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OnLive has server farms which offer all the number-crunching might to play such titles as Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Assassin`s Creed: Brotherhood while the end user just interacts with the game over a broadband connection.
All you need to access online is a PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone which meets the minimum system requirements and an internet connection which is at least running at 2 megabits per second, although a 5Mbps connection is recommended. Because OnLive works regardless of whether your graphics card has vast amounts of RAM or pixel pipelines it means that you can enjoy the same HD visual fidelity whether you are using a four year old laptop or a cutting edge gaming PC.
Of course, there are some obvious drawbacks to the service, with the primary concern being one of lag. Lag is the interval between the gamer pressing a button or moving a mouse and that translating into onscreen action. Even consoles running the game locally have some lag, but since each key stroke registered by OnLive needs to be sent from the user`s location to the server and back over their connection there is a more noticeable dislocation of action from reaction in-game.
What works in favour of OnLive in the UK is the fact that it has worked in partnership with BT to iron out any kinks in the service and test it thoroughly before launching. BT is responsible for a majority of the nation`s broadband infrastructure and so getting its seal of approval and support is vital.
If you do not have a PC or a laptop which you want to use with OnLive then there is the firm`s own Game System which might catch your eye. This unassuming black box comes with its own controller and will sit below your HDTV acting as a streaming hub that gets you straight into the action.
What OnLive really does is level the playing field when it comes to gaming. You need not splash out hundreds of pounds on a new graphics card or the latest games console if you still want to play the best games currently available. You can use your tablet computer or BlackBerry phone to log on, live out your digital fantasises and then log out fulfilled. It does exclude people who do not have decent broadband services, which means you will either have to invest in a faster internet connection or save that cash up to buy a better PC for gaming. However, in the long term cloud gaming can only get better.
This is a guest post written by Erica Muhanji.Listen, we all love the BRZ. It's light, it's cheap, it's rear-wheel-drive. But we want more. We've wanted more since our very first lap with the car, and we haven't been quiet about it. Instead, you gave us this:
The Special Edition BRZ Series.Blue.
PHOTOS: Subaru BRZ Wagon Concept
I'll give you a pass on the name. If you want the world to think you don't have a functional grasp on how a keyboard works while drawing parallels between your sports car and dandruff shampoo, that's your call. But I can't let the car slide.
You expect me to get excited about some painted wheels and a body kit? You think that's worth my time? Worse, you think it's worth your customers' money? Quit trolling us and drop a turbo in the engine bay.
We like low-power sports cars as much as the next goon, but few companies do turbo flat-fours like you. The WRX and STI twins pack the kind of gut-punching power that would turn the BRZ from a shoulda-bought-the-Miata to a just-ripped-your-Mustang's-face-off machine.
Why do you deny us? What's the motivation? I've heard the excuses. The EJ257 engine doesn't fit under the BRZ's low hood. OK, but the new WRX's turbo FA20 totally would. So maybe it would need a different exhaust manifold. So what? You have some of the world's best engineers at your disposal. Figure it out.
We're still waiting.
READ THIS: Here's the Subaru BRZ shooting brake you didn't know you wantedThis is a list of some of the military equipment used by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). This list does not include equipment used by the Syrian Opposition.[1][2]
Small arms [ edit ]
Assault and battle rifles [ edit ]
Sniper rifles [ edit ]
Machine guns [ edit ]
Shotguns [ edit ]
Pistols [ edit ]
Explosives, anti-tank weapons, grenade launchers, and anti-aircraft launchers [ edit ]
Towed arms [ edit ]
Towed artillery [ edit ]
Vehicles [ edit ]
Logistics and utility vehicles [ edit ]
Tanks and armored fighting vehicles [ edit ]
Self-Propelled Artillery [ edit ]
Aircraft [ edit ]
Watercraft [ edit ]
Armored suicide truck
ISIL has been using a mix of watercraft to transport fighters around the Tigris River and Euphrates River and has been referred to as their unofficial riverine navy.[57] US forces have come across small watercraft that can ply rivers to carry troops, equipment and in some cases act as floating IEDs.[57]
Barges for transport.
Skiffs.
Motorized vessels.
Weapons production [ edit ]
IS has an indigenous weapons industry. Their workshops can produce identical copies of the RPG-7 and SPG-9. In addition, they have developed an indigenous rocket launcher, which comes in four varieties. Two variants fire PG-9 munitions at short and long range. A third fires PG-7V munitions and the fourth fires an unspecified thermobaric munition. They also produce grenades to be fired from the muzzle of an AK pattern rifle or dropped from a drone. They also produce mortar ammunition and rockets.[58] [59]Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/5/2013 (2098 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
One of the most sought-after restaurant locations in town has a new tenant.
The Grove, a nearly three-year-old River Heights pub, has signed on to open its second location in the former home of Papa George’s restaurant in the heart of Osborne Village.
The 3,000-square-foot space, which has been completely gutted, has been vacant since the popular late-night eatery closed after 35 years last October.
The Grove’s deal ends a months-long saga to fill the neighbourhood anchor for Graeme Rowswell, head of G. T. Rowswell Realty Leasing Co. He spent six months negotiating with a “very large” national company but said they ended up being too demanding. It was similar with a second group that approached him and wanted him to redevelop the building.Image caption Ciarán Maxwell was a former lance corporal in the Royal Marines
A former Royal Marine from County Antrim who made bombs for dissident republicans has been sentenced to 18 years in prison.
Ciarán Maxwell, from Larne, admitted a series of terror charges ahead of a pre-sentence hearing that began last Wednesday.
After his arrest last year, police found 43 weapons hides.
Image copyright Police Image caption Maxwell also admitted drugs offences
On Monday, an Old Bailey judge told Maxwell he must serve a further five years on licence after his release.
The judge said Maxwell was motivated by hostility to the United Kingdom and had betrayed his position in the armed forces.
He told the former lance corporal that the purpose of a pipe bomb - 14 of which were constructed by Maxwell - was "to maim and kill a potential victim".
The judge rejected Maxwell's account that he was motivated by post traumatic stress disorder resulting from a sectarian beating he received as a teenager.
Image copyright Police Image caption The former Marine made 14 pipe bombs for dissident republicans
He said Maxwell was "dangerous" and threatened the political stability of Northern Ireland.
The judge added that Maxwell had "considerable skills as a terrorist bomb maker" and enjoyed his work.
"There was considerable planning, including attack planning, research, and the acquiring of large amounts of materials, including police items for use in disguise," Mr Justice Nigel Sweeney said.
"You were strongly committed to the cause.
"To state the obvious, a skilled bomb maker is of considerable importance to a terrorist organisation like the Continuity IRA."
Image copyright Police Image caption A police vest was found in one of the hides
On Friday, the court heard that Maxwell faked his support for the dissident republicans' cause as he was "frozen" with fear, and that he believes old connections now wish him and his family serious ill.
The 31-year-old was arrested last year after two dissident republican arms dumps were found near Larne.
Maxwell grew up as a Catholic in the County Antrim town and later moved to England, having enlisted in the Royal Marines in 2010.
He lived in Exminster in Devon, and was based with 40 Commando in Taunton, Somerset. He never served in Northern Ireland.
Image copyright Police Image caption Bomb timers were also discovered
The court was told that four of the pipe bombs he made were used in attacks in Northern Ireland.
Other weapons found in the hides included anti-personnel mines, mortars, ammunition and bomb-making materials.
The former Marine was not in court, but appeared by video link from Woodhill Prison in Milton Keynes.
The judge said Maxwell had enough chemicals in Northern Ireland to create "100 kg of high explosives, larger than the notorious Enniskillen bomb."
It was heard that when Maxwell applied to the Royal Marines in 2009, he said he had "no beliefs" on an application form.
Image caption Maxwell was arrested after two arms dumps were found near Larne, County Antrim
The judge said there was "insufficient evidence" to suggest a sinister motivation for joining the Marines.
Police Service of Northern Ireland Ass Ch Const Stephen Martin said: "Ciaran Maxwell is an extremely dangerous individual who was capable of gathering a large amount of munitions over multiple sites in Northern Ireland and England.
"The hides uncovered at Larne and surrounding areas collectively, amount to one of the most significant seizures of munitions in recent years in Northern Ireland, not to mention the further items recovered in hides in Great Britain.
Image copyright Police Image caption The hides also contained hundreds of rounds of ammunition
"It is obvious that these materials and munitions were sourced, gathered and constructed over significant periods of time which demonstrates Ciaran Maxwell's determination and committed planning.
"These items are designed to cause damage, serious injury and to kill."
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland James Brokenshire said: "I pay tribute to the police and other agencies in successfully bringing this case before the courts.
"This has undoubtedly saved lives."
Maxwell was also convicted of possession of cannabis with intent to supply and had images of other people's bank cards and identity documents which he intended to use in online fraud.Photo
On a late-November day in 1983, Steven Levy, then a freelance journalist for Rolling Stone, got into a car outside 10460 Bandley Drive, in Cupertino, Calif.
As the vehicle sped away from the white office building, Mr. Levy looked at the driver and said hello to Steven P. Jobs, then the young, spry co-founder of Apple, who immediately responded with a voluble tirade about the magazine Mr. Levy worked for.
As he zigzagged Cupertino’s streets toward a pizza restaurant, Mr. Jobs complained that a coming article about the Macintosh — a computer that was still two months away from being announced — would not be on the cover of Rolling Stone, but rather stuffed inside a planned issue. Mr. Jobs profanely complained about the magazine and about a previous cover article, on MTV.
Mr. Levy couldn’t get a word in, but when he finally did, he explained that he had written the MTV cover article Mr. Jobs hated so much.
“He immediately changed the subject,” Mr. Levy recalled with a chuckle in a phone interview.
For the next couple of hours, over pizza with olives, Mr. Levy interviewed Mr. Jobs about the coming Mac computer, his design philosophy, a breakup which had left Mr. Jobs love-sick and, ominously, struggles with Apple’s board over the direction of the company. (Mr. Jobs would be fired two years later.)
The interview was a rare and raw moment for Mr. Jobs, where he bared his true feelings on the record with a reporter.
Photo
While some snippets of the 11,500-word conversation were used in the Rolling Stone feature (which never did make it to the cover), until now, the transcript has been tucked away in one of Mr. Levy’s files.
To celebrate the 30-year anniversary of the Mac, Mr. Levy said Friday that he was appending the transcript, which is “essentially unexpurgated,” in an updated Kindle version of the book about the birth of the Macintosh, “Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer that Changed Everything.”
It’s clear in the interview that Mr. Jobs was struggling with a few demons. For one, he was upset about a recent article in Time magazine that described him as petulant and unkind. And he blamed his obsession with work for a breakup.
“I just had a romance that I really care about, a lot — I mean, a lot — go up in smoke. Because of the stress, and the sort of other woman that Macintosh is,” Mr. Jobs said.
Yet what is apparent in the discussion is that Mr. Jobs knows he is about to introduce a computer that is going to change the world. He discusses the graphics and the design of the machine with the passion of an artist describing a newly completed masterpiece. “I mean, it’s incredibly great,” Mr. Jobs said when asked about the Mac. “It’s insanely great.”
The Macintosh he was so excited about would be the world’s first mass-market personal computer that had a graphical user interface and a mouse.
“It’s hard to put yourself in the mindset, to look back at the way things were back then,” Mr. Levy told me when I asked about re-reading the interview after all these years. “Computers had these glowing green letters back then and there was no Internet.”
But Mr. Jobs seemed to know exactly the kind of impact the Mac would have, and the team of people who had helped make it a reality.
He repeatedly refers to the team that built the Mac as “pirates,” and then says a quote that became famous years later: “Better to be a pirate than join the navy.” It’s also clear that Mr. Jobs and his band of over-worked pirates had agonized over every detail of the computer, even analyzing the details of the manual.
There are some aspects of the 30-year-old interview that might answer some unanswerable questions about what Mr. Jobs would have done with his life if he were still alive today.
When Mr. Levy told Mr. Jobs that there was “speculation” that he might go into politics, Mr. Jobs replied that he had no desire to enter the public sector and noted that the private sector could have a greater influence on society. “I’m one of those people that think Thomas Edison and the light bulb changed the world more than Karl Marx ever did,” Mr. Jobs said.
Photo
One thing Mr. Levy was continually searching for in the interview, was what was driving Mr. Jobs — a question that was echoed in 2011 in “Steve Jobs,” the biography written by Walter Isaacson.
In the 1983 interview, it’s clear that money isn’t the answer. Mr. Jobs talked about his net worth falling by $250 million in six months. “I’ve lost a quarter billion dollars! You know, that’s very character building,” he said, and notes that at some point, counting your millions of dollars is “just stupid.”
Mr. Levy pressed again. “The question I was getting at is, what’s driving you here?”
“Well, it’s like computers and society are out on a first date in this decade, and for some crazy reason we’re just in the right place at the right time to make that romance blossom,” Mr. Jobs replied, noting that the 1980s were the beginning of the computing revolution. “We can make them great, we can make a great product that people can easily use.”
Such passion is something that would follow Mr. Jobs through his career, and what he said next seemed to be the driving force behind that passion.
“I look at myself as an artist if anything,” Mr. Jobs said. “Sort of a trapeze artist.”
“With or without a net?” Mr. Levy asked.
“Without,” Mr. Jobs replied, and then he said one of the more profound things in the interview: “You know we’re constantly taking. We don’t make most of the food we eat, we don’t grow it, anyway. We wear clothes other people make, we speak a language other people developed, we use a mathematics other people evolved and spent their lives building. I mean we’re constantly taking things. It’s a wonderful ecstatic feeling to create something and put it into the pool of human experience and knowledge.”
Given that we’re still talking about the Mac computer 30 years later, and a long list of other products Mr. Jobs helped create, it’s apparent that he was able to add something to that pool.BYRAM - The police officer who fatally shot a shotgun-wielding man on Laurel Trail this past June was justified in his use of deadly force, according to the findings of an investigation conducted by the Sussex County Prosecutor's Office.
Ronald Neal, 56, of Byram, was killed after he allegedly aimed a shotgun directly at an officer outside of his home on June 3. Neal lived in the home with his wife, who wasn't home at the time of the incident, authorities have said.
Sussex County Prosecutor Francis Koch said in a six-page statement on Thursday the officer who fatally shot Neal was justified because it was necessary to protect the officer at whom Neal had raised his gun.
Under state law, fatal shootings involving police officers receive a review by a grand jury unless "the undisputed facts indicate that the use of force was justifiable under law." Koch said no criminal charges were filed and the facts were undisputed in this case so it was not presented to a grand jury.
Koch said in the statement Byram police responded to Neal's home after receiving a 911 call at 3:41 p.m. on June 3 reporting a gunshot inside the home at 19 Laurel Trail in Byram. The caller told police she believed the person in the house had shot himself.
The officers involved in the shooting were not named in the news release, but were identified as Officers 1, 2, 3 and 4 based on the order of their arrival at the scene. Sussex County First Assistant Prosecutor Greg Mueller previously identified Byram Detective Robert Tierney as the officer who shot and killed Neal. He also said Tierney has an "exemplary service record."
The first officer arrived on the scene and was told by a neighbor that earlier in the day he'd heard a gunshot from the Laurel Trail home. The second and third officers arrived on the scene a short time later and then all three officers took up "cover positions on the property," according to the statement.
Officer 3 yelled several times to try and make contact with the resident inside the home, and, eventually, Neal responded and told the officer he was alone but he had firearms, per the statement.
Neal then exited the home with two firearms -- a handgun and a shotgun -- and continued to talk to police. As Neal and Officer 3 continued to talk, a fourth officer, a crisis negotiator, arrived on the scene and took over communications, according to the statement.
It was during his interaction with the fourth officer that Neal repeatedly began to yell for police to shoot at him, according to the statement. While Neal and the crisis negotiator were speaking, Neal's shotgun was allegedly leaning by the front doorway and in close proximity to him.
Neal had initially put the handgun down on his porch, but during his discussion with the crisis negotiator he picked it up and threw it onto the lawn between himself and police officers, according to the statement.
A short time later, Neal allegedly walked back to the front doorway of his home and picked up the shotgun despite being told by the crisis negotiator to put it down.
"Mr. Neal yelled to the officers not to shoot him in the arm because if they did he would only reach for the gun again," according to the statement. "Mr. Neal then raised the shotgun, with the barrel pointed straight up in the air. While still on the porch, Mr. Neal then began to lower the shotgun so it was pointed directly at Byram Officer 1."
It continued: "It was only upon this action that Byram Officer 3 fired a single shot at Mr. Neal to protect the life of Byram Officer 1. Byram Officer 3's single shot hit Mr. Neal in the left side of his torso causing him to fall backwards and to the floor of the porch."
After Neal was shot, police rushed to his aid and cleared his weapons, according to the statement. Despite first aid, Neal was pronounced dead at Hackettstown Medical Center at 5:21 p.m.
The medical examiner later confirmed Neal's cause of death to be a single gunshot wound to the left chest area.
The shooting investigation was immediately taken over by the Sussex County Prosecutor's Office, which notified the state Division of Criminal Justice of the incident.
As part of the investigation, police spoke with an individual who talked to Neal several times over the phone on June 3. The individual told investigators he suspected Neal was under the influence of alcohol, and, during the course of the conversation, Neal said he wanted to see his parents, both of whom are dead.
The individual also said Neal asked him to come over, but the individual said he couldn't because of a prior commitment, to which Neal allegedly responded "but you said if I ever needed you, you would come over."
Two days after the shooting, police spoke with a man who had been friends with Neal for about 10 years. The friend told police Neal told him a year or two ago about a plan he had "to come out of his house with an unloaded gun and to get someone else to remove him from the planet."
The friend told officers he believed Neal had referred to police as the ones who would remove him.
Neighbors who lived near the home also told the prosecutor's office police "professionally and calmly" tried to calm Neal down.
According to Koch, the Division of Criminal Justice concurred with the prosecutor's office's findings and agreed with the decision to forego the grand jury review.
Justin Zaremba may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @JustinZarembaNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook(CNN) A nurse contracts Ebola. An urgent care center in Boston shuts down when a sick man recently returned from Liberia walks in. Health care workers complain they haven't been properly trained to protect themselves against the deadly virus.
Public health experts are asking whether the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is partly to blame.
Here are five things they say the CDC is getting wrong.
1. The CDC is telling possible Ebola patients to "call a doctor."
How much do you know about Ebola?
How much do you know about Ebola? 03:13
How much do you know about Ebola?
When passengers arrive in the United States from Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea, they're handed a flier instructing them to "call a doctor" if they feel ill.
Never mind how hard it is to get your doctor on the phone, but even if you could, it's quite possible she'd tell you to go to the nearest emergency room or urgent care center.
We saw how well that worked at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. On September 25, the hospital sent a feverish Thomas Eric Duncan home even though he had told them he'd recently been to Liberia.
And we've seen how well that worked in Massachusetts, where an ill man recently returned from Liberia walked into an urgent care center, which then evacuated its other patients and closed for several hours.
One way to do it differently: Set up a toll free number for returning passengers that would reach a centralized office, which would then dispatch a local ambulance to get the patient to a hospital.
The hospital would be warned that a possible Ebola patient is on the way, and the patient would not be brought through the main emergency room.
That's the idea of Gavin Macgregor-Skinner, an assistant professor at Penn State's Department of Public Health Sciences.
"Do you really want someone with Ebola hopping on a bus to get to the hospital? No," he said. "And once they get there, do you want them sitting in the waiting room next to the kid with the broken arm? Again, no."
JUST WATCHED Meet the face of the U.S. Ebola response Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Meet the face of the U.S. Ebola response 03:21
2. The CDC director says any hospital can care for Ebola patients.
"Essentially any hospital in the country can safely take care of Ebola. You don't need a special hospital to do it," Dr. Thomas Frieden said Sunday at a press conference.
"I think it's very unfortunate that he keeps re-stating that," said Macgregor-Skinner, the global projects manager for the Elizabeth R. Griffin Foundation.
He said when it comes to handling Ebola, not all hospitals are created equally. As seen at Presbyterian, using protective gear can be tricky. Plus, it's a challenge to handle infectious waste from Ebola patients, such as hospital gowns contaminated with blood or vomit.
Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, said some hospitals have more experience with infectious diseases and consistently do drills in how to deal with biohazards.
"If you were a burn unit patient, wouldn't you want to go to a burn unit?" he said.
The CDC may already be moving in that direction.
Designating certain hospitals as Ebola treatment units "is something we're exploring further," said Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the agency.
JUST WATCHED How U.S. hospitals prepare for Ebola Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH How U.S. hospitals prepare for Ebola 03:08
3. The CDC didn't encourage the "buddy system" for doctors and nurses.
Under this system, a doctor or nurse who is about to do a procedure on an Ebola patient has a "buddy," another health care worker, who acts as a safety supervisor, monitoring the worker from the time he puts on the gear until the time he takes it off.
The "buddy system" has been effective in stopping other kinds of infections in hospitals.
Skinner said the CDC is considering recommending such a system to hospitals.
4. CDC didn't encourage doctors to develop Ebola treatment guidelines.
Taking care of Ebola patients is tricky, because certain procedures might put doctors and nurses in contact with the patient's infectious bodily fluids.
At Sunday's press conference, Frieden hinted that Presbyterian might have performed two measures -- inserting a breathing tube and giving kidney dialysis -- that were unlikely to help Duncan. He described them as a "desperate measure" to save his life.
"Both of those procedures may spread contaminated materials and are considered high-risk procedures," he said. "I'm not familiar with any prior patient with Ebola who has undergone either intubation or dialysis."
Osterholm said CDC should coordinate with medical groups to come up with treatment guidelines.
"We could have and should have done it a few months ago," he said.
JUST WATCHED See the suit designed to protect doctors from Ebola Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH See the suit designed to protect doctors from Ebola 03:08
5. The CDC put too much trust in protective gear.
Once Duncan was diagnosed, health authorities started making daily visits to 48 of his contacts.
But that didn't include several dozen workers at Presbyterian who took care of Duncan after he was diagnosed. They weren't followed because they were wearing protective gear when they had contact with Duncan. Instead, they monitored themselves.
Public health experts said that was a misstep, as the CDC should have realized that putting on and taking off protective gear is often done imperfectly and one of the workers might get an infection.
How did Dallas nurse contract Ebola?
"We have to recognize that our safety work tells us that breaches of protocol are the norm, not the exception in health care," said Dr. Peter Pronovost, senior vice president for patient safety and quality at Johns Hopkins Medicine. "We routinely break precautions."
Skinner said that in this case, self-monitoring worked, but that monitoring from health officials can be beneficial, too, and so health care workers who were involved in Duncan's care will now get daily visits from health authorities.A newly-discovered peatland in the Congo Basin of central Africa contains an estimated 30.6 billion tons of carbon in its waterlogged soils—equivalent to three times the total annual carbon emissions of every human being alive today.
Covering an area the size of England, the Cuvette Central is the largest tropical peatland area on Earth, dramatically increasing the amount of carbon stored in our planet’s hot and humid midsection, according to an analysis published last week in Nature. Now that this vast carbon sink has been identified, experts say we need to take every action possible to ensure it remains in the ground.
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“Peatlands are only a resource in the fight against climate change when left intact, and so maintaining large stores of carbon in undisturbed peatlands should be a priority,” lead study author Simon Lewis said in a statement. “Our new results show that carbon has been building up in the Congo Basin’s peat for nearly 11,000 years.”
Peatlands only cover about three percent of Earth’s land surface, but they contain up to a third of all of the carbon sequestered in soils. Peat forms in waterlogged regions where plants add lots of organic material to the soil, but where decomposition is inhibited by a lack of oxygen (and, in the case of boreal and tundra peatlands, low temperatures). Over time, the highly organic, dark brown-to-black muck soils that characterize peatlands can compress into coal. That is, unless the soil warms up and dries out, at which point all of that carbon is liable to escape back to the atmosphere.
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Vast peatlands underlie forests in western Amazonia and Indonesia, but until recently, nobody knew whether the world’s third major tropical forest region—the Congo Basin of Central Africa—also contained significant deposits of carbon-rich muck. But ecologists Greta Dargie and Simon Lewis of the University of Leeds suspected that we might find peat if we looked for it, particularly in a wet, topographically-depressed region of the Congo’s interior, known as the Cuvette Central.
“It is astonishing that in 2016 discoveries like this can still be made.”
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To do so, the researchers conducted an extensive, three year field campaign, sampling soils within a remote area of the northern Republic of Congo (ROC) spanning 15,400 square miles (40,000 square kilometers). Combining field measurements with satellite remote sensing data on elevation and soil moisture, the researchers identified a vast peat layer underlying 56,000 square miles (145,000 square kilometers) of swamp forest and averaging nearly 8 feet (2.5 meters) deep. Radiocarbon dating indicates that the peat started accumulating 10,600 years ago, coincident with the onset of the Holocene epoch, which brought humid conditions to central Africa.
All told, Cuvette Central is thought to be the most extensive peatland ever identified in the tropics, hoarding some 30.6 billion tons of carbon in just 4 percent of the Congo basin. That’s roughly the same amount of carbon stored in all of the above-ground vegetation across the other 96 percent of the basin. It’s also equivalent to about 20 years of fossil fuel emissions in the United States, or three years of human carbon emissions globally.
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“The sheer expanse of these peatlands makes central Africa home to the world’s most extensive peatland complex,” Dargie said in a statement. “It is astonishing that in 2016 discoveries like this can still be made.”
Other large tropical peatlands, on the islands of New Guinea, Bornea and Sumatra, have shrunk substantially in recent years due to land use changes, including drainage for agriculture and human-caused wildfires. When peatlands burn, they’re like carbon bombs, releasing tremendous plumes of climate-warming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. (In October of 2015, Indonesian peatland fires were briefly emitting as much CO2 as the entire US economy.)
Unlike the imperiled peatlands of south Asia, most of the Cuvette Central remains untouched. This could change, the researchers say, if swift action is not taken to protect these forests, which also happens to be a last refuge for famous African megafauna including lowland gorillas and forest elephants. Threats to the Cuvette Central include future drainage for agriculture and a reduction in rainfall due to climate change, which may already be happening.
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As it stands, peatlands in the ROC and the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo could, if maintained, represent a significant carbon offset for the entire African continent, whose human population and carbon footprint are projected to soar in the decades to come.
“The existence of such large and previously unquantified components of the national carbon stocks of both ROC and DRC,” the researchers write, “provides an additional imperative...to work with the people of the Cuvette Centrale to pursue development pathways that will radically improve local livelihoods and welfare without compromising the integrity of this globally significant region of Earth.”
[Nature]At least a dozen people in a wedding convoy were killed in the al-Bayda province of Yemen on December 12 when the United States launched a drone attack. It provoked great outrage, and, in the aftermath, the Yemeni government compensated a local tribe and Yemen’s parliament passed a resolution to ban US drone strikes.
Nothing was said by any US official in the immediate moments after news about the strike began to circulate in Yemen. What unnamed Yemeni officials claimed hours after was that a wedding convoy had been mistaken for an al Qaeda convoy. But now, over a week later, anonymous US officials decided to tell a reputable news organization the strike targeted “ringleader behind the summer plot that shuttered 19 diplomatic posts across Africa and the Mideast.”
The Associated Press reports:
Two U.S. and one Yemeni official say Shawqi Ali Ahmad al-Badani was the target. He is a mid-level leader in Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. U.S. officials say between nine and 12 other militants were killed. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to describe drone operations publicly. […] The Yemeni government paid the local tribe compensation for the loss of life, but Yemen’s official security committee also announced that the airstrike had targeted al-Qaida militants, including those who masterminded attacks on government institutions, the police and army. U.S. officials say the militants were traveling to the wedding, but were not near civilians when they were hit.
This conflicts with everything that has been reported by journalists covering the strike that took place. It strongly suggests that US officials are lying or attempting to cover up what happened, which would not be surprising since the drone attack was the worst in Yemen’s history.
When the attack occurred, Iona Craig, a freelance journalist in Yemen, reported that a convoy of 11 vehicles had been hit. “Two of the vehicles were destroyed.” Al Qaeda militants were “believed to have been among those killed, but at least a dozen of the dead were civilians.”
A Yemeni government official told Craig, “There was a [militant] target, but something went wrong.”
“A local news website,” according to Craig, “published a list naming the casualties, claiming that all 15 [of the casualties] were civilians. Two tribal sheikhs were believed to be among those killed.”
Craig reacted to the claims by anonymous US officials:
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For Foreign Policy magazine, Adam Baron, a journalist also based in Yemen, wrote:
The initial reports left me incredulous. As I started to make calls to sources in the area, it became clear the strike hit four cars in a convoy of about a dozen vehicles, killing at least a dozen people and wounding many more. The casualties were identified as members of local tribes. The information I received, as usual after such an event, was sometimes contradictory: While some sources stressed that those killed were all civilians, others seemed just as confident that some were indeed militants.
He added this was not a “targeted killing” nor was it “consistent with the White House’s claim that the strikes are only carried out when civilians will not be caught in the crossfire.” The “suspected militants” had been surrounded by “civilian bystanders.” And, he confessed, “It was hard not to wonder if the wedding convoy was mistaken for something more sinister — that someone in the bowels of the US intelligence community concluded that vehicles carrying heavily armed wedding guests were actually an al Qaeda convoy.”
It is just one paragraph, but there are multiple lies in this piece of propaganda fed to the Associated Press.
One, US officials are sure they were all “militants,” a statement that sharply conflicts with what those in the area where the strike took place have said. They are also certain all were “militants,” but the officials do not apparently know exactly how many were killed, which makes statements on who died further perplexing. (Craig reported 15 killed.)
Two, the officials completely deny that any civilians were nearby. The people of Yemen have bodies to show that civilians were killed. Even the Yemeni government does not dispute that civilians were killed. The security committee just excuses what happened by stating “al Qaeda militants” were targeted.
Three, the name of the alleged ringleader of this embassy plot does not include a last name similar to any of the victims reported killed.
In Yemeni news media, these are the names of the dead that were reported:
Hussein Mohammed Saleh Al Amiri, 65
Mohammed Ali Massad Al Amiri, 30
Ali Abdullah Mohammed Al Taysi, 35
Zeidan Mohammed Al Almiri, 40 Z
Saif Abdullah Mabkhout Al Amiri, 20
Motlaq Hamoud Mohammed Al Taysi, 45
Saleh Abdullah Mabkhout, 30
Aaref Mohammed Al Taysi, 30
Saleh Massad Al Amiri, 42
Massad Dayfallah Al Amiri, 25
Shayef Abdullah Mabkhout Al Amiri
Hussein Mohammed Al Tomayl Al Taysi, 20
Salem Mohammed Ali Al Taysi
Those reported wounded were:
Abdullah Mohammed Al Khashal Al Taysi
Mohammed Ali Abdullah Al Amiri
Abdullah Aziz Mabkhout Al Amiri
Nasser Ali Ahmad Al Amiri
Nayef Abdullah Al Khasham Al Taysi
The name of the |
has been. Sometimes it's been expertly produced entertaining vacuity and other times not. These new episodes aren't expertly produced, but they're OK.
Is that enough?
I know, for example, that the fabricated terrorist plots of History's Six are much closer to damaging and disturbing in their awfulness. When Six focuses on its main characters and, particularly, when you can just watch Walton Goggins act and forget about everything else, it's pretty decent. It's when the show uses Boko Haram and ISIS-affiliated terrorists for cheap action beats that Six falls apart for me. Unlike 24, it preys on fears that will be familiar to viewers with peripheral cultural literacy. That's manipulative trash and no matter how OK other parts of the series are, I can't be tolerant of it. I'm sure, though, that many viewers aren't bothered.
Many viewers won't be bothered by what's happening on 24: Legacy and since I wasn't initially bothered, I can't blame them, but the more and more I think about this getting a spotlight after the Super Bowl, in front of what will be probably the largest audience for any scripted program this season, I'm loving the optics less and less.
It's not that I'm saying we shouldn't have shows like this or that shows shouldn't be allowed to depict whoever they want to as villains. If Fox were premiering a new season of Sleeper Cell after the Super Bowl, I'd like to think I wouldn't be saying, "No shows with Muslim terrorists"; rather, I'd be nodding with interest at a show aspiring to feature a variety of Muslim characters, representing many moral shades. Somebody needs to make a new Sleeper Cell, or any show with the intellect and pragmatism to sincerely explore our societal fears and also reality.
Maybe these kinds of weak portraits of international relations are already no longer feeling merely frivolous to me — just as I can no longer figure out how to respond to self-serious, but thin shows like Designated Survivor or Homeland that say a few of the right things, but seem to lack the desire or the reason to handle material with any depth.
Chances are good that this feeling will pass or that desensitizing will kick in. I hope that frivolity won't be the enemy for the next four years, but I may need to seek my frivolity elsewhere.
But maybe I'm just a snowflake and this is exactly the moment for action escapism.Everything ends. Maybe not on a cosmic level, but here on earth, in the laughably brief duration of human lifetimes, the institutions of men and women all have a final episode. People die. Narrative arcs reach their conclusion. Some say the world will end in fire, and some say “winter is coming,” but either way, we’re all goners. Even “American Pie” eventually runs out of verses. Things age and they change, but there’s a last page to every book, an end to every story.
One such story is that of the Aardvark, the Berry Street music venue that’s held on to its spot near TCU for nearly 20 years. Bought in 1998 by a then-26-year-old musician named Danny Weaver, the Aardvark’s 300-person capacity room was once an epicenter for Fort Worth’s music scene. If you were going to shows in the early 2000s, this was the place to be. I spent my early 20s there, both as a fan and a musician. Playing the Aardvark was my first “big” gig. Getting trashed on Sex with an Alligator shots was my first “big” bar tab. Ask any local band dude in their 30s or older, and you’ll get similar stories. Of course, you could also ask a lot of TCU alums who matriculated over the past two decades about the Aardvark, assuming their memories aren’t completely submerged beneath an ocean of Coors Light and Jägermeister. Such is life, right? But on February 1, 2018, the Aardvark, as it has been, will be no more.
In a phone interview on Monday afternoon, Weaver told me he’s selling the bar to Christ Chapel, the burgeoning Arlington Heights mega-church that has been holding a church service at the Aardvark every Sunday for the past eight years. “They made me a really good offer, and (the Aardvark) being the only bar over (on West Berry), there’s not the foot traffic we used to have, and there’s like 71 bars over on West 7th, so it’s made it harder to compete,” said Weaver. And
But Weaver has also owned it for 19 years, and he is ready for a change. “I have an 8-year-old and a 6-year-old, and they’re starting to ask why dad isn’t at dinner or at breakfast or at a baseball game.” More than anything, Weaver is looking forward to being a dad. And anyway, he never thought of the bar being his career path. “Running it for 19 years wasn’t my game plan. I was 26 and it was a good deal, and I hated college.”
Weaver says that though he wishes it could be the Aardvark forever, he appreciates the work that Christ Chapel’s Sunday-morning college ministry has done, and praises the “good job reaching out to 18-, 19-year-old kids who are impressionable.” And though building’s days as a bar will end, Christ Chapel will still maintain some food offerings, as well as live music, though obviously, the performances will be faith-oriented.
Though the ’Vark’s days of rock ’n roll debauchery are numbered, Weaver is proud of what he and his staff were able to keep going for so long, though he admits that giving up his bar isn’t as easy as he’d like to think it is. “It’s mixed emotions,” he said. “Whenever you spend this much time doing this, you invest in a lot of bands careers, and I’m proud of that. But it does start to weigh in on you a little bit. You want everyone to make money, you want the bands to have a good time, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, but I’m more at peace by being able to spend more time with my children. That’s really a big part of it. I could keep doing this, keep having shows, keep running the bar, but my kids don’t get it.” As much as Weaver liked seeing his boys enjoy come to the bar to watch bands like Bowling for Soup soundcheck, he doesn’t want to miss any of their baseball games.
Besides spending time with his family, Weaver has moved into the energy business, working as a distributor for Green Panel Energy, a clean energy company that specializes in providing power to bars and restaurants. Like his purchase of the Aardvark way back when, Weaver sort of fell into it. “I had a buddy that had been doing it, and he thought I’d be great at it since I know bar and restaurant owners.”
In the meantime, the Aardvark is still open for a couple months, and Weaver says it’s packed with Aardvark legends like John Price and Green River Ordinance, as well as some major announcements for January that he has to keep under wraps for a couple weeks due to radius clauses. If, as Neil Young suggested long ago, it’s better to burn out than fade away, the Aardvark will go out with a bang and not a sigh. Everything comes to an end, but at least the Aardvark is finishing strong.This article was first published on Arsenal Report in 2014.
Welcome to the first bi-annual ITK Awards results show, sponsored by no one and loathed by the internet gossip junkies! We have a great show tonight, as we'll take a look at the best and worst ITK moments of the last few months while taking inappropriately sharp stabs at anyone dumb enough to claim they have inside knowledge about anything.
If you're new to the ITK phenomenon, it's an abbreviation that stands for 'In The Know' - a term used for people on the internet, and/or in tabloid media, who claim they have inside sources feeding them information that they then openly spread as if their sources wouldn't cut them off from this stream of confidentiality the second anything leaked in the first place. The ITK people usually come out of the woodwork around the time schools end for the summer. Make of that what you will.
In the last six months we've gathered quotes, tweets, posts and comments from a selection of the most notorious bullshitters the web has seen, and we can now reveal the winners of the 2013-2014 ITK Awards. Here we go:
The Golden Poo: Ben Fairthorne
The old saying 'if you throw enough shit on a wall, something will stick eventually' applies perfectly to Ben Fairthorne's Twitter strategy where he wildly guesses at transfers all day long, hoping he'll get one right so he can live off that lucky stab for another year. In 2012 he actually claimed Wenger's "closest adviser" gives him inside information.
If that's not enough to suspend bets on him winning the Biggest Douche In The Universe Award, what is?
Winning ITK moment (7 July 2013):
Thiago joining Manchester United finally being confirmed by papers as I reported a month ago after tip off by agent.
Medal Of Hubris: Tim Payton
Ah, Tim Payton - the self-proclaimed supporter spokesperson who pokes his head into any opportunity to be seen or heard in the media, following in the footsteps of Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian in a quest to become famous for no apparent reason. Lately he's used his low-level notoriety among Arsenal supporters to create an illusion of actually having inside contacts at the club, when in reality his "insider" is most likely tabloid sensationalist hack gossip columnist John Cross, who Tim hangs around with whenever he's not at Job Centre Plus.
Winning ITK moment (9 July 2013):
An Arsenal person told me today [Higuain] still might be a couple of weeks
The Illegal U-Turn: GeoffArsenal
Geoff used to be a reliable source for peripheral information such as starting line-ups and the occasional transfer revelation, mostly because he has made friends with some low-level people at the club through his line of work (apparently in producing sports events, ironically according to our inside source). But after building up tens of thousands of Twitter followers and getting a couple of lucky guesses right, self-importance kicked in and Geoff turned into an ITK monster of epic proportions.
What used to be a good source for unimportant info is now a 'Safe ITK' account, where Geoff keeps claiming things that can never be disproven or argued against. Recently started deleting tweets to give the impression Arsenal are telling him to be quiet about things. Now spends his time re-tweeting praise for podcasts and doing shoutouts from his die-hard followers.
Winning ITK moment (11 August 2013):
Did anybody screenshot my Gustavo tweet?
Platinum Training Wheels: Abroke Diaby
Previously involved in the Football Manager community where he made more enemies in just a few years than the United States of America managed to make throughout human history, he only recently started dabbling in the ITK sludge, quickly building loyal followers who swear by his accuracy.
Winning ITK moment (15 July 2013):
Cesc is signed 100% to Arsenal. Not 99.99%, 100%. Sky Sports don't know shit.
Tabloid Hack Plaque: John Cross
This slob has built an entire career on guesswork and speculation, completely bypassing every journalistic code there is in order to make a quick buck. What used to be a profession of hardcore investigative truth-seekers that valued accuracy over anything is now filled to the brim with sensationalistic opportunists who scour social media all day long in a desperate drive for site clicks.
Winning ITK moment (19 July 2013):
Suarez is keen to join Arsenal and has ditched his promise that he would not leave Liverpool for another Premier League club
This article was first published on Arsenal Report in 2014.June 23, 2004. BMC Bioinformatics publishes “Mistaken Identifiers: Gene name errors can be introduced inadvertently when using Excel in bioinformatics”. We roll our eyes. Do people really do that? Is it really worthy of publication? However, we admit that if it happens then it’s good that people know about it.
October 17, 2012. A colleague on our internal Yammer network writes:
Sad but true. I keep finding newbie bioinformatics errors in the Cancer Genome Atlas project data. This time a text download of 450K methylation from the Cancer Genome Atlas project reveals that Excel has had its evil way with the data at some point. Gene names such as MAR1, DEC1, OCT4 and SEPT9 are now reformatted as dates. For example: barcode probe name beta value gene symbol chromosome position TCGA-06-0125-02A-11D-2004-05 cg13918206 0.92035091902012 1-Dec 9 118159781
I click through the CGA data portal in search of more datasets and choose, more or less at random, another file containing data from the Illumina 450K platform. It’s called jhu-usc.edu__HumanMethylation450__TCGA-G4-6628-01A-11D-1837-05__methylation_analysis.txt. Let’s get that into R:
tcga <- read.table("jhu-usc.edu__HumanMethylation450__TCGA-G4-6628-01A-11D-1837-05__methylation_analysis.txt", sep = "\t", header = T) dim(tcga) # [1] 485577 6 head(tcga$gene.symbol) # [1] 1-Dec 1-Dec 1-Dec 1-Dec 1-Dec 1-Dec # 25107 Levels: 10-Mar 11-Mar 11-Sep 13-Sep 14-Sep 1-Dec 1-Mar 1-Sep... ZZZ3
Seems we have a problem. Let’s count up gene names:
genes <- as.data.frame(table(tcga$gene.symbol)) head(genes, 20) Var1 Freq # 1 119652 # 2 10-Mar 5 # 3 11-Mar 21 # 4 11-Sep 32 # 5 13-Sep 18 # 6 14-Sep 4 # 7 1-Dec 8 # 8 1-Mar 30 # 9 1-Sep 10 # 10 3-Mar 33 # 11 4-Mar 25 # 12 5-Mar 4 # 13 5-Sep 12 # 14 6-Mar 21 # 15 7-Mar 13 # 16 8-Sep 2 # 17 9-Mar 6 # 18 9-Sep 16 # 19 A1BG 6 # 20 A1CF 5
Yes, we have a problem.
“Newbie bioinformaticians” is one thing. Large institutes, awarded millions of dollars to contribute to “big science” projects is another.
Despair at the quality of public data, fears about reproducibility in science. Must be Monday.(Follow Jeff: @JeffGSpursZone)
Former San Antonio Spurs forward Matt Bonner is still looking for his next NBA gig.
After the Spurs did not bring him back in the offseason, Matt is still holding out hope another team will want his services but as of yet, nothing has transpired for him.
And although Bonner is still unemployed, he is enjoying the time with his family in New Hampshire, and still is staying ready mentally and physically should an NBA team come calling.
“I’m hoping one team will realize they need a consistent three-point shooter, someone who is hard-working and can bring veteran leadership and will decide to add me to their team,”
“I haven’t retired yet,” Bonner said. “I’m still working out and seeing what happens. I recognize time is running out but it’s not over yet.”
And although Bonner enjoys the time he is having with his family as he waits, he does admit not being on an NBA roaster has been difficult for him.
“It’s never easy mentally going through something like this but, overall, it’s been awesome to spend time in my home state and give that experience to my kids and my wife, too,” Bonner said. “No matter what happens, I’ve made a lot of memories that are sentimentally important to me.”
Should an NBA squad come calling, there is no doubt Bonner can provide an impact in whatever role a team needs him to be. He's won NBA titles, played under Gregg Popovich, and of course, his career 41.4 percent three-point shooting touch could provide value for any team.
There's still plenty of time for an NBA team to pick him up. The season is still young and with trades, injuries, or the waiver-wire still an avenue for a return. the chances are high Bonner will return to the game he loves.
And in case you were wondering, Matty still keeps up with the Spurs.
“They have a lot of new faces and despite that, they’re still winning basketball games,” Bonner said. “I think that’s a good sign...I think they have a high ceiling with how much better they can be by the end of the year once all the new guys get acclimated to the system.”The federal government is backing off a key provision of its proposed prostitution law by expanding the types of areas where sex workers can legally discuss a transaction, The Globe and Mail has learned.
The actual buying of sex, however, is still on track to be criminalized, leaving critics warning sex workers will still face limits that could threaten their safety.
The change is included as an amendment proposed by government and set to be voted on Tuesday, when the House of Commons justice committee is scheduled to meet for clause-by-clause deliberation of Bill C-36. The amendment would make it a crime to discuss the sale of sex at, or near, a school, playground or daycare. The government's initial proposal was to ban such discussions anywhere a minor could reasonably be expected to be, a restriction widely criticized by both supporters and opponents of the bill who warned it unfairly and broadly targets sex workers.
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(What will be Canada's new prostitution laws? Read The Globe's easy explanation)
The amendment, if passed, would be a concession on the part of the government – though it doesn't go as far as the NDP, who have proposed an amendment deleting the clause entirely, a move that would place no restrictions on where sex workers can discuss a transaction.
The rest of the six government amendments, however, are minor or technical in scope and don't respond to other major critiques of the bill. In particular, the government is pressing forward with criminalizing the buying of sex, if not the selling – a scenario some critics warn will still threaten sex workers and, ultimately, expose the law to once again being struck down by the courts.
"That does add detail to the provision. … The main issue is it doesn't deal with the effects of criminalizing one party in the transaction," Elin Sigurdson, a lawyer for Pivot Legal Society, said when told of the proposed amendment. Pivot was an intervenor in the so-called Bedford case that led the Supreme Court to strike down Canada's existing prostitution laws last December, giving Ottawa one year to come up with a new law. That led to Bill C-36, and Ms. Sigurdson was among the witnesses who spoke to the committee last week.
"It doesn't deal with the harms, the fact the purchaser is still going to be subject to criminal prosecution, and that's going to mean the whole transaction moves into the most underground, dark, dangerous parts of cities and places," she said.
Criminal lawyer Leonardo S. Russomanno said the change does expand the areas where a sex worker can discuss a transaction but said there are still problems with the bill.
"They're still targeting the sex worker, albeit under a narrower construction," said Mr. Russomanno, a lawyer at Abergel Goldstein and Partners in Ottawa who spoke to the committee last week on behalf of the Criminal Lawyers' Association.
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The amendment was particularly relevant because the Supreme Court struck down Canada's existing laws largely because they threatened the safety of sex workers. The provision, barring them from discussing the sale of sex anywhere children may reasonably be expected to be was "probably the most offensive provision, given what the Supreme Court said in Bedford," Mr. Russomanno said.
A spokeswoman for Justice Minister Peter MacKay declined to comment specifically on the amendments, a copy of which were obtained by The Globe and Mail, but said it's up to the committee to consider changes.
"But, one thing is clear: doing nothing was never an option. Our Government wants to protect vulnerable Canadians and our communities and we hope the opposition will move quickly to ensure legislation is adopted before the end of the year," Mr. MacKay's director of communications, Mary Ann Dewey-Plante, said in a statement Monday.
Mr. MacKay's parliamentary secretary, Conservative MP Bob Dechert, declined an interview request Monday. In a written statement, he declined to discuss "hypotheticals on possible amendments the committee will look at Tuesday, but said the government is open to changes.
A total of 21 amendments have been proposed to the bill – six from government, 11 from the NDP and four from independent MP Maria Mourani. The Liberals, Bloc Québécois and Green Party did not propose amendments.
Editor's note: An earlier version of this story online and in Tuesday's paper incorrectly stated which legal group Leonardo S. Russomanno spoke on behalf of. It was the Criminal Lawyers' Association.Will Marseille defender Nicolas N'Koulou be the man who takes over from John Terry once his Chelsea career ends?
The transfer window might be closed, but the rumours keep ticking. As always, Transfer Talk has the latest and greatest. See all the summer deals right here.
N'Koulou the man to solve the Blues' blues?
It has been no great secret that Jose Mourinho is on the lookout for a quality centre-back to bolster Chelsea's shaky defence. And it appears he's found his man.
According to a report from L'Equipe, the current Premier League champions plan to make a January swoop for Marseille defender Nicolas N'Koulou, with the Blues hoping to sign Cameroon international on a cut-price deal as his contract with the French giants is set to run out at season's end.
Valued at £7.2 million, the paper insists Marseille, who finished fourth in the league last season, would rather deal with Chelsea than their Ligue 1 rivals -- which is good news for the Blues as their unsettling situation at the back looks set to be solved... finally.
Meanwhile, back on Chelsea's current roster, John Terry is refusing give his spot up without a fight, reports the Mail.
The future of the Chelsea captain has been in doubt since being overtaken in the starting XI by young powerhouse Kurt Zouma, with Turkish giants Fenerbahce said to be monitoring his situation closely.
However, the 34-year-old believes he still has plenty left in the tank and aims to convince his pragmatic Portuguese boss into to greenlighting another 12-month contract.
QPR want Ravel back
Queens Park Rangers want to bring Ravel Morrison back to London, reports the Standard.
Unable to settle at Lazio -- where he has made just two Serie A appearances since February -- Morrison and QPR are hoping to rekindle whatever it was that made the troubled midfielder a success during a four-month stint with the Hoops back in 2014.
Since then, the England U21 international was released by West Ham before finally landing with Lazio. However his recent illness-related absence in the Romans' 5-0 loss to Napoli over the weekend has QPR believing they can lure the starlet back to Loftus Road.
United could have been in good Kompany
Sir Alex Ferguson's new book, "Leading," contains quite a few revelations about life behind the scenes at Old Trafford.
However, one juicy peice of information that wasn't touched on -- but has found it's way onto social media -- is that Manchester City's Vincent Kompany was included on a list of five potential signings for United back in 2004.
Interesting "discussion document" from 2004 MUFC board meeting in Fergie's book. Lists Kompany as a potential target pic.twitter.com/JQ5ismRpyw - Paul Hirst (@hirstclass) September 22, 2015
In the end, Ferguson's men opted to bring in defensive reinforcement in the shape of Argentina international Gabriel Heinze and the then-up-and-coming Barca teen Gerard Pique instead.
But, considering that Kompany was one of only two names out of the five that didn't get signed, you can imagine how close United came to snaring the future City captain.
Interestingly enough, that same document lists Kleberson -- or KleRberson as he is named there -- as more important to the squad than the 'excess' that was Nicky Butt?!?!
Perhaps that proves that Sir Alex was fallible after all...
Tap-ins
- The Birmingham Mail says that West Brom boss Tony Pulis is still unsure whether he'll sign free agent Ricardo Vaz Te. The former Hammer has been trialling at the club for the past week.
- Leeds owner Massimo Cellino -- sounding like a scorned lover -- has told Sky Sports that he has "deeply offended" and "hurt" by Sam Byram's decision to refuse United's offer of a new contract. Cellino says he is going to go out and sign someone "better than him."
- L'Equipe have confirmed that free agent Houssine Kharja has joined Romanian champions Steaua Bucharest. The 32-year-old Morocco international has enjoyed spells at Roma, Inter Milan, Fiorentina and, most recently, Sochaux.The Dasarath Rangsala Stadium in Nepal witnessed a historic moment for Pakistani football as the young green guns battled hard to beat India 2-1 in the final of 1st ever SAFF U16 Football Championship today, 10 August 2011.
Goals from midfielder Muhammad Zeeshan and star striker Mansoor Khan proved to much for India to overcome as they went down once again in the tournament to a determined and resolute Pakistan U16 side.
According to the press release issued by Pakistan Football Federation (PFF). This win marks the first time in five years that Pakistan has won a football event at any age level, since the 2006 South Asian Games football gold for Pakistan U23 under great Bahraini coach Salman Ahmed Sharida.
The Pak U16 coaching staff of head coach Sajjad Mehmood and Hassan Baloch defied all odds and hampered preparations before the tournament to guide the Green Guns to a historic win.
Earlier the day, hosts Nepal left it late to beat Bangladesh 2-1 to finish 3rd in tournament. A large Nepali crowd was in full voice and cheering on Pakistan from the first whistle as the Indo-Pak rivals began another round against each other in football.
Both sides looked determined and focused for the win, but it was Pakistan who drew first blood in 23rd minute as Muhammad Zeeshan's speculative shot completely fooled India goalie Supritam and found the back of the net to put initial tournament favourites India behind once again.
India went in hard again and managed to score just before half time through the impressive and hardworking Daniel Lalhlimpua to equalise.
But five minutes into the second half, a goalmouth scramble in India's box from a Pakistani corner saw Pak star striker Mansoor Khan sneak in a goal and shock India once again.
The 2-1 Pakistani lead forced India to go aggressive on Pakistan's defence and came close a few times. But Pakistani defence led by captain Muneer and goalkeeper Usman Khan held firm as they ran the clock down.
India's desperate attempts proved futile as after nervy final minutes, Pakistan were crowned South Asian U16 football champions and going undefeated and only conceding one goal the entire tournament.
Mansoor Khan's performances this tournament has won him many fans across South Asia as he was declared best player overall. Pakistan U16 will now return to Karachi tomorrow 11 Aug 2011 at 7:20 PM at Karachi airport.Raising of the Ink Flag, photograph by Micha Perry. The man on the pole is, photograph by Micha Perry. The man on the pole is Avraham Adan
The Ink Flag (Hebrew: דֶּגֶל הַדְּיוֹ, Degel HaDyo) was a handmade Israeli flag raised during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War to mark the capture of Umm Rashrash.
History [ edit ]
On March 5, 1949, Israel launched Operation Uvda, the last military maneuver of the war. On March 10, the Israeli Defense Forces reached the shores of the Red Sea at Umm Rashrash, west of Aqaba in the area of biblical Elath, and captured it without a battle. The Negev Brigade and Golani Brigade took part in the operation. A makeshift flag created from a white sheet inscribed with ink was raised by Avraham Adan, company commander of the 8th Battalion of the Negev Brigade.[1]
The improvised flag was made on the order of Negev Brigade commander Nahum Sarig, when it was discovered that the brigade did not have an Israeli flag on hand. The soldiers found a sheet, drew two ink stripes, and sewed on a Star of David torn off a first-aid kit.[2]
In Eilat, a bronze sculpture by Israeli sculptor Bernard Reder commemorates the event.[3] The photo of the raising of the Ink Flag, taken by the soldier Micha Perry, bears resemblance to the Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.[4]
Gallery [ edit ]
Modern reconstruction of the Ink Flag
Close-up of the man on the pole
Commemorative sculpture by Bernard RederCBS/AP
Two new national polls this morning provide very different views of the general election match-up.
According to a new USA Today/ Gallup survey, in a head-to-head match up against President Obama, Republican presidential contender Rick Santorum performs slightly better than his GOP rival Mitt Romney. The poll undercuts Romney's electability argument against Santorum just one day ahead of a critical primary in Michigan.
Nationally, Santorum beats Mr. Obama 49 percent to 46 percent, the poll shows, while Romney ties with the president at 47 percent. The national survey, conducted February 20-21, has a four-point margin of error, meaning both GOP candidates are statistically tied with Mr. Obama.
In a survey of voters in 12 swing states by USA Today and Gallup, Santorum's lead against Mr. Obama widens. He beats the president 50 percent to 45 percent. The swing state survey, conducted February 14-21, also has a four-point margin of error. In this poll, Romney bests Mr. Obama 48 percent to 46 percent.
The USA Today/Gallup survey shows both Mr. Obama and Romney may be suffering from voters' perceptions about health care reform -- three of four voters in swing states say Mr. Obama's reforms are unconstitutional. Meanwhile, 27 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in the swing states say they are less likely to support Romney because of the Massachusetts health reforms he signed into law (7 percent said they're more likely to back him because of the reforms).
However, another survey of national voters released today from Politico and George Washington University suggests that neither Romney nor Santorum could beat Mr. Obama at this point.
In this survey, Mr. Obama leads Romney 53 percent to 43 percent in a head-to-head match up. The president similarly leads Santorum 53 percent to 42 percent. The survey, conducted February 19-22, has a 3.1 percent margin of error.
While Romney performs just slightly better against the president in this poll, the survey shows that among Republican voters nationally, Santorum bests Romney 36 percent to 34 percent.
Electability has been a key argument in Romney's campaign: On Friday, the former Massachusetts governor said he's the only Republican presidential candidate that can beat Mr. Obama in the general election. In every contest so far with entrance or exit polls, the most important candidate quality for voters is the ability to beat Mr. Obama.
Romney will face a critical challenge on Tuesday, when Republicans will vote in both Michigan and Arizona. Expectations are especially high for Romney in Michigan, where he was born and raised.Airship makers close in on cargo craft FREIGHT TRANSPORT
A 500-foot dirigible being built with new lighter materials by Aeros Corp. will be able to carry 66 tons of cargo at half the cost of a Boeing 747. A 500-foot dirigible being built with new lighter materials by Aeros Corp. will be able to carry 66 tons of cargo at half the cost of a Boeing 747. Photo: Worldwide Aeros Photo: Worldwide Aeros Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Airship makers close in on cargo craft 1 / 3 Back to Gallery
Airship builders say the development of lighter, stronger materials will allow them to deliver on a century-old ambition of making craft capable of winning business from freight operators such as FedEx Corp. within three years.
A drop in the price of carbon fiber and advances in systems that can control the buoyancy of even the largest airships have also encouraged development of models to move goods faster than surface ships and at half the cost of a Boeing 747. A 500-foot dirigible being built by California's Aeros Corp. will carry 66 tons, according to founder Igor Pasternak.
Manufacturers must overcome industry skepticism about a mode of transport widely regarded as obsolete, together with a lingering fear of lighter-than-air travel that can be traced to the 1937 Hindenburg disaster, in which 36 people died when the airship was consumed by fire in New Jersey. Airship makers argue their products are a cheaper means to move many goods directly to the point of delivery.
"When it matures, the lighter-than-air industry will be as big as the fixed-wing sector, with a huge impact on freight movements," said Barry Prentice, professor of supply-chain management at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. "But I can't be sure that it's finally going to happen in my lifetime."
Commodity clients
Airship manufacturers themselves are likely to be the first commercial operators in order to build confidence, he said. Commodities companies may be among early customers, Gary Elliott, chief executive officer at Britain's Hybrid Air Vehicles, said.
Airships, traditionally rigid-framed craft with a lifting capacity well in excess of blimps that maintain their shape through internal pressure, might also be used to supply oil rigs to remote locations, Elliott said.
The receptiveness of the market will become clearer later this year when Hybrid begins taking orders for its Airlander 50 model. Elliot is targeting the first commercial flight for the year after next. The company doesn't disclose a price for its product.
Any sales to airlines would probably follow interest from logistics specialists including FedEx, operator of the world's largest cargo carrier, and United Parcel Service, the No. 1 package-delivery provider, according to Prentice.
"These companies have tremendous needs for lift, and pressure on cost, so they would be likely customers," he said.
Hybrid says its Airlander will beat aircraft shipments on price, allowing it to win some flows even though an Atlantic crossing would take two days rather than eight hours. And while sea-freight will remain cheaper, an airship has the advantage of being able to cut out transfer consignments on trucks and trains, aided by the ability to take off and land vertically.
"The whole concept of transportation will adapt," said Elliott.
Checkered history
Germany's Zeppelin, which built the ill-fated Hindenburg, survives as Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik. It began developing semi-rigid airships in the 1990s and won orders for three craft from Goodyear in 2011 for delivery in 2014 to replace aging blimps, reviving a decades-old alliance.
The last large-scale effort to commercialize rigid airships failed in 2002 with the collapse of Germany's Cargolifter. While the company remains in business making more modest balloon-like craft, its gleaming white 19.4 million cubic-foot hangar that rises in a field south of Berlin is now used as a tropical amusement park.
Over the past decade, the Pentagon has provided momentum for airship development as it seeks lower-cost surveillance capabilities. The Hybrid Airlander 50, which features a multihulled, nonrigid design, is a cousin of the Long-Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle, which first flew in August and has been sold by Northrop Grumman to the U.S. Army.
The Airlander will measure 365 feet and feature a cargo compartment capable of handling standard containers, LD3-type aircraft boxes and other cargo forms.
Hybrid expects to set prices next month and needs 15 orders "to start cutting fabric," with an initial public offering planned if demand blossoms. Elliott said he'll avoid the overaggressive expansion strategy that undermined Cargolifter, with thousands of shareholders losing their investment as a result.
Challenges remain
Aeros is conducting indoor tests of its rival half-scale Aeroscraft model, with flights in the open planned for midyear. The Montebello (Los Angeles County) company is seeking $400 million to fund full-scale versions with a near-3,500 mile range, mainly from U.S. federal and state sources, with certification sought for 2015.
Still, development of a viable airship industry remains hobbled by outdated thinking among regulators that has its origins in the Hindenburg disaster, Prentice said, among them a ban on the use of hydrogen that makes the craft more expensive.
"There is a lot of legacy regulation that was passed 75 years ago that hasn't been updated," he said.Ever wonder what patents Microsoft has been using to sign up Android vendors such as Samsung, HTC, Huawei, Acer, and over 10 others in cross-licensing agreements? Just last week Barnes & Noble asked US regulators to probe Microsoft’s anti-Android strategy, which sees the company collecting millions in profits from royalties paid by just about anyone shipping Android on their devices.
In their initial letter to the Department of Justice, Barnes & Noble claims Microsoft’s patents “cover only arbitrary, outmoded and non-essential design features,” and today we get a look into exactly what they’re talking about thanks to a detailed report from Groklaw of the exhibits attached to B&N’s letter.
Below B&N walks us through some |
in daily contact with a critical mass of boys with similar interests and capacities?"
• The Telegraph is also carrying a piece by Anthea Rowan who was dismayed to discover that the boarding school she subscribed her daughter to turned out not to have any other weekend boarders.
"The school my daughter attends describes itself as a boarding school. That's what it says on the tin. And that's what it is: when we visited, we met boarders. When we enquired, we were told there would be other boarders starting in her house, in her year and at the same time as her. So she was beyond disappointed when she discovered that she was the only full boarder in her year in her house when she started a year ago."
• The BBC is reporting "one in five universities in deficit".
• Rural schools in west China provinces are being sponsored by tobacco companies, Bloomberg reports:
One of the first things primary school kids learn is what made their education possible: tobacco.
"On the gates of these schools, you'll see slogans that say'Genius comes from hard work - Tobacco helps you become talented,'" said Xu Guihua, secretary general of the privately funded lobby group Chinese Association on Tobacco Control. The schools are sponsored by local units of China's government-owned monopoly cigarette maker. "They are pinning their hopes on young people taking up smoking."
• The DfE is giving parents more freedom to run their own local children's centres. More on this in the Guardian at a later date, I'm sure...
Events
• The Clarity Foundation will work to improve provision for children with special educational needs. More information here, and they are holding a launch at a two-day conference in Newbury in October.
• CRASSH, The Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, part of Cambridge University, is holding a series of six free lectures to discuss "The Idea of the University"
From the Guardian's Higher Education Network
• Don't doubt the value of blogging in academic publishing. Blogging encourages wider participation and generates instant debates. It should be wholeheartedly embraced by early career researchers, says Sarah-Louise Quinnell.
• Live chat: Should universities regard students as consumers? As marketisation intensifies, will higher education become hire education? What are the implications for academia if students become the consumers? Join us Friday, 23 September at 1pm, or post your questions now.
Teachers seminars from the Guardian Education Centre
Reading for pleasure – bringing classics to life
This half-day conference for secondary school teachers will explore the use and teaching of classic books from Dickens and beyond. Keynote speakers will be Simon Callow, actor and Dickens enthusiast and Judy Golding, daughter of William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies. 20 October, London
Insight into digital journalism
Spend a day at the Guardian and find out how an international news media organisation works. The seminar will focus on aspects of digital journalism including writing and editing for a news website, the relationship between print and web journalism, live blogging, the use of social media, podcasting and video production. 2 November, Kings Place, London
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Judy Friedberg is away until 27 September, in the meantime please send your tips and stories for Cribsheet to Frederika Whitehead.Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was supposed to attend this week's Economic Council of the Christian Democratic Union meeting in Berlin, but suddenly canceled his travel plans on Tuesday. Ross was scheduled to give an address at the conference immediately before German chancellor Angela Merkel, so he instead gave his remarks by teleconference from Washington.
Ross was allotted 10 minutes to speak. After speaking for more than 20, the conference organizers cut his feed midsentence. The audience "laughed and clapped" in response, according to Bloomberg. Merkel then rose and, during her remarks, disagreed with one of Ross's points.
The relationship between President Donald Trump and Merkel has been strained since his inauguration. His repeated insistence that Germany owes money to NATO and his unusual reticence to embrace that alliance has been one point of friction. His disparagement of Germany as "very bad" in a closed-door meeting was another. That claim centered on what Trump (and Ross) viewed as a trade disparity between the two countries and was the point with which Merkel took issue.
In most other contexts, a laughing reaction from a small group of America's economic and geopolitical allies would be odd but not particularly noteworthy. In the context of the Trump administration, though, it's telling.
Trump's campaign rhetoric repeatedly centered on the idea that America was being laughed at internationally. His evidence for this claim was lacking, but it was a point he raised repeatedly.
During his campaign launch, he said Mexico was "laughing... at our stupidity" on the border. In a speech before the Iowa caucuses, Trump claimed that the Islamic State was laughing at our leaders, a claim he repeated in a March debate. The whole world was laughing at us because of Barack Obama, he said in an interview in May of 2016 - and in speeches in June and October. As Election Day approached, he made the claim over and over.
When he announced that he was withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate accord last month, Trump claimed that it was necessary because we'd gotten a bad deal - so bad that we were being laughed at.
"The Paris agreement handicaps the United States economy in order to win praise from the very foreign capitals and global activists that have long sought to gain wealth at our country's expense.... The same nations asking us to stay in the agreement are the countries that have collectively cost America trillions of dollars through tough trade practices and, in many cases, lax contributions to our critical military alliance," he said. "At what point does America get demeaned? At what point do they start laughing at us as a country? We want fair treatment for its citizens, and we want fair treatment for our taxpayers. We don't want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore. And they won't be. They won't be."
On Tuesday, The Post highlighted new survey data from the Pew Research Center showing that perceptions of America and our president have decreased substantially in most parts of the world following Trump's election. That includes Germany — a country to which Trump was pointedly referring in his Paris remarks and where Trump's commerce secretary was laughed at literally.
Views of the American people have held fairly constant over the years among Germans, Pew's polling revealed. But views of our government and president slipped during the George W. Bush administration, rose under Barack Obama — and then collapsed this year.
German confidence in the American president followed the same pattern. Last year, 86 percent of Germans had a lot of or at least some confidence in America's president. This year, more than half have none at all.
It's easy to read too much into the reaction Ross prompted this week. But as a symbol of the relationship between the two countries at the moment, it's hard not to — particularly given how often other countries' laughter was raised by Trump as something we should be concerned about.Sentai Filmworks is releasing several anime titles in North America this month. The following is a full list of their August 2015 releases.
August 4, 2015:
Space Brothers Collection 4 – Episodes 39-51 on DVD and Blu-ray.
Sakura Trick Complete Collection – Episodes 1-12 on DVD.
August 11, 2015:
Captain Earth Collection 2 – Episodes 14-25 on DVD and Blu-ray.
Haikyuu!! Collection 2 – Episodes 14-25 on DVD and Blu-ray.
The Kawai Guide to Manors & Hostel Behaviour Complete Collection – Episodes 1-12 and the OVA on DVD. The commercial bumpers will be featured as on-disc extras.
August 18, 2015:
Hayate the Combat Butler Season 1 – Episodes 1-52 on DVD and Blu-ray.
August 25, 2015:
Kamigami no Asobi Complete Collection – Episodes 1-12 on DVD and Blu-ray.
Vampire Hunter D – The OVA with dual audio on DVD and Blu-ray. The Japanese trailer will be featured as an on-disc extra.
Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions ~ Heart Throb – Episodes 1-12 and the OVA with dual audio on DVD.
All releases listed will feature their respective textless opening and ending animations as on-disc extras, except for the Vampire Hunter D OVA releases. Except for the Vampire Hunter D OVA and Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions Season 2 releases, all releases will feature their respective episodes with Japanese audio and English subtitles only.In January 2009, Anwar al-Awlaki supposedly had a chance to get out. According to information obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE, Yemeni government intermediaries had secretly conveyed an offer to the jihadist hate preacher granting him amnesty if he only said a single sentence: "I do not belong to al-Qaida."
At the time, al-Awlaki had already been hiding in the vast Yemeni desert for a while. But he refused to say the sentence. Since then, the 40-year-old has been hunted by both the Yemeni military and the United States.
Now, a range of media sources are citing Yemeni and US government officials as saying that al-Awlaki was killed on Friday in an air strike. But it is still unclear exactly who really launched the strike, though presumably it was a US drone that brought him down.
Still, neither members of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) nor al-Awlaki's locally important and influential family have confirmed reports of his death.
Samir Khan, a young American of Saudi origin, was apparently killed alongside al-Awlaki. Khan is thought to have been the publisher of the English-language online magazine Inspire, launched by AQAP. Khan had relocated to Yemen over a year ago.
At this time, it is unclear whether the people behind the attack knew it was likely to kill Khan as well. Although Khan had yet to be implicated in any terror plots, he is thought to have been trying to recruit terrorists and instigate attacks.
The Propagandist-in-Chief
If the reports are true, then AQAP has lost its most important propagandist. Indeed, since al-Awlaki was a figurehead for the entire al-Qaida network, his death could have effects far beyond the Arabian Peninsula. Having been born and raised in the United States, al-Awlaki could speak English just as well as Arabic. For years, he has made good use of his fluency in English to incite potential recruits and attackers to wage jihad in the name of al-Qaida.
Indeed, al-Awlaki was successful in these efforts. US Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan told investigators that he had corresponded with al-Awlaki before going on a shooting rampage on the Fort Hood military base in Texas in November 2009. Thirteen were left dead in the attack.
Al-Awlaki also went on tape and boasted of having been the "teacher" of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian student who launched a failed attempt to bring down a US airliner as it approached Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. Even Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American who unsuccessfully attempted to detonate a car bomb in New York's Times Square in May 2010, had been in contact with al-Awlaki. His sermons also inspired a militant Islamist in Great Britain to carry out an attack on a member of parliament. Several other terror suspects in the US also exchanged e-mails with al-Awlaki.
In February 2011, two German jihadists claimed they had al-Awlaki to thank for their careers as terrorists. The two natives of the western German city of Bonn, who have been living in a region on the Afghan-Pakistani border for several years, say they had the "great honor" of meeting al-Awlaki in Yemen and spending "precious hours" with him. Al-Awlaki's people then dispatched the two to Waziristan, one of them claimed.
Never an Official al-Qaida Member
Ironically enough, despite all his efforts in support of al-Qaida, al-Awlaki had never become a formal member of the terrorist organization or its branch in Yemen. Indeed, it's unclear whether he ever swore the "bai'a," the oath of allegiance necessary to become a member. The first time he showed up in an official AQAP video was in May 2010 -- and that was only as a kind of interview guest.
At the same time, however, he was an eager contributor of articles to Inspire, the online magazine directed toward potential recruits in the West. For example, he explained in his writing that one didn't need a fatwa to kill Americans, announcing that: "We will bomb and we will kill."
He said that execution was "medicine" for the artists whose caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad were published in a Danish newspaper in 2005, sparking outrage across the Muslim world. At the same time, he included a black list of undesirable individuals, including Europeans such as Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and Dutch Islamophobe politician Geert Wilders.
Al-Awlaki was born in the US state of New Mexico on April 21, 1971 and would spend the first six years of his life there enjoying a typical American childhood complete "with hamburgers and Christmas trees," a close relative once told SPIEGEL ONLINE. Then, in 1977, his family returned to Yemen. But the young Muslim eventually went back to the US, where he attended George Washington University in Washington, DC. He became a student imam at 23, which entitled him to free tuition.
Just a Mouthpiece - or an Attack Planner, Too?
In the following years, two 9/11 conspirators were counted among his followers, but how close their relationship was remains unclear. Since 2001, however, al-Awlaki became more radicalized, recording and distributing sermons, starting a blog and making himself available for consultation via e-mail.
Al-Awlaki came from a prominent family; his father was a government minister in Yemen. After al-Awlaki returned to Yemen, presumably because things had gotten too hot for him in the US, he reappeared in AQAP circles. Still, his relatives insisted he was simply a successful missionary.
What is sure is that propaganda was his primary activity. The US terrorism expert J.M. Berger estimates that al-Awlaki recorded more than 100 hours of his sermons, or much more than Osama bin Laden did. Nevertheless, some experts and intelligence analysts have suspected that al-Awlaki could have also played a role in AQAP attacks, as well.
Last year, Norwegian expert Thomas Hegghammer put together a powerful chain of circumstantial evidence supporting this theory. After an unsuccessful AQAP attempt in 2010 to blow up two cargo planes, a specifically unnamed "chief of external operations" described preparations for the attack in the organization's online magazine. Hegghammer is convinced that al-Awlaki wrote this text. For one thing, it includes allusions to the Muslim history of Andalusia, a known hobby of Awlaki's. There is also a reference to Charles Dickens' novel "Great Expectations," which was used in one of the explosive devices as camouflage, and which al-Awlaki had reviewed years before on his blog.
AQAP Still Capable of Functioning without al-Awlaki
After the death of Osama bin Laden, there were reports from Washington that among the data found at the al-Qaida chief's hideout in Pakistan was traces of a correspondence with AQAP head Nasir al-Wahayshi in which he suggested to Bin Laden that al-Awlaki replace him as the AQAP's leader. Bin Laden reportedly refused. But the offer, if authentic, at least speaks to al-Awlaki's growing importance within AQAP.
Still, AQAP will continue to function without al-Awlaki. The group has hundreds of fighters, many of whom have much experience. In addition to several extremely hardened former Guantanamo inmates, they also include at least one expert bomb maker.
Al-Awlaki was a boon to AQAP, and his death is their loss. But AQAP's survival doesn't depend on him. Though al-Awlaki didn't have any relevant combat experience, his death will especially affect AQAP's ability to create and disseminate propaganda. The figurehead is now gone, and the loudspeaker has been turned off.
Al-Awlaki's death is also a loss for al-Qaida's overall leadership because his successful propaganda found its way into all parts of the network. Nevertheless, persistent speculation that al-Awlaki was the successor to Osama bin Laden was groundless. He was not important enough or experienced enough for that, nor was he sufficiently well-connected.
In US counterterrorism circles, the attack against al-Qaida will surely elicit a great sense of satisfaction. Although it isn't the first time that terror suspects carrying US passports have been killed by US drones, the attack reportedly brought down two birds with one stone. However, though convenient, it might reignite the debate over whether the US president, the CIA and the US military have a sufficient legal basis with which they can justify these targeted killings.The conservative Islamist party Ennahda won a majority of seats (90 out of 217) in the elections to the Constituent Assembly in Tunisia on October 23. This result has sent many on the left into confusion. This represents a shift to the right, some argue. How can the Tunisian revolution end up in a victory for the right wing, ask others. Scandalously some “modernists” argue that “elections were premature”.
The Western media has given a biased and much distorted view of this election. Even before any results had actually been announced the headlines already boldly proclaimed: ”Tunisia election turnout more than 90%”; “Massive turnout for Tunisia's historic poll; “Tunisia Election Vote Sees Big Turnout”; “Huge turnout in Tunisia's Arab Spring election”; “Tunisian election turnout exceeds all expectations”.
Massive abstention
As finally – after a long delay and many cancelled press conferences – provisional official results were announced this proved not to have been the case. There were 7,569,824 Tunisians eligible to vote. Of those, 4,123,602 (54.47%) actually registered to vote. Of those registered,3,205,845 cast a vote (77.75 %) and an additional 496,782 people who had no registered went to vote. This makes a total of 3,702,627 voters, which represents a 42% turn out - very far from the “festival of democracy” which the capitalist media talked about, and certainly less than half of the much celebrated “90% turn out”.
The reason for this massive abstention is clear. Nine months after the revolution which brought down the hated dictatorship of Ben Ali, a large number of Tunisians think that even though they now have “democracy”, nothing has really changed. The Tunisian revolution, which started in Sidi Bouzid on December 17th, 2010 and led to the overthrow of Ben Ali by the revolutionary action of the masses on January 14th this year, was a struggle which combined political demands (freedom, democracy, an end to corruption) with social and economic demands (for jobs, a future for young people, education, land reform, against the looting of the country by the ruling Trabelsi clique). None of those social and economic demands have been addressed and the people do not trust that any of the existing parties will address them.
An opinion poll (pdf report) carried out in August by the Tunisian Polling and Statistic Data Processing Institute (ISTI), revealed this very clearly. Over 60% declared they were “dissatisfied” with the economic situation of the country (an increase from 57% in April) and 70% were dissatisfied with the performance of the political parties (up from 64% in April). When asked to name parties that they “appreciated”, 57% answered “none”. The level of rejection of all political parties was even reflected amongst those who said in August that they would vote, 65% of whom had not yet decided who they would vote for, and even among those who had decided 47% said they may change their choice.
The mood of anger and dissatisfaction at what the revolution has achieved was particularly marked in the cities of the interior, which were the strongholds of the revolution, and even greater amongst the unemployed youth who were at its forefront.
The correspondents of the French Communist Party paper L’Humanité captured this mood very well by talking to people in a number of towns and cities in the South West. In Sidi Bouzid, they interviewed Djamaï Bouallegue, 24, a market fruit seller like Bouazizi, the young man who set himself on fire sparking off the revolution, told them: “after January 14 we can speak more freely, it is true, but my situation has not changed. My life is still very hard.” He told them he would not vote: “I do not trust any party. I do not believe in promises without guarantees”. Nadar Hamdouni, an unemployed graduate who headed one of the many independent lists standing in the election, agreed on the main point: “What happened in Sidi Bouzid was not a revolution, but a social uprising. But afterwards, nothing has changed. The youth feel the same frustration, the same despair”.
In Regueb, another stronghold of the revolution, we see the same story. Nomen Ben Mohammed Kadri, 34, unemployed graduate earns 45 euro a month to maintain his family of three, of which 30 euro go on purchasing drugs for his elderly father, leaving them with 12 cents per person per day. He has set up camp outside the Town Hall for the past 200 days demanding a job. He also said he was not going to vote: “The Tunisian revolution hasn’t changed anything regarding inequality. I will not vote as long as I have not won my right to work.” Elsewhere,Nemri Bessam who works as a private security officer at a resort in Hammamet is also adamant: “The revolution will not be completed as long as we don’t have jobs”.
This is not the kind of abstention that comes from lack of interest in politics, but one that comes mainly from the rejection of existing political parties and a strong feeling that the revolution has not achieved its aims. Nemri’s friend, Soufine, an unemployed decorator, sums it up with strong words for “all those parties which have mushroomed on the scene like puppets to speak in our name,” whatever the result of the elections, he said, “a second revolution is needed”.
“Secularism” or social issues?
Even with such a high level of abstention, the results of the election also tell an interesting story. The “traditional left” parties did much worse than expected. The social-democratic Ettakol (the Democratic Forum for Labour and Freedom) only got 21 seats, the former Maoist turned centre-left Progressive Democratic Party got 17 and the Democratic Modernist Pole (a coalition around the former Communist Party, Ettajdid) got only 5 out of a total of 217 seats. All of these parties were legal under Ben Ali and basically provided it with a “democratic” façade. They played no role in the revolution and all of them participated prominently in the different “transitional” governments after the fall of Ben Ali, which fell one after the other overthrown by the mass movement from below.
In fact, the only “progressive” party to do relatively well in the elections was the Congress for the Republic (CPR), which had been banned under Ben Ali, its leader forced into exile and which did not dirty its hands in any of the provisional governments. The CPR got 30 seats and came second after Ennahda (after the disqualification of a number of Aridha lists).
All parties which had played the role of “loyal opposition” to the old regime were severely punished and none of the attempts to create a new legitimate party out of the ashes of the old ruling RCD got off the ground.
Furthermore, these “progressive” parties centred their whole campaign around the issue of the “threat of Islamism”, represented by Ennahda and in defence of “modernism” and “secularism” (laïcité), not mentioning any of the pressing social and economic issues which sparked off the revolution and which are at the top of the list of priorities for the Tunisian masses. To many, the insistence on secularism and modernism as the basis of the attack against Ennahda sounded very much like the rhetoric used by both Bourguiba and Ben Ali.
The unemployment rate is 18% for the general population and 37% among the youth and there are over 180,000 university graduates without a job.
As one writer put it in the Nawaat website, the battle on those questions “had been lost in advance, as the Tunisian people did not take to the streets in order to demand equality in succession rights or the freedom of expression for artists. The Tunisians from Regueb came out to demand the right to work, an equality of opportunities, in other words, a decent life here! It was in regard to the questions of jobs, social justice, the economic model required or the distribution of wealth that they were waiting for a message from left-wing parties. But the wait was in vain”.
The two parties (PDP and PDM) which were more virulent in their attacks against Ennahda from the perspective of classless “modernism” suffered the worst defeat. A campaign of clear demands relating to these issues would have allowed left-wing organizations to win away a large section of those who voted for Ennahda, which one centred on questions of identity (“modern” versus “arabo-Islamic”, etc) could not appeal to.
This was clearly demonstrated by the unexpected success of the Aridha Chaabia (Popular Petition) list, by London based, former Ennahda businessman and TV channel owner Hechmi Hamdi. He stood on a demagogic programme promising free healthcare for all, free public transport for the elderly, economic development and above all universal unemployment benefit of 200 Dinars, and used his profile as someone from Sidi Bouzid, from the interior, not from the “Tunis elite”. Before six of its lists got disqualified for “irregularities,” Aridha had won 28 seats, making it the third largest party and it came first in the birth place of the revolution Sidi Bouzid, where it got 59% of the votes. In the end, Aridha will have 19 seats.
Ennahda reassures big business and imperialism
In the context of this kind of campaign, Ennahda, which had played no role in the revolution which overthrew Ben Ali, was able to play its cards strongly: a party which was underground and suffered heavy repression under Ben Ali, a party which was a victim of the attacks of the wealthy establishment “modernist” elite in Tunis, which was “defending the right to wear the hijab” allegedly threatened by the pro-French “secularists”, etc. Above all, this was a party with a strong network of activists in the working class and poor areas throughout the country (it came first in all electoral districts except Sidi Bouzid), large amounts of funding from supportive businessmen and middle class elements as well as support and publicity from Qatar (through Al Jazeera) and possibly Saudi Arabia, as well as being able to use the mosques for political propaganda. At the same time, Ennahda’s programme also appealed to the masses of the poor through promises of job creating and a reduction of regional inequality.
The vote for Ennahda also represents to a certain extent, a degree of tiredness amongst sections of the population. After nearly a year of constant stress and struggle, disruption of normal life, mass mobilizations, chaos, clashes, etc. which have not fundamentally changed anything in terms of jobs, education and living standards, and faced with the lack of any serious alternative on how to achieve those aims on the part of the left, some amongst the less politically active yearn for some sort of stability, a return to normality.
Another factor we have to add is the confusion created by the extreme splintering of the different political parties and lists competing with each other (655 independent lists, 830 political parties and 34 coalitions) and the very complex extreme proportional representation system used which meant that 1,392,657 votes (37.6% of those who voted) went to parties and lists which did not get any representation, which is not far from the 1,5014,18 votes of Ennahda (40.5% of those who voted).
Having won 41% of the seats in the Constituent Assembly, Ennahda leaders were quick to reassure big business and imperialism. Party leader Ghannouchi went straight away to meet with a delegation from the Tunis stock exchange and promised them more public offerings of state owned companies (more privatizations).“We wanted to reassure them that we are on their side and that we want to play a positive role in the Tunisian economy,” said Moaz Ghannouchi, an economist and the son of the leader.
After the meeting with the Islamist leaders, the stock exchange rallied. Meanwhile, party secretary and candidate for Prime Minister Hamdi Jebali was meeting with representatives of the UTICA bosses federation. He reassured them that no Islamic rules would be introduced which interfered with the country’s powerful tourist business and that, “The market is central to Nahda’s economic philosophy as we can see in its programme.”
At the same time, Ennahda, which does not have an overall majority in the Constituent Assembly, quickly offered a coalition to the CPR and Ettatakol.
Tunisian capitalists and foreign imperialists were not worried about these results and in fact had been working on the leaders of all political parties, including Ennahda, prior to the elections. Ennahda’s general secretary had travelled to the US and met with senators McCain and Lieberman, no doubt to reassure them of the party’s commitment to “Western democracy” and the “market economy”.
A Western diplomat in Tunis was quoted by Reuters as saying that: “we will pay close attention to what they implement but on the economic side we have no cause for concern. Our biggest concern is long delays in government formation… A lot of their backers are from the merchant class who are keen on the idea of a liberal economic policy and they don't have serious plans to change the economic policy of previous governments.” As a matter of fact, imperialism was already working with Ennahda before the election, and particularly the French ruling class, with important economic and political interests in Tunisia, had been working hard to court the Islamists.
According to a Tunisian political analysis quoted by L’Humanité: “emissaries of the Elysée and the Quai d’Orsay (the presidency and the foreign affairs ministry) have come regularly to Tunis in the last months, combining meetings with the cadres of the Islamists and dinners with influential businessmen. But in the last weeks the situation has been clarified even further: France votes Ennahda”.
French imperialism is trying to restore its standing in the North African country, severely bruised by its close, almost incestuous links with Ben Ali, and they see the leaders of Ennahda as the best guarantee for the interests of Capital in Tunisia.
Wave of strikes and social protests
Now, the new Ennahda coalition government will have to face the enormous social and economic problems which provoked the Tunisian revolution less than a year ago and which, if anything, have become worse and none of which can be solved within the limits of capitalism. They will also have to do so in the face of a population which distrusts all political parties, which feels that the revolution has been stolen or derailed, but which is also aware of its own revolutionary power. The last nine months have witnessed an explosion of strikes and protests in all sectors of society which is still continuing.
There have been strikes in the banking sector, in the textile factories, the post office, the railways, the airports, among the judges, police officers, etc. demanding the removal of corrupt and authoritarian managers, wage increases and improvements in working conditions. After the start of the university year there has also been a wave of demonstrations, strikes and sit-ins at different faculties and university campuses demanding the removal of rectors and directors, most of them linked to the old RCD regime.
It is only a few days since the Constituent Assembly elections and there has already been a three day strike of postal workers, and a national strike of hotel and tourist agency workers with militant demonstrations in many cities (like this one in Sousse). Brewery and Refrigeration Company of Tunis (SFBT) workers are also out on strike, as are workers at the Italian oil company ENI who are demanding permanent contracts. The working class and the youth feel confident and are organizing through direct revolutionary action to achieve their aims.
Among them are the unemployed graduates who played a key role during the whole revolution. The Union of Unemployed Graduates (UDC) has recently held its national meeting in Sousse with the participation of 500 people, representing thousands from all over the country. A joint demonstration with left-wing trade union activists managed to gather over 10,000 in the capital Tunis on August 15, demanding jobs, social justice, and punishment for those responsible for the old regime.
In the context of an economy which is slowly grinding to a halt, a 28% fall in foreign direct investment and a global recession of capitalism affecting mainly Europe, which is the main destination of Tunisia’s exports and the main source of foreign investment and tourists, Ennahda will find itself in an impossible situation.
New conflicts are inevitable, in which the class questions will come to the fore. A 27 year old unemployed voter of Ennahda from Kasserine, interviewed by L’Humanité put it clearly: “if (Ennahda’s leader) Ghannouchi does not keep his promises, he will meet the same fate as Ben Ali”. Ennahda leaders are acutely aware of this, and this is one of the reasons for their enthusiasm for a coalition government. They do not want to be seen as solely responsible for the policies they are preparing to put in place.
Revolutionary alternative missing
What is missing from the situation, and was sorely missing at the peak of the revolutionary movement, is a revolutionary organization able to offer a clear alternative to complete the democratic and economic tasks of the revolution. This can only be done through the expropriation of the interests of big business and imperialism, with a clear break with capitalism and the old regime.
The most advanced of the left-wing parties in Tunisia, the Tunisian Communist Workers’ Party (PCOT) and the left-wing Arab nationalist Movement of the Democratic Patriots won three and two seats in the national assembly respectively. The main problem facing the PCOT is that at all crucial moments of the revolution it has failed to take a clear lead. When power was in the streets and the revolutionary committees were thrown up from below, with the provisional governments which followed the fall of Ben Ali suspended in mid-air, the PCOT should have taken the initiative to convene a national meeting of the revolutionary committees with the aim of taking power. Instead of this, the initiative was retaken by the capitalist forces through the creation of all sorts of “committees for the protection of the revolution” and “higher instances for the realization of the aims of the revolution” which channelled everything towards the election of a Constituent Assembly in order to ensure bourgeois stability.
The programme of the PCOT in these elections contained many important progressive demands, but these were not part of a more general programme of struggle for socialism. In fact, the word socialism is not even mentioned in the whole programme. While the party calls for the “nationalization of strategic sectors of the economy”, and for these to be put under the “democratic control of its workers”, at the same time it talks about a “balanced economic development of the key sectors of the economy… as part of a plan to meet the needs of the people and raise Tunisia to the level of developed countries”. The problem is that planning of the economy can only be implemented if the means of production are taken into public ownership, something which the PCOT programme contradicts when it talks of the “submission of the private sector to the requirements of national development and needs of the Tunisian people: development of production, job creation, rights of workers and employees, respect for the environment”. As a matter of fact, under capitalism, companies work on the basis of making profits, not satisfying the needs of the Tunisian people, and the only way you can force them to do otherwise is… by nationalising them under workers’ control. And that must be stated clearly.
This reluctance to speak openly about socialism, the talk instead of a “patriotic and peoples’ economic choice”, the discussion about dropping “Communist” from the party name (and actually standing in the elections under the name of “revolutionary alternative” instead of the more well known PCOT party name), show clearly the shortcomings of the Stalinist two-stage theory. This is the idea that there is some sort of separate “progressive”, “patriotic” and “democratic” stage in the revolution which it is necessary to fulfil before one can struggle for socialism and workers’ power. This is even more clearly revealed when it comes to the party’s political programme which talks of the installation of a “democratic, modern, republican and people’s” regime as the main aim of the revolution. This is to be achieved through a “parliamentary regime based on proportional representation”, the “independence of the judiciary”, separation of religion from the state and politics, “guarantees for individual rights and respect of human rights”, etc … in other words, a bourgeois democracy!
What needs to be understood is that the democratic and social demands of the Tunisian revolution, for freedom, jobs, social justice, etc., cannot be achieved within the limits of capitalism and bourgeois democracy. The |
which he lost the world, and was content to lose it.” Although Johnson regarded Shakespeare as the greatest modern writer to depict our “general nature,” he preferred Tate’s “King Lear” for the poetic justice of its ending.
As the scholar Michael Dobson has argued, canonization fuelled adaptation: if Shakespeare was the newly minted national poet, his plays had to be improved to be worthy of his stature. (That impulse spurred Henrietta and Thomas Bowdler’s expurgated “Family Shakespeare” edition, which advertised that it removed “from the writings of Shakespeare some defects which diminish their value.”) In 1838, the great actor-manager William Macready restored Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” complete with the Fool and the original body count, but he could not persuade his audiences to accept Shakespeare’s “Richard III.” Colley Cibber’s trim Restoration adaptation, with its popular lines like “Off with his head! So much for Buckingham,” was preferred until 1877, and even Laurence Olivier’s 1955 film kept some of Cibber’s alterations. “The Taming of the Shrew,” frequently revived in adaptations throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was not performed in Shakespeare’s version until 1887, almost three hundred years after its Elizabethan début.Some of the country's lowest-paid workers could lose almost a quarter of their weekly wages under changes quietly introduced by the Abbott government.
Thousands of workers will be hit by the changes, which will strip between $172 and $225 a week from the pockets of full-time contract cleaners who work in government buildings.
Red tape repeal: The government is looking to abolish the Commonwealth Cleaning Services Guidelines for cleaners employed on government contracts from July 1. Credit:Louise Kennerley
The changes are among the 9500 regulations to go under Prime Minister Tony Abbott's red tape ''repeal day'' on Wednesday.
Buried in more than 50,000 pages of regulations and acts of parliaments to be scrapped is the revelation the government will abolish the Commonwealth Cleaning Services Guidelines for cleaners employed on government contracts from July 1.Well, since no one here probably reads Hebrew, reading the original article isn’t going to be that useful. I’ll be brief, though. This is not the first time shit like this happens and probably not the last.
An Israeli Arab dared to use his car on Yom Kippur (like he gives a flying fuck about Jewish Halacha, duh), so the crowd mobbed him and almost lynched him. By that, I mean that they tried stoning him to death and he managed to escape.
He did, by the way, try to be quiet and subtle… But you know, religious thugs don’t really use their brains before they delve into a self-rightous spree of violence.
Disgusting. If this is the way Jews behave on the day when they’re supposed to be atoning for their sins, I can only imagine what their worst is. Also, if this is the way Jews are supposed to behave to a foreigner who tries to respect their feelings but nevertheless, does not share their same convictions, then I am ashamed of being associated with Judaism for having been raised Jewish.
Despicable.
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Woohoo! This post was Pharyngulated!
AdvertisementsA Cheap and Customizable Ransomware Service Has Been Discovered, Your Money Is at Risk
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Security researchers at internet technology company Recorded Future have discovered a new economical ransomware service that could be a windfall for cyber criminals. The identified malware is named Karmen and it allows anyone to customize their own ransomware package for malicious gain.
Also read: Burger King Tried to Hijack Your Smartphone in Attempt to Sell Burgers
Karmen: A Ransomware Service for the Everyday Cybercriminal
Karmen is a cheap ransomware-as-a-service, with a going rate of one upfront payment of US $175. At this price, it offers a bundle of tools and functionalities such as allowing users to set ransom prices, determining how much time to give to victims before they have to pay the ransom, and a variety of different means of communication with victims.
The malware’s interface includes a dashboard where they can keep tabs on their activities and things like the number of “clients” the user has, and how much money they’ve made from their efforts.
Recorded Future describes the program as a standalone malware variant, which is what it is sold as. Furthermore, they noted that it only requires one-time upfront payment while allowing a buyer to retain 100 percent of the money they blackmail from infected victims.
Moreover, the ransomware is sold in both light and full versions, with the light version omitting sandbox identification functionality — therefore offering a much smaller file size.
The Discovery of Karmen
Recorded Future said they found the malware on March 4 when they discovered it was being sold in underground forums as a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS). The person doing the selling was a Russian-speaking cyber criminal with two online aliases, DevBitox and Dereck1.
There is very little known about DevBitox, except that the cybercriminal was also observed soliciting clients for different kinds of hacking services on the dark web. According to the researchers, Karmen is the hacker’s first commercial project.
Karmen-originating infections were first documented in December of 2016, being reported by victims in Germany and the United States, and according to researchers it encrypts files on the infected PCs using the AES-256 encryption standard
Fortunately, victims have recourse in case they happen to be infected by this ransomware because its code comes from Hidden Tear, an open source project. Hence, it can be removed via a free tool available on NoMoreRansom.org.
The Rise of RaaS
The advent of RaaS has been a thorn in the side of cyber security professionals. It has turned a crime that was once largely limited to the creators of ransomware into a profitable business venture that provides novice cybercriminals the resources to execute their ill-intentioned goals.
It has essentially outsourced the basic infrastructure of ransomware, providing a standardized platform that can be customized to fit the specific needs of any individual client.
This is crucial, as it removes a costly barrier-to-entry into the ransomware game. Thus, RaaS makes ransomware much cheaper, which, in turn, creates more demand for malware and turns people who would otherwise be harmless into fully capable cyber criminals.
What do you think of the discovery of this ransomware service? Let’s hear your thoughts.
Images via allthingsd.com, Recorded Future, and Twitter
Flip Share Pin 14 SharesIn North Sinai, the first thing people do when they wake up is check their cell phones to make sure that their mobile and Internet connections are still working. Unfortunately they are disappointed almost everyday. This is the reality that we have grown accustomed to since last September, after military operations began in North Sinai. Nearly every day we awake to find the connections disabled. This typically lasts for about 12 hours.
The military operations began here in September 2013 as part of the government's war on terrorism, following a series of attacks targeting the army and police in the peninsula. For local civilians, the effects of the assault are many: check points have been established on the main roads linking the cities in North Sinai. Curfews as early as 4pm have been imposed in some areas. The daily disconnections of phone and Internet services have only added suffering to people's lives.
Some mobile network users are working to put pressure [ar] on providers to change this trend. Last October, a group in North Sinai decided to sue the operating companies for the repeated disconnection and delays in reestablishing connections. A Facebook event page [ar] invited individuals to join the lawsuit, which chiefly targeted Mobinil for repeated and long-lasting service cuts, but these were in vain. In downtown Arish city, two demonstrations against service cuts were held. One organizer of the first protest (a founding member of 6 April movement in North Sinai) was detained for one day following the event.
Some activists from North Sinai launched a hashtag on Facebook and Twitter with the title #Sinai_out_of_coverage (#سيناء_خارج_التغطية) expressing their daily suffering with the networks disconnections, hoping that their voice might be heard and that they will regain their normal life once again.
The problem is not only about cell phones — service cuts also affect workers and productivity in places like the post office, banks, and civil records. Marwa R., a school teacher interviewed by Global Voices explained that she “went repeatedly to the civil records [headquarters] to renew my ID but every time I go I find that it's not working due to the disabled connections.”
Many officials suffer from a delay in getting their salaries because the banks stop working whenever the networks are disconnected. Another woman, also a teacher, lamented:” I've been trying to get my salary for days now and it doesn't work every time I go to the bank. I'm just waiting for the connections to be switched on and I'll just hurry to the bank maybe I can do it today.”
Many teachers travel every day from Arish to Rafah (on Egypt's Eastern borders with Gaza) and Sheikh Zuwaid (Southern Rafah) or to Central Sinai passing by very dangerous roads with IEDs, shootings, and clashes between the army and militants. There have been two recent incidents where a group of teachers riding by bus passed by violent clashes — in both incidents, multiple teachers were shot and some were badly injured. Families constantly worry about their loved ones traveling through these dangerous areas and want to make sure their family members working in those places are safe. But without mobile phone connections, they are unable to do so. Cyber cafe and mobile shop owners also suffer from these service cuts, which leave them with little revenue to keep their businesses afloat.
When the networks are working, everyone tries to do all they need using cell phones or the Internet, but even then, the service is so bad that there’s little they can accomplish. People can hardly make a phone call, and both sides are often unable to hear anything.
Security officials say that they disable connections because militants use cell phones to communicate and to explode IEDs. This may be true, but these networks are meant to serve the general public. Shutting them down affects everyone.
Some even argue that neighboring Israeli and Palestinian networks are so strong that they have coverage in much of North Sinai — when Egyptian networks are cut, militants will simply use these instead. In the end, peaceful civilians are those who suffer most from the everyday routine of disconnection.[Warning: This story contains spoilers from Monday's episode of Jane the Virgin, "Chapter Forty-Six."]
Abortion is a word that's been heard on Jane the Virgin before, but Monday's episode of The CW series dealt with it in a much dramatic way than ever before.
In the episode, it was revealed that Xo (Andrea Navedo) had decided not to carry her baby with Esteban to term and had gotten an abortion. Although that revelation was hardly surprising to viewers given that she had already told Rogelio (Jaime Camil) in the season three premiere that she didn't plan to go through with the surprise pregnancy, her actions hit Alba (Ivonne Coll) hard. After avoiding her strict Catholic mother for several days, the two finally hashed it out in a moving scene in which the two finally agreed to disagree (just as they came to an agreement on Alba's hideous choice in wallpaper.)
Although the storyline began at the end of last season when Xo learned she was pregnant, the dialogue between the two women about abortion, and reproductive rights, comes at a very interesting time. The third and final presidential debate, which took place less than a week ago, featured a heated discussion between candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on that very subject that started an eye-opening post-debate discussion online.
"Its just so much, right now, under attack that I feel like its an important [topic]," showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman tells The Hollywood Reporter. "Abortion is an important thing to be talking about, to normalize, to not stigmatize, and to dramatize."
This, however, wasn't Jane the Virgin's first time touching on the subject of abortion. In the pilot episode, when Jane discovers she's pregnant by accidental artificial insemination, she contemplates abortion before deciding to give birth. And years before that, Alba had advised a very young Xo to get an abortion when she discovered she was pregnant with Jane. All this for a show that also deals heavily with religion, and particularly Catholicism.
"If Xo were to have that baby, to me that would be a really strong message that I do not want to send, which is that a fortysomething woman who has raised a child and doesn’t want a baby should have it anyway," Urman says of Xo's decision to go through with the abortion.
"We have a character in the house that thinks quite the opposite [of Xo] so that, I think, lets us have a discussion about it. Instead of discounting that point of view, we're giving value to it as Alba's point of view but then showing a way out of it for this family. It's just looking at it within the microcosm of the family where people have different points of view and how they can push forward past that. Alba says, 'I wish you didn’t do it, but its your choice,' and then they move on."
A big part of that discussion had to do with Xo's known desire not to have any more children, something Urman and the writers specifically laid the groundwork for during the show's second season. It was the reason that she and Rogelio ultimately broke up, and she ended up sleeping with his rival, Esteban, in the first place.
"Xo is not tortured. It is not a tortured abortion. It is not an abortion where she is unclear about what she wants or unclear about her choice. She's very clear and I think most abortions are that. And I feel like that’s an important thing to reflect on TV as well," Urman says. "She has to deal with the fact that somebody in her family doesn’t appreciate that or doesn’t approve of that but that doesn’t change who she is and what her choice is."
THR spoke to Urman about the differences between Jane and Xo's surprise pregnancies, and other hot-button issues she plans to tackle on the series this season.
What were your thoughts from that angle of showing this woman considering an abortion?
The family is Catholic but they've had many discussions about abortion and abortion is definitely something that they've talked about and have different ideas about and have approached at different moments in their life. Jane in the pilot was considering getting an abortion and decided not to, not because she wanted a baby but because she learned it was Rafael's last sperm sample and this was his only chance to have a biological child. But the question of the pilot was, should she have an abortion? Once she learned that there might be a congenital defect, her mom asked her and at that point, she thought she wouldn’t because she was too far along for her comfort level. But its always been something that they've talked about. Alba told Xo to get an abortion years ago and now regrets it. For us, this is definitely something on our minds and there are so many different points of view, as long as I feel like we treat those points of view with respect, then they can disagree. Ultimately, how they move past that as a family is what ultimately the story is about.
What made you want to have Xo get pregnant and have that discussion once again given that Jane talked about it in the pilot?
Because Jane's was complicated by Rafael's situation. I believe every pregnancy, every person is different, what they want is different and what they believe is different so I don't feel like its something that you just do once and then she chooses to have the baby and that discussion's over. I feel like with Xo, we made a really big deal about her being in a very, very different place.
When you're in the room and you're talking about incorporating these different points of view, do you have writers who are Catholic/religious and can come at it from that perspective?
I have three Catholic writers who, though they might be pro-choice have definitely family members who aren't' and can speak to the complexity of it. But everybody is different.
Its going to be a specific story to Xo, Alba and Jane. It's not representative of everyone. Its representative of this family, in this particular situation with their particular history and their particular relationship between the three women, so I'm trying to dramatize that, and be respectful. Obviously, I'm pro-choice, but I'm not going to be stigmatizing Alba for what she believes. We're just going to see how this family navigates a difference of opinion.
When you're coming into a storyline like this, how concerned are you about offending viewers? Do the network and/or studio have concerns about that? What are those conversations like?
I think they just thought we were going to handle it the way we handle our issues: thoughtfully, hopefully, and something that comes out of character. So, again, I think the more specific you can be in the storytelling then it's not a blanket statement, it's a dramatization of something three women living in a house together might face. The network and the studio, I pitched them this story and the different points of view and they were very supportive. … I feel like we just try to approach storytelling with compassion. I can't really worry about everybody's different points of view on every different thing that we put out there. I hope that, you know, everyone feels respected. That is something I would want, without necessarily thinking that I'm going to change people's minds who don't think the certain way I do, because that's not at all my goal or possible I don't think.
This isn't your first time being slightly political on the show. Last year, you tackled immigration with Alba's quest to become a legal citizen. Are there other such issues you would like to explore on the show this season?
We're going to be talking about what's happening in Venezuela right now because the original telenovela came from there and I made the family from there. [Venezuela's] in a really precarious position right now with the shortage of electricity and that's going to impact the family as Jane starts to excavate her grandmother's past through her writing. She's going to be exploring her grandmother's history and that's going to pull her into some of the things that are happening in the present and up her awareness of that. We're going to be continuing to discuss immigration and Alba, now she has her green card, she has different opportunities than she had before so she's going to get a new job because now she can work on the books and that will bring in a new environment and just a real sense of pride for her and excitement and a sense of new beginnings. … Our characters will vote, all that kind of stuff.
Jane the Virgin airs Mondays at 9 p.m. on The CW.It’s been only a season, but the 2015 NBA draft class seems destined to be one of the best ever. Even beyond clear superstar talents like Karl-Anthony Towns and Kristaps Porzingis, the class is teeming with players who, in one way or another, serve as a key to understanding their respective teams’ long-term identity. Over the next few weeks, Jonathan Tjarks will be looking at 2015 draftees entering Year 2, and how their teams can best serve their pillars of the future.
Mario Hezonja hasn’t had a chance to live up to the hype. He was dubbed the “European J.R. Smith” due to his ability to shoot 3s and play above the rim, as well as an aggressive style of play that bordered on arrogance. The Magic drafted him at no. 5 overall, but the minutes and shots just weren’t there for him in his rookie season. He was behind Elfrid Payton, Victor Oladipo, Evan Fournier, Tobias Harris, and Aaron Gordon in the pecking order, and it’s hard to play with much pizzazz running off screens and spotting up off the ball. The Magic have accumulated plenty of talent in the post–Dwight Howard era, but they have never figured out how to put it all together.
Patience in Orlando is running thin. Scott Skiles resigned after only one season as the head coach, and the front office went all in when it traded Oladipo, Ersan Ilyasova, and the team’s first-round pick for Serge Ibaka, who is in the final year of his contract. The Magic handed out $116 million in contracts to Bismack Biyombo, Jeff Green, and D.J. Augustin, and gave new coach Frank Vogel a clear mandate to make the playoffs. Where that leaves Hezonja is unclear. There will be minutes for him as a shooter off the bench, but he will to have to force Vogel to give him a bigger role. To get a feel for what he could do with more responsibility, I broke down the film on three of the only games from last season when he played more than 32 minutes.
January 31 vs. Boston — 17 points, 3 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 turnovers on 7-of-13 shooting in 33 minutes
Hezonja’s game against Boston was one of his best performances off the bench. He entered the game with about four minutes remaining in the first quarter, made his first 3-pointer less than a minute later, and never cooled off. The Magic were playing a supersized guard rotation, with either Oladipo (6-foot-4) or Fournier (6-foot-7) running point on the second unit, which forced the Celtics to put Isaiah Thomas (5-foot-9) on Hezonja. Despite being nearly a foot taller, Hezonja never tried to post him up, and Orlando didn’t adjust its offense to attack the mismatch. It’s a good example of how little the coaching staff trusted him to initiate offense as a rookie. He had a minuscule 16.9 usage rating and averaged fewer than one free throw attempt per game; at 6-foot-8, Hezonja has the size advantage over most wings in the NBA, let alone Thomas, but he attempted only 13 shots out of the post all season.
Hezonja’s inability to stay on the floor was compounded by his poor grasp of Orlando’s defensive schemes. Like most rookies, Hezonja was lost off the ball, not keeping track of his man or staying connected when chasing him through screens, and not making the proper rotations as a help-side defender. He is big and athletic enough to eventually become a plus defender, but he will have a hard time earning Vogel’s trust until he learns to correct some of the mental mistakes he made last season.
March 25 at Miami — 8 points, 3 rebounds, 1 assist, 2 steals, and 2 turnovers on 4-of-11 shooting in 37 minutes
Hezonja started in five of the final 11 games of the season, when it had become clear that the Magic weren’t likely to advance to the playoffs. Hezonja was the starting small forward against the Heat, doing a decent job of bodying up Joe Johnson and preventing him from bullying on the block. He logged minutes as a small-ball power forward, too. Playing in smaller lineups showcased his athleticism; he was burning slower players in transition and getting down the floor in an awful hurry. It’s easy to get excited about Hezonja when he’s playing in space: He’s a 6-foot-8 jet with great top-end speed and a quick release from anywhere on the court.
But he struggles to translate that athleticism when playing in the half court. Hezonja doesn’t get as many rebounds (6.9 percent rebound rate), steals (1.4 percent), or blocks (1 percent) as you would expect for a guy with his physical tools. He’s not particularly long for his height, so he has to put himself in the right positions to get his hands on balls. What might help is sliding him down the position spectrum, rather than up. Hezonja is bigger and faster than Klay Thompson, for example, who spends a lot of time chasing down smaller point guards for the Warriors. Putting Hezonja in a similar situation would give him a huge edge in size and length. The Magic could run the offense through Fournier and Gordon on the wings and switch everything with Biyombo and Ibaka upfront. Thompson is the blueprint for what Hezonja can become, but he’s a long way from that — and it’s hard to compare anyone to Klay, a player who has maxed out his talent so completely since getting drafted.
April 11 vs. Milwaukee — 19 points, 3 rebounds, 7 assists, and 5 steals on 7-of-11 shooting in 39 minutes
No Gordon, no Oladipo, and no Nikola Vucevic meant this game was as close to a liberated Hezonja performance as we saw all season. He was more involved in the offense, and he even spent part of the game as the primary ball handler when he was playing with C.J. Watson and Devyn Marble on the second unit. He’s a smart player with a good feel for the game, and he usually makes the right pass when it’s available. Most of his assists came within the flow of the offense, but he looked more comfortable handling the ball in the pick-and-roll, especially when he could take the ball up the floor himself and start the offense before the defense got set.
The increased role also highlighted some of his limitations, especially going against the Bucks’ long and athletic wings. Hezonja had trouble with Khris Middleton on defense, who repeatedly took advantage of him in isolations, getting where he wanted off the dribble and shooting over the top of him. Nor was there much he could do when Giannis Antetokounmpo unfurled his arms and started blanketing him all over the court. He’s a straight-line driver without a ton of shake off the dribble, and his inability to create space is why he settled for a lot of contested jumpers as a rookie. He can take and make tough shots, but the best scorers in the NBA tend to have more versatility in their games; it’s hard to be an efficient offensive player when you rarely go to the free throw line.
At this point, the math doesn’t add up to Hezonja having a starring role for Orlando in the upcoming season. The Magic have a logjam in the frontcourt, with Vucevic, Biyombo, and Ibaka expecting to play big minutes at the interior positions, causing a domino effect to the rest of their lineup. That pushes Jeff Green and Aaron Gordon down a position to the 3, even though both are most effective at the 4, which forces Fournier and Hezonja to play primarily as 2s, with Fournier likely getting most of the minutes, after signing an $85 million contract in the offseason. The presence of Elfrid Payton and Augustin means there’s not much room at the 1, leaving Hezonja with another 15–20 minute role off the bench.
The Magic could make him the sixth man and let him run the second unit, a role Fournier and Oladipo filled last season. The question becomes whether he would be playing with Biyombo or Vucevic at center. Vucevic would demand the ball in the post if he’s coming off the bench, while Biyombo is a better roll man more comfortable in the uptempo offense well-suited to Hezonja’s game. There are no easy answers for Vogel, since Biyombo would improve the starting unit’s defense at the expense of its floor spacing, which will be an issue playing next to two non-shooters in Gordon and Payton. One way to balance defense and shooting while also creating more playing time for Hezonja, would be sliding Ibaka to center and Gordon to power forward, but that would mean benching one of their high-priced big men in favor of an unproven second-year player.
Playing Ibaka, Gordon, Hezonja, and Fournier together would give the Magic a lineup that could switch screens, spread the floor, and play uptempo, where Hezonja is most effective. Vogel needs to figure out the best way to maximize his game, because he could be the last top-five pick the Magic have for a long time. Hezonja has the tools to be a high-level, two-way player, but his skill set isn’t one that can transcend any situation. So much of a young player’s success in the NBA depends on being in the right place at the right time, and that hasn’t happened yet for Hezonja. He’s only 21, so he still has plenty of time, but his team won’t be waiting around.Terrifying tales have surfaced recently of unsuspecting iPhone users that have had their private conversations swiped by thieves or intercepted by accident, and through our own independent test we've confirmed the issue and at least one way it could arise — but, to be clear, that doesn't mean you should hit the panic button.
Stories about a potential iMessages bug swirled after users started to report on the issue in forums — one user in a MacRumors thread said that after having their iPhone stolen, their iMessages were still being intercepted by the thief despite a remote wipe. In December, Ars Technica reported that one of their readers had befallen a similar fate. And recently, Gizmodo intercepted a bunch of private communications from an Apple store employee after taking an iPhone 4 in for repairs.
Apple representative Natalie Harrison tells us that the problem in the Gizmodo case is not a bug with iMessage, but rather a rare situation in which a retail employee broke protocol and used their personal SIM to help a customer that didn't have a working SIM. But what about those who have their iPhones or SIMs stolen? The issue may not be a catastrophic "bug," but it's certainly a reproducible exploit. So here's what you need to know.
The SIM-swapping field test
With the iPhones of our own Ross Miller, Patrick Austin, and Chris Welch as test subjects, we've successfully reproduced the iMessage issue. This can be done with any SIM-equipped iPhone at any time, but the process is imperfect and time-consuming.
For this test, we used three carrier-locked iPhones — henceforth described simply as the Victim (the original iPhone), the Spy (the conversation-scraping iPhone), and the Bystander (a garrulous third party).
First, make sure iMessage is set up on all phones. From the Settings → iMessage window, you should see the phone number listed and grayed out. As an note, iMessage is a substitute for SMS; when iMessage is enabled, the iPhone sends iMessages instead of SMS, and vice-versa.
Now, take out the Victim's SIM card and put it in the Spy's iPhone. On the Victim's phone you'll get a "No SIM installed" pop-up and and the Settings → Phone menu will be inaccessible, but sure enough, the phone number will still be listed under iMessage.
The Spy's phone, however — now containing the Victim's SIM card — will attempt to verify said card. This will take several minutes, but the process can be expedited by turning the phone off and on. The same phone number will then be connected to both iPhones, despite having different Apple IDs. You can put the Victim's SIM card back in his or her phone or simply toss it away.
What happens next
From the Bystander's iPhone (with iMessage on — it doesn't happen otherwise), send a message to the Victim's phone number. Both the Victim and the Spy will get it, despite only one of them having a SIM card. If either iPhone responds, both will see it come up as a "sent" message. The SIM-less iPhone can intercept (and even join in) all of someone else's iMessage conversations without any signs of intrusion. It'll look as if your phone is possessed.
If the Victim turns off iMessage, it would only serve to cut them out of the loop. The Bystander's phone would still detect iMessage to be working (via the Spy's phone), and would send iMessages to the Spy's phone that the Victim won't be able to see.
How to disable
As the Victim
When we remote wiped the Victim's iPhone, iMessages was disabled, but only when the SIM was removed. If the SIM is still in the phone, as may be the case in a scenario where the phone is stolen, iMessages can still be reactivated, but only if that SIM is still valid. Therefore, if you're the Victim, your best bet is to perform a remote wipe and then immediately deactivate the old SIM card — after our own test, we've confirmed that this method will invalidate the old SIM, clear the phone, and prevent it from being reactivated with your phone number.
As the Spy
This whole issue stems from the phone number staying tied to the phone's iMessage service even after ejection. The iPhone itself clearly knows the SIM is missing, as exhibited by the disabled Phone settings. If, however, you have the SIM-less iPhone and you're tired of invading someone else's privacy, popping in another SIM card or even just turning iMessage off and on should sever ties completely.
Why this (probably) doesn't matter
We've recreated all this in a controlled environment, but that doesn't exactly mean it might come up in a real world setting — the biggest danger here is that someone might swipe your SIM card, slap it in a spare iPhone, put it back in your iPhone after verification, and then monitor all of your conversations without you ever knowing. And since this all takes place on the physical level, your messages can be swiped even if your phone is passcode locked. And what if your phone is stolen? In that case, you can always default to normal panic mode, which is the same on all platforms.
Of course, if someone ever does get their hands on your iPhone, there's a whole host of other nefarious things that they could do than swipe your SIM card — so the issue might not deserve some of the hysteria we've seen across the web, but it's also clearly a risk that Apple needs to address. Until then, it's just one more reason to think twice the next time you consider leaving your iPhone unattended at the bar.
Ross Miller contributed his words, time, and sense of privacy to this report. Special thanks to Patrick Austin, Chris Welch, David Pierce, and Michael Shane, as well.While her father’s and children’s killer may have received a 10-year prison term, Jennifer Neville-Lake is already serving a kind of life sentence. Her last moments with her two youngest children were in the hospital, their beds next to each other and their hands intertwined, as they were taken off life support while family and friends sang “Over the Rainbow.”
Marco Muzzo arrives at the Newmarket courthouse for his sentencing hearing on Feb. 23, 2016. ( Nathan Denette / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILE PHOTO ) Harrison, Milly and Daniel Neville-Lake (left to right) are shown in a handout photo. ( Kay Prince Photography / THE CANADIAN PRESS )
“None of my children saw 10 years. None,” she told reporters Tuesday after Superior Court Justice Michelle Fuerst imposed the sentence on convicted drunk driver Marco Muzzo in a Newmarket courtroom. “When you choose to drink and drive, you’re hurting other families. You’re killing someone else’s babies … like all of mine were killed on a beautiful Sunday afternoon just after 4 o’clock,” Neville-Lake said outside the courthouse after the sentencing. With credit for time served in custody since the Sept. 27 crash, Muzzo, 29, still has 9 years and 4 months left to serve.
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He is eligible to apply for full parole after having served one-third of his sentence (about 3 years), and can apply for day parole six months prior to that (after having served about two-and-a-half-years). Muzzo was also banned from driving for 12 years. Public reaction to the penalty was predictably swift and angry, with many noting that it was too light and nowhere the near maximum punishment for impaired driving causing death, which is life in prison. But from a legal standpoint, lawyers and advocates noted that it was one of the highest sentences for this type of crime in Canadian history, and perhaps the stiffest for an individual with no prior criminal record and who pleaded guilty. “I don’t think we’re going to see another case like this in the near future where someone necessarily attracts a 10-year sentence, but I think Justice Fuerst’s sentence sends a message that the tariff has gone up for these types of offences in Ontario,” said criminal defence lawyer Daniel Brown, who was not involved in the case.
Muzzo pleaded guilty in February to the Vaughan crash that killed Daniel Neville-Lake, 9, Harrison, 5, Milagros, 2, and their 65-year-old grandfather, Gary Neville. Their grandmother, who was driving, and great-grandmother were also seriously injured in the crash. Court heard that Muzzo’s blood-alcohol content was nearly three times the legal limit when he ran a stop sign and crashed into the family’s minivan. He had picked up his vehicle at Pearson airport after returning from his bachelor party in Miami on a private plane.
Article Continued Below
Dressed in a black suit and dark blue shirt, Muzzo showed no emotion as he was asked to rise in the prisoner’s box Tuesday morning to receive his sentence before a packed courtroom, including a large contingent seated with his mother, Dawn, and fiancée Taryn Hampton.
He briefly glanced at them as he was led away in handcuffs, while the Neville-Lake family sobbed on the other side of the courtroom. “For as long as Mr. Muzzo has been alive, courts have warned about the consequences of impaired driving,” Fuerst said. “Yet the message escaped him. It is important that it does not escape others. The high degree of Mr. Muzzo’s moral blameworthiness, combined with the enormous and far-reaching consequences of his offences, sets this case apart from others.” The Crown had asked for a sentence of 10 to 12 years in prison, while the defence requested 8 years. Muzzo does not intend to appeal. His lawyer, Brian Greenspan, told reporters his client “fully accepts” the sentence. “The judge chose, as a result of a balance between the aggravating and mitigating factors in this case, to impose a sentence of 10 years and certainly that’s within the range of acceptable sentence and the range of sentence that is beyond review,” he said. It was the culmination of a high-profile case, which attracted widespread attention not only because of the young |
ara military checkpoint in southern Nablus on more confiscated Palestinian lands of Yasouf town to the east of Salfit governorate. Eyewitnesses said that a bulldozer escorted by Israeli troops was leveling a land plot adjacent to the location where a hit-and-run attack was carried out last Tuesday resulting in the injury of four Israeli soldiers. The IOF added more cement blocks at the barrier, intensified the deployment of troops, and installed more surveillance cameras, eyewitnesses pointed out.
http://english.palinfo.com/site/pages/details.aspx?itemid=75192
Like sheep to the separation
Haaretz 30 Nov by Amira Hass — The separation fence in the West Bank cuts off villages from towns, and towns from cities. Now, it is also separating nursing ewes from their lambs — “It’s hardest for the mothers. They bawl the whole time. It takes them about 10 days before they forget.” — The mothers in question are the ewes who gave birth not long ago, and they are bawling because the top brass of the Israel Defense Forces has decided to separate them from their young lambs, which they have not yet forgotten. The speaker is the owner of the flock, Jamal Hanina of Qalqilyah. His sheepfold lies amid Palestinian greenhouses and plant nurseries on the northern side of the separation fence (inside the occupied West Bank, but in a strip that has been annexed de facto for the benefit of the settlement of Alfei Menashe). But his pasture lands are on the southern, “Palestinian,” side of the fence.
Ever since the fence was built about 13 years ago, the IDF has let Hanina and his flock pass through an agricultural gate that is opened three times a day for an hour each time. Three months ago, the IDF forbade the sheep to pass through, but that was before they began giving birth. After a short time, the ban was revoked and the ewes resumed spending their nights in the sheepfold. Last Monday morning, 120 sheep left their pens and crossed through the Habla agricultural gate to get to their pasture. They left behind “19 or 21 lambs, I forget how many,” Hanina said. But when they returned to the gate at noon, they discovered that the orders had changed. The soldiers said they were forbidden to cross... Hanina, who is “50, but looks 30,” according to his own testimony, ekes out his living by working also at night as a guard in one of the plant nurseries on the northern side of the fence, near his sheepfold. “We’ve had a flock since my grandfather’s time, since the Turkish era,” he said. “These lands have been ours since long before the fence bisected them. They’re always coming with a new prohibition, a new order. Now, it’s forbidden for the sheep. But the horses are still allowed to cross, and also the donkeys. May it never happen to you.” (Continued, with a description of the 38 gates in the wall for the Palestinian population – and their various Kafkaesque rules]
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.689068
Gaza
Palestinian fishermen forces to return to shore after Israeli gunfire
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 28 Nov — Israeli naval forces Saturday opened fire on Palestinian fishermen off the coast of Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, according to local fishermen. The fishermen told Ma‘an that all fishing boats in the area were forced to return to the shore due to the gunfire. No casualties have been reported...
Two fishermen sustained moderate injuries after being targeted and shot in the same area earlier this month. Israeli forces often say that Palestinian fishermen “deviate from the designated fishing zone” allotted by Israel to the workers, posing a “security threat.” The limited zone in which Palestinian fishermen are allowed to work has historically fluctuated, and rights groups say that boats are often fired on within the zone. On Nov. 5, Egyptian military forces shot and killed a Palestinian fisherman off the coast of the southern Gaza Strip.
http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=769068
Palestinian patients suffer as Israeli crackdown on exit permits keeps them away from hospital
GAZA CITY (The Independent) 29 Nov by Donald Macintyre — Nearly a third of applications to travel for medical treatment have been denied this year and reasons are seldom given — Since he was diagnosed in infancy with cystic fibrosis, Mahmoud Kuweifi, 24, has been allowed out of Gaza for regular treatment at Israel’s world-class Tel HaShomer hospital, for whose medical staff he and his family have nothing but praise. “I like them very much,” says Mr Kuweifi, adding only half-jokingly: “If I could claim asylum there, I would.” The warmth with which Mr Kuweifi’s parents describe “the Jews” who have cared for their son would be striking even if they didn’t live in the eastern Gaza City neighbourhood of Shejaiyia, scene of perhaps the worst death and destruction during the 2014 war. His father, Mohammed Kuweifi, 53, a tailor, talks volubly about the kindness and professionalism of Tel HaShomer’s doctors in treating his son’s incurable, but manageable, disease. During the war, he got a call from the hospital to check on how his son was doing. Which is why he is so upset that the young man had to miss two appointments last month because the Israeli military didn’t grant him a permit to cross into Israel. Especially when his fluctuating condition worsens, as it did last Wednesday when Mr Kuweifi suffered stomach pain and vomiting. With his immune system compromised, any infection could be a major threat... But Mr Kuweifi’s experience is also part of a pattern. While Israel almost trebled the number of exit permits from Gaza after the war to an average 13,832 per month, that number has started to decline again. And the proportion of permits refused for hospital treatment in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Israel has also risen. The Israeli military declined to say why Mr Kuweifi had been refused but insisted its “criteria remain unchanged”. Demand for exit permits has grown this year after Egypt closed the southern Rafah crossing for all but 19 days, yet only 69 per cent of medical applications were approved, with 11 per cent or 255 patients denied permits and 19 per cent receiving no response. Reasons are seldom given. Last week the Palestinian civil-affairs committee was told that “companions” aged 16-55 would not be allowed to accompany patients without often protracted security checks, including interviews with Israeli intelligence. It’s tempting to see the rise in denials as a security measure triggered by the recent violence in Israel and the West Bank. But in fact it began in August. (Continued).
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/palestinian-patients-suffer-as-israeli-crackdown-on-exit-permits-keeps-them-away-from-hospital-a6753701.html
Israel imposes age restrictions on companions of Gaza patients
GAZA CITY (Alresalah.ps) 28 Nov — Israeli occupation authorities have imposed restrictions on the age of Palestinians allowed to accompany patients when transferred to hospitals in the occupied West Bank and 1948 Occupied Palestine. Only people of 55 years old and above are allowed to travel to the West Bank and the occupied Palestinian territories. The new restrictions will have impact on many patients, especially children, having difficulties accessing treatment without the escort of their parents and other close relatives aged below 55. The Director General of the Health Minister’s Office, Maher Shamiya, on Thursday slammed the Israeli decision, saying in a press statement that it comes as part of Israeli intents to crack down on Palestinian patients and their families. Shamiya underlined that most of those transferred for treatment in the occupied territories are tumor-stricken patients. “How can a person aged 55 or over assist such a critical category of medical patients?” he wondered.
http://english.alresalah.ps/en/post.php?id=4946
Gazan accused of killing Italian activist dies fighting for ISIS in Iraq
GAZA CITY (Ma‘an) 28 Nov — A Palestinian accused of killing an Italian activist in the Gaza Strip four years ago has been killed while fighting with the Islamic State group in Anbar province in Iraq, Palestinian security sources in Gaza said Saturday. Security sources identified the Gazan as 28-year-old Mahmoud al-Salfiti, also known by his nom de guerre, Abu Khattab. He was arrested by Hamas in 2011 along with three other Palestinians over the killing of Italian solidarity activist Vittorio Arrigoni. The sources said that he managed to escape Hamas custody in June this year and later emerged in Syria, fighting for the extremist Islamic State group. It was reported that he escaped prison while on leave to visit his family for the month of Ramadan. It was not clear how he was able to reach Syria from the blockaded Gaza Strip. Arrigoni was found hanged in a house northwest of Gaza City on April 15, 2011. He had been kidnapped by a group that identified itself as Salafist. Al-Salfiti was one of three Gazans arrested shortly afterward, following a violent standoff with Hamas security forces in Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, during which two other Palestinians were shot dead. A fourth Palestinian was later arrested, and together they were tried and convicted of killing Arrigoni by Hamas.
Vittorio Arrigoni, Onadekum (Calling You) – DARG Team
Al Jazeera documentary about Vittorio Arrigoni
http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=769061
Egypt discovers iron tunnel network under Gaza border
Ynet 27 Nov by Roi Kais — Massive network of ‘extremely expensive’ tunnels with 40cm-thick iron walls discovered on Egyptian side of the border, which Cairo claims was built by Hamas and funded by Qatar — Egyptian border guards discovered a first of its kind underground tunnel network made of iron under the country’s border with Gaza on Friday, according to Egyptian security officials. The tunnel was discovered at a depth of 10 meters near the northern part of the Rafah crossing which connects the Gaza Strip to the Sinai Peninsula. Egyptian forces destroyed the tunnel using vast quantities of explosives. The Egyptian officials said the tunnels were discovered when water that had been pumped from the ocean to flood the tunnels on the border, as the Egyptians have been doing in recent weeks, failed to seep into the ground. Security officials realized that something must have been blocking the water from being absorbed, and thus discovered the network of tunnels. Egyptian engineering forces promptly began excavations in the area and discovered an iron tunnel at a depth of 10 meters. A quick examination of the tunnel revealed that its walls were made of 40cm-thick iron. The Egyptian officials said that building such a tunnel would be an extremely expensive endeavor. It was later discovered that the tunnel reached 200 meters into Egyptian territory and was presumably still under construction. The tunnel stretched 70 meters into Palestinian territory as well. According to Egyptian intelligence, the advanced tunnel network includes some 17 iron tunnels from Gaza, which are meant to service Hamas and other armed groups in their fight against the Egyptian flooding operations against the tunnels.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4731773,00.html
QC celebrates wedding of athletes from Gaza
[photo of bridegrooms] Gulf-Times 28 Nov — Qatar Charity (QC) has celebrated the wedding of 20 young athletes in the Gaza Strip as part of its social and relief projects. QC funded the project for the benefit of talented athletes from different sport clubs across the Gaza Strip. It was implemented at a cost of QR120,500 in co-operation with Amwaj Sport. QC’s social and relief projects aim to improve the conditions of the poor and the needy as well as support the youth and help them enjoy a stable life both psychologically and physically, according to a statement. Mohamed Abu Halloub, QC’s office director in the Gaza Strip and supervisor of the project, said: “We wish the couples a life full of faith and hope. QC will continue to support the different categories of Palestinian people.” He also stressed that QC had been supporting athletes in the besieged Strip for nine years.
http://www.gulf-times.com/qatar/178/details/464514/qc-celebrates-wedding-of-athletes-from-gaza
Palestinian refugees – Lebanon
Palestinians in Lebanon are excluded on many levels
MEMO 26 Nov by Saqr Abu Fakhr — Over three years ago, the International Civil Aviation Organisation issued a regulation that all passports must be issued to a standard unified internationally and be able to be read electronically. The Lebanese authorities made the necessary changes immediately and issued biometric passports with watermarks, but excluded the travel documents issued to Palestinian refugees from these measures; they are still handwritten. This makes these travel documents unreadable by international airport systems, thus hindering the travel of Palestinians to the already very few countries that allow them to enter. It also makes their work permits in the countries they work in less likely to be renewed. In the event that the ICAO insists on enforcing this regulation, starting from the deadline yesterday, 24 November, this will result in a new humanitarian disaster for the Palestinians in Lebanon... The image of the Palestinians has changed many times in the eyes of the Lebanese people. Some see them as forced refugees who deserve being welcomed and helped. Others believe that they do not deserve any support because they sold their land and fled their country on purpose, one of the many myths in circulation. In the eyes of the Lebanese Christians they are Muslims, and they are Sunnis in the eyes of the Lebanese Shia. Even Palestinian Christians remain outsiders as far as the Christian community in Lebanon is concerned. Amid the chaos of Lebanese politics, the Palestinians are seen as devils by some groups and as a mercy by rival groups. Many have called for them to be spread around all of the Arab countries, but this is a Stalinist kind of solution. Others, meanwhile, have said that they should be re-settled further afield; this is an evil solution that ultimately relieves Israel of its legal responsibilities. Nothing has changed over the past forty years. The official position is the same as always: no facilitation or ease for the life of Palestinians; rather keep the situation the same so as to push them to migrate elsewhere. This happens on a daily basis, and the Lebanese believe that, in time, the refugee burden on Lebanon will be eased. This is being said openly by people in power. Out of the original 490,000 Palestinians registered as refugees by the UN (UNRWA and UNHCR), only 250,000 remain. At one point, President Elias Hrawi had a Palestinian wife, Mona Jamal; so too did Prime Minister Hariri, Nazik Hariri;... Other prominent politicians’ wives were also Palestinians... Minister Nayla Moawad’s mother is from the Palestinian Roch family. If those women had an ounce of Palestinian nationalism within them, they would have forced the entire Lebanese government, as well as the parliament, to issue laws and declarations in favour of justice and the Palestinians in Lebanon.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/blogs/politics/22483-palestinians-in-lebanon-are-excluded-on-many-levels
Other news
November 29: International Day of Solidarity with Palestine
IMEMC/Agencies 29 Nov —... Today, messages from the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority are being seen across the internet. Below is a press release from PLO Executive Committee Member Dr. Hanan Ashrawi on the occasion of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. “Three years ago, 138 countries overwhelmingly voted in support of Palestine’s enhancement of status at the United Nations. The international community made a powerful statement that Palestinian self-determination and freedom trump Israel’s military occupation, and voted in favor of Palestine as a non-member observer state. Three years later, we, the Palestinian people, are witnessing an end to the two-state solution as Israel works to destroy the chances for peace and stability with its systematic and deliberate plans to establish “Greater Israel” on historical Palestine. In spite of the disastrous and alarming conditions on the ground, we extend our gratitude to the members of the international community that have expressed their genuine solidarity with us, courageously stood on the right side of peace, justice and dignity, and actively supported Palestinian aspirations for independence and liberty. (Continued)
http://www.imemc.org/article/74061
Africa: Palestinian flag raised at UN headquarters [in Ethiopia]
IMEMC/Agencies 28 Nov — On Friday, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) — the UN’s biggest entity in Africa — hoisted the flag of the state of Palestine at its headquarters in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, to show solidarity with the cause of the Palestinian people in securing their right to statehood. World Bulletin/Al Ray reports that resident ambassadors of numerous countries, UN and African Union officials, as well as Ethiopian government representatives, attended the flag-raising ceremony that was accompanied by the Palestinian anthem. “On this international day of solidarity, let us reaffirm our commitment to bring about the justice and peace that the people of Israel and Palestine deserve,” said United nations General Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon through his representative. “Today, 136 countries recognize the state of Palestine and its flag flies at the United Nation next to those of member states. However, these advances are not felt by children in Gaza or by residents of Nablus, Hebron and east Jerusalem,” he said.
http://www.imemc.org/article/74047
EU official Martina Anderson calls for international protection of Palestinians
IMEMC/Agencies 28 Nov — On the occasion of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, a European Union official, Friday, called for placing Palestine and the Palestinian people under international protection. “Ahead of International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people I would like to reiterate my call to place Palestine and its people under international protection, ” said Chair of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Palestine, MEP Martina Anderson. “The occupiers will not protect the occupied,” stressed the EU official, according to WAFA. Anderson began her video statement noting that, since the UN resolution which partitioned Palestine, “the right of the people of Palestine have eroded away to nothing” following successive Israeli military aggressions, land confiscation, settlement construction and Palestinians’ freedom restrictions. Commenting on the latest Israeli spree of killings perpetrated against Palestinians, Anderson stated: “Today Palestinians face as much as hardships as they have throughout their history. (Continued)
http://www.imemc.org/article/74046
Jews, Arabs march on Israeli checkpoint to demand an end to occupation
+972 mag 28 Nov by Haggai Matar — Some 300 Israelis and Palestinians marched on the Israeli army’s “tunnels checkpoint” south of Jerusalem Friday to demonstrate against the occupation, against the ongoing violence, and in support of two states. The demonstrators gathered on Route 60, the southern West Bank’s main north-south artery that connects Jerusalem, Beit Jala, the Gush Etzion settlements, and Hebron. For an hour, the demonstrators marched north along the side of the road to drums while chanting political slogans. Israeli and Palestinian drivers passing the protest along Route 60 couldn’t miss the long procession and many reacted — either by yelling and curses, or with calls of support... The protest was organized by “Combatants for Peace” as part of its new initiative, “standing together,” an attempt to organize various movements and political parties in the name of Jewish-Arab cooperation against violence and the occupation.
http://972mag.com/jews-arabs-march-on-israeli-checkpoint-to-demand-an-end-to-occupation/114258/
Thousands protest in solidarity with northern branch of Islamic Movement
Ynet 28 Nov by Hassan Shaalan — Thousands protested in Umm al-Fahm on Saturday afternoon in solidarity with the northern branch of the Islamic Movement following the decision to outlaw it. The protest was organized by the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel. Large police forces were deployed to the entrance of the city to secure the protest. Among the protesters were many Arab MKs and hundreds of Arab leaders condemning the decision to ban the group and calling on the Arab public in Israel to continue and expand the protest until Israel backtracks on its decision... Police did not say how many people attended the protest, but a Reuters photographer said there were about 15,000 demonstrators in what was one of the largest Arab rallies in Israel in recent years... “The entire Arab leadership opposes the outlawing of the Islamic Movement, and it shows in today’s protest,” said MK Jamal Zahalka of the Joint Arab List. “This is a protest of unity. We won’t allow the Islamic Movement to be isolated. Hurting the movement is hurting the entire Arab public, it is a provocation against us. Instead of saying thank you that we’re all participating in a non-violent legal struggle, they outlaw the movement and push parts of our public to illegal activity. The repercussions could be dangerous. This is not just wickedness, but complete stupidity.”
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4732004,00.html
WATCH: Holy Land Custodian launches Christmas season from Jesus’ birthplace in Bethlehem
Reuters 28 Nov — Christian worshipers on Saturday welcomed the Custodian of the Holy Land, Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, and other senior priests on their arrival in Bethlehem. The West Bank town is recorded in the Bible as the birthplace of Jesus. Pizzaballa’s arrival in the biblical town marks the beginning of the festive season of Advent, when millions of Christians around the world make their preparations for Christmas. Colorful flags decorated Manger Square outside the Church of Nativity and a marching band played as high-ranking religious clerics arrived in the town. Three Christian denominations – the Armenians, Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox – share control of the church in the West Bank town. The Custodian of the Holy Land is the Pope’s envoy to the Middle East. He is the major superior of the friars in the Palestinian territories, as well as in Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Cyprus and Rhodes.
http://www.jpost.com/Christian-News/WATCH-Holy-Land-Custodian-launches-Christmas-season-from-Jesus-birthplace-Bethlehem-435622
Netanyahu: Not one meter of Area C to be conceded
IMEMC/Agencies 29 Nov — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that there are no plans to deliver any lands from West Bank Area C to Palestinians. In a meeting for Likud ministers, on Sunday, Netanyahu stressed that there will be no transfer of land to the Palestinian Authority, “not 40 thousand dunams, not 10 thousand, not one meter,” he said. The Cabinet demanded answers, Sunday, after reports surfaced that Civil Administration, under orders from Netanyahu, was preparing to deliver 10,000 dunams (2,471 acres) of land from Area C to the PA, as a confidence-building measure. According to Al Ray, the Yesha Council also strongly denounced the plan, accusing Netanyahu of giving “concessions” instead of attacking the PA and its leaders who “encourage terrorism.”
http://www.imemc.org/article/74059
No need for West Bank invasion, targeted assassinations, says Ya’alon
Times of Israel 29 Nov — Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon on Sunday brushed off demands from politicians for a dramatic escalation in IDF operations in the West Bank to end the wave of terror attacks that has killed at least 20 Israelis over the past two months. Former foreign minister Avigdor Liberman, a longstanding critic of the government’s policy toward the West Bank and Gaza, on Saturday demanded a new policy of “decisive victory,” including targeted assassinations in the Gaza Strip against those inciting Palestinians to kill Israelis and ground incursions into Palestinian population centers similar to those that ended the Second Intifada in 2002’s Operation Defensive Shield. Ya’alon, who served as IDF chief of staff during Defensive Shield, rejected the demands as “sloganeering.” “Ever since Defensive Shield, when we again began entering Area A,” the parts of the West Bank that include Palestinian population centers, “we haven’t stopped doing so,” he told Israel Radio Sunday morning. IDF forces “go into Area A. So there’s no need for targeted assassinations. If there’s information about a terrorist in some place, we just go in and arrest him, even in the heart of Area A, in the refugee camp of Jenin or the Qasbah in Nablus. This time we don’t need another Operation Defensive Shield. I love these slogans. There’s no need for divisions [to invade Palestinian cities]. An undercover unit goes in, carries out the arrest and leaves. Such operations take place dozens of times a day.” Ya’alon called for resilience and patience in dealing with the latest terror wave.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/no-need-for-west-bank-invasion-assassinations-says-yaalon/
Israeli forces shut down 3rd Palestinian radio station
IMEMC/Agencies 29 Nov — This Sunday morning, Israeli military forces issued an order for the closure of a Hebron radio station, the third Palestinian news outlet to be shut by Israeli authorities, this month, in Hebron. The director of of Dream Radio station, Talab Al-Jaabri, stated that soldiers stormed the station, destroying equipment and damaging offices. Al-Jaabri said, according to the PNN, that the military told him the radio station would be closed for six months, due to “incitement against Israel.” Earlier this month, the army shut down Radio Hebron and Al-Huriya, two other Palestinian radio stations which have been accused of broadcasting anti-Israeli content.
http://www.imemc.org/article/74056
Israel suspends EU role in peace process with Palestinians
JERUSALEM (Reuters) 29 Nov by Ori Lewis — Israel said on Sunday it was suspending contacts with European Union bodies involved in peace efforts with the Palestinians after the bloc started requiring the labeling of exports from Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the foreign ministry to carry out “a reassessment of the involvement of EU bodies in everything that is connected to the diplomatic process with the Palestinians”, a ministry statement said. “Until completion of the reassessment, the Prime Minister has ordered a suspension of diplomatic contacts with the EU and its representatives in this matter.”
http://news.yahoo.com/israel-suspends-eu-role-peace-process-palestinians-181646719.html
groups.yahoo.com/group/f_shadi (listserv)
www.theheadlines.org (archive)In the wake of a storm of publicity over the past day, Boston Beer Company - which manufactures Sam Adams - has decided not to participate in the upcoming South Boston St. Patrick's Day Parade.
Yesterday South End restaurant Club Cafe announced that it would no longer serve Sam Adams due to the brewer's association with the parade. In an open letter on its facebook page Club Cafe stated that they were "disappointed that Sam Adams does not understand that the organizers of the St. Patrick's Day Parade continue to demonstrate that they do not respect LGBT Irish Americans by excluding LGBT members of this community from openly marching in the St.Patrick's Day Parade."
A post on this blog about the Club Cafe decision quickly gathered more than 400 comments and was shared by more than 700 facebook users.
This morning Sam Adams released a statement that said, in part "We share these sentiments with Mayor Walsh, Congressman Lynch and others and therefore we will not participate in this year’s parade."
Here is the entire statement:
"We have been participating in the South Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade for nearly a decade and have also supported the St. Patrick’s Day breakfast year after year. We’ve done so because of the rich history of the event and to support veterans who have done so much for this country. We were hopeful that both sides of this issue would be able to come to an agreement that would allow everyone, regardless of orientation, to participate in the parade. But given the current status of the negotiations, we realize this may not be possible. We share these sentiments with Mayor Walsh, Congressman Lynch and others and therefore we will not participate in this year’s parade. We will continue to support Senator Linda Dorcena Forry and her St. Patrick’s Day breakfast. We wish her all the best in her historic stewardship of this tradition."
For all of today's top stories from the LGBT world visit Boston Spirit's Fab 5.The Alabama Senate special election and the Virginia gubernatorial race are near-certain to dominate political pundits' attention this fall. But they could be poor predictors of 2018. The former is taking place in a deeply red, racially polarized state that bears little resemblance to most swing House districts. The latter is unfolding in a purple state, but the GOP nominee, Ed Gillespie, holds uncommon appeal with upscale voters who couldn't stomach Donald Trump.
The races that could best harbingers of November 2018 aren't likely to get much national coverage at all: all 100 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates are up for election this November.
Democrats aren't likely to pick up the chamber: they currently hold just 34 seats and would need to gain 17 to win control. Hillary Clinton did carry 17 seats held by Republicans last fall, but many of those are located in transient outer suburbs where Democratic-leaning minorities and young voters tend not to vote in off years. Moreover, Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam isn't blowing out Gillespie, so down-ballot Democrats may not be riding long coattails.
Still, if Democrats managed to pick off 10 or more GOP-held seats, it would send a signal that voters are in the mood to punish President Trump and Republicans - a mirror image of the GOP legislative gains in 2009 that foreshadowed Republicans taking back the House in 2010.
Democrats have made a lot of hay out of special election upsets this year in deep red legislative districts in New Hampshire and Oklahoma. But, those races have featured infinitesimal turnouts. For example, on Tuesday, Democrats flipped a state House district east of Manchester, New Hampshire, that gave Trump 59 percent of the vote last fall. But only 1,804 voters cast ballots in a district that cast 10,023 ballots last November.
As those elections show, Democratic voters are hyper-motivated right now. But their chances fall as turnout rises. On June 20, Republican Karen Handel defeated Democrat Jon Ossoff in Georgia's 6th CD after a $50 million contest that generated 56 percent turnout. The very same day, Democrat Archie Parnell came within three points of a shocking upset in a South Carolina race that attracted a fraction of the money and generated 19 percent turnout.
Virginia's House of Delegates races are a better proxy of what's to come in 2018. Turnout won't be too hot (as in Georgia) or too cold (as in New Hampshire). It will be driven by the governor's race, which better approximates what a midterm turnout looks like.
Moreover, there are plenty of vulnerable GOP Virginia delegates sitting in districts where Clinton outperformed Obama. Republicans like Dels. Jim LeMunyon (67th), Scott Lingamfelter (31st) and Tag Greason (32nd) all fit that bill - just as there are plenty of House Republicans sitting in districts where Trump is uniquely unpopular. Their races will test voters' inclination to send a message to Trump regardless of whether they know and like the local GOP candidates.
The five likeliest Democratic pickups are all in the highly-educated Northern Virginia suburbs: two are open seats (the 2nd and the 42nd) that are near-certain to change parties, and three more involve GOP incumbents who have only narrowly won in the past few cycles.
Of all the delegate races, the biggest potential national story lies in the 13th District, situated in the Prince William County suburbs. Democrat Danica Roem, a transgender woman and local journalist, is challenging longtime GOP Del. Bob Marshall, a steadfast social conservative who has handed out plastic fetuses on the floor of the House of Delegates and refuses to acknowledge Roem as a woman. Clinton carried the 13th District by 14 points.
Another bellwether race, and the only in Southwest Virginia, is in the 12th District between moderate GOP Del. Joseph Yost and Democratic news anchor Chris Hurst, whose girlfriend, reporter Alison Parker, was fatally shot on live television in Roanoke in 2015.
Think of it this way: if Democrats pick up five seats or less, Republicans would breathe a sigh of relief. If Democrats pick up five to ten seats, it would suggest Democrats are in contention for the House next year. If Democrats pick up 10 to 15 seats, it would be a strong sign they're on track to pick up the House majority next year. If Democrats pick up more than 15 seats, we're looking at a potential tidal wave in 2018.
Here's a quick guide to the 25 GOP-held seats to track on November 7th, along with district-level performances in the 2013 gubernatorial race, the 2014 Senate race and the 2016 presidential race. For Democrats, the difference between winning "toss up" races and "reach" or "tidal wave" districts would be the difference between a good night and a tremendous night.
Probable Democratic Pickups:
District Republican Incumbent Democratic Nominee Region 2013 Governor 2014 Senate 2016 President 2nd OPEN (Dudenhefer) (R) Jennifer Foy (D) Prince William County McAuliffe +11 Warner +6 Clinton +17 31st Del. Scott Lingamfelter (R) Elizabeth Guzman (D) Prince William County McAuliffe +3 Gillespie +2 Clinton +7 32nd Del. Tag Greason (R) David Reid (D) Loudoun County McAuliffe +7 Warner +2 Clinton +19 42nd OPEN (Albo) (R) Kathy Tran (D) Fairfax County McAuliffe +6 Warner +2 Clinton +20 67th Del. Jim LeMunyon (R) Karrie Delaney (D) Fairfax County McAuliffe +8 Warner +6 Clinton +22
Toss Ups:
District Republican Incumbent Democratic Nominee Region 2013 Governor 2014 Senate 2016 President 12th Del. Joseph Yost (R) Chris Hurst (D) Blacksburg McAuliffe +6 Warner +8 Clinton +2 13th Del. Bob Marshall (R) Danica Roem (D) Prince William County McAuliffe +1 Gillespie +4 Clinton +14 21st Del. Ron Villanueva (R) Kelly Fowler (D) Virginia Beach McAuliffe +4 Warner +3 Clinton +4 72nd OPEN (Massie) (R) Schuyler VanValkenburg (D) Henrico County Cuccinelli +5 Gillespie +6 Clinton +4 94th Del. David Yancey (R) Shelly Simonds (D) Newport News McAuliffe +3 Warner +2 Clinton +5
Democratic Reaches:
District Republican Incumbent Democratic Nominee Region 2013 Governor 2014 Senate 2016 President 10th Del. Randy Minchew (R) Wendy Gooditis (D) Loudoun County Cuccinelli +3 Gillespie +8 Clinton +4 40th Del. Tim Hugo (R) Donte Tanner (D) Fairfax County Cuccinelli +7 Gillespie +11 Clinton +8 50th Del. Jackson Miller (R) Lee Carter (D) Manassas Cuccinelli +1 Gillespie +3 Clinton +12 51st Del. Rich Anderson (R) Hala Ayala (D) Prince William County Cuccinelli +1 Gillespie +7 Clinton +6 68th Del. Manoli Loupassi (R) Dawn Adams (D) Chesterfield County Cuccinelli +2 Gillespie +4 Clinton +10 73rd Del. John O'Bannon (R) Debra Rodman (D) Henrico County Cuccinelli +5 Gillespie +5 Clinton +7 85th Del. Rocky Holcomb (R) Cheryl Turpin (D) Virginia Beach Cuccinelli +2 Gillespie +3 Trump +1 100th Del. Rob Bloxom (R) Willie Randall (D) Eastern Shore McAuliffe +2 Warner +1 Clinton +2
Tidal Wave Territory:
District Republican Incumbent Democratic Nominee Region 2013 Governor 2014 Senate 2016 President 26th Del. Tony Wilt (R) Brent Finnegan (D) Harrisonburg Cuccinelli +17 Gillespie +20 Trump +9 27th Del. Roxann Robinson (R) Larry Barnett (D) Chesterfield County Cuccinelli +8 Gillespie +8 Trump +4 28th OPEN (Howell) (R) Joshua Cole (D) Fredericksburg Cuccinelli +5 Gillespie +9 Trump +4 33rd Del. Dave LaRock (R) Tia Walbridge (D) Loudoun County Cuccinelli +15 Gillespie +20 Trump +16 62nd Del. Riley Ingram (R) Sheila Bynum-Coleman (D) Hopewell Cuccinelli +9 Gillespie +7 Trump +6 83rd Del. Chris Stolle (R) David Rose-Carmack (D) Virginia Beach Cuccinelli +4 Gillespie +9 Trump +8 84th Del. Glenn Davis (R) Veronica Coleman (D) Virginia Beach Cuccinelli +1 Gillespie +5 Trump +5
Past election results courtesy of The Virginia Public Access Project. Cook Political National Editor Amy Walter and Cook Political Report Web Editor Ally Flinn contributed to this story.You are here: Home / Articles / Rulers and Rulership Concerning the Twelve Khalifahs That Will Rule Before the Hour, All Of Them From the Quraish
Filed under: Rulers and Rulership
Friday, December 18 2009 - by Abu.Iyaad
Key topics: Twelve Khalifahs Imam Mahdi Mahdi
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The Hadeeth of the Twelve Rulers All From Quraish There occurs in the Saheeh of al-Bukhaaree, in "Kitaab ul-Ahkaam" under the chapter of "Istikhlaaf": حَدَّثَنِي مُحَمَّدُ بْنُ الْمُثَنَّى حَدَّثَنَا غُنْدَرٌ حَدَّثَنَا شُعْبَةُ عَنْ عَبْدِ الْمَلِكِ سَمِعْتُ |
of that beer than any other beer."
His biggest coup yet was last March, when acclaimed California brewer Russian River released Pliny the Younger, a triple IPA that Beer Advocate has rated the best beer in the world. All of Seattle received about 20 kegs, by one estimate (Russian River declined to provide numbers, not wanting to spur discord among bars); people nearly rioted at bars like the Dray to get a small pour. Super Deli Mart got one of the kegs.
How does a convenience store get Pliny the Younger? It's simple, says Chung: "I move huge quantities of beers for them" -- in bottles, but also in the drafts he pours and the jugs he fills. Most bars have to earn back three to four times the cost of a keg. Not Chung. "I didn't do the draft beer to make money; I did it as marketing," he says. "If I make 25 percent on my drafts, I'm super-stoked." He charges just $3 anytime for a pint of, say, Bridgeport's Hop Czar IPA -- a better deal than any Happy Hour in the city -- and $5 to $10 to fill a half-gallon growler. (Given the volume, he still makes money on the kegs, he says.) Great prices for great beer are a big reason people keep showing up. You just have to be cool with sipping your pint not far from the Tampax.
"It could be $400, $500, I'll still buy it," Chung says of a keg, "because the customers appreciate it, and I'll probably kill that keg in a matter of hours."
And then, of course, there's the beer cooler that he hopes patrons will visit. It holds many of the mart's 500 -- soon to be 600 -- different beers and barley wines, from tallboys of Colt.45 malt liquor, to hard-to-find bottles like Firestone Walker's Double Jack Imperial IPA. There are porters from Hawaii made using toasted coconut, and beers that taste like crème brulee. Nearby is the 2009 Old Stock Ale from California's North Coast Brewing Company, a small, sand-colored bottle with a cork stopper atop a graceful neck -- so handsome a bottle it looks as though a genie might emerge from it. The bottle contains just over one pint of liquid, and costs $25.99.ArcticThunder Account Inactive
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Re: Study: Black Culture Produces Narcissism Not Low Self Esteem Quote: Fenria Originally Posted by Seriously, blacks are too stupid to think poorly of themselves. I know that sounds silly at first, but think about it. It takes quite a bit of intelligence to sit down, reflect, and say, "I need to do some work on these various areas of my personality, abilities, and performance." It takes a smart and versatile person to admit they're wrong and do something about it.
Think about all the dull people you've met. I'll put money on it that they all thought they were god's gift. Blacks listen to and perform music that is basically braggadocio lyrical prose set to someone else's music. Most rap songs are identical, featuring long screeds about money, looks, sexual prowess, strength, etc. regardless of the fact that most of the blacks who create the music and listen to it have none of the above.
Blacks are obsessed with themselves. Their narcissism is out of control. It's simple to convince a dumb person that they're beautiful and clever because they WANT to believe it. It's nearly impossible to convince a smart person that they're something they're not, and they would find it patronizing beyond belief. Whats comical and sad is that they are dealing with people who have the mind of a 13 year old. 13 year olds usually know everything. I generally see white women that mix with blacks as having some sort of perverse fetish like a female teacher who has sex with her 12/14 year old students.
Quote: AttorneyBackcountry Originally Posted by Prior to the research study it was thought that african american culture produced low esteem. I have always laughed at the claim that blacks suffer from low self esteem, they are the most self assured, confident, arrogant people on the planet. This is one of the attractions to them from white females, is their confidence, "swagger" as its called.Whats comical and sad is that they are dealing with people who have the mind of a 13 year old. 13 year olds usually know everything.I generally see white women that mix with blacks as having some sort of perverse fetish like a female teacher who has sex with her 12/14 year old students.I don't know why they thought that for because there has been studies in the past that showed that blacks were the most confident with East Asians being the least confident and Europeans being a little more confident than East Asians which is so predictable.Getty Images
The NFL learned how hard it was to expose the bounty system the Saints used to help fuel their 2009 Super Bowl run by investigating the situation in 2010 and coming up with nothing.
Next time around, it could be even harder to get to the truth.
Here, the NFL was able to dust off a cold case because someone blew the whistle during the 2011 season. And, as we explained earlier this month, it’s critical that the NFL protect the whistleblower from any type of retaliation — including insults, threats, and/or specific acts of violence from an overly zealous fan who now thinks the Saints’ Super Bowl title has been tainted and/or that the team’s quest to play in the Super Bowl that will be hosted by New Orleans has now been derailed.
As it turns out, the NFL has outed the suspected whistleblower. On the network that the NFL owns.
Technically, the NFL didn’t directly out the suspected whistleblower. Instead, analyst Warren Sapp outed the suspected whistleblower on Twitter, and Sapp then was invited on air to elaborate. (We won’t use the name of the suspected whistleblower here.)
“My source that was close to the situation informed me that [name omitted] is the one that was the snitch initially,” Sapp said. “I trust my source unequivocally.”
Sapp emphasized that he didn’t get the information from the NFL. “I did not call anybody at the league and I did not receive any information from the league,” Sapp said.
Still, NFL Network put Sapp on the air and allowed him to disclose the name.
“That’s the information that I got and I trust my source,” Sapp said. “I was given that information, and I went with it, by a reliable source.”
It’s our understanding that Sapp’s source is wrong, and that the person he identified isn’t really the whistleblower. Still, it’s a topic that never should have been discussed on the network owned by the league.
No matter how the hairs are split, some people who heard what Sapp said will believe that the person he identified as the whistleblower was the whistleblower. And they won’t regard him as a whistleblower — they’ll regard him as, as Sapp called him, a snitch.
And snitches get stitches and the Saints’ Super Bowl win has indeed been tarnished and their shot at another Super Bowl win in 2012 has been significantly undermined and it only takes one crazy or otherwise unstable Saints fan to decide to do something crazy or unstable to the person identified as the suspected whistleblower.
So the next time the NFL is trying to crack the locker-room Omerta and someone is considering the possibility of doing the right thing and coming clean, that person should legitimately be concerned that his name eventually will be broadcast to the world on the TV network owned by the NFL.
One final point: This isn’t Sapp’s fault. This is a failure by NFL Network to understand the potential consequences of discussing on the air in any way the name of the person who did the right thing and exposed a bounty system that the Saints brazenly continued to utilize for two years after the NFL conducted a failed investigation into the question of whether the Saints were using a bounty system. Instead, someone at NFLN saw Sapp’s tweet and Sapp was brought on the air to discuss it and Sapp just answered questions that never, ever should have been asked.House Republican Leader Ken Fredette and Gov. Paul LePage joined forces Thursday on a last-minute effort to delay the launch of Maine’s new adult-use marijuana market until January 2019, a move that frustrated some members of a committee that has spent months trying to finalize regulations to govern the state’s recreational pot industry.
Fredette and LePage want state lawmakers to kill the legislative committee bill that would set up Maine’s regulatory framework for recreational cannabis, saying it’s too big, complex and controversial for lawmakers to debate in a single day. The full Legislature is scheduled to return and vote on the bill Monday.
Instead, LePage submitted a Fredette bill that calls for legislators to extend the existing moratorium on the commercial aspects of the marijuana law from February 2018 to January 2019.
It is unreasonable to ask lawmakers to come in from their summer break and read, debate and approve in a single special session a 76-page law on a controversial topic that voters passed by a razor-thin margin last November, Fredette said.
“I’m not saying we’re not going to do this, but we need to slow it down and do it right,” he said. “You can’t just plop a bill this big down and say pass it right now or we’ll have chaos. That is not how you make laws here in Maine.”
LEGISLATORS UNFAMILIAR WITH BILL
Many lawmakers have told Fredette they don’t know enough about the committee bill to vote for it, he said. The bill covers everything from tax rates to testing requirements to license fees and rules.
But they also don’t want the language approved by voters to go into effect without tightening the loopholes, such as the section that allows marijuana social clubs, Fredette said.
“A moratorium is the least lousy option,” he said. “It gives the Legislature time to come back in regular session in January and debate this bill right. It is a major change for Maine. It shouldn’t be rushed.”
The reaction to the proposed moratorium was mixed.
Legalize Maine, the advocacy group that wrote the referendum question and represents the interests of many medical marijuana caregivers, had pulled its support for the committee bill, saying it was “not ready for prime time.”
The group had hoped the bill would fail and the existing language of the citizen initiative would go into effect, which would give medical marijuana caregivers a big leg up in a new market. A continued moratorium would scuttle that dream, for now.
The Maine chapter of the Marijuana Policy Project, which along with Legalize Maine helped organize the citizen initiative, supports the committee bill, and criticized Fredette and LePage for trying to delay the will of the voters.
“We hope lawmakers will not let their work be in vain or the will of the people be delayed,” said director David Boyer. “It’s a shame (Fredette and LePage) are trying to hijack the legislative process by proposing further delays.”
He said the committee allowed for ample input from the public and lawmakers.
ACCUSATIONS OF ‘OBSTRUCTIONISM’
The committee leaders, Republican Sen. Roger Katz of Augusta and Democrat Rep. Teresa Pierce of Falmouth, criticized Fredette and LePage for sitting on the sidelines while the committee sought their help to craft the law.
They have complained that neither LePage nor most state agencies that they invited to advise the committee would provide assistance, leaving them alone to consult with local industry players and experts from other states.
“The 11th-hour attempt to wreak havoc is obstructionism for no good reason,” Katz said. “Their unwillingness to problem-solve is irresponsible to the voters, the businesses and the communities of Maine.”
Pierce accused Fredette and LePage of “kicking the can down the road” and “disrespecting voters.” Stalling implementation of a legal regulatory system is handing the market over to criminals, Pierce said.
The last-minute governor’s bill adds a lot of uncertainty to an already chaotic special session. Fredette thinks lawmakers will go the safe route and support a moratorium, but Katz and Pierce say the committee’s bill will pass on its merits.
LePage’s spokeswoman did not respond to an after-hours request for details about the governor’s position on the committee bill, but Fredette, Katz and Pierce agreed he must support a moratorium if he submitted Fredette’s bill.
VOTE MAY NOT GO ALONG PARTY LINES
The committee bill requires 100 votes in the 150-member House to qualify as “emergency legislation,” which means it would go into effect as soon as the session closes. It needs two-thirds of those present and voting to override a LePage veto.
There are 74 Democrats, 69 Republicans and seven independents currently serving in the House, which has one vacancy. Two of the independents are former Republicans. But the vote may not go along party lines.
The marijuana committee approved its bill, 15-2. Although it enjoyed bipartisan support, the bill also engendered bipartisan dissent – Democratic Rep. Craig Hickman of Winthrop and Republican Rep. Patrick Corey of Windham opposed it.
If the moratorium passes, lawmakers would have more time to review the bill and state agencies would have more time to write rules to govern the market and calculate the fiscal impact.
As of Thursday, the projected fiscal impact of the bill is still unknown, but one state agency predicted a combination of a 10 percent sales tax and an excise tax would generate $20 million a year in new revenue for the state.
If the moratorium extension were to pass, Mainers could continue to grow up to six mature plants and possess up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana for personal use. It is the only major part of the voter-approved law unaffected by a moratorium.
Penelope Overton can be contacted at:
[email protected]
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As 2012 draws to a close, many year-end reviews of the election season have focused on September 17, the day Mother Jones released the 47-percent video that captured Mitt Romney at a private fundraiser. That moment, when millions of Americans saw the candidate denigrating nearly half the electorate as “victims” who do not take “personal responsibility and care for their lives,” is widely seen as having upended the campaign. But the path to the scoop began months earlier, with a story about aborted fetuses.
Early on in the election season, Mother Jones had made a decision to look closely at Mitt Romney’s record as a businessman—a record the campaign was promoting as a key reason why voters should choose him. As I dug into the history of Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney had founded and managed, I found out about an investment it had made in Stericycle, a medical-waste disposal firm that in more recent years had been attacked by anti-abortion groups for disposing of aborted fetuses from family planning clinics. I obtained an electronic pile of documents related to the deal, including filings Bain had made with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Romney was listed as an active participant in the Stericycle investment, which occurred in November 1999. This fact was significant; it undercut the claim that Romney had departed Bain in early 1999 to run the Winter Olympics, and had nothing to do with the firm’s actions after that point, including investments that relocated American jobs.
On July 2, I posted a story on the candidate’s connection to Stericyle, reporting that Bain had filed SEC documents—including one signed by Romney—designating Romney as an active participant in the deal in late 1999. The story made news, and soon other outlets followed up.
A few days later, I received an email from James Carter, a freelance researcher who had information to share. (He didn’t mention he was the grandson of President Jimmy Carter and possessed a deep personal motive for unearthing material on Romney, who routinely disparaged his grandfather. I wouldn’t learn of his relationship to the former president until early September, when Carter and I met at the Democratic convention in Charlotte.) Carter tipped me off to documents about a Bain affiliate’s investment in a Chinese firm named Global-Tech Appliances, which outsourced manufacturing for US corporations including Sunbeam and Hamilton Beach. The Global-Tech deal had occurred before Romney left Bain for the Winter Olympics.
I investigated further and broke the story on July 11.
On the campaign trail in February, I noted, Romney had proclaimed, “We will not let China continue to steal jobs from the United States of America.” Years earlier, though, he had bet on outsourcing.
There were thousands of pages of SEC documents to review. I discovered that a Bain affiliate wholly owned by Romney had invested tens of millions of dollars in a pair of companies that pioneered the outsourcing of high-tech manufacturing to Mexico, China, and elsewhere. These investments had originated before Romney left Bain for Utah.
A.O. said the video would be sent via regular mail from a city other than where he lived. He said he was entrusting me with it because of my work on Romney’s years at Bain.
On August 24, days before the Republican convention was to begin, Carter sent me a link to a YouTube video. It seemed to show Mitt Romney talking about a trip he had taken to China to buy a factory. Romney noted that the facility employed thousands of young women working long hours each day for “a pittance” and living “twelve girls per room.” The factory had fences and guard towers—not to keep the workers in, he was told, but to prevent job-seekers from sneaking in and joining the work force. For Romney, the point was not the harsh conditions faced by the Chinese workers but the wonders of the United States. He went on: “The Bain partner I was with turned to me and said, ‘You know, 95 percent of life is settled if you are born in America. This is an amazing land.'” A title at the end of the clip said it had been recorded at a $50,000-a-plate fundraiser, but there was no information about when or precisely where, or who had shot and posted the video.
The clip had been knocking around in the Internet for several months. Someone using the handle RomneyExposed had uploaded it along with a few other snippets that seemed to come from the same event. The images were disguised; these clips were essentially audio files and impossible to verify. The China remarks had also been posted on a fake YouTube account under the name of Rachel Maddow; the MSNBC host asked YouTube to shut down this channel, but she did link to the video on her website. After that, every so often a blogger would rediscover this clip, and in late August, someone posted it in both the HuffingtonPost comments section and on the liberal Daily Kos website. Yet its origins remained a mystery: Carter told me he’d found it through a simple YouTube search and didn’t know anything else about it. At my urging, he started digging.
On August 27—the day before the Republican convention was to open—a new YouTube account set up by “Anne Onymous” uploaded some of the clips. Carter discovered that this channel was linked to a Twitter account and sent the owner a private message. He didn’t learn the person’s identity nor any more detail about the China video, but informed me that the source “would like to get in touch with you.”
After a series of messages back and forth, “Anne Onymous” agreed to send me the entire video recording of this Romney fundraiser. He noted that the video was about an hour long, but he would not say where or when it had been shot. He asked that it not be released in any version that would show the faces of others in the room.
I told A.O. that I would not use any of the footage without consulting him, for it was clear that he wanted to preserve his anonymity. I emailed Carter, “I have made contact and am working something out. Will keep you posted.”
For several days, the source and I went back and forth. The file was too large to email. A.O. offered to ship it via overnight mail on Monday, September 3. I asked if he would send it through a file-transfer website. Yes, he said. But a few hours later, he seemed to be having second thoughts. I worried that he’d disappear.
I emphasized, as I had throughout, that I would handle the story responsibly and would not reveal his identity. He proposed obscuring the video so no one but Romney would be recognizable before sharing it with me. His aim was to keep the focus on the candidate’s words, not the location of the event or the guests.
I suggested A.O. let me view the video and then we would discuss what to do. Nothing, I said, would be done with the video without his approval.
In Charlotte, while covering the Democratic convention, I counted the hours as my colleagues in DC lay in wait for the mailman each afternoon.
That was finally good enough for him: A.O. told me the video would be sent via regular first-class mail from a city other than where he lived. It should arrive, he said, in several days. He said that he was entrusting me with it because of my previous work on Romney’s years at Bain.
In Charlotte, while covering the Democratic convention, I counted the hours as my colleagues in DC lay in wait for the mailman each afternoon. I maintained contact with A.O, who told me what to look for on the video: Romney impersonating Henry Kissinger, Romney saying that Palestinians didn’t want peace in the Middle East, and Romney declaring that 47 percent of Americans believe they are entitled to food, healthcare, and housing.
The package arrived on September 10. I was back from Charlotte and watched it immediately. There was Romney standing and speaking to a small group of people eating dinner. The point of view suggested that a recording device had been placed on a table to the side. (A.O. had not told me what equipment had been used or how the recording had been made.)
In the opening minutes, Romney was serving up the usual chitchat about his family and his deep concern for the nation’s future. He cracked a joke about his father: “Had he been born of Mexican parents, I’d have a better shot at winning this.” The audience laughed.
Romney defiantly took issue with the charge that he had succeeded because he had come from wealth, declaring, “I had inherited nothing. Everything that Ann and I have we earned the old-fashioned way, and that’s by hard work.” The audience of well-to-do donors applauded. He described his trip to China to emphasize a related point: “Frankly, I was born with a silver spoon, which is the greatest gift you could have, which is to get born in America.”
This was interesting stuff: an unguarded Romney talking in an intimate setting with folks who shared the privileges of wealth. But it did not seem explosive.
When the candidate was asked how “the Palestinian problem could be solved,” he provided a long answer indicating that he did not believe a two-state solution was feasible. Peace was “almost unthinkable,” and he said that were he elected he would merely aim to “kick the ball down the field” (rather than actively pursue the peace process). Given that he had publicly proclaimed his support for the two-state solution, this was news—but mostly for the foreign–policy crowd.
I asked the source point blank if he was connected to any campaign or partisan outfit. He assured me he was not.
I kept watching as the conversation unfolded along predictable lines. Then one of the donors asked, “For the last three years, all everybody’s been told is, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.’ How are you going to do it, in two months before the elections, to convince everybody you’ve got to take care of yourself?”
Romney answered without hesitation:
There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it—that that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. And I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49, 48—he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect. And he’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean that’s what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5 to 10 percent in the center that are independents, that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not.
I was stunned. With conviction and passion, Romney had described the election as a face-off between the strivers (people like himself and the other 1-percenters in the room) and the parasitic hordes who sought to live off the hard work of the accomplished. He acknowledged that he was writing off the former.
There was more on the video—Romney discussing his political strategy, saying the campaign was using his wife Ann “sparingly right now, so people don’t get tired of her,” and making cracks about the hosts of The View—but I knew the 47-percent remarks would be the story. I couldn’t recall any major presidential candidate getting caught speaking in such contemptuous terms of his fellow citizens.
I studied the video closely to identify where and when the fundraiser had occurred. There were multiple tells, with Romney referring to other things he and his wife Anne had done that day. I found reports that Romney on May 17 had attended a $50,000-a-plate dinner at the Boca Raton, Florida, home of Marc Leder, a controversial private equity manager who had been inspired to enter the field after a visit to Bain Capital. (The previous year Leder had been in the news for holding a wild sex party at his Bridgehampton estate.)
Throughout the day, I discussed the terms of the video’s release with A.O. I promised that the faces of everyone other than Romney would be blurred, and that I would not identify the precise fundraiser. I asked point blank if he was connected to any campaign or partisan outfit. He assured me he was not.
My colleagues and I also reviewed the video closely to see if we could discern any indications of editing. We spotted no signs.
“You can mark my prediction now: A secret recording from a closed-door Mitt Romney fundraiser… has killed Mitt Romney’s campaign for president.”
The file had come in two parts. A.O. explained that the recording device had timed out—or been jostled and turned off—at one point, and that he had restarted it. He estimated that one to two minutes, possibly less had been lost.
My colleagues at Mother Jones and I started to think about the best time to unveil the video. Our lawyers had to be consulted; that would take time. Monday was the Jewish New Year. We aimed for Tuesday, September 18, as the release date. But I told my staff that we should get it ready as soon as we responsibly could, just in case.
I began writing two articles: one focused on the 47-percent remarks and other comments Romney had made about the campaign, another featuring his statements on the Middle East and other foreign policy topics.
On the evening of September 15, I was at a party, and A.O. called. The site Political Wire had reposted the China clip, and it had gotten some buzz. Ben LaBolt, the press secretary of the Obama campaign, had tweeted about it. And, A.O. said, the Huffington Post was pressing him for the full video. He assured me there was nothing to worry about.
Okay, I thought, this is all a matter of trust. A.O. trusts me; I trust A.O. Hold on tight.
On the afternoon of September 17, I was driving back from rural Virginia, where my family had gone to mark the death of a close friend, when I saw an email from Ryan Grim of Huffington Post: “you got the full video from the guy at the Romney fundraiser?”
Shit, I thought.
I didn’t respond, and within an hour, Huffington Post rushed out an article linking to several of the short clips A.O. had previously posted on YouTube and elsewhere (including a partial audio clip of the 47-percent comment). Like others before them, HuffPo had not authenticated the clips, on which no clear video could be seen. But they reported that the source had given the full video to me.
I conferred with my colleagues and within minutes we launched our story and embedded excerpts of the video, with Romney clearly visible as he spoke.
It was an immediate sensation. Reporters besieged me with phone calls and emails. News outlets wanted more information about the video. Tweets were flying. The story exploded on Facebook.
NBC News and ABC News scrambled to show it on their nightly news shows. Both “David Corn” and the hashtag “#47Percent” were top trends on Twitter. Josh Barro, a conservative writing for Bloomberg View, wrote (perhaps prematurely), “You can mark my prediction now: A secret recording from a closed-door Mitt Romney fundraiser, released today by David Corn at Mother Jones, has killed Mitt Romney’s campaign for president.”
A top Obama adviser sent me a one-word email: “Wow.”
The Romney campaign replied quickly, releasing a statement that did not directly respond to what the candidate had said in the video: “Mitt Romney wants to help all Americans struggling in the Obama economy.”
With the story burning red hot, A.O. granted me permission to remove the blurring from the video clips, to report the time, place, and host of the fundraiser, and to release the whole video file. On Maddow’s show, I revealed that Romney had made the 47-percent remark at Leder’s opulent home in Boca Raton in May. Soon afterward, the Romney campaign interrupted another fundraiser to hastily hold a press conference in Costa Mesa, California. The candidate looked flustered. He offered up talking points: “The president believes in what I’ve described as a government-centered society where government plays a larger and larger role…and I happen to believe instead in a free-enterprise, free-individual society.”
We knew what Romney perhaps hadn’t yet realized: This story did not require interpretation. It showed Romney in his natural environment, at ease with his own words.
Asked if he was “stepping away” from the fundraiser remarks, Romney replied, “Well, um, it’s not elegantly stated, let me put it that way. I’m speaking off the cuff in response to a question, and I’m sure I can state it more clearly in a more effective way than I did….But it’s a message which I’m going to carry and continue to carry.”
He added, “I hope the person who has the video would put out the full material.” Back at the Mother Jones offices, we had already begun making preparations to do so. We knew what Romney perhaps hadn’t yet realized: This story did not require interpretation or analysis. It showed Romney in his natural environment, at ease with his own words.
The following day, Mother Jones posted my second article on the fundraiser video, highlighting Romney’s remarks about the Middle East conflict. Here, too, he was telling his funders something quite different than what he said in public.
That afternoon, we posted the entire video file. Readers were free to determine for themselves if the excerpts had accurately reflected Romney’s full remarks. Other journalists soon posted more articles zeroing in on specific aspects of the comments.
But it was the candidate’s 47-percent riff that would remain a major component of the campaign narrative. Within a week of the video’s release, that clip was viewed on YouTube 3.4 million times, racking up more than three times the views of Romney’s acceptance speech. Romney campaign was derailed for nearly two weeks. His unscripted moment had become far more important than his script.
I could’t have expected any of this when I first set out to scrutinize Romney’s campaign narrative. I was simply doing the day-to-day work of reporting, digging into the candidate’s private-sector past and following whatever leads could be unearthed. In the end, thanks to A.O.’s initiative, I was able to show millions what average voters are never allowed to witness: a candidate at a ritzy private fundraiser being absolutely candid. As Bob Woodward noted, “It’s a big scoop and one of the most important campaign stories of the year…We don’t know what’s really said or done behind closed doors. Here somebody went behind closed doors.” And the real Romney was revealed.IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Khang & Khang LLP (the “Firm”) announces that it is investigating claims against Tesla, Inc. (“Tesla” or the “Company”) (Nasdaq: TSLA) concerning possible violations of federal securities laws.
If you purchased shares of Tesla and want more information, please contact Joon M. Khang, Esquire, of Khang & Khang LLP, 4000 Barranca Parkway, Suite 250 Irvine, CA 92604, by telephone: (949) 419-3834, or by e-mail at [email protected].
The investigation concerns whether Tesla and certain of its officers and/or directors violated federal securities laws. On October 2, 2017, the Company cited “production bottlenecks” as the reason for its failure to meet its production goals for its Model 3 sedan. On October 6, 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported that “[u]nknown to analysts, investors and the hundreds of thousands of customers who signed up to buy it, as recently as early September major portions of the Model 3 were still being banged out by hand, away from the automated production line, according to people familiar with the matter.” When this news was announced, shares of Tesla declined in value.
If you have any questions concerning this notice or your rights, please contact Joon M. Khang, a prominent litigator for almost two decades, by telephone: (949) 419-3834, or by e-mail at [email protected].
This press release may constitute Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions.Alvaro Morata has taken a short break from his honeymoon to return to Madrid in an effort to speed up a prospective move to Manchester United.
The Real Madrid and Spain striker has spent the past week in Ibiza following his wedding to Italian model, Alice Campello, in Venice 11 days ago.
Morata, 24, had hoped a deal would be well down the road to completion by now, but with Real holding out for at least £75 million after rebuffing an offer of around £65 million from United, negotiations threaten to drag on.
That has prompted Morata to take the extraordinary step of briefly leaving his new wife to travel back to the Spanish capital in a bid to persuade Real not to create a protracted process and to grant him his wish of joining United before resuming his honeymoon.
Morata has spoken to Jose Mourinho and indicated his eagerness to move to Old Trafford, despite interest from Chelsea. Mourinho gave Morata his Real debut in December 2010 when he was manager at the Bernabeu and there is a strong mutual admiration between the pair.The idea to "second line" through downtown Bloomington on Fat Tuesday came out of a brainstorming conversation. Jazz UpFront owner James Gaston said he was talking with one of his employees about potential Mardi Gras events.
"She said we should have a big Mardi Gras party," said Gaston. "We began bouncing ideas around, and I said 'we should get everyone on Front street involved and we could'second line' down Front street with the band.'"
During New Orleans parades, the "second line" is generally considered to be the group that follows the main section of the parade, or the members of the club with the parading permit as well as the brass band. On February 28, that band will be the New Orleans spiced central Illinois based Prairieland Dixie Band. Gaston said his club will be open that afternoon, with the intention of starting the parade at 5:30 from Jazz UpFront.
"Then we'll second line down Front street to Diggers Again on the east side of East and Main streets," said Gaston. "We may have a police car with us because we're hoping for a big crowd and we don't want anyone getting hurt."
Gaston said all are welcome to join the second line.
"We hope a lot of people participate," said Gaston. "Because that's what the whole project is about... bringing more awareness to downtown Bloomington, and especially Front street."
The Prairieland Dixie Band will begin playing inside Jazz UpFront around 4:00 p.m. on Fat Tuesday (Feb. 28) before leading the "second line" east on Front street around 5:30 p.m.
"The band is going to come inside Diggers (230 E Front) with us and play a little bit. Then we're coming back for a stop at Rosie's (at 106 E Front.) I hope they can play inside Rosie's, but if they're having dinner, I'm not sure," laughed Gaston.
Tickets for the Jazz UpFront Mardi Gras celebration, including the second line parade along Front street are available from Jazz UpFront, Diggers Again, and Rosie's Pub. The price is $35 in advance, $40 on February 28. Tickets include masks, beads, handkerchiefs, dinner, music, and one drink per establishment.Could we be witnessing a Smart Home Revolution? Heavy investment in the Internet of Things proves that this may very well be the case!
Throughout the decades the world has witnessed a number of revolutions. From the industrial revolution, through the rise of the radio, television and the telephone, to the recent Internet revolution, the world has been changing more rapidly than ever before. And while most consider the current state of innovation to be rather unchanging, we may very well be on the verge of another revolution.
Only a decade ago, the Smart Home revolution seemed far off in the future. However, new research shows that it may be right around the corner. Even though some argue that we still haven’t reached a level of Internet security needed for Internet of Things solutions to be integrated into our daily lives, there are now more IoT enthusiasts than ever before. And as the economic world turns, this results in a rising number of investments made worldwide. To top it all of, it’s undeniable that IoT makes our lives easier, better and more efficient.
Are we witnessing a silent Smart Home revolution?
While most people live their daily lives not truly paying attention to the new Smart Home solutions, the IoT integration is quickly taking shape. This is the result of multiple factors, |
Disappearing Act" Unreleased track from The Unforgettable Fire sessions, finished in 2009 4:35 2. "A Sort of Homecoming" (live from Wembley Arena, London) B-side from "The Unforgettable Fire" single 4:07 3. "Bad" (live from NEC, Birmingham) From Wide Awake in America EP 8:00 4. "Love Comes Tumbling" B-side from "The Unforgettable Fire" single 4:52 5. "The Three Sunrises" B-side from "The Unforgettable Fire" single 3:53 6. "Yoshino Blossom" Unreleased instrumental track from The Unforgettable Fire sessions 3:39 7. "Wire" (Kevorkian 12" Vocal Remix) Previously unknown and unreleased remix 5:12 8. "Boomerang I" B-side from "Pride (In the Name of Love)" single 2:48 9. "Pride (In the Name of Love)" (extended single version) A-side from "Pride (In the Name of Love)" single 4:43 10. "A Sort of Homecoming" (Daniel Lanois Remix) Unreleased 1985 single version, featuring Peter Gabriel 3:18 11. "11 O'Clock Tick Tock" (long version) B-side from "Pride (In the Name of Love)" single 4:13 12. "Wire" (Celtic Dub Mix) From 1985 NME 7" vinyl promo 4:36 13. "Bass Trap" B-side from "The Unforgettable Fire" single 5:15 14. "Boomerang II" B-side from "Pride (In the Name of Love)" single 4:50 15. "4th of July" (single version) B-side from "Pride (In the Name of Love)" single 2:26 16. "Sixty Seconds in Kingdom Come" instrumental B-side from "The Unforgettable Fire" single 3:15 Total length: 69:42
Bonus DVD [ edit ]
In addition to the music videos and documentary from The Unforgettable Fire Collection, the DVD includes:
U2 live at Amnesty International's A Conspiracy of Hope concert – Giants Stadium, New Jersey, United States – Sunday 15 June 1986
"MLK" "Pride (In the Name of Love)" "Bad"
U2 live at Live Aid – Wembley Stadium, London, United Kingdom – Saturday 13 July 1985
"Pride (In the Name of Love)" Sepia music video, directed by Donald Cammell
11 O'Clock Tick Tock – Bootleg version, live from Croke Park, 29 June 1985
Charts and certifications [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Footnotes
BibliographyApple’s PR tour for the Apple Watch doesn’t appear to be slowing down with Apple’s design chief Jony Ive showing off the device and revealing an exclusive collection of never before seen Sport band colors tonight in Milan. Apple this morning kicked off a showcase of the device at Milan’s Salone Del Mobile Design Fair in Itlay, which was attended by Apple executives including marketing head Phil Schiller and designer Marc Newson.
Sylvania HomeKit Light Strip
Earlier today, images emerged of a red Sport band, and now Apple appears to be showing off several more exclusive Sport bands at tonight’s event in Italy. An image posted to Instagram shows dark blue, light pink, red, and yellow Sport bands. All of these colors were previously unreleased by Apple and never before seen. At the Design Week event in Milan, Apple is allowing invitees to try-on the Watch and use it with a band of their choosing. Designer Karl Lagerfeld was seen with an Apple Watch paired with a gold link bracelet earlier this week, although it’s not confirmed if the band was designed by Apple.
Attendees of the event were invited by Apple design Marc Newson, who joined the company in late 2014. A gallery of images from the event can be seen below (via Umberta Gnutti Beretta). Apple is holding similar pop-up store events in Paris, London, and Tokyo. It’s worth noting that Italy, where the Milan Design Week events are being held, is not a launch market for the Apple Watch, but an important one in the fashion world.Pumpjacks on Lost Hills Oil Field in California on Route 46 at sunset. Image: Arne Hückelheim/Wikimedia
As President-elect Trump spearheads plans to boost oil, coal and gas, a major new study by one of the world's foremost energy experts shows just how dangerous this path would be—not just for the planet, but for the economy.
The new study, just published in January as part of the SpringerBriefs in Energy series, suggests that as long we remain dependent on fossil fuels, economic contraction is inevitable. And while renewable energy offers the only potentially viable future, it is also unlikely to sustain the sort of mass consumerism we are accustomed to—like three or more cars per household, SUVS or massive military projects like aircraft carriers.
The bottom line is that we can't sustain our present rate of consumption no matter what energy source we rely on. And clinging to oil, gas and coal in the hopes of keeping the endless growth machine alive will be even worse: leading to a spiral of debt and economic recession that has already begun.
The Laws of Thermodynamics
According to the report,there is a direct link between a long-term slowdown in economic growth, and a corresponding decline in the value of energy generated from fossil fuels.
It all comes down to physics: the laws of thermodynamics. Economies need energy to function. And to grow, they need extra energy to fuel that growth in production and consumption. But as more energy is required just to extract new energy from fossil fuels, there is less "energy surplus" available to continue driving economic growth—to ramp up even more production and consumption. And increasingly, more and more energy is being used just to maintain the existing infrastructure of society as it is, leaving less room for further growth.
"Of perhaps greater concern than the quantity of oil and other energy sources is their declining EROI [energy return on investment]", writes study author Charles Hall, ESF Foundation Distinguished Professor of Environment Science at the State University of New York. Hall is the founder of the concept of EROI.
Hall's ground-breaking methodology is now used by scientists around the world to measure the total value of energy a resource can generate. It works by comparing the quantity of energy extracted to the quantity of energy inputted to enable the extraction.
He points out that throughout the energy literature "there is widespread concern that net energy returns (e.g. EROI) for oil and gas are declining and likely to continue declining." This has economic implications:
"As the energy required to find and deliver high-quality energy becomes larger at the societal level, there may be too little energy surplus available for other activities or insufficient usable energy to drive economic growth."
The most robust research suggests that all the world's fossil fuel production will peak sometime between 2025 and 2050. However, Hall says that production levels might not be the most important issue:
"The world will not run out of hydrocarbons. Instead it has, and will increasingly, become difficult to obtain cheap petroleum, because what is left is an enormous amount of low-grade hydrocarbons which are likely to be much more expensive financially, energetically, politically, and environmentally."
Growth Has Stopped Growing
Hall's study, Energy Return on Investment: A Unifying Principle for Biology, Economics and Sustainability, demonstrates a correlation between the declining abundance of resources, "as reflected in lower production and EROI for oil and other important fuels", and the decline of economic growth.
Fig 1. a. Growth rate of global oil production from 1950–2015; b Growth rate of US economy from 1950–2015 (Source: Hall) Charles Hall's study notes that growth rates in Europe, Japan and many other developed countries are similarly declining but lower
As of mid-2016, the GDP of Europe has been stagnant for over a decade, and the US has reached a GDP growth rate of 1.1 percent, nearly the same as its population. This means that the US has actually experienced no average increase in "per capita wealth."
This is part of a longer term trend of economic decline that conventional economics can't explain, because it ignores the role of energy in making economic activity possible. As Hall argues, economics is "basically about how energy is used to transform raw materials from nature into the products and services that are traded in markets. Economics as a discipline should reflect this basic reality, but essentially does not."
Fig 2. GDP growth rates of selected OECD entities (Source: Hall)
And that gets to the crux of the problem. We need more energy to get more stuff to grow the economy. So what happens when we can't get as much energy as before? Growth slows.
That's why Hall fingers the declining EROI of fossil fuels as the key culprit in decreasing rates of production, which in turn has played a key role in the economic slowdown: "Past investments— over the past century— were made at a time when the production of high quality fossil fuels was increasing at rates as high as 5% a year. At the time of this writing they have declined to no more than 1% a year, and the US (and global) economies show similar pattern."
Hall argues that modern developed economies, with their enormous infrastructures, roads and cities, are rapidly approaching "a stage where all of the available energy is used in'maintenance metabolism' to support the infrastructure that exists." This leaves less and less energy "available for net growth."
Hall appeals to politicians and business leaders to start facing this reality urgently: "It is critical for CEOs, government officials and the public to understand that the best oil and gas are simply gone, and there is no easy replacement."
But Hall's work is just the latest in a raft of new scientific research on the declining economics of fossil fuels. Last October, a team of European government scientists published a scientific paper on Cornell University's Arxiv website warning that the global economy has entered a new era of slow growth, due to the decline in the value of energy generated from fossil fuels.
The paper, under review with an academic journal, was authored by Francesco Meneguzzo, Rosaria Ciriminna, Lorenzo Albanese, Mario Pagliaro, who conduct research on climate change, energy, physics and materials science at the Italian National Research Council (CNR) — Italy's premier government agency for scientific research.
The scientists developed a new model to explore the relationship between global population growth, economic growth and total energy consumption. The latter, they find, is the driving force in the growth of global wealth. But now the world is experiencing "declining average EROIs for all fossil fuels; with the EROI of oil having likely halved in the short course of the first 15 years of the 21st century."
In other words, in less than two decades, the total value of the energy being produced from oil has plummeted by half.
Like Hall, the team concludes that as the energy value that fossil fuels generate is declining, their investment costs of extraction are increasing. This is creating a geophysical brake on global economic growth. As long as the economy remains dependent on fossil fuels, it will remain tied to the recessionary impact of global net energy decline.
Borrowing From the Future
The lead author of the Italian study, Dr. Francesco Meneguzzo of the CNR's Institute for Biometereology, told me that the economy can never truly recover, unless it transitions to an energy source which can substitute for oil.
In the absence of that, the system has relied on the expansion of debt—essentially borrowing from the future to finance our present lifestyle—to keep growth trundling along. "Debt piling, borrowing from the future, becomes a necessity, yet it is a mere trick to gain some time while hoping for something positive to happen," said Meneguzzo.
"The reality is that debt, basically as a substitute for oil, does not work to produce real wealth."
Where will this end up?
"Recently, debt has started shrinking, basically because it has failed to generate real wealth. Assuming no meaningful and fast transition to renewable energy, the economic growth can only deteriorate further and further."
Meneguzzo outlined a bleak scenario for the global economy based on continued fossil fuel dependence. Manufacturing would rely on local, cheaper and dirtier energy sources; wages would be pushed down to reduce costs; lower wages would mean poorer populations overall, lowering consumption and demand. All this would fuel "a downward spiral of deflation and debt."
The Great Transition
Is there a way out? Not with business-as-usual, according to Meneguzzo.
"Unless that debt is immediately used to exploit renewable sources on a massive scale, along with 'accessories' such as storage making them as qualified as oil, social and political derangements, even before an economic crash, look to be unavoidable."
And not everyone agrees that a renewable energy transition is feasible. According to Charles Hall, the energy costs of installing renewable energy capacity for solar and wind could be too high. Renewables might not be able to produce enough surplus energy to maintain a complex civilization. And he is skeptical that there are enough affordable mineral resources to build a new clean energy infrastructure.
He suggests economists should begin exploring "the possibility that humans are capable of achieving happiness by means other than the acquisition of ever-increasing quantities of material goods— goods that cannot be produced with declining resources."
He also flags up the world's grossly unequal distribution of resources, advocating that better mechanisms are needed to ensure more equal access to a pie that "is not growing."
Other researchers say that a renewable energy transition is still achievable despite the difficulties. A study last August by Professor Ugo Bardi of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University Florence concluded that the current geological epoch, the Anthropocene, will expire at century's end due to the thermodynamic demise of fossil fuels.
The Anthropocene, according to some scientists, comprises a new geological era characterized uniquely by humanity's overwhelmingly destructive impact on the earth.
Bardi's paper in the journal Biophysical Economics and Resource Quality finds that the Anthropocene age represents a "carbon-generated power 'pulse'" that cannot last much longer after the 21st century due to fossil fuel depletion. Yet this could be a good thing, leading to a new geological epoch in which humanity's relationship to the planet is sustainable, and powered mainly by solar energy.
He calculates that the world's total "technical potential" of energy production for solar PV plants could be around 500–1000 TerraWatts (TW), without significantly impacting on agricultural land.
Compare this colossal figure to the total power currently consumed by the world every year, which is about 17 TW.
Bardi's vision of the post-Anthropocene age highlights the possibility of arriving at "a new stage of the earth system in which humans could have access to truly gigantic amounts of useful energy," but without destroying ecosystems in ways associated with fossil fuels.
Bardi also contributed to a study on renewable transition published last September in Environment Research Letters. He and his co-authors, Denes Csala of Lancaster University, UK and Sgouris Sgouridis of the Masdar Institute in Abu Dhabi, found that the transition would be extremely tricky, but could be achieved by installing renewable energy plants at an accelerating rate from the 0.12 TW per year level of 2013, to a peak of 7.3-11.6 TW per year in the late 2030s.
This would avoid dangerous climate change and maintain enough energy flow to support the world's economy. "There are enough fossil resources left…to move from the present energy infrastructure to a renewable infrastructure before oil becomes too expensive to extract," Bardi told me.
Figure 3: Renewable energy consumption, partitioned between hydroelectricity and other sources, and its percentage on total consumption, during 1965-2015 (Source: Meneguzzo et. al)
Meneguzzo and his co-authors offer a similar scenario. Over the last eight years, the rise in renewable energy from 7 to 9.6 percent of total energy consumption was driven almost entirely by a near exponential increase in solar and wind (the green in 'other renewables' in Figure 3.). Both are set to "grow at significantly faster pace than so far."
If successful, said Bardi, the post-transition economy would be prosperous, but "lean… as different as our economy is different from the coal based economy of the mid 19th century." Extravagances "like SUVS and aircraft carriers" would be obsolete, but not due to lack of energy which "will be abundant, but because of constraints in the available mineral resources."
Whoever is right about the potential for renewables, one thing is clear: there is no point hanging on to the declining economic value of fossil fuels. Trump's agenda of achieving stratospheric economic growth by burning as much oil, coal and gas as possible is a delusional fantasy.
We need to start building the economy after fossil fuels.
Get six of our favorite Motherboard stories every day by signing up for our newsletter.BlackBerry Ltd. confirmed Tuesday it plans to sell most of its Canadian real estate, but new chief executive John Chen pledged to keep its headquarters in Waterloo, Ont.
"BlackBerry remains committed to being headquartered in Waterloo and having a strong presence in Canada along with other global hubs," Mr. Chen said in a release in which the company announced it will sell more than three million square feet worth of space. "This initiative will further enhance BlackBerry's financial flexibility, and will provide additional resources to support our operations as our business continues to evolve." Real estate firm CBRE Ltd. will handle the sale, which will see BlackBerry lease back properties it still needs.
The Globe and Mail first reported last fall that BlackBerry was considering a sell off of its real estate, after it approached commercial real estate firms in late September. The move came shortly after the company announced plans to cut 4,500 jobs, or more than 40 per cent of its work force, and to slash its costs in half amid sharply declining revenues in the midst of an attempted sale of the company. That process ended with investor Fairfax Financial Holdings pulling a $9-per-share bid in early November and instead leading a $1.25-billion refinancing of the smartphone company.
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BlackBerry had 27 buildings, including six leased properties, in the Waterloo area, as of the end of its last fiscal year in early March. It valued its land, based on cost, at $68-million (U.S.) as of Nov. 30, and its related buildings, leasehold improvements and other real estate assets at $941-million. Since then, it has announced plans to sell five buildings and land to the University of Waterloo for $41-million. The deal is slated to close Feb. 14.
The company said in the release it wouldn't comment on the potential value of a sale and would only "disclose further information as required." In a recent regulatory filing BlackBerry said it was holding $192-million worth of "certain property plant and equipment assets" for sale and expected to dipose of them "within the next 12 months." A company spokesman said there is "some overlap" between the properties put up for sale Tuesday and those included in the earlier set of assets earmarked for sale two months ago, but there are "additional properties" now for sale.
BlackBerry's real estate sale is part of an effort to fill up the company's coffers as its revenues and cash flows continue deteriorating over the next few quarters. In addition to the refinancing, BlackBerry applied for and received an early $700-million tax refund in November and expects an additional $323-million refund this year. It has a largely untapped $500-million credit facility. BlackBerry's improved liquidity situation – helped by a deal to offload much of the financial risk of making smartphones to Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group – has sparked a rebound in BlackBerry stock in recent weeks.
News of the planned divestiture, released after the market close, extended a rally in BlackBerry stock in after-hours trading. BlackBerry stock was up by 3.5 per cent as of 5:45 pm on Nasdaq after closing up 9.4 per cent on the day, following news that the U.S. Department of Defense will continue to deploy BlackBerry smartphones as the main hand-held device on its network. The stock closed Tuesday in the U.S. at $9.93, its highest close in four months.Aereo is about to present its case to the U.S. Supreme Court, but first it wants to present its case to you. Today, the startup launched ProtectMyAntenna.org, a website designed to inform its users about Aereo’s tech, which uses freely offered over-the-air HDTV signals to provide its customers with live and DVR digital TV viewing options.
Basically, Aereo maintains that each of its subscribers are using their own micro antenna, so in terms of the letter of the law, there’s no difference between what it does and what users who own their own antennas and hardware them to their TVs at home do. Personal use with an individual antenna, as well as the right to record and then playback recordings of that signal are protected under current law.
Aereo says this new site is in part an answer to requests it has received from its users regarding how they might be able to help the startup in terms of spreading the word about the service, how it works and what its legal position is relative to the broadcasters who would see it shut down. To that end, in addition to a thoughtful, plain language explanation of the issues at hand and Aereo’s stance, you’ll also find copies of the existing decisions on the books regarding Aereo’s service from lesser courts, as well as the company’s own briefs, and the Amicus briefs of companies and advocacy organizations that support Aereo’s argument.
It’s probably the most complete single resource of Aereo’s side of things available going into this Supreme Court hearing. Even if you’re not directly affected by the case, the site and these docs are worth a review if you’re at all interested in what rights you have as a use and consumer of broadcast television.When Run the Jewels launched their Kickstarter for Meow the Jewels – the cat-centric remix of last year's Run the Jewels 2 LP, producer Just Blaze promised that he would not only contribute to the record, but also release a download of drum samples he used from 2001-2005, provided that the project received full funding.
Today, he's made good on his word by releasing those files in a collection he's calling Meow the Drums. Download it here.
During the period covered in the download, Just Blaze produced iconic tracks for Jay Z, Kanye, Cam'ron and the Diplomats, Fabolous, and more.
Just Blaze said in a statement:
Thanks to all who contributed to making Meow The Jewels a success. For the uninitiated, I promised to contribute a remix to the project if it was funded, and as an added bonus a good amount of the signature drums I used on many records in the early half of the 2000’s. Please note these are the raw, relatively unprocessed files straight out of my MPC (hence the delay in tracking them down and getting them to you guys). That said, in most cases, you’re not going to instantly press a pad and be like ‘OMG, IT’S THE SUCH AND SUCH SNARE!’ (though that will happen in a few cases). I used a lot of layering, compression, and EQ / Mix techniques to get these things to sound like the drums many of you knew and loved. Enjoy this starting point, and happy drumming! P.S. This is just the beginning. Stay tuned to Splice.com for much more!!
Read our Run the Jewels feature, "Last Rappers Standing".
Watch the video for Just Blaze's contribution to Meow the Jewels:
Watch El-P and Killer Mike on Pitchfork.tv's "Over/Under":If you are struggling to find a good strategy game for the PlayStation 4, hopefully, this top list will help you out. There is a nice mix of strategy game genres on the PS4, like Turn Based Strategy (TBS), Real Time Strategy (RTS), Tower Defense (TD), and Construction and Management Simulations. All of the games featured in this top list are worth checking out and are ranked from worst to best. There is also an honorable mentions list near the bottom of this article if you are looking for even more worthy strategy games on PS4.
12. Tropico 5
– See It On Amazon
Tropico 5 is a pretty good management simulation game, with a steep learning curve. You are El Presidente and will take control of an island known as Tropico. Build structures, manage money, hire workers, create jobs, defend Tropico, and most important of all make a profit. Starting with almost no resources, complete a variety of ongoing tasks that become more challenging the further you progress in the game. Hopefully, you will eventually become a superpower and expand your island to the max. To be honest, the first time I played this series, I got stuck on a few tasks for a few hours, not knowing what to do exactly. Once you get the hang of the tasks system, making a profit, and building mechanics, Tropico can be very addicting. The PS4 does a pretty good job with the controller set up, but it’s much slower compared to a PC when using hotkeys on a keyboard. I wish Tropico 5 had a better and easier tutorial because many gamers new to this strategy genre will be lost and end up potentially quieting before they find out what this game is all about.
Helpful Note: Be sure to turn off Natural Disasters in the game settings, they are annoying and might ruin your experience.
– Resources: More Information | Gameplay Trailer
11. Invisible Inc
Stealth and Speed is the heart of this turn-based strategy game. Play through a variety of well crafted randomized missions that require you to recover your objective, be sneaky, recover items and defeat enemies. In many missions, you have a choice on what type of play style you want to implement. Maybe you want to be 100% stealth and not mess with any enemies, or maybe you want to lethally knock out enemies and hack security cameras! It’s up to you. Even though I wish there was more content here, for how simple it is the gameplay is executed almost perfectly. The story is pretty basic with reading mostly text from different characters. It’s a good game, just don’t expect a mind-blowing experience.
– Resources: More Information | Gameplay Trailer
10. Prison Architect
– See It On Amazon
Don’t let the basic 2D graphics fool you, Prison architect is a very addicting simulation game, where you manage and construct a high-end maximum security prison. The amount of options at your disposal is staggering. So many things to manage, to do and build. Put your planning skills to the test, if you fail just try again. Like most management simulations your #1 goal is to always make money. You can really tell the developers tried to think outside the box in this one, the micromanagement feels unique in a lot of ways. Some of the inmates are crazy lol, the situations you encounter involving them can be stressful and sometimes humorous. Even though the graphics and menu can feel distracting at times, this is one of the better tycoon style games to come out recently from a gameplay, personality, and content point of view.
– Resources: More Information | Gameplay Trailer
9. X-Morph Defense
X-Morph Defense is a hidden gem that many gamers don’t know about. It’s a fantastic one of a kind Tower Defense/ Shoot Em Up hybrid. Surprisingly it is balanced well between the two genres, making for a challenging and addicting experience. On top of that, the upgrades for your aircraft and defense towers are awesome. The amount of action and explosions on screen is very satisfying, with bright and beautiful graphics as a nice bonus. Planning and upgrading are crucial for your success. At heart its a great Tower Defense game where you build weapon towers and lead your enemies through a maze of destruction. Being able to control and shoot with your aircraft is the icing on the cake though.
– Resources: | More Information | Gameplay Trailer
8. Cities Skylines
– See It On Amazon
If you are looking for a great city builder simulation, look no further than Cities Skylines. The maps and building capabilities of this sandbox game are massive. You are a mayor of this city, you will have to pick a piece of land you want to build on. Your main goals are to increase your cities population, expand it, and thrive financially. Keep the population up by expanding and keeping people in your city happy. Industrial areas will help substantially with financial investments and jobs usually, while residential areas are a great way to increase your cities population. Like all large cities, problems will arise where firemen, police and other city paid workers will be needed. The tutorials are very easy to follow and will help you along the way. You might fail a few times, but every time you do you will learn more about the different aspects of building your city, which will help you make necessary changes in your next playthrough. Hopefully, after playing for a while, you will learn how to create a safe city that flourishes perfectly in every way.
– Resources: More Information | Gameplay Trailer
7. SteamWorld HEIST
– See It On Amazon
SteamWorld Heist is an addicting 2D turn-based strategy game, where you play as a team of robotic pirates out to loot enemy spaceships. The turn-based shoot and hit gameplay starts out simple, however in later areas planning out strategic combat against enemies is a must. There is so many ways to approach combat situations, along with different weapons to use. Your team of robots unique abilities, clothing and weapons can all be upgraded. If you’re looking for something different to play in the genre this is a great choice.
– Resources: More Information | Gameplay Trailer
6. The Banner Saga 1 & 2
The Banner Saga 1 & 2 are both fantastic turn-based strategy RPG’s that feature a Viking theme. The amount of different choices you make, adds a lot of replayability to this series because of so many aspects of the story and gameplay change. I personally enjoyed the story of both games, but the first game was superior in the storytelling area. As for gameplay and combat, Banner Saga 2 is better, cleaner and has more to offer. The battles are addictive and the story heats it up nicely at times. Learning how to play can be a little difficult at first, but once you learn the system you probably won’t want to put it down.
– Resources: More Information | Gameplay Trailer
5. Nobunaga’s Ambition: Sphere of Influence
– See It On Amazon
A Japanese historical simulation game. Nobunaga’s Ambition is based on the conquest and domination of rival territories across ancient Japan in the Sengoku era. You start the game by choosing different clans to play as. Starting with low resources, try to conquer smaller territories at first. As you grow larger, stronger and more wealthy, go after larger targets. The top-down graphics are not that great, but the addicting action-packed gameplay, voice acting, soundtrack and story cutscenes make up for it. This game suits a PC’s keyboard and mouse much better, but controls feel decent enough on PS4. Its a very deep niche strategy game overall and probably won’t appeal to everyone, or maybe gamers rarely give these sort of strategy games a try. I enjoyed it and think it’s one of PS4’s hidden strategy gems.
– Resources: More Information | Gameplay Trailer
4. Valkyria Chronicles Remastered
– See It On Amazon
Valkyria Chronicles is a strategy JRPG originally released for the PS3 and now re-released on the PS4 as an HD remaster. The turn-based strategic war battle gameplay is fun and challenging. A great mix of turn-based action with a touch of a third-person shooter. Figuring out the best ways to approach enemies or what attacks you should use always keeps the excitement high. You will find out that selecting the right troops for certain missions is very important. It does take some time to become a master playing Valkyria, but after some trial and error, you will learn how to make better decisions in combat. The characters and story are even more impressive, I was captivated by every scene of this adventure. If you are a fan of Strategy games or RPG’s this is a must buy.
– Resources: More Information | Gameplay Trailer
3. Disgaea 5: Alliance Of Vengeance
– See It On Amazon
I have to admit I am a huge Disgaea 5 fan, so I might be a little positive bias whenever I mention it. All fanboyism aside, Disgaea 5 is a fantastic turn-based strategy JRPG. The combat takes place on square board type maps. The strategy comes in when trying to figure out the best ways to defeat enemies. Some maps you will have to throw objects or stack Comrades to reach enemies. How far you can move, throw an attack is based on individual characters and what level they are currently at. Characters all hold amazing magic special attacks or healing, which are needed in certain situations. There are just so many variations to the combat in Disgaea and ways to defend against enemies, that strategy is a very strong influence on the overall gameplay. Like most RPG’s characters can be leveled up, along with weapons and items. The humor and characters are very off the wall and goofy in a dark way xD. The characters might not be for everyone, to me, this is one of the funniest and charming game series I have ever played. It’s a huge game and if you are trying to level up to 9999 or want to unlock the best weapons you will likely be playing it for years!
– Resources: More Information | Gameplay Trailer
2. Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shogun
– See It On Amazon
Shadow Tactics is an amazing Samurai stealth strategy game, that kind of reminds me of a classic called Commandos 2. The setting takes place in the Eco-Era of Japan. Most of the time you will control five different characters through missions. Each has unique abilities to learn well and master. Knowing a lot about how each of your characters performs in certain combat situations is probably your strongest weapon in Shadow Tactics. Some of the later levels are very advanced and will require you to plan your steps way ahead, whether you want to take the complete stealth route or a more combative route. The theme and combat are executed very well even though some later levels feel a bit overwhelming because of there large size. This is a must own on PS4, especially for those that want some stealth action.
– Resources: More Information | Gameplay Trailer
1. XCOM 2
See It On Amazon
XCOM 2 and War of the Chosen DLC are by far the best Turn-based Strategy experiences on the PS4 so far. You are on a quest to battle against aliens that are trying to take over the planet. Choose from 4 to 6 squad members when engaging into battle. If you like certain characters a lot be sure to keep them alive or if they die, they will be killed off. The battles are very challenging and may require some planning ahead. The game never feels unfair though. There are so many ways to complete battle missions, but sometimes it takes some trial and error to learn how to conquer them. For me that’s where the addiction comes in, getting better and having a sense of accomplishment after destroying these aliens. The War of the Chosen DLC is even better, with a lot of fixes and additions to the already fantastic gameplay. This is a must buy for anyone interested or already in love with the strategy genre, just don’t expect XCOM 2 to hold your hand at all!
– Resources: More Information | Gameplay Trailer
* Honorable Mentions *
The majority of following games barely missed our top list, or might not be considered strategy games fully, but share elements of the genre!
Sudden Strike 4 – This is a good world war 2 RTS game. Probably the closest thing we will see to Command and Conquer for a while on the PS4. The controls and gameplay are not perfect on PS4, but it’s worth playing if you are craving RTS action.
Hasbro Family Pack – This pack includes four video board games including MONOPOLY Plus, RISK, TRIVIAL PURSUIT Live, and SCRABBLE. Risk and Monopoly definitely require a lot of strategies if you want to always win :D.
Orcs Must Die! Unchained – This is a high quality Free to play 3D Tower Defense game, that’s not Pay to win! Battle against orcs by setting traps and attacking them with weapons.
Tooth and Tail – Nice imaginative RTS with tons of great ideas. A great game for beginners who want to learn how to play RTS games.
Dynasty Warriors: Godseekers – A Dynasty Warriors Spin-off tactics style combat RPG game. A lot of fun with some awkward level design and repetitive combat that might dull down the experience once you reach later levels.
CastleStorm: Definitive Edition – A fun 2D RTS with tons of action. Send out ground troops to battle against enemies while shooting cannon blasts at enemy castles.
Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition – If this was considered to be a full-on Strategy game I would have added it to the top list because it’s a fantastic tactical RPG. However many battles often require some strategic thinking and planning before entering them.
Defense Grid 2 – A action-packed 3D Space themed Tower Defense game.
Grand Kingdom – A neat JRPG that shares a mix of different genres in it. I guess it’s more of a tactical RPG, but it has a lot of strategy sort of elements also.
Skulls of the Shogun: Bone-a-Fide Edition – A simple but fun fast paced cartoony Samurai RTS game with tons of depth.
Bloons TD 5 – It’s Monkeys vs threatening Balloons in all-out Tower Defense action. Boons TD 5 is one of the best Flash TD games ever made, I am glad it has been ported to PS4.
Birthdays The Beginning – Expand and bring all kinds of life forms to this world in this fun tycoon style game.
Do you know of any other good Strategy games that I failed to mention for the PS4? Please let me know in the comments belowMunster came back from 18-0 down to beat Jersey 29-28 in last season's British and Irish Cup final
Rugby union's British & Irish Cup will be scrapped at the end of the season.
It comes after the 12 clubs from England's second-tier Championship decided to withdraw for 2018-19.
'A' sides from the four Irish Pro 14 clubs and 'Premiership Select' teams from the four Welsh regions face England's second-tier teams in pool stages and subsequent knockout rounds.
Scottish |
barbecue in North Carolina, but when used with restraint, it works. The mustardy sauces of South Carolina work in the same way. And though Texas sauces may be on the sweeter side today, the basic sauce recipes used by our barbecue forefathers had a lot more vinegar than honey. Take the 1937 Dallas Morning News article, in which the author describes a typical Texas barbecue sauce at the time:
It is made simply of vinegar and hot water, melted butter if the purse allows, or rendered beef suet if not, black and red pepper and salt (pioneer sauce stopped there) and generous dashes of catsup and Worcestershire sauce. Onions and sometime lemons are sliced into it… thicken it slightly with flour and water as thin gravy is thickened.
Even with the addition of ketchup, the sauce would have been a lot closer to one found in North Carolina’s Piedmont region than the bottled “Texas-style” sauces enhanced with corn syrup on store shelves today. Not only would it not be sweet, but it would also fill the nooks in a chopped beef or pulled pork sandwich a lot better than a thick sauce that rests on top like cake frosting. (Try this recipe for a thin, acidic barbecue sauce that works great with fatty pork or beef.)
Aside from sauce, there are other ways add acid to a barbecue sandwich. To get it with a crunch, dill pickles and white onions are the ubiquitous option in Texas. But at Corkscrew BBQ, in Spring, they offer the option of pico de gallo as well. (See below for a modified pico recipe that we’re calling “pickle de gallo,” which goes great on a barbecue sandwich.) You can also ask for pico at Young’s BBQ in San Saba, or really just about any barbecue joint serving tacos. At Hometown Bar-B-Que in Brooklyn, they pickle daikon and carrots for a smoked lamb belly banh mi. The lamb belly is so rich and fatty that it needs no sauce for moisture, but without the acidic garnishes it would feel like a lard bomb. All together, it might be the best new barbecue sandwich out there.
Not to be left out, at least one Texas barbecue joint also serves banh mi. Brotherton’s Black Iron Barbecue adds slices of juicy brisket to the sandwich along with house-made kimchi. The crunchy, fermented cabbage gives a boost of heat and acid that marries well with the brisket.
Up in Connecticut at HooDoo Brown Barbeque they smoke skin-on pork bellies. The skin is shatteringly crisp, and the fat is like a suspended liquid released only upon biting into it. It’s some of the most decadent barbecue you’ll ever eat, and it comes with VooDoo sauce, which it’s more like a garnish. Green onion replaces white onion in this pice de gallo variant, and lime juice provides the tingle along with a splash of vinegar. Miraculously, it lightens the otherwise leaden dish.
In San Antonio, 2M Smokehouse is taking pickles to another level. There’s pico for the tacos, of course, and plenty of dill pickles, but I’d suggest a bite of pickled onions or even nopales after a bite of the fatty brisket. I swear, for better or worse, you’ll be able to eat more brisket if you mix in some pickled nopales between every bite. Pickled serranos and carrots are also available if you really want some kick in your taco. Roegel’s Barbecue and The Pit Room in Houston and The Slow Bone in Dallas are three more spots with a real focus on providing more in the pickle department than just dill chips.
Great barbecue requires a balance of flavors. Too much smoke, an overwhelming amount of seasoning, or the absence of either makes for disappointing smoked meat. Pitmasters tinker with that balance. They hone their techniques to seek greatness in barbecue, but they rarely consider how much acid can help in that balance of flavors. Here’s hoping more barbecue joints trade in the punches of sweetness for a little bite.
RECIPE: Pickle de gallo
1 medium tomato, seeded and diced
1/2 medium onion, finely diced
4 dill pickle spears, or a whole pickle, chopped
1 ounce pickled jalapeños (or try sweet-and-spicy pickled jalapeños), finely chopped
1 lime, juiced
1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt, divided
Place diced tomatoes into a colander or strainer and sprinkle with 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Add diced onions on top and squeeze the juice from half of a lime over top, saving the other lime half for later. Let the tomatoes and onions drain for at least 30 minutes, but preferably for an hour.
After draining, shake off excess water from the tomatoes and onions, and place them in bowl. Add the pickles, pickled jalapeños, juice from the remaining 1/2 lime, and the remaining 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Stir to combine. Place in the refrigerator for at least an hour before serving. This should keep for three days.By Los Angeles Zombie Girl – Vicki Woods
This time of year our Sunday evenings are sadly walker free. With Fear the Walking Dead not returning until August and The Walking Dead still a million miles away in October what are walker lovers to do? Well I decided to survey some TWD fans and find out their Top 20 Walkers from the first 6 seasons of The Walking Dead! You actually get a few more because I had quite a few ties.
Number 20: Sophia and Merle
Sophia and Merle were not gross or crazy looking walkers. The reason they both made the list was because they made us cry. When we saw Sophia stagger out of the barn back at Hershel’s, in Season 2 Ep. 1 there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Rick’s team spent a good portion of Season 1 looking for Carol’s little girl and when the worst case scenario happened, we all cried, along with the rest of the cast, for Carol’s loss. Now Merle was a different story. As a character we all hated Merle. Daryl’s older brother was a mean bully and we were glad to see him disappear in Season 1. When we found him again at the Governor’s, in Season 3 meaner than ever, we disliked him even more. But when Daryl, our tough Daryl, stabs walker Merle in the head and then cries over his brother in Episode 15, well that was one seriously emotional scene.
Number 19: Atlanta Suit Walker
The Atlanta Suit Walker from Season 1 is KNB EFX’s own Joe Giles. Joe is a make-up artist there and is affectionately called Patient Zero by Greg Nicotero, because his look is the one they based all the walker looks on. Joe has been a walker in lots of episodes, but his iconic Atlanta Suit Walker has remained a fan favorite.
Number 18: Church Lady Walker and friends
The Church Lady is still dressed up pretty nice. This walker from Season 5 was a “friend” of Father Gabriel’s and we see how guilty he is when her rotted body and others, pop out of the water in the flooded food pantry. Bad Father Gabriel! Apparently he locked all these innocent people in the food pantry and left them to die.
Number 17: Riot Gear Walker and Wedding Ring Walker
I think the reason these two Season 3 walkers go together is they both are about Maggie and Glen. When Maggie learns how to take out the Riot Gear Walkers, who were undead prison guards, the glee that she shows was definitely infectious for everyone watching. When Glen decides he wants to propose to Maggie, a female walker lost two fingers and her wedding ring in the name of love. We never saw an actual wedding, but by Season 4 they were referring to each other as husband and wife. How romantic can you get?
Number 16: Deer Eating Walker and Autopsy Walker
The amazingly cool Deer Eating Walker was played by Greg Nicotero himself. While not the only cameo he does in the series, this walker in Season 1, Ep. 3 is always a favorite and makes it on most lists. Another favorite that keeps coming back is Autopsy Walker from Season 2. When Daryl and Rick decide to cut a walker open to see if it ate Sophia, we all get a medical school lesson.
Number 15: Tongue Hanging Out Walker
The Tongue Hanging Out Walker in Season 1 Ep. 4 was a Greg Nicotero tribute to a famous zombie in George Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” Dr. Tongue. This walker is pretty gross. No kisses for her.
Number 14: Michone’s Walkers
When we first see Michone and her armless, jawless walkers in Season 2, Ep. 13 it’s a pretty intense sight. Her idea was simple. If you are surrounded by walkers that can’t hurt you, the others will leave you alone. Luckily for the gang, she finally gave the walkers up to have some real human friends to hang out with.
Number 13: Swamp Walker
In Season 2 Carl was a mixed up kid. Not sure who to trust, or who was going to be his Dad, he acted like a bratty kid. In Episode 11 he finds a walker who seems stuck in a swamp, and throws rocks at it. When he finds out it was still dangerous, he chickens out on shooting it and runs away. Later that night the same walker comes along and kills Dale. Way to go Carl!
Number 12: Penny Blake and Bunny Slippers Walker
Penny Blake was the Governors daughter. In Season 3 he kept her in a closet, and fed her, Just a little bit insane! Brushing her hair does not look like too much fun. Michone eventually took care of this little walker. The Little Girl in the Bunny Slippers from Season 1 Ep. 1 was the one that made us all jump and realize The Walking Dead was a show to be reckoned with! They just shot a kid walker! Actually for the record, little girls don’t really seem to have a chance on this show.
Number 11: Sewer Walkers and Metal Head
Lauren Cohen who plays Maggie, has a personal favorite- the Season 6 Sewer Walkers. These melting gooey walkers probably smelled really bad! She and Aaron run into them in the sewers while looking for a way out of Alexandria. These colorful creatures were the softest and squishiest walkers of them all. Metal Head is a walker Eugene runs into while showing Abraham where they could make bullets. Great idea! Finally, Eugene redeemed himself after all the lying he did.
Number 10: Cherokee Rose/Wrightson Walker
Never heard of a Wrightson Walker? Well according to Greg Nicotero, Bernie Wrightson is a fantasy, illustrator and comic book artist extraordinaire and he pioneered the zombie drawing art form. This moss covered, nose missing, stomach removed, skeleton in Season 6 Ep. 6 is a tribute to this important artist for the genre. He also is a tribute to Daryl’s story as told to Carol about the Cherokee Rose. Notice the flower on the walker’s um… lapel?
Number 9: Girl in the Trunk Walker
The Season 5 Girl in the Trunk Walker was one of my favorites. This poor young lady in wouldn’t have survived with or without a zombie apocalypse. Maggie finds her in a car they are searching, tied up and gagged in the trunk. No idea where her abductor ended up. Luckily the distraught Maggie didn’t get in the trunk with her. Having literally lost her entire family she was not really in a good place.
Number 8: Walkers on Fire/Burned
Walkers on fire are pretty amazing. With real smoke and flames, all of the charred or burning walkers have been great! I got burned walkers at every point on the list- so I averaged it out to Number 8. We had fires at Hershels’s barn, the prison, the cabin and Terminous where the walkers come out, blackened, flaming and were crazy to see. At the Grove Fire with Lizzie and Mica, the walkers literally smoked and sizzled. And the left over crispy critters in the Season 6 after the forest fire and Alexandria gasoline fire were super cool. Lots of black and red make-up used for these scenes! Fans love burning walkers so much that there is a cool walker fire scene in the new Universal Studios Hollywood Walking Dead Attraction too!
Number 7: Bowling Ball and Napalm Walkers
The Napalm walkers in Season 5 were really epic. In the parking lot of the hospital where the gang was going to save Beth and Carol, they all encounter walkers melted to the ground after what had been an apparent military strike. (Remember when they saw Atlanta bombed in Season 2?) At one point Daryl, always resourceful, picks up a walker head like a bowling ball and uses it as a weapon to take out a bad cop. Go Daryl!
Number 6: Floppy Jaw Walker and RPG Walker
When Alexandria was getting taken over by walkers, Season 6 Ep. 3, the Floppy Jaw Walker was my favorite. Not sure if he could actually bite you, but I wouldn’t get close enough to tell. This was one of my all-time favorite make-ups! In Episode 6 Abraham wanted the weapon that this walker had, but he had to crawl onto almost certain death on a highway overpass, to get it. Die? Not Abraham! He got the weapon and smoked a cigar to boot!
Number 5: Lizzie’s Friend
Lizzie, oh Lizzie, you need to look at the flowers now! Lizzie was one of the characters that could never get their mind wrapped around the walkers being dead, or undead. In Season 4 Ep. 14 she found a buddy in a walker lady and played tag with her. Normal right? A kid needs a friend to play with. Well then she went and killed her own sister. Bye, Bye Lizzie and friend.
Number 4: The Governors Fish Tanks
The Governor was suspected to be crazy all along, but when we get the first glimpse of him sitting in his Walker-Cave filled with aquariums full of heads in Season 3 Ep. 3, we realize that he is totally mad. It’s very unnerving hearing the bubbles and seeing that the heads are still moving. A bit of trivia, if you look closely, one of the heads is from the original “Jaws” movie!
Number 3: Tree Intestines Walker
Tree Intestines Walker from the beginning of Season 6 was both pathetic and amazing. We couldn’t tell if he got himself all tied up or if someone left him that way. But he still managed to grab Carter, a complaining Alexandrian, and bite him right in the face. He was helpful at least.
Number 2: Flare Gun Walker
The Flare Gun Walker from Season 5 Ep. 11 was spectacular! When Rick shoots a flare gun at this walker and it sticks in his eye, well that’s about 4th of July as you can get! We’re talkin’ fireworks. Well done Rick!
Number 1: Bicycle Girl and Well Walker
I thought maybe we would get some new winners with all the great SFX in The Walking Dead, but these walkers are still at the top. Bicycle Girl is from Season 1, Ep. 1. Just half a walker, dragging herself on the ground towards Rick, he starts to see clearly what the world has become. When Rick goes back and takes her out, we see the kind of man he is. Yeah I know that changes quick as his fight gets harder, and his leadership is questioned, but at first there was a lot of compassion in our sheriff. This walker has earned a permanent place for herself in the new TWD attraction at Universal Studios Hollywood. The Well Walker in Season 2 Ep. 4 has stayed a favorite even though it was also from early in the series. An especially gross, bloated kinda guy, he comes completely apart when removed from the well he fell into. Lots of walker slimy goodness and great work from cast and SFX crew.
Special Mention for a couple of my favorites: Tight Squeeze Walker, and Skin off His Back Walker. I guess as a SFX artist I loved these. There are cool videos showing how they did the effects. Tight Squeeze Walker had skin literally tear off his face and chest when he squeezed through a tight space between trucks. Skin of his Back Walker got his skin torn off by Tara, during what didn’t turn out to be a routine supply trip. What can I say, I love this stuff!
Honorable mentions for ones that didn’t make the list but were still Walkers to Remember: RV Walker, Field Walker, Bleeding Eyes Walker, Hanging Walkers, Grown into Tree Walkers, Meghan’s Mud Walkers, Morgan’s Wife, Shane, Eye Popping Walker and I’m sure there are many more.Neill Blomkamp is embarking on an experimental filmmaking venture that he’s calling Oats Studios. The District 9 and Elysium director released a trailer for some of the studio’s upcoming projects, which will be released to Steam in the next couple of months.
The trailer opens with a shot of an overgrown Eiffel Tower, as a voiceover explains that aliens have come to exterminate humanity. The trailer then shows off quite a bit more: a woman shooting an alien in a red-lit corridor, American soldiers flying over Vietnam, trucks flying Texas flags driving through the desert, a whole bunch of cool-looking aliens and quite a bit more. The trailer explains that what’s coming soon is a series of short, experimental films called Oats: Volume 1.
Blomkamp has been teasing hints about Oats Studios for the last year, asking if fans would be interested in buying films off of Steam, and posted some intriguing images to Twitter, showing off one of the aliens seen in the trailer, as well as a Vietnam-era soldier. Earlier this month, he showed off a 15 second teaser showing off a soldier shooting down... something.
If I sold experimental short films on @steam_games as tests for potential full feature films, would people watch them? — NΞill Blomkamp (@NeillBlomkamp) April 9, 2017
While Blomkamp earned considerable acclaim for his debut feature District 9, he got his start with short films, such as Alive in Joburg (which became District 9), Landfall, a short Halo film (his debut film was originally supposed to be an adaptation of the Bungie franchise), and more recently, an entry in BMW’s The Hire series, featuring Clive Owen. From the looks of it, these upcoming short films will be a set of really exciting science fiction films.
The trailer simply says that Oats: Volume 1 will be streaming soon. Whenever it hits, Oats Studios has our attention, and we already can’t wait to see what Blomkamp has up his sleeve.UPDATE: Ocean's 8 just added a slew of big names to its already long list of celebs who will take part in the film.
Multiple reports say Katie Holmes, Anna Wintour and James Corden will all be making cameos in the upcoming, female-driven film.
Holmes confirmed the news at the 2017 Winter Television Critics Association Press Tour on Friday, explaining, "I'm a fan of all the Ocean's movies. So, I'm happy that it has so many amazing women in it, so many amazing actresses. It's really so much fun being a part of," Holmes told Entertainment Tonight. "I play myself. It's just a cameo."
Meanwhile, the film will reportedly be recreating a version of the Met Gala at some point in the film during which Wintour will also make a cameo as herself.
________British Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn has reiterated his support for a united Ireland.
Asked whether he supported unification during an interview with the New Statesman current magazine, Mr Corbyn answered, “it’s an aspiration that I have always gone along with”.
Mr Corbyn has long been in favour of a united Ireland. In 1984 he invited Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams to a meeting in London and cancelled a second meeting in 1996 after coming under pressure from Labour party colleagues.
In 1985 he opposed the Anglo Irish Agreement, saying “the agreement strengthens rather than weakens the border between the six and the 26 counties, and those of us who wish to see a united Ireland oppose the agreement for that reason”.
The new Labour leader appointed John McDonnell, who said in 2003 that IRA members should be honoured for bringing the British government to the negotiating table, as shadow chancellor.
BBC apology
Mr McDonnell apologised for the remarks during an appearance last week on BBC’s Question Time.
Mr Corbyn’s support for a united Ireland has been branded “unhelpful” to the Northern Ireland peace process.
Although unsurprised at his position, unionists have on Thursday called for on Labour to clarify its position.
Democratic Unionist MP Jeffrey Donaldson said: “Nothing Jeremy Corbyn says about Northern Ireland is going to be helpful or is designed to be helpful.
“What we now need is for the Labour Party to clarify its position on the principle of consent, and Jeremy Corbyn needs to make clear whether he stands by the agreements made by Tony Blair which put the issue of consent at the heart of the constitutional arrangement in Northern Ireland.”
Majority consent
Under the terms of the Belfast Agreement, a united Ireland can only be brought about with the majority consent of people in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
The Ulster Unionist Party said it had been assured that Labour was committed to the principles of consent when officials met shadow Northern Ireland secretary Vernon Coaker earlier this week.
Tom Elliott MP said: “He was very clear that Labour is committed to the consent principle as set out in the Belfast Agreement. Indeed he has also been unambiguous in the House of Commons that this is the position.
“What we have here is a party leader who is out of step with his own party’s position.”
The UUP has requested a meeting with Mr Corbyn.
Sinn Féin meanwhile welcomed Mr Corbyn’s comments.
A spokesman said: “Jeremy Corbyn has been a long-time friend of Ireland and of the peace process.”
The SDLP said Mr Corbyn reflected its views.
Foyle MP Mark Durkan said: “Jeremy Corbyn is stating a view held by many in the Labour Party in regards to a united Ireland, and one that reflects an aspiration of the SDLP.
“It has always been a key tenet in our party constitution and one that is based upon the principle of consent.”
Press AssociationIf you are looking for a place to go to in North Korea, visiting Hyesan will surely be an adventure of a lifetime. Hyesan is a city in the Ryanggang province of North Korea. Located in the Baekdu Mountains, it is in the border of China and North Korea.
Hyesan lies in the uppermost stream of the Yalu River. During the Yi dynasty, it is known as a fortress. It is one of the coldest places in Korea during the winter and has recorded its coldest temperature at -44° F in 1915. Hyesan is a significant city in Korea in terms of river transportation because of its proximity to the Yalu River and product distribution.
When visiting Hyesan, it is important to visit the following locations:
1. Yalu River. It is also known as Amnok-gang in Korean. The Yalu River is known as one of the largest hydroelectric dams in Asia. It has grazed two battles: one in 1894 during the Sino-Japanese War and the other in 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War.
2. Baekdu Mountains (also Changbai Mountains.) It is the mountain range that lies in the border of China and North Korea. It is considered as one of the spirited mountains by the Koreans and is widely believed to be the place of their ancestral origin. In Mount Baekdu, you will find Heavenly Lake which is formed in the crater of the mountain. It serves as the water source for the Yalu River. There are also several waterfalls in the mountain range including the Hyongje Falls.
If you plan to travel to Hyesan, the best time of the year will be in September. This is because July and August has rains and October has snow. However, if you intend to view snow and go skiing, the best time to go is from November to March.
Visiting Hyesan is a great experience. Besides the beautiful destinations, the place is rich in history and attractions that can capture your attention.Pittsburgh Steelers center Maurkice Pouncey apologized on Monday after he was photographed last weekend, along with his brother Mike Pouncey of the Miami Dolphins, wearing "Free Hernandez" caps.
"I fully recognize the seriousness of the situation involving my former teammate, and I regret that my actions appear to make light of that serious situation. I apologize to anyone who was offended by my actions," he wrote in a link that was tweeted to his Twitter followers.
Brothers Maurkice and Mike Pouncey wear "Free Hernandez" hats, an apparent gesture of support to former University of Florida teammate Aaron Hernandez. Courtesy Lisa Mion via Instagram
A source told ESPN.com's John Clayton on Sunday that the Steelers had planned to talk to Pouncey about the photos. It is unknown whether that discussion had taken place before Pouncey posted his apology.
Mike Pouncey hasn't yet posted a similar apology. A source close to the center told ESPN.com on Sunday that the Dolphins were expected to discuss the photos with him, however.
The Pouncey brothers, who are twins, reportedly wore the hats on Saturday at a Miami nightclub, where they were celebrating their upcoming birthdays. They both turn 24 on July 24. The photos, which began circulating on the Internet on Sunday, do not appear to be digitally altered.
A Dolphins spokesman told the Miami Herald on Monday that the team had "only recently heard about it" and would not have any further comment on the matter.
The brothers played with former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez at the University of Florida. They were with Hernandez at the Venue nightclub in 2007 on the night of a shooting that left two men wounded. Hernandez was briefly questioned by police after the shooting, but at the time they did not see him as a suspect.
Hernandez is charged with the execution-style murder of 27-year-old semipro football player Odin Lloyd and is being held without bail. He has pleaded not guilty. The Patriots released the tight end last month after he was arrested.
Information from ESPN.com's John Clayton was used in this report.Today, we’re dropping our data prices to $10 per gigabyte beyond the 1 GB Large level.
If you’ve been looking at Ting but the data cost just seemed too high, you should re-do your calculations.
If you’re already a Ting customer, you simply pay less for data, starting with your next full billing cycle. You don’t have to call and threaten to cancel your account in order to get transferred to our retention department for us to extend this new pricing to you. Just as well really, given that we don’t actually have a specific retention department.
Take a look at the rates page to see some changes.
Ting data levels and pricing
Medium : (Up to 500 MB) Was $12 Now $10
: (Up to 500 MB) Large : (Up to 1 GB) Was $19 Now $16
: (Up to 1 GB) XL : (Up to 2 GB) Was $29 Now $20
: (Up to 2 GB) XL+: Was $15/GB Now $10/GB
We shouldn’t have to point this out but because of the industry’s proclivity for hidden fees, bait and switch and otherwise robbing Peter to pay Paul, we do: We’re not charging more for minutes or messages now to compensate. The $6 per phone monthly line cost isn’t going up. Data is simply less expensive overall on Ting.
You might notice that per unit pricing beyond the XL (2 GB) level is by the gig. We decided to conform to this particular industry norm in large part because it’s easier for potential customers to make comparisons with other plans and then decide to come to Ting. That said, we refused to make the change at a cost to current customers. We modeled this new pricing across our entire customer base over several months to be sure that everyone wins and pays less, or at least the same.
Why is this price drop happening now?
Subtext: What took you so long?
When you strip away all the affectations, we’re in the time-tested business of buying wholesale and selling retail. We have wholesale relationships with our carrier partners and we’re always looking to get the best deal we can for our customers.
We have been working with said carrier partners to negotiate better data rates for some time. We were successful and as was always the plan, we’re passing those savings on to our customers, new and old, immediately.
Michael Goldstein, VP of Sales and Marketing for Ting, perhaps says it best in this Ask video.There's been lots of excitement in the blogosphere and beyond over the news that, following the recent furore over the IPCC reports, the United Nations has been forced into yet another embarrassing reinvestigation of its data.
This time it's the turn of the highly influential report called Livestock's Long Shadow, which was published by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in 2006. Its headline conclusion was that global meat production was responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, which was slightly more than all of the world's cars, trains, and planes combined. This astonishing fact has been cited ever since by environmentalists and, in particular, vegetarian advocacy groups as a good reason in itself to reduce meat consumption. I myself have mentioned the report when writing about this subject.
This is how the latest revelation has been reported over the past couple of days:
Boffin rubbishes Paul McCartney lentil-noshing plan - The Register.
Veggies are wrong and eating less meat will NOT save planet The Daily Mail.
Save the planet, eat less meat... right? That's what the UN said, anyway, but one scientist has a grade A beef with that claim - Fox News.
Forget all that indecorous talk of animal flatulence, cow burps, vegetarianism and global warming. Welcome to Cowgate - The Washington Times.
The glee from the usual suspects is palpable, but not exactly surprising. The reinvestigation was triggered by the claims of Frank Mitloehner, the associate professor and cooperative extension specialist – air quality, at the department of animal science at the University of California, Davis. He presented a paper earlier this week at an American Chemical Society meeting in San Francisco arguing that the FAO's comparison with the transport sector was flawed.
The paper, called Clearing the Air: Livestock's Contributions to Climate Change, was first published last October in the journal Advances in Agronomy. In it, Mitloehner argued that while full lifecycle analysis was used to calculate the emissions for the meat sector, this wasn't the case for the transport sector, where only the fossil fuels burned by the vehicles was included, not the emissions resulting from manufacturing the vehicles.
"This lopsided 'analysis' is a classical apples-and-oranges analogy that truly confused the issue," Mitloehner told the meeting.
The BBC's Richard Black has since contacted the FAO's livestock policy officer, Pierre Gerber, and asked him for his reaction.
"I must say honestly that he [Mitloehner] has a point - we factored in everything for meat emissions, and we didn't do the same thing with transport," he told Black. "But on the rest of the report, I don't think it was really challenged."
Fair enough. On this evidence, it certainly seems worth examining this apparent mismatch between the methodologies used to calculate the emissions of each sector. I have no problem with that at all.
What does seem odd, though, is that none of the reports that I have seen so far have thought to mention who funded the original report. Just a cursory check online is all it takes to reveal the source of the funding. After all, it was mentioned in the original press release put out by the university last December:
Clearing the Air is a synthesis of research by the UC Davis authors and many other institutions, including the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, US Environmental Protection Agency, US Department of Agriculture, California Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board. Writing the synthesis was supported by a $26,000 research grant from the Beef Checkoff Program, which funds research and other activities, including promotion and consumer education, through fees on beef producers in the US. Since 2002, Mitloehner has received $5m in research funding, with 5% of the total from agricultural commodities groups, such as beef producers.
Well, that's a rather interesting paragraph, isn't it? It's funny how none of this information made it into those gleeful reports. First, let's learn some more about the Beef Checkoff Program. It appears to be an initiative of the Cattlemen's Beef Board, which, according to its website, "consists of 106 members, including domestic beef, dairy and veal producers, as well as importers of beef and beef products".
The checkoff is a producer-funded marketing and research program designed to increase domestic and/or international demand for beef. This can be done through promotion, research and new product development, and a variety of other marketing tools. The Cattlemen's Beef Board and USDA [US Department of Agriculture] oversee the collection and spending of checkoff funds.
And what about the "$5m in research funding" that Mitloehner has received since 2002? As is right and proper, Mitloehner freely publishes all the details on his website as a pdf document. Here we learn that, over this period, he has received $40,000 from the National Pork Board, as well as sizeable grants from the US Department of Agriculture and something called the Agriculture Air Research Council (AARC), which, according to the Pork Checkoff website, is "an independent, non-profit organisation … formed to oversee and manage the air emissions research. The AARC board of directors has two representatives from each participating livestock sector, including one member from the National Pork Board and one from the National Pork Producers Council."
In other words, Mitloehner's research over the past eight years has been significantly funded by representatives of the US livestock industry and the government department charged with overseeing this multi-billion dollar industry.
Let me make this perfectly clear: I'm not saying that Mitloehner is a bought-off scientist in the pocket of Big Beef. As I said earlier, I actually think his claims are worthy of further investigation and I'm pleased this now appears to be taking place. It's not like he's trying to hide this information – it's just a click away on his website. My beef is that this funding information has not been deemed worthy of inclusion in the reports and blogs that have been so quick to leap on Mitloehner's findings as, in their eyes, further proof that environmentalists are just a bunch of unscientific cranks.
Spin it on its head for one moment: remember how climate sceptics were punching the air over the revelation that the so-called "HimalayaGate" error in the IPPC's fourth assessment report had resulted from a WWF document? For some sceptics, this fact alone immediately invalidated the whole report.
I think everyone agrees that transparency is a worthy goal so maybe in the future all sides of this debate can aim to include information such as this as a basic principle? Just a thought.Ballet is undoubtedly one of the most captivating forms of movement, and group of dancers has proved that pairing the art form with Jason Derulo's music is an unbeatable combination.
A few students from the Chicago Multi-Cultural Dance Center have become internet sensations after a video of them dancing to Derulo's hit song If It Ain’t Love in their pointe shoes has attracted more than more than seven million viewers on Facebook.
Cheryl Taylor, a CMDC school administrator, told BuzzFeed News that many of the dancers in the video have been training with the center since they were three years old.
Modern ballet: Students from the Chicago Multi-Cultural Dance Center have become internet sensations after footage of them dancing to Jason Derulo's hit song If It Ain’t Love was shared on Facebook
Amazing skill: More than seven million Facebook users watched the video of the girls shimmying their shoulders and squatting in their pointe shoes
The dancers, who range in age from 12 to 16, can be seen taking turns moving and shaking across the studio in the viral clip.
The mesmerizing footage was first shared on their dance teacher Homer Hans Bryant's Instagram account on May 13, but just three days later, it was reposted on the Só Bailarinos Facebook page, where it has racked up millions of views.
In the clip, the girls can be seen practicing 'hiplet', Homer's modern dance creation, which merges ballet and street dancing.
Although the girls on their tippy toes the entire time, they are still able to keep their balance as they kick their legs, shimmy their shoulders, and squat impressively low to the ground.
Going viral: The footage was first shared on Instagram by the girls' dance instructor Homer Hans Bryant
Stars: Homer (center) teaches the girls 'hiplet', a combination of ballet and hip hop. He is pictured with professional dancers Alicia Graf Mack (left) and Daisha graf (right) in 2015
And instead of wearing classic pink tutus, Homer's dancers are rocking leggings and dance shorts with their leotards.
In the background, Home can be heard encouraging the girls, telling them to 'get' and 'hit it' as they make their way across the floor.
Homer often posts videos of his students busting a move to modern music in their pointe shoes, so it's unclear why this clip has taken the internet by storm.
However, Cheryl told BuzzFeed News that the girls are thrilled that so many people are happy to watch their choreography.
Words of encouragement: Home can be heard encouraging the girls to 'get' and 'hit it' as they make their way across the floor in the video
Fan club: Thousands of Facebook users commented on the amazing video, which sees the girls move and shake across their dance studio while on the tip of their toes
More than 10,000 people have commented on the video so far, with many praising the students on their incredible strength and grace.
'It made my toes hurt watching this video,' Ruby Sorto wrote. 'Props to these ladies. I couldn't do any of those dances the way they're doing them.'
Courtney Howell added: I would've all the way broke my ankle and knees. This took incredible discipline, strength and heart.
I would be the one holding the phone calling on Jesus to keep everybody's ankle intact with oil in my other |
using this crackable SRK key.
In other words: After upgrading firmware you need to re-take ownership of the TPM, which will regenerate the SRK.
Example use:
$ g++ -o check-srk -std=gnu++11 check-srk.cc -ltspi -lssl -lcrypto 2>&1 &&./check-srk Size: 2048 Outputting modulus… 8490234823904890234823904823904890238490238490238490238490[…]893428490823904231 -------------- THE KEY IS WEAK!
(use -s if you have an SRK PIN)
Thanks to marcan for a much better checking script than the one provided by original authors.
For more info about the Infineon disaster see this relevant paper.We published our Unconscious bias 2016 report (1.52 MB) in August 2016. It included an overview of steps currently taken to minimise the risk of unconscious bias in the admissions process for higher education. It also assessed the potential for implementing a ‘name-blind application’ process at either a central (UCAS) or local (individual provider) level.
Today (Friday 17 November 2017) we publish a progress report on the recommendations Minimising the risks of unconscious bias in university admissions: 2017 update on progress (1.01 MB).
Six English universities volunteered to run pilot projects to test a ‘name-blind application’ process in the 2017 entry cycle. None of the six projects produced conclusive evidence that masking applicants’ names led to significantly different admissions outcomes. In two of the projects, the universities found that masking applicants’ names appeared instead to have a negative impact on initial admissions outcomes.
More than 110 higher education providers engaged with resources produced to help those working in admissions recognise and tackle the risks of unconscious bias. The Higher Education Liaison Officers Association (HELOA) is now considering how to take this work forward, and we will be supporting them in a range of ways.
UCAS continues to publish equalities data on behalf of the higher education sector to show differences in applications, offers and acceptances by sex, ethnicity and area-based background measures. This is a key part of our work to raise awareness of the differences in entry rates between different types of student groups and trends.
Helen Thorne, External Relations Director, for UCAS said: ‘Universities and colleges are committed to ensuring that admissions processes are fair and transparent for all students, and employ a range of robust strategies and policies to achieve this. Minimising the risks of unconscious bias is an important part of this, and it’s encouraging that over 110 universities have used training and good practice resources in the last year.
‘The name-blind pilot projects have made a valuable contribution to understanding what works and what doesn’t in supporting fair admissions. The lessons learned should help universities and colleges to shape and inform good practice for the future.’
For more information contact Felicity Cowie, Head of Media and Corporate Communications, [email protected], 01242 545 469.What I’m about to suggest in this column is something I’m not sure I have the moral fortitude to actually carry out in my own adult life. But before I share this perhaps painfully naive idea, I’d like to tell you a story from my childhood.
Riding the bus one afternoon, a girl in another grade began loudly complaining about our health class teacher. This teacher was the only other Jewish person in our rural Upstate New York school besides me, and pretty soon, the insults about the instructor turned anti-Semitic. I decided to toy with the girl a bit, so I played along and volleyed some anti-Semitic epithets of my own. The drama culminated in a dramatic reveal: as my stop approached, I dramatically informed her that the name Horowitz (my maiden name) is Jewish, and so was I.
Over the years, as children are particularly good at doing, I forgave the girl and we became friends. Even now, we are still friends, even though we’ve never discussed what we said that day on the bus after school. We never felt the need. She got to know me as a human being, not just a Jewish person, and whatever hatred she had been taught by someone in her family melted away, because she saw that Jewish people aren’t the evil subhumans she was led to believe.
I was reminded of this story reading the incredible tales of three individuals who have one thing in common: They have, single handedly, convinced individuals committed to a life of hatred to turn away from that hate. Through the power of listening, and treating these people with their heinous views as humans first and foremost, they were able to alter the destinies of those they encountered.
Daryl Davis is a jack-of-all trades; a musician, actor, author and a lecturer. But a documentary profiling Davis focused on not his jobs; rather, it told of Davis’s unusual hobby: meeting and befriending white supremacists.
Davis is African American, and his MO is this: He meets with white supremacists from around the country and asks them one question: “How can you hate me if you don’t even know me?”
In other words, he starts by listening. “Give that person a platform; let them air their views, and they will reciprocate,” he explains.
It’s a novel idea in this age of the Donald Trump administration to listen to anyone we disagree with – especially so with white supremacists. But with his technique, Davis has achieved the impossible. He has convinced two hundred members of the KKK and other white supremacist groups to renounce their views.
Another incredible mind-changer is David Abitbol of the blog “Jewlicious.” The target of his patient attentions was Megan Phelps-Roper, a member of the Westboro Baptist Church. Unlike any other Church in America, the members of Westboro spend their time traveling to funerals and other major gatherings, picketing with inflammatory signs about how God hates pretty much everyone. The list of God’s unchosen includes Jews, gays, veterans, Muslims, baby killers, etc, etc.
In order to further her mission as a member of the Church, Phelps-Roper joined Twitter, where she easily found many of her sworn enemies. As she explained in an interview, “One of the first things I did on Twitter was attack this Jewish man, David Abitbol, who ran a blog called Jewlicious.”
Initially, Abitbol responded to Phelps-Roper with sarcasm and hostility, but he soon changed tactics. “Instead of mocking me — although he still did some of that too — he was asking questions about our picket signs and I started asking him questions about Jewish theology because I wanted to know how to better counter it,” she explained.
The power of discourse, questioning, and true curiosity on both sides got the better of her. Their year-long exchanges led to Phelps-Roper leaving Westboro, and not just Phelps-Roper; she took most of her family with her.
All this was the result of Abitbol taking the time to engage Phelps-Roper as a human being.
The subject of our third remarkable story is Derek Black, the scion of famous white supremacists. His father, Don Black, was the brains behind Stormfront, the Internet’s first and biggest white nationalist site with 300,000 users. His mother, Chloe, had been married to David Duke, who was Derek’s godfather. “They had raised Derek at the forefront of the movement, and some white nationalists had begun calling him ‘the heir’,” the Washington Post reports,
Black was outed on his college campus as an anti-Semite. But one of his classmates, Matthew Stevenson, the only Orthodox Jew on campus, decided to invite Black to a Shabbat meal.
“It was the only social invitation Derek had received since returning to campus, so he agreed to go,” writes the Washington Post. Stevenson told the other guests, “Let’s try to treat him like anyone else.”
Pretty soon, Black became a regular at these Shabbat meals. And eventually, Black, like Phelps-Roper and the two hundred men (and women) Davis befriended, renounced the ideas that had once filled him with such hatred.
I am not made of the same fiber of Davis, Abitbol or Stevenson. I spent the entire Republican primary being attacked by white nationalists and landed myself on a top ten list compiled by the ADL of Jewish journalists targeted by them. Unlike these three remarkable human beings, I did not engage with any of these individuals as human beings once. But maybe I should have, and maybe I should in the future. Because hating people for being hateful obviously isn’t getting us anywhere.
Someone once tweeted, “There is not a single good person who voted for Trump. Not one.” To which Federalist writer Tom Nichols responded, “This is a recipe for a second Trump term.”
This is a recipe for a second Trump term. https://t.co/Ocy7rTdMJi— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) June 18, 2017
Phelps-Roper agreed, and retweeted it.
It’s time to admit that even in the wake of Charlottesville – especially in the wake of Charlottesville – the only way we’re going to get our country back is to change minds. This might mean we need to start befriending nazis.
Bethany Mandel is a Forward columnist. Follow her on Twitter, @bethanyshondark.
This story "We Need To Start Befriending Neo Nazis" was written by Bethany Mandel.Earlier this year, the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres hit the ice sporting a little more color than usual. Their signature blue and gold uniforms were well represented, of course, but their sticks (and the sticks of their opponents) now had dashes of orange, yellow, green, purple, and red courtesy of rainbow-colored tape. The message was simple (and displayed on the Jumbotron and hashtagged on social media): You Can Play. The “You” in this instance meant all members of the LGBTQ community, as indicated by the signature rainbow flag nods. The event is just one example of how the National Hockey League has become one of the most progressive professional sports leagues; its focus is not as much on selling its stars as forward-thinking (though that is part of it), but on making the hockey rink a place that’s as warm and inclusive as the ice is cold and hard.
And to think, one of the driving forces behind it all was a gruff old hockey lifer who carried around the word “truculence” like a badge of honor.
Brian Burke’s signature porcupine-like white hair and no-nonsense scowl has been an institution in the NHL for decades. The current President of Hockey Operations for the Calgary Flames, Burke has coached U.S. Men’s Olympic teams and held executive positions for the likes of the Hartford Whalers, Vancouver Canucks, Anaheim Ducks, and Toronto Maple Leafs. In 2009, Burke’s youngest son, Brendan, publically came out as homosexual, a move that earned him the immediate respect and support of his University of Miami teammates as well as his high-profile dad. Less than a year later, Brendan died tragically in a car crash. Brian and Brendan’s older brother, Patrick, formed the You Can Play campaign as a way of honoring Brendan’s bravery.
“Patrick and his father are both members of the NHL family, and they brought the initiative to the league,” says NHL Vice President, Special Projects & Corporate Social Responsibility Jessica Berman. “The idea was to promote inclusion, especially to combat homophobia in sports.”
The You Can Play campaign kicked off in 2012, and became part of other efforts to reach out to inner city youth, young girls, and the handicapped under the NHL’s broader Hockey Is For Everyone banner. But this year, the league has promised to take it, in Berman’s words, “to a new level,” working with individual teams to ensure this goes beyond window-dressing and becomes an ongoing part of the game’s culture. “Even though the teams all do inclusion efforts year-round, we asked them to focus on the month of February so we could have it all be more prominent and concentrated.” This included having each team name an LGBTQ ambassador—and the list ran the gamut from noted tough guys such as Montreal Canadiens’ Andrew Shaw and Ottawa Senators’ Dion Phaneuf to representatives of the game’s global reach such as Carolina Hurricanes’ Swedish-born goaltender Eddie Läck and the New York Rangers’ Norwegian forward Mats Zuccarello. In an interview with ESPN, Boston Bruins’ ambassador Brad Marchand stated unequivocally that “guys would accept [a gay teammate], no question. We’re a team in the [dressing] room and a family. It doesn’t matter what different beliefs guys have, or where they come from, or whatever the case may be. Guys would accept it.” Meanwhile, the NHL’s sister league, the NWHL, recently welcomed with full support its first transgender player, the Buffalo Beauts’ Harrison Browne, who identifies as male.
In addition, the teams sponsor free hockey clinics (open to all) and invite diverse groups to come and see games. “I’ve been the most pleased with the breadth of engagement,” says Berman. “Teams doing specific outreach, in terms of the LGBTQ community as well as race and gender, but also initiatives around national origin and newcomers, meaning immigrants. It’s great to see how much our teams have opened their arms to bring in more diverse groups.”
Teams such as the New Jersey Devils have been experimenting with more outside-the-box projects as well, such as screening the documentary Soul On Ice: Past, Present, & Future on their Jumbotron following an early February matinee game against San Jose. The film tells the story of the struggle of black hockey players, and Willie O’Ree—the man who broke the NHL’s color barrier in 1958—was in attendance to promote the film. Somewhat serendipitously, Wayne Simmonds of the nearby Philadelphia Flyers had just finished celebrating being named MVP of the All-Star Game a few days earlier.
The program is not without its flaws, of course. Relying on individual teams to spearhead diversity initiatives did reveal some blind spots, as SB Nation Outsports writer Rafael McDonnell pointed out. McDonnell put the Dallas Stars on blast for its weak and cursory attempts to honor the month-long activation. “I’m not angry at the Stars for not making a bigger deal about their ‘Hockey Is For Everyone’ night,” writes McDonnell. “The team is within its rights to market events as it sees fit. But this feels like a missed opportunity to build a bridge between sports & the broader Texas LGBTQ community.”
Still, hockey is rapidly becoming a game without borders, which is not surprising seeing as your average NHL roster literally globetrots from Arizona to Jesenice, Slovenia. Back in 2008, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)—which is home to the iconic Hockey Night in Canada—approached a young reporter with broadcaster dreams named Harnarayan Singh about starting up a Punjabi telecast. Hockey Night Punjabi not only allowed the game to reach those who spoke the third-most-spoken language in Canada (behind English and French), it allowed Singh and his fellow broadcasters to drastically change the visual landscape of hockey TV. Fans unused to seeing turbans in between periods were won over by the team’s energy and the broadcasts’ often made-up slang (as Singh explains in a piece written for Players Tribune, it’s often difficult to directly translate typical hockey terms such as “slap shot” into Punjabi). Singh solidified his icon status in 2016, when his “BONINO BONINO BONINO NICK BONINOOOOO!” goal call become the #1 highlight from the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Stanley Cup run.
Meanwhile, the month of February also saw Fatima Al Ali, a 27-year-old woman from the United Arab Emirates and avowed hockey fanatic, accept an invitation to come and skate with her favorite team, the Washington Capitals. The image of a woman in a hijab jostling on the ice with Russian star Alex Ovechkin and American T.J. Oshie was as indelible as the selfie Ali took later that night when she dropped the puck on a ceremonial faceoff between Ovechkin and the Detroit Red Wings’ Henrik Zetterberg.
“Capitals alumnus Peter Bondra met Fatima while he was in Abu Dhabi hosting a youth hockey clinic at the Pavlikovsky Hockey School,” explains Jim Van Stone, President of Business Operations for Monumental Sports & Entertainment, which helped facilitate Al Ali’s visit. “Fatima was at the same rink and he noticed her stickhandling. He struck up a conversation and recorded her practicing with the puck. He posted the video of her on Twitter, and it went viral, coming to the attention of thousands of hockey fans and the Capitals organization.”
Bondra extended an open invitation to Al Ali to come and visit the Capitals, and the fact that schedules managed to synchronize during the month of February was a bit of serendipity—but it reinforces the league’s and the individual teams’ commitments to growing the game all year long. “There is much potential across the globe to introduce or further develop access the game,” says Van Stone. “And we’re always looking for ways to support programming that offers access to hockey on all levels, whether locally, nationally or internationally.”
In the end, this is the lesson other leagues could perhaps learn from the NHL. Because the push started from such a personal place within the Burke family and grew from there, the focus is on culture rather than sound bites. It’s less about familiar star faces in PSAs and more about making the hockey arena a place where everyone can come and feel included, regardless of race, gender, or sexual identity.
“These are all part of our attempts to rebrand ‘Hockey Is For Everyone,’ and to own that message of support. To create an inclusive environment,” says Berman. “It has been amazing, and really great to watch. From local engagement, from fans and social media—they’ve all embraced the initiative. From that, it will grow.”MANILA - BDO Unibank, the country's largest lender, said Friday it received reports of alleged ATM fraud and urged depositors who think they were affected to have their cases investigated by the bank.
Social media posts circulated this week purportedly showed how some depositors lost money due to "skimming" or copying of account details through hijacked ATM machines.
"BDO has obtained reports of potentially compromised ATM following reported losses from cardholders," the bank said in a statement.
"Customers with unauthorized transactions may reach out to the bank via formal channels so that their cases may be properly investigated and, where confirmed as impacted, may be reimbursed," it said.
In a separate statement, BDO President Nestor Tan said the incident is "nothing out of the ordinary."
"ATMs are compromised every now and then, and banks take the precautionary measure of disabling cards if we have reason to believe they may have been compromised," the statement read.
Tan said the incident will be addressed with Europay MasterCard Visa implementation.
"This is a security protocol, moving cards from magnetic stripes to chips, which will make them secure. It is just a matter of time until the industry completes the implementation," he said.
The bank owned by the country's richest man, Henry Sy, said "all efforts" were being made to keep accounts safe.
The ATM fraud reports came a week after Bank of the Philippine Islands' electronic services were paralyzed for 2 days due to what it said was an "internal" glitch.While we still don’t have an exact date on the opening of the newly re-done Planet Hollywood Observatory at Disney Springs, more details about the expected menu have surfaced and they sound pretty fabulous!
Some more indulgent options will include L.A. Lasagna, a fried take on the classic comfort food with Bolognese sauce, roasted garlic cream and tomato basil sauce. Guy Fieri’s new Big Bite Burgers or Knuckle Sandwiches – the Bacon Mac-N-Cheese pictured above with his signature Donkey Sauce on a garlic-buttered brioche bun is sure to be a hit; I mean, there’s mac and cheese on the burger! Wow!
You can also have the Lobster Feast Fra Diavolo with kicky spaghetti piled high in a whole lobster shell or a 10-ounce bone-in New York Strip Steak for two (you’ll even have the option to add a whole steamed lobster).
If you can’t decide, try a bit of everything with the High Roller Platter, a generous serving of guest favorites: Chicken Crunch, Texas Tostados, Buffalo Wings, Cheesy Spinach Dip and Peri-Peri Shrimp – perfect for sharing.
Lighter options include salads like Citrus Kale with julienned broccoli, slivered brussels sprouts and cabbage, feta, grapefruit, oranges, cranberries and sunflower seeds with citrus-agave dressing. The Spinach & Berries salad will feature candied walnuts, blue cheese crumbles and balsamic vinaigrette.
Be sure to save room for dessert as the dessert menu alone is said to be worth the trip!
Gigantic, loaded milkshakes are making a return to the menu with new Chocolate Comet or Strawberry Borealis added. These are sure to please even the biggest sweet tooth!
You can also do a blind tasting of 12 flavors of house-made ice creams and sorbets, or try the Planet Melt Down, a chocolate hardshell dome that’s melted tableside with hot chocolate sauce to reveal double chocolate fudge cake, fresh strawberries and whipped cream. I’ve seen something similar served at a local restaurant and it’s quite the showy dessert – delicious too!
I’m looking forward to Planet Hollywood Observatory re-opening soon! Which menu item are you most excited to try?
Source: Disney Parks BlogTrue to its theme, Mr. Robot has established itself as a disruptive cable television show that redefines the hacking thriller genre. The show has multiplied USA Network traffic by a factor of 4X since the title's release, according to SimilarWeb, Found Remote's weekly data partner.
Particularly revealing is a monthly comparison with HBO stats since May of 2015. While HBO attracted nearly 8 times as many visits in May, the industry leader waned over the summer while USA Network delivered crushing results. By the end of July, USA had narrowed the gap. The two networks now appear to be neck-in-neck in the battle for viewership.
Is Mr. Robot USA's Clickbuster?
Could a single media property really have such a dramatic impact? A closer look at the search data clearly shows USA's most significant traffic source accounts for nearly 50% of the network's traffic.
Of 4,696 search terms that drove traffic to usanetwork.com, over 966 (over 20%) are directly attributed to Mr. Robot. Together, these terms accounted for 36.8% of the site's search engine traffic share. The top term "mr robot" alone accounted for 19.08% of search traffic – more than even the branded term "usa network", which drove 13.2% of the site's search traffic segment. Also interesting is the network's focus on Mr. Robot in paid search advertising. Approximately 10% of search traffic on combinations of the show's title was generated as a result of paid campaigns.
Three Months. 2.4 Million Visits. 6.4 Million Viewers.
An analysis of USA network's leading folders paints an even more dramatic picture. Mr. Robot drove a whopping 52.11% of USA's traffic share over a 3 month period. Echoing the search data, interest in the network's newest release destination URL usanetwork.com/mrrobot received the lion's traffic share with 29.85%.
Assuming traffic sent correlates closely to actual traffic share, a conservative analysis would conclude that when compared with search, other traffic sources combined sent at least as many visits (though probably more) to URLs associated with Mr. Robot.
In a data-driven programming marketplace dominated by Netflix, traditional cable networks must leverage digital technologies to compete successfully. Looking both at subject matter and promotional strategies, USA Networks has done a remarkable job keeping up with viewer tastes and digital habits. The marketing plan followed a guerilla campaign screened at SXSW and streamed on Twitch with a dedicated promotional site whoismrrobot.com, which attracted 850,000 visits from May to July 2015. The Pre-linear release for on-demand viewers was made available May 27th. By the official release date on June 24th, 2.7 million viewers had already checked it out, and 3.7 million more tuned in for the on-air telecast.
About Ohad Flinker: As the Inbound Content Editor at SimilarWeb, Ohad covers emerging digital trends and data-driven insights. When he's not too busy creating or sourcing the latest and greatest content shaping the digital measurement space, he enjoys mixed martial arts training, community-generated art festivals in the desert, and of course being a dad. His name is pronounced like "Oh g-d" with an H.
You can access the Found Remote hub here.Sign up to receive The Drum's Found Remote newsletter.One of the rare prospects with a massive frame in the system, Jarred Tinordi displayed his dominant size during his 22-game stint with the Canadiens this year. It was originally thought that the young blueliner was likely to win a spot during training camp, however he was returned to Hamilton due to the signing of veteran Douglas Murray.
Slow development is par for the course when discussing defencemen, especially hulking players like Tinordi. During his late season call-up, Tinordi was given relatively easy minutes by coach Therrien, although he did quite well during those cushy shifts, which led to some pretty interesting WOWY numbers. Unlike the majority of large defenders, Tinordi displays some smooth skating for his size, combined with relatively decent puck skills. He clearly doesn't have silky-smooth hands, but he's not a disaster with the puck either.
Whilst in Hamilton, Tinordi was given first pairing minutes alongside Greg Pateryn, along with a heavy penalty-kill workload, which translated quite well into NHL-level penalty killing when called upon.
Votes
More than half of the voters placed Tinordi in the #4 spot, with Luke being the only vote that put him outside the top 10. Andrew tempered his expectations, given that Tinord has little to no professional offensive potential, yet the vast majority of voters saw him in the #4 - #6 range. Tinordi clocked in at #7 in last year's Top 25 Under 25, meaning he's found his way into the top five for the first time in this project. Of course, the graduation of players like PK Subban, Max Pacioretty & Lars Eller helped him jump in the rankings.
Strengths
Photo credit: Bruce Bennett
The first thing that comes to mind when talking about the 6'6" defender is that he's about a foot taller than the team average. Well, not quite, but you see where I am going with this. Size is an asset in the NHL, but only if the player with size can combine his frame with some reasonable hockey skills.
Thankfully for the Habs, Tinordi does just that. He possess decent speed, due to his long strides. His mobility is actually quite impressive for a big man. This allows him to deny speedy forwards that would otherwise out-skate their larger opponents. His defensive acumen is top notch, as he uses his strength to defend the crease ferociously.
Another key element to his game is Tinordi's ability to create a rush with the puck. This isn't a nightly occurrence, but given the chance he can do a fantastic job of moving the puck up the ice quickly.
Despite his size advantage, Tinordi doesn't suffer from the same discipline issues that usually plague big men. The bulk of his penalty minutes were accumulated in fights, rendering his PIM totals quite low in terms of minors. Speaking of his fighting, for a rookie Tinordi has displayed some heavy hands. He concussed Tim Gleason in the pre-season, and went on to win his four regular season bouts, facing Kyle Clifford, Raffi Torres, Carter Ashton and Eric Gryba.
Tinordi isn't a goon, and his talents would be wasted if he was given that role, however it's safe to assume that like his father Mark, Jarred can punish his opponents when put in a fight situation.
Weaknesses
The main element missing to a complete game in Tinordi's case is clearly his lack of offensive awareness. He's a defensive defender at heart, and doesn't control the game with the puck like P.K. Subban or Nathan Beaulieu are capable of doing.
I spoke briefly about his breakout ability, but if we're being honest we shouldn't expect to see that happen very often. During his games with the Canadiens we saw little to no offensive breakouts. Rather, we were treated to a few glaring giveaways that resulted in goals against. This was likely due to nerves and the looming risk of being benched for a simple error, which happens to be coach Michel Therrien's modus operandi.
Projection
Even though the Habs hold a size deficit compared to most NHL teams, Tinordi's spot in the roster for the upcoming season is definitely not guaranteed. He'll have to fight with other hungry rookies in camp, most notably Nathan Beaulieu.
As it stands, the Canadiens have one spot left in their defensive pairings, which means that either he or Beaulieu face a return to Hamilton to continue their progression. Given that Beaulieu seemed to be the preferred player in last year's playoffs, the odds are that Tinordi will be playing the a large chunk of the 2014-15 season with the Bulldogs. This isn't particularly bad for his development, as he's shown on occasion that he's not quite ready for the speed of NHL play.
Ideally, Tinordi projects to be a solid second-pairing player, with the ability to absorb a large amount of penalty-kill duties. His above-average skating for a man his size gives him the inside edge on his competition, and that should bode well for his place within the Canadiens organization in the future.
Follow @Dr_HabsPetr Cech set to join Arsenal from Chelsea by the weekend
Petr Cech: Goalkeeper closing on move to Arsenal
Petr Cech's move from Chelsea to Arsenal could be completed before this weekend, according to Sky sources.
A transfer fee for the Czech Republic international goalkeeper is expected to be agreed by the two Premier League clubs in the next 48 hours.
It is understood that Cech has already agreed personal terms with Arsenal, but no deal has yet been done as the Gunners continue to negotiate terms with Chelsea.
The transfer will be a cash only deal, with Chelsea's request to receive a home-grown player as part of the proposed transfer no longer being considered.
Cech is said to be grateful to Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich for allowing him to move to whatever club he chooses, even though that is now set to be London rivals Arsenal.
The 33-year-old has one year left on his contract at Stamford Bridge but has been searching for a new employer after spending much of last season as second choice 'keeper behind Thibaut Courtois.
Petr Cech: Was part of Chelsea's title winning squad last season
Chelsea captain John Terry said on Monday that he believes Arsenal will be buying an extra 12-15 points a season if they complete a deal for Cech.
He told radio station Talksport: "There is obviously talk of Arsenal signing Petr and if they do get Pete, that will strengthen them for sure. He will save them 12 to 15 points a season.
"I am sure if he does leave the club, which nobody wants to see, but we understand he wants to play football, he is going to be sorely missed. He will improve whatever side he goes to."Mark Sanchez took the high road last season when it came to all Tim Tebow-related matters, but the fifth-year quarterback recently intimated that the Jets were as responsible as anyone for all the Tebow hype.
"I just don't know if it was the best situation for either of us, but you play with the cards you are dealt with and do the very best you can," Sanchez said of the coverage surrounding Tebow on Fox Sports Radio's Petros and Money show this week. said of the Tebow media coverage on Fox Sports Radio this week.
"Well, I think part of that, too, is ESPN didn't necessarily sneak in overnight at our training camp," Sanchez added about the daily on-site coverage by the cable outlet in Cortland, NY, last year. "They had to get permission to go. You can avoid that stuff on your own if you like, in my opinion, but he's a popular guy and people gravitate towards the guy. He's a special person and a heck of a competitor, so people want to know what's going on, but that's all I got on that."
Sanchez said he has a good working relationship with Tebow.
"It's cool. We're good," Sanchez said. "He's a nice guy. He works hard and that's good. It's honestly, after the shock of the whole thing, was something you were going to have to deal with. I'm dealing with it the best way I can and trying to stay positive about the whole thing, and I think it's not on my mind. I'm concerned right now with learning a new system and being the best quarterback I can be, and hopefully that helps the team."
Although Tebow is still on the roster, sources told the Daily News earlier this week that the Jets are still trying to trade him. Tebow is expected to be released at some point after the draft if he isn't dealt. He's not expected to be a part of the quarterback competition with Sanchez and veteran David Garrard in training camp.
Sanchez stood behind Rex Ryan, who entered the 2013 season on the hot seat for the first time with the Jets.
"I think we enjoy playing for Rex," Sanchez said. "We know he's a great motivator, and he's passionate about what he does, and we've seen him be successful. We've seen him put this team in a good position and a successful position."
"I am confident in Rex," Sanchez added. "I know he's going to get the best out of our team. I know Mr. John Idzik is going to make the right decisions come this draft and try and help this ball club, so I'm really positive and optimistic about the direction we're heading. And it's up to us to eliminate outside distractions, whether it's about Tebow in the media or just anyone on the outside or anybody's expectations and really just focusing on us and really trying to get the best of each other. That's really what it's about."
http://twitter.com/MMehtaNYDNWBO heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder and Olympic gold medal winner Alexander Povetkin battled in court on Tuesday, at a trial over a title bout that was called off after the Russian tested positive for a banned substance.
The boxers sat on opposing sides of a Manhattan federal courtroom as jurors heard their attorneys give opening statements in a trial focussed on whether Povetkin ingested meldonium after a World Anti-Doping Agency ban of the drug went into effect in January 2016.
That question has become key to duelling lawsuits the boxers have filed against each other over their scheduled fight for May 21, 2016 in Moscow, which was called off after Povetkin tested positive on April 27 for meldonium.
Judd Burstein, a lawyer for Wilder and promoter Lou DiBella, told jurors that positive urine test came after three negative ones earlier in April, which meant that Povetkin took the drug after passing the earlier tests.
"The only rational explanation for what transpired here is that Mr. Povetkin took meldonium in 2016," he said.
But Kent Yalowitz, a lawyer for Povetkin and promoter Andrei Ryabinskiy's company, said the Russian boxer had, like many other athletes, taken meldonium at a doctor's direction before the World Anti-Doping Agency had even announced plans to ban it.
"The evidence will show that meldonium can stay in the body for many months," he said.
The lawsuits came after the World Boxing Council announced on May 13 that Povetkin had tested positive for meldonium and subsequently announced the postponement of his bout with champion Wilder.
In June 2016, Wilder and DiBella sued Povetkin and Ryabinskiy's World of Boxing LLC, saying they were owed at least $5 million for the defendants' breach of a contract requiring Povetkin to be produced for the match.
Povetkin and World of Boxing soon after countersued, seeking $34.5 million for what they said was Wilder's own breach of contract for walking away from the fight and defamation for engaging in a "smear campaign."
The World Boxing Council in August announced that based on scientific and medical information it received, it was not possible to determine whether Povetkin ingested meldonium after Jan. 1, 2016, when it was officially banned.
In December, a bout between Povetkin and Bermane Stiverne was called off after the Russian tested positive for a different banned substance, ostarine.President-elect Donald Trump chose Michael Flynn, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, to fill the role of assistant to the president for national security affairs. Flynn accepted the position Friday.
My transition team, which is working long hours and doing a fantastic job, will be seeing many great candidates today. #MAGA — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 17, 2016
“I am pleased that Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn will be by my side as we work to defeat radical Islamic terrorism, navigate geopolitical challenges, and keep Americans safe at home and abroad,” Trump said in a statement Friday. “Gen. Flynn is one of the country’s foremost experts on military and intelligence matters and he will be an invaluable asset to me and my administration.”
“@GenFlynn will be by my side as we work to defeat radical Islamic terrorism.”
—@realDonaldTrump
Flynn, a registered Democrat, has had a career of more than 35 years in service to the United States. He served several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, for a total of almost five years in combat, and was a senior military intelligence officer in the Department of Defense.
“I am deeply humbled and honored to accept the position as national security adviser to serve both our country and our nation’s next president, Donald J. Trump,” Flynn said in a statement on Friday.
Flynn, 57, retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014. He served as the director of the agency from 2012-2014.
He is said to have been successful at hunting down terrorists, knows the intelligence community very well, and is a cyber expert.
“[Flynn] served as the director of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the U |
uru.com. I tried out several brands of 50-foot-plus HDMI cables, including Monoprice, Monster, and Straight Wire, and got some interesting results.
Now playing: Watch this: Three ways to wrap your cables
The cable lies
In the home, there are only four basic types of HDMI cables:
High-speed (also called Category 2)
High-speed (also called Category 2) with Ethernet
Standard-speed (Category 1)
Standard-speed (Category 1) with Ethernet
That's it. Standard-speed cables are rated to carry up to 1080i. Many standard-speed cables can probably handle 1080p, they're just not rated for it.
High-speed cables can do well beyond 1080p (up to 4K, so you don't need "4K HDMI cables"), including 3D. Check out my article on how 3D content works for more info on that.
Honestly, though, if you're buying the right kind of cables (i.e. as cheap as possible), there won't be enough of a price difference to justify not buying a High Speed cable. Any high-speed cable should work with 3D and Audio Return Channel (ARC).
When cable manufacturers claim their cables are "Made for 240 Hz" they are lying to you. The conversion to 120 or 240 Hz is done inside the TV. There is no such thing as a 120 Hz or 240 Hz signal. Blu-ray content is 1080p/24, though your player likely converts this to 1080p/60. This is the highest-bandwidth, non-computer source you can have, and even it is only 60 Hz (check out 1080i and 1080p are the same resolution and What is refresh rate? for more info).
More expensive cables can be more rugged, with thicker casings, a beefy connector, and higher potential durability. If and how much more this is worth is up to you. Personally I find the bulky plugs of many "high-end" HDMI cables to be a nuisance, either falling out, or pulling on the connector in such a way that could potentially pose problems in the long run.
Bottom line
OK, so not all HDMI cables are literally the same. Different manufacturing quality can have a slight affect on the ability to transmit the signal over long distances (50+ feet). Better made cables may even last longer. "Better made" doesn't have to mean more expensive.
No matter what, though, there is absolutely no picture or sound quality difference between a $3.50 cable and a $1,000 cable.
Most of you reading this only need a few feet of HDMI cabling to run from your Blu-ray player and cable/satellite box to your TV. Over these short distances, even the cheapest HDMI cables are going to work. And if they work, as you've read, it means you're getting perfect image and sound. Even over long runs, most cheap cables can do the job just fine. Don't let a salesman try to up-sell you on $300 HDMI cables as the "only way to make your new 240 Hz TV work." Politely tell him he is incorrect and to move on with the sale.
In the year and a half since we first published this article, the most common misunderstanding comes from those used to an analog cable mentality. They understand that over any cable, there is a high likelihood of signal degradation. As in, the signal received by the television isn't as strong or exactly the same as what leaves the source.
However, unlike analog cables, there is no linear correlation between signal degradation and picture degradation. The picture will be perfect up to the point where there's not enough signal to create the image. At that point, you'll have nothing. No picture at all. In the occasional situation where you get sparkles (as mentioned above), this is proof of that the system works (but the cable doesn't). You can't change what the pixel is. It can only be exactly the right pixel as sent by the source, or no pixel at all.
So my original conclusion is still apt: If you're paying more than $5 for a 2-meter HDMI cable, you're overpaying.
Continue on to Why all HDMI cables are the same, part 2, Still more reasons why all HDMI cable are the same, the HDMI Cable Buying Guide, and 4K HDMI Cables are nonsense (yeah, there's a lot to cover).
You don't have to take my word for it:
HDMI.org
EETimes.com, "HDMI: The digital display link"
HowStuffWorks, "How HDMI works"
Wikipedia HDMI entry
Wikipedia TMDS entry
Wikipedia 8b/10b encoding entry
HDGuru.com, "All HDMI cables are the same! Or are they -- full test"
Got a question for Geoff? First, check out all the other articles he's written on topics like LED LCD vs. plasma, Active vs Passive 3D, and more. Still have a question? Send him an e-mail! He won't tell you which TV to buy, but he might use your letter in a future article. You can also send him a message on Twitter @TechWriterGeoff or Google+.Photo: Dane Schubert
Earlier today it was announced that superstar high school miler Mary Cain will miss the World Indoor Championships due to a small injury. Heather Kampf will take her spot.
I felt some disappointment hearing this. Cain is a big-time crowd favorite in no small part because she gives us an unusual combination: a great champion who is also an underdog. Had she run at the Worlds, she likely would have been in the mix for a medal–gold was a long shot but possible–but she’s still just 17 years old.
And think about this: Cain is a serious student, still in high school, and would have missed more than a week of class to go to Poland for the Worlds. AP exams are just two months away. Missing out on this trip, while obviously disappointing to Cain, may not have been all bad from her perspective.
Links
Kevin Sully previewed the Worlds with his Monday Morning Run.
I recapped the weekend’s college conference championship action and picked my Three Stars and Team Players.
News
Runner’s World’s Morning Report recaps the weekend’s action.
Cain’s withdrawal headlines Ken Goe’s daily Oregon track & field rundown, plus the morning’s news links.
USA Track and Field announced its teams for the IAAF World Half Marathon Championships, four men and four women. Club affiliation is not mentioned in the release, but virtually all are members of a pro/semi-pro running club.
More from USA Track and Field
Provisional World Indoor Championships entry lists have been released by the IAAF.
More from the IAAF
Jon Gugala’s story on Heather Kampf and her surprise spot on the team for the World Indoors.
More from Competitor.com
“We all know Usain Bolt is one of the fastest people on Earth. Now, students have shown his superhuman speeds would actually allow him to fly like a bird on one of Saturn’s moons while wearing a wingsuit.” OK, then.
More from ITV
The EAA rounds up the weekend’s European cross country action.
More from the EAA
Bruny Surin, Canada’s two-time world indoor champion, provides “a champion’s guide to the 60 meters”.
More from Spikes Mag
Scott Bush catches up with Amy Van Alstine, the surprise USA cross country champion.
More from RunnerSpace
Updates to the pro fields at the Boston Marathon: Ryan Hall and Abdi Abdirahman in, Moses Mosop and Dathan Ritzenhein out with injury.
More from Boston Marathon
WBZ-Boston profiles Desi (Davila) Linden on her preparations for the Boston Marathon, her first trip back to that race since nearly winning in 2011.
More from CBS Boston
High school runner sprints to finish, legs buckle, falls, crawls to finish. Becomes 8th fastest high school miler in US history in the process.
More from Dyestat
Video of the day
On Saturday, Croatia’s Sandra Perkovic put up the longest discus throw since the Soviet Union broke up. You can brush up on your Serbo-Croatian, too.
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Regarding the above, here are the 50 longest throws since 1993.For example, the Koran says martyrs going to heaven will get ''hur,'' and the word was taken by early commentators to mean ''virgins,'' hence those 72 consorts. But in Aramaic, hur meant ''white'' and was commonly used to mean ''white grapes.''
Some martyrs arriving in paradise may regard a bunch of grapes as a letdown. But the scholar who pioneered this pathbreaking research, using the pseudonym Christoph Luxenberg for security reasons, noted in an e-mail interview that grapes made more sense in context because the Koran compares them to crystal and pearls, and because contemporary accounts have paradise abounding with fruit, especially white grapes.
Dr. Luxenberg's analysis, which has drawn raves from many scholars, also transforms the meaning of the verse that is sometimes cited to require women to wear veils. Instead of instructing pious women ''to draw their veils over their bosoms,'' he says, it advises them to ''buckle their belts around their hips.''
Likewise, a reference to Muhammad as ''ummi'' has been interpreted to mean he was illiterate, making his Koranic revelations all the more astonishing. But some scholars argue that this simply means he was not ''of the book,'' in the sense that he was neither Christian nor Jewish.
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Islam has a tradition of vigorous interpretation and adjustment, called ijtihad, but Koranic interpretation remains frozen in the model of classical commentaries written nearly two centuries after the prophet's death. The history of the rise and fall of great powers over the last 3,000 years underscores that only when people are able to debate issues freely -- when religious taboos fade -- can intellectual inquiry lead to scientific discovery, economic revolution and powerful new civilizations. ''The taboos are still great'' on such Koranic scholarship, notes Gabriel Said Reynolds, an Islam expert at the University of Notre Dame. He called the new scholarship on early Islam ''a first step'' to an intellectual awakening.
But Muslim fundamentalists regard the Koran -- every word of it -- as God's own language, and they have violently attacked freethinking scholars as heretics. So Muslim intellectuals have been intimidated, and Islam has often been transmitted by narrow-minded extremists.
(This problem is not confined to Islam. On my blog, www.nytimes.com/kristofresponds, I've been battling with fans of the Christian fundamentalist ''Left Behind'' series. Some are eager to see me left behind.)
Still, there are encouraging signs. Islamic feminists are emerging to argue for religious interpretations leading to greater gender equality. An Iranian theologian has called for more study of the Koran's Syriac roots. Tunisian and German scholars are collaborating on a new critical edition of the Koran based on the earliest manuscripts. And just last week, Iran freed Hashem Aghajari, who had been sentenced to death for questioning harsh interpretations of Islam.
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''The breaking of the sometimes erroneous bonds in the religious tradition will be the condition for a positive evolution in other scientific and intellectual domains,'' Dr. Luxenberg says.
The world has a huge stake in seeing the Islamic world get on its feet again. The obstacle is not the Koran or Islam, but fundamentalism, and I hope that this scholarship is a sign of an incipient Islamic Reformation -- and that future terrorist recruits will be promised not 72 black-eyed virgins, but just a plateful of grapes.
William Safire is on vacation.VOTE FRAUD: More Than 5,000 Out-of-State Hillary Voters May have Tipped New Hampshire Against Trump
More evidence of voter fraud in New Hampshire has surfaced. It is now believed that over 5,000 out-of-state voters may have voted for Hillary Clinton on election day in New Hampshire because the state allows same-day registration.
New Hampshire was a close race in the 2016 Presidential election. Hillary won the four electoral votes, however; it took a week to count the votes because it was tight. Hillary received 348,521 votes, while Trump picked up 345,789. Trump lost by 0.4 percent.
As previously reported, Hillary Clinton’s former top campaign lawyer, Marc Elias is behind a New Hampshire lawsuit to block a law which would force people who are registering to vote to show a form of I.D. Figures.
The Democrats are pulling out all the stops to prevent voter I.D. laws because without illegal aliens, dead people or people being bussed in to vote, the Democrats would never win another election.
Via Washington Times:
More than 6,500 people registered to vote in New Hampshire on Nov. 8 using out-of-state driver’s licenses, and since then the vast majority have neither obtained an in-state license nor registered a motor vehicle. Conservatives say the state’s same-day registration is an invitation for fraud because of loose proof-of-residence rules. New Hampshire House Speaker Shawn Jasper, a Republican, issued the numbers Thursday based on inquiries he made to the Department of State, which oversees elections, and the Department of Safety.
Here are the numbers:
⦁ 6,540 people registered and voted on Nov. 8, based on presenting out-of-state licenses. ⦁ As of Aug. 30, about 15 percent (1,014 of the voters) had been issued New Hampshire driver’s licenses. ⦁ Οf the remaining 5,526, barely more than 200 (3.3 percent) had registered a motor vehicle in New Hampshire. New Hampshire law gives drivers 60 days upon establishing residence to obtain a state license. But more than 80 percent of voters who registered on Nov. 8 using out-of-state driver’s licenses, or 5,313 of them, neither had a state license nor registered a motor vehicle almost 10 months later.
It is well known that people are bussed in to vote in New Hampshire. This is why the Democrats are fiercely working to stop any investigation into vote fraud and are working to prevent any type of voter I.D. laws. Strict laws would have tipped New Hampshire in Donald Trump’s favor.Dominic Ondoro is pretty tall for a Kenyan runner. Maybe 5'11", with shanks like a deer. He broke away from his countryman and training partner Elisha Barno at about the 21st mile to win Sunday’s Twin Cities Marathon, receiving a $10,000 check. He demolished the course record of 2:10.05 that has stood for 31 years (for an additional $25,000) by covering the deceptively taxing course from Minneapolis to St. Paul in 2 hours 8 minutes and 51 seconds.
Ondoro, who won last year at Twin Cities in 2:11.16, approached this year’s race with learned respect for the hills that treat tiring runners harshly between miles 20 and 25. Nonetheless, he impressively negative split, covering the fairly flat first half in 1:05.02 and the second half in 1:03.49. Ondoro needed a few minutes to, you know, sit quietly and make sure all the parts were still intact, and then told reporters he understood why the record had stood as long as it had.
Ondoro and Barno train with other Kenyan runners in Santa Fe, N.M. They’re professional journeymen, earning their keep by hitting second-tier marathons and road races rather than the major ones, like the Chicago Marathon that took place on the same day. Running, and winning, is their job, but since they can only run four marathons per year at the very most—and usually only two—they have to be very strategic about which races they enter.
The winner of the Chicago Marathon gets $100,000, ten times the first-place award at Twin Cities, but Chicago has the budget to attract 2:06 and 2:05 marathoners with appearance fees. A 2:08 guy like Ondoro would probably not warrant appearance money amongst a field of that caliber, and he would have to gamble on having a very very good day to take even Chicago’s last money spot—fifth—of $25,000.
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A win at Twin Cities was a much safer bet, and arriving at the start line healthy with solid training and perfect weather, the businessman countenanced substantially boosting his take-home by aiming at both the win and the course record. The 1:05 first half was a test of the equipment, just brisk enough to put the course record within reach. At halfway though, a decision had to be made, and the bill paid over the next 13 miles. According to the Star Tribune, Ondoro and Barno discussed, concluded, and took off together just after halfway.
The stakes were quite high—we’re talking about a quarter of this guy’s annual income, at least. Though he and Barno had no doubt done some brutal 23-mile training runs, and though both men looked smooth, light, and untroubled, make no mistake—it was not easy.
Six minutes off the current world record, a 2:08:51 marathon is nonetheless quite painful. Heck, any marathon that is raced, pushing to hit a certain time or shake an opponent, as opposed to merely finishing, is an entirely different event. All of the top 20 finishers had vividly bloodshot eyes; some will have blood in their urine. Having burned the easy fuel, and then some fat, under extreme duress, the body “goes catabolic,” i.e. it breaks down muscle fibers for the stored glycogen and consumes them. It’s not pleasant. This is what Ondoro and Barno signed up for when they decided to go for the course record, and there was no guarantee the pain would be worth it. They could easily have imploded at 22 miles and gotten nothing but picturesque bodily fluids for the effort.
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Ondoro ran all the way through the finish, then was rounded up and directed into the media tent, where he sat hunched over on a folding chair, coughing weakly, sipping at water, swishing and spitting some of it on the ground. Someone shoved a microphone at him but he waved it away. Barno was ushered in, and a few minutes later, Kenyan Rodgers Gesabwa. Ondoro looked up briefly, they touched hands, and said something to each other in Swahili. The three spent wraiths coughed softly, drank, spit.
Ondoro asked for a tissue to wipe his mouth. After about ten minutes, he spoke quietly into microphones. No one that I saw interviewed Barno, who finished in an impressive 2:10.21—now the third-fastest time ever run on that course—for an $8,000 payday. And a great deal of anonymity.
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In a cruel demonstration of the vagaries of running marathons for a living, both Ondoro and Barno ran faster than the winning time in Chicago, where Kenyan Abel Kirui earned $100,000 for covering the course in 2:11.23. The two friends, Ondoro and Barno, said they would celebrate theirs as a joint victory. Ondoro wept into his hands during the award ceremony.
Ondoro ran a brilliant, gutsy race, and in becoming the new Twin Cities course record holder, he supplants Phil Coppess, whose 1985 unassisted handling of the route in 2:10.05 stood for 31 years. Thirty-one years. And that’s not for lack of trying. Thirty-one years of professional runners, guys who do this for a living, could not do what Coppess had done because it was extraordinary. It still is—as of last year it was the 18th best U.S. marathon in history—and always will be when you know the back story. I interviewed Coppess in 2012 for the New York Times.
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Unlike the vast majority of competitive U.S. runners, Coppess, who grew up in tiny Oxford Junction, Iowa, did not go to college. He moved directly into adulthood, getting married, having kids, and working rotating shifts at a corn processing plant. Running was a high school memory. Some years later, he noticed office workers at a nuclear plant running on their lunch hour and thought, I used to do that. Running at any level is not popular amongst factory workers, now or then: Coppess didn’t receive much support for his hobby.
He eventually designed a training regimen that dovetailed with his rotating shifts at Clinton Corn and his parenting responsibilities; he was awarded full custody of his three children in a 1985 divorce. He ran 14 to 15 miles on work days, longer on his days off, carrying a bulky stopwatch to record each mile. “I didn’t think it was a good 20-miler unless I had gone under two hours,” he said. One day a week, he did a track workout, and on another, hills. Physical therapy consisted of weekly chiropractic adjustments.
His parents helped out with child care, and he frequently brought his children along to the track and to races. “The kids knew the routine—I’d go for a run or they’d go with me to the track, then we’d go out to eat,” he told me in 2012. “I didn’t cook much.” He was apologetic about that.
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His training and racing in early 1985 was better than it ever had been—absurd as it seemed, Coppess estimated he could improve on his 2:13 marathon best by three minutes. He ended up improving his PR by three minutes—2:10.05. This, from the Times, is how the Twin Cities course record happened:
“I thought about Chicago and New York, but I was going for the win and thought Twin Cities was my best shot,” Coppess said. He took the weekend off and flew to Minneapolis. His parents made the five-and-a-half-hour drive with his three children. Coppess was confident that he could break 2:11, which he figured would be good enough for first place. As always, his strategy was simple: go out hard, a pace just under five minutes per mile, and keep it up for 26.2 miles. If others wanted to go with him, fine, and if they didn’t, that was fine, too.
It was a brisk day, with temperatures at the start in the upper-30s. After six miles, he was alone in the lead. By the halfway point, he was out of sight from second place. That’s 26.2 miles the hard way, but he was accustomed to running alone.
“It was a faster pace than I’d ever run for a marathon, but every mile, I was right where I wanted to be,” he said. Coppess passed the 30-kilometer mark in world-record time. “When I hit 26 miles at 2:09 flat, I thought, I can run 385 yards in under 60 seconds, so I started to sprint but got a side-ache,” he said. “It was a pretty good payday. Until I did taxes.” He stayed overnight in Minneapolis because the hotel room was paid for, and because he did not have to work until Tuesday.
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Coppess, now 62, doesn’t run any more, but he still lives in Clinton, Iowa and works at the Alcoa factory. Contacted by the Star Tribune before this year’s Twin Cities Marathon, Coppess said, “That course is a lot harder than people think... You’ve got to be willing to go for it.”Illustrations by Nick Gazin
Tom Burke was driving through a sleepy part of Grand Rapids, Michigan—an empty neighborhood full of abandoned warehouses—when he first noticed the vehicle tailing him. “I was like, Why is this car turning left whenever I turn left?” he recalled. “I figured out I was being followed.”
Tom, a 49-year-old who has been active in antiwar and labor circles for decades, had been monitored for months by the FBI, and that morning, September 24, 2010, the Bureau was moving against him and his fellow activists. Agents had raided the homes of some of Tom’s friends, seizing computers and tearing apart rooms as part of an investigation into whether they were planning an armed revolution and providing aid to terrorist organizations. In response, Tom was on his way to an internet café to issue a press release telling the world what was happening, which was about all he could do given the circumstances.
That same morning, he and his wife were served with subpoenas demanding they testify before a grand jury. By December, 23 activists across the Midwest were subpoenaed and asked to answer for their activism. Among other things, they were accused of providing “material support” for terrorism, a charge that can mean anything from providing guns to a terrorist group to providing any sort of “advice or assistance” to members of such a group, even if that advice is “lay down your arms.” (Former president Jimmy Carter warned a few months before the raids that the threat of a “material support” charge “inhibits the work of human-rights and conflict-resolution groups.”)
Nearly four years later no one has been charged with a crime, and an unsealed affidavit, which the FBI used to get a federal judge to sign off on the 2010 raids, even notes that this group of mostly middle-aged peace activists explicitly rejected the idea of providing arms to anyone. The document, released by court order last month in response to requests from the activists, shows that an undercover special agent was intent on luring people into saying ominous things about “revolution” and, sometimes, some of these people indulged her, which provided the pretext for legally harassing a group known to oppose US policy at home and abroad.
The FBI first became interested in Tom and his fellow travelers on the eve of the 2008 Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota, when the bureau that purports to keep America safe sent an undercover agent who went by the name “Karen Sullivan” to infiltrate the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee, one of the most prominent groups organizing protests outside the convention. The agent couldn’t uncover any wrongdoing whatsoever, but soon she made her way to another left-wing organization in the Midwest, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), a group that includes Tom and a number of other activists who received subpoenas.
Her cover was fashioned to appeal to the bleeding-heart leftists she sought to entrap and imprison—“Karen’s” identity was practically a caricature of a socialist activist.
“She presented herself as a lesbian with a teenage daughter,” Jess Sundin, a founding member of the Anti-War Committee who also belongs to the FRSO, said in a 2011 interview with Nick Pinto of the Minneapolis City Pages. The agent told activists she had a rough childhood and spent years on the streets after first her parents and then the military kicked her out for being gay. She laid it on thick, in other words.
“I remember a woman who was really eager,” Tom told me. “She kept bringing up how eager she was about revolution. And you know, on the one hand, people think it's good because we really need to change society, so it's a fine thing to talk about. On the other hand, she was trying to find people she could manipulate into [committing] a crime.”
Her excesses, her going on about revolution a bit too much, were shrugged off as the zeal of a recent convert, but they didn’t go without notice. These were experienced activists who knew that government surveillance of dissident groups had a long, ongoing history—but they were also aware that paranoia can also scare off the genuinely eager and slowly kill an organization. Being a little too green and a little too willing to help out doesn’t always mean someone’s a cop. And why worry if you have nothing to hide?
“We had discussions about her,” Tom said. “The mistake we made is that we believed, well, we're not breaking any laws, so what is she going to report? The raids shook us.”
"Karen Sullivan" along with another undercover FBI agent, who went by the name of "Daniela Cardenas"
Most of the activists targeted by the FBI wouldn't deny they are revolutionaries, but they aren’t naïve either. They are radical enough to not rule out that some future revolutionary period could entail a gun going off somewhere, but they aren’t about to stockpile weapons—they know America is not revolutionary Russia. As a result, the day-to-day activities of the self-described “Marxist-Leninists who believe that capitalism... is inherently a system of inequality, injustice, and war” are pretty mundane. After the 2008 Republican convention, they engaged in routine organizing efforts, attempting to mobilize support for health-care reform and opposition to police brutality. When George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin, they put together rallies protesting the verdict.
The FBI affidavit paints a far more sinister picture, with testimony from “Karen” alleging that members of the FRSO—teachers and trade unionists with long-standing ties to their communities; people whose homes she visited and whose newborn children she cradled in her arms—were actively plotting to take over government buildings in an armed revolution, all while aiding terrorist organizations in Colombia and Palestine. But after two years of undercover work, there was never any hard evidence for any of this; the affidavit is based almost entirely on the undercover agent’s testimony—testimony that, at worst, makes her former comrades sound like a couple of leftists after a few beers.
“Commies fighting for national liberation in other countries? We love those guys,” Jess Sundin, who was later subpoenaed, allegedly told the agent in 2009. Another activist allegedly talked about being a “big fan” of terrorist groups, though the affidavit concedes that statement came amid laughter and joking. Those off-the-cuff remarks, however, were presented as damning evidence that these community organizers—eight of whom are women with young children at home—were serious threats to “national security.”
To bolster its claim of “material support” for terrorism, the FBI affidavit makes much of the “solidarity trips” activists would sometimes take to Colombia and Palestine. The FRSO was said to have met with people who have ties to the FARC, a nominally Marxist guerrilla group now fueled by the drug trade that has been fighting the Colombian government for decades. In lieu of direct evidence, the affidavit quotes “Karen” as testifying that, based on her two years of undercover work, “I know… that there are multiple members of the FARC who do not publicly acknowledge their FARC membership and who are members of various unions.” At one point, the affidavit alleges that members of FRSO have provided aid to a pregnant woman who was a member of one such union and was touring the US. The agent also testified that her “experience and training as an FBI Special Agent” taught her that “criminals engaging in illicit activities often attempt to conceal their activities from others in order to avoid being caught.”
In the case of Palestine, the agent actually went on a solidarity trip herself, though she appears to have tipped off Israeli security before the FRSO members arrived, leading her group to be sent back home as they soon as the landed. The affidavit claims that activists provided aid to terrorists because they were on their way to deliver $2,000 to a group aiding the poor, embargoed people of Gaza—which would apparently indirectly help potential terrorists by helping to feed them. A list of questions an FBI agent left behind at a home that was raided suggests the source that money: a “Revolutionary Lemonade Stand.”
To say that all of this combined makes the activists terrorist sympathizers is a pretty drastic reach—in fact, the affidavit mentions that one of them told “Karen” that the “FRSO is not going to send anyone ‘military aid.’”
Unable to uncover hard evidence of any crime, in March 2010 the FBI agent tried to get the others to help her commit a crime. She told them she had been left $1,000 from her deceased father—who, she had claimed earlier, kicked her out of her home for being gay—and instructed that she send it to militants in Palestine. According to the affidavit, an unnamed activist promised to put her in touch with a man who could help her with a “monetary donation to people in his country,” offering to help because it's “such a cool story.” The affidavit doesn’t say if the money was ever sent.
Protests at the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minnesota, which is what the FBI was originally investigating. Photo via Flickr user Eric Hanson
So why haul all these people before a grand jury? If the case was so weak, it should have been dropped—and if there were anything to these allegations of terrorism and planning for armed revolution, activists wouldn’t be out on the streets giving interviews to me.
“Grand juries are a great vehicle for investigating political dissidents,” said Kade Crockford, a privacy expert with the ACLU of Massachusetts who has been following the case. “They are run by the government in a non-adversarial process which is secret from the public and immune from many of the constitutional protections afforded to criminal suspects in open courtrooms.”
People who testify before a grand jury aren’t allowed to bring a lawyer into the courtroom and don’t have the right to remain silent—simply refusing to talk can land someone in jail for a year and a half, which serves as a convenient way to jail people with radical politics without having to go through the hassle of convincing a jury to convict them of a crime. Anything you do say can and will be used against you, resulting in a perjury charge if nothing else. And the testimony of witnesses is kept secret, which can sow distrust among activists already prone to infighting.
“All these circumstances make grand juries the ideal vehicle for FBI fishing expeditions into lawful political activity that the government doesn’t like but, due to pesky constitutional issues, cannot outright criminalize,” Kade told me.
From the affidavit, it's evident the activists’ greatest crime was their anti-government rhetoric. Time and again, “Karen” kept asking her newfound friends when they would get around to the revolution here at home. Or were they all just talk? She goaded them and led them down conversational paths designed to produce incriminating quotes. She once asked Jess Sundin if she would be willing to throw down when the time came for “street fighting,” as if these peaceful activists desired nothing more than to make the streets run red with the blood of local small business owners and other patriots. To that, Jess allegedly replied, “If that was my assignment, yeah,” though the FBI admits she then “stated that she did not think a revolution would happen in the next ten years.”
Jess is also quoted as having “welcomed new FRSO members by stating 'we need new fighters,'” as if it were the first time anyone in American politics had used militant rhetoric (“We need fighters,” said President Barack Obama on the 2010 campaign trail).
“Do we support the overthrow of the US government?” another member of FSRO is said to have asked herself. “Oh, yeah.”
Pushed to discuss what she herself “would do during the revolution,” the activist allegedly responded, “Fucking fight and [kill] people.” But, she added, “We are not there yet.” The affidavit also notes that she didn’t even know how to use a firearm, though the fact that she knew someone who could “take her shooting” if she wanted—in Middle America, no less—is presented as if it were a shocking revelation.
Yet another activist supposedly told the informant that “she wanted to build a revolutionary movement in the United States,” a perfectly legal thing to do, “but did not think now was the time to pick up arms,” a perfectly legal thing to say.
Far from planning revolution by way of terrorism, the FBI affidavit itself suggests that, at worst, the FRSO was engaged in some fiery rhetoric—speech, in other words, which is something people are ostensibly allowed to engage in freely. No, you probably shouldn’t yell “fire!” in a crowded theater, but you can go ahead and yell all you want about hating the government and putting that theater under collective ownership after the revolution. At least, you’re supposed to be able to do that.
Another example of constitutionally protected free speech
Suppose the allegations are true, though. Suppose that when the FBI asked an activist, “What do you think of terrorist groups? Do you support them?” the activist had deep down inside wanted to respond with an “I love them” and a “Hell, yes.” If that were the case and the 23 activists targeted by the government were as nefarious as they were alleged to be four years ago, they managed to trick a lot of people, including some elected politicians, who stood by them when all 23 risked prison time by flatly refusing to participate in the grand jury process.
The Chicago Teamsters condemned the raids and demanded an immediate stop to the grand jury proceedings. So did the chapter of the SEIU representing workers in Illinois and Indiana. So did the New York Metro Area Postal Union. So did the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America. So did a Bay Area chapter of the American Federation of Teachers. And so on and so on. In all, more than three dozen labor groups spoke out against the harassment of their fellow trade unionists. Instead of sowing division among the left, the FBI had, for once, created solidarity.
Even the politicians joined in. Twelve of the 13 members of the Minneapolis City Council signed a letter in October 2011 stating that they were “deeply concerned about the chilling effects [the FBI’s] activities might have on completely nonviolent and legal activism.” They said they were worried about what it all meant for the “health of our democracy,” adding that the council had recognized the Anti-War Committee as “an important voice of nonviolence and political dissent.”
US Congressman Keith Ellison, the chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, also expressed concern about the raids in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, though he fell short of outright condemning the federal law enforcement harassment of his constituents, a step too far for a liberal Democrat in Congress.
That so many public figures were willing to stand up for a group of self-described socialists shows just how obvious it was to anyone familiar with the case that the raids and subpoenas didn't represent a good-faith effort to arrest terrorists, but rather a last-ditch attempt to |
, Gnomeo & Juliet, and Chicken Little!
Kes – Jennifer Lien Although she’ll be fondly remembered for playing Kes in Star Trek: Voyager, Jennifer Lien’s first job was in a commercial for bubblegum, and she had the job of two to do too – she played the part of twins. She appeared in American History X in 1998, following on from her Star Trek time, and she’s been super quiet in the world of showbiz since the early 2000’s, although seems to have recently gotten herself in to a few spots of bother with the boys in blue…
Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott – James Doohan James Doohan wasn’t just responsible for playing the part of Scotty – Montgomery Scott – in Star Trek, the TV series and subsequent movies, he was also one of the biggest brainstorms behind some of the greatest features in the franchise. The Vulcan and Klingon languages were partly created by him, and on top of that, many kids have become involved with the field of technical and engineering subjects, due to his ‘Chief Engineer’ status on board the Starship Enterprise. He sadly passed away in July 2005 at the age of 85.
Neelix – Ethan Phillips New York born actor and playwright, Ethan Phillips is well known for his part in Star Trek: Voyager where he played Neelix, a native from an alien land who ends up on the USS Voyager. Ethan actually started his acting career on the stage, and returned to it after his Trekkie stint. So much so, in fact, that he helped to found an LA lab for playwright development called First Stage. It’s been so successful, it’s been running for almost 25 years!
Lieutenant Commander Tuvok – Tim Russ Most recently, you will have spotted Tim Russ in TV shows such as The Night Shift in 2015, and also Lab Rats in 2013. Movies have kept him busy too – InAlienable, for example, and Greyscale in 2014. Most of us will remember him as Lt. Commander Tuvok in Star Trek: Voyager however. That or when he was in Samantha Who? Before he bagged himself the part of Tuvok, he’s actually worked quite extensively with the franchise, and has since gone on to co-write and direct various fan series.
Seska – Martha Hackett Seska was a Bajoran crew member when she popped up in Star Trek: Voyager, and she was played by the wife of the independent moviemaker, Tim Disney- Martha Hackett. She appeared in a couple of the previous shows before finally getting her main part, and she actually originally auctioned for the role of Jadzia Dax in Deep Space Nine. She’s been pretty quiet since her Trekkie days, although has appeared in TV shows such as NCIS. She was also in the 1999 comedy, Never Been Kissed, also starring Drew Barrymore.
Eve McHuron – Karen Steele “Mudd’s Women” was an episode of Star Trek screened in 1966, starring a pretty fabulous Karen Steele playing the part of Eve McHuron, a woman who was destined to find a settler from the planet of Ophiuchus III and marry him. Hawaiian-born Karen was actually a model and cover girl before she branched into the acting world, but that’s not how she earned her first ever bucks. Quite controversially, her first real income was earned on Barbara Hutton’s estate, spearing baby sharks.
Sylvia – Antoinette Bower Over the years, Antoinette Bower has starred in a host of TV shows, most of which any TV actor would have been proud of. The Six Million Dollar Man, Murder, She Wrote, and Hogan’s Heroes are in the list, and she also popped up in Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In 1967 she appeared in an episode of Star Trek, a voodoo-queen who transforms herself into a cat and finally meets her demise. It must be pretty cool to be a Star Trek baddie, right?
Jannar – Ricky Worthy
Jannar – a representative of the Xindi race in the Xindi council – was portrayed in ‘Star Trek: Enterprise’ by Rick Worthy. Although the role was minor, the character of Jannar was often seen with Degra – a character who was a very important part of the Xindi Council. Since his performance in Star Trek, Worthy appeared in a variety of science fiction films, such as ‘X-Men Legends’ and ‘Collateral Damage’. In an interview for a documentary in 2012, Worthy was almost brought to tears when he spoke about the fact that him pursuing his acting career almost left him homeless. Jannar – a representative of the Xindi race in the Xindi council – was portrayed in ‘Star Trek: Enterprise’ by Rick Worthy. Although the role was minor, the character of Jannar was often seen with Degra – a character who was a very important part of the Xindi Council. Since his performance in Star Trek, Worthy appeared in a variety of science fiction films, such as ‘X-Men Legends’ and ‘Collateral Damage’. In an interview for a documentary in 2012, Worthy was almost brought to tears when he spoke about the fact that him pursuing his acting career almost left him homeless.
Commander Shran – Jeffrey Combs
Although Combs played various characters throughout the Star Trek series, he is probably best known for his recurring role of Commander Shran on Star Trek: Enterprise. Shran was of the Androian species and was a highly intelligent officer within the Andorian Imperial Guard. After his appearance on the series, he went on to star in a number of films and television shows, most notably Night of the Living Dead 3D: Re-Animation. Although Combs played various characters throughout the Star Trek series, he is probably best known for his recurring role of Commander Shran on Star Trek: Enterprise. Shran was of the Androian species and was a highly intelligent officer within the Andorian Imperial Guard. After his appearance on the series, he went on to star in a number of films and television shows, most notably Night of the Living Dead 3D: Re-Animation.
Degra – Randy Oglesby
Degra was a part of the Xindi clan and a a representative in the Xindi Council; the character in the ‘Star Trek’ series was portrayed by Randy Oglesby. In the sci-fi series, Degra is married and has two children. However, in Feburary 2154 (based on the plot), Degra was killed in the Reptilian ship disaster. In real life Oglesby is best known for his recurring role in Star Trek, and played more than one role. Aside from that, Oglesby portrayed a guest role on ‘General Hospital’ in 2007. Degra was a part of the Xindi clan and a a representative in the Xindi Council; the character in the ‘Star Trek’ series was portrayed by Randy Oglesby. In the sci-fi series, Degra is married and has two children. However, in Feburary 2154 (based on the plot), Degra was killed in the Reptilian ship disaster. In real life Oglesby is best known for his recurring role in Star Trek, and played more than one role. Aside from that, Oglesby portrayed a guest role on ‘General Hospital’ in 2007.
Vulcan Ambassador Soval – Gary Graham
If you’re a true ‘Star Trek’ fan, you’ll know Soval – the Vulcan ambassador to Earth in the 22nd century. Although the actor who portrayed Soval – Gary Graham – is well-known for his role in the series, he is perhaps best known for his starring role in ‘Alien Nation’ as Detective Matthew Sikes. The series was followed by five television films, airing between 1994 and 1997. Some trekkies may not know this, but Graham currently stars in a new role – Ragnar – in “Star Trek: Of Gods and Men” and will continue to portray this role in “Star Trek: Renegades”. If you’re a true ‘Star Trek’ fan, you’ll know Soval – the Vulcan ambassador to Earth in the 22nd century. Although the actor who portrayed Soval – Gary Graham – is well-known for his role in the series, he is perhaps best known for his starring role in ‘Alien Nation’ as Detective Matthew Sikes. The series was followed by five television films, airing between 1994 and 1997. Some trekkies may not know this, but Graham currently stars in a new role – Ragnar – in “Star Trek: Of Gods and Men” and will continue to portray this role in “Star Trek: Renegades”.
Admiral Maxwell Forrest – Vaughn Armstrong
Vice Admiral Maxwell Forrest, portrayed by Vaughn Armstrong, was in important part of the Enterprise missions and was in close contact with Jonathan Archer. Unfortunately, Armstrong’s character was killed in a bombing of Earth’s embassy. As an actor, Armstrong is known for portraying many different characters in the franchise. By Armstrong’s interview in 2003, the actor revealed that he played eleven characters in ‘Star Trek’ already, and the plan was for him to play a twelfth character in the 2005 episode – “In a Mirror, Darkly”. Vaughn is now 66 years old. Vice Admiral Maxwell Forrest, portrayed by Vaughn Armstrong, was in important part of the Enterprise missions and was in close contact with Jonathan Archer. Unfortunately, Armstrong’s character was killed in a bombing of Earth’s embassy. As an actor, Armstrong is known for portraying many different characters in the franchise. By Armstrong’s interview in 2003, the actor revealed that he played eleven characters in ‘Star Trek’ already, and the plan was for him to play a twelfth character in the 2005 episode – “In a Mirror, Darkly”. Vaughn is now 66 years old.
Christine Chapel – Majel Barrett Majel Barrett, also known as Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, is a producer as well as an actress, but you’ll probably remember her role as Christine Chapel in Star Trek, the original series. She actually appeared on the show twice. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, she appeared as Lwaxana Troi, and once more in Deep Space Nine. She went on to marry Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry, and has since been nicknamed the “First Lady” of the franchise.
Gowron – Robert O’Reilly
Robert O’Reilly, American actor and television star, appeared in the sci-fi franchise ‘Star Trek’ for over a decade, primarily as Chancellor Gowron in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”. For trekkies who don’t quite remember, Gowron was the leader of the Klingon Empire. Following his appearances on Star Trek, O’Reilly also appeared in over one hundred different films and television episodes, as well as Broadway performances and gigs at Carnegie Hall. The actor is now married to his wife Judy, with whom he has triplets (sons), born in 1997. Robert O’Reilly, American actor and television star, appeared in the sci-fi franchise ‘Star Trek’ for over a decade, primarily as Chancellor Gowron in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”. For trekkies who don’t quite remember, Gowron was the leader of the Klingon Empire. Following his appearances on Star Trek, O’Reilly also appeared in over one hundred different films and television episodes, as well as Broadway performances and gigs at Carnegie Hall. The actor is now married to his wife Judy, with whom he has triplets (sons), born in 1997.
Vulcan Spock – Leonard Nimoy Up until his final performance in 2013, Leonard Nimoy played Spock, the first officer and science officer who then ended up being promoted to commanding officer of the Enterprise. He was in the pilot of the show, has had numerous appearances in the follow-on TV shows, and he was also in eight of the movies too. With an asteroid named after him, he branched out into other areas of the arts, including music, photography, writing, and even directing.
Mr. Homn – Carel Struycken
The Dutch actor played the manservant, Mr. Homn in Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the series Mr. Homn accompanies Lwaxana Troi whenever she travels. Interestingly, Homn rarely speaks and is killed when the Jem’Hadar invade Betazed. Just like the character he played, Carel is extremely tall, 7ft to be exact and because of this he often plays giants or roles that make fun of his height! Later on this year Struycken will star in a Showtime revival of the show Twin Peaks.
The Dutch actor played the manservant, Mr. Homn in Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the series Mr. Homn accompanies Lwaxana Troi whenever she travels. Interestingly, Homn rarely speaks and is killed when the Jem’Hadar invade Betazed. Just like the character he played, Carel is extremely tall, 7ft to be exact and because of this he often plays giants or roles that make fun of his height! Later on this year Struycken will star in a Showtime revival of the show Twin Peaks.
Admiral Alynna Nechayev – Natalija Nogulich
Serious Star Trek fans will remember that Admiral Alynna Nechayev was extremely fond of Bularian canapés. Actress Natalija Nogulich starred in both Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, playing the Starfleet admiral. The character is a fan favorite and often appears in fan fiction, as well as the Star Trek novels. The actress of Serbian descent has appeared in many other movies and TV shows, including Frasier and Home Improvement.
Serious Star Trek fans will remember that Admiral Alynna Nechayev was extremely fond of Bularian canapés. Actress Natalija Nogulich starred in both Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, playing the Starfleet admiral. The character is a fan favorite and often appears in fan fiction, as well as the Star Trek novels. The actress of Serbian descent has appeared in many other movies and TV shows, including Frasier and Home Improvement.
Transporter Technician Hubbell – April Grace
Maggie Hubbell, also known as Transporter Technical Hubbell, was the transporter chief aboard the USS Enterprise-D in the 2360s. The actress who played her, April Grace, moved to Saudi Arabia and then moved to England where she started her acting career. Since appearing on the show April has starred in many other films and television series, including The X-Files, as well as having a recurring role between 2003 and 2004 in Joan of Arcadia where she played Sergeant Toni Williams.
Maggie Hubbell, also known as Transporter Technical Hubbell, was the transporter chief aboard the USS Enterprise-D in the 2360s. The actress who played her, April Grace, moved to Saudi Arabia and then moved to England where she started her acting career. Since appearing on the show April has starred in many other films and television series, including The X-Files, as well as having a recurring role between 2003 and 2004 in Joan of Arcadia where she played Sergeant Toni Williams.
Epsilon Technician – Roger Aaron Brown
Roger Aaron Brown starred as Epsilon IX Technician in Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979. Although his role was a minor one, after appearing on Star Trek he then went on to have success in many other shows and films including playing John Henry in the 1995 film Tall Tale. He also made a guest appearance on T.J. Hooker with fellow Star Trek actor William Shatner. In the past couple of years it seems that Brown has slowed down in terms of acting. Roger Aaron Brown starred as Epsilon IX Technician in Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979. Although his role was a minor one, after appearing on Star Trek he then went on to have success in many other shows and films including playing John Henry in the 1995 film Tall Tale. He also made a guest appearance on T.J. Hooker with fellow Star Trek actor William Shatner. In the past couple of years it seems that Brown has slowed down in terms of acting.
Harry Mudd – Roger C. Carmel Believe it or not, Roger C. Carmel actually only appeared in three episodes of Star Trek – two in the original first series of it, and then again in Star Trek: The Animated Series. Other than the regular crew members, he’s one of only a handful of cast who have come back over different series as the same character. He had hundreds of roles, covering TV and film, with a career that covered three decades. He sadly died at just 54 years old in 1986, the case of death being congestive heart failure.
Nyota Uhura – Zoe Saldana Zoe Saldana, who was born in the USA but raised in the Dominican Republic, played Nyota Uhura in the 2009 Star Trek film. Nichelle Nichols who played the character in the Star Trek series in the 60s advised Saldana on how to portray the role. Although it is reported that Zoe was anxious about taking the role, she was greatly encouraged and supported by her mother who was a massive Star Trek fan. After acting in the film, she then went on to star in James Cameron’s hit, Avatar.
Amanda Grayson – Winona Ryder Winona Ryder played Spock’s human mother, Amanda Grayson, in the 2009 film Star Trek. The character dies when Vulcan is destroyed. Ryder is also well known for dating and becoming engaged to Jonny Depp in the early 90s, although the couple split up a few years later. Ryder also starred in the Oscar nominated film Black Swan alongside Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman. Today, Winona plays Joyce Byers in the Netflix original series Stranger Things.
Captain Nero – Eric Bana Although Eric Bana was not a Star Trek fan growing up and had never seen any of the films, he was extremely excited when he read the script for the 2009 film and promptly accepted the role. Bana played the villain of the film, Captain Nero who destroyed Vulcan. In 2009, Eric also starred in film adaptation of The Time Traveler’s Wife alongside Rachel McAdams. In recent years Eric has been extremely busy starring in various TV shows and films. Later on in the year Bana will star in King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.
Lieutenant Malcolm Reed – Dominic Keating Dominic Keating played Lieutenant Malcolm Reed on Star Trek: Enterprise and it was his first major role in a TV Show. He played the tactical officer and armory officer on the Enterprise Starship who was born in the future year 2117. Since his appearance on the TV series he starred in a number of other shows including Heroes, CSI:NY and Prison Break. The actor also enjoys doing voice work and even worked on Ricky Gervais’ film The Invention Of Lying.
Commander T’Pol – Jolene Blalock When she was aged just 17, Jolene Blalock left home to become a model for the Asia and European market. After finding the modeling world difficult despite becoming a huge hit for guy’s mags, she made the leap into an acting career, with small roles in TV shows such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Veronica’s Closet, and Love Boat: The Next Wave. It wasn’t until 2001 that she was offered the part of Commander T’Pol, a revolution she still says “delighted her” to this day.
Borg Seven of Nine – Jeri Ryan She won two Saturn Awards for her part as Borg Seven of Nine in Star Trek: Voyager, and she was nominated for a further award too. Jeri Ryan became a firm favorite in the world of Star Trek, and she went on to appear in over one hundred episodes, from 1997 to 2001. Since then, she’s had a string of TV appearances in various shows – Two and a Half Men, The O.C., and Boston Public. Most recent shows include Bosch, Arrow, and NCIS.03-22-2016 (Photo: Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (left) is welcomed by European Council President Donald Tusk in Brussels, on October 5, 2015) http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/contact http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/schedules Twitter: @BatchelorShow Erdogan of Turkey Bullies the EU for Protection Money. Gregory Copley Defense & Foreign Affairs. “…Now, more than seven decades later, we see the world bow before the naked blackmail of Turkey’s dictator — for he has exceeded his electoral mandate, as did Hitler, and has become his own creature, and not the Turkish people’s — who pours chaos into Europe and the Middle East, and demands concessions in order to reverse his aggression. Out of blind, short-term reactionism, the world’s political and journalistic classes fail to see how he first caused the chaos for which he now seeks reward to control.
“No war existed in Syria before Turkey’s new dictator, Reçep Tayyip Erdoğan, dipped his hands into its troubled but stable waters. The counter-coup against Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi in Libya was well within the grasp of Libyans in 2011 until Erdoğan inserted his forces, bent not just on overthrowing the Libyan dictator but building a Turkish surrogate again on the Mediterranean shores. No floods of refugees flowed into Europe and elsewhere until Erdoğan took the chaos of Syria and Libya and channeled it into Western Europe and the Balkans. DI’ISH, the Islamic State or Islamic Caliphate, did not exist before Erdoğan made it happen and fed it, and still feeds it.
“All of his misdeeds against his neighbors and his own people have come back to haunt the Turkish State. There has been a profound flight of capital from Turkey; there has been a cessation of inward foreign direct investment, except where politically-motivated subsidies are fed into it by its few allies. The open and covert wars which Turkey has inspired against the Kurds, the Syrians, the Egyptians, the Cypriots the Israelis, and others are coming back to haunt Turkey, which now faces a civil war within its own borders. “ “And yet despite the reality of his weakness, Erdoğan courts war with Russia so that he can demand that NATO steps in to provide him with military protection. He demands that the European Union subsidize him so that he can stop the flow of refugees which he caused to be visited upon Europe. He has suspended all liberties in his own country so that the truth of his misrule does not emerge….”
“Under the European Union deal with Turkey, all migrants and refugees, including Syrians, who cross to Greece illegally by sea from March 20 will be sent back to Turkey once they are registered and their asylum claims have been processed. “That is expected to take effect from April 4, by which time Greece must have in place a fast-track process for assessing asylum claims. The EU has pledged to help Greece set up a task force of some 4,000 staff, including judges, interpreters, border guards and others to manage each case individually. "The agreement comes into effect from today. Greek authorities have done whatever is necessary and will continue to do what it promised," George Kyritsis, a government spokesman for the refugee crisis, told Reuters. "Other parties (to the agreement) should also do their part," he said, referring to Greece's EU partners and Turkey. In return, the EU will take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and reward it with more money, early visa-free travel and progress in its EU membership negotiations….” http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-greece-idUSKCN0WM0ACOn 4 March, the EU’s neighbourhood commissioner and its foreign affairs chief issued a joint consultation paper titled “Towards a new European Neighbourhood Policy”, meant to trigger a debate with member states and other stakeholders on how to revive the EU’s decade-old neighborhood policy (ENP) - i.e. relations with countries spanning from Azerbaijan to Morocco and from Belarus to Egypt.
The paper is long on questions (74 of them) about policy proposals but much shorter on strategic thinking.
It is also feeding the Syrian regime (Photo: james_gordon_losangeles)
Yet, in 2014, the EU’s geographical environment took a sharp turn for the worse: in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, in Syria and Iraq, and in Libya.
The political landscape across EU border regions has transformed radically and the east and south of Europe are undergoing even deeper political and societal changes than what meets the eye. Pre-existing EU assumptions about the neighborhood are now obsolete.
From Russia, bullying and open hostility have become the new normal, while successive eastern Ukraine ceasefire “negotiations” have turned into tragic farces.
Russia’s air force routinely challenges the integrity of Western European air space, while weekly Russian resupplies of Syrian leader Bashar alAssad’s forces are keeping the Damascus regime afloat, fuelling an unprecedented human tragedy.
Through military actions, political rapprochements, and massive propaganda, Moscow is doing its utmost to drive a wedge between both EU and Nato member states. EU policies are directly challenged by Russia in Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.
Across Europe’s southern neighborhood, Islamic conservatism is becoming more deeply rooted than ever before, not just within Islamist parties but throughout entire societies, including those long perceived as predominantly “secular” and “modern” such as Tunisia and Turkey.
Their societal, scientific, and legal norms, long-inspired by Europe’s, are now regularly challenged or reversed. A different concept of society and state is being introduced.
There is also deep resentment across southern Europe toward the EU for its lack of influence on events in Palestine and Syria, and over the massive loss of life among irregular migrants in the Mediterranean Sea.
In addition, the self-proclaimed caliphate of Daesh - with its territorial control, its military aptitude, its unimaginable violence, and its cultural revisionism - presents a challenge that no Western diplomacy has had to cope with before.
These developments render the EU’s traditional model (liberal democracy) and methodology (personal high-level talks and financial incentives towards good governance) largely ineffectual.
EU leaders are now suddenly confronted with situations in which they can no longer trust their intruding interlocutors (Putin); cannot be sure that their counterparts are able to talk openly (Moldova or the South Caucasus); cannot decently negotiate with (Assad); and cannot even conceive to interact with (al-Baghdadi).
Elsewhere, as in Tunisia, the EU is now dealing with an unprecedented governing coalition between liberals (Nidaa Tounes) and Islamists (Ennahda) with radically diverging societal objectives.
What the EU should do
This eminently mobile - and often hostile - environment requires radical policy changes to the ENP. The EU should:
- relinquish the “more for more” approach (more aid for more alignment on EU values), which is euro-centric and has become largely obsolete. While the EU should continue to defend and promote its fundamental values, it should take on board a lesson in humility: in Sidi Bouzid, Tahrir Square, or Maidan, citizens didn't wait for the EU to stand up for their freedoms.
- be ready to adjust its policies swiftly and frequently in response to changing circumstances. There is no longer one set menu for all neighbors. Long-term trends concerning gender equality, science, economy and culture must be watched carefully and policies adjusted accordingly.
- combine the promotion of EU values—where relevant—with a more assertive defense of EU interests. This means differentiating not only between countries depending on how EU interests are best served, but also, within countries, between governments and civil societies (as some governments become more authoritarian or unruly, civil society often remains the EU’s best investment in the future).
- use the full array of instruments, from trade to financial support (humanitarian, socio-economic, civil society, Erasmus+, etc), from visa facilitation and readmission agreements to counter-terrorism cooperation and military operations, in an integrated manner.
- better integrate EU policy vis-a-vis neighbors and its enlargement policy. Turkey, which is bordering the South Caucasus and the Islamic State, should be treated more strategically, combining the defense of EU interests (sealing the border with Daesh, counter-terrorism cooperation) with pragmatic advances where and when they are possible (trade, visa facilitation, Erasmus+).
The comfortable days of dealing with like-minded liberal interlocutors are largely over: the “EU model” is becoming less sellable in today’s global environment and the EU brand of democracy and civilization is fundamentally challenged.
It is high time to adjust to these new realities. Yes, the EU needs to continue promoting its values but should also defend its interests and watch long-term evolutions.
Marc Pierini is a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe and the EU's former envoy to TurkeyProblems with designer and hybrid dogs
Yes, they are cute, and they have cute names, but are they healthier or are the problems with designer dogs about to make us reevaluate their appeal?
A few months ago, a local kid in his late 20’s, bred his Siberian Husky with his male Pitbull and called them “Pitskies.” I thought to myself, as he was telling me about the puppies and showing me pictures, why would you do that? She had given birth to four puppies, one looked somewhat like a husky, and the others looked like Pit Bulls with too much fur. They were cute nonetheless, but hey, all puppies are cute! When I got home, I googled Pitskies. I found site upon site of Pitskies for sale and a Facebook page devoted to this unnatural concoction. I like Pit Bulls, and I love my husky, but these two breeds are polar opposites in the personality department. The poor dogs won’t know if they are coming or going.
I have friends that have designer dogs (labradoodle and a peekapoo), and they are lovely! So what’s the problem? I hadn’t given it any thought until I ran into this guy. I started looking into it a little deeper and found a more significant problem.
The creator of the first Labradoodle was Wally Conron. He was an Australian breeder with the Royal Guide Dogs Association of Australia. His goal was to combine the low shedding coat of the poodle with the easily trained Labrador Retriever. His motivation back in 1988 was to provide a guide dog for a woman in Hawaii, as her husband was allergic to dogs. His good intentions left him with regret. Conron has repeatedly stated that he caused “a lot of damage” and “that problem was being bread into dogs rather than taking the problems away from the dogs.” He felt he was to blame for “creating a Frankenstein.”
A few weeks later, I ran into the Pitsky guy again, and he told me that all of the puppies were sold. Sold? They’re mutts! My oldest daughter just adopted a mixed breed puppy. The puppy was vet checked, spayed and up to date on all her shots. The adoption fee barely covers these expenses. I gathered that the Pitskies only received minimal vet care if any.
Backyard breeders and puppy mills, with ideas of grandeur, are pairing one purebred dog with another purebred dog and naming it something clever. They are charging big bucks for so-called “designer dogs.”
These people have no regard for the outcome. If a dog has a litter of eight puppies and only three are suitable for sale, what happens to the other five puppies? Best case scenario, the five puppies end up in a shelter or worse case, the puppies are neglected or put down. A person running a puppy mill is willing to do anything to make a buck, and the new rage of designer dogs fits the bill. Puppy mill operators do not have a reputation for long-term concern for the health and happiness of their dogs. Designer dogs are not a registered breed. Therefore they do not require pedigree paperwork. This saves the breeder an additional expense and increases the profit margin. Good luck getting any information about the puppies’ parents. Designer or hybrid dogs, it seems, has opened up a whole new revenue source for the unscrupulous.
People will argue that humans have been manipulating dog breeds for centuries. This is true. However, it has been a long process of development opposed to a one-shot deal. Quality breeders often will keep “the pick of the litter” to carry on the line. If you were to breed a Golden Retriever and a Poodle you’ll get, in theory, a Goldendoodle. The pick of the litter can’t be bred to carry the line or it will washout the original desired result of a half and half-breed.
Wally Conron told Psychology Today in an interview in 2014, “I opened up a Pandora’s box, that’s what I did. I released a Frankenstein. So many people are just breeding for money. So many of these dogs have physical problems, and a lot of them are just crazy”.
My daughter’s mix breed dog is a combo of Labrador Retriever and Catahoula Leopard dog. She was found under a shed with her mom and litter mates.
There are so many dogs that need to be rescued. Shelters are overcrowded, and there is never enough funds to go around. Adopt a mutt and come up with your own cute name like “Catalab.”
A mutt is a mutt regardless of its name. Stop paying purebred prices for them. Follow the rule of supply and demand. Remove the demand, and the supply will go away.
Lemon and Chance were lucky enough to be adopted by family friends and play together often. These pups may have started under a shed, but they’re living the life dogs deserve.
This designer dog dilemma just gives more credence to the saying:
Adopt don’t shop
Like this: Like Loading...I’ve often been told that I shouldn’t buy any accessories since I can DIY them myself. I must confess that I sometimes do, especially if it’s handmade as I like supporting other designer makers (I sometimes wonder if handmade artisans’ customers are each other!) However, when I see designer pieces going at astronomical prices, I definitely prefer DIY-ing and giving it my own personal touch. How about you? What are some of your favourite jewelry brands?
These Lanvin Courtney earrings have been shouting “DIY me” for some time and I’m finally sharing them on the blog. The originals cost $325 (and may no longer be sold in shops) but my version is a sweet £5 and 5 minutes of work!! Not bad, huh?
What you need
Rhinestones
Glue- use rhinestone glue so that your crystals don’t get “tarnished”
Ribbon- I used the handle of a shopping bag!!
Pair of earring studs
Optional: fray check
Step 1
Cut the ribbon into 2 10-cm lengths. Apply either glue or fray check to the cut ends to prevent fraying. Add more glue to one end of the ribbon. Fold the ribbon into half and press the two ends together.
Repeat with the other ribbon. Leave to dry
Step 2
Turn the rhinestone over. Apply glue around the rim and press it down in the ribbon.
The pattern is entirely up to you but I chose to glue 3 rhinestones to each ribbon. This si so easy to make, you can make many pairs with different variations in the placement of the rhinestones! (In fact, Lanvin has a whole range of different earrings in this series)
Here are some of them
Leave to dry.
Step 3
After the rhinestones have dried, flip the ribbon over so the rhinestones are on the floor and just the ribbon is facing up. Apply glue to the back of the earring stud and leave to dry on the ribbon.
Repeat with the other side.
Step 4
Team it with jeans and a breezy tee and hit the streets!
Doesn’t it totally look like 1 of the Lanvin earring series?!
For more upcycled shopping bag jewelry ideas, check out these shopping handle bracelets
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Like this: Like Loading...Department for Community Based Services Commissioner Adria Johnson has a lot on her plate right now.
"I am a firm believer in transparency," she told WKYT's Miranda Combs from her office in the Health and Family Services Cabinet. "I am a firm believer in wanting to hear what's broken. These are the conversations we have to have."
"We're looking at many different options to stabilizing the workforce," Johnson said.
The number of kids coming into the state's care is continuing to climb, and there are less foster homes to put them in. "Capacity is a real issue for us," she said. "We have heard from several foster families that we, the system, don't make it easy to be a resource home."
There has also been an exodus of unhappy social workers. During a legislative committee meeting last month, Rachel Blanford spoke about her challenges as a social worker for thirteen years. "It only takes one bad case to make a worker drown," she said during the hearing.
"I need their voice," Johnson explained. "I need to understand what the practical day to day experience is like for them and where we're getting this wrong."
"It just weighs on you all the time," Blanford told Combs last week from her home in Bardstown. She quit her job with the state last year and started working for more money and less stress.
"So why are so many social workers leaving now?" Combs asked. "I think they have started to realize that there's other opportunities that don't require the same level of work, that pay better, that don't use you up," Blanford explained.
Blanford was emotionally drained when she quit. Her bad days were unforgettable. She recalled pulling up to a home visit not long after her maternity leave: "I saw them carry this sweet little baby out and she was blue and she had already died. It was awful." Blanford said the balance between the daily emotional and mental fatigue, and the benefits of employment with the cabinet just were there. "I guess I wasn't getting what I was putting back in," she said. "It's just feeling unappreciated."
Johnson said changes to keep social workers from leaving are coming. The cabinet is looking at going to shift work. She said that would not only alleviate so much overtime, but it would also make sense considering calls for neglect and abuse don't just come in from nine to five.
They are also looking at allowing social workers to work from home or work remotely, and upgrading current technology. "These are things that can be put into effect sooner rather than later |
is what the UFC wanted.
You have fought 154 in the Olympics and 145 in MMA. You can meet me at 140 easier than for me to go down to 135. The only reason you want the fight at 135 is because you feel that is your only chance because you hope the weight cut will affect me. You guys say I’m irrelevant, yet watch my highlights. The true MMA fans not only know me, but know I’m the best. Sad that you give the true MMA fans no recognition by saying that they don’t matter.
I’m currently training to fight at 145 on March 28 and in early May. My team has hired a medical doctor to help me make 135. I plan to challenge and win the Invicta 135 Championship in the summer and challenge you, champion to champion, for your 135 belt in December.
Now I know critics will say “I thought you said you would die if you made 135.” All I’m promising is that I will give 100 percent to try to get to 135 to make this plan happen. If I do, I will still listen to my doctor’s advice and fight no more than three times at 135: first to win the Invicta belt, the second time to kick your ass and the third time to kick your ass again so that the world can see it wasn’t luck. You can even have me tested every week up to the fight. That way you will not have an excuse after I kick your ass.”Rick Bryson, left, and Mark Meadows (Photo: Courtesy the candidates)
CULLOWHEE – Democratic congressional candidate Rick Bryson said at a debate Friday that U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows, R-Jackson, has done little to benefit Western North Carolina during his time in office and plenty to hurt it.
Meadows told the audience at Western Carolina University and viewers online that he has represented the views of his constituents and pushed several causes and projects to benefit them.
"His fingerprints are on nothing in our district, not even a boat ramp," Bryson said of Meadows.
"When you really look about what is wrong in Washington, D.C., it's people that go to Washington, D.C., that go along to get along," Meadows said.
Bryson, a Bryson City alderman who is the underdog in the conservative 11th District, was the aggressor in much of the debate. The two men disagreed over how Meadows had run his office, his role in a 2013 shutdown of the federal government, how to handle Syrian refugees, the war on terror and gun rights, among other issues.
Bryson said Meadows had cost the 11th District $23 million by opposing passage of a federal budget in 2013 in hopes of keeping money from flowing to implement the Affordable Care Act.
He compared Meadows' actions to "a farmer who fancies that he sees a mouse in his barn and he burns the barn down."
A letter Meadows circulated in 2013 suggesting a government shutdown was widely credited as helping lead to the budget impasse. Meadows, who took office in January of that year, said Friday his role has been exaggerated.
"It's amazing that I get the reputation after eight months that I'm able to shut down the entire federal government on my own," he said. He said some figures actually show an increase in economic activity in WNC during the 2013 shutdown.
But, Meadows said, "I think it's a bad idea generally to shut down the government, and the consequences of that are tremendous." He said he and another congressman will introduce a measure Monday to keep the government running into January if no federal budget is passed this year.
Bryson said he had helped move Bryson City's water system from a losing operation to a profitable one, improved its fire service and won a special designation for the Swain County town as a destination for trout fishermen.
Voters' choice, he said, is between "someone to make inflammatory headlines or one who makes real progress."
Meadows said Bryson failed to mention Meadows' role in winning a grant for the Bryson City fire department and that he has worked cooperatively with people in the region to win millions of dollars in federal funds for projects like greenway and other transportation improvements in Asheville's River Arts District and a new runway at Asheville Regional Airport.
Bryson said Meadows knew his former chief of staff, Kenny West, had tendencies toward sexual harassment before West became his first chief of staff in January 2013.
Meadows removed West from the job in 2015. The House Ethics Committee is investigating whether Meadows violated House rules by paying West his full salary when West was barred from Meadows' offices because of sexual harassment allegations and was performing limited duties.
Meadows said he did not know of potential problems with West until 2014 and acted quickly once complaints arose. He said his daughter volunteered in his office for six months at the beginning of 2013 and, "I would not have put my daughter in that situation or any woman in that situation if I thought there was a threat."
He said he had conferred with a House lawyer on payments to West and thought he was following the rules.
"If the Ethics Committee says that I made a mistake, I will make it right, both personally with an apology but also financially for anything I didn't do properly," he said. "I acted in good faith in a difficult situation."
Bryson said he would push for federal funds to finance small business startups in the region if elected so WNC's young people could return to the mountains after attending college rather than looking elsewhere for work.
Meadows said he has also been working on a regional job creation effort but is skeptical of a major federal role in general.
"The federal government doesn't create any job that is lasting... so what they can do (is) get out of the way" and let entrepreneurs build businesses that add jobs, he said.
Meadows seemed to look more favorably at military action overseas to fight terrorism than Bryson, although he made no specific proposals.
"The problem is the terrorists believe that they can continue to take American lives and lives across the globe without any consequences," he said.
"We have either an opportunity to fight them over there or we're going to fight them here, and it's time that we take the battle to ISIS and make sure that they run," Meadows said.
Bryson said he was opposed to U.S. military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan and is skeptical of America's ability to "straighten out countries where we don't understand the culture."
He said a first step in dealing with ISIS would be to improve intelligence: "So often, we don't know enough about the people who want to do us harm."
The debate was sponsored by WCU's Public Policy Institute and Department of Political Science and Public Affairs.
Read or Share this story: http://avlne.ws/2dqTLEqBlog on workfare, and the response of Chris Grayling to the successful protest campaign which forced the withdrawal of Holland & Barrett.
I will not go into much detail about the tremendous campaign that has seen Holland and Barratt dropping out of the workfare scheme, as it has already been covered very well, and in-depth elsewhere.
Instead I will briefly look at the response to the news by the minister responsible, Chris Grayling. When I read his remarks yesterday morning, I almost choked on my Belvita breakfast biscuit:
“It is a disgrace that anyone should seek to target a company that is trying to help young unemployed people in this way. The people involved in these protests have absolutely no idea of the damage they’re doing to the job prospects of the next generation. I’m determined to stand up firmly against these protesters. What they’re doing is totally unacceptable.”
So, Holland and Barratt have replaced a third of their workforce with workfare so that they can help young people? Grayling et al must have really chortled over their foie-gras dreaming up that ‘gem’.
In a typically cynical attempt to discredit the anti-workfare campaign, both the government and Holland and Barratt are claiming that protesters had intimidated and assaulted staff, and had also damaged property. However, they could not produce any evidence to support these claims. Then again, they don’t really need to, because as soon as it is reported in the ‘Daily Mail’, it becomes the truth, regardless of evidence.
I have personally been on at least ten workfare demonstrations outside Holland and Barratt in Liverpool, and I have never witnessed and intimidation or violence against staff. I have however witnessed threatening and intimidating behaviour from the ‘private security staff’ that Holland and Barratt, and other stores, have employed across Liverpool City centre, in an attempt to ‘deal with’ protesters.
Being honest, Chris Grayling is not someone I knew too much about, but good old Wikipedia set me straight. It transpires that Grayling is an expenses cheat, a liar, and a homophobe. If you add his penchant for modern day slave labour, it becomes clear that Grayling almost has the full set of traditional Tory values.
So it would seem that everyone wins from workfare. Based on Holland and Barratt having 1,000 workfare staff for the last year:
*Holland and Barratt saved themselves £1.5 million in wages.
*Holland and Barratt gained 1.920,000 hours of unpaid work.
*The Government were able to manipulate unemployment figures.
*The unemployed were able to work for around £2 an hour
*Could it be that this is the ‘responsible’ capitalism that ‘Red’ Ed Milliband has told us about?
Surely that writing is now on the wall for the workfare scheme, and hopefully the same can be said for Iain Duncan Smith’s errand boy, and slippery toad, Chris GraylingWestern Force veteran Matt Hodgson has revealed some of his teammates have been left mentally shot by the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the franchise's future, and says the situation is also ruining rugby in Australia.
Photo: PHOTOSPORT
The Australian Rugby Union's announcement that it will axe either the Force or Melbourne Rebels has caused chaos in rugby circles, with the situation now seemingly headed towards the courts as both franchises fight for their survival.
Last week, Rebels assistant coach Morgan Turinui said he feared the constant speculation could be damaging to the mental health of his players.
And Hodgson holds those same fears about the Force, with the 36-year-old becoming somewhat of a confidante for his teammates.
"I talk to people daily about it... and it's taking its toll on the players, Hodgson said.
"The mental stability of people is being shocked, I think you're seeing that in not only the performance of the two teams, but also in the way they're approaching life at the moment."
Photo: PHOTOSPORT
With the Force and Rebels unable to re-sign players until a final decision is made, Hodgson fears there could be a mass exodus.
And he would understand if Force players started signing with rival franchises in order to secure their futures.
"It's a tough one, because I love the Force, but I also want to see individuals succeed in the sport they love playing," Hodgson said.
"It's definitely coming to the time now where that signing elsewhere is an option they're going to have to take, because they're going to have to take care of themselves and their family."
He said players don't want to leave but they have to think about their futures because other markets are shutting.
Hodgson will consider playing o n next season if the Force survive.
"The body and the mind is still loving rugby, and the path the Force are taking is a good one," said Hodgson, who has been with the franchise since their first season in 2006.
"So if the option's there, I'll definitely think about it, but there's 34 other blokes I'd rather get jobs for first before myself."
Last week's 55-6 loss to the Highlanders means the Force will need to win at least three - and probably all four - of their remaining games if they are to top the Australian conference.
Hodgson hopes last week's poor display against the Highlanders was nothing more than a blip on the radar, saying the side are determined to bounce back hard against the Reds.
Photo: PHOTOSPORT
-AAPHillary Clinton on Tuesday outlined an ambitious $20 billion plan to cure one of the most devastating diseases of our generation within 10 years — describing Alzheimer's not only as a condition that has taken a personal toll on too many American families but as a critical fiscal matter for the country that needs to be addressed.
The Democratic presidential front-runner, who was campaigning in Iowa, said her plan would provide $2 billion in guaranteed annual funds by closing tax loopholes to “prevent, effectively treat and make a cure possible." That level is four times the current funding.
Although she did not offer specifics on where the money would come from, two advisers provided more details on why Clinton is making the disease a priority.
In a conference call with reporters, Robert Egge, executive director of the Alzheimer's Impact Movement, and Rudolph E. Tanzi, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and director of genetics and aging research at Massachusetts General Hospital, described Alzheimer's as the only one of the 10 leading killers of Americans for which there is no way to cure, prevent or even slow the progression of the disease.
More than 5 million Americans are living with Alzheimer's today, and the number is expected to triple to 15 million by 2050. Government spending on the disease is expected to jump from $586 million in 2014 to $1 trillion in 2050.
“This is a tsunami, an epidemic that could single-handedly crush Medicare, Medicaid… It’s an unmet medical need of the greatest type," Tanzi said.
Tanzi explained that there have been a number of important breakthroughs in Alzheimer's research in recent years — including the discovery of two dozen Alzheimer's genes, the role of inflammation in the disease — but that progress in building on that work has been frustratingly slow because of a lack of resources.
"Our single bottleneck has been funding," he said. "We are a budget-constrained, not knowledge-constrained, field."
Tanzi said it is "reasonable and rational that if we can throw enough money at this disease over the next 10 years we do have a chance of dramatically reducing its incidence, of actually being able to stave off this disease in people who are at the highest risk."
The funding plan is part of a larger effort by Clinton to address the country's growing Alzheimer's crisis. She has said previously that she would seek to have Medicare cover comprehensive care-planning for the disease and announced a tax credit proposal for caregivers of patients with Alzheimer's.
Clinton is scheduled to speak further about her plan during an appearance at 5:30 p.m.
I often disagree with @HillaryClinton but on #Alzheimers she is moving in the right direction. https://t.co/OFCw89xlZz — Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) December 22, 2015
Read more:
Beware the rule-following co-worker, Harvard study warns
Happiness won’t help you live longer (but unhappiness won’t kill you either)
Provocative study raises questions about human transmission of Alzheimer’s protein — FAQ
For more health news, you can sign up for our weekly newsletter here.Head of Law Firm That Has Drafted Anti-LGBT Bills in 20 States Says She Carries a.45 Into Restrooms
Mocking transgender people and suggesting she needs protection from them, Anita Staver says she carries a Glock.45 wth her in to restrooms.
"I'm taking a Glock.45 to the ladies room. It identifies as my bodyguard," Staver tweeted.
I'm taking a Glock.45 to the ladies room. It identifies as my bodyguard. #BoycottTarget @Target — Liberty Lawyer (@AnitaStaver) April 22, 2016
Staver is the president of Liberty Counsel, a Christian activist law firm which appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of anti-gay hate groups. The group gained national sttention last year when they represented Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis. Her husband, Liberty Counsel's Founder and Chairman Mat Staver, recently admitted that their firm has drafted and is advocating for anti-LGBT bills in 20 states.
Liberty Counsel says it is a "Christian ministry," whose mission "is to preserve religious liberty and help create and maintain a society in which everyone will have the opportunity to discover the truth that will give true freedom."
Image via Liberty Counsel Action/Facebook
See a mistake? Email corrections to: [email protected]Chelsea want Andreas Christensen back from loan this summer but he will not return to Stamford Bridge to sit on the bench, the player's father has warned.
Borussia Monchengladbach have made no secret of their desire to sign Christensen, who has made 56 appearances in all competitions and established himself as one of the brightest young defensive talents in Europe since joining on a two-year loan from Chelsea in the summer of 2015.
The Blues have no desire to sell and are adamant that the 20-year-old is a big part of their long-term plans, but Sten Christensen insists his son will not agree to come back unless he is given guarantees of regular first-team football to continue his development.
"Chelsea want Andreas back, and they have wanted that for a long time," Christensen's father told Danish newspaper BT. "But it was an interminable two-year loan, so there was nothing to do.
"They have worked to get him back before the time, but Gladbach would not let him. Instead, they would like to buy Andreas. They still really want to, but Chelsea [won't] get rid of him, and the price [would be] too high.
Andreas Christensen is highly-rated in Germany.
"As it is right now, he'll be at Chelsea again this summer. It is important for Andreas that he plays. He will not return to Chelsea and sit on the bench. It is this transfer window that determines how Andreas' situation will be in the summer.
"If Chelsea buy 10 central defenders, it may well be that we need to do something else. But let's see because Chelsea don't want to lose Andreas."
Antonio Conte has already moved to bolster his defensive options in January by recalling Nathan Ake from loan at Bournemouth, but revealed last week that he sees no urgent need to bring a new central defender to Stamford Bridge in the winter window now Kurt Zouma and John Terry are back to full fitness.
Liam is ESPN FC's Chelsea correspondent. Follow him on Twitter: @Liam_Twomey.WHEN João Lourenço said on the eve of Angola’s election in August that, as president, he would have “all the power”, few took him seriously. The former defence minister had been hand-picked by José Eduardo dos Santos, Angola’s president for 38 years, seemingly as part of a deal to protect his interests. The opposition dubbed him “the chauffeur”, since Mr dos Santos would tell him where to go.
Two months into his presidency, though, the chauffeur seems not to be taking directions. On November 15th he suddenly sacked Mr dos Santos’s flamboyant and ultra-wealthy elder daughter, Isabel dos Santos, from her job at the head of Sonangol, the national oil company. That was followed by the cancellation of a lucrative contract between the state television company and a media company owned by two of Mr dos Santos’s younger children.
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Then, on November 20th, in defiance of a law introduced by his predecessor, Mr Lourenço fired the police chief and the head of the intelligence agency. In Luanda, the fabulously expensive coastal capital, rumours fly that another of the ex-president’s children, José Filomeno dos Santos, the head of the $5bn sovereign-wealth fund, will be next for the chop. One of Ms dos Santos’s other interests, Unitel, a mobile-phone company with a near-monopoly, could face more competition.
Some even wonder if José Eduardo himself, who is still chairman of the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (known as the MPLA from its Portuguese initials), the country’s ruling party, might be under threat. The new president has not been discreet about his ambitions, says Paula Roque, a researcher at Oxford University. By sacking Ms dos Santos and taking over the security apparatus, Mr Lourenço has seized control of two of the three main sources of power in Angola.
The third is the MPLA. And behind the scenes, party veterans are trying to persuade the former president, who has not been seen in public since the end of October, to step down as party leader early next year. “It’s become clear just how sick and tired the country was with how things were,” says Paulo Faria, a professor of politics at Agostinho Neto University in Luanda. “Successful resistance from within the party seems unlikely.”
Mr Lourenço’s assault on the former president’s gilded empire is winning over at least some Angolans. On social media many have shared an image from “The Terminator”, a film, with Mr Lourenço’s face replacing that of the he-man star, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Two guns held aloft, the caption reads: “The Relentless Remover”. The presidential motorcade is said to stop now at red lights. Mr Lourenço was seen queuing for a meal at KFC, a fast-food chain. In a country where the rich and powerful have been above the law for years, such small gestures have carried weight. Even the previous government’s loudest critics have come out in support. Luaty Beirao, an Angolan rapper and activist who was jailed by the old administration, said he was stunned by Mr Lourenço’s actions, calling it a “revolution”.
Will Mr Lourenço’s revolution really transform Angola? The country is in a terrible state. After the end of the civil war in 2002, oil wealth started to flow, bringing new roads and fancy skyscrapers to Luanda. Thanks to epic corruption, little has filtered down. Most Angolans live in penury. Life expectancy is barely 60 years. So dire are health facilities that last year Angola suffered the world’s worst outbreak of yellow fever in decades.
These days there is less money to go around. Economic growth has slowed since 2014, when the price of oil, which makes up over 90% of exports (the rest is almost all diamonds), collapsed. Despite tight monetary policy the currency, the kwanza, trades on the black market at just 40% of the official rate. Reliable data are almost non-existent, so it is unclear exactly how much the government owes international creditors. But the amount has certainly soared. Much of it is owed to China, on terms that are far from generous.
Rafael Marques de Morais, a journalist and anti-corruption activist, fears that not much will change. He thinks Mr Lourenço had little choice but to go after the president’s children. “Isabel was strangling Sonangol with her incompetence,” he says. But, he adds, more junior members of the dos Santos family are still “everywhere in government, in economic and social affairs”. And there is little hint that Mr Lourenço’s government intends to go after corruption or try to build solid institutions to replace the dos Santos’s system of patronage. “He’s not even trying to find figures who have a better reputation,” says Mr Marques de Morais of the new president’s appointees.
That said, by weakening the dos Santos clan, and so quickly after taking office, Mr Lourenço has made a strong start. For as long as Mr dos Santos held the reins, “you could not conceive of genuine reform,” says Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, also of Oxford University. The elderly ex-president warped his country’s post-independence history. With him removed from the picture, perhaps things can start to change for the better.One man was killed and another was in jail Wednesday after a fatal stabbing in Oceanside the night before, authorities said.
The incident, initially reported as a fight, happened about 8:30 p.m.Tuesday near the Rodeway Inn at state Route 76 and Coast Highway, police Lt. Ron Hardy said.
Several people at a nearby restaurant ran to the aid of the victim, a police sergeant said. A man legally permitted to carry a concealed weapon witnessed the assault and stopped it. The witness had the suspect prone on the ground when police arrived, Hardy said.
Police arrested Bruce Eric Hunt, 52, on suspicion of murder, Hardy said. Hunt was booked into the Vista jail.
It's not clear what led to the fatal altercation, but police said both of the men involved were believed to be transients.
The victim, who was stabbed with a large knife, was wearing women's clothing, but there is no indication that played a role in the fight, Hardy said.
The stabbing marked the city's fourth homicide this year. There were seven murders in the city in 2012.Women in India are used to hearing different levels of atrocious comments and judgement that have been made by many people of power. From calling women like Gurmehar Kaur, with a strong mind as delusional or brainwashed to blaming clothes and dressing for men committing rape and sexual assaults, people in India have done it all. While this has been going around for quite some time, an 11-month-old video of a priest in Kerala mansplaining women’s clothing and its fault in sexual crimes in our country has been going viral on social media. The priest from Kerala is seen addressing a mass gathering and sharing his thoughts on how women in jeans and pants tempt men. Gurmehar Kaur trolled with Virat Kohli, Salman Khan, Dawood Ibrahim memes that go viral on the social media!
The man of God, who dedicated his life to serving the Lord confessed that he did not feel like giving communion to girls in jeans, pants, shirts or jerseys. In the six-minute video where he addresses the crowd in Malayalam, he questioned women who allowed them to wear pants and other men’s clothing. The priest asked women how the Catholic community is allowing them to wear such clothes and asked if the Bible gave them the permission to wear pants and shirts.
The religious priest, who clearly has not heard of free will or women’s rights and choice, blamed them for tempting men. He said that men who come for retreats cleanse their souls and become a man of God. However, women wearing clothes like jeans, pants and other western clothing tempt men. He clarified that the women do not realise that their clothing is tempting men to do wrong and also shared a story where a boy claimed that seeing his sister in shorts and t-shirts at home made him excited.
Watch the entire video here.
The priest had a phenomenal solution to end this grave problem; the priest declared that women should only wear churidar, which is according to our culture. The God-man also said that women should strangle themselves with a rope or drown in the sea instead of tempting men in this way. Victim blaming and pointing fingers at women for exercising their fundamental rights instead of actually confronting the guilty has been a long time practice in India. While people strive to bring about change and make men responsible for their actions, clergies and priests like these only increase the problem.Kotaku East East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.
Back in 2012, Kotaku reported how One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda barely got any sleep. Fast forward to 2015. Oda is showing no sign of slowing down.
Previously, Oda said he was getting around three hours of sleep on average with zero holidays.
According to a recent magazine article (via 2ch), which details Oda’s schedule, the famed manga artist still goes to bed at 2am and gets up at 5am. That’s three hours of sleep! Everyday! Without a day off! Holy fuck that’s a rough schedule. And apparently, Oda isn’t stopping any time soon. One Piece could last another decade.
In case you are interested, here’s how his weekly schedule looks: From Monday to Wednesday, Oda works on the story, the dialogue, and uses very very rough sketches to work out the flow of the manga. Then, from Thursday to Saturday, he and his assistants begin the actual drawing. On Sunday, they do any color work that’s necessary, such as the kind of images you see on manga covers.
The breaks he gets are to eat, sleep, and, I imagine, visit his shark toilet. This dude is hardcore. As you enjoy that manga, try not to imagine the toll this must be taking on his body. Focus on the pirates and the friendship. That’s all.
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Top photo: Viz
To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter@Brian_Ashcraft.David de Rothschild spoke to me by phone from San Francisco. We talked about the narrative power of adventures, the economics of the plastic industry, and how an Evian bottle thrown away in Illinois can end up in the middle of the Atlantic.
You're an ecologist, activist, journalist, TV host, traveler. How would you describe your profession?
I want to give nature a voice through storytelling—and this requires a kind of focused environmental ADD. You know, there's no such thing as a box in nature. Boxes are human inventions. And to tackle these issues you have to think outside the box, otherwise you're limiting your scope and your work. You have to be a champion of change across all mediums, whether that's through TV, design, exploration, traveling, teaching, talking, touring, whatever it is.
So why is adventuring, in your view, an important way to shed light on our ecological challenges?
Adventure is a very charming medium, in the sense that it's far more attractive to learn about something in an adventurous way than the old-school, wordy way. The old-school method goes like, "Um, the oceans are screwed, they're filling up with plastic, you're part of the problem—and, oh, you should be interested in this." Right?
Our method is to say, "The oceans have a problem, but we're going to build a boat out of plastic bottles, sail across the world on it, prove anything's possible. Do you want to get involved?" Which one would you rather go for? Adventure allows better integration of the message, and more accessibility to the message.
Not only that, adventures generate stories, and stories inspire more people to dream and ultimately ask questions. Someone who's seen the Plastiki might also then turn around and start asking: "Can I build a boat? Can I undertake my own adventure? If he can build this boat out of plastic bottles and sail across the south Pacific, can't I become more sustainable in my everyday life?" As soon as someone starts asking questions, they're on their own adventure.
What went into the boat's creation? What's so noteworthy about the design of your craft, the Plastiki?
We tried to make it—on every level—as sustainable as possible. To do that meant that we had to avoid the path of least resistance. And in order to do that, we had to innovate.
One breakthrough was realizing that pressurizing bottles gives them more integrity and strength. By putting C02 powder in every bottle and letting it evaporate into a gas, we found a way to turn a weak structure into an incredibly strong structure. This emphasizes the design work that goes into plastic bottles—how incredible the engineering is, how resilient these things are, and yet how disposable we make them.
The second big breakthrough was the structural material that we developed [the recycled PET compound, Seretex], which allowed us to generate the Plastiki's skeletal structure. That was an enormous breakthrough because not only did that allow us the longitudinal rigidity, the strength down the length of the boat. But it's also allowed to take plastic—and show that we can take discarded plastic bottles and effectively create a material that doesn't need to be like-for-like—take one plastic to make another plastic bottle. But you can take a plastic bottle and build a bridge. You can build a boat. You can build a house. You can build rooftops. You can build skateboards. You can build whatever you can build now with this material. What that does is change the narrative that plastic is valueless and single-use—now [it] becomes, "Plastic is valuable and multi-use."Chris Colohan is a pretty influential dude, but his sphere of influence fragments into two decidedly unexpected camps, depending on how you're approaching it. Fans of the dearly-departed Canadian metallic hardcore juggernaut, Cursed, will recognize his name in a snap—he held court as the band's snarling mouthpiece until their abrupt breakup in 2008. His current bands, Left for Dead and Burning Love, have accrued plenty of name recognition on their own, and are still very much alive. One would think he'd be busy enough tending to them, but Colohan is rapidly becoming better-known for his exploits in the kitchen.
He's the creator of Magic Vegan Bacon Grease, a creamy, one hundred percent vegan spread that's just as at home in a frying pan as it is spread on toast, and claims to impart a delectably rich, smoky flavor unto all that it encounters. He swears that it tastes just like bonafide bacon grease. Colohan's been vegan for over two decades, and has been touring in bands for just as long. Eventually, he got fed up watching his bandmates gloriously feast on greasy soul food, and decided to whip up his own cruelty-free version. I got in touch with him for more details to find out if this porcine substitute holds up to the hype.
MUNCHIES: For someone who doesn't identify as a chef, you've created something pretty, well, magical. Chris Colohan: I was messing around with clarified canola oil and other shortenings, synthetic bacon bits, fried onion and garlic, and just eating it. At some point, I got industrious enough that I made a few dozen jars at once and took them to TBC (a vegan bakery here in my end of Toronto). I wasn't expecting much out of it, so I didn't know until a few weeks after that the reaction to the idea that someone had cracked a vegan version of bacon grease had gone so far and wide. From there, it was a patent, then a business, and then a life plan in a really short time.
I've spent a lot of time touring and have always marveled at the extra effort that my vegan friends had to put in just to stay fed on the road, let alone healthy. What are a few of your favorite tips for touring as a vegan? If your experience of tour life is anything near as… let's say "spartan" as mine (a.k.a. selling all your original Pusmort and Crossed Out records to Damian for rent money the night before tour so you can lie badly to your super patient wife that you totally had it covered) then: big jars of peanut butter and tahini are your friend. And bananas. If you're any good at stealing (I suck), that's a thing. Punk stew is going to happen to you somewhere, and you're going to have to fake liking it. I have a little mini travel shaker that's got lemon pepper and all my favourite spices in case of Punk Stew emergencies or huge vats of pasta. I try to be discreet about it while grateful to the chef.
Now that things have changed, what's your favorite greasy treat? Collard greens or kale are my own favourite, fried with onions and Cholula hot sauce. If you ask Andy Czuba, my friend in Buffalo and one-man US MVBG disseminator, he'll say gross toast—just straight up MVBG on toast. It's super lazy, and secretly not actually gross. Can someone that drinks please try this and tell me that it's as good a hangover cure as it seems like it should be?
Not every vegan wants to scarf down whole grains and seitan 24/7; sometimes you just want a big plateful of greasy, cruelty-free comfort food. It seems like you've managed to plug a very real, fatty hole in the market. Aside from even the vegetarian issue, peoples' childhood memories of cans of bacon drippings next to their stoves and the comfort food feelings we associate with that are fairly universal and cross-generational, and that includes vegans who—until recently—have been pretty starved for options. We were eating Tofutti ice cream that was like a cup of straight edible oils (basically non-dairy creamer) and soy/rice cheese that tasted like plastic for many years, and really trying to feel it when it was, in fact, gross. Anyone from vegans to older dudes that have had heart attacks are getting into it once they realize that MVBG makes all that accessible to them again.
What kinds of products do you eventually plan to add to the line? Vegan Spam? Now that things are rolling, I am actually making a second product, a vegan cheese spread. I don't have a "business plan", and I'd like to keep it that way to see how things evolve. I think that's a good rule of thumb. Seeing that I can make brand new things, I have a whole new disrespect for reality, so I'm gonna let my inner mad scientist off the leash and do more shit like that. People can take it or leave it. That's pretty much my approach to music, too, but edible.
I know that Burning Love and Left for Dead are still very much alive. What creative pursuits are you currently working on—new music, touring, writing? Tour life is secondary to grease-life right now, but Left For Dead will try to finish the 4 x 7" set we put out the first installment of last year, and play a few selective shows this year. BL has a new 7" coming out via Deathwish Inc., and we're going to write a new LP for Southern Lord this year, even if we aren't able to get away as much to tour around it. I have been working on finishing more ambitious writing projects since publishing Negative Space with Permanent Sleep Press last year and doing a reading tour for it in the middle of Arctic Storm Pax along with an old friend whose writing I respect a lot, Joe Sulier. A few more zine-style projects are done and slated for release with Permanent Sleep, and I'm trying to finish a book called Nine Lives that's been underway for over ten years.
Now that every band under the sun has hopped on the reunion train and a good few years have passed since you went your separate ways, do you think that we'll ever get a chance to see Cursed play again? It's a long and pretty sad story but I'll just say that there are some irreconcilable things that happened before, during, and after which would |
something to Al Gore and “it’s bad.” Podesta wants to punch the former president of Afghanistan Karzai in the face. Do Hillary and Bill even have each other’s phone numbers? When is the last time they slept in the same zip code? I’m serious: they NEVER talk to each other.
Why did Clinton pick Tim Kaine already in 2015?
Here is evidence Tim Kaine lied about how he heard about how he had been picked.
Identity politics at its most crude
The campaign wrote sermons for Black churches. These churches could lose their tax 501c3 status. Here is how to finesse Black Lives Matter. And don’t forget this lovely memo about not committing to any policies with BLM. And segregation? Hillary tells Goldman Sachs that we should go slow and not upset the racists.
In many documents insiders list candidates by ethnicity with little reference to any other qualifications. Here. Also see the famous Citibank memo picking Obama’s cabinet before he won the election in 2008. Get money from Jews. And here about whether to hire Muslims or Christians. Here they list people again by ethnicity.
Still, “four white boys” are running the campaign.
Her “public positions” (I.e. everything she has ever said while campaigning) is a lie
Banks love Hillary. She hates the environment. She hates Greenpeace as they won’t let her take oil money. No, she will not offer a government option in Obamacare revisions; she believes government health care is a “lefty alternative universe.” Of course she is for TPP. Oh yes she is. She most certainly is. Hillary Clinton hates environmental activists but loves fracking. She is not really all that keen on gay marriage even now.
Spitting in your face
Hillary gave nothing of substance to Bernie supporters and everyone on her campaign hates progressives. Bernie supporters are bed wetters. Bernie is a doofus. Anyone who says something nice about Bernie is a terrorist. Campaign told female senators to accuse Bernie of sexism and they then did so. Bernie supporters are paranoid (wonder why?). His followers are “evil spawn” and no one should talk to Bernie. Bernie’s brother said Bill Clinton is probably a rapist, so Podesta threatened him.
Hillary listens to no one but her inner circle of morons who use easy to hack passwords
People who were only tangentially connected to the campaign repeatedly warned the insiders to cool it. Here is a pollster. Here is a smart guy in Hawaii. This guy breantbbi — he’s always giving them good advice they then ignore.
The media suck
CNN is a joke. Here, Hillary, have our poll before we publish it. Most journalist get paid to write nice stuff about Hillary, seems like. Same pollsters for the media work for Hillary. Huna can’t tell if a document is from CNN or made internally, as they are so similar.
Apple gave our data to the government. Facebook supports Hillary. LinkedIn caved to Hillary. New York Times editor is a “wuss” and HRC people push them around. They go to war and succeed in changing NYT stories. The HRC campaign rigs polls with MSM. Huffington Post won’t do a harsh story on Obamacare as a favor to Hillary. The Washington Post editors and publishers vacation with Hillary. Erza Klein is a shrill. Associated Press is “friendly.” Very friendly when the email server problem emerges. Univision owner bribes Hillary to influence Israel policy. Definitely handed Univision over to her. Univision again. Politico is in the tank. Here. Talkingpointsmemo too? More rigged polls. More rigging of polls that are still out there now.
Google! And we do see some strange stuff with Google.
Nevada, Iowa, Rhode Island, New Jersey, New York, lots of suggestion of outright electoral fraud
Dan Rolle is an insider spilling the beans on Nevada. Where is that email about 1%? Hillary stole the Iowa caucus. Here and more rigging. How could they know three months before the New York State primary that they were going to win in Brooklyn? The earlier DNC leaks say the attorney general would run a sham investigation. I’m digging up more links. New Jersey.
Soros
Soros avoids anti-fraud investigation. Soros meddles in East Timor to get their oil. No one gets more time with campaign and Hillary than Soros. See attachment. Soros gives slush money. They sit with him to see if he likes their message. Soros owns the company that supplies a large percentage of the voting machines in the US.
Clinton Foundation is a racket
In one memo you can see it all. It’s a total mess, with the Clintons dipping into to take money whenever they want. Illegal.
The Clinton Foundation illegally coordinates with the campaign and should lose 501c3 status. Soros money from the campaign and the foundation is mixed. Here and here (see attachment) and here and here and another and here and the most smoking of the guns and more today and more there and Bing and links with Teneo. Article, good one. The speeches and foundation money are bribes, as the people on the inside know. How to skirt election laws.
Breaking laws
Foreigners are not allowed to donate to campaigns. The foundation cannot engage in politics yet it does. Superpacs are not allowed to coordinate with campaign but they do regularly. You have to report gifts, but they don’t. Then there is emailgate. And the Clinton Foundation is not a legal 501C3, as they do politics. Plus probably crimes in the way they take money — fraud in how they raise it. More.
There is an email where the Hillary people say they are going to throw us Bernie people “a bone” of meaningless nothing.
There is an email where a guy is mad that “compliance is fading” and we are no longer obeying our masters.
These guys definitely suck.
More to come I’m sure!
I’ll just stop for now.High tensions and audience unrest highlighted the first meeting between Premier Kathleen Wynne, Mayor John Tory and citizens as part of an intended series of conversations to address racism and policing in the province. The Anti-Racism Directorate meeting, which took place at Daniels Spectrum in Regent Park Thursday evening, saw conversation between members of the black community, activist groups like Black Lives Matter Toronto (BLMTO) and politicians about racial profiling and government initiatives to help fight racial inequity.
Black Lives Matter demonstrators ambushed Mayor John Tory outside his office in February to demand an end to police carding in this file photo. ( Christopher Reynolds / Toronto Star file photo )
Within minutes of the meeting’s start, the calm that was originally called for by moderator Paulette Senior had broken as members of the crowd began to chant “Black Lives Matter,” and some called for Tory and Wynne to speak out about recent events, such as the Black Lives Matter tent city, and the disruption of the Pride parade. At one point, a speaker confronted Tory directly for not addressing BLMTO when the group was camped out in front of Toronto Police headquarters earlier this year to protest police brutality. “I’m really shocked to see John Tory here... I’m wondering why you’re piggybacking off Kathleen Wynne,” the speaker said, attacking the fact that Tory did not meet with BLMTO publicly before this event. “You are a coward.”
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“I’m here tonight because I was invited by (Wynne) and the provincial government,” Tory said after taking the mic, visibly upset. He said there would be further meetings and quickly sat down. Earlier in the night, Wynne addressed the issue of white privilege and marginalized experiences directly with members of the audience who yelled at her regarding accountability. “I believe we can do better. I believe there are people who would like to see us go at each other’s throats,” Wynne said, asking for civility and understanding from all sides. “I don’t believe we have to do that. I believe that we can find a better way.” Children and Youth Services Minister Michael Coteau, who is also in charge of the province’s anti-racism efforts, answered questions about how much money was being spent on the new anti-racism task force. He explained that it was $5 million — a number criticized as being “peanuts” by the audience — but that the goal was to leverage other ministers to join the effort.
Sheron Shadrach drove nearly two hours from Mississauga to attend the meeting tonight. When she found out she had to watch in an overflow area, she said she felt disrespected. The organizers should have predicted there would be more interest and found a venue that could accommodate more than 300 people, she said. Her friend Audrey Campbell said the people in Daniels Spectrum were being treated like “caged rats.” At least 200 people filled the two overflow areas, some spilling onto the patio outdoors to listen in the rain.
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Before the meeting got started, audience members reflected on what they hoped to see and hear from politicians in attendance. Margaret Parsons, executive director of the African Canadian Legal Clinic, said she was hoping for a concrete action plan to address and eliminate racism. Emile Thomas, another attendee, said he was concerned Tory was “piggybacking” onto the meeting organized between the provincial government and Black Lives Matter. Tory hadn’t agreed to a public meeting at the municipal level with Black Lives Matter activists. The meeting follows months of protest from Black Lives Matter against Toronto police over allegations of discrimination and aggressive policing, with carding and police shooting incidents as cornerstones of the debate. Black Lives Matter shut down this year’s Pride parade for half an hour, demanding Pride Toronto sign off on a list of demands, including the banning of police floats in future parades. Since then, the group has been at odds with Tory, who took a public stance aligning himself with police, and Pride executive director Mathieu Chantelois, who said he had no plans to honour the agreement.
Read more about:We have to admit that we underestimated the extent of this massive, multi-year Disney Springs expansion project in the past. What we thought was going to be a refresh of this entertainment district is undoubtedly getting much more exciting thanks to the new themed neighborhoods, food and beverage offerings, and all the other additions that continue to be added. The photos included in this update should give you a slightly clearer idea about the amount of work being done.
The exterior ofhas changed a lot in the past few weeks:Part of the building is now blue, and the Genie coming out of the chimney is gone:Walking around the Marketplace:Let's explore theThe oldarea has been replaced by a more contemporary (and realistic) theme:The shop was recently expanded towards the back:Many of the store's aisles feel much more open and less cramped:As a side note, the clock that was stuck in Tick-Tock's mouth has been saved:Continuing our tour of the Marketplace:This kiosk seems new:Some of the buildings in the Town Center are visible from many areas within Disney Springs:Work continues to be done around the lagoon:will soon close for a long refurbishment project:Let's now take a peek above the walls and see what the Town Center has in store:New kiosks are being built near the springs:It looks like the Town Center will be the most beautiful area of Disney Springs:Back on the ground:The light fixtures around The Landing and the Town Center are great:Let's take another peek above the walls:The Landing:From Bulbanews, your community Pokémon newspaper.
Additional learnset moves and double battling included
Article Discussion Report error Saturday, June 29, 2013 Reported on Bulbanews by Pokemaster97
Originally reported on Famitsu
This article brought to you by Bulbanews, your community Pokémon newspaper.
Link to this article
New minor details regarding Pokémon X and Y were revealed during today's World Hobby Fair. A three on three stage battle between two players was featured, with players using the Pokemon Froakie, Chespin, Fennekin, Gogoat, Helioptile and Noivern.
Additionally, a second battle confirmed the appearance of Double Battles in X and Y. In this battle, one battler used Noivern, Spewpa, Lapras and Hydreigon while the other used Litleo, Talonflame, Charizard and Lucario.
Within the battles, additional moves that would appear in the Pokemon's learnset were showcased.
GalleryMONTREAL - Shea Weber was somewhat apprehensive about making the move to the Eastern Conference this past season, but he certainly didn't show it.
Following an 11-year stint in Nashville - the last six of which he served as captain - the 31-year-old defenseman wasted little time making his towering presence felt on the Canadiens' back end, quickly acclimating to his brand new hockey home.
Seeing plenty of ice time certainly helped in that regard. Weber averaged 25:03 of playing time per game in 78 regular-season outings in 2016-17, logging nearly 1,955 minutes between mid-October and early April. Not only did he boast the heaviest workload on the Canadiens' roster, but he was also the 10th most-utilized player League-wide as well.
"The adjustment was made pretty quickly, and it was easier than I thought it would be. I thought it was going to be difficult. Having been in one place for 11 years, I wasn't sure what to expect," said Weber, who played 763 games in a Predators uniform before being dealt to the Canadiens last June. "Looking back now, I'm really happy with everything. I love it here. I'm looking forward to moving ahead and getting better."
With 157 blocked shots and 140 hits to his credit, Weber was nothing short of a rock defensively. He was equally productive on offense, too, ranking in the Top 5 on the roster with 17 goals - including 12 power-play markers and four game winners - 25 assists, 42 points, and 183 shots on the year, picking up right where he left off in Music City.
The Sicamous, BC native insists his new teammates had everything to do with his personal success during his freshman campaign in Montreal.
"There's a good group of guys in here who made the transition easy. I felt like I fit in with them right away, and that's the difficult part," explained Weber, who earned his sixth All-Star nod in January, joining longtime buddy Carey Price in Los Angeles where he successfully defended his hardest shot crown during the annual Skills Competition. "I think I only knew two guys in this room before I got here, so I knew it was going to take a bit of time. Now, we'll keep building."
Come playoff time, Weber continued to prove his worth. Once again, the 2016 Mark Messier Leadership Award winner was the player Claude Julien and his staff featured the most, and the Canadiens' No. 6 answered the call with the game-winning tally in Game 3 at Madison Square Garden, while blocking a team-leading 20 shots during the series with his imposing frame.
Unfortunately, things didn't work out for the group as a whole against the New York Rangers, which left Weber both disappointed and hungry for a far more significant run next spring.
"It's hard to get into the playoffs, and once you get in, you never know - anyone can win it. That's the hardest part, to sit here and just realize that it's - not a wasted opportunity, we gave it our best - but it's tough to lose this opportunity. Last year, the team missed the playoffs, and you never know when you'll get back," stressed Weber, who also added two helpers in his ninth trip to the postseason. "We've got to get back there next year, and I believe we've got the group that can do it, and I believe we can make more noise next year as well."
Weber will undoubtedly play a key role in leading that playoff resurgence with the endless list of intangibles he brings to the table, all of which can make everyone around him better in the long run.
"Shea has played with a lot of the best players in the world. He's a huge part of this team and I've learned a lot from him this year," praised captain Max Pacioretty. "He brings experience we haven't really had in this room before."Home Field Advantage
every man is different. every man has unique strengths and weaknesses. one of the most difficult aspects of game is learning what works best for you. i’d probably suggest you ask those friends closest to you what they think are your best qualities. from there, see which are most applicable to red-pill/game.
i’ve always been humorous. i’ve always been able to make people laugh. humor is a great social lubricant.
of course, all i can do is relay how i used what i possess towards learning game. and, well i’m a pervert and i can make people laugh. fortunately, most women are huge perverts so making them laugh then going pervy removes “creep status”. the fact is, i’ve had guys watch me interact with women and admit, “i just couldn’t do that.”
but for me, it’s calculated. i watch every move she makes; calculate every smile, nod, laugh, eye movement, shift of body, etc. i surgically read IOI’s. my job is to take her off of her game, and make her play mine. once i make her laugh and she’s leaning towards me, i’m almost home. a number close is guaranteed. i was telling this to Sploosh at a strip club last night. when i can make her break character and and laugh while she’s on stage, i KNOW i have her.
the above basically explains why online dating doesn’t work for me. besides as Sploosh astutely put it, “they see 5’4″ and they move on.”
uh….thanks? dick. lol.
but he’s right. online women can be as superficial as men. but when the same women that would glance over me online sits in front of me, she’s mine to pick apart and qualify. a large part of how i work is by joking with her. i was on a first date with what would end up my as girlfriend. she asked me if i had any tattoos. i told her no and she asked me if i liked tattoos.
“yeah, i just think they’re most sexy when they’re inconspicuous. when a woman has excessive tats it takes away from her natural beauty. like say, you’re undressing her and as you remove her panties (notice, i’m already planting the ‘we’re gonna have sex’ seed in her head) and you notice she has a small heart inside her bikini area, THAT’S HOT.”
she smiled and agreed how sexy that could be. but i wasn’t done.
“then you notice something really hot. like inside the heart she has something hot written inside of it, like ‘black cock’.”
she stared at me for a moment, then burst into laughter. i knew right there that me and this cute little mexican girl would get along just fine. now, i admit, unless you have super sick game, this is something that takes time and usually comes with age. you get to understand yourself better as you get older. if you’re a younger guy and you’re reading this, you are well on your way to jedi status.
i didn’t have the luxury of a series go blogs that i could reference and cite. you do. read up, get off your ass and practice the Venusian Arts. trust me, i’ve met very few women that didn’t appreciate a man that could effortlessly interact with woman and could bring a smile to pretty faces with ease.
i’ve seen guys that could be models, but they have ZERO skills with actually talking to women. like a hot girl, they’re looks became a crutch and they never had to learn how to be interesting. i fully admit i have the sex appeal of John Merrick, but i sure as shit can make a woman laugh, all the while escalating with flirty sexual banter. most of it is even self-depricating.
so play up your strengths, kick the pedestal out from under her, and bring her into your world. it benefits both parties.
stay up.Disney Princesses Are My (Imperfect) Feminist Role Models
With the recent success of Frozen and the anticipation of Moana, Caroline Siede examines the power of the Disney princess.
The Internet rejoiced at news that another Disney princess is on the way sooner than expected. Moana, Disney’s upcoming film about an ancient Polynesian princess exploring her Oceanic home, will now hit theaters in 2016 instead of 2018. The fan response was enthusiastic. Many expressed hope that Moana will continue the female driven-storytelling that made Frozen such a phenomenon. Others celebrated the fact that Moana will become the fifth Disney princess of color and the first of Polynesian descent. I’m ecstatic about Moana just as I was about Frozen. I’ve been a Disney fan since childhood, and it’s always refreshing to see a massive company adapt to the progressive tides. But are Frozen and Moana atypical Disney films? Are the princesses who came before Anna, Elsa, and Moana simply hurtful stereotypes of conventional domesticity? There’s no doubt that Disney is actively promoting diversity in both the storytelling and marketing of these recent films, but that’s actually nothing new. In a media landscape teeming with male-driven narratives, Disney has spent the past 75 years teaching young girls that their stories deserve to be told too. And that’s enough to make all of the Disney princesses my (imperfect) feminist role models.
One reason Frozen felt like such a revelation is that female-driven storytelling is a disappointing rarity, even in contemporary filmmaking. According to the Geena Davis Institute on Gender In Media, male characters outnumber female characters 3 to 1 in family friendly entertainment. In a study of recent family-friendly films, the Institute found that female characters make up a mere 30% of protagonists despite the fact that women constitute half of the population. From a young age girls learn that female characters—even well written ones like Hermione Granger and Princess Leia—are sidekicks, not heroes. That made it even more remarkable that Frozen offered two leading ladies. Furthermore, Frozen was an intentional subversion of the cultural understanding of the Disney princess as a helpless girl who needs to be rescued by a man. But Disney has been offering similar subversions long before Elsa encouraged the world to “Let It Go.” In fact, that’s been its mission from the beginning.
Considering the Disney princess genre includes 13 female protagonists introduced across 75 years of filmmaking, it’s no wonder there’s a bit of confusion about where to place these characters on a feminist scale. To understand the successes and failures of these individual heroines, we must examine them within the historical contexts in which they were created. Here’s a brief timeline of Walt Disney Animation Studios’ three most fruitful eras and the princesses created during them.
Classic Era [1937-1967]
Snow White (Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, 1937)
Cinderella (Cinderella, 1950)
Aurora (Sleeping Beauty, 1959)
Renaissance Era [1989-1999]
Ariel (The Little Mermaid, 1989)
Belle (Beauty And The Beast, 1991)
Jasmine (Aladdin, 1992)
Pocahontas (Pocahontas, 1995)
Mulan (Mulan, 1998)
Revival Era [2009-present]
Tiana (The Princess and the Frog, 2009)
Rapunzel (Tangled, 2010)
Merida (the Disney/Pixar collaboration Brave, 2012)
Elsa and Anna (Frozen, 2013)
Interestingly, the image of the “Disney princess” is still irreparably tied to the three women who kicked off the genre despite the leaps and bounds Disney made in the subsequent Renaissance and Revival eras. (In Batman terms, that’s like arguing that both the campy 1960s series and Christopher Nolan’s dark take on the character can only be judged as a packaged deal.) Unsurprisingly, the princess films made in the 1930s-1950s reflect the sexist gender politics of that era. (After all, Snow White was released only 17 years after women earned the right to vote). On the surface, these films reinforce rigid gender stereotypes: Women are good at cooking, cleaning, and looking beautiful. Men are good at rescuing ladies and fighting monsters.
Yet it’s women who are the titular characters in these three films. The leading ladies get the memorable songs, the iconic costumes, and the emotional journeys, while their male love interests are generic—often unnamed—supporting characters. The princes may do the physical rescuing, but they are very much presented as “prizes” for our heroines to win (albeit through conventional means of being beautiful and suffering silently). While contemporary blockbusters struggle to populate their worlds with more than one token woman, these early Disney films offer a wide range of female characters. Snow White’s Evil Queen, Cinderella’s Stepmother, and Sleeping Beauty’s Maleficent remain three of Hollywood’s most memorable female villains. And long before Frozen celebrated female friendships, Cinderella and Aurora relied on female fairies for help, guidance, and encouragement. These films troublingly imply that only beautiful women can be heroes, but it’s still a fairly progressive step to depict women as romantic leads, villains, and supporting characters all in one film.
Today we celebrate The Hunger Games, Lucy, and Divergent for proving that female-driven films can be blockbusters. But we’ve known that since 1939 when Snow White’s $6.5 million international gross made it the most successful sound film of all time. (It was quickly displaced by another female-driven blockbuster, Gone With The Wind.) Perhaps that’s why—after enduring a period of critical and commercial failure in the 1970s and 1980s—Disney once again returned to the princess genre to revitalize itself.
The Little Mermaid kicked off the Disney Renaissance and launched a whole new breed of more overtly feminist princesses. Ariel is feisty, adventurous, and defiant. She’s more recognizably flawed than the princesses who came before her and more adamant about achieving her dreams on her own terms. But as Disney’s first return to the princess genre in three decades, the film is very much a transitional one. While Ariel’s personality is more realistic, her narrative still follows the underdeveloped love-at-first-sight arc from the classic era. But with a bonafide hit under its belt, Disney pushed its feminist storytelling even further during the 1990s.
Belle is defined by her intelligence and love of reading. Princess Jasmine—the only supporting character in the entire princess line—openly declares she’s not a prize to be won. Mulan disguises herself as a man and saves China from invasion. Tiana goes from waitress to business owner thanks to her own determination. Merida and Rapunzel reject the limiting lifestyles their parents try to force on them. Like Snow White, these female-driven films found massive success at the box office, and like Frozen they actively subvert expectations of Disney princess storytelling.
And while Moana deserves ample praise for centering on a woman of color, Disney has actually done a fairly good—if delayed—job diversifying its princess line. So far the company has turned a Middle Eastern princess, a Native American chief’s daughter, a Chinese warrior, and a black business-owner into four of the most recognizable characters in pop culture with remarkably little fanfare. Meanwhile, we’ve yet to have a single superhero movie centered on a character of color.
Of course, these successes don’t give Disney a free pass. It would be insincere to argue these princesses are flawless role models. Their impossibly slender, stunningly beautiful looks reinforce limiting beauty standards. The plots of these films disproportionately center on romance and love at first sight. And with the exception of Frozen, all of Disney’s princess films were written and directed by men. In other words, these films are simultaneously powerful and problematic, none moreso than 1995’s Pocahontas. The film stereotypes Native Americans as “noble savages” with mystical connections to nature, rewrites history to give Pocahontas a white male love interest, and ends on a note of cross-cultural reconciliation that rings incredibly false when one takes into consideration the subsequent genocide of Native Americans by white settlers. And yet, Pocahontas remains pretty much the only mainstream story about a Native American woman in American pop culture. Amy Aidman’s 1999 study found that young Native American girls responded positively to seeing themselves represented onscreen. That’s a stark reminder that women and people of color must too often make compromises when watching entertainment: accept imperfection or settle for zero representation.
So why not write off these problematic princesses and find better role models? Part of the power of the Disney princess is that she is inescapable. As a massive conglomerate, Disney is able to give its princess line an almost frightening level of cultural ubiquity. Conventional wisdom holds that girls will watch male-driven stories while boys will simply ignore female-driven ones. But it was impossible to ignore Frozen last year just as it was impossible to ignore Snow White, The Little Mermaid, and Beauty And The Beast when they premiered. Stop a few hundred people on the street and they’ll likely be able to name more Disney princesses than American Girl dolls, Baby-Sitters Club members, or Legend Of Korra characters. It’s important to introduce young girls to well-written female characters in niche properties, but it’s equally important to teach young girls that their stories don’t have to be niche.
That’s because representation matters on a very concrete level. A 2012 study from the academic journal Communication Research found that while watching television increased self-esteem among white boys (who are overrepresented), it lowered the self-esteem of black children of both genders as well as white girls (who are all underrepresented). The author of the study points out, “Male characters are portrayed as powerful, strong, rational, and the main character, while in contrast, female characters are portrayed as emotional, sensitive, and more likely to be a sidekick or love interest.” Taken as a whole, the Disney princess line offers a surprisingly diverse view of the female experience, ranging from the traditionally feminine Cinderella to the more traditionally masculine Mulan. These women are powerful, strong, and rational, but they are also emotional and sensitive. Most importantly, they are the main characters in their own stories. Too few well-written female characters can claim the same thing.
Perhaps the most important skill parents can teach their children is how to consume media critically. The generation-spanning Disney princess line is full of successes and failures when it comes to female representation. That makes it the perfect starting point for conversations about history, gender roles, and representation. With a little parental guidance, children can learn to separate the positive qualities of these female characters (kindness, empathy, bravery, intelligence, ingenuity) from the gender stereotypes they promote. And that’s an invaluable skill for young girls (and boys) to learn.- Advertisement -
There is a war that's been under way against the middle class.
The war has been going on for at least 11 years. It's a world wide war-- a World War funded by multinational corporations and billionaires.
If you're reading this, you're probably a war victim, certainly a target, or you're a right winger scoping out the enemy.
YOU are the target in the Third World War. by VOA youtube video
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YOU are the target in the Third World War. (image from VOA youtube video)
There are those who seek wholeness and common ground. I've entertained those ideas, in my head and in writing, myself. But there comes a time when one must face reality. The enemy is not nice. The enemy is evil. The enemy is comprised of psychopaths, sociopaths-- you pick the term-- people who make choices that kill people or let them die..
The enemy is not that easy to detect though. There are plenty of Democrats masquerading as allies when they are really anything but. Then there are Democrats who are so spineless, so weak, so inept and incompetent that they might as well be enemies. Every war has leaders like that. But I digress to discuss grayer areas when there are screamingly clear examples of pure enemies-- not just of the left, but of the middle class and of the America the founders envisioned.
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Suppliers
Let's start with the most obvious-- the Koch Brothers. They're the most recent billionaires who are buying legislators and media. But then there's Robert Murdoch and his media empire. There's Richard Melon Scaife who's funded right wing policy promotion organizations to the tune of scores of millions of dollars. There's the Olin family and the Walton family and, recently come to light, Harlan Crow, who gave six figure funding for Swiftboat Veterans for Truth and who's spent millions influencing Supreme Scumball Clarence Thomas. The history of the rise of the right in the US is the history of massive political spending by wealthy right wing families.
Tthen there are the people in government. Let's start with Clarence Thomas and then look at the other four Supreme court justices who deserve total contempt for their handing the nation over to transnational corporations, with women, minorities and the middle class paying the price.
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There are the leaders of the Republican party who, against the will of a strong majority of Americans, continue to exacerbate the nation's economic woes by maintaining fealty to supreme traitor to the US, Grover Norquist. I have no doubt that his influence has already caused the deaths of many Americans and will probably, ultimately cause the deaths of tens of thousands. But not just deaths. He and the politicians who sign loyalty oaths to his anti-tax policies have contributed to the US failing to be among the top nations in terms of lifespan, education, broadband... and a growing list that shows how these traitors have already done potentially mortal damage to the future of America.
Let's not forget the Military/Industrial/Medical complex. They depend on this war to keep and grow their power and their freedom from regulation and legal accountability. They are gradually taking over the functions that have long been done by church and state, including diplomatic development.
And finally, there are the church collaborators. In every war, some religions take sides. In this war, the Christian Zionists are probably the most reliable church allies to the corporatists. There could be as many as 75-100 million of them in the US.
Next Page 1 | 2Elon Musk, chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, during the International Space Station Research and Development Conference in Washington on July 19. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
It’s rare — if not unheard of — to hear someone question Mark Zuckerberg’s comprehension skills.
The Facebook chief executive and social media icon is frequently lauded for his critical thinking and global vision, qualities that have helped him maintain his reign atop one of the world’s most successful companies.
Yet on Tuesday, Tesla chief executive and fellow billionaire Elon Musk said in a tweet that Zuckerberg’s understanding of the threat post by artificial intelligence “is limited.”
Ouch.
In Silicon Valley, at least, them’s tech titan fightin’ words.
I've talked to Mark about this. His understanding of the subject is limited. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2017
[Elon Musk doesn’t think we’re prepared to face humanity’s biggest threat: Artificial intelligence]
Musk’s tweet was a response to a Facebook live broadcast that Zuckerberg did during a backyard grilling session Sunday in which he was asked about Musk’s strident warnings surrounding AI. Without mentioning Musk by name, Zuckerberg called such warnings “really negative” and “pretty irresponsible.”
As he waited for his wood-burning stove to finish slow-cooking a brisket, Zuckerberg fielded a variety of questions, including on economic opportunity and the future of AI.
“I think that people who are naysayers and try to drum up these doomsday scenarios. … I don’t understand it. It’s really negative, and, in some ways, I actually think it’s pretty irresponsible,” said Zuckerberg, who also argued that people “can build things and the world gets better.”
Zuckerberg pointed out some of the ways in which he believes AI can save human lives, such as helping to enhance the safety of self-driving cars and to diagnose medical conditions. He argued that technology can be used for good or bad and that it’s incumbent upon inventors to innovate with caution.
“But people who are arguing for slowing down the process of building AI, I just find that really questionable,” he added. “I have a hard time wrapping my head around that. If you’re arguing against AI, then you’re arguing against safer cars that aren’t going to have accidents and you’re arguing against being able to better diagnose people when they’re sick.”
[YouTube is tricking people who search for ISIS videos]
Musk has been warning for years about the risk posed by AI, most recently telling a group of governors this month that they need to start regulating artificial intelligence, which he called a “fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization.”
When pressed for concrete guidance, Musk said the government must get a better understanding of AI before it’s too late.
“Once there is awareness, people will be extremely afraid, as they should be,” Musk said. “AI is a fundamental risk to the future of human civilization in a way that car accidents, airplane crashes, faulty drugs or bad food were not. They were harmful to a set of individuals in society, but they were not harmful to individuals as a whole.”
After Musk dropped his dig at Zuckerberg on Twitter, thousands of retweets and “likes” followed. Musk followed up his statement by noting that a “movie on the subject” is “coming soon,” but he did not provide details.
More reading:
How doctors used virtual reality to save the lives of conjoined twin sisters
Google Street View’s latest destination: The International Space Station
Why I remain optimistic about TeslaKilling of Cecil the lion by US dentist has caused international outrage, and now conservationists say there is little they can do to save his 12 cubs
Lion cubs fathered by Cecil, the celebrated lion shot dead in Zimbabwe, may already have been killed by a rival male lion and even if they were still alive there was nothing conservationists could do to protect them, a conservation charity has warned.
The killing of the 13-year-old lion on 1 July by Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer, who is thought to have paid $50,000 [£32,000] to take part in the hunt, has sparked world-wide condemnation.
US dentist accused of killing Cecil the lion 'upset' as hunter becomes hunted Read more
Two men arrested for their part in the hunt, Theo Bronkhorst and Honest Ndlovu, appeared at the Hwange magistrate’s court on Wednesday charged with poaching offences. Zimbabwean police said they were also looking for Palmer, who is believed to have since returned to |
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Individual ContributorsRep. Jim Sensenbrenner is the author of the Patriot Act — and an opponent of how it has been used to justify broad domestic spying powers. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) authored the original Patriot Act after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and previously served as chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Recently, he has become a vocal critic of how that legislation has been used to justify broad National Security Agency spying powers since they came to light due to documents from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Sensenbrenner is introducing legislation called the USA FREEDOM Act with Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) to try to reform those programs. I spoke to the congressman Thursday afternoon about the proposal, congressional oversight over the NSA, and how opposition to the spying programs is building alliances in a time of bitter partisanship. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Andrea Peterson: What is the USA Freedom Act?
Sensenbrenner: It does several things. First of all, it stops the collection of metadata by the NSA and has some restrictions on section 215 of the Patriot Act — essentially, the suggestions made by Senator Leahy in the 2005/2006 reauthorization act which were rejected during the negotiations. It restricts section 215 to bring it back to the original intent, which was that the Justice Department would identify a non-U.S. person who is engaged in a terrorist organization, get a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) order to be able to find out who that person was in contact with, and be able to try to spread that spiderweb to see who was involved in a plot that might target people either domestically or internationally.
And it also deals with reforming the FISA Court?
The two other things are that we are proposing reform of the FISA Court, where we recognize there are things that have got to be classified. But if the FISA Court changes policy or attempts to reinterpret the law, we require the publication of that so it is not a secret decision when basically the FISA Court allows the NSA to shift gears. The other thing we do is create an office of public advocate to represent the public and privacy interests in particular — and also give the public advocate authority to appeal a decision of the FISA court the advocate feels does not comport with the law or comport with policies.
One of the former FISA Court judges who is retired wrote an op-ed — I think it was in the Wall Street Journal, but I'm not sure about that. It said judges sit on the bench and they listen to advocates on both sides argue the case and then decide based upon the facts and the law is argued. But in the FISA Court, they only hear one side and they don't hear the other. I think the creation of the public advocate would allow a judge to be a judge rather than hearing one side of the argument and making a guesstimate of what the law and the regulations require.
The other thing that the Freedom Act does is that it gives the Internet providers and phone companies the authority to petition the FISA Court not to release whose phone records have been ordered to be turned over to the NSA, but how many FISA orders or national security letters they have received and how many they have complied with.
I know you had some very interesting, and I thought quite amusing comments, about other proposals at the Cato Institute event — I already reported on the "fig leaf" comment...
I read that.
Do you have any other thoughts about the proposals?
I have not seen the proposals, and I don't think that the Intelligence Committee people — and specifically Congressman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Senator Feinstein (D-Calif.) are as far along as we have been in terms of drafting legislation that would correct the abuses that have occurred in the NSA and have come to light in the last few months. Let me say that both of them have been very strong in their defense of what the NSA has been doing, and despite their advocacy I think that their arguments have gotten less and less support in Congress and among the American public as more and more abuses of the NSA have come to light — particularly during the august recess of Congress.
I know you were a supporter of the Amash Amendment and spoke for it — do you think there's been enough of a shift in Congress since that vote that some of these more comprehensive reform packages might be successful?
Well, there was an inspector general's report that showed that there have been thousands of violations of their own regulations that came out in August. And there were also published reports that NSA employees were actually getting into people's Facebook sites, particularly what their social status was. And in my opinion that is outrageous, and I have found an awful lot of support for making sure that never happens again.
Since you were the author of the Patriot Act, you were at least at one point supportive of greater powers going to the intelligence community. Were the programs it has now been revealed the Patriot Act was used to justify particularly surprising to you? How else did you expect it to be implemented?
Clearly, they were very surprising to me. I can say that if Congress knew what the NSA had in mind in the future immediately after 9/11, the Patriot Act never would have passed, and I never would have supported it. We have to have a balance of security and civil liberties. What the NSA has done, with the concurrence of both the Bush and Obama administrations, is completely forgotten about the guarantees of civil liberties that those of us who helped write the Patriot Act in 2001 and the reauthorization in 2005 and 2006 had written the law to prevent from happening.
What I can say is during my six years as chair of the Judiciary Committee, both Mr. Conyers and I were very vigorous in sending pointed letters to the attorney general, who under the FISA law is the official that sends petitions to the court for approval, to find out exactly what they were doing, and a couple times we had to act like crabby professors when students send incomplete answers and tell them to redo it. I think that things were relatively under control and along the spirit of the Patriot Act until I left in January of 2007 as chair of the Judiciary Committee. And looking at the timeline of when I think they rapidly expanded their powers was when they knew I would not be sending oversight letters.
Do you agree with Rep. Amash's assertion that congressional oversight of the NSA is broken?
Absolutely I do. The oversight that was contained in the Church Commission Reports not just by the Congress but by the FISA Court was designed to put brakes on potential abuses by the NSA that came to light in the '60s and '70s — I am specifically referring to the war in Vietnam as well as the COINTELPRO investigations that were going on at that time. Now, instead of putting the brakes on NSA excesses, both the FISA Courts and the two intelligence committees have stepped on the gas and there has been a failure of oversight. I think there needs to be much more rigorous oversight, which is something I tried to do when I was chair of the Judiciary Committee.
It's been somewhat of a politically contentious time, especially with the shutdown and the looming debt ceiling debate, but do you see the surveillance issue as one that breaches that partisan divide?
It certainly does. I'm going to be introducing this bill with Senator Leahy and Congressman Conyers. Maybe a few people have quarreled about my credentials as a conservative Republican and a few people have quarreled with their credentials as liberal Democrats. But the answer to the question is yes. While other people have been dealing with issues like the shutdown and the debt ceiling, we have been working on bipartisan and bicameral legislation which will hopefully be passed and signed into law. So while there's a lot of screaming across the aisles by others, there are some of us that have been working across the aisle so that once the current issues get past us we can work on something we genuinely think is necessary and is needed to protect the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens.Have you ever noticed that every time you run across someone either in passing, at the check out counter, or within a conversation with a friend or family that the first question that comes out of their mouth is “how’s your day or how you doing”? Usually the response is “I’m ok, fine, fair to middling, great, outstanding, fair to partly cloudy, moderately neato, some other positive remark, or a sarcastic negative response”.
I’ve always been intrigued by that. It’s almost as how someone’s day is going will determine how the conversation is going to go. If someone is having a good day then the conversation is usually quick, to the point, and done. But if someone is having a bad hair day then the conversation will go one of two ways. One it could go the way of you are a sympathetic ear and will listen to every word this person has to say as they dump all their problems onto you because you brought up the question. Or, two it could cause a really awkwardly tense moment and you try your best to get out of the conversation by either looking at your watch or creating something else you have to do and you have to leave now.
This question is a great conversation starter or ender depending on how you look at it. But, if you are not prepared for the person to really tell you how their day is, then I suggest you don’t use this as a conversation starter because it could start a whole different thing than you originally intended. Usually I veer off to my next question/conversation starter which is “what about this weather we’re having”, which has the exact same potential for either a negative or positive response. So I am still wondering is there a better way to start a conversation, and if so what is it?
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AdvertisementsToday, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai released the broad strokes of his plan to abandon consumer protections to the benefit of large corporate players in the telecommunications industry.
While major telecom companies are looking forward to Pai’s FCC makeover, the same can’t be said for everyone else in tech. After Pai’s announcement, a group of more than 800 names in tech sent Pai a business-minded denouncement of his plans to strip away the rules that shape net neutrality.
For tech companies that aren’t telecom behemoths, the crux of the argument is this:
“… the success of America’s startup ecosystem depends on more than improved broadband speeds. We also depend on an open Internet—including enforceable net neutrality rules that ensure big cable companies can’t discriminate against people like us. We’re deeply concerned with your intention to undo the existing legal framework. Without net neutrality, the incumbents who provide access to the Internet would be able to pick winners or losers in the market. They could impede traffic from our services in order to favor their own services or established competitors. Or they could impose new tolls on us, inhibiting consumer choice. Those actions directly impede an entrepreneur’s ability to “start a business, immediately reach a worldwide customer base, and disrupt an entire industry.” Our companies should be able to compete with incumbents on the quality of our products and services, not our capacity to pay tolls to Internet access providers.”
The letter, spearheaded by Y Combinator, Techstars and Engine represents a massive swath of tech’s net neutrality supporters, from investors and incubators to startups and code schools. The full letter is embedded below.A team of scientists, led by researcher Carles Lalueza-Fox from CSIC (Spanish National Research Council), has recovered - for the first time in history - part of the genome of two individuals living in the Mesolithic Period, 7000 years ago. Remains have been found at La Braña-Arintero site, located at Valdelugueros (León), Spain. The study results, published in the Current Biology magazine, indicate that current Iberian populations don't come from these groups genetically.
The Mesolithic Period, framed between the Paleolithic and Neolithic Periods, is characterized by the advent of agriculture, coming from the Middle East. Therefore, the genome found is the oldest from Prehistory, and exceeds Ötzi, the Iceman, in 1700 years.
Researchers have also recovered the complete mitochondrial DNA of one of these individuals, through which they could determine that European populations from Mesolithic Period were very uniform genetically. Carles Lauleza-Fox, from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (CSIC-UPF), states: "These hunters-gatherers shared nomadic habits and had a common origin. Despite their geographical distance, individuals from the regions corresponding to the current England, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, and Spain, shared the same mitochondrial lineage".
The DNA data, which represent the 1.34% and the 0.5% of both individuals total genome, show that they are not directly connected to current populations of the Iberian Peninsula. Iberians from the Mesolithic Period were closer to current populations of northern Europe, who could have assimilated part of the genetic legacy of these hunters-gatherers.
La Braña-Arintero site was discovered in 2006 by chance. Juan Manuel Vidal Encinas, archeologist from the Regional Government of Castilla y León, who has also participated in the study, has excavated it at a later date. The cave, due to its location in a cold and mountainous area, is a suitable place for the good preservation of the DNA of these two individuals, found inside it.
The oldest remains from Prehistory
CSIC researcher emphasizes: "So far, we only had one genome of the European Prehistory, that of Ötzi [also known as the Iceman], from the Neolithic Period. His mummy, belonging to a man who lived 5300 years ago, was found in the Tyrolean Alps, on the border between Austria and Italy. La Braña-Arintero site offers a unique opportunity to obtain pre-Neolithic genomes".
According to Lalueza-Fox, this is only a first result since the intention of the team is to recover the complete DNA of these individuals, and to compare it with that of the modern humans. CSIC researcher discloses: "The arrival of the Neolithic Period brought about a replacement of populations, and could cause genetic changes in genes associated with new infectious diseases, and in metabolic genes linked to changes in diet. Therefore, all the information extracted from this genome will be absolutely important".
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Our government has officially become corrupted to the core. In fact, it’s so corrupt that it’s willing to commit treason to protect former members of it, like Hillary Clinton.
Under Obama’s watch, the Department of (in)Justice has actually committed a treasonous act in order to protect Hillary’s shot at the White House. This is no joke either.
A bombshell report from Politico (not exactly a conservative media outlet), it has been revealed that Obama’s Justice Department dropped charges against the man responsible for peddling arms to Libyan terrorists. On Monday, lawyers for the DOJ filed a motion to have the charges dismissed because testimony from Marc Turi would cast additional scrutiny on Hillary over her private email server right before the election.
And we just can’t have that, now can we?
More from Politico:
The deal averts a trial that threatened to cast additional scrutiny on Hillary Clinton’s private emails as Secretary of State, and to expose reported Central Intelligence Agency attempts to arm rebels fighting Libyan leader Moammar Qadhafi. Government lawyers were facing a Wednesday deadline to produce documents to Turi’s legal team, and the trial was officially set to begin on Election Day, although it likely would have been delayed by protracted disputes about classified information in the case. A Turi associate asserted that the government dropped the case because the proceedings could have embarrassed Clinton and President Barack Obama by calling attention to the reported role of their administration in supplying weapons that fell into the hands of Islamic extremist militants. “They don’t want this stuff to come out because it will look really bad for Obama and Clinton just before the election,” said the associate. In the dismissal motion, prosecutors say “discovery rulings” from U.S. District Court Judge David Campbell contributed to the decision to drop the case. The joint motion asks the judge to accept a confidential agreement to resolve the case through a civil settlement between the State Department and the arms broker. … Representatives of the Justice Department, the White House and Clinton’s presidential campaign either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment on the case or the settlement. Turi was indicted in 2014 on four felony counts: two of arms dealing in violation of the Arms Export Control Act and two of lying to the State Department in official applications. The charges accused Turi of claiming that the weapons involved were destined for Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, when the arms were actually intended to reach Libya. Turi’s lawyers argued that the shipments were part of a U.S. government-authorized effort to arm Libyan rebels.
Wow…just wow.
Is there any depths the Obama administration isn’t willing to go in order to protect itself?
CommentsTelling Brian Wilson's Fractured Life Story On Film
Enlarge this image toggle caption Francois Duhamel/Roadside Attractions Francois Duhamel/Roadside Attractions
We're watching The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson in a recording studio. It's the mid-1960s; the band is at the height of its popularity. Wilson is busy working with studio musicians on the album that will eventually be considered one of the best ever recorded, the revolutionary Pet Sounds. "How does that work — two basslines in two different keys?" one musician interjects. "It works in my head," Wilson replies.
This window into Wilson's creative process comes from the new feature film Love & Mercy. In these moments from the band's heyday, the musician is played by Paul Dano — but that early period is interwoven with darker scenes from 20 years later, in which an older Wilson played by John Cusack struggles with mental illness. We see his life controlled by a domineering psychotherapist, and how things change when he falls in love with the woman who becomes his second wife, Melinda.
"We didn't really want to be a slave to that biopic thing, where you're having to hit every beat in the person's life," says Bill Pohlad, the director of Love & Mercy. "The idea was just to take two parts of his life and intertwine them, and hope that that would paint a good enough picture."
YouTube
Pohlad recently spoke with NPR's Melissa Block about creating a portrait that would bring viewers into Wilson's mind — which he did with some help from the man himself. Hear their conversation at the audio link, and read an edited version below.
Melissa Block: In the '60s phase of the film, we see Brian Wilson struggling with sounds in his head, voices that he's hearing. But he's also hearing ways to create music that no one's done before: new sounds, new harmonies. He says, "I'm going to make the greatest album ever made."
Bill Pohlad: I think it was Melinda who actually said that he hears these amazing things in his head — orchestrations, arrangements, instrumentation. They're so complex that nobody else can understand them until he actually executes them. But the problem is, he hears these all the time, but he can't ever turn them off.
Some of the best parts of the movie, I think, are the studio sessions where he's creating Pet Sounds, laying down tracks. We see Paul Dano in a piano, putting bobby pins on the strings. We hear a clown horn, we hear a bicycle bell. And he's very actively conducting the barks of dogs.
The stories about Brian and what he did in the studio, obviously, are part of his legend. All those things actually happened: He really did get into the piano and was plucking the strings. That was the beauty of Brian in general, but particularly this period: He was a guy at the height of his creative powers, just letting it flow, and there are a lot of things he's doing that no one's ever done before.
You did have to make a choice about how to portray Brian Wilson's mental illness in this film, right? And that could go in a lot of different directions.
I really wanted it to be something where we could feel for this person as a real human being, not just as a celebrity. So the mental illness, or the difficulties that Brian has faced in those areas, was a big part of it: trying to figure out a way to treat it authentically and not go overboard, [including] how to represent what he hears in his head. Brian doesn't really suffer from visual hallucinations — he suffers from auditory hallucinations. We brought in Atticus Ross, who did not only the score, but helped with these things that I call "the mind trips." Atticus ran with that and really did an amazing job.
There's a scene that takes place at a dinner party, and it starts with normal sounds, conversations, clinking of dishes and glasses. By the end, it's become this terrifying cacophony of sound — we're in Brian Wilson's head, hearing what he hears.
That was the hope, to really try to illuminate that. He gets these cues that trigger some of his creativity, but in this case, just the normal party sounds become almost maddening. That's one of those parts where you can tell that he's really starting to have some more serious problems.
toggle caption Francois Duhamel/Roadside Attractions
How much did Brian Wilson collaborate on the movie or cooperate with you and give you permission to tell his story?
Both Brian and Melinda, his wife, were great about it. I think whenever you're trying to tell a story of a living person, it's difficult: They really have to find a trust level with the filmmaker. Before we started shooting, I wanted to make sure that Brian really understood what we were doing, so we did a table read with actors reading through the script. Brian was sitting there, and he started what I thought was nodding off, like he just was not into it — and I thought, "We're in trouble here." At the end he was like, "That was great," and just kind of walked off. Then, an hour later, he called back with these amazingly insightful notes on the script. He was very with it and very insightful about his comments.
It's interesting that at the end of the movie, when the credits are rolling, you have the actual Brian Wilson playing piano in a concert — recently, I guess?
Yeah, of him performing "Love And Mercy." After everything we've gone through in the movie at that point, we see the real Brian performing, what he really looks like at that time, and that he came out of this — not unscathed, but he came out of it. And he's the last one standing, it turns out; unfortunately, both of his brothers died, and he's still there. The most fragile one, for some reason, has survived all this and is still out there performing.Logo used today Product type Coffee Owner Nestlé Country Switzerland Introduced 1938 ; 81 years ago ( ) Markets Worldwide Tagline It all starts with a Nescafé Website Official website
Nescafé is a brand of coffee made by Nestlé. It comes in many different forms. The name is a portmanteau of the words "Nestlé" and "café".[1] Nestlé first introduced their flagship coffee brand in Switzerland on 1 April 1938.[1]
History [ edit ]
The logo of Nescafé used in 1984–1998.
Nestlé began developing a coffee brand in 1930, at the initiative of the Brazilian government, to help to preserve the substantial surplus of the annual Brazilian coffee harvest. Max Morgenthaler led the development project. Nestlé introduced the new product under the brand name "Nescafé" on 1 April 1938.[1] Nescafé is a soluble powdered coffee that became an American staple during World War II.[2]
In 1965, Nestlé introduced a freeze-dried coffee brand called "Nescafé Gold" in Europe.[1]
In 1966, Nestlé developed a freeze-dried coffee brand under the name Taster's Choice.[2]
Marketing [ edit ]
In the United States, Nestlé used the Nescafé name on its products until the late 1960s. Later, Nestlé introduced a new brand in Canada and the US called Taster's Choice, which supplanted Nescafé for many[vague] years. The company continues to sell Taster's Choice as a separate product, branded as superior to Nescafé and higher priced.[citation needed]
In the United Kingdom, a television advertisement campaign, the Gold Blend couple starring Anthony Head and Sharon Maughan ran in 12 installments between 1987 and 1993.[3] The first 11 episodes were released as a promotional compilation video called Love Over Gold in 1993. A novelisation of the same name written by Susan Moody (under the pseudonym Susannah James) was released in the same year.[4]
In 2003, the company reintroduced the Nescafé brand in Canada and the US, and the product is now known as Nescafé Taster's Choice. It is sold in North American supermarkets in both glass and plastic packaging.
While the Nescafé brand was created for soluble coffee, it has subsequently been used as an umbrella brand on a number of instant coffee products, including, in the UK, Gold Blend and Blend 37 freeze-dried coffees.
In 2006, Nescafé launched the new coffee machine system "Dolce Gusto" ("sweet taste" in Italian). The system allows consumers to make various styles of coffees themselves (cappuccino, latte macchiato, espresso, lungo, etc.). Additionally, hot chocolate and cold drinks can be prepared with the machine. The machines are now sold in more than 60 countries. Unlike other Nescafé products, most Dolce Gusto beverages use roasted and ground coffee beans, instead of instant coffee.
In the UK in August 2009, Nescafé unveiled a £43 million ad campaign for Nescafé, focusing on the purity of its coffee and featuring the strapline "Coffee at its brightest".[5]
Nescafé was ranked 153rd among India's most trusted brands according to the Brand Trust Report 2012, a study conducted by Trust Research Advisory. In the Brand Trust Report 2013, Nescafé was ranked 230th among India's most trusted brands and subsequently, according to the Brand Trust Report 2014, Nescafé was ranked 209th among India's most trusted brands.[6] Nestle India has branded instant coffee as Nescafe Classic and the 70:30 mix of instant coffee and chicory as Sunrise. [7]
Lawsuits [ edit ]
In February 2005, the Associated Press reported Nestlé lost a lawsuit and was ordered to pay US$15.6 million to Russell Christoff for using an image of him without his permission on their Taster's Choice label for approximately five years (1998–2003).[8] The $15.6 million judgment was subsequently reversed in its entirety by the California Court of Appeal.[9] On 31 October 2007, the California Supreme Court, with a vote of 6–0, granted review. On 17 August 2009, the court reversed the judgment (opinion S155242) and remanded the case to the trial court to consider whether the ad campaign covered a "single publication", which would have prevented Christoff from suing because the statute of limitations would have lapsed, or multiple publications.[10]
Influence in the world [ edit ]
In 1981, an advertising commercial of a train was made, the musical theme was "La Colegiala" composed by Rodolfo Aicardi.
Due to the enormous popularity of Nescafé, during the Second World War, "all the production of the American plant was reserved only for the use of the military".
In Ecuador, a Boeing 737-200 from the AeroGal company was painted red to promote the brand.
In Chile, since 2009 the brand has sponsored and helped to restore a well-known Chilean theater that was in decline, making it the First Nescafé Theater in the World and naming it the Nescafé Theater of the Arts. In previous years, the brand was sponsoring different stars of Canal 13, such as Esta Noche Fiesta and Tuesday 13, the 123 Nescafé competition and was for some time the sponsor of different campaigns of the Chilean Telethon, returning as sponsor to the campaign in 2011. In turn, its variant Nescafé Dolca, was sponsor of Una Vez Más de Canal 13.
English band Muse successfully sued Nescafé in 2003 when their song "Feeling Good" was used in a television ad without permission, and donated the £500,000 compensation to Oxfam.[11]
See also [ edit ]
Nescafé Basement
Nespresso - another brand of coffee made by NestléI’m generally an optimist about the resilience of the U.S. economy, its ability to bounce back from shocks and power through disasters, whether they’re imposed by nature, markets, or politics. But today, four years into an expansion that few people saw coming, I’m more pessimistic than many about the impact of the shutdown.
The predictions have come fast and furious. The shutdown costs $300 million in lost gross domestic product per day, according to IHS Global Insight. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg last week said a one-week shutdown would reduce fourth quarter GDP growth by.1 percent. Macroeconomic Advisers, one of the most sober and best forecasters, said a two-week shutdown could shave.3 percent off the fourth quarter. Neil Irwin at the Washington Post has helpfully aggregated a bunch of Wall Street forecasts that project that a one-month shutdown could reduce fourth-quarter growth by anywhere from.5 percent to 2.0 percent.
That’s a pretty big dispersion.
Market and economic analysts have looked back to the experience of 1995 and 1996 for guidance. The stock market actually rose during those two shutdowns. (Therefore, the suggestion goes, this time won’t be so bad for stocks either.) Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics, told Reuters that “the shutdowns in late 1995 caused Federal spending to contract by 14.2 percent annualized in the fourth quarter, subtracting around 1.0 percent from overall GDP growth.”
It is natural to look back and make comparisons. But investment professionals often note that past performance is no guarantee of future performance. And there’s plenty of reason to be skeptical of the models and forecasts analysts are making, whether they rely on data from 1995 or data from 2011. That’s because the U.S. economy is an extremely dynamic organism. Just as the economy of 1995 looked a hell of a lot different than the economy of 1978, the economy of late 2013 looks a lot different than the U.S. economy of 1995. (I could provide a lot of data to support this claim, but the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s website is shut down.)
Think about it. In 1995, the internet wasn’t really a commercial force, China was still a minor economic power, and the acronym “HELOC” (Home Equity Line of Credit) had yet to enter the vernacular. Many of the forces that define our economic lives simply didn’t exist. I’d argue that many of the big changes in the way America works make the U.S. economy more vulnerable to government-shutdown-induced damages. When you look back over the past 18 years, one of the unavoidable conclusions is that, for a variety of reasons, the federal government is much more involved in the economy than it was. What’s more, the economy is now more dependent on certain sectors that can’t operate at their fullest capacity without the government being entirely open.
As this chart shows, the federal government has become a larger part of the economy over time. In 1995, federal spending accounted for about 19 percent of GDP. Now, it accounts for about 22 percent of GDP. Entitlements like Medicare and Social Security, which have yet to be affected, account for a big chunk of this rise. But the fact remains that federal government spending accounts for a significantly larger chunk of GDP than it did 18 years ago. So if you slam the brakes on that spending, it will have a bigger direct impact than it did 18 years ago, for example in the effect the furloughs of defense contractors is having on the private sector. Politico had a good piece Tuesday morning about how Charleston, South Carolina, which is represented by shutdown advocate Mark Sanford, is remarkably dependent on federal spending.
The U.S. is more trade intensive than it was back in the mid-90s. That is to say, exports and imports—the volume of goods, people, and services moving in and out of the country—have risen far more rapidly than the economy as a whole. The U.S. today is the world’s largest importer and the world’s largest exporter. You can go look at the data at the World Bank’s website. Last year, trade accounted for 24.8 percent of GDP. In 1995, it was 18.5 percent. That’s a big difference. The U.S. economy is now one-third more trade intensive than it was in 1995. That means many more people’s livelihoods depend on trade today than 18 years ago. The shutdown isn’t stopping trade entirely, but the Wall Street Journal has an excellent article that details how the shutdown is gumming up the works. It turns out that dozens of agencies are involved in the process of releasing shipments for import and export. And many of them are closed or operating with fewer staff.
“All pesticide imports to the U.S. have been halted, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which must approve them but has had more than 90% of its staff furloughed. Some U.S. technology companies can’t fill overseas orders because they cannot obtain U.S. Department of Commerce authorization to export. Steel imports are stranded at customs-clearance warehouses awaiting paperwork.
Then there’s finance. The trend of financialization—the fact that a larger number of people are involved in moving, trading, and managing money—has long been documented and lamented. (Here’s a great report from the Kauffmann Foundation on the topic.) In 1995, the financial sector accounted for about six percent of GDP; last year, it accounted for about eight percent. That’s an increase of one-third. And as we well know, the financial industry can’t function without the government. Today, the Export-Import Bank is closed, and so is the Small Business Administration. That means small businesses can’t get loans. The inability to get data on income from the IRS is hampering the ability to close mortgages, including jumbo loans, as Diana Olick of CNBC reports. The U.S.D.A. isn’t giving out information on pig prices, which means it is harder for traders to trade contracts based on those prices. These may sound like one-percent problems, but they’re not.
Simply put, there’s a lot of economic activity going on today that might not have existed in 1995 and 1996 and that is affected—directly, indirectly, tangentially, inadvertently, partially, wholly—by disruptions in government operations. Some of this activity may not have been taking place two or three years ago. All of which is to say that models constructed based on prior data and understanding of the economy may not be accurate measures of what is happening now and what will happen in the next few months. When new, unprecedented things happen, models get thrown out the window. We learned that the hard way in 2007 and 2008, when a subprime crisis morphed into a systemic crisis that brought global trade to a standstill.
This isn’t to say that a government shutdown is unprecedented. It’s not. But a government shutdown in an economy that looks like today’s economy is unprecedented. Even the people who follow these issues full-time for a living don’t understand the interconnections. To a large degree, we’re flying blind. And that’s one of the reasons brinksmanship is so dangerous.Do any of the following describe you or your organization:
Are you having a hard time building resilient tests that don't break?
Are you part of an evolving micro services architecture based system?
Are you building more component-based UI architecture?
Are you looking for patterns and practices that help scaling test automation?
Join Continuous Delivery and Quality Architect Sahas Subramanian as he explains and demonstrates design patterns that help build stable and scalable automated tests using Selenium, WebdriverIO and Sauce Labs. In this webinar, Sahas will cover:
Rationalized Automation - when to use WebDriver and browser-based automation technique
Patterns & Practices
Test, Page Object, UIMap and their respective roles
Dealing with asynchronous behavior without using thread.sleep
Sharing UI map, Page Objects and how to avoid redundant code
There will be a live Q&A with Sahas following the presentation.
About Sahas
Sahas Subramanian (@sahaswaranamam) is a |
delay or cancel a fight? We cannot find out these answers or begin to look into the statistics of injuries without this information.
Thank you for reading. Please take a moment to follow me on Twitter –@MikeHutchLWOS. Support LWOS by following us on Twitter – @LastWordOnSport – and “liking” our Facebook page.
For the latest in sports injury news, check out our friends at Sports Injury Alert.
Have you tuned into Last Word On Sports Radio? LWOS is pleased to bring you 24/7 sports radio to your PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone. What are you waiting for?There were years in which, through my own unconscious actions, I co-created messed-up relationships with men, but I was not ready to own my part in it. It turned from pain to hatred. I worked for seven years with Greg Ehmka doing intention work and emotional clearing, which greatly helped me raise my levels of self-responsibility. I recognized that the higher my levels of self-responsibility climbed, the happier I was! Minimizing victim, maximizing happiness! I was able to see how my own plunge into chaos pulled people into my life to help me learn and be present with my own growth and how each relationship really was a gift. I was able to heal the hatred I had projected onto men, experience the pain that was present, and get to the real love I had for men. I had thought before that I loved men but realized I had put men on a broken pedestal. Damned if they did, damned if they didn’t, and how dare they be human and not perfect.
After my healing experience, I started to think about writing a book to “empower” men. It was to be a book on men’s bodies—and so the concept was born.
When I was in San Diego a couple of years back, I was researching some more and came across the NCFM-National Coalition For Men website. I called up and Harry answered, and I told him about my book. He graciously met up with me and was so very kind. He gave me reading material and the book Loving Men, Respecting Women by Tim Goldich (which I’m restarting to read now and it is amazing!!). I told him that my book was about empowering men. He questioned what exactly I meant by this, as the word “empowering” doesn’t mean what it sounds like it means. I can’t remember his exact wording, but I think the concept was that people use that word a lot to say they are “helping” men when they really aren’t. The meeting was great and helped me think more about what my goal was for the book.
I started a survey and a website to enlist male volunteers to anonymously share photos of their bodies and cocks, which meant a photo from the neck down. The survey was a ridiculous 100-plus questions long. Destin Gerek (The Erotic Rockstar) was generously in conversation with me at the time. He suggested that about 10 questions maximum or less was best and then recommended reading as well. He also mentioned how he would do the photo but preferred not to have his head lopped off. This made me think some more too. Why just make it about men’s bodies? It should be the full-expression face as well.
I took a few years away from the book, just at a total loss as to what its purpose was. I realized to “empower men” was just another way of telling men what to do, and I didn’t want to do that. I was upset because I kept hearing of men’s experiences and feeling so at a loss that if I could just get this damn book together, maybe I could help somewhat. But I couldn’t figure it out.
I had issues with feminism in my early twenties (I’m 31) and was about to walk away from it after an online discussion that was just pure man-hating when another feminist said, “No, we’re not all like that, don’t give up.” For over a decade I held on to that, hoping I would somehow change feminism by holding on to that mantra.
Still, with the book on my mind but feeling clueless as how to start, I joined some online groups and discussions. This included circles with other Life Coaches. Well, the world of life coaching and spirituality is soaked in the shaming of men. It’s all “goddess this” and “goddess that” and “women who want to be treated like a goddess.” (I’m very much aligned with goddess beliefs; HOWEVER, I am ALSO very much aligned with god beliefs.) These circles talk about the Divine Feminine but ignore the Divine Masculine. (I loved listening to the Honey Badger Brigade talk about this!) So, when I was in one of the groups listening to these women talking about men’s penises and making shaming remarks, I couldn’t take the stupidity anymore and realized I couldn’t wait until I wrote the book to stand up and say something.
So I created a Facebook page now called ‘Loving and Celebrating Men’. Now I just had to fill it … derp. I googled “loving men,” but all the links were how men could love women! I searched “supporting men,” and the results were all still about what men could do to support women. There was nothing geared towards what men needed. I kept digging. Not sure how, but I came across A Voice for Men. Now, mind you, I was still very much a feminist. I was wanting to step away from feminism but just wasn’t sure where to put my energy—equalism? humanism? When I found AVfM, I was still very much entitled. I called myself a feminist, and oh boy, shit hit the fan. I shared my Facebook link. At AVfM, I met some commenters who wanted to give me the benefit of the doubt but were skeptical and others who were just not having it at all. I was confronted with “How can you say you love men and call yourself a feminist?” There was much lashing out between us. I joined a men’s group but was shortly after kicked out—no surprise, again, still a feminist and had all the feminist armoring that came with it.
I took what these men said into account: Why was I still hanging on to feminism? Did I really think my own words would change the truth of what feminism actually was and what it had done to men and continues to do to men?
So I stopped calling myself a feminist and started calling myself a human rights activist. Meanwhile, this process was all terrifying as shit. I had finally denounced feminism and started to share some articles I had encountered online, and feminists were pretty pissed and lashed out. Meanwhile, I created a group online for men to share their voices uncensored. There, a feminist came in with sneaky hatred until she erupted, and I was told by a few feminists what a traitor I was and how I knew nothing of the goddess and how fucked up and delusional I was. The men in the group, so sweet, were concerned that I was too harsh with her. I assured them I wasn’t and that she was being devious and sneaky.
This was a really intense process. All that I understood to be real was very intensely placed in my face as total and utter horseshit. I was so shaken by all of this that I was sick to my stomach pretty much every day, and my insomnia kicked in because I was so shocked. In life coaching, we call this a “death process,” death of identity. And, holy shit, did my identity get kicked in the face! A terrifying experience, but that is growth and that’s how you wake up. More terrifying than identity death process are the horrors you support by staying asleep. I had no idea how asleep I really had been, and it scared the shit out of me. Here I was thinking I had taken such a stand for equality—what a deep lie that was; I was completely oblivious to how deep this attack on men went.
A commenter said I had rage-quited. I came back with “I’m not going anywhere! I came here to get information on how to help men and damn it I’m going anywhere without it” … again, more fem armoring. I kept asking for help and clarification on what patriarchy meant or didn’t mean; I was completely confused. However, that was just more of me saying, “Men, do the work for me” and not digging myself. As I was commenting on AVfM, the site became a sanctuary for me after every debate I had with a feminist; it became a well of sanity, as did NCFM, even though at first I was still very unconscious with my comments.
This process was roughly two very intense weeks. I had started to shift my view on society and misunderstandings about society quite a bit. A Honey Badger said that I, too, was a Honey Badger, but I was in no way going to support a movement that was called a Men’s Rights Movement. I had spent my life being duped by the so-called Women’s Rights Movement and had lost all trust in any gender-specific group. I would only call myself a Human Rights Activist. She shared how she, too, was a Human Rights Activist and that was exactly why she was a part of the Men’s Rights Movement. I wasn’t at the point where I could understand what she meant.
I started to research the Human’s Rights Movement but found they, too, were just an extension of feminism. Domestic violence was fixed solely under the “women” section. What the hell? So, I turned my attention back to the Men’s Rights Movement. I was listening intently to what the men and women were sharing, but I still wasn’t sure. And I really was still confused on the patriarchy not being real. What world am I in? Everything I thought was real was revealing itself to be … not real and, worse, intentional lies.
So I began to dig. I read many articles on AVfM and finally came across Karen Straughan. This is the video that gave me the final push to wake up: “Feminism and the Disposable Male.”
There was o turning back from that information, and with everything that I had been researching and reading and the small glimpses I had had throughout my life, this was it, this is what I was looking for. I started to watch more MRA videos and get involved with more debates with feminists who were just downright nasty. I’ll never forget the first time I was called a misogynist. It was as if my voice was choked in my throat. The person had completely shut out every statistic I presented, every logical discussion I had brought forth with “You’re a misogynist.” I said, “I’m a woman.” “Well, women can be misogynists too.” Holy crap. This is what men feel when their voices are silenced. I had just entered the world of “Your voice is shit.” I was sad that these women I had spent my life standing by, my so-called sisters, would not hear my voice or my call for them to wake up. But the sadness didn’t last very long; it was replaced with a deep rage. Oh yeah? I started poking them every chance I got. You don’t want to hear me? I’ll make you listen. And this is why I have so very much space for the anger of men. At the time, I had only just experienced this feeling of my voice being shut up—how did men deal with this shit their whole lives? Yes, very much me waking up to my privilege as a woman and my entitlement.
I started to see that I didn’t live in a world filled with “misogynists.” The world suddenly felt safer. I really did live in fear of rape all the damn time as a feminist. I feared travel, I feared every damn thing! I lived in a terrifying world that I had no idea I had subscribed to! I remember reading a comment on AVfM about a man proposing to get rid of the “women and children first” policy aboard ships and instead make it “children and pregnant women first, then everyone else, first-come first-serve” and that would then be equality, when women were not treated as children. I let that sink in … it scared the shit out of me! The fact that it scared me shocked me even more, holy entitlement! Whoa, I was being opened to the levels of my deep-seated feeling of superiority that I had thought I had rid myself of. I wouldn’t be put first? I would have to face the fact of my child living without me? Of course, yes, this is all very hypothetical, but it brought a very powerful awareness to me to the point of terrifying me that whole damn day. I felt sick to my stomach again. Holy shit, I would face the possibility of death? I was always against the draft and I don’t think it should exist, but then I started to think about how men must feel to HAVE to sign up for this. What it would feel like to leave my child behind; there are fathers who have no choice but to leave their children behind, men who are not fathers who barely lived their life but have to go face death to save their country. Or sign up with the promise of help for school. These men with no help from the government to pay for college because they are men have to look death in the face for the chance of an education if they live? WHAT? And how privileged is that, I experienced this horror for a day! Men GROW UP with this! I guarantee that if the draft were necessary for all genders, we would not have a draft. But men do; men are raised with that requirement.
From there on, I was very clear that I was a Honey Badger—an endearing term for female MRAs. I do all I can as an MRA to spread the word of the Men’s Rights Movement.
Our society treats men as if they are inherently dangerous criminals just for being born male; this is the misandry that many boys are raised with, and sadly many begin to believe they have no worth and their voices don’t matter. Men are told to shut up and be “polite” if they want to be heard. We’ve listened to the voice of women for so long, completely uncensored, and men must be heard equally uncensored for us to move forward.
The MRM is the voice that is missing in our society. To deny the voice of men as vital, to shame men, to treat men as disposable, to treat a boy as if he is less than is unjust.
A lot of my rage was self-anger for allowing myself to be so unconscious towards men for so long. Awful. But I’m awake now, red pill swallowed.
I’m currently researching and reading to write the book itself, since I finally know what it’s about. Men don’t need to change, they are just fine, amazing, and beautiful just the way they are. The world stopped loving men a long time ago and definitely stopped celebrating men; it’s not men who need to change, it’s how the world views and treats men that needs to evolve.
In order to really love men, you must stand up for their rights; otherwise, you’re just telling yourself a lie, like I did for so long. I, for one, will take the face-slapping truth over a sugar-coated mirage any damn day.Are Democrats looking to see how in touch Congress is with the people they represent? The Public Religion Research Institute ( PRRI ) recently released two studies which we at Instinct shared with our readers:
Possibly in following with those results, Democrats in Congress are planning to reintroduce legislation within the remaining days of March that would ban LGBT discrimination nationwide.
Wold it pass? Most likely not, but progressives hope the results of the vote or the inactivity by Republicans would illustrate a fissure between the two major political parties, just in time for candidates seeking re-election to answer back to their constituents.
Rhode Island’s Democratic Representative David Cicilline will sponsor the bill in the House while a companion bill will be re-introduced by Oregon’s Democratic Senator Jeff Merkle.
Not only are democrats standing up to say yes, we support a ban on LGBT discrimination, but they plan is to give a soap box for the Republicans to stand on and say why they do not support a ban. They more so are desiring the soap box would turn into a noose and the Republicans will hang themselves with their own bigotry and words. What would most Republicans be against?
The Equality Act, as it’s known, would amend existing civil rights laws to add protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in workplaces, housing, and public spaces. It would also clarify that transgender students can use single-sex facilities in schools in accordance with their gender identity, possibly settling a dispute tangled in courts. - buzzfeed.com
Do you think the Equality Act will make it out of committee in either the House of Reps or the Senate?
Do you think there will be some Democrats that will not support banning LGBT discrimination?
Is this a waste of time or do we need to keep banging at the door of equality for all?
h/t: buzzfeed.comSome of the entertainment at the Michigan Renaissance Festival in Holly.(Photo: Griffin Moores | MLive.com)
HOLLY, MI -- Take a trip back in time to a 16th Century village at the 37th annual
Michigan Renaissance Festival
. This is your complete guide to the event which brings 250,000 visitors.
About the festival:
The Michigan Renaissance Festival is one of the biggest themed attractions of its kind in the country. The 17-acre village features building reproductions of Renaissance shops, taverns and a castle. There is non-stop entertainment along the streets and on more than a dozen stages, including jousting, comedy and theater, music and games. There's plenty of food, including those famous turkey legs, and there are more than 300 artisans displaying their works. Wearing a Renaissance themed costume is optional.
Where:
The Michigan Renaissance Festival is at 12600 Dixie Highway in Holly. If you don't have GPS, check out
to the festival.
When:
The festival runs every weekend from August 22, 2015 through October 4, 2015, plus Labor day and Friday, October 2. Hours are 10am-7pm rain or shine. There is plenty of
parking
space available on the grounds of the festival. Parking is FREE.
Entertainment at a past Michigan Renaissance Festival in Holly. (Photo: Griffin Moores | MLive.com)
Tickets:
You can purchase
right at the gate when you arrive. Adult: $21.95 Child (Ages 5-12): $12.95 Seniors (Ages 65+): $19.95 Students: (with valid college ID): $19.95 Dogs: $10 (see
for restrictions)
: Adult: $18.95 Child (Ages 5-12): $10.50 There are also group rates and season passes. Call the sales department at 248-634-5552.
Theme weekends:
Each weekend is a different
at the Michigan Renaissance Festival. August 22 & 23:
Royal Pet & Ale Fest
featuring a pet festival and pet entertainment August 29 & 30:
Highland Fling
featuring Highland Heavy Games, Junior Caber Toss, and a Celtic Village September 5, 6 & 7:
High Seas Adventure
featuring a Beard Competition, Tattoo Competition, and Trader's Port September 12 & 13:
Wonders of the World
featuring Belly Dance Championships and World Market. September 19 & 20:
Shamrocks & Shenanigans
featuring Highland Heavy Games, Junior Caber Toss and a Celtic Village September 26 & 27:
Harvest Huzzah
featuring a BBQ Festival October 2:
Festival Friday
is School Day, Ladies Shopping Day and FREE Admission for Military October 3 & 4:
Sweet Endings
featuring a Chocolate Festival Check out all of the
and all of the
at the festival this year. See the
of the village and enjoy the 2015 Michigan Renaissance Festival.
Edward Pevos is the Mlive entertainment reporter for Detroit and Southeast Michigan. You can follow him on TwitterMicrosoft is building out a number of "graphs," or data indexes, across the company. There's the Bing knowledge graph, the Office Graph, and now, the LinkedIn professional graph.
This week, the company announced plans to add another graph to its stable: A "world graph." It's partnering with HERE, TomTom, and Esri to build this geographic data index.
The data in the coming world graph isn't just about mapping data for cars or other kinds of navigation. It will provide "a full suite of location capabilities across the company and Microsoft's developer ecosystem," a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed.
Will the world graph simply be a replacement for the data currently powering Bing Maps? The Microsoft spokesperson said it goes beyond that.
special feature Louisville and the Future of the Smart City Louisville, Kentucky is building a unique bridge between the smart city and the smart home. Here's what communities and citizens can learn about the benefits of the onrushing digital transformation. Read More
"Bing APIs (application programming interfaces) are used by multiple businesses to provide location based functionalities. With the broader adoption of Azure across manufacturing, transportation, and smart cities we see the need for a tighter integration with cloud functionality for some of the emerging scenarios and use cases. Conceptually, we believe our Azure location-based services will be a superset of the Bing APIs we offer today."
The world graph "will be built in collaboration with each of these partners (HERE, TomTom, and Esri) under the premise of extensibility to other 3rd party graphs," the spokesperson said when I asked about Microsoft making the data in this graph available outside the company.
Microsoft and partners are in the development stage "and not ready to commit to a timeline" as to when the world graph data will be available, the spokesperson said.
Microsoft already had a decade-plus-long partnership with HERE (and Nokia, previously) for mapping/location data that Microsoft uses across Bing, Cortana, Windows, and Office.
On December 15, Microsoft and HERE announced a "multi-year strategic commercial agreement" between the two companies. Via this agreement, HERE will continue to provide Microsoft with its mapping data for some non-publicly specified amount of time. (I asked; all I could get was for multiple years.) The extension of the HERE agreement specifically allows Microsoft to use HERE data and services in cars.
Microsoft's new partnership with TomTom is about integrating location-based services into Azure. The target market for the resulting services are developers building location-aware enterprise, mobile, web, and Internet of Things applications, according to Microsoft. TomTom will contribute maps and technologies like its High Definition Map and RoadDNA technology for autonomous driving, Microsoft officials said this week.
Microsoft announced a makeover of its connected car strategy a year ago. Instead of trying to embed Windows in cars, the company is now working to provide auto makers with its productivity suite and other services for use in cars.
Esri has geographic information system (GIS) technology that runs on Azure. That system takes location-based data inputs like weather data, social media feeds, and live sensor data (including data from HERE and TomTom). Esri and Microsoft have integrated some of their products, such as Esri's ArcGIS Maps with Microsoft's Power BI."Wadia" redirects here. For other uses, see Wadia (disambiguation)
For the Islamic banking practice, see Wadiah
The Wadia family is a Parsi family from Surat, India currently based in Mumbai, India and the United States.[1] The family is related to the politically prominent Jinnah family—Neville Wadia was married to Dina Jinnah—the only child of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Rattanbai Petit.[2] The present head of the house is Nusli Wadia, son of Neville and Dina, who runs the Wadia Group of companies. The Wadia family has three main branches: textiles, shipping, and jewelry. Descendants from each of these branches have made significant contributions to their fields, to their communities, to India, and to the global economy; they have been industrialists, government leaders, medical doctors, and scholars.
History [ edit ]
Lovji Nusserwanjee Wadia advanced the Wadia shipbuilding dynasty in 1736, when he obtained a contract from the British East India Company for building docks and ships in Bombay (present-day Mumbai). Although the Wadias would eventually come to be considered a Bombay family, many of them remained in Surat, where one branch of the family established a ship breaking yard (where ships are dismantled) that remains one of the largest of its kind in the world.[3]
The poem whose words would become the lyrics of The Star-Spangled Banner, the national anthem of the United States, were written in 1812 on board a Wadia-built British Royal Navy ship, HMS Minden by Francis Scott Key.[4]
By the 1840s, the family was one of the leading forces in the Indian shipbuilding industry. At that time they had built over a hundred warships for Britain, and had trading networks around the world.
The prominent women of the Wadia family, including Motlibai Maneckji Wadia, Jerbai Nusserwanji Wadia, and Lady Hirabai Cowasji Jehangir, were known for their philanthropy in providing financial support to Zoroastrian temples, establishing schools and hospitals, and supporting the arts in the 1800s.[5] More recently, Neville Wadia continued the philanthropic tradition of his family by continuing to establish hospitals and schools.[6]
The Wadia family has endowed Nowrosjee Wadia College in Pune. Lovji Nusserwanjee Wadia's great grandsons, JBH Wadia and Homi Wadia founded Wadia Movietone in 1933, which had its studios at Lovji Castle (Lovejee Castle) in Chembur, Mumbai, India. The company has a ship as its logo, honoring their family legacy.[7]
The family is related to Pakistan's politically prominent Jinnah family, through Neville Wadia, who was married to Dina Jinnah from 1938 to 1943, and had two children together, Diana and Nusli Wadia. Dina was the daughter of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Rattanbai Petit, the former is the founder of Pakistan, while the later was the daughter of Sylla Tata and Dinshaw Maneckji Petit.[8][9][2] Though Dina took divorce from Neville in 1943, she remained a prominent member of the Wadia family.[10][11] Pakistan
Notable members [ edit ]I’m interested in unschooling because it’s an applied philosophy rather than a teaching method. This philosophy, which I strive to use daily with my son, who is now 16 years old, is also the one used in free schools. For me, this approach to life and to children’s’ development encourages independence, confidence, and pleasure in living. Experiencing unschooling with my son has permitted us to go beyond the simple accumulation of knowledge.
A.S. Neil comes to mind when discussing freeschools. A radical educator, psychoanalyst, and friend of Wilhelm Reich, he founded Summerhill school in Suffolk, England in 1921 which continues operating to this day. The founding principles of this free school were freedom and self management, with the child being the master of their learning.
Neil believed that children only learn things when they want to learn them. He also thought that traditional education forms created easily manipulated and docile individuals who conform to the needs of consumer society. The freedom at Summerhill is the rejection of the expert, of the teacher who possesses all knowledge.
Ivan Illich, the remarkable critic of industrial society and author, was also interested in the link between school and society. In 1961, he established the Centro Intercultural de Documentacion Cuernavaca, Mexico. Illich considered descolarization necessary for freeing people from the consumerist ideology taught in schools in advanced capitalist societies, and he postulated the idea that one should try to imagine the separation of school and the state.
His Cuernavaca workshop, until he closed it in 1976, was an incubator where many revolutionary educators, including Paul Goodman (anarchist writer and poet, author of Growing Up Absurd), Paulo Freire, Brazilian educator and author, Pedagogy of the Oppressed and John Holt, (American proponent of home schooling who coined the neologism, “unschooling”), discussed how to change society.
Holt was a fervent promoter of educational reforms. After teaching in Colorado for several years in the 1950s, he moved to Boston to participate in a study about how children learn. For a year he didn’t teach, but only observed classes to see children in learning situations.
Following his experience as a researcher and teacher, Holt wrote How Children Fail in 1964, emphasizing that children live in fear in school, afraid of giving the wrong answer, afraid of not being good enough. Besides fear, lack of interest in subjects imposed on children explained the level of failures at many schools.
In 1967, in How Children Learn, Holt demonstrated how children’s’ natural learning process is short-circuited by schools. Believing that schools couldn’t be reformed (he equated them with prisons), Holt sought a true alternative to the educational institution, and spent the rest of his life trying to imagine and create ways of changing the educational paradigm. In 1977, he launched the magazine Growing Without Schooling, whose articles focused on how to go from schooling to unschooling.
The term unschooling defines how families live and learn outside of schools and their compulsory and institutional curriculums. Holt did not exclude the possibility that unschoolers use curriculums or follow courses with a traditional approach to teaching. But the determining factor is that the child chooses what, when, why and how they want to learn; the child is responsible for and controls their learning.
This approach postulates that learning, like motivation, is intrinsic in each individual; that learning begins and ends with oneself and should not be subjected to a predetermined corpus of knowledge that responds to a demand made by the society. The role of parents is to encourage children’s’ curiosity, to assist them in their projects and experiments.
The term unschooling, according to Holt, could also be known as self-directed learning, centered on the child’s interests, or as natural or organic learning, and later became associated with a type of education at home that doesn’t use a fixed and standard curriculum. He defined unschooling as according children the maximum freedom in the context of learning, within the limits of where their parents are comfortable.
For Holt, it meant living and learning together, following interests and questions as they appear, learning the way we do before we go to school and the way we do after leaving it–following interests that lead children and adults to read texts, take classes, and initiate projects.
The significant difference is that activities are freely chosen and realized by the learner. They are not dictated or imposed through a curriculum that determines at which specific moment and at which specific place learning must take place, even though parents will certainly influence and guide their children.
Learning how to read or to resolve complicated math equations is not natural, but unschooled children decide to learn this type of material when it makes sense for them, and not at a predetermined age. School is based on the memorization of what teacher and the state mandate must be learned.
Our educational system is formatted on the industry model, with the bell, the desks in a row, and children separated by age. Born with the beginning of industrialization, this model exists for producing the factory workers and consumers of the capitalist system. Because the free school believes in the child as a natural learner who should be in charge of their own education, they and unschooling philosophy are a way to change the old paradigm.
Developing children’s critical sense allows them to develop independent thinking. Cornelius Castoriadis, a libertarian socialist who was one of the founders of the group, Socialism or Barbarism in 1946, which influenced many anarchists and Situationists, wrote that autonomous thinking is, more than anything, questioning.
According importance to my son’s questions (numerous!), taking the time to listen when they’re asked (even if I have one foot on a ladder or am absorbed in my book), helping and guiding him in his research, assisting him in his experiments, and seeing his pleasure in validating, invalidating, nuancing, complexifying his solutions and answers–this has given me the privilege of observing the birth and formation of his critical thinking, his personality, his being.
Illich, in Deschooling Society, saw the function of alienation in schooling, that is being a prisoner of the scholastic ideology, people renounce the responsibility for their own growth, and this abdication leads to a kind of intellectual suicide.
Creating concrete alternatives to the indoctrination of the official educational system has always been a priority for anarchists. Whether in the area of reflection about education, like Max Stirner and William Godwin, or by experiments by Sebastien Faure, Paul Robin, and Francisco Ferrer, these eloquent examples from the past carry hope for the future.
And, they stimulate us to roll up our sleeves and act.
Marike Reid-Gaudet has a background in anthropology and the sociology of education. She is currently the president of AQED (Homeschooling Association of Quebec) and dreams (and works with other dreamers) about having a free school in Montreal.
See summerhillschool.co.ukTORONTO – The 2016 Grey Cup Festival Committee announced today that less than 2,000 tickets remain for the 104th Grey Cup presented by Shaw at BMO Field this Sunday, November 27 featuring the Ottawa REDBLACKS and Calgary Stampeders.
The Committee also announced that all corporate suites are now officially sold-out.
“With Ottawa and Calgary winning on Sunday, and now that Grey Cup week is upon us, the response from fans has been tremendous,” said Sara Moore, COO of the 2016 Grey Cup Festival. “We anticipate these strong sales will continue over the next couple of days and expect a sold-out crowd on Sunday with an incredible atmosphere for the first-ever Grey Cup at BMO Field.”
Tickets can be purchased by visiting CFL.ca/GreyCup.
Fans planning to attend the Nissan Titan Tailgate are encouraged to purchase their tailgate pass quickly as its nearing capacity. Fans also have two other options on game day with the Budweiser GameDay Fan Zone and the Grey Cup Warm-Up Party at Muzik. All details can be found at GreyCupFestival.ca.
Multi-platinum, Grammy nominated OneRepublic will headline the WIND Mobile Halftime Show while Canadian singer-songwriter and Juno Award winner Alessia Cara will perform at the SiriusXM Kickoff Show.“On 7 January 2016, just a month after the union meeting, Mohamed Abdallah denounced Regeni to the authorities (…) because his questions were not about street vendors … and had other intentions. The Egyptian government placed Regeni under investigation, but decided after a few days that his research was of no interest to National Security”. The Guardian
The death of this young man shocked and outraged Italians. Giulio Regeni was an Italian student who went missing in Cairo after speaking to trade union and opposition activists. His mutilated body was later found on the side of the road. He appeared to have been horribly tortured. Why was he murdered? Why a botched investigation? Was he a spy? For whom? Follow us on Twitter: @Intel_Today
Giulio Regeni (15 January 1988 – 1st or 2nd February 2016) was an Italian Cambridge University graduate who was abducted and tortured to death in Egypt. Regeni was a PhD student at Girton College, Cambridge, researching Egypt’s independent trade unions.
Previously, Regeni had been an employee of the international consulting firm ‘Oxford Analytica’.
Regeni’s mutilated and half-naked corpse was found in a ditch alongside the Cairo-Alexandria highway on the outskirts of Cairo on February 3, 2016.
His recovered body showed signs of extreme torture: contusions and abrasions all over from a severe beating; extensive bruising from kicks, punches, and assault with a stick; more than two dozen bone fractures, among them seven broken ribs, all fingers and toes, as well as legs, arms, and shoulder blades; multiple stab wounds on the body including the soles of the feet, possibly from an ice pick or awl-like instrument; numerous cuts over the entire body made with a sharp instrument suspected to be a razor; extensive cigarette burns; a larger burn mark between the shoulder blades made with a hard and hot object; a brain hemorrhage; and a broken cervical vertebra, which ultimately caused death.
Official Investigation or Cover-Up?
Egyptian officials have been floating various theories in the media: Regeni was gay and the victim of a crime of passion, he was involved in a drug deal gone bad, or else he was a foreign spy.
Forensic Sciences
It is almost certain that Regeni was tortured by ‘professionals’ over a period of many days. Although he disappeared on January 25th, Regeni was still alive on February 1st and some of his earliest wounds had begun to heal. Some of the tortures he endured are said to be reguraly used by the Egyptian police.
The forensic doctors at the University of Rome used a highly accurate technique for determining time of death, which measures potassium levels in the vitreous fluid of the eyes. They established that Regeni died between 10pm on 1 February and 10pm on 2 February. “This is important because it means that he was alive for at least six or seven days and tortured repeatedly during that time.” Detailed analysis in Italy showed that he had been hit repeatedly on the head, but that these blows were not fatal. Blood had coagulated around the points where he had been hit, and other cuts, bruises and abrasions on his body showed different stages of healing. This indicated that Regeni had been tortured more than once – and that days had passed between his initial torture, later sessions, and the moment of his death. He was covered with cuts and burns, and his hands and feet had been broken. Even his teeth were broken. His torturers appear to have carved letters into his flesh, a well-documented practice of the Egyptian police.
This horrific story should not fade away. Whether or not Regeni was a spy — his friends and relatives do not believe it — we do not know. But his horrific death demands an explanation. Stay tuned.
Is Egypt covering up the murder of an Italian student?
REFERENCES
Who murdered Giulio Regeni? — The Guardian
Murder of Giulio Regeni — WikipediaWASHINGTON ― Congress offered a rare show of unity Wednesday when Republicans and Democrats in both chambers overwhelmingly voted to override President Barack Obama’s veto of a bill that allows the families of Sept. |
Congress when they were investigating it. Putting him in an important foreign policy position gives us strong evidence that Trump and Tillerson both have poor judgment, and it tells us that we should expect that the administration’s foreign policy will become even more aggressive and meddlesome than it already has been.
Daniel DePetris laid out the case against appointing Abrams last month:
But if Trump indeed formally nominates Abrams, he will be promoting a man who has shown a willful disdain of congressional overseers to the point of being convicted on charges coming close to perjury. Can President Trump be assured that Abrams would be able to withstand the scrutiny during his confirmation hearings? And more importantly, is the neoconservative, unilateral interventionism that Abrams has advocated for throughout his career—and that led directly to the second Iraq War—the kind of foreign-policy doctrine that President Trump wants in his State Department?
One good thing about Trump’s success seemed to be that it would mean the exile of neoconservatives from important positions in the government for a few more years, but if this report is correct Trump has no problem giving them one of the more influential foreign policy jobs.
Update: Michael Crowley reports that Trump is close to making the final decision and will meet Abrams tomorrow.A survivor of the Grenfell Tower fire has been treated for cyanide poisoning, raising fears that the highly toxic gas hydrogen cyanide might have been released by the burning of insulation or plastics during the blaze.
Luana Gomes, 12, was diagnosed with smoke inhalation injury and cyanide poisoning, according to discharge papers from King’s College hospital in London seen by the BBC’s Newsnight.
Celotex RS5000 insulation was used during the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower and placed behind the cladding panels. The material is made from polyisocyanurate (PIR), which is combustible and produces toxic fumes, notably hydrogen cyanide, when it burns.
In a report published in 2011, Anna Stec and Richard Hull at the Centre for Fire and Hazard Science at the University of Central Lancashire found that 1kg of PIR burning in a badly ventilated area can produce enough lethal gas to fill 100 cubic metres.
Luana’s mother and sister were treated for possible cyanide poisoning, according to the report. They were put into medically induced comas and given a cyanide antidote.
Symptoms of cyanide poisoning include headaches, dizziness, confusion, vomiting and convulsions. Cyanide can be fatal in high doses.
Luana’s mother, Andreia Gomes, who was seven months pregnant at the time of the fire and lost her baby, told Newsnight: “You just killed my son. If it was in a normal situation, I could have gone out. And he was seven months. He could have survived. But because of the conditions, he passed away.”
Hull, a professor of chemistry and fire science at the University of Central Lancashire, told the BBC: “Plastic foam insulation is effectively made from crude oil and so it’s going to combust in more or less the same way as any other petrochemical.
“It’s got a lot of nitrogen in it and therefore when it burns it produces both carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide.”Gratitude for the kindness of strangers. Photo by David Barnes of the Atlanta Journal Constitution
Citing the tradition of their enslaved ancestors to "free ourselves," a coalition of 25 grassroots, black-led organizations bought the freedom of about 60 black women jailed around the country for low-level offenses by raising $550,000 to pay their bail and bring them home to their families and communities in time for Mother's Day - a gift one recipient termed "wondrous." Targeting an unjust bail system that they charge constitutes "modern bondage" and disproportionately punishes poor people, especially women of color, the Mama's Bail Out Day campaign was launched in Atlanta by Black Lives Matter and Southerners on New Ground (SONG), an LGBTQ rights group, and joined by a coalition of over 20 other organizations, from Color of Change to bail reform groups to public defenders.
Seeking to change a narrative that demonizes incarcerated moms, especially black ones, the project freed women held in jails in 16 cities, including Atlanta, Oakland, Houston, L.A., Minneapolis and New York City. They had all been accused - but not convicted - of minor offenses like loitering, failing to appear in court on a traffic ticket, small-scale pot possession, crossing outside a crosswalk, "using fighting words," and other so-called "quality of life" misdeeds. Of the total funds raised, about $345,000 went directly to bail money and the rest was spent on organizing and support efforts for those newly freed, from finding temporary housing to to Mother's Day events to hairdresser appointments so they can "feel human again." The campaign slogan: "Money kept them in. Black love got them out."
The campaign is part of a broader effort to remedy two under-recognized aspects of a flawed criminal justice system: the money-bail system - which grassroots groups have begun targeting by creating community bail funds - and a failure often cited by the Black Lives Movement to address the plight of jailed women, whose numbers have risen 700% since 1980, making them the fastest growing demographic in corrections. Among them, black women are twice as likely as white to be arrested and held on bail; black and trans women are especially vulnerable to sexual abuse while there; up to a third of women have mental health issues; and about eight in ten women are mothers.
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Particularly for women trapped in cells, not because they've been convicted of anything but because they can't afford to return to their lives while a money-based system plods on, collateral damage can be enormous - separation from kids who need them, loss of jobs and peace of mind (think Sandra Bland) and isolation from community - for what are often minor mistakes. Noted one emotional woman freed from jail in Atlanta and reunited with her family, "All of us are fallen." Acknowledging that, the bailout project seeks to minimize the damage by calling on the kindness of strangers, and using their collective resources "to purchase each other's freedom."
A criminal "justice" system where money talks. Photo by David Barnes(Image: Peerio)
NEW YORK -- Encryption to most people either just happens, or it doesn't. A select few have the skills to fiddle with keys, code, and command prompts needed to secure emails and documents, but the vast majority rely on tech titans like Google and Dropbox instead to do the hard work.
In the aftermath of the global surveillance leaks, Nadim Kobeissi wants to give ordinary people on the street the keys to their own kingdoms: by making encryption easier to use.
13 best privacy tools for staying secure From encrypted instant messengers to secure browsers and operating systems, these privacy-enhancing apps, extensions, and services can protect you both online and offline. Read More
The 24-year-old developer, now living in Paris for his PhD program, spent most of his formative teenage years working on end-to-end secure chat client Cryptocat, as well as miniLock, a passphrase-based encryption standard. A little less than a year ago, Montreal-based tech investor Vincent Drouin tasked him to forge something out of the fire of his previous successes. After Kobeissi carefully crafted an eight-person team, the Peerio app was born.
Peerio is an encrypted messaging and file storage app for Windows, Mac, and the Chrome browsers that takes the likes of Gmail and Outlook, HipChat, and Dropbox to task. The app puts its users in the privacy driving seat, clearly marking for the lay user when something is encrypted.
On Monday, the team unveiled a significant update: a revamped, cleaner user interface, improved synchronization across devices, and an early-April timeframe for its mobile apps. Since launch, the company has seen extraordinary growth, from 50 users in initial testing to 15,000 users in a month after its mid-January debut.
"We're offering all the tools you need to get work done, but also doing so with a level of encryption that most services just simply do not bother to implement," Kobeissi said on the phone.
The app aims to be simple. According to Kobeissi, "There's nothing new to learn," Indeed, the user interface is easy -- with features like Gmail's "compose" window and Dropbox's drag-and-drop functionality included. The user interface and overall experience is a particular focus for the team. Security and privacy shouldn't be difficult, but encryption software has a bad rap for making it so.
What sets this app apart from most other messaging and file storage services is the enabled-by-default end-to-end encryption, which lets users hold onto the keys. The aim is to make the data unreadable and useless to anyone who might succeed in snatching it. "We're trying to combine all the reasons why people use PGP... into an app that makes sense," Kobeissi said.
PGP, or "Pretty Good Privacy," is an encryption tool that reportedly still causes headache for the National Security Agency, according to leaked documents by whistleblower Edward Snowden. With more than two-decades of trust and reviewed public scrutiny behind the project, it's world-renowned as the best cryptographic privacy standard. But it's clunky and difficult to use. Even with tools like the Gnu Privacy Guard (GPG), a friendlier version of the software that aims to make the privacy tool more mass-market, only a select few who truly understand how it works can use it.
"If anyone asks for our user's information, we aren't capable of giving them data, their messages, or their files. This is Peerio's purpose." — Peerio developer Nadim Kobeissi
Perhaps a controversial decision in some circles, Peerio does not use PGP for its cloud-based file storage and messaging service.
"There's been a lot of talk about how PGP is basically an architectural dead-end for developing new applications," Kobeissi explained.
Simply put, PGP may be lauded as offering the best security available, but it's almost impossible to use without considerable user experience roadblocks.
The Peerio team, needing a better security engine, turned to miniLock, an open-source standard, developed by Kobeissi and released in mid-2014.
Kobeissi admits the standard is still in its infancy, but trumpeted its successes.
miniLock uses passphrase-based security, instead of traditional passwords. Peerio enforces that phrase, which Kobeissi says any brute-force search would "essentially take forever." It also means the user can take that passphrase-based identity to any machine as if it were their own. As the beating heart to Peerio's encryption, miniLock's code has been peer-reviewed and verified by the security community, and remains in the public domain so it can be continuously and independently analyzed, audited, and scrutinized by the security community. Kobeissi also had Peerio audited by a third-party security firm to ensure the code was secure and ready for a public debut.
PGP may have decades-worth of trust to its name, but Peerio has just months. Kobeissi argued that because the app's encryption code is open-source, it makes it near-impossible to include backdoors into the code. That takes Kobeissi and his team out of the trust equation, he said, putting the trust squarely "in the math and the programming."
That open-source model makes it difficult to make money. But thanks to a donations drive that exploded last month, the program's sole developer staved off sunsetting the program. Kobeissi said the team wants there "always" to be a free version, and will offer tiered cloud storage subscriptions so individual users can benefit from the service while larger companies and enterprise customers can pay for more storage.
Read this Meet the shadowy tech brokers that deliver your data to the NSA These so-called "trusted third-parties" may be the most important tech companies you've never heard of. ZDNet reveals how these companies work as middlemen or "brokers" of customer data between ISPs and phone companies, and the U.S. government. Read More
Encrypted files are stored in Peerio's private cloud, based in a Canadian datacenter. The team is not naive to the dangers of cloud storage, particularly in the wake of the Snowden leaks that equally implicated Canada's government in the global surveillance ring. Kobeissi said the decision to set up shop in Canada was for the developers' convenience because the datacenter was a short drive away.
That may change in the future should the global geopolitical situation change. When the Cryptocat service was under threat, Kobeissi relocated its servers to Sweden, known to be a safe haven for technologists and even pirates, like The Pirate Bay which evaded authorities for so long.
"If the servers were to be challenged in Canada, we should respond to the challenge that sets an example and a precedent for data privacy in Canada," he said. "If we got an unreasonable request for server information, we have committed as a company to respond to that request in a way that's legally compliant."
He said the only information he could hand over was the time when someone logged in, and the computer's Internet address that was used, hinting that the data is as good as useless.
He was clear that Peerio would "make a stand" for upholding data privacy laws in Canada.
"We could be forced to hand this data over, but to be clear, we are an encryption software company, and we are not going to be able to give over your data," he said.
I asked him if the NSA, or the FBI or any other intelligence agency could force him to hand over a user's data. Kobeissi chuckled at the thought: "We never have access to any encryption keys."
"They have to go to the users, then?" I asked.
"They have to go to the user. In every way, we are unable to hand over the [encryption] keys," he said.
Kobeissi wants Peerio to expand, and is optimistic about the future. Peerio is a for-profit business, unlike Kobeissi's former projects, Cryptocat and miniLock. But he's committed to open-source, free software, and the simple principle that easy and simple-to-use encryption should be available to everyone.
With an eye on the enterprise customer, he was cautious about the immediate future. "We think our technology is better. We offer security guarantees that others can't offer," he said. "Maybe we're too small right now to handle the support requests of a larger company," he admitted.
Kobeissi sees small-to-medium-sized businesses as a realistic prospect in the near-term.
A company that's made its entire front-end app, its innards, and its encryption open to the public to inspect, to download, and to use for free doesn't traditionally make for a strong business model.
But Kobeissi sees it differently. He hopes Peerio's openness and transparency is "more of a sign that we are deserving of a customer's investment."It seems the only people who missed playoff hockey in Canada more than the fans are the folks selling after-market tickets.
One year removed from no Canadian teams qualifying for the NHL post-season, five are in this year, and the asking prices for tickets to their first home games ranged from the shockingly cheap ($64) to the stupidly expensive ($50,343), according to StubHub's figures on Monday.
Not surprisingly, the request for an amount higher than the average Canadian income is for the Toronto Maple Leafs' first home contest, which is Game 3 of their series vs. the Washington Capitals.
That's $1,000 for every year since the franchise last won the Stanley Cup.
Those with a more modest bank account will still have to shell out. The cheapest seat on StubHub for the Leafs' first home game, on April 17, is $318.
Profiteers are also looking to cash in on the return of playoff hockey to Edmonton after a decade-long absence.
The San Jose Sharks will head to Rogers Place in Edmonton on April 12 to face the Oilers in Game 1 of their first-round series. The lowest ticket price listed on StubHub is $372, while the most expensive tickets are club seats going for the not-so-modest price of $5,697.
Ticket prices on the secondary market appear more modest in Montreal, where the Canadiens have won the Stanley Cup a record 24 times. To see Game 1 against the New York Rangers on April 12, it costs $101 on StubHub for a seat in the upper bowl and $1,332 for suite seating.
In Calgary, the most expensive seat for the April 17 contest against the Anaheim Ducks is going for $1,006, and the cheapest for $105.
And in the nation's capital, a seat in the lower club seats for the April 12 series opener between the Ottawa Senators and the Boston Bruins is going for $13,325, though you can sit in the nosebleeds for $64.
Having five of the seven Canadian teams in the playoffs is exciting to say the least, but those wanting to see the action up close might have to skimp on groceries for a while.IRS Audit Triggers and Red Flags – Why Tax Returns Are Pulled For Audits and How to Avoid Getting Audited
Most tax payers, including myself, share the same dread of getting audited by the IRS. But in reality the chances of facing an IRS audit aren’t all that high and continue to decline – funding cuts and better tax software are a big reason for this. The IRS generally audits 1% of the more than 150 million returns filed annually. For taxpayers making less than $200,000, the rate drops to 0.95%. Those with incomes greater than $200,000 though face an audit rate of 2.94%, and for those earning more than $1 million it jumped to 5.57%. Mind you the percent is higher for big money earners because there are much fewer people in these income brackets and it is much more cost-effective for the IRS to target these groups. After all, $1000 disallowed to a taxpayer in the 35% bracket generates $350 in additional tax, compared with only $100 from someone in the 10% bracket.
Common Reasons Returns are pulled for Review or Full Blown Audits 1. NEW changes this year compared to your last 3 years of filing? This will most definitely flag your return.
2. Address Change?
3. Did you file prior to receiving your W-2? (ex: did you use your last paycheck stub?) there could be a math error.
4. Educational Credit?
5. ID verification
6. Add/drop dependents?
7. Offset (owed back taxes for a prior year) which will not show up on the offset line.
8. Have you checked the offset line (800) 304-3107
9. Health Care Form (1095A) missing/not included
Types of IRS Audits
Despite what you see in the movies and read in the tabloid media most IRS audits do not involve men in black suits storming your home or office looking for receipts and hidden stashes of cash and other valuables. In fact most audits are “correspondence” audits where you get a letter from the IRS asking for more information. More than 1 million of the almost 1.4 million audits last year were correspondence audits, while only about 310,000 were actually field audits – those that involved face to face meetings.
IRS Audit Triggers
The IRS has a few different audit methods. First, every return filed is scored by its “discriminant function” system, or DIF, said Robert P. Brennan, a former IRS agent. The score is based on the IRS’s study of a sample set of thousands of returns. From that study, the IRS determines what is an average and valid range for, say, the amount of charitable-contribution deductions claimed by a person earning $100,000 a year. Then, a taxpayer with that income who claims a much higher deduction will get a high DIF score, and is thus likelier to get audited. That system only captures unusually high deductions; it can’t find someone who is under reporting income. So the IRS also organizes projects or focus areas, to examine certain types of businesses.
The IRS “is very concerned about the underground economy,” he said, adding that the IRS estimates about $290 billion in income goes unreported each year. As a result, in addition to high DIF scores, the tax agency focuses a keen eye on cash-based businesses, such as restaurants, gas stations and hair salons, Brennan said.
For small-business owners who receive Forms 1099, this is less of an issue, as the IRS can check what the taxpayer reports against the Form 1099 filed by the business that paid the money. In that situation, “the IRS has a record of all of your income earnings,” Brennan said. The project-based audits are focused “on the cash guy,” he said. “The cleaner who does your clothing, the guy who comes in to hang your lamp or do a back porch.
How to Avoid Getting Audited
Most non-automated IRS audits are based on people who take unexpected deductions based on their income or profession. Naturally the more deductions you have the less you pay in taxes and so the more likely the IRS is going to scrutinize your return. So by all means take your legitimate deductions, but keep your receipts so they you can substantiate the expense if you are ever audited.
I like to keep a large size yearly envelope (2009, 2010 etc) for my personal and business expenses receipts. Whenever I expense something I get a receipt and dump it in there. You should also keep copies of past year’s tax returns and associated documents (3 years is recommended). Incorrect numbers or math on a return are also red flags for triggering an audit. That’s why E-filing with tax software like Turbo tax is a way to cut down on math errors, since the tax software does the math for you and checks that your deductions make “sense” relative to the information in your return.
Here are some the key deductions the IRS looks at very closely:
Deduction for unreimbursed employee business expenses, such as meals and entertainment. “That’s always a popular form to audit,” Brennan said. “For a lot of people, that’s your classic bumping up of your expenses that you really don’t have,” he said. “When things are tough, people try to find as many deductions as they can,” he said. “I don’t tell my clients not to report this, I tell my clients be sure you can substantiate this.”
Home-office deduction. The IRS “is always interested in your office in the home,” Brennan said. “Not many people qualify for an office in the home, but many people claim it.”
Income from offshore accounts. The tax agency is “very interested this year in foreign bank accounts,” Brennan said. “They are trying to get foreign banks to disclose information of account holders. They will then take account-holder information, pull up that return and see if they disclosed it.”
Wage income, plus a Schedule C with a loss. “If a person is working full time and then [the IRS] sees a Schedule C with a loss” that may attract attention. “Some people have a vineyard or horse racing activity, they will seriously question that,” he said. “The IRS might say that’s a hobby.”
Carry-back of net operating losses. Business owners who carry-back a net operating loss may well find increased IRS scrutiny, Hechinger said. It’s likely, he said, the IRS may think “that because of the economy the way it is, people may be more aggressive. They want people to substantiate that loss carry-back,” he said. But “if it’s legitimate you’ve got to claim it.”
Capital-gain exclusion on home sale. Even with the downturn in the housing market, people who bought many years ago in pricey areas may find they still had a substantial gain when selling their home in 2008 or 2009. Any home improvements over the years would increase their basis in the home, and make it likelier that their gain falls within the capital-gains exclusion. But make sure you can substantiate the basis. You know you spent the money on improving that house, but unfortunately people toss records over time. You have to find ways to substantiate it.
If the IRS comes-a-calling
If the IRS sends you correspondence regarding your tax return never ignore the letter and answer it before the due date. The IRS won’t go away so don’t wait for a repeat notice. If you had taxes prepared by a firm or accountant, sit down and talk to them and have them forward the requested information to the IRS. If you did them yourself, make sure you provide the necessary information. A lot of tax software gives you the options of purchasing some kind of audit protection so take advantage of that if possible.
If this isn’t sufficient, you may be called in for a face-to-face audit. If that happens, consider hiring a professional like a CPA or a tax attorney to go with you. If you used a paid tax preparer, bring them along. Also make sure you prepare ahead of time to answer any questions. How Far Back Can My Tax Returns be Audited? The Statute of limitations for an IRS Audit is broken up into 2 components. The time during which an action can be brought by the IRS for an audit and the time for IRS tax collection activities. Generally, there is a 3-year statute of limitations for the IRS auditing a tax return and a 10-year statute of limitations for the IRS collecting tax.Dear Dr. Right,
You were right. Ten years ago this August, I left your office with my husband, round belly bulging with my nearly full-term first child, cursing your name. It was our first appointment together and you basically told me I was going to fail. When I explained to you that I had been off meds and symptom-free from my bipolar disorder for almost a year and that I wanted to stay off medication to breastfeed, you nodded with a sympathetic smile on your face, scribbled in your notebook and simply said we needed to have a plan.
A plan for which hospital I'd go to when I became manic to the point of needing that level of care. That level of care that you were so sure I'd need.
You were right.
At that stage of my fight, Dr. Right, I was still in denial about the fact that I had been diagnosed with a mental illness. I thought maybe, just maybe, since I had nearly a full year of stability without meds, the past had been a misdiagnosis. Perhaps those eight psychiatrists I had seen over the years since my two hospitalizations for mania were all wrong. I mean, I hadn't experienced any significant episodes of depression or mania since 2006 and most importantly, I felt solid and stable. Didn't that count for anything?
Didn't that make me normal again?
I was so excited to be a mom and every spare moment I had was spent preparing for this new little life who would soon enter the world. His crib was set up, clothes had been washed and lovingly put away, and diapers and wipes sat waiting on the changing table in his nursery. One of the last things on my list was meeting with you, a psychiatrist who agreed to treat me without medication for the remainder of my pregnancy and beyond, according to my wishes.
Man, am I glad we met when we did. Because you were so right. And when the time came, four weeks after his birth, when the compounded lack of sleep and absence of meds in my bloodstream caught up to me in the form of full-blown postpartum psychosis, my husband had someone to call for help.
He called you.
How terrifying it must have been for him to see me unravel the way I did. How helpless he must have felt watching me slowly lose touch with reality, my eyes glazing over, unable to focus on the simplest task of taking a shower or eating a bowl of cereal. And when the psychosis reached its peak, he saw me scrambling to pull together every journal I had ever written in, piling them up before the blazing gas fireplace in our family room like an offering before I died. My legacy, scrawled in ink for my son to read someday since in my mind, I wasn't going to make it back to the surface. I was hurling to the depths of hell which to me felt like being dragged to the floor of the ocean, my ankles cuffed with a ball and chain pulling me to the bottom. I was sinking faster than I could breathe. And I was so scared it was my day to die and I'd never see my baby again.
Mania to the point of psychosis can do this to a person.
I was taken under a Temporary Detention Order to the Emergency Room where I was held handcuffed to the bed. The doctors and nurses eventually determined I was a threat to myself or others and the green light was given to find me a bed. I was lucky, beds aren't always available, as the Deeds' family tragedy unfortunately proved. I only had to wait overnight and the next morning I was transferred to our local hospital's geriatric psych ward, the only open bed in the surrounding area.
I made it through. It wasn't easy, in fact, it was pretty awful being in a psych ward for a week of my new baby's life. My mental illness had landed a forceful blow to the gut, showing me it was in control of my body. Still, wandering the halls at night I'd stumble, groggy from the antipsychotics, to the nurses station to ask for another dose of whatever sleeping pill they could give me. I knew sleep was my friend in there. After a week, I got well with your help, and with support from my husband and family.
Once home, I focused on getting stable. I followed my treatment plan and took my meds religiously. Then it happened again. I thought I knew what was best for my next baby. I didn't. Acute mania reared its ugly head to the point of psychosis, repeating the nightmare a year and a half later when I found out I was pregnant with my daughter because I had stopped my medication.
You were right again. At five weeks pregnant I landed in the psych ward again.
Those days are tough for me to look back on, the times I was in the hospital and the weeks and months of recovery afterwards. But I wouldn't trade them for anything because they are a part of who I am now and they tell the story of how I've evolved. Those slices of my life do not define me, but when added into everything else that makes me the person I am today, I am grateful for those agonizing, terrifying, heart-wrenching experiences.
You are the expert when it comes to psychiatry, Dr. Right. Me, I'm just the patient. During one of our sessions, I brought up whether or not to disclose my mental illness, and I asked for your opinion. Of course only I could make that call. You expressed the same sadness that so many in this world share over the injustice mentally ill people experience when they expose their conditions. I was looking for justification that it would be okay if I wrote openly about what I had been through, but I didn't get that from you. In fact, you recommended that I keep my illness hidden, lest I be discriminated upon because of it. Once more, it was as if I were hearing "destined to fail" all over again.
Good thing I didn't listen that time.
I'm writing now, Dr. Right. Remember when I told you I wanted to write a book? Well, I still do, but first I've started self-publishing online, to gain experience. I have a blog, and over the past two years my readership has grown tremendously, all organically, due to my dedication to sharing my story in order to help others.
I've met so many incredible people through blogging and social media. It blows my mind how I can write about the struggles I've gone through and in return, I get emails from people saying, "Me too!" and "Thank you so much for being so brave." My heart is blissfully content because I know I've uncovered my purpose in life and my words are having an impact on people, a positive impact. I can feel it. And every time I put my thoughts out there for the world to read, my voice grows a little stronger.
I've created a show and non-profit organization called This Is My Brave where others like me who live with mental illness can stand up on stage and share our personal stories, our suffering and our breakthroughs, the hope we've found in long-term recovery. This is our chance to show the world our vulnerability in an effort to raise awareness and acceptance.
For years after I was handed my diagnosis I feared the backlash of people who knew me finding out about my mental illness. Conversations were uncomfortable, I cared too much about what other people thought of me. It didn't take me very long to realize that living in fear is not really living. Taking off my armor and choosing to expose myself and my story was one of the best decisions I ever made about my mental health and my life in general.
Revealing my vulnerability freed me to follow my dreams.
And I have you to thank. Thank you for being right. Thank you for letting me fall. Thank you for being there when I needed you. Finally, thank you for doubting me and advising me to stay silent. Because I needed my chance to prove someone wrong and you were that person for me.
Respectfully yours,
Jennifer Marshall (your patient from 2008-2011)Robert Kirkman, author of The Walking Dead, joins us this week on io9's Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast to talk about zombies, comics, and AMC's The Walking Dead television series.
The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy is hosted by John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley.
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You can download the MP3 for this episode here, subscribe to The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast feed here, and browse other episodes here.
Read on for this episode's fabulous SHOW NOTES!
0:00 Introduction
0:25 Dave and John introduce the show
1:32 Old episodes of GGG to return on io9
Interview: Robert Kirkman
02:17 Interview begins
02:29 Why does The Walking Dead emphasize survival so much?
3:09 How much thought and research does Kirkman put into survivalism?
4:26 Don't use The Walking Dead as a manual for survival for medical school or during a real-life zombie apocalypse
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4:45 The strained emotions of the characters in The Walking Dead
5:49 Taking refuge in a prison
7:18 Has Kirkman spent time in prison?
7:34 The origins and development process of The Walking Dead television series
8:54 Kirkman's involvement in the production of the TV show
10:00 Changes made to the The Walking Dead in its transition to television
11:20 Jumping the shark and Ryan Ottley's color story issue of The Walking Dead
14:06 Upcoming The Walking Dead novels
14:51 Kirkman's take on variations on the zombie myth
15:49 Will The Walking Dead see more supernatural elements in the future?
16:47 Kirkman's short story "Alone, Together" which appears in The Living Dead 2. Writing prose vs. comic books
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18:34 How did Kirkman break into comic books?
19:13 Starting from the ground up and publishing his own comic book
20:45 Advice for aspiring comic book writers
21:48 The current state of the Comic Book industry
23:38 Does the Comic Book industry work hard enough to appeal to a younger audience?
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24:37 Kirkman's other (non-The Walking Dead) projects: Invincible, The Astounding Wolf-Man and Haunt
26:43 Any upcoming projects for Kirkman?
28:00 Kirkman loves The Living Dead anthologies!
29:40 Think Kirkman's as grim as his stories in The Walking Dead? Think again. Humor writing
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30:14 How would Kirkman fare during a zombie apocalypse?
31:03 End of interview
31:15 Ad Spot for Kill the Dead by Richard Kadrey
Dave and John talk about Zombies!
32:21 what if Zombies invaded the set of Big Brother? Dead Set (TV Series)
38:02 Where do survivors get weapons during a zombie apocalypse?
39:26 When does Luke Skywalker gets a chance to use the loo?
40:33 Why do so many dumb people get stuck in the middle of a zombie apocalypse?
41:55 Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated
43:04 John and Dave's zombie panel and The Horde
43:46 Chainsaw Maid and Chainsaw Maid 2
44:19 Zombiefest 2008 in Pittsburgh
44:53 John and Dave discuss The Walking Dead television series on AMC
47:07 Does The Walking Dead rip off 28 Days Later? Or stay true to the roots on the sub-genre? Dave talks about The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
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49:08 Fast zombies or slow zombies?
49:51 Conveniently placed gun or zombie-in-waiting?
51:09 The uncompromising nature of The Walking Dead
51:50 Ad Spot for The Zombies of Lake Woebegotten by Harrison Geillor
52:34 Dave and John discuss episode 2 of The Walking Dead
53:06 How do zombies know who's human?
53:46 The "One Unreasonable Guy" syndrome
55:53 "Realistic" zombies?
56:31 Sex during the zombie apocalypse? Really?
57:38 Like the show? Haven't watched it? Either way, you should definitely check out the comic
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58:14 The Walking Dead is John's favorite piece of zombie entertainment
58:54 Planning to pick up the comic now? Image is re-releasing the series in a weekly format!
59:39 Don't have AMC? Watch The Walking Dead through iTunes instead
1:00:33 Show wrap-up
Thanks for listening!
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John Joseph Adams is an anthologist, a writer, and a geek. He is the bestselling editor of the anthologies By Blood We Live, Federations, The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Living Dead (a World Fantasy Award finalist), Seeds of Change, andWastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse. His most recent books are The Living Dead 2 and The Way of the Wizard, and he is currently assembling several other anthologies, including Brave New Worlds and The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination. Barnes & Noble.com named him "the reigning king of the anthology world," and his books have been named to numerous best of the year lists. In addition to his anthology work, he worked for more than eight years as an editor at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction,and is currently the editor of Lightspeed Magazine and Fantasy Magazine.
David Barr Kirtley has published fiction in magazines such as Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, Lightspeed,Intergalactic Medicine Show, On Spec, and |
ounsel-ag interactively to search from the current directory, or you can point it at a directory of your choosing by passing in the initial-directory argument. In my Emacs initialisation, I have bound another wrapper function, bound to a global shortcut key, that invokes cpb/counsel-ag on my notes directory, so I can instantly search through my notes in reverse chronological order. It looks like this: ;; wrapper function to invoke chrono-sorted ag search on my notes dir ( defun cpb/counsel-ag-notes () "Search my notes file hierarchy using counsel and ivy." ( interactive ) ( cpb/counsel-ag nil "~/Dropbox/notes/pkb4000/" nil "PKB4000: " ) ) ;; I invoke search by pressing "Ctrl-C 4" ( global-set-key ( kbd "C-c 4" ) 'cpb/counsel-ag-notes ) I believe that my relationship with Emacs is safe for now.
2017-02-28: Fixed (interactive) invocation in wrapper function.
invocation in wrapper function. 2017-02-27: Updated cpb/ag-collection for latest counsel version. Added example of wrapper function and global shortcut.
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Like this: Like Loading...World's only remaining 'Ghost Car' headed for auction... incredible images of the Plexiglas Pontiac expected to fetch almost $500,000
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An extraordinary transparent car is set to fetch as much as $475,000 when it goes up for auction.
The motor, dubbed the 'Ghost Car', is a Pontiac Deluxe Six which, bizarrely, has been covered in the see-through material Plexiglas.
Built in 1939 by General Motors and chemical company Rohm and Haas at a cost of $25,000, it was the first transparent full-sized car to be made in America.
One of a kind: The 1939 motor is a Pontiac Deluxe Six which has been covered in Plexiglas, developed just a few years earlier in 1933
Innovative: General Motors and chemical company Rohm and Haas built the vehicle for $25,000 - an astronomical price during the 1930s
A BRIEF HISTORY ON THE PIONEERING PLEXIGLAS PONTIAC
The collaboration between GM and Rohm & Haas was made for the 1930-1940 World's Fair in San Francisco
At a cost of $25,000, it was the first transparent full-sized car to be made in America
Two Ghost Cars were made but the 1939-1940 Pontiac Deluxe Six is the only won known to survive
It toured the nation's dealerships and went on display at the Smithsonian until 1947, and was subsequently owned by a series of Pennsylvania Pontiac dealers
This model has a three-speed transmission, a six-cylinder engine, coil spring independent front suspension, live rear axle with semi-elliptic leaf springs and four-wheel hydraulic drum brakes
Billed as a vision of the future, it was made for the 1939-40 New York World's Fair, where it became a sensation at General Motors' 'Highways and Horizons' pavilion; and it continues to cause a stir today.
Just two were ever made and this model, which has a three-speed manual transmission, and is thought to be the last of its kind.
It has clocked up just 86 miles in its lifetime; and now its set to go on sale for the first time since the early 1980s. It last sold for an undisclosed amount.
American auctioneers RM expect it to sell for between $275,000 and $475,000 when it goes under the hammer on July 30.
A spokesman for RM Auctions said: 'The car is in a remarkable state of preservation.
'It's a testament to the longevity of Plexiglas in an era when automotive plastics tended to self-destruct within a few years.
'Although it has acquired a few chips and cracks, it is structurally sound and cosmetically clear, showing off the Ghost Car's innards as it did in 1939.
'This motor still turns heads as much as it ever did. It is not, obviously, suited for touring but as a unique artefact from automotive and cultural history.'
Ready for the road: A Pontiac Deluxe Six as it would have appeared in car showrooms in the late 1930s
Seventy-two years of wear: The Plexiglas does have some chips and cracks but is mostly in good condition, according to auction notes The car has was the result of a collaboration between General Motors and Rohm & Haas, who developed the ground-breaking material Plexiglas in 1933. The material went on to be used in military planes during World War II and then expanded in to signs, lighting, fixtures, trains and other cars. Rohm & Haas used drawings for the Pontiac four-door Touring Sedan to create an exact replica body out of the transparent acrylic. It was completed with structural metal underneath, which was given a copper wash, and chrome-plated hardware. Rubber moldings were made in white, as were the car’s tires. The only recent mechanical work has been replacement of the fuel lines. The model also boasts an L-head six-cylinder engine, coil spring independent front suspension, live rear axle with semi-elliptic leaf springs, and four-wheel hydraulic drum brakes. According to the GM Heritage Center, a second car, on a Torpedo Eight chassis, was hurriedly constructed for the 1940 Golden Gate Exposition on Treasure Island, a man-made island in San Francisco Bay.
Not for touring: The collectible is unlikely to be seen on the road
Transparent: Wires and a spare wheel can be seen through the trunk of the car
Once their respective showcases had closed, both 'Plexiglas Pontiacs,' or 'Ghost Cars' as they were sometimes known, toured the nation’s dealerships. The 1939-40 Deluxe Six is the only one known to survive.
Following the dealership tour, it went on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and was reportedly there until 1947.
It was later owned by a succession of Pennsylvania Pontiac dealers. It appeared at the first annual meet of the new Pontiac-Oakland Club International in 1973 and was purchased by Don Barlup of New Cumberland, Pennsylvania. Barlup commissioned a partial restoration from S&H Pontiac of Harrisburg and sold it to collector Leo Gephart in 1979.
The current owner’s father purchased it from Gephart in the early 1980s, and it has remained in the same family ever since.
Not surprisingly, it has no conventional vehicle identification number; even the machined boss for the engine number is blank.
A collection of period photos and other memorabilia accompanies the car, which still turns heads as much as it ever did.
Mechanics: The model has an L-head six-cylinder engine, coil spring independent front suspension, live rear axle with semi-elliptic leaf springs, and four-wheel hydraulic drum brakes
Turning back the clock: The dial on the 1939 car shows the wear of its 72 years At the wheel: The steering wheel features rings of chrome-plated hardware, and Pontiac's insignia in red
Artefact: The car has clocked up just 86 miles in its lifetime; and will to go on sale for the first time since the early 1980s
Sensation: Billed as a vision of the future, the car was made for the 1939-40 New York World's Fair in San Francisco, pictured hereImage caption Mark Kennedy was said to have worked undercover in the green movement for seven years
The convictions of 20 protesters for trying to shut down the UK's second largest power station have been quashed by the Court of Appeal.
The ruling came after it was revealed the group had been infiltrated by undercover police officer Mark Kennedy.
They had been convicted of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass at the Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal-fired power station in Nottinghamshire.
The 20 had received either community orders or conditional discharges.
They were found guilty by a jury at Nottingham Crown Court in December and the judge accepted they were "decent men and women" motivated by their concern for the environment.
A later trial involving six protesters collapsed in January.
It followed claims that former Metropolitan Police officer Pc Kennedy - who had been using the name Mark Stone in his covert work - had changed sides and offered to give evidence on their behalf.
He was said to have spent seven years working undercover in the green movement across Europe.
The case was heard by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, sitting with two other judges.
Lord Judge said the convictions were unsafe "because of significant non-disclosure" of material "which would have been supportive of the defence case".
The full judgement outlining details of the decision will be given on Wednesday.
The 20 people who had their convictions quashed were:
David Barkshire, 45, of Sheffield; Paul Kahawatte, 26, of Whitstable, Kent; Ben Julian, 34, of Hackney, London; Spencer Cooke, 43, of Belper, Derbyshire; Martin Shaw, 46, of Oxford; Phillip Murray, 25, of Canterbury, Kent; Jesse Harris, 25, and Anna Rudd, 32, both of Leeds; Adam Waymouth, 27, of Salisbury, Wiltshire; Bradley Day, 23, of Swansea; Chris Kitchen, 33, of Colchester, Essex; Emma Sheppard, 30, of Manchester; Daniel Glass, 27, and Jonathan Leighton, 22, both of Glasgow; Olaf Bayer, 36, and Lisa Kamphausen, 27, both of Southampton; Clare Whitney, 26, of Cambridge, and Jacqueline Sheedy, 46, Sarah Shoraka, 33, and Ben Stewart, 37, all of Stoke Newington, London.Apparently Democrats would rather have no gun sales ban than a sales ban that allows Americans due-process rights.
On Monday evening, Senate Democrats put party over principle in rejecting common-sense, reasonable gun control measures. After the mass murder at Orlando gay club Pulse, Sen. Chris Murphy and his colleagues staged a flashy talk-a-thon in which they demanded that votes be taken on legislation strengthening gun control laws. The Senate Republicans agreed to the Democrats’ demand. Democrats got what they asked for, then blew it.
Senate Republicans agreed to vote on four gun control proposals—two offered by Democrats and two offered by Republicans. The Democratic proposals included Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s bill linking a terrorism watch list to a gun sales ban. On the Republican side, Sen. John Cornyn also offered legislation that would link a terrorism watch list to a gun sales ban, but his version added due process protections for Americans who are put on the list. The other two proposals expanded the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, although the Republican version did not go as far as the Democratic version. For a brief moment it seemed as if the Senate would take some kind of action.
Then all four gun control proposals were voted down because of the Democrats.
Rather than agree to the incremental gun control measures Republicans proposed, the Democrats chose to pass no gun control legislation at all. At some point after loudly demanding legislation for more than a week, Senate Democrats decided it would be better for their reelection prospects that no gun control bills pass the Senate during the election season. Their decision was hypocritical, unprincipled, and pure politics.
Republicans were willing to link the terrorism watch list to a gun sales ban, as Democrats have demanded. The price of agreement was due-process protections for Americans placed on the list. But apparently due process is too much for the Democrats. They would rather have no sales ban than a sales ban that comports with the Fifth Amendment. The Democrats similarly rejected an incremental expansion of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Apparently, some gun control is not worth sharing credit with the Republicans.
Not content to merely vote against incremental gun control, Senate Democrats then decided to throw a tantrum about it. Murphy sleazed that Senate Republicans “have decided to sell weapons to ISIS.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren tweeted her agreement. Sen. Harry Reid nonsensically accused Republicans of blocking the very gun control measures Republicans had proposed.
Make no mistake: Senate Democrats rejected two incremental gun control bills for no other reason than that Republicans were voting for them. Democrats’ hatred for Republicans was more important to them than the moral standards they claim to possess.EXO’s Baekhyun and Suho were such adorable babies!
On July 2, Baekhyun uploaded a picture of himself when he was younger onto his Instagram, upholding a promise he made earlier to fans.
어릴 때 부터 까불까불 #덤보 #트위스트춤 A photo posted by BaekHyun. (@baekhyunee_exo) on Jul 2, 2016 at 5:14am PDT
Along with the photo, he writes, “Silly, silly, ever since I was young #Dumbo #Twist dance.”
The singer is not the first EXO member to reveal childhood photos this promotional era. Xiumin also previously released a video of him dancing when he was five, and Suho recently uploaded several baby photos as well on June 28.
Suho also included a message that thanked their fans for all of their love and support for EXO’s third album, “EX’ACT,” and that he is happy these days because of everyone. He cheekily ends by saying, “This baby is quite cute hehehehe.”
Meanwhile, EXO has been seeing immense success with their latest tracks “Monster” and “Lucky One,” and is currently preparing for their third solo concert.SENATOR DAVID NORRIS has made an allegation in the Seanad today that a tabloid editor told him that stories published about him were “payback time”.
The former Presidential candidate was speaking as part of the Seanad discussion on media standards which is currently ongoing. Senator Norris said that the editor said the articles were “payback time for what I had done in standing up for victims of invasion privacy” and specifically because of his focus on Ireland’s defamation law.
Norris called a speech by Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte as “pretty limp” and said that the debate in the Seanad should include discussion of what he described as “bullying” by the media of public figures. He also claimed that “bullying happens inside every single newspaper” and that he had proof of it but that those people who supplied him with the information were afraid to stand up against their “editorial masters”.
He was scathing of the “self-regulating” Press Council and said that “every newspaper” had carried editorials calling for other professions to have independent regulators – except their own profession. He also said that he had had to change his phone number three or four times but that “Grub Street” had managed to get his new number with little difficulty. He finished on an angry call for the Government to tackle the Irish media and claimed that there was not one TV, newspaper or broadcasting outlet that had not “villified me, blackguarded me, defamed me and libelled me”.
Senator Norris had become the focus of intense media scrutiny over letters written to the Israeli High Court in 1997 in defence of his former partner, asking for leniency after that partner, Ezra Nawi, was found guilty of having sex with an underage teenager in 1992.
David Norris resigned from the Presidential race for a time before rejoining and finished fifth in the field of seven candidates.On Monday, May 15th, Stephen Jaffe joined the Progressive Army for a digital Town Hall hosted by Brandon Sutton (the full video is embedded at the end of this article). This town hall ran concurrently with Nancy Pelosi’s event on CNN.
#PelosiTownHall wasting question time with Trump bullshit while #JaffeTownHall using phrases like "equitable racial justice paradigm" — Mike?Ramsey (@ramseycartoons) May 16, 2017
Stephen Jaffe – On the Issues
Stephen Jaffe covered a multitude of issues with questions being raised by participants from around the country on social media.
On the Environment
When listening to the town hall, we appreciated how straightforward and direct Jaffe’s answers were. Prompted with a question, Jaffe didn’t try to dance on where he stood. He made a clear, bold stand with each answer. On the environment, Jaffe believes “people who deny climate change are science deniers.” Believing wholeheartedly to have science on his side of the argument, he continued “climate change is a fact, science is a fact. And to deny it is like denying gravity: you can deny it all you want, but if you step off a cliff, you’re still going to fall.” He refers to the issue of climate change and science denial as part of a growing U.S. trend of anti-intellectualism. People are mistrustful of those with a high degree of education and think they have a right to their ignorance, he explains.
When asked specifically whether he supports a ban on fracking, Jaffe gives a hard yes:
“Yes. I support a ban on fracking. I don’t think it’s necessary. I’m a strong advocate of the creation of alternative sources of energy.” He mentions wind, solar, and safe nuclear power before continuing, “There’s no reason to destroy the planet with something like fracking, offshore oil drilling, and similar kinds of activities.”
On Foreign Policy
We did a profile on Stephen Jaffe a week ago and failed to bring up foreign policy during our interview. So many people had inquired where he stood in relation to a multitude of foreign policy issues we had to put a disclaimer on our article noting that we are following up and will update the article accordingly. We were thankful to have the town hall to have Jaffe address his foreign policy stances.
The first foreign policy situation that came up during the town hall was that of North Korea. In giving his thoughts on the situation we got a glimpse of his non-interventionist mindset:
North Korea is a messy situation. I think it is incumbent upon the President of the United States to make certain that we, the people of the United States, are safe. It is not incumbent upon us to be the policeman of the world or Asia. I don’t think that we need to run in every time North Korea rattles its sword. If North Korea has a missile that looks like it’s going to be shooting at us, and landing in San Francisco, I think the U.S. does, then, probably have a right to act to defend itself. The stickier problem is what will the U.S. do if North Korea, for example, were to invade South Korea. Should we stand by or should we act? I don’t know how many U.S. troops are in South Korea. I know it’s a big number […] We obviously would have to act to extract them. Do we help to defend South Korea?
Jaffe admits he needs to study the situation more and says we shouldn’t invade North Korea or anyone else. He also acknowledges that we have a treaty with South Korea, which obligates us to respond in certain circumstances.
Syria, an issue that followed the presidential candidates in 2016 and is ever looming to this day, was discussed briefly by Jaffe. He called Syria “a threat to the United States. There’s a horrible three-sided civil war going on inside Syria. There are atrocities being committed there, but I don’t believe anything going in Syria is a threat to the sanctity of the United States.” Again Jaffe’s tone and rhetoric point to his non-interventionist view of how the US should interact with issues outside of our own borders.
.@Jaffe4Congress What is your position on Israel-Palestine? Do you support the @BDSmovement? Why or why not? #JaffeTownHall — Travis Talks (@_Travis_Talks_) May 16, 2017
Another controversial issue among left-leaning voters has to do with the Israeli/Palestine conflict. Jaffe responded:
On Israel, I absolutely support Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself. At the same time, I support the rights of Palestinians living in Israel, and near Israel, to the same peace and security that the Israelis demand for themselves. I’m not enough of an economist to understand the BDS impacts, but I do think that perhaps a two state solution should be something that should be studied. The sticking point, of course, on that is the West Bank and I have other issues with some things about Israel. Israel is partly a theocracy, which is exactly what we criticize Iran for being. And I’m opposed to that. I am an extremely strong proponent of an absolute separation of religion and government, church and state. And Israel doesn’t have that and I want to see that more in Israel. But in terms of the Palestinians vs. the Israelis, I think each have an equal right and reasonable expectation to the peace and security of their people.
Finally, Jaffe was also asked about U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia:
Well, the reason the U.S. looks the other way at the human rights violations in Saudi Arabia is [twofold]. One is the obvious one, it’s money and oil. Another obvious one is military bases. Saudi Arabia provides a lot of oil to us and we still think we need it, or sort of need it, and also they provide, I believe, military bases that we can land jet fighters that need to fly around the middle east and do whatever it is we need to do. I find looking the other way at these atrocities — Saudi Arabia chops off the hands of thieves and I won’t go into some of the other things — but I find it completely hypocritical of the United States. And I think we should hold the Saudi Arabians accountable if they want a relationship with the United States. They ought to be held accountable for how they treat their own people. And I don’t think money is a good enough reason.
On Cannabis
#JaffeTownHall How do you feel about the legalization of cannabis? I am disabled by chronic pain,but I can't take opiates 4fear of addiction —?Amanda Guthrie? (@whattheplucked) May 15, 2017
Continuing his trend of responding with straightforward answers, Jaffe replied to the question about cannabis as follows: “I think it’s hypocritical to criminalize marijuana and legalize alcohol and nicotine. I would advocate for the legalization of cannabis” so long as it is regulated, he made clear. “Marijuana may be harmless to most of the population, but there are some people who, if they use it, it can trigger other things that are not good.”
On Healthcare/Single-Payer
Healthcare, specifically single-payer healthcare, seems to be Jaffe’s favorite topic to talk about. He brings it up often as a means to highlight a key way in which he differs from Pelosi. Without being prompted, he brought up the issue several times during the town hall, in addition to responding to questions. One of the things he made sure to bring up was the following:
A couple of things [Ms. Pelosi] said were very disturbing, the fact that she does not favor single-payer. But she also said something else, and her exact words were, ‘Actually, Obamacare is to the left of single-payer.’ Now that’s a very troubling thing to hear. […] It shows to me that she really doesn’t understand what the issue is there.
He adds that Obamacare is more to the center of our political spectrum and that he would like to challenge Pelosi on this issue.
Regarding pharmaceutical costs and the idea of importing cheaper drugs from Canada, Jaffe says:
The Big Pharm companies say the prices are so high here because Americans bear the cost of the research and develop of new drugs, even though the drugs go all over the world. So, I think that the government should negotiate prices on new drugs and I think if there’s a way for Americans to buy their drugs cheaper from Canada – or anyplace else – let them do it. Why not? I’d like to hear a rational argument against that.
When asked how he would get single-payer passed, given the opposition to it on both sides of the political spectrum, Jaffe responded, “I think people misunderstand what it is.” […] “I think most democrats, if you explained it to them, would support it. And I’m certainly ready to stand here and explain it to anyone who wants to listen.”
On Criminal Justice
Along the lines of the “equitable racial justice paradigm” of the town hall (as mentioned in the initial tweet above), Jaffe was asked about Jeff Sessions and his recent move to roll back the Obama administration’s reforms of the mandatory minimum sentences aspect of the War on Drugs. His response:
Mr. Sessions can tell the U.S. attorneys in the justice department to essentially overcharge all these drug cases, non-violent drug offenders, but that doesn’t mean 1.) the juries will convict them and 2.) it doesn’t mean the judges will sentence them. There’s all kinds of ways — it doesn’t prevent plea deals from being made.
Jaffe went on to say that it’s not “that easy” to change the justice system that fast. There are many attorneys who understand there are better ways of handling drug offenses in the legal system.
When asked about the private prison industry, Jaffe made a strong declaration: “I am categorically against it. It has nothing to do with economics. I think it is immoral – immoral! – for a company to make a profit against the misery of people locked up in prison.”
Watch The Town Hall in its Entirety
If you’ve made it this far, consider yourself briefed. Or, if you prefer, watch the full town hall belowBuy Photo State Rep. César Blanco, D-El Paso (Photo: El Paso Times file photo)Buy Photo
AUSTIN - Rep. Cesar Blanco, D-El Paso, is questioning Texas’ top cop’s claim that he was right this year when he said that the U.S. Border Patrol participated in a state operation that sent state police and National Guard troops to the border.
The claim by Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw drew criticism from many who said McCraw took credit for the Border Patrol’s work after leading Texas Republicans claimed the feds had been derelict in securing the border.
The Dallas Morning News reported that at a meeting this month of the Texas Public Safety Commission, McCraw played a video by produced by the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector. The video said Border Patrol and DPS were cooperating closely as Texas enacts an $800 million, two-year program under the name “Operation Secure Texas.”
McCraw told the commission, which is appointed by the governor and oversees his agency, that the video was proof that he was right when he insisted that federal authorities were involved in Operation Strong Safety, the Morning News reported.
The program was begun by former Gov. Rick Perry in 2014 in response to a surge of Central Americans who crossed Mexico and turned themselves in to U.S. authorities at the border.
Blanco, a prominent critic of Operation Strong Safety, on Tuesday refuted McCraw's claim, citing continued denials by Border Patrol leaders that their agency was involved in the operation.
“We still have a letter from Commissioner Gil Kerlikowski,” Blanco said.
He was referring to a May 18 letter to U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, from U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Gil Kerlikowski. It said Kerlikowski’s agency was never part of Operation Strong Safety.
The letter came after years of criticisms by Texas Republicans that the federal government had failed to secure the border.
Blanco fought a lengthy battle to get DPS to release statistics showing what its personnel had done during the $100 million border-security program, but the only numbers the agency released lumped activities by DPS and Border Security personnel together. Statistics in Kerlikowski’s letter show that, with the exception of methamphetamine, state personnel were responsible for only a tiny fraction of the drugs seized in the Lower Rio Grande Valley during Operation Strong Safety.
McCraw has justified the state’s refusal to disaggregate statistics for Operation Strong Safety by claiming the federal agencies participated in the program. He told the Public Safety Commission that the video, which touts cooperation between federal and state agencies, as proof that he was right. But the Morning News reported that federal officials continue to insist that Border Patrol did not participate in Operation Strong Safety.
DPS says it worked with Border Patrol during Operation Strong Safety - regardless how federal officials characterize it.
“We don’t want to engage in a battle of semantics, but U.S. Border Patrol (BP) agents have been actively involved in Operation Strong Safety (OSS), including BP agents physically co-located in the Operation Strong Safety Command Post to assist and coordinate with the everyday functions of the Command Post, BP agents sharing information and intelligence with law enforcement partners in the Command Post, BP reporting detections on the Texas-Mexico border to the OSS Command Post, and BP coordinating interdiction efforts with Operation Strong Safety missions,” Tom Vinger, a spokesman, said in an email.
Blanco said he’s pleased that federal agents and state police are communicating, but he still wants McCraw to honor an earlier promise to report the activities of just state personnel under Operation Secure Texas. The numbers are vital if leaders want to know whether taxpayers are getting value for their $800 million, Blanco said.
“We’re just being told we’re safe,” he said. “Are we?”
Blanco also took a shot at Gov. Greg Abbott, a relentless critic of the Obama administration. After so much criticism, it’s good to see DPS and the Public Safety Commission embrace cooperation with the feds, Blanco said.
“I’m glad Gov. Abbott and President Obama are working together on this,” Blanco, who has made multiple visits to the White House in recent months said facetiously.
Abbott’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Marty Schladen can be reached at 512-479-6696; [email protected]; @martyschladen on Twitter.
Read or Share this story: http://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/local/el-paso/2015/12/29/el-paso-lawmaker-questions-dps-border-claims/78044592/Let’s make a simple todo app with Go
Continue if you are a beginner in Go
Saddam H Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 23, 2017
Screenshot of the app
Generally Go is perfect for building micro services, but it doesn’t mean that trivial MVC app are not easy to build. Go has built-in support for parsing html template, though we are not going to focus on that.
First of all let’s write our go code for serving a html page and save it in a directory.
In our case let’s call the directory todoapp and create a home.tpl file inside it. Paste the html in home.tpl, it doing some http call to our backend application.
Source code for template with vue.js code
I am not going to describe about the template and vue.js written in the template file in this article.
Let’s start building the backend, create a main.go file inside the same directory where the home.tpl reside.
We are using chi-router for routing, mgo for mongodb to persist our data and renderer to render response. You can install those packages using go get see the command below:
$ go get github.com/go-chi/chi
$ go get gopkg.in/mgo.v2
$ go get github.com/thedevsaddam/renderer
Now start to write our code, open main.go in your favorite editor.
Let initialize the essential constants, variables and create some types to use
declaring constants, variables and types
Let’s describe the above example, between line 4–9 we declared a constant block to define some constants like host name, database name, port etc.
Between line 11–15 we declared two struct todo and todoModel. They both have the same number of fields, fields name also remain same. But in todoModel the ID field is a type of bson.ObjectId. We used bson tag so that mgo package can use the tags. And in our todo we used json tag so that json decoder can use these tags to serialize the Go type to typical json.
If you look the example, we missed the first two lines, where we declared two variables, first one is going to hold data type of pointer to renderer.Render and second one pointer to mgo.Database. See the code between line 27–33, wehere we initialized those two variables.
Lets begin to see our part two of the code
Writing essential functions
If you take a look to the above example, between line 1–4 we wrote a function homeHandler which is going to render our home page using the render package.
Between line 6–37 we wrote our main function which is our entry point. Inside main function at line 7 we created a channel type of os.Signal and at line 8 we register the channel to os.Signal package with an argument os.Interrupt which basically listen to os signals, if use signal cancel (ctrl+c) then notify the channel about the signal. We are using this signal to shutdown our server gracefully. At line 10 we are declaring and initializing a variable as chi router. At line 11 we are using a middleware to called Logger which comes with chi router as a sub-package, it basically log our incoming requests to stdout. At line 16 we declared a http.Server server variable and initialized it using struct literal. Between line 24 -29 we started a goroutine and fired up our server. At line 31 we are releasing the signal from the blocked channel and line 33 we are declaring a context with time out of 5 sec and passing it to the server shout down method. At line 35 we are using defer statement as soon as the main function ends the deferred cancel is called and release the context resources. At line 14 we mounted a route group called todo and between line 39–48 we registered a route group which contains 4 routes.
Lets write the third part of the code
handers to perform CRUD operation
In the above example line between 1–36 we wrote our createTodo function which is responsible for creating a new todo. At line 2 we we declared a variable of type todo and between line 4–7 we decode the incoming request json data to our t variable, if it fails we return a json reply to user using renderer.JSON() method. Betwen line 10–15 we checked if the title is empty then we send a json reposne to user. At line 18 we declared tm and initialized using struct literal with the incoming data form t variable and other information. Between line 24–30 we inserted the data to mondo db. Finally at 76 we sending a json reply to user that the todo created with the todo_idThat snatchings and armed robberies are common in Noida is no secret. Each day, newspapers carry news of people being robbed in different parts of the city. However, if you think that cellphones, cash and other valuables are the only items stolen, you are in for a big surprise. Pizza, it seems, has also become a favourite choice for them of late. Pizza delivery boys here say that on an average, there are 8-10 such incidents in the city every month, but most remain unreported. With a dozen pizzas being stolen in Noida every week, we take a look at the intricacies of this unusual crime.Delivery boys in the city say that there is no definite number of stolen pizzas from Noida, but say that its over a dozen a week on an averge. “Ab yeh toh nahin keh sakte ki poore Noida mein kitni chori hoti hai, par sunne me aata hai sabse ki hafte mein do-teen incident ho jaati hain,” says Ramesh, a pizza delivery boy with Dominos. Ramesh’s colleague adds, “It’s not as if they steal only one pizza when they rob you. Saare le jaate hain jitney ho aapke paas. Normally, a delivery boy carries 4-5 pizzas when out for delivery.”The latest case took place on January 6, when Rajnish, a pizza delivery boy, was robbed in Sector 58. He tells us, “I had parked my bike, and was looking for the address, when three men came on a bike, and snatched the pizzas from me. Before I could react, they sped off towards Sector 57.” Fortunately for Rajnish, a PCR van was in the area. He called the cops and the accused were apprehended with the stolen pizzas at a traffic signal in Sector 57, within the next 15 minutes.However, this case is an exception because pizza robberies are hardly ever reported. A manager of a Dominos restaurant in Noida, says, “We make a written complaint about it, but most times, no FIR is filed. A written complaint is required because we have to document stolen pizzas, and report it to our superiors. Par FIR ka jhanjhat kaun lega? Pizza hi toh hai.” The police, although acknowledging that such crimes do occur, say they cannot investigate, if the cases aren’t being reported. “Yes, we have heard of the odd cases of delivery boys being robbed in the city, but we can’t take action or investigate, if the cases aren’t being reported,” says a senior police official.Noida-based actors Jaswinder and Rahul pose as pizza robbers, escaping with their loot (BCCL)According to delivery boys, pizza robbers don’t strike them as the average criminals, and seem to be among the educated lot. A Pizza Hut delivery boy tells us, “Although the robbers hide their faces with a cloth or a helmet, you can tell that they are not the average criminals. Awaaz aur baaton se toh padhe-likhe type lagte hain.” They say that since many of these robberies are committed near college campuses, it might validate their assumption.Ravi, a delivery boy in Greater Noida, says, “Most of these incidents happen near Knowledge Park, where all the colleges are. It could be because it’s a deserted area, but the thieves seem to be well-off, not the regular criminals. Normal choron ko pizza chura ke kya milega?” Even in Noida, the most common spots for pizza robberies include areas near Sector 58 and Sector 62 – both close to several colleges, apart from places like Sector 12, and places close to Expressway.Delivery boys say that there is no specific time frame for such incidents. In busy areas, they take place usually after sunset, but in more remote areas like Expressway and Knowledge Park, incidents have taken place during broad daylight as well.When the robberies first started, a few years ago, delivery boys were faced with the difficulty of convincing their bosses that they were actually being robbed. Their superiors suspected them of selling the pizzas, and then reporting them as stolen. A pizza delivery boy at a joint in Sector 18, tells us |
with overpopulation.
Everyone needs a place to stay. Hence the resources required to build houses are increases both in demand and prices. The supply is decreasing as well.
Just houses? Think again.
The need for better infrastructure is rising in demand as well. Schools, Hospitals, bridges etc.
So much infrastructure demands a lot of brick and mortar which is short in supply.
An effective and eco-friendly alternative could be bamboo.
Although an entire structure can be built using bamboo, let’s look at the roofing solution today.
Bamboo is a grass that is extremely hard and durable all the right attributes required for a roof. Bamboo also grows quickly which means that there will be adequate supply.
A bamboo roof needs support. Just like a concrete roof is supported by iron rods.
A bamboo roof is supported by Bamboo Truss.If Boeing was looking to 2014 as a fresh start for their constantly malfunctioning Dreamliner, that particular dream is almost certainly crushed by now. In addition to one of the plane's batteries malfunctioning (again) just a few days ago, a Norweigan's Airlines flight was cancelled yesterday after a passenger noticed that fuel was pouring from a valve on the plane's wing.
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Fortunately, the passenger, Ann Kristin Balto from Tromsø, noticed the highly disconcerting leak as the plane was taxiing to the runway—before it actually took off. After alerting the stewardess, the flight was immediately cancelled. Despite the fact that it was indeed a passenger who saw the leak and stopped the plane directly before takeoff, Norweigian spokesperson Charlotte Holmbergh Jacobsson told The Local that "the pilot would have been aware of the leak from his instruments." Uh-huh.
Of course, it's not necessarily Norweigan's fault. Particularly considering Boeing Dreamliner's short, precarious history. As Balto told The Local:
The passengers weren't angry at Norwegian, but felt more that Norwegian has unfortunately been put into a very difficult situation by buying these Dreamliner planes.
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But that doesn't mean we know for certain it's Dreamliner's fault either! There's always the possibility some careless technician left the gas valve open. Either way, not great luck for the Dreamliner line. Just last year, the entire Dreamliner fleet was grounded for four months after a battery exploded in Boston. But if things keep going the way they have for Boeing, the next time might be a whole lot longer than just four months. [The Local]
Image credit: Kristin BaltoMedia playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Iain Duncan Smith urges PM to reverse Universal Credit cuts.
Former Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith is urging Theresa May to reverse cuts to Universal Credit.
Mr Duncan Smith, who quit days after the 2016 Budget, is urging the PM to postpone a plan to raise the income tax threshold to fund the move.
In 2015, cuts to the Universal Credit "work allowance" were announced - reducing the amount people could earn before benefit payments were withdrawn.
A government spokesperson said there were "no plans" to reverse the cuts.
Universal Credit's single payment replaces six current benefits, including Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).
Mr Duncan Smith drove its introduction under the coalition government, although it was beset by delays, IT problems and an entire "reset" of the system, and was the subject of tensions between the Treasury and the DWP.
He argues the cuts to work allowance cost people up to £1,000 as they move off benefits into work.
Image copyright PA Image caption The Centre for Social Justice said reversing the cuts would put money in the pockets of low-paid workers
Now a backbencher, he chairs the Centre for Social Justice which is making the call to reverse the cuts made by former chancellor George Osborne - who was sacked by Mrs May when she became prime minister in July.
The CSJ is pointing to Mrs May's own words in her first speech as PM, in which she promised those who were "just managing" that "when it comes to taxes, we'll prioritise not the wealthy, but you".
Mr Duncan Smith argued that higher earners would benefit most from raising the income tax threshold - something the government has pledged to do by 2020 - and said the money should be spent on those who were "just about managing" instead.
'Make sure work always pays'
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, the former minister said: "One of the key elements as you cross into work, the work allowances, those were all reduced. The problem with that is it means it is more difficult to get people into work and keep them in work.
"We want to get people into work, we want them to progress through work, but most importantly, we want to make sure work always pays."
He said raising the tax threshold for everyone would mean about 25p in every pound would end up with the lowest paid, while reversing the Universal Credit cuts was "a more direct way of delivering on Theresa May's statement, which was strong and powerful, to help those who try".
Image copyright AP Image caption Film director Ken Loach has criticised the DWP in his latest film 'I, Daniel Blake'
The CSJ argues that £3.4bn cut from the Universal Credit budget by Mr Osborne would cost people up to £1,000 as they "transitioned" from Universal Credit into work, thereby undermining incentives to take a job and move off benefits.
The government says Universal Credit work allowances have been simplified and people are getting extra help to move into work, as well as benefitting from increased tax allowances, childcare support and the National Living Wage.
A spokesman for the DWP said: "There are no plans to revisit the work allowance changes announced in the budget last year.
"Universal Credit is transforming lives with claimants moving into work faster and staying in work longer than under the old system."
Mr Duncan Smith also defended his work at the DWP, following the new film by Ken Loach, 'I, Daniel Blake', which tells the story of a joiner in north east England on benefits.
Mr Loach appeared on BBC's Question Time on Thursday, criticising the system that tells "the most vulnerable people" that their poverty "is their own fault."
'Unfair on staff'
Mr Duncan Smith said he had "high regard" for Mr Loach but added: "Whilst on the one level this was a human story, full of pathos and difficulties, I think is the film has taken the very worst of anything that can ever happen to anybody and said 'this is life how it is lived'. I don't believe that
"Also, his portrayal of job centre staff was unfair. Yes, you will always get one of two, but the vast, vast, vast majority are there to work and help people. This idea that everybody is out to crunch you has really hurt a lot of job centre staff."Arsenal midfielder Mikel Arteta will miss the remainder of the season with ankle ligament damage.
The Spaniard picked up the injury during on Monday and left the Emirates Stadium on crutches.
While subsequent scans have revealed no break, the ligament damage is serious enough to rule the 30-year-old out of Arsenal's four remaining matches.
The Gunners still have Chelsea, Stoke, Norwich and West Brom to play.
Arsenal run-in 21 Apr Chelsea (h) 28 Apr Stoke (a) 5 May Norwich (h) 13 May West Brom (a) Football fixtures - day by day
With Jack Wilshere also out for the season, Abou Diaby struggling for match fitness and Yossi Benayoun ineligible to face Chelsea on Saturday as he is on loan from the Blues, manager Arsene Wenger has been left with a selection headache.
Aaron Ramsey is the most likely to come into the side in place of Arteta, with Tomas Rosicky, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Alex Song making up the rest of the Arsenal midfield.
Wenger has warned his players of the importance of the match against Chelsea, with Tottenham Hotspur and Newcastle United in position to take advantage of any Arsenal slip-up in the race to finish in the top four to gain a Champions League place.About this mod Currently adds two new perks and a way to rebuild Liberty Prime outside the quest. Permissions and credits Author's instructions File credits Produced by AceCarteria on behalf of SiderisTech Enterprises. Donation Points system This mod is not opted-in to receive Donation Points Changelogs Version 002 Added 2 new perks, including the titular Ascendance Added craftable barrels Added the first Ascendance Chip Created settlement category for Project Ascendance
Version 001 Initial release
NOTE: This mod does not require SiderisTech Core.
Project Ascendance [Or, A Bunch of Random Ideas I Slapped Together]
Welcome to the Ascendance. This mod contains a bunch of ideas that I came up with to improve your Fallout 4 experience.
A list of currently implemented features:
1. Perk system
This mod adds a series of new perks. However, these perks are not obtained via the standard perk selection menu. Instead, they need to be crafted at the Perk Workbench [which can be created for 1 Screw at any settlement.] To obtain the perks, you need to craft Applicators for them using Perk Point Items.
How do you get Perk Point Items? Good question!
To obtain Perk Point Items, you need to craft a Perk Checker [also crafted at the Perk Workbench, but it's free.] When you use the Perk Checker for the first time, via a probably inefficient script, the item will detect your current level, and give you an Information Holotape that will give you info as to perks added by this mod. Further uses will, based on your current level and the level you were at when the item was last used, give you a number of Perk Point Items equal to the amount of times you leveled up.
Anyway, back to the applicators. The applicators, when used, will, via a probably inefficient method, detect what rank of their perk you have, and give you a book that gives the next rank of the perk. These books act like standard magazines, and will show the same menu that appears when a magazine is found. These books also carry insights into the Republic of Sideris, it's people, and it's military, as well as various other entities in the world of New Zenith.
Note that if you do not meet the requirements for a perk, or if you have the max rank of a perk, the Perk Point Item spent will be refunded.
A list of perks currently added:
Atom's Glory: You have studied the wonders of Atom, and have learned how to combat them more effectively. Deal +5% damage against members of the Church of Atom per rank. 5 ranks. Perk requirements: Level 14
Tit for Tat: Chemicals deployed by the Prometheus Initiative have granted you increased damage when a limb is crippled. Deal +20% damage while you have a crippled limb. Perk requirements: Level 26
2. Rebuilding Liberty Prime
You can now rebuild Liberty Prime outside the quest where you do so. Simply go and break down the door to the gantry [it has 3000 health, you may want to bring some nukes], steal the parts [most of them are marked stolen], get the Beryllium Agitator [which you can get outside the quest where you do so], get a whole bunch of fusion cores, head to a chemistry station, build Liberty Prime, and drop the Liberty Prime item. Bam, Liberty Prime appears. [A custom Liberty Prime, mind you, the original one is invulnerable.]
3. Barrels
In the settlement menu, you will now find a category for Barrels. These barrels, when placed, allow you to store up to 10,000 mL of a certain liquid. Due to scripting limitations, each liquid implemented has a barrel for it. You can also withdraw liquids stored in the barrel into a variety of vessels [currently only 4; will be changed when GECK comes out.]
4. The Ascendance
Upon taking the Ascendance perk, you will be granted 1000 max energy. Energy does not currently appear on the HUD [again, will be corrected when GECK comes out.] To get your current and max energy, craft an Energy Checker at the Ascendance Workbench. Energy is used to power a variety of gadgets, artifacts, and baubles supplied by this mod. In the future, these creations will be found on Legendary enemies.
Known bugs:
The recruitable entities do not function. This is deliberate, as I have not fully scripted them yet.
Incompatibilities:
NoneAfter being on vacation for two weeks, "The Daily Show" made a triumphant return Monday night with guest Michelle Obama and a certain bone to pick. Namely, the fact that the media jumped on Jon Stewart in his absence and started calling him a socialist.
First, Fox News Chief Roger Ailes claimed that Stewart "admitted to [him] in a bar" that he is a socialist. Then, a 2000 clip of Stewart in an interview with Larry King, saying, "I think I would say I'm more of a socialist or an independent," surfaced and was used to support Ailes' claim.
Stewart didn't seem to remember this conversation, though. This night where he and Ailes were hanging out in a bar after the Republican National Convention and talking politics over a couple of drinks somehow eluded his memory.
It wasn't until he recreated the scene with some of his coworkers that Stewart was able to "remember" the night.
In a sarcastic paraphrase of Ailes that evening, Stewart joked:
Oh, Jon! Did I ever tell you that I, Roger Ailes, plan to undermine the role of an independent press by constantly whining at any reportage that deviates from a staunch conservative narrative is biased, while at the same time filling the editorial vacuum that that creates by building a Conservative propaganda juggernaut in the guise of a news organization... Jon, I'm gonna call the organization Fox News, and its tagline will be -- you're gonna love this: 'A Fanatically Micro-Managed Media Fiefdom Where My Own Far-Right Agenda And Personal Sense of Victomhood Drive Every Aspect of the Operation... and Balanced.'
Party talk aside, though, Stewart wanted to remind everyone that the word Socialism wasn't a scandalous thing until conservative figures adopted it as a way of knocking Obamacare.
"A program where everyone will be forced to buy health insurance in a competitive marketplace from private, for-profit insurance companies?" he quipped. "It's a Marxist's dream!"Supporters of net neutrality rules knew they were in for a fierce debate when their leading opponent, Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai, scheduled a speech on the issue for this week.
In an an address delivered at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, Pai didn’t disappoint. The chairman repeated many of the talking points used by critics of the rules that his agency passed in 2015 to protect web sites and online services from being blocked or discriminated against by the big Internet service providers.
“The Internet is the greatest free-market success story in history,” he said, citing Google, Facebook, and Netflix as examples. But after years of a “light-touch regulatory framework,” Pai said, the FCC in 2015 “decided to impose a set of heavy-handed regulations upon the Internet”—so-called Title II classification, a decades-old designation that regulates conventional telephone carriers and in its modern expansion includes Internet service providers to prevent paid prioritization of bandwidth, colloquially known as a “fast lane.” It was a mistake, Pai said.
“When the FCC rammed through the Title II order two years ago, I expressed hope that we would look back at that vote as an aberration, a temporary deviation from the bipartisan path that had served us so well,” he said.
Unlike his predecessor Tom Wheeler, who stepped down in December as the Obama administration came to an end, Pai didn’t shy away from criticizing proponents of the 2015 policy.
“Consider, for example, the leading special interest in favor of Title II: a spectacularly misnamed Beltway lobbying group called Free Press,” Pai said. “Its co-founder and current board member makes no effort to hide the group’s true agenda. While he says ‘we’re not at the point yet’ where we can ‘completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies,’ he admits that ‘the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.’ And who would assume control of the Internet? The government, of course. The overall goal is to ‘remove brick by brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles.'”
Free Press, a nonprofit, is hardly the only group supporting the 2015 rules. And the unnamed co-founder—emeritus board member and professor Robert McChesney—has nothing to do with its current net neutrality efforts.
“It’s silly,” says Free Press president Craig Aaron. “It doesn’t represent our views or work. And it shouldn’t distract from what Pai is trying to do to end net neutrality and give unchecked power over the Internet to companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T.”
AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast, three of the country’s largest Internet service providers, have all issued statements supporting Pai’s efforts.
The move to create a deep partisan divide over net neutrality troubles Kevin Werbach, a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania who worked on Internet issues at the FCC during the Clinton administration in the 1990s.
“Pai is clearly trying to throw some red meat to the right-wing base in order to counter the broad popular support for open Internet protections,” says Werbach, who supports the 2015 rules. “He demonized one advocacy group to distract attention from the many entrepreneurs, economists, legal scholars, and technologists who supported the FCC’s open Internet rules. That’s not the job for the head of an independent administrative agency.”
The chairman clearly disagrees.
Said Pai: “Make no mistake about it: This is a fight that we intend to wage and it is a fight that we are going to win.”
Editor’s Note, April 27, 2017: The headline of this story and several passages have been changed or removed to more accurately characterize Pai’s statements.Expectations are as high as they can get for the Cubs in 2016. A World Series might not be enough. They might have to win the Super Bowl as well.
The Cubs have an impressive bullpen, a Cy Young winner leading a talented rotation and an outfield that boasts a trio of mid-20-something stars, including their big free-agent splash, Jason Heyward.
But it’s the infield that drives this team. An infield that boasts two MVP candidates, two potential All-Stars and one top prospect.
What’s left to say about Kris Bryant? He was the unanimous choice for National League Rookie of the Year, taking all 30 first-place votes. He finished 10th in baseball in FanGraphs’ WAR at 6.5. His 5.5 Offensive WAR, according to Baseball-Reference, which measures WAR a little differently, was also 10th in baseball. Bryant came to the Cubs on a wave of hype and he rode it like he was Kelly Slater. He hit 26 homers and 31 doubles, had an.858 OPS and a 136 wRC+, which was...Creditors had little expectations from today's ad hoc meeting with "soon-to-default" Venezuela, and with good reason: not only was the meeting attended by several sanctioned Venezuelan officials, potentially jeopardizing the legal status of any bondholders who voluntarily appeared at the Caracas meeting meant to "restructure and refinance" Venezuela's massive debt load, but it was nothing but total confusion, with neither Venezuela, nor creditors knowing what is on the agenda, why they were meeting, or what is the endgame. In sum, the meeting resulted in no firm proposals, lasted no more than 30 minutes, consisted largely of an angry rant by an alleged drug dealer who also happens to be Venezuela's vice president, and ended as chaotically as it started.
Quoted by Reuters, one unnamed bondholder had a perfectly succinct summary of what happened today, or rather didn't:
“There was no offer, no terms, no strategy, nothing,” the bondholder said, leaving the meeting that lasted a little over half an hour at the ‘White Palace’, departing with a colorful gift-bag containing Venezuelan chocolates and coffee.
Credit walked in as confused as they left, a little over a week after President Nicolas Maduro stunned investors with a vow to continue paying Venezuela’s crippling debt, while also seeking to restructure and refinance it; the two things are literally impossible at the same time. There is another problem: both a restructuring and a refinancing appears out of the question, due to U.S. sanctions against the crisis-stricken nation, which make discussions with the key negotiators who has been put on a sanctions black list, grounds for potential arrest. A default would compound Venezuela’s already disastrous economic crisis.
As Reuters reports, Monday’s short and confused meeting, attended by senior Venezuelan officials blacklisted by the United States, gave no clarity on how Maduro would carry out his plan, bondholders and their representatives who participated said afterwards.
That means Venezuela remains with the dilemma of whether to continuing paying debt at the expense of an increasingly hungry and sick population, or defaulting on creditors and burning its bridges to the global financial system.
Vice President Tareck El Aissami, the only government official to speak, devoted most of his remarks to railing against Donald Trump and global financiers who he said have conspired to keep the country from making debt payments on time. He pledged Venezuela would continue to honor its obligations while working to form committees with bondholders to figure out the next steps. He offered no specific proposals for restructuring, according to Bloomberg which was briefed by people who attended the meeting, which wasn’t open to journalists.
The surreal procession of Venezuela's descent into insolvency started earlier:
The event, held across from the presidential palace at Palacio Blanco, was accompanied by much fanfare, with a literal red carpet laid out for attendees who passed through an honor guard on their way into the building. After government Twitter accounts sent repeated invitations to the meeting over the past week, it appeared that no more than 100 people showed up, and none of them were allowed to ask any questions publicly. Finance Minister Simon Zerpa, Oil Minister Eulogio del Pino, PDVSA President Nelson Martinez and planning vice president Ricardo Menendez were in attendance.
The most notable presence, however, was that of chief debt negotiators Vice President Tareck El Aissami and Economy Minister Simon Zerpa - whom the U.S. previously sanctioned for drug trafficking and corruption charges respectively - who attended the meeting for half an hour. As Reuters recounts, "they met with some bondholders, while others stayed out of the room on concerns about penalties for dealing with officials sanctioned by Washington."
At that point the meeting turned even more bizarre:
El Aissami told creditors that Deutsche Bank may soon cut off some financial services to Venezuela, participants said. He read a statement protesting unfair treatment by global financial institutions, including U.S. President Donald Trump’s sanctions aimed at preventing Venezuela from issuing new debt.
In retrospect, the move was at least somewhat clever: “Now Maduro can say: ‘I showed goodwill, the bondholders showed goodwill... but unfortunately because Uncle Sam is not playing ball we can’t (refinance)',” said Jan Dehn, Head of Research at Ashmore Investment Management, who did not attend the meeting. “I‘m not hugely surprised nothing’s come out of that meeting.”
Surprisingly, and ignoring the sheer chaos of recent events, markets remain optimistic that Venezuela will continue to service its debts despite Friday's notice of involuntary default by bond trustee Wilmginton Trust; bulls were noting that Caracas has made close to $2 billion in payments in the past two weeks, albeit delayed. Somehow they extrapolated that this state would continue indefinitely.
In any case, the market appears placated for now: bond prices were up across the board on Monday, with the benchmark 2022 notes issued by state oil firm PDVSA rising 3.3 percentage points. Meamwhile, nearly $300 million in late interest payments on three bonds - PDVSA 2027, Venezuela 2019 and Venezuela 2024 - was also due on Monday after 30-day grace periods ended. But bondholders appeared unconcerned at the delay, which was due in part to increased bank vigilance of Venezuela transactions.
“My expectation is that the coupon payments will come through as well,” said Ashomer's Dehn. “We know that these delays exist and why they exist.”
Meanwhile, for Maduro the choice is simple: keep paying creditors and preserve some minute, if irrelevant, access to capital markets, or conserve the cash and feed the starving domestic population. The sight of poor Venezuelans eating from garbage bags has become a symbol of Venezuela's socialist decay. It contrasts sharply with the era of Chavez, when high oil prices helped fuel state spending.
According to Reuters, halting debt service would free up an additional $1.6 billion in hard currency by the end of the year. Those resources could be used to improve supplies of staple goods as Maduro heads into a presidential election expected for 2018. But the strategy could backfire if met with aggressive lawsuits. A default by PDVSA, which issued about half of the country’s outstanding bonds, could ensnare the company’s foreign assets such as refineries in legal battles - potentially crimping export revenue.
Which is why when choosing between keeping its creditors happy or feeding its people, Maduro will always pick the former...
* * *
... Unless, of course, the decision is made for it: late on Monday evening, S&P announced it was lowering Venezuela's credit rating from CC to Selective Default, or SD. Highlights below:
Venezuela Long-Term Foreign Currency Rating Lowered To 'SD'
Venezuela failed to make $200 million in coupon payments for its global bonds due 2019 and 2024 within the 30-calendar-day grace period.
In line with our criteria for timeliness of payments, we are lowering the issue ratings on these bonds to 'D' from 'CC' and the long-term foreign currency sovereign credit rating on Venezuela to 'SD' from 'CC'.
The local currency sovereign credit ratings on Venezuela remain on CreditWatch with negative implications, reflecting our view that the sovereign could again miss a payment on its outstanding debt obligations or advance a distressed debt exchange operation, equivalent to default, within the next three months.
RATING ACTION
On Nov. 13, 2017, S&P Global Ratings lowered its long- and short-term foreign currency sovereign credit ratings on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to 'SD/D' from 'CC/C'. The long- and short-term local currency sovereign credit ratings remain at 'CCC-/C' and are still on CreditWatch with negative implications. At the same time, we lowered our issue ratings on Venezuela's global bonds due 2019 and 2024 to 'D' from 'CC'. Our issue ratings on the remainder of Venezuela's foreign currency senior unsecured debt remain at 'CC'. Finally, we affirmed our transfer and convertibility assessment on the sovereign at 'CC'.
CREDITWATCH
Our CreditWatch negative reflects our opinion that there is a one-in-two chance that Venezuela could default again within the next three months. We could lower specific issue ratings to default ('D') if Venezuela doesn't make its overdue coupon payments before the stated grace period expires, or upon the execution of the announced debt restructuring.
If the sovereign cures its default on the overdue coupon payments and remains timely on other coupon payments before the restructuring debt operation is completed, we would raise our long-term foreign currency sovereign issuer credit and issue ratings to 'CC'.
If any potential restructuring operation is completed, we would lower all of our foreign currency ratings on Venezuela to default and subsequently raise them to the 'CCC' or 'B' category.
RATIONALE
On Nov. 12, 30 calendar days had passed since two coupon payments were due, and Venezuela had not paid the $200 million due to bondholders (or the bondholders had not received funds by that date). In accordance with our criteria, "Methodology: Timeliness of Payments: Grace Periods, Guarantees, And Use of 'D' And 'SD' Ratings," we have lowered two issue ratings to 'D' (default), and we lowered the long-term foreign currency sovereign credit rating to 'SD' (selective default).Shamrock St, the site of an alleged abduction in Palmerston North.
A man has been arrested in connection with a child abduction in Palmerston North, bringing "huge relief" to the community.
Police confirmed on Thursday afternoon that a man was arrested on Wednesday night after a 5-year-old girl was snatched in Shamrock St as she and her sisters were on their way to Takaro School on Friday, February 12, about 8.30am.
The girl was found across town at Hind Place by resident Bill Gillilard, 91, about 2½ hours later.
MURRAY WILSON/ FAIRFAX MEDIA Police mark the scene at Shamrock St.
The man appeared in the Rotorua District Court on Thursday and was remanded in custody.
He was set to appear in the Palmerston North District Court on March 10.
The man's occupation and age were suppressed until the court appearance.
Murray Wilson/ Fairfax NZ. The 5-year-old girl had been on her way to Takaro School.
Shamrock St resident Gillian Skyrme said people had felt anxious about the event and the news of an arrest was welcomed.
"I think we all feel very relieved."
Skyrme said she hoped the incident didn't stop people carrying on with their normal routine.
"I think it's really unfortunate and I hope it doesn't make people worry about children walking in the community."
Another Shamrock St resident, whose son witnessed the alleged abduction, said the incident had brought the street together.
"I think we were all aware, whether we had children or not. It just made the street come together as neighbours.
"It's just a shame it had to happen like this."
Her son had heard the young girls screaming and ran outside to see what the commotion was about.
The three young girls walked by her house on a regular basis.
"There is a lot of relief around the neighbourhood," she said. "You're not looking behind your back now."
Palmerston North mayor Grant Smith said the arrest was a "huge relief".
He said the past few days had been a "harrowing time" for many people and there was a considerable feeling of "angst" among many people.
"Even though it was an isolated event, people with young children were worried."
He said it was a rare event to have in the city and in New Zealand.
"It could have happened anywhere in New Zealand. It is unusual, for certain."
Smith had regularly been in touch with the police in the past few days and had offered the family involved support throughout the ordeal.
"There was a little bit of a frenzy there for a couple of days."
He hoped the arrest would bring some normality back to the city.
Palmerston North MP Iain Lees-Galloway said the arrest would be a huge relief to Palmerston North families.
"As a parent myself it certainly made us a little bit more wary about letting our kids walk to school.
"I'm sure it has had a similar impact on a lot of other families as well."
Lees-Galloway praised the police for their hard work.
He said Palmerston North was a tight-knit community, but an arrest did not mean people would be any less wary.
"People won't relax immediately, people won't feel any more confident about their children's safety tomorrow. But I hope over time people come to feel more secure and feel more confident about their children's security."
Palmerston North City councillor Rachel Bowen, who holds the children and families portfolio, said she had been receiving concerned messages since the alleged abduction.
"Every familiy in Palmerston North was concerned and heartbroken for the victim and their family."
She said they could now be pleased that there might be a resolution.
"Huge credit to the police... it matters in our community, our community of young families."
Police area commander Inspector Sarah Stewart said she hoped this development would provide reassurance to the community, and she would like to thank members for their support and assistance throughout the investigation.
Takaro School principal Helena Baker Tumuaki said the news of an arrest was "a relief", the NZ Herald reported.
"As can be expected, we're relieved. We're relieved for the girl's whanau."
Police Commissioner Mike Bush also commented on the arrest and said it would give reassurance to the community.
"Whilst incidents of this nature understandably cause great concern, they are very rare.
"It is important that kids have information about how they can keep themselves safe, and I encourage all parents to talk to their children about how to recognise inappropriate behaviour and what to do when it occurs," he wrote on his blog.
Police National Headquarters spokesman Grant Ogilvie said police had to take all steps necessary to ensure the safety of the young victim, so the court appearance had been kept quiet until late Thursday afternoon.
"We may normally have given some notification [of the arrest] but we made the decision we couldn't do that here. We took the steps needed to protect the victim."
Ogilvie said they made their decision because some media had continued to run the picture and name of the girl "long after she was found".
A team of more than 30 police officers has been investigating the case.You may have heard by now that Hollywood mega-movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, who owns a major company that has produced some of the most famous movies and their stars, is in a whole lot of trouble after decades of engaging in alleged sexual harassment and potential sexual assault.
Two decades ago, the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein invited Ashley Judd to the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel for what the young actress expected to be a business breakfast meeting. Instead, he had her sent up to his room, where he appeared in a bathrobe and asked if he could give her a massage or she could watch him shower, she recalled in an interview.
In 2014, Mr. Weinstein invited Emily Nestor, who had worked just one day as a temporary employee, to the same hotel and made another offer: If she accepted his sexual advances, he would boost her career, according to accounts she provided to colleagues who sent them to Weinstein Company executives. The following year, once again at the Peninsula, a female assistant said Mr. Weinstein badgered her into giving him a massage while he was naked, leaving her “crying and very distraught,” wrote a colleague, Lauren O’Connor, in a searing memo asserting sexual harassment and other misconduct by their boss.
Harvey isn't denying the allegations made by a number of women, saying in a statement, "I appreciate the way I’ve behaved with colleagues in the past has caused a lot of pain, and I sincerely apologize for it. Though I’m trying to do better, I know I have a long way to go."
But Harvey isn't just a movie guy, he's also a massive donor to the Democrat Party. One of his big recipients? Hillary Clinton. In fact, he was a fundraising bundler for her 2016 campaign.
But where is Clinton on this issue? After all, she is the former Democrat presidential candidate who argued all women should be believed when making allegations of sexual harassment or assault.
Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported. https://t.co/mkD69RHeBL — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 23, 2015
She's silent, just as she was when Bill Clinton was accused of doing the same thing. After all, it's the politically expedient thing to do.
The RNC has called on Democrats who have received "dirty" money from Weinstein to return it.
"During three-decades worth of sexual harassment allegations, Harvey Weinstein lined the pockets of Democrats to the tune of three quarters of a million dollars. If Democrats and the DNC truly stand up for women like they say they do, then returning this dirty money should be a no brainer," RNC Chairwoman Ronna Romney-McDaniel said Friday.
Some Democrats have done so, others like Hillary and Senator Elizabeth Warren, have not. Neither has the DNC.Former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton are under fire over their charity organization's decision to reportedly keep a $250,000 donation from disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein.
The Clinton Foundation told the DailyMail.com that it will not return money received from Weinstein, who has been accused of sexually assaulting or harassing more than 30 women, including actresses Angelina Jolie, Ashley Judd, Rose McGowan, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Beckinsale, Rosanna Arquette and Mira Sorvino. The foundation says it already spent money received from Weinstein on charitable purposes.
"Suggesting @ClintonFdn return funds from our 330,000+ donors ignores the fact that donations have been used to help people across the world," foundation spokesman Craig Minassian said on Twitter over the weekend.
The Clinton Foundation, which is currently run by Bill and Chelsea Clinton, said it last received a contribution from Weinstein in 2014. The Hollywood mogul also backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and reportedly donated more than $35,000 to her presidential campaign.
Hillary Clinton condemned Weinstein several times last week, saying she was "shocked and appalled" by the allegations.
"This kind of behavior cannot be tolerated anywhere, whether it's in entertainment, politics," she told the BBC, before attacking President Donald Trump. "After all, we have someone admitting to being a sexual assaulter in the Oval Office."
When asked about allegations of sexual misconduct against her husband, Hillary Clinton said "that has all been litigated... in the late '90s... That was clearly in the past."
But Fox News reports criticism is escalating for Clinton, who is on tour promoting her new book "What Happened," after Democratic politicians, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Al Franken, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Cory Booker, all vowed to donate money from Weinstein to women's rights organizations.
"What other people are saying, what my former colleagues are saying, is they're going to donate it to charity, and of course I will do that," Clinton told CNN earlier last week. "I give 10 percent of my income to charity every year, this will be part of that. There's no - there's no doubt about it."
"Know what Hillary Clinton is NOT? She's not stupid. Or unsophisticated about the world. The Weinstein stories had been out there for years," CNN host Anthony Bourdain wrote on Twitter. The celebrity chef is dating Asia Argento, an Italian actress who says Weinstein raped her at the Cannes Film Festival in 1999.
Bill and Chelsea Clinton have not commented on questions about donations from Weinstein, according to the Daily Mail.
Weinstein has publicly apologized for any pain he had caused, but his representative Sallie Hofmeister told The New Yorker that "any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein."
Weinstein has |
. You’re such a loser, the name whispers, that you can’t even get being a loser right. Meanwhile, the objects of their derision play and design video games and appear on panels and argue over who the best Star Trek captain was (Janeway, obviously), carving out a community and a culture where no man has gone before, reclaiming a word that the traditional sci fi scene has always been conflicted about.
Buried beneath the layers of misogyny and genre snobbery is self-loathing, because the real insult here isn’t "fake", or "girl". It’s "geek". You keep on using that word, sexist fanboys of the internet. I do not think it means what you think it means.Add House Speaker Paul Ryan to the list of Republicans outraged that President Obama is extending overtime eligibility to millions, effectively eliminating a way that employers exploit workers. Ryan is “committed to fighting this rule and the many others that would be an absolute disaster for our economy,” based, of course, on a load of nonsense:
“This regulation hurts the very people it alleges to help. Who is hurt most? Students, non-profit employees, and people starting a new career. By mandating overtime pay at a much higher salary threshold, many small businesses and non-profits will simply be unable to afford skilled workers and be forced to eliminate salaried positions, complete with benefits, altogether. For the sake of his own political legacy, President Obama is rushing through regulations—like the overtime rule—that will cause people to lose their livelihoods.
This makes zero sense if you think about it. Businesses won’t be able to make salaried employees work for 70 hours a week at $25,000 a year, and therefore will eliminate those jobs altogether? If they can’t afford to pay overtime, they just can’t make people work more than 40 hours a week. Maybe businesses will hire another person to work at regular pay. Maybe they’ll miraculously find the money for overtime. Maybe they’ll figure out how to work more efficiently. The options abound.
As Bryce Covert points out, the same Paul Ryan who thinks it’s awful and terrifying for people to get time and a half if they work more than 40 hours a week is the Paul Ryan who said this just last fall:
“Here’s the problem. They’re working hard. They’re paying a lot. They are trying to do right by their families. And they are going nowhere fast,” he said. “They never get a raise. They never get a break… They are working harder than ever to get ahead. Yet they are falling further behind.”
And now he’s “committed to fighting” an effort to make sure that people get a raise, get a break, don’t have to work harder than ever to get ahead. What a surprise—Paul Ryan not meaning what he says when he’s expressing support for working people.In 2014 professor Kingsley mysteriously disappeared from the university campus where he taught. In 2015, convinced he had become trapped in one of his experiments, his daughter Evelyn set out to find him, never to be seen again. Now, due to a strange clause in the professor’s will, the reading is to be a public affair held after a specific amount of time has gone by. The time has now passed and since the professor has promised to bequeath something to everyone in attendance you and your party decide to take up one of the last remaining tables and see what surprises, if any, the professor has in store. The reading is lengthy but true to his word your group is handed an envelope and a strange box is placed on the table before you. While the events leading up to this moment have been truly bizarre, are you ready find out what the Professor’s Will has in store for you?
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Last Friday, Oscar Bergamin, a Swiss humanitarian aid worker helping refugees in northern Syria, wrote a tweet that included 18 digits. They were the coordinates of a bunker near the Turkey-Syria border that had been seized by members of ISIS, the self-proclaimed Islamic State that’s terrorizing large chunks of Iraq and Syria. The tweet caught the eye of ISIS-affiliated accounts on Twitter, which sent out a barrage of threatening messages to Bergamin, warning that they were “coming for Mr. Aid Worker,” and that he would be beheaded. (Two weeks ago, ISIS beheaded British aid worker David Haines and holds another British aid worker, Alan Henning, hostage.)
Bergamin, the president of a Swiss humanitarian aid organization called Ash-Sham CARE, says that the bunker he tweeted about is “no secret at all” and can be seen from miles away. He says he intentionally shared the bunker’s location so that the US military might destroy it.
The day before he tweeted the coordinates, Bergamin was perched outside the bunker, taking photos and watching out for civilians. On Twitter, he asked the US Central Command and “all followers” to “just blow it away!” Bergamin tells Mother Jones that a “fit of cynicism” prompted his messages. With as many as 18,000 refugee families are trapped just beyond the bunker, he felt helpless and angry at ISIS.
After his tweets, Bergamin received death threats over Twitter in clear, direct English, forcing him to make his account private. Some ISIS accounts have tweeted pictures of his LinkedIn and Twitter accounts and pictures of him, claiming that Bergamin is a CIA agent who needs to be killed. Bergamin is not disclosing his current whereabouts for his own safety.
Following Bergamin’s tweet and the ongoing US air offensive against the Islamic State, Twitter accounts connected to the group have issued a media blackout and have clammed up about its movements and locations.
Bergamin founded Ash-Sham CARE in November of 2011 along with “a group of concerned people especially worried about the appalling humanitarian situation in Syria.” The group focuses on providing emergency humanitarian assistance, primarily in northern Syria. According to Bergamin, the group is “largely unnoticed by the public” and receives little funding. Though its team is small, he says it has built an excellent network throughout Syria.
Located at the Turkish border on the eastern side of the Euphrates River, the bunker was held by the Free Syrian Army before ISIS. Bergamin says that “there are almost every day clashes there between Kurds and ISIS” near the bunker and that the area has been basically unreachable since ISIS took the town of Jarabalus and massacred many civilians in January. Prior to the siege, Bergamin’s organization provided aid to five camps for internally displaced persons in the city. The bunker currently blocks the way to the camps.
Bergamin now admits that the tweets may not have been a good idea, and that his anger and frustration may have gotten the better of him. Humanitarian groups tend to remain neutral in war zones; the International Red Cross’s fundamental principles of humanitarian work include impartiality and neutrality.
Other Twitter users have questioned Bergamin, telling him that he has put lives at danger by provoking ISIS. “Giorgio” wrote to Bergamin, “your tweet is being used by IS affiliates on twitter to prove that aid workers aren’t peaceful people, hence can be hit,” to which Bergamin replied, “Unfortunately.”
Bergamin notes that while he gave ISIS an opportunity to lash out at aid workers and journalists, the coordinates of the bunker are not especially secret at all: He pulled its location from Wikimapia. “Reactions show ISIS has been waiting for something like this,” he writes in an email. “I am neither a spy or working for CIA. It’s as if I send the secret coordinates of the Eiffel Tower in Paris…it’s ridiculous.”The covers have already become a meme.
Graphic designer Vlad Sepetov created the covers for Kendrick Lamar’s last two projects—untitled, unmastered. and To Pimp A Butterfly—and he recently opened up about the design decisions that went into his latest cover for Kendrick’s upcoming fourth album DAMN.
In a series of tweets, he addressed criticisms of the cover, contrasting it with the “uber political” To Pimp A Butterfly artwork by noting that DAMN. was meant to be more “loud and abrasive”:
Sepetov also explained his decision to put the Parental Advisory logo on the right side, rather than the more traditional bottom left corner:
In the 24 hours since its reveal, the album cover art has already become a meme:
DAMN. is set to drop worldwide on Thursday, April 13 at 9 p.m. PST. It will include Kendrick’s recent single “HUMBLE.” as well as features from Rihanna, Zacari, and U2.
You can read all the lyrics to Kendrick Lamar’s recent single “HUMBLE.” on Genius now.Rodney Fish
A commissioner in Lawrence County, Indiana this week voted to discontinue the county’s needle exchange, citing the Bible in his decision to end a program that drastically reduces the probability drug users will contract blood-borne viruses like HIV.
As NBC News reports, Rodney Fish, one of the council members, called his vote against needle exchanges “a moral issue.”
“It was a moral issue with me. I had severe reservations that were going to keep me from approving that motion,” Fish said.
“I did not approach this decision lightly,” he added. “I gave it a great deal of thought and prayer. My conclusion was that I could not support this program and be true to my principles and my beliefs.”
As vox.com noted, before casting his vote, Fish quoted from the Bible, saying, “If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people; if my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
But needle exchanges save lives.
Christopher Abert of the Indiana Recovery Alliance told NBC News “people are going to die” as a result of the commissioners’ votes.
“The opposition to them is a moral opposition,” Abert said, noting this this the second syringe exchange to close in Indiana since the election of state Attorney General Curtis Hill, who opposes exchanges.
The opioid epidemic ravaging the United States has fueled an increase in injection drug use, which in turn has contributed to “a 150 percent increase in acute cases of hepatitis C infections,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.
In Lawrence Country alone, Abert says cases of hepatitis C have already decreased 50 percent.
“In the last year, the Indiana Recovery Alliance has served hundreds of Lawrence County residents, who reported over 50 overdose reversals,” the Alliance told NBC News. “Dozens of people have remained hepatitis and HIV free through their involvement and testing with the program. Stopping just one case of HIV saves $450,000 in lifetime costs.”
But Fish says his anecdotal evidence does not mirror those statistics.
“Few, if any of the health care professionals that I personally spoke with believe that the needle exchange program was an effective way of getting people into treatment programs,” he said.
“I researched to the best of my ability and queried individuals all over our community to get a response from the people who deal in these issues,” Fish continued. I spoke with physicians. I spoke with nurses, EMTs, first responders and other county officials whose opinions I respect.”
“My constituency overwhelming responded in saying no, we do not want to support this program,” he added.hide
On DROdio
I spoke on the American Marketing Association's Social Media panel on July 15th. The video is above. Below is the original marketing information for the panel:
Innovation & Technology, How it affects the Marketing Mix
Date: Wednesday, July 15, 2009
I spoke on the American Marketing Association's Social Media panel on July 15th. The video is above. Below is the original marketing information for the panel: Innovation & Technology, How it affects the Marketing Mix Date: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 Time: 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM Location: John Hopkins University Krieger School of Arts and Sciences Washington, DC Center 1717 Massachusetts Ave., NW Room BOB Washington, DC 20036 Cost: $40 Members & Students $60 Non-members Hors d'oeuvres included. All onsite registrants are subject to an additional $10 surcharge. Register Pre-registration closes at 5:00 PM on Monday, July 13th. Speakers: Aaron Brazell, CEO, Emmense Technologies, Founder, Technosailor.com Gray Brooks, New Media Ombudsman, Obama for America Shana Glickfield, Communications Consultant, Founder, DC Concierge Daniel Ruben Odio-Paez, COO, PointAbout, Co-Founder, DC Moblile Mondays Patricia Mejia, VP Marketing, Siteworx Moderator: Maurisa Turner Potts, Expert Marketing Consultant Every day a new social marketing outreach tool is introduced to the marketplace. Rapid innovation in technology has added new weapons to a marketer's toolbox. Both clients and companies are looking for the next new hot thing to differentiate their product or service. Facebook, Smartphones, Iphone Apps, Twitter, and U Stream are every day household names. New companies and industries have been formed to spread messages about products and services. Yet, a key question remains: How does innovation and technology affect the marketing mix? Come join five expert panelists on July 15, 2009 to discuss key innovations in technology that directly impact marketers. Aaron Brazell is a social media strategist and implementer. As a long time entrepreneur and technologist, he is most known for his blog, Technosailor.com - the most widely read business and technology blog in the Baltimore/Washington region. Gray Brooks helped pioneer the political New Media space. In early 2003 Brooks drove to Vermont, helping the Internet team power Gov. Howard Dean's presidential bid. In January 2007, Brooks joined Barack Obama's campaign. As New Media Ombudsman, he was the special projects manager for the New Media Director and helped integrate the department into the campaign at large. Over the two years of the campaign and presidential transition, Brooks managed efforts integrating web design, online video, email, text messaging, online advertising, social networks, and fundraising. Patricia Mejia is the Vice President of Marketing for Siteworx, Inc. Patricia offers a diverse background in public, private and non-profit organizations, having served most recently as VP of Marketing & Communications at IXI T Corporation. Prior to IXI, Patricia held leadership positions at Freddie Mac, the Mortgage Bankers Association and the Southeastern Universities Research Association. Daniel Odio is a co-founder of PointAbout, a company that is focused on unlocking innovation in the mobile space. Previously, Daniel was the founder of Cardea Commercial Real Estate Advsors and DROdio Real Estate, Inc, a resdental real estate brockerage. Daniel has been featured on CNN, CNBC, TLC, The Wall Street Journal and many other publications for his innovative use of technology in the real estate market. Shana Glickfield, an independent communications consultant, was previously the Director of Strategic Communications at Amplify Public Affairs. Shana is currently leading a workshop series to improve how Hill staffers use social media tools in the course of their jobs. She is the founder and author of renowned local blog, The DC Concierge and is one of the top 100 Twitters in DC. Maurisa is an accomplished marketing professional with more than 14 years of professional marketing experience. Her background includes developing innovative and customized marketing strategies, communication roll-outs, event planning, public relations, and partnership development. She has experience in a variety of areas such as economic development, hospitality, technology, telecommunications, accounting, retail and legal services. After spending a majority of her career working in corporate America, she launched her own marketing/public relations consulting business offering freshly tailored marketing solutions exclusively to small businesses, boutiques, entrepreneurs and other private entities. She serves on the Board for the Greater Washington Fashion Chamber of Commerce. She is also a member of Success in the City Professional Women Organization, Washington Women in Public Relations, and a Social Committee Member for the Virginia Tech Alumni Association (National Capital Region). Here's a transcription of the event: Subject: American Marketing Association's Social Media Panel Date: July 15, 2009 Location; Johns Hopkins University Speakers: Aaron Brazell, CEO, Emmense Technologies, Founder, Techosailor.com Gray Brooks, New Media Ombudsman, Obama for America Shana Glickfield, Communications Consultant, Founder, DC Concierge Patricia Mejia, VP Marketing, Siteworx Daniel Ruben Odio-Paez, COO, PointAbout, Co-Founder, DC Mobile Mondays Moderator: Maurisa Turner Potts, Expert Marketing Consultant Legend - Panel Members and Moderator AB - Aaron Brazell GB - Gray Brooks SG - Shana Glickfield PM - Patricia Mejia DO - Daniel Ruben Odio-Paez MT - Maurisa Turner Karen: So, I wanted to just make a couple of announcements, and then I'm going to turn the mike over to our Chapter President, Brendan Hurley. We've a few upcoming events, and I hope you like this space, because we're going to be meeting here a lot for the speaker series. So coming up on July 28th, we have a networking series that's gonna be with José Andrés, who is from THINKfoodGROUP. How many people have been to the Zaytinya, the Jaleo? Great restaurants. So that's going to be on Tuesday, July 28th, that's a lunchtime event. Am I correct? [Yeah.] Good. So on August the 12th, we'll be back here at Johns Hopkins, and the table speaker series on the 12th is on Sports Marketing. So if you are interested in sports and marketing, I hope to see you and see your smiling face on August the 12th. I put the time as 6[:00] to 8[:00] because I know D.C.; I know traffic. We're going to start at 6:30 every month, the speaker series, but I wanted us to have enough time to network, exchange business cards, and get to know each other. But anyway, I'm going to turn it over to our new Chapter President, Mr. Brendan Hurley, who's going to talk a little bit about the chapter, and we'll be starting in 5 minutes. Thanks. [...] You're welcome. Brendan Hurley: Thank you, Karen, and welcome everyone. Again, my name is Brendan Hurley. I'm the new Chapter President for the American Marketing Association here in DC, so I'm very honored to hold that title and to be here tonight, and to welcome you. I'd like to thank and welcome all of our speakers. Thank you very much for your time, and your insights, and your expert knowledge. I'm sure that our guests are going to learn quite a bit from you, so we appreciate that. For those of you who are not aware--we just began our new fiscal year. The Chapter begins the fiscal year on July 1st, so I just want to take this opportunity to tell you a little bit about what our goals and expectations are for the new year. All we wanted to, really as a chapter, we want to focus on our core competency this week--move forward to try to provide maximum member value, so we are really focusing on increased and better programming, and increased in better networking opportunities for you, as we know that is very important to our members. We're also going to be doing some internal and external research. We want to find out what, as members, you think of the organization. For those people who are not members--we want to know what you think of the organization, as well, so that we can continue to improve and grow as a Chapter. We believe in building organizational infrastructure and improving efficiency so we're very dedicated. Our volunteer force is very dedicated on focusing on those areas, so you have any input or suggestions for us, we welcome it. If you're interested in volunteering for the chapter, we really welcome that. As part of our desire to improve the infrastructure, we really need volunteers to fill our committees. Melissa Okimoto, our Director of Volunteers, raise your hand, Melissa, is here. If you're interested in talking to her, she'd more than happy to chat with you about some of the many opportunities available as volunteers at AMADC. So thank you again for allowing me to speak to you. Now it's my pleasure to introduce to you the moderator for this evening's discussion, Maurisa Turner. Maurisa also happens to be the Chapter's Vice President of Marketing and Communications. Maurisa is an accomplished marketing professional with more than 14 years of professional marketing experience. Her background includes developing innovative and customized marketing strategies, communication roll-outs, event planning, public relations and partnership development. She has experience in a variety of areas, such as economic development, hospitality, technology, telecommunications, accounting, retail, and legal services. Maurisa, is there anything that you really haven't touched on in your career? [Laughter] She launched her own marketing/public relations consulting business recently offering professionally tailored marketing exclusions, exclusively to small businesses, boutiques, entrepreneurs and other private entities. She serves on the Board of the Greater Washington Fashion Chamber of Commerce, which she was just featured recently, I might add. She's also a member of Success in the City Professional Women's Organization, Washington Women in Public Relations, and a Social Committee member for the Virginia Tech Alumni Association. So, welcome. Thank you. [Applause] Maurisa Turner: [I have to move this lower [microphone] for a 4' 11" person.] Good evening, everyone. Thank you for coming and thank you, panelists, for being here. Before we start off, I'd like to get a little poll in the audience about how much everyone knows about social media. And I'm going to start with the basic question. Raise your hand if you know what the definition of social media is. Who is currently using social media? [Laughs] We have applications here. How many people are using Facebook? YouTube? Twitter? How many people blog daily? [Laughter] OK, weekly? Alright. And how many people do it for business? Personal? For both? OK, alright. How many people work for organizations that make it a requirement in their business to have a social media plan? Do any have a work or an entity where they're adverse to using social media applications? [OK.] May I ask? [OK.] Is anyone Twittering right now? [Laughter] Alright. I just wanted to get a good pulse on just how the background of how many people are in the social media phase; how they're using it--business versus personal. And, of course, we are here trying to ask the burning question, how does this innovation and technology really affect the marketing mix? And, showing case studies, and proof-positives, and results from our amazing panelists that have used it very effectively and dynamically, and learn some of their points and tips, and how they carry it on into your background, into your career, as well. So, let me kick off one question I'm going to talk this to Gray [Brooks] [Laughs], as a very interesting and exciting track recently. This question is for you, and of course, everyone else still on the panel, please pitch in. Last year, we saw a political candidate and Marketer of the Year, beating out companies, such as Apple and Nike. Many would argue that the technology behind the Obama campaign helped drive the brand, and spark the excitement of President Obama. Please give us your thoughts on power of the 'Obama' brand and how technology affected the marketing of his candidacy. Gray Brooks: Sure, first of all, can you all hear me OK? [Yeah] Thanks for having us here tonight. You touched on a couple of the words in there that I think that are very crucial, but that sometimes they're too easily considered. And one is "technology", and the other is "brands". The people at the top of the campaign did varied work, and I think hired a lot of very good people. But this is my third campaign, and I [...] other campaign. [Laughter] It would be a mistake not to realize that even when we're screwing up, we got by ok because the package we were selling, the candidate himself, was really good. So, technology enabled some revolutionary things, but also it was still a matter of selling something that was already a good product. The other part of it is that, it would be a mistake not to realize how much effort went into the branding. I think the advertising industry was very conscious of, and very, I guess, more knowledgeable about the work that went into the branding of the campaign. Before the general election, we were hiring several graphic designers to focus that exclusively on adding artistic depth to the campaign at every level. On the Web site, we managed to subsume all the print design, all the [...] ads, everything that people saw down to the literature being handed out in mailboxes. We eventually were able to go through these two or three people, so there was consistence. It was based around a design that people thought conveyed a message even without words. And then the rest was kind of adding technology on top of that. But those two fundamentals of having really good product, and then actually truly focusing on brand, in trying to say something that you thought out. I was a huge part of that. Aaron Brazell: I would say also that there was a huge emotional need in the constituency in the American people to have the technology come along to accent the product. I agree everything that Gray said. There was a great product there. The technology really enhanced it, but what really drove the point home was that there was a need for something, and that product and that technology enhanced that, and brought it out. I think any, no matter what it is, you're not going to get anywhere without the technology, and you're not necessarily gonna get anywhere with just the communications side of it in the product. But if you have three of those things all combined, I think you have a dynamic trifecta. Shana Glickfield: In my experience with social media consulting professionally where I advise corporations and nonprofits, and even individuals, I think a lot of people now want the Obama-like results. And I think it's important for marketers to understand that it was a big campaign, as the trifecta was taking place, and that you can have a very successful social media campaign without having the Obama-like results. GB: We definitely want to be over our two lessons we learned here is that it was merely a case study. It was a huge case study in one that has a lot of material to learn from, it takes years. It's just made up of best used strategies. The fact is, it's a mistake to see that something as ultimate, when really, it was just one example. Patricia Mejia: I would add that I think you had conversed a lot of things and also you're first?, you're innovative, so I think from a marketing standpoint, it's important to think about what the next thing is. Timing is everything when it comes to marketing, so I think it's a combination of things sort of lining up. It's like a perfect world in the negative, but things came together because of the timing, as well. AB: You have to drive that point home. If you look at it, it's just not a political panel here, but as an example, since we're in that space already with the Obama campaign, you look back at 2004 with the Dean campaign, they also did many of the things that the Obama campaign did do. They had arguably a great product. I didn't like the idea, but that's a different story altogether. [Laughter] They supposedly had a great product. There was a lot of great messaging there, but the emotional aspect of where the American people were with his outburst, and all these other things that happened just didn't coalesce the whole product, the trifecta - I love that word [Laughter], actually come together and do something where we saw completely the opposite side of the Obama side. MT: Great. Thank you. Of course, we know that each of you blog either on personal or business-related. There's been some questions out there that some think that blogging has jumped the shark', so to speak. What are your thoughts on that? GB: I don't mean to monopolize the time, but people say it's great. DO: So, first I'll say that it's a pleasure to be here. I see a lot of you out there that could be up here, so I wish this could be a roundtable where we all could be talking together because I'm sure that you're doing things that we don't know about, so I'd like to just open that piece of it up if you have thoughts, let's just share them. If I can step back for a second, I would say that it's really important to understand what social media is and isn't. I think a lot of people consider social media to be a medium, but I consider it to be a tool, like a telephone. You don't place an ad in a telephone; you place an ad in the yellow pages, and for me what social media is, is it's a vehicle. It's a tool that allows me to take the expertise that's inside the head of, let's say, whoever we're looking to profile, and share that with the people that need it in the moment that they're making a purchasing decision. So for example, if it's real estate - I started a real estate company six years ago, and we had really competent realtors, but nobody necessarily knows that unless you can use tools like social media to allow that expertise that's in their heads to get to the people that need to know it when they need to know it. So, what I would say about blogging, which to me is the component of social media, is that blogging allows you to do some things that you can't do otherwise. I like to say that Henry Ford would love blogs, because when you get questioned, you've answered twenty times already by e-mail instead of spending 15 minutes composing that answer again by email. Spend three hours writing a blog about it, a really researched in-depth answer; and then when somebody emails you that question, just send them back and answer the blog. You're making an assembly line of expertise, right? So, very importantly at the beginning [...], I would say social media is a tool, not a medium, and blogging is a very powerful tool. You also get great Google lists out of it when you blog with original content, which means that when people search for keywords, you're the one that comes up as a subject matter expert, so to me, blogging is so very pertinent. PM: I would add to that is that blogging is important, but authentic blogging is so much more important. So I think the authenticity people see through the salesy part of trying to sell you something to position yourself. The authenticity is what people are really looking for. They're really yearning for it, because they're kind of like over the marketing. I just had to add that. AB: To go the extra mile there, I agree with Daniel here. Blogging is one of those places where you create content that's going to be there forever, arguably, unless the internet blows up, which is always possible. They're also going to be there, and the search engine's Google, most importantly, is going to find it, it's going to be there all the time. You can certainly refer people to them over email, or whatever. I think one of the big questions about is blogging. Is blogging jumping to the shark? At least this is the side of the conversation I'm hearing from the technology side, it's the question that's posed, it's blogging versus social networks. So your Facebooks, your Twitters, your YouTubes and what have you, Tumblr. Why spend more time writing on a blog when all your costs are going into Twitter? That's the side of the conversation I'm hearing quite a lot. In fact, I don't know how many of you, do any of you know Dave Troy? [No.] Ok. So David Troy is an entrepreneur. Actually, more towards Baltimore, but he's involved with marketing, as well, so I thought some of you might have heard of him. Dave Troy asked a question on Twitter, maybe three weeks ago, "How many of you are blogging? Since Twitter came around, are you blogging more or less?" He was making the assumption that everybody blogged less. I find I blog more, because of Twitter and still sell all that much, but the reason why is you can have all these thoughts out there in social media, and social networks, etc., but, unless you have a place to put that to like really park it, and grow it, and create an audience around. And you just can't do that on social networks. You can certainly share your thoughts. You can share your links, and share your list, this and that and other thing, but it's hard to build community around that. And, if you're working with a product or company, you're trying to drive the product. You're trying to drive some software, you're trying to drive something that creates more sales, and you want to build community around it, because that community is going to turn into your biggest fan [trusts?] So, is it valuable to be out there on Twitter, absolutely. You're out there, you put your thoughts out there, you pick every opportunity, you can't conversate with the people who may be buying your product, may be buying your company, may be engaging with you in business somehow. But, if you really are going to build a community, you're going to need the blog. So no, blogging has not jumped the shark. That was a long-winded answer. SG: Blogging, in my experience, also, a lot of the great [...] that mention SEO[?], I like community building, a couple of other things, but I think the solid leadership comes from putting content out there, and I think a lot of people get stuck with blogging because they think they have to sit down and write this 3-hour think piece every time. And that's not the case. People don't even like to tune into a blog and see all the same text over and over. You think about how to take the pressure off and make yourself a better blogger. It actually takes less time to judge. If you're going to send something to a couple of your colleagues, from a newspaper or video on YouTube, instead of circulating it via email, I would just post it to a blog. It'll take just as much time, but you're really building your blog out. MT: You have a question? Unidentified Female Speaker A: Yes, I have a question. You're all talking about building communities, and so like sending it email around to people you know, or doing it on Facebook or Twitter, will it follow you? I find it hard to understand how is building communities around blogs easier, than building? GB: Just jump in. Part of my answer to you definitely revolves around my students' overall question, and there is a really, really useful plagiarism of Benjamin Franklin, don't live to geek." And it's cute and easy to remember, but it really does get back to the whole point of all this, and that is that no technology is good, or bad, or going to work, or not going to work. It's just another tool, and we're at a point today where we have more tools and more capabilities than we ever had before. But that gets us back to the original philosophical question of, "What are you trying to get done?", and then, "How are you going to do it?" And the technology, like blogging or anything else can help you, right, and if it's not helpful, then don't use it. The only thing that I think matters here is just asking yourself, "What was I doing already?" and, "Can I be even more efficient?" Or, as efficient, maybe, as with some side benefits by using this other thing. And, so, there are many times where you get other side benefits by blogging, as opposed other means without other extra costs and effort. Like you said, instead of emailing everyone in the company, if you post it on the blog, its adding content to your blog without any extra effort. U/i Female Speaker B: But how do you drive readers to the blog? GB: There are two ways to that. One is, if you compared to what you were doing before like sending an email with the content in there, and it [...] around the link, that's just as good. And, so you're not losing anything on the process. The other thing is, the more you write, the more content you create, and the more you do actually adds authenticity, and try to add something that's worth reading. People find that, and that's a great thing about Google, and a great thing about the internet is that quality material rises to the surface literally on its own. PM: One thing I would add is, I think as marketers we really need to stop thinking about us, and start thinking about the people that we are trying to reach. So, if I were you, I would think about what's my target audience care about. What influences them, what do they care about? And so, are blogs relevant? It really depends on who you're trying you trying to reach. If you that the people that you're trying to reach like to find out what you think, and like to, sort of, get into you head before they'll start to trust you, then I think the blog is a very useful tool. The other thing I would say about building an audience around the blog, it can be damn expensive. So, I understand what you're saying about how do you build that community on the blog if you're creating all this content on, why wouldn't you just jump on Facebook and put your original content out there, or put it on Twitter, because it goes to various people? AB: Can I ask a question? Why would it be expensive to build an audience on a blog? PM: It depends on your topic, right? If you're blogging about something like Obama, then surely, everyone is always searching for Obama. AB: You're talking about buying keywords, is that what you're talking about? PM: If you're buying keywords, buying impressions through advertising - that's my opinion. I've seen it, it's expensive to build a community around [Cut off.] AB: [Cut in] I've never done that in my life. I've got the largest business and technology blog in DC, and I've been going at it for five years, and I haven't spent a dollar. GB: I think her point is very valid, and definitely reflects on everyone's company and that is, new media has infinite possibilities for being a black hole that you |
etc.) while enabling some of our best and brightest to take risks and become action-oriented builders from the beginning of their careers. At a minimum, they'll have 2 years of seeing how early-stage businesses perform from the ground floor. Entrepreneurship is something you get better at over time, and an early start can make a big difference.
I also hope that Venture for America can represent part of a more genuine range of choices for our talented young people to start their careers and develop professionally. What they do should be more than a function of which organizations and industries have the highest levels of resources to recruit.New Rush audio oddities/rarities from MitA
It's been over 2 years since his last update, but MusicInTheAbstract - owner and operator of the MitA's Rush Oddities site - has finally posted several new Rush audio nuggets to share with us all. You can listen by clicking the following links or just use the player below. Thanks MitA!!
[Tom Sawyer "Lost-ending", from the cutting-room floor!]
[Another Geddy "Cameo" vocal appearance in Finjan klezmer-music recording]
[Alex and Neil Jam during Geddy equipment failure]
[John Rutsey Speaks - introduces song in early Rush live performance]
[Geddy Thanks the Audience with some Salty Language]
[2112 Temples of Syrinx Isolated Geddy Vocal part]
[Main Monkey Business - Isolated Geddy bass performance]
[Power Windows Tour pre-concert Sound Check (4 songs)]
[The Weapon, lyrics missing - from the Gold Ultra Disc II release of Signals]
[Cygnus X-1 - rare concert 'trainwreck']
[Alex 'vocal performance' on Bravado]
[The Trees 'Telepath' dance remix]LOS ANGELES Watchdog and activist groups are outraged by a Fox News Channel segment in which an interviewer asked people in New York’s Chinatown if he was supposed to bow to greet them, if they were selling stolen goods and if they could “take care of North Korea for us.”
Several organizations condemned humorist Jesse Watters’ piece on “The O’Reilly Factor,” calling it racist and demeaning to Asian-Americans.
“It’s 2016. We should be far beyond tired, racist stereotypes and targeting an ethnic group for humiliation and objectification on the basis of their race,” Asian American Journalists Association President Paul Cheung said in a letter to Fox and posted online. He is director of interactive and digital news production for The Associated Press.
Cheung called on Fox to apologize to the Asian-American community and asked for “an explanation for how this type of coverage will be prevented in the future.”
Watters asked people on the street about the presidential race, sought a demonstration of karate and showed footage of him getting a pedicure.
At one point in Monday’s nearly five-minute segment, an elderly woman’s silence in response to a query was paired with a clip from Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein” in which Madeline Kahn shouts, “Speak, speak, why don’t you speak?!”
Gregory A. Cendana, executive director of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, criticized the report.
The coverage, including making “fun” of the Chinese elder, “played into the exoticization and status of perpetual foreigner” of the Asian-American community, Cendana said in a statement.
After the “Watters World” report concluded, Bill O’Reilly called it “gentle fun,” adding, “we’re gonna get letters, inevitably.”
On Wednesday, the Asian Americans Advancing Justice affiliation said it was outraged by the “blatant, racist and offensive stereotypes of Chinese Americans.”
“It is unconscionable that a news organization would sanction a segment that laughs at a community of people, including Watters ridiculing elderly Chinese Americans who were limited English-proficient,” the group said.
Asked for comment, Fox directed attention to two Twitter posts Wednesday by Watters.
“As a political humorist, the Chinatown segment was intended to be a light piece, as all Watters World segments are,” he wrote.
“My man-on-the-street interviews are meant to be taken as tongue-in-cheek and I regret if anyone found offense,” Watters’ second tweet said.Several people injured on second day of clashes as migrants en route to western Europe try to enter Macedonia from Greece
Thousands of migrants rushed past baton-wielding Macedonian police who were attempting to stop them entering Macedonia from Greece. Police fired stun grenades and several were injured in the clashes.
The conflict started when police decided to allow a small group of migrants with young children to cross the frontier. Then the crowds at the back squeezed them towards the wall of police. Several women and children fell to the ground apparently fainting after pushing past the cordon. Thousands of others, including women with babies and men carrying small children, used the moment to run across a field unprotected by barbed wire to enter Macedonia. Police fired stun grenades, but failed to stop the push.
There were no immediate reports of the number and extent of injuries. Several hundred, mostly elderly and children, remained on the Greek side of the border when order was restored. It was the second day of clashes between the migrants and Macedonian police who are attempting to block them from heading north.
On Friday, police clashed with the migrants, a day after Macedonia’s government declared a state of emergency on the frontier to stop the human tide. At least 10 people were injured.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Migrants at Gevgelija train station in Macedonia after crossing from Greece. Photograph: Ognen Teofilovski/Reuters
Both Greece and Macedonia have seen an unprecedented wave of migrants this year, most fleeing wars in Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq. More than 160,000 have arrived so far in Greece, mostly crossing in inflatable dinghies from the nearby Turkish coast, an influx that has overwhelmed Greek authorities and the country’s small Aegean islands. Some 45,000 have crossed through Macedonia over the last two months.
Few, if any, of the migrants want to remain in Greece, which is in the grip of a financial crisis. Most head straight to the country’s northern border with Macedonia, where they cram on to trains and head north through Serbia and Hungary on their way to more prosperous EU countries such as Germany, the Netherlands or Sweden.
On Friday night, the police allowed only small groups of families with children to cross the border by walking on railway tracks to a station in the Macedonian town of Gevgelija, where most take trains to the border with Serbia before heading further north toward EU-member Hungary.Those who could not cross spent the rainy and chilly night in the open with little food. They massed close to a razor wire separating them from machine-gun toting Macedonian policemen. Some raised their babies above their heads to try to persuade the policemen to let them through.A police officer told the Associated Press that the force is only following the government’s orders to block the refugees from entering the country.
“Until we receive another order, the situation here will remain like this,” said the officer, who refused to be named because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.As heavy rain poured, some migrants took off their shirts and booed and shouted insults at the policemen in camouflage fatigues. Others took shelter inside dozens of small tents or under a few trees on a muddy field.
Europe could solve the migrant crisis – if it wanted | Daniel Trilling Read more
Last week, there were chaotic scenes at the Gevgelija train station involving hundreds of migrants trying to board the trains.
Rama Kabul from Syria walked the railway track in the opposite direction from the station pleading with two Macedonian policemen pushing her back with riot shields to let her brother who remained trapped behind the razor fence on the border join her.
“They took me out and left him there,” Kabul said with tears in her eyes. “I just want to talk to him.”
Macedonian police said they started blocking the refugees on the 50km (30-mile) frontier “for the security of citizens who live in the border areas and for better treatment of the migrants.”
“Macedonian authorities should be protecting migrants, including children and those among them who may be fleeing war and persecution, not giving the police a green light to fire at them,” Emina Cerimovic, research fellow at the rights group, said in a statement.
Until now, the border has been porous, with only a few patrols on each side. Sealing it disrupts the Balkan corridor for migrants who start in Turkey, take boats to Greece or walk to Bulgaria, then make their way through Macedonia and Serbia before heading further north.The University System of Maryland has come up with a way to help liberal arts students who struggle with algebra.
Encourage them to take statistics instead.
University system administrators are using a $3 million federal grant this fall to launch a pilot remedial statistics course at a dozen two-year and four-year colleges, including Towson University, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Coppin State University.
They are hoping a switch to statistics could make it easier for many students to fulfill their math requirement, leading to faster college completion rates and fewer dropouts.
The approach makes sense to Poulomi Banerjee. Banerjee, 21, was a good math student in high school, and jumped right into calculus when she arrived at UMBC.
She says she soon realized she was in over her head. She switched to statistics — which turned out to be more relevant to her degree in health administration and policy.
CAPTION Baltimore County Interim Schools Superintendent Verletta White announced that she was slashing her proposed operating budget. Baltimore County Interim Schools Superintendent Verletta White announced that she was slashing her proposed operating budget. CAPTION Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire ex-mayor of New York and major donor to Johns Hopkins, talks with reporters at the Maryland State House Tuesday about having an armed police force for the hospital and university. (Pamela Wood, Baltimore Sun video) Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire ex-mayor of New York and major donor to Johns Hopkins, talks with reporters at the Maryland State House Tuesday about having an armed police force for the hospital and university. (Pamela Wood, Baltimore Sun video)
"Statistics is very helpful in the work I'm doing now," Banerjee said. "I think it's great that they're allowing that for students. I couldn't imagine not having that option."
The pilot course is part of a larger movement to guide students in liberal arts majors, some of whom struggle with algebra, toward statistics, which might be more relevant to their courses of study and professional interests.
Administrators were unable this week to provide pass rates for students in algebra and statistics.
Administrators plan to track students as they take the trial course and move into a standard statistics class over the next two years. They hope some 1,560 students in the dozen colleges involved will enroll in the pilot.
Most students entering Maryland's public university system take a math test and are placed in an introductory algebra or remedial math course.
Some students are directed to a more advanced course — a higher level of algebra, or calculus.
Some end up taking remedial math again and again.
"Students get stuck in a kind of loop," said Nancy Shapiro, the system's associate vice chancellor for education and outreach. "It's just hanging out there like a hurdle that they have to get over."
Students still can take algebra and calculus if they wish. But university system officials hope statistics will become a more popular alternative. Academic advisors will let students know they have alternatives beyond algebra and calculus to fulfill their math requirement.
"Ideally we want students to take the math course that works for them, and what was happening in the past was they were restricted to a math course that wasn't a good fit for them," Shapiro said. "So we're expanding the choices."
Students at Maryland universities have always been allowed to fulfill the math requirement by passing statistics, Shapiro said, but many were unaware of it.
Since encouraging liberal arts majors to take statistics is a newer concept, administrators want to test their theory that the material will prove more useful to students, and lead fewer to drop out.
Many of the state's public community colleges directed students to take algebra based on a reading of Maryland regulations that required completion of a math course "at or above college algebra."
The Maryland Higher Education Commission tweaked those regulations this year to make it clear that classes in statistics or quantitative reasoning also fulfilled general education math requirements.
Scott Wolpert, who chairs the math department at the University of Maryland, College Park, supports the shift to statistics for liberal arts majors.
"We live in the era of big data and every possible profession is being affected by it," Wolpert said.
But he added that algebra and calculus are not going away.
"At the same time that big data is going on and affecting all professions and all parts of the economy, engineering and computer science are booming," he said. "Pre-calculus is the entryway to computer science, the sciences, engineering and the like."
Former University System of Maryland Chancellor William E. Kirwan is heading a task force examining the math requirement. He said he has been surprised by the level of support for allowing students to fulfill the requirement with statistics without taking algebra.
"I think the mathematics community has come to realize that in this day and age with so much interest in data and other areas of quantitative reasoning that for many students there are more appropriate entry-level courses," Kirwan said. He cited statistics, game theory, probability and mathematical modeling as examples.
David May is the project director for Advancing Mathematics Pathways for Student Success, a project sponsored by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. Organizers are attempting to coordinate efforts among colleges around the country that are trying to guide more students into statistics.
Colleges in at least 15 states have joined the movement. He said the effort in Maryland has made it a "model state."
"I think Maryland is going to be one of the places that we will point to as a place where they've gone about it in a good way, getting the faculty involved, getting the state involved, and not having it be a college-by-college effort," he said.
English professor Jennifer Ballengee, the chairwoman of the university senate at Towson University, said "statistics is something that they [liberal arts majors] need to use."
But she is concerned a shift away from algebra could make students less competitive in the workforce than their peers at private universities who are required to take it. She said administrators should consider whether there will be any loss in quality of education.
"We want to make sure we're not churning out students whose education is just geared toward a job," Ballengee said. "Because I think there's a real loss there, if we imagine that we only need college to train us for a career."John Doble is a rising playwright whose work includes Coffee House, Greenwich Village (Best Play nominee Midwinter Madness Short Play Festival); To Protect The Poets (Roy Arias Theatre, NYC, 2011; semi-finalist, National Arts Club new plays contest and Reverie Productions Playwrights Contest); The Mayor Who Would Be Sondheim (New York International Fringe Festival, 2005; HRC Showcase Theatre, Hudson, NY, 2006. Finalist, Stage 3 Theatre Company Festival of New Plays, Sonora, CA, and Playwright Center’s New Play Competition, Minneapolis, MN, 2005); Blind Date (Samuel French Short-Play Festival, NYC, 2004; selected for The Last Frontier Theater Conference, Valdez, AK, 2005); The Mortgage (Pulse Ensemble Theatre’s Festival of One-Act Comedies, NYC, 2004); Lefty and Other Stories, a collection of short fiction, Clemson University, 2004 (nominated for the Pushcart Prize).
Now John is back with a new one-act play, A Serious Person, which will be featured in Manhattan Repertory Theatre's Winter One-Act Play Competition Series 2 from January 9-12 at 9pm. Starring Alex Engquist and Loralee Tyson, A Serious Person tells the tale of two 20-somethings, an insurance salesman and a beautiful airline ticketing agent, who strike up a comically-charged conversation and an unlikely flirtation as she confronts him with her outlandish opinions about everything under the sun, including Bush vs. Kerry, the church, Picasso and evolution.
Performed at Manhattan Repertory Theatre (303 West 42nd Street, 6th floor), all tickets are $20. To reserve seats email [email protected].
For more on "A Serious Person" be sure to visit http://www.aseriouspersontheplay.com.
1. Who or what inspired you to become a playwright? The audience. I started writing, as so many writers do, with short stories. A number of mine were published in literary magazines, and then a collection was published by Clemson University. But seeing a story in print is a bit like tossing a stone into a lake – one doesn’t know if people see or hear (or read) it, let alone if they’re affected by it in the way a writer hopes. I also found that dialogue is easier for me than exposition. If I live a dozen lifetimes, I’d never be Thomas Wolfe. And so I decided to try a play. When I’d finished my first one, I enrolled in a workshop where playwrights read each other’s work aloud. When I heard others react, when they laughed or I saw they were moved, I was hooked.
2. Who haven't you worked with that you would like to? I admire a great many playwrights: Shanley, Fugard, Theresa Rebeck, Mamet, Tracy Letts, the late August Wilson and the late Wendy Wasserstein to name just a few. I’d love to work, or have worked, with any of them.
Loralee Tyson and Alex Engquist in John Doble's "A Serious Person", Photo Credit: John Keon Photography Loralee Tyson and Alex Engquist in John Doble's "A Serious Person", Photo Credit: John Keon Photography3. What made you want to write A Serious Person? This one came rather easily. Last year I wrote a one-act, Coffee House, Greenwich Village, about a man and woman who meet on a blind date. The woman, a femme fatale, seductively leads the man to commit a murder. I thought I might write a comedy that would serve as a companion piece. Who knows? I might write a third one too.
4. What do you hope audiences come away with after seeing A Serious Person? I enjoy plays that both entertain and give me something that sticks to my ribs, something that leads me to think. That’s my goal here: that people will chuckle but also walk away thinking. And perhaps, if I’m lucky, think the next day and the day after.
5. What excites you about being part of Manhattan Repertory Theatre's Winter One Act Play Competition? Manhattan Rep is a first rate venue for emerging playwrights like myself. Ken Wolf and his colleagues are real professionals and a pleasure to work with. Also, because of the format, we get a sizeable, sophisticated, interested audience for each performance.
Alex Engquist and Loralee Tyson in John Doble's "A Serious Person", Photo Credit: John Keon Photography6. A Serious Person is a one-act play, of which you have written a few. What do you like about writing in the short form as opposed to a full-length play? A full-length play is like a meal whereas the short form is like a snack. And sometimes a snack is just what I’m in the mood for. Also, the short form is shorter, which means it’s easier, at least for me. (See below).
7. What is your favorite part of the creative process in writing a show? Having written. None of it comes easily to me. But when I’ve finished something I’m satisfied with, it’s gratifying beyond words.
7a. Where is your favorite place to write? I write at home.
8. How do you select the elements for a play that propel the action in a short period of time? My plays just seem to come to me, almost as a whole. But then of course I have to write them, and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite. But the idea – the framework including the characters, beginning, middle and end – seems to emerge holistically. Writing for me is an endlessly mysterious process.
9. What's the interest in bringing together two strangers over two people who have been acquainted for some time? A blind date is, by definition, an unpredictable situation where anything can happen, where all bets are off. It gives me free rein to go anywhere. I think that for the audience, a blind date is also an engaging set up where they can expect the unexpected. But I’m also finishing a full-length where cousins get together after a long separation, which I also hope proves to be engaging and surprising.
Loralee Tyson and Alex Engquist in John Doble's "A Serious Person", Photo Credit: John Keon Photography10. What made you want to write A Serious Person with a male and female character instead of two members of the same sex? This play could easily be performed with two men or two women. But having been on a blind date or two myself and being who I am, I’m more familiar with the world I’ve created. In general, I think writers should stick to what they know best.
BONUS QUESTIONS:
11. What have you learned about yourself from being a playwright? I sometimes feel as if I’m just getting started, that if I could just tap into all that’s inside me, I’d crank out play after play. And sometimes I feel as if I’ll never write another word. When an idea does occur to me and I write a new play, it’s always a surprise. I think to myself: "Now where did that come from?" And then, after I’ve written it, it’s as if it was always there, just waiting to emerge.
12. What's the best advice you've ever received? That when writers read or see a play or film, they try to dissect it, understand how it was put together. I’ll often read a novel or short story or watch a play or movie I admire several times. I may be one of the few non-teachers who’s read War and Peace three or four times. I also recently went to Glengarry Glen Ross, a play I’ve seen on stage and film upwards of a half-dozen times.Gad Saad, better known as "The Gadfather" to his fans, regularly appears on highly popular U.S. talk shows and his YouTube channel has millions of views, yet the Montreal professor is largely unknown in Canada outside academic circles.
He is credited with founding the field of evolutionary consumption, which teaches that men and women are influenced by biology and Darwinian principles when they shop.
But Saad, a Concordia University marketing professor, is perhaps just as known for his public battles against what he considers to be a social justice culture that harms society by rejecting intellectual diversity.
He argues political correctness is limiting the free exchange of ideas on university campuses across the continent — and he holds special disdain for professors who do not fight back.
"The seven deadly sins should be updated," Saad, 52, said over coffee. "We should add an eighth sin: Cowardice."
"Most (teachers) put their heads down. They want to do their research, not ruffle feathers, and cowardice seeps in — let someone else fight the battles."
When University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson was vilified for refusing to use gender-neutral pronouns for transgender people, Saad invited him on his YouTube show (The Saad Truth) instead of joining the chorus of academics and others who denounced him.
The episode garnered more than 100,000 views.
Political correctness
Saad is a Lebanese Jew who fled his home country with his family during the civil war in 1975 and moved to Montreal.
Four years later, when he was 15, his parents returned to Lebanon and were kidnapped by a militia tied to the Palestinian Fatah, which he says was hired by someone who wanted to take his father's store.
They were released about a week later but neither he nor his parents have returned to the country.
Being forced to flee such a country has influenced his politics, he says. His experience as a youth is one of the main reasons he can't stay silent about a cultural phenomenon he believes threatens freedom of speech in Canada and the United States.
Gad Saad is a marketing professor at Montreal's Concordia University. (Radio-Canada)
While student unions across the continent concoct lists of banned Halloween costumes to protect against "cultural appropriation," Saad uses his YouTube channel to satirize them.
"Our African ancestors were the first to engage in breathing," he muses on the topic of one of his recent online broadcasts.
"By that logic I think by breathing today, we are engaging in cultural appropriation of the first Homo sapiens. And so the only way I will ask you to stop being racist is to suffocate — to stop breathing."
He sees some respite, however, from the political correctness fever he says has gripped society — if only because it has become so bad "it's almost impossible to imagine how much more could the pendulum swing to the lunacy end."
'They are fading into irrelevance'
Others in academia reject the argument that campuses have become intellectual wastelands.
University of Toronto physics Professor A.W. Peet, who identifies as a nonbinary transgender person, says the debate over political correctness "is a red herring."
"I don't see any evidence whatsoever that, for example, loud, white, middle-aged, heterosexual, cisgender, able-bodied men are under threat from political correctness on campus," Peet said.
"It's just about these guys realizing that society is moving beyond their points of view... and they are railing against the fact they are fading into irrelevance."
Saad's relevance, however, and his popularity are clear with every appearance on top-rated talk shows hosted by big names such as Joe Rogan, Sam Harris and Dave Rubin.
His four guest spots on Rogan, for example, received more than 200,000 views each — on YouTube alone.
Saad is among a small group of Canadian professors who are pioneers in using social media to reach millions of people outside the classroom by popularizing complex scientific concepts.
Gad Saad is fighting what he says threatens freedom of speech in Canada and the United States. (Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press)
His 2011 book, "The Consuming Instinct," explains that how and what people buy is triggered by four Darwinian drivers: survival, reproduction, kin selection and reciprocal altruism.
His fans and YouTube viewers learn as much about his trenchant satire against identity politics and so-called micro-aggressions as they do about how humans and other animals are often driven by the same biological factors.
Saad laments, however, that there are few formal structures in universities to promote and encourage professors using social media tools to spread knowledge.
He says that's changing, however, albeit slowly.
"There is an intellectual snobbery that regrettably many academics suffer from," he says.
"They are proud their paper is only read by a small group of people — makes it very exclusive. Let's get rid of that. If it's truly important, people should be excited about it."The dread of an uncertain future married with youthful rebellion, if brewed well, can be a potent combination. Rahul Rajkhowa, a second-year Master's student at Jawahar Lal Nehru University (JNU) has attempted a similar fete with his latest rap number against varsity Vice-Chancellor (V-C) Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar and his "arbitrariness".
The 2 minute, 55 second-song tells the story of thousands of students staring at an uncertain future after the university decided to cut down the number of M Phil and Ph D seats by a shocking 98 per cent. Uploaded on Rajkhowa's YouTube channel by the same name, the composition has been viewed over 1,600 times since it was first put up two days ago.
The 21-year-old student, who is pursuing his Master's in International Relations, said he was "angry and hurt" by the way JNU took this radical decision. "Well, I try to rap about what's relevant. When I'm going through a lot, this is how I vent," he said.
"When the rumours started doing the rounds last year, we were hoping that they were just that - grapevine. Now, it is there for everyone to see. We don't know what to do after completing post-graduation. There are so many students who come to JNU with the hope of getting affordable, quality education. We are stranded now," rued the former DU student. The angst resonates in his lyrics: "Can't go back home to my bed. I got parents to answer to, society to answer to."
Making his displeasure with V-C Kumar abundantly clear, Rajkhowa clarifies that it was not hatred, but more. Sample this: "Back to my beloved V-C, hate is a strong word, but I really don't like you man. So, I'll lay down just one word for you. You're incompetent."
He also said that he was at sea, like so many of his other batchmates, about what to do next. He further criticised the university on other issues such as disappearance of Najeeb Jung. Calling the varsity head a "paranoid fascist", he rapped: "Hell, you can't even find the boy that went missing on your watch. Everybody knew the boys who beat him up were from the Orange Party. They still walking scot-free. But how do you catch the guilty."
When queried what prompted him to compose the rap, he said: "I wanted the entire country to know what we were going through and how our future had plunged into darkness because of some man's whimsical stance. I am really hoping that they will be unified with us through this," he said.LAST JUNE 29, a day before Rodrigo Duterte became president of the Philippines, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) announced the turnover of 55 housing units in Ormoc City to survivors of Supertyphoon “Yolanda.” The units were the first batch in a resettlement program of 165 disaster-resilient houses in three sites—Ormoc, Tacloban City and the municipality of Hernani in Eastern Samar—that the European Union funded through the UNDP’s Project Recovery. The 9.7-million euro grant (about P508 million) was meant to complement national and local government efforts to rehabilitate Yolanda-affected communities by providing them sturdier, more fortified dwellings.
A couple of weeks before that, on June 13, the Philippine government announced its commitment to the United Nations to work to end the rising HIV epidemic in the country by 2030, through a blend of approaches including increased funding by the government and additional support from the world body and other international partners. LGBT activist Jonas Bagas noted in a Facebook post that “The UN established the Global Fund, which has funded and is still funding HIV, TB and malaria programmes in the Philippines—including the ones being implemented in Davao. The country’s PLHIV (people living with HIV) community is in fact heavily relying on international donors for life-saving treatment, among others, because the Philippine government has continuously refused to fund these meds fully.”
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The UN’s World Food Program (WFP) is also present in the country through the nutrition interventions it is doing by providing nutritious, ready-to-eat meals to some 65,000 school-age children in Maguindanao, Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur. Pregnant and nursing women in conflict-ridden or disaster-affected areas also benefit from the food program, and the WFP has worked closely with the Food and Nutrition Research Institute to develop locally-produced fortified food for Filipino kids aged six months to three years old.
In fact, immediately after Yolanda in 2013, the WFP was among the first to launch a relief effort for the survivors, flying in 40 tons of fortified “high-energy” biscuits to the Philippines from Dubai. The move was all of a piece with other UN mobilizations to rush aid to the country; Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appealed for donors to raise $791 million for a yearlong rehabilitation and recovery program that would, for starters, allot $38 million of the amount to the local agriculture and fisheries sector through the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Some 128,000 households in the Visayas, Bicol and Mimaropa regions were the specific target of the FAO support.
The UN International Telecommunications Union also deployed 90 satellite phones to support the joint relief efforts by the government and the World Health Organization, as well as to help survivors reestablish contact with their loved ones in other places.
And so on. What are we to make, then, of the latest outburst from President Duterte? Last Sunday, he lashed out at the UN for its supposed temerity to question the growing bloodbath triggered by his administration’s war on crime and drugs. But, instead of addressing the issue, the President not only threatened to yank the Philippines out of the UN; he also startled everyone with these words: “Where were you here the last time? Never… When have you done a good deed to my country?”
The only charitable view one could take here is that the President has been grossly misinformed about all the help the UN has extended to the country, and ill-advised on how to deal with its scrutiny of the recent spike in extrajudicial killings. The Philippines is not only a charter member of the UN, it is also a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is not unreasonable to be reminded of that commitment, especially when the human rights violations may appear to be state-directed.
Also, the Philippines’ vulnerable position, as a country with 10 million of its citizens working all over the world and subject to other countries’ laws, makes it imperative to work with international organizations like the UN to ensure its citizens’ welfare. The UN’s Ban was among those who publicly lobbied the Indonesian government to spare the life of
Mary Jane Veloso in the run-up to her announced execution for drug smuggling.
President Duterte’s off-the-cuff governance—policy out of pique—is creating needless problems. If he continues down this truculent path, the Philippines might find itself an international pariah soon enough.
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MOST READThe police officer who last year questioned the then-dean of USC’s medical school about his role in the drug overdose of a young woman expressed skepticism at Dr. Carmen Puliafito’s account, according to an audio recording that was made by the officer and released Tuesday.
Puliafito told the officer he was at the Pasadena hotel room where the overdose occurred as a family friend to help the woman, who was later rushed to Huntington Memorial Hospital.
The unidentified officer is asked by a social worker at the hospital what he thought of the account offered by Puliafito.
“You buy it?” says the social worker on the recording that Pasadena police released in response to a California Public Records Act request by The Times.
“No,” the officer replies.
The social worker later laughs and says: “A friend of the father. Excuse me? That’s funny.”
The officer and social worker then speculated about Puliafito’s relationship with the woman and discussed the drugs and “provocative clothing” found at the scene.
Despite the officer’s doubts, a required report on the overdose at a Pasadena hotel was not filed until three months later, after The Times made repeated requests for information. No arrests were made.
In a statement Tuesday, Pasadena Police Chief Phillip L. Sanchez defended his department’s handling of the overdose, saying it lacked evidence to arrest Puliafito in connection with methamphetamine that officers found in the hotel room registered in his name. It remained unclear if the department followed up on its investigation after questioning Puliafito at the hospital.
The woman who overdosed, Sarah Warren, now 22, told The Times the police never interviewed her. About six hours after she overdosed, Warren said, Puliafito picked her up at the hospital and they returned to the hotel to resume using drugs.
Puliafito, 66, resigned as dean of the Keck School of Medicine three weeks after the overdose, saying he wanted to pursue opportunities in the biotech industry. His involvement in the incident was not publicly reported until The Times published an investigation last week that found Puliafito associated with a circle of younger criminals who said he abused drugs with them.
On March 4, 2016, an employee of Hotel Constance in Pasadena requested an ambulance for a guest who had suffered an apparent overdose. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
After he stepped down as dean, Puliafito remained on the USC faculty and continued to accept new patients, according to the school’s website.
The Pasadena police’s handling of Warren’s overdose and Puliafito’s involvement have been the subject of intense scrutiny and criticism.
Last week, Pasadena City Manager Steve Mermell sent a memo to council members saying that The Times’ account of the hotel incident “reflects poorly on the city and the Pasadena Police Department.”
“As indicated in the article, initially there was no police report made of the incident,” Mermell said. “There should have been and that was a failure on the part of our responding officer. Once this came to light, [police] undertook an appropriate investigation and ultimately the involved officer was the subject of disciplinary action.”
It’s unclear whether the officer in the recording was disciplined.
On Friday, USC administrators announced that Puliafito had been suspended from the faculty and barred from seeing patients, and that the school had begun the process to fire him.
The Medical Board of California has said it is investigating Puliafito, based on The Times report.
An overdose, a young companion, drug-fueled parties: The secret life of USC med school dean »
The overdose occurred March 4, 2016, at the Hotel Constance on Colorado Boulevard. A hotel employee called 911 to report an apparent overdose. On the recording, Puliafito is heard identifying himself as a doctor and saying the woman was his girlfriend. He told the 911 dispatcher that the woman “had a bunch of drinks and she’s sleeping.”
Paramedics arrived at the hotel and took Warren to the hospital. The police officer met Puliafito at the hospital, where he interviewed the doctor.
On the police officer’s recording, Puliafito can be heard telling the officer that he’s a friend of Warren’s father.
When asked if he has a “romantic relationship” with Warren, Puliafito responds “no.”
Puliafito said he “thought she was sleeping, and she was breathing and you know, and hadn’t thrown up or anything.”
“You as a doctor, did you notice anything that would have alarmed you?” the officer asked.
Puliafito responded that he was an ophthalmologist and eye surgeon.
“So not an emergency medicine physician. I mean, I basically looked at her respirations |
but we're also sharing all the data captured in the Panoptic Studio."
In addition to Sheikh, the multiperson pose-estimation research included Simon and master's degree students Zhe Cao and Shih-En Wei. The hand-detection study included Sheikh, Joo, Simon and Iain Matthews, an adjunct faculty member in the Robotics Institute. Gines Hidalgo Martinez, a master's degree student, also collaborates on this work, managing the source code.
The CMU AI initiative in the School of Computer Science is advancing artificial intelligence research and education by leveraging the school's strengths in computer vision, machine learning, robotics, natural language processing and human-computer interaction.PORTLAND, Ore. -- At least 50 people took to downtown Portland Saturday afternoon to protest the jailing and prosecution of Ammon Bundy and the other armed occupiers of the 41-day standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Burns.
"They did not receive due process. They did not receive justice. They received cruel and unusual punishment, they received excessive fines, they received threats," said Kelli Stewart, the leader of the rally.
Timeline: Armed occupation at Oregon refuge
The protest began at 11 a.m. in front of the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse and ended shortly before 1:30 p.m. More protests were planned in Salem and Bend, and other states.
"Do we have any patriots with us today in Portland, Oregon?" Stewart asked.
Raw video: Protesters in downtown Portland
Protesters sang the national anthem and God Bless America, listed off the names of the jailed occupiers, and voiced that the government doesn't have the ability to limit people's rights and take over private land.
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"Respect the constitution, respect the people!" one of the protesters' signs said
"We do not support breaking laws, we do not support abusing people," Stewart said over a bulhorn to the group.
Watch: KGW's Ashley Korslien at the rally
Posted by Ashley Korslien KGW on Saturday, March 5, 2016
The protesters had a moment of silence for LaVoy Finicum, who was shot and killed during a confrontation with the FBI and Oregon State Police.
"One thing that I loved about LaVoy is that he stood for everybody's freedom," Stewart remembered.
More: FBI releases Finicum video 'in the interest of transparency' (Warning: Graphic)
A counter-protest was held across the street.
"We're here to speak up for America's public lands," said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. "The Bundys are in jail and it's time to end this war on America's public lands."
The protests were peaceful although two incidents involving masked people briefly required police intervention.
Police presence now at the #OregonStandoff protest in downtown Portland https://t.co/D5QEr43X0S pic.twitter.com/DyRtx5e07r — Nate Hanson (@NHans_KGW) March 5, 2016
In all, 25 people have been indicted on a felony charge of conspiracy in connection with the armed standoff.
Photos: Oregon Standoff protest in downtown Portland
Photos: Oregon Standoff protest in downtown Portland <p>Oregon standoff protest in downtown Portland</p> <p>Oregon standoff protest in downtown Portland</p> <p>Oregon standoff protest in downtown Portland</p> <p>Oregon standoff protest in downtown Portland</p> <p>Oregon standoff protest in downtown Portland</p> <p>Oregon standoff protest in downtown Portland</p> <p>Oregon standoff protest in downtown Portland</p>
Top local headlines:
Ammon Bundy, in jail interview, says standoff 'was worth it'
3 children die in Centralia house fire
Fictional story imagines Portland after earthquake
Raw video: Ammon Bundy jail interview, Pt. 1 | Pt. 2
Lincoln Co. deputies rescue man just before car fire
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Check news, weather & traffic wherever you are with the KGW News appJuve close on Cavani deal
By Football Italia staff
There are mixed reports over the outcome of a Juventus summit with Edinson Cavani, as Atletico Madrid call PSG.
It is well known that the former Napoli striker is a prime transfer target for the summer, especially with club coffers buoyed by reaching the Champions League Final.
According to Calciomercato.com, Juve have already agreed terms to keep Cavani on the current €7.5m wages he earns at Paris Saint-Germain.
This would involve an accounting trick to spread the real cost over bonuses, which do not count on the wage bill.
The Juve wage cap is €5m per season and Carlos Tevez is the highest paid player on €4.5m.
It’s claimed the club would give Cavani a signing-on fee worth €17.5m, which would make up the difference in a lower official wage.
However, Sport Mediaset warn that agreeing terms with the Uruguay international is not enough, as Atletico Madrid are lobbying with PSG to sign the player.
There is the risk of a bidding war, so Juve reportedly set a 10-day deadline for Cavani to accept or they’ll find an alternative.Today in the German third division an American scored a game-winning goal. While that brief summary may not seem newsworthy, who scored it and what it means may make you smile.
Joe Gyau is the who. The 24-year-old winger who was playing minutes for Borussia Dortmund’s first team less than three years ago has scored his first goal in nearly that much time. The oft-injured Gyau is now with SG Sonnenhof Großaspach and scored the match-winning goal against Osnabrück.
Weirdly enough, video clips from the German third division aren’t as commonly available as you may think. We hope to find a clip of the goal, but for now this awesome Instagram post will have to suffice.
I remember crying when the doctor told me I might not be able to play again! Today I scored my first goal since 2014! Goal is dedicated to my mom who always believes in me no matter how the cards are stacked up. And most importantly I'm glad I could help the boys win today @sgaspach #Tamarack #Matrix A post shared by Joe Gyau (@joegyau36) on Apr 5, 2017 at 1:00pm PDT
It doesn’t seem that long ago that Gyau broke into the United States men’s national team and showed several flashes of brilliance before sustaining the initial injury that started this nearly three-year cycle of hell that almost resulted in the ending of his career. We’re extremely happy to see him back and playing and wish him nothing but the best in his bid to climb back up to the national team level.Walmart Girls PUNISH me for Non-compliance!
If you don’t obey, you will be punished.
Has America given up it’s dignity for a cookie and toy?
Walmart, Ephrata WA. In this small town there’s not a lot of options. Today cashiers decided to punish me in front of everyone and I think you’ll find this worth watching to the end. This is not about shaming store clerks. It’s about revealing what our nation has become.
But what you’re about to watch goes far deeper than Americas biggest storefront. It’s the expectation that we obey made up authority or be punished. I chose punishment and walked out. This is not Fifty Shades of Grey or the Twilight Zone. It’s our brave new world that’s starting to look like a third world slum.
I was with my 7 year old daughter and this is funny, but it’s not funny. Perhaps you’re shaking your head and proudly thinking “I don’t shop at Walmart”. It’s cool you have choices in your town. But read on.
This is not about Walmart. It’s everywhere in a society who thinks like slaves. It’s about speaking up and confronting civil insanity. It’s at the gas station, the amusement park, the legislative building and the City Hall. You have to stand up.
Some will say I failed because I shopped here in the first place. Others say I failed because I did not leave everything and walk out, a viable option. Still I was on an outing with my daughter and when I find an unexpected encounter I try to choose choose how to best share a message and keep moving. When this happens to you, here or elsewhere; make a better video and I’ll be happy to learn from it.
One way or another we have to start speaking up. We’ve all faced something like this. Having your bag searched at the theater. Giving up your stuff at the door. Complying with a silly rule to get something. The question is not “do you shop at Walmart?”. The question is that when this happens will you stand your ground and firmly say no, or will you comply to get the cookie?
Speak with your dollars and your mouth. We’re getting a Winco soon and I plan to do more of our shopping there. You will be faced with something like this. You will have to comply or give up something. By standing your ground and speaking up you make bigger impact than even walking out. It’s time to teach people what it means to be independent.
Take out your camera and take back your dignity. Just be kind and loving to the ignorant. The goal is to educate, not attack.
— GavMedia playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Drivers on one of Scotland's busiest roads stopped in their tracks when a tractor with only a sheep dog in the front seat appeared
Delays were caused on a busy stretch of the M74 motorway after reports of a dog "taking control of a tractor".
The incident - highlighted on Twitter by Traffic Scotland - took place at J13 at Abington, South Lanarkshire.
It later emerged that a sheepdog called Don, owned by farmer Tom Hamilton, had leaned on the controls of his utility vehicle, taking it on to the road.
Police and Mr Hamilton later recovered Don, who was unhurt, and the vehicle, from the central reservation.
Mr Hamilton told BBC Scotland that he was out on his off road pick up checking lambs in a field above the M74 near Abington.
Farmer relieved
As always he was accompanied by his Collie sheepdog Don, who was sitting beside him in the passenger seat.
Image caption Don escaped with little more than a fright
While Mr Hamilton was examining a lamb he turned round to see the Gator utility vehicle crashing through the fence and heading down an embankment on to the northbound lane of the M74 with Don still sitting in it.
The vehicle stopped after hitting the central barrier, smashing the windscreen.
Mr Hamilton said he feared that he had not pulled the handbrake properly and was extremely relieved that no drivers were hurt.
The farmer was also relieved that Don escaped with little more than a fright.
The episode caused a stir on social media when it was reported by Traffic Scotland at about 08:45 on Wednesday.
Dog puns
The transport body tweeted: "M74 (N) J13-RTC due to dog taking control of tractor... nope, not joking. Farmer and police at scene, vehicle in central res."
Shortly afterwards Traffic Scotland provided the update: "M74 (N) at J13 - Route is clear from earlier incident and dog is fine. Has to be the weirdest thing we have ever reported! No delays in area."
Police said the vehicle had gone through a fence near the motorway at about 08:15.
The incident led to plenty of dog puns as people responded to Traffic Scotland's tweets.
Tony T wrote: "Police investigating, so far no leads," while Beverley Friend added: "This is barking."
Michelle Muirhead asked: "Will the dog have points on his licence? Was he breathalysed? Did police arrest him?"The District Attorney’s Office has filed formal charges against the UC Santa Barbara professor accused of stealing an anti-abortion protester’s sign then destroying it after a physical confrontation on campus March 4. Mireille Miller-Young is charged with theft, battery, and vandalism, all misdemeanors. Her arraignment is scheduled for April 4.
According to eyewitness accounts and a UCSB police report, Miller-Young had been approached by a group of anti-abortion activists holding large banners with graphic photographs of aborted fetuses. After exchanging “passionate” words with the demonstrators — who are part of a Riverside-based ministry called Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust — Miller-Young reportedly took one of the signs, walked with it across campus, then destroyed it in her office with scissors and help from students. A 16-year-old activist said she was pushed and scratched by Miller-Young when she tried to follow her. The incident, which was first reported by The Santa Barbara Independent, has since been covered by national media outlets.
In her interview with police, Miller-Young suggested the activists had violated her rights by displaying upsetting imagery at her place of work and that she believed she had a “moral right” to remove the material from sight. Miller-Young told authorities she is pregnant and was “triggered” by the violent photographs. The police report — parts of which were redacted upon release, including the reporting officer’s name — is reproduced in its entirety below:
At about 1500 hours, I spoke to Miller-Young by telephone. I recorded my conversation with Miller-Young on my digital voice recorder.
In essence, Miller-Young told me she felt “triggered” by the images on the posters. Miller-Young stated that she had been walking through the Arbor to get back to South Hall. Miller-Young said she was approached by people who gave her literature about abortion. Miller-Young said that she found this literature and pictures disturbing. Miller-Young said that she found this material offensive because she teaches about women’s “reproductive rights” and is pregnant. She said an argument ensued about the graphic nature of these images. Miller-Young said that she [sic] situation became “passionate” and that other students in the area were “triggered” in a negative way by the imagery. Miller-Young said that she and others began demanding that the images be taken down. Miller-Young said that the demonstrators refused. At which point, Miller-Young said that she “just grabbed it [the sign] from this girl’s hands.” Asked if there had been a struggle, Miller-Young stated, “I’m stronger so I was able to take the poster.”
Miller-Young said that the poster had been taken back to her office. Once in her office, a “safe space” described by Miller-Young, Miller-Young said that they were still upset by the images on the poster and had destroyed it. Miller-Young said that she was “mainly” responsible for the poster’s destruction because she was the only one with scissors.
I asked if Miller-Young had carried the poster into her office or if she had students carried [sic] it. Miller-Young said that she had carried the poster but that there were students with her. Miller-Young went on to say that because the poster was upsetting to her and other students, she felt that the activists did not have the right to be there.
I asked Miller-Young if she knew the students who had been with her (the students I had seen in the video). Miller-Young said that she was under the impression that I had already spoke to one of the students (Ito). Miller-Young refused to provide me with the unidentified student’s name, stating that she was not comfortable with it. Miller-Young said that she was concerned with protecting her students who she believed were “following” her.”
I asked Miller-Young if she felt anything wrong had happened this afternoon. Miller-Young said that she did not know enough about the limits of free speech to answer my question. Miller-Young went on to say that she was not sure what an acceptable and legal response to hate speech would be. Miller-Young said that she was willing to pay for the cost of the sign but would “hate it.”
I explained to Miller-Young that the victims in this case felt that a crime had occurred. I told Miller-Young that I appreciated the fact that she felt traumatized by the imagery but that her response constituted a violation of law. Furthermore, I told Miller-Young that I was worried about the example she had set for her undergraduate students.
Miller-Young said that her students “were wanting her to take” the sign away. Miller-Young argued that she set a good example for her students. Miller-Young likened her behavior to that of a “conscientious objector.” Miller-Young said that she did not feel that what she had done was criminal. However, she acknowledged that the sign did not belong to her.
I asked Miller-Young what crimes she felt the pro-life group had violated. Miller-Young replied that their coming to campus and showing graphic imagery was insensitive to the community. I clarified the difference between University policy and law to Miller-Young and asked her again what law had been violated. Miller-Young said that she believed the pro-life group may have violated University policy. Miller-Young said that her actions today were in defense of her students and her own safety.
Miller-Young said she felt that this issue was not criminal and expressed a desire to find a resolution outside of the legal system. Miller-Young continued and stated that she had the “moral” right to act the way she did.
I asked Miller-Young if she could have behaved differently in this instance. There was a long pause, “I’ve said that I think I did the right thing. But I acknowledge that I probably should not have taken their poster.” Miller-Young also said that she wished the anti-abortion group had taken down the images when they demanded them to. Miller-Young also suggested that the group had violated her rights. I asked Miller-Young what right the group had violated. Miller-Young responded, “My personal right to go to work and not be in harm.” Miller-Young elaborated that one of the reasons she had felt so alarmed by this imagery is because she is about to have the test for Down Syndrome. Miller-Young said, “I work here, why do they get to intervene in that?”
I explained to Miller-Young that vandalism, battery, and robbery had occurred. I also told Miller-Young that individuals involved in this case desired prosecution.
I later booked the torn sign into evidence at UCPD. I also uploaded the audio files of my interviews into digital evidence.
I request that a copy of my report, along with all related supplemental reports, be forwarded to the District Attorney’s Office for review.For the second year in a row, Kyoto -- a city that could be described as the antithesis to the bustling energy of Tokyo -- has been voted the world’s best city to visit by readers of Travel + Leisure magazine.
After compiling the scores from its affluent and well-traveled readers, the American travel magazine released the results of its annual World’s Best Awards, which break down the top-scoring cities, hotels, airlines and cruises into tidy rankings.
And with an A+ approval rating of 91, Kyoto was given the top spot on the world’s best cities list, narrowly beating out Charleston, South Carolina and Siem Reap in Cambodia for the title.
While Tokyo is best known for being a portal of modern city life -- bustling energy, skyscrapers, flashing neon lights -- Kyoto offers a different kind of rhythm that includes more than 1,000 ancient Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, zen gardens, traditional ryokan inns and a district dedicated to working geishas. Kyoto is considered the birthplace of geisha culture.
It was also the imperial capital of Japan for more than 1,000 years.
Interestingly, conspicuously absent on the list are a few of the top tourist destinations in the world, notably Paris, New York and London, as well as representation from Latin countries and South America.
The only North American city to crack the list is Charleston, which also topped the best cities list for the US and Canada.
Travel + Leisure readers were most enamored by the Galapagos Islands in the category of best islands, followed by Bali and the Maldives, while Disney Cruise Line emerged the favorite mega-ship cruise line.
In the category of top hotels, the luxurious Oberoi Udaivilas, Udaipur on Lake Lake Pichola in India, was named the best in show, scoring a near-perfect mark of 99 for its unrestrained opulence.
And travelers seem to be happiest with Singapore Airlines, which was named the world’s best airline over Emirates and Qatar Airways.
Here are the top 10 cities as voted by readers of Travel + Leisure magazine:
Kyoto, Japan Charleston, South Carolina Siem Reap, Cambodia Florence, Italy Rome, Italy Bangkok, Thailand Krakow, Poland Barcelona, Spain Cape Town, South Africa Jerusalem, Israel
© (c) 2015 AFPIn a season where signs of positivity have been woefully thin on the ground, the play of Matias Laba has been a reason to keep watching games. His quality has been apparent for most of his time here and the stats back it up. So when Laba tweeted this:
Fracturado el dedo gordo, un mes out pic.twitter.com/7raAmSIKgo — Matias Laba (@matiaslaba) August 21, 2013
Broken big toe, out one month. — Matias Laba (@matiaslaba) August 21, 2013
..earlier this afternoon, well you can imagine the sinking feeling in the pit of many a supporter stomach. With Toronto FC releasing the details that he sustained the injury during the game on Saturday you have to wonder why it took so long for the team to let the public know? Perhaps it was hoped it was a knock from which he could easily recover, or that it was a sprain and not a break, or they maybe just needed swelling to go down before they could find out for sure. Regardless, it means that TFC's midfield (and the team as a whole) will be without its best player for the next 4-6 weeks:
http://www.torontofc.ca/news/2013/08/matias-laba-suffers-fracture
So what does this mean for TFC over the next month or longer? Laba's play in the midfield has been a big factor in solidifying that part of Toronto's play as well as making those around him better. So who steps in to fill the void? It would seem obvious that Jeremy Hall will get his starting spot back - but who to put out there with him? Does Jonathan Osorio continue in the other central midfield role? Is this Kyle Bekker's time to prove the SuperDraft hoopla was warranted? Or does Darel "Yellow Card" Russell finally get sprung from the bench?
Either way, this news couldn't come at a worse time for the team. Not only are they hoping to rebound from a horrific game against Columbus, but they're going up against DC United this weekend - a game that is always laden with underlying drama - and one that has long been circled on the calendar by many fans as a must win. Not to mention the five games in three weeks that are upcoming on the schedule - no, this will not be easy. Grab onto something, anything to keep you afloat Reds fans - it's going to be a long several weeks.After a bit of a contract dispute with the Rangers, enforcer Jody Shelley has decided to sign with rival Philadelphia Flyers according to Bob McKenzie of TSN. The deal is for three years at $1.1 million per, which is basically matching Colton Orr's deal with the Toronto Maple Leafs last summer. In my opinion, it is a big mistake letting Shelley go and I feel that Sather should have dealt out the money to Shelley, and you will understand why after I tell you the following signing the Blueshirts have made.
In order to replace Shelley, and Brashear I guess, GM Glen Sather has signed 6-foot-8, 257 pound bruiser Derek Boogaard for 4 years at $1.65 million per. This is Donald Brashear all over again but even worse. Boogaard has recorded just 14 total points over the course of five seasons in the National Hockey League and has not scored a goal in the last four years. So now Sather has made one of the best signings of the day (Biron) as well as the worst (Boogaard) in the matter of three hours.
The only thing "Boogy" brings to the table is size, strength, and fists (105 PIMs last season with Minnesota). He has absolutely no offense, he cannot skate, and not much hockey sense whatsoever. Do not get me wrong, Boogard is one of the top enforcers out there, but for $1.65 million he will just be wasting cap room.
More importantly, I would now like to see Slats re-sign Prust, Staal, Girardi, and Prospal after coughing up close to $2 million to a fighter. Once again, the Blueshirts become the joke of July 1st in the NHL because of that signing.
Anyway, the rumor that had the Rangers and Flames making a deal has been swirling around, but when I asked NYR beat writer Andrew Gross about it, he said there is "nothing worth reporting". So I think we have put that rumor to rest.
Derek Boogaard Minnesota Wild Height: 6-8 Weight: 257 Born: Jun 23, 1982Most people are susceptible to losing their cool from time to time. We all tend to make the occasional, emotionally driven poor decision. However, at what point does this tendency cross the line from basic human nature to actual mental illness? A team of psychiatric doctors and students at UCLA Medical Center believe they have successfully identified that distinction by naming a new illness — Trumpophrenia.
“We all teamed up to study the President of the United States’ apparent inability to handle criticism, and specifically how he handles that trait by publicly lashing out on social media in self-destructive ways.” Says post-doctoral student Mary MacLeod. “And as we began to dig deeper and deeper into the unstable psyche of Donald Trump, we began to realize that this disorder has never been identified in medical journals until now.”
Specifically, Dr. MacLeod explained that a “simple lack of impulse control, egotism, or compulsion about one’s self-image” doesn’t fully explain this mental illness. In their estimation, it seems that President Trump actually cannot control his own actions.
Dr. MacLeod explained, “For example, we came up with this thought experiment. The scenario says to imagine that you have been publicly insulted in a way that feels humiliating to you. This insult was so widely public that most people in the country are likely to have heard about it. You have the opportunity to respond to the insult on Twitter. However, Twitter’s ‘send’ button is also rigged to simultaneously administer a very painful shock to your thumb as you press it, causing severe and permanent nerve damage. If you simply do not respond, everything will be okay. If you send a Tweet, you will be shocked.”
This thought experiment was presented to approximately 5900 participants. The results of the study indicate that 98% of people would not push the button, citing that they could find a better way to respond. 2% of those surveyed said they would probably push the button, but they would regret it.
Dr. MacLeod, however, points out that President Trump falls outside this scale of measurement. Based on his actions, he seems to have “little concern for the consequences of his own decisions.”
“To someone with a mental illness like the President’s, consequences are secondary to ego and self-image.” Dr. MacLeod explains, “It’s not a normal matter of poor judgement. It’s a lucid, though-out decision that his own public image is more important that any possible consequence of defending it. This is beyond anything we have ever seen. Trump would push the button repeatedly until he ran out of fingers to shock, and then likely hire an assistant to push the button for him. That’s why we had to name the new illness, Trumpophrenia.”
In conclusion, Dr. MacLeod believes that, to a Trumpophrenia patient, there is likely nothing in the world more important than defending their own perceived public image. They will always reliably choose to defend their image at any cost, without regard for their own well-being, or that of anyone else affected by their actions. Unfortunately for the world, this patient’s actions often have a global effect.
The medical team has not yet identified any medicine to treat Trumpophrenia, but they have just been approved with an 8-figure emergency research grant to begin exploring a potential treatment or cure. NewsWerthy will report further if developments are made.
If you liked this story, share it! Follow us on Facebook to see more! And, to learn more about NewsWerthy, Click Here.In today’s post, we are going to look at a couple of awesome online resources for free gardening books. As the copyright for books expires, several websites take the time to scan the books into the public domain. Many of these books are quite old; some are several hundred years old and others are more recent. And it’s not just free gardening books. You can find entire volumes of works by authors like Martin Luther and William Shakespeare. There are literally thousands of books available at the click of a mouse. Two fantastic resources are:
Project Gutenberg – here you can find titles such as:
Organic Gardener’s Composting by Steve Solomon Making a Rock Garden by H.S. Adams Wildflowers Worth Knowing by Neltje Blanchan Gardening Indoors and Under Glass by F.F. Rockwell Botanical Magazine, Volume 3 by William Curtis Wood and Garden by Gertrude Jekyll
The other resource, Soil and Health Library, is dedicated more to sustainable agriculture and holistic health. Some of the books available here include:
Soil Fertility and Animal Health by William Albrecht Biodynamics Journal The Natural Way of Farming: The Theory and Practice of Green Philosophy by M. Fukuoka The Organic Front by J. Rodale Grass Tetany by Andre Voisin Sustainable Soil Management: Soil System Guide by Preston Sullivan
It is so exciting to me that all of this knowledge is just waiting at our fingertips. I love the internet and all of the information that it has to offer but there is something special about books that were written before synthetic fertilizers and harmful chemicals were introduced to the world. Many of these authors worked the land when soil was the most important element of gardening. I hope that we can glean some of their wisdom and realize that humanity existed for thousands of years without the addition of Miracle-Gro and Roundup.
So, what will you download first? For me, I downloaded Soil Fertility and Animal Health. I’ve started reading it but keep getting pulled away by life’s demands. Let me know what free gardening book you’ll start with. Leave me a comment below or e-mail me. If you enjoy being part of the Mid-Atlantic Gardening community, join our e-mail list (upper right hand corner of this page), become a fan on Facebook and follow me at Twitter. Have a wonderful and blessed Easter weekend! Happy gardening!The conservative majority of the Supreme Court on Monday struck down an Arizona campaign finance law that offered political candidates facing well-funded opponents a subsidy to “level the playing field” and protect from public corruption.
Chief Justice John Roberts and the conservative majority agreed with the five conservative politicians and two political action committees who argued that the law stifled free speech, claiming it meant they were punished if they raised too much money because the government would subsidize their opponents.But Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, writing a dissent on behalf of the minority of the court, said that there was a major problem with the decision by her colleagues — Arizona’s matching funds provision “does not restrict, but instead subsidizes, speech.”
The plaintiffs who brought the case, Kagan wrote, “are making a novel argument: that Arizona violated their First Amendment rights by disbursing funds to other speakers even though they could have received (but chose to spurn) the same financial assistance. Some people might call that chutzpah.”
“Pretend you are financing your campaign through private donations,” Kagan wrote. “Would you prefer that your opponent receive a guaranteed, upfront payment of $150,000, or that he receive only $50,000, with the possibility — a possibility that you mostly get to control — of collecting another $100,000 somewhere down the road? Me too.”
“Robust campaigns leading to the election of representatives not beholden to the few, but accountable to the many. The people of Arizona might have expected a decent respect for those objectives. Today, they do not get it,” Kagan wrote.
“Arizonans deserve better. Like citizens across this country, Arizonans deserve a government that represents and serves them all. And no less, Arizonans deserve the chance to reform their electoral system so as to attain that most American of goals,” Kagan wrote. “Truly, democracy is not a game.”
Common Cause President Bob Edgar said the ruling “is not the death knell of public financing.”
“This ruling affects only one mechanism of public financing, and there are numerous ways to fix it,” Edgar said. “Today, in the wake of Citizens United, it is more critical than ever that we change the way we pay for our elections by moving to a small donor system that gives the public a voice back in our government. Nothing short of our democracy is at stake.”
Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer said in a statement that the “reform movement to create new public financing systems nationally and at the state and local level will go forward without interruption.”
But Sean Parnell, president of the libertarian-minded Center for Competitive Politics, said that the “so-called ‘reform’ measure that stifled free and unfettered political speech.” He said the court “continued its streak of showing greater deference to the plain meaning of the First Amendment and less interest in schemes to suppress some speech in the interest of favoring the speech of others.”
(H/T Rick Hasen)In a blow to David Cameron, who has attempted to draw a line under the expenses scandal, Mr Fox’s lengthy battle to avoid repaying overclaims for mortgage interest was thrown out by the high court judge appointed to hear challenges against the audit of Commons allowances by Sir Thomas Legg.
Mr Fox had increased the loan on his London second home in order to pay for decorating work and to fund his main constituency home, and breached the rules by claiming for the higher interest payments.
Sir Paul Kennedy, whose ruling on the final 14 challenges to the Legg audit was published yesterday, told him: “What you claimed was not recoverable under the rules then in force.”
In a statement, Mr Fox said that he had already repaid the money, totalling £22,476.03, adding: “When Sir Thomas Legg said that the fees office had overpaid my mortgage interest over six years I immediately repaid the money as I never wanted to have any funds I was not entitled to.
“I am delighted that Sir Paul Kennedy has acknowledged that had the fees office rejected this at the outset, I would have been able to claim directly for work carried out on my property. While out of pocket as a result, I feel vindicated that I acted at all times in good faith.”
Shahid Malik, the Communities Minister, had an appeal rejected over excessive claims for a £1,050 television and DVD player, and £730 armchair, which breached the maximum limits set by the Commons authorities.
Sir Paul said that he recognised the minister’s “frustration (and) irritation” that the claims had originally been approved by the now-discredited Commons fees office, but added: “I can not intervene”.
The former judge also rejected Mr Malik’s challenge to a demand to return overclaims for council tax, which he said he had “planned” with the consent of the fees office to offset a “shortfall” in mortgage interest claims.
John Lyons, former Labour MP for Strathkelvin and Bearsden, was ordered to repay £11,004.50 after Sir Paul said it appeared that he had claimed for his full mortgage costs, rather limiting his expanses to the interest only element to which he was entitled.
Labour's Derek Wyatt had his repayment demand reduced from £3,611 to £3,490 after Sir Paul rejected the bulk of his appeal.
In total, five MPs had their appeals rejected, while five more were upheld and four had their repayment requests reduced.
The Members Estimates Committee of senior MPs disclosed that 13 MPs with overclaims of £10,000 or more had entered into secret deals to delay their repayment requests until July.
Sheree Dodd, a spokesman for the House of Commons, refused to give their names or details of their overclaims.
Around half are expected to resign or lose their seats at the general election, which is widely expected in May – they will have any outstanding sums docked from the generous retirement grants given to MPs.
In addition, three former MPs are understood to be in the process of returning funds, while another two are said to be refusing to pay amounts running into tens of thousands of pounds.
A source said: “They haven’t quite said **** *** but they’re not far off.
“Some of the MPs wanted far longer than to repay their overclaims, but we had to have a cut off point, and July seems fair.”
Miss Dodd would not give the names of the former MPs who had failed to return overclaims.
Matthew Elliott, Chief Executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Taxpayers will be angry that the Commons authorities are still covering up information about the expenses scandal.
“Any delay will mean that MPs’ continue to benefit from their dodgy claims for months to come and might allow them to avoid paying at all, or to pay out of the resettlement grant they shouldn’t be getting in the first place.
“They need to name the MPs who are delaying paying back taxpayers’ money that should never have been paid out and outline why they have been allowed a delay, or make it very clear how they will ensure that the money is definitely repaid.”The U.S. Supreme Court has the opportunity to lift federal restrictions on marijuana. A group that advocates on behalf of medical marijuana patients has asked the nation’s highest court to decide whether marijuana is a dangerous drug with no medical value.
Americans for Safe Access on Monday appealed a District of Columbia Circuit Court decision that upheld marijuana’s federal Schedule I status.
“It is only by failing to apply the appropriate standards and make the required comparisons that the federal government could conclude that marijuana is as harmful as heroin and PCP and even more harmful than methamphetamine, cocaine and opium, and should remain in the CSA’s most restrictive Schedule I,” the appeal states ( |
who tapped a California leadership team more than six months before his rivals.
“It really does lend itself to someone who is really well organized,” said Johnson, the GOP strategist. “In these low Republican population districts, it looks a lot more like a caucus. You ID and turn out. That’s really Cruz’s game.”
Michael Schroeder, a former California Republican Party chairman and Cruz’s political director in the state, said running a congressional district campaign is almost the opposite of a traditional California race dominated by warring on the airwaves.
“I’ve run statewide campaigns here. You go for big chunks of votes. This is not that,” Schroeder said. “We have 53 separate elections that happen to occur on the same day. We have to look at it that way.”
Schroeder said he plans to lean on the campaign’s call-from-home program for volunteers—“I call them my drone pilots,” he said—to phone into districts.
Molnar, who is working closely with the Kasich campaign, predicted a more subterranean race than is typical in the state. “Unless you have stupid money,” he said, “there’s no way you’re going to see a lot of broadcast TV ads for Republican voters in the San Francisco Bay Area.”
He said Kasich would explore “tele-town halls” where they call into GOP households, and that plans are in the works for in-person town halls where the Kasich campaign hopes to lure the most likely voters. Molnar predicted the best-funded campaigns might do “targeted cable,” buying reliably GOP networks, like Fox News, even in liberal areas.
Finding actual Republicans can be a tall task, as Jim Kay, a 74-year-old Republican who’s lived in Berkeley since 1971, can attest. He estimates he has canvassed Berkeley 20 times in the past 45 years to get out the GOP vote. “I’m a big walker, so I wouldn’t mind walking a few miles even if you get a Republican every two to three blocks,” he said, mostly because it’s so satisfying when he does. “Usually, they’re so surprised to see someone canvassing for the Republicans that it’s almost like you’re a long-lost cousin!”
Kay said he’d knock doors for Kasich—and to stop Trump—but despite reaching out, the campaign hasn’t provided him any materials yet. (He has ordered a bumper sticker and plans to put it on his hybrid SUV). But while he waits, Kay is relishing the moment.
“My vote’s been irrelevant for so many years here,” he said, sipping tea at the original Peet’s coffee shop in Berkeley. A musician strummed the banjo around the corner. “It’s almost a physical shock!”HP has unveiled its latest range of Ultrabooks at its Global Influencer Summit in Shanghai.
Leading the charge is the Spectre XT, which slots into the firm's range alongside the Envy 14 Spectre, and it makes an enviable first impression: it's just 15mm thick and weighs 1.4kg, which makes it slimmer and lighter than most of its Ultrabook rivals - and significantly slighter than the older model, which was 20mm thick and weighed 1.8kg.
There's no denying the Spectre XT is a looker, either: the lid and wrist-rest are both constructed from brushed metal, the 13.3in screen is surrounded by a slick black bezel, and the base is coated with the red of Beats Audio, which comes as standard.
The screen, meanwhile, has been slimmed down from the original Spectre - it's now 13.3in rather than 14in. Resolution has taken a step down, from 1,600 x 900 to 1,366 x 768, but it looks as though HP has been able to preserve the enviable levels of quality, with vibrant colours and decent detail in evidence when we used the XT.
The only thing missing is the Gorilla Glass covering of the original Spectre, and the loss of that dose of originality is our only major complaint about the XT's looks - and, of course, the simpler design has allowed HP to make the XT slimmer and lighter. That's a trade off we suspect many will be happy to make.
There's plenty to like in the ergonomic department, too. We criticised the original Spectre for its poor build quality, and we're happy to note that HP has addressed our concerns; while there's still a little give in the rear of the screen, the desktop isn't distorted, and the wristrest is far firmer than it used to be.
There's a little flex in the base of the keyboard, but the Scrabble tile keys are still responsive and comfortable and, as with the original Spectre, it's still backlit. The entire trackpad is smooth and responsive but, like last time, the two buttons at the bottom of the pad are simply seperated with a thin white line - and they're still a little too tough for our liking.
Under the hood, HP's latest offers precisely the kind of specification we'd expect from the next generation of Ultrabooks. Processing power - at least in the model we've used - comes from one of Intel's Ivy Bridge chips, the 2GHz, low voltage Core i7-3667U, and storage is provided by a 256GB Samsung SSD - plenty of room for Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit and Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Elements 10, which are included as standard. There's also four gigabytes of RAM, and HP is claiming eight hours of battery life.
HP is being coy about UK pricing, but the Spectre XT will cost at least euros 999 when it arrives on these shores at the end of June. We'll have a full review at launch but, until then, what do you think? Is this the machine to make you buy an Ultrabook, or are you still to be persuaded? Let us know in the comments.
HP has unveiled its latest range of Ultrabooks at its Global Influencer Summit in Shanghai.
Leading the charge is the Spectre XT, which slots into the firm's offering just beneath the Envy 14 Spectre, and it makes an excellent first impression. It's only 15mm thick and weighs 1.4kg, which brings it into line with the best Ultrabooks around, including the Dell XPS 13 and Asus ZenBoook UX31 - and that also means it's almost half a kilo lighter than the original Spectre.
There's no denying the Spectre XT is a good-looking laptop. The lid and wrist-rest are both constructed from brushed metal, the screen is surrounded by a slick black bezel, and the base is red to signify the inclusion of Beats audio.
The screen, meanwhile, has been slimmed down from the original Spectre - it's now 13.3in rather than 14in. Resolution has taken a step down, from 1,600 x 900 to 1,366 x 768, but it looks as though HP has been able to preserve the enviable levels of quality, with vibrant colours and decent detail in evidence when we used the XT.
The Gorilla Glass covering of the original Spectre has been removed, and the loss of that dose of originality is our only major complaint about the XT's looks. If that's helped make the Spectre XT thinner and lighter, though, that's a trade-off we suspect many will be happy to make, with a little extra portability arguably more important than snazzy design.
There's plenty to like in the ergonomic department. We criticised the original Spectre for its mediocre build quality, and we're happy to note that HP seems to have addressed our concerns; while there's still a little give in the rear of the screen, the desktop isn't distorted, and the wristrest is firm.
There's a little flex in the base of the keyboard, but the Scrabble tile keys are responsive and comfortable and, as with the original Spectre, the keyboard is still backlit. The entire trackpad is smooth and responsive but, like last time, the two buttons at the bottom of the pad are simply seperated with a thin white line - and they're still a little too tough for our liking.
Under the hood, HP's latest offers precisely the kind of specification we'd expect from the next generation of Ultrabooks. Processing power - at least in the model we've used - comes from one of Intel's Ivy Bridge chips, the 2GHz, low voltage Core i7-3667U, and storage is provided by a 256GB Samsung SSD - plenty of room for Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit and Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements 10, which are included as standard. There's also four gigabytes of RAM. HP is claiming eight hours of battery life, and connectivity includes dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi and a pair of USB 3 ports. A separate Spectre XT will also be released to appeal to businesses thanks to the inclusion of Windows 7 Professional and a TPM security chip and the removal of third-party software such as the two Adobe apps and Norton Internet Security.
The Spectre XT will cost at least £899 when it arrives on these shores at the end of June, with the business-specific XT a little cheaper at £859. We'll have a full review at launch but, for now, it looks as though HP has managed to put together a good looking, fast and light Ultrabook. So, does this look like the machine that will open your wallet, or are you still to be persuaded by Ultrabooks? Let us know in the comments.Omni Military Loans Blog: Disney Military Discounts
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Taking a Disney vacation is a rite of passage for many families – after all there is something special for everyone to enjoy at these magical resorts! Whether you’re marching down Main Street, viewing spectacular fireworks, or snapping photos of your children with their favorite characters, a Disney vacation is like no other.
If you are planning to visit the Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida or Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California, or want to set sail on a Disney cruise, you’ll be pleased to know that as an active duty military member, you and your family are entitled to some deep military discounts. Disney is a very military-friendly company and its military discounts offer some of the best Disney deals available.
Mickey Mouse, the Magic Kingdom, and military discounts – it’s the perfect match for family fun and long-lasting memories. Find your Disney military savings below and save on your next getaway.
Disney Military Discounts
Disney 4-Day Military Promotional Tickets
Walt Disney World Resort, Florida
When – Purchase through Sept. 30, 2015, admission through October 3, 2015
U.S. military personnel can purchase Disney 4-Day Promotional Tickets that include admission on any 4 days for just $177 plus tax. The Park Hopper Option is included which gives you same-day access to all 4 theme parks – Magic Kingdom park, Epcot, Disney’s Animal Kingdom park and Disney’s Hollywood Studios – for each day of your ticket. Add the Water Park for just $30 more plus tax. Purchase the tickets at participating U.S. military sales outlets. There are blackout dates and other restrictions so visit the website for details.
Military Promotional 3-Day Park Hopper Tickets
Disneyland Resort, California
When – Purchase through Oct. 1, 2015, admission through October 3, 2015
Active and retired U.S. military personnel can visit Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure Park and save with a Military Promotional 3-Day Park Hopper Ticket. For just $132 per ticket you can explore both amazing parks on any 3 days. Purchase the tickets at participating U.S. military sales outlets. Visit the website for blackout dates and other details and restrictions.
Special Disney Cruise Line Rates
When – Various times throughout the year
Embark on a Disney cruise and take your family adventures to the sea. Disney Cruise Line offers special discounted military rates on select Disney cruises as a way to honor our nation’s service members.
20% Discount on Rooms and Other Special Packages
Shades of Green AFRC at Walt Disney World Resort, Florida
When – Varies by package
Located in a peaceful wooded setting, this Armed Forces Recreation Center (AFRC) at Walt Disney World Resort is just minutes from the Magic Kingdom. Members of the military can stay in tax-free accommodations, and have access to many dining options, a spa, fitness center, activities, and pools, as well as discounted tickets and a free shuttle to the Walt Disney World Resort. In addition, guests can enjoy an Extra Magic Hours Benefit so you can spend more time in the Disney parks, plus discounted golf at the two surrounding PGA Championship Golf Courses. Shades of Green is an ADA-friendly resort and has a Wounded Warrior suite.
The resort is currently offering U.S. troops from all services and DoD personnel serving a minimum of 270 consecutive days or more in an CENTCOM AOR or Balkans location for OEF/OIF/Operation New Dawn and their dependent children a 20% discount on room reservations ranging from 1 – 14 nights.
Soldiers can also take advantage of the Red White & Blue Salute Package available through September 30, 2016. This package ranges from a 4 night to 8 night stay and includes a breakfast and dinner buffet each day.
There are several other offers available throughout the year as well. Check out Book Early & Save August, Savings in September, Fall Back & Save, and the Sunrise package.
Offers are subject to change. See the Shades of Green website for details and eligibility requirements.
Special Military Hotel Rates
Walt Disney World Resort Hotels, Florida
When – Through October 3, 2015
If you want to be in close proximity to all the magic – and receive the Extra Magic Hour early admission benefit – consider staying at one of the many Walt Disney World Resort Hotels. Through October 3, 2015, active and retired members of the U.S. Military can receive special rates. See website for details and blackout dates.
Special Military Hotel Rates
Disneyland Resort Hotels, California
When – Through October 3, 2015
When you stay at a Disneyland Resort Hotel you are conveniently located just steps away from all the Disney enchantment. You also have access to the Extra Magic Hour early admission benefit. Visit by October 3, 2015 and active and military retired service members will receive special rates. See website for details and blackout dates.
With these Disney military discounts, you and your family will have an even happier time at the “happiest place on Earth.” Start planning your Disney vacation and save!There's no refuge in the suburbs from Canada's housing affordability problem.
You can buy a house for less money in the suburbs than you can in a big city, but the cost of commuting may kill almost all your savings. Some number-crunching by a public-spirited mortgage broker in the Toronto area makes this point quite clearly.
David Hughes, with the Mortgage Group Ontario Inc., divides his clients into a couple of groups with respect to attitudes toward living in suburbia: One group wants to live in the suburbs and is fine with the idea of commuting, and then there are those who want to live downtown, but can't afford the prices. "They either buy a fixer-upper, or they run screaming to the suburbs and living with the two cars."
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Now, he finds people talking more about the cost of two working parents commuting by car every day. He explains this shift as being a result of the bigger mortgages people are taking on, and the considerable cost of buying and owning a car. "Gas at $1.30 a litre will do that to you," he said.
No question, you'll find house prices are cheaper outside big cities. Toronto Real Estate Board numbers suggest a spread of almost $250,000 between city homes and those in the neighbouring suburbs. But as shown in a spreadsheet created by Mr. Hughes, suburban living loses its cost advantage if you have two adults commuting by car each day. Add the effect of stress and time spent in gridlock, and suburbia looks even more costly.
Mr. Hughes uses some contentious assumptions, but his spreadsheet is a great conversation starter and a must-read for home buyers who are searching for affordability in the suburbs.
Imagine you're part of a couple that has $50,000 for a down payment and must decide between a $500,000 house in the suburbs and a $720,000 house downtown. The suburban lifestyle comes with two cars in this example; the city dwellers get by with public transportation, taxis and car sharing or rentals. To keep things simple, we'll assume here that your mortgage rate will be a constant 3.5 per cent and that you'll take 25 years to pay it down.
Suburban living costs less in this example, but by only $63 per month if you add mortgage and transportation costs. And that's with some conservative estimates by Mr. Hughes on car costs.
Using the 2013 edition of the Canadian Automobile Association's Driving Costs publication (pdf) as a guide, he set the annual cost of commuting at $9,500 a vehicle, or $19,000 for a pair. Included in these costs are variable factors such as fuel and maintenance, and fixed expenses such as insurance, licence and registration, depreciation and financing.
Your actual car ownership costs could be lower if you drive a reliable older vehicle that has been paid off. But you may well pay more. Mr. Hughes's CAA numbers were based on owning two Honda Civics – many families are driving at least one fancier vehicle. The estimated total number of kilometres driven each year was in the low 20,000 range – you could easily drive further in a year if you have a long commute.
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The downtown household pays $6,000 annually for a pair of monthly transit passes and occasional use of taxis, car rentals or car sharing. Maybe it's not realistic to believe a family with kids can live downtown and not own a car. But while owning a car for periodic use makes city living more expensive, it doesn't do a thing to mitigate the high cost of commuting from the suburbs.
The case for cheaper suburban houses is undermined most when you take a long view that factors in your transportation needs both before and after your mortgage is paid off. Mr. Hughes figured on the suburban household moving to just one car after the mortgage is done, while the downtowners stay car-less.
Let's add up what happens over 40 years – 25 with a mortgage and 15 afterward. The suburban household pays a total of $1.3-million on mortgage principal and interest and transportation. The downtown household pays just a little bit less – $33,865, to exact.
If you plan to live outside the city where you work, commuting costs must be part of your housing affordability analysis. Mr. Hughes said he delicately makes this point to clients that come in with thoughts of suburban living. "I don't want to see anyone impoverished by their choice."
Follow me on Twitter: @rcarrick
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There’s no refuge in the suburbs from Canada’s housing affordability problem. You can buy a home for less money in the suburbs than you can in a big city, but the cost of commuting may kill almost all your savings. Some number-crunching by a public-spirited mortgage broker David Hughes in the Toronto area makes this point quite clearly.
Mr. Hughes uses some contentious assumptions, but his spreadsheet is a great conversation starter and a must-read for home buyers who are searching for affordability in the suburbs.
Read the full story.The world is full of mysteries, and the human race loves nothing better than to find answers to them. Frequently, though, the answers aren't as popular as the mysteries themselves, and people will just continue right on believing, even when the evidence is right there, why don't you just look?! Just look, you bastard!
10 Cattle Mutilation
The Mystery
There have been numerous reports of cattle mutilation -- that is, unexplainably dead cows turning up with odd wounds that look to be surgically precise. Their bodies have been split open, and the soft organs inside have been removed. Their eyes, tongues, genitals and anuses may also have been removed. But the most unusual element of all, and the thing that really sets off the Crazy Alarms in people's heads, is that the bodies are always mysteriously drained of blood.
Getty
Although the phrase "missing genitals" would drain our blood, too.
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Clearly, it's vampires. Or else aliens are doing it to study the cows. Maybe satanic cults are committing ritualistic sacrifices. No, wait: It's unseen monsters like El Chupacabra that are feasting on the livestock!
Well, something is happening, goddamn it.
The Solution
In the 1970s, the ATF and even the FBI investigated the cattle-mutilation phenomenon. Their results? They found no evidence of anything other than natural causes and the occasional psychopath. No cult activity, no aliens, no monsters.The controversial Dragon Aromatics plant in southeastern China exploded yesterday, leaving several injured as firefighters battled a major blaze. According to state media, the accident was caused by an oil spill catching fire.
The Taiwanese-owned plant produced paraxylene, better known as PX, a chemical used in everything from water bottles to clothing and photographic film. When inhaled or ingested it can cause nausea and damage the nervous system. Provincial officials have said that there are no signs of a chemical leak in villages nearby.
The PX plant has long been opposed by local residents: In 2007, tens of thousands of protesters in the city of Xiamen forced local officials to block construction of the facility, in a rare victory of public participation. But the plant was built anyway in the nearby town of Zhangzhou.
After its construction, a Zhangzhou official told a reporter that the PX plant would “definitely never” suffer an accident. Nevertheless, it exploded for the first time in July, 2013.
Reuters/Stringer A view of the explosion in Zhangzhou on April 6, 2015.
Witnesses told local media that the explosion yesterday shook the ground and sent a plume of smoke into the sky. According to the state-run news agency Xinhua, a gas station about 1 km (0.5 miles) from the plant had all of its windows blown out, and some residents living near the plant have escaped to nearby islands by boat. Local news reports are citing different casualty numbers, with the People’s Daily citing at least 14 injuries and Xinhua reporting at least three. Criticism online is already being censored.
Dragon Aromatics is owned by Xianglu Group, a Taiwanese petrochemical group, and is one of the largest independently-run PX producers in China—the world’s largest user and producer of the chemical. The country has had trouble keeping up with demand; in 2013, Chinese PX production only met 47% of the country’s needs, Xinhua reported.
That’s in part because of public resistance to more plants producing PX. Large demonstrations have blocked the construction of plants in the port city of Dalian and the southern city of Kunming. And a proposed plant brought thousands of residents in Maoming and Shenzhen in Guangdong province into the streets last year.Here’s One Solution to Texas’ Power Woes, And it Could Cost You Nothing By Terrence Henry Email
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Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
As we’ve been chronicling over the past few months, Texas is in a bit of a bind when it comes to power. There are more and more people, and fewer and fewer power plants. While natural gas prices stay low, that means power companies in Texas have to charge less (here’s a good explainer on how that all works), so there’s little incentive to build new plants.
One motivation has been to raise the prices generators can charge when the grid nears capacity, or peak demand, like it does on some of these hot August days. That’s when power companies make most of their profits.
But there’s another solution. And according to some observers, it has an attractive price tag: free.
It’s called demand response. A new analysis today from the Environmental Defense Fund suggests it could provide an innovative way out of Texas’ looming power crisis.
First let’s look at how bad things could get in the coming years. Texas has a goal of having 13.75 percent more power available than consumers need. That’s called a reserve margin. And setting that target means low chances of a strained grid leading to blackouts. By 2014, Texas’ reserve margin could be below ten percent, and a year after that under seven percent.
Texas has the lowest reserve margin in the country, as you can see in this map from the Energy Information Administration (EIA):
Map by Energy Information Administration
Moreover, it’s the only state that isn’t meeting reserve margin goals. Other grids in surrounding states have reserve margins six to sixteen percent higher than targets.
This is where demand response could come in. Basically, it means getting users on board to voluntarily conserve and power down at the right times. (Here’s a great explainer on demand response from How Stuff Works.) You could even end up getting paid not to use power. In essence, you “build” more power generation by requiring less of it.
And in June the Brattle Report said demand response could get Texas’ reserve margin — that amount of excess power available to avoid blackouts — up to fifteen percent.
Marita Mirzatuny of the Environmental Defense Fund breaks down what that would mean:
So if Texas met this demand response goal of 15 percent it would be enough to cover our reserve margin of 13.75 percent and then some. Without new power plants. Without any new generation capacity at all. Even better is that unlike other mechanisms that do not benefit consumers financially such as the price cap increase, demand response and other demand side resources can provide large gains for consumers. Not only do they encourage reductions in energy consumption and thus energy bills, but because there is an added value in providing that “negawatt” capacity back into the system, customers are compensated.
Demand response has worked in other markets, like PJM, a grid operator in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic region. PJM used demand response to supply nine percent of peak demand last year, according to Mirzatuny. Residential customers in that market received $20 million overall in payments for curbing their use during peak demand.
But in the Texas grid, managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), only two percent of the peak demand power comes from demand response. However, that demand response did help ERCOT avoid rolling blackouts during the summer of 2011.
But this could all be changing soon. ERCOT approved a pilot project for demand response in late June. Here’s how the Council describes it:
“The 30-minute Emergency Response Service (ERS) pilot project will allow eligible participants a half hour to respond to ERCOT requests to reduce their electric use. The program is open to electric users — either as individual customers or as part of an aggregated group of consumers — who can reduce demand on the ERCOT grid by at least 100 kilowatts, about the amount 20 homes use during peak demand.”
And as Mirzatuny notes, the Public Utility Commission in May approved a rule change that will allow the Texas grid to try more pilot projects. Mirzatuny says that “we are headed down the right path and finally waking up the innovations needed in the energy market.”
So demand response could provide the extra power we need during peak demand without having to charge higher prices.
You can read more about the energy crunch in Texas at our ERCOT topic page.The series snoozed to a close in Antigua today - an unremarkable ending to a remarkable rubber
A week on from Brian Lara's epic quadruple-century against England in Antigua, and the backlash has begun Down Under
Our intrepid commentary duo were in St John's when the record for the individual score in Test cricket was broken
Brian Lara's 375 had a sense of inevitability to it, while the 400 came amid a backdrop of strikes and the threat of a whitewash
Six months after losing his record for the highest Test score, Brian Lara faced England in Antigua. And rewrote history
Fall of wickets: 1-8 (MP Vaughan, 4.3 ov), 2-45 (ME Trescothick, 14.2 ov), 3-54 (N Hussain, 18.5 ov), 4-98 (MA Butcher, 29.1 ov), 5-98 (GP Thorpe, 30.2 ov), 6-182 (GO Jones, 59.3 ov), 7-205 (GJ Batty, 69.3 ov), 8-229 (MJ Hoggard, 79.4 ov), 8-277* (SP Jones, retired not out ), 9-283 (SJ Harmison, 96.1 ov), 10-285 (SP Jones, 98.6 ov)
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Bisogna ammettere che fino a prima di Natale, almeno visto da fuori, non era più che un cubo di cemento così pesante e grigio da non potersi guardare. Peggio del carcere di Bollate, veniva da dire, che sta un chilometro più in là e oltretutto chissà se era costato di più o no. E invece zitto zitto, un po’ per volta, quel Palazzo Italia che sarà tra i pochi edifici dell’Expo a restare per sempre, qualunque cosa accada agli altri, se ne sta venendo fuori e si comincia persino a capire un po’ come sarà veramente: assomiglia a un grosso albero quadrato alto sei piani per cento metri di diagonale, appoggiato su otto basi tipo radici con in mezzo un grande spazio vuoto, e tutto attorno pieno di linee curve come una scultura, però bianco come un transatlantico, con uno scafo che più si sale più si ramifica, e negli spazi tra i rami vetro ovunque, anche sul tetto, tutto piegato e trasparente anche quello, con l’acqua che quando piove anziché scorrere fuori precipiterà dentro a cascata. Vetro fotovoltaico, cemento fotocatalitico, dicono che sarà una bomba di risparmio energetico. Sarà finito per l’inaugurazione? «Certo che sì. Non c’è un piano B».
A parlare durante l’ultimo sopralluogo in cantiere accanto al professor Emilio Pizzi del Politecnico, in un andirivieni di putrelle e pannelli che anche il più piccolo si misura in tonnellate, è l’architetto Michele Molè che poi è il padre del progetto. Non da solo, naturalmente, ma alla testa dello studio Nemesi&Partners che insieme con Proger e Bms Progetti per la parte ingegneristica più il professor Livio De Santoli per il capitolo energetico stanno realizzando l’intero Padiglione Italia dopo aver vinto nel 2013 la gara contro altri 67 concorrenti. Il Padiglione nel suo insieme occupa quasi completamente la lunghezza totale del Cardo, la strada perpendicolare al Decumano che a sua volta è l’asse principale dell’Expo. E sarà costituito da quasi 14 mila metri quadri di edifici destinati a essere distrutti, tra cui quello dell’Unione europea, più i 13.200 metri quadri che Palazzo Italia riempirà da solo: con una zona espositiva, una per gli eventi, una di uffici, una per conferenze, un ristorante Vip e una terrazza panoramica.
L’architetto Molè dice che il progetto è ispirato a più criteri: «Abbiamo voluto una architettura integrata nel paesaggio, con un grande spazio interno per sottolineare l’idea di comunità, con una struttura innovativa e sperimentale, contemporanea ma che tenesse conto della grande tradizione dell’arte italiana».
L’architetto alza gli occhi e indica la grande «vela» - così si chiama quella grande copertura curva di acciaio e pannelli di vetro uno diverso dall’altro - che sembra sciogliersi sull’edificio e ne sta diventando il tetto: «Questo alla fine sarà un palazzo a emissione quasi zero». Elenca le cellule fotovoltaiche impresse nel vetro, la circolazione dell’aria, il cemento raffreddato dall’interno, sistemi di risparmio attivi e passivi. Invita a toccare col trasporto appassionato del tecnico quel cemento candido, in effetti così liscio da parer marmo, di cui sono fatti i 920 pannelli del rivestimento esterno: «Anche lì non ce ne sono due uguali, tutti colati uno per uno in stampi unici». In materiale «mangia-smog», con un componente che attira le particelle sporche dell’aria e le sbianca con una reazione fotocatalitica».
Costo totale dell’opera 40 milioni circa, alla fine: otto più del preventivo iniziale che ne prevedeva 18 di parte edile, otto di rivestimento e il resto di «vela». L’architetto spiega che la differenza è dovuta a una variante sostanziale chiesta dalla committenza a lavori iniziati: «Il progetto originario prevedeva molti più uffici e meno spazi pubblici, la proporzione ora è stata invertita».
© RIPRODUZIONE RISERVATAJan 13 - The following list shows the status of new coal-fired power plant projects in Germany, which are the focus of environmentalists campaigning against climate-harming carbon emissions from the coal-to-power generation process.
Plants in locations listed here in alphabetical order have attracted opposition on environmental and health grounds, or because local people fear the impact on landscapes and tourism.
Latest updates are marked***
BERLIN
Vattenfall Europe has decided to base replacements of a heat plant on gas and biomass rather than hard coal.
BRUNSBUETTEL
Environmental groups BUND and DUH criticize plans by GDF Suez to build a plant at Brunsbuettel by 2012.
DATTELN
The state government in North-Rhine Westphalia on December 9 changed planning laws with view to allowing a reassessment of E.ON’s construction of the 1,050 MW Datteln plant which a court had ruled may clash with local interests.
Original parts of a partial block on construction were lifted but it remains arguable if the 1.2 billion euro ($1.73 billion) project — over half of which has been completed — can go ahead for a start by 2011.
DOERPEN
EnBW and junior partner Switzerland’s BKW abandoned a plan for a coal plant by 2015, saying they could not place a contract for the heat from a combined heat-and-power plant design, after local buyers said they preferred gas.
DUESSELDORF
The city utility has put off plans for a new 400 MW coal block at Lausward and is exploring alternatives including gas.
EMDEN
Denmark’s Dong in October gave up a plan for an 850 MW coal plant at Emden in East Frisia, citing the finance crisis.
HAMBURG-MOORBURG
Vattenfall Europe tries to ease tough environmental conditions for a plant project.
HERNE
A court has rejected a suit brought by environmentalists against new capacity at Evonik’s existing generation site although the plans for the extra 750 MW were put on hold in early 2008, with no signs of change in the meantime.
HUERTH
RWE has put off plans for its first commercial size (450 MW) plant project using carbon capture and storage.
KIEL
Plans for a project to replace an existing nearly 40-year old coal block were shelved by city utility and partner E.ON.
KREFELD***
Local utility network Trianel, which is building a 750 MW coal plant at Luenen, says it hopes to get the approval for another one at Krefeld in January 2010 and to start building in the fourth quarter.
LUBMIN***
Danish state company Dong has pulled out of plans for a 1,600 MW plant in Lubmin on the Baltic Sea in Germany for 2012, citing lack of political support. [ID:nDKT004778] The project company is looking for new investors.
MAINZ-WIESBADEN
A new local ruling coalition has officially shelved for good a plan for a new 800 MW hard-coal fired plant on the banks of the Rhine for 2014. This follows a long battle over the plant.
MANNHEIM***
Utility MVV and its power plant unit GKM have all necessary permissions for a coal unit for start up in 2013. The World Wildlife Fund has sent a complaint to the European Commission saying the approval procedure was faulty and should have required carbon sequestration and storage.
STADE
Dow Deutschland and EnBW abandoned a plan to build a plant at the Dow site in North Germany. Separately, GDF Suez and E.ON are each pursuing projects of their own there.
STAUDINGER 6
Public hearings are on for objections to a big controversial block to be built by E.ON at Hanau near Frankfurt by 2013.Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) gave an impassioned speech on MSNBC Wednesday decrying a "cruel" and "craven" Republican health care bill. He was speaking to Chris L. Hayes about the "American Health Care Act" that is scheduled for a House vote on Thursday.
"Just for the moral urgency of this moment," he told Hayes, "the craven bill that I see coming to vote tomorrow is just cruel and just wrong."
"To tens of millions of Americans," he continued, "Republicans, Democrats and Independents, people who deserve more from a nation this wealthy, this rich, they deserve better."
"So screw the politics," Booker said.
"This is about people |
to the center, and do not like what they see, and so start heading back in the opposite direction. But everybody understand this, because everybody has done it.
The pull toward the center is never so strong that it cannot be resisted, and everyone has resisted and drawn away from the center at one point or another, and so they understand that people sometimes pull back. But no matter how far someone pulls back, at no point do they ever stop “belonging” for there is no outer boundary that can be crossed.
Centered Set Illustration
If a horse corral helped picture the bounded set, a water hole in the African grasslands might be a good picture of a centered set. In many cases, there will be only one watering hole for miles and miles in any direction. This means that animals that live in the area will never stray too far from the water, especially in the dry season.
During the rainy season, they may stray further from the hole, but they always know where the water can be found, just in case the rains do not come. And during the dry season, when the rains do not come and the grass withers away and the ground is parched, it is not uncommon to find hundreds of different animals all sharing the same watering hole. Animals that at any other time of year might stay away from each other, or even prey on one another, will live in relative peace and safety near the water hole. Lions, zebras, deer, and birds will drink from the same water, and while the rains are absent, will not stray too far from the water, for they know that the water is their life.
There are no fences to pen them in, and no cowboys to keep the peace, and yet the draw of the water is enough to accomplish both.
Centered Set Churches
While centered sets are not the common way of doing church today, they are becoming more common, and will be, I believe, the predominant model of the future.
People of all backgrounds and beliefs will be welcomed at the table to join in the conversation, to participate in serving the community, to learn from and challenge each other, and to encourage one another to move ever closer to Jesus Christ. In such an atmosphere, there is room for people of all faiths, all backgrounds, all races, and all creeds.
As Frost and Hirsch point out, “In a centered-set church it is recognized that we are all sinners, all struggling to be the best people we can be. But we also believe that the closer one gets to the center (Christ), the more Christlike one’s behavior should become. …No one is considered unworthy of belonging because they happen to be addicted to tobacco, or because they’re not married to their live-in partner” (p. 49). And I might add to this, “…or because they hold to some doctrine which we think is heretical.”
What do you think of these two approaches? What are the benefits or dangers of both? Where else do you see these types of sets in nature or society? Do you think a bounded-set church can become a centered-set?JavaOne is a software developers conference held each fall in San Francisco California. The conference is held at the same time as Oracle’s larger product conference – OpenWorld. Together both events bring in about 110,000 attendees to the city. Many streets near the Moscone Center and O’Farrell are only open to foot traffic and serve snacks and beverages to attendees. There’s something decadent about drinking a hot latte in a recliner on a blocked off street in the middle of San Francisco.
I thought a post was in order since many are surprised to learn Oracle’s JavaOne conference has a security track. This year is the third year for the security track at JavaOne. I can’t share too much about this years track just yet but I can share about last years track. In previous years, the security track included around 40 sessions held over the course of the conference week. Content covers various areas like open source projects, technologies, platform security, labs, and more. Many industry verticals are covered like finance, insurance, banking, government, academia, as well as independent researchers. A key differentiator for JavaOne is that that conference sessions are defensive in nature. For example, we focus on defensive techniques developers use to strengthen software applications as opposed to offensive techniques to exploit software weaknesses.
JavaOne 2014 Security Sessions (Article)
The security track is not the focus of attention for JavaOne so we don’t have a keynote like other tracks but we provide an opening presentation that launches the track. Following is the presentation I provided last year to give you some background.
One thing I will say about JavaOne 2015 security track and opening session – you will love it! To launch the event I invited a security hero of mine. He’s an early luminary in the security industry, a company founder, testified before Congress on security, interviewed on film, and more. He will be doing most of the speaking this year and I’m looking forward to his presentation.
How interesting the security track at JavaOne is depends upon you! JavaOne is community driven. Got an interesting proposal on security for JavaOne? We would love to hear about it. The CFP is still open but closing soon.
Submit JavaOne 2015 Proposals (Oracle Speaker Registration)
See you at JavaOne!The B.C. government has revealed plans to improve the bike route along the Stanley Park Causeway by expanding the sidewalk and adding a fence.
The proposed changes for the busy route, which connects downtown Vancouver with the North Shore, include:
Installing fences to separate the sidewalk from the road.
Widening the sidewalk on both sides.
Limiting pedestrians to the east side of the road.
It is estimated about 13 or 14 trees would have to be removed.
Currently the cyclists and pedestrians share the elevated sidewalks on both sides of the causeway, including a long downhill stretch for traffic heading into downtown Vancouver.
In May, a 61-year-old woman fell off the raised pathway and into the path of a West Vancouver bus. (CBC)
Cycling advocates called for safety upgrades after a 61-year-old woman was killed last year when she rode off the elevated sidewalk and into the path of an oncoming bus.
The ministry plans to collect public feedback, but the Vancouver Park Board has the final word on the design and says it likely won't vote on any plan until the spring.Take your recovery seriously.
Its highlighted in every sport. Commercials, TV spots, ESPN, YouTube. Not the recovery, but the "day in, day out" "24/7" hard work that these world class athletes put in. We all understand this tenfold. But even more importantly what people don't see, is the time and effort they take to maintain, care, and pamper their "temple". As an athlete, your body is your tool. It is your money maker. It is your end all, be all. If you don't have your body at 100%, your output will likely be less than that as well. If you think that giving 100% effort in training followed by 50% in recovery is going to kick it, you are in for a long, painful road.
Think of it this way: You have a cow that makes you money by producing milk. You would make sure that cow had good pasture to graze, water to drink, and shelter to keep safe. Or that Ferrari in your garage. You wouldn't wash it with dish soap, fill it with diesel, or keep the tires flat, right? So why in the WORLD would you treat your own living body any less by discounting it? Eat well and give your body the physical treatment it deserves. Spare the expense elsewhere.Apple’s turn toward streaming is a matter of necessity, as listeners increasingly shift from music downloads to streaming. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, downloads generated $2.6 billion in revenue in 2014, down 8.5 percent from the year before. Streaming made $1.87 billion last year, and overtook CD sales for the first time.
As the biggest retailer of music, Apple remains a crucial marketing partner for the music industry. Yet its absence from streaming has let others get a head start. Spotify, which started in Sweden in 2008 and came to the United States in 2011, said in January that it has 15 million paying subscribers around the world, as well as 45 million more who listen free, with advertising. (Apple’s iTunes has more than 800 million customer accounts.)
Exactly how Apple will match Spotify is unclear. Music executives say they have not been shown a prototype of the new streaming service, nor been given much detail on it.
The new music app, which is a collaborative effort between Mr. Reznor and other Apple and Beats employees, including Jimmy Iovine — who founded Beats with the hip-hop star Dr. Dre — will feature the streaming music service with many of the same characteristics as the Beats Music streaming service, one Apple employee said. Those may include curated playlists and a more vivid visual appeal, while conforming to Apple’s sleek and minimal design aesthetic, one person said. The name Beats Music will most likely be shed.
According to an Apple employee, the service is being tested as part of a new version of the company’s mobile software system, iOS, which has been given the code name “Copper” and is expected for public release this year.
Mr. Iovine has set the tone of the transformation of Apple’s music plans, according to music executives. Mr. Iovine, who reports to Eddy Cue, Apple’s head of software and Internet services, has been leading aggressive talks to secure prominent album releases that will be exclusive to Apple, akin to what Beyoncé did when she released her self-titled album on iTunes in December 2013. One music executive involved in the negotiations described this part of the new iTunes as “Spotify with Jimmy juice.”
A crucial difference for Apple’s streaming service is that unlike Spotify, it will have no free tier. That has greatly pleased top executives at major music labels, who have begun to complain openly that so much free music has given consumers too little reason to pay for it.Nick Cave is one of the most influential and enduring figures in modern culture, responsible for a litany of seismic releases with the Bad Seeds, The Birthday Party, Grinderman, and more, not to mention a prolific writer of novels and screenplays (including John Hillcoat’s 2005 Australian western The Proposition).
Still, it makes sense that a teenager from New Zealand might not know who he is. When a young teen named James Malcolm was waiting for his flight, he noticed a group of people asking for photos with Cave. Feeling “left out,” Malcolm captured a selfie with the artist and posted it to Twitter, asking who “the celeb” is.
Does anyone know who this is? People keep asking him to sign their t shirt pic.twitter.com/Md4fU1uKZD — James Malcolm (@DieJamesMalcolm) January 17, 2017
Can someone please tell me who this celeb is? Everyone was asking him for pics and I didn't wanna feel left out pic.twitter.com/s67vF5rZKZ — James Malcolm (@DieJamesMalcolm) January 17, 2017
Well, he sure knows now. His mentions have been flooded with Twitter users both charmed and, well, weirdly offended? Look at this self-serious asshole:
@mike_mcgb everyone else was asking him for a photo and I wanted to find out who he was in a fun/cheeky way + I felt left out + I luv celebs — James Malcolm (@DieJamesMalcolm) January 18, 2017
@DieJamesMalcolm Cave is an artist, not a 'celeb'. Bit of a line between the two, don't you reckon? — Mike McGrath-Bryan (@mike_mcgb) January 18, 2017
Artists can be celebrities, pal. Ignore him, James.× Presidential election has political experts painting Utah a paler shade of red
SALT LAKE CITY — Big-name statisticians and political prognosticators are starting to paint Utah pink instead of red, noting that the nation’s most reliably Republican state could turn left in 2016.
The Rothenberg/Gonzalez Political Report, Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia, and Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com have all moved Utah from “safe” to “likely” Republican columns.
Of course, pink is still a shade of red, and no one is predicting a Clinton win.
“I’ve been wrong about every prediction this cycle,” said Utah’s Lt. Governor, Spencer Cox, a Republican who can’t bring himself to endorse Donald Trump.
“In Utah, people look at the person and the character, and many of us are finding that lacking in both candidates,” said Cox, referring to his conversations with other Utah Republicans.
Cox points to an internal poll from Mia Love he says showed a three-way tie between Hillary Clinton, Trump, and Libertarian Candidate Gary Johnson.
“You would have to have someone like Mitt Romney come out and say he’s supporting [Gary Johnson]. I know there’s been some discussion of that recently,” said Cox.
Former Executive Director of the Utah Democratic Party, Matt Lyon, says he sees Utah as a possibility for Clinton this year.
“Regardless of how much people are predicting politics, this election is all over the map,” said Lyon.
Lyon’s reasoning is similar to Cox’s, that Utahns can’t bring themselves to support Trump, who they perceive as immoral.
“Donald Trump does not represent what Utahns care about,” Lyon said.
Still, Cox says Utah Republicans feel the same about Hillary Clinton, which is why he’s still thinking about other candidates.
“Yeah, I’m looking at Johnson. I’m looking at everybody,” Cox said.Story highlights Gay conservatives are undertaking the most coordinated effort yet to change the GOP's position on same-sex marriage
They are working to change the party's platform to'respect... all families'
Young Conservatives are focusing on the early presidential nominating states
The head of the Iowa Republican Party said it's going to be a tough sell for the rank and file
Gay conservatives are undertaking the most coordinated effort yet to change the Republican Party's position on same-sex marriage. Their approach: one state and one Republican activist at a time.
While the official stance of the Republican Party says the "the union of one man and one woman must be upheld as the national standard," conservative same-sex marriage advocates want to change that.
Young Conservatives for Freedom to Marry hopes that by the time the Republican convention rolls around in 2016, they will have recruited or persuaded enough like-minded party activists and young conservatives to remove the restrictive language and replace it with this: "We encourage and welcome a thoughtful conversation among Republicans about the meaning and importance of marriage, and commit our Party to respect for all families and fairness and freedom for all Americans."
To accomplish that goal, Freedom to Marry, a nonpartisan advocacy group, has launched a national grassroots campaign targeting Republican activists -- the most powerful impediment to marriage freedom in the party -- in key presidential nominating states that they can "agree to disagree" on same-sex marriage.
Tyler Deaton, campaign manager at Young Conservatives for Freedom to Marry, said they are not looking for an endorsement of same-sex marriage, "but that it's a valid point of view."
JUST WATCHED Court strikes down same-sex marriage ban Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Court strikes down same-sex marriage ban 01:10
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Their campaign is targeted and funded. They have launched in the first four and arguably most influential of the presidential nominating states: New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina. And the national organization Freedom to Marry has committed $1 million to the effort.
Young Conservatives thinks that momentum is on its side. More Republicans are announcing their support for same-sex marriage. Three openly gay Republicans ran for Congress this year (one lost in the primaries) and Republican lawmakers are slowly announcing their support.
In addition, Young Conservatives point to a New York Times public opinion poll that shows 40% of Republicans -- and 56% of Republicans under age 45 -- support same-sex marriage.
The group just completed its lobbying campaign in Nevada, which might be their easiest stop, since the state party, which leans libertarian, has officially made marriage a non-issue by stripping all social issues from its platform.
Libertarian-minded Republican Clark County Assemblywoman Michele Fiore said she is working with Young Conservatives to convince the national Republican Party to follow Nevada's lead.
"If we truly are the party of freedom, we need to be the party of choice," Fiore, who was raised by a lesbian couple in Brooklyn, New York, told CNN.
But not all states share Nevada's view and not all local Republican chapters are run by libertarians. In Iowa, for instance, where Christian conservatives are a dominant force in the party, resistance is certain.
"Any entity is more than welcome to try and make their case," Jeff Kaufmann, chairman of the Iowa Republican Party said, "but marriage certainly is a difficult swallow for our rank and file."
Young Conservatives' next stop is South Carolina, another state with a socially conservative Republican base. Deaton, who is from the South and is gay, says he understands evangelicals' and Southerners' concerns and believe that he has the ability to at least soften their opposition.
We'll find out when the GOP finalizes its platform in Cleveland in the summer of 2016.BY: Follow @HashtagGriswold
A CNN contributor alleged that former Trump administration national security advisor Michael Flynn had struck a deal with the FBI, only to later clarify she had no evidence to back her claim.
Harvard professor and former Obama administration official Juliette Kayyem made the claim late Saturday night.
"The name I mention often on the show, Mike Flynn, the former national security adviser," she said. "It is starting to look like from my sources and also from open reporting, that Mike Flynn is the one who may have a deal with the FBI, and that's why we have not heard from him for some time."
The accusation quickly advanced among left-leaning Twitter users after Kayyem tweeted out video of the segment.
This is important, and @juliettekayyem is smart and credible. If Trump aides like Flynn cooperate with the FBI, then we may get the truth. https://t.co/NFqcBdfUEr — Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) March 25, 2017
(THREAD) BREAKING: Harvard professor and @CNN political analyst Juliette Kayyem says, per sources, Michael Flynn may have flipped on Trump. pic.twitter.com/kkG4h4gqvw — Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 25, 2017
#Flynn struck a deal with FBI by flipping on #Trump. #Nunes‘s blood is now in the water. https://t.co/jk5aEf19Jr — Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) March 26, 2017
But others were skeptical. Kayyem had alluded to "open reporting" that Flynn was dealing with the FBI, but the only public reporting to that effect came from a highly suspect liberal blog.
In a Facebook post the next day, Kayyem addressed the questions in a Facebook post.
"I did not say on this segment that I have any confirmation that he is actually cooperating or that I have talked to anyone who does," she wrote. "My informed analysis of this case is based on my years of experience in the national security arena."Fresh from the failure of his controversial media reforms the Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has been accused of misleading parliament about the rollout of the national broadband network.
On Thursday afternoon, while journalists were focused on Labor's leadership spill, the company building the NBN conceded what it had refused to admit two days earlier: its targets were no longer realistic.
Accused: Stephen Conroy. Credit:Andrew Meares
The NBN Co's target of ''passing'' 341,000 homes by the end of June was cut by about a third. The company said only between 190,000 and 220,000 premises would be passed by fibre by then. NBN Co counts as passed premises where cable has been laid in the street but the house or apartment is yet to be connected.
Opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull accused Senator Conroy of using ''Labor's leadership crisis as cover for NBN Co's disclosure of its humiliating failure to reach targets it set itself six months ago''.Eurogroup chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem warned Friday that a small group of EU countries may be forced to form a “mini-Schengen” if the bloc fails to resolve its migrant crisis.
”I really don't wish to have that. Such a step would have negative political and economic consequences for us all,” he told German business newspaper Handelsblatt of the possibility of reducing the 26-member passport-free Schengen zone to a core group of just five or six countries.
But Dijsselbloem argued that “we cannot maintain our social welfare state in the long term if the influx of asylum seekers goes on like that”.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Asia and Africa have travelled to Europe, mostly via Greece and along the so-called Balkans route to northern Europe.
The crisis has strained ties within the EU, with mostly newer members such as Hungary taking a firmly anti-migrant stance and northern countries like Germany welcoming those fleeing war.
Urging member states to shoulder their fair share of the migrant burden, Dijsselbloem warned: ”If the EU fails to better secure its external borders, then a smaller group of countries will do so. Because we must protect our society and our high social standards.”
”Then that could be a mini-Schengen, even if that's without a doubt not the best solution,” warned Dijsselbloem.
”Several countries are paying a bigger bill for the migrant crisis as they are hosting the migrants. These are Sweden, Germany, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands. We are in the same situation, that's why we want to work more closely together,” said Dijsselbloem, who is also the Netherlands' finance minister, in a separate interview with Belgian newspaper L'Echo.
The Netherlands is taking over the EU presidency next year, and Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders has said Europe must work to keep the dream of Schengen alive.
Beyond the issues surrounding the record numbers of migrants arriving in the EU, there are growing concerns about border security in the wake of the November 13 jihadist attacks in Paris that claimed 130 lives.
Last week the European Union agreed to rush through reforms to the Schengen zone by the end of the year in the wake of the atrocities carried out by the Islamic State group.
The plan would reform the Schengen border code “to allow systematic and obligatory checks at all external borders for all travellers, including those who benefit from free movement,” French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said last Friday.
[AFP]As I promised a few days ago, I tested 15 homebrews on Neur0n’s VHBL port over the weekend, the ones that were the most mentioned in the comments here. As expected, some of them work, some don’t. Sadly, some major ones don’t work yet and I have no clue why. But remember that the port is not even released yet, so there’s hope we will figure some things out, before or after the release.
So, what were the top 15 homebrews you guys requested me to test? Well, they are described below in three lists, one for homebrews that worked on this upcoming VHBL release, one for those that didn’t pass my tests, and the last one for the few I haven’t tested yet.
For now all my tests were done on a psp. In general, the results on the vita are not too different. It is easier and faster to test on the PSP, as I am trying to build a list of compatible versions before I do similar tests on a Vita.
Homebrews that work
(note: links are to the specific versions that I tested, which might not be the latest version for each homebrew. In general, it is recommended to get the latest version, but sometimes VHBL gives us less choice):
DaedalusX64 (N64 emulator). I tested an early build of DaedalusX64 that was specially crafted for HBL, and it works. It is slow, but it runs. I haven’t tested recent builds. Remember that DaedalusX64, even on CFW, rarely runs at full speed, so I’m on the fence about saying it “works” on VHBL. I tested with Ocarina of Time and it was extremely slow.
GPSP (GBA Emulator). The version I tested is one of the “unofficial kai” builds. Savestates seem to work fine as far as I can tell. I tested Final Fantasy tactics advanced
(GBA Emulator). The version I tested is one of the “unofficial kai” builds. Savestates seem to work fine as far as I can tell. I tested Final Fantasy tactics advanced NesterJ (NES emulator). Per many people’s request, I’ve tested the AoEX version of NesterJ. It worked fine with my test of “bomberman”, although I couldn’t figure out how to show the emulator’s menu once inside a game.
(NES emulator). Per many people’s request, I’ve tested the AoEX version of NesterJ. It worked fine with my test of “bomberman”, although I couldn’t figure out how to show the emulator’s menu once inside a game. Masterboy (Sega Master System / Game boy Color emulator). The latest version 2.10 works fine, nothing much to say. I tested wonderboy 3 on SMS, and some Dragon Ball Z card game on GBC.
(Sega Master System / Game boy Color emulator). The latest version 2.10 works fine, nothing much to say. I tested wonderboy 3 on SMS, and some Dragon Ball Z card game on GBC. Picodrive. The Sega Genesis emulator is flawless as long as you set the sound to 44kHz in the options. I tested Aladdin and Streets of Rage 3
Bookr. Tested the 0.8.1 version (basically the latest), the PDF reader for psp works, as usual, very well on VHBL.
. Tested the 0.8.1 version (basically the latest), the PDF reader for psp works, as usual, very well on VHBL. Nazi Zombies Portable. This quake mod in which you have to defend a barricade against a horde of Nazi zombies works fine on VHBL. Loading times are quite long, but other than that it works fine.
. This quake mod in which you have to defend a barricade against a horde of Nazi zombies works fine on VHBL. Loading times are quite long, but other than that it works fine. Wagic 0.18.6. The least I would expect is for my own homebrew to work on VHBL :D. In all fairness, Wagic went through lots of tweaking when we initially created HBL, and is now made to run in a fairly restricted environment such as the one provided by HBL. Wagic is a heroic-fantasy collectible card game.
. The least I would expect is for my own homebrew to work on VHBL :D. In all fairness, Wagic went through lots of tweaking when we initially created HBL, and is now made to run in a fairly restricted environment such as the one provided by HBL. Wagic is a heroic-fantasy collectible card game. Cave Story. No surprise, this platform/rpg game has always worked fine on VHBL so far.
. No surprise, this platform/rpg game has always worked fine on VHBL so far. Doom PSP and Doom Legacy. They both have their pros and cons, so choose the one you like. I need to try Heretic on those, as I was a big fan of that game.
Homebrews that don’t work
For all these homebrews, unless specified otherwise, I am still looking for solutions, so don’t give up hope, but don’t assume they will be compatible when we release.
ScummVM. Yup,too bad… I’ve tested both versions 1.0.0 and the latest 1.4.1 of this great point and click adventure game engine. They don’t fail at the same step, but for now the port is not usable in VHBL. The crash is not caught by pslink so I am not sure what’s going on… it could be an error with audio functions, but this is strange since they are all hooked correctly as far as I can tell.
. Yup,too bad… I’ve tested both versions 1.0.0 and the latest 1.4.1 of this great point and click adventure game engine. They don’t fail at the same step, but for now the port is not usable in VHBL. The crash is not caught by pslink so I am not sure what’s going on… it could be an error with audio functions, but this is strange since they are all hooked correctly as far as I can tell. Geometry War Portable. The clone of the famous Atari game fails at creating some audio thread.
. The clone of the famous Atari game fails at creating some audio thread. Snes9xTYL. This one’s a let down… sadly, the famous Super NES emulator fails at the intro screen, and I am not sure why. I would guess it is also audio related, but can’t tell since psplink does not catch the crash. Snes9xTYL is open source so that could really help to debug, but I can’t figure out how to compile it. If you manage to compile this homebrew and want to help please get in touch with me.
. This one’s a let down… sadly, the famous Super NES emulator fails at the intro screen, and I am not sure why. I would guess it is also audio related, but can’t tell since psplink does not catch the crash. Snes9xTYL is open source so that could really help to debug, but I can’t figure out how to compile it. If you manage to compile this homebrew and want to help please get in touch with me. PSP Revolution gives me a crash just after loading. Here again, a wild guess is that some audio function is failing… No Dance Dance revolution on VHBL for now 🙁
gives me a crash just after loading. Here again, a wild guess is that some audio function is failing… No Dance Dance revolution on VHBL for now 🙁 S4inexcraft: This popular Lamecraft mod still used the PSP’s OSK, which doesn’t work on the Vita. I didn’t bother testing any further since this is a “no go” for the Vita. If the new keyboard from the latest Lamecraft release gets integrated into S4inexcraft, I’ll give it a try again.
Homebrews I haven’t tested yet (but I plan to)
yMenu. I’ll see if this alternate VHBL menu works fine on this VHBL release. It uses the same engine as Wagic so I am assuming it will work ok.
. I’ll see if this alternate VHBL menu works fine on this VHBL release. It uses the same engine as Wagic so I am assuming it will work ok. Lamecraft. I haven’t tested it yet simply because I tested S4inexcraft instead
. I haven’t tested it yet simply because I tested S4inexcraft instead Some NeoGeo emulator (MVSPSP was the most requested). Neogeo emulators are, for some reason, always super difficult to run, maybe because they require dozens of external files? I don’t know, I didn’t try too hard, but the versions I found in my quick tests refused to start even on a CFW, so I need to try a bit harder.
I have contacted Neur0n to see if he has done some testing on his end. It is possible that some other versions of specific homebrews end up working with VHBL.
These tests were conducted on a PSP (I will do the next tests on Vita) for the upcoming release of VHBL. VHBL is a homebrew loader for the PS Vita. It requires you to buy a specific PSP game on the PSN in order to run. The name of that game will most likely be announced through one of our ninja releases (although this depends on the plans of the exploit owner, in this case, Neur0n). If you don’t know how these releases work yet, figure it out :). As I type this, the release is scheduled for “some time after firmware 1.80 is released”.(GERMANY OUT) USA California Los Angeles View at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (also called as the Grand Old Lady) during an American Football play - ca. 1931 - Photographer: Emil Otto Hoppe - Published by: 'Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung' 11.11.1931 Vintage property of ullstein bild (Photo by Emil Otto Hoppe/ullstein bild via Getty Images)
USC Basketball vs. Pepperdine: Trojans Romp, Off To Best Start Since 1971
USC Basketball vs. Pepperdine: Trojans Romp, Off To Best Start Since 1971 by Alicia de Artola
Eighty-five years ago, on December 12, 1931, the USC football team put together a historic 60-0 victory over the Georgia Bulldogs at the Coliseum.
The 1931 USC Trojans were a dandy, winning their third national championship in four seasons under legendary head coach Howard Jones.
Led by four All-Americans including Johnny Baker and Erny Pinckert, they won their seven Pacific Coast Conference games by a combined score of 259 to 13. USC then became the darlings of college football by snapping Notre Dame’s 26-game winning streak with a 16-14 win in South Bend.
But it was their pre-Rose Bowl tune up on December 12th against Georgia that was truly historic.
The barnstorming Bulldogs, who had already won games at Yale and NYU, made the cross-country trip to Los Angeles with an 8-1 record. A 20-7 home loss to Rose Bowl participant Tulane was their only blemish.
To this day, the 60-point margin of defeat is the worst Georgia has ever suffered.
USC changed that. Jones’s team affectionately known as the ‘Thundering Herd’ trampled Georgia, winning 60-0.
Bulldog head coach Harry Mehre said after the game, “[USC is] the greatest team I have ever seen.”
To this day, the 60-point margin of defeat is the worst Georgia has ever suffered. The 60 points are the most they’ve ever allowed.
RELATED: Five USC Football Records That Will Never Be Broken
That’s not the case for USC, whose record margin of victory was set with an 80-0 win over Pomona in 1925. More recently, you might remember the 69-0 win over Washington State in 2008.
The Daily Trojan was of course on the scene for the Georgia drubbing. Here’s what reporter Carlos Escudero wrote of the game in the December 14, 1931 edition of the paper:
To the touchdown tune of ‘Marching Through Georgia on a Steam Roller,’ the inexorable Trojan avalanche of red and gold swept back the University of Georgia’s courageous team Saturday in the Olympic stadium, 60 to 0, overpowering the invaders from the south through sheer tearing, smashing power. […] If the Georgia defense crumpled under the merciless hammering, it can be said for their attack that it was daring, brilliant at times, marred by miscues at others, but on the whole good enough to score on any other team not in position to pass out such killing battering as Troy was giving.
Whew.
Georgia returned to the Coliseum two years later, losing by a more respectable margin of 31-0. The Trojans and Bulldogs have only played once since, meeting for a one-off game at the Coliseum in 1960, a 10-3 tilt in favor of Troy.
The teams were rumored to meet in a future non-conference game during the 2020s, but Georgia ultimately settled on a home-and-home series with UCLA.Uncle Sam and the Saudi Split
Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s richest and most powerful state, is once again at loggerheads with the United States, its longtime patron, oil customer, and weapons dealer. The current split opened with the U.S. abandonment of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in January and widened as President Barack Obama’s administration haltingly embraced pro-democracy demands from the Arab street — a trend the kingdom staunchly and unequivocally opposes.
Those differences are yet again on painful display this week at the United Nations, where Saudi Arabia will join other Arab countries — and over 100 other U.N. members — in supporting the recognition of a Palestinian state in the world body, a move the United States has committed itself to opposing strenuously on behalf of its closest Middle East ally, Israel.
But Saudi Arabia and the United States have been at odds for much of the last decade, over not just Palestine but also terrorism, energy policy, and the Iraq war. The question is whether repeated strains in the relationship starting even before the 9/11 attacks are leading toward a substantive shift in the kingdom’s attitude toward its main foreign protector for the past seven decades. This is a question of major strategic importance for the United States given the kingdom’s role as the world’s top oil producer in terms of capacity (12.5 million barrels a day) and its No. 4 ranking in foreign exchange holdings ($540 billion). The Saudis continue to hold out against demands from some other oil producers for payment in currency other than the U.S. dollar, partly or totally. What would be the consequences if they agreed to a change in this policy? Is Obama willing to find out?
The United States and Saudi Arabia have always had trouble describing how they relate to each other. For decades, the core of the relationship was summed up in the cryptic description of "oil for security," meaning assured Saudi oil supplies at reasonable prices in return for assured U.S. security of the kingdom against its external enemies, be it Iraq, Iran, or al Qaeda.
In the early 1970s, the two countries coined the term "special relationship," even while Saudi Arabia steadfastly refused to become a "non-NATO ally" of the United States, like Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan, or sign any formal defense agreements. After 9/11, neither side spoke any longer |
used Photoshop to remove the central elements, leaving behind the selection border of each image as an animated gif.
The artist explains that a common theme in his work is the social and cultural side of technology. “The web is a perfect example of how technology transforms society, and we’re right amidst it. This is where the main influence for my work stems from, examining how we interact with the web and how it might change.”With CSS filter effects and blend modes, we can now leverage various techniques for styling images directly in the browser. However, creating aesthetic theming isn't all that filter effects are good for. You can use filters to indicate hover state, hide passwords, and now—for web performance.
While playing with profiling performance wins of using blend modes for duotone image effects (I'll write up an article on this soon), I discovered something even more exciting. A major image optimization win! The idea is to reduce image contrast in the source image, reducing its file size, then boosting the contrast back up with CSS filters!
Start with your image, then remove the contrast, and then reapply it with CSS filters.
How It Works
Let's put a point on exactly how this works:
Reduce image contrast using a linear transform function (Photoshop can do this) Apply a contrast filter in CSS to the image to make up for the contrast removal
Step one involves opening your image in a program that lets you linearly reduce contrast in a linear way. Photoshop's legacy mode does a good job at this (Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast):
You get to this screen via Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast in Photoshop CC.
Not all programs use the same functions to apply image transforms (for example, this would not work with the macOS default image editor, since it uses a different technique to reduct contrast). A lot of the work done to build image effects into the browser was initially done by Adobe, so it makes sense that Photoshop's Legacy Mode aligns with browser image effects.
Then, we apply some CSS filters to our image. The filters we'll be using are contrast and (a little bit of) brightness. With the 50% Legacy Photoshop reduction, I applied filter: contrast(1.75) brightness(1.2); to each image.
Major Savings
This technique is very effective for reducing image size and therefore the overall weight of your page. In the following study, I used 4 vibrant photos taken on an iPhone, applied a 50% reduction in contrast using Photoshop Legacy Mode, saved each photo at Maximum quality (10), and then applied filter: contrast(1.75) brightness(1.2); to each image. These are the results:
You can play with the live demo here to check it out for yourself!
In each of the above cases, we saved between 23% and 28% in image size by reducing and reapplying the contrast using CSS filters. This is with saving each of the images at maximum quality.
If you look closely, you can see some legitimate losses in image quality. This is especially true with majority-dark images. so this technique is not perfect, but it definitely proves image savings in an interesting way.
Browser Support Considerations
Be aware that browser support for CSS filters is "pretty good".
This browser support data is from Caniuse, which has more detail. A number indicates that browser supports the feature at that version and up. Desktop Chrome Opera Firefox IE Edge Safari 18* 15* 35 No 18 6* Mobile / Tablet iOS Safari Opera Mobile Opera Mini Android Android Chrome Android Firefox 6.0-6.1* 46 No 4.4* 71 64
As you can see, Internet Explorer and Opera Mini lack support. Edge 16 (the current latest version) supports CSS filters and this technique works like a charm. You'll have to decide if a reduced-contrast image as a fallback is acceptable or not.
What About Repainting?
You may be thinking: "but while we're saving in image size, we're putting more work on the browser, wouldn't this affect performance?" That's a great question! CSS filters do trigger a repaint because they set off window.getComputedStyle(). Let's profile our example.
What I did was open an incognito window in Chrome, disable JavaScript (just to be certain for the extensions I have), set the network to "Slow 3G" and set the CPU to a 6x slowdown:
With a 6x CPU slowdown, the longest Paint Raster took 0.27 ms, AKA 0.00027 seconds.
While the images took a while to load in, the actual repaint was pretty quick. With a 6x CPU slowdown, the longest individual Rasterize Paint took 0.27 ms, AKA 0.00027 seconds.
CSS filters originated from SVG filters, and are relatively browser optimized versions of the most popular SVG filter effect transformations. So I think its pretty safe to use as progressive enhancement at this point (being aware of IE users and Opera Mini users!).
Conclusion and the Future
There are still major savings to be had when reducing image quality (again, in this small study, the images were saved at high qualities for more of a balanced result). Running images through optimizers like ImageOptim, and sending smaller image file sizes based on screen sized (like responsive images in HTML or CSS) will give you even bigger savings.
In the web performance optimization world, I find image performance the most effective thing we can do to reduce web cruft and data for our users, since images are the largest chunk of what we send on the web (by far). If we can start leveraging modern CSS to help lift some of the weight of our images, we can look into a whole new world of optimization solutions.
For example, this could potentially be taken even further, playing with other CSS filters such as saturate and brightness. We could leverage automation tools like Gulp and Webpack to apply the image effects for us, just as we use automation tools to run our images through optimizers. Blending this technique with other best practices for image optimization, can lead to major savings in the pixel-based assets we're sending our users.It's amazing what qualifies for a tax break in Australia these days.
The climate science misinformation promotion unit at the Institute of Public Affairs, a Melbourne-based “free market” think tank, are currently passing the hat around to raise cash to publish a book on climate change.
The IPA has been pushing and promoting climate science denial since the late 1980s, when it published an article in its magazine asking if there really was a greenhouse effect.
According to an email to supporters earlier this month from the IPA’s executive director John Roskam, the think tank has raised $144,545 towards a $175,000 target to publish a book Climate Change: The Facts 2014.
Roskam reminded supporters that their donation for the book would be “tax deductible” and those prepared to part with $400 or more more would even get their name on the back cover.
The list of chapter authors is a predictable line up of denialists and contrarians picked from the blogosphere, conservative media outlets and the associates of secretly funded conservative think tanks.
They include Nigel Lawson, Stewart Franks, Bill Kininmonth, Mark Steyn, Donna Laframboise, Pat Michaels, Jennifer Marohasy, Andrew Bolt, Richard Lindzen, Jo Nova, Anthony Watts, James Delingpole, Bob Carter, Ross McKitrick and Ian Plimer.
Yep. A few Aussies will have slightly fatter tax refunds (or thinner bills) in exchange for funding climate science denialism and contrarianism from a list of usual suspects.
That means government-endorsed tax breaks to promote the work of James Delingpole — a UK writer and “interpreter of interpretations” who thinks that climate research is a “junk science boondoggle” and who has compared the wind industry to a pedophile ring.
The IPA will surely be crossing its fingers that Delingpole’s selection of “facts” improves from his 2012 book Killing The Earth To Save It, published by Connor Court (where IPA executive director John Roskam is on the editorial board).
There, Delingpole sourced a passage from a website called “Green Agenda” which he described as “probably [the] best analysis” of the Club of Rome’s influence on environmental policies.
The “Green Agenda” website is run by fundamentalist Christian “end of times” preachers who warn, amongst many other things, that we should all be watching out for “four Angels and three 'Frog-like' evil spirits”.
Those tax incentives will benefit the IPA-endorsed opinions of Mark Steyn, a Canadian conservative currently being sued for libel by climate change scientist Dr. Michael Mann.
Or a teeny bit less in the Australian government’s tax pool so that Ian Plimer, a geologist and mining industry director, can tell you – again - that climate change isn’t caused by increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Research has found that almost all books sceptical of the risks of human-caused climate change have links to conservative think tanks. As well as being published by one, the IPA's offering has among the authors associates of think tanks including the Cato Institute (Lindzen, Michaels), the IPA (Carter), the Global Warming Policy Foundation (Lawson) and the Frontier Center for Public Policy (Laframboise).
This is in fact the second time the IPA has released a publication erroneously titled Climate Change: The Facts. The first incarnation, released in 2010, included contributions from a similar list of climate sceptics. That book also took contributions from Lawson, Plimer, Lindzen and Kininmonth, alongside the likes of Lord Monckton and Professor Richard Tol.
As well as gathering cash for its latest climate screed, the IPA is also readying itself to promote one of the authors on a four-city speaking tour starting at the end of this month.
Flying in from the US will be Pat Michaels of the Cato Institute, who once estimated that about 40 per cent of his funding came from the petroleum industry.
The IPA doesn’t say where its funding comes from, but they seem to have plenty of cash coming in.
In its accounts ending June 2012, the Melbourne organisation declared an income of $3.95 million, of which $2.2 million came in straight donations.
Enough for a book or two, you’d think?FILE - In this Oct. 8, 2000, file photo, New York Jets quarterback Ray Lucas (6) reacts after he fumbled as he was hit from behind while attempting to throw a pass during an NFL football game against the Pittsburgh Steelers at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. The 39-year-old Lucas has been clean and sober for more than a year after struggling for years with an addiction to prescription painkillers. He wants to share his story whenever he can as a cautionary tale to NFL rookies and veterans alike--and people struggling with addictions. It's nothing to be embarrassed of, he wants them to know, and there's help out there, such as the website www.TurnToHelp.com. (AP Photo/Daniel Hulshizer, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Ray Lucas still has his share of bad days, when his body aches and his mind wanders to the dark place he once thought he'd never leave.
The former NFL quarterback is a recovering addict. And, he cherishes the chance to open his eyes in the morning. After all, for Lucas, dying once seemed a lot easier than living.
"I live day by day and one day at a time," Lucas said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday. "I still have a lot of pain that I deal with, but I relish in the fact that sometimes you've got to walk through hell to get to heaven."
Heaven is being the husband Lucas knew he wasn't. It's being the father to the three daughters who just wanted a minute of his time. It's being the son, brother and friend that everyone missed.
"I'm living a dream now," Lucas said, "and it's a far cry from where I was before."
The 39-year-old Lucas struggled for years with an addiction to prescription painkillers. He shares his story as a cautionary tale to NFL rookies and veterans alike — and to help people struggling with addictions. He wants them to know they can get their lives back, starting by using the website www.TurnToHelp.com.
The site, sponsored by Reckitt Benckiser Pharmaceuticals, offers people the chance to find doctors who specialize in dealing with opioid addictions for discreet office visits — rather than treatment facilities that might require lengthy stays.
"The hardest thing for an addict to do is ask for help," Lucas said. "We don't want anybody to know who we are or what we think we are. It's, 'I'm ashamed of myself,' or, 'I'm embarrassed.' For stuff like this website to come out, it's game-changing for people who suffer from addiction."
Lucas appeared to have it all a few years ago. He was a popular quarterback who had stints with the Patriots, Jets, Dolphins and Ravens during a seven-year NFL career that ended in 2003. He stayed in the game in retirement by becoming an Emmy award-winning studio analyst who's not afraid to speak his mind about the Jets for SportsNet New York.
But, he harbored a dark secret that was gradually tearing his life apart. He was addicted to prescription painkillers after suffering severe neck injuries while playing football. Lucas was popping pills like candy — about 800 a month — and wondering where it all went wrong.
"When I was going through the throes of addiction, I would pass by mirrors and didn't know who I was looking at," Lucas said. "It was pretty tough to look at yourself in the mirror, especially when you wanted to punch the guy you were looking at."
A deep depression led to suicidal thoughts. He told HBO's "Real Sports" last year that he tried to end it all one day by planning to drive his car off the George Washington Bridge.
"That's the public version, but there were many other times where I tried to do it myself by taking 50 pills a night and praying that I wouldn't wake up because life wasn't worth living," Lucas said. "I wasn't living. I was killing myself from the inside."
Lucas doesn't blame the NFL or the game he played for so long. Professional football is violent by nature, he said, and taking painkillers is all part of it.
"I don't think the NFL is turning out addicts," he said. "I'm not saying that. This is bigger than the NFL. What I'm saying is that when you have prolonged use of a certain narcotic, your tolerance level goes way through the roof, and when you need medication, it's going to take 10 times more pills than the normal human being needs to take."
He spoke of his plight as news broke about the death of former All-Pro linebacker Junior Seau, who was found shot to death at his home Wednesday morning in what police said appeared to be a suicide. Lucas made no comments about Seau, whose death was still under investigation.
"For two years, I was in a black hole," Lucas said. "I was in an abyss. It was like being in a hole and people reaching out their hands and you're trying to reach them, but you're an inch away and you can't grab it. Every day, that hole gets deeper and that arm that you're looking to grab gets farther and farther away where you just don't care about everyday life anymore."
He grew distant from his wife, Cecilia, and three daughters. But they never gave up hope that they'd get back the man they loved.There are some towns in St. Louis County that have issued more traffic citations than there are residents.
"These are people who make the same mistakes you or I do – speeding, not wearing a seatbelt, forgetting to get your car inspected on time." – Thomas Harvey
The shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri exposed a long history of simmering racial tensions between a largely black community and a primarily white police force.Protesters say Brown's death is a horrific consequence of that tension. But black residents here, and elsewhere in St. Louis County, say they've long been subjected to harassment from law enforcement that's more low grade in nature. One of the key institutional mechanisms used to do that has been traffic enforcement.Police spend an inordinate amount of time rooting out petty motoring offenses rather than protecting these communities, according to a meticulous new report in The Washington Post.In Florissant, a St. Louis County town near Ferguson of roughly 52,000 people, for example, black people make up 27 percent of the population, but represent 71 percent of drivers pulled over by police officers. Last year, the town issued 29,072 traffic citations, according to statistics from the Missouri attorney general's office.Compare that to, say, Lee's Summit, a suburb of Kansas City that has a population of 92,000. Despite it being a much larger city, The Post reports, the police force in Lee's Summit issued only 9,651 tickets and collected half as much revenue from traffic enforcement.In some cases, The Post reports, there are some towns in St. Louis County that have issued more traffic citations than there are residents. Other municipalities here have issued more arrest warrants over traffic offenses than there are residents.These warrants often begin a spiral for poor residents who cannot afford fines, which then beget late fees and additional financial penalties, which land them in jail, which causes them to miss work and so on. Outstanding warrants impede social organizations from placing people in housing or job-training programs."These aren't violent criminals," Thomas Harvey, a lawyer with the Arch City Defenders, tells The Post. "These are people who make the same mistakes you or I do – speeding, not wearing a seatbelt, forgetting to get your car inspected on time. The difference is that they don't have the money to pay the fines. Or they have kids, or jobs that don't allow them to take time off for two or three court appearances. When you can't pay the fines, you get fined for that too. And when you can't get to court, you get an arrest warrant."The Post report details how St. Louis County municipalities criminalizes poverty via traffic enforcement in great detail.Occasionally, these traffic-enforcement cases turn violent. The Post didn't examine it in this particular story, but consider the plight of motorist Henry Davis, who wound up in Ferguson merely because he missed an exit during a heavy rainstorm, then pulled to the side of the highway because he couldn't see.Police in Ferguson ran his license plate and discovered an outstanding warrant – for a different Henry Davis. By the time that mistake was discovered, Davis had already been hauled off to jail, where he tells The Daily Beast four officers beat him while he was handcuffed.They later charged him with destruction of property – for bleeding on their uniforms.The Future is Here: Meet the Neural Lace
Elon Musk shocked the tech world this past summer when he explained both the concept and need for a neural lace at the 2016 Recode Code Conference.
The Neural Lace is a concept that has been a staple of science fiction. It’s the idea of capturing the processes of the human mind with a tool and enhancing them to better suit our environment and lifestyle in one large, wirelessly connected interface among humans. Recently, this concept has taken a step forward in transitioning from the realm of fiction to non-fiction.
With their results published in Nature Nanotechnology, scientist Charles Lieber and his team have developed syringe-injectable electronics. Thus far, they has only been tested on live mice, but the results are promising. These electronics assist in monitoring brain activity, delivering treatment, and can even enhance brain activity. While human trials are years away, and the neural lace is currently a wired technology, the reason why Elon Musk finds it imperative is because of what it could do.
Why We Need It
Elon Musk is making it very clear that the best way to avoid a dystopian nightmare is to form a symbiosis with machines. “The need for this, he said on Monday in Dubai, could “achieve a symbiosis between human and machine intelligence, and maybe solves the control problem and the usefulness problem.” Since computers are able to transmit information an exponentially quicker than humans, becoming “one” with them would allow humans to stay relevant in an age where automation and technology threaten our usefulness as organic organisms. Additionally, having a wireless interface would help to keep us on a similar playing field—essentially by making us part machine. So, while this cyborg idea of a future sounds ludicrous, when you consider how much of our reality is already sci-fi inspired, it makes a little bit more sense.Name Samsung SmartThings Smart Home Hub Wink WNKHUB-2US 2 Smart home hub White Samsung ET-WV530B Smart Wi-Fi System 4x4 MIMO 100 White Item Price from $75.00 from $180.85 from $74.00 Buy Now Buy on Amazon Buy on Amazon Buy on Amazon Name Samsung SmartThings Smart Home Hub Item Price from $75.00 Buy Now Buy on Amazon Name Wink WNKHUB-2US 2 Smart home hub White Item Price from $180.85 Buy Now Buy on Amazon Name Samsung ET-WV530B Smart Wi-Fi System 4x4 MIMO 100 White Item Price from $74.00 Buy Now Buy on Amazon
IFTTT (If This Then That) is one of the most popular programs for home automation that is used, however some people want to find IFTTT Alternatives for a number of reasons. IFTTT can be used for things such as your sonos, and a whole lot more.
Many smart home owners use it to set up task automation — and they either do not like the format or want to do something that IFTTT is not the best for.
If you’re unfamiliar with IFTTT, think of as a way to tell your smart home devices what to do. It’s excellent for simple applications.
For example, if you want your lights to dim at evening, you can set that up with IFTTT. You can create routines called recipes that allow you to automate more in your home.
But is it the absolute best option for automation?
Some smart home owners don’t like the lack of versatility that comes with IFTTT. You can only do one thing at a time, and some people have said that it can be unreliable.
In this article, we’ll explore 4 IFTTT alternatives that may be better for smart homes.
4 IFTTT Alternatives:
Yonomi
Yonomi is an app with one goal––to connect all of your smart devices.
Yonomi is basically a smart hub in app form. Like the Samsung SmartThings system, Yonomi acts as a central hub or bridge that various devices can use to communicate with each other and work in sync.
The app is free, and it supports most popular smart home devices, including the Amazon Echo, August Smart Lock, and Nest Learning Thermostat.
It can do some pretty cool things. For example, when you get a call, Yonomi will pause any music playing so you don’t miss the call. It can also adjust lights when you want to have a movie night.
Like IFTTT, you can use Yonomi to command your devices, but Yonomi allows you to create full automation routines to control multiple devices any way you want to.
You can get complex or stay simple with Yonomi. The app is easy to use, so creating routines is a breeze.
The biggest downside of Yonomi is that it doesn’t support some of the big smart home devices.
Namely, Yonomi doesn’t work with Google Home or Ecobee devices. Most other IFTTT alternatives will work with these devices, so that’s something to consider.
Otherwise, Yonomi is a nice and free app with the ability to connect your smart home. If you like the user interface, and if it works with all your devices, give it a try.
Stringify
Stringify is a more full-featured alternative that expands on IFTTT’s basic capabilities.
If you’ve ever used Zapier, you’ll find it easy to use Stringify. Both deal with multi-step automation sequences instead of just the two-step sequences that you can create IFTTT.
Stringify uses Flows, which are series of actions. For example, you can create a Flow that lets you turn on your smart hub and lights and get a weather notification all at the same time.
You can create custom Flows from the ground up using Stringify, which means you can create completely customized sequences so you can automate your home exactly the way you want.
As a bonus, the Stringify blog often posts about smart home integrations. They share different ideas for automations and then tell you how to create Flows to make those ideas happen.
Stringify works with many of the most popular smart home devices, including products by Nest, Philips Hue, and Amazon.
The Stringify app is available for iOS and Android, and it’s completely free. You’re only a few clicks away from creating amazing automation for your smart home.
Tasker (Only On Android)
If you use Android devices, you can set up Tasker to control your smart home.
At just $3, the app is an inexpensive choice to replace IFTTT. It’s a popular app for automation in general, but it’s gaining traction among smart home users who want a little more flexibility in automation. If you’re buying up smart home gear, $3 should not be a huge deal at all (after all — your typical smart home product is in the $50 range).
Tasker is an extremely versatile app that can allow you to create automation sequences that other apps can’t handle. For example, you can flick your phone and turn on your lights — and do a lot of the things that IFTTT can. The possibilities are really endless and enable to fully customize your home as you see fit.
The major downside is that it’s only available for Android, so iPhone or Windows Phone users won’t be able to use the app. However Android is incredibly common, and if you don’t want to buy a $1,000 Iphone, represents an excellent choice to run your smart home off of.
The other downside is that it will take a little bit more work to set up and there is not as much as support as IFTTT. Tasker isn’t as intuitive as IFTTT, so it’ll take you some time to get everything ready.
However, once you’re done with the initial setup, you’ll have seamless automation, and you’ll be able to do more than what’s possible with IFTTT. One of the main benefits is that it is very easy to use (click through to the Google Play store to see some of the things that are possible),
For the right person, Tasker is an amazing app that can do a lot. If you have an Android device, this could be the definitive automation software for you.
Integromat
Integromat finishes up our list of IFTTT alternatives, and it’s a great option. You can find their site at https://www.integromat.com/en.
Although Integromat is a general automation app, it can be used for smart homes. They have support for hundreds of applications and are a sandbox that lets do you almost whatever you want.
It works in the same way as most of the other IFTTT alternatives do, but it offers a different interface and user experience. You might prefer it to the other options on this list.
If you’re after something simple that’s only a step up from IFTTT, Integromat is a good option. However, the free plan may be a bit limiting for people who use smart home devices constantly. If your that into your smart home it might be a good idea to pay and get access to all of the advanced features.
Currently, Integromat doesn’t list any compatible smart home devices, but they do note that it can be used for smart applications. You might have to inquire about compatible devices to make sure your smart home will work with the app.
Conclusion
There are lots of IFTTT alternatives out there, but these are our favorites — it’s really up to you which one will be best for your smart home. Competitors have been coming out fairly rapidly, and by the time you read this there may be a better choice in the market over these current options. If you’re looking for more posts on IFTTT
They take IFTTT’s abilities and add to them so you get way more functionality. And all of these apps are simple to learn and use, so you won’t spend hours trying to figure out how to make it all work.
If IFTTT just isn’t cutting it anymore, give one of these options a try — they may be better for your setup and improve your home dramatically.
Alternatively, check out our post on Google Home IFTTT and Amazon Alexa IFTTT.
Are you going to use one of these IFTTT alternatives, or are you sticking with IFTTT? Tell us what you’re choosing and why in the comments.
Like this: Like Loading...Union Bank is a proud sponsor of Lost LA.
With the combined equivalent of 14 million standard shipping containers moving through San Pedro Bay's harbor each year, it's likely that many of the TVs, toys, and other imported goods sold at deep discount this Black Friday will have passed through the region's twin seaports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Now, as frenzied shoppers fight off the effects of tryptophan in their hunt for sales, explore the story of Southern California's unlikely harbor – and how it came to be divided between two cities – through selected images from the region's photographic archives.
San Francisco and San Diego both benefit from fine natural harbors, but topography forced Los Angeles to create its own; before improvements, the San Pedro Bay offered only partial shelter from winds and seas, and features like a sandbar in the middle of the bay and mudflats along the shore made the bay less than an ideal site for shipping.
S2 E6: Pacific Rim (Trailer)
Supply ships anchored off San Pedro almost as soon as the Spanish colonized the region, but it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that Los Angeles began improving its ersatz harbor. To bolster his business transporting goods and passengers along the 21-mile route between Los Angeles and the San Pedro shoreline, teamster Phineas Banning dredged a channel through the bay's marshes and built a landing in the 1850s. Banning later doubled down on his investments, developing the harbor town of Wilmington and overseeing construction of the region's first railroad, the Los Angeles & San Pedro.
In the 1890s, Santa Monica – an even more unlikely place for a harbor – nearly replaced San Pedro as the region's major shipping port. In an attempt to cement its monopoly on trade through the region, the Southern Pacific Railroad built Port Los Angeles near the mouth of Santa Monica Canyon and lobbied the federal government to build a breakwater around its improvised harbor. The ploy backfired. Although the ensuing Free Harbor Fight lasted nearly a decade, Los Angeles' business leaders ultimately united to successfully win federal backing for an improved harbor in San Pedro Bay. The episode weakened the grip of the railroad – depicted in the popular press as a grasping Octopus – over the region's growing economy.
Although the victory of Harrison Gray Otis and others over the Southern Pacific ensured that ships would continue to steam into San Pedro Bay, the harbor's current configuration – two municipally owned seaports, one in Los Angeles and the other in Long Beach – was by no means fixed.
In 1906, four cities stretched tentacles of their own toward the harbor: Los Angeles, Long Beach, and the then-independent municipalities of Wilmington and San Pedro.
A series of legal and electoral contests ensued, as Steven P. Erie explains in his book "Globalizing L.A." Long Beach attempted to annex all of the strategically located Terminal Island; eventually, it won the island's eastern half. Los Angeles, meanwhile, sought to win control of the harbor by consolidating its own city government with that of the county's. When that stratagem failed, it annexed the long, narrow Shoestring Addition and turned to consolidation with Wilmington and San Pedro, which reluctantly merged with the metropolis in 1909.
Los Angeles' civic leaders then pressured Long Beach to follow suit, a move that prompted the city to consider seceding from Los Angeles County and becoming part of Orange County. Long Beach managed to maintain its independence without resorting to that drastic step, and it annexed more bayside land where it could develop a seaport of its own.
When the dust settled, Los Angeles and Long Beach shared control of the San Pedro Bay harbor. Both cities then granted their ports a significant degree of legal and political autonomy and proceeded to invest heavily in harbor improvements.
Building a harbor where nature did not provide one proved costly. Between 1910 and 1924, Los Angeles city voters approved $30 million in harbor bond measures. Long Beach initially lagged behind, but the discovery of oil in 1921 boosted the city's finances, and over a similar period Long Beach voters pledged $17 million toward their own municipal port.
Initially, domestic shipping dominated traffic at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, with timber from the Pacific Northwest sailing into the harbor and Southern California oil sailing out. Eventually, the opening of the Panama Canal and expanding global trade – as well as a the invention of post-Thanksgiving Day commercial extravaganzas – transformed the former mudflats of the San Pedro Bay into one of the busiest international shipping centers in the world.
Wilmington in 1870. Courtesy of the Courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library Photograph Collection.
Map of the San Pedro and Wilmington harbors, circa 1880. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library Photograph Collection.
Construction of the new breakwater in San Pedro Bay began in 1899. Courtesy of the Title Insurance and Trust / C.C. Pierce Photography Collection, USC Libraries.
Los Angeles harbor waterfront in 1903. Courtesy of the Title Insurance and Trust / C.C. Pierce Photography Collection, USC Libraries.
Los Angeles voters approved $30 million in harbor bonds over a 14 year period from 1910 to 1924. The bonds financed channel dredging, pictured here in 1922, as well as other improvements to the municipally owned port. Courtesy of the Title Insurance and Trust / C.C. Pierce Photography Collection, USC Libraries.
1897 birdseye view of the Los Angeles harbor. Courtesy of the Robert B. Honeyman, Jr. Collection of Early Californian and Western American Pictorial Material, Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley.
The 1914 opening of the Panama Canal boosted traffic at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which are more than 400 miles closer to the canal than San Francisco. Circa 1890s map courtesy of the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley.
1936 postcard of the Los Angeles harbor. Courtesy of the Frasher Foto Postcard Collection, Pomona Public Library.
1938 postcard of the Los Angeles harbor. Courtesy of the Frasher Foto Postcard Collection, Pomona Public Library.
Aerial view of the San Pedro Bay harbors in 1953. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Examiner Collection, USC Libraries.
U.S. naval ships illuminate the skies above the Los Angeles harbor in honor of Foreign Trade Week, 1946. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive, Young Research Library, UCLA. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Longshoremen load California lemons onto a ship in the Long Beach harbor in 1973. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive, Young Research Library, UCLA. Used under a Creative Commons license.
The Queen Mary sails into the Long Beach harbor in 1967. Today, the retired transoceanic liner is one of the harbor's most recognizable landmarks. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive, Young Research Library, UCLA. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Royalties from oil, which was discovered in Long Beach in 1921, helped finance improvements to the city's harbor. The artificial Island White, shown here in 1986, hides oil wells from residents and beachgoers. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive, Young Research Library, UCLA. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Aerial view of the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in 1964. Courtesy of the Dick Whittington Photography Collection, USC Libraries.
Aerial view of the Long Beach harbor in 1984. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive, Young Research Library, UCLA. Used under a Creative Commons license.
This article was originally published on Nov. 23, 2012. It has been republished in conjunction with the broadcast of Lost LA's "Pacific Rim" epsiode.Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus
--Ralph Wiley
Ken Burns' Civil War documentary makes note of the fact that General Lee was opposed to slavery. I basically took that as true, until--in all honesty--some of my commenters informed me that it, in fact, was not. One of the saddest, and yet telling, aspects of the War, for me personally, is that on the two occasions when Confederate troops headed North, they kidnapped free blacks and sold them into slavery. Ditto for black soldiers who were captured and "lucky" enough not to be killed. Anyway, if you have a moment check out this lecture a reader was kind enough to send to me. At about the 55:00 mark, Elizabeth Brown Pryor talks about Lee's relationship to slavery, and more interestingly, how the myth that he was somehow anti-slavery came to be.
It was sad to hear frankly. If the war actually weren't about slavery, I think all our lives would be a lot easier. But as I thought on it, my sadness was stupid. What undergirds all of this alleged honoring of the Confederacy, is a kind of ancestor-worship that isn't. The Lost Cause is necromancy--it summons the dead and enslaves them to the need of their vainglorious, self-styled descendants. Its greatest crime is how it denies, even in death, the humanity of the very people it claims to venerate. This isn't about "honoring" the past--it's about an inability to cope with the present.
The God of History binds the Confederacy in its own chains. From the declaration of secession in Texas...
...in this free government *all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights* [emphasis in the original]; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states....
To Virginia |
,” which is Catholic code really for same-sex issues, and compared it to the Hitler Youth. The Catholic Church is not going to change its teaching. Believe me, the Catholic Church cannot.
Q: So you left. You were not lured away.
A: It’s not about superiority or inferiority. I needed to find a place for me where I could worship God, where I could be given the Eucharist, but I didn’t have to buy into some of the social and moral teaching that I had not been able to embrace for more than a year.
Q: Catholics are called to be faithful and obedient, to defer to authority that goes back through the popes to Peter. Were you a good Catholic?
A: I don’t think I’m a very good Christian. I try my best. It’s very hard. If you mean was I completely obedient, I certainly tried to be.
National Post
• Email: [email protected] | Twitter: JosephBrean(Reuters) - A judge has ruled the U.S. government cannot be held liable for a grizzly bear attack that killed a man hiking in Wyoming, just hours after the animal had been captured, collared and released by federal researchers.
U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Freudenthal this week rejected a $5 million wrongful death suit brought by the widow of Erwin Evert, 70, who was fatally mauled by the male grizzly in June 2010.
Evert’s widow, Yolanda Evert, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Wyoming, claiming the federal government had failed to warn the family about trapping activities near their private vacation cabin in the Shoshone National Forest.
The judge’s ruling was based on a Wyoming law that exempts landowners from any obligation to keep the area safe “or to give any warning of a dangerous condition, use, structure or activity.”
That exemption applies when the landowner, in this case the federal government, does not charge a fee for recreational use. Evert was not charged for hiking in the national forest.
A 2010 probe of the mauling found researchers had finished their work in the area and removed warning signs on their way out of the forest, because the weather was bad and they believed no one would be hiking near the trap site.
The investigative report by federal and state agencies found Evert knew of the trapping operation and had been told by a friend to stay out of the forest.
Freudenthal concluded in her ruling that she could not find “the risk of bear mauling was known or obvious to Mr. Evert.”
Wildlife officials shot the bear dead from a helicopter shortly after Evert was killed.A second case of Ebola emerged in Sierra Leone after health officials thought the epidemic was over, with a close relative of the first victim testing positive for the virus that has killed more than 11,000 people, authorities said Thursday.
About 150 of the first victim's contacts have been under monitoring, and the new patient had been under quarantine.
Health Ministry spokesman Sidi Yaya Tunis said the new patient was one of the people who prepared the initial victim's body for burial. The 22-year-old died in mid-January, and relatives were allowed to hold a traditional funeral as authorities at the time did not suspect she had died from Ebola.
Ebola is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of victims, and corpses are especially contagious. Traditional funerals in the region where mourners touch the body were a major source of virus transmission during the epidemic in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.
The new cases in Sierra Leone have marked a major setback for the region, as virus transmission had appeared to stop. Even in announcing the apparent end of the outbreak, though, World Health Organization officials had warned that additional "flare-ups" of new cases were still possible.
However, Sierra Leone's new cases are particularly worrisome to experts because no one identified the first victim as an Ebola patient, and burial precautions were not taken to prevent further infections. There also had not been any known cases in Sierra Leone for two months, and it is still not known exactly how the 22-year-old contracted the virus.
Associated PressJames Winnie James Winnie Photo by Contributed Photo /Times Free Press.
Two witnesses told a Chattanooga police officer on Jan. 23 they saw James Winnie shoot his wife outside her brother's home on Sixth Avenue.
But when the witnesses and victim did not show up in Hamilton County General Sessions Court on Tuesday, an attempted first-degree murder charge against Winnie was dismissed.
Winnie shook his attorney's hand and walked away from the stand with a smirk after a quick round of judicial proceedings, which included a state prosecutor's testimony that multiple attempts to contact the witnesses and victim produced no results.
Winnie, 38, was arrested at a Super 8 Motel in Ringgold, Ga., on Jan. 26, three days after police were called to 3113 Sixth Ave. on a shooting report. Winnie's wife, who had been shot in the leg, her brother and another witness told police Winnie was the shooter, according to an incident report.
She also told officers Winnie had been abusing her for years and that he had become angry with her during a text message conversation the night before because he felt she was "snitching" on another man for unrelated crimes.
According to the incident report, Winnie showed up outside his wife's brother's home the morning after the text message dispute with a gun and fired two rounds at his estranged wife.
Witnesses told police Winnie's first shot missed. But a second shot didn't.
"Due to the fact that James had fired a shot at Ms. Winnie, paused, and fired a second shot, it is highly likely that he was trying to kill his wife," an officer wrote. "He was obviously not satisfied after shooting at her and not hitting her."
Winnie has a Marion County, Tenn., address, but records show his Hamilton County criminal history is extensive.
He has been charged with various offenses over the last 20 years, including aggravated assault and drug violations. Officers who investigated the January incident noted Winnie is a convicted felon and methamphetamine was found in the hotel room where he was arrested.
Contact staff writer David Cobb at [email protected] or 423-757-6249.
This story was updated Feb. 16 at 11:15 p.m. with more information.SNc Channels:
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Apr-23-2009 18:22 TweetFollow @OregonNews Sentencing in Charles Lynch California Medical Marijuana Case Delayed A case we have been following for months; Charles Lynch faces prison even though he didn't violate state law.
Charles Lynch on the Los Angeles Federal Courthouse steps
Photo by Rick Ray Films
(LOS ANGELES) - Sentencing in the case of Morro Bay, California medical marijuana dispensary owner Charles Lynch, has been delayed in a Los Angeles Federal Court. Lynch, who is 47, was pursued by a California Sheriff as part of an alleged personal vendetta. In fact, local law enforcement reportedly used the name of a convicted child molester also named Charles Lynch, to confuse people and turn them against the legal dispensary owner, in the course of their investigation. San Luis Obispo Sheriff Pat Hedges called in the DEA and their agents worked for months to find some kind of illegal activity to bust Lynch on. Finally, after the DEA had been in place for some time, an off duty security guard who worked for Lynch was arrested for selling some pot to an undercover agent. Almost immediately, Lynch's doors were kicked in and his dispensary that supplied medicine to a sizable base of patients, was raided. After the initial bust, Lynch resumed operations and then found himself facing extreme charges for what stemmed from the act of an off duty security guard. Morro Bay's Mayor and Chamber of Commerce Director along with other city officials, have steadfastly denied that Lynch is anything but a legal and progressive businessman who helped a lot of people and gave a lot to the community. Throughout the entire federal case, his attorneys have never once been allowed to mention the fact that Lynch was perfectly legal under California state law. In fact the law itself was barred from even being discussed. Lynch's list of supporters includes people like Drew Carey, Melissa Ethridge, Gary Shandling and a long list of others. I'm not sure if they were always his friends. I suspect this has had a lot to do with it. People in America are largely tired of the federal government trumping state laws that voters approve. Another of Lynch's supporters wrote: "Hello Charlie, my name is Sgt. Zachary S. and I am currently serving in Afghanistan as an Infantry Team Leader. I am sorry to hear about your case and I think it is just stupid what the federal government is doing to you." It looks like people from every walk of life are unhappy about watching this happen, when every single thing Charles Lynch was doing was completely legal under California law. The soldier concluded with, "I wish you well, and hope you win your case. Me and the guys of HSC, 101 DSTB, 101 Airborne Division are pulling for you."
Zachary S.
101 Airborne Division Lynch's case has been covered by one major news agency after another. He has appeared with John Stossel on ABC News, Al Roker on NBC News and Larry King Live, just to name a few. The bottom line is that the only way Hedges was able to get this case going in the first place is because Lynch was, like nearly all medical marijuana users, not legal under the antiquated federal law, one strongly endorsed by people like George W. Bush. I say nearly because there is, no matter what the federal government agencies admit, a national federal medical marijuana program. There are still several people on it, and they get their weed from Uncle Sam himself, and it is grown at the University of Mississippi. The DEA and the FBI speak out of both sides of their mouths when they say the federal government does not recognize medical marijuana; it does and that is a fact. Technically, the books are written in a way that allow them to have their 'dual law theory,' but experts in medical marijuana say it is a joke. At any rate, Lynch was convicted by a county sheriff on a federal charge, and he never violated California law. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder recently said that the only medical marijuana dispensary cases the Department of Justice would pursue in the future are the ones that violate both state and federal law. Lynch's attorneys made an argument before the court today and that is reportedly what led to the sentencing delay. Perhaps this is all coming together in Lynch's favor. I know many people who were very concerned that he could be sentenced to prison today and there is an obvious sigh of relief in the air over the postponement. By the estimate of many, it makes little sense to send Lynch to prison and he should be allowed, after all he has been through, to go back to what he was doing in Morro Bay, which by coincidence is the place I was lucky enough to move to when I was 16. It is also the place where I lost my parents two summers ago; at the time this case against Lynch first began. Like our medical writer Dr. Phil Leveque, they were conservative WWII era Americans who thought anything that helped people feel better was a good thing. They knew medical marijuana was legal and helpful, and these members of the "Greatest Generation" were able to get past their social problems and learn a few things about cannabis. They were amazed with what they learned. The judge's decision has at this point, been delayed until June 11, 2009 in federal court in Los Angeles. ----------------------------------------------------- Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. In addition to his role as a war correspondent, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor.
Tim spent the winter of 2006/07 in Afghanistan with Oregon troops. Tim recently returned from Iraq where he covered the war there while embedded with an Oregon Guard aviation unit. Serving the community in very real terms, Salem-News.com is the nation's only truly independent high traffic news Website, affiliated with Google News and several other major search engines and news aggregators.
You can send Tim an email at this address: [email protected]
California | Los angeles | Marijuana | Medical marijuana | Legal | Most Commented on
Articles for April 22, 2009 | Articles for April 23, 2009 | Articles for April 24, 2009The Great Bipartisan War on Free Trade
Like most economists, I am strongly inclined toward free trade. I cringe to see the way free trade is under attack, from both parties, during this primary season.
The two populist candidates are the worst offenders. Bernie Sanders, whom I support on many other issues [1] [2] [3], goes off the rails when it comes to trade. Donald Trump, whose policy views are sometimes too vague to pin down, has made clear-cut opposition to “horrible trade deals” a centerpiece of his campaign.
Nor is the pushback from the rest of the field as strong as one might hope. Hillary Clinton has changed her position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which she supported as Secretary of State, and runs away from her previous support for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which she liked well enough when her husband signed it into law. On the Republican side, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich all profess to favor free trade in principle, but when pushed, as they were during last week’s Republican debate in Miami, they quickly go on defense, hedging their support for trade with numerous “ifs” and “buts”.
Let’s take a look at some of the candidates’ least defensible arguments against free trade, starting with Trump and moving on to Sanders.
Money spent on imports is “lost”
One of the main targets of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, was the doctrine of mercantilism. Among other things, mercantilists argued that if your country brought in more gold than you paid out, you were a winner; if more went out than came in, you were a loser.
Trump is a heartfelt mercantilist. In his words:
Well, you know, I don’t mind trade wars when we’re losing $58 billion a year [to Mexico], you want to know the truth. We’re losing so much. (APPLAUSE) We’re losing so much with Mexico and China — with China, we’re losing $500 billion a year. And then people say, “don’t we want to trade?” I don’t mind trading, but I don’t want to lose $500 billion. I don’t want to lose $58 billion.
The numbers Trump gives here are trade deficits—the difference between what Mexico or China spends on goods exported from the US and what America spends on goods from those countries. But that money is not “lost” in any normal sense of the word, because US consumers get something in return—cars, computers, toys for their kids. It makes sense to say, “I lost $50 at poker last night at the Elks Club,” but unless you dropped your wallet somewhere in the produce aisle, you wouldn’t say “I lost $50 at the supermarket this morning.”
When we run a trade deficit with China, we are not losing something, we are making a choice. Two choices, in fact.
One choice is what kinds of goods to buy and whom to buy them from. If I buy a pair of made-in China boots, it is because I like the price, the quality, or both. If you tell me, “No, you can’t buy those boots, you have to buy those others,” I would protest. That would be a real loss—being forced to buy boots that (in my opinion) give less value for the money.
The other choice reflected in a trade deficit is more subtle. When we run a trade deficit with China, we are, implicitly, making a choice between the present and the future. Right now, running a trade deficit allows us to consume more than we are producing, and in return, the Chinese get some money they can use to buy goods from us. But, instead of doing so immediately (in which case, trade in goods would balance), they take some our money and invest it in Treasury bills, which they can cash in to buy things from us in the future.
Is it good for Americans, collectively, to consume more than they produce each year? There are credible American economists who think it is not, just as there are Chinese economists who doubt that it is good for China to churn out goods for others, while holding living standards down in order to amass mountains of Treasury bills. One thing is certain, though. We cannot boost the chronic low saving rates of our households and government by starting a trade war with China.
Blame it all on currency manipulation
Another of Trump’s favorite themes is to emphasize currency manipulation as a source of trade imbalances. His website tells us,
In a system of truly free trade and floating exchange rates like a Trump administration would support, America’s massive trade deficit with China would not persist. On day one of the Trump administration, the U.S. Treasury Department will designate China as a currency manipulator.
It sounds tough, but the charge that China’s policy holds the yuan at an artificially low value is badly out of date. As we see from the following chart, based on data from the Bank for International Settlements, since 2010, China’s currency has appreciated by 30 percent, double the rate of appreciation of the dollar, and more than Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea or Taiwan.
For conclusive proof that China is not holding its currency at an artificially low value to gain a trade advantage, all we have to do is look at the behavior of its foreign currency reserves. A country that purposely undervalues its currency does so by buying up foreign currency in exchange for its own. In the bad old days, when China’s foreign reserves were soaring, the charge of currency manipulation had some credibility. However, since early 2014, China’s currency reserves have plunged. They are now more than 20 percent below their peak, and falling fast. (You can find a chart with the latest data here.) The fact is that China is now doing everything it its power to prevent the yuan from depreciating. To the degree it is manipulating at all, it is manipulating its currency upward.
Do imports really kill jobs?
It is time to bring Sanders into the conversation. Like Trump, he has made the claim that trade kills jobs a standard part of his campaign rhetoric. Trade with Mexico, he says, has cost 800,000 jobs and trade with China, millions more. Commentators, drawing on exit polls, have attributed much of Sanders’ appeal, including his surprise win in Michigan, to his antitrade stance.
Politifact has examined the 800,000 job claim and ruled it to be “mostly false. That is hardly surprising, since standard economic theory predicts that trade should have no effect on total employment. In the long run, averaging out business cycle effects, the number of people at work is determined almost entirely by demographic factors, such as population growth and age structure, and social trends, such as the changing role of women in the labor force.
The following chart, which shows job trends over the past thirty years, is consistent with that orthodox conclusion. The red bars show effective dates for NAFTA and normalization of trade with China. As we see, the US economy has added about 50 million jobs since 1985. The pattern of job growth is irregular—the number of jobs falls during recessions and grows during recoveries—but as of 2015, the total number of jobs is right where the long-term trend indicates that it ought to be. There are no visible breaks at the red lines. On the contrary, NAFTA came into force near the beginning of one of the greatest job booms in US history.
What standard economic theory does predict is that trade can affect the structure of employment. Countries export things in which they have a comparative advantage and import things in which their trading partners have the advantage. The US has a comparative advantage in aircraft, financial services, farm products, and many other goods. American exporters, on the whole, have been hugely successful. Exports as a share of US GDP have grown from 4 percent in 1960 to more than 15 percent today. At the same time, China and Mexico have a comparative advantage in manufactured goods that require low to moderate levels of skill, and their exports to us have grown, too.
The tendency of trade to draw labor and capital in each country into the production of the things it makes best is the fundamental source of its benefits. Yet, although everyone shares in those benefits through lower prices, some workers lose their jobs and some companies lose their customers to competition from imports. We can see that from the next chart, which shows that US manufacturing employment has declined by a third since its peak in 1979.
Even in this chart, NAFTA has no visible effect. The downward trend in manufacturing jobs was already underway in the 1980s. Although factory jobs increased a bit during the dot-com boom of the 1990s, they fell during the housing boom of the early 2000s, and they have recovered only partially as the economy has shaken off the worst effects of the Great Recession.
We should remember, though, that trade has not been the only cause of declining manufacturing employment. Rising productivity has also played a role. For example, if we narrow our focus to the auto industry, we see that after a big dip during the recession, US auto output has recovered to its pre-NAFTA level. Yet, because productivity has risen, the number of automotive jobs remains 40 percent below the 1994 level.
Presumably, productivity would have grown even faster if competition from imports had not put downward pressure on autoworkers’ wages, easing the pressure for ever-greater automation.
In short, there is a story here about trade and jobs, but it is more nuanced than the one Sanders and Trump tell. Politicians may promise that erecting barriers to trade will bring back both the factory wages and the jobs of the past, but that is fantasy. Protectionism might raise the share of manufacturing in US GDP, but in many cases, the beneficiaries would be robots, not flesh and blood workers. And in the process, the three-quarters of the labor force that would remain in the service sector, many of them working for low pay, would find their standard of living further eroded by higher import prices.
Free trade and the world’s poor
There is one more thing that bothers me about the war on free trade, especially, as it waged by the political left. Bernie Sanders is a progressive. “The issue of wealth and income inequality,” he writes, “is the great moral issue of our time; it is the great economic issue of our time; and it is the great political issue of our time.” But there is one aspect of inequality Sanders talks less about—the global inequality between rich and poor nations.
At a rally that I attended in Traverse City, Michigan, Sanders told a story of a visit to a Mexican auto factory sometime in the early 1990s. The factory was shiny and modern, he said, but the workers were making just 25 cents an hour. When he asked to see their homes, he found that they were living in cardboard shacks. (See the Michigan news website MLive.com for a similar version of the story.)
But Sanders leaves out an important part of the story. What do Mexican autoworkers earn today? Reuters reports that they earn $8 to $10 per hour, including benefits. It seems that NAFTA has helped to raise the wages of Mexican autoworkers by as much as forty-fold over twenty years.
What can a progressive not love about that? Surely, when Sanders opposes NAFTA, he does not really mean that he wants to send Mexican workers back to their cardboard shacks.
Conservatives, too, ought to welcome Mexico’s growing prosperity. GOP candidates, Trump foremost among them, talk endlessly about border security. They all agree that something has to be done about the northward flow of immigrants.
But just who is crossing our southern border these days? It turns out that under NAFTA, illegal border crossings by Mexicans have slowed dramatically. A 2014 study from the Pew Research Center shows that as wages and working conditions have improved, the number of border aprehensions of Mexicans illegally entering the US has fallen from a million and a half per year in the 1990s to about a quarter million. Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador are now the sources of a majority of illegal immigrants. Another Pew study shows that more Mexicans, legal and illegal, are now returning to their home country from the US each year than are making the trip northward.
What can a Conservative not love about a more prosperous southern neighbor?
The bottom line
The bottom line is that I am disappointed in Sanders’ stand on trade. I can understand his sympathy with those who have been displaced from good jobs that they thought were secure. But, if we are going to help them, tariffs and other broad protectionist measures are not the way to go. In case after case, economists have found that the costs of such measures are simply too great.
For example, one study found that a tariff imposed on Chinese tires in 2009 saved 1,200 American jobs, but did so at a cost to $1.1 billion in higher prices to American consumers. That comes to more than $800,000 per tire worker’s job. And it does not even try to account for the fact that consumers, after paying more for tires, had less to spend on other goods, meaning that American jobs in other sectors were threatened.
It would be far more reasonable to employ direct forms of aid. Retraining, adjustment assistance to workers or employers, income support, or wage subsidies are some of the possible remedies. None would come close to costing $800,000 per job.
I am less surprised by Trump’s support for high tariffs, since, in other cases, too, he has proposed policies that are superficially plausible, but do not stand up to scrutiny—a wall to keep out Mexicans who are now headed south, rather than north; a blanket ban on visas for Muslims as a tool for combatting terrorism, and so on.
Some commentators tell us not to get excited. Presidential candidates go protectionist in every election season, they say, and then support free trade once they are elected. They point out that President Obama, who imposed the tire tariffs and bragged about them in the 2012 election year, later negotiated the TPP and saw the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement (first signed by George W. Bush) through its implementation phase.
Let’s hope that, whoever is elected, those optimists are right.AMERICANS are giving more to charity than ever before—but a smaller proportion of this money is going to religious organisations. Though the amount given to religious charities has risen from an inflation-adjusted $89 billion in 1987 to $105.5 billion in 2013, that represents a fall from 53% to 31% of the total, according to research released by Giving USA, a non-profit that researches philanthropy in America, and the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
There are several possible explanations. One is that religious charities are not as good at fundraising as secular ones. A typical church, synagogue or mosque tends to shy away from having a proper fundraising strategy, says David King, chair of Giving USA’s founding organisation The Giving Institute. Mr King suggests that churches may think of professional fundraising as a “dirty secret” and rely on people to donate out of a sense of spiritual obligation.
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Another factor may be that Americans are becoming less devout. The 2013 General Social Survey found that the proportion of Americans with no religious affiliation had risen from 8% to 20% in the previous two decades.
A third—and probably crucial—factor is that the sharp overall rise in charitable giving has been driven by the very rich, who tend to favour secular charities. Billionaires like to give huge sums to art galleries, universities or cancer hospitals, which may then name a wing after them. Church collection plates, by contrast, tend to fill with small donations from average folks. Most religious donations are no more than $40-100, says Dan Busby, president of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, which provides data to Giving USA. Since average folks are feeling squeezed right now, it is remarkable that donations to religious causes have held up as well as they have.Gordo’s Pub & Grill, Norwood
Raymond Gordo found the ideal location—just up from Xavier University—in 2008. He named the JeanRo Burger after his former boss, who he says, gave him a hard time about the switch to bar food. Of course, now that de Cavel has opened Le Bar a Boeuf, the tables have turned. “He says, ‘Eets not a bur-GAIR joint,’ ” Gordo recounts. “Well it is, Chef.”
Zip’s Café, Mt. Lookout
While the name of the original owner appears lost to memory, the legendary Zip burger has been pleasing palates since 1926. Mike Burke—Zip’s fifth owner—bought the place in January. “We like to say Zip’s used to be a bar that happened to have a burger,” Burke says. “Now it’s a family restaurant that happens to have a bar.”
Paula’s Café, Downtown
Paula Kirk started with a soup-and-sandwich spot in the 525 building in 1990. She added burgers in 2007 when she moved her place to Fourth Street. Today she gets her buns from Shadeau Bakery and her beef from Avril’s—coarse ground, with a bit of extra fat to keep it moist and flavorful. For a while, she thought about franchising. “Every city can use a Paula’s,” she says. “I should have gone on Shark Tank a long time ago.”
Arthur’s Restaurant, Hyde Park
It opened in 1947 as the Allen E. Bradford Restaurant; in 1948 it became Apke’s Grill; in 1956 it was called Art’s—presumably after a new owner, though “we don’t know anything about him,” says B.J. Hughes, one of three current co-owners. Then sometime in the 1970s, Arthur’s appeared on the door. Ergo, there is no actual Arthur. But the people in the wall mural by Jerry Dowling? They’re all real.
Doris & Sonny’s Homelike Restaurant, Miamitown
In 1963, Doris and Sonny Hugentobler began dishing up comfort food for pre-Interstate truckers and travelers. Their son Kent took over in 1998. “We always had a burger on the menu,” he recalls. In fact, on Sunday nights the whole family would make and freeze a week’s worth of patties. Now Hugentobler makes ’em fresh. But he says, “I still have the patty press.”
Terry’s Turf Club, East End
Why a turf club? Terry Carter opened his Eastern Avenue burger shack in 2007, using a vintage sign from the old Latonia Turf Club (now known as Turfway Park) for the name. “Saved me $5,000,” he says. The former owner of Neon’s says he started with a 24-inch grill; now he has three different grills. And a zillion toppings. Why? Because “the food is supposed to be fun.”
Herb ’N Thelma’s Tavern, Covington
Henry Boehmker opened the place in 1939 as Heine’s Café; Herb and Thelma, Henry’s son and daughter-in-law, kept the lights on. Two more owners followed, before Joe and Suzanne Fessler bought it in January. It’s very…retro. Says Joe: “You really can’t understand it unless you come in.”SANA, Yemen (Reuters) — Nearly half of Yemenis go to bed hungry as political instability compounds a surge in global food and fuel prices, giving Yemen the world’s third-highest rate of child malnutrition, the World Food Program said Sunday.
Yemen has been in turmoil since the revolt last year against Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had ruled for more than three decades. Already weak state control in outlying regions broke down as the army split into pro- and anti-Saleh factions and Al Qaeda militants occupied some areas.
The country has to import most of its food needs because of a paucity of arable land, and the rise in food and fuel prices has hit it badly, a World Food Program spokesman, Barry Came, said.
“Five million people, or 22 percent of the population, can’t feed themselves or buy enough to feed themselves,” Mr. Came said. “These are mostly landless laborers, so they don’t grow their own food, and with high food prices they can’t buy it either.”
Photo
“There is another 5 million who are being really hard hit by high food prices and on the edge of being food insecure,” he said. “So 10 million people in this country go to bed hungry every night.”
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The number of people receiving daily food rations from the United Nations agency has risen to more than 3.8 million from 1.2 million in January, but poor infrastructure and fear of kidnappings have complicated the logistics of providing food aid.Why is she important?
Well, because she took the unpopular route in getting herself out there. Here's the problem with many of us... Where idealist, but we aren't really executionist. Sara... She's an executionist. Here's what I learned from her over the last month.
Invest In Yourself
A year ago Sara posted a travel gear video. Her kit included the following.
Since then Sara has upgraded her kit, ditching the 70D and switching to the Canon 6D as well as the 5D Mark III, she's kept all her lenses and added a Zeiss 85 f/1.4 to complete the kit. Early on you can see she invested heavily in her glass, and it's clearly paid off dividends as she's still shooting with it a year later.
As most of you I know I'm an advocate of shoot more, buy less, but I'm also doing street photography, which doesn't take much gear... I'm almost certain that I can capture the same moments with a Kodak Easyshare... Actually, I know I can, I've seen it happen. But for everyone else, buy what you need... I want to get into podcasting, so I'm going to go all in on what I need to have a solid production.
Show Your Work
Early on in my career, I felt as though I had no following, so know one would care about my work. Someone I follow immensely is Gary Vaynerchuk, in his recent book #ASKGARYVEE he tells us that when he started Wine Library TV he had not one follower on YouTube. Yet because he remained patient and passionate (The two P's) he organically grew his following and fed them content as often as possible. After 1000 videos, I believe he had amassed over 30K followers, which at the time was impressive considering YouTube was so new and his content and demographic were so niche.
Sara was in the same boat as Gary, she not only lacked a following but her videos were all over the place. There was no structure, she just uploaded whatever she worked on.What I like most about her is that she didn't go back and delete anything, she kept it organic, 5 years from now we'll be able to visit her YouTube page and actually see her growth because she's showed us everything.
Don't Be A Perfectionist
If YouTube is good for one thing it's people with too much time on their hands. If you spend a majority of the video reading the comments like I do you'll see that several people pointed out Sara's flaws in filmmaking. In her New York Vlog PT. 1 you'll see several people point out the shakiness in her video... Now Sara clarified why it was shaky, she used 60FPS instead of the standard 24FPS, as a filmmaker, I'm sure she picked this up during her editing process, but she still uploaded the video. I know time and time again if I sucked at something, or I couldn;t get the edit right or the frame was filmed poorly I'd scratch the whole project and tell myself I'd redo it... This normally results in my doing nothing... You have to accept flaws and learn from them. You'll get it right next time, it doesn't have to be perfect to be good.
Related: Find The Small Victories In Your Failures
Execute
Sara's response video to her #HowToCasey video was posted just 2 days after the original video. She didn't overthink it, she didn't crush under pressure, she took advantage of her new platform and she executed. Since February Sara has put out over 10 videos and she isn't slowing down, her Creative Spaces TV is growing a solid following and she's even tampered with vlogging. She's trying new things while sticking to channels aesthetic. #Everydaze is one of my favorite videos from her, it's Sara letting us know that she is about to CRUSH IT, and she's come through... Every day, every single day, on her Facebook.
Expect Nothing
Hard work pays off, but it doesn't also work out in your favor in a timely manner. You have to be patient. Sara has been posting videos to YouTube for over a year, and she's just now gaining traction. It shows that she works hard simply because she enjoys what she does, attention is just an added bonus. Most of us would have honestly quit at that time. My first year blogging I think I gained 30 thousand views... My second year 100K. And this year I plan to quintuple that. I've also dabbled in YouTube and because my expectations have been so high I find myself quitting and deeming it worthless... Expecting nothing when you produce free work, that way you'll appreciate every like, comment and fan you have.
Put Your Heart Into Everything You Do
I saved the best trait for last. Put your heart into everything you do. I live in Detroit where the music scene is popular and by popular I mean a lot of people are aspiring musicians. Unfortunately not many of them put their heart into everything. Occasionally we'll get a viral song from someone, but the other songs aren't up to par, or they may not even have another song.
What Sara did was special to me. Her Casey video went viral but she had a shit ton of content already posted on her page, and obviously she had a shit ton to post afterward. She wasn't stunted by her 15 minutes of fame, she isn't a one-hit wonder, she put her heart into everything she does... All she needed was the platform.
Why Me & |
Borini is a frustrated centre-forward. Still, at least it is an improvement on being a frustrated footballer.
The Italian, on loan from Liverpool, sees himself as a central striker but it is a position he has started just once in for Sunderland, at West Bromwich Albion in Paolo Di Canio’s last game.
That is the glass half-empty story.
On the plus side, Borini is fast becoming a constant in the Black Cats’ ever-changing forward line.
With neither able to score goals at present, Jozy Altidore and Steven Fletcher are almost taking it in turns to be Sunderland’s No.9.
Even Adam Johnson has been unable to nail down a regular place, although his performances last week should ensure the right-wing slot is his for a while.
Emanuele Giaccherini, a much-heralded full Italian international with a Scudetto to his name, remains a bit-part player.
In the euphoria of victory at Fulham on Saturday, Gustavo Poyet declared the 11 which started to be more or less his preferred side. For the eighth time in the last 12 matches, Borini had been part of it.
For a player whose professional career is yet to really get going, it is a significant step forward. The next will be to add the goals which can ensure he gets to play where he wants.
Despite being only 22 years old, Borini is already on his sixth club. He is yet to make 25 appearances for any of them.
“Eleven players have to play, seven on the bench. Only 14 will play maximum (in any given game),” he stresses. “You have a point to prove when you are not in the 11. That gives you the extra desire to play the games.
“At Liverpool when I was sitting on the bench every game, my aim was to come here and prove what I can do and (have an) impact on games.”
He is managing that.
Di Canio seemed very lukewarm about Borini – 19 minutes against Arsenal was the sum total of his pre-West Brom involvement – while his caretaker replacement Kevin Ball was a much bigger fan of Giaccherini. Poyet, though, has been won over. So have the fans.
It helps that the rare occasions Borini finds the net – against Newcastle United, Chelsea and Manchester United – are the big ones.
It also helps that he works harder than his rivals to play wide in Poyet’s front three.
After seeing his career disrupted by injury – most notably last season’s dislocated shoulder – more than anything he just needs a run of games to show what he can do, not least to the club which still owns him, Liverpool.
“The first objective of the season was to get on the pitch every week,” he says.
“I still have objectives to achieve, like scoring more goals. To play in the big teams like Liverpool, you don’t just need to perform well.
“As a striker you need to score goals. That’s the next step. As a striker you can perform well, but at the end of the season people count your goals.
“I needed to prove to myself first that I can play here because I have never had a long spell playing in England. I have always been in England but I have never had a long run of games.
“At Swansea I only had 12 games, Liverpool not so long because of injuries and Chelsea.”
Despite what he says, it is hard to see Borini getting his wish of playing down the middle. For all that Poyet speaks of liking to play with two centre-forwards, his actions as Sunderland manager prove otherwise.
The Uruguayan’s way of playing is a 4-1-2-3, and despite his technical ability and work-rate, Borini is too lightweight, both physically and in terms of his goal return, to be the middle man of the forward line. The arrival of Argentinian Ignacio Scocco, if it happens, will only reduce the chances further.
A career as a second centre-forward is a possibility, but Borini’s destiny looks like that of a wide forward, certainly if he stays in England.
Much as he enjoys life in the North East, this season-long loan is nothing more than a career move for Borini. With a long-term contract at Liverpool, Borini is here to show his worth to the Reds manager, Brendan Rogers.
“I like the lifestyle here, the people and the stadium,” he says. “Football is huge. I like it here. I can relax when I go home and I don’t have to stress about being seen or stopped by people (he does not live on Wearside). I can live a normal life.
“It’s nice when you get to the stage when you lose or win that people are still happy to see me.
“That helps my confidence stay high. I will finish my season here and then after that I will got back to Liverpool because that is my contract. Things are written on paper so that’s the thing.
“The aim here first is to stay up, not go down. It will be nice to go back there as a Premier League player and shown them that even in a hard situation, instead of winning every week, that I can do well.”
To achieve that last goal, Sunderland will have to improve on their home form, the worst in the division. Three of the next four league games are at the Stadium of Light, where the Black Cats have kept their best performances for the cups.
“I don’t understand the reason why,” Borini admits.
“At home the fans want us to get forward and win games.
“They need us to push like English football has always been. Sometimes the fans want different to what the manager wants.
“The cup games are different. You only have one choice to win, so you can’t compare to the league games because that is for three points.”So, you are thinking about or have decided to enter into the world of rebuildable atomizers. Here we will try to give you everything you need to know to rebuild a simple 1.2 ohms single micro coil and.6 ohms dual micro coils for your RDA. Before we get started I want to mention that there are certain risks associated with short circuits in any electrical device as such please follow the steps in this guide to ensure you are building coils and vaping safely.
1. What You Will Need To Build Coils:
An ohms reader
RDA of your choice
Resistance Wire: Kanthal or NiChrome (We are using 28ga Kanthal in this tutorial)
Small blue 2mm screwdriver (included with most RDA’s) or 2mm drill bit/ 14ga blunt tip needle
Additional small screwdriver or Allen key that fits your RDA’s screws.
Small butane or propane torch.
Tweezers (preferably ceramic tipped), needle nose pliers, or forceps.
Small wire cutters or nail clippers
Scissors
Wicking Materials: organic cotton, silica, eko-wool etc.
E-juice
A little time and patience.
2. Before You Get Started
If you do not have an ohms reader please do not attempt to build your own coils Now that you have all the supplies you need, before you get started wrapping coils you will want to figure out how many wraps your coil will need to have to reach the desired resistance. To do this there are various tools available. We recommend the coil wrapping calculator at www.steam-engine.org by adjusting the variables like wire size (28ga), coil type (single) target resistance (1.2 ohms), inner coil diameter (2mm) leg length (4mm) this calculator will tell you exactly how many wraps you need. For this tutorial our 1.2 ohm single coil will need 8 full wraps.
Oxidize the Wire
First you will want to cut a piece of your kanthal resistance wire. Although 3 inches is likely enough it is often easier for beginners to have a little extra to hold onto so I recommend cutting a 4-5 inch piece of wire. You will then want to hold the end of your wire with your tweezers, pliers, forceps, etc. Light your torch and carefully heat the kanthal wire at one end until it glows orange then slowly move the torch down the entire piece of wire. Give your wire a moment to cool then grab the other end of the wire and repeat. Oxidizing the wire will make it less “springy” and easier to work with.
3. Wrapping Your Coil
You will need your tweezers, small blue screwdriver and your wire for this part. You want your wire to be on top of the screwdriver close to it’s handle. Hold the end of the wire nearest the screwdriver firmly with your thumb. You then will start wrapping your wire around the screwdriver until you have reached our target of 8 wraps. Do your best to keep the coils as close to one another as possible without any overlapping. It is important to try to keep the wire tight through the process to eliminate as much slack as possible. Once you have made your 8 wraps both leads should be facing the same direction. Double check your number of wraps by counting them on the side of the coil that is opposite of the leads. Once you are sure your coils has 8 wraps you can hold one lead firmly with your fingers and pull on the other lead with your tweezers or pliers then repeat with the other lead. This is to remove any extra slack your coil might have. DO NOT REMOVE YOUR COIL FROM THE SCREWDRIVER.
Wrapping Your Coil Using a Kuro Coiler
We will use the 2mm Kuro Coiler here. First insert wire into the hole 1 on the side of the handle leaving approximately 1/2” of wire sticking out from the hole in the handle. Hold the end of the wire against the handle so it cannot slide back out. Pull the loose end of your wire around the shaft. Place the top winding piece on to the shaft with the pin towards the handle. Turn the top winding piece slowly so it catches the wire and starts wrapping. Be gentle. Excessive pressure will cause the wire to wrap over itself. Once you have 8 wraps remove the top winding piece and straighten the wire that sticks through the hole in the handle. Adjust or straighten the leads as needed then remove the coil from Kuro Coiler’s shaft and slide it on to your small blue screwdriver for installation.
4. Installing Your Coil
Next we will want to take the build deck of your RDA and loosen the post screws most of the way. We do not suggest removing the screws completely because they are easy to lose and hard to put back in when your hands are already full. You will then take your coil (still on the screwdriver) and place one lead in your positive post hole and the other in your negative post. Using the screwdriver currently inside your coil try to position the coil towards the center of your RDA. Once you have it roughly positioned you can tighten your post screws. Be careful not to over tighten or you might cut the wire inside the post and have to make a new coil. Once your coil is mounted securely trim the leads as close to the posts as possible.
5. Testing Your Coil For Shorts
Next you will want to take your RDA and screw it on to your ohms reader and turn it on to be sure the new coil on your RDA doesn’t have a short. It should measure close to your target resistance of 1.2 ohms but it is important to remember it is quite common and normal for coils to have a slight variance in resistance of up to.2ohms. If your coil is displays the proper resistance within.2ohms you are ready to move on to the next step. However if your ohms reader is not reading your coil or displays a resistance more than.2 ohms different than your target resistance there is a problem that needs to be fixed. Usually issues are easily fixed. Check to be sure your RDA’s post screws are tight. Check your coils positioning to make sure it isn’t touching the deck or posts. Be sure your atomizer is screwed completely into the ohms reader. If these steps corrected your problem you are ready to move on to the next step. If those steps did not correct your problem try making another coil. If you continue to have an issue there might be a problem with your atomizer or with your ohms reader.
6. Test Firing Your Coil and Eliminating Hot Spots
Now that we have made sure your coil is installed properly and there are no shorts, you are ready to put your RDA on to your mod. Once your RDA is installed onto your mod you will want to briefly fire your mod until the coil begins to glow. Once your coils begin to glow stop firing your mod and gently squeeze your coil together with your tweezers. Repeat this process until the coil glows evenly starting from the center moving towards the outer wraps.
7. Wicking Your Coil
There are many things you can use to wick your coil, organic cotton, silica wick, eko-wool (silica braided around cotton) are all very popular for different reasons and uses. For this purpose we prefer organic cotton for its superior flavor and wicking abilities. You will want a piece of material just big enough to snugly fit inside your coil leaving about half an inch on either side. It sometimes helps to wet and twist the end of your wick to get it started. Push it in from one side of the coil and pull it out the other side. If It doesn’t go through easily you likely are using to much material for your wick. On the other hand if your wick is sliding loosely inside the coil there is not enough material. Once your wick is threaded though the coil take the wick sticking out of each side and trim them so they are just long enough to be folded over to sit on the deck of your RDA. Once your wicks are trimmed wet them with a few drops of e-juice and fold them on to the RDA deck paying mind not to push them underneath the coil so air can reach the entire coil.
8. Test it again!
After wicking your coils it is likely they were pushed on or moved around a little. It is important to recheck your RDA’s post screws are tight. Then recheck your resistance on an ohms meter. Be aware it is possible that your resistance might have changed slightly +/-.2ohms but this is normal. If everything checks out you are ready to move on to the next step. If there is a problem you will need to recheck everything working your way backwards until you find the problem.
9. Vape and Enjoy!
You have successfully built a 1.2ohms single coil for your RDA. Saturate your wicks with your favorite e-juice, replace your RDA’s cap, vape and enjoy! You deserve it!
Dual Coils
We said we would teach you to build.6 ohms dual coils too, but you already know how. When you are using dual coils you are creating a second path for electricity to follow which cuts the resistance in half. For example 1.2ohms / 2 =.6ohms. Simply make and install 2 of the 1.2 ohms coils we just made. Be sure to make the coils as close to identical as possible. Try to install and position them similarly. When test firing your dual coils they should fire at about the same time and glow evenly if one glows brighter than the other check your screws. If it continues to glow unevenly try squeezing the coil that glows brighter with your tweezers. Let it cool then test fire again. Repeat until they glow evenly outward from the center. Wick them similarly. Vape and enjoy!
A Note On Safety
It is important to note when building or rebuilding your own coils it is absolutely crucial to know the limits of your device, hardware, and batteries. Never build at resistances that will exceed their safe operating capacity. For more information on this please see our tutorial on Battery Selection and Vaping Safety. Exposed coils when installed and fired on your device are very hot please exercise caution. If you do not have an ohms reader please do not attempt to rebuild your own coils.
NEW: Suorin
NEW: Starbuzz Carbine HookahWhen Jerry Lewkowitz joined a Phoenix civic group called the Thunderbirds in 1962, Arnold Palmer had just won his second consecutive Phoenix Open. The following year, Palmer won it again, and in ’64, some guy named Jack Nicklaus prevailed.
That was before the enclosed par-3 16th hole, before the raucous party atmosphere, before the Phoenix Open became the wildest scene on the PGA Tour calendar. The tournament was then held at Phoenix Country Club, and there were no grandstands filled with rowdy fans chugging beers, only a few tents and no big name players.
By 1971, when Lewkowitz, now 86, chaired the tournament, Nicklaus and Palmer were two of the biggest sports stars on the planet and the little tournament in the desert, run by the Thunderbirds, was hardly even on their radar. Lewkowitz flew to California to try to convince the game’s headliners to make a stop at their desert event after playing in the Crosby Clambake at Pebble Beach.
Nicklaus was unfazed by the pitch.
“He didn’t hit me with a 9-iron or anything, but Jack said, ‘I’m not coming there. The tour should start in Florida and end in Phoenix,'” Lewkowitz said.
Palmer offered a measured response: “We’ll see.”
But after playing well at Pebble, Palmer’s pilot, doubling as his personal assistant, called Lewkowitz to say Palmer would come to Phoenix.
Palmer wouldn’t need a rental car because he has a deal with Lincoln, and his hotel was also already taken care of. Arnie’s lone request: to play in the pro-am with Dell Webb, Bob Goldwater (the founder of the tournament and less-famous brother of Barry), and Bob Hope.
Lewkowitz panicked. The Thunderbirds had been trying for years to get Hope to come out and were rebuffed each time.
“Jerry, don’t worry about it,” Palmer’s pilot mused. “We’ll take care of it. He’ll be there Wednesday.”
***
It’s hard to believe now that a tournament that gave $9 million—all of the event’s profit—to charity last season and has become one of the most popular stops on Tour ever had to beg big-name golfers to make the trip.
More people can now fit on the famous 16th hole than would come to the tournament back in the 1970s. The explosion of the Phoenix Open into the most fan-friendly, fun-filled atmospheres in the sport is a success story that should make many other PGA Tour stops envious. The “people’s major,” as it’s been dubbed, has become the biggest, baddest bash in golf, part by necessity and part by design.
The West Coast swing featured heavy hitters in the golf world: Pebble, Torrey, the myriad courses in Palm Springs. They were the power players of the early season.
But a small group of players liked coming to Phoenix because it had a unique energy. The Thunderbirds, a mainstay in the community dating back to the 1930s, ran the event with the goal to raise as much money as possible. Today, the chairman is swapped out yearly, so the guys running the show are constantly trying to one-up each other.
“Beat last year’s figures, that kind of attitude, has really enhanced the tournament,” Lewkowitz said.
“Some civic groups have the same leadership forever and it gets better,” former chair Mike Kennedy said. “Some do, some don’t. But you basically eliminate the complacency factor the way we do it. The status quo is not typically acceptable.”
Witness the Bird’s Nest, a social event built around the tournament.
At first it was just a tent over the tennis courts with live music and “energy” (in this case, potentially a code for “booze”). It attracted a certain type of fun-loving tour pro and became a staple of the tournament. This year, country music star Dierks Bentley will perform Thursday night for a sold-out show in front of thousands.
In many ways, the growth of the Phoenix Open mirrors its host city. The tournament moved to TPC Scottsdale in 1987, an area of Phoenix had left mostly undeveloped.
“I said ‘This is absolutely ridiculous no one’s going to come out here.’ Obviously I was wrong about that,” Lewkowitz said.
“We wondered if people would come,” Kennedy says, “but one of the primary objectives was to try to continue the energy beyond the golf. Not only did that happen – it happened immediately – but it’s been the last 10, 12 years that this thing has exploded.”
“Energy beyond the golf.” More code. The party, and not just the Bird’s Nest.
In order to entice players and spectators, the Phoenix Open had to adapt or risk becoming obsolete. A niche market among players as a fun spot to have a couple Rob Roys and play some high-desert golf isn’t a long-term business model. Players and fans still had to want to come. The tournament still had to matter.
Thanks to one magical Tiger Woods moment in 1997, the tournament reached a new level.
“The skyboxes around 16, you know what made that? Tiger’s hole in one.” Lewkowtiz says.
“If you look at the video when Tiger Woods hit his hole in one, you’ll see that there are some tents,” Dan Mahoney, 2016 tournament chair, explains, “there’s a lot of people just standing around and it was really more just a spectator hole.”
As that par-3 drew more attention, the Thunderbirds decided to build the skyboxes that have become synonymous with the Phoenix Open. Like other sports, golf has learned that big money comes from luxury boxes for sponsors, advertisers, and corporate heavyweights.
Before the 2016 tournament, the fire marshal told Mahoney and the T-birds that the 16th hole had reached capacity. Their solution would make a Manhattan resident proud: go up.
They’ve added yet another deck (now three) to create an even grander stadium stage. The hole can easily fit 15,000 spectators and regularly draws capacity crowds, creating one of the most unique and raucous settings in golf.
It’s the closest thing the PGA Tour has to a student section.
“People have been calling us the people’s major,” Mahoney says. “We obviously want it to be an acceptable environment for the players and not have them constantly harassed, so we always try to wonder how to balance the frivolity, with the proper respect for the players.
“We have to adhere to our roots as a golf tournament. It is a golf tournament first, not a party first, but there’s no reason that people can’t come out and have fun at a golf tournament.”
The “fun” results in a self-building win-win: more people and pros want to be a part of the event because it’s such a great time. That in turn creates more revenue for the community while also allowing the Thunderbirds to upgrade the tournament to make it bigger and better every year.
When the Thunderbirds mulled changing the tournament from Super Bowl Sunday, the PGA Tour insisted they were the perfect tournament to go head-to-head with the biggest day in sports. The numbers back them up. Each of the last two Super Bowls in Phoenix have buoyed revenue numbers for the Phoenix Open, and Kennedy was even chair of the 2008 Super Bowl committee before helping the city make a bid to the NFL for the 2015 Super Bowl it eventually won.
Kennedy expects the 2016 tournament to match the 2015 revenue levels, despite usually seeing a decline post-Super Bowl years.
And as far as Kennedy sees it, there’s no ceiling in site for the growth of the wildest party on the PGA Tour.
“We’re nowhere near out of room. The sky’s the limit. The drama is at the end, but for the week and social events, there are still enormous opportunities out there. I don’t think there’s anybody out there who’s saying we’re out of anything.”The question isn't
if
you'll watch the Oscars, because of course you will. The question is
how
you'll watch the Oscars, and I have seven answers for you, which range from practical means to highly subjective advice. Perhaps it goes without saying that you'll be well served if you have a TV, a sense of humor and a well-stocked liquor cabinet. (Also, Michigan readers - if you're seeing this prior to 11:50 p.m. Feb. 27, 2016, be sure to
which offers 150 Celebration Cinema movie passes as a grand prize.)
1. Old school live TV:
If you haven't cut the cord or are still wrapping the rabbit ears with aluminum foil, the ceremony airs at 8:30 p.m. on ABC, and if you're lucky, it may end by Tuesday.
2. New school streaming:
You can stream the show at
or with the
- albeit with two major caveats: You need proof of your pay-TV provider, and the stream is only available in select markets - Chicago, Fresno, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, Raleigh-Durham and San Francisco. So if you don't live in these areas, here's your opportunity to take that Megabus trip to Fresno you've been putting off for so long. Looking for fashion?
at the Oscars starting at 5:30 p.m. EST. You can also watch on
. ABC's coverage of the Red Carpet starts at 7 p.m. The ceremony begins at 8:30 p.m.
3. Monday on your DVR:
This way, you can go to bed early, and fast-forward through the boring stuff, which is at least 80 percent of the show. Of course, if you want to be surprised, you'll have to ignore all media - Facebook, radio, telegrams, etc. - to avoid spoilers. To achieve this, I suggest gouging out your eyes and sticking them in your ears, or wrapping your entire head in opaque cellophane.
4. Backstage stuff:
via cameras in the audience and behind the curtains, because one paltry glowing screen showing images and commercials just isn't enough for your tragically splintered attention span. Watching TV isn't just a passive activity anymore, you know - it's an opportunity to relax and multitask at the same time! If your left hand is on the TV remote and your right hand needs something to do on a laptop, then your tongue is free to tap out tweets on your phone.
5. Red carpet coverage:
The fashion show starts at 7 p.m. It's your chance to appreciate the journalistic depth of dingbat morning-show hosts' questions for celebrities: "Who are you wearing?" they'll prattle. "Are you revved up about 'The Revenant'?" they'll dribble. "Wow! 'Spotlight.' Wow!" they'll ask, not realizing it isn't a question. "Can you please launch us all into the nearest supernova?" you'll ask your god.
6. With realistic expectations:
You know the ceremony will be too long. You know some of host Chris Rock's jokes will fail. You know there'll be three montages too many. You know you'll perform poorly in the Oscar pool. You know your favorite movies are too good to actually win. So why expect anything else?
7. Drunk:
A preferred method for watching the Oscars is the altered state, which theoretically makes all the insufferable speeches, rampant phoniness, indulgent back-patting, awkward teleprompter reading and the inevitable "Mad Max: Fury Road" best picture loss more tolerable.
John Serba is film critic and entertainment reporter for MLive.com. Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter or Facebook.Anti-Earmark Republicans Looking For Ways Around Earmark Ban
Just weeks after voting for a broad ban on earmarks, Republicans are looking for ways to get money to their districts without calling it an "earmark."
Doug Mataconis · · 7 comments
Only weeks after approving a ban on earmarks for the coming session of Congress, House and Senate Republicans are looking for ways around the ban to get money back to their districts:
After agreeing to kill earmarks, some of the most conservative GOP lawmakers are already starting to ask themselves: What have we done? Indeed, many Republicans are now worried that the bridges in their districts won’t be fixed, the tariff relief to the local chemical company isn’t coming and the water systems might not be built without a little direction from Congress. So some Republicans are discussing exemptions to the earmark ban, allowing transportation, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and water projects. While transportation earmarks are probably the most notorious — think “Bridge to Nowhere” — there is talk about tweaking the very definition of “earmark.” “It’s like what beauty is,” said Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.). “Everyone knows what a bridge to nowhere is, or an airport that lands no airplanes, or a statue to you — everyone knows that’s bad. It’s easy to say what an earmark isn’t, rather than what an earmark is.”
Or, as America’s 42nd President put it:
It’s rank hypocrisy, really. First, Republicans try to claim their fiscal conservative bona fides with a purely symbolic and utterly pointless ban on earmarking. Then, after it passes, they turn around and redefine what an “earmark” is so that they can continue funneling money to their districts. It stands as proof not only of their own phoniness, but also of the fact that “earmarking” is part and parcel of a large government that spends a lot of money. No matter how you try to ban it, legislators will always find a way to get money and government to their district and their supporters. If you want it to stop, you have to stop it at the source, and that’s in the Federal Budget.
What’s even more ironic about the spectacle of anti-earmark Republicans like Michelle Bachmann trying to find a way around their own earmark ban is the fact that, now, many of them are starting to realize that the ban itself may not have been a good idea:
Conservatives also are frightened that they’ve ceded too much control to the executive branch, leaving local highway and water project decisions to bureaucrats. Bachmann, a favorite among tea partiers, said that Article I of the Constitution gives Congress “the authority to make discriminatory decisions, which means proactive decisions about which roads are built.”
That’s a point that some of us were making before the GOP went for symbolism over substance and voted for the earmark ban:
If Congress weren’t earmarking the appropriations bills, then all of the decisions about where the money would go would be left to the Executive Branch. It’s fairly easy to see what would happen then. The allocation of money by the Executive Branch would become a bargaining tool by which the President would influence Congressmen and Senators to support legislation favored by the White House. Giving the White House power to decide where the money allocated to, say, the Transportation Department goes won’t reduce the budget of the Transportation Department, it will just make the Presidency more powerful.
More broadly, it seems clear that Republicans didn’t think about what they were doing when they enacted a braoad earmark ban:
Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), a tea party favorite who lost out on his bid to chair the House Appropriations Committee, thinks his party may have overreached. “Let’s look at transportation,” he said Wednesday. “How do you handle that without earmarks, since that’s a heavily earmarked bill? How do you handle a Corps of Engineers project? I think, right now, we go through a period where we have gone one step further than we meant to go, and there are some unintended consequences.”
And one of those unintended consequences is that the earmark ban is revealing quite starkly the hypocrisy of some members of Congress. That may actually be a good thing.AP The Penn State University football program is worth more than $50 million each year to the university. But according to one estimate, the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse case could cost the university more than $100 million in civil suits alone.
Darren Rovell of CNBC spoke with a "legal insider" who estimated that Penn State's liability in the civil lawsuits will be "easily $100 million."
Another estimate, made by an attorney on the "Happy Hour with JP Peterson" show on 1010 Sports also estimated the cost of civil lawsuits to be at least $100 million, and could reach $250 million.
Of course, this all depends on how many victims come forward, and when the incidents are alleged to have occurred. As of Tuesday, the number of victims was believed to be close to 20. But it would not be surprising if that number climbs in the coming days and weeks.CLOSE Nine puppies from the Cottrellville Township home where 98 dogs were seized are doing well in the care of the Humane Society of St. Clair County SNAP. Jeffrey M. Smith | Times Herald
Buy Photo Sandra Kilby, executive director, makes a face as she plays with one of nine buhund puppies Thursday, June 16, 2016 at the Humane Society of St. Clair County SNAP in China Township. The nine Norwegian buhund puppies were surrendered to SNAP after 98 dogs were seized from a Cottrellville Township home. The puppies have been placed in foster homes before they are put up for adoption. (Photo: JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD)Buy Photo
Sandy Kilby said the nine puppies surrendered to the St. Clair County Humane Society SNAP are "very cute" — and now freshly cleaned.
They were among the 98 dogs and three cats found in squalid conditions inside a Cottrellville Township home this week.
"The dogs were in great condition, they just were dirty. Health-wise, they were fine," Kilby said. "I'm so, so thankful we were able to get them to be surrendered to us."
Kilby said she has been looking for the dogs for the past several months.
The SNAP executive director said the dogs' owner had contacted her in late 2015 about surrendering more than 10 dogs. But after she had made arrangements for foster homes, he disappeared.
Kilby said she worked with animal control officials to try to find out where he was located, but was unsuccessful.
The case remains under investigation, with the township office determining possible code violations, the county health department investigating, and the prosecutor's office determining possible criminal charges, according to the St. Clair County Sheriff Department.
Deputies and animal control officers responded to the home in the 7500 block of South River Road after a neighbor complained about foul odors and non-stop barking coming from the residence. A 66-year-old man and a 56-year-old woman lived at the house.
Twenty-two dogs were removed from the home by animal control on Tuesday. The homeowners on Tuesday turned over 23 dogs to a Colorado based Norwegian buhund rescue, who arranged temporary housing for the animals throughout Michigan. Another nine dogs were turned over by the homeowners to the St. Clair County Humane Society SNAP.
On Wednesday, deputies and the animal control officer returned to remove the remaining dogs. The residents refused to allow entry and a search warrant had to be requested. A total of 38 dogs and three cats were removed.
It was also discovered that the homeowners had given up six dogs to the Blue Water Humane Society before deputies returned, according to a statement from the St. Clair County Sheriff Department.
The dogs removed from the house include Norwegian buhunds and norrbottenspets, and Norwegian spets mixes.
The animals were in overall good physical condition, however they were covered in feces and urine, according to the sheriff department. The animals all had free run of the house.
The animals will be evaluated for adoption or rescue.
Contact Liz Shepard at (810) 989-6273 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @lvshepard.
Read or Share this story: http://bwne.ws/28HoIZnNot that it's much of a surprise, but it appears that Tiger Woods and Nike will remain endorsement partners for the forseeable future.
According to an ESPN.com report, Woods has signed a new contract with the equipment and apparel manufacturer, which will supplant the current agreement that was set to expire at year's end.
'We're comfortable with where we ended up and the career trajectory that Tiger will be on with Nike,' said Woods' agent, Mark Steinberg, according to the report, adding that financial terms and duration of the new deal would not be disclosed.
Woods signed with Nike upon turning pro in 1996, agreeing to a five-year contract worth $40 million. They have served as arguably his most prominent sponsor across the span of his career, and the current contract between the two parties has been in place since 2006.
'We are thrilled to continue our partnership with Tiger,' said Nike Golf president Cindy Davis in a statement. 'He is one of Nike's most iconic athletes and has played an integral part in Nike Golf's growth since the very beginning.'
The renewal serves as the latest positive development in what has already been a successful season for the 37-year-old Woods, who has won four times this year on the PGA Tour and regained the top spot in the Official World Golf Rankings in March.This post is written by Hatchet staff writer Allison Kowalski
Three-time presidential candidate Ron Paul called on political leaders to ignore traditional party platforms to find lasting policy solutions.
The former Republican congressman and self-described libertarian told the packed Lisner Auditorium crowd that crossing party lines was crucial to steering the country in a new direction.
“Right now if you agree that we have to have a change, then change it any way you can, because it’s your attitudes, your minds who are going to have to pay for it and deal with the consequences,” Paul said.
Stressing a largely hands-off government, Paul also called out the federal government for distorting the truth to shape public opinion.
To demonstrate what he called a lack of transparency, Paul tested the audience’s perception of their public officials.
“How many people here in this room, when you see a pronouncement from a high official in Washington, know that you can depend it’s the truth?” Paul asked.
The crowd remained still, with just one or two hands that slowly climbed into the air. At least one person booed from the back of the audience. Looking into the audience, Paul said: “That’s what the problem is.”
The crowd’s biggest reaction of the night came after the former Texas lawmaker answered a question about gay marriage laws.
“I think people should do what they want,” Paul said said to a burst of applause.
GW College Republicans chairwoman Sinead Casey said a key reason for inviting Paul to speak was his disregard for political partisanship.
“He contributed to a part of the conversation that needs to be happening in America |
ing. First, I’ll count out enough chips to call. Then, after a dramatic pause, I’ll add to the call amount, suggesting I’m planning to raise, instead. Players who hold strong hands often will react differently. A call and a raise are dissimilar to a player betting from legitimate strength. A call may be desired and a raise worrisome. So, if I see a change in reaction, it’s more likely that the bettor has genuine strength. But bluffers don’t care. A raise and a call spell the same doom, so their reaction is unlikely to change. If I see no modification in response, I give more credence to the conclusion that the opponent is bluffing.
Anyway, I hope that helps. Gotta go, phone’s ringing. — MCEveryone knows that pillows are good for sleeping. But did you know that once upon a time they were used for fighting? Have you heard the tale of the Pillow Fighters? The fiercest, fluffiest fighters the world has ever known?
And food was used for fighting, too. The thought of fighting with food is food for thought indeed. You'll feast your eyes on the ones known as the Food Fighters. They came from the East, hungry for victory.
This the story of how these two forces met in the surprisingly peaceful, poorly named Battle of West Blanketsburgh. It is a true tale of pillow fighting: it is no mere pillow sham. It is also the story of the greatest Pillow Fighter the world has ever known: the man they called Casey the Pillow Fighter. Written by Gary Cohen l Drawn by Louie ChinCompanies working on infrastructure projects in Saudi Arabia haven’t been paid for six months or more, Bloomberg reported on Monday, as the country is facing a budget deficit on sliding crude prices.
Payment delays increased lately as the government wants to cut prices on contracts in order to preserve cash, the sources said.
Oil crash forces S. Arabia to cut ‘unnecessary’ budget expenses http://t.co/tFJcjawXLJpic.twitter.com/BVRtIVtXpG — RT (@RT_com) September 7, 2015
Analysts say such delays can slow completion of important projects, such as the construction of the $22 billion Riyadh metro, and also negatively affect the employment rate.
“It’s hard to hold back from boosting spending when oil is on the rise, but very hard to cut when oil prices fall,” said Simon Williams, Chief Economist for the Middle East and North Africa at HSBC. “Cuts are coming -- the budget deficit is too large to ignore and pretend its business as usual.”
READ MORE: Crude down on Goldman gloom, Saudi stubbornness & global glut
Saudi Arabia is currently facing a budget deficit for the first time since 2009. It comes on the back of sliding crude prices with oil sales accounting for almost 80 percent of the country’s revenues. The government cut spending, sold bonds and tapped foreign reserves to compensate for the oil plunge’s negative effect on the economy.
Oil price crash: ‘Saudi Arabian economy going to fundamentally change’ (Op-Edge) http://t.co/3kevoShjzNpic.twitter.com/EnycC80724 — RT (@RT_com) September 7, 2015
The Kingdom sold state bonds worth $15 billion (55 billion riyals) this year. Net foreign assets fell by about $82 billion from January to August.
Saudi Arabia’s GDP is expected to grow about three percent this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The economy expanded 10 percent in 2011, following the authorities’ announcement of $130 billion in social spending.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The cameras show how a hummingbird shakes its head to get rid of the water (Footage: University of California, Berkeley)
Slow-motion footage has revealed how a hovering hummingbird is able to cope with wet weather.
The cameras show that the delicate bird shakes its head with such acceleration that it can reach a g-force of 34 (Formula 1 racing cars typically reach less than 6g).
This mid-air manoeuvre takes just 0.1 seconds and removes almost all of the water droplets from its feathers.
The research is published in the journal of the Royal Society Interface.
Professor Robert Dudley, one of the authors of the study, from the University of California, Berkeley, said: "It is the extreme mobility - its head is going through 180 degrees in a 10th of a second or less - it is just extraordinary."
Artificial rain
The Anna's hummingbird is found in cloud forests and the neo-tropics where rainy days are common, and is able to remain active even in very wet weather.
Image caption The Anna's hummingbird high-speed drying technique could inspire engineers
Yet, until now, nobody knew how the bird did it.
To find out, the researchers trained their hi-tech cameras on a bird as it fed from its feeder, and then sprinkled it with water.
Lead author of the study Dr Victor Ortega-Jimenez, from the University of California, Berkeley, said: "We simulated three different types of rain - and the hummingbirds did this extreme oscillation in light, medium and heavy rain.
"It seems it is a common behaviour of hummingbirds."
The researchers were surprised that the hummingbirds were able to generate such extreme forces while in flight.
Professor Dudley said: "We know visual information is the key to flight control, and, obviously, when you are shaking your head, you don't have that input of flight acceleration, and yet they remain basically stable - they are not falling out of the air."
The scientists said their findings could help engineers to develop micro air vehicles that could cope with unsettled weather or even washing machines with an improved drying spin.(click play on bottom toolbar)
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PALIN FANS GO ROGUE
WATCH: SARAH BOOED AT BOOK TOUR EVENT
Unhappy fans of Sarah Palin went rogue on the Alaska Republican during her book tour stop in Noblesville, Indiana on Thursday.
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and what the hell is Andrea Mitchell up to in this shot…?
Tea partiers turn on each other
After emerging out of nowhere over the summer as a seemingly potent and growing political force, the tea party movement has become embroiled in internal feuding over philosophy, strategy and money and is at risk of losing its momentum.
Read more:
Small Town To Liz Cheney: We Want Gitmo Detainees, Not Your Fearmongering
Officials in a small Michigan town featured in a new video about Guantanamo by Liz Cheney’s national security group want her to know that they’re not falling for her “fearmongering” — and tell us they want Gitmo detainees in their town.
Full story here: Plum Line
Palin’s Exxon Valdez account draws guffaws
ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Sarah Palin’s new memoir, “Going Rogue,” already has been strongly criticized by John McCain’s aides for her account as a vice presidential candidate on the ticket with him in their unsuccessful 2008 race for the White House.
Now, add Alaskan experts who were involved in the case over the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster saying her account over her role in the litigation is distorted for a number of reasons.
“That is the most cockamamie bullshit,” said Dave Oesting of Anchorage, lead plaintiff attorney in the private litigants’ civil case against Exxon and its successor, Exxon Mobil Corp. “She didn’t have a damn thing to do with it, and she didn’t know what it was about.”
full story:
From Comedy Central
Gaywatch – Peter Vadala & William Phillips
Peter Vadala is fired for saying homosexuality is “bad stuff,” and Mick Foley protects a 10-year-old who supports gay rights.
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316,000 Bongs, Disguised As Christmas Ornaments, Seized
LOS ANGELES — Customs officials say they got a surprise when they found 316,000 glass bongs disguised as Christmas ornaments at the Los Angeles harbor.
More here:
John McCain Could Lose Senate Primary To Tea Party Supporter
PHOENIX, AZ — Rasmussen announced a new poll on Friday showing Senator John McCain may be in trouble at home where a polarized electorate has him facing constant criticism from both the left and the right.
More here:
AdvertisementsLady Gaga is BFFs with Donatella Versace (heck, she even wrote a song about her) and now it looks like she may get the chance to play the fashion icon too.
American Crime Story creator Ryan Murphy got tongues wagging at Entertainment Weekly's PopFest on Sunday (October 30) at the prospect of recruiting Gaga for an upcoming season.
The showrunner will be tackling the story of Gianni Versace's murder in 1997 for season three, and during this weekend's panel, the moderator suggested that Gaga would make "the perfect Donatella."
Murphy replied: "Ya think?" and then grinned to a rapturous reception.
The role would mean a re-teaming of Murphy and Gaga after working together on American Horror Story: Hotel and the current season.
FX Networks
American Crime Story, which kicked off with The People vs OJ Simpson, will explore the Gianni murder in season three, after portraying the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in season two.
Speaking of the storyline, Murphy explained: "I was always very moved and freaked out by the Versace assassination, and I thought it was a really great story to do because it's a manhunt season.
"[Serial killer Andrew Cunanan] killed four people and then Versace, and was on the loose. We're exploring the reasons of how he got away with being undetected."
He added: "The tragedy of the Versace murder was that it should not have happened. He should have been caught by then. But he wasn't caught because he was targeting gay people, and people didn't care.
Getty Images
"That's why Gianni Versace was killed, for the most part. So it's a really tragic story and I've always said the thing that makes me cry the most in the world is lost potential, or lost possibility, and I think he was such an amazing force taken too soon for reasons which he shouldn't have been. That is a true crime story in America, so we're tackling that."
The two seasons will shoot simultaneously, and the Versace season is expected to air after Katrina: American Crime Story in 2017.Everything you’ve heard is correct – buying alcohol in Iceland is really, really, really expensive.
Alcohol is bought at state-run liquor stores Vínbúðin, which is closed on Sundays and offers insane prices on booze with a ridiculous markup. Just check out the prices on Vínbúðin’s website if you don’t believe me. My post on how to drink in Iceland on a budget hasn’t gone off to a great start, but just bear with me.
This only gets worse if you buy alcohol in bars or restaurants. Then you’ll really empty your pockets.
So, how can you save on alcohol in Iceland? Well, the obvious answer is: Don’t drink. But if you do drink, there are a few things you can do to not go bankrupt whilst having a good time.
First of all, buy alcohol in the duty free shop at the airport. Each traveler is allowed 6 units of alcohol. That is, for example, 1 liter of liquor and 2 six-packs of beer. You can work out how much you can buy by using the duty free shop’s calculator here.
Party in Iceland on a budget
And now you want to party. Experience Icelandic nightlife at it’s best. Tourists often wonder why there are hardly any partygoers in Reykjavík city between the hours of 8 PM and 12 PM. Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret. Because alcohol is so expensive at bars, most Icelanders start their drinking at home or at someone else’s house. That way, they are drunk enough (or in some cases totally pissed) when they arrive down town, that they don’t have to spend any money at the bar. So, if you don’t feel like drinking in your hotel room, try to meet some locals and invade their house party.
But bars and restaurants are often nice hang-outs when you’re traveling in foreign lands. We at Must See in Iceland urge you to download The Reykjavík Appy Hour app which directs you to the cheapest happy hours in Reykjavík in real time. We feel like it’s the responsible thing to do as your travel guide. Download on iTunes or Google Play Store.
Oh, and remember – beer is not sold in supermarkets in Iceland so don’t be fooled.
Make it safe, make it fun, make it cheap. And let us experience the party with you on #mustseeiceland.The world isn’t exactly short of services offering to store your music collection in the cloud so you can access it from anywhere. In recent times, major players Apple (iCloud), Google (Drive), and Amazon (Cloud), have pitched up alongside early pioneers in the music locker and streaming space, such as Michael Robertson’s MP3tunes. And, perhaps feeling the heat, another burgeoning offering — AudioBox.fm — has seen a significant reboot with an approach that appears to ‘bring everything but the kitchen sink’ to the cloud-music table.
At the heart of this completely rewritten version of AudioBox is integration to a plethora of third-party cloud storage services and a desktop app to stream directly from a user’s own computer — all built around a slick HTML5 browser-based music player.
In addition to being able to sync and access tracks stored on a user’s Dropbox, Skydrive, Google Drive, or Box.net account, among others (a feature AudioBox dubs ‘Unified Library’), the service provides cloud-storage of its own on a ‘pay as you grow’-basis or through dedicated subscription tiers for those users that know more about their requirements in advance.
Streaming from YouTube and SoundCloud is also supported.
Alternatively, users can shun the cloud altogether, turning their own computer into a private music locker via AudioBox Desktop – an app they download that means their locally stored music collection can stream through the AudioBox player just as if it was in the cloud. It’s a feature we’ve seen offered elsewhere, though AudioBox stresses that it’s worked hard to do this in a secure manner, without the need for a user to open up any additional router/modem ports, and notes that the feature is a great way to “circumvent” the walls of Apple’s iTunes.
As you’d expect of any modern music player software, AudioBox supports playlists and rule-based smart playlists. There’s plenty of social media integration too. Tie-ins exist for Last.fm, Twitter, Facebook, Twitch.TV, Google+ and others, so a user can spam their friends with what music they are currently listening to, as well as track their own listening habits.
And as exhaustive a list this is, I’ve undoubtedly missed off a fair few features (such as support for Apple’s Retina display). Which begs the question: Is this ‘bring everything but the kitchen sink’ approach enough to compete with larger players, such as Apple, Amazon, Google et al.? That’s probably best left answered by the market, but either way, AudioBox’s functionality and ambition are impressive.
The are, however, holes that still need to be filled. Missing (for now) are native mobile apps for this rewritten version of the service — though I’m told that iOS, Android, and BlackBerry 10 apps are in the current pipeline, possibly just a few weeks away. There’s also an API, so third-party developers can fill any further gaps, though don’t rule out AudioBox getting there first if the current box of tricks — to use a different metaphor — is anything to go by.
To that end, the startup behind AudioBox — iCoreTech — has upped roots from its native Italy to incorporate in the U.S. and is now headquartered in New York, after securing $25K in angel funding. Meanwhile, TechCrunch has learned that the company is in late stage talks with a U.S. ISP and several other companies, including an online music store, about licensing its platform.(UPDATE: A day later late Friday, DA now says there is no evidence of cyber doom.)
The San Bernardino District Attorney told a federal judge late Thursday that Apple must assist the authorities in unlocking the iPhone used by Syed Farook, one of the two San Bernardino shooters that killed 14 people in a killing rampage in December. The phone, which was a county work phone issued to Farook as part of his Health Department duties, may have been the trigger to unleash a "cyber pathogen," county prosecutors said in a brief court filing.
"The iPhone is a county owned telephone that may have connected to the San Bernardino County computer network. The seized iPhone may contain evidence that can only be found on the seized phone that it was used as a weapon to introduce a lying dormant cyber pathogen that endangers San Bernardino's infrastructure," according to a court filing (PDF) by Michael Ramos, the San Bernardino County district attorney.
The development represents the first time any law enforcement official connected to the investigation provided an indication, other than links to possible co-conspirators, of what the authorities might discover on the phone. The district attorney's position comes a week after Jarrod Burguan, the San Bernardino police chief, said there was a "reasonably good chance that there is nothing of any value on the phone." James Comey, the FBI director, said Feb, 21 that "Maybe the phone holds the clue to finding more terrorists. Maybe it doesn't."
The county declined to directly comment. A spokesman, David Wert, told Ars in an e-mail that "The county didn't have anything to do with this brief. It was filed by the district attorney." The DA's office, which did not immediately respond for comment, followed up with a statement to Ars, saying that there is a "compelling governmental interest in acquiring any evidence of criminal conduct, additional perpetrators, potential damage to the infrastructure of San Bernardino County, and in protecting the California Constitutionally guaranteed due process rights of the victims, deceased and living, arising from state crimes committed on December 2, 2015."
Jonathan Zdziarski, a prominent iPhone forensics expert, said in a telephone interview that the district attorney is suggesting that a "magical unicorn might exist on this phone."
"The world has never seen what he is describing coming from an iPhone," Zdziarski said. "I would expect, I would demand, in order to make that statement at all, he should make some kind of proof."
It sounds like he’s making up these terms as he goes. We've never used these terms in computer science. I think what he’s trying to suggest is that Farook was somehow working with someone to install a program on the iPhone that would infect the local network with some kind of virus or worm or something along those lines. Anything is possible, right? Do they have any evidence whatsoever to show there is any kind of cyber pathogen on the network or any logs or network captures to show that Farook's phone tried to introduce some unauthorized code into the system?
In a follow-up e-mail, Zdziarski added: "This reads as an amicus designed to mislead the courts into acting irrationally in an attempt to manipulate a decision in the FBI's favor. It offers no evidence whatsoever that the device has, or even might have, malware on it. It offers no evidence that their network was ever compromised. They are essentially saying that a magical unicorn might exist on this phone."
At issue is that the Federal Bureau of Investigation wants Apple to create software to help it bypass the passcode lock to enable the authorities to gain access to the iPhone. Apple is fighting a Southern California magistrate's order that it do that. Oral arguments are set for March 22 in federal court, in which Apple hopes to change the magistrate's mind.
The government claims that a 1789 law, known as the All Writs Act, allows judges to issue orders despite there being no law on the topic.
The district attorney's revelation was contained in his application to submit a friend-of-the-court brief. His so-called amicus brief has not been lodged with the court. San Bernardino County did not make it available when Ars requested it.BOISE, Idaho (AP) - A federal judge has ordered Idaho to pay roughly a quarter million dollars in legal fees to the Animal Legal Defense Fund and other groups who successfully sued the state over what they called the “ag-gag” law.
Idaho lawmakers passed the law making it a crime to surreptitiously videotape agriculture operations in 2014 after the state’s $2.5 billion dairy industry complained that videos of cows being abused at a southern Idaho dairy unfairly hurt their businesses.
The Animal Legal Defense Fund sued the state, and in 2015 a federal court invalidated the law after finding that it violated the First Amendment.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill ordered the state to pay the winning side roughly $250,000 to cover their attorney fees and costs.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC.Russian President Vladimir Putin reversed a ban on political protests during the period of the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Now protesters may march during the Games – but with certain restrictions.
"Gatherings, rallies, demonstrations, marches and pickets that are not directly connected to the Olympic and Paralympic Games, can be staged only after agreeing with Sochi municipal authorities and the regional department of the Interior Ministry," the Kremlin's press service announced Saturday.
This comes as part of amended restrictions on security measures in the Black Sea resort that will take effect January 7, a month before the Winter Games begin, and last until March 21, after the Paralympics have finished.
The initial decree, signed by Putin in August last year, banned any protests for the period of the Olympic Games. At that time, right groups, calling for everything from gay rights to political reform, have complained that the ban was “unconstitutional.”
Putin also ordered officials to designate a place where demonstrations may be held during the Olympics and Paralympics, his press secretary Dmitry Peskov said.
The International Olympic Committee welcomed the decision.
"It is in line with the assurances that President Putin gave us last year and part of the Russian authorities' plans to ensure free expression during the Games whilst delivering safe and secure Games," the IOC told Reuters.
The decree comes after Putin ordered a security clampdown across the country in the wake of two suicide bombings in the southern Russian city of Volgograd, which killed at least 34 people and injured over 100.
On Friday, the Russian president together with the country’s PM, Dmitry Medvedev, arrived in Sochi to inspect various Olympic venues in the area and watch preparations for the opening ceremony.Paul Sancya/AP Photo
Rick Perry delivered his biggest fumble of the campaign to date when he failed to name the third agency he would eliminate if he were to become president during a Republican presidential debate in Rochester, Mich.
“It’s three agencies of government when I get there that are gone – Commerce, Education and the um, what’s the third one there? Let’s see. Oh five – Commerce, Education and the um, um,” Perry said.
Mitt Romney, standing two podiums to Perry’s right, offered the Environmental Protection Agency as a suggestion.
“EPA, there you go,” Perry said.
But then, the Texas governor quickly retracted his statement, saying the EPA doesn’t need to be eliminated but simply rebuilt.
Again, he tried to name the third mystery agency.
“But you can’t name the third one?” CNBC moderator John Harwood asked.
“The third agency of government I would do away with - the education, the uh, the commerce and let’s see. I can’t the third one. I can’t. Sorry Oops.”
The third agency Perry couldn’t think of was the Department of Energy, which he rails against on the stump nearly every day.
Perry finally remembered the third agency 15 minutes later after referring to his notes, saying “By the way, it was the Department of Energy I was talking about.”
Just minutes after the conclusion of the debate, Perry took to the spin room and told reporters he was embarrassed by his gaffe.
“Speaking of boots, I’m glad I had my boots on tonight because I sure stepped in it out there,” Perry joked. “I stepped in it. Man, yeah it was embarrassing. Of course it was.
“From time to time, you may forget about an agency that you are gonna zero out,” he said. “Everybody tomorrow will understand the Energy Department is one of those that needs to be done away with.”
Advisers to Perry characterized his slip up as a “human moment,” saying it was a “stumble of style not of substance.”
Rep. Michele Bachmann expressed sympathy for the Texas governor has he struggled to remember the name of the agency.
“It was a tough moment,” she said on CNBC after the debate. “All of us recognize it was something none of us would want to go through. I felt bad for him.”
Eric Fehrnstrom, asenior advisor to Mitt Romney said, “There’s nothing I could say that could darken the night Rick Perry has had.”
Sources told ABC News Romney’s green room sat in “quiet amazement” as the governor failed to answer the question.
Perry has received criticism throughout this campaign cycle for his poor debate skills, but his brain freeze Wednesday night may have been the most severe of his campaign stumbles, especially as the Texas governor has centered his job creation plan on unleashing the power of the energy industry.
Perry has previously said he believes there are too many debates this primary season, but on Wednesday night he said he would not back down from the upcoming debates.
“Absolutely not, I’ll be in South Carolina on Saturday and, hopefully, I’ll remember the Energy Department.”
Perry will continue engaging in damage control of the incident Thursday morning when he plans to appear on the major morning shows.Will Broadly-Written 'Revenge Porn' Laws Encourage Shady Law Firms To Engage In 'Revenge Porn' Trolling?
from the a-brand-new-set-of-exploits dept
"Revenge porn" laws are universally badly and broadly written, prone to all sorts of unintended consequences that will punish First Amendment-protected speech with increasingly harsh sentences. Arizona's new "revenge porn" law equates the offense with domestic violence, filing under Chapter 14 of state law ("Sexual Offenses").This law has the potential to create a new, ultra-nefarious level of "revenge porn trolling" by entities with the same moral turpitude as Prenda and Malibu Media, both of which have actively explored the outer limits of copyright law in their extortionate efforts. Arizona's new "revenge porn" law gives these sorts of entities a new form of leverage to use against unwary infringers.The law contains wording that would implicate anyone who "intentionally discloses, displays, distributes, publishes, advertises or offers" any form of media depicting sexual activity or nudity "if the person knows or should have known that the depicted person."By definition, copyright infringement is "disclosing without consent." You can't infringe if you have permission.True, there is an exception that excludes "images involving voluntary exposure in a public or commercial setting." This would seem to exclude professional pornography, but that would also seem to be outweighed by the "consent" referenced in the law's opening paragraph.This potentially creates a loophole for porn producers (or rather, their legal representation) to pursue the non-consensual republication of their content.What would be scarier for the non-aware infringer to receive? A demand letter referencing potential infringement damages or a demand letter referencing potential felony charges forIt wouldn't take much to set up a honeypot. Just a few amateurish-looking shots and maybe a quick and dirty site with a revenge porn-ish look. With even less effort, photos and video could be scattered across the web containing faux contact info -- anything to make them look like the sort of thing the bill targets. And if the info comes out that a law firm/porn producer was behind the content, they can always fall back on copyright.Even without a honeypot, there's still the question of consent. If Arizonan X post infringing pics and video to his tumblr, he is definitely circumventing the depicted person(s) "consent." The law only specifies that the posting person "knows or should have known" that the depicted person did not consent to this "disclosure." Consent given to a porn producer is not consent given to the public for distribution.Granted, criminal prosecution won't result in monetary reward for trolls, but trolling endgame has never been the courtroom. The judicial system is the last resort. The real money is in demand letters, and Arizona's new bill will give them plenty of legal threats to use.[Side note: this doesn't even address what the law does -- in fact, what all these laws do -- to the tangled legalities of amateur porn. If consenting adults post consensual images and video of their sexual activities, what happens when one of the parties revokes consent after the fact? Does this make the posted material instantly illegal? There's no wording in Arizona's law that addresses this form of consent (that language was dropped, along with wording about newsworthy postings). Professional porn would have explicit language dealing with consent, but amateur efforts would obviously be devoid of contractual stipulations.No doubt advocates of this law would consider the revocation of consent by one party to be sufficient enough for prosecution, but this should make anyone in the affected states wary about engaging in recorded sexual activities -- even more so than "revenge porn" itself does.]
Filed Under: arizona, honey pots, revenge porn, trollingDespite the fall of the Mughals, red light areas and their court heritage found patronage from the Raj. The British colonisers found these places exotic and exciting — dance, music, style and seduction from the Orient gave birth to tales that spread far and wide. Over the years, red-light districts have been squeezed and suffocated. EOS revisits four bustling cantonments that the Raj patronised to discover a Mughal-era tradition that is on the cusp of extinction. Click on the tabs below to explore Pakistan's red light districts.
The diamond of Lahore has dulled By Xari Jalil Old properties in Heera Mandi have been renovated and reused as restaurants and other shops. Photos by Xari Jalil and Murtaza Ali, M Arif / White Star I still remember my first time,” says Jugnu*, her face pale under the white tubelight of her cramped room. “I was only 13 but was dressed to the nines. I wore jewellery and makeup, and even though I was told I looked beautiful, I felt shy and embarrassed and did not want to go dance.” Jugnu’s paternal aunt, who was a dancer like Jugnu but had retired by then, had a talk with her niece to settle her nerves. “She said, this is our family profession and that our women had been doing it for ages. Why should I feel ashamed of it? As she spoke, something inside me began to melt. Slowly I felt much better.” She remembers entering the small room called the ‘time-kamra’ or ‘office’. Two or three ‘tamashbeen’ [spectators] sat there, while her own troupe — the musicians and her aunt — accompanied her. It was a small private baithak [gathering], and once Jugnu began her dance she forgot all her fears. “I don’t remember which song I danced to,” she grins, flashing paan-stained teeth under her dark lips. “But I do remember it was Madam’s song.” Aside from being a red-light area, Heera Mandi was once renowned for culture and courtship in the Mughal tradition Like all dancing girls in the Shahi Mohallah, or specifically in the red light district called Heera Mandi, there is a money-throwing ritual at dance performances. Back in those days, the going rate for a new dancer would have been around 400 to 500 rupees. But Jugnu danced so well that she herself got around 2,500 rupees. “That means Rs25,000 each — for everyone in that room,” she says. “We always distribute equally after a baithak.” Jugnu still retains her attraction but has become a little plump, after bearing two children with different men – which can be a downfall for dancing girls. It is possible to think that this woman could have done better by making a living out of dancing. But after official sanction against red light districts, her family, like many others, moved away to another neighbouring area known as Baagh Munshi Ladda. It is now also known as the ‘new Heera Mandi’ although nothing in the new locality is reminiscent of the old area. To call it a baagh [garden] is an overstatement, however. Jugnu’s own house is windowless and grotty. With four children and three adults as occupants, it is in a constant state of disarray. Her room is cramped and empty but for a whirring pedestal fan, a very thin and stained mattress and pillow, and tiny oil lamps sitting in a row on a bare concrete shelf. For Jugnu’s mother Zeba*, who is from Gujrat but was married to a man known only superficially to her father, it was a shock to discover that her in-laws were from a paisha [vocation] that was considered taboo. “But in Kanjar families, daughters-in-law are not meant to carry on the tradition of singing and dancing,” says Zeba, now 47. “So my other two daughters were trained in singing, but they both died. Now I only have Jugnu.” There are two majority communities who reside and work in Heera Mandi. One of them is the Kanjars, whose women carry on the tradition of singing and dancing. The other is Mirasis — musicians and trainers of the Kanjar women. Irrespective of whether they sell their bodies, however, Kanjar women are viewed as prostitutes even though that might not always be the case. “A girl’s birth brings celebrations,” says Zeba. “When a boy is born, however, there is sorrow. Even today, it is Jugnu who is the breadwinner of this family. She is taking care of her own children as well as her sisters. Her brother only earns daily wages.” Like all Kanjar women, Jugnu too has been ‘married’ but without a nikahnama [certificate of marriage]. She has had a business contract with the three or four men she married, which she says lasts for a night in return for a large sum of money. “My father arranged it with a gold businessman the first time, and he paid around 30,000 rupees for it. Even our servants were paid 5,000 rupees each. I was only 13 and embarrassed, hurt and scared. But I got over it fast.” Like all such men, that businessman too did not return. “It was not easy for a man to come too close to a woman in a kotha back in those days,” she says. “We were surrounded by our tabla player, sheesha player, dhol wala, naika [a senior woman chaperone], and the flower man would come and so did the money seller,” she says. “There was a courtship ritual in getting to know the woman first and then coming closer. The man could not just use and abuse. We were protected by our community.” A regal fixation Even today, the idea of Heera Mandi remains as exotic as ever to most. Many believe that even now, they might catch a sight of some dancing girls or perhaps hear a mujra in the distance. It seems thrilling and adventurous, tinged with the secrecy of illicit excitement. Other old properties have been put up for sale.─Photos by Xari Jalil and Murtaza Ali, M Arif / White Star But today, a trip down the lane opposite the regal Badshahi Mosque and the Lahore Fort shows that the age-old culture of the bazaar has vanished. In its place now are shoe shops and warehouses, many of them manufacturing set-ups. All the buildings which once used to be kothas are now decrepit, dusty skeletons. The time-kamra is now just home to piles of sawdust and leather. “Local culture and music are important for all civilisations,” says Mian Yousuf Salahuddin, better known as Yousuf Salli. “But the way ours was killed off, it is indeed a very tragic thing.” Salli lives smack in the centre of the Taxali gate area. His ancestral Haveli Barood Khana was originally built by the Sikhs during their rule in Punjab and was meant for storing gun-powder, weapons and ammunition, hence its name. But after the first Muslim mayor of Lahore, Mian Amiruddin, bought it in 1870, the haveli has stayed in the family and has been passed down generation after generation. If Salli’s paternal grandfather was the mayor, then his maternal grandfather was the great poet Sir Muhammad Iqbal. And through the times, Salli has become renowned for being an unofficial patron of the arts and culture. “Good singers are not easy to find anymore,” argues Salli. He talks of the great musicians who came out of this area, including Ustad Taafu, whose entire family still lives at Bhaati Gate — a place famous for musicians’ residences and music shops. “There was Ustad Barkat Ali Khan, Fateh Ali Khan, Amanat Ali Khan,” he says. Besides there were some great gaikas (women singers) including Farida Khanum and Noor Jahan who received their training from the ustads here. In the old days, kotha singing had a very particular style of ghazal singing. It was more experimental and flexible — a slight step further than that of ‘thumri’. “If you really want to see that ghungroo dance or listen to that calibre of singing again, you cannot find it,” argues Salli. After the Zia regime when all this was banned, there was obviously economic depression in the area,” says Dara Anjum, historian and Director of the Lahore Fort. “Building owners who were charging, say 5,000 rupees in rent from a Kanjar family, were not being paid timely because business for the Kanjar community was slow. When other businessmen like the shoe manufacturers offered double the rent, the building owners were forced to evict their tenants.” There was a third and worse option — dropping to the lowest of the low and selling sex for however much it took. But because Kanjar girls knew the skill of performing arts, many were picked to go to the film industry. Others became renowned singers. The ones who weren’t as talented simply moved out. Some including Jugnu even tried their luck at dancing in the Middle East. Although most people refer to General Ziaul Haq’s |
or financial aid staffs must attend an NCAA Regional Rules Seminar. The athletics director and head baseball coach attended a 2014 Regional Rules Seminar (self-imposed by the college). The head baseball coach and a senior athletics administrator must attend at least one additional NCAA Regional Rules Seminar during the probation period.
Monthly rules education sessions for the head baseball coach and his staff. During the sessions, the college must review the baseball program’s recruiting communications.
The members of the Division III Committee on Infractions who reviewed this case included Dave Cecil, associate vice president for financial aid at Transylvania University; Amy Hackett, committee chair and director of athletics at the University of Puget Sound; Tracey Hathaway, associate director of athletics for compliance and student-athlete welfare at the University of Massachusetts Boston; Gerald Houlihan, attorney in private practice; and Gerald Young, athletics director at Carleton College.A look from Acronym | Source: Acronym
BERLIN, Germany — You'd be forgiven for not knowing much about Acronym. The company never advertises and with no public relations strategy to speak of, its founders are tough to reach. They prefer to let their designs speak for themselves and whether you know it or not, they've been pacing the vanguard of technically-focused fashion for nearly two decades.
Founded in 1994 by Errolson Hugh and Michaela Sachenbacher, Acronym is an incredibly lean and agile operation. The founders are as likely to refer to themselves as a guerrilla unit as a clothing company, but since 2002, they've produced their own apparel label. It's sleek and futuristic, tough, functional and undeniably cool. It's so brim-full of performance features that they offer a glossary to help customers interpret them. And though the technical nature of the garments is a selling point in certain markets, you needn't know the difference between Gore-Tex and Super Composite Skin to appreciate how well they function.
Acronym began as a design agency offering contract services to larger firms. Their first job was with a German snowboarding company called Protective, which they quickly parlayed into a role with Burton Snowboards. Their relationship with Burton was a resounding mutual success that lasted nearly 14 years. Hugh spoke fondly of the partnership: "Burton was great because they were so irreverent. Snowboarding's inherently technical. You need the protection, you need the performance for the activity, but it's got such a punk rock spirit to it. There was never an idea that was too crazy."
Theres no marketing budget that youre paying for. Its all going into the gear.
Working heavily with sportswear and military technology, Hugh and Sachenbacher developed an interest in applying them to everyday attire. For Hugh, the impulse to marry technical performance to formal elegance is deeply rooted. "I started karate when I was 10, and I was given the traditional karate uniform, the gi, which is a very Japanese form of pattern-making. Right after that I realised, 'Wow, I can do things in this suit I can't do in my regular clothes.' That's always informed Acronym."
Hugh and Sachenbacher pitched this notion of form-meets-hyperfunction to several of their partners. None were interested in pursuing it. According to Hugh, they were puzzled by the concept: "They all said, 'Why would you want to do that? It's so difficult, it's so expensive. We don't get it.' So, out of frustration, we decided to do it ourselves."
Acronym's first collection, dubbed Kit-1, was released in 2002, in an edition of 120. Nearly three years in the making ("It almost killed us," says Hugh), it consisted of a jacket, a bag, a soundtrack, software, catalogues featuring concept art, and few other small items. Not exactly a typical first offering. The response was strong, and the concept resonated with industry fixtures. Their first full collection, released in Fall 2003, was carried by tastemakers like Colette in Paris.
With zero marketing besides word-of-mouth and a handful of magazine features, the best explanation for Acronym's immediate success was the work itself. "Because we came from a design background, our entire business model, such as it was, was purely product-based. The whole structure of the company was set up to build exactly what we wanted with no compromises."
Acronym has never strayed from this single-minded focus on product design, and it's the key to unpacking their success. "There's no marketing budget that you're paying for when you buy one of our jackets," says Hugh. "It's all going into the gear. I think people can sense that, and you can see it in the end product." Stated simply: to sell a hard-shell jacket for over $1,000, you just have to make a hard-shell jacket that's worth over $1,000.
This is all to say that Acronym's customers — enthusiasts might be a more apt descriptor — have understood its vision from jump. Despite daunting price-points, Hugh never worries about leaving product on the shelves. "What people really want out of Acronym is how uncompromised it is."
Over the past decade, Acronym has cultivated a relationship of trust with its audience, which has allowed them to achieve things most labels wouldn't dare attempt. "If we had to run the stuff by our sales team or our commercial department, I can imagine it would be very difficult to make it happen. One season we reduced our apparel offerings from the normal 20 to four, which was risky, but it was one of our most successful seasons."
That renegade spirit is what makes Acronym such a unique brand. Whether they intended to or not, they've built a positive feedback loop where operational innovation facilitates design innovation. "When you have the product in front of you, it's hard to imagine it's made by the size of company it's made by. But we can do that because we strip everything else away." When Hugh says "everything else," he means it: until 2009, he and Sachenbacher were the company's only employees. The team has since grown, but remains puny by wider industry standards. By staying so lean, Acronym is able to offer several avant-garde pieces per season. Their runs are small, their market is devoted and their reputation for quality is unimpeachable. No matter how far out one of their pieces seems, consumers know it will function as intended and then some.
Acronym's product-first philosophy has generated some unique business practices, too. In 2005, they introduced Subnet Mask, an invitation-only website that is the locus of their wholesale business. "Subnet Mask is our dealer website. It's the tool we made up to address the fact that we didn't have the time or the money to travel to sell the collection." To access Subnet Mask, you need a password granted "by recommendation" from Acronym. Once inside, you can view photos and videos of the new collection. Orders are placed on the website, and cancelled if deposits aren't made promptly. Simple. "That's how we avoided having to deal with all of the traffic control of managing accounts," says Hugh. "We just don't have the time."
Though the brand was viewed as something of a curiosity at first, the industry has caught on quickly. "When we started, the technology we were using was a new thing for fashion," says Hugh. "Our focus was always on quality. For us, the technology is quality. It's not an end in itself. That notion of technology being quality has become much more understood in the industry." As a result, Acronym fields an endless stream of requests from brands seeking to access their expertise, which allows them to be picky when choosing collaborators. Currently, they design Stone Island Shadow Project, Herno Laminar, and Disaeran for Japanese retailer United Arrows. These co-productions are essential to Acronym's continued growth. Hugh considers them invaluable learning experiences: "We're constantly getting to see the insides of companies we normally wouldn't get to see. All of them do something really well. All of them also face different challenges, so you can learn at a really fast rate."
A higher profile has its downsides, too. Last June, Gucci showed a jacket as part of its Men's Spring 2014 collection that bears an uncanny resemblance to Acronym's GT-J5A jacket, introduced in 2006. While that sort of line-for-line copying is typical in the world of fast fashion, it's surprising for a house as venerable as Gucci, and, in Hugh's view, indicative of an industry in distress.
"I just laugh at the Gucci thing because it doesn't really hurt us. But it isn't actually that funny. And with those resources they shouldn't have to do that. I'm almost sure that somebody had it as a sample, and there was a deadline crunch, and they needed that slot to be filled, and they sent it to the factory and knocked it off. Probably no one person is even responsible for it, but the whole system is under such pressure, even at that scale. They're under extraordinary pressure to keep up the pace. In my view, this is a broken system, in many ways."
When were designing something for Acronym, were designing the result, not the product itself.
Hugh takes solace in the fact that even though another label might produce garments that look like Acronym, they're unlikely to function like Acronym. Recently, much of the label's focus has been on pushing the envelope in pattern making. "At the beginning it was definitely the materials, and now we're more into the way things fit and how they work on the body, as far as kinesiology, and how they move," Hugh explains. "Lotta [Saas, a member of the design team] spends pretty much all her time working for us trying to figure out how to make things do what they aren't supposed to in terms of the pattern. It looks like a regular pair of pants but allows you to move as if you're wearing a track pant for competition."
When asked what he thought the future of apparel holds, Hugh replied with a quotation from speculative fiction godhead William Gibson: "'Interface evolves towards transparency.' What I get out of that is that the gimmicks disappear. All of the bells and whistles go. When we're designing something for Acronym, we're designing the result, not the product itself. The thing that it allows you to do, that's the focus."
"In karate, you're taught to punch through the target. We're trying to design through the product. The product is there, it's the vehicle, but it's not actually what we're about."Here at Nightwatch, we count ourselves lucky to have correctly made an important decision when we started developing our ambitious web interface for the services we offer online. Now, we want to tell you about it, hoping it can benefit you too.
When choosing a front-end framework for your application, you’re faced with a wide array of options, each promising to improve existing solutions in a better, more exciting way. This means your problem is now twofold; in addition to stress due to decision fatigue, it's also easy to get persuaded into what’s currently fashionable, only to realize later that your decision is not working out well for your project’s maintainability on the long run.
Granted, the front-end ecosystem has never been broader, and the tooling has never flourished so vividly. The ambivalence of it is that it’s an exciting place, but mainly for passionate explorers with a lot of free time on their hands.
A painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, possibly depicting the front-end development landscape at the moment.
Unfortunately, if you’re involved in a real business and have to maintain an actual, possibly bootstrapped product, you need to be extremely careful in what technology you base your product on in order to survive.
If you fail to choose your tools wisely, you might end up fighting them, when you really should be fighting for customers by rapidly delivering new or improved features in your application.
What We Needed
When starting out with Nightwatch, we wanted to use a front-end framework, which:
Is perfect for a bootstrapped business on a budget,
Includes all moving parts for a modern web application (routing, state management, components, asset build tools, CLI),
Provides reactive templates, fast rendering and doesn’t choke on a lot of elements,
Reduces development churn by offering conventions and enforced app structure,
Enables newly joined developers to be productive starting day one,
, Is backed by a stable open source coalition (and not a corporation, or even worse, venture capital),
Is continuously being developed and improved, providing regular and clear upgrade paths,
Provides excellent documentation and guides,
Is mature and tested in battle, used by many successful companies (Intercom, LinkedIn, Apple, NBC, Twitch, Netflix,...).
Two years ago, in May 2015, we placed our bet on Ember.js:
Initial commit with Ember.js
Growing (up) with Ember.js
In product development, the primary goal is to develop and improve the product. A product is made with tools. To ensure an updated product, you have to keep your standards and tools updated as well; otherwise, you risk piling up technical debt.
Ember.js excels at making upgrades pretty much painless. As painless as it goes in the front-end JavaScript world.
Let’s run a little retrospective:
Just a few of Ember upgrades in Nightwatch
This is an (omitted) upgrade commit list from the last two years of development. Given the fact that one computer year ≈ seven JavaScript years, it’s impressive how Ember.js enabled us to both grow our application rapidly while allowing us to keep the framework updated without much effort. In this volatile world of front-end development, this just sounds hard to believe.
Can you count how many routers React retired and how many times Angular backwards-incompatibly reinvented and renamed itself in this time? 🤔
Mind you, these upgrades didn’t just involve bug fixes, but also major goodies like:
A complete rewrite of the rendering engine (Glimmer 2), one of the fastest rendering engines in the world, which considerably reduced the bundle size,
Support for lazy loading parts of the app (Engines),
Support for server-side rendering (FastBoot).
Ember calls this concept stability without stagnation, which resonates loudly with our philosophy. The idea is that backward compatibility is important and can be maintained while still innovating and evolving the framework.
Little to No Development Bureaucracy
Generally, bureaucracy is something unpleasant that wastes your time and doesn’t really matter in the whole scheme of providing value to your users.
When using other frameworks, we’ve often observed development teams lose precious days (or even weeks) on:
Arguing on how to structure code and which file goes where,
Configuring build tools, asset chains, deploy pipelines,
Dealing with asset fingerprinting and cache busting,
Setting up test runners, test assertion libraries,
Deciding on data flows and state management,
Differentiating between development and production builds,
Feeling lost due to incomplete documentation.
The truth is, most of the time we can’t really afford to deal with these things, nor want to - because they provide zero business value. We just want to work on amazing features for our users.
Luckily, Ember.js comes with all these tools already attached and figured out - continuously updated to the best practices in contemporary web development.
Developer Ergonomics
Ember is one of those frameworks that put the developer in the first place. It enables them to be able to accomplish more, faster, and without suffering from decision fatigue.
Ember CLI
Ember provides superb development workflow. Its primary utility is Ember CLI, a command line utility which includes a fast Broccoli-powered asset pipeline, a strong conventional project structure, and a rich add-on system for extending with npm and bower dependencies.
Want to spin up a development server? Just execute ember serve in your terminal. It rebuilds the code on each code change, and it does it very quickly (thanks to Broccoli pipeline).
You don’t need much guessing to figure what ember build or ember deploy commands do. And there is a lot more. Scaffolding, test execution, unit/integration/acceptance tests – a full test harness in the command line.
CLI tools are nowadays pretty common in frameworks, but that wasn't always the case. Hats off to Ember, which popularized the idea of CLI programs to increase productivity. Both Angular CLI and Create React App are based on, or heavily influenced by Ember CLI.
Ember Data
Ember Data is a customizable data layer add-on that comes with Ember (usage is completely optional though) that maps to your back-end models and provides convenient methods for async queries and CRUD operations straight out of the box.
Ember Data model
Ember Inspector
Ember Inspector is a multi-dimension x-ray scanner and an oscillator for Ember applications. This browser extension allows us to browse through the internal structure, inspect state in every corner of the app and measure performance. For microscopic inspection, you can bring any component reference to JavaScript console. We think that’s very cool 😎.
Inspecting components in Nightwatch
Rich Features, Done Fast
There have been claims Ember.js will lock you into an Ember way of doing things and leave you with a small maneuvering room when trying something a bit different. Well, Nightwatch is a living proof this claim is false.
For example, take a look at our custom graph configurator:
This graph series configurator was built in a couple of days, using a simple hierarchy of objects, extended from Ember.Object. The template reactively reflects any change in their state and computed properties (one of the strongest Ember concepts).
Ember's mechanisms offer a truly powerful way of building ambitious web applications, especially dashboard-like applications that feature many knobs and whistles.
Giant Ecosystem and Excellent Community
When implementing components of an application, there is a decent chance somebody already did it well and open-sourced it as an Ember add-on. Datepickers, authentication, media, UI elements, animations, responsiveness utils, you name it. A lot of them are tested and well-proven, and working with them significantly reduces development cost.
What we also like is how Ember shapes itself via development democracy, i.e., RFCs. This guarantees continuous improvements in the right direction with a common consensus.
Disadvantages
Although we don’t really have bad feelings for any part of Ember, we do miss some features which would make development faster and less error-prone.
The first is hot-reloading, popularized in React applications. It reloads the logic in place when the code is changed, without needing to reload the whole page. Currently, Ember CLI performs a page reload every time you change JavaScript code. CSS hot reloads work fine, though.
The next thing we miss is first-class TypeScript support. There are some developments in this area, but it’s still the wild west, mainly because TypeScript doesn’t fully understand Ember’s dynamic object model (yet).
Also, to reduce the final bundle size by eliminating unused code, a tree-shaking feature in Ember CLI would be nice. Luckily this is already in the works by the Ember folks.
Conclusion
We firmly believe developers should look past the usual most hyped frameworks and seriously consider Ember.js when selecting a framework for their next project.
It’s is an excellent choice for running feature-rich web applications where you want to focus on business and features instead of solving issues and dilemmas about tooling and deciding on which pieces to bring into the bundle to make everything work. This is especially crucial for teams of any size that need to move fast. Ember.js is all about that. That’s why we’re using it. What about you?Travelers can rent a place to stay in a local 'host's' home across thr globe through the website Airbnb.com. (AP Photo)
PALM SPRINGS, Calif. (ABC NEWS) - A woman who rented out her home using the popular website Airbnb.com recently found herself living what she calls a nightmare.
She said, the guest was supposed to only stay about a month and a half, but now he's refusing to leave, squatting in her home and forcing her to hire a lawyer to try and get him evicted.
Cory Tschogl told ABC's "Good Morning America" she rented out her stunning 600-square-foot condo in Palm Springs, California through Airbnb, but now, more than 30 days later, the man who rented it won't leave and is even threatening to sue her. She turned to Business Insider for help.
"She was extremely frustrated. She described the whole situation as a nightmare," said Julie Bort of Business Insider, who interviewed Tschogl.
Tschogl told Business Insider that the "guest" - as Airbnb calls him - wanted to rent for 44 days, and paid for 30 days up-front. He said he needed a place to say for "an extended business trip."
But, on day one, Tschogl said he started complaining about what he called "cloudy water," and about the condo complex's gated entry system. He then asked for a full refund.
"She said, 'OK, that's fine, just take the refund. Just leave. That's all great,'" Bort said Tschogl told her.
But he didn't leave. So she waited, thinking he would go when the reservation was up. The guest still didn't budge.
Tschogl said she texted him, threatening to turn off the utilities if he didn't leave. His reply:
"He started sending her threatening texts. He actually threatened tosue her, claiming damages," Bort explained.
According to a legal expert "Good Morning America" spoke with, this man and other Airbnb "guests" can be considered actual tenants - which means, to get her guest evicted, Tschogl now needs to go through a full eviction process, which could take months, as well as thousands of dollars in legal fees.
"Airbnb is extremely popular, but its really, really up to you to understand the rules and the laws that govern your area," Bort said.
As of Tuesday morning, Airbnb has paid Tschogl for the full reservation, and tells ABC News, "We're working with her to provide additional support as we move forward."
ABC News tried to reach the renter for comment, but was unsuccessful.Honda Center and downtown Long Beach will play significant roles in the 2024 Olympics should Los Angeles be awarded the Games, Los Angeles 2024 officials said Thursday.
Honda Center in Anaheim would host the volleyball competition and Long Beach would be home to six sports as part of a revised plan that extends the footprint for the Olympic Games that originally was centralized in Los Angeles.
LA 2024 officials are also in talks with state and Riverside County officials about making Lake Perris the Olympic rowing and canoe venue. Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles would host the golf competition and a new NFL stadium in Inglewood will also be part of the final bid, LA 2024 officials said.
The revised plan focuses on four Olympic sports parks and emphasizes the proximity to public transportation and the Los Angeles and Orange County region’s wealth of world class facilities. It comes just days before the Oct. 7 deadline for 2024 bid candidate cities to submit to the International Olympic Committee their Stage II bid books addressing governance, legal issues and venue funding. It also follows months of conversations between LA 2024 and international sports federations officials about potential 2024 venues.
“For us the first conversation was what’s the right thing with the sport and how does that match with taking advantage of our existing venues, they’re all world class providing the best platform for the Games,” LA 2024 chairman Casey Wasserman said. “So the expanded footprint is really best venues, right for the sports, right showcase, right opportunity, and what you see is the result of that process that has been going on for a long time now.”
The shift away from a more compact venue plan brings the Los Angeles bid into closer alignment with Agenda 2020, a series of IOC reforms that emphasize sustainability.
“We think what’s important in the eyes of the IOC as outlined in Agenda 2020 is a sustainable plan that works for the long-term vision of the city, and we believe that taking advantage of these venues, which we have a wealth of them in Los Angles and Southern California, is the most Agenda 2020 responsible plan we can put forward,” Wasserman said. “They happen to be iconic venues, We can cluster sports around those venues and we think the result is a great platform to host the Games for the athletes and the fans to really elevate the experience for everybody.”
The IOC will select the 2024 host city on Sept. 13, 2017 in Lima, Peru. Paris, which like Los Angeles is seeking a third Olympics, and Budapest are also in the bidding.
Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi said Wednesday she would not support what she described as an “irresponsible” bid for the 2024 Games, essentially ending that city’s bid.
The LA 2024 changes present the IOC with a venue plan that is in contrast with the proposed Paris layout, which also emphasizes top-flight existing venues but ones that for the most part are not near each other.
The revised plan also allows LA 2024 to use UCLA venues as training facilities for athletes staying in the Olympic Village on the Westwood campus. Pauley Pavilion would host the wrestling and judo competitions.
Wasserman said the decision to move volleyball from Pauley Pavilion to Honda Center was made at the request of the Federation of International Volleyball (FIVB), volleyball’s global governing body. LA 2024 met with FIVB officials at their Lausanne headquarters earlier this year.
The move to Anaheim was also a point of emphasis during a meeting between FIVB officials and LA 2024 chief executive Gene Sykes and sports director Doug Arnot last month at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
“They made it very clear they preferred the Honda Center to other alternatives that we offered them, and one of the things we’ve said to leaders of the sports federations in almost every case we’ve had multiple choices, which makes our bid unique,” Sykes said. “If they can help us design a bid that works best for them they become allies of our bid, which is very important to the bid strategy. So we’re fortunate to have the wealth of opportunities and available choices that we have in this community.”
The move was also an obvious choice because of Orange County’s rich volleyball history, LA 2024 officials said.
“They preferred Honda for a number of different reasons. One, I think the size, the seating capacity, the hospitality opportunities that they had at Honda,” Arnot said. “They felt that it was a better environment overall for volleyball. And quite frankly the fact that Orange County is at the epicenter for volleyball in the United States was another compelling reason to consider Honda. They know they’ll have a great friendly crowd there.”
Long Beach would become a fourth Olympic sports park, joining similar parks in downtown Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley and the South Bay at the StubHub Center. The Long Beach Arena would host team handball. The city’s downtown waterfront would be the site of open water swimming and triathlon, which also would use the Long Beach Grand Prix course. Temporary facilities would be built for water polo and BMX within the downtown Olympic sports park. Sailing competitions would take place just off the Long Beach pier, enhancing the viewing opportunities for spectators.
“We just saw a natural evolution of opportunities with sailing and some of the other sports centering around a downtown Long Beach,” Wasserman said. “The redevelopment that has happened down there and the ability to bring some temporary venues like BMX and water polo to a waterfront really creates an iconic location. It really creates a great opportunity to showcase a set of sports in an iconic location.”
A driving force behind the Long Beach sports park was also desire by the ITU, triathlon’s worldwide governing body, to replicate the grand prix style race course used for the Rio triathlon. LA 2024 officials also offered the Palos Verdes Peninsula and other Los Angeles County locations to the ITU as potential triathlon sites.
“We gave them everything they could see and they chose Long Beach and when they were assertive as they were about it, it make it easy for us to think about how else we would build a park around that in Long Beach,” Sykes said.
LA 2024’s sports park theme would allow the organizers to cluster multiple venues in proximity to public transportation and within one secure area, with celebration and fan festival-like areas within the park. The plan will reduce security costs, make the Games more accessible to fans and enhance the spectator experience. The sports park plan will also encourage fans to attend lower-profile sports by placing them close to venues for big-ticket sports.
“Being able to place multiple venues inside one secure perimeter is a great advantage for us and a great opportunity for our security partners to concentrate their energy, their efforts and the infrastructure in one place and to allow us to develop an atmosphere inside that will be an even more compelling experience,” Arnot said.
The sports park plan could see Anaheim playing an even larger role in a 2024 Games. In a Sept. 13 letter to IOC president Thomas Bach, the Anaheim City Council assured him that other local venues in addition to the Honda Center would be available during the 2024 Games.
“The Venue City hereby confirms and undertakes, to the maximum extent of its authority, that no major public or private event, conference, or other meeting, other than would ordinarily occur at the Disneyland Resort, Anaheim Convention Center, Angel Stadium of Anaheim, Honda Center or City National Grove of Anaheim, which could have an impact on the successful planning, organizing, financing and staging of the Games or their public and media exposure, will take place within the Venue City itself … or its neighborhoods, during the Games or during the preceding or following week, without the prior written approval of the IOC,” the council wrote Bach.
The council also answered a series of IOC questions and agreed to provide general guarantees to the IOC.
“The City of Anaheim looks forward to continuing to work with the City of Los Angeles towards our shared objective of Los Angeles being selected to host the Games,” the council wrote Bach. “Bringing the Games back to Anaheim and Southern California is a great opportunity for us to showcase our diverse and vibrant region to the world, and we stand ready to partner with the City of Los Angeles in this endeavor.”
Contact the writer: [email protected] of the 1.3 million names sent into space aboard NASA's Orion test capsule was a stowaway, uploaded to NASA's database by a security researcher who found and exploited a vulnerability.
The name 'Payload1 Payload2' was one of three uploaded to the NASA Orion database that collected names to be later transferred to a chip aboard the rocket and shot into space.
The hack since closed was not malicious nor dangerous to the mission but rather a flexing of grey matter by bug hunter Benjamin Kunz Mejri.
"Two IDs were observed by the NASA team and one passed through the procedure of verification and validation," Mejri wrote in an advisory.
"To ensure the ticket was closed NASA included an image that shows the user in the official NASA 'no fly list'.
"The high severity vulnerability allows remote attackers to inject own system specific codes to the application-side of the affected NASA online-service website."
The filter bypass and persistent input validation web vulnerability was related to the first and surname fields of the Orion boarding pass module.
It let remote attackers to inject scripts to compromise NASA's embed boarding pass module.
"After saving the malicious context to a boarding pass service the attacker can use the embed module to stream malicious codes as embed code execution through the boarding pass application of the NASA Mars program website," he said.
Mejri reported the flaw and his exploits to NASA which promptly banned two of the three identities uploaded, allegedly missing one. The two known identities were stamped with a 'no fly list' while the third remains known only to Mertz.
Names were written to a chip using e-beam lithography and subsequently flashed to a second chip which went into space.
NASA said the chip was not vulnerable since it was isolated and lacked executable code.
The ship landed safely in the Pacific Ocean Saturday a mile and a half off-target.
Mejri's payload spent four hours and 24 minutes in two elliptical orbits of Earth, with an apogee of 5800 kilometres. ®The next-gen Ford Fiesta will build on the current car’s success with more mature looks and a higher-quality cabin.
The design and mechanical layout of the seventh-generation Ford Fiesta supermini, due to be unveiled at the end of this year, has been heavily influenced by two familiar small cars.
The 2017 Ford Fiesta has been revealed today
One is the new budget Ka+, which promotes the Ka nameplate from the A-segment to the B-segment and frees the new Fiesta to move to a ‘mainstream premium’ position in Ford marketing parlance.
The other influencer is the current, sixth-generation Fiesta, which is still setting records after seven years on sale. Its enduring popularity and great road ability reassure Ford that its customers will be happy with an evolutionary car.
“The current Fiesta has been so successful,” one Ford insider told Autocar, “that it has earned the right to evolve.”
Like the current car, the new Fiesta will be based on Ford’s Global B platform, also used in a simpler form for the Ka+. That means the new Fiesta will be very similar in overall length and wheelbase to the existing car, although there is talk of slightly wider tracks.
Clues to chassis spec came to life with the current Fiesta ST, when suspension engineers decided the twist beam rear suspension needed retooling to preserve handling balance and improve ride comfort. But the investment needed was not forthcoming until Ford committed to using familiar but improved components in the next-generation car.
So the new Fiesta will have a developed version of the outgoing model’s platform, complete with tuned but fundamentally unaltered MacPherson strut front suspension, rack and pinion steering and a twist beam rear end. Although manufacturers such as Renault have dropped three-doors from their supermini ranges, the new Fiesta will continue in three-door and five-door versions.2K and Euroleague Basketball announced today that NBA® 2K15, the next installment of the top-selling and top-rated NBA video game simulation franchise*, will include additional teams and players from the Turkish Airlines Euroleague as part of their exclusive multi-year global partnership. NBA 2K15 will be available on October 7 in North America, and on October 10 internationally for the PlayStation®3 and PlayStation®4 computer entertainment systems, the Xbox One all-in-one games and entertainment system and Xbox 360 games and entertainment system from Microsoft; and Windows PC.
NBA 2K15 will feature 11 additional teams from the Turkish Airlines Euroleague, including top-level FC Bayern Munich of Germany, JSF Nanterre of France, Galatasaray Liv Hospital Istanbul of Turkey and Partizan NIS Belgrade of Serbia, bringing the total number of playable Euroleague teams to 25, including every team that participated in the 2013-14 Turkish Airlines Euroleague. All squads will be fully updated to reflect trades accurate to the day of release**.
“The global response to the integration of Euroleague teams into the NBA 2K series last year was fantastic, and a key factor in our decision to include the full complement of 2013-14 Euroleague teams in NBA 2K15,” said Greg Thomas, President of Visual Concepts. “We know there’s a huge passion for basketball in Europe, and we’re excited to further expand the number of playable European teams to make this the most comprehensive basketball game ever.”
"After an exciting start last year, our partnership with 2K takes another strong step forward with an expansion of the Euroleague Basketball teams in NBA 2K15," added Jordi Bertomeu, President and CEO of Euroleague Basketball. "The appeal of our style of basketball to video game fans was evident right away with just 14 Euroleague Basketball teams last year, and we are sure that seeing many more of them in NBA 2K15 will be another hit."
The full list of 25 teams to be included in NBA 2K15 are:
• Alba Berlin;
• Anadolu Efes Istanbul;
• Brose Baskets Bamberg (new);
• Budivelnik Kiev (new);
• Crvena Zvezda Telekom Belgrade (new);
• CSKA Moscow;
• EA7 Emporio Armani Milan;
• FC Barcelona;
• FC Bayern Munich (new);
• Fenerbahçe Ülker Istanbul;
• Galatasaray Liv Hospital Istanbul (new);
• JSF Nanterre (new);
• Laboral Kutxa Vitoria;
• Lietuvos Rytas Vilnius (new);
• Lokomotiv Kuban Krasnodar (new);
• Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv;
• Montepaschi Siena;
• Olympiacos Piraeus;
• Panathinaikos Athens;
• Partizan NIS Belgrade (new);
• Real Madrid;
• Stelmet Zielona Góra (new);
• Strasbourg (new);
• Unicaja Málaga;
• Zalgiris Kaunas.
2K also recently announced Oklahoma City Thunder superstar Kevin Durant, newly-crowned 2014 NBA Most Valuable Player, as cover athlete on NBA 2K15.
Developed by Visual Concepts, a 2K studio, NBA 2K15 is not yet rated by the ESRB.
*According to 2008 - 2014 Metacritic.com and The NPD Group estimates of U.S. retail video game sales through April 2014.
**Roster update available as a free update, requiring a connection to the Internet.
2K is a publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO).The Bible, and Christian principles in general, are being censored from our public schools—in fact, from the whole “public square.” Under the guise of adhering to the “separation of church and state doctrine,” judges and other government officials are disallowing Christianity in the growing number of arenas administered by the United States government. The censorship is swift and complete, effectively compartmentalizing the church’s influence in the world. As John Eidsmoe says, “Those who object to Christian expression in public life frequently use the phrase as a code-word to mean, separation of church from reality. They say, ‘Christians can stay in church and pray and sing, but leave the real problems of the world to us’.” As Christians, we realize that the real problems of the world can only be solved with reference to Biblical Christian principles. But recently Christians have been told that such an attitude is “unconstitutional;” that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution includes a clause that calls for the separation of church and state. Many people now espouse the belief that American government was designed to include “an impenetrable wall” separating church and state. If this is true, then the Christian is violating the founding principles of our country when he or she calls for Christianity to be voiced in the public square. But is it true? Absolutely not. The First Amendment does not include the phrase “separation of church and state.” It reads: “Congress shall |
and was always astonished to find that his fellow-writers, Turgenev, Fet and others thought differently. We may be sure that in his unregenerate days Tolstoy's conclusion would have been: ‘You like Shakespeare — I don't. Let's leave it at that.’ Later, when his perception that it takes all ‘sorts to make a world had deserted him, he came to think of Shakespeare's writings as something dangerous to himself. The more pleasure people took in Shakespeare, the less they would listen to Tolstoy. Therefore nobody must be allowed to enjoy Shakespeare, just as nobody must be allowed to drink alcohol or smoke tobacco. True, Tolstoy would not prevent them by force. He is not demanding that the police shall impound every copy of Shakespeare's works. But he will do dirt on Shakespeare, if he can. He will try to get inside the mind of every lover of Shakespeare and kill his enjoyment by every trick he can think of, including — as I have shown in my summary of his pamphlet — arguments which are self-contradictory or even doubtfully honest.
But finally the most striking thing is how little difference it all makes. As I said earlier, one cannot answer Tolstoy's pamphlet, at least on its main counts. There is no argument by which one can defend a poem. It defends itself by surviving, or it is indefensible. And if this test is valid, I think the verdict in Shakespeare's case must be ‘not guilty’. Like every other writer, Shakespeare will be forgotten sooner or later, but it is unlikely that a heavier indictment will ever be brought against him. Tolstoy was perhaps the most admired literary man of his age, and he was certainly not its least able pamphleteer. He turned all his powers of denunciation against Shakespeare, like all the guns of a battleship roaring simultaneously. And with what result? Forty years later Shakespeare is still there completely unaffected, and of the attempt to demolish him nothing remains except the yellowing pages of a pamphlet which hardly anyone has read, and which would be forgotten altogether if Tolstoy had not also been the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina.
1947A nice relaxing day at the beach is just what's needed as the temperatures continue to soar.
However, rather than simply laying in the sun and soaking up the rays Massachusetts man Elliot Sudal prefers to wrestle sharks.
Video footage has emerged showing the 21-year-old pulling the shark out of the water and wrangling with it after it became caught on his line.
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.
The keen fly-fisher fought for 45 minutes with the shark on the rod until it became tired.
He then handed the rod to his cousin a bravely waded into the water.
The video has now gone viral after being picked up by US network news.
Writing on his Facebook page Mr Sudal, who is thought to have caught over 100 sharks in the last eight months said: "I can't keep up with all these calls and voicemails and FB stuff.
"Let alone leave my house to get to Boston... This got so wild!"
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 nowFirst off, thank you Santa for my delayed replies.
My female bunny passed away last week and I was delayed in getting back information to santa. And sadly my best friend bunny died this morning unexpectedly https://www.reddit.com/r/Rabbits/comments/58ctif/rest_in_peace_to_my_baby_shadow_who_helped_me_out/d8zc8wc?context=3 so I was delayed in posting my gift. But Santa was very patient and I do appreciate that as my santa went above and beyond to get me items that really matched my likes!
As shown in the video,
I got a "Secret Stories of Walt Disney World" book that I'm reading right now at my grandparents to control my emtoions.
I got an Olaf (with his snot kids) tree ornament! (I don't know why but seeing Olaf makes me crack up so much, I just love his voice and stuff man)
I got a Peter Pan Big Ben tree ornament!! (I watched Peter Pan like 3 times in a row when I was younger on VHS!)
I got a limited edition Tron Film Piece...like the actual piece of the film from the movie!! So cool and it had the authentic sticker and stuff. Like man, so awesome.
I even got an Olaf bath towel thing...like one of those that you put in warm water and BAM it grows! (It grew to like, the size of a uh...waffle? Yeah a mickey waffle!)
Then finally, I got a super awesome Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger mug with Buzz and LGM!! I love Toy Story so much and I loved the animated TV series in like 2001 I think!
Thank you so so so so much Santa, you really helped by providing me with things to get through my sorrow :) You truly show Disney magic!Step aside Shakhtar Donetsk. Move along Borussia Dortmund. Get out the way St Pauli.
There’s a new hipster side in town. Sevilla, managed by Chilean hothead Jorge Sampaoli, are building quite the side.
READ MORE:
They’ve already got the ‘Ukrainian Lionel Messi’ (Yevhen Konoplyanka), the thinking man’s Karim Benzema (Kevin Gameiro) and the new/old Dani Alves (Mariano).
But now they’ve added the ‘new Diego Simeone’ (Matias Kranevitter) on loan from Atletico Madrid and Japanese attacking midfielder Hiroshi Kiyotake.
Most excitingly of all are the additions of maverick Brazilian playmaker Ganso from Sao Paulo and Argentinian-born Italy international Franco Vazquez from Palermo.
Ganso is the type of player who prefers nutmegs to goals, possessing a wand of a left foot but less than prolific work-rate.
Vazquez was Paulo Dybala’s foil when the pair played for Palermo and got caught up in controversy when Roberto Mancini spoke out about non-Italians playing for Italy.
So if you’re trying to find a second-team to follow next season look no further than Los Rojiblancos.
Get your tickets in early though. The Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan will be filled to the rafters with pencil moustaches and man buns.
//embeds.audioboom.com/boos/4798780-dream-team-fc-with-james-buckley-cashed-out-on-griezmann/embed/v4?eid=AQAAACg1gFc8OUkA
WATCH: Ever wondered what it feels like to get nutmegged by Lionel Messi?Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2012 June 20
Venus Transits the Midnight Sun
Image Credit & Copyright: Babak Tafreshi (TWAN)
Explanation: Today's solstice, the astronomical beginning of summer in the north, is at 23:09 UT when the Sun reaches the northernmost declination in its yearly trek through planet Earth's sky. While most in the northern hemisphere will experience the longest day of the year, for some the Sun won't set at all, still standing just above the horizon at midnight as far south as about 66.6 degrees northern latitude. Of course, as summer comes to the north the midnight Sun comes earlier to higher latitudes. Recorded near midnight, this time series from June 6 follows the Sun gliding above a mountainous horizon from a latitude of 69 degrees north. The remarkable scene looks north over the Norwegian Sea from Sortland, Norway. The 2012 transit of Venus is already in progress, with Earth's sister planet in silhouette at the upper left against the bright disk of the midnight Sun.By Keith Johnson –
In their latest attempt to smear the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post and other pseudo-conservative news outlets have exploited a minor dispute between the group’s finance committee and a few disgruntled protesters. AFP recently discussed the matter with one of the key spokesmen for OWS, who said Wall Street and Big Business are trying to undermine them by exaggerating what most activists consider to be a minor issue.
Some representatives of OWS’s 30 working groups have complained they have not yet received their share of the nearly $500,000 in donations that have been collected since the occupation began in September. Although this hardly qualifies as a major scandal, some OWS critics are portraying it as such, even going so far as to suggest that protesters in New York were becoming as greedy and power hungry as the Wall Street fat cats they claim to be fighting.
The overblown controversy relies almost exclusively on two complaints. One is by OWS volunteer Brian Smith, who is quoted in an Oct. 23 New York Post article as saying: “The other day, I took in $2,000 [in donations]. I kept $650 for my group, and gave the rest to [the] finance [committee]. Then I went to them with a request—so many people need things, and they should not be going without basic comfort items—and I was told to fill out paperwork. Paperwork! Are they the government now?”
This AFP writer spoke with Justin Lecea, an OWS information liaison in New York City, who was asked if there was any substance to the mainstream media hype.
“Some of these groups are annoyed that they now have to go through a procedure to obtain money,” said Lecea. “It used to be a lot less formal, but now that we’ve got a fiscal sponsor who has lent us their tax-exempt status, we have to have some basic accountability.”
Lecea said those complaining are among a small minority of the protesters, and are in no way representative of the more than 40,000 activists who’ve made their presence known in lower Manhattan. While there are some disagreements as to how money is distributed, those matters are ultimately resolved during meetings of the group’s general assembly (GA).
Lecea says the GA is an open forum anyone can attend. There is no central leadership, and all are permitted to submit requests for reimbursements or payouts, as well as vote on approval of those requests. “It’s democratic and transparent,” added Lecea.
When asked if the well-publicized disputes had been resolved, Lecea replied: “The only big issue has been the drummers wanting their equipment replaced. They wanted $8,000, but their proposal failed in the GA by a democratic vote. Apparently, voters felt it wasn’t the GA’s responsibility to compensate [them].”
According to Pete Dutro of the OWS finance committee, $66,000 of the approximately $480,000 they have on account has been spent on computers, credit card processing fees, food and medical supplies. Most of that money has come from donors who contribute an average of $50 paid directly to volunteers at Zuccotti Park—ground zero of the OWS protests—or through online payments.
The online donations are managed through the group’s fiscal sponsor, Alliance for Global Justice (AGJ) — a non-profit organization whose mission statement is: “To explore and implement alternatives to the unjust domination of governments, global financial institutions and multinational corporations.”
Founded in 1989, AGJ has been largely concerned with countering U.S. interventionist policies in Central and South America. In 2004, the organization absorbed a $60,000 donation from the George Soros-linked Tides Foundation. Because of that, their relationship with OWS has become another element of controversy. In an Oct. 23 article from Wall Street-friendly Human Events, columnist Matthew Vadum concluded that the movement has been hijacked by Soros. He wrote, “The nonprofit organization at the receiving end of Soros’s largesse, Alliance for Global Justice, is managing donations benefiting the communists, socialists, anarchists and hippies now occupying Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan.”
On Oct. 27, this AFP writer spoke with Chuck Kaufman, national coordinator for AGJ. Though he did not deny the Tides Foundation’s donation, he was adamant that billionaire speculator Soros had no influence on the group’s affairs. “As far as our work is concerned, Soros is one of the problems—not the solution,” says Kaufman. “He made his money through currency speculation, which messed up the economies of many Asian nations.... [H]e’s certainly no ally of ours.”
Kaufman’s disdain for Soros is corroborated on AGJ’s website, which slams the Soros-created National Endowment for Democracy (NED). It reads: “The best known agency of ‘democracy building’ is the National Endowment for Democracy, a supposedly private organization that operates almost 100 percent with our tax money.”
The post went on to say: “Neo-conservatives are obsessed with maintaining and expanding U.S. power. It is about realizing their vision of a ‘New American Century.’ This is incompatible with real democracy, in which the people of the world’s sovereign nations exercise their self-determination.”
So far as his relationship with OWS, Kaufman stated, “No money has come from Soros for [the] OWS [movement] through our funding mechanism.”
——
Keith Johnson is an independent journalist and the editor of “Revolt of the Plebs,” an alternative news website that can be found at www.revoltoftheplebs.com.In an interview with 60 Minutes, Steve Bannon, formerly President Donald Trump’s chief strategist and current Breitbart news executive, said that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops favored continuation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program because the bishops are dependent on undocumented immigrants.
Literally dependent: Since they are “unable to really to come to grips with the problems in the Church,” Bannon said, “they need illegal aliens, they need illegal aliens to fill the churches … it’s obvious on the face of it.”
The comment is fascinating because it manages to be true, in a limited sense, yet means nearly the opposite of what Bannon intends. It’s true that the church and the Hispanic community are demographically aligned: Many American Catholics are Hispanic, as are most recipients of DACA, and thus it’s likely that a large share of DACA recipients are Catholic.
Given the church’s heavy Hispanic demographic, immigration policy in general looms large for the church and its parishioners. But what is so peculiar here is that Bannon should present this as a bad, or even an unusual, thing.
Immigrant status has always been, and remains today, a vital component of American religiosity. Without immigration, both past and future, the Roman Catholic Church is not the only denomination that would face collapse. Mormons, the Orthodox, Pentecostals, even staid “all-American” institutions like the Presbyterian or Methodist Church would face catastrophic losses in membership.
For the most part, the only growing religious groups in America are those that count immigrants prominently among their numbers.
Immigration and American religion have always been intertwined
When Irish and German Catholic immigrants came to the United States, including Bannon’s own ancestors, they were viewed with suspicion partly due to their Catholicism. “Anti-Catholic” riots could often as easily be called “anti-immigrant” riots. In 1834, Lyman Beecher sermons condemning Catholic immigration — later published as “A Plea for the West” — helped inspire the burning of an Ursuline convent in Boston as well as attacks on Irish neighborhoods. (Full disclosure: Lyman Beecher and I, as you might guess from the name, sit on fairly close branches of the New England Lymans family tree). By the 1870s, bills prohibiting government funding of religious schools had passed in many states, aiming to deprive Catholics and Lutherans of the ability to pass on their faiths to the next generation.
For a snapshot of the importance of immigration to churches, and vice versa, in American history, you could do worse than look at the US Census of Religious Bodies for 1906. It reveals that somewhere between 8.3 and 12 million Americans attended non-English-speaking churches that year, compared with about 23 to 30 million who attended English-language churches — out of a total US population of 85 million.
In other words, a solid quarter of the American religious world in 1906 was not rooted in the English language.
From 1890 to 1906, the report shows, the US went from having almost no measurable Eastern Orthodox population to about 130,000, thanks to Greek and Eastern European immigrants: Every one of the resulting congregations used languages other than English. Over the same period, we added nearly 6 million Roman Catholics thanks largely to Italian and Polish immigration; in 1906, at least 5.5 million Americans attended non-English-speaking Roman Catholic churches.
In my own tradition, Lutheranism, about 85 percent of churches in that time were non-English-speaking; the denomination added 900,000 members from 1890 to 1906, largely immigrants from Scandinavia. One of America’s most venerable and staid denominations, Methodism, was itself largely founded by immigrants and foreigners like Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke, and found many of its most zealous recruits among lower-class Scots-Irish immigrant converts.
When immigrants landed on American shores, they might first pass through some government screenings, but then they had to find their own way to integrate into American life. Some did so through gangs, some through immigrant political machines, some through unions. But millions assimilated to American life through churches. They created a common moral vocabulary, built relationships between immigrants and natives, and connected people in need to people who could provide.
“Ethnic religion” has been the norm for most religious Americans for most of history. (The early leaders of my denomination, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, had an evangelism strategy that could be summarized as knocking on doors until they found people who spoke German, and then hauling them to church.) This is not to cast aspersions on anyone’s religious sincerity. People may be first drawn into a group by ethnic kinship and then develop authentic and fervently held beliefs. But it is vital to note that to the extent that Roman Catholicism in America is immigrant-dependent, that’s just a way of saying it’s doing religion the historic, American way.
Many denominations are dependent on immigration for growth
Today, according to the Pew Religious Landscape Study, immigrants remain a vital part of many religious groups’ composition — even some groups you might not expect. About 14 percent of Mormons are first- or second-generation immigrants, as are about 16 percent of evangelical Protestants. Within evangelical Protestants, there’s a wide range, with Pentecostals at about 30 percent first- or second-generation immigrant; Baptists are at 8 percent.
Mainline Christianity is about 14 percent first- or second-generation immigrant — only slightly less than their more theologically conservative cousins.
Meanwhile, more than 60 percent of Orthodox Christians and more than 40 percent of Roman Catholics are foreign-born, or their parents were. The numbers for Buddhists, Muslims, and Hindus are even higher. Jews are in the 30s.
Bannon’s criticism of immigration’s impact on religion is especially peculiar given that he presents himself as a traditionalist Catholic. If he were a secular progressive who wanted to see American religion die, then targeting churches that are successfully recruiting immigrants and accusing them of corrupt motives would make a lot of sense. Delegitimizing the evangelization of immigrants is a swell way to hasten the end of Christianity in America. But Bannon claims to be invested in trying to keep the torch of Christianity burning in on our shores.
There is, of course, a deeper problem. Bannon’s quote, like Rep. Steve King’s (R-IA) infamous comment on Twitter, “We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies,” reflects a cultural Christianity in which the gospel of Christ has been eaten alive by the gospel of WASPyness. Whereas American religion has always included an element of ethnic community, it has usually not actually made the religion about the ethnicity.
Where Paul in his letter to the Christians in Colossae would remind us that there is no distinction in the church, not between “Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all,” the evangelists of race-as-religion would rather have us thinking about whether the Hispanic family two pews over might be undocumented.
Paul urged Jewish and Greek Christians to consider that even the uncivilized nomads of the steppe frontier were valid and legitimate partakers at the Lord’s table — brothers and sisters, not foreigners or barbarians (or “illegals,” Paul might have added, if he were writing today). And while Christian leaders since time immemorial have striven to make houses of worship inviolable grounds, today conservatives are turning the word “sanctuary” into an epithet. Anti-immigrant groups have particularly smeared Mormon churches as being “pro-amnesty.”
The gospel doesn’t spell out an immigration policy. It does make clear the duties of religious leaders.
It is always dangerous to try to prooftext policy. Weighing the prudential needs of the state in carrying out its God-given task of guaranteeing public order against the desire to see Christian mercy reflected in government is a challenge. There’s no compelling biblical case for 400,000 immigrants versus 2 million, or 25,000 deportations versus 100,000. Such debates within the civil realm are best solved without trying to claim divine sanction for either position.
But we can say with absolute certainty what scripture thanks of how religious leaders should treat sojourners, especially those who may be in legal or economic jeopardy. There are no foreigners within the church, because we are one people, no longer divided by tongue, tribe, or nation. We shall not wrong or oppress “sojourners,” or “strangers,” words used to refer to people we today might call immigrants and foreigners, nor shall we “thrust [them] aside.” Indeed, anyone who denies justice to the immigrant is cursed. We are urged to show hospitality to strangers, and reminded that the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger are all our charge to care for.
From Abram, to the Hebrews in Egypt, to the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt from Herod, God’s people are frequently migrants and foreigners. So powerful is the Judeo-Christian reliance on sojourner or immigrant imagery, that in Peter’s first epistle — this is just one example among many — he characterizes the whole life of the Christian as one of a sojourner and exile.
This doesn’t mean that the “Christian” stance on immigration is open borders. Scripture is strangely quiet on the best rules to set for immigration into diverse, capitalist, liberal democratic societies.
But whatever laws may be best for the kingdom of man, the laws for the kingdom of God and its ministers are unambiguous. The only visa needed to cross that border is baptism, the only passport the Nicene Creed. The shepherds of the Roman Catholic Church do indeed advocate on behalf of the needs of their flock, as every Christian minister ought to. They do indeed have special care for the marginal, the vulnerable, the foreign, and the weak, as every Christian minister ought.
And they should indeed specially seek out these marginal people to fill their pews, just as Christ and his disciples sought converts among the abhorred and the unwanted of society. The Roman Catholic Church does need the weak, the marginal, the foreign, the “illegal” immigrant, as Bannon put it. Where else but in weakness is Christ’s strength displayed?
Yes, this means that the church must often preach against the state. Our government must compromise to meet competing demands, weighing security against liberty, economic growth, national values, and other concerns. But the church need not give moral sanction to compromise; the church has no competing claims on its conscience, whether on the moral worth of illegal immigrants or any other issue.
The gospel may not always be good politics, but it is good nonetheless.
Lyman Stone, a Vox columnist, is a regional population economics researcher who blogs at In a State of Migration. He is also an agricultural economist at USDA. Find him on Twitter @lymanstoneky.
The Big Idea is Vox’s home for smart discussion of the most important issues and ideas in politics, science, and culture — typically by outside contributors. If you have an idea for a piece, pitch us at [email protected] waste shuts down BART escalators
An escalator at the Civic Center BART station was inoperable on Wednesday. An escalator at the Civic Center BART station was inoperable on Wednesday. Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 12 Caption Close Human waste shuts down BART escalators 1 / 12 Back to Gallery
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story was shared and upvoted on Reddit on October 30th, 2018. The original publishing date was six years earlier.
When work crews pulled open a broken BART escalator at San Francisco's Civic Center Station last month, they found so much human excrement in its works they had to call a hazardous-materials team.
While the sheer volume of human waste was surprising, its presence was not. Once the stations close, the bottom of BART station stairwells in downtown San Francisco are often a prime location for homeless people to camp for the night or find a private place to relieve themselves.
All those biological excretions can gum up the wheels and gears of BART's escalators, shutting them down for long periods of extended repairs, increasing station cleaning costs and creating an unpleasant aroma for morning commuters.
Five of the nine escalators that weren't working at BART stations on Wednesday were in downtown San Francisco, said Jim Allison, a BART spokesman. While there are many reasons a BART escalator can break down, the beating they take at night is among the most acute.
The problem is tough to combat, especially with so few downtown public restrooms open late, BART authorities said.
Officers have to witness someone in the act to issue a citation, said Officer Era Jenkins, a BART police spokeswoman.
Must witness to cite
"Nobody wants to be walking in urine and feces, I know that, (but) if we don't see it or the person doesn't admit to it, they can just say it was someone else," Jenkins said. "Certain crimes you don't see, you can't enforce."
BART police officers sweep "each and every stairwell at each and every station" before the stations open in the morning and ask people who spent the night in the station to move somewhere else, Jenkins said.
If they spot a mess, the officers alert cleaning crews, Jenkins said. Station surveillance cameras usually are not monitored when the stations are closed, she said.
San Francisco police officers also can check the downtown station stairwells, but they generally only respond when someone complains, which isn't often, said Albie Esparza, a San Francisco police spokesman.
"When they are out of sight, people don't usually call about them," he said.
Not much BART can do
BART officials point out that they have little ability to change the reasons people camp at the base of BART stairs or use the plaza of the 16th Street/Mission BART Station as a public urinal, an issue highlighted in a recent Chronicle Watch.
"As much as we like to have an oasis from the rest of the world, we don't look at (these issues) in isolation, we look at (them) as part of a puzzle," Allison said.
BART officials have recently begun meeting with San Francisco authorities to explore ways of cleaning up the 16th Street plaza. Those conversations could easily evolve to encompass the downtown stairwells, Allison said.
Chronicle Watch If you know of something that needs to be improved, the Chronicle Watch team wants to hear from you. E-mail your issue to [email protected], or reach us on Twitter at@sfchronwatch and facebook.com/sfchronwatch.Windows Maps is built into Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile. Powered by Bing and HERE mapping technologies, Windows Maps provides directions, rich mapping data of the entire world, and even 3D aerial views. Windows Maps also allows you to sync favorite places and use them with Cortana, who in turn lets you refer to places simply as "home" and "work" and so on while using her locational commands. Additionally, Windows Maps is now available on the Xbox One Preview thanks to the Summer Update, and here's how it works on the console.
Windows Maps has all the same features that it does on PC and Windows 10 Mobile. Favorite locations sync using your Microsoft Account, you can search for directions, browse 3D maps and discover rich information about places all over the world. Windows Maps doesn't utilize a mouse-like cursor seen in apps like Baconit and Cast. Instead, its controls are mapped directly to the Xbox One controller and handle fairly similarly to browsing the map screen of an open world video game. The left joystick moves your position, and the right joystick controls the tilt and rotation of the map. 'A' is your left click, 'Y' is a global search key, and 'B' is your back button. The triggers zoom and the view button cycles between map controls and Windows Maps' more complex user interface elements.The study replicated what city traffic wardens might expect to inhale
Scientists have known nanoparticles reach the brain when inhaled, but this is the first time they have been shown to affect how we process information.
Researchers sought to replicate the environment experienced by those who work in a garage or by the roadside.
Their findings were published in the journal Particle and Fibre Toxicology.
A team at Zuyd University in the Netherlands persuaded 10 volunteers to spend an hour in a room filled either with clean air or exhaust from a diesel engine.
They were wired up to an electroencephalograph (EEG), a device that records the electrical signals of the brain. They were monitored during the period of exposure and for an hour after they left the room.
Such physiological changes do warrant investigation because there could indeed be a long-term effect
Ken Donaldson
University of Edinburgh
After about 30 minutes, the brains of those in the exhaust rooms displayed a stress response on the EEG, which is indicative of a change in the way information is being processed in the brain cortex.
This effect continued after they were no longer in the room.
"We can only speculate what these effects may mean for the chronic exposure to air pollution encountered in busy cities where the levels of such soot particles can be very high," said lead researcher Paul Borm.
"It is conceivable that the long-term effects of exposure to traffic nanoparticles may interfere with normal brain function and information processing. Further studies are necessary to explore this effect."
Dog's life
The fact that the brain responds when confronted with a new smell is not entirely surprising, says Ken Donaldson, professor of respiratory toxicology at the University of Edinburgh.
"And it may not necessarily be negative, but such physiological changes do warrant investigation because there could indeed be a long-term effect. It's a very interesting, and potentially important, study."
Controlled studies examining the impact of pollution on the brain are ethically problematic, while longer-term studies of the population in polluted areas can be practically difficult as brain diseases are not necessarily noted on the death certificate as the cause of death.
Alzheimer's patients for instance often die of infection.
But a study of dogs in Mexico found those who lived in highly-polluted Mexico City had brain lesions similar to those seen in Alzheimer's patients, while those who lived in much less-polluted rural areas showed a much lower rate of damage to the brain.Entertainer Kanye West arrives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Gala in New York, May 2, 2016. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo
(Reuters) - Rapper Kanye West was reported on Tuesday to be undergoing a spiritual crisis after being hospitalized for exhaustion following the cancellation of the remainder of his U.S. tour.
West's reality star wife, Kim Kardashian, pulled out of an expected appearance in New York on Monday night to be with her husband, who was taken to a Los Angeles hospital after police responded to a call for help, U.S. media reported.
Representatives for the 39 year-old musician did not return calls for comment on Tuesday on how long West was expected to remain in the hospital. He was hospitalized after a series of rants and concert cancellations in California last week.
A source close to the "Jesus Walks" singer told People magazine on Tuesday that West was dealing with exhaustion and sleep deprivation as well as a wider spiritual crisis.
"He feels like he’s under spiritual attack, and has been for a while," the source told People.
"Sometimes, darkness creeps in, and Kanye wrestles against it. He talks about that a lot. It’s exhausting, and it takes everything he’s got. He’s just so tired now; he’s very low energy and feels like there’s a grieving in his spirit. It’s very hard to explain, but something has happened recently, where he’s not the ‘Ye that everyone knows," the source added.
"'Ye' is a nickname for West.
His mother-in-law, Kris Jenner, told celebrity outlet Extra on Monday night that the singer was "just really tired. He's had a grueling tour and it's been a grind, so he just needs to rest."
Celebrities rallied around West.
"Praying for Kanye. Praying he has the right energy surrounding him during this time. Sending peace and love," singer and actress Janelle Monae posted on Twitter.
Actor Marlon Wayans tweeted "And I hope u all pray for @kanyewest too. He's not just an artist but he's a father, a son a husband and above human. Get well soon."
West, who was promoting his current album "The Life of Pablo," made headlines last week when he was booed at his San Jose, California, concert for declaring his support for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.
He canceled a concert in Los Angeles at the last minute on Sunday, and on Saturday walked off stage in Sacramento, California, after 30 minutes during which he took aim at Beyonce, Jay Z, the media, and the music industry in general.
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)My Santa outdid herself on this one! Nothing in this box I have ever come across before. It's all new for me to explore! Three different types of hot chocolate from Soma. Perfect as the weather is turning cold where I am! Some Merchants of Green Coffee Coffee beans for my SO to enjoy. As well there are some Mary Macleod's shortbread cookies. They are absolutely delicious! I am eating a few as I make this post :). Then to wrap this all up my Santa aded a mug to my collection! It's perfect! I love everything that you got me. Thank you Santa!
Warning: Potato quality photos
Ps. Sorry it took so long for me to recieve and post. Accidentally had it shipped to my old address. But I managed to track both packages down!Equinox, the developer of Mail Designer Pro, has uncovered a secret formula used by Apple to create scannable promo codes for the App Store.
If you've used an iTunes Gift Card, you may have used your iPhone's camera to scan the code and quickly redeem it. Turns out, it's a bit complicated to create that scannable code.
The first factor is the font. Turns out there is a hidden font you need to use. After a lot of searching, Equinox discovered its called 'Scancardium'. If you're on a Mac you can find it here: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreRecognition.framework/Resources/Fonts/.
Your promo code must be in the Scancardium font and it must be inside a box with some pretty specific sizing. The surrounding box must be a ratio of 3 width to 1 height. The thickness of the box border must be a factor of 0.045 and the font height inside the box must be a factor of 0.34.
To make things simpler, Equinox has created some templates in Sketch and Photoshop for developers to use. You can download the templates from the link below. They've also posted a FileMaker template to make it easy to generate your own codes.
Hit the link below for more details...
Read MoreOf the three visible? The 1st image.
The middle image, the Magician's tower- while beautiful in its detail, I still find quite generic. The pillars are too blocky, the bridges are too perfect, too straight and exact. In fact, most of the graphics in the game come off this way, even the ruins for some strange reason.
I understand this is in alpha, but only so much can be accomplished moving forward. I'm pretty certain most of the geometry is final.
A lot of this reminds me of EQ2. Maybe not bad, but maybe in need of something a little more stylized to make it less fantasy-generic? I'm not asking for anything cartoony. There's a broad line between realism and stylized that I think this game would thrive well in. I'm hoping for something that strongly reminds me of Keith Parkinson's work: https://www.keithparkinson.com/artwork/ -- artist of the EQ box art. Why not go buck-wild with his influence? Push the art style to its limits.
Let's feel like we're exploring one of his fantastic paintings.
Maybe as an homage and thank you for his influence over the years
Detailed environments take a lot of time and patience to fill out, so I'm hoping there'll be a continued effort in environment design as after they finalize more of the gaming mechanics.Image copyright Wellsville NY Daily Reporter Image caption This graffiti was discovered the day after Donald Trump's election victory at a New York softball field.
A prominent US civil rights group says it has identified almost 900 incidents of harassment following Donald Trump's win in the US presidential election.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is calling on Mr Trump to "act strongly to squelch harassment".
They also urge Mr Trump to "reach out to the communities he's injured".
Last week Mr Trump repudiated the fringe "alt-right" group whose members celebrated his election win with Nazi salutes.
The SPLC has released two reports into the aftermath of the businessman's win.
Along with representatives of teachers' unions and other civil rights groups, the SPLC outlines how they say |
Other factors such as cognitive and intellectual health should also be considered by officials. Many studies have investigated on these factors and much more, hence authorities should look into the findings of each and every single study to have a larger view of the consequences of early-onset marijuana use.
Photo: Brett Levin | Flickr
TAG marijuana, Teen, Asthma, Depression
ⓒ 2018 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.In the 1950s and 60s, there was a television show called “I’ve Got a Secret.” Host Garry Moore welcomed guests who had a “secret.” Four panelists would then have a timed round of questions to attempt to discover the secret. If they were unsuccessful, the secret keeper went home with a cash prize.
This popular show was a fun diversion for Cold War America. Unfortunately, there’s a new secret game being played in Washington. This time, the United States Air Force is the secret keeper and American taxpayers are being asked to shell out the cash.
The Air Force is in the early stages of purchasing its next long-range bomber aircraft – a huge and expensive undertaking. In recent months, the winning contractor was announced: Northrop Grumman, the plane was designated as the B-21, and we have just learned its catchy nickname – the “Raider.” But what’s really important is how much the Air Force will pay Northrop Grumman to produce the plane – and that’s where the “secret” comes in.
The Air Force, presumably backed by higher-ups in the Pentagon, is refusing to release the overall contract value or total program cost for the B-21. Officials argue that publicizing those numbers would give too much information to our adversaries. But this decision stands decades of weapons procurement policy on its head. Longstanding practice in the Pentagon is to develop programs either in the “open” or in the “black.” Highly classified, or “black” programs, are developed without being publicly acknowledged. But the B-21 isn’t a “black” program and many of its details have already been publicly released, including an artist’s rendition showing its shape and relative size. The secrecy has baffled Senator John McCain (R-AZ), chairman of the Armed Services Committee. He had this exchange with the nominee to be the top General in the Air Force: Artist rendering of the B-21 – U.S. Air Force
“Chairman McCain: Thank you, General. On the issue of the B-21 bomber, do you know what the Independent cost estimate associated with the winning bid was, roughly? Is it $23.5 billion? “General David L. Goldfein: Yes, sir. That is the independent cost estimate. “Chairman McCain: And the aircraft per unit cost associated with the winning bid was about $556 million. Is that correct?
“General Goldfein: Yes, sir. That is correct.
“Chairman McCain: And the Air Force budget request as developed is about $1.36 billion. Is that right?
“General Goldfein: Yes, sir.
“Chairman McCain: The Air Force released an artist conception of the B-21?
“General Goldfein: Yes, sir.
“Chairman McCain: The Air Force released the top tier suppliers for the B-21?
“General Goldfein: Yes, sir.
“Chairman McCain: I am having a difficult time understanding how the public disclosure of a single contract award value funded from an unclassified budget request is going to give the enemy more information on the capabilities of a new bomber than what the Air Force has already disclosed. All I can see is that keeping it a secret deprives the American taxpayer of the transparency and accountability they deserve.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, questioning General Goldfein.
“Can you explain what new information our enemies might learn from the release of the contract award value that they could not learn from the information the Air Force has already released?
“General Goldfein: Yes, sir. And, Chairman, I agree with you, and I believe that if we are not transparent with the American people on the cost of this weapon system, through its elected leadership, then we have a good chance of losing this program.”
So, what gives? If the new Air Force Chief of staff believes the cost of the B-21 should be disclosed, why, exactly, is it being kept secret?
In an effort to pry loose the cost information, McCain’s armed services panel produced a draft Fiscal Year 2017 Pentagon policy bill requiring the Air Force to disclose the full contract award value. But a senior Democrat on the committee, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, offered an amendment to strip that requirement. It passed with bipartisan support.
Unfortunately, the Air Force has a long history of low-balling or just getting wrong estimates of how much its aircraft programs will cost. For instance, just in the last 30 years, the Air Force has underestimated the unit cost of the B-2 by 465%, the F-22 by 205%, and the F-35 by 68% (so far). That’s a dreadfully poor track record. We believe the Air Force refuses to release the projected cost of the B-21 because officials don’t want taxpayers to know how many hundreds of billions of dollars it will cost to sustain this system for the next 40-50 years. (Hint: The most recent Government Accountability Office estimate of the sustainment cost of the F-35 is $1.3 trillion dollars.) And Air Force officials also don’t want to eat more humble pie when the cost estimate once again balloons.
But unlike the old “I’ve Got a Secret” television show, which awarded guests $80 and a carton of cigarettes if they fooled the panelists, the Air Force will get a much bigger cash prize if it continues to fool the Congress into supporting this secrecy. Multiple that $80 by a billion, and you may be getting warm.
For refusing to release the overall costs of the B-21 bomber program, the United States Air Force receives our “Golden Fleece” award.
About the Golden Fleece Award
From surfing subsidies to the Great Wall of Bedford, Indiana, Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire’s Golden Fleece Award protected taxpayers…and made them laugh! One of the most popular and enduring icons of American politics, Senator Proxmire’s Golden Fleece Award embodied both outrage and humor as it put the public spotlight on waste and abuse of taxpayer money. To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the famous waste-busting award, Senator Proxmire asked Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS) to revive the Golden Fleece Award in 2000.
For more information, contact Taxpayers for Common Sense at 202-546-8500 ext. 132Long before I became an NFL Analyst I obtained a Computer Science and Stats Degree from a small school of 60,000 or so in Pennsylvania -- Penn State University.
I always knew my Computer Science and Statistics degree would come in handy one day, I just never knew it would be for fantasy football bye week management.
Let's dig in.
The truth is, drafting a fantasy team and trying to manage bye weeks can get you in trouble. Big trouble!
In short, favoring and drafting certain starters or backup players to cover bye weeks can really hurt your odds of winning.
Contrary to common opinion, in many situations, having four, five, six or even eight key NFL players all on bye in the same week actually INCREASES your odds of winning over the season!
In other words, it's a GOOD THING to have almost all your starters out on bye in one week!
I'm sure some of you are saying, 'Greg you have no idea, what the heck are you talking about! Everyone knows you should draft to make sure you manage the bye weeks properly. Leaving a big gap in Week 5 is the sign of a rookie.'
Before we go any further, I need you to take a minute and form your own opinion on this.
Is it better to:
1) 'Properly' manage your bye weeks, never have more than one starter out on bye each week
2) Have a major gap in your starting lineup one week due to bye
3) None of the above, in the long run, it makes no difference
So, what's you answer? One, two or three?
Okay, here's the deal:
I used my old computer science degree and wrote a small but effective program to simulate 50,000 8-week NFL seasons. In turn the computer gave me results from 50,000 virtual seasons. I will share those results here.
I used Monte Carlo (random number) Simulation to make this happen. In other words, I let the computer simulate the results of three different drafting techniques (Team A, Team B and Team C).
Assumptions
NOTE: The results are rigorous and should hold up across a wide range of league rules and situations.
- A starting lineup consists of eight players.
- Each team drafts 16-players (eight Starters and eight Benchwarmers).
- All Starters average 20 points/game, with scores varying from 15 to 25 each week.
- All Benchwarmers average 12 points/game, with scores varying from 7 to 17 each week.
- Teams always play their Starters, unless the Starter is on bye. When the Starter is on bye, a Benchwarmer is inserted into the starting lineup.
TEAM A
This team made sure they only had one player on bye each week of the virtual season. In other words each of the eight starters went on bye in different weeks. So, this team never had more than one player on bye each week. Some might say this team managed bye's 'properly.' In total, this team missed eight starters due to bye during each virtual season.
TEAM B
This team had two starters on bye for four weeks and no Starters on bye the other four weeks. So, for four weeks this team was at full strength and for four weeks this team had two starters on the bench. Like Team A, Team B missed using eight starters due to bye each virtual season.
TEAM C
This team paid no attention to bye weeks during their draft! As it turns out, all eight of their Starters go on bye the same week. In that week, the team is in trouble. That's the bad news. However, during the other seven weeks, this team was at full strength. Like Team A and Team B, this team also missed using eight starters due to bye each season.
So, all the teams have identical talent, the only difference is how each team managed to spread out bye weeks among Starters.
To best measure which method works best, the highest scoring team that week went 2-0, the team in the middle went 1-1 and the lowest scoring team went 0-2.
So, after 50,000 seasons, which team did best?
As it turns out, Team C is the clear winner and it's not even close! The results are statistically significant.
The table below shows how many wins each team had over the 50,000 eight-week seasons.
Team Wins Team C 501,247 Team B 361,972 Team A 336,781 Total 1,200,000
The take is clear, drafting players to spread out your bye weeks is not the way to go! It's much better to get your bye weeks out of the way all in one week and then run on all cylinders the rest of the season.
For those interested in my code, see program below.
DEFINE SIM PROGRAM
teamwins=0
_i = 0
while _i lt 50000
do
_wk=1
while _wk le 8
do
teamscore(team 'a') = random(15 25) + random(15 25) + random(15 25) + random(15 25) -
+ random(15 25) + random(15 25) + random(15 25) + random(7 17)
if _wk eq 1 or _wk eq 2 or _wk eq 3 or _wk eq 4
then teamscore(team 'b') = random(15 25) + random(15 25) + random(15 25) + random(15 25) -
+ random(15 25) + random(15 25) + random(7 17) + random(7 17)
else teamscore(team 'b') = random(15 25) + random(15 25) + random(15 25) + random(15 25) -
+ random(15 25) + random(15 25) + random(15 25) + random(15 25)
if _wk eq 1
then teamscore(team 'c') = random(7 17) + random(7 17) + random(7 17) + random(7 17) -
+ random(7 17) + random(7 17) + random(7 17) + random(7 17)
else teamscore(team 'c') = random(15 25) + random(15 25) + random(15 25) + random(15 25) -
+ random(15 25) + random(15 25) + random(15 25) + random(15 25)
sort team a teamscore
"tbl teamscore
teamwins=teamwins + statrank(team) -1
"tbl teamwins
_wk = _wk +1
doend
_i=_i+1
doend
sort team d teamwins
tbl teamwins
ENDThe BBC has announced that Game of Thrones actor Paul Kaye will appear in a two-episode adventure of the Peter Capaldi-starring Doctor Who. The new season of the time travel show, its ninth since Doctor Who returned to screens in 2005, has just started filming in Cardiff, Wales. In addition to playing the part of Thoros on GoT, Kaye has also appeared on the British sitcom Pulling and starred in the 2004 film, It’s All Gone Peter Tong. He originally became famous in the U.K. in the ’90s interviewing celebrities in the guise of his demented alter-ego, Dennis Pennis.
“As a kid of the 1970’s, the two shows you always watched were Top of the Pops and Doctor Who, they were unmissable,” said Kaye in a statement. “I actually wrote a song called ‘Looking for Davros’ in my first punk band and I sang it like a demented Dalek. I got to present TOTP back in the mid ‘90s and landing this role in Doctor Who completes the dream double. Peter is a perfect Doctor and I’m loving every minute of the experience, even the five hours in make-up. What a treat, best 50th birthday present ever!”
The two-part tale will also feature Morven Christie, Arsher Ali, Colin McFarlane, Steven Robertson, Neil Fingleton, Zaqi Ismail, and Sophie Stone, alongside stars Capaldi and Jenna Coleman. The episodes are written by Toby Whithouse (Being Human). “An amazing guest cast for a brilliantly creepy two-parter by Toby Whithouse,” Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat was quoted as saying in the announcement. “Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman are back in Cardiff, back in the box, and back in action for one of our scariest adventures yet!”
The new season of Doctor Who will premiere this fall.Capitol Hill lawmakers involved in national intelligence concerns disagreed Sunday about whether to stop the NSA’s massive mining of phone records, following the release of a White House report that calls for the federal government to no longer store such information and questions whether the program stops terror attacks.
“This is not the Holy Grail of reports,” Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told ABC's "This Week.”
The Michigan Republican said he disagrees with the argument the White House advisory panel report was a devastating blow to the National Security Agency’s gathering of telephone metadata and with the report recommendation that telecommunications companies or a third party store the data.
“That’s less safe than what we have,” said the hawkish Rogers.
He also argued the report, by a five-member panel appointed by President Obama, found no abuse or criminal activity. But he acknowledged the report opens the door for further debate on Capitol Hill when lawmakers return from break.
In the face of strong public concern about government overreach, the president suggested after the release of the report that he might be open to changing the program, after arguing it is an “important tool to disrupt terror plots.”
The report was released Wednesday, several days after a District Court Judge in Washington, D.C., called the program “nearly Orwellian” and ruled that asking a judge in a secret court for a warrant to spy on millions of American cellphone users without evidence of probable cause of criminal behavior is unconstitutional.
“That’s just one judge’s perspective,” Rogers said.
Sen. Mark Udall, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, backed the report and its 46 recommendations, suggesting they should be reviewed upon Congress’ return.
“The argument for the status quo fell apart [last] week,” the Colorado Democrat told ABC. “The NSA has over-reached. … We have to rebuild American’s trust … but we cannot do that by bulk-data collection.”
Rogers and Udall agreed that Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor who sparked a national debate on such issues after leaking details of the NSA’s domestic and international spying efforts, should return to the United States to defend accusations he committed treason.
“I’ll pay for his plane ticket,” Rogers said.The standard Biblical case against homosexuality is not as air-tight as many people seem to think. People bring up many points routinely, and it’s amazing how the attacks don’t hold up–if you look at their Biblical “evidence” carefully.
In this post we will be looking at two verses in Leviticus used as Clobber Passages, proof texts used to condemn gays and lesbians.
We Are No Longer Under the Law
The apostle Paul taught that we are no longer under the Law. Period.
The verses are Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. First, Thou shalt not lie with a man, as with a woman: it is abomination. Second, If a man lie with a man, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.
There is, however, a big problem with quoting Leviticus. The problem is that Christians are no longer under the Law. We do not live our Christian life by following the Old Testament Law. The Apostle Paul makes this abundantly clear. It is not something fabricated to win an argument, or made up in the twentieth century, or manufactured to get around something somebody doesn’t like. It is clearly stated in the Greek scriptures. The Apostle Paul wrote it in Galatians:
All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.” (Galatians 3:10)
If we rely on following the Law (the Torah, the first five books of the Bible) we are under a curse. The passage above, Galatians 3:10, contains a quote from the Law itself, Deuteronomy 27:26. According to Paul’s statement below, things have changed.
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse for us. (Galatians 3:13)
It was Jesus’ death on the cross that rescued us from the curse of the Law. If we insist on following the Law and imposing the Law on others, we negate the cross of Christ, and repudiate Christ’s death on the cross.
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1)
Return to the Law = Return to Slavery to Sin
If we measure ourselves as Christians by how well we follow the Law, we have returned to our slavery to sin. We are then measuring ourselves, “justifying” ourselves, by evaluating our behavior by the Law. For us religious folks, this is precisely what is meant by “a dog returning to its own vomit” (Proverbs 26:11; II Peter 2:22). And if we put other Christians under the Law, we are subjecting them to the very yoke of slavery Paul warned them about. We force them to return to their own vomit as well.
If you insist that other people observe the Law, then you are burdening people “again by a yoke of slavery,” which makes you a slave master. When people resist your attempt to place them under the Law, they are acting in accordance with the urging of Paul, “Do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”
Stop burdening people with a yoke of slavery.
But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law. (Galatians 5:18).
You Cannot Observe the Law and Walk in the Spirit Simultaneously
A mature Christian cannot be led by the Spirit and follow the Law simultaneously. This is an example of “serving two masters,” which Christ said was impossible. In the Greek scriptures Paul urges us to walk in the Spirit, to be filled with the Spirit, to keep in step with the Spirit, and warn us against the bondage to the Law. We can’t live life in the Spirit if the Law has us in chains.
The Bible Does Not Teach a “Ceremonial Law” and a “Moral Law”
The people who would return you to slavery to the Law, slavery to sin, will say, “Paul was talking about the ceremonial law, not the moral law. He abolished the ceremonial law, but we are still under the moral law.”
Sorry. That distinction between the ceremonial law and the moral law is a man-made excuse to keep themselves and others under bondage to the Law. An argument can be made to support the alleged distinction between a ceremonial law and a moral law, but it is not a Biblical distinction. None other than conservative Bible scholar F.F. Bruce says this in his book, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free, in chapter 18, “What the Law Could Not Do.”
Paul never makes a distinction between a so-called ceremonial law and a so-called moral law. The Bible makes no such distinction. The Law is the Law, according to James the brother of Jesus.
For whoever keeps the whole Law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. (James 2:10)
Not only is no distinction made between a ceremonial law and a moral law in the scriptures, the actual emphasis of the scriptures is the unity of the law. That phrase, “the whole law,” is used in at least half a dozen places–Deuteronomy 4:8; 33:10; Galatians 5:3,14; 6:13; James 2:10; and elsewhere.
James never makes a distinction between the so-called ceremonial law and the so-called moral law, either. There is no discussion in James of dividing up the Law into different kinds.
So just remember this: anyone who tries to use the Law in Leviticus to prove that God condemns homosexuality is abusing scripture — totally misusing Leviticus. God ruled that piece of evidence “inadmissible.”
In the book of Romans Paul describes the death-dealing destructiveness of the Law, and he also describes what has taken the place of the Torah for Christians in various letters: 1) the Image of God, 2) the Law of Love, 3) the Holy Spirit, 4) our Conscience, and 5) Human Government.
How to Respond to False Teachers
If someone uses Leviticus 18:22 or 20:13 to prove that God hates homosexuality, challenge them on it. Tell them, “Don’t quote Leviticus to me. In Galatians Paul says we are no longer under the Law. Paul said Leviticus is the yoke of slavery, Galatians 5:1.”
If they say, “God was talking about the ceremonial Law, not the moral Law,” ask them, “Where in the Bible does it say there’s a difference between moral law and ceremonial law? That distinction was made up by men (literally true). Show me in the Bible where those phrases even appear, moral law and ceremonial law.” that.” The word ceremonial only appears in the New International Version; no other translation even uses the word.
They won’t be able to show you any Biblical reference distinguishing between the so-called ceremonial and moral laws. If they refer to the book of Acts and the sheet being lowered from heaven, simply say, “That was just one concrete example of the cancellation of the entire Law.”
Simple truth: You cannot quote Leviticus to prove God hates homosexuality. The Apostle Paul said so in Galatians.
If You Obligate People to Obey the Law, You Bring them Under a Curse
Please note: I did not say that the Old Testament is irrelevant to us. And I did not say that the Law is irrelevant to us.
The WHOLE Bible is relevant.
All I said is that you cannot legitimately quote Leviticus to prove that God hates homosexuality. If you make people accountable to obey the Law, you bring them under a curse. The Apostle Paul said so in Galatians.
About the verses in Leviticus. To put it simply, if a judge rules a piece of evidence inadmissible, it cannot be introduced as evidence. If one of the parties mentions the evidence anyway, the judge declares a mistrial. When people say, “The Bible condemns homosexuality throughout the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments,” God the Righteous Judge would throw the case of the accusers out of court.
[edited for content 3/5/12]
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If you want to Demolish the Strongholds of shallow anti-gay slogans, click here.
If you want to respond to the Clobber Passages, click here.By By Leo Reyes Apr 16, 2017 in Sports Filipino-American chess player Wesley So has won the 2017 US Chess Championship title in a tightly-fought match held at the The Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis in St Louis, Missouri, USA. The 23-year-old Filipino-American competed with 12 top US chess players who are all ranking members of the US Chess Federation from March 29 to April 19, 2017. The Top 6 contestants and their corresponding ranking include: Wesley So (Champion), Alexander Onischuk (No.2), Varuzhan Akobian (No.3), Hikaru Nakamura (No.4), Fabiano Carhuana (No.5) and Yaroslav Zherebukh (No.6). So won the coveted title after three attempts since 2015. It was his first major victory after joining the US Chess Federation in 2014. So has won major world tournaments representing the Philippines before moving to the US with adoptive parents Lotis Key and husband, Renato Kabigting in Minnesota. In the Philippines, So achieved his third and final Grandmaster norm on December 8, 2007. He started playing and competing at age 9 and has been traveling and competing in youth world tournaments in his adolescence after becoming the youngest Filipino Grandmaster at the age of 14 to become the seventh youngest to reach the title. So has participated in five Chess Olympiads representing the Philippines with his debut at the Turin Olympiad in 2006. The Fil-Am chess genius has represented the US in the chess Olympiad since 2016. So was born in Bacoor, Cavite in 1993 and studied at the Jesus Good Shepherd School and later to St. Francis of Assisi College in Bacoor. “I really wanted to win this one this year … because it’s the strongest national competition in the world,” players have won this one.” he added. After a brief rest, So will fly to Azerbaijan to compete in the After a brief rest, So will fly to Azerbaijan to compete in the Gashimov Memorial 2017 tournament (Shamkir Chess 2017) from April 20 to May 1, 2017. The annual tournament is being held in memory of Vugar Gashimov, a young Grandmaster from Azerbaijan, who died at the age of 27 after a lingering illness. The annual tournament is being held in memory of Vugar Gashimov, a young Grandmaster from Azerbaijan, who died at the age of 27 after a lingering illness. So defeated Alexander Onischuk by way of a rapid playoff tiebreak. His new championship title came after winning three games and drew eight games in all in the final round. With the win, So bagged the US$50,000 grand prize for the 2017 championship.The 23-year-old Filipino-American competed with 12 top US chess players who are all ranking members of the US Chess Federation from March 29 to April 19, 2017.The Top 6 contestants and their corresponding ranking include: Wesley So (Champion), Alexander Onischuk (No.2), Varuzhan Akobian (No.3), Hikaru Nakamura (No.4), Fabiano Carhuana (No.5) and Yaroslav Zherebukh (No.6).So won the coveted title after three attempts since 2015. It was his first major victory after joining the US Chess Federation in 2014. So has won major world tournaments representing the Philippines before moving to the US with adoptive parents Lotis Key and husband, Renato Kabigting in Minnesota.In the Philippines, So achieved his third and final Grandmaster norm on December 8, 2007. He started playing and competing at age 9 and has been traveling and competing in youth world tournaments in his adolescence after becoming the youngest Filipino Grandmaster at the age of 14 to become the seventh youngest to reach the title.So has participated in five Chess Olympiads representing the Philippines with his debut at the Turin Olympiad in 2006. The Fil-Am chess genius has represented the US in the chess Olympiad since 2016.So was born in Bacoor, Cavite in 1993 and studied at the Jesus Good Shepherd School and later to St. Francis of Assisi College in Bacoor.“I really wanted to win this one this year … because it’s the strongest national competition in the world,” So said. “All the great More about Chess, wesley so, us chess championship, grandmaster More news from Chess wesley so us chess championshi... grandmasterShare. At a Return of the Jedi screening, Hamill discusses the new trilogy. At a Return of the Jedi screening, Hamill discusses the new trilogy.
At Entertainment Weekly’s CapeTown Film Festival tonight, a 30th anniversary screening of Return of the Jedi -- coinciding with May the 4th, AKA Star Wars Day -- ended with a huge surprise guest in the form of Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill.
Hamill shared his memories of making not just Return of the Jedi but the entire Star Wars trilogy, and yes, he talked about how Star Wars is once again a part of his life, with Star Wars: Episode VII in the works, under J.J. Abrams' direction. Officially, Lucasfilm still hasn’t confirmed any cast members, including Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford, but Hamill, without ever saying, “Yes, I’m in Episode VII,” certainly seemed to be all but confirming it with the statements he made.
Hamill recalled that while making Return of the Jedi, he was absolutely sure it was the end of the series, “because we had a beginning, middle and an end.” But during that period, George Lucas did talk to him about his bigger ideas for a series of trilogies – initially four different trilogies, and then three. Still, said Hamill, “I don’t even think I believed that the third trilogy would feature us. I thought it would be all different characters. To my knowledge, we were just going to do a beginning, a middle and an end [in the original trilogy] and it was over.”
Exit Theatre Mode
He compared making Jedi to the final semester of school, saying, “We knew it was going to be the last time we’d see everybody. I’m still in a state of shock that they want to do more.”
When it came to details on Episode VII, Hamill remarked to the audience, “First of all, you probably know more about it than I do.” He brought up a meeting he’s mentioned before with George Lucas and Carrie Fisher last year, in which Lucas revealed the intention to make new films.
Going into that meeting, Hamill recalled, “We were trying to figure out, ‘What’s he going to talk about?’” Hamill said he thought, “Wait a second, I think he’s going to release these in 3D. Maybe he’s going to ask us to do publicity or something.’ We just had no idea. But my wife said, ‘What if he says, ‘We’re going to do more movies'?' I said, ‘Yeah, right!’ It wasn’t even on the radar for me, at all. And I had sort of settled into my elderly recluse phase of my career.”
While talking about how much he loved filming the Dagobah sequences for The Empire Strikes Back, which were shot on a soundstage with a lot of practical effects, Hamill then made his most specific mention of his involvement in Episode VII, revealing, “I’ve only had one creative meeting about the new films, but I do remember saying, ‘We’ve got to find a proper balance between CGI and old school [FX].”
Exit Theatre Mode
After the crowd cheered this statement, Hamill added, “That’s what the challenge is, is to try and meet expectations of what you guys want. I think there’s nothing wrong with CGI, but I think you have to have a balance, because the camera perceives the width and the depth and the weight – even if it’s a miniature model, the camera just realizes that. So when you have too much CGI and the clouds are CGI and the trees are CGI and the buildings are CGI, you’re getting to a point where the figure in the shot is like a hybrid of an animated film and live-action. And I want it to have an organic look so that we don’t get into Roger Rabbit territory." He then added, with a laugh, “But I don’t imagine that the priority is what I want!”
Hamill stressed he still doesn’t know the full plan for the new trilogy, and recalled how Lucas, when telling him and Fisher about the new films, didn’t reveal he also was selling Lucasfilm to Disney - which Hamill learned about like most people, as the news broke to the press. But Hamill added, “They haven’t done too bad with the Marvel franchise. They did really well with the Muppets. The more you think about it, the more it makes sense. Plus, it was nice to see George seeming so happy!” Hamill explained that, “He seemed happier than I’d seen him in a long time,” especially compared to when he was making the original Star Wars and was notoriously unhappy with how things were going and compromises he had to make.
An audience member told Hamill they hoped to see Luke be a true Jedi Master in the new films, in the manner of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. Hamill said he’d love to see a Luke, “Heavy on the Jedi mind tricks, less on the lightsaber duels. That one in Empire nearly killed me!” He explained how that sequence took six weeks to shoot, “Six weeks I’m being beaten within a n inch of my life on a daily basis! It was awful!” He smiled, recalling, “And then it’s cut down to like six minutes. ‘Eh, it’s no big deal.’”
Exit Theatre Mode
As the Q&A was wrapping up, Hamill noted he had to be careful about what he said, because something small can be blown out of proportion, using the example of when he said he felt that the original trilogy was funnier than the prequels. Hamill stressed he felt, “The prequels weren’t meant to be [as funny]. They were much more solemn. I’m glad they had their own identity and atmosphere. You just have to be really careful, because I don’t want to criticize other people’s work. I love George. I don’t want to hurt his feelings. It’s like you can criticize America, but if you go over to Europe and you hear other people criticizing it, it gets your dander up.”
He added, “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said, ‘Jar-Jar was supposed to be irritating! He’s irritating to the other characters in the movie!’ I defend the prequels, totally, because that’s George’s choice. He earned the right to do what he wanted to do. He became a studio. He wasn’t just the director and writer; he was the studio as well. So those weren’t sort of the movies he wanted to make. Those were exactly the movies he wanted to make.”Why Testing Designs with Users Is Still a Major Challenge for Companies
The good folks at UXPin have just released their annual Enterprise UX Industry Report. They surveyed over 3.000 professionals – mainly product managers.
The good news: things are slowly but steadily changing, and increasingly more people expect useful and usable business products. The bad news is that user testing remains a major challenge for companies in 2017.
While the issues of legacy technology, bureaucracy, and complex use cases still exist, the status quo is changing. We are undoubtedly in the midst of an enterprise UX renaissance. Startups like Gusto, Stripe, and Slack are setting the expectation that business products should be useful, usable, and satisfying. Meanwhile, large organizations like IBM, GE, and Salesforce are prioritizing design as a competitive advantage by hiring thousands of designers to reshape processes and culture.
– UXPin Enterprise UX Industry Report
Out of more than 3,000 people surveyed, over 50% believe that testing designs with users is still a challenge:
This is nothing new to us, since we need to educate our clients in Europe from daily about the real value of regular user testing. What we can contribute to the discussion, is the top 3 reasons WHY this remains such a big problem.
Micro-Feedback at Work
We’ve been surveying our blog readers and customers ourselves for years now, and we automatically send them this email straight after they sign up to receive our latest Usability Hacks:
The 3 reasons why testing with users is still a challenge
As we receive quite a lot of replies to our question, let’s break the answers down to 3 recurring topics:
No. #1: No clue
It |
I’m excited!
SB: It’s not for me and you, it’s just for you.
ST: It’s just me.
SB: And it’s you CIG, and this is from Alien Eagle.
ST: Good one, Alien Eagle.
[25:22] ALIEN EAGLE asks: In regards to collisions: I really love how every object has collisions right now. However, it seems there are a lot of times we fall through hard objects, including our own ships (my 325a after every EVA). What are future plans to create more reliable collisions?
ST: Yeah so this is actually a really good point and to talk a little bit about this and why it happens. So you guys are aware most of the ships now have the local physics grid within them which is a sparse grid that has just local physics world informations so it’s a little island, sitting inside a bigger island, sitting inside a bigger island of physics.
SB: islands in the stream that is what we are.
ST: Well said! So basically what’s happening when this happens. So it’s only going to happen when you do a pass between the local physics grid and the world grid and going back and forth between them is basically a really tricky for us to deal with. Because it’s not only dealing with the play that’s going back and forth in-between sending forces in-between. Even trickier is that the bounds for that local physics grid actually exists on the asset.
So on the ship itself we built it into the weapon – actually ship script so what’s usually happening here and is usually one of two things. It’s either the code has been a little bit messed up in terms of when you are passing between these things, dealing with transferring all the character attachments and everything and if all of that isn’t transferred over you’re going to fall through. The other times this happens is when the asset itself has gotten broken in some sort of way or even worse that one piece of that asset hasn’t streamed in yet. So that’s a big, big problem.
Sometimes we will get the mesh in and the local physics grid information does come in. Usually that’s what you’re seeing in a lot of the PU releases, a lot of the PTU releases we ended up in this situation with a couple of ships. So the way you can kind of tell what’s going on is, if happens with every single ships that’s probably the code. But if it happens with just one ship well it’s probably just the asset itself.
These are just normal teething pains when you are trying to work on a physics system like this. Just because there’s so many interdependencies and complexity to passing all that data in and out, in and out, in and out. It gets really crazy when there’s three levels of nesting of something like that. You’ve got an Idris, which has a Connie, which has a Merlin. It can get pretty crazy! So just dealing with every single situation with that, it’s pretty normal teething pains. So I would say the future plans to make it a little more reliable is just to fix the bugs with it really. As we run into them absolutely we fix them
SB: Fixing bugs is what we like to do!
ST: Fixing bugs!
SB: Squish them!
ST: Squish them!
SB: Going on a bug hunt!
[28:31] Daz asks: I would like to know how FPS combat will feel when done. Can you explain how the character is going to move around, take cover and which FPS’s do you think are the closest analogue to what you are creating?
SB: So, how the character is going to move around and take cover. So, in Star Citizen our character does take cover, he does have actually cover animations set. So we have him come up to the cover object and when he gets there, he’s using his idle animations, the weapon ends up raising, now it’s not technically correct.
ST: Why is it not technically correct?
SB: Because you raise your weapon up towards your head, so you can blow your brains out or something like this. For us to be able to allow the players to read what is happening it’s important for design to be able to see that weapon, so we’re bringing it up here and we’re trying to be nice and safe. Then you can move back and forth across that cover object and around it and everything like this as well. Now when you hit an edge what happens is your character is going to then go from whatever that position is, to another, the weapon is going to move to another location. So say I’m going to my left hand side, to let me know that I’m at the corner of that cover object, and then I can peek out or if I go to aim I will then step out and come around the next corner and try to fire. What is the closest analog to what we’re creating..?
ST: That’s tough huh?
SB: Yeah it is.
ST: None of the shooters, really that are out anyway, are third and first.
SB: Yes.
ST: With the expectation that you can really play in both. There’s some that you can bounce out of, third, and see yourself.
SB: There’s a distinct connection within Star Citizen that doesn’t exist in majority of first person shooters, where the third person and the first person assets are the same assets. That took a lot of, sort of, engineering figuring this out.
ST: I like how you called engineering art ‘chasing the tail’.
SB: It actually came down to just a day in the Frankfurt.
ST: I explained it on my sort of intro to you but I actually had a little explanation to the subscribers about Evo’s one line change and then the little meme I did right after the fact, “1000 man hours? I do in one line.” But it was pretty cool, like it is interesting to talk about the first person/third person thing, and it does go totally in line with this only because we had tried for years back at CryTek to kind and get this right. This kind of started in Crysis 2, and like you know him far better than I do because you worked with Evo and other people at CryTek. It started in Crysis 2, you gave it a try.
SB: Yeah we tried.
ST: “No this is not going to work.”
SB: Because the problem really was an engineering issue and a time issue, during Crysis 2 were making a lot of major changes to a lot of different systems. It just, there were certain promising things about it, but there were going to be issues with it, we could see those issues and we certainly found that we couldn’t solve those issues within the time we had to ship the particular product. But changes that happened between Crysis 2 and Crysis 3, in the way that the third person character and the AI aimed, actually sort of set the ground-work for what we’re doing here, because, you know, later last year we were looking at some of these issues, and connection issues, and we were trying to figure out why this wasn’t working; why this other thing wasn’t working.
We saw the, we were like, the custom aim joint isn’t being used properly. So once we got that working, and we were able to get the aim system working properly, it was a simple matter of tying back to the camera setup, now we had control of being able to make adjustments within first person, that made the same actual adjustments in third-person. So where you are pointing the gun in first person is exactly where he’s pointing it in third person. Zero difference.
ST: And there’s just a huge disconnect with that right?
SB: It was such a simple, it was one of those sort of answers where you just look at it and you’re like, I remember standing there in the room and going, well can’t just bla bla bla? And tie this to this? And it was like…
ST: But you’ve been in game development enough years to know that, as soon as someone says “Can’t we just” usually.. not, can’t we just. So. In this case,
SB: In this case, it was! In this case it was just like, huh. And Evo went back, he made the test, and totally fucking worked.
ST: Yeah, which is super awesome, and I remember that we’re the initial naive sort of implementation, literally take a camera, strap it onto a joint, and see what it looks like, and like it looked cool but you realised, I’m kinda getting sick, this doesn’t really make sense, and then yeah.
SB: So, what is the FPS combat going to feel like? So… Start Citizen, from a feeling standpoint, is going to be a little bit different than a lot of the games that you’ve typically played. It’s not really a Call of Duty, but then again it’s not a Battlefield 4, but then it’s not an ARMA 3, but then it’s not a Crysis 3
ST: Yeah, right.
SB: We’re taking sort of pieces of each of those, building something something new, and utilize what I like to call competitive analysis. So what I’ll do is, we’re playing something so, for instance we’re working on the cover, and something is not feeling right, or it’s not playing right, and I’m trying to explain what it is that I’m looking for, or what is wrong here. So what I’ll do is I’ll go get video from competing products out there, and I’ll take those videos and I’ll also take examples of videos of myself doing something, or animations that we’ve done, and really break ‘em down and go, you see what they do here? You see what we’re doing here? This thing isn’t working here, right? And this is how we can fix that. I like what they’re doing over here. So, it’s kind of hard to sort of…
ST: It’s a nebulous question. How does it feel, how do you explain that. Now…
SB: And that’s going to change over time.
ST: And maybe I’ll give it a stab, because it’s… it’s somewhere, it’s not a twitch shooter, it’s not a Quake, it’s not a Doom, it’s not a fast shooter by any stretch of the imagination. Can you look around fast? Yeah, definitely you can look around fast. But it, things are not moving at that rate. It’s just not that quick.
SB: No, we want to promote ADS
ST: Exactly, Aiming down the sights. We want to promote some tactical movement, you want to promote teamplay, so, it’s, it’s definitely definitely somewhere between the Battlefields and ARMA. Where it’s not full simulation but it’s also not so simulation heavy that it becomes tiresome or frustrating.
SB: There’s some things you’ll see you may go “Oh hey I know that from say Crysis 3”. And things that we do with the character in the game because it is an engine game. It’s a similar engine so even though we have heavily modified it
ST: Even this bit of it, which is the most fundamental sort of part of the CryEngine is the first person aspect of it or the first person character aspect of it. We’ve kind of re-did that, which probably doesn’t make sense to a lot of people. The easiest thing to do would have been to say “Alright just copy paste Crysis 3 and go to town”. Again with this game we wanted to be something new something unique and we’re not afraid to give that a try right? I think that’s an important point anyway.
Maybe and to extend the question a tiny bit. I did one like, one of the examples, just to bring up one of the examples we were looking at. Between Battlefield and our turning in place. So and still we’re actually in a very real, realy shape that we have to fix our turn in place which is not as good as it could be in both our opinions I think. Or just our general turning. Battlefield has a really interesting system of you’ll be standing there and your character is allowed to rotate almost 180 degrees before his feet do anything right? You recall this we were taking a look over a multiplayer server?
SB: I remember you shooting me constantly as we were testing
ST: Yeah and then I was prone and you shot me in the face and you tea-bagged me sometimes it was… I remember this too! So we were taking a look at it what happens is with our game right now in Star Citizen in what like 30 degrees or something like this? I can’t remember what the foot turn start is. We’ve got different animations for 0-45, 45-90 and then 90 plus I think or I might have gotten that wrong, 30, 45 whatever.
Basically as soon as you’re outside of that rotation we start adjusting your feet so that you can align to that new position now. I kind of like the way that Battlefield does it because you don’t get a lot of this foot shuffling which a lot of people are not liking with our game right now cause one there’s a bug where you can get stuck shuffling. But mostly because and again this came from other bugs with the camera, you could see yourself shuffling and you don’t really see that anymore with the fixes that have gone in.
It does almost make a lot more sense when you’re holding a weapon you wouldn’t just rotate 30 degrees and then start doing that you would probably go just about as far as you can go and then you would make that rotation so it’s things like that just to wrap an example into that.
SB: Yeah we’re taking to that exact like originally it was 30 degrees off center. Now we’re going okay well … For instance when we’re in relaxed and we’re looking, I can go like this, I can go like this, I can go like this and now this is … I can go all the way over here, but naturally if I’m you’re here from me, I’m just going to, at this point I’m going to start to rotate. So it’s a balancing act between the no weapon. So when you’re relaxed, that behavior is a little bit different and the having the weapon so we want to remove a lot of that ticky ticky ticky ticky ticky coming across, but we also want to make sure that when I am aiming and I’m gonna go aim this way that I as I come this direction, right about here … So it’s maybe 60 degrees or so, I’m going to attempt to re-orientate.
ST: Right
SB: That way we’re still keeping the feeling of realism in the characters poses when he’s firing and stuff like that, but we’re not getting that ticky ticky ticky.
ST: Right, right right, perfect. So hopefully, daz that was enough info there to give an idea of what we think it’s gonna feel like. Of course we have the way that Chris wants it to feel, the way that we want it to feel which are all pretty much in line so I think we’ll get there soon.
SB: So let’s go to BigDave.
ST: I like that BigDave question.
SB: Yeah.
[41:22] BigDave asks: In regards to melee combat: If there is a blocking/parrying system in place for melee combat, what games/movies/etc will you guys be looking at in order to get a basis of how those animations look? For instance, Chivalry has a somewhat rigid but free feel to the parrying animations, while other games such as Total War have very detailed combat maneuvers, but they are fully scripted (when zoomed in on soldiers). TL:DR – Will we have highly scripted melee combat motions, or less detailed ones that allow for more player movement?
SB: I think overall the concept behind Star Citizen as a first person combat game is to give you freedom. So we don’t want to go for with these …
ST: Quick time events?
SB: Yeah, quick time events.
ST: I hate to say that because of all the tomfoolery with Ryse.
SB: And things like that. But we are looking at … we’re talking about the design for these sorts of things. So in regards to what we are looking for reference we’re looking at things like Eskrima and Kali and various different military trainings and things like that. We’ve been talking about jabs and swipes and parries and all of these things like that. But we do want it to be a much more fluid sort of thing. The same sort of thing would end up happening if say you got into a fight at a bar in the Persistent Universe, right, you know, you don’t want to pull out and a knife and be stabbing somebody but you certainly can take a …
ST: It just depends who you are …
SB: I’m guessing …
ST: Well, no, I’d just curl up in a bawl and cry a little bit in each one of my bar fights.
SB: Perfect we’ll … let me write that down [writes it down] …
ST: Curl into ball …
SB: Curl up in ball …
ST: And cry.
SB: In ball behaviour. Curl up in ball behaviour.
ST: And cry.
SB: And cry.
ST: Perfect.
SB: And cry. And we will that ‘The Sean’.
ST: ‘The Sean’? [laughs] Okay.
SB: So yeah.
ST: That’s a good answer.
[43:46] Ethnine asks: When all of this is over and ‘done’, and we’re all in Star Citizen playing together, what do you see yourself doing in the completed game? Will you be a pirate? Will you run security for some major organization? Or will you be a lone bounty hunter looking for his next big score? What roles do you see yourself fulfilling once you’re let loose in this amazing title that you helped create?
SB: Well for me my handle in Star Citizen is Ghost Monkey Five and I will be running a militant group called the Ghost Monkey Extraction Unit. We specialise in the extraction of personnel and information from highly sensitive locations. If you have found us and have need of our services leave us a message at Bones’ Bar on Terra.
ST: Wow!
SB: Grando Omnum Spiritum Simea. Long live the Simian Order!
ST: Wow! I can’t top that answer!
SB: I’m going totally role player on you. Totally role player
ST: No! That was amazing. I want to be part of the Simian Order! How does one become part of the Simian order? I had an answer to this question and it’s completely changed now. I’d like to be part of the Simian Order, could I be Ghost Monkey Eins?
SB: No, Ghost Monkey Eins is actually the entity which brought life to the void. You can actually learn more about this by searching for the Simian Order on the forums. Actually for the organisations.
ST: Awesome! So when all of this is over and done I will be searching out the Simian, The Great Simian, The Grand Simian and becoming part of the Order of… What was it again?
SB: The Simian Order
ST: The Simian Order, that’s correct! Yeah that’s what I will be. That’s what I will be.
SB: I hear The Grand Simian has an Aurora
ST: He does?
SB: And that he travels the galaxy spreading the word of the light.
ST: Is there a… Never mind I guess we’ll go too deep into that. Let’s just leave that one alone!
Outro
ST: This is the first we’ve given that a go. I think it was mildly successful we didn’t get too hijacked, too out of control so that’s really good!
SB: We’ve only been here for four hours Sean
ST: Yeah, really they haven’t seen that we’ve been here for four hours. Maybe they can read my watch so that might be a problem.
SB: They might be like “Hey what are they talking about? They’ve only been talking ten minutes”.
ST: See this is what’s happening.. So guys thank you so much for subscribing to this, thank you so much for allowing us to do this. If you guys liked Steve and I answering your questions trying to get through the questions without …
SB: Send a cheque to Steve Bender at Cloud Imperium Games dot com. Write it on the side of a Porsche 911.
ST: That’s kind of it. Really guys thanks a lot for doing the subscriptions for this stuff it’s really to be able to do these things. We had a lot of fun with it today and keep throwing in the questions and thanks a lot for helping us develop Star Citizen. I think that’s pretty much it I think we can send them off and we can get back to work
SB: Yeah?
ST: Ish
SB: Sounds good to me
ST: Great
SB: I need a beer
ST: I need a beer!Outside of a residential building on North Miro Street in New Orleans’ Treme neighborhood, there is a thin, white pole about six feet high. At the top of the pole is the frame for a two-part sign; the upper piece is completely missing, but the bottom remains. Hand painted in a muted blue, a mix of block lettering and script spell out simply: “Over 42-Years Experience.”
Outlasting any identifying information about the business, and it would appear, the business itself, this is the work of Lester Carey.
One of a handful of New Orleans’ hand-painted sign makers, Carey’s work appears on the sides of corner stores, bars, auto repair shops, funeral homes, barbershops and churches across the city. His vernacular style is at once distinctive and anonymous — an aesthetic most locals would recognize, but take for granted, and be unlikely to attribute to an individual artist, let alone Carey. Carey died earlier this month at the age of 64. He struggled with homelessness and drinking.
Despite his citywide presence, Lester Carey was a neighborhood man. He was known well in New Orleans’ Central City area, where he spent his days posted up on corners with friends and walking the streets with his shopping cart full of art supplies. He could usually be found hanging with his buggy on Felicity street, out front of a tire shop that boasted many of his own signs, advertising the shop’s business hours and instructing customers not to block the driveway.
Hand painted signs are prevalent throughout New Orleans as a cheap and lasting way for businesses to advertise. But beyond the practical considerations of finances and durability, most shop owners I talked to said, it’s just what they’ve always done. Carey would make regular rounds, visiting spots where his work was showing wear to make cosmetic updates, or offering to paint new menus on the sides of corner stores. For $10 or $15 bucks a pop, no one was going to tell him no, even in an age of cheap printed and digital signage.
Wilbert Chambliss Jr., a barber whose shop sits on Felicity Street across from the tire shop, said Carey would come by every six months or so to touch up his window display, originally commissioned by Chambliss’ father in 2000. The shop and the sign made it through Hurricane Katrina without much damage. Chambliss says he recognizes hand painting as something of a dying art.
“In this day and time, if this (shop) was just being started up, I doubt we’d have a window like that,” he concedes. But he says, he never thought about getting a vinyl or light-up sign. He prefers a custom design, like Carey’s. “If you walk around the neighborhood, each and everyone one of his signs are unique and different. That’s the way he did it; he did it to please the customer.”
One such customer is Billy Kattoum, who runs the Magnolia Market, just blocks from the barber shop.
Kattoum has been in charge there for 20 years, and says his predecessor worked with Carey before him. Carey used to paint the weekly meat board specials on the side of the market, updating the prices every time they would change on specialty items like turkey necks and pig feet. Kattoum said he didn’t think much of it; Lester always came around looking for work, and he gave it to him. “It was never about the money for him,” Kattoum said. “He was just living day by day.”
Not everyone took Carey’s signature style at face value. Anthony DelRosario is a librarian at Tulane University. After Katrina hit, he switched up his route to work, and found himself biking through Central City. He appreciated the hand-painting on the sides of corner stores and bars, and began to notice a consistent and idiosyncratic style among much of the signage: a playful yet commanding blend of script and block lettering, sometimes with a spirited curved word, unevenly sized fonts and sometimes a poor use of available space. The signs were often accompanied by images of food: cartoonish hamburgers or po’boys whose fillings were represented as triangles. DelRosario began taking photos to document the signs, many of which were on abandoned stores he feared could be demolished.
“The city seemed like it was going to change quite a bit post Katrina,” DelRosario remembers, “so it seemed like it was important to document what made New Orleans, New Orleans.”
Gallery: Lester Carey Lettering One of Carey's signs appears on the corner of Miro and Barracks in the Treme. Even after a paint job, the number of years represented remains the same and the business it is referencing remains a mystery. (Photo by Nina Feldman)
Rusted sign in 2010 on the corner of Miro and Barracks in Treme (Photo by Anthony DelRosario)
The old meat board at Magnolia Market in Central City (Photo by Anthony DelRosario)
Carey with his Buggy and sketchbook (Photo by Anthony DelRosario)
One of Carey’s sandwich illustrations (Photo by Anthony DelRosario)
Carey with his supply cart outside of the Keller Market in Central City (Photo by Anthony DelRosario)
Ernie K-Doe performs in New Orleans with Carey's signage in the background. DelRosario estimates this photo was from 1999 or 2000. (Photo by Anthony DelRosario)
Carey's work on the front of a church on Felicity Street across from the tire shop where he hung out
Carey’s signage appears on the side of Chicken Mart at Simon Bolivar and Jackson streets. Carey’s work used to be on the front and side of the store, but the owners have since replaced the front signage with a large printed sign. They have also added a digital sign in the parking lot. They opted to keep Carey’s hand-painted sign on the side. (Photo by Nina Feldman)
Carey’s lettering in a shop window on Paris Avenue in New Orleans (Photo by Anthony DelRosario)
Carey’s distinctive blend of block and script lettering on a corner store on Louisiana Avenue (Photo by Anthony DelRosario)
A window display at Royal Furniture on St. Claude in the Marigny (Photo by Anthony DelRosario)
A fourth generation shrimpman Keilen Williams can be found on South Claiborne near Josephine selling his huge gulf shrimp for $5 a pound. (Photo by Anthony DelRosario)
Carey paints a sign at The Saint in 2009. (Photo by Anthony DelRosario)
A tire shop where Carey hung out with his signs on in Central City
Carey’s sign at Jackson and Roman in New Orleans (Photo by Anthony DelRosario)
After taking photographs for some time, DelRosario wanted to find the artist behind the work. One image, painted on an old wall of one of public housing complexes that would eventually be demolished and redeveloped, included a signature. And so began DelRosario’s quest for Lester Carey.
Once he tracked him down (on Felicity Street in Central City), DelRosario spent the next nine years supporting Carey and working to bring him the recognition he felt he deserved. He took hundreds of photos of Carey’s work and created extensive social media accounts to document it. Carey got his degree in commercial art at Delgado Community college, and Delrosario describes Carey’s style as “naive commercial art,” or a sort of commercial folk art.
“It’s maybe a little laissez-faire,” DelRosario said of Carey’s style. “The lettering’s not perfect.”
In a city that is constantly seeking ephemera and traditions, DelRosario had picked out an aesthetic unique to New Orleans that it seems even a city so self-aware had failed to notice. DelRosario started making pins and shirts with Lester’s designs on them and selling them online, under the name Nola ‘Nacular, with proceeds going back to Carey. Soon, Jac Currie, of clothing company Defend New Orleans, took notice. Defend New Orleans uses iconic symbols and phrases from the Crescent City to create a city brand appreciated by locals and tourists alike, and Currie partnered with DelRosario to make a t-shirt displaying Carey’s signature script and block blend. Currie, who at the time also owned neighborhood haunt and late night dance bar, The Saint, recognized Carey’s work as both innovative and essentially New Orleanian. He even commissioned Carey to paint a sign on the exterior wall of the bar.
I’ve lived walking distance from the “Over 42-years Experience” sign on Miro Street for almost seven years, and I’ve pondered it often. Last year, I noticed the sign had gotten a fresh paint job. Whoever felt it was important to give the sign a facelift wasn’t as concerned about illuminating the subject of its pride or updating its timetable. Today, seven years later, it reads the same.
In some ways, the tradition of hand painted signs like this one could be characterized the same way one might describe the entire New Orleans ethos: It might not be the most practical solution, but we’ve always done it this way; it is unlike anything else, and it’s beautiful.
Lester Carey did not have life insurance. Anthony DelRosario created a gofundme page to assist Carey’s sisters with the funeral costs. Any funds raised over the goal will go towards establishing an arts scholarship in Carey’s name.An $18 million student housing complex is planned for downtown Dayton at the site of the former Dayton Daily News building and adjacent property, Cox Media Group Ohio announced Wednesday.
Cox Media Group Ohio said it plans to sell the property to the nonprofit United Housing and Community Services Corporation of California, which would partner with Missouri-based Student Suites to build the 350-bed facility just a few blocks from Sinclair Community College.
The 200-apartment development would be the largest residential project downtown in recent memory – larger than The Cannery and St. Clair Lofts, which opened with more than 100 units just over a decade ago – according to Aaron Sorrell, director of planning and community development for the city of Dayton.
“The historical legacy of the Dayton Daily News property will be preserved, and this could bring hundreds of people downtown 24-7,” said Julia Wallace, market vice president of Cox Media Group Ohio, parent company of the Dayton Daily News.
The historic 1908 “bank” building at the corner of Fourth and Ludlow Streets would be preserved and renovated as part of the new complex. The press rooms to the west and the large 1950s newspaper office building attached to the north would be demolished, as would the city-owned Schwind building further north at 25 S. Ludlow St.
In their place, Student Suites would construct a five-story, U-shaped, 200-apartment building wrapped around a courtyard, while retaining the existing 93-space parking lot to the west of the building.
The block of Ludlow Street between Third and Fourth has struggled in recent years, with the newspaper building empty since 2007, the arcade empty for decades, the Commercial Building sidewalk blocked off because of falling window glass and the Schwind building the subject of multiple failed renovation plans.
“This takes a block that has been neglected to a shameful extent and really gives it new life,” said City Commissioner Matt Joseph. “Having residents there, having investment there … you’ve seen it before where a little bit of investment in one place really starts something.”
Wallace said Cox, which moved out of the Ludlow Street building in two stages in 1999 and 2007, will donate $1 million to the project. Sorrell said Dayton City Commission will consider its own $1 million contribution, aimed at acquiring and demolishing the largely vacant Schwind building.
The bulk of the project — $13.5 million — would be financed through tax-exempt bonds, according to Sorrell, with the remainder of the money coming from the developer and possibly a federal historic tax credit. The bonds would be paid off with revenue from apartment rents.
Sorrell said the project would have to be approved by the city’s Landmarks Commission, and might require a variance from the Board of Zoning Appeals.
William Levy, president of Best Management On Campus, which would eventually manage the complex, said developers are in the process of getting bond approvals. He said rent prices for the apartments have not been set yet, but that the goal is to provide affordable housing that gives students at a two-year college a four-year college experience.
“The market is unquestionably there,” Sorrell said. “The market studies that have been done over the years have shown a huge demand for student housing. … This project of 350 beds just scratches the surface of the demand.”
Madeline Iseli, vice president for advancement at Sinclair, called the proposed project “a great complement” that would help better connect Sinclair’s campus with downtown. Under Ohio law, community colleges are prohibited from owning and operating their own housing, but in recent years, Sinclair officials have mentioned the desire to increase student housing options near campus.
Dick Davis, partner at Student Suites, said his company has built student housing in several states, including projects at Central State and Wilberforce. Sorrell said current plans call for 50 one-bedroom units and 150 two-bedroom apartments. Davis said each would have its own kitchen.
Davis said the housing would be restricted to students, but the complex will have other features, possibly including restaurants or food service, and office space, which could be used by Sinclair. He said those plans remain fluid.
If project approvals go smoothly, Davis said demolition and renovation would begin this summer, with the goal being to have student housing available for rent in fall 2014 for the start of the school year. Sorrell called that timetable “ambitious, but doable.”
The Schwind building houses the Moraine Embassy restaurant on the first floor, and Sorrell said Student Suites will be responsible for relocating that establishment.
Wallace said Cox hired an agent, Michael Greitzer, to explore options for the Ludlow property, and he brought Student Suites into the mix. Wallace said Cox has kept Sinclair involved throughout discussions of this plan. She said Cox is committed to the community where the now-national company began.
“We felt a responsibility to the community, and have been working on it for three years, to do something worthwhile with the site downtown,” Wallace said. “To me, this is the best possible outcome. We have the state-of-the-art media center that we need (at 1611 S. Main St.), and downtown gets something probably better than an office building, with people living there.”“I am very excited for the upcoming trip,” Melania Trump said in a statement. | Getty Melania Trump scheduled to address U.S. military families during trip abroad
Melania Trump will engage with foreign women and children and deliver remarks to U.S. military families and personnel when she joins President Donald Trump on his first trip abroad as commander in chief, the first lady’s office announced Thursday.
The Trumps will leave Washington on Friday for a trip to Saudi Arabia, Israel, Rome, Brussels and Sicily. And while Melania Trump will accompany her husband at some events, the White House said the first lady will also participate in many of her own, including attending spousal programs at the NATO and G-7 summits in Brussels and Sicily, respectively, and speaking to U.S. military personnel and families in Italy.
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“I am very excited for the upcoming trip,” Melania Trump said in a statement. “This will not just be an opportunity to support my husband as he works on important matters of national security and foreign relations, it will also be my honor to visit and speak with women and children from different countries, with different perspectives.”It looks like the oil lobby’s bamboozlement habit is so ingrained that it extends even to cosmetic touches.
The website Astrotruth.org notes that an American Petroleum Institute pamphlet given out at a forum last week appears to show oil and gas industry employees as a racially diverse group of people.Check it out:
But two of those people aren’t what they seem. This stock photo shows the same group, but two men who appear as dark-skinned and Asian in the API pamphlet are white in the stock photo. (Check out the men who are third from the left, and second from the right, in the front row.)
API — or whoever prepared the pamphlet on its behalf — downloaded the stock photo, then altered the heads of two white men to make them appear non-white, it appears.
But they did a pretty shoddy job. Astrotruth noticed the maneuver because it looks like API forgot to change the dark-skinned man’s hand, which remains white.
API has been in the news lately for organizing astroturf rallies to fight efforts to address global warming, and for teaming up with Newsweek to host panel discussions on energy policy, featuring CEO Jack Gerard.
Late Update: Alert reader R.B.W. writes:
Go look at the stock photo again. The two men who are now Asian and black are the same man in the photo twice. Even the stock photo is doctored.
He’s right! This is getting down-right post-modern.EgyptAir received a notification from Moscow's Domodedovo International Airport that the flight on early Saturday was cancelled through a company manager at the airport, Civil Aviation minister Hossam Kamal said in a Friday ministry statement.
Russian authorities have still not officially informed Egypt of their reasons to cancel EgyptAir flights to Moscow starting on Saturday, according to Kamal.
As per the airport's notification, EgyptAir decided to halt the Saturday flight and re-book other flights from Cairo for the passengers. The passengers on the arriving flight to Cairo from Moscow will also have their flights re-booked.
The Russian Aviation agency Rosaviatsiya formally notified Domodedovo airport, where EgyptAir flights arrive, that the ban is effective starting Saturday, said the airport spokesman Alexander Vlasov.
Egypt operates three weekly flights from Cairo to Moscow on Saturdays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Official phone calls are being conducted on a high-level between officials from both countries in order to clarify the matter and to understand why the flights were halted as was reported by news agencies, Kamal said.
The Egyptian aviation authority is also conducting calls with the Russian side to understand the reasons behind the decision of which it was not officially notified of.
The reasons |
board members avoid "even the perception of any personal agendas or special interests" and "should not be seen as advocates for their appointing authorities or for certain segments among their constituents or the electorate."
Hall reportedly told Ferguson that Ball State should support repeal of the prevailing wage law because it demonstrated "our student-centered approach — potential cost savings."
After reviewing Ferguson's email, Michael Poliakoff, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, told The Star Press: "It seems very unusual for a board chairman to be acting independently — if that's what's happening — of the (board's) committees and the full board in making decisions." If there is a significant policy issue, the protocol is for the board "to make a resolution," which "gives the institution its important transparency," he said. A board cannot fulfill its strategic function, its oversight function, if it is tied up with micro-management, he explained. "To the contrary, they must look at the big picture and set the direction."
Trustees Frank Hancock and Marianne Glick, both of whom spent a decade on the board, submitted their resignations to Pence a month before Ferguson resigned, though they weren't replaced until much later. Pence named Jean Ann Harcourt — the president of a school supply company, a leader in local, state and national Republican politics and a host of the annual "Picnic with Pence" fundraiser — to fill out Glick's term. The governor named Mike McDaniel — executive director of governmental affairs for the Krieg DeVault law firm in Indianapolis and a former GOP state chairman — to take over for Hancock, also a Republican.
Buy Photo Former Ball State trustee Frank Hancock. (Photo: Corey Ohlenkamp/The Star Press file photo)
In a recent interview, Hancock, the owner of Sports Graphics in Indianapolis, acknowledged the board, himself included, got out of bounds "a little too much."
"We had transitioned from a board with little input into Jo Ann’s plans — until she sought it — to a board which some members wanted to direct Paul from day one," Hancock said. "The pendulum moved from the far right to the far left, when it should have stopped in the middle.”
He thinks the Penn State University child sex abuse scandal changed a lot of university boards, "including ours, and had a lot to do with the board's over-reaching, in my opinion. While trustees now had a better understanding of our accountability and responsibilities, presidents now were being asked to provide boards more information than ever before. While Jo Ann had started the process, I think when Paul came in, we kind of went overboard in requesting not only more information, but digging into the details. The more transparent the information Paul provided led to more questions being raised. In many cases, those answers led to further questions and it went on and on in some cases."
Hancock continued: "All of a sudden we were no longer a board advising and consenting to plans and programs presented, but we were now digging in deep, questioning many of the aspects the plans and programs were based upon. It’s my belief this fundamental change in the board's interaction with the university president over the past four years, its inability to police itself when some members strayed too far in the weeds, played a part in both Jo Ann retiring and Paul leaving the university. Will it have an effect on the hiring of the next president? I don’t know."
After he resigned but before he was replaced, Hancock asked for a meeting with Pence's chief of staff, Jim Atterholt, "to go down and explain why I was resigning, what I thought the governor could do with my appointment, what I thought the board needed. When I did go down, I was surprised, startled maybe, that Rick was there and sat in on the meeting. I didn't realize he was going to be part of the meeting."
"I guess that meeting was not particularly productive then," said Anita Levy, a senior program officer at the American Association of University Professors. "It sounds like the chair has the governor's blessing to some extent, so it may be difficult to rein him in under those circumstances, if he's an avid supporter of the governor."
After reviewing Ferguson's complaint email, Levy told The Star Press: "It looks as if the chair is getting into the weeds quite a bit. Some of it may be pure personality differences. It's hard to tell from a distance. He may be a micromanager, and it looks as if no one else on the board has tried to rein him in, or tried and been unsuccessful in doing so. But it does appear the board, taken as a whole represented by the chair, has overstepped its authority in some of these instances."
One could call Hall an avid supporter of Gov.-elect Eric Holcomb. After a board of trustees' meeting in Muncie on Sept. 9, the board toured a new BSU facility at Launch Fishers, a co-working space for entrepreneurs in Fishers, then traveled to Hall's house nearby on Crooked Stick Golf Club, where Hall hosted a fundraiser/reception for Holcomb. The candidate's campaign committee reimbursed Hall $2,683 for catering and event supplies.
"I am a Republican and I supported the Republican candidate in the governor's race," Hall said. "I have a lot of Democratic friends, a lot of good working relationships with Democrats, and don't view my role on the board as a partisan role. I view it as looking out for the well-being, with my colleagues, of Ball State as a whole."
Hall says he typically spends 10 to 20 hours a week on Ball State business, though BSU spokesperson Joan Todd says he has been known to devote up to 70 hours a week (all unpaid) to the chairman's job. The chairman sees himself as a "facilitator," not a micromanager, including in between board meetings.
"I don't have any significant inherent powers that are different than any other trustee," he said, "but rather as chair it is my role to help facilitate the discussion between the president and other members of the cabinet and the full board."
Hall's supporters paint a different picture of him than the portrait in Ferguson's email.
Buy Photo Phil Repp, vice president for information technology at Ball State University. (Photo: Corey Ohlenkamp/The Star Press file photo)
"I would never characterize Rick’s leadership as a micro-managing," Phil Repp, BSU's vice president for information technology, told The Star Press. "His leadership is bold and clearly passionate in moving Ball State forward. Does he engage us and ask us to help him move Ball State into a more prominent place? Yes. I was most impressed when Rick came to the faculty convocation this past fall in the midst of questions about President Ferguson leaving the institution. I thought that act showed us he is a leader who faces challenges with us and not to the side. That is what Ball State needs."
Under Hall's leadership, the board changed its structure a few years ago, establishing committees for more conversations.
"Literally, our meeting table got bigger and all the cabinet and the trustees were at that table," Repp said. "I see only positive from such a robust conversation about Ball State and where it should go. I welcomed that kind of openness and straightforward leadership. Questions from the trustees only make us better."
Amy Harden, associate professor of fashion merchandising, saw no evidence that the board overstepped its authority during her tenure as chair of University Senate, which coincided with Ferguson's tenure as president. The Senate's level of communication and connection with the board increased during that time, she added. Her description of Hall includes "thoughtful," and someone who ensures that all information is considered, who has a "strong insistence on accountability" and who is "sincerely interested in my thoughts and input of the faculty viewpoints and willingness to work together." She found Hall's temperament to be "open to ideas, collaborative, and very strong and focused on the goals of making Ball State stronger."
No one can claim Ferguson was a perfect president. Some accused him of refusing to look past 2018 (Ball State's 100th anniversary) when it came to strategic planning; of focusing his efforts internally, trying to give faculty and students everything they wanted, which is why he was well liked on campus; and of not doing enough fundraising. Though he may not have been given much of a chance.
How does Hall respond to allegations that board dysfunction/micromanagement has hurt the chances of getting a really strong next president?
Buy Photo Ball State board of trustees Chairman Rick Hall at a board meeting in Muncie on Friday. (Photo: Corey Ohlenkamp/The Star Press)
"It would be a disservice to Ball State University to not bring a very strong leader to serve as president, that can work with the board, that brings different talents and perspectives to the table, that can work with the faculty … and work with the administration," the chairman said. "We want a strong leader that has a vision for the institution and wants to continue our upward trajectory."
What's unfortunate about the perception that Hall runs the university is "it's such a disservice to the people who are doing such a great job on campus," Hall said. "And I want to share why I think we are in good shape."
"Higher education is about value proposition. What are the students being taught that translates into the job market and at what costs? And we have what everybody else wants. We've got a faculty deeply committed to teaching that does an outstanding job. And we have an administration that by necessity, because of our funding, has developed a culture of fiscal responsibility. So when you combine those things the results you get are a 93 percent job placement rate, you get the lowest tuition increase in nearly 40 years, and the appetite for a Ball State education is at an all-time high … We had our second-largest freshman class in 15 years. Those are the types of metrics the board focuses on in determining whether the university is performing well, and it's up to the president and the cabinet to implement the measures that produce those results."
Contact Seth Slabaugh at (765) 213-5834.
Read or Share this story: http://tspne.ws/2i0B2y6It’s an excellent idea to lower speed limits on residential streets from the current limit of 50 km/h to 40 km/h or even to 30 km/h. That said, such a major change is going to blow up big time on city council if traffic safety officials bungle the transition like they’ve done with previous major changes in enforcement.
Many drivers will struggle with lower residential limits, especially at first. If the city’s first and main instinct is to relentlessly hammer them with photo radar tickets, expect a citizen revolt.
As Coun. Bryan Anderson puts it: “If you think you complained before about speed traps, wait until this goes in.”
How does a lowering of limits turn into a cash grab? When it’s done without proper driver education, especially in the form of putting in proper signage, such as digital speed feedback signs. Unlike photo radar tickets that arrive two weeks later in the mail, these signs actually get drivers to slow down that very moment and perhaps avoid a dangerous situation.
But punishment, not useful information, has been standard procedure for dealing with Edmonton drivers, which is the big reason why we’ve seen photo radar revenues explode in the last five years, tripling from $16 million in 2011 to $52 million in 2016.
Pity the Edmonton driver.
We want to drive safely. We also want to avoid costly photo radar tickets, especially those who are just scraping by financially.
But when we merge into the flow of traffic on arterial streets, going no faster or slower than mass of drivers, we will likely only see one of the city’s many signs with a picture of a flashing camera and the message: “PHOTO RADAR ENFORCED.” This sign tells us what we already know all too well, that photo radar is king in Edmonton. But they don’t tell us what we need to know, the actual speed limit, crucial information because even on major four-lane city roads, we have pogo speed limits that jump up and down from 50 km/h to 60 to 50, then down to 30 km/h in school zones.
Drivers have to spend too much time and attention trying to ascertain the speed limit.
“It creates distracted driving,” Anderson says.
City councillors claim there is wide support for lowering residential limits, but it’s worth noting that local politicians in the town of Drayton Valley always said there was wide support for photo radar, only to see 70 per cent of people vote to axe it in April.
Anderson favours a plebiscite in this fall’s civic election on lower limits to settle the matter. It’s a good idea — and why not add a question about photo radar?
That said, I support lower residential limits and also some use of photo radar.
The safety argument is certainly compelling on a 30 km/h limit for residential streets. As Gerry Shinko, head of traffic safety, says: “For me, and from what I’ve seen in the literature on the residential roads and places where there are vulnerable road users, you want to keep that speed around 30.”
To give some credit to the traffic safety folks, they’re also finally getting the message about having proper signage in school zones, not just one small, measly sign. They put in enhanced signage in 13 school zones last year, Shimko says. “There’s no harm in improving all the school zones we have. We’re doing 24 again this year where we’re adding more signs and putting in zebra crosswalks.”
Traffic safety officials are also finally getting on board with the mass use of digital speed feedback signs.
“Those are amazing, their results are amazing,” Shimko says. “We’re getting six to 12 km/h reduction from drivers once they get to the point of the sign.”
I asked Shimko if there would have been less resistance to all the changes if his department had been more aggressive with the digital feedback signs right off the top.
Shimko says the benefits of the signs wasn’t really prevalent in the literature, so it was up to Edmonton to pilot them. “We started seeing some amazing results. … It’s proven to be a really valuable lesson.”
When I ask Shimko why our numerous static photo radar warning signs don’t also post the speed limit, he says: “That’s actually never come up. That’s a good question. I can certainly get back to you.”
It’s better late than never with the digital feedback signs, but council should not proceed with any more major changes in our speed limits unless proper signage is Plan A, not Plan Z after several years of another photo radar cash grab.
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twitter.com/DavidStaplesYEGI have been doing stand-up comedy for roughly ten years. I have experienced a moderate and relative level of success. During a blurry smear of my life from somewhere around 2009 to somewhere around 2013 I lived in an apartment complex with a dozen or so other comedians. All of us were young, at least career wise. We were figuring out how to tell jokes while simultaneously figuring out how to live. It felt like an adult adolescence that centered around a ritual where we would perform stand up in bars and comedy clubs. We fell in love, got in fights, threw up, died, bought things, got jobs, drank, quit drinking, played board games, got on TV, drank, broke up, drank, learned lessons, drank, had sex, and drank. At some point during this time, Louie came out. Louie was a monolith. We would gather around in living rooms to watch as this comedian who was experiencing a near perfect career epoch utilized French new wave film techniques and a Red Digital Camera to darkly and cryptically tell the story of his life. It was the first time anyone had done this, at least on this level, at least that we knew about.
Some of us went on to commercial success, some of us quit, some of us died, I have commitment issues so I’ve never fully been able to pull off any of those things. Most of us at some point decided that the story of our time in this apartment complex was worthy of a series. I tried to write it. Everyone else tried to write it. The closest it ever came to a reality was when a production company filmed a sizzle reel for what would probably have ended up as a reality TV show. Then over the course of the next half a decade it seemed like every comedian who struck it big claimed their right to produce an autobiographical show about the sordid inner lives of their younger comedian selves. It was an attractive idea. No one I know would have turned down the opportunity. It’s sort of a natural end to the path of what a comedian is. That being said, I’m glad I didn’t. I think we’ve explored this concept and I think the world has changed in such a way recently that the personal is no longer as compelling as the world at large. There is a reason art tends to work in movements. We just experienced our comedy grunge 1990s and Louie was Nirvana. Now it’s time for nu-metal or hip hop or Napster or something. I don’t know, this isn’t a perfect metaphor. I’m not that good of a comedian. There is, however, no way for me to write about this from a purely objective point of view. Here are my thoughts.
I’m Dying Up Here is a Showtime series. Showtime for some reason produces things that are consistently almost relevant. It is a Jim Carrey produced adaptation of a non-fiction paperback history of stand up comedy in 1970’s Los Angeles. Here’s the twist though: It’s a drama about comedians. The story follows a core cast of fictional comics working at a thinly veiled stand-in for The Comedy Store called Goldies and frequently references actual 70’s comedy titans like Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Joan Rivers, and Andy Kauffman. There’s a lot going on here. I turned on the first episode intending to roast it to a smoldering crater. I, as a comic, am defensive of what I do. There has almost never been a good depiction of the inner workings of stand up comedy on film or in television. It seems like a fundamental impossibility. It’s like trying to see the back of your own head. You can take a picture of it but you can’t see it. You can’t write a show about stand up because you’re going to spend all of your time and energy constructing the plot, and then just assume you can shoehorn in the scarce minutes of monologue where the comedian is on stage by writing the stand up act in Final Draft and having an actor perform it. This flies in the face of the fact that comedians work for years to get those minutes of material as tight as possible. This is where these shows always go wrong. I’m Dying Up Here kind of gets this wrong and kind of gets it right. I’m conflicted. Sometimes the right stories are told the wrong way. Here’s the plot.
A comedian named Clay Apuzzo sweats and focuses as he prepares to perform on Johnny Carson’s TonightShow. He takes the stage and kills with autobiographical material. We quickly transition to a Scorcese-esque cinematic introduction wherein he celebrates his post-show victory by strutting into a hotel in 1970’s big shot clothing and checks into a room to watch his own set. He orders room service and tips heavily. Meanwhile, the camera still in full cinematic mode, glides around a comedy club where we meet a cast of comics living in a Boogie Nights 1970’s comedy club dimly lit dream. The lighting is right. The feeling is right. We watch these people grind, bust on each other, and gather round an old antenna television as their friend Clay reaches the apex of stand-up comedy at the time. We slowly learn that Cassie, an LA transplant from Texas has a connection to Clay and is working in the “Cellar” section of the club that night. I’m a New York comic and may be getting portions of this wrong but this appears to be a reference to The Comedy Store’s different levels of rooms, which are the Belly Room and the Main Stage. The difference between these sorts of stages is that you sort of level up from open micing, to the Belly, and then to the Main Stage. Details aside, this is true to the game and exists in one form or another at every venue and in every avenue of stand up. Cassie deals with hecklers, which happens over and over in this episode. We’re establishing some themes and devices. Unless you’ve been unplugged for the last five years, you’re aware that there is sexism in comedy. The heckling is maybe an overused device, but I get that the show is trying to get across the struggle of these comics against the ignorance of the time and the business itself. Still I wonder if it’s going to reach an Aaron Sorkin-level of device abuse. Clay get’s called to the couch after his set. This, on Carson, meant he approved of your set. It was the highest honor in comedy at the time.
Suddenly we flash back to Cassie and Clay in bed. Clay is spinning a metaphor about climbing Mount Everest and how you get “fifteen minutes” at the top before you realize that the whole point was the climb itself. Here I stopped to remind myself that I was watching a comedy. The romanticization of a comedian’s dark personal drive is kind of a trick. Suddenly I’m not that surprised that this show is produced by Jim Carrey. The thing where you make a show about comedy but write it as a drama is approaching hack at an alarming rate. I think we might be well aware of it as an audience. We get it. Tears of a clown, I am Pagliacci, etc. I paused to mock the screenwriting, to write the words “Comedy Vinyl” in my notebook, to imagine me and my dumb friends talking like this. Then I remembered that I have made this exact metaphor in this exact way before. Hell, I think had the same haircut as this guy when it happened. Maybe I’m wrong.
Cut to some young comics performing at a strip club in Boston. Ron, played by Clark Duke, is getting a hand job in the balcony while Eddie is on stage harping on his jewish background and dealing with, you guessed it, a heckler. Eddie barely evades actually being attacked by his heckler while panicking about his asthma. Ron cracks a bottle over the back of the guy’s head. Then in a diner back in Los Angeles, the club comics banter with each other in a way that I’m just not sure can be carbon copied from real genuine moments onto the screen. In both heckler scenes thus far and then in this diner scene the back and forth reads like Sorkin dialogue – too witty and fast to be believable. I get that we’re telling a story, but I’m not sure if this is reproducible content. That’s the problem with writing stories about comedians. The stories of their lives move from chapter to chapter based on jokes, and you can’t fabricate jokes fast enough to replicate these stories. That’s why these late night diner hangouts are so fun in real life. You hear jokes that are actually so funny that they are sacred moments of friendship between weird broke artists and will simply never happen again outside of that diner on that one night. Trying to write witty banter always comes off very transparently to me. You imagine the writer putting his or herself in the shoes of the person who delivers all the good burns. It’s dialogue written by someone on the drive home when they realized what they should have said in an argument they had an hour ago. It’s a fantasy.
Clay leaves the hotel and steps out into the street where he’s hit by a bus and dies. This is where I started to really like the show. There’s something inherently comedic about being hit by a bus. “Hit by a bus” is such a stock phrase in comedy. Especially in this world where everyone is constantly busting hecklers all the time. “Hey pal why don’t you go step into traffic and get hit by a bus.” It’s funny that a comedian would die that way. Maybe this show is smarter than I think. The comics gather at the club, Goldies, for an Irish wake regarding Clay’s untimely death. I’m going to be honest here. I love Al Madrigal’s performance as Edgar Martinez, the Mexican comic who happens to still be on acid that he took before Clay died. I’ve met Al and I’ve also taken acid and I relate to this character way too much. A B-plot starts to unravel regarding a one year open micer named Adam who wants to get passed at the club. He argues with his manager and with Goldie about how ready he is to perform on the main stage. I have no idea if this is inside baseball or if people can relate to this. He needs money to keep climbing the proverbial mountain and he takes a high paying job masturbating in front of a dying priest. There is a bone dry moment of comedy when he asks that they put the crucifix away while he does this.
Ron and Eddie road trip to L.A. to stay with Clay, who they had met previously, only to be confronted by Cassie and Clay’s parents freshly grieving and making funeral arrangements. They end up moving in with Arnie and learning some extremely true to life lessons about acting like a big shot and living in a closet with a litter box in order to survive. Sully, an extremely 1970’s looking comic deals with cheating on his pregnant wife and jokes about his ring. The dialogue between him and his mistresses, as well as in his act, is funny but suffers from the aforementioned impossibilities. It kind of works though, when you remember that these are struggling comics. Also, a lot of these people are real-life stand-ups and have the chops to bring to these characters. Furthermore, we’re dealing with 70’s comedy so if it sounds a little hokey, it probably was a little hokey. All of these factors help curb my skepticism.
Cass discovers a postcard that indicates that Clay committed suicide, which creates a core theme and plotline. He then starts popping up Dexter style in scenes with her and offering commentary directly to the camera on their relationship to and the mystery of his own motivations. Hell, with what’s going on at House of Cards and The Handmaid’s Tale I guess devices like this are anyone’s to use. She brings this information to Goldie and Goldie offers some sage wisdom about how Clay’s parents are Catholic and telling them that he committed suicide would only bother them. Goldie’s character comes into focus as this tough maternal type that cares for her comics. I found this true to life in that she’s not portrayed as inherently good or bad, just a survivor with a job. She delivers a gut-punching monologue about her family history with surviving the holocaust and I’m forced to try to remember if the bookers in comedy are ever this tortured or if I’m watching a dramatization of something that isn’t actually that dramatic. Then I remember the industry members I know who are indeed brilliant trainwrecks. Cass shows Clay’s dad the postcard anyways and upsets him. He’s from a bygone era and betrays a lot of complicated feelings about his leisure suit clad cold dead son. I kind of dig this. Later, at Goldies, the comics hold a private open mic/wake with the Apuzzos in attendance. Ron, Eddie, and Adam make moves to get in. We wonder if they are motivated purely or are maneuvering for booking spots over the lifeless body of a comedy hero. These are genuine questions in this world. I know it. I wonder if the rest of the audience knows it. Eddie takes the stage and delivers a simultaneously mournful and bittersweetly funny anecdote about Clay. He explains that he got into comedy after Clay confided in him a tragic and twisted desire to be vulnerable in front of strangers in night clubs since he can’t be vulnerable around anyone else. Clay’s father can’t handle what these hep cats are doing with his son’s memory. He calls them all children and leaves in a huff. He clearly doesn’t understand why they take this artform so seriously. Either that or he also thinks we have enough white male brooding protagonists in prestige television.
In the movie Punchline, there was an egregious anachronism where the comics were depicted as retiring to a locker room Top Gun style after their respective sets. It’s hilarious and is widely known about in the comedy community. As this episode reached its climax I waited for a locker room moment to appear. Cassie confronts Goldie about a rumor she correctly heard that Carson’s booker wants to ease up on giving spots to younger talent, given what happened with Clay. Cassie announces that she’s aware that the Tonight Show is going to be “laying off” young comics. I think this is the locker room moment. Comedians don’t use words like “laid off” because comedians work freelance. Television writers sometimes use words like “laid off” because they work in jobs where there is enough job security to begin with, to where you can be laid off. Locker rooms aside, Melissa Leo’s performance as Goldie does live up to mythic status of her obvious source material – Mitzi Shore. She’s old hollywood and brassy. She’s a mentor and a gatekeeper. You can’t quite figure her out. She fights with Cass about performing in the main room, and eventually acquiesces to give her one of those sought after opportunities that they hold over your head when you’re new like Cass. Dead Clay appears and tells her to go on stage and open up a vein. I, again, wonder if I am watching a show about comedy.
Cass performs on the main stage and starts to bomb. She folds a little as the light and focus of playing a real audience makes her autobiographical act suddenly so obviously hacky and green. I’ve seen this happen so many times. Usually when it’s happening I’m in the back of the room raising my eyebrows at other comics. Then, in a dramatic moment, she breaks from her act, loses words, and is almost pulled from the stage before opening up that vein and digging into some real vulnerable and funny thoughts leftover from her relationship with her dead boyfriend. She uses comedy to work navigate her way out of the hellmouth that has swallowed up her life. In her catharsis she simultaneously proves to Goldie that she is capable of becoming a writer with a point of view and she illustrates the immortal ringing truth that a comic is only really funny when they are vulnerable and willing to rip their ribcage open and show you their guts in all their weird crooked glory. It’s a perfect climax to a story about the artistic process of inside out clowns. “WE GET IT!” I belt out, bored, at my laptop screen. The thing is, though, I TOTALLY get it.If 2015 was the year that we first started to see laptops and phones with the new USB-C port, 2016 will be the year where we see a flood of peripherals to support them. Acer is wasting no time here at CES 2016, where it’s announced its first USB-C monitor — the press release says it’s the world’s first, but Lenovo beat the Taiwanese company to the punch yesterday.
The H7 series comes in 25-inch and 27-inch models, both with IPS panels at 2560 x 1440 resolution that support 100 percent of the sRGB gamut. The monitors have conventional HDMI and DisplayPort inputs, but if you use USB-C you’ll be able to charge your laptop and output to the monitor with a single cable.
The H7’s thin-bezeled design is pretty gaudy from the shots we’ve seen, combining a champagne gold brushed metal finish with a circular base and white back panel emblazoned with a giant Acer logo. The series will go on sale next month in EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) regions starting from €499 (about $542); details for release elsewhere are yet to be announced.
Acer may have lost out on announcing the world’s first USB-C display, but it does say it’s created the world’s thinnest monitor. The R1 series is a range of 1080p IPS displays at 21.5, 23.8, 25, and 27 inches with the same “ZeroFrame” bezel design as the H7; the panel’s enclosure is under 7mm thick, though there is a chunkier section near the base as with Sony’s ultra-thin TVs. EMEA countries will get the R1 series this month starting at €139 ($151).
Acer’s final monitor of CES is an opulent curved 21:9 display. The 34-inch XR342CK ultra-wide monitor comes in at a resolution of 3440 x 1440 and includes customizable ambient lighting on the panel’s bottom edge. It also employs AMD FreeSync technology, which works with the GPU to remove frame tearing from video games at variable refresh rates. Gaming gear is one of the best ways for PC manufac to make money these days, and the XR has a price to match — it’ll be launching in EMEA regions in March for €1,099 ($1194).Eye Saver Mode
Eye Saver Mode optimizes your viewing comfort by reducing blue light emissions and flickers at the touch of a button. Read documents, play games, watch movies and edit photos for longer periods of time, and experience a more comfortable, more pleasing view, without worrying about eye strain or fatigue.
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Just by purchasing this monitor, you're saving energy and reducing your environmental impact. Activate the Auto Setting to reduce energy use by about 10%. The Eco-Saving Plus feature reduces screen brightness to save power, plus the screen brightness automatically transitions fluidly—reducing energy use even more. The monitor itself is also constructed without PVC making it an environmentally safe choice.
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Optimize your gaming experience with the touch of a button. Game Mode detects changes in scenes, enhances colors, and adjusts contrast so you see everything clearly. Thanks to ultra-fast video response, you always keep up with the action.
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“When I grow up, all my trilogies will have four movies!”—Typical Hollywood Producer.
Ever since the Harry Potter series ended with a two-part conclusion, we’ve been getting more, and more two-part endings to trilogies. The Hunger Games and The Avengers are the best examples of this phenomenon. This leads to the question—do trilogies matter anymore?
Big franchises that set you three or more movies are supposed to show the complete arc of both the plot and the story for the characters. To properly show the ending to a journey, you cannot rush it. The filmmakers who made the last two Harry Potter films knew this. This is why they split the 800-page source material into two movies. However, because of the success of both films, a trend was born. Even though it may seem like trilogies are running stronger than ever (there are even trilogies entwined within trilogies in the Marvel MCU ), I believe that the lack of definitive endings to characters’ journeys, and the over-saturation of trilogies are what have cheapened the value of the trilogy.
Nowadays, the first part of the last chapter feels like nothing more than build-up to the inevitable part two film. Even Harry Potter 7 was a victim of this to a certain extent, because The Deathly Hallows – Part 1 could not have a conclusion, since it was just the first half of the series’ ending. I heard the same complaints about the first part of the final installments of The Hunger Games and Twilight series. Besides money, why split the last movie into two parts? Oh wait, I just answered my own question. Let’s look at The Avengers trilogy (or whatever you want to call it, since it two will be four movies). Does Tony Stark’s character change at all in these films? How about Thor? In Thor 2, Thor still believes that Loki can come back to him, after Loki proved to be rotten in both Thor and The Avengers. Sure, these films are not supposed to be dissected. But we are only looking at the surface. If character arcs and complete stories are things that kid shows get right, so should the Marvel MCU. In Gargoyles, important, consequential things happen. Goliath realizes he needs to leave the castle roughly 90 days after he started living there, and Goliath and his clan took out Xanatos and were arrested. Ever since Thor’s introduction in 2011, he still falls for all of Loki’s tricks.
Additionally, many trilogies have now received the franchise sticker, meaning that Hollywood can make a movie for the same franchise every year and make box office cash year after year by releasing a new film as a part of their larger pantheon of films. Examples of such franchises are Star Wars, the Marvel films, and Harry Potter. Star Wars soon will be the weirdest trilogy explanation. Before Disney, it was simple: Original and Prequel trilogy. Basic and easy to pinpoint which ones were good and bad. Now, we will have seemingly one-off movies (Rogue One, the Han Solo film) in between and after the movies of the sequel trilogy. How will audiences be able to identify which ones are which? I guess it will be as simple as George Lucas’s gold, George Lucas’s crap, and Disney’s reign of mediocrity. As a result of the oversaturation of franchises and their yearly films, the idea of having trilogies becomes less valuable. I used to get excited for trilogies, because they wouldn’t happen all that often. In a lot of ways, superhero films and Star Wars movies are turning into Bond movies. The character’s problems don’t roll over into the next film; everything is just a self-contained story. Look at how little Iron Man 3 and Cap 2 actually mattered to The Avengers: Age of Ultron. None of the MCU films feel like they are completely resolved at the end (save for Iron Man 3, which, thanks to Age of Ultron, ended up not mattering anyway), because there is always a bigger picture.
I know that The Lord of the Rings is essentially a 10-hour journey to the bigger picture. But, at the end of each film, you see the end of the main characters’ problems. At the end of The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo had changed from a boy to a man. In The Two Towers, Rohan stopped and defeated Isengard. The Return of the King resolves the final battle. But when you are watching Cap 2, you wonder, “Why is this movie about Hydra, when Loki just killed Odin, and Thanos is still out there?! Shouldn’t something much bigger be happening now?” Most of the Marvel |
Senate, SB 406 sponsored by Sen. Rob Bradley, R-Fleming Island, allows more new licenses to be granted faster but also keeps vertical integration in place. The free-market enthusiasts in Tallahassee seem to have abandoned that ideal when it comes to an industry they aren't keen to see grow.
The legislation contains numerous other barriers and oversight provisions, suggesting that legislators are more worried about recreational users getting their hands on marijuana than ensuring that suffering patients have reasonable access. But the Department of Health is not a law enforcement agency, and implementing Amendment 2 should not be an exercise in how little the law can allow. Doctors and patients should not be subject to nanny state-style rules that don't apply in other medical decisions.
Florida should not turn into California when it comes to the availability of marijuana. But voters delivered a mandate that they want reasonable access to this long-stigmatized drug for limited medical purposes. Legislation implementing Amendment 2 should allow chronic pain sufferers to use the drug, leave treatment decisions to doctors, abandon unnecessary oversight and get out of the way of a competitive, thriving market.BUFFALO, N.Y. -- In recent years, it has become uncouth, and maybe even a little offensive, to say that you like college basketball better than the NBA. Anyone who thinks that way has learned to be careful about how they phrase it, if they say it at all.
There's a good reason for this. For decades, the notion that college basketball -- which just so happens to have more white players and (slightly) fewer tattoos than the professional ranks -- represents a more "fundamental" or "pure" game has been as prevalent as it has been wrong. It's Hoosiers, really, the fantasy that a disciplined group of white players could defeat a more talented group of black players through smarts and teamwork. The sentiment behind that (entertaining, well-made) movie has been a latent founding myth of much of college basketball fandom over the past 27 years; it both reaffirmed and instituted a way of often-subconscious thinking. Here's how Spike Lee (with the late Ralph Wiley) put it in his book Best Seat in the House:
When Indiana won the national championship in 1987, right around the time Hoosiers was released, you knew with your own eyes the brothers were out there working, sweating, rebounding, hitting the game-winning j for Coach Knight's team. But not in Hollywood, the land of I Wish.
(Lee also points out the irony of the team-spirited Hickory High winning the championship on an isolation play that even Carmelo Anthony would have found indulgent.)
That mindset -- that college basketball is the "real" game -- has fueled many segments of college basketball fandom for decades. But now our always-on-the-lookout-for-such-things culture shines more light on it, pointing out the retrograde racial attitudes that were never that well-hidden. So if you understand that the fundamentals and skills and team play and everything else are infinitely better in the NBA, but you still prefer college basketball for your own reasons -- because it's more democratic, because its tournament is so fantastic, because the United States President obviously prefers it or simply because you grew up near a college town -- you may find yourself often keeping it to yourself. And more than most, you may find yourself wanting to strike back at anyone who likes the sport for the wrong reasons.
Which leads us to Aaron Craft.
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Aaron Craft is the wrench with which NBA fans can bludgeon college basketball fans. He is the face of college basketball in the worst way: He is how idiots defend the game and how skeptics deride it. He is the physical manifestation of what New York's Jonathan Chait wrote this week about how white fans watch basketball: "White people simply have certain preconceptions, and preconceptions make you see the things you expect to see and miss the things you don't." We notice Craft's strengths and overpraise them -- ESPN's Rick Reilly, for one, acts like every other basketball player since 1948 is Craft's moral inferior -- and completely miss all the non-white players doing the exact same thing.
This can make you hate Aaron Craft. His hustle and intensity -- admirable qualities that we should desire of every basketball player -- work against him. His act begins to feel as self-aggrandizing as the most ostentatious end zone dance. You find yourself cheering against him reflexively at first, and then passionately. Disliking Craft, and players like him, feels like a righteous correction.
Thing is, very little of this is Craft's fault. Craft is scrappy and gutty and feisty and all the other code words people use to describe white basketball players (particularly guards), but he is also really good. He has won the Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year award twice, he has made multiple All-Big Ten teams, and he has helped lead the Buckeyes to the NCAA tournament four times. This, as Chait predicted, makes broadcasters go crazy over him. Bill Raftery, an otherwise sensible and entertaining man, described Craft as having "a toughness in that jersey that belies the angelic countenance." It was reminiscent of the old Onion story in which a fictional Derek Jeter watches one of his games on tape and issues an apology for all the praise Tim McCarver was giving him on air. "I had no idea," fake Jeter said. "He said it, not me." This makes us cheer against Craft more. We shouldn't hold Craft accountable for the slobbering done in his name, but we do.
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Thing is, the game always does seem to come back to Craft. In Thursday's terrific NCAA second-round-opening game between Ohio State and local rival Dayton -- the first game to tip off Thursday, and certainly the best -- Craft was the focal point of everything. It was a game that had 15 lead changes, and three of them came in the final 16 seconds. Every single one of them involved Craft.
The first was the type of play for which we praise and overpraise Craft. Down one after Dayton's Dyshawn Pierre hit three free throws, Ohio State coach Thad Matta called a timeout. The play, as it turned out, was simple: Give it to Craft. Craft, with his usual dogged aggression, plowed to the basket and scored immediately with a nifty reverse layup (and, of course, went skating butt-first across the floor after it went in). It looked like yet another Craft TV Moment. I was in the stands and couldn't hear him, but I assume Raftery began reciting a Joyce poem in Craft's honor at this point. But the next time down the floor, with Dayton setting up for the win, Craft faltered at his strength: Defense. The Flyers' Vee Sanford dribbled right with Craft just a half-step late after him; he then rose for a jumper and an easy bank-in, with Craft barely even leaping up after him. On the biggest, and nearly last play of his career, the defensive whiz was beat. After the game, Craft was a lot more bothered by this than by what would happen next. "This is the fourth game-winner hit on me in my time here," Craft said (and Craft is definitely a guy who would count them). "It's amazing the way that defense has kind of been my thing, and it's amazing how it's going to end with a kid getting the game-winner on me."
You could tell Craft felt antsy that his collegiate career was about to end from his own failing, because he grabbed the inbounds pass after that and bolted down the court like he was escaping a fire. He might have burned one defender the way he'd just been burned, but he couldn't burn three. Regardless, his shot while triple-teamed almost went in. Lord knows what Raftery would have done if it had.
When a player goes as hard as Craft has for four years, it should be sad when his playing days end in such sudden, personal fashion. But this is Craft. Craft's eulogies are muted, especially compared to the primary reactions to his defeat. Along with goofy Photoshopped memes making fun of him and jokes about his flopping ability, there were hundreds upon hundreds of Dayton fans -- the Flyers faithful notoriously show up huge on the road -- taunting him as he left the court.
Not much of this is fair to Craft. As much as we want him to be, he is not, in fact, a bad guy. But this is our sports cultural correction; when he receives that much praise, for reasons both inside and outside of his control, he must be cut down extra hard when he fails. Craft had a solid statsheet-filling game -- 16 points, five rebounds, four assists. But what will be remembered is him lying on the ground, devastated. There was much sadness. But there was more glee. What he represents, to his detractors and his supporters, is bigger than who he actually is.
When a great player like Craft comes to the end of his college career, you often hear people say there will never be another like him. But there will be another Aaron Craft. There always is.
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Email me at [email protected]; follow me @williamfleitch; or just shout out your window real loud, I'll hear you. Point is, let's talk.The UFC has just made the previously reported Rotterdam headliner official, announcing that Alistair Overeem will indeed be facing his teammate Andrei Arlovski on May 8th. The former Strikeforce champion is in London, and it's where he addressed the fans and said he didn't really have a problem accepting the contest.
"It would be a little stupid to think that fight would not happen eventually," Overeem said. "We were kinda training separate anyways, since we kinda felt it coming... At least I did."
Overeem says he has already fought teammates before in kickboxing matches, so he didn't really hesitate taking a fight against someone he wasn't really close with.
"We didn't really train together," he said about their relationship. "You can maybe count it in one hand, maybe two all together. We don't socialize. We're not friends. We don't train together. We see each other, say hello, there's respect of course. He's a teammate, but there's not much of a relationship."
"I've fought teammates in the past. I fought Tyrone Spong. I fought Saki in K-1. Saki, I was pretty close to at the time," he said. "I've fought friends before. I don't have a problem fighting Andrei, who is not my friend. He's my teammate."
Alistair confirmed that they'll just be training at the same gym on different times, with likely one of them going during mornings, and the other during evenings. He says they have yet to figure out how to split the other coaches at JacksonWink MMA, but Greg Jackson has already gone on record to say that he will be in Arlovski's corner for that fight.Jess Fishlock's recovery time might give Wales cause for encouragement with Joe Ledley
Jess Fishlock has been named in the squad for Wales' vital UEFA Women's Euro 2017 qualifier with Norway, just three weeks after she broke her leg.
Fishlock was expected to be out for around six weeks.
Wales host Norway at Newport Stadium on 7 June in the first of three home qualifiers remaining as they bid to stay in qualification contention.
"I think looking back we were all very concerned for Jess," manager Jayne Ludlow told BBC Radio Wales.
"But as it has turned out, it was not as bad as expected."
Fishlock trained with her club side Seattle this week following recuperation in Australia.
"She took herself over to Australia to get some rehab, which has done her the world of good and it looks like she will be fit for the competition for us, which is fantastic," Ludlow confirmed.
"With the likes of Jess and any of our senior internationals who would live and die for the cause, we are always going to give them up to the last minute to be involved in any game going forward, because of what they give to the team on and off the pitch."
Jo Price is named as one of two goalkeepers despite being without a club side.
Wales squad: Jo Price (Unattached), Claire Skinner (Cwmbran Celtic), Natasha Harding (Liverpool Ladies), Jess Fishlock (Seattle Reign), Loren Dykes (Bristol Academy), Rhiannon Roberts (Doncaster Rovers Belles), Charlie Escort (Reading Women), Rachel Rowe (Reading Women), Sophie Ingle (Liverpool Ladies), Angharad James (Notts County Ladies), Nadia Lawrence (Yeovil Town Ladies), Melissa Fletcher (Reading Women), Kayleigh Green (Yeovil Town Ladies), Hayley Ladd (Bristol Academy), Helen Ward (Reading Women), Chloe Chivers (Cwmbran Celtic Ladies), Gemma Evans (Cardiff Ladies), Kylie Davies (Reading Women), Kylie Nolan (Cardiff City Women), Cori Williams (Cardiff Ladies).A woman in Brownsville, Texas, has a confirmed case of Zika even though she didn’t travel to any Zika-stricken areas or have any other risk factors, Texas health authorities announced Monday. Her case is likely the first known instance of Zika transmission by local mosquitoes in the state.
But, if true, that transmission is entirely unsurprising, officials there said. Brownsville sits at the southern most tip of Texas, directly on the border of Mexico, which is experiencing ongoing transmission of the Zika virus by local mosquitoes.
In a press statement, John Hellerstedt, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, said:
We knew it was only a matter of time before we saw a Zika case spread by a mosquito in Texas. We still don’t believe the virus will become widespread in Texas, but there could be more cases, so people need to protect themselves from mosquito bites, especially in parts of the state that stay relatively warm in the fall and winter.
The woman, who is not pregnant, had a urine test come up positive for Zika virus last week. However, a blood test came back negative, suggesting that the virus could no longer spread from her to others via mosquito bites.
Health authorities say no other cases have been found. Nevertheless, they plan to continue with surveillance and mosquito control efforts. These include trapping and testing mosquitoes, spraying insecticide, educating residents on how to cut down on mosquito breeding sites and avoid bites, and conducting urine tests on other residents to determine if there are additional infections. Local and state authorities are also coordinating with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Even though it is late in the mosquito season, mosquitoes can spread Zika in some areas of the country,” CDC Director Tom Frieden said in a press statement. “Texas is doing the right thing by increasing local surveillance and trapping and testing mosquitoes in the Brownsville area.”
Texas has had 257 other confirmed cases of Zika, all associated with travel.
According to the CDC's tally last week, there have been 4,444 Zika cases in the continental United States and Hawaii. Of those, 182 are thought to be from local mosquito transmission in Florida, 36 from sexual transmission, one from an accidental laboratory exposure, and the rest from travel.
The virus can cause mild to unnoticeable symptoms in adults. However, if it infects a pregnant woman, Zika can cause severe birth defects, including microcephaly and other neurological conditions. Last week, the CDC reported that babies infected in utero that had normal head sizes at birth can still develop microcephaly later (PDF).Scottish Labour have missed chance after chance to be relevant in post-indyref politics. By Lesley Riddoch
Nationalists rejoice over Kezia Dugdale’s latest indyref clanger, Tories taunt and Greens continue to quietly outflank – but I weep for Scottish Labour.
For the bold social democratic party that might have been. For the party that should have developed a sufficiently distinctive Scottish agenda by 2014 to have a genuine debate or even a policy change over independence – reflecting the radical popular will as other social democratic parties have done across Northern Europe for centuries, instead of working with the Tories to stifle it.
I weep for the party that could have championed workers’ rights and led the campaign to transform workplace relations in Scotland – but instead pulled devolution of the minimum wage, trade union law and much besides out of the Smith Commission deal.
I weep for the party that brought STV to council elections but failed to ditch first past the post at Holyrood elections and so has partly contributed to its own demise.
Of course it’s not fashionable to feel any pity for Scottish Labour in its present tormented state. Far easier to scoff at policy stumble after stumble by Kezia Dugdale – dismissing then embracing Jeremy Corbyn as UK leader, dropping the rebate for the poorest workers in an otherwise promising assault on the SNP’s timid tax stance, opposing the named person scheme after voting for it, and U-turning spectacularly on independence.
In an interview this weekend, the Scottish Labour leader said it was ‘not inconceivable’ that she would support independence if Brexit saw Scotland hauled out of Europe against its will. At long last a clear, brave and reasoned stance reflecting the political priorities of this century not the last one.
Within hours though, her remarks had been replaced with the standard line that Dugdale was against independence -- in all circumstances. This latest flip-flop has buried any renewed interest by Yes voters.
Once again Scottish Labour has revealed itself to be more worried about alienating Tory voters than wooing back Yes-supporting progressive ones. Ms Dugdale boxed herself in further by telling STV’s Bernard Ponsonby that she would not respect the desire for a second independence referendum should the SNP ask for and receive a mandate to hold one.
Why try to out-Tory the Tories like this? Kezia Dugdale will never convince unionists that she’s a more stalwart supporter of the Union than Ruth Davidson. She could have appeared more progressive and far-sighted but now the Scottish Labour leader has pulled her party dogmatically behind the Union – no matter what chaos Brexit or a Boris-led UK Government may bring.
It didn’t need to be this way. In recent months, many Scots were looking for a party with stiffer land-reforming zeal than the SNP – but Scottish Labour again failed to rise to the occasion. Certainly MSPs Sarah Boyack and Claudia Beamish worked hard to improve aspects of the SNP Bill, but didn’t advance a clear, more radical alternative. Now the Greens have claimed that space.
It seems Scottish Labour is infected with the same fear of bold, progressive policy that gripped the UK party for most of the long Blair/Brown decades. That’s no surprise – the decision not to form a stand-alone Scottish party was a profound mistake. Not because a name change would have persuaded savvy, critical voters to give Scottish Labour another try, but because the party’s proxy membership of the Westminster club allows the values of that very different political establishment to keep muddying the waters of Scottish debate.
Scotland does have conservative voters, but the kind of Conservatism and thus the kind of consensus possible here would be very different, if each opposition party was not constantly trying to find its guiding star somewhere south of Surrey instead of somewhere north of Selkirk. In social democratic Scandinavia, Oslo and Helsinki councils have been run for 20-30 years by conservatives who believe that investing in the public domain will safeguard private investments.
That’s a very different brand of Conservatism to the privatising, judgmental and callous brand running Britain, and it’s been shaped by the confident, constant presence of a strong left – not always in government, not all in the same party – but always dominating the political agenda.
Compare and contrast Scotland, where there is near unanimity on many issues, but tortuously slow progress – partly because unionists need to appear adversarial in the Westminster tradition, partly because Labour and the Lib Dems failed to back beefier devolution and partly because domestic issues easily become proxies for the unresolved independence debate. Can that change?
The wisdom is that Kezia Dugdale is in a hopeless position. On the one hand, ex Labour voters have nothing but contempt for a party that looked south for much of its policy orientation, took voters for granted, presided over complacency and cronyism at local level, campaigned with the Conservatives and tried to stifle growing feelings of Scottishness instead of responding with ambitious constitutional reform.
On the other hand, Ruth Davidson has proved a better match for the personality politics begun by Alex Salmond and developed into an art form by Nicola Sturgeon.
It’s true that Scottish Labour has also been stymied by a leadership contest which robbed Kezia Dugdale of a strategy-planning summer and by a lack of cash as membership continues to plummet.
But special pleading like this cuts little ice with Yes voters accustomed to crowd-funding everything from online magazines like Bella Caledonia to the Orkney Four’s legal case against Alistair Carmichael.
Scottish politics needs progressive parties to work together and make the most of an unsatisfactory devolution settlement. If Labour can’t rise to the occasion, a new political force will fill that vacuum. Outside political parties, it is already gathering.
So this is Kezia Dugdale’s final chance to take a sincere stand and stick to it. Otherwise Labour will be finished in Scotland come 5 May and a Tory opposition will make building a progressive Scotland longer and harder. That truly is a sad prospect.AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal. AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal.
Government on Wednesday informed Delhi High Court that nothing has been found against the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in its probe regarding allegations that it had received offshore funds in violation of FCRA provisions.
The counsel appearing for the Home Ministry told a bench, comprising Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice R S Endlaw, that the Intelligence Bureau (IB) report has found nothing against the AAP.
The court, however, directed the government to file a fresh status report in a sealed cover regarding its findings in the matter.
The court reserved the verdict on the plea seeking CBI probe into the past and present foreign funding of AAP in alleged violation of FCRA provisions.
"We will take into consideration all the facts and then decide the matter. Judgement reserved," it said.
Advocate Pranav Sachdeva, appearing for AAP, said the party had not flouted any law in receiving foreign funds and got donations worth Rs 30 crore from Indian citizens only, of which about Rs 8.5 crore came from NRIs.
Terming the charges levelled against AAP as "baseless", he said the party has even written to Supreme Court to set up a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the funding of all major national and regional parties in the country.
The plea, moved before the high court on February 4, had also sought CBI probe against Home Ministry officials, who in their report had earlier stated that donations made by eight foreign residents to AAP, were not in violation of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA).Lady Mary Fairfax dies at her Sydney home aged 95
Updated
Lady Mary Fairfax has died peacefully at her family home in Sydney, aged 95.
In a statement, Lady Mary's family said she died on Sunday night following a recent significant deterioration in her health.
Members of the Fairfax family, one of Australia's great media dynasties, have gathered at Fairwater — Lady Mary's harbourfront estate in Double Bay.
Born Maire Wein in Warsaw, Poland, she was the third wife and widow of Sir Warwick Oswald Fairfax.
With Sir Warwick she had three children, Warwick Fairfax, known as young Warwick, Anna Cleary and Charles Fairfax.
She also had a son, Garth Symonds, from her first marriage to solicitor Cedric Symonds.
"This is a deeply distressing time for the family," the statement said.
"Funeral details will be announced in due course. We have no further comment at this time."
Lady Mary was made an Officer of Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1976, a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1988 and appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) in 2005.
She has been acknowledged for her philanthropy, including gifts to St Vincent's Foundation and Garvan Foundation, and her roles with the Australian Ballet and Australian Opera Foundation.
'Lady Macbeth' of the Australian media landscape
Veteran Sydney journalist David Leser paid tribute to Lady Fairfax.
"She was just an extraordinary character," he said.
"She'd had a love affair in the 1950s that scandalised Sydney society, she had this harrowing divorce trial and a celebrated remarriage to Sir Warwick Fairfax. And she found herself at the centre of an Australian media empire.
"And then of course 30 years later she was blamed for the ruin of that empire.
"She was a figure of great romance in Australian business media circles and for some she was also a figure of vengeance. Some people regarded her as the Lady Macbeth of the Australian media landscape."
"I could never work out whether she was just monstrously misunderstood or whether she was as deceptive as she was clever."
In 1987, "Young Warwick", then aged 26, controversially bought out his family's holdings in publicly-listed newspaper company John Fairfax and Sons by borrowing heavily. However, by December 1990 the privatised company had collapsed and a receiver was appointed.
"That takeover bid by 'Young Warwick' — probably partly at the behest of his mother — absolutely decimated the Fairfax company and it was the beginning of decades of mismanagement and Fairfax is still trying to struggle with that today," Leser said.
"Lady Mary Fairfax had a multitude within and she was a very, very complex character."
He described her as a "tireless worker for the arts and charities" and "a generous, fun-loving hostess and friend".
"I don't know whether she was a family maker or empire breaker but she was just this larger than life matriarchal figure."
Opera, medical worlds remember Lady Mary
Lady Mary was known for her philanthropy, most notably supporting the Australian opera scene as well as medical research.
Opera Australia artistic director Lyndon Terracini said young singers benefited greatly from Lady Mary's support.
"Mary Fairfax made a tremendous contribution to opera in Australia generally, not just to Opera Australia," he
"Her support for young singers was exemplary and really she was one of the first genuine benefactors in Australia to contribute in a substantial way and an ongoing way.
"She raised money from other people as well as donating herself to the development of young singers so that in those days they could go abroad and study."
St Vincent's Hospital spokesman David Faktor said Lady Mary leaves a notable legacy at the hospital with her donations to projects and research.
"She took a keen personal interest in all our endeavours including those of the Garvin Medical Research Institute," he said.
"She was particularly interested in hearing and she supported our ENT units at St Vincent's."
Topics: media, charities, sydney-2000
First postedAndreas Komodikis is hoping to break into QPR’s first team.
It’s rare for a modern-day footballer not to come through an academy system from a young age.
But every now and then there’s an exception, a player that breaks the trend.
Andreas Komodikis is on his way to becoming a Premier League footballer, having played Sunday league football just three years previously.
The 18-year-old winger has taken an unusual route to professional football and now plays for Championship promotion-chasers QPR.
But at the age of 15, his dream of having a career in football looked unlikely as he played at Sunday league level.
He had previously dealt with rejection from a Premier League club’s academy after starting life at Tottenham Hotspur as an eight-year-old in a development squad.
The QPR youngster is hoping for his shot at the big time.
‘I was at the development centre training once a week. I would play there for two months and then go for a trial,’ he told Metro.co.uk.
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‘Then I’d carry on in the development centre and have another trial. This went on for about four years.
‘So I kept going there until I was put forward for a six-week trial. I felt I did really well and impressed the people watching.
‘But after the six-week trial, I was told that I was good but I wasn’t good enough.’
It says a lot about Komodikis’ character that he didn’t throw in the towel there and then. While others would have given up on their dream, he felt that his rejection had a double meaning.
Komodikis playing as a young boy
‘I took that to mean that I could have been signed up, but it just meant that now wasn’t my time.
‘I was 13 when I stopped going and I went to my local Sunday league team. I just carried on training with them, playing as much as I could and for my school team.
‘I was scoring goals left, right and centre and was always being told by the manager that I had the X-factor in the team. I didn’t let my dreams get crushed.’
At 15, he received a call from a scout who knew him from his time training with Spurs, but had since moved to QPR. The scout asked him to come for a trial in December 2012.
After no word back from the club by January, he began to fear the worst. But the club signed him in February and made him an academy player.
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‘It all happened very quickly. But I didn’t once give up on my dream,’ he added.
Komodikis celebrating with his young teammates
‘While I was playing Sunday league football, I was seeing players come and go.
‘It made me wonder, “Why am I the only one staying here? There must be a reason.”’
QPR soon offered him a two-year scholarship and he didn’t waste any time in making an impact.
He had broken into the QPR Under-18s after starting life on the sidelines and had played four of five matches in a pre-season tournament.
Komodikis scored against Liverpool in the final.
QPR faced big club sides, such as Inter Milan and Liverpool – who Komodikis scored against in the final.
‘I was left out of the first match but the manager gave me a chance in the second,’ he said.
‘When I played, I really impressed him and while I wasn’t the most technically gifted player, I work my socks off.
‘Going to a big tournament and winning a trophy was a great experience.
‘I went on to play five or six consecutive games, which we won. I was then dropped for two matches, which we lost. I was thrown back into the team and we started winning again.
Komidikis was starting to become an important player for the young side, but if he thought his luck was in, he had to think again.
Just as he’d established his place in the team, disaster struck.
His young footballing life has been stop-start.
‘During my first year, I got a horrific injury,’ he explained.
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‘I broke my ankle and I ruptured all three ligaments in my ankle.
‘It was December 7 against Millwall. Funnily enough, the other winger broke his ankle on the same day just minutes before me.
‘We went through rehab together. We pushed each other to make sure we made it back.’
Komodikis' career to date 2008 – Joins Tottenham development squad 2011 – Rejected by Spurs after six-week trial and returns to Sunday League 2013 – Signed by QPR
Having been told that it would take eight months to return, his hard work off the pitch ensured that he returned after just six months.
However, he had missed the rest of the season, which further stunted his ability to grow as a player.
‘I’d missed a lot of action. I was six and a half months behind other players. They had all been to academies before as well so technically I was slipping behind.
‘But I kept working as hard as possible and kept myself in contention.’
Komodikis missed out on a professional contract, but the club instead extended his scholarship.
Komodikis suffered many setbacks but was always determined to return.
With his confidence growing, he is now setting his sights on the QPR first team, although he recognises that it won’t be easy.
‘I want to have a career at QPR,’ he said.
‘They’re the club who took a chance on me and gave me hope.
‘They’re letting me fulfill my boyhood dream and I want to give everything back to them.’
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Should QPR not want to sign him, though, he won’t be short of options.
His performances this season have not gone unnoticed.
Now Komodikis wants first-team football
He has been taken aside after matches by other teams’ coaches and managers, who insist that he had been the best player on the pitch.
At QPR, it’s a time of change. Jimmy Floyd-Hasselbaink has just replaced Chris Ramsey as manager. The club have been bouncing up and down from the Premier League in the past few years and are still in contention for promotion this season.
‘I’m confident we’ll be promoted this season. The players are working hard and have the quality to rise up the league,’ Komodikis added.
‘It’s been an unsettled season with all the changes. But everyone wants to give everything for the club and do well together.’
Should QPR go up this season and Komodikis battles his way into contention, he could have taken one of the quickest leaps from Sunday league to the Premier League.
MORE: Watch former QPR man take the worst corner everArsenal have announced the signing of Malaga left-back Nacho Monreal for around £10m, subject to the completion of formal registration processes.
Monreal has agreed a long-term deal, thought to be four and a half years.
The 26-year-old has made 54 appearances for Malaga since joining from Osasuna in 2011 and won seven caps for Spain.
"Monreal is an excellent ball-playing full-back with a solid all-round game both defensively and going forward, and at the age of 26 he's coming into his prime. "The only negative is that he'll be cup tied for the Champions' League but, for around £10m, it's an excellent long-term deal. "It is believed that Arsenal had been in talks with Malaga to sign Monreal in the summer, but the injury suffered by Kieran Gibbs during Wednesday's game against Liverpool brought the deal forward."
Arsenal made their move after with a thigh strain sustained in with Liverpool.
That left Andre Santos as their only recognised left-back.
"We are delighted that Nacho Monreal has agreed to join us," said Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger.
"We have been monitoring him for some time now and are really pleased that we've been able to agree this move today.
"Monreal is a strong left-sided defender with good experience at both club and international level. He is a technically gifted player, a good crosser in the final third and strong in the air.
"Monreal will add quality to our squad and of course, to our defensive unit. We all look forward to him playing for us."
The 5ft 10in defender, Wenger's only signing in the January transfer window, is cup tied for this season's Champions League.
Arsenal face Bayern Munich in the of Europe's elite club competition, at home on 19 February and away on 13 March.
Monreal will link up with former team-mate Santi Cazorla, who for around £15m last summer.The upshot: despite continuing uncertainty in financial markets, commodities are well placed to overcome most obstacles. Partly because the companies which are performing strongly in the sector are still very attractively priced and also because the demands from emerging markets and supply shortages are still such key factors for the medium term.
A fresh impetus since the new year Natural resources market has received a fresh injection of attention this year with an extra US$70bn ploughed in, raising the sector’s value to around US$400bn. However, in global terms this is not such a huge amount considering the amount of activity in this arena. While volatility has increased due to speculation and money market tightening there are still many longer-term opportunities due to persistent extraordinary growth stories and energy requirements.
Specifics – what to watch out for Gold and platinum are obviously very topical after recently hitting all time highs – then suffering a sharp correction which we believes was to be expected. But the immediate rationale for remaining positive on gold is justified: with inflation threatening and dollar uncertainty set to continue. Likewise, there is a bullish stance on platinum, especially with extreme energy shortages in South Africa (the largest producer) meaning it cannot even be extracted from the ground.
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Coal and iron ore are intertwined as both are involved in the production of steel and both are experiencing extraordinary high demand – again, due to China’s massive infrastructure programme. While supplies of coal in the ground may be plentiful, getting it to the market has become tortuous – with floods hampering progress in Australia and Indonesia and problems at ports only accentuating the turmoil. The iron ore price also benefits from complete transparency as the rate is negotiated and so is not hindered by the quirks of speculation. Uranium meanwhile, is down 65% to date this year, but remains fundamentally very sound in the medium term as the logic of more nuclear power stations is inescapable.
China – still putting on a good show, despite a few wobbles. While base metal inventories have risen moderately and the pace of growth slowed, the Chinese economy remains remarkably strong. Retail spending has surged ahead 20% year on year and while there may be some warning signs – such as elevated food costs – the economy is pretty much unaffected by what’s going on in the rest of the world. And this has a huge impact on natural resources of all flavors.
Big oil – but not big returns. While the oil price has continued to trickle upwards, energy shares are not reciprocating this sentiment. Some of this is because many of the major oil producing nations are not being overly friendly towards large western oil corporations – with even appropriation of assets occurring. This coupled with scarcity of new sources of revenue has impacted on the underlying price of these companies. However, this has been overdone and there are many firms poised to profit from oil prices creeping ever further north.
Soft commodities – not a hard decision. The reasons are |
s or possibly the 1980s. "The reality is that there's 97 per cent agreement among climate scientists that human are causing global warming. The technique that is often used to cast doubt on this figure is to use fake experts, use people who have the impression of scientific expertise but don't actually publish peer-reviewed research. "There's a petition with 31,000 people with science degrees who don't believe in human-caused global warming and this petition is used to cast doubt on the consensus but it's 31,000 almost all fake experts." MYTH BUSTED: Climate has changed in the past. What's happening now must be natural as well
This argument uses a logical fallacy known as a non sequitur, or jumping to conclusions. "Just imagine if you walked into a room and you found a dead body with a knife sticking out of it's back and you argued 'well, humans have been dying of natural natural causes for thousands of years, so therefore, this person must have died of natural causes as well.' "The conclusion doesn't follow from the premise and that's pretty much the same argument that's used in this natural climate change argument. "When we look at climate change now, what we see are many fingerprints or patterns in the climate change that match human activity. "Many lines of evidence that humans are causing global warming."
MYTH BUSTED: The sun is causing global warming "The argument is really 'look up in the sky, you see this big ball of fire and think, look how big the sun is, how can we compare to that?' It's a very anecdotal argument. "But the fact here is that over the last 30 years of global warming, sun and climate have been going in opposite directions. "Solar activity has actually been going down for the last few decades while we've been experiencing this warming and so that really rules out the sun as a cause of global warming, the fact that it's actually had a cooling influence. On top of that we also have all these human fingerprints." MYTH BUSTED: Global warming stopped about two decades ago
"The fact here is that over the last few decades our planet has been building up heat at a rate of four atomic bombs per second. "So every second four atomic bombs worth of heat, or 250 trillion joules of energy, is building up in our climate system, day, night for the last 20-odd years. "The technique used to distort the reality of global warming is again, cherry-picking, just looking at small bits of data and ignoring the bigger picture. "They'll just cherry-pick small periods of a temperature record and say 'hey look, over a very small period, temperature isn't going up very much' but it's ignoring the bigger picture and it's ignoring looking at our climate system as a whole, all the heat building up in our system."The Islamic State has released photographs showing its fighters using a US-made BGM-71 TOW anti-tank missile against elements of the US-backed Free Syrian Army in the Damascus countryside.
The images were published by the Islamic State’s Wilayat Damascus (State of Damascus) and disseminated on Twitter by its supporters.
In the photo set, many Islamic State fighters can be seen amassing in more than 15 technicals, or armed pickup trucks. The pictures then show the use of the TOW missile on Free Syrian Army (FSA) units. The last few photos show FSA members the Islamic State has taken captive.
While the Islamic State is publicizing its use of the American-made weapon, it is unclear if it is the same model that is being supplied to various FSA groups throughout Syria. At least one TOW missile was also used by the Al Nusrah Front, al Qaeda’s official branch in Syria, in that group’s recent offensive on Wadi al Daif in the northwestern province of Idlib. [For more on this, see LWJ report Al Nusrah Front uses American-made anti-tank missile in Idlib.]
Additionally, many FSA groups have utilized supplies of TOW missiles to assist the Al Nusrah Front or allied jihadist groups in the past. In early October, many FSA groups assisted Al Nusrah and Ahrar al Sham in southern Syria with TOWs. Then a few days later, the Hazm Movement posted a video of its fighters utilizing TOWs in support of Jaish al Muhajireen wal Ansar in Aleppo. The Chechen group considers itself to be the Syrian branch of the Caucasus Emirate, an al Qaeda-linked jihadist organization that operates in the North Caucasus.
Pictures released from the Damascus countryside can be seen below:
Caleb Weiss is a contributor to FDD's Long War Journal.
Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.GLENWOOD SPRINGS — A man authorities believe shot Colorado Trooper Eugene Hofacker on Interstate 70 Thursday is a convicted killer who was arrested months ago in an attempted murder case.
Thomas Ornelas, 40, of Montrose, allegedly shot six-year patrol veteran Hofacker, 31, according to Adrienne Jacobson, spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Corrections.
The Garfield County Coroner's Office will confirm the identity of the shooting suspect.
Friday morning, Colorado State Patrol chief Scott Hernandez posted that: "Trooper Hofacker is awake this morning and communicating with us. He is in good spirits as he prepares for additional surgery today. Please keep Eugene and his family in your thoughts and prayers."
Ornelas had a lengthy, violent criminal record.
At the time of Thursday's shooting, Ornelas out on a $75,000 bond in a case out of Mesa County from March 1, 2013. In that case, he pleaded not guilty to nine counts, including two counts of att empted second-degree murder. He was scheduled to go to trial in September.
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According to state records, in August 1990 Ornelas pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in a Denver case and was sentenced to 18 years in prison on Feb. 1, 1991, Jacobson said.
Ornelas was first paroled on Oct. 24, 2002, after serving 12 years for the murder. He violated parole conditions and was sent back to prison on July 9, 2003. He was paroled a second time on Aug. 26, 2004, and completed his sentence in October 2005, she said.
Hofacker was in critical condition but is stable, according to Hernandez.
Authorities said Hofacker and another trooper, who were riding in the same car on their way to a training session, stopped to assist a motorist pulled over on the side of westbound I-70 at mile marker 129 near the Dotsero exit at about 9:10 a.m. The incident occurred about 9:10 a.m. west of the Dotsero exit. The shooting happened within five minutes.
Garfield County Sher iff Lou Vallario said Hofacker was shot when he approached the driver-side window. The second trooper, who was approaching the car on the passenger side, returned fire and killed the driver, Vallario said.
Hofacker, who was based in Vail, was taken to Valley View Hospital in Glenwood Springs. Hernandez did not comment on Hofacker's injuries but did say the trooper had been wearing his body armor.
After completing his sentence for murder, Ornelas was charged with multiple crimes in Montrose County. He was sentenced to unsupervised probation in 2007 after he pleaded guilty to third-degree assault, and in 2010 he was sentenced to probation after pleading guilty to obstructing a peace officer.Image copyright Getty Images Image caption As drones become more popular, countries will need to consider regulations to restrict usage
A drone has collided with a commercial aircraft in Canada, the first such incident in the country, according to the Transport Ministry.
The drone struck one of the plane's wings, while six passengers and two crew members were aboard.
The aircraft sustained only minor damage and was able to land safely, the Canadian transport minister said.
Earlier this year, Canada announced that it was making it illegal to fly recreational drones near airports.
The law prohibited airborne drones within 5.5km (3.5 miles) of an airport and restricted the height of a drone's flight to 90 metres (300ft).
Those breaking the restrictions could face fines of up to 25,000 Canadian dollars ($20,000, £15,000).
The Skyjet flight was heading to Quebec City's Jean Lesage International Airport when the drone hit it on 12 October.
In a statement, transport minister Marc Garneau said: "Although the vast majority of drone operators fly responsibly, it was our concern for incidents like this that prompted me to take action and issue interim safety measures restricting where recreational drones could be flown.
"I would like to remind drone operators that endangering the safety of an aircraft is extremely dangerous and a serious offence."
According to a UK Airprox Board report, a drone passed directly over the wing of an aircraft approaching Gatwick Airport this summer.
The drone was "flown into conflict" with the Airbus 319, with a high risk of collision, read the report.A comprehensive review and study of the rich dinosaur track record of the Tremp Formation in the southern Pyrenees of Spain (Southwestern Europe) shows a unique succession of footprint localities prior to the end-Cretaceous mass extinction event. A description of some 30 new tracksites and data on sedimentary environments, track occurrence and preservation, ichnology and chronostratigraphy are provided. These new track localities represent various facies types within a diverse set of fluvial environments. The footprint discoveries mostly represent hadrosaurian and, less abundantly, to sauropod dinosaurs. The hadrosaur tracks are significantly smaller in size than, but morphologically similar to, those of North America and Asia and are attributable to the ichnogenus Hadrosauropodus. The track succession, with more than 40 distinct track levels, indicates that hadrosaur footprints in the Ibero-Armorican region occur predominantly in the late Maaastrichtian (at least above the early Maastrichtian–late Maastrichtian boundary). The highest abundance is found noticeably found in the late Maastrichtian, with tracks occurring in the C29r magnetochron, within about the latest 300,000 years of the Cretaceous.
Funding: The research was partially funded by a grant from the Committee for Research and Exploration of the National Geographic Society. This paper is a contribution to the projects CGL2011-30069-C02-01,02/BTE and CGL2010-16447, subsidized by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación of Spain, the European Regional Development Fund, and the Governments of Catalonia (“Direcció General de Patrimoni Cultural, Departament de Cultura”) and Aragón (“Grupos Consolidados”, and the “Dirección General de Patrimonio Cultural”). B. Vila acknowledges support from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (Subprograma Juan de la Cierva (MICINN-JDC) 2011). V. Fondevilla acknowledges support from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, (FPI grant, BES-2012-052366). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Copyright: © 2013 Vila et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
(A–D) Underneath views of overhanging ledges in the Iscles-3, Cingles del Boixader, La Mata del Viudà, and Masia de Ramon Petjades localities, respectively. (E and F) Cross-sectional outcrop views in the La Pleta Nord and Serraduy Sur localities, respectively. (G and H) Plan view outcrops in the Areny 1 and La Llau de la Costa localities, respectively. Scale bar: 15 cm; hammer length is about 33 cm. Arrows indicate the position of some tracks.
(A) Geological map of the southern Pyrenees with Tremp Formation outcrops and location of tracksites and measured sections (modified from López-Martínez and Vicens [26] ). (B) Geological map of the Isona sector (enlarged area in A) and location of tracksites and measured sections (modified from Riera et al. [6] ). Numbers (tracksites): 1, Fornons 3 and Dolor 2; 2, Serraduy Norte and Serraduy Sur; 3, Iscles-1, Iscles-2, Iscles-3, Iscles-4, and Iscles-5; 4, Areny 1; 5, Sapeira-1 and Sapeira-2; 6, La Mata del Viudà; 7, Moror A and Moror B; 8, La Massana; 9, Fumanya; 10, Cingles del Boixader; 11, La Pleta Resclosa and La Pleta Nord; 12, Camí de les Planes and Serrat de Santó; 13, Costa Roia; 14, Torrent de Carant; 15, Serrat de Sanguin; 16, Orcau-2; 17, Orcau-4; 18, Barranc de Torrebilles-5; 19, Basturs Poble; 20, La Llau de la Costa; 21, Tossal del Gassó; 22, Masia de Ramon Petjades; 23, Barranc de Guixers-1 and Barranc de Guixers-2; 24, Barranc de Guixers-3. See abbreviations for measured sections in ”Methodology” section.
The study area is concentrated on several localities belonging to the Tremp Formation, along multiple sections distributed over various geographical areas of the southern Pyrenees (Tremp, Àger, and Vallcebre synclines in the provinces of Huesca, Lleida and Barcelona, Spain, SW Europe; Fig. 1 ). The Tremp Formation is a marginal marine and terrestrial unit, about 800 m thick, which is exposed in northern Catalonia and Aragón (Spain) and encompasses deposits of Late Cretaceous to Early Palaeogene age. The Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) part of the formation contains two lithologic units deposited as a result of a marine regression [27] : a basal lagoonal grey unit (coals, mudstones and sandstones) and a fluvial lower red unit (mudstones and sandstones) [28]. In the latter unit various lithostratigraphic subunits have been recognised such as the fluvial “Gres à reptiles” and the lacustrine “Tossal de la Doba limestones” (or “Tossal d'Obà” member), in the Vallcebre and Isona sectors, respectively [6], [28] – [31]. The lacustrine Vallcebre limestones and laterally equivalent strata (the “Suterranya limestones” and “Sant Salvador de Toló limestones” subunits in the Isona sector) and overlying fluvial units represent the Palaeogene strata [28], [29]. The transition from Cretaceous to Palaeogene strata is isochronous [32]. Even though no impact layer has ever been found in the Pyrenean continental sections, the Cretaceous–Palaeogene boundary is located at the contact between the lower red unit and the Vallcebre limestones and laterally equivalent strata or just below this contact, according to biostratigraphic and magnetostratigraphic determinations ( [6], [31] and references therein). In any case the boundary is found above the “Gres à reptiles” and “Tossal de la Doba limestones” members. With regard to the base of the Tremp Formation, this is not completely isochronous since laterally it evolves into the deltaic-marine Arén Sandstone Formation ( Fig. 3 in [6] ). This chronostratigraphical scheme can be expanded and correlated to other areas of the northern Pyrenees and Provence regions of France, within what is known as the Ibero-Armorican domain [33], though no dinosaur tracks have yet been reported there. Since the early 1920 s numerous fossil localities in the Arén Sandstone and Tremp formations of Spain have yielded multiple bones, tracks and eggs attributed to theropods, hadrosaurs, ankylosaurians, and sauropods [6], [34].
The aim of the present paper is to provide the first comprehensive review and update of the latest Cretaceous dinosaur track record in Europe with the inclusion of 28 new localities, and to discuss their implications in terms of ichnotaxonomy, palaeoenvironments, chronostratigraphy, and the K–Pg boundary extinction event.
Geologic formations of Campanian and Maastrichtian age all over the world provide a rich track record of dinosaurs in the last 20 million of years of the Mesozoic [9]. Up until now the geologically uppermost known track record has been located in North America, more specifically within the Raton Formation of Colorado, where a diverse ichnofauna composed of ichnites from hadrosaurs, probable ceratopsians and large theropods has been identified very close to the K–Pg boundary [10]. Nevertheless, in the last decade new discoveries in other regions have brought to light an ichnological record comparable with that of North America in terms of age and stratigraphic position [11], [12]. The Tremp Formation in the southern Pyrenees preserves one of the richest terrestrial track records yet identified in the latest Cretaceous of Europe. The dinosaur track record is composed of multiple footprint localities of Maastrichtian age with abundant tracks and trackways made by titanosaurian sauropods (Fumanya, Orcau-2, La Massana localities; [13] – [16] ) as well as of hadrosaurian ornithopods (La Mata del Viudà, Moror B, Areny 1 localities; [17] – [19] ) and theropods (Moror A locality; [18] ). Other reports of purported dinosaur tracks are herein considered too poorly preserved to be of ichnotaxonomic significance (Mas Morull, Santa Maria de Meià, Coll de Jou localities; [20] – [22] ) or of non-dinosaurian affinity (La Posa locality; [23] ). Outside of the Pyrenees, Herrero-Santos [24] reported a hadrosaur trackway from the lower Maastrichtian deposits of Sierra de los Gavilanes (Murcia province, Spain), and Gierlinski et al. [25] reported hadrosaur and theropod tracks from an upper Maastrichtian locality in Poland.
The end-Cretaceous mass extinction was one of the major events in the history of life on Earth, resulting in the demise of multiple taxa [1]. On land, non-avian dinosaurs and many other vertebrates succumbed at the end of the Maastrichtian, the final stage of the Cretaceous. With the exception of data from the bolide impact zone and nearby areas (e.g. North America [2] ), little is known about how the last dinosaur faunas reached the boundary in most parts of the planet [3] – [7]. Much of the current knowledge is from the fossil bone record recovered from the uppermost levels of many geologic formations around the world. In addition, the discovery of dinosaur tracks close to the Cretaceous–Palaeogene (K–Pg) boundary has shown their utility as chronostratigraphical markers [8]. The autochthonous character of fossil tracks means that they provide unmistakable proof of the presence of the track maker in a restricted temporal and spatial context, with no possibilities of reworking as is possible for bone remains. Tracks thus represent a valuable tool for analysing last occurrences and diversity patterns of dinosaurs before the K–Pg extinction event.
Detailed sedimentological analyses were conducted at Iscles-3, Masia de Ramon Petjades, Costa Roia, Serraduy Sur, La Llau de la Costa, Cingles del Boixader and La Mata del Viudà localities. High resolution, close-range photogrammetric models for MCD-5140 and MCD-5142 tracks in the La Llau de la Costa locality were generated using the methods described by Falkingham [44] in order to produce higher fidelity models ( Appendix S1 ). Measurements of tracks and trackways refer to the parameters TL, TW and SL, taken after Thulborn [45], in cm. All necessary permits were obtained for the described study, which complied with all relevant regulations. The Departament de Cultura de la Generalitat de Catalunya and Gobierno de Aragón issued the permission for the studied localities.
All the localities and stratigraphic sections are indicated in Figure 1. They have been correlated with the lithostratigraphy and integrated in a chronostratigraphic frame. The western and eastern sectors of the Tremp Syncline (Isona and Isàvena-Ribagorçana areas) have been correlated and dated in accordance with data from the present study and the magnetostratigraphy of Oms and Canudo [35], Pereda-Suberbiola et al. [36], and Cruzado-Caballero et al. [37], and Riera et al. [6], Marmi et al. [38], and Vila et al. [39], respectively. The Vallcebre sector is dated on the basis of the magnetostratigraphy of Oms et al. [31] and Vila et al. [40]. The Àger sector is correlated and dated on the basis of López-Martínez et al. [20]. Their magnetostratigraphic succession for this area fits well in the standard time scale of Ogg and Hinnov [41] and Renne et al. [42], allowing correlation within the four sectors. Sections St, MR, LTs, BGS, CS, OrE, BWA, BP, LT, LB, TDN, TDS and SC correspond to sections I, V, VI, VII, IX, XIII, XIV, XVII, XVIII, XXII, XX, XXV and XXVII in Riera et al. [6], respectively. Sections Bl, CR, Mr and BWB correspond to sections H2, I1B, M1 and I15B in Riera [43], respectively. Sections BTS and BTN correspond to sections A and B in Marmi et al. [38]. Sections Ar, Sr, IsC and VcC have been redrawn from Vila et al. [39]. Sections MS and SrW have been redrawn from Llompart [17] and López-Martínez et al. [20], and Cruzado-Caballero et al. [37], respectively. The Areny 1, Tossal del Gassó, Camí de les Planes, Serrat de Santó, Orcau-4, Serrat de Sanguin, La Pleta Nord, La Pleta Resclosa, and Serraduy Norte sites are projected at the reference sections.
Results
The following descriptions (see also Text S1) refer to the 28 newly discovered localities (Table 1), some of which have been briefly referred by previous authors [6], [21], [37], [46], and to two already known sites (La Mata del Viudà, Areny 1; [17], [19]). The descriptions are complemented with data from other localities (Fumanya, Orcau-2, and La Massana, Moror A and B; [13], [15], [16], [18]). This work further integrates data on the stratigraphic succession of sites, the sedimentary environments, track occurrence and preservation, ichnology and chronostratigraphy. The resulting dataset shows a unique succession of track localities prior to the terminal Cretaceous extinction event.
Sedimentary environments Dinosaur tracks occur in various depositional settings in the grey and lower red units of the Tremp Formation. The new sites correspond to track horizons that represent various facies types within a diverse set of fluvial environments belonging to the lower red unit (Fig. 2). The remaining localities exemplify tracks produced in lagoonal environments (Table 1). PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Figure 2. Sedimentary architecture in outcrops of the main track localities of the Tremp Formation. (A–G) Iscles-3, Masia de Ramon Petjades, Costa Roia, Serraduy Sur, La Llau de la Costa, Cingles del Boixader and La Mata del Viudà sites, respectively. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0072579.g002 Meandering streams (channel facies) are identified at 27 localities in the Tremp and Vallcebre synclines (Table 1) on the basis of the following characteristics (Fig. 2A–D): (a) dominant texture composed of very fine- to medium-grained sands and mudstones; (b) mudstone layers commonly covering sandstones where footprint casts are found; (c) vertical trend arranged in fining-up cycles; (d) multiple and very well-defined lateral accretions; (e) occasional conglomerate lag at the base of each accretion surface or thalweg; (f) sedimentary structures restricted to the middle and lower part of the sequence and absent in the upper part due to plant bioturbation; (g) these sedimentary structures comprise planar lamination or small-scale cross-bedding mainly visible at the top of beds; and (h) sequence thickness varying from 2 to almost 6 metres. The characteristics of the sandstone bodies correspond to lithofacies F12B of Riera et al. [6]. The channel-shape of these sandstones and the presence of the lateral accretions or point bars are typical in alluvial systems with high sinuosity rivers [47]. A crevasse splay setting can be identified at the La Llau de la Costa locality (Fig. 2E and Table 1) on the basis of the following characters: (a) poorly sorted sandstone; with (b) a tabular-shaped morphology; (c) surrounded by floodplain overbank mudstones but laterally connected to the abovementioned meandering channel bodies; and (d) an abundance of small plant remains. At the La Llau de la Costa site the bed has an exposed lateral extension of about 30 metres and a maximum thickness of 1 metre. It consists of grey, poorly sorted, fine-grained sandstones with mud and scattered coarser elements, and abundant vegetal remains, a typical feature of crevasse splay deposits [48]. Dinosaur tracks occur at the bottom of, on top of, and within the tabular lens. Hence, the multiple track levels at the La Llau de la Costa site indicate different episodes of crevasse splay development and trampling. Braided streams (channel facies) are recognized at the localities of Cingles del Boixader and La Mata del Viudà (Vallcebre and Àger synclines, respectively; Fig. 2F and G and Table 1) on the basis of the following features: (a) general texture composed of gravels; (b) mud-free horizons except for the occasional mud drapes interbedded with sandstone layers that preserve tracks; (c) absence of a vertical trend in texture or thickness; (d) unidirectional cross-bedding in gravels; and (e) well-rounded and mineralogically mature sediment. These characteristics correspond to lithofacies 12C of Riera et al. [6]. Associated with meandering and braided streams, the fine overbank deposits consist of massive red, ochre and purple mudstones (lithofacies F10, F7 and F11 of Riera et al. [6], respectively). Invertebrate activity may also be extensive and corresponds to burrows of the continental ichnogenera Naktodemasis and Spirographites [6], which obliterate the original sedimentary structures. Grey mudstones may be present, representing oxbow-lake deposits in abandoned meanders (lithofacies F5B of Riera et al. [6]). Of particular interest in the context of dinosaur track production and preservation is the absence of mud cracking in the mudstone layers of the floodplain or within channels. When the latter are not bioturbated, they are grey-coloured and are found in the lower parts of the cycles (lithofacies F5B of Riera et al. [6]). Lagoon settings are identified exclusively in the grey unit (Table 1) as indicated by regional works [28]. At Moror A and B, they occur in a succession of grey mudstones, marls and limestones with charophytes, root bioturbation, bivalves and ostracods [18]. The Moror A site is located in a bioturbated and bioclastic limestone bed showing evidence of desiccation, and the Moror B outcrop occurs in a micritic limestone, which is also bioturbated. Other sites in the Tremp Formation that contain sauropod footprints (Orcau-2, La Massana and Fumanya) have also been characterized as lagoonal [49], [50] with tidal influence [51]. All these lagoonal localities are found in limestones (lithofacies F2B facies of Riera et al. [6]).Yale researchers have identified the source of neuropathic pain that many diabetics suffer from and believe they may be able to target it. While working with rats, the researchers found that changes in the structure of dendritic spines are associated with pain and they also found a drug that interferes with formation of these spines, reducing pain in lab animals.
Nearly half of all diabetics suffer from neuropathic pain, an intractable, agonizing and still mysterious companion of the disease. Now Yale researchers have identified an unexpected source of the pain and a potential target to alleviate it.
A team of researchers from Yale and the West Haven Veterans Affairs Medical Center describes in the May 15 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience how changes in the structure of dendritic spines – microscopic projections on the receiving branches of nerve cells — are associated with pain in laboratory rats with diabetes.
“How diabetes leads to neuropathic pain is still a mystery,” said Andrew Tan, an associate research scientist in neurology at the Yale School of Medicine and lead author of the study. “An interesting line of study is based on the idea that neuropathic pain is due to faulty ‘rewiring’ of pain circuitry.”
With a growing number of diabetics, the condition represents a huge unmet medical need. Once neuropathic pain is established, it is a lifelong condition.
“Here we reveal that these dendritic spines, first studied in memory circuit processing, also contribute to the sensation of pain in diabetes,” Tan said. A single neuron may contain hundreds to thousands of dendritic spines.
The Yale team led by Tan and senior author Dr. Stephen G. Waxman, the Bridget Marie Flaherty Professor of Neurology, professor of neurobiology and pharmacology, found abnormal dendritic spines were associated with the onset and maintenance of pain. They also found that a drug that interferes with formation of these spines reduced pain in lab animals, suggesting that targeting abnormal spines could be a therapeutic strategy.
Tan said that these dendritic spines in nerve cells seem to store memory of pain, just as they are crucial in memory and learning in the human brain.
“We have identified a single, key molecule that controls structural changes in these spines and hopefully we can develop therapeutic approaches that target that molecule and reduce diabetic pain,” Waxman said.
Other authors on the paper are Omar A. Samad, Tanya Z. Fischer, Peng Zhao and Anna-Karin Persson,
The research was funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Images: Active Nerve Cell from Shutterstock; Yale NewsI am making a book with messages from people who love Jenna to send to her. Please submit your messages to be included in the book. Thank you.Organised by Charlotte with help from Tuli.Limited to 95 entries. Current entries: 4
Dear Jenna Dear Jenna, first off, happy birthday! i hope your day is great. i really want to say you are one of my favourite people on this earth, i love watching you on doctor who i can also remember when you were on emerdale and waterloo road. watching you and matt have helped me through some dark times so thank you and for that i am eternally grateful. xx zack|14|newcastle,england
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A message from Twitter: Dear Jenna,
Not gonna lie, I became a fan of yours thanks to Doctor Who. But you’re honestly one of my favorite actresses because you’re able to do such a variety of characters. I’d like to thank you for being Clara as silly as it sounds. It’s because of Clara that I’ve been able to meet so many wonderful people, become more confident in myself and slowly learn to love life. I can still remember getting a glance at you at the World Tour and it being one of the best moments of my life. So thank you.
Sarah age 19 from New York, U.S.A.
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A message from Twitter: You always make me laugh and smile for no reason and without even knowing it. I truly believe that you are beautiful inside and out and I’m glad to be one of your fans. I love you. ~ Lauren from Scotland!
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❝ toboldlygoaway asked: Rose|19|USA Dear Jenna, where do I start? Every time I see a picture of you I can't help but smile because you are the most adorable human being ever. I have loved watching you on Doctor Who and grow from being a great actress to one of the best actresses on television. I wish you could be on the show forever (or maybe even play the first female doctor, because if anyone could do it, it would be you!). Thanks for making me smile and for being amazing!
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Hello Jenna!!! First of all, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! I hope you have a wonderful day and that this year is full of wonderful and great things for you! We are so lucky to have you as a companion, and if you don’t already, I hope you know you are loved by so many of us! Clara is tied along with Rose for my favorite companion of all time! You are an amazing actress and you’ve brought so much to the show, and we are happy to have you [& would be happy if you stayed forever :) ]. You inspire me to continue working at my dream even when its difficult, as you have said you didn’t give up working on yours even after getting rejections, remembering to work hard and be kind and now look how far you’ve come. I am glad for your success in your career and hope that it continues on for a long time, I know you will go far. As a person, you are so kind and nice to us fans, and we love you all the more for it! Thank you so much for being so lovely to us. Wishing you all the best on your birthday and looking forward to seeing you in the upcoming series of Doctor Who and what I’m sure will continue to be a wonderful career (though we hope your stay on Doctor Who is a long one) full of successes and recognition. You’ve won our hearts both as Jenna and Clara, so THANK YOU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, and all the best to you!!! :) Sending love and hugs, Leslie, 26 Colorado, USA.
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❝ amxwilliams-deactivated20180222 asked: Hi Jenna! Happy Birthday! I hope it is just as amazing as you are! You are such a great actress and I love your role as Clara in Doctor Who. She is such a strong and awesome character and even my favourite companion of the Doctor. Thank you for being so amazing and sweet all the time! - Mila, 17, Germany
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message for Jenna Alyson, 19, USA Hi Jenna! You’ve been my favorite actress since I first started watching Doctor Who in 2013. I met you at Indiana Comic Con and I was sooo nervous, but you were so nice and friendly! You answered my questions and listened to me talk for the small amount of time I had to meet you, and you’ve made me so happy! My confidence has grown a lot since I met you and I’m super grateful that you came to the convention :) Thank you for being super awesome and funny and sweet! I hope you have a great birthday!
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Hello, Jenna! Massive fan! So massive I possibly drive my sister crazy when I so much as mention your name - oops! But in all seriousness, you’ve been a huge inspiration to me and I’ll never be able to thank you enough. You’ve helped me find my writing muse again, you’ve helped me find a sense of confidence and self-love I was starting to doubt, you’ve given me some amazing wardrobe ideas I can’t wait to test out, and you’ve brightened up my bedroom every Saturday night Doctor Who is on. So thank you, so much, for being such a wonderful women, a |
them, waking a sleeping driver. They didn’t have those in the ‘30s, but they had something else. A small metal gong or bell was attached to the driver under the chin. The idea was that if the driver happened to nod off, they would ring the bell and wake up.
4 Skull License Plates
No, the skulls on these license plates were not issued only to people who were super cool; they were actually given to super awful drivers. Or at least that was the plan. In Memphis in the ‘30s, an idea was devised to let motorists know who was a good driver and whom to keep away from. Those who continued to break traffic laws would be forced to use special black license plates with a skull and crossbones and the words “Traffic Law Violator.” The idea never took off—probably because people realized that if a person is so bad they need a warning on their car, it’s probably easier just to not let them drive.
3 Dog Sacks
Even in the ‘30s, people knew that dogs like to stick their heads out the window. They also realized dogs left unwanted hair in the backseat, so they got inventing. The Dog Sack attached to the car’s running board at its bottom and to the door at its top. The dog could be placed inside and get fresh air through a head hole. There was also another similar invention—more like a cage. Also attaching to the outside of the car, it had flaps that could be rolled down to protect the dog from dust or rain.
2 Wrist Twist Steering System
You’d probably need some practice to use a car with the Wrist Twist. Intended to replace the steering wheel, it used two 13-centimeter (5 in) plastic rings that could be turned independently of one another. It apparently made the dash easier to view and was more comfortable to control since your arms didn’t need to move much. Despite its supposed ease to use, the Wrist Twist never went into commercial production.
1 Horse Head
The Horsey Horseless was a design from 1899. Allegedly thought up by a man named Uriah Smith, the vehicle featured a full-size, hollowed-out replica horse head bolted to the front to help people transition from horse-drawn carriages to vehicles. Smith even suggested the horse head be hollowed for storage. It’s believed the sketches found on the Internet only represent a design idea, and the car was never actually produced. It’s difficult to imagine how people made the transition without it.In recent years, you may have heard the term “Carbon Footprint.” You may have even noticed that some products and services now label their goods with energy ratings. So what does it mean, and why is a footprint bad? A Carbon Footprint is the amount of CO2 (carbon dioxide) and other greenhouse gases that you contributed to as a result of your activities within a given time frame. Many everyday activities account for a large portion of these emissions and, in turn, contribute to global warming.
The warming of the Earth leads to droughts, reduced cloud-coverage, melting of polar icecaps, flooding, food shortages, etc. Even if you don’t buy into the idea of climate change, there are other indicators of unnecessary waste. If you’ve taken a look at your local landfill, I think you would agree that something needs to change. The United States, as a whole, has been notorious for its large part of carbon dioxide emissions into the Earth’s atmosphere. We’ve made much headway due to increased wind power, natural gas, and recent energy policies.
So what can you do to reduce your footprint? There are many ways that we can alter our routines to become more sustainable. Some of these changes may seem drastic. Pick some ways that you are comfortable with. Here are some things that you can start doing today.
Carpool or Ride a bike – The average car emits around one pound of CO2 per mile. It may not be reasonable to bike everywhere you go, but consider cutting back on your driving. Walk or bike to your local stores or parks. If you run or bike for exercise, try starting from your house instead of driving across town.
Buy online – Purchasing products online allows you to browse for an item without even getting into your car. Sure, the item needs to be delivered, but delivery routes can be very efficient.
Turn off your lights and electronics – This may seem obvious but many people don’t know that computers and TVs use 10 – 40% of power when left on standby. Turn off appliances when not in use and remove chargers when charging is complete.
Go Vegan – This is possibly the most effective way to minimize your carbon footprint. Those who cut out animal products from their diet stand to decrease their carbon footprint dramatically. As InquirerBusinessreports, Livestock farming now accounts for the use of 70 percent of the global freshwater and 38 percent of the world’s land-use conversion. Some 70 percent of the Amazon Rainforest, in fact, has already been cleared for grazing and feed crop production. World Watch magazine reported that livestock and their byproducts actually account for at least 32.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions as noted by Inquirer Science/Health on April 20. Forbes online, in its April 28 issue, wrote that the 2006 report estimated that 18 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions attributable to cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, pigs and poultry (chicken) were in fact updated to 51 percent, citing an analysis performed by Robert Goodland, a former World Bank Group environmental adviser, with cowriter Jeff Anhang, an environmental specialist at the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corp. If you find it impossible to go completely vegan, try vegetarian for a while. You may find it easier to make the switch gradually.
Buy Food Locally – Foods that are grown local, travel less. Not only is this better for the environment but it also says a lot about the quality of your food. Produce that travels 10 miles is certainly fresher than produce that travels 1,000 miles. Many grocery chains now partner with local farmers to provide a wide variety of locally grown fruit and vegetables.
Recycle – Many cities now offer recycling bins to go alongside trash bins for curbside pickup. Be sure that you are recycling glass containers, paper, aluminum cans, steel and bi-metallic cans, corrugated paper, and plastics. For old electronics, check your listings to find an electronics recycling program near you. They will provide you a safe way of recycling unwanted cell phones, computers, monitors, printers, scanners, and so on. Remember to Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. You are not truly recycling unless you buy recycled products. A great way to reduce is to use cloth bags for everyday use and at grocery stores. Many stores now offer green alternatives to plastic and paper bags. You can find eco-friendly, cloth bags online for as little as 44 cents apiece. Because they are durable and reusable, cloth bags are responsible for significantly less energy usage and pollution than paper or plastic.
Use Energy-Efficient Light Bulbs – If every family replaced just one light bulb in their home with an energy-efficient bulb, we would save enough energy to illuminate 3 million homes for a year and save around $600 million in annual energy costs, preventing 9 billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per year. That’s equivalent to about 800,000 cars. You may even qualify for a tax credit by using energy-efficient bulbs. Check with your energy service provider to see what programs they offer to help you in getting started. Some even offer free light bulbs for a year and data analysis to see your savings.
Go Paperless – If the US cut paper use by just 10% it would eliminate 1.6 million tons of greenhouse gases which is the equivalent of taking 280,000 cars off the road for one year. The next time a birthday comes up, think about the effects of sending your greeting via USPS. By using traditional mail, you consume paper, waste energy from the post office, and produce gas emissions from the vehicles delivering the mail. Instead, use email, text, or a phone call.
Of course, there are many other ways in which a person can manage their carbon footprint. These are just a few to get you started. With most of these suggestions, you will not only lighten your load on Mother Earth, but will save money and improve your overall health. It’s really a win-win situation. For more information on ways to reduce your carbon footprint, visit CarbonFund.Org
If you found this article helpful, please share it with your friends & family by using the social buttons below. You can also Stumble this page by clicking the link at the top of the page. Thanks for reading!This morning Bart Simpson looked at Mr. Burns and pleaded not guilty.
The incredible state of affairs came to be because Barton “Bart” Simpson, 56, was caught bringing a gun onto a plane in Birmingham, England on May 31st, according to the Solihull Observer.
Simpson does not deny that he brought the old.38 Smith & Wesson revolver onto the plane, a crime that caries a mandatory five year sentence. Instead, Simpson is resting his defense on a quirk in the law that allows people to transport antique weapons.
And so this morning Simpson was in court to enter his plea and there in front of him at Warwick Crown Court was Mr. Recorder Burns. In England judges are called “recorders.”
“It’s a bizarre coincidence that Bart Simpson is actually on trial in front of Mr Burns but it’ll proceed as any other criminal case would,” a court worker told swns.com.
“There were some eyebrows raised when the court list was published.”Piece I did for an Illustration class---the characters of "Sherlock" in earlier teen\young adult years.This has been a mother, but I'm pretty happy with the end result. I don't usually add little shpeals about my drawings, but why not...My opinion of the character Mycroft is a little shady; I get a feeling of hypocrisy or piousness from him. I think Sherlock is the more honest of the two brothers: Sherlock doesn't hide who he is, all his cards are on the table, more or less. But Mycroft does not seem that way, to me anyway. I'm almost sure Mycroft is responsible in large part for the kind of person Sherlock is\has become over the years. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, up to you. So that's kinda why I stuck him under an umbrella, and smoking: we don't really see the real him 24\7 like we do Sherlock.While drawing Sherlock, I was influenced mostly by Sum 41, Green Day, My Chemical Romance, and 30 Seconds to Mars. His grunge-iness took on many different levels of extremity before I settled on this look for him. John came together in probably two minutes. There was never any question what he would look like. Moriarty was the one that kept me up later than I would like scrapping ideas. I still don't know if I got him right. But, in the end I did settle on a good piece of music for him, and that was actually this [link] So it fit, obviously, and it helped me decide that I wanted him to look menacing, not playful.Hope you guys likePoliZette Trump Vindicated on Media Collusion WikiLeaks implicates Politico reporter for working with Democrats, CBS gives Clinton a free pass
Soon-to-be-former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz isn’t the only person acutely feeling scrutiny and shame after last week’s WikiLeaks email release implicated her in shady dealings on Hillary Clinton’s behalf. Now Politico’s chief investigative reporter, Kenneth P. Vogel, is also facing backlash over the revelation that he sent an entire copy of an article to the DNC for review before publication.
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The DNC emails leak showed that several staffers not only favored former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders during the bitter primary season, but even conspired to aid her, despite the fact the DNC is supposed to remain “neutral” until a candidate has clinched the nomination. And now that Vogel’s Politico mishap has been uncovered, Republican nominee Donald Trump’s assertions about the media’s collusion with Democrats to benefit Clinton are being vindicated.
“The Democrats are in a total meltdown but the biased media will say how great they are doing! Emails say the rigged system is alive & well!”
“The Democrats are in a total meltdown but the biased media will say how great they are doing! Emails say the rigged system is alive & well!” Trump tweeted on Sunday. “If the Republican Convention had blown up with emails, resignation of boss and the beat down of a big player (Bernie), media would go wild.”
Trump added on Monday, “Wow, the Republican Convention went so smoothly compared to the Dems total mess. But fear not, the dishonest media will find a good spinman!”
The email that puts Vogel on the hot seat was sent on April 30 to Mark Paustenbach, the national press secretary and deputy communications director for the DNC. The email, which Paustenbach forwarded on, was titled, “Fwd: per agreement … any thoughts appreciated” and included Vogel’s piece that would later be published on May 2. The piece was titled, “Clinton fundraising leaves little for state parties.”
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“Vogel gave me his story ahead of time/before it goes to his editors as long as I didn’t share it,” Paustenbach wrote. “Let me know if you see anything that’s missing and I’ll push back.”
Upon the WikiLeaks release of Vogel’s email, Politico spokesman Brad Dayspring told The Huffington Post that Vogel’s conduct did not comply with Politico’s standard policies, but also offered excuses and cover to the embattled reporter.
“Politico’s policy is to not share editorial content pre-publication except as approved by editors,” Dayspring wrote in an email. “Checking the relevant passages for accuracy was responsible and consistent with our standards; sharing the full piece was a mistake and not consistent with our policies.”
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Dayspring also contended no substantive changes were made to the article after it was circulated to DNC leadership.
Regardless of how many “substantive changes” were or were not made after Vogel forwarded his story to the DNC staffer, the WikiLeaks release showed that the Democratic Establishment and at least one media outlet had been working together on the articles that readers use to gather, filter and interpret their own information. One can only wonder how many other times this sort of collusion has occurred within the media that Trump claims is “rigged” and “biased.”
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Coming on the heels of the DNC WikiLeaks, an “unaired” clip of Clinton and vice presidential candidate Sen. Tim Kaine was released from CBS News’ “60 Minutes” program this weekend. In the unflattering clip, that CBS chose not to air, host Scott Pelley asked Clinton whether about what she knew regarding the DNC email scandal. And Clinton’s answers – and non-answers – were quite telling.
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“You have people in the Democratic National Committee who are supposed to be, if you will, agnostic about who the nominee is going to be, and they seem to have their thumb on the scale for you,” Pelley asked. “They seem to be working against Bernie Sanders, their fellow Democrat.”
“Again, I don’t know anything, I don’t know anything about, uh, about these emails. I haven’t followed it,” Clinton responded.
“In your view, any effort in the DNC to favor one candidate or another would have been improper?” Pelley countered.
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“Again, I don’t have any information about this, and so I can’t answer specifically,” Clinton rejoined.
Although the full effects that these revelations will have on the mainstream media’s credibility with the American public during the 2016 election season remain to be seen, this not-so-subtle bias rings true with Trump’s warnings of a “rigged” system.As the Senate reviews House Republicans plan to overhaul Obamacare, a handful of conservative senators are pushing for some steep cuts to the federally-backed health insurance program Medicaid.
GOP senators, led by Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, are seeking an immediate roll back of the federal money granted to the Obamacare Medicaid expansion program, The Wall Street Journal reports. Their rationale is that serious cuts to the program’s funding would force states to make prudent decisions regarding how they choose to spend Medicare funds.
The Affordable Care Act funneled hundreds of billions of dollars to states that chose to expand Medicaid. The program brought millions of Americans into the health insurance marketplace, and any funding cuts to that program will lead to some losses in the number of Americans with health insurance.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected in March that 24 million Americans would lose health insurance if Congress passed the American Health Care Act (AHCA), with a large portion of the loss stemming from Medicaid consumers. The CBO estimated that the AHCA would cut $839 billion from Medicaid over the next decade.
Lee was critical of the bill after it passed in early-May, denouncing it for not going far enough in removing government from the health care marketplace.
“Its reforms to Medicaid fail to either incentivize state innovation or place the program on a financially sustainable path,” Lee told reporters.
The AHCA, with the addition of the MacArthur amendment, affords states the opportunity to opt-out of certain provisions of Obamacare through waivers. Critics of the House bill argue that if states were able to obtain a waiver, millions of Americans who get health insurance through Medicaid, especially those who obtained it through Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion program, would lose coverage.
The House bill actually enhances federal funding for the 31 states and the District of Columbia that chose to expand its Medicaid program. As long as a state signed up for Medicaid expansion before 2020, the AHCA does nothing to change its levels of funding. It simply halts any federal funding for Medicaid beneficiaries after 2020.
Some conservatives, like Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rob Portman of Ohio, think the House bill was a “positive step” towards repealing and replacing Obamacare but acknowledge critics’ concerns.
Cruz says that a “number of senators,” including himself, are concerned about the potential loss to Medicaid recipients under the AHCA. Portman said he “couldn’t support the House bill,” because he “didn’t believe it provided adequate coverage for people who are currently being helped by expanded Medicaid.”
The debate in the Senate over Medicaid funding is likely to be contentious. Some 20 Republican senators are in states that chose to expand Medicaid under Obamacare. If the Senate passes a bill that guts Medicaid even more than the House proposal, those senators could face a lot of heat in the 2020 election cycle.
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Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected] in the French town of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, the statue of Saint Sara-la-Kali, dressed in seven latyers of gowns, will be brought from her shrine by Roma men on white horses and bathed in the ocean. This event will be attended by hundreds of Catholics and is particularly important to the Roma people. Readerss will take crystals and even cards in bags and dip them in the ocean at the exact moment that the Statue of Saint Sarah is dipped into the water. Across the Ocean, I will be at the beach offering my own prayers and offerings, and anointing myself with her oil.
Who is Saint Sara-la-Kali?
The statue depicts a black woman or girl, decked in a crown and blue and white clothes, much like Mary, and indeed no discussion of Black Madonnas is complete without including this statue of Saint Sarah. But the question of who exactly this is supposed to be is a mystery.
I first heard of her many years ago as the secret daughter of Jesus and Mary Magdeline. She arrived on the shores of Camargue on a fragile boat with no oars with Mary Cleopas, Mary Salome, and Mary Magdeline. She is black indicating that she is hidden offspring, and her name is Sarah, meaning Princess.
Later I learned the more popular legends that claim her as an Egyptian girl that served the three Mary’s and is venerated for her charity. Egypt of course represents a land of mystery and magic and the Talmud even claims that Jesus had Egyptian secrets tatooed on his body.
Still other legends claim that she was a Roma Queen already in France, and that the shrine where her statue is now located was once a place of Mithraic Sacrifice.
And of course some claim that she is a Christianized Kali, whose veneration the Roma carried with them. Indeed recent genetic studies have shown the Roma throughout Europe are descended from dalits in India 1400 years ago.
So how do I honor her? D) All of the Above.
To my mind there is an honesty and even power in saying “I do not know” or “I cannot quite pin it down”. Indeed I feel that the mystery of the Black Madonnas overall is an invitation to contemplate how much we do not know, how much we cannot know, and how our ordinary methods of knowing fail us when faced with the ineffable.Interview with Wolf-Dietrich Jaehn. Jaehn served in the Afrikakorps during World War II and ended the war as Lieutenant and Company Commander of the Stabskompanie/ schwere Panzer-Abteilung 507.
We often hear about the war experiences of British veterans on Forces TV, but not so much those that they fought against. Now, a former German soldier has told us about his memories of battle during the Second World War. Now 92, he joined the army at 17 like his father before him, and went on to fight in the Afrika Korps against the Desert Rats.
I want to thank Forces TV for making this video interview with Wolf-Dietrich Jaehn available.
Find the unit history books of Panzer-Abteilung 507 here: Combat History of Schwere Panzer Abteilung 507 (U.S.) and Combat History of Schwere Panzer Abteilung 507 (U.K.). Chronik 507 (German) can be found here.Americans For Truth About Homosexuality’s Peter LaBarbera stopped by VCY America’s “Crosstalk” program on Wednesday to discuss the debate over legislation in Arkansas and Indiana that would allow businesses to discriminate against LGBT customers in the name of “religious liberty.”
Although both measures still have the potential to license discrimination, each has been softened by lawmakers in the wake of controversy, which LaBarbera and “Crosstalk” host Jim Schneider attributed to the “spirit of Antichrist” in the gay rights movement.
At the end of the program, a listener called in to share her views on the Antichrist. “I believe that there are several Antichrists,” she said, “and I believe one is the gay liberation movement and another Antichrist, I believe, is some parts of the government in Iran that are always talking about destroying Israel.”
“Certainly the spirit of Antichrist is in the movement that is a very assault at how he designed man and woman to be,” Schneider agreed. “Thank you. That is indeed the spirit of Antichrist. And especially when we see the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Peter, the attacks against it, that is a spirit of Antichrist saying that we cannot act upon the convictions that God’s word provides for us.”
LaBarbera responded that this is “absolutely” the case and that there is now an Antichrist-driven situation in the U.S. in which “Christians have to go to the back of the bus.”
Soon afterwards, another listener called in with another biblical question, asking LaBarbera if he ever brings up the story of Sodom and Gomorrah when he’s giving anti-gay talks.
LaBarbera responded that he does sometimes bring up the story of the cities that were destroyed by God as punishment for sin, but that people are often “ignorant” about what that has to do with the United States, where “the things homosexuals do in private, the orgies, etc…are every bit as evil as what we’d done in Sodom.”
“Jim, I think we would both agree that in some aspects America has surpassed Sodom in the evil that it allows,” he said. “We can’t all talk about it on this show, but I mean I’ve been to events that are incredibly perverse in their public events in San Francisco. And the things that homosexuals do in private, the orgies, etc., I think are every bit as evil as what we’d done in Sodom. We don’t know exactly what we’d done but we have an idea from the word of God.”
“So we’ve reached that level and we’re wondering what punishment does God have for us since we’re allowing the promotion of this in our nation,” he warned.
Finally, LaBarbera and Schneider got a call from a listener who said that he was a barber who wasn’t “against homosexuals” but maintained that he had the right to refuse service to a gay person because they might have AIDS.
“I’m a barber by trade and I’m not against homosexuals, I’m just against the lifestyle, so I get a one in my chair, I have the right to refuse not to shave his neck or use any implement that might cause blood because I don’t know if he’s got AIDS or anything,” he said.
LaBarbera, who earlier in the program had said that Christians wouldn’t refuse service to gay people, just to their weddings, didn’t address the issue directly but agreed that gay people have brushed “the safety of people” aside in their “fanatical push for gay rights.”Donald Trump could be the first president to be successfully impeached, according to Professor Ronald L. Feinman. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque Donald Trump's presidency is likely to be the second shortest ever, a leading historian and author has claimed.
Professor Ronald L Feinman predicted that the former reality TV star will stay in the top job "between the 31 days of William Henry Harrison in 1841," who died pneumonia and the "199 days of James A. Garfield in 1881," who died 79 days after he was shot by an assassin "after terrible suffering and medical malpractice."
Even if his time in office is "dragged out," Feinman predicted that Trump is unlikely to last the 16 months and 5 days of 12th president Zachary Taylor, who died of a digestive ailment while Head of State in 1850.
The 20th-century American history professor, who recently published a book about the unfortunate fates of US leaders, added that he thought the "Pence Presidency" was inevitable. He was referring to Trump's Vice President, Mike Pence, who would take over if Trump was to leave the leadership.
In a blog post, he added that he thought it was likely that Trump will be impeached or forced to resign in a matter of weeks.
Feinman predicts Trump won't last as long as President James A. Garfield, who died 199 days into office. Wikimedia His prediction comes shortly after the White House admitted the President was told several weeks ago that his National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had not told the truth about a telephone call with a Russian diplomat.
The news fuelled broader concerns about his closeness to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the role his country may have played in helping Trump's election.
Feinman, who teaches at Florida Atlantic University, suggested the businessman turned politician is more generally unsuitable for office.
"Many foreign policy professionals are shaking their head at Trump's inappropriate behavior and language every time he speaks in public, or issues a Twitter comment, and his instability and recklessness," he said, citing Trump's decision to hold a security meeting over the North Korean missile test in a public space in earshot of other people as "a sign of his failure to act responsibly."
"The fact that Vice President Mike Pence played a major role in pushing Flynn out is a sign that Pence is already asserting himself with Trump," he said, adding the Vice President often appears uncomfortable with Trump's "freewheeling and careless behavior."
No US president has ever been successfully impeached, although an attempt was made to Bill Clinton but he was acquitted by the Senate.
Richard Nixon also resigned before he could be impeached for serious wrongdoing in the Watergate scandal.Ottawa police executed a series of raids across the region late Thursday after more than a dozen firearms were stolen from a former senator’s Rockcliffe Park home, salvaging a police investigation some officers say was hampered by a controversial on-call policy.
Three search warrants — two in Ottawa and one on Rue de Zenith in the Plateau area of Gatineau — were conducted by the Ottawa police guns and gangs unit and break-and-enter section in connection to the Wednesday morning theft from the home of Rod Zimmer.
Police had made arrests but it was not immediately known how many people would face charges. If anyone was charged, they would appear in Ottawa court on Friday morning.
Though the searches weren’t complete by Thursday evening, police had recovered some of the firearms believed to have been stolen from the home.
The theft Wednesday occurred at the house near Beechwood Cemetery registered to Zimmer, the former Liberal senator from Manitoba who made headlines in 2012 after his significantly younger wife, Maygan Sensenberger, threatened him during a flight from Ottawa to Saskatoon.
Zimmer was out of town at the time of the break-in at the red-brick five-bedroom house, which is undergoing renovations.
Police believe that more than a dozen guns were stolen by traffickers, and were targeted by one or more people who were looking to sell them on the black market.
Patrol officers received a call reporting a suspicious incident just before 1 a.m. Wednesday in the exclusive Rockcliffe Park neighbourhood, home to politicians, ambassadors and high-profile CEOs.
Upon arriving, police determined that a break-and-enter had occurred and multiple firearms — a mix of long guns and handguns — and ammunition had been stolen from the home. At least six hours elapsed before specialized gun investigators began investigating around 9 a.m., though break-and-enter investigators did begin their investigation around 3 a.m.
The high-profile crime came as some Ottawa police investigators continue a quasi work-to-rule campaign, strictly adhering to their collective agreement to protest what some officers say is the unreasonable expectation that they remain available to work at all times without being adequately compensated for it.
The police contract does not make it mandatory to answer work-issued phones after-hours unless an officer is receiving on-call pay, where they are compensated for one hour of paid time for every three hours that they remain on call. Some units continue to answer after-hours calls, while others simply aren’t.
“Hours later, those guns could be anywhere,” one officer said of the risk posed by the delay.
“Nobody looked into it for at least six hours, which is unacceptable and is dangerous to this community,” another officer said. “It is absolutely unacceptable for a police service to be operating like this.”
Chief Charles Bordeleau told the Citizen in an email that the force is evaluating changes to the on-call system and practices “to ensure they are working and meeting the operational needs of the Service and to ensure public safety at all times of the day.”
Bordeleau would not answer whether the theft of multiple guns warrants an immediate guns-and-gangs response or whether on-call supervisors are facing hurdles when detectives won’t pick up their phones.
“I am not going to comment on any ongoing investigations,” Bordeleau said.
According to the chief’s last verbal report less than a month ago to the police board, the civilian body that oversees police, officers had seized 17 crime guns to date in 2015. Now, in a single incident, a comparable number of weapons is believed to have hit the streets.
Gun violence was at a record high in 2014, and anti-gang officers have always maintained that gang-related shootings, carried out with illegally obtained firearms, peak in the summer months. Quashing guns and gangs in the city continues to be one of Bordeleau’s “operational priorities.”
Senior officers have contended that officers are paid quite handsomely with what’s referred to as “callback” pay where officers return to work when called in. When a detective agrees to return to work for an after-hours incident, he or she receives time-and-a-half for every hour worked and must be paid for a minimum of three hours. But many investigators say the move to keep their phones off when their shift ends has less to do with pay and more to do with the direction of a cost-cutting police force that is operating like a business and is nickel-and-diming fundamental parts of police investigations.
In separate incidents reported by the Citizen this week, a sexual assault suspect and suspected drug dealer sat in police cellblocks for nearly 20 hours each waiting for the right investigators to begin files into their alleged crimes. Officers say they’re concerned the force’s insistence that only supervisors are on-call for a handful of police units means the charter rights of accused who have a right to appear before a judge in due time might be violated.
After their headline-grabbing incident in 2012, Sensenberger pleaded guilty to causing a disturbance on the Air Canada flight and received a one-year suspended sentence. Zimmer, meanwhile, retired from the red chamber in August 2013 at the age of 70, citing ongoing health concerns.
Attempts to reach Sensenberger and Zimmer were unsuccessful.
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twitter.com/shaaminiwhyMajor League Baseball is expected to announce a few rule changes on Friday for 2015, aimed at increasing the pace of play and reducing game times in the sport. The changes, which will presumably be implemented beginning opening day 2015, were reported by Ken Rosenthal and Jon Morosi of Fox Sports on Thursday night:
Managers must initiate all replay challenges from the dugout. In 2014, the first year of replay challenges, the general practice involved a manager running on to the field to argue with an umpire, all while looking back toward a coach in the dugout who was in communication with the club's video representative to determine whether or not to challenge the call.
Batters must keep one foot inside the batters box at all times, unless an established exception occurs.
Game play to resume "promptly" after each commercial break. Baseball certainly doesn't want to decrease its advertising allotment, thereby decreasing revenue, so this rule will attempt to make sure the game is ready to begin as close to each commercial break is returning.
"One thing you will see, which will happen right away, is between innings when it says 2:25, between the last out and the next inning starts, that first pitch will come at 2:25," Tigers general manager Dave Dombrowski said earlier in February. "It won't be at 2:25 the hitter is announced, and he strolls in and the pitcher gets on the mound. The pitcher is going to be ready to deliver the ball at 2:25."
MLB created a pace of play committee in September, looking to cut back on game times averaging well north of three hours. The committee included Braves president John Schuerholz, Mets general manager Sandy Alderson, MLB Players Association executive director Tony Clark, Red Sox partner Michael Gordon, MLB president of baseball operations Joe Torre, and Red Sox chairman Tom Werner.
New commissioner Rob Manfred has prioritized this effort to improve pace of play, saying in a September interview: "Attention spans are shorter. I think that it's very important to us at least symbolically to say to fans, we understand that you want this to move as quickly as possible and we're going to continue to modernize the game, without harming its traditions, in a way that makes it more enjoyable and more attune to the society that we live in."Putin has agreed to stop the Russian support for PYD according to a deal with Turkey's Erdogan
ERBIL — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart met on October 10, in Istanbul for discussions over a range of issues, including the turmoil in Syria and the Kurdish question in the region.
A source who attended the meeting revealed to BasNews that Erdogan has demanded Vladimir Putin to close the office of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Moscow and cut the Russian military support for the Kurdish party.
According to the source who declined to be named, the Russian president has accepted Erdogan's request, but Turkey, in return, should turn a blind eye to the existence of the Russian troops in Aleppo, Syria and smooth the path for Moscow to further impose its hegemony on the city. In addition to this, Turkey needs to stop its support for Syrian opposition forces in Aleppo, he said.
Considering this deal between Russia and Turkey, Russia must turn its back on PYD and drop its pledge of supporting the Kurdish forces in the self-ruling region in northern Syria.
The meeting of the two leaders came on the sidelines of the World Energy Congress that was held in Istanbul on October 10.
Turkey has practically involved its military in the war in Syria by deploying thousands of troops into the country as part of its “Euphrates Shield Operation” that intends to remove the IS militants from its southern border areas and limit the advances of the Kurds across northern Syria.
However, Russia has been backing the Syrian Kurds while Turkey insists that PYD, which is now ruling swathes of the Kurdish areas in Syria, is affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the one that is in war with Ankara for decades.Resident Evil VR game has been announced
Update: While there will in fact be a Resident Evil attraction at Hub Zero in Dubai, this VR game was incorrectly labeled as being part of the franchise (mistranslation!). The VR game is actually its own entity, titled Time Zombies.
At a film and comic book convention in Dubai, Resident Evil: Bio Terror was revealed, marking the series’ first official foray into VR gaming. But before you get all excited, it’s worth noting that said game will only be available for people that visit Hub Zero–an entertainment park in Dubai that has partnered with several video game publishers.
Resident Evil: Bio Terror will play in a style closer to House of the Dead than the Chronicles games. And, judging by the game’s title card (pictured above), it looks like we’re going to be dealing with a lot of lickers! Stay tuned for more information as it surfaces.
[Source]This article is about the entity that is labelled "Satan". For the general concept of devils, see Devil. For other uses, see Satan (disambiguation)
Figure in Ab |
want to keep supporting people who need our help to break out of a cycle of addiction and we need to keep policing so that we are tackling those that are seeking to make a profit out of what really is a trade in incredible misery."
Topics: drugs-and-substance-abuse, drug-education, drug-use, drug-offences, law-crime-and-justice, australia, nsw
First postedWhen it comes to forwards in the history of the Buffalo Sabres there have been many great names. In total six players who have donned the blue and gold have their name in the Hockey Hall of Fame. For the most part, these players spent a large amount of time with the Sabres, with the exception of Dick Duff and Clark Gillies who only suited up for 61 and 86 games respectively. Still, the names of current Hall of Famers include Gilbert Perreault, Rick Martin, Dale Hawerchuk and Pat LaFontaine, but with the likes of Dave Andreychuk, Alexander Mogilny and more, it might only be a matter of time before we see more Sabres forwards in the Hall of Fame.
French Connection: Perreault, Martin And Robert
There is no doubt that the starting line of forwards on the All-Sabres team has to be the French Connection of Perreault, Martin and Rene Robert.
[See Also: The Top 10 NHL Lines]
Perreault was the first player drafted by the Sabres in 1970 after the Sabres won a spin of the wheel with their expansion cousins, the Vancouver Canucks. It turned out to be one of the best things to happen to the organization. Perreault played 17 seasons all with the Sabres and is still the team’s all-time leader in games played (1,191), goals (512), points (1,326) and game winning goals (81).
In 1971, Perreault was joined by Rick Martin who the Sabres selected with their first pick in the draft. Martin is second on the team’s all-time goals list (368) and third in points (804). He remained with the team until 1981.
Finally, the third member of the French Connection, Rene Robert was acquired in a trade from the Pittsburgh Penguins near the end of the 1972 season, thus completing the line. In eight seasons with the Sabres, Robert scored 222 goals and had 552 points. He was later traded to Colorado.
Line Two: LaFontaine, Hawerchuk And Gare
Sticking with the Sabres Hall of Fame forwards, two of the next three players on the team are also in the hall, while the third has his number hanging from the rafters at First Niagara Centre.
Pat “La La” LaFontaine, as once announced by the great Rick Jeanerette, played in Buffalo from 1991 to 1997. He scored 285 points including 227 goals during that time. When he retired in 1998, he was the second all-time U.S born scorer. One of Lafontaine’s greatest accomplishments was returning from a knee injury that kept him out for most of the 1993-94 season, but the next season he returned in a big way and was named the league’s recipient of the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy.
Dale Hawerchuk made his impact as a member of the Winnipeg Jets, but still had plenty in the tank when he got to Buffalo in 1990. In five seasons, he still managed to average a point per game and finished with 385 points for the Sabres, including 110 goals.
Danny Gare might not be in the Hockey Hall of Fame, but he does have his number retired by the Sabres. Gare played for the Sabres from 1974 to 1982. Impressively, he scored 18 seconds into his first NHL shift. In 503 games with the Sabres, Gare was a point per game player finishing with 500 points, 267 of them goals.
Line Three: Andreychuk, Ramsay And Luce
The next trio of players are a solid group who all have or might be part of future hall of fame conversations.
Dave Andreychuk was drafted by the Sabres out of the nearby Oshawa Generals program in the Ontario Hockey League. He holds down second place on the Sabres all-time scoring list with 804 points. He is third in goals with 368 and second in assists at 436. What made Andreychuk special was his ability on the man advantage. He scored 161 power play goals, which is a franchise record, but over the course of his career scored an NHL-record 274. He has played 1639 games, the sixth most in history, 837 of those were with the Sabres.
Craig Ramsay will forever go down in Sabres history as one of the best defensive forwards. Ramsay holds the franchise-record for +/- with Buffalo at +328. In 1985, his final season in the league, Ramsay was finally rewarded for his defensive play with the Frank J. Selke Trophy. He played his entire 14-season career with the Sabres and finished with 672 points (382 goals). Ramsay also holds the franchise record for most short-handed goals with 27.
Don Luce’s name appears near the top of every statistical category in Sabres History. He has played the fifth most games by a forward at 766, scored 527 points, has the second best +/- at +216, the second most short-handed goals (25) and fifth most shots. After being drafted by the New York Rangers in 1969, he bounced to Detroit before landing in Buffalo. He spent 10 seasons with the club where he put up the best numbers of his career. In 1975, Luce was awarded the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy.
Line Four: Mogilny, Vanek And Ray
When you look at early 90s Sabres teams, you cannot help but remember some of the speed and quickness that was displayed by Alexander Mogilny. After winning a gold medal with the Soviet Union in the 1988 Winter Olympics he joined the Sabres in 1989. He remained there until 1995 but scored 444 points in just 381 games. In the 1992-93 season Mogilny scored 76 goals and tied as the league’s goal-scoring leader. He was a six time All-Star during his career, a Stanley Cup champion, with New Jersey, and captured the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy in 2003.
Much like part one of this team, the forwards group features a current Buffalo Sabres player: Thomas Vanek. Vanek is the most dangerous current offensive threat on the team and has never had a season with fewer than 20 goals. During his 585-game career with Buffalo, he has 488 points. In 2009, he was an All-Star, he was named to the 2007 Second All-Star Team, played in the Young Stars game and won the Plus/Minus Award at +47 all in that same year.
The final player on the team adds something different than the above players but still is always mentioned as one of the team’s more memorable players. You cannot have an All-Sabres team without Rob Ray. Ray played the third most games by a forward with 889 and totaled a whopping 3,189 penalty minutes, a number that is fifth all-time in the NHL. Ray was never afraid to drop the gloves, which provided for dynamic moments. In 1999, Ray was awarded the King Clancy Memorial Trophy for exemplifying leadership qualities on and off the ice.
http://youtu.be/UVxWMy-dTDo
And with that, this writer’s All-Sabres team is wrapped up. Forwards are a tough group with the Sabres because of how many great ones there are. Still, when looking at the players that have come through the organization in all positions it is hard to fathom that they have not brought a Stanley Cup to the City of Buffalo. That task has been given to the next wave of players who will have to be great if they hope to crack future All-Time Sabres teams.RAMALLAH, January 7, 2017 (WAFA) – If US President-elect Donald Trump moves the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as he and his staff had said he would after he takes office later this month, then he would have declared the peace process dead, secretary general of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Saeb Erekat said on Saturday.
He told Voice of Palestine radio that moving the embassy to Jerusalem is recognition of Israel’s annexation of the occupied city, which means destroying all chances of peace.
“We call on the United States not to do this,” he said, “because if it is done, it means recognition of Israeli annexation of Jerusalem, which means destroying the peace process and ending all chances of peace,” said Erekat.
“We hope the US will be wiser than to adopt such a step,” he said.
The PLO official said if the new US administration proceeds with moving the embassy to Jerusalem, then the Palestinians will definitely act. “We are considering in the PLO what to do,” he said.
Erekat said instead of holding Israel accountable for its “crimes” against the Palestinian people and compel it to implement United Nations Security Council resolution 2334 adopted last month which condemned Israeli settlements, it is being rewarded and treated as a country above the law.
“Israel is violating all laws,” he said. “For this reason, we are going to ask the signatories to the Geneva Convention and the UN General Assembly to act in order to have this resolution implemented,” explaining that even though the resolution did not come under Article 7, which allows use of force to implement a Security Council resolution, it did come under Article 6, which also compels states to enforce it.
Erekat was not the only one who warned of dire consequences if the new Trump administration changes long standing US and world policy toward the Palestinian conflict with Israel and which refuses to recognize Israel’s control over the territories it occupied in June 1967.
President Mahmoud Abbas had also described talk about moving the embassy to Jerusalem as “an aggression,” warning that “it is a red line, which we will not accept,” and which will enter the region and world peace into a crisis that will be difficult to come out from.
US Secretary of State John Kerry had also warned of an explosion in the region if the embassy is moved to Jerusalem.
“You’d have an explosion, an absolute explosion in the region, not just in the West Bank, and perhaps even in Israel itself, but throughout the region,” he told the American TV station CBS.
“If all of a sudden, Jerusalem is declared to be the location of our embassy, that has issues of sovereignty, issues of law that would deem to be affected by that move and by the United States acquiescing in that move and that would have profound impact on the readiness of Jordan and Egypt to be able to be supportive and engaged with Israel as they are today,” warned Kerry.
M.K.How To Teach Children That Failure Is The Secret To Success
Enlarge this image toggle caption CAP/Getty Images CAP/Getty Images
Is failure a positive opportunity to learn and grow, or is it a negative experience that hinders success? How parents answer that question has a big influence on how much children think they can improve their intelligence through hard work, a study says.
"Parents are a really critical force in child development when you think about how motivation and mindsets develop," says Kyla Haimovitz, a professor of psychology at Stanford University. She coauthored the study, published in Psychological Science with colleague Carol Dweck, who pioneered research on mindsets. "Parents have this powerful effect really early on and throughout childhood to send messages about what is failure, how to respond to it."
Although there's been a lot of research on how these forces play out, relatively little looks at what parents can do to motivate their kids in school, Haimovitz says. This study begins filling that gap.
"There is a fair amount of evidence showing that when children view their abilities as more malleable and something they can change over time, then they deal with obstacles in a more constructive way," says Gail Heyman, a professor of psychology at the University of California at San Diego who was not involved in this study.
But communicating that message to children is not simple.
"Parents need to represent this to their kids in the ways they react about their kids' failures and setbacks," Haimovitz says. "We need to really think about what's visible to the other person, what message I'm sending in terms of my words and my deeds."
In other words, if a child comes home with a D on a math test, how a parent responds will influence how the child perceives their own ability to learn math. Even a well-intentioned, comforting response of "It's OK, you're still a great writer" may send the message that it's time to give up on math rather than learn from the problems they got wrong, Haimovitz explains.
She and Dweck conducted a series of smaller studies to explore how the interactions between parents' failure and intelligence mindsets affected their children's beliefs about intelligence.
First they interviewed 73 parents and their fourth- and fifth-grade children about their beliefs on failure and intelligence. The parents were mostly mothers with at least a college degree; they lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. The questions focused on whether they viewed intelligence as something that could change and whether they saw failure as positive, facilitating growth and enhancing productivity or as negative, debilitating and inhibiting learning.
The way children perceived "being smart" was not related to how their parents perceived intelligence, but it was related to how their parents reacted toward failure.
"Parents who had more of a failure-is-debilitating mindset had children who were significantly more likely to believe that intelligence is fixed," they found, even after accounting for how parents perceived their children's academic success.
"The more parents believed that failure is debilitating, the more likely their children were to see them as concerned with their performance outcomes and grades rather than their learning and improvement," the study found.
Then the researchers surveyed 160 different parents online to find out how they would respond to their child coming home with a failing quiz grade. Those who saw failure as negative were more likely to worry about their child's abilities in that subject or to comfort their child about not being talented in all subjects. But parents who saw failure as an opportunity were more likely to ask their child what they learned from the quiz, what they still can learn and whether asking the teacher for help would be useful.
Through two more surveys of 102 Bay Area parents and their children and 100 fourth- and fifth-grade students, the researchers found that children could correctly identify their parents' beliefs about failure but not necessarily about intelligence — and it was the former that matched up with the children's own beliefs about intelligence. Finally, the researchers conducted a randomized experiment with 132 parents to discover whether parents' failure beliefs directly cause their children's beliefs through parents' reactions to failure: they did.
"The takeaway is that when your child is struggling on something or has setbacks, don't focus on their abilities, focus on what they can learn from it," Haimovitz says. One way, she says, is to ask a child: "How can you use this as a jumping-off point?"
But it's unclear how much the study's findings relate to children of various ethnic, racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. Related research Heyman has done in China revealed a mixed bag in terms of results.
"Cultures have very different beliefs about effort and ability, and asking subtly different questions you can get different answers," Heyman says.
Whereas academic success often correlates with athletic or social success among white students, the same is not necessarily true among black or Latino students, according to Cleopatra Abdou, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Southern California. What is consistent across cultures, however, is the powerful influence that beliefs people internalize as children follow them through life.
"The messages we get from our parents, whether explicitly or symbolically or subconsciously, stay with us and are very hard to unlearn and to overcome" if they're not helpful, she says. "Sometimes we have internalized faulty beliefs or beliefs that don't serve us."
Further, taking the learn-from-failure message too far might backfire eventually. "If you're being told this message you can learn anything and you've done everything you can and you're not getting anywhere, then maybe at a certain point you say you're going to say I just don't believe this," she adds.
Further, children's mindsets can also be influenced by their temperament, such as their tolerance for frustration, Heyman says.
"One thing we do know in recent years, there's too much blaming of parents," Heyman says. "Temperament is extremely important and it's biologically based, and to deny that causes all kinds of problems."
The challenge for parents is to support children without setting them up for failure.
"There's this very difficult fine line between parents and teachers helping children enough so that they can do things on their own that they couldn't do otherwise but not to help them so much that they expect other people to do it for them and don't get pulled up to a higher level," Heyman says. "You slowly pull back as the kids get better on their own, but not let them flail around so much that they get frustrated and give up."
Tara Haelle is the co-author of The Informed Parent: A Science-Based Resource for Your Child's First Four Years. She's on Twitter: @tarahaelleThe Little Chief Front Load Smoker (Smokehouse Products) has a medium size with four grills. It operates with 250 watts. It is designed perfectly for any type of game meat, poultry, fish, beef and pork. It is made of aluminum and it has been a great item for many years now. It has the following items; flavor pan, smoker, electric cord, and grilling racks. It is to unload when the meat is ready. You just do it as an oven from the front. Cleaning is very easy. The materials used to make the smoker are very durable and it does not require any assembling you just buy it and start using it.
See Product Details: Smokehouse Products Little Chief Front Load Smoker
You can decide to make your since it is possible to make it given that you have all what is needed. But it can be much expensive in obtaining all the items needed to build up a Smoker. Better to buy Little Chief Front Load Smoker than having to come up with yours. I have been using mine for business over twelve years now and it works pretty. There is no problem carrying it when relocating since I have done so six times, but it is still in good condition. It is recently that I bought one for my family back at home at a very cheap price and I hope it will serve them as the one that I have been using.
When buying Little Chief Front Load Smoker you need to be keen on usage specifics to avoid unnecessary accidents. Failure to follow the given instructions means that you already plan to fail in using this product. The first things before you find a better place where you install familiarize yourself with the requirements. Here are a few that you must do according to the. Make sure you use it outside this is because of high temperature so make sure that the place at which you are using it is open. The Little Chief Front Load Smoker must be at least two feet away from the combustible materials. The surface to which you are using it on can either be concrete or a surface that is non-combustible. Ensure that you use the smoker with 110volts
I found this video on youtube.com: Little Chief Electric Smoker (review) – A quick look at the Little Chief Smoker [front load model]
Merits
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Demerits
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So as should be obvious I have more particular dissensions than compliments, yet I evaluated “Smokehouse Products Little Chief Front Load Smoker” as 4.6 stars. So none of these grumblings are major issues, and all together are worth 0.4 star. I'd prescribe this item to any individual who needs a passage level smoker, which is all a great many people need.NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose in another turbulent session on Tuesday as a pullback in oil prices eased worries about consumer and business spending, while financial shares gained after the Fed chairman said he may keep open a lifeline for banks.
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, July 8, 2008. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Technology and retail companies bounced back after a sharp sell-off last week, helping the S&P 500 stave off a bear market for another day. Wal-Mart (WMT.N) was the biggest boost to the Dow, and Apple (AAPL.O) rose ahead of Friday’s new iPhone launch, helping the Nasdaq.
The positive mood continued after the closing bell, with aluminum producer Alcoa Inc (AA.N) posting stronger-than-expected results. Its shares rose more than 5 percent after the bell.
Financial shares climbed after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in a speech that the U.S. central bank may extend emergency lending facilities for big Wall Street banks past year-end, showing the Fed is determined to stop the housing-inspired credit crisis from wreaking further havoc on the economy.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson added to that optimism when he said Treasury was working on ways to shore up mortgage financing. And JPMorgan Chase & Co’s (JPM.N) chief executive, Jamie Dimon, said in a speech that the future of the U.S. economy is bright, though more short-term suffering is ahead.
“You had two major officials today who made clear that they will do everything possible to shore up the housing market,” said Andrew Harding, chief investment officer for fixed-income at Allegiant Asset Management in Cleveland.
The Dow Jones industrial average.DJI jumped 152.25 points, or 1.36 percent, at 11,384.21, while the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.SPX gained 21.39 points, or 1.71 percent, to 1,273.70.
The Nasdaq Composite Index.IXIC rose 51.10 points, or 2.28 percent, at 2,294.42, snapping a 3-day losing streak.
Fannie Mae FNM.N and Freddie Mac FRE.N shares rebounded from 15-year lows, after the mortgage finance companies’ main regulator said proposed accounting rules should not force them to raise more capital. The comments eased fears the companies’ value would be diluted by a massive capital increase.
Fannie Mae shares rose 11.9 percent to $17.62 and Freddie Mac shares jump 13 percent to $13.46.
General Electric (GE.N) shares rose 3.5 percent to $28.06, and were the top boost to the S&P 500, just days before the economic bellwether releases its second-quarter earnings. Wal-Mart added 3.9 percent to $59.11.
Apple gained 2.5 percent to $179.55. Its new iPhone sold out online in Britain ahead of Friday’s launch, defying general consumer gloom. Google (GOOG.O) rose nearly 2 percent to $554.53 and IBM (IBM.N) was also up almost 2 percent to $123.88.
An index of S&P financial shares.GSPF rose 5.7 percent.
JPMorgan shares rose 5.1 percent to $35.77.
A drop of more than 4 percent in U.S. crude prices made energy companies the top drags on the S&P and the Dow.
Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) slid 1.2 percent to $85.94, Chevron Corp (CVX.N) also fell 1.1 percent to $95.79, and oil services company Schlumberger (SLB.N) declined 3.3 percent to $96.19.
Economic data released on Tuesday showed consumers still hurting, however. Pending sales of previously owned homes plummeted 4.7 percent in May, and sales at chain stores, though improved last week, were weaker in June.
Trading was moderate on the New York Stock Exchange, with about 1.7 billion shares changing hands, below last year’s estimated daily average of roughly 1.9 billion, while on Nasdaq, about 2.49 billion shares traded, above last year’s daily average of 2.17 billion.
Advancing stocks outnumbered declining ones by about 2 to 1 on NYSE and Nasdaq.It’s the little things that lift this car from the merely great to the extraordinary. The fact that you have to pay attention if you want to get it right. It’s scythingly fast, but get the wrong gear and there’s no turbo-torque get-out-of-jail-free card to play, no barmy amount of instant hit that means you can enter a corner at walking pace and still be competitive on the next straight. The engine that nevertheless seems to always be on your side, a fantastic, howling, encouraging thing, full of character and soul. Get a series of corners just right in a 911R and it feels like you’ve achieved. Get them wrong and it just makes you want to try again until you do. The steering is fabulous, the body control complete – with just enough lean to let you know what’s going on with all four points of the car.The FWCM 2013 shall be played over a maximum of twelve (12) games and the winner of the match shall be the first player to score 6.5 points or more. If the scores are level after the regular twelve (12) games, after a new drawing of colors, four (4) tie-break games shall be played. The games shall be played using the electronic clock starting with 25 minutes for each player with an increment of 10 seconds after each move. In case the match is still drawn, a match of 2 games shall be played with a time control of 5 minutes plus 3 seconds increment after each move. In case of a level score, another 2-game match will be played to determine a winner. If still there is no winner after 5 such matches (total 10 games), one sudden-death game will be played. Detailed regulations here
their mob unless they are scared," Ms Dixon said. "It may have been chased by dogs or scared by off road motorbikes. "It’s great that the City of Mandurah and Department can come together to help this kangaroo." Latest News TAB sale could cheap Michael Kors "cripple" country racingNew oven helps families at Pat Thomas HouseAshes 2015: not here to sunbake Australia make fun of England camp in SpainProposed citizenship changes for dual nationals involved in terrorism introduced into ParliamentQ has lost the plot, says cabinet minister Peter Dutton Editor Picks The carnage has to stop ArriveAlive OPINIONSouth West warned as hunt continues for "travelling conmen" Police cheap gucci shoes hunt five burglars in WaroonaFans flock to Mandurah foreshore for replica cheap Michael Kors a show with a bit of X FactorMandurah kids are safety champsTAB sale could "cripple" country racingMan charged over Australind Jewellers ram raid Jail time for fraudsterBushfire disaster looming: Northcliffe fire captainOut of the fire ing line and intoKorey Elizabeth Huebner Korey Elizabeth Huebner, 24, of Hershey, wholesale michael kors passed away Jan. 28, 2013 as the result of an automobile accident. She was born Oct. cheap michael kors 5, 1988 to Gene and Diane (Wright) Huebner in North Platte. She attended K 12 at Hershey Public Schools, graduating as salutatorian in 2007. Korey attended the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and graduated from the University of Nebraska Medical Center with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 2012. Since graduation, she has been employed by South Lake Village Rehabilitation Center in Lincoln as an RN. Korey was a member of Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church, Alpha Phi Sorority, and the coordinator of the More Beautiful You Legacy Program for young women. Korey was an inspiration to everyone in her life and will be fondly remembered and cherished by her mother, Diane; sister, Lyndee (Chris) Haertel, brother, Jake Huebner; sisters, Megan Huebner (Kolby Van Newkirk) and Kellen (Adam) Hohman; and her grandmothers, Velma Wright and Miriam Huebner. She will be especially missed by her niece and nephew, Ayzlee and Kade cheap handbags sale Haertel. She was blessed with many loving aunts, uncles, relatives and friends. She was preceded in death by her dad, Gene Huebner Jr., Christian Louboutin Online grandfathers; Fred Wright and Eugene Huebner Sr., her aunt Cornell Wright and her cousins, wholesale fake handbags James and Joseph Holz. A memorial has been established in her memory. Saturday, February 2, 2013 at the Hershey replica Michael Kors High School East Gymnasium Michael Kors handbag outlet in Hershey. Burial will be at the Trinity Lutheran Cemetery south of Hershey. Friday at Carpenter Memorial Chapel in North Platte, which is in charge of arrangements.Articles Connexes?YAOUNDE (Reuters) - Boko Haram attacked a town in northern Cameroon on Monday, killing at least one person, an army source said, less than a week after the group issued threats against the Central African country.
The Nigerian group’s insurgency, which is thought to have killed more than 10,000 people last year, has intensified in recent months and is posing a growing threat to neighbors Cameroon, Niger and Chad.
“They attacked our military base at Kolofata on Monday morning, killing one of our soldiers and wounding many others,” said a source in the Cameroonian special forces who requested anonymity. Local paper L’Oeil du Sahel also reported the morning attack, saying the Islamic group had since been pushed back from the town.
Last week, a man purporting to be the leader of the Nigerian militant sect, Abubakar Shekau, threatened to intensify violence in Cameroon unless it scraps its constitution and embraces Islam.
Cameroon’s President Biya, who was addressed in the video, has stepped up security in the far north in recent months but cross-border raids from Boko Haram’s stronghold in Nigeria still occur.
He has appealed for international military help to fight Boko Haram. Chad also called for international aid last week after 2,000 refugees fled Boko Haram attacks and crossed the border from Nigeria into Chad.The Allman Brothers Band are wrapping up their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame career with six shows at the Beacon Theatre which began last night and will run through Tuesday, Oct. 28.
This year, the band’s 45th anniversary, has been tumultuous. In January, guitarists Derek Trucks and Warren Haynes announced in a joint statement that they would not perform with the band after this year. In March, their annual performances at the Beacon Theatre were cut short due to Gregg Allman’s illness, announced by the band as bronchitis. After completing eight shows, the group performed two without their namesake singer before postponing the final four. Those shows, plus two additional concerts, are what the band is about to perform.
Throughout the year, Gregg Allman and drummer Butch Trucks (Derek’s uncle) have made varying statements about whether or not the original members, which include drummer Jaimoe, intend to replace the guitarists and continue.The Men In The Union and Confederate Armies
Although many of those in both armies were mere youngsters in age at the time of their enlistments, they soon became men.
All but 1.5 per cent of the enlisted men in the Federal Army were between 18 and 46 at the time of their enlistment; and all but 3.3 per cent of the officers fell into that age bracket. The average age was slightly under 26 years (25.8083) at time of enlistment.
There were 127 Northern soldiers recorded as being age 13; 330 age I4; 773 age 15; 2758 age 16; 6425 age 17; 133,475 age 18; 90,215 age 19; 71,058 age 20; 97,136 age 21. From there on it gradually went down to 7012 age 45; 967 age 46; and 2366 age 50 or over.
As to physical characteristics, the average height of the Federal soldier was put at 5 feet, 8¼ inches. The tallest man authentically recorded was said to be Capt. Van Buskirk of the Twenty-seventh Indiana, who stood 6 feet, 10½ inches. The shortest man as far as records go was a member of the 192nd Ohio, and at the age of 24 he measured 3 feet, 4 inches in height.
Incomplete records indicate the average weight was 143¼ pounds. About 13 per cent had black hair, 25 per cent dark hair, 30 per cent brown, 24 per cent light, 4 per cent sandy, 3 per cent red, and 1 per cent gray hair. Forty-five per cent of the Yankees had blue eyes, 24 per cent gray, 13 per cent hazel, 10 per cent dark, and 8 per cent black.
In prewar occupations some 48 per cent of the Yankees were farmers, 24 per cent mechanics, 16 per cent laborers, 5 per cent in "commercial pursuits," 3 per cent professional men, and 4 per cent miscellaneous.
As to nativity of Northerners, basing the Army on a total of 2,000,000, about three fourths were native Americans. Of the 500,000 foreign-born, about 175,000 were from Germany, 150,000 from Ireland, 50,000 from England, 50,000 from British America, and 75,000 from other countries.
The vast majority of soldiers on both sides were volunteers. There were 16,367 in the Regular Army in 1861. This increased to 25,463 by January 1, 1863, and then dropped to 21,669 by March 31, i865. There was a militia (on paper at least) in most states, but as an actual force it had before the war fallen into ineffectual decay and cannot he said to have been more than an institution for occasional parades, festivals, or social events.
In the North the draft act of 1863 resulted in four different enrollments: July, 1863; March, 1864; July, 1864; and December, 1864. These drafts resulted in a total of 249,259 men being held to service. Of this total, some 86,724 paid commutation to be relieved of service, which brought in $26,366,316.78. There were actually 162,535 men raised by the draft. Of this total only 46,347 men were held to personal service; 116,188 furnished substitutes. Thus the draft provided only about 6 per cent of the total Federal enlistments in the Army. Nevertheless the drafts main effect seems to have been to stimulate enlistments of volunteers who made up the great bulk of the manpower.
In July of 1862, the Federal Congress authorized the acceptance of Negroes for labor and military service. The first major recruiting began in Louisiana in September of 1862. A few units were organized by states, but for the most part they were considered Federal troops. A total of 178,892 Negroes officially served in the Union Army, of whom 134,111 were from slave states, with some 93,346 of these from seceded states. They participated in r66 regiments including 145 infantry regiments, 12 regiments of heavy artillery, 1 regiment of light artillery, 1 of engineers, and 7 cavalry regiments. Losses in Negro troops were 2,751 men killed or mortally wounded; 29,618 died of disease. Among the 7,122 white officers, 143 were killed or mortally wounded and 138 died of disease.
In the Confederacy problems of manpower were inherently much greater. Here, as in the North, conscription undoubtedly served to keep men in the Army and to stimulate enlistments and reenlistments far more effectively than it did to provide manpower directly. Furthermore, national conscription was contrary to the theories of local and personal autonomy that formed the spiritual background of the Confederacy. Conflicts with state and local authorities, large exemptions, and substitutions all contributed to the conscription problem. Records are not available as to the effects of conscription in the Confederacy, but its impact both for good and evil is readily apparent. The inescapable fact is that the South urgently needed skilled manpower at home to keep the economy rolling; at the same time the Confederacy desperately needed men for the armies. With too few men to meet both needs, the two necessities could not be reconciled.
The Confederate Congress in an act of April 16, 1862, adopted conscription, which included substitution. This was the first military draft in the history of the United States. The substitution measure was repealed December 28, 1863. An act of February 17, 1864, authorized use of Negroes, free and slave, as laborers in units designed for manifold duties. It was not until March 13, 1865, and after much debate, that provision was made for the use of slaves as soldiers. The move came far too late to be of significance militarily.
Incomplete reports show that 81,993 conscripts were drafted in the Confederate states east of the Mississippi from April 16, 1862, until early 1865.
Much is often made of the supposition that a disproportionately large number of West Point graduates went South. While it is of course true that many exceptionally capable officers did follow their states into secession, a majority of trained officers stayed with the Union. Of the 1249 known living graduates when the war commenced, 89 per cent served in either the Union or Confederate armies. Of this 89 per cent nearly three fourths were in the Federal armies. While figures vary, it is recorded |
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Phantom 575 Basic Phantom 575 Pro Phantom 65 LED Spot Phantom 70 LED Wash Phantom 75 LED Beam Phantom 75 LED Spot Phantom 95 LED Spot Phantom KV195 Phantom Series Pharos PHB-300E Phenix 300B Pheonix RGY Phoenix RBP Phoenix RGY PHS-1200E PHS-150 PHS-200 PHS-220 PHS-250 PHS-260 PHS-265 PHS-280 PHS-300E PHS-575 PHS-710 PHS-750E PHW-1200E PHW-260 PHW-280 PHW-575 PHW-710 PHW-750E PHX LED Profile Spot RGBA PHX LED Profile Spot RGBW PHX LED Profile Spot White Pica Cube 4C Pica Cube UV Pica Cube WNC PicoBeam 30 PicoSpot 20 LED PicoSpot 45 LED PicoWash 40 PicoWash 40Z PIERCE 33 PIGI S Pilot 1200 Pilot 150 Pilot 250 Pilot 300 Pilot 575 Pilot Wash 1200 Pilot Wash 250 Pilot Wash 575 Pin Scan PinLite Led RGB PinLite Led White Pinspot LED Quad DMX Pinwheel RGB Pipeline 4 Banks Pipeline 4 Banks Individual Pipeline 4 Way Controller Pipeline 4 Way Controller Individual Pirouette PIX 18 PIX 240 Pix120 PIXBAR 200 PRO PIXBAR 300 PRO PIXBAR 400 PRO PIXBAR 450C PRO PIXBAR 500 PRO PIXBAR 600 PRO PIXBAR 650C PRO PIXBAR12x12 PIXBAR12x3 PIXBAR12x8 PixBeam PIXBELT PixCube16 Pixel 7 Zoom Extreme Pixel Bar Pixel Bar 12 PIXEL BAR 8 Pixel Bar 8 COB PIXEL BAR IP Series Pixel Beam 160 RGBW Pixel Beam 7 Pixel Blade 7 Pixel Bubble 80 MKII Pixel Drive 8 Pixel Moving Bar Pixel Patt Pixel Pulse Bar PIXEL SQUARE Pixel Square 16 COB Pixel Square 25 COB PixelArc 6way Pixelbar Pixelbar 256 PixelBeam PixelBrick 22 RGBA PixelDrive PixelDriveM2 PixelEight Pixellicious Pixellicious Mini Pixellicious2 Pixelline 1044 Pixelline 110ec PixelLine Micro W PixelMax Wash PixelPar PixelPar 90 PIXELS 18x3 PixelStorm PixelStorm 240 PixelStorm COB Mini Pixeltrack Pro PIXI5WL PIXIEBEAM PIXIESPOT PIXIEWASH PixKolor PixlSTIK PixMob PRO2.1 PIXPAN16 PIXPAN9E PiXPar 12 PiXPar 24 PIXROLL12TRI PIXROLL6 PIXYLINE 18 FCW PL1 LED Luminaire PL243 Washer PL3 LED Luminaire Plano Spot 7TC Plano Spot LED Plasma 3K RGB PLASMAWAVE 1 Platinum 1200 Wash Platinum Beam 15R Pro Platinum Beam 5R Platinum Beam 5R Extreme Platinum BX Platinum CLS-1 Platinum CLS-2 Platinum CLS-3 Platinum FLX Platinum HFX Platinum LED RGB BAR 504 Platinum LED Studio TRI PAR Platinum Line LED Multi Spot Platinum Profile 35 Pro Platinum Profile LED Platinum SBX Platinum Seven Platinum Spot 15R B Platinum Spot 15R Pro Platinum Spot 35 Pro Platinum Spot 5R Platinum Spot 5R Pro Platinum Spot III Platinum Spot LED Platinum Spot LED II Platinum Spot LED Pro II Platinum TOUR PIX PRO 16x8 Platinum Wash 16R Pro Platinum Wash LED Zoom Platinum Wash ZFX Pro Platinum Wash ZFX Pro XL PLB-130 PLB-15R PLB-230 PLB-280 PLCYC LED PLFRESNEL1 LED MKII PLPROFILE1 LED PLS-5R PLUTO 4000XE PML MK II Pocket Pro Pocket Scan Pointy 600 POLAR1000 POLAR3000 Polaris POP 337 Beam POP 354 Popscan Power 7 Power Fog Industrial Power N Power Par 36 Power Spot 250 Power Spot 575IE Power Spot 575II Power Spot 700 Power Spot 700 CMY Power Spot 9 Q5 Power Spot 9 Q6 Tour Power Strobe 1500 DMX Power Wash 250 Power Wash 250 Basic Power Wash 575E Powerbar 2 Powerbar 4 Powerline 18 RGB POWERMATRIX5x5-RGB POWERPIXEL4-RGB POWERPIXEL8-RGB PowerScan 150 PowerScan 150R PowerScan 250MR Powershine MK2 D RGBW PowerSoft PowerSpot PP1410 PP1810 PR LED PAR PR-5000 Beam PR-5000 Framing PR-5000 Spot PR-5000 Wash PR-6000 Spot PR-6800 PR-6810 PR-6820 PR-6830 Precision DMX Premier 120 Premier 120 MK2 PRIME Princess Beam 7 Pro 19Z Pro Baton PRO BEAMER MK2 PRO BEAMER ZOOM Pro Color Strip Pro LED Par RGBWAUV Pro Presenter PRO Slim Strobe SMD 5630 Pro Slimpar 18 PRO SlimPAR-7 HCL PRO SlimPAR-7 QCL RGBA PRO SlimPAR-7 QCL RGBW Pro Spot 250 Pro Stage 150 RGBW Pro Stage 150 White PRO Tri LED Starcloth Controller Pro Video Player Pro-1600RGB Pro-5000RGB Pro-700RGB Pro-800RGB Pro-Motion 1200 Pro-V8 ProBar ProBar RGB PROCBET WASH 19-15Z RGBW Profile Profile 575 PROFILE 75 BEAM LED PROFILE 75 SPOT LED Profile Panel RGB Profile Panel RGBA Profile Spot 250F Profile Spot PZM PROFX60 Projector 1 Projector 2 ProLED 120-3MH ProLED 54-3 ProMover P64 ProPar 336 ProPar 36 LED II ProPar 56RGB ProPar 7-4 ProPar Quadra Propar RGBW Propar RGBW 12x8 Propar RGBWAU ProPar Seven 6 ProPar V12 ProPar Z19 CWWW ProPar Z19 RGBW ProPresenter 6 ProScan 250 MSD Prospero Laser Blue ProSpot 250 LX ProSpot 300 ProSpot 50 ProSpot 500 ProSpot 575 LX Proteus Beam Proteus Hybrid Protron 3K Protron 3K Color Protron Color Protron Eclypse ProTron LED Protron Star ProWash 250 LX ProWash 575 LX PSC-250 PSD 518 PSD-1415-IP PSYCO2JET PT PT-MW3615 PT-P1815Z PT160B PT160B-R PT160S PT189B-R PT320B-R PTB-2R Puma Puma 50 Punch LED Pro Punch Plus Punisher X250 PUP PVP 2 Global Fixture PVP 2 Layer PVP 3 Layer PVP 3 Workspace PX249 PXO Beam Q-10 Q-2 Q-2 W Q-7 Q-7 W Q-Beam 260 LED Q-QB Q-Rainbow RGBX Q-Roll 250 Q-Scan 250 Q-Spot 150 Q-Spot 160 LED Q-Spot 200 Q-Spot 250 Q-Spot 260 LED Q-Spot 300 Q-Spot 360 LED Q-Spot 460 LED Q-Spot 560 LED Q-Spot 575 Q-Spot RGBW Q-Spot White Q-Stick RGBW Q-Wash 250 Q-Wash 260 LED Q-Wash 360Z LED Q-Wash 419Z LED Q-Wash 436Z LED Q-Wash 560Z LED Q-Wash 575 Q-Wash LED Q1500S Q4 QFX QM(E)575S QM(E)575W QM(E)700S QM(E)700W QME700P QNEX 250 QS250S QS250W QT QUAD Quad 10 Quad Gem DMX Quad LED Moving Beam Quad LED Wash Zoom Quad Par Profile 5x8W RGBW Quad Phase Quad Phase HP Quad Scan LED QUAD8-FX QUADBAR1631 QuadBeamRG QUADCOLOR MINI PAR QuadPAR18 Quadralite Quadro V1.2 QUADRO18UTRI QuadRoll 40 Quantum 120 Quantum 3000 Quantum c80 Quasar Quattro Scan LED Radiance Hazer Radiant Laser 10-A Radiant Laser 10-B Radiant Laser 10-C Radius 2-0 Rafleflash 4 Rain Spot 575 Rainbow 250 Rainbow PP II RAMBO SMURFS Rapid QB1 RGBA RAPTOR RAVE SPOT Ray Tracer Quad Ray Tracer X Quad Ray1R Rayzor 360Z Rayzor Beam 2R Rayzor Q12 Rayzor Q12 Zoom Rayzor Q7 RAZER 440 Razor 500 Razor 510 Razor P7 RAZOR440 RazorLite Led RBG Ready 365 Red Red Fat Beam Laser Bar REDRAMPLZR REDWash 3.192 Reflection LEDKo FullSpectrum Reflection LEDKo VariWhite REFLEX Reflex LED DMX Refresh RegoLed Renegade XB Renegade XB2 RentalMini36-Tri Resolume Arena 3 Composition Resolume Arena 3 Layer Resolume Arena 4 Composition Resolume Arena 4 Layer Resolume Arena 5 Composition Resolume Arena 5 Layer Resolume Arena 6 Composition Resolume Arena 6 Layer Retro Flat Par 18x12W RGBW Retron LED 575 Rev Beam 180 RevEAL Profile Revo 4 Revo Burst Revo III Revo Roll LED Revo Sweep Revo Xpress Revolution Revolution 700 RevoPRO RevueLED 120 RGBW RezoTube Pack RG-230B RG-M08 RG-M17 RG-M17A RGB RGB 2500 RGB 3000 RGB 4000 RGB 5000 RGB 6000 RGB BAR 252 RGB LED Dance Floor RGB LED PAR 64 RGB LED PIXEL BAR RGB LED Stick RGB LED-PAR 36 RGB LED-PAR 56 RGB NanoLed-C RGB Pixel RGB Quasar Pro 45K RGB400 DMX RGBA RGBA Pixel RGBA1 RGBAUV RGBAW RGBAWUV RGBCh RGBL212DMX RGBL222DMX RGBL412DMX RGBL430DMX RGBLaser RGBUV Par RGBW RGBW BeeEye LED RGBW Moving Head Beam RGBW Par RGBW Pixel RGBW Recessed Downlight RGBW V3 RGBWAUV RGBWCh RGBWUV Ribalta Ribbon Lifts Ricochet Right Arm Rikardo 1k5 RIO IP PAR126 RIO IP PAR186 RIO RAZOR360 QUAD RIO ZOOM19 QUAD Rion Hex RLCanvas RLGraphix RLGraphix16 RLMask RLMask16 RLParticle RLSurface RLSurface2 RLText RLText16 RLVideo RLView RLWave RLWave16 Roadie Compact Roadie X-Stream ROBIN 100 LEDBeam ROBIN 1000 LEDBeam ROBIN 1200 LEDWash ROBIN 300 Beam Classic ROBIN 300 LEDWash ROBIN 300 LEDWash+ ROBIN 300 Plasma Spot ROBIN 300 Spot Classic ROBIN 300 Wash Classic ROBIN 300E Beam ROBIN 300E Spot ROBIN 300E Wash ROBIN 600 LEDWash ROBIN 600 LEDWash DL ROBIN 600 LEDWash SW ROBIN 600 LEDWash+ ROBIN 600E Beam ROBIN 600E Spot ROBIN 600E Wash ROBIN 800 LEDWash ROBIN 800 LEDWash DL ROBIN 800 LEDWash SW ROBIN Actor 12 ROBIN Actor 3 ROBIN Actor 6 ROBIN Actor 6 ST DL ROBIN BMFL Blade ROBIN BMFL FollowSpot ROBIN BMFL Spot ROBIN BMFL Wash ROBIN BMFL Wash XF ROBIN BMFL WashBeam ROBIN BMFL WashBeam EV ROBIN ColorStrobe ROBIN CycBar 12 ROBIN CycBar 15 ROBIN CycFX 4 ROBIN CycFX 8 ROBIN Cyclone ROBIN CycPix 12 ROBIN CycWash 12 ROBIN DL4F Wash ROBIN DL4S Profile ROBIN DL4X Spot ROBIN DL7F Wash ROBIN DL7S Profile ROBIN DLF Wash ROBIN DLS Profile ROBIN DLX Spot ROBIN LEDBeam 150 ROBIN Linee ROBIN MegaPointe ROBIN MiniMe ROBIN MiniMe DV ROBIN MiniPointe ROBIN MMX Blade ROBIN MMX Spot ROBIN MMX WashBeam ROBIN ParFect 100 ROBIN ParFect 100 DL ROBIN ParFect 100 SW ROBIN ParFect 150 ROBIN ParFect 150 WF ROBIN ParFect H1 ROBIN ParFect S1 ROBIN Pointe ROBIN Spiider ROBIN Spiider Extended ROBIN Spiider M1 ROBIN Spikie ROBIN Square ROBIN Strobe ROBIN SuperSpikie ROBIN T1 Profile ROBIN Tarrantula ROBIN Viva ROBIN Viva CMY RoboColor II RoboColor II x RoboColor Pro 400 ROBOSCAN 575 RoboScan 812 RoboScan Pro 1220 CMYR RoboScan Pro 1220 IIR RoboScan Pro 1220 RPR RoboScan Pro 1220 XR RoboScan Pro 218 RoboScan Pro 218II RoboScan Pro 518 RoboScan Pro 918 RoboSpot MotionCamera RoboZap RoboZap MSR 1200 ROC-P323Z ROC-WM1915 Rocket 2R Rockinhead RockLite RGBA RockLite RGBAW RockLite RGBW Rogue 5 Beam Moving Bar Rogue R1 Beam Rogue R1 FX-B Rogue R1 Spot Rogue R1 Wash Rogue R1X Spot Rogue R2 Beam Rogue R2 Spot Rogue R2 Wash Rogue R2X Beam Rogue R2X Spot Rogue R3 Spot Rogue R3 Wash Rogue RH1 Hybrid RokBox 5 RGBVW RokBox EXA RokBox InfiniWhite RokBox RGBW ROLLAPIX 100 Rolldrop Roller Scan 5R Rolling-Screens Roto Bar Rotomad ROTOR7i Rotosphere Q3 Royal 3D Royal Sky RPM Wash 720 RS-1000RGBV RS-1500RGB RS-800G RTI NEO SIX RUBIK RUBY RUSH BATTEN 1 HEX RUSH BLINDER 1 WW RUSH Club Smoke Dual RUSH CS Series RUSH DC 1 Aqua RUSH FiberSource 1 RUSH MH 1 Profile RUSH MH 10 Beam FX RUSH MH 11 Beam RUSH MH 2 Wash RUSH MH 3 Beam RUSH MH 4 Beam RUSH MH 5 Profile RUSH MH 6 Wash RUSH MH 6 Wash CT RUSH MH 7 Hybrid RUSH MH 8 Mini Profile RUSH Multibeam 2 RUSH PAR 1 RGBW RUSH PAR 2 CT Zoom RUSH PAR 2 RGBW Zoom RUSH PAR 3 RGB RUSH PAR 4 UV RUSH Scanner 1 LED RUSH Strobe 1 5x5 RUSH Strobe CWL RUSH Wizard S-4 Fresnel S2000 S2500 S500 S500 Hybrid SA 040 SA021 SA035 SA035 Wash SA035B Saber Saber Spot DTW Saber Spot RGBW Salamander Quad Pro Satellite Satura Profile Satura Spot CMY Pro Satura Spot LED Pro Satura Spot LED Pro V2 SB 040 SB-L5019F SC 250 H SC 250 Pro SC-330 SC-370 SC-530 SC-570 SC-780 SC-7R SC-X50 MKII Scan 1200 XT Scan 575 XT Scan-LED 60W Scan7 RGB ScanTron Scanvision 2 SCENA LED 200 SCENA LED 80 SCENA LED 80 FC Scenius Profile Scenius Spot Scenius Unico Scimitar SCL 575 SCN-930 SCN-950 SCOOPSCAN 250 Scorpion 3D RGB Scorpion Bar RG Scorpion Burst GB Scorpion Dual Scorpion GBC Scorpion RG55 Scorpion RVM Scorpion Scan 280 Scorpion Scan RGB EU Scorpion Storm FX RGB Scorpion Storm FXGB Scorpion Storm FXRG Scorpion Storm RG Scorpion Storm RGX Scroller Scroller with Dimmer Scroller+Dimmer SeaChanger SeaChanger LED SeaChanger Nautilus Profile SeaChanger Nautilus Wash SeaChanger Nemo Profile SeaChanger Nemo Wash SeaChanger Studio Dichroics SeaChanger Tungsten Profile SeaChanger XG SeaChanger xGRB Selador Select LED 20-30 Serum ServoBeam 10R ServoBeam 2R ServoBeam 5R ServoColor 300 ServoColor 4K ServoColor 600 ServoColor 60HD ServoColor 770 ServoColor 800 ServoDot 60HD ServoPanel ServoPanel MK2 ServoSpot 250 ServoSpot 500 ServoSpot 575 ServoSpot 600 ServoSpot 6K ServoZoom 10R Set Platform Seven Batten 12 Seven Batten 48 Seven Batten 72 Seven Par 19IP Seven Par 7IP SF-3000 SG ARROW 700SP SGD-3319FX SGE-3318-W SH-LED308 Shaft 5R SHAPESHIFTER C1 SHAPESHIFTER C2 SHAPESHIFTER W1 SHAPESHIFTER W2 SharBar Shard Shark 150 Shark 150-C Shark 250 Shark 250-C Shark Beam FX One Shark Spot One Shark Wash One Shark Wash Zoom One Sharpy Sharpy Beam 230 Sharpy Plus Sharpy Wash 330 Sharpy Wash 330 PC ShineKolor Shirley Shirley MKII Shirley MKIII Shocker 2 Shocker 90 IRC Shocker Panel 180 USB Shooter 180 Shooter 360 Shooting Star Shotlight Wash Show Bar Tri 18x3W RGB Show Batten 100 Show Player Show Spot II SHOWBEAM ShowColor 1200 EB SHOWGUN ShowNET SHOWPIX SI-039 SI-040 SI-043 SI-049F SI-050L SI-053 SI-055 SI-061 SI-063G SI-064 SI-071 SI-083 SI-093 SI-093F SI-094 SI-097F SI-098N SI-099N SI-108 SI-109 SI-110 SI-128Y SI-133A SI-171 SI033 SIDIUS 575 SPOT SIDIUS LED 368 Z Silent Storm Silverado Single 300 Sirius Sirius Beam 230 SIXBAR 1000 SIXBAR 500 SIXPAR 100 SIXPAR 100IP SIXPAR 200IP SIXPAR 300IP SIXPAR Z19 IP SKY Beam 2R Sky Beam 7R Sky Beam 9R SKY BSW 17R SKY COLOR 5000 SkyBox 5 SkyBox EXA SkyPanel S30-C SkyPanel S30-C V.2 SkyPanel S30-RP SkyPanel S60-C SkyPanel S60-C V.2 SkyPanel S60-RP SkyPanel-C V.3 SkyPanel-C V.3 Effects SkyPanel-C V.3 GEL LEE SkyPanel-C V.3 GEL Rosco SkyPanel-C V.3 Source SkyPanel-C V.4 SkyPanel-C V.4 M16-17 GEL LEE SkyPanel-C V.4 M16-17 GEL Rosco SkyPanel-C V.4 M20-21 Source SkyPanel-C V.4 M22-23 Effects SkyPanel-C V.4 M24-25 LE CCT RGBW SkyPanel-C V.4 M26-27 LE HSI SkyPanel-C V.4 M28-29 LE XY SkyPanel-C V.4 M30-31 Ultimate SkyPanel-C V.4 M30-31 Ultimate FX SkyPanel-C V.4 M30-31 Ultimate GEL LEE SkyPanel-C V.4 M30-31 Ultimate GEL Rosco SkyPanel-C V.4 M30-31 Ultimate Source SkyPanel-C V.4 Ultimate Skywriter Skywriter HPX Tour SL BAND 300 CCT SL BAND 300 RGBW SL BAND 300 White SL BAR 620 SL BAR 640 SL BAR 660 SL BAR 720ZT SL BEAM 100 SL BEAM 300 FX SL BEAM 500 FX SL HYDRUS 350 SL LEDSPOT 300 SL NITRO 510 SL NITRO 510C SL PAR 150 Zoom RGBW SL PAR 155 Zoom RGBW SL ParBlazer 100 UV SL PUNCHLITE 220 SL STRIP 10 IP SL STRIP 400 CCT SL STRIP 400 RGBW SL STRIP 400 White SL SUNLED 10 SL WASH 180 SL WASH 350 SL-1006 SL-250 SL-575 SL1 Switch SL3 SLASH SLC WASH Slender Beam Bar Quad SLI FLATSET1-0 SLI MHW HB10 SLI MHW HBXT Slim PAR LP64 SlimBANK TRI-18 SlimBANK UV-18 Slimbar 16 DL RGBWAUV Slimbar 8 DL RGBWAUV SlimBEAM QUAD IRC SlimKolor UHD 1810 Slimline 7Q5 RGBA Slimline 7Q5 RGBW Slimlite RGB Par 56 SlimPANEL TRI 24 IP SlimPAR 18 SlimPar 18x3W SlimPAR 38 SlimPAR 56 SlimPAR 56 IRC IP SlimPAR 64 SlimPAR 64 RGBA SlimPAR 7 DL SlimPAR HEX 3 IRC SlimPAR HEX 6 IRC SlimPAR Pro H USB SlimPAR Pro Q USB SlimPAR Pro QZ12 USB SlimPAR PRO RGBA SlimPAR PRO Tri SlimPAR Pro VW SlimPAR Pro W USB SlimPAR Q12 USB SlimPAR Q6 USB SlimPAR QUAD 12 IRC SlimPAR QUAD 3 IRC SlimPAR QUAD 6 IRC SlimPAR QUV12 USB SlimPAR T12 USB SlimPAR T6 USB SlimPAR Tri 12 IRC SlimPAR Tri 7 IRC SlimSTRIP UV 18 IRC SM-B20180-12F SM-S752 SMART 36 SMART 54 Smart Color Smart Move DMX SMART Wash DL SMARTBATPLUS smartMAC Smarty Hybrid SMOKEBUBBLE BLASTER SMOKEJET Smooth Scan Blue SN-600 Snake Eyes Snake Eyes Mini Snap Shot DMX Sniper 2R Sniper 5R Sniper Pro Sniper Pro V2 Snow Frost Hybrid SnowARC Bar Quad 16 SnowARC Pro Quad 40 Snowball SnowBank SnowBAT Pro Quad 4 SnowBlind SnowBlind FX Soft LED Bar SoftLite Led RGBW SolaFrame 3000 SolaFrame 750 SolaHyBeam 1000 SolaHyBeam 2000 SOLAR-2 ze ETZ SolaSpot Frame 2000 SolaSpot LED SolaSpot Pro 1000 SolaSpot Pro 1500 SolaSpot Pro 2000 SolaSpot Pro CMY SolaTheatre SolaWash 19 SolaWash 37 SolaWash FX 1000 SolaWash FX 2000 SolaWash Pro 2000 Solo 1000 Solo 250 Solo 575 Solo 575P Source Four LED Daylight Source Four LED Daylight HD S2 Source Four LED Daylight HD S2 Basic Source Four LED Lustr S2 Source Four LED Lustr+ Source Four LED Studio HD Source Four LED Studio HD Basic Source Four LED Tungsten Source Four LED Tungsten HD S2 Source Four LED Tungsten HD S2 Basic Source Four Revolution SP-1500 DMX MK II Strobe SP-6 SP-T5018N SP-W5019F Space Color Laser Space Light Space Tracer 4000 CMY Space-3 MK2 Laser SpaceFlower 3000 Spark 7 SparkliteLED Sparkular Sparx Sparx 10 Sparx 7 Spatial Wash COB RGBW Spectra 3D Laser Spectra Batten Exterior Spectra Cyc 200 Spectral 300 Q4 Spectral CYC650 Spectral M1500 Q4 Spectral M3000Z Q4 Spectral M400 Tour Spectral M800 SpectraPar100 Spectre Speedwire SPH025 Spherilight Spherion Tri LED Spheriscan Spica 250M SPIDER Spider LED 96W RGBW Quad Spider Star Spider Ultimate Spider White Spike 4K Spin 250 Spin4 Spitfire RGY SPLASHER Spooky Blue V4 Spot 120 LED Spot 1200 Spot 150 XT Spot 150W Spot 160 XT Spot 170 AT Spot 250 Spot 250 Pro Spot 250 XT Spot 250B Spot 250S Spot 320 Spot 575 Spot 575 XT SPOT BEAM 280W POINT Spot Emperor SPOT G60 SPOT LED 60W Spot ML Spot ML 230W Spot ML 575W Spot Moving Head Spot Pro 1200 Spot Pro 575 Spot Pro 700 Spotbot LED CYM 300 SPOTWASH-3048 Sputnik Spyder Beam Spyker SQW 36 SRC 109 C SRC-241 SRL-6018S SRL-6349 SS812XCA SSDL-3201RGB ST-0054L ST-005L ST-0253L ST-SX Series ST288 ST918 STAGE BAR 16 Stage Beam 30W STAGE BEAMER RGB STAGE BEAMER RGB MK2 Stage Color Stage Color 1200 Stage Color 300 STAGE COLOR 48 Stage Color 575 Stage Color RGB Stage Cyclo Stage Flame Stage Flood QCL Stage Flood QCL 48x10W Stage Fogger DMX Stage Haze Stage Light 300 Stage Mover STAGE PAINTER 12 Stage Par 64 Stage Par CX-2 Stage Profile Plus SV Stage Propeller Stage Scan Stage TRI LED Stage Wash 10x36 LED MH Stage Wash 10X36 Zoom Stage Wash 12x15 RGBWA Stage Wash 12x7 Zoom STAGE WASH RGBAW Stage Wash RGBWAUV Stage Zoom 1200 StageBar 54 StageLite Led StageLite Led SC StagePar 108-CA Star Sky II DMX Star Sky Pro Controller Starburst Starforce STARK1000 STARK1000 FX STARK400 STARK400 FX Starman 360 Startube 4 STB-520 Stealth Beam Stealth Craze Stealth LED Stealth Spot Stealth Wash Zoom Steam Wizard StickLight 12-Channel RU-AC SticKolor 1210UHD SticKolor 168HD Stiletto Beast Stiletto Glo 19 Stiletto I7 Stiletto Z18 Stiletto Z19 Stiletto Z3 Stiletto Z6 Stimul-Eye Sting 7 Sting 7 MK2 Sting 7 White Stinger Stinger 1 Stinger Gobo Stinger II Stinger Spot Stinger Star STL-025 Storm Storm 1000 RGBW Storm 1000 White Storm 400 RGB Storm 8x10QC Storm 8x10WH Storm LED Storm Strobe 1000 RGBW StormChaser StormLite HD Stormy Stormy CC STP-10 MKII for 10x GU-10 DMX STR 400W LED Stratos Hi-Res Stratos Wash STRIKE 1 STRIKE 324 STRIKE 4 STRIKE 882 STRIKE P38 STRIKE Saber STRIKER Striplight Striplite Led STROBE 1000W RGBW Strobe 2 Strobe 3 STROBE 300 LED RGB Strobe 3ch Strobe 8x25W COB Strobe X Stroker Strong Quad Beam Bar StrongLite HD Studio Beam Studio Color 250 Studio Color 575 Studio Command Studio Force D 12 Studio Mini PAR Q White Studio Mini PAR TRI 3W Studio PAR 64 CAN Q8W Studio PAR WT9 PRO Studio Spot 250 Studio Spot 575 Studio Spot 575 CMY STUDIOCOBFC StudioLed 600 StudioPix Stuido Force V 12 SUNBEAM Sunraise LED Sunray Tri LED DMX Sunstrip 12 Sunstrip Active Sunstrip Pro RGB V4 Super BSW 200 Super Gun 330 Super Nova Super Nova LCD Super Nova RGB Super Nova Standard Super Quadra Beam Super Scan Super Scan Zoom Super Solar RGBW Super Speed LED Lifting Ball Super Winner SuperCyc SuperFlash 1 SuperFlash 3 SUPERFLY FX SuperSharpy SupraKolor Surface SURPASS-4 SURPASS-7 Swarm 4 Swarm 4 FX Swarm 5 FX Swarm Wash FX Sweeper Beam LED Sweeper Beam Quad LED Sweeper LED Swing Batten SwitchBlade Micro Sword5R SY-2504 SYK B015 SyncroMITE Beam SYNERGY 5 PROFILE SYNERGY 5 SPOT Synthesis Spot 700 T-1500 T-5 T4X LED 150 SPOT T918 Tamuz Target MDC Target Q190 Taurus TB-1230QW TDC 33 TDC 4 LED TDC 444 MKII TDC Agaricus TDC Hybrid Beam TDC LED Derby Techni-Scan Tracker Techno Derby Techno Strobe 168 TechnoArc Technobeam Technobeam-i Technoflash 448 Technoray Technospot Telescan Mark IV Telescan Mark V Tessera V.2 Tessera V.2 Preset Tessera V.2 Test TH-250 The Puck 3NX The Puck CSI Xtreme The Puck Fab5 The Puck Pro Zoom The Puck RGB The Puck RGBAW The Rover The Winner The Winner II Thin Par 6 Thin Par Passport Thinpar 38 Thinpar 64 ThinTri 38 ThinTri 64 THRILL Compact PAR 64 LED THRILL Compact PAR Mini LED THRILL Mini Profile THRILL Multi-FX THRILL Vertical Fogger Thruster THUNDER 400 Thunder 80 THUNDER WASH 100 RGB THUNDER WASH 100 White THUNDER WASH 600 RGB THUNDER WASH 600 White ThunderStik Tiger 7R Tiger E 7R TIGER LYRE 1R Tiltstrip Narrow White TITAN Titan 400i RGBW TITAN BEAM Titan RGB 1.5 Titan Solo Full Color Titan Solo RGB Titan Solo White Titan Strobe BLAZE Titan Tube Titanium TRI Matrix Bar Titanium TRI Par TitanPar Hex12 TitanPar Tri7 TitanWash 36-4 TitanWash Zoom 5in1 TL-LED021A TLMINIB-i TM 1200 TM 1200 DX TMC DMX Pro TMH XB-230 TMH-155 ToneKolor 2412HD TOP 3x3 TOP- DOT TOP-1810 RGBW TOP-MBAR-CW TOP-MBAR-RGBW TOP-PARZOOM TopCat H-1 TopCat H-4 Topower 2000W Tornad TORNADO 7 Tornado IP3000 Torrent 90 Torrent 90 Beam Torrent F3 Torrent F5 Torrent FZ Torrent Streak Torrent Xray TOUGH 70 ToughPAR Quadra ToughPAR RGBAW ToughPAR Zoom RGBAW ToughStick 5 ToughStick EXA ToughStick RGBAW Tour Batten TW Tour Hazer II Tour QT Skywire TourBar 32 TourBar 64 TourBeam 50 Mini TourBeam X4 TourBlinder 400 TourFlash 800 RGBW TourKolor TourLED 21 CM MKII TourLED 42 CM TourLED 42 CM MKII TourLED Pro 28 Zoom TOURnado IP COB TOURnado IP EXA TOURnado WiMAX 5 COB TOURnado WiMAX QZoom TourSpot 250 TourSpot 575 TourSpot 60 TourStick 72 CM TourWash 555 TourWash 575 TourWash 76 CM TourWash Mini 28 Zoom TP-L678 TP-P70F TP-T21 TP6 TPix Strip Controller TPL-039C TPL041 Tracker 250 Spot Tracker 250 Wash Tracker 300 Tracker 575 Spot Tracker 575 Wash Tracker Q4 Trackpod 84 Trackscan 250R Trackspot Trackspot 2 Trackspot Bolt Tracpod TP-30 Tracpod TP-81 Transition Tri 18 Tri 4 Pixel Batten Tri Flat PAR Profile Tri LED 56 Can Tri Phase Tri Scanner Tri-Star LED TRI4U TRIBAR 400 TRIBAR Spot Tricolor Mini Par Trident TrimPar 3VIP Trio Par LED Trio Par LED RG TriPAR Profile Tripix Tripix (Wash) TripleFlex TriStrip3Z TrueColor 1218 TrueColor 1224 TrueColor 318 TrueColor 330 TrueColor 348 Truss Mate TrussKolor 710UHD TS-150 TS-155 TS-255 TS-5 TS-7B TUBELED Turbo par CDM Turbo Scan TURTLE TVL CYC RGBW TVL F1WW TVL PANEL DW TVL SOFTLIGHT DW TVL1000 II TVL2000 TVL3000 TW RGB9 TW-120 TWIN-LED Twinscan 20 Twist Spot 75LED TWIST-150LED TWIST-25 TWIST-252 TWIST-5LEDMK2 TWIST-75LED Two Scrollers with Dimmer TX0610 Beam TX0710 Wash TX1810 Beam TX1810 Zoom TX1910 Wash TX8 LED 300 SPOT TY-10 Typhoon 120 UB 12H UB 6H UB 9H UHP LED UHP LED BAR Ultra Bar 10 Plus Pak Ultra Bar 12 Ultra Bar 6 Ultra Bar 9 Ultra Hex Bar 12 Ultra Hex Bar 6 Ultra Hex Par 3 Ultra Kling Bar 18 Ultra Scan Ultra Spot 575 Ultra Trinity280 Ultra Trinity330 UNICO Unique2 UNO UV BAR 18 UV COB Cannon UV LED Bar 20 UV Strobe UV Strobe IP UV Strobe LED UVLED Bar16 V-2042 V-315 V-715 RGBW V-LS96 V1201 V1202-R V1510TB-ER V2000B-ER v2002 v2004 v2005 v2008 v2009 V200SPOT v2031 v2033 v2088 V250SP V300B-ER V575 Spot V575S V700S-E Vario Zoom Varycolor 7 Varycolor Micro Varycolor P6 VaryLED 3-84 Varyscan 3 Special Varyscan 3 Special Plus Varyscan 4 1200 HMI Varyscan 5 MV Varyscan 6 575 HMI Varyscan 7 Varyscan Micro Plus Varyscan P3 Varyscan P6 Vazt P100 VBar 270 VBar Pak VC-Dot 1 VC-Dot 4 VC-Dot 9 VC-Grid 15 RGB VC-Grid 25 RGB VC-Grid 25 White VC-Grid 30 RGB VC-Grid 60 RGB VC-Strip 15 RGB VC-Strip 25 RGB VC-Strip 25 White VC-Strip 30 RGB VC-Strip 60 RGB VDO Dotron VDO Fatron 20 1000mm VDO Fatron 20 320mm VDO Sceptron 10 1000mm VDO Sceptron 10 320mm VDO Sceptron 20 1000mm VDO Sceptron 20 320mm VDO Sceptron 40 1000mm VDO Sceptron 40 320mm VDP250MH14 VDP250MHS16 VDP250SC6 VDP600HZ VDP7510S2 VDPL150MH21 VDPL3610MHZ VDPL710MHW14B VDPLOW1803RGB VDPLTC VDPLW1028 VDPLW |
very many examples of the diagram that one can pick when looking at space science. Instead, I would like to focus my discussion on how diagramming can take place when the objects one wants to observe is invisible, such as intergalactic material (IGM) and dark matter. One might argue that diagramming what that cannot be readily observed takes on a tone of importance so that all observable clues could then add up to provide a profile of that invisible entity. This would mean diagramming the electromagnetic light spectrum that is a phenomenal effect of particular interactions of the objects, the diffusion of background radiation or density of the space purportedly occupied by the object, the behavior of the visible entities when they are around these invisible material, and graphing the signals in correlation to the effective range of the former’s emergence.
Some of such attempts at diagramming the invisible have been made with the aid of telescopes such as the Fermi Large Array telescope. This telescope is built for detecting signals from invisible particles by diagramming its range of energetic spectra emitted and collating these spectra for analysis. The same has also been done with another large array telescope called the Cerenkov Large Array telescope that marshals the same detector used in galactic neutrino and proton-related observations to look at non-thermal high energy particles that could be the window to these invisible entities, and thus, a view into the genesis of our universe.
Images: Tablet; DaVinci; lightcone; cloud chamber; vertices; Feynman diagram; dark matter(Fortune Magazine) -- Gazing across the craggy canyon that is the Hull-Rust-Mahoning mine in Minnesota's legendary Iron Range, it's hard to believe that our planet's most abundant element - iron - is mostly locked away in the earth's core. For here iron-bearing rock has shouldered its way to the surface in heroic quantities, and men and machines have carved out the world's largest iron-ore pit. And as it has for over a century, Range iron still forges the steel sinews of the American economy.
But more than a century of mining has left Iron Country scraped and scarred, a landscape dominated by vast quarries and basins of stony waste from processed ore - tailings, which sprawl across the land like a mighty river delta. Now largely covered by scrub vegetation, these tailings are the remains of a struggle to wrest a living from the earth that began with the great Iron Rush of the 1880s. Fortune hunters from far afield flocked to the rich hematite mines of the Vermilion and Mesabi ranges, which were soon minting millionaires so fast that by 1910 regional capital Duluth was reckoned to have more than any other city in the world.
Two world wars brought boom times as the Range answered the call for iron and steel to arm the nation. And there were busts too, notably during the Depression, when output crashed from 47 million metric tons in 1929 to just 2 million metric tons in 1932. And all the time those tailings kept accumulating - a buildup that will continue until the ore runs out. Then the Range will fall silent, closing a long chapter of American history.
Or maybe not. Just west along Route 169 from the Hull-Rust-Mahoning mine, near the town of Keewatin (pop. 1,164), a vast domed structure dominates a tailings basin left by the defunct Mesabi Chief mine. The dome can't be seen from the highway, and few Rangers (and even fewer mining corporations) know it's there. Inside sits equipment that could prove to be as significant to the region as the 1950s-era discovery of a way to extract iron from low-grade taconite rock. The earlier technique arrived in the nick of time for the Range, for its hematite - known locally as "natural" ore - was almost depleted. Similarly, the dome at Keewatin is home to a revolutionary process, dubbed "magnetation," that can extract valuable iron from the tailings - just when the Range is in need of new sources of ore.
"Our process," says Rod Hunt, 83, who, along with mining veteran Al Fritz, 78, co-founded upstart Magnetation Inc., "is the equivalent of the fabled philosopher's stone of yore. We can't turn base metal into gold, but we can process the millions of tons of natural-ore tailings and extract the iron that got missed the first time around."
That's good news for the hardscrabble region (March unemployment there was 13.5% - the highest rate since 1992) and explains why Iron Range Resources, a state development agency, has backed the company with $2.5 million in seed money. But magnetation technology also is good news for the iron industry globally. U.S. Geological Survey data show that global reserves of economically recoverable iron ore could eventually run out. "Magnetation is a transformational technology," says former regional development consultant Mike Andrews. "If it didn't exist, it would have to be invented."
Behind the invention stands a grizzled bunch of veterans with more than three centuries of mining, construction, and engineering experience among them. Magnetation's iron men seem more like Minnesota's answer to the Buena Vista Social Club than mining messiahs, but they apparently have developed a technology that has defied the best efforts of bigger players.
Process inventor Fritz is characteristically modest about his achievement. "The last half-century hasn't seen many new developments in mining," he says. "I guess we lucked onto one." But it wasn't so much luck as dogged determination that enabled Fritz, formerly superintendent of the Hill Annex mine, to tweak the process during his retirement. The breakthrough came three years ago when Fritz and Hunt, who first met prospecting for gold in Alaska back in the 1980s, bench-tested a prototype machine - which they dubbed the "ferrous wheel" - that finally solved the problem of creating a magnetic field capable of extracting enough of the weakly magnetic hematite to make commercially viable iron-ore concentrate.
"We weren't getting any younger, so we decided it was time to go into business," recalls Hunt, who had the additional motive of recouping enough funds to repay the mortgage he had taken out on his house to pay for the prototype.
They were soon joined by Ed Shaughnessy, 57, a mining project manager for 30 years when he wasn't racing dragsters, who just happened to own some tailings - about 4 million metric tons of them that came his way in 1998 when the businessman who hired him to build a drag-racing strip on the tailings failed to pay up. Next came two other Range veterans: haulage and construction contractor Tom Hammerlund Sr., 67, who had heard about Magnetation's contraption through Shaughnessy, and engineer Eugene Bergstrom, 71, who liked the sound of it so much that he sold his resort business on nearby Lake Winnibigoshish to invest in the Keewatin startup.
The big coup for Hunt and Fritz was persuading Larry Lehtinen, the youngster of the group at 53 but with 30 years' experience in the iron and steel business, to come onboard as CEO. A man of vision and energy in the mold of the Range's early pioneers - like his great-grandfather Albert, who arrived from Finland in 1896 - Lehtinen has a reputation for making things happen. Recalls Hunt: "Al and I had faith in the process, but Larry and the others got us out of the lab and into production."
***
Magnetation's first challenge was to show that its patent-pending technology could indeed extract the "lost" iron. This it has done emphatically - since Feb. 23 its plant has been shipping concentrate rich enough for blast furnaces to turn it into pig iron, the raw material for steel.
Now it must compete price-wise with the world's mining giants. Magnetation will never match them on volume: Brazilian mining behemoth Vale (VALE), the world's largest iron ore producer, ships about 250 million metric tons annually, compared with Magnetation's tiny initial target of 300,000 metric tons. But Lehtinen is certain that Magnetation can compete on price. Although he won't discuss costs, Lehtinen insists that Magnetation is already the lowest-cost producer in the U.S. and can match Vale, as well as mining giants BHP Billiton (BHP) and Rio Tinto (RTP), all of which must ship their ore long distances to their main customers.
"Our raw material is all around us," Lehtinen explains. "It's easy and cheap to extract, and it has already been crushed." Indeed, the main input is the water needed to convert the tailings into a mudlike slurry that can be fed through the magnetation process, where, as the name suggests, giant magnets separate the weakly magnetic hematite from the nonferrous elements of the tailings - mainly silica. And thanks to Shaughnessy's 150-acre tailings basin, getting started was relatively easy.
"I got a whole lot of grief from my wife for those tailings," recalls Shaughnessy, "but now they don't look so worthless." Far from it. Shaughnessy's tailings could yield as much as a million metric tons of concentrate, worth around $90 million at current prices. And Magnetation has lined up enough tailings to produce 104 million metric tons of concentrate, worth just under $10 billion.There are bands of quasar ghosts haunting deep space.
The Hubble Space Telescope has snapped rare images of strange, looped structures that are believed to be long tails of gas formed during a violent merger between two galaxies. These objects were lit up by a blast of radiation from a quasar - the luminous and compact region that surrounds a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy.
This image shows the winding green filaments observed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope within eight different galaxies. The ethereal wisps in these images were illuminated, perhaps briefly, by a blast of radiation from a quasar - a very luminous and compact region that surrounds a supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy. Credit: NASA, ESA, Galaxy Zoo team & W. Keel (University of Alabama, USA)
It would have taken light from the quasar tens of thousands of years to reach them and light them up. So, although the quasars themselves have turned off, the green clouds will continue to glow for much longer before they too fade.
Scientists believe a quasar beam illuminated these distant clouds of gas through a process called photoionisation. Oxygen, helium, nitrogen, sulphur and neon in the filaments absorb light from the quasar and slowly re-emit it over many thousands of years. Their emerald hue is caused by ionized oxygen, which glows green.
The latest discovery from Hubble comes as the iconic telescope is set to celebrate its 25th anniversary later this month.
The first object of this type was found in 2007 by Dutch schoolteacher Hanny van Arkel. She discovered the ghostly structure in the online Galaxy Zoo, a project enlisting the public's help to classify more than a million galaxies catalogued in the Sloan DigitalSky Survey (SDSS). The bizarre feature was dubbed Hanny's Voorwerp (Dutch for Hanny's object).
These latest objects were found in a spin-off of the Galaxy Zoo project, in which about 200 volunteers examined over 16,000 galaxy images in the SDSS to identify the best candidates for clouds similar to Hanny's Voorwerp. A team of researchers analyzed these and found a total of 20 galaxies that had gas ionized by quasars. Their results appear in a paper in the Astronomical Journal.He said that he ran toward the officer with his wife and his 12-year-old daughter, all three of them screaming that the man could not understand the officer.
“Don’t kill him, he’s deaf,” his daughter yelled. “Don’t do it!”
About six other neighbors joined in, frantically trying to get the officer’s attention. But less than a minute after the episode began, a second officer arrived and immediately pulled out his handgun, Mr. Rayos said. While people continued to scream, the first officer fired his Taser at Mr. Sanchez, while the second fired his handgun, the police said.
Capt. Bo Mathews, a spokesman for the Oklahoma City Police Department, said Wednesday that the second officer, Sgt. Christopher Barnes, fired multiple shots and that Mr. Sanchez, who was hit more than once, was pronounced dead in front of his house.
Image Capt. Bo Mathews, a department spokesman, said the police did not know yet why one officer pulled out his Taser while the other had his handgun. Credit Sue Ogrocki/Associated Press
Mr. Rayos said he heard more than six shots in rapid succession. “They seemed like they just came to shoot him,” he said. “It happened so quickly.”
In the neighborhood, Shields-Davis, just south of downtown Oklahoma City, Mr. Sanchez was known for wandering up and down the streets during the day, even in heavy rain, and running laps in the parking lot of an American Legion post next to his home. He never left home without the pipe, wielding it shoo away stray dogs, Mr. Rayos said.Following through on his campaign promise to do so, Mayor de Blasio is ready to funnel $100 million into some heavy duty development in Sunset Park, planned for the Brooklyn Army Terminal, Industry City and Liberty View Plaza which includes high-budget sequels to DUMBO and the Chelsea Market.
Affectionately known at one point as Gunset Park by those who grew up there (like me), and slapped by those who lived in neighboring sections of Brooklyn with the derogatory moniker Gunset Park, it’s is still a place where you can get some of New York’s best bahn mi and tacos, and where you can enjoy an amazing view of Manhattan from the highest point in Brooklyn, in the actual park itself. Sunset Park is, for now, still known as an affordable place that’s just barely resisted the fast moving gentrification of Murray Hill East, Park Slope and countless other neighborhoods. Now though? It’s on the fast track.
In case you haven’t visited Sunset Park before, might I suggest you do so now, while it’s still in its twilight days? This way, when the transformation to Sunset Park 2.0 is complete and nobody will be able to afford to live there anymore, you can at least say that you saw it before the change over to yet another place people write stupid hacky lazy hipster-related jokes about. Make sure to hit up some of these old local favorites now, before they’re bulldozed to make room for luxury housing.
1. Tacos Matamoros (4508 5th Ave)
I beg of you, on my hands on knees, not to confuse this wonderful, heavenly taco joint with Tacos Matamoros II over on 58th Street. I can’t stress this enough. You go for the original every. Single. Damn. Time. If you’d like to survey whether this place is worthy of existing in the upcoming “Funset” Park, have al pastor or carnitas tacos ($1.50 each for a small). Go ahead and have a margarita to wash it down. You won’t need any more convincing.
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2. Melody Lanes (461 37th St)
This bowling alley that’s basically a time capsule from the 80s (with a bartender who still hasn’t returned home to his native 1840s by the look of his glorious grey mutton chops) is one of the very few relatively cheap bowling alleys left in Brooklyn. $8 gets you a game during weekday evenings, $9 does on Friday and Saturday nights. The best way to make your buck go farther is to come with a group of friends and rent a lane for 2 hours ($70 Sun-Thurs, $75 Fri & Sat), which is probably more bowling than you’ll be in the mood for. Maybe don’t eat any of the food they serve at the snack counter, as it’s served out of a creepily-located counter in the back, isolated near the restrooms. Do however get yourself a pitcher or two of beer to split with your teammates. Though bowling isn’t a bar game, I’d venture to say that you have a decent-to-moderate chance of making out with a date after a few frames. BONUS: The famed Tacos El Broncos truck parks it right around the corner, so head there for all your taco and taco-related needs when you’re done pretending that you’re bowling in space on Saturday nights.
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3. Irish Haven (5721 4th Ave)
The very place where Leonardo DiCaprio ordered a cranberry juice, leading to a kerfuffle in The Departed (true story), this is a dive bar’s dive bar. This place is pretty much a dump, in the best way possible, and the locals love it for its chill atmosphere, its dart board, its movie star pool table and its jukebox. A can of PBR will set you back $3, while their beers on tap go for $4 or $5. Because this is Sunset Park, tacos of course factor in somehow. Every Tuesday, Irish Haven celebrates alliteration with Taco Tuesdays. Starting at 6:30 until they run out, you’ll get yourself a free taco with every drink. So enjoy the divey atmosphere, have an inexpensive beer, and pretend you’re enjoying a part of Hollywood history. Not that the joint hasn’t seem some less-than-savory neighborhood happenings on its own.
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4. Ba Xuyen (4222 8th Ave)
This is very, very simple: $5 banh mi. Delicious $5 banh mi. Get your choice of classic pork, chicken, meatball or, if you’re feeling a little bit daring and like mystery with your giant sandwich, head cheese. Being that this place is within spitting distance of the actual park after which this soon-to-be-over neighborhood is named, just buy two, and run (or swim) them off.
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5. Johnny’s Pizza (5806 5th Ave)
You know how your neighborhood has at least one awesome pizza spot where you can saunter in late at night and buy a truly delicious, truly greasy, hearty slice for the same price as a subway fare ($2.50)? Johnny’s Pizza is better. It’s a lot better. You know what your local dingy pizzeria favorites are; just head here and order that same thing, and immediately start looking for apartments on the block so that you can live near it until the future happens and it’s gone. Make sure to flip off the adjacent Papa John’s on your way out, too.
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6. International Restaurant (4408 5th Ave)
Featuring Latin food that’s more of the island variety, head here if you’re extremely hungry with a mean hankering for mofongo, a fried dish of mashed plantains, with your choice of meat ($6.45) or without meat ($5,45), and some gravy to make sure it doesn’t dry out. The arroz con gandules (yellow rice with pigeon peas) for $4.95 is a staple, as are the white or yellow rice ($2.75) and the red beans ($1.95).
Hell, maybe this can actually turn out alright, since development doesn’t automatically have to mean pickled everything and overly expensive “Brooklyn-certified” gift shops. Also, another major part of the project should help with the neighborhood’s roads and, yes, sewage, which need serious upgrades
On the other hand…nah. In lieu of measured debate about the possibilities of more jobs for the locals (whose ability to remain local, to be fair, I am concerned about), let’s recommence freaking out instead. When’s the J. Crew coming?
Follow Dave for more Sunset Park recommendations at @DaveRosado
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7 CommentsA bomb exploded in front of a girls’ school in southern Italy on Saturday, killing a 16-year-old girl and wounding seven others, suspicion quickly falling on the local Mafia.
The explosion, near the entrance of a school named after the wife of murdered anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone, occurred as girls were arriving for the start of the school day, which in Italy includes Saturdays.
Authorities said at least two gas canisters appeared to have been placed in or near rubbish containers at the school, which local media said was located near the main court in Brindisi, a port city on the ‘heel’ of the Italian peninsula.
The general director of the Perrino hospital in Brindisi, Paola Ciannamea, told local television that one girl was stable after surgery but in very serious condition, and at least six others were being treated for burns that were not life threatening.
“This is a tragedy,” Mimmo Consales, the mayor of Brindisi, told SkyTG24 television.
There was no claim of responsibility and no indication of who had planted the bomb, but initial suspicions were directed at the local mafia, known as the United Sacred Crown.
Consales noted that the incident occurred just a few days before the 20th anniversary of the murder of Falcone and his wife, Francesca Morvillo, by a bomb in Sicily on May 23 1992. An anti-Mafia march had been planned in Brindisi later in the day.
“You can understand the symbolism of this and what it all signifies,” he said.
Twenty years ago the Sicilian Mafia bombed Milan, Florence and Rome, killing 10 people, in response to a crackdown on organised crime that had been spearheaded by Falcone and his fellow magistrate Paolo Borsellino, who was also assassinated in 1992.
Shattered glass
Television shots of the scene in Brindisi showed a cement wall blackened by fire next to the school’s entrance gate.
Shattered glass and other debris covering the pavement on a sunny spring day.
Schools in the region were immediately closed and a group of investigators, including Italy’s top anti-mafia prosecutor, were summoned to meet later on Saturday.
Interior Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri said organised crime’s involvement could not be ruled out, pointing out that the link to Falcone’s wife, but cautioned that there were no firm indications.
“I prefer to be prudent, but this is a striking fact,” she told SkyTG24.
Cancellieri announced plans several days ago to step up security around sensitive targets including official buildings after a series of threats against tax officials.
Italy’s main tax collection agency, Equitalia, has been attacked with a series of small bombs as public anger mounts over the high taxes imposed to shore up public finances and combat the economic crisis.
The head of Ansaldo Nucleare, a nuclear engineering company owned by the defence technology group Finmeccanica, was shot in the leg in an attack claimed by an anarchist group, adding to concerns that extremist groups may try to exploit the public anger.
Prime Minister Mario Monti, who is at Camp David attending a Group of Eight summit, said his government was determined to prevent a return to the political violence of the past.—Reuters.Top Republicans pushed a measure through the House on Tuesday that overturns Obama-era regulations intended to protect consumers’ data from being shared with advertisers without consent. If you’re reading this story on a computer or internet-connected device, that obviously includes you.
The bill, which passed 215-205 in the House, pulls back legislation passed by Congress in 2016. Originally proposed by the Federal Communications Commission, the measure would have broadened FCC privacy rules so they also applied to broadband internet service providers. In other words, it required companies like AT&T, Verizon and others to get consent from customers like you before sharing (or selling) your personal data and web browsing history with advertisers.
A companion bill passed 50-48 last week in the Senate. President Donald Trump signed the bill Monday.
Now, before you lament the end of your internet privacy — take a deep breath.
As Wired reporter Klint Finley told the NewsHour, those FCC rules never actually went into effect, meaning technically, Tuesday’s measure doesn’t change anything. The rules to protect customer data were passed in October of last year but wouldn’t have taken effect until December 2017, Finley said. So the bill passed on Tuesday simply blocks those rules from taking effect, Finley said.
That said, Tuesday’s measure does create some wrinkles in the debate over consumer privacy in the rapidly growing Internet of Things. Namely, the measure blocks the FCC not only from implementing the 2016 rules, but pursuing others like them.
“Mostly it means that internet service providers now have the go-ahead to sell data,” Finley explained. “It was already technically legal, but if any companies were holding off on doing it while they waited to see if the laws went into effect or not, they don’t have to wait anymore.”
Let’s dissect this together.
How did we get here?
FCC’s 2016 privacy rules were a follow up to the 2015 Open Internet Order, regulations that defined the Internet as a public utility and set the stage for today’s net-neutrality rules. The Open Internet Order also put the FCC in charge of privacy regulations.
Until 2015, the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, held jurisdiction over ISPs, according to a FCC statement. However, two years ago, the FCC “stripped the FTC of its authority over internet service providers.”
The debate over net neutrality can be summed up in this question, as posed by Neil Irwin of The New York Times: “Is access to the Internet more like access to electricity, or more like cable television service?”
Why is Congress taking this up again?
The Obama-era bill was passed in October 2016. But lawmakers took advantage of the Congressional Review Act, a rare procedural move that permits lawmakers to reconfigure any regulation they disagree with.
The bill has sparked debate from both sides of the aisle. Some House Republicans say requiring the FCC to get consent from consumers before sharing data approaches government overreach. House Democrats say not putting those protections in place sets up a poor precedent for online privacy.
ISPs have pushed back against privacy regulations. Their issue: Sites like Facebook and Google are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and are therefore governed by regulations that do not force them to obtain customer consent before collecting and selling personal data. Notice how right after you’ve been searching for a copy of Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection on Amazon, advertisers bombard you with video game ads once you’ve switched back to Facebook.
What does the latest bill actually do?
“Historically, regulations have treated that data as the property of the consumer,” GeekWire wrote. Under the new bill, “it will be viewed more like the property of internet providers.”
This means, ISPs could sell your personal information without consent. They can view anything from your browsing history and geolocation to the applications you use on the web.
The bill also makes it harder for the FCC to pursue policies like those passed last fall, says Ernesto Falcon, legislative counsel for the advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation. Congress has “in essence created a law that contradicts the existing privacy law the FCC is tasked with enforcing,” Falcon told the NewsHour.
Why do ISPs want this information, and what do they do with it?
As the digital economy expands, ISPs have become increasingly interested in improving their presence within advertising, Business Insider reported.
“The traditional means is to collect information to create a profile and market it to advertisers who attempt to connect that user to goods they believe they will purchase,” Falcon said.
In theory, anyone from insurance companies, airlines, banks and retailers to political parties or, critics fear, the government, could buy data profiles of consumers.
What’s next?
Trump signed the bill into law Monday. Even though the measure repeals internet privacy rules passed in October, the FCC still reviews privacy cases involving customer privacy on the Internet.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai told the NewsHour in a statement that “the FCC will work with the FTC to ensure that consumers’ online privacy is protected through a consistent and comprehensive framework. In my view, the best way to achieve that result would be to return jurisdiction over broadband providers’ privacy practices to the FTC, with its decades of experience and expertise in this area.”
Republican Sen. John Thune told Axios that he’s open to passing additional privacy protections in order to reach a legislative compromise on net neutrality “if that were something that it took to get Democrats to the table.”
How to protect your data
Let’s be honest: Whether you know it or not, your internet privacy has more than likely been jeopardized at some point. When it comes to dealing with ISPs, educating yourself on what to expect goes a long way, Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, told the NewsHour. If the bill becomes law, consumers could still explicitly opt out from having their data shared, even if it isn’t obvious how to do it.
“Consumers can call their providers and opt out of having their information shared,” Guliani said. “Consumers can pressure companies to be more transparent and I think there’s an opportunity to pressure companies to implement good practices and for consumers to say ‘I think that you should require opt-in consent and if you’re not, why not?’”
Now, some ISPs do offer some sort of getaway from their targeted advertising. But as noted in The Verge, you may have to dig order within a company’s linear notes in order to find protections for yourself.
Falcon said utilizing a VPN, or Virtual Private Network, could provide a safeguard, but noted that it’s not a bulletproof method.
“People can start using VPNs but they aren’t a perfect defense and ISPs are going to start using our browser information and application data without our permission,” Falcon said. “Ultimately people must let their member of Congress know they value their privacy. If they voted against repeal, encourage them to push for legislation to restore our privacy rights.”
READ MORE: House sends bill to Trump blocking online privacy regulationphoto: Nils Geylan
At the time of this writing, Barack Obama has been president-elect for less than a week and no one is wasting any time in making suggestions for actions he should take once he's President Obama. The Center for Progressive Reform passed on their suggestions for 7 Executive Orders for the President's First 100 Days and so I pass them on to you to debate, discuss and otherwise armchair analyze.
They cover a range of perennial issues familiar to TreeHugger readers—Climate change, chemicals in products intended for children, pollution, preserving ecosystems on public lands. Here they are: 1. Reduce the Federal Carbon Footprint
The new President should issue an Executive Order requiring each federal agency to measure, report, and reduce its carbon footprint. Not only would the Executive Order have a meaningful impact on the federal government's carbon emissions, it could also lead to the creation of uniform, practical standards for measuring such footprints, standards that could be applied government-wide and beyond. Each of the provisions of this proposed Order is consistent with the goals of the National Environmental Policy Act.
The next President should issue a new Executive Order clarifying that all federal agencies are obligated to consider the global climate change-related implications of their actions. This proposed Order is consistent with the goals of the National Environmental Policy Act.
The next President should amend Executive Order 13045 (issued initially by President
Clinton and then amended by President Bush) to mandate that agencies establish an affirmative agenda for protecting children from lead, mercury, perchlorate, phthalates, fine particulate matter, ozone, and pesticides; require the reform of risk assessment policy so that children are accounted for as a vulnerable group; and end the use of discounting the value of children's lives in cost-benefit analysis. As is the case with the provisions of the existing Order on Protecting Children, each of these recommendations is consistent with the goals of the various environmental, safety, and public health statutes.
The next President should amend or replace the original Executive Order [12898] on Environmental Justice. The new Order should require a meaningful analysis of the environmental justice impacts and implications of all major new rules; impose on agencies a substantive obligation to take affirmative steps to ameliorate environmental injustice; launch an affirmative Environmental Justice agenda; hold agencies accountable for carrying out their environmental justice obligations; and clarify key terms from the current Order, including "environmental justice communities" and "subsistence," to avoid the kind of narrow interpretation of the terms applied by the Bush Administration. As is the case with the existing Executive Order on Environmental Justice, these recommendations are consistent with the goals of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
The new President should issue an Executive Order restoring open government in three areas where unwarranted secrecy has developed. The Order should restore the presumption of disclosure concerning exemptions from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) so that political appointees and career government employees cannot operate free of scrutiny; forbid agencies from taking advantage of loopholes that limit the transparency provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) so that the public can be assured that special interests do not have undue influence on agency decision making; and improve the transparency of regulatory review by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
(OIRA) so that efforts by political appointees in the White House to override the judgment of scientists and other experts in regulatory agencies can at least be transparent to the public. All of the proposed Order's provisions are consistent with the goals of FOIA and FACA.
The next President should [...] should amend the existing Executive Order on Federalism to strengthen provisions setting forth a presumption against preemption; require agencies to provide a written justification for preemption; and require that, when a federal statute allows states to adopt more stringent standards or seek a waiver of statutory preemption (as in EPA's denial of California's Clean Air Act waiver), agencies must provide a written justification to the White House before denying the state's regulatory authority or waiver request. As is the case with the existing Executive Order on Federalism, these recommendations are consistent with the goals of the various statutes under which the environmental, safety, and public health agencies operate, including the National Environmental Policy Act.
The next President should issue a new Executive Order declaring a national policy of
promoting ecological integrity as a baseline requirement for sustainable public land use. The President should also revoke two Bush Administration Executive Orders issued in 2005 (Executive Orders 13211 and 13212) that made it easier to develop energy resources on public lands, even at the risk of causing long-term degradation of natural resource values. In addition, the President should amend a third Bush Order (Executive Order 13443) by providing equal opportunities for public participation in federal land use decision making to a wide variety of constituencies, in addition to those promoting hunting. All of these measures are consistent with the goals of the various public lands statutes.
CPR points out that the Bush Administration often preempted stronger state laws on environmental regulation with weaker federal ones,
These are just the summaries of what CPR believes President Obama should do (obviously the document was worded with either Obama or McCain in mind). The full version of Protecting Public Health and the Environment by Stroke of a Presidential Pen goes into much more detail as to why these Executive Orders should be enacted.
Barack Obama
Barack Obama Faces Environmental Clean Up After Two Centuries of Bingeing: Bill McKibben
Obama Cites Michael Pollan's Sun-Food Agenda
Be the Change... Obama Should Reinstall White House Solar PanelsReview: The Last of Us
By Nick Olsen
A deadly virus has been let loose, and the population is devastated. The infected run rampant, terrorizing the remaining population as everything goes to hell. The infection turns its victims into a variety of different monsters the longer the it rages within them. It’s up to a small group of people with limited ammunition to save us from total annihilation. In 1996 this game was called Resident Evil. Fast forward 17 years and two console generations and Naughty Dog utilizes a near identical formula for The Last of Us. Fortunately for us, the formula remains solid, and with the advancements Naughty Dog applied, The Last of Us will undoubtedly be remembered as the game that brought the Playstation 3 (PS3) life cycle to a close with a bang. As we shift our focus to the Playstation 4 (PS4), it’s difficult to imagine how better hardware could provide a substantial improvement on graphics, or gameplay. It is that good.
On the other hand …
Before diving into the actual game, I’d be remiss if I didn’t address the frustrations I encountered just trying to get the game to work. The first copy of the game I purchased was the standard disc format, and initially all seemed well: I popped the game into the PS3 and off we went. Unfortunately before I could complete the playable intro I experienced environments that refused to render, floating characters, broken dialog and a host of other issues. So I started over, but the problems persisted. This is where things got seriously bad; on my third attempt at starting the game my PS3 refused to recognize the disc and after multiple ejects and re-inserts spanning two hours the farthest I could get was starting the game from the PS3 home menu and receiving a “unable to load game” error.
One might imagine that if a developer is developing console exclusives, they’d want to be sure those games run on the system they’re developing for.
Eventually I gave up on the disc and decided to go for the digital copy-a download which was 27 gigabytes. I decided that was enough frustration for one day and let it download over night.
Putting the frustrations aside
To my great relief, when I fired up the digital version of the game everything worked as it should and I was able to put my frustrations aside and truly focus on the game. The two things I noticed immediately when exploring in the playable introduction is how smoothly the game responds to player commands and the impressive level of detail in the creation of characters and environment alike. Moving through Joel (our primary protagonist) and Sarah’s (his daughter) house as the initial infection event takes place immerses the player immediately through unparalleled attention to detail–Sarah’s facial movements, her reactions to events and quality voice acting from Hana Hayes create a natural sense of tension which draws the player in. In the few short moments that we get to experience the world as Sarah we are given small but meaningful glimpse into just how much time and effort Naughty Dog poured into the game.
The basic controls of the game are mapped perfectly to the controller and feel natural no matter the action the player is taking. Using the left and right analog stick for both player and camera movement allows for an all-encompassing view of the world from any angle, allowing the player to examine every nook and cranny available, a critical aspect of the later gameplay. Early, using Sarah, there are limited actions to take with objects in the environment, but the few interactions that take place do so seamlessly without disrupting the natural flow of the gameplay.
There are no extended wait periods as we open doors to explore new rooms, and picking up a newspaper to read the headline happens in real-time rather than pausing the action. These details may seem trivial, but they actually carry a great deal of importance later in the game: when the action |
elligence reports from Dhaka have also confirmed the presence of Lashkar commanders on the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. The LeT is believed to be recruiting Rohingyas, offering to help them to seek revenge against the Buddhists through terrorist acts.
According to the Bangladesh government, umbrella organization like Jamaat-ul-Arakan and the Rohingya Solidarity Organization are running terror training camps in remote areas of Bandarban district of Bangladesh adjoining the Myanmar border. With the Bangladesh-Myanmar border turning into a new theatre of global jihad, the US and other Western powers have begun monitoring this area.
After the 2012 Muslim-Buddhist clashes in Myanmar, Bangladeshi security agencies made a series of arrests that revealed plans to radicalize, train and fund some Rohingya refugees with the help of Pakistan based terror groups and Saudi Arabian financiers.
It was through these suspects that Bangladeshi security agencies came to learn of the visit to Arakan of Al Qaeda explosive expert Nur Bashar and the banned Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan’s shura member, Mufti Abu Zarra ul Burmi, who was employed as a teacher in Karachi University before joining IMU in 2004.
LeT attempts to dabble in the Arakan date well before the 2012 violence. They also have an Indian connection. It was Abdul Karim Tunda, a Pilakhuwa (Ghaziabad )-born Lashkar commander who masterminded a series of bombing in North India in 1996-98, who had travelled from Pakistan to Bangladesh over the past decade to explore the possibility of recruiting Rohingya youth for terror.
The Lashkar has been assisted by Rohingya extremist leaders including Rabiul Alam, a Pakistan trained jihadist from the Teknaf region, and another person identified as “Dr Yunus,” who is the coordinator of the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation in Bangladesh.
The terror headache assumes global dimensions as the RSO is being funded by Saudi Arabian NGO World Assembly of Muslim Youth through Dr Yunus and his associate Maulana Rashid of Cox’s Bazaar.
Indian, Bangladesh and Western security agencies are still trying to piece together the Rohingya threat. New Delhi has urged the Yangon military to take up genuine Rohingya grievances, like their economic and social marginalisation in Myanmar, but so far to no avail.
But with the threat assessment of Rohingya refugees on the rise, the Indian home ministry is planning to order a census of refugees in India as a precautionary security move.
First Published: Aug 02, 2013 00:23 ISTIceland’s parliament passed a law today that eliminates the distinction between “marriage” for straight couples and “civil unions” for gay couples, creating instead one marriage for all Icelanders, regardless of sexual orientation.
The law – approved with 49 yes votes and none against – was submitted by the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights last March. The law is a correction of a previous law on marriage, where the definition is first and foremost changed from involving “a man and a woman” to simply “two individuals.”
In essence, whatever rights and privileges marriage granted a man and a woman who got married are now extended to any two human beings who get married, regardless of gender.
The law met with a great deal of resistance from members of the national church and others, but for the most part the proposal had received strong multipartisan support, as was evident when votes were cast.
Many members of parliament rose to make statements as to why they were voting the way they did, but Movement MP Margrét Tryggvadóttir probably summed it up best in saying. “I say ‘yes’ with a sun in my heart. I feel that Iceland and the world is better than it was yesterday.”
RelatedIt's Hard, the Who's controversial and somewhat underrated 10th album, was released in September 1982. Years later, singer Roger Daltrey said it never should have seen the light of day.
The album came during a strained period for the Who, who were coming off 1981's commercially successful but creatively disappointing Face Dances. Plus, guitarist and songwriter Pete Townshend's drinking finally led to rehab.
After returning to the Who, there were fences to be mended both personally and creatively. "I managed to convince the guys in the band that I would stay alive if they allowed me to work with them again," Townshend recalled years later. "After the Rainbow fiasco" -- a 1981 concert where Townshend drank four bottles of brandy and got in a backstage fight with Daltrey -- "I had difficulty proving to Roger in particular that I was going to enjoy working with the Who, and that it was important to me that the band end properly, rather than end because of my f---ing mental demise."
Townshend, showing his dedication to rebounding from Face Dances, challenged his fellow band members to openly discuss any ideas regrading the sound and lyrical direction of the record before anyone would start writing. While common ground was hard to come by, the members eventually decided that their empathy for the planet and the people on it combined with the highly volatile times was rife with subject matter.
"I felt that suddenly the band had an outside purpose and it really did unify us a lot," Townshend says of this time. "It made us feel like human beings, part of society, living on a planet, not as isolated superstars who were worried about advancing middle age, money problems, whether they could buy another radiator cap for their Rolls-Royces. We were living in the real world again."
Despite Townshend's commitment to the direction, singer Daltrey never quite took to the LP. At the time, he called it "a stop-gap album" and stated that he felt they didn't take any chances. In a 1994 interview he would simply state, " It's Hard should have never been released."
The album's biggest hit, "Athena," was penned by Townshend after meeting engaged actress Theresa Russell and immediately falling for her (she didn't return the affection). The track would climb to No. 28 on the singles chart and No. 3 at mainstream rock, but despite the radio airplay, it was not a favorite of the band when it came to the live setting, and it eventually cut the song from set lists.
Watch the Who's Video for 'Eminence Front'
"Eminence Front," on the other hand, quickly became a staple of the band's live show, with Townshend creating a different solo for the song every night. The track would reach No. 5 on the mainstream rock chart, but failed to break through to the Top 40 singles list.
Other favorites include "Dangerous," the first song from It's Hard to be introduced live; "Cry If You Want," a staple during the band's 1982 Farewell Tour that has returned in abbreviated form on past reunion shows; and the title track, the band's final commercial single.
Though Daltrey has distanced himself from the It's Hard album, "Cry If You Want" was one song that gained a positive reaction from the singer: "I think the statement, the song that most captures what the Who feel at the moment is a song called 'Cry If You Want.' I think it should have been the single.... I think that really does state how it feels to be 38 years old and singing in a rock band called the Who!"
The album art, designed by Graham Hughes, depicts a young boy playing an Atari game, and serves as a nod to the changing times. Another sign of the changing times: It's Hard became the first album from the band's catalog to be released on CD.
The disc peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard album chart, and was certified gold by the RIAA just two months after its release. It would be 24 years before the Who (now down to just Daltrey and Townshend, following he 2002 death of bassist John Entwistle ) would release another album, 2006's Endless Wire.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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“And by the way, I like coal,” remarked Mitt Romney during the first presidential debate last Wednesday night. And if any industry likes Romney back, coal ranks up there along with finance and oil. Ad Policy
Coal companies provide a product that causes mercury poisoning, climate change and other environmental hazards. The increasingly profitable way of extracting it, mountaintop removal, the process by which a mountain is blown up and the coal beneath it is gathered with heavy cranes and machinery, is being blamed for poisoning waterways throughout Appalachia.
As regulators move slowly towards regulating coal, the industry is reacting with a political push that markedly favors Romney, who has attacked Obama’s EPA regulations and promises a more coal company-friendly administration.
“I had a dream the other day that Mitt Romney won the election and appointed Jim Inhofe as Administrator of the EPA,” said Peter Socha, the CEO of the James River Coal Company, during a conference call for investors this year. Inhofe is the senator from Oklahoma famous for his steadfast denial of climate science, calling any notion that burning fossil fuels contributes to the greenhouse gas effect “a hoax.” Listen here:
Many in his industry share the dreams of Socha, whose coal company has sought approval for mountaintop removal mining and has been fined as recently as this year for damaging streams and rivers.
Last week, The New Republic’s Alec MacGillis reported that Murray Coal, the company caught compelling its workers to attend a Romney rally earlier this year without pay, has leaned on its white collar employees to contribute heavily to the company political action committee. The pressure may violate campaign finance laws, but it is only one example of how the industry is attempting to influence the election this year.
Murray is one of 34 coal-related companies financing an aggressive lobbying campaign called the “American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.” The group financed tens of millions in pro-coal political ads, paid for organizers to show up at presidential campaign events spreading a pro-coal message, and has attempted some guerilla tactics to insert itself into both political parties. Though the ads demand that the voters “stand up for coal in this election,” you won’t find any disclosures with the Federal Election Commission because ACCCE’s ads do not mention candidate names, the trigger that requires registration.
King Coal’s many tools for affecting the debate – from coercing workers, to campaign contributions and advertising – are enhanced by the campaign geography. Swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania are heavily reliant on coal industry jobs and coal as a power source. This gives the coal industry leverage to lean on both candidates to pander to their narrow interests.
Indeed, four years ago, ACCCE’s paid organizers managed to deliver several pro-coal questions to then-candidate Obama, who eventually told a town hall audience that he proudly supports the idea of “clean coal,” a trumped up term invented by industry but with no proven technology. There is nothing clean about burning coal, and there is way to safely sequester coal emissions underground, as coal companies claim. Nevertheless, Obama provided a great deal of money for clean coal efforts as part of his stimulus measure.
The fact that coal companies were able to influence Obama in such a way is a grim reminder that an industry that provides a deadly, outdated product can win if it invests enough resources in the political system.As artificial intelligence advances and our toys become more and more like us, we must consider the ethics of extracting pleasure from the machines.
(Photo: Sex With Glass)
If Immanuel Kant were still around, there’s no doubt he would be pro-sexbot. The term, once defined strictly as a physical robot made for sex (think “fembot”), now also encompasses any sort of artificially intelligent (AI) software made for sexual pleasure—and they’re becoming increasingly popular. While Kant makes it clear in his writing that he believes humans are rational beings because they can choose to follow a moral law, non-rational beings are merely “objects of our inclinations.” Under these terms, sexbots are no more valuable than animals—they are “means,” not “ends,” inherently valueless, given meaning only by that which humans ascribe to them.
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And yet, as sexbots become more intelligent, transitioning from dolls and one-trick robots into artificially intelligent creations, ethical lines are blurring. Is using AI software now exploitative, on par with sexual assault and rape? At what point should we declare AI sexbots sentient beings? Is there a difference between sex slavery with a human and with an AI program? What really is ethical sex?
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From January 22 to 25, the biggest names in the adult entertainment industry met at the W Hotel Hollywood for the XBIZ 360 conference. Most of the talk centered on how pornography will change with new technology like 3-D printing and Google Glass. The much-hyped application Sex With Glass, developed by students during a Hackathon at Central Saint Martins in London, made a particular splash. Set for launch in early February, the application allows users to record or watch either themselves or their sexual partner during the act.
Perhaps the most technologically impressive sexbot ever created was made to catch pedophiles looking for underage children online. Sweetie identified over 1,000 sexual predators without putting a real child in harm’s way.
What was most interesting, though, were the some of the under-reported technological debuts. Both the first sexbot (code named “Roxxxy”) and the first AI “erotic chat” site (Chatterbabes.com) were on show at XBIZ 360 only four years ago. This year, there was talk of computer-based reconstructions of pornography stars, virtual girlfriends, and artificial companions, all of which can be viewed—and interacted with—through both Glass and popular virtual-reality headsets like the Oculus Rift, most commonly used as a 3-D gaming device.
Sexbots have come a long way from the doll Ryan Gosling falls in love with in Lars and the Real Girl. While rent-a-doll “escort” services are still surprisingly profitable in countries like Japan and South Korea (and “fembots,” or basic “female” robots made for sex, are most popular with American men), technologically savvier sexbots are catching on more widely. Robot prostitution is set to overtake human prostitution by the year 2050, according to “Robots, Men and Sex Tourism,” a study conducted by researchers at the Victoria University of Wellington.
Perhaps the most technologically impressive sexbot ever created was made to catch pedophiles looking for underage children online. In November of 2013, Hans Guyt, the team leader of Terre des Hommes Netherlands, an organization trying to stop child sex slavery and exploitation, created an advanced CGI model of a 10-year-old Filipino girl named “Sweetie.” Because it would be both illegal and obviously unethical to create a sting operation where a real child would be obligated to solicit and perform sexual favors over webcam, Sweetie allowed Guyt and his team to identify over 1,000 sexual predators without putting a real child in harm’s way.
Sweetie was not technically an AI sexbot because her actions and words were determined in real time by the programmers, but her realism was so perfect that she duped nearly every user that contacted her. Prolific science writer Allen Boyle predicts that by 2029 computers will be able to match the capabilities and complexities of the human mind. That kind of computing capability coupled with the pixel-perfect realism of “girls” like Sweetie means that AI sexbots could be virtually impossible to differentiate from humans—all in the very near future.
Isn’t this a good thing? Wouldn’t it be nice to outsource the degrading, often harmful sex industry to robots and programs? In his article, “The Ethics of Robot Prostitutes,” David Levy adapts Kant’s human-versus-animal argument to the AI sexbot debate, arguing that AI sexbots are akin to vibrators so using them as a means to achieve orgasm is likewise permissible. And if using an AI program is the same as using a vibrator, why not use the program instead?
Arguably, AI programs can’t be exploited or harmed because they are not sentient; they can’t pass along disease; their increasing realism allows for a user’s maximum pleasure; and they can continue to be used as a way to catch real predators.
But sexbots aren’t quite the solve-all answer one might first think. The oxytocin and chemicals released during orgasm—whether it’s with a human, a robot, or an AI program on a screen—really can make you feel. This is where the ethics get tricky.
The fact that AI will catch up to human intelligence in the coming years will raise questions of robotic sentience and free will. For now, the ethical issue is in our emotional relationship with sexbots. As we begin to treat increasingly realistic sexbots as partners, we ascribe them the value of a person. The chemicals and smells that we release, and that the most advanced sexbots likewise emit, mean the difference between humans and AI programs has diminished.
I would never use an AI sexbot or, for that matter, any sort of machine or program made for sex, you might be thinking. So why should I care? This isn’t a valid argument to dismiss AI ethical implications. We care that thousands of prostitutes are reportedly assaulted each day. We care that children are exploited, forced into sex slavery and into doing webcam shows like the ones Sweetie infiltrated. If AI programs become sentient—or rather, when AI programs become as advanced as the human mind—will we still be able to rest on the idea that AI sexbots are unfeeling, not prone to the Kantian idea of rationality? No: Their well-being should then be just as important as that of any other sentient being.
“Transhumanism,” or bettering humans through technology, is quickly becoming our new reality. Zoltan Istvan, author of The Transhumanist Wager,predicted that the Transhumanist Age would bring on massive socio-cultural changes, such as a sharp decrease in new marriages. “In only a matter of decades,” he wrote, “transhumanist technology will lead us to become very different beings with very different rituals, regardless of past heritage or cultural influence.” Not only will sexbots lead us to become “different beings,” they will lead the technology we have created to become different as well. AI programs are becoming, and in some instance already have become, the “means,” not just the “ends” to be used exclusively for our pleasure. Whether we choose to imbue them with value no longer matters—the intelligence of upcoming AI programs makes them valuable; makes them rational; makes them sentient; and makes them, quite nearly, human.HILLSBOROUGH — Detectives are investigating a home invasion by a man who demanded money, assaulted two adults with a hammer, then locked them in a closet and fled — by stealing their vehicle on the way out, police said.
At about 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, a man, armed with a hammer, entered a residence on Sunnymeade Road and demanded money from an 80-year-old woman and a 57-year-old man, according to a statement from Somerset County Prosecutor Geoffrey D. Soriano, Somerset County Prosecutor's Office Chief of County Detectives Timothy Fitzgerald, and Hillsborough Township Chief of Police Paul Kaminsky.
After assaulting the two adults with the hammer, the man locked both of them in a bedroom closet from which they were unable to escape for at least six hours, the statement said.
When they did escape, the couple notified Hillsborough Police, the statement said.
After robbing the victims of personal items, the man fled the area in one of the victims' vehicles, which was subsequently recovered in Raritan Borough, the statement said.
Both victims sustained injuries and were taken to Somerset Medical Center, where they were both treated and released, the statement said.
Detectives from the Somerset County Prosecutor's Office Major Crimes Unit, Crime Scene Investigation and Forensics Unit, and the Hillsborough Township Police were on scene handling the investigation, the statement said.
Crime Stoppers of Somerset County Inc. is offering a reward of up to $5,000 for information leading to the identification and arrest of the man responsible for the home invasion and attack, the statement said.
Soriano, Fitzgerald and Kaminsky ask anyone with information regarding this crime, or anyone who may have observed the man in the area, to contact the Somerset County Crime Stoppers Tip Line at 888-577-8477 or leave tips online on the Crime Stoppers tips website or the prosecutor's office website. All calls and tips will be kept confidential, Soriano said.
Update: The prosecutor's office has released a description of the suspected home invader and new information on the case. Read the updated story here.We’re at La MaMa Theatre in New York’s East Village, where the famous Russian dissident and activist Maria Alyokhina is rehearsing for her performance in Burning Doors, a touring protest play with the underground Belarus Free Theatre.
It’s nearly 11 a.m. when we meet.
But Masha, as she is known, is bleary-eyed and unfocused. She’d just woke to a media firestorm in Russia over her romantic relationship with Dmitry Enteo, founder of a far-right activist movement called “God’s Will.”
The ultra-religious Orthodox group had recently expelled Enteo because of his relationship with Alyokhina. But few details had emerged until Alyokhina arrived in New York, when one independent Russian publication ran a bombshell feature detailing the unlikely love affair between a culture-policing Christian extremist and a blasphemous Pussy Rioter.
“He’s kind of a homophobe,” Alyokhina says of Enteo, smiling nervously and dragging on a cigarette outside the theater. Then she takes it back—“Actually he’s not a homophobe, he’s OK with LGBT people”—and looks for affirmation from another touring performer in Burning Doors who’s joined us.
“He’s against gay propaganda activists,” the friend tells me.
The smile falls from Alyokhina’s face.
“What does this mean, ‘propaganda activists?’” she asks.
“For example what he said about LGBT flags—” her friend starts to reply but Alyokhina interjects in Russian. They go back and forth for a minute or so.
“It’s complicated,” Alyokhina tells me, as if to translate, then heads inside for rehearsal.
I won’t realize just how complicated it is until late that night, when a Russian-speaking colleague sends me the article about Alyokhina’s controversial romance.
“ It’s not easy to show this fight, to show what freedom means ”
In 2012, 23-year-old Alyokhina and other members of feminist art collective Pussy Riot were arrested when they donned colorful balaclavas and shouted for the Virgin Mary to “drive away Putin!” inside Moscow’s biggest cathedral.
Their guerrilla Punk Prayer performance lasted roughly 40 seconds before security guards chased them from the church. Pussy Riot stressed that Punk Prayer was an anti-Kremlin political protest against the Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the Russian Orthodox bishop campaigning for Putin in the presidential race.
But that didn’t stop a judge from convicting them of “hooliganism based on religious hatred,” arguing that they’d made “emphatically vulgar” gestures in the church and had “offended the feelings of religious believer[s].”
When Alyokhina and fellow Pussy Rioter Nadezhda “Nadya” Tolokonnikova were released from jail in a flurry of media attention, Tolokonnikova was often described as the pretty one.
But with her intense blue eyes, impish smile, and wry sense of humor, Alyokhina is bewitching and seductive, even when (or perhaps because) she’s defiant and aloof. It’s hard not to be intimidated by her candor, which can come off as blunt and frosty. But she’s mostly warm and is a good listener who’s genuinely interested in what other people have to say.
After our morning interview was cut short, Alyokhina suggested we chat again later that night (“I’m not a morning person”) over dinner at a Japanese restaurant near her East Village hotel.
Alyokhina is dressed in all black, as she was that morning, her wavy blond hair tucked under a black beret. She is petite and muscular, with a raspy voice and elf-like features.
During dinner we talk mostly about Burning Doors, which tells the stories of three political prisoners: Alyokhina, who appears as herself; Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian filmmaker who is serving a 20-year sentence in Russian prison, and Petr Pavlensky, whose 2015 protest performance—dousing the entrance to FSB headquarters in gasoline and setting it on fire—inspired the play’s title.
“All of our stories are about artistic resistance, but Oleg’s is hardest to watch because he was tortured during investigation,” Alyokhina tells me in her heavily-accented English. “It’s cruelty theater,” she adds, skeptically examining a few shriveled figs (“What is this?”) inside her seaweed-wrapped rice ball.
Alyokhina’s story draws on the two years she spent in a Russian penal colony, including five months in solitary confinement, and addresses the brutal realities of life in Russia’s modern gulag.
For Alyokhina, this included being routinely stripped naked and searched, forced to squat while guards in her all-women prison accused her of hiding something “up there.” She was also taunted by a cruel prison doctor during graphic gynecological exams.
“She was one of those people who think they have absolute power,” Alyokhina says of the doctor. “Fascism can have totally different forms. The problem is not that she or other prison workers are bad people, it’s that they’ve become a function of the system. When you delegate your right of choice to the system, you start to forget that you have freedom. Your only purpose for existing is to be a function.”
It’s a physically and psychologically exhausting performance for Alyokhina, but she is fearless—even when having her head repeatedly plunged under water as she recites poetry.
It’s hard not to feel anxious watching her be submerged for increasingly long periods: 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 45 seconds, and so on. I began wondering whether her head was fully under water. There had to be some sort of stage trickery that allowed her to breathe?
Alyokhina laughs when I mention this at dinner: There was no trickery. For her, this scene was one of the most important parts of her performance.
“We are showing freedom, and freedom does not exist if you’re not fighting for it,” she says. “But it’s not easy to show this fight, to show what freedom means. It’s not possible to dive into water in prison, because you are always in the ground.”
Much of the play’s Russian dialogue is subtitled in English and projected on stage, but this scene is an exception. “I’m talking about how hard it is for me to breathe,” Alyokhina explains.
It’s been a year since the Belarus Free Theatre company staged their first performance of Burning Doors in London. They’ve since taken the show to Germany, Australia, Finland, and now New York.
“I wanted to convey things to the audience about my experience that hadn’t been revealed in public before,” says Alyokhina. “But it’s not just about showing that experience. It’s about repeating it again and again, except I’m not reliving it on my own this time. I’m sharing it. This is the whole point of the show.”
She pauses.
“I learned in prison that a lot of people don’t believe in words. They only believe in the power of example.”
Alyokhina declines to talk much about her "friendship" with Enteo, as she prefers to call it, which hadn’t been revealed in English media at this point. She shakes her head emphatically.
“No, thank god! This will be…” she trails off, then mimics the sound of an exploding bomb. She promises to email me a link to the article and says good night.
“ I wanted to understand the leader of a movement that wanted to put us in jail ”
Alyokhina never sent me the story. But when I tell her the next day that I’ve read it, she asks to meet in person again, after the New York premiere of Burning Doors that night.
I remind her of what she’d said the night before about believing in the power of example. What are we to make of her relationship with Enteo, then, given his strong ties to an activist group known for beating up gay people during Pride rallies?
“He hasn’t been doing [homophobic] actions with that movement for a year now,” Alyokhina says. “I think he has problem with Gay Pride parades,” she allows, “but not with gays and lesbians.”
This reporter replied, “The first day we met you said he was a homophobe.”
“He’s not a homophobe,” says Alyokhina. “Ask Olga, who is quoted in the article. She has spent nine months together with us. He’s not about protecting the patriarchy at all. Totally not, and I’m sure of this.”
Alyokhina didn’t know about Enteo’s background when she first met him, briefly, at a party in October 2016, though her friend told her about his movement before introducing them.
“I shook his hand and that was it,” she says. Afterward, he began sending her messages on Twitter and asking her to hang out. Finally, in December 2016, she agreed to meet again and invited him to her apartment.
“I wanted to understand the leader of a movement that wanted to put us in jail,” she says.
Indeed, when Pussy Riot was on trial in 2013, Enteo and other members of “God’s Will” gathered outside Russia’s Ministry of Justice and called for Pussy Riot to be imprisoned. “God’s Will” was a little-known movement before 2013, when they campaigned to criminalize “offending religious feelings” in response to Pussy Riot’s Punk Prayer.
They successfully convinced Putin to sign their legislation into a law that carries up to a year in prison, though it doesn’t clearly specify what qualifies as offense.
The night Enteo went to Alyokhina’s, they spent five hours talking and watching videos of the activist work that he’d done.
“He was quite happy to talk about himself,” she says with a grin, admitting that she thought he was “quite funny.”
“There were some hard moments for me, because if someone is showing such videos with pride, well…”
She stubs her cigarette and goes on: “I believe that there is a reason for hatred, and if we want to push away hatred we should understand the reason why it’s happening and show that there’s another side. I’m from the other side, and I’ve showed the reality that things can be different.”
When he asked her to celebrate New Year’s Eve with him, she suggested they go to a bridge, steps from the Kremlin, where opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was shot to death in 2015.
Enteo accompanied her and brought flowers to leave on the bridge that night. Later in January, Alyokhina invited Enteo to an annual anti-fascist rally that he and other “God’s Will” members tried to break up in previous years. But with Alyokhina, he came as a protester himself. He also came to a presentation of her new book, Riot Days, and to see her perform in Burning Doors.
But Alyokhina rolls her eyes when asked about when they started dating and whether she was attracted to him from the beginning.
“I’m not going to talk about the first time we had sex,” she says firmly, trying not to smile. “Pure. No.”
She declines to answer if she’s in love with him (“I do not use this word because if you use it so much it becomes empty.”) Asked if she tells him that she loves him, she laughs: “I mean I’m speaking about him, so this means something.
“But it’s more interesting than that, the whole relationship—” she winces. “I hate that word ‘relationship.’ I don’t understand this need to mark and define everything.”
“ I’m not interested in forcing him to change ”
Whatever they are, how does she reconcile with the fact that Enteo is ideologically opposed to everything she’s fought for in the last five years? How does she expect Pussy Riot fans to reconcile with her lover’s opposition to feminism?
And even if Enteo is no longer destroying art that his movement deems Satanic or culturally deviant, does she really think he’s changed much in the nine months since they first connected?
“I’m not interested in forcing him to change,” Alyokhina says. “Inviting someone to an anti-fascist rally isn’t telling them to change how they think. It’s introducing them to another perspective. For me, it’s important to show, not tell. And then the person can choose.
“Because often people just don’t understand the mechanism of this revolution that the opposition wants, because they don’t know how to change. It’s important that I show how it’s possible. After that, everything else is his choice, not mine.”
She cares that fans of Pussy Riot know she's fighting for freedom of artistic expression. Her relationship with Enteo does not mitigate the years she's devoted to political activism and affecting change in Russia.
Does she see herself having children with Enteo? Does she envision a future together?
For the first time, Alyokhina looks incredulous, even horrified—and understandably so.
“What future can we talk about? What future? We are living in a country where one of our friends was just beaten in the head with a metal stick. There’s not a complicated construction of the future in my life. Pussy Riot exists when it’s doing protest art. You do, and you exist. That’s it.”
Burning Doors is at La MaMa, 66 East 4th Street, NYC, until Oct. 22. Book tickets here.
Additional Reporting by Katie ZavadskiRely on Horror’s 2016 Game Of The Year: The Nominees
2016 has been a fantastic year for video games. From indies to AAA, this year we’ve seem some of the best games of the generation — some were games that prevailed despite years of development hell. As we reach the new year, it’s once again time to reflect on which game we loved the most with Rely on Horror’s 2016 Game of the Year. But before we announce our winner, we’re announcing our top five nominees (as voted by our staff). Here’s the list below (in no particular order):
DOOM – id Software
Oxenfree – Night School Studio
Inside – PlayDead
Dark Souls 3 – From Software
Thumper – Drool
We’re once again allowing our readers (that’s you) to vote for their favorite horror (and horror-themed) game in the Rely on Horror 2016 Community Game of the Year poll. Simply fill this form (embedded below). The form includes our GOTY nominees and as many horror games that came out this year that we could remember. If your favorite horror game of the year isn’t on the list, simply add it under “Other”. FYI – you must be logged into a Google Account to see, fill out and submit the form that’s embedded below.
We’ll announce our Game of the Year and the Rely on Horror Community Game of The Year in January!The clock is ticking on medical marijuana legislation at the Capitol.
With the Legislature scheduled to adjourn in a week, the Senate on Monday postponed taking up a bill passed by the House last week.
The delay will help lawmakers search for middle ground on competing versions of the legislation in the House and Senate, their sponsors said.
Gov. Mark Dayton said Monday that he hopes the Legislature will send him a medical marijuana bill he can sign into law.
The final measure can be a compromise between the House and Senate versions, Dayton said, but he prefers the House version — especially because the Senate bill would let patients have access to whole-leaf marijuana for use in vaporizers.
“It’s just, to me, impossible to believe that somebody is going to buy 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana, and not smoke it or not sell it to someone else who will,” Dayton said during a news conference at the Capitol.
Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia allow medical marijuana. The issue has been pushed to the forefront in Minnesota and other states this year by families seeking access to the drug for children with severe seizure disorders.
Children take marijuana in a liquid form, and families say the treatment is superior to traditional pharmaceuticals that they say offer little relief and significant side effects.
Similar concerns have prompted lawmakers in seven states this year to allow limited access to a form of medical marijuana that’s thought to help with seizure disorders.
In Minnesota, the House passed its bill Friday on an 86-39 vote after nearly five hours of emotional debate. Four days earlier, the Senate passed its bill 48-18.
The Senate might take up the House bill Tuesday, said Amos Briggs, spokesman for the Senate DFL Caucus. At that point, the Senate could table it, pass the House version or appoint a conference committee, Briggs said.
The House bill provides medical marijuana to patients with seizure disorders and seven other diagnoses. The Senate bill covers the same conditions, but also would help patients with intractable pain, post-traumatic stress disorder, severe nausea and wasting syndrome.
Law enforcement groups and doctors have questioned whether letting pain patients have medical marijuana would provide a way for people to fake symptoms and obtain legal cover for recreation use.
Critics have pointed to the experience in Colorado, where the majority of patients seeking medical marijuana have done so |
equipped to handle the issues” are at the microphone.
Kganyago said there is nothing new about the ban on open lines – the SABC has done it before.
“Now we are being proactive about it to warn them against open lines during this period.”
MetroFM listeners shocked
“Listeners of MetroFM Talk were shocked this week when host Rams Mabote did not invite them to comment on any issue they deemed important,” the Sunday Times report stated.
Listeners complained on Twitter about the snub, with an SABC employee stating that the current affairs show drew a lot of complaints about the ANC.
Another SABC source said this was not the first time the broadcaster tried to censor callers.
“SABC bosses have over the past few months complained about current affairs shows and warned about balance when discussing politics,” stated the report.
The full reports are in the Sunday Times and City Press of 28 February 2016.
More on the SABC
SABC denies claims of R100 000 reward for exposing employees who leak info
Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan takes on the Guptas, SABCWe love Ed Sheeran so much, it hasn’t even bothered us that we’ve been listening to his debut album for years now. OK, that’s a lie. We mind a lot. Luckily, new music is on the way.
www.youtube.com/embed/scHS8YaYoRA?feature=player_detailpage
Ed Sheeran released the first single off his second album, x (pronounced “multiply”), today on BBC’s Zane Lowe’s radio show. The track is up and already available for download here in the U.S. and we highly recommend you do so. “Sing” has everything a single needs in order to find its way to regular radio rotation, namely an assist from Pharrell Williams (in case you weren’t sick of him already).
“Sing” is a truly impressive mixture of what Sheeran did so well on his debut album and what many may not realize Sheeran is capable of. To passive listeners, the “A Team” singer is just a ginger-headed Brit with an acoustic guitar. Yawn. Anyone who spent time with Sheeran’s debut album, +, however, knows he’s so much more. The album slid easily between folksy, depressing acoustic numbers to redemptive raps and drunken meanderings. If “Sing” is any indication, fans should expect no less from x, out June 23.
What’s so great about the song? Starting off with a grunt and a few breathy sighs, Sheeran and his acoustic guitar launch into a full-on R&B track. It’s so sexy, too — like something you’d sneak a listen to on late-’90s-era radio when they’d do their midnight hour of love. As Sheeran falls in love with a girl on a club’s dance floor, dozens of former R&B artists are — no doubt, begrudgingly — admitting the singer has something they always sorely lacked. (Our best guess: the accent and fiery hair.)
The single offers up some great and nostalgic moments. The backing choral “oh” reminds us of a certain New Kids on the Block song that at one time took up our every waking moment. The old-school beats mixed with Sheeran’s guitar are also a nice touch of flavor. As always, Sheeran’s speed and flow when rapping are impressive, just as he previously demonstrated on “You Need Me, I Don’t Need You.” And that falsetto? Robin Thicke may have just lost the only thing he had going for himself.
What do you think of “Sing”: Is it a win, or does it fall flat?Once again, a peaceful law-abiding community suffers the injustice of being targeted for hate graffiti and is targeted on the basis that some Muslims regard it as being heretical. So what do these moral guardians of faith do, they decide to promote intra-Muslim sectarianism by scrawling the following on the Noor Mosque in Crawley.
The comments listed on the door of the mosque are simply an affront to all of the community who use the mosque and sends out a signal that they are not valued or accepted.
This case highlights how hatred and intolerance impacts on wider communities and where the perpetrator has no sense of morality in targeting a place of worship.
Judging by the language on the mosque, we believe that it has been written by someone with some local knowledge and who may reside in the area. It may also have been written by a Muslim given the language used.
We have passed this case onto Sussex Police who have confirmed that they are looking into this matter. If requested by the police, we would also be happy to provide a community impact statement if someone is arrested on suspicion of the offence. Such actions are unacceptable and we will do all we can to ensure that any perpetrator who is charged, knows that the full weight of the law will come down on them for such actions which target all users of that mosque.The B.C. Public Interest Advocacy Centre says BC Hydro disconnection rates have skyrocketed since smart meters were installed, leaving thousands of low-income families without power.
Spokesperson Sarah Khan says last year more than 30,000 people were disconnected because they couldn't pay their power bill. In 2013, only 5,000 were disconnected.
"Families with children have no heat or light. They're not just cold but not able to do homework as families struggle to pay the money," Khan said.
Khan says smart meters have made it easier to cut off electricity because it's done electronically.
"The smart meters, of course, are allowing BC Hydro to connect much more easily because they no longer need to send a crew out, so they no longer need to deal with the human element of disconnecting power," Khan said.
Rate redesign application filed
The BCPIAC obtained the information about power cuts as part of its involvement with a B.C. Utilities Commission proceeding for BC Hydro's most recent rate redesign application, which it filed in September 2015.
The B.C. Public Interest Advocacy Centre says BC Hydro's smart meters have made it easier for it to cut off power. (CBC)
The proceeding is scheduled for a public hearing this August, and the BCPIAC is representing a coalition of seven anti-poverty, disability, and seniors' rights groups.
The organization is asking BC Hydro to implement a low-income energy assistance program, including customer service rules for low-income customers.
Khan said hydro customers who struggle to pay their power bill are penalized again with reconnection and late-payment fees.
She also points out that BC Hydro rates have increased by more than 50 per cent in the past 10 years and are projected to keep on going up.
"We think that the rising rates are correlated with the increased number of people who are getting disconnection orders," Khan said.
BC Hydro says its credit agents conduct a manual review before they cuts power to any household. It also said reconnection fees have dropped to $30 from $125.
The power provider does also have a program for low-income families: they can apply for "free energy-saving products and professional advice" to help them save costs.
With files from Angela SterrittThe family of Olimpia Mikszan is marking the 20th anniversary of her disappearance with an appeal to the public for any new information.
Mikszan graduated from Abbotsford Secondary School (Abbotsford Police)
The 18-year-old was last seen on the morning of June 21, 1996 outside her basement suite apartment in central Abbotsford, accompanied by an acquaintance.
She was reported missing by friends the next day.
"Where is she? We would like to find out. What happened? We want closure, we want the truth," said Elzbieta Mikszan, Olimpia's mother.
"If she's somewhere and someone knows something about her please help us to bring her back. She was a very special person in our life."
Mikszan was last seen with an acquaintance outside her basement suite apartment of this home June 21, 1996. (Abbotsford Police)
Const. Ian MacDonald said Abbotsford police followed up on a number of tips 20 years ago before the case went cold.
"We want to make a public appeal for anyone who might have a recollection of Olimpia, who might have seen her in and around this time in June," he said.I'm a little tired of writing about passwords. But like taxes, email, and pinkeye, they're not going away any time soon. Here's what I know to be true, and backed up by plenty of empirical data:
No matter what you tell them, users will always choose simple passwords.
No matter what you tell them, users will re-use the same password over and over on multiple devices, apps, and websites. If you are lucky they might use a couple passwords instead of the same one.
What can we do about this as developers?
Stop requiring passwords altogether, and let people log in with Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, or any other valid form of Internet driver's license that you're comfortable supporting. The best password is one you don't have to store.
Urge browsers to support automatic, built-in password generation and management. Ideally supported by the OS as well, but this requires cloud storage and everyone on the same page, and that seems most likely to me per-browser. Chrome, at least, is moving in this direction.
Nag users at the time of signup when they enter passwords that are … Too short: UY7dFd Lack sufficient entropy: aaaaaaaaa Match common dictionary words: anteaters1
This is commonly done with an ambient password strength meter, which provides real time feedback as you type.
If you can't avoid storing the password – the first two items I listed above are both about avoiding the need for the user to select a 'new' password altogether – then showing an estimation of password strength as the user types is about as good as it gets.
The easiest way to build a safe password is to make it long. All other things being equal, the law of exponential growth means a longer password is a better password. That's why I was always a fan of passphrases, though they are exceptionally painful to enter via touchscreen in our brave new world of mobile – and that is an increasingly critical flaw. But how short is too short?
When we built Discourse, I had to select an absolute minimum password length that we would accept. I chose a default of 8, based on what I knew from my speed hashing research. An eight character password isn't great, but as long as you use a reasonable variety of characters, it should be sufficiently resistant to attack.
By attack, I don't mean an attacker automating a web page or app to repeatedly enter passwords. There is some of this, for extremely common passwords, but that's unlikely to be a practical attack on many sites or apps, as they tend to have rate limits on how often and how rapidly you can try different passwords.
What I mean by attack is a high speed offline attack on the hash of your password, where an attacker gains access to a database of leaked user data. This kind of leak happens all the time. And it will continue to happen forever.
If you're really unlucky, the developers behind that app, service, or website stored the password in plain text. This thankfully doesn't happen too often any more, thanks to education efforts. Progress! But even if the developers did properly store a hash of your password instead of the actual password, you better pray they used a really slow, complex, memory hungry hash algorithm, like bcrypt. And that they selected a high number of iterations. Oops, sorry, that was written in the dark ages of 2010 and is now out of date. I meant to say scrypt. Yeah, scrypt, that's the ticket.
Then we're safe? Right? Let's see.
Start with a a truly random 8 character password. Note that 8 characters is the default size of the generator, too. I got U6zruRWL.
Plug it into the GRC password crack checker.
Read the "Massive Cracking Array" result, which is 2.2 seconds.
Go lay down and put a warm towel over your face.
You might read this and think that a massive cracking array is something that's hard to achieve. I regret to inform you that building an array of, say, 24 consumer grade GPUs that are optimized for speed hashing, is well within the reach of the average law enforcement agency and pretty much any small business that can afford a $40k equipment charge. No need to buy when you can rent – plenty of GPU equipped cloud servers these days. Beyond that, imagine what a motivated nation-state could bring to bear. The mind boggles.
Even if you don't believe me, but you should, the offline fast attack scenario, much easier to achieve, was hardly any better at 37 minutes.
Perhaps you're a skeptic. That's great, me too. What happens when we try a longer random.org password on the massive cracking array?
9 characters 2 minutes 10 characters 2 hours 11 characters 6 days 12 characters 1 year 13 characters 64 years
The random.org generator is "only" uppercase, lowercase, and number. What if we add special characters, to keep Q*Bert happy?
8 characters 1 minute 9 characters 2 hours 10 characters 1 week 11 characters 2 years 12 characters 2 centuries
That's a bit better, but you can't really feel safe until the 12 character mark even with a full complement of uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters.
It's unlikely that massive cracking scenarios will get any slower. While there is definitely a password length where all cracking attempts fall off an exponential cliff that is effectively unsurmountable, these numbers will only get worse over time, not better.
So after all that, here's what I came to tell you, the poor, beleagured user:
Unless your password is at least 12 characters, you are vulnerable.
That should be the minimum password size you use on any service. Generate your password with some kind of offline generator, with diceware, or your own home-grown method of adding words and numbers and characters together – whatever it takes, but make sure your passwords are all at least 12 characters.
Now, to be fair, as I alluded to earlier all of this does depend heavily on the hashing algorithm that was selected. But you have to assume that every password you use will be hashed with the lamest, fastest hash out there. One that is easy for GPUs to calculate. There's a lot of old software and systems out there, and will be for a long, long time.
And for developers:
Pick your new password hash algorithms carefully, and move all your old password hashing systems to much harder to calculate hashes. You need hashes that are specifically designed to be hard to calculate on GPUs, like scrypt. Even if you pick the "right" hash, you may be vulnerable if your work factor isn't high enough. Matsano recommends the following:
scrypt: N=2^14, r=8, p=1
bcrypt: cost=11
PBKDF2 with SHA256: iterations=86,000
But those are just guidelines; you have to scale the hashing work to what's available and reasonable on your servers or devices. For example, we had a minor denial of service bug in Discourse where we allowed people to enter up to 20,000 character passwords in the login form, and calculating the hash on that took, uh … several seconds.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go change my PayPal password.A four carbon linear chain diamine, putrescine (1,4‐diaminobutane), is an important platform chemical having a wide range of applications in chemical industry. Biotechnological production of putrescine from renewable feedstock is a promising alternative to the chemical synthesis that originates from non‐renewable petroleum. Here we report development of a metabolically engineered strain of Escherichia coli that produces putrescine at high titer in glucose mineral salts medium. First, a base strain was constructed by inactivating the putrescine degradation and utilization pathways, and deleting the ornithine carbamoyltransferase chain I gene argI to make more precursors available for putrescine synthesis. Next, ornithine decarboxylase, which converts ornithine to putrescine, was amplified by a combination of plasmid‐based and chromosome‐based overexpression of the coding genes under the strong tac or trc promoter. Furthermore, the ornithine biosynthetic genes (argC‐E) were overexpressed from the trc promoter, which replaced the native promoter in the genome, to increase the ornithine pool. Finally, strain performance was further improved by the deletion of the stress responsive RNA polymerase sigma factor RpoS, a well‐known global transcription regulator that controls the expression of ca. 10% of the E. coli genes. The final engineered E. coli strain was able to produce 1.68 g L−1 of putrescine with a yield of 0.168 g g−1 glucose. Furthermore, high cell density cultivation allowed production of 24.2 g L−1 of putrescine with a productivity of 0.75 g L−1 h−1. The strategy reported here should be useful for the bio‐based production of putrescine from renewable resources, and also for the development of strains capable of producing other diamines, which are important as nitrogen‐containing platform chemicals. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2009; 104: 651–662 © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.A vicar has been betrayed after taking in a destitute alcoholic who then embarked on an affair with his wife of 29 years.
Ivan Mascarenhas, 49, moved in with Matthew and Sandra Taylor in Northamptonshire, after he began drinking again and was thrown out by his wife.
The vicar of St Mary's in Rushden took pity on him and gave him a spare room while he found his feet.
And Rev Taylor even praised Ivan in church for battling alcoholism, not knowing that he was sleeping with his wife.
MailOnline understands Mr and Mrs Taylor have gone on a fortnight's holiday and their local diocese said they are ‘rebuilding their marriage’.
Moving on: Rev Matthew Taylor appears to have forgiven his wife Sandra (pictured together) after she had an affair with a homeless alcoholic they took in
Illicit: Ivan Mascarenhas says that Sandra, right, helped him in his struggle with alcohol before they 'fell in love' and started a relationship he said was 'like a fantasy' because it 'felt forbidden'
Mr Mascarenhas said their affair started after he bonded with the vicar's wife over long walks and was 'like a fantasy' because it 'felt forbidden'.
He told The Sun: 'We couldn’t control ourselves. We both knew it was wrong and that it shouldn't happen'.
Betrayal: Rev Taylor had even praised his house guest in church and learned of the affair a fortnight ago
The lovers met through a drugs and alcohol rehab shelter Sandra ran through the church.
Father-of-two Ivan then returned to his wife Claire, 41, but fell off the wagon and was thrown out, so after begging Sandra for help he was taken in by the vicar and his wife in May.
Two months later Ivan was found a place to live a mile away but he says that Sandra then began sending him texts and inviting him back to her house for sex.
He told The Sun:'We'd fallen in love. We just couldn't stop. Of course it was wrong, and the fact we are both Christian made it even worse. Matthew was a friend, which makes me feel terrible about it'.
Mother-of-two Sandra is understood to have told her husband of the affair in recent weeks and appears to have been forgiven.
She is said to feel'shame and sadness' about what happened.
Rev Taylor said: 'During a time of great and intense emotional loss and stress, my wife Sandra was drawn into an inappropriate relationship with Ivan Mascarenhas while he was a voluntary member living in one of the rehab's dry houses.
'It was a short relationship which is now ended and for which Sandra now feels great shame and sadness.
'She resigned immediately having realised the seriousness of the situation. Ivan has left the house and a flat has now been arranged for him in a different location.'
Support: The congregation and church leaders at St Mary's in Rushden are'supporting Matt and Sandra as they rebuild their marriage'
Sandra Taylor has resigned from her post at the drugs and alcohol charity Recovery House in Rushden.NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Four teams have shown the most interest so far in Yoenis Cespedes, and three are no surprise.
The Angels, Giants and Tigers have been expected to bid aggressively for corner outfielders. But the fourth club is a shock – the World Series champion Royals.
Both of Kansas City’s 2015 corner outfielders – Alex Gordon and Alex Rios – are free agents. The Royals are trying to retain Gordon.
But that did not preclude the Royals from inquiring on Cespedes, as well. However, Kansas City has come to a rather quick conclusion that Cespedes’ price tag will almost certainly be beyond its comfort zone. Gordon will cost a lesser, more tolerable amount. Royals GM Dayton Moore has acknowledged the team will try to save money by giving Jarrod Dyson a chance to be one of their regular corner outfielders.
The Mets have made little movement to suggest they want to keep Cespedes and have publicly acknowledged it is unlikely.
The Angels have been associated with just about every significant corner outfielder, and reports say they are in steady talks with Justin Upton. They are looking for someone to join Mike Trout and Kole Calhoun.
Cespedes would fit the Giants, who are looking for a left fielder who also may be able to play some center field should Angel Pagan suffer more injuries and/or deterioration in performance.
New Tigers GM Al Avila has said his club is not in pursuit of Cespedes. Detroit traded to the Mets just minutes before last season’s July 31 deadline. However, the Tigers were known to be fans of Cespedes, so there is a chance they can circle back later in the process.
With Ben Zobrist becoming the first big position player to sign a free agent deal, that could serve to launch a run of agreements.The women said they're concerned for the safety of children and pets who might wander off the paved path.
"What happened to Hamilton being the best place to raise a child?" asked Bush. "There's needles down here, there's hundreds and thousands of Tampax applicators."
On Sunday evening, the city announced that in response to the women's concerns, the Waterfront Trail is now closed from the Bayfront Park boat launch to the high level bridge for cleanup. It is expected to reopen by Friday.
"The cleanup hasn't actually started yet but due to the type of waste, the trail is closed as a safety precaution," city spokesperson Kelly Anderson stated late Sunday.
She said staff is investigating the source of the waste.
Villebrun said she spoke briefly with city officials Sunday evening but vowed that the protest would continue until they actually witnessed the debris being cleaned up.
Ward 1 Coun. Aidan Johnson visited them Sunday afternoon and promised to help get answers. He was shocked by what he witnessed.
"It's disgusting," he said. "It's worse than I realized. There are used tampons, syringes, condoms and other forms of filth in layers all along the shoreline.
"Obviously a team that has some kind of expertise in biohazard cleanup needs to be tasked with the cleanup."
The women told Johnson there is similar hazardous contamination littering the shore of Princess Point further to the west.
Johnson said a quick examination of the shore suggested to him the material may have been the result of more than one spill.
"It looks to me like there are layers of debris. There's like an archeological phenomenon going on of layers."
Police have been checking in periodically with the women to ensure they remain safe. At one point, a police officer brought two life vests for them as a precaution.
Trail users have been stopping by to offer encouragement and one woman donated a case of bottled water and a container of coffee.
[email protected]
905-526-3226Harvard University’s reported decision to rescind the admissions offers of at least 10 people for posting offensive memes sheds light on a lesser-known student forum: the meme thread.
In the past year, Facebook groups featuring college-specific jokes and memes, have gained popularity at universities like Cornell University, Princeton University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Southern California.
At Harvard, an offshoot of the original group, "Harvard Memes for the Elitist 1%," was found to have students posting racist and sexually explicit memes involving minors, The Harvard Crimson reported Sunday evening.
The offspring chat, "Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens," is described as a trove of "Offensive stolen memes for white, rich, hetero, cisgender, depressed with sucidal [sic] tendencies males." The group had more than 100 members.
A spokeswoman for Harvard, Rachael Dane, told The Chronicle that the university does not comment publicly on the admissions status of individual applicants. (Yale, Cornell, and Columbia Universities declined to comment on how their respective admissions offices determined what online behavior was grounds for an acceptance to be rescinded. Neither Brown, Princeton, Dartmouth, nor the University of Pennsylvania had responded to a request for comment as of Monday evening.)
Some student administrators of similar public meme pages at other colleges said they agreed with Harvard’s decision. "I think the students, honestly, they had it coming," said George Iskander, an administrator for Yale’s meme group. "The stuff they posted was really blatantly offensive. It really is in the truest sense of the word obscene."
“You're never anonymous. You should do everything on the internet with that in mind. You are never hidden.”
The pages are normally home to jokes that are specific to the creator’s campus and primarily feature pictures with captions — referred to as "memes" — pertaining to local politics or school-specific inside jokes. One of the first was created in 2016 at the University of California at Berkeley by Chris Tril, who graduated this year. The Berkeley meme group, originally named UC Berkeley Memes for Edgy Teens, was intended to be a communal area for students with similar senses of humor to post relatable content, Mr. Tril said. The page was renamed Monday evening as "Not-Harvard Memes for Rescinded Teens."
"I thought that people didn’t like the same stuff that I did, but as it turns out, other people do," he said. "So we made a little community just by doing that."
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The group now has more than 95,000 members. Karina Pauletti, a current admin on the Berkeley group, said the page attracts 500 to 1,000 new members every day. By comparison, Harvard’s main meme page has just over 30,000 members.
For many of these groups, there are no restrictions on who can join the page and post memes — people unaffiliated with the college can do so — but each new member must be approved by a page administrator, the user who runs the page and decides if a contentious post is deleted or stays. Many groups also have moderators, who screen comments and posts for inappropriate content.
The role can be relatively time consuming, given that moderators must manually accept the hundreds of requests to join the page, as well as review any memes that may be offensive. While some administrators on meme pages with several moderators and administrators said the workload was easily balanced among them, others with fewer said they needed to set aside a few hours a week to moderate.
Chirag Bharadwaj, a co-founder of and administrator for Cornell’s meme page, said he sets aside roughly two to three hours a week during the school year to moderate memes. Yoon Ko, a page administrator for Duke University’s meme group, said he spends one to two hours a week screening comments and posts.
But when it comes to controversial posts, page administrators said that it can sometimes be difficult to define a clear line between funny and inappropriate, and that there was a trend toward posting "edgy" content in an attempt to be funny. It’s "the idea that, in order to be funny, sometimes you have to be kind of offensive, you have to kind of overstep boundaries that might piss some people off," said Brinda Gurumoorthy, an administrator and co-creator on Cornell’s group. "People don’t know where to stop with that sometimes."
Ms. Gurumoorthy, a rising senior, said she doesn’t want to police the page too much, but that there is certain content that is clearly inappropriate. "We do draw the line at things that are explicitly racist, sexist, ableist, so we try to pull down things that are in that category," Ms. Gurumoorthy said.
Elise Vondra, co-creator and administrator of the University of Southern California’s page, said her logic is simple. "If we’re on the fence, we take it down," Ms. Vondra said.
Page administrators interviewed by The Chronicle said that they have only occasionally dealt with contentious posts, but that members of their meme pages have pushed back against bans on certain content.
One post that caused trouble in Southern California’s group depicted an all-white sorority pledge class with the caption "we value diversity." Ms. Vondra said she decided not to remove the meme because it was social commentary, not derision. "There’s a line between irony and satire and rude, crude, offensive shock-value stuff," Ms. Vondra said. "The stuff that they posted was beyond the line of humor. That was just offensive and if I was at Harvard, I wouldn’t want that to represent our university."
Ms. Vondra, a rising sophomore, said she fully supported Harvard’s decision. "That just shows who they are as a person, that they think that’s OK," Ms. Vondra said. "With college applications, they want to see what kind of person you are. If someone put that on their application, they wouldn’t accept it."
By and large, students don’t expect to be held accountable for the things they post on the internet, Ms. Vondra said. "You’re never anonymous," she said. "You should do everything on the internet with that in mind. You are never hidden."Three years ago, feeling Louisville needed professional sports to attract and retain talented young people in our community, 41 local residents launched a soccer club around which our town could rally. Aptly named Louisville City FC, the team has quickly built a reputation for winning and drawing some of the United Soccer League’s largest crowds.
A study conducted last year by the City of Louisville determined a soccer-specific stadium is needed to maintain and grow the game here. Now, after months of work with various property owners, Louisville City FC is a step closer to making that a reality.
Tracts of land are under option in the Butchertown Neighborhood, where the club plans to transform 40 acres into a 10,000-seat, soccer-specific stadium and adjacent development including space for offices, hotels and retail.
“Since receiving the results of the study, our board has explored a number of potential stadium locations, but none measured up to this site as a longterm home for Louisville City FC,” said club chairman John Neace. “We’re ready to solidify the future of LouCity, an important community asset.”
Through public-private partnership, LouCity intends to continue the revitalization of downtown Louisville and surrounding areas in space occupied by the former Challenger Lifts headquarters, an above-ground oil tank facility, a storage space and auto salvage lot.
A 10,000-seat soccer-specific stadium would open in 2020 on a site that is, as with the club, a winner. It’s situated next to Interstates 64 and 71, blocks from Main Street; a close walk from the Big Four Bridge; and within view of the downtown Louisville skyline.
LouCity is working with city government, Metro Council members and state economic development officials to make the project a reality. Construction of a stadium and nearby development, including office and retail space, would create jobs, drive tax revenues and spur economic growth beyond soccer.
“The concept of a master development agreement gives us the ability to build a stadium and commercial value around it that can assist in funding the stadium,” said LouCity board member Mike Mountjoy. “We want to thank Mayor Greg Fischer and his team for working side by side with us in planning this project.”
LouCity, which for now plays at Louisville Slugger Field, competes in the United Soccer League, sanctioned Division II in the United States below only Major League Soccer. The club has made back-to-back runs to the conference finals after starting play in 2015.
The USL has mandated that its members all move into soccer-specific stadiums by 2020. Additionally, LouCity pays rental fees at Slugger Field, which it splits with the Louisville Bats baseball team, as well as the cost of converting the field for soccer. Sponsorship opportunities are limited, and concession revenue does not go to the soccer club.
LouCity commissioned global architecture firm HOK for stadium design of a facility expandable to 20,000 seats should the opportunity to move to Major League Soccer present itself. Initial renderings show seating within close vicinity of the pitch, a suite level and amenities including roofs and multiple video boards.
“I want to thank our owners for all of their work toward getting us into a home of our own,” said LouCity coach James O’Connor. “It’s vital we play on a proper pitch, and I know a soccer-specific stadium is something our fans deserve. It’s an exciting time to be a part of Louisville City FC.”
Last year, an average of 7,218 fans attended LouCity’s home games. Off to an unbeaten start, the club’s next game is set for 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Slugger Field. Tickets are available by calling (502) 384-8799, emailing [email protected] or online at LouisvilleCityFC.com/tickets. Current season ticket holders will receive seating priority in the new stadium.The US State Department has confirmed people who hold dual citizenship with one of seven countries named in an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump will not be able to enter the country.
This means Australians who are also citizens of Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya or Syria may also be affected under the new immigration policy.
A spokesperson for the Foreign Minister Julie Bishop confirmed in a statement that the latest changes in the US would affect Australian dual nationals from these seven countries.
"We are aware that visa issuance to nationals of Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen has been suspended following the signing of the Executive Order on Protecting the Nation from Terrorist Attacks by Foreign Nationals on 27 January 2017.
"The Australian Embassy in Washington is engaging with US officials on the potential implications of the suspension for Australian travellers, including dual nationals."
The statement also went on to say that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade had not received requests for consular assistance from Australians stranded in the United States and unable to board flights.
"Travellers are advised that visa and other entry and exit conditions can change at short notice. Travellers should contact the nearest Embassy or Consulate of the United States for the most current information.”
Related reading British MP says new Trump rules bar him from entering US
US online media outlet Quartz reported the State Department confirmation a day after Trump signed the controversial policy into effect.
It puts a temporary halt on all refugees, pending new vetting measures, and bans all citizens of the seven countries, mainly Muslim, countries from entering the US.
The ban on Syrian citizens is indefinite while the ban for citizens of the other six countries is currently set for 120 days.
An Iraqi-born MP in British Prime Minister Theresa May's government has confirmed the ban will relate to him and his wife.
Australians who hold only Australian citizenship will still be able to travel to the US as usual under the visa waiver program.
Australians, New Zealanders and citizens of 35 other countries allied with the US will still have the option of going online and applying for entry to the US, if their travel is for business or pleasure, and less than 90 days.
Related reading Travellers so far blocked by Trump travel clampdown
There were fears the order Mr Trump signed on Friday, titled The Protection of the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States, could scrap the visa waiver program and force Australians to sit for interviews at US consulates before departing. But that was not the case.
Mr Trump's order did "immediately suspend" the unrelated visa interview waiver program for some visitors to the US who have visas and need to renew them.
"I am establishing new vetting measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America," Mr Trump said at the signing ceremony.
"We don't want them here.
"We want to be sure we are not admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas.
"We only want to admit those into our country who will support our country and love deeply our people."
SBS News has contacted the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for confirmation of their latest travel advice for dual citizens heading to the US.
- with AAPOne day in 1995, a large, heavy middle-aged man robbed two Pittsburgh banks in broad daylight. He didn’t wear a mask or any sort of disguise. And he smiled at surveillance cameras before walking out of each bank. Later that night, police arrested a surprised McArthur Wheeler. When they showed him the surveillance tapes, Wheeler stared in disbelief. ‘But I wore the juice,’ he mumbled. Apparently, Wheeler thought that rubbing lemon juice on his skin would render him invisible to videotape cameras. After all, lemon juice is used as invisible ink so, as long as he didn’t come near a heat source, he should have been completely invisible.
Police concluded that Wheeler was not crazy or on drugs—just incredibly mistaken.
The saga caught the eye of the psychologist David Dunning at Cornell University, who enlisted his graduate student, Justin Kruger, to see what was going on. They reasoned that, while almost everyone holds favorable views of their abilities in various social and intellectual domains, some people mistakenly assess their abilities as being much higher than they actually are. This ‘illusion of confidence’ is now called the ‘Dunning-Kruger effect’, and describes the cognitive bias to inflate self-assessment.
To investigate this phenomenon in the lab, Dunning and Kruger designed some clever experiments. In one study, they asked undergraduate students a series of questions about grammar, logic and jokes, and then asked each student to estimate his or her score overall, as well as their relative rank compared to the other students. Interestingly, students who scored the lowest in these cognitive tasks always overestimated how well they did—by a lot. Students who scored in the bottom quartile estimated |
were taken from them by force of arms.
But what you cannot argue, it seems to me, is that continued American financial and military support for the maintenance of this mess makes any sense at all, and that continued American diplomatic engagement is in any way a rational policy. The US president simply does not have the power to force Israel to stop its illegal, immoral and foul settlement of the West Bank – because the Israel lobby controls this aspect of foreign policy through the Congress, whoever is in the White House; and so we are committed indefinitely to supporting a de facto apartheid regime in perpetuity. That support drives a stake through any attempt to repair relations with the Muslim world, and establish a better diplomatic position with which to isolate and pre-empt Islamist terror. And so we remain trapped in this nightmare – held responsible for everything Israel does (with good reason) and yet unable to stop or affect any of it. If your marriage were like this, your best bet would be a divorce. And it’s coming to the point where America needs to do the same thing with Israel.
My view is that we should therefore end any and all government aid to the Jewish state, and stop using our UN veto to protect it from appropriate international censure.
We should withdraw from any direct negotiating role between the two parties, and try and make the broader international situation more conducive to Israeli withdrawal and Palestinian moderation. At the same time, we should support Palestinian efforts to join international organizations, and be willing to be part of any international force that could police an eventual two-state solution. We should attempt to create a great power coalition, like the one pressuring Iran, to come up with a proposed territorial solution.
Is this an attack on Israel, a Jewish state many of us support in principle but find increasingly difficult in practice? I’d argue not. I’d argue that the dysfunctional relationship between Israel and the US Congress makes American attempts to be an honest broker in the dispute a farce and helps sustain the intolerable occupation indefinitely. The US alienates the Israelis and the Palestinians by this relationship, and the rest of the world increasingly sees the US as simply an obedient and very powerful poodle for the Israeli government. By disengaging, we at least free ourselves from a lose-lose position, which hobbles US foreign policy in other ways. For Israel to seek both to annex the West Bank permanently and also be allied with the West is not something the West can reciprocate indefinitely without abandoning core democratic values.
No doubt these arguments will mean I will be accused of anti-Semitism or anti-Zionism. I’m resigned to that. That too is part of the dead-end. For my part, I still believe in the dream of a free and Jewish state in the ancestral homeland, democratic and prosperous, and have nothing but profound admiration for its achievements and tenacity and acts of benevolence and entrepreneurship around the world. I just do not believe a friend allows a friend to spiral into self-destruction and the abandonment of its ethical core. I think we’ve done about all we can to help achieve a settlement through direct diplomacy – but the Obama years have proven irrefutably that, at this late stage, it’s worse than useless.
It’s time for a divorce. Which is the only thing that could make a functional relationship with Israel possible again.
(Photos: John Kerry by Alex Wong/Getty; Netanyahu and Putin by Dmitri Azarov/Kommersant via Getty Images; Two Palestinian activists sit inside an Israeli bus as it rides between a bus stop outside the West Bank Jewish settlement of Migron, near Ramallah, and a checkpoint leading to Jerusalem, on November 15, 2011. By Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty; Netanyahu and Putin by Dmitri Azarov/Kommersant via Getty Images.)MOORESTOWN, N.J. (CBS) — One person is dead and another is in critical condition after a dispute between two employees turned deadly at a business in South Jersey Monday morning, police said.
The shooting happened at about 7 a.m. at Shields Business Solutions on Twosome Drive in Moorestown, New Jersey.
According to investigators, the incident began as an altercation between two employees inside the building.
Investigators said 42-year-old Edgar Figueroa, of Philadelphia, shot his co-worker, 31-year-old Melvin Nieves, also of Philadelphia, four times.
Police said the shooting occurred inside of the building and Nieves, who was not armed, ran out of the building.
Nieves was transported by helicopter to Cooper University Hospital where he is listed in critical condition.
Authorities say Figueroa also made his way outside and eventually took his own life by turning the gun on himself in the outside rear of the building.
Investigators said the deadly shooting was sparked by an ongoing domestic situation.
No one else was injured.
A representative from Shields Business Solutions released a statement that read in part:
“An unspeakable tragedy unfolded here this morning and, first and foremost, we’d like the families of those involved to know that our thoughts and prayers are with them. To our employees, we want to reiterate that their safety is our absolute priority. In order to provide support to our employees today and throughout the week, we have engaged a grief counselor who will be available here at our offices. At this point, this situation is a police matter, and we are working with the Moorestown Police Department.”
The shooting remains under investigation.For months, the conversation surrounding the stench at La Jolla Cove centered on what the city couldn’t do and the permits necessary to break the rules.
The city explored countless options to clear bird droppings considered to be the source of the stink, including various chemicals, vacuums and even a run-of-the-mill hose.
This week city officials unveiled a plan that takes a different approach, a solution that works with the rules rather than against them.
That’s how the city settled, at least for now, on a caramel-colored compound they hope will cut through the crap.
The product, manufactured by the San Rafael-based Blue Eagle company, is made up of seven types of live, natural microorganisms that literally feed on poop.
A local distributor plans to use a hose to spray the product on the bluffs at La Jolla Cove, a process that will likely spread over days and weeks.
But the city has rejected similar solutions in the past, so why did this one pass muster?
Turns out it has a lot to do with the process.
About a month ago, the city hired environmental consultant Merkel & Associates Inc. to help sort through the regulatory mess.
Keith Merkel, the company’s principal consultant, urged the city to reflect on all those regulations: At least three agencies required permits for any cleaner that might, even inadvertently, flow into the ocean. Other agencies would be on guard should the city disturb sea lions, bird nests or even the bluffs.
Merkel focused on ways to approach the problem that didn’t run afoul of all those rules. What the city settled on is a plan that conveniently skirts them.
Last week, Mayor Bob Filner issued an emergency finding that allows the city to disturb the seals and sea lions that nap and play at the La Jolla Cove by declaring a threat to the public health and welfare. An exemption in the Marine Mammal Protection Act allows the city to make such a determination rather than wait for a permit.
This means workers can mist the brown, foamy solution on the cove without an outside agency’s approval but the city is still taking precautions to avoid violating other rules.
A biologist and geologist will be on hand as the workers apply the solution over several days. Regulations will dictate where it goes.
Workers will avoid the edges of the bluffs so the compound doesn’t make its way into the ocean, meaning La Jollans are still likely to see droppings snaking their way down the rocks.
“The approach that we’re taking is no discharge and by taking the approach of no discharge it inherently means there are places we can’t get to,” Merkel said.
Workers will also spray the product beginning at 5:30 a.m. and call off work for the day if it’s too windy to avoid any potential accidents, Merkel said.
The day-to-day lives of the cove’s animal inhabitants dictate the plans too.
Workers are set to clear the majority of the guano-covered cove beginning early next month but they’ll have to wait for the end of the bird nesting season to finish the job to avoid a potential conflict with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service requirements. That means the job won’t be finished until late July or early August.
Sea lions could also change the cleaners’ plans.
A biologist who works with Merkel will observe sea lions lounging on the cove and let workers know if one looks likely to refuse to move.
A stubborn seal means workers won’t be able to spray the solution in that particular area on that day, Merkel said.
As a result, the clean-up process is expected to happen over a 10-day period, which allows the city to work around the animals’ schedules and provides more time for the compound to eat through the bird guano.
Whether the solution will work — and how much it might cost over the long haul — isn’t certain.
Workers began testing the Blue Eagle product this week and they will charge the city $50,000 for the initial clean-up effort.
They’ll likely need to return at least two to three times a year to remove the stink, meaning the solution could cost more than $100,000 a year. That doesn’t include the city’s bill for Merkel’s assistance.
Filner said Tuesday he’ll find a way to cover the bill.
“It just has to be done,” he told U-T San Diego. “It’s a health and safety feature.”
Voice of San Diego is a nonprofit that depends on you, our readers. Please donate to keep the service strong. Click here to find out more about our supporters and how we operate independently.It looks a bit like silver bird. It probably was used to spy on insurgents. And now it's in the hands of the Pakistanis.
WIRED editor-in-chief Chris Anderson flags pictures of an unusual, unfamiliar drone that reportedly crashed crashed over southwestern Pakistan late last week. It's a surveillance drone, with a camera attached – recovered from the crash but not apparently visible in this photo – rather than the larger, deathly flying robots that shoot missiles. This one looks tiny, with a wingspan not much longer than a man's outstretched arms, and clearly light enough for a grown man to carry.
The Pakistani Frontier Corps in Baluchistan province recovered the drone. And they confidently declare it to be an "American surveillance unmanned aerial vehicle." But as Anderson points out, it doesn't look like anything the U.S. flies – or at least acknowledges flying. What's the deal?
Danger Room asked some of our favorite drone and aviation enthusiasts for their perspective on the small mystery drone. And we weren't the only ones who thought it looked decidedly avian.
Check out the SmartBird, a drone designed by the engineers at Festo and modeled explicitly on the herring gull:
It's clearly not the same drone, as the wings are obviously different: the mystery drone's wings are straighter and more sharply angled than the SmartBird's sleeker, more rounded wings, which mimic those of the gull. Judging from the light of the second picture, the SmartBird's wings – which flap to enable autonomous flight – are made of more than one type of material, which doesn't appear to be the case with the downed drone. What's more, the downed drone's wings have ailerons and its nose kinda-sorta looks like it hosted a propeller, two features the SmartBird lacks. One of our eagle-eyed experts points out to us that since the SmartBird is designed to weigh less than a pound (!), it probably couldn't have carried a camera in its belly.
But the two drones look fairly similar, especially with their fantail design in the rear, and their dimensions appear to roughly align. (.PDF). TechCrunch has a cool video from last month of the SmartBird flying above a TED talk given by Festo's Markus Fischer.
And there's a recent push to design small drones to look more like birds that extends beyond Festo. Back in the spring, AeroVironment launched a pint-sized drone that looks like a hummingbird. That drone didn't look anything like the one that crashed over Pakistan. But masquerading a spy robot as a bird has obvious benefits to the stealthy drone program that hunts al-Qaida in Pakistan's tribal areas.
Of course, all this speculation overlooks the simplest explanation: Forge is back in his mutant workshop.
Photo: Via DIY Drones; Festo
See Also:- Video: Hummingbird Drone Does Loop-de-LoopMI5's Cyber Technical Analysts play a vital role in investigations against hostile actors conducting cyber espionage against the UK. The work is varied and the impacts of their work are extremely rewarding. They carry out complex technical analysis, develop new capabilities and perform a unique technical investigator role in this varied and pivotal position.
Unique Mission
The data and context of the Cyber Technical Analysts' work are unique to MI5. Within this role you will have the opportunity to work with very different data for a vital cause: keeping the country safe. It means you'll have real impact using exciting technologies. The culture of the team is to focus on the impacts of your work and the mission of working for MI5. To achieve this you'll have the freedom to explore innovative ways of discovering malicious software, traffic or activity.
Training
At MI5 we work with people to determine their individual needs, and then put the necessary training in place. We recognise that everyone is at different stages in their careers, with different skill sets, so we tailor our training accordingly; professional development is important to us. MI5 gives you the support and the training to develop into a subject matter expert for a technical specialism. There is also the potential to become a leading national expert on a particular cyber adversary.
The people, the tech, the purpose - it's so unique here.
Work/Life balance
A common misconception is that there is no work-life balance at MI5, due to the nature of what we do. It is true that there may occasionally be times when you need to work longer hours than usual, such as the busy points of an investigation. But it’s also true that you’re not able to take your work home with you, so when you leave the office you really are leaving your work behind you.
Do You Spot What Others Don't?
Attention to detail is a must in this role. If you've been able to spot the hidden message on this page then you're on the right path. But even if you haven't we'll train you on all the analytical skills that you'll need. It's about bringing an inquisitive, open mind and a creative approach.It was supposed to be the happiest moment of their lives. Carlos Morales kissed his wife Erica and told her he loved her just minutes before she delivered their quadruplets.
Tragically, it would be the last time he would ever see her alive, Morales tells PEOPLE.
Pregnant with four babies conceived through IVF, Erica, 36, went into labor at seven months on Jan. 15. Doctors prepared to deliver the babies by C-section.
“We were so excited to start our family,” Carlos, 29, who works in manufacturing in Phoenix, Arizona, says. “And then it all came crashing down.”
All four babies – three girls, one boy – were safely delivered. But Erica went into hypovolemic shock, an emergency condition where one experiences a severe amount of blood loss. She died at 1:50 a.m. on Jan. 16, before she even had a chance to hold her newborns in her arms.
Their Love Story
Carlos and Erica met at a nightclub in Scottsdale, Arizona, in 2006.
“I didn’t speak any English and she didn’t speak any Spanish,” Carlos tells PEOPLE, laughing. “But I asked her to dance and she said yes”
He only found out later that Erica, a real estate agent, ended up throwing out a piece of paper he gave her that night with his number scribbled on it.
But through mutual friends, they saw each other again, and this time, they didn’t part ways.
He knew right away he wanted to marry her. Erica learned Spanish, Carlos learned English, and in 2007 they got married in Las Vegas.
Erica and Carlos Morales Courtesy Carlos Morales
“We also really wanted to have a baby,” says Carlos. “So we started to try right away.”
After experiencing a miscarriage, which Carlos says “was beyond devastating,” they found out Erica was pregnant last June after undergoing fertility treatment.
“We couldn’t have been more excited to finally have a baby,” he says. “Erica was taking such good care of herself.”
When she went for her first sonogram, she found out she wasn’t just having one baby, but four.
“Her doctor told her she had to just relax,” Carlos says. “So that’s exactly what she did.”
Carlos cooked, cleaned and made sure Erica stayed off her feet. Erica’s mother move into their house to help them.
Doctors closely monitored Erica, who was healthy throughout her pregnancy.
On Jan. 12, Erica was checked into the hospital because she was experiencing high blood pressure.
It was on Jan. 15 that she texted Carlos when he was at work saying the doctors wanted to deliver the babies.
“The doctor said she was having too many contractions so it was time to deliver the babies,” Carlos says. “We took pictures before she went into the delivery room, made some videos, and she was surrounded by family and friends. I said to her, ‘Let’s get these babies out.’ ”
The couple also discussed names. They settled on Carlos Jr. for the boy and Tracey and Paisley for the two girls. Erica couldn’t decide on the other girl’s name. They thought they had plenty of time to figure it out.
“‘We can decide after she’s born,’ ” Carlos recalls Erica telling him.
Some 24 people – doctors, nurses, family and friends – were in the delivery room when the babies were born. Each weighed from two to three lbs. For Carlos, it was the moment of a lifetime.
“I forgot about how expensive it was going to be to raise four kids or how hard it might be,” he says. “Seeing Erica and the babies healthy is all I could think about. I was just so excited for our future.”
Erica, who was coming out of an anesthesia-induced sleep, squeezed her husband’s hand. She couldn’t yet speak. Carlos sat by her bedside, with their newborn babies in the nursery one floor away.
Code Blue
Suddenly, around 1 a.m., Carlos heard equipment alarms going off and saw nurses rushing into the room. The medical team asked him to leave while they worked on Erica.
An hour later, they told him she was gone. He heard their words but couldn’t understand.
“How could this have happened?” he asked, something that still haunts him today. “She was fine, and then she wasn t. She was alive and then she was just gone.”
He still asks himself every day if there is something he could have done to keep his wife alive.
“I went from having the best day of my life to the next morning experiencing the worst day of my life,” Carlos says. “My four babies came into the world and then my wife died.”
When he was sitting by his babies in the middle of the night after she passed away, the nurse asked him what the babies’ names were.
Carlos gave the nurse the three names they had agreed upon. The other girl’s name he chose himself: Erica.
Living for His Children
Carlos continues to grieve for Erica every waking minute. She lives in his dreams. The one thing that keeps him going: The babies.
Carlos Jr. and Tracey are already home; Paisley and Erica are still in the hospital. Carlos goes to visit them every day while his mother-in-law cares for the babies at home. At the hospital, Carlos is also a student, paying close attention in the free baby-care classes it offers.
“I’m learning everything from how to give them a bath, CPR, feeding, and how to manage their sleep schedule,” he says. “I need to be prepared.”
“Everything I do now is for my children,” Carlos, who will return to work, tells PEOPLE. “Our family and friends have been very supportive too.”
One friend, Nicole Todman, created a GoFundMe page where people can donate.
Get push notifications with news, features and more.
Erica Morales Courtesy Carlos Morales
It’s hard for Carlos to think of the future when he still can’t understand the past.
“When I’m alone at home I still tell myself that I hope I’m dreaming,” he says. “Erica was the most special person in the world and she should be here to love her babies.”
Just recently he found a note that she had written on her iPad.
She had jotted down her dreams for her children to go to college, speak both English and Spanish and to have good jobs.
“I will try my hardest to make sure that happens,” he says.
And he draws comfort from his Catholic faith. He knows when he held all four babies for the first time after they were born, Erica was looking down on her family from heaven.
“She always used to do this happy dance and I know that right then and there she was doing it next to me,” he says.In response to the gun running and other criminal charges against him, the California State Senate suspended Yee as a Senator on March 28, 2014. [3] On July 1, 2015, Yee pleaded guilty to a felony racketeering count in relation to money laundering, public corruption and bribery in a San Francisco Chinatown organized crime case. [4] On February 24, 2016, Yee was sentenced to five years in federal prison. [5] As of March 25, 2016, Yee is incarcerated at FCI Ft Worth. [6]
Prior to becoming state senator, Yee was a California State Assemblyman, Supervisor of San Francisco's Sunset District, and was a member and President of the San Francisco School Board. In 2004 Yee became the first Asian American to be appointed Speaker pro Tempore, making him the second highest ranking Democrat of the California State Assembly.
Leland Yin Yee ( Chinese : 余胤良; pinyin : Yú Yìnliáng, born November 20, 1948) is a former Democratic California State Senator for District 8, which when he was elected, covered parts of San Francisco and the Peninsula. In 2015, Yee pleaded guilty to felony racketeering charges for money laundering, public corruption, gun trafficking, and bribery.
After obtaining his doctorate, Yee worked as a therapist in the Mental Health Department of San Francisco, the Oakland School District and with Asian American for Community Involvement, a non-profit that serves low-income people. [10]
San Francisco School Board Edit
Yee was elected to the San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education in 1988 and served two four-year terms on the board including one as Board President. During his tenure, Yee called for audits of all schools in the San Francisco Unified School District and fought to establish performance standards for educators.[10]
1992 Edit
In 1992, Yee was arrested for alleged shoplifting a bottle of tanning oil from the KTA Superstore in Kona's Keauhou Shopping Village. The case was not prosecuted, as Yee disappeared before he could be prosecuted.[9][11]
District 4 Supervisor Edit
Yee was elected supervisor in 1996. As District 4 supervisor Yee, was appointed to chair the Finance Committee, where he helped establish the "Rainy Day" budget reserve and introduced General Obligation Bond Accountability Act. He was re-elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2000.[10]
Board of Supervisor member Leland Yee in 1999
1999 Edit
In 1999, Yee was stopped twice by police for suspicion of soliciting prostitutes in San Francisco's Mission District.[12][13][14]
Yee as member of SF Board of Supervisors
District 12 Assemblyman Edit
In November 2002, Yee was elected to the California State Assembly to represent the 12th Assembly District.
In his first year in the Legislature, he was appointed to the Speaker's leadership team as the Assistant Speaker pro Tempore. In 2004 Yee became the first Asian Pacific American to be appointed Speaker pro Tempore in the California State Assembly and was elected President of the National Asian Pacific American Caucus of State Legislators.[15]
In his first term in the Legislature, Yee had 15 bills signed into law.[16] These bills include AB 1371 which strengthens informed consent requirements for mentally handicapped patients that take part in medical research.[17]
Yee had 11 bills chartered into law in 2004.[18] Noteworthy bills included AB 2412 which allows part-time community college faculty to access unemployment benefits[19] and AB 3042 which enhances sentences for child prostitution.[20]
Yee had 12 bills chartered into law in 2005.[21] Included in his bill package were AB 800 which ensures a patient's medical records include his/her spoken language,[22] AB 1179 which would have banned the sale of violent video games to children (which was later declared unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court.),[23] and AJR 14 which states that California officially opposes the weakening of the federal offshore oil drilling moratorium[24]
Following news of the "Hot Coffee mod" in Rockstar North's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Yee claimed that the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) knew about it in advance and criticized them for not rating the game "adults only".[25] The controversy resulted from the Hot Coffee mod created by personal computer users of the game using hacking tools to create a modification to play a "minigame", or game-within-a-game, which was otherwise inaccessible to players.[26] In response, Rockstar removed the content used for the modification. That same year, Yee passed California Assembly Bills 1792 & 1793, a video game bill that criminalizes sale of video games rated M to children under 18 and require retailers to place M-rated games separate from other games intended for children. Yee's bills passed in part to mass media concentration on the speculative link between video game violence and real world violence, as well as several support of concerned parent groups. The bill was signed into law on October 7, 2005, and the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) filed a lawsuit 10 days later. After the bill passed, it was ruled to be unconstitutional by Judge Ronald Whyte.[27] The adverse ruling required the state to pay $324,840 to the ESA in legal fees.[28] (This law was eventually argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010 in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, in which the court struck down the law as unconstitutional.)
2006 Edit
Yee had 10 bills signed into law in 2006.[29] Notable bills included AB 1969, which increases renewable energy production in the state,[30] AB 2581, which aims to protect student free speech and prohibit school administrators from censoring school newspapers and broadcast journalism,[31] AB 409, which establishes tighter controls and higher health standards for nail salons,[32] and AB 1207, which adds sexual orientation to the list of protections in the Code of Fair Political Practices.[33]
State Senator Edit
On June 6, 2006, Yee defeated his opponents Mike Nevin and Lou Papan to win the Democratic nomination for the California State Senate. In the final vote tally certified on June 27, 2006 by San Mateo County Chief Elections Officer Warren Slocum,[34] Yee gathered 51.9 percent, Nevin received 35.4 percent and Papan took 12.7 percent of the vote. Since Jan 1, Nevin spent $887,562.80 of campaign contributions, Yee spent $673,372.59 and Papan ran a modest campaign, spending just $289,862.64. He was elected to the California State Senate in the November 7, 2006 election by a landslide of 77.5% of votes cast.[35] With San Francisco and San Mateo County having a high Democratic base Yee was elected on November 7, 2006.[35] Yee replaced Jackie Speier, who left office due to term limits.[8]
Yee was suspended from the senate in 2014.[3] Yee formerly served on the following Senate committees:[36]
Appropriations
Business, Professions and Economic Development
Governmental Organization
Human Services
Labor and Industrial Relations
Select Committee on Biotechnology
Select Committee on California's Wine Industry
Select Committee on California's Horse Racing Industry
Select Committee on Integrity of Elections
Select Committee on International Business Trade
Yee formerly[3] chaired the following Senate committees:[36]
Select Committee on California's Public Record and Open Meeting Laws
Select Committee on Asian Pacific Islander Affairs
Select Committee on Bay Area Sustainable Development and Economic Progress
Support for gun control Edit
Yee was a vocal advocate for gun control, both before and while engaged in gun running. During sentencing, Federal District Judge Charles Beyer called Yee's actions "vile" and the arms dealings particularly "hypocritical" given the politician's history of gun control.[37] In 2006 Yee was named to the Gun Violence Prevention Honor Roll by the Brady Campaign for his efforts that included co-authoring a first-in-the-nation bill to require new semiautomatic handguns be equipped with ballistics identification technology known as micro-stamping.[38] In May 2012, together with Kevin de León, Yee proposed legislation to ban any semi-automatic rifle that used a bullet button that makes the rifle a "fixed magazine rifle." SB 249 would ban conversion kits and rifles. According to his press release, "Absent this bill, California's assault weapon ban is significantly weakened. For the safety of the general public, we must close this loophole."[39] Yee is quoted as saying, "It is extremely important that individuals in the state of California do not own assault weapons. I mean that is just so crystal clear, there is no debate, no discussion."[40]
2007 Edit
Yee had 11 bills signed into law in 2007.[41] Included in these bills was SB 279, making it unlawful to park cars for sale, deemed a public nuisance and traffic hazard, along public roads,[42] SB 190, which brings more transparency to the compensation practices of administrators at the University of California and the California State University,[43] SB 523, which increases the quantity of child support payments collected in San Mateo County,[44] and SCR 52, which declares the legislature "finds that joint governance of the University of California Retirement Plan is necessary to ensure that significant pension plan decisions are based on full and accurate information, to prevent conflicts of interest from impacting the management and performance of the University of California Retirement Plan, and to ensure that the University of California Retirement Plan is financially sound and well managed in a fair and appropriate manner."[45]
On April 12, 2007, Yee criticized the United States Army's plan to spend $2 million in tax dollars to sponsor the Global Gaming League. Yee claims the military individuals on the site are "desensitized to real-life violence through the online violent video games."[46]
On August 29, 2007, Yee again criticized the ESRB, this time for not disclosing what content was removed from Manhunt 2 to re-rate the game from an AO rating for violence to the ESRB Mature rating.[47] Yee asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the change in rating. In response, ESRB president Patricia Vance stated the details for a product that has not yet been released will not be disclosed.[48]
2008 Edit
Yee had fourteen bills signed into law in 2008.[41] Among these bills, SB 697 prohibits balance billing of patients in the California's Healthy Families program,[49][50] SB 1217 allows public oversight of the state bar pilots commission,[51] SB 1356, which aims to protect victims of domestic violence from the threat of jail when they refrain from testifying against their abuser in court,[52] SB 1370, which protects teachers from the retaliatory action of school officials as a result of student speech,[53] SB 1696, which states that contracts between a government and a private entity should be subject to the same disclosure requirements as other public records,[54] and SB 1419, which creates a double-fine zone on 19th and Van Ness Avenues—an area with a historically high pedestrian collision rate.[55]
Yee and Assemblyman Ted Lieu of Los Angeles challenged the legality of the LPGA's English language policy, resulting in a revision of policy by the end of 2008.[56] Yee introduced California S.B. 242, prohibiting businesses from denying services to customers that don't speak English (a modification of the Unruh Civil Rights Act).[57] in California.[58] The bill was vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on October 11, 2009.[citation needed]
On January 23, 2008 during a committee meeting, Yee announced his opposition to the health care plan sponsored by Governor Schwarzenegger and supported by a majority of Democrats in the California State House and Senate, while opposed by a majority of Republicans. Yee's opposition along with the opposition of Democratic Senator and Health Committee Chair Sheila Kuehl led the New York Times to predict that California's healthcare bill would be effectively killed.[59]
2009 Edit
Yee had 9 bills signed into law in 2009.[60] He wrote SB 340, which requires businesses to list all automatic renewal offer terms and obtain customer approval, SB 13, which provides $16.3 million for domestic violence shelters, SB 786, which preserves an individual's right to enforce open government laws, and SB 447, which reforms the criminal background check laws for people seeking employment at youth organizations.[60]
On July 22, 2009, Yee filed an amicus brief in support of Governor Schwarzenegger's appeal to the Supreme Court regarding the passing of a law that would criminalize the sale of "ultraviolent" video games to minors, claiming that unlike books, movies and CDs, video games "can contain up to 800 hours of footage with the most atrocious content often reserved for the highest levels and can be accessed only by advanced players after hours upon hours of progressive mastery.".[61] This action has been met with criticism from gamers that the Californian state senator is wasting resources on a law already judged unconstitutional at a time when the state is already facing economic problems[62]
2010 Edit
In 2010 Yee introduced SB 1451, a bill that ensures California students do not learn from a modified curriculum designed by Texas-based textbook publishers.[63] He wrote SB 399, a bill that would give a juvenile sentenced to life in prison without parole, the right to ask for a court review after ten years.[64] He also introduced SB 920, a bill allowing Californians to opt out of having phone books delivered to their homes. The Senate rejected the bill, however.[65]
The remainder of Yee's bill package focuses on consumer protection,[66] child safety,[67] government transparency,[66] and domestic violence prevention[68] None of his bills have been signed into law this year.[69] Yee was also the third largest taxpayer-funded gas card spender in the senate for 2010 costing $5,314.66. A spokesman said he commutes daily from the state Capitol to his district to hold daily and evening meetings to better serve his constituents.[70]
In April 2010, Yee filed a public records request to discover if any state funds were used by California State Stanislaus Foundation to hire and pay former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin $75,000 to speak at the school's 50th anniversary celebration on June 25.[71] The foundation refused to divulge any information about the fees paid to Palin.[72]
In response, Yee introduced SB 330, which would require groups to abide by California's Public Records Act.[72] On May 28, 2010, the Los Angeles Times reported that two California State sources disclosed that Sarah Palin would receive $75,000 for her speaking engagement. Officials would not confirm the amount of the disclosure.[73] In response to the disclosure, Yee said, "It's rather disappointing that Sarah Palin is asking for nearly $100,000 to speak at this anniversary event when we're looking at state increases in student fees, cancellations of classes and the fact that this money could be going to scholarships… She could do wonders for all of us... by taking this money and donating it back to the foundation."[74] The fundraising gala raised a then record $200,000 profit for the Cal State Stanislaus Foundation.[75]
2011 Edit
California State Assemblyman Paul Fong had introduced Assembly Bill 376, a legislation intended to ban a method of harvesting shark fins, but the details of which also stipulates that any commercial or culinary use of any shark's fin become banned, in particular Shark's fin soup, which Assemblyman Fong describes as: "Anything that is unhealthy, that the culture is practicing, we should stop doing it. We used to bind women's feet and that was unhealthy for the woman".[76] In what may be a described as a cynical analogy with a long obsolete practice of foot binding is echoed by Hawaii's former first lady Vicky Cayetano who states that: "shark fin soup is about as cultural as bound feet",[77] however, Senator Leland Yee, while voicing his concern about the illegal shark finning trade, argued that the mentality behind AB376 constitutes "the wrong approach and an unfair attack on Asian culture and cuisine... rather than launch just another attack on Asian American culture, the proponents of the (blanket) ban on shark fin soup should work with us to strengthen conservation efforts".[78] Critics said the bill unfairly targeted the Chinese-American community because it only restricts the sale of shark fins, which are used almost exclusively in Chinese cuisine. The bill does not apply to other shark products like oil or meat. "I think what is most insidious about this particular bill is that it sends a very bad message, not only to us in California but to the rest of the world, that discrimination against Chinese-Americans is OK," Yee said.
On January 19, 2011, conservative political commentator Rush Limbaugh mocked Chinese president Hu Jintao during his visit to the White House on his radio show. "Hu Jintao — he was speaking and they weren't translating. They normally translate every couple of words. Hu Jintao was just going ching chong, ching chong cha," said Limbaugh, who imitated Hu's speech. Yee criticized Limbaugh for his remarks: "His classless act is |
competing with a private business in the same market.
“If the service they are providing is one that is also provided by private entities, it starts to look more like you’re manipulating commerce and not regulating state authority,” said White.
The Tennessee solicitor then made the claim that the FCC is unfairly forcing utilities to offer broadband outside of their service area.
According to the state, the FCC is “saying public entities can’t limit themselves in terms of where they provide broadband service… If Google wants to provide service only in Nashville… Google is free to do that.”
But Judge White seemed puzzled by this line of thought.
“I thought what the FCC did was tell Tennessee and North Carolina that they can’t restrict the service provided, not that any provider… can’t limit their service,” she said.
Tennessee’s response was that EPB is a part of the state, so the FCC is effectively saying to Tennessee, “You can’t restrict yourself. You can’t decide to limit yourself when to invest in broadband. If you invest in broadband, you have to invest in broadband everywhere in the state.”
The solicitor likened the FCC’s actions to the government putting itself into the decision-making process between a board of a private company and its executives.
One of the judges asked North Carolina’s Solicitor General what would happen “if the state legislature decides that broadband is kind of a bad thing and we ought to limit it whenever we can” and passes laws to make it more difficult for state-controlled utilities to provide the service. Wouldn’t that sort of legislative action be contrary to Congress’ intention in Sec. 706?
North Carolina deflected, by maintaining that Congress had not explicitly given the FCC authority to preempt state laws, so it doesn’t matter.
An attorney for the FCC tried to make the case that the state laws at issue aren’t about the state’s structure or sovereignty.
“What these laws do is regulate competition in the interstate market,” said the FCC, “They’re about how an entity that may provide broadband actually does so.”
Pointing to Tennessee’s law that allows EPB and others to provide telecom services, but specifically prohibits utilities from expanding broadband service, the FCC contended that “Such a scheme does not in any way safeguard the public… it also doesn’t arbitrate between competing subdivisions” as the state argues. “Instead, all it does is regulate competition.”
Judge John Rogers, whose questions dominated the majority of the FCC’s time before the court, asked what would happen when a city-operated broadband network doesn’t want another city coming in and providing a competing service?
The FCC said this isn’t really the question raised by the laws at issue, but noted that a state could pass a provision that a city could only go into a new area only when invited. Such a law would likely not be seen as violating the spirit of Sec. 706; or at least it would pose a different question for the FCC to consider.
“Just this week, a bill in Tennessee was defeated that would have allowed just that,” noted the FCC. “It would have allowed cities to provide service outside of their electrical service territory” but only with the permission of the city into which they are moving.
Judge Rogers said the issue ultimately boiled down to “Is this something that regulated parties are allowed to do, or is it something that regulated parties are required to do?”
At first, that statement might seem to indicate that the judge was leaning in favor of the FCC’s argument, as the FCC contention has been that it is not ordering city-owned broadband providers to expand, just removing a roadblock their possible expansion.
But Rogers repeatedly raised concerns that this way of handling the matter was only taking the decision out of the state’s hand and ceding that control over to local government.
“It seems you’re interfering with the way the state structures its decision-making authority to exercise discretionary determinations,” the judge commented. “How is it not that?”
The FCC’s answer is that the states had already made the decision that cities could enter the broadband market, and the cities had chosen to do so, but “except for these competition laws at issue here,” the cities were not being allowed to operate their broadband services as intended by federal law.
Judge White eventually intervened to try to bring some order to Rogers’ comments.
“I think that Judge Rogers is talking about the unitary nature of the state, that the state government and the city government is really the same thing because of the power of the state,” she explained. “And so what he’s trying to make the point of is that you’re really just affecting who makes the decision… I think that what the [FCC] is seeing is… a barrier erected by the state and the city wants to do something that the state will only allow it to do a little bit, but not more and you see your authority as removing barriers, as removing the state’s denial to the city of the power to make that decision.”
A victory by the FCC in this case could throw open the doors nationwide for city- and county-owned broadband networks to challenge laws in 20 different states that significantly restrict their ability to offer service to consumers.
For example, in Washington state, the law allows municipalities to operate broadband networks, but they are only permitted to sell access on the wholesale market, meaning consumers need to go through a third party to buy access to something that their tax dollars have funded.
Utility providers in that state and others have been watching the Tennessee/North Carolina lawsuit, waiting for a resolution before deciding whether to invest time and effort into filing similar challenges to preempt laws in their state.
On the other side of the coin, if the states win, it could embolden telecom lobbyists — who have written most of these restrictive laws — to push even further to introduce laws in states where they don’t yet exist.
In fact, just this month, industry lobbyists in Colorado — where community broadband is not allowed, but where individual communities can seek exemptions from that law — tried to push through a bill that would make it significantly more difficult for towns and cities to build their own networks or launch private-public partnerships. After public backlash — and a letter from Netflix, Google, and others calling on the Colorado senate to kill the bill — it died in committee earlier this week.Registration is the Law
Register to be Eligible for Benefits and Programs Linked to Registration —
A young man who fails to register with Selective Service may be ineligible for opportunities that may be important to his future. He must register to be eligible for federal student financial aid, state-funded student financial aid in many states, most federal employment, some state employment, security clearance for contractors, job training under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (formerly known as the Workforce Investment Act), and U.S. citizenship for immigrant men.
STUDENT FINANCIAL AID
Men, born after December 31, 1959, who aren't registered with Selective Service won't qualify for federal student loans or grant programs. This includes Federal Pell Grants, Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants (FSEOG), Direct Stafford Loans/Plus Loans, National Direct Student Loans, and College Work Study.
CITIZENSHIP
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) makes registration with Selective Service a condition for U.S. citizenship if the man first arrived in the U.S. before his 26th birthday.
FEDERAL JOB TRAINING
The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (formerly the Workforce Investment Act (WIA)) offers programs that can train young men seeking vocational employment or enhancing their career. This program is only open to those men who register with Selective Service. Only men born after December 31, 1959, are required to show proof of registration.
FEDERAL JOBS
A man must be registered to be eligible for jobs in the Executive Branch of the Federal Government and the U.S. Postal Service. Proof of registration is required only for men born after December 31, 1959.
Security clearance background investigations will verify whether or not men are in compliance with federal law; thus, men who are required to be registered with the Selective Service System will be verified of their Selective Service registration status for security clearances, as well as for some contractors.
Penalties for Failing to Register
Failing to register or comply with the Military Selective Service Act is a felony punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 or a prison term of up to five years, or a combination of both. Also, a person who knowingly counsels, aids, or abets another to fail to comply with the Act is subject to the same penalties.
If a man fails to register, or provides Selective Service with evidence that he is exempt from the registration requirement, after receiving Selective Service reminder and/or compliance mailings, his name is referred to the Department of Justice for possible investigation and prosecution for his failure to register as required by the Act. For clarification, if a man is exempt from registering with the Selective Service System, his name is not forwarded to the Department of Justice. The federal law stipulates that names are to be submitted to the Department of Justice annually.
The more immediate penalty is if a man fails to register before turning 26 years old, even if he is not tried or prosecuted, he may find that some doors are permanently closed.
NOTE: Some states have added additional penalties for those who fail to register. See STATE LEGISLATION.
Registration is the Goal
Selective Service wants young men to register. It does not want them to be prosecuted or denied benefits. If a draft is ever needed, it must be as fair as possible, and that fairness depends on having as many eligible men as possible registered. In the event of a draft, for every man who fails to register, another man would be required to take his place in service to his country.Despite Bernie Sanders being tied with her for pledged delegates after last weekend’s Nevada caucuses, the media herd has anointed Hillary Clinton yet again as the inevitable Democratic nominee. Superdelegates, those undemocratic figureheads and goons of the party establishment, are by definition unpledged and fluid and should never be added to the official column of any candidate until the national convention. To do so is an amoral tactic of intimidation that affects momentum and gives backstage wheeling and dealing primacy over the will of the electorate. Why are the media so servilely complicit with Clinton-campaign propaganda and trickery?
Democrats face a stark choice this year. A vote for the scandal-plagued Hillary is a resounding ratification of business as usual--the corrupt marriage of big money and machine politics, practiced by the Clintons with the zest of Boss Tweed, the gluttonous czar of New York’s ruthless Tammany Hall in the 1870s. What you also get with Hillary is a confused hawkish interventionism that has already dangerously destabilized North Africa and the Mideast. This is someone who declared her candidacy on April 12, 2015 via an email and slick video and then dragged her feet on making a formal statement of her presidential policies and goals until her pollsters had slapped together a crib list of what would push the right buttons. This isn’t leadership; it’s pandering.
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Thanks to several years of the Democratic party establishment strong-arming younger candidates off the field for Hillary, the only agent for fundamental change remains Bernie Sanders, an honest and vanity-free man who has been faithful to his core progressive principles for his entire career. It is absolutely phenomenal that Sanders has made such progress nationally against his near total blackout over the past year by the major media, including the New York Times. That he has inspired the hope and enthusiasm of an immense number of millennial women is very encouraging. Feminists who support Hillary for provincial gender reasons are guilty of a reactionary, reflex sexism, betraying that larger vision required for the ballot so hard-won by the suffrage movement.
The Democratic National Committee, as chaired since 2011 by Clinton sycophant Debbie Wasserman Schultz, has become a tyranny that must be checked and overthrown. Shock the system! Here are the flaming words of one of my heroes, Mario Savio, leader of the Free Speech Movement at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1964, he declared from the steps of Sproul Hall to a crowd of 4,000 protesters: “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop!”
A vote for Bernie Sanders is a vote against the machine, the obscenely money-mad and soulless juggernaut that the Democratic Party has become. Perhaps there was a time, during the Hubert Humphrey era, when Democrats could claim to be populists, alive to the needs and concerns of working-class people. But the party has become the playground of white, upper-middle-class professionals with elite-school degrees and me-first values. These liberal poseurs mouth racial and ethnic platitudes, acquired like trophy kills at their p.c. campuses, but every word rings hollow, because it is based on condescension, a patronizing projection of victimhood onto those outside their privileged circle. There is no better example of this arrogant class bias than Wellesley grad Hillary Clinton lapsing into her mush-mouthed, Southern-fried dialect when addressing African-American audiences.
Sanders is no Communist, bent on seizing centralized control of business and industry. He is a democratic socialist in the Scandinavian mode, where social welfare is predicated on cooperation and shared sacrifice. Whether such a system can work in the vastly larger and more culturally diverse U.S. is another matter. The financial viability of his proposals would certainly be stringently vetted by Congress, which holds the purse strings of the national budget. But Sanders’ attack on the crass excesses and unpunished ethical lapses of Wall Street is a great awakening call, at a time when the U.S. has disastrously lost its manufacturing base and when the super-rich have accumulated proportionally more wealth than at any time since the Gilded Age of the late 19th century.
The Sanders theme that is closest to my heart is his call for free public universities. Thanks to the G.I. Bill, my father, returning from active duty as a paratrooper in occupied Japan, became the first member of his large family to attend college. I was born while he was still in school and meeting expenses by mopping the cafeteria floor. The State University of New York added Triple Cities College to its system in his final year; hence his class was the first to graduate from the newly named Harpur College, which soon relocated from the factory town of Endicott to Vestal, near Binghamton.
The public education that I received at Harpur College during the 1960s (I appear to have been its first second-generation graduate) was superb, not simply for its excellent faculty and cultural programs but for its dynamic student body with a large constituency of passionately progressive Jews (like Bernie Sanders) from metropolitan New York City. Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, a liberal Republican, was pouring funds into the State University of New York in his attempt to rival the University of California. The cost to my parents for my four years of college was amazingly minimal.
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It is an intolerable scandal that college costs, even at public universities, have been permitted to skyrocket in the U.S., burdening a generation of young adults with enormous debt for what in many cases are worthless degrees. The role played by the colleges themselves in luring applicants to take crippling, unsecured loans has never received focused scrutiny. Perhaps a series of punitive, class-action lawsuits might wake the education industry up. Until the colleges themselves pay a penalty for their part in this institutionalized extortion, things are unlikely to change.
As college became accessible to a wider and less privileged demographic following World War II, many state legislatures were initially generous in their funding. But that support rapidly diminished after the recession and oil embargo of the 1970s. Instead of prudently retrenching and economizing, public universities charged ahead and began raising tuition, in tandem with increasingly expensive private schools. Colleges became overtly commercialized and consumerist in their pursuit of paying customers. The annual college ranking by U.S. News & World Report, which began in 1983, triggered a brand-name hysteria among upwardly mobile parents and turned high school into the nightmarish, gerbil-wheel obsession with college applications that it remains today.
The steady rise in college tuition, leading to today’s stratospheric costs, began in the 1980s and was worsened by a malign development of the 1990s: the rapid swelling of a self-replicating campus bureaucracy, whose salaries exceeded those of most faculty. The new administrators, with their corporate and technocratic orientation, had an insular master race mentality and viewed faculty as subordinate employees. The flagrant corporatization of the university was outrageously ignored by the faux Leftists of academe, trendy careerist professors who sat twiddling their thumbs, as they played their puerile poststructuralist and deconstructionist word games. As a consequence, faculties nationwide have fatally lost power and are barraged by dictatorial directives from tin-eared campus bureaucrats enforcing a labyrinth of intrusive government regulations.
Simultaneously in the 1990s began the redefining of college as a comfortable extension of the bourgeois living room. Parents expected a big bang for their buck—bright and shiny dormitories with single rooms; lavish exercise facilities; cafeteria buffets of restaurant range and quality. Meanwhile, many large second-tier schools began to rely on an army of poorly paid and exploited adjunct teachers, who had to migrate from job to job for survival.
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The American fixation on the bucolic residential campus as the ultimate definition of education has produced our present impasse, where students expect a homey “safe space” monitored and secured by hovering parental proxies. European universities, in contrast, focus on education and are rarely concerned with providing luxurious amenities or supervising students’ social lives. Similarly, there are few European parallels to the rah-rah campus sports ethos in the U.S., which began with Ivy League football in the late nineteenth century.
Perhaps the most serious problem in American education is the blind funneling of all high-school students into a now diluted and weakened college prep program. It’s become a giant boondoggle that is doing more harm than good, given this stagnant job market. Vocational high school lost favor in the 1970s, when college-for-all became the new credo. The educational reformer James Bryant Conant, who had promoted meritocracy in his tenure as president of Harvard (1933-53), opposed separate vocational facilities in his proposals for the “comprehensive high school.”
As a career teacher at art schools, which are vocational in admission and structure, I must protest the snobbery with which vocational training and trade schools are treated by the educational establishment in the U.S. It is irresponsible for teachers not to be concerned about the future employment and lifetime welfare of their students. Classes in business and entrepreneurship should be offered in every high school, especially in the inner city, and vocational tracks should be available to students who have no interest in college but want to start supporting themselves immediately after graduation. We need to adapt elements of the German apprenticeship system, where industry contributes to specialized job training while students are still in school.
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I applaud Bernie Sanders for putting the urgent issue of free public universities on the national agenda. Let the private schools gorge themselves with cash—their pretentious, sticker-shock tuition rates, which only pampered trust-fund babies actually pay; the obscene multimillion-dollar salaries of their presidents; their mammoth endowments (fattening on Wall Street) that are unknown in Europe. But before taxpayer money is invested again in the great cause of public education, American universities must embark on a program of radical austerity, stripping themselves of luxuries and booting three-quarters of their parasitic administrators out the door. Every precious dollar must be devoted to the central mission of teaching and learning.
POSTSCRIPT: I will be replying to questions from Salon readers in my future columns. Please feel free to write to me via my Salon mailbox (see below).On The Toolchest Site, an astounding miniature replica of the 18th century Hewitt chest at Colonial Williamsburg, created by miniaturist William Robertson. Robertson's work is mind-boggling in its detail and virtuosity. The article notes that this was a 1,000-hour project.
There are also cast brass Rococo drop handles as well as beaded backplates. It should also be noted that the miniscule lock actually works, and the label on the underside of the lid is printed on 18th century paper — in lettering to perfect scale of course.
As you would expect from something so masterfully created, the tool chest was made with the same construction as the original chest. Tool trays and drawers are fully dovetailed with hand-sawn dust boards. The dividers are v-notched and crosslapped and the lid sides are tongue and groove.
Robertson’s tool chest contains all the same tools that were found in the original. All the tools work, even the plane’s tote (handle) is set a scale 1/8″ to one side as the original. The saw has 160 teeth to the inch. Robinson says that the hardest tool to make was the folding rule with 5 leaf hinge. It is about.030″ thick and hand engraved on boxwood. Things like the shears and dividers also have nice little joints.Detroit postal worker Sharon Berrien didn’t steal some 2,000 pieces of mail to collect those $20 birthday checks from Grandma alone. No, there was a deeper motivation: ennui.
“I was bored,” Berrien told investigators after she was charged with stealing mail by federal authorities Monday.
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Of course, Berrein took the money, the Associated Press said. The accused said she kept $1,000 to $1,500 and littered the leftover mail — taken out of a Detroit mail processing center — along Interstate 94. Sightings of abandoned greeting cards keyed authorities into the fact that something was amiss. A probe led to the Nov. 21 discovery of 800 pieces of mail in Berrein’s trash.
As a cure for future stints of boredom, might we suggest the podcast Serial?
[AP]
Contact us at [email protected] over when and if the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates heightened last week when August’s jobs report showed the economy added 50,000 fewer jobs than expected even while the unemployment rate fell to 5.1%. The economy seems to be improving and worsening at the same time, which has complicated investor’s expectations for what the Fed might do next.
But worried as the market is about higher rates, the fact is it really doesn’t matter.
The fear of higher interest rates is rooted primarily in its contractionary effect on lending and money supply. An increase in the cost of capital can hamper both consumption and manufacturing.
But even if that happens, it would simply be right-sizing the economy to current demand. After all, a small increase in borrowing costs shouldn’t prevent consumers from spending or deter a business that can sell more goods from increasing its capacity. The point is that at near zero interest rates, the U.S. has a lot of buffer on this front, so if there is a reduction in the economy, it will be because of a substantial disconnect between supply and demand.
Higher interest rates would simply help the U.S. avoid the trap of overproduction and asset bubbles fueled by excessive cheap debt. If that sounds familiar, it should. Those are precisely the challenges plaguing another large world economy: China.
Ironically, the selloff of U.S. stocks began a few weeks ago because of weakness in the Chinese economy, the devaluation of the yuan, and stock market turmoil in the Asian nation, which led to serious concerns about a global economic slowdown. So if the market believes that China’s problems are unlikely to be fixed soon, then it should welcome an increase in U.S. interest rates. It might hurt a little now but will bring the U.S. economy in line with global demand and prevent the creation of an asset bubble whose bursting could cause a lot more pain in the future.
On the other hand, if the Fed decides to delay raising rates, as the stock market is clearly hoping for, then it will give U.S. investors a chance to assess China’s moves to solve its economic problems over the next few months, and respond accordingly later on. That does have the benefit of propping up the U.S. stock market in the near future and enabling the Fed to navigate a soft landing for the U.S. taking into account rapidly changing global conditions.
In any case, no matter what decision the Fed makes in the coming weeks, the reality is that the U.S. economy will continue on its trajectory of growth (or not). The ‘bad’ scenario, namely the raising of interest rates this month, isn’t really bad at all. If anything, it’s the stock market’s knee-jerk reaction to it that’s the problem.
Then again, the more the market falls on the fear of an interest rate hike, the less likely it becomes that the Fed will pull the trigger on it in the near future, which will then push prices back up. So maybe there is a point to the market’s tantrum. It’s just creating its own reality.
S. Kumar is a tech and business commentator. He has worked in technology, media, and telecom investment banking.Once a side dish, VR is becoming a main course. Getty Images for Engadget
“There’s 57 channels and nothin’ on,” Bruce Springsteen sang in 1992. How quaint. Twenty-five years later, there are at least 10 times that many channels, instant access to more films than anyone can watch in a lifetime, and 400 hours of new video uploaded to YouTube every minute. Sisyphus himself might pity me for all the shows, movies, and videos I feel obligated to inhale in a single day. With these pre-existing media breaking new ground seemingly every week, I could be forgiven for my profound disinterest in virtual reality until now, right?
It’s not just exhaustion that’s kept me away from VR. I’ve never thought of myself as the right demo for the tech: I’m not a gamer, a gearhead, or an early adopter. I also don’t mind a passive viewing experience. Based on the reports of nausea-inducing software and burdensome facial contraptions, well, isn’t life hard enough to get through without paying someone to suffer even more? And there’s something particularly dispiriting about the gadget market these days, with its parade of redundancies: tablets, fitness trackers, smart watches. My home is already littered with unused electronics. Plus, isn’t there something intrinsically sad and scary about virtual reality anyway, as it inevitably becomes a haven for maladjusted weirdoes destined to unwittingly star in their very own episode of Black Mirror?
And then, within a matter of hours, I became a VR convert.
Virtual reality, as I’d expected and feared, is extremely easy to love. My years-delayed rendezvous with the technology took place in Los Angeles this week, at Engadget’s Alternate Realities conference and the Tech Showcase at this year’s AFI Film Festival, two gatherings where creators working at the forefront of the medium showed off their stuff. I almost threw up twice. But I also walked away convinced that after years of dubious-sounding hype, we now are actually witnessing the beginning of a new artistic medium—one with its own unique canvas, visual language, ways of watching, and narrative possibilities.
My favorite of the VR projects I experienced was also the most nakedly ambitious. The first 15 minutes of Arden’s Wake, directed by Pixar alum Eugene Chung, aim for both emotional connection and technical achievement. (It won the Best VR Film award at this year’s Venice Film Festival and showed this week at AFI Fest.) An original story that feels like a girl-power twist on The Little Mermaid (with a dash of the mythical horror of The Secret of Kells), the film begins in the wooden house in the middle of the sea that the teenage Arden shares with her grizzled and widowed inventor father. A boy comes calling in a rowboat, the household turns topsy-turvy, and before you know it, Arden’s father falls into the water, and she sets off to rescue him in the homemade submarine he’d just finished building. The opening chapter of Arden’s Wake ends with a witchy sea monster circling the submarine and swallowing it whole.
If the story feels a tad derivative, the sublime animation will instantly wash such reservations away. As with nearly all the VR movies I saw, I turned around to get a 360-degree view of my surroundings, then looked up to stare at the sky and down to gaze into the deep. Arden’s Wake begins with me looking at its protagonist’s half-dome home floating on the water from the outside, a giant window blaring at one side to peek through. But I had just heard Chung speak at the Engadget event about VR’s lack of elementality, the assumption that solid materials are solid—and an assumption that his film cannily explodes. I snuck a look through the “window” of the home, then simply walked through the exterior like a ghost. It was like being inside of a gorgeous dollhouse, with dozens of things to look at, rendered in such fine animation that the first thing I noticed was the photorealistic grain of the wood of the walls. But the experience was about a lot more than exploring; I appreciated how Arden’s Wake taught me to watch it as it was telling me a story. A light directed my gaze in one direction, a movement in another, a sound to a third corner. I turned my head when Arden did; my identification with the character was sealed with our coordinated motions. (VR offers a distinctly tactile mode of watching in other ways, since many projects invite viewers to move their bodies around. Such movements might change what you see or experience, and the medium dampens its viewers’ self-consciousness, since the headset prevents them from being able to see what they look like in front of others.) As Arden’s submarine sunk lower and lower, I kept looking up at the increasingly murky surface of the water. My VR headset fit imperfectly—light spilled in from the space between my cheeks and the goggles—but I felt colder and more claustrophobic as she and I kept sinking into the ocean.
Greater immersion is the primary objective of virtual reality, but the spherical canvas it allows for can be utilized in other ways, too. Wes Hurley’s autobiographical documentary Potato Dreams, also at AFI Fest, uses tableaux vivants, or actors in pose, to evoke the gay artist and his mail-order-bride mother’s escape from a hostile Soviet Union. I rotated in a swivel chair to watch all the “living pictures”—a process similar to observing a collage or montage but which wasn’t quite either—and occasionally glanced upward at a menacing man peering down at me. The floor “fell away” sometimes, leaving me feeling unmoored, in a spatial suggestion of the social isolation that Hurley felt due to Russian homophobia. The glowering from above and the rootlessness below made me feel simultaneously constrained and desperately alone. It was difficult to imagine a version of this in 2-D.
The wildest place the AFI Tech Showcase took me to was inside a seed. Milica Zec and Winslow Porter’s Tree exemplifies one of virtual reality’s implicit promises: to plunge us so deeply into any situation that it’ll upend our ideas of what a protagonist or a story should be, and not just in a Pixar-y “what if your stuff had feelings?” kind of way. The intensely sensorial Tree puts you inside of the titular plant during its journey from a seed to a kapok tree towering over the Amazon, where deforestation looms. We’ve all heard statistics about the importance of the Amazon, but Tree, which was made in partnership with the Rainforest Alliance, manages to sentimentalize its protagonist and give it a narrative arc without pretending that a plant is anything more than a plant.
I counted 10 pieces of equipment that made the Tree experience possible: laptops, the VR headset, headphones, a vibrating backpack, hand sensors, a wind machine, a scent sprayer, matches, and a seed that I placed into a pot before the video. Every VR film or game that I experienced necessitated an attendant who disinfected the headset, put it and any other equipment on me, explained how to watch or play the project at hand, provided guidance when necessary, made sure I wasn’t going to trip over wires or bump into anything, and took the equipment off when it was over. For Tree, the attendant went above and beyond by lighting a match to simulate the smell of a burning forest and waving the smoke around me. I loved the smell-o-vision, but it seemed to confirm a reality no one who was hoping VR would become the next consumer must-have wanted to admit: This technology is nowhere near ready for mass adoption, at least for narrative entertainment.
Let’s start with the attendants, who are instrumental in not only teaching people how to use the tech (instruction that can be added to the software), but also make sure users don’t walk into walls. It’s not realistic to expect someone will monitor our well-being every time we put on an Oculus Rift, of course, but walking or flailing around is one of the things that make virtual reality so distinct as a medium. And a chaperone who tells us how to use or not use the headset honestly sounds kind of nice, since each one seems like it should come with a list of side effects the way drugs do: nausea, headache, eye strain, dizziness, motion sickness. Perhaps most relevantly to home use, I’m just not sure who wants to stand around in their living room for half an hour, let alone the time it’d take to watch a movie or play an extended game, as VR content inevitably experiments more with long-form content.
Screens and headsets are destined to become thinner and less calamitous to the inner ear, and VR has a good chance to supplement, if not supplant, our watching and gaming experiences. But creatively, at least, virtual-reality content shouldn’t have to be long to be taken seriously. Technological hurdles have given us (and taken away) new forms of short-form storytelling: the six-second Vine, the 10-minute YouTube video, the 140- and then 280-character tweet. Content creators can thrive under limitations, and frequently do. As the VR projects I experienced demonstrated, the current handicaps of the tech haven’t gotten much in the way of creativity and experimentation.
As far as I can tell, the only difference between a museum installation and a narrative VR film is that the installation calls itself art while VR wants to be commerce. I’ll leave it to the bajillionaires to figure out how to make money off this astounding technology. But the 15-minute VR experience is a pretty great new art form already.A convoy of armored coalition vehicles passes through a camp for displaced civilians on the road outside Qayara airbase south of Mosul on Aug. 30, 2016. (Photo: Susannah George, AP)
The top U.S. military officer confirmed Thursday that Islamic State militants targeted a military base in Iraq where U.S. troops were stationed with a potentially deadly chemical weapon this week.
“We assess it to be a sulfur-mustard blister agent,” Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Dunford did not elaborate, but the shell landed at a military base in northern Iraq where U.S. military advisers are helping Iraqi forces prepare for an upcoming offensive, according to an earlier account from two defense officials. They asked not to be named because they were not authorize to discuss the issue publicly. The defense officials suspected the Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS, of launching the attack.
The shell landed in Qayara West, an air base that was seized from the Islamic State recently and is serving as a staging area for the upcoming offensive to retake Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, from the militants, the officials said.
No one was killed or injured in the Tuesday attack. The defense officials said American troops were several hundred yards from where the shell landed.
Dunford said U.S. troops have adequate protection against chemical weapons and have detection and decontamination equipment.
“It wasn’t particularly effective but it was a concerning development,” Dunford said.
Dunford said the coalition has conducted about 30 airstrikes on the Islamic State's “emerging” chemical capabilities. Earlier this month the Pentagon said it struck a pharmaceutical factory in Mosul that had been converted by the Islamic State into a chemical weapons factory.
The U.S. government has previously accused the Islamic State of using chemical weapons.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2cZX55tKodak Black says "Lil Wayne can Eat my ASS" pic.twitter.com/5KiTHnmDge — DJ Akademiks (@IamAkademiks) January 9, 2017
In December, Kodak Black went on Twitter and declared that he's the best rapper alive over Lil Wayne. Now, Lil' Kodak posts a video saying "Lil Wayne can eat my ass."
In the clip, Kodak says the aforementioned phrase seemingly out of the blue, with no context and no explanation. This one is a bit of a head-scratcher, for sure.
In case you missed it, go back and check out photos and videos of Kodak's swanky new crib. The 19-year-old is living well these days, as his beautiful new house features a lavish swimming pool nearby a golf course in sunny Florida. There are plenty of palm trees in sight, along with an abundance of TVs. It's pretty much the house that every teenager dreams about.
In other Kodak-related news, the “Can I” rapper accidentally exposed himself while filming on Instagram Live just a few weeks ago, and the Internet immediately began to roast him. To his credit, Kodak just laughed off the incident, commenting, “Lol I Got All You Niggas Ol’Ladies Zoomiing In Tryna See My ‘Lil Kodak.’”
Music-wise, 2016 was a breakout year for the rising star out of Broward County. He dropped the well-received mixtape Lil B.I.G. Pac and made the coveted XXL Freshman list.
After getting home from prison, Kodak's been putting the pressure on the industry, starting with "There He Go," a track that got so big he had to release it on iTunes. Then he killed "Weatherman" for Yo Gotti, and recently jumped on two features for fellow Sniper Gang member Jackboy—"Too Fly" and "Run My Check Up." Now we're just waiting on "Tunnel Vision," the joint with Metro Boomin that sounds out of this world.USC: It's a sporting nation unto itself Updated: 2011-12-22 07:43 By Chen Xiangfeng (China Daily)
USC running back Curtis McNeal (22) celebrates during an NCAA game against the UCLA Bruins |
the list in terms of Hillary attack lines. “Mrs. Clinton, name an accomplishment. And in the meantime, please explain why we should accept that the millions and millions of dollars that have flowed into the Clinton Global Initiative from foreign governments do not represent a conflict of interest,” prospective GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina declared. "We could have had Hillary here, but we couldn't find a foreign nation to foot the bill," joked Senator Ted Cruz. On social media, Clinton's foes have been hammering the former secretary of state over the donations. The criticism was not just from those hoping to see Clinton go down to defeat in the 2016 election. California Democratic Representative Jane Harmann called the failure to disclose the donations "troubling." “Yes, there was a process set up. All of the other contributions were reviewed, as I understand it. There was transparency. This was an unsolicited donation of $500,000 at a time when U.S. was deluged with help for Haiti,' Harman said on Fox News Sunday. "I guess it got lost in the system. I think it needs to be explained. I don’t understand why the money wasn’t returned, or after the fact, approval wasn’t sought.” In a statement released last week, the Clinton Foundation admitted its error with Algerian donation. “Immediately following the devastating earthquake in Haiti on January 12, 2010, the Embassy of Algeria made an unsolicited donation of $500K to [the] Clinton Foundation Haiti Relief fund,” a foundation spokesman said in a statement issued Wednesday. “This donation was disclosed publicly on the Clinton Foundation website, however, the State Department should have also been formally informed. This was a one-time, specific donation to help Haiti and Algeria had not donated to the Clinton Foundation before and has not since.” Hillary Clinton, however, has yet to speak publicly on the matter. As to whether foreign government donations to her family foundation should preclude her from becoming president, as they might result in influence-peddling, initial investigations, including one by the Wall Street Journal, have yet to turn up any evidence of illegality. Clinton's supporters, meanwhile, are brushing the criticisms aside, citing the work the charity does. "If the biggest attack on Hillary's going to be that she raised too much money for her charity, okay, I'll take that," Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe told the Washington Post. "No one's alleging anything beyond that she raised money and people gave her money and foreign governments gave her money. At the end of the day, that's fine. It went to a charity. It helped a lot of people." On its website, the Clinton Foundation also seemed to be preparing for what seems like Clinton's inevitable White House run. "Should Secretary Clinton decide to run for office, we will continue to ensure the Foundation's policies and practices regarding support from international partners are appropriate, just as we did when she served as Secretary of State," a statement read. Rick Perry Questions Hillary Clinton’s Ethical Judgment (Washington Post) By Jose A. DelReal March 1, 2015 The Washington Post Former Texas governor Rick Perry is raising questions about Hillary Clinton’s ethical judgment after reports that her family’s foundation received millions of dollars from foreign governments during her tenure as secretary of state. “Are you going to trust an individual who has taken that much money from a foreign source? Where’s your loyalty?” Perry, who is considering a 2016 White House bid, told CNN’s Dana Bash in an interview airing Sunday. “I’m really concerned, not just going forward, but what has been received at the Clinton Foundation over the course of years and how that affects this individual’s judgment.” A Washington Post report last week revealed that the Clinton Foundation — which is a philanthropic organization — accepted donations from seven foreign governments. At least one of the donations reportedly violated an ethics agreement between Clinton and the Obama administration. “It’s not only the appearance of impropriety. It’s also the ethical side of this that, I think, most Americans really have a problem with,” Perry said. Perry also addressed a small dust-up between himself and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who appeared to compare labor protesters in the United States to Islamic State terrorists during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday. Responding to the remarks, Perryt old MSNBC that the comparison was “inappropriate.” During the CNN interview Sunday, however, the former Texas governor said he accepted Walker’s explanation. “I think the initial response when I heard that: ‘That’s not right. You don’t make that connect.’ The governor has gone back and clarified his remarks since then and clearly said that’s not what he was talking about,” Perry said. “I respect that clarification and support him on that.” Rick Perry Questions Hillary’s ‘loyalty’ (MSNBC) By Jane C. Timm March 1, 2015 MSNBC Following a weekend full of conservative attacks on Hillary Clinton at the Conservative Political Action Conference, former Texas Governor Rick Perry added to the list, questioning the former secretary of state’s “loyalty” in an interview that aired Sunday. Responding to news that the Clinton foundation had not notified the State Department when it previously accepted a donation from a foreign nation, Perry argued that Clinton was disloyal. “I think it falls flat in the face of the American people when it comes to, are you going to trust an individual who has taken that much money from a foreign source? Where’s your loyalty?” Perry said in an interview that aired on CNN’s “State of the Union.” The donation – from Algeria – was for $500,000 and came right after the Haiti earthquake. All of the funds were distributed for relief there. The Clinton Foundation is a nonprofit that focuses on issues like economic and leadership development and health security. Since 2010, they’ve raised a total of $36 million for Haiti efforts. “Are you going to trust an individual who has taken that much money from a foreign source?” Perry asked. The foundation acknowledged they should have alerted officials about the donation from the country. “As the Clinton Foundation did with all donations it received for earthquake relief, the entire amount of Algeria’s contribution was distributed as aid in Haiti,” the statement said. “This donation was disclosed publicly on the Clinton Foundation website, however, the State Department should have also been formally informed.” But Perry said Americans will question this. “I’m really concerned that – not just going forward—but what has been received at the Clinton Foundation over the course of the years and how that affects this individual’s judgment,” Perry said. Perry is actively exploring a second presidential bid; he joined the crowded Republican field and spoke at this weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference, but Perry barely registered on the event’s straw poll, earning just 1.1% of the votes. Dem: I’m troubled by Hillary donation controversy (The Hill) By Rebecca Shabad March 1, 2015 The Hill Former Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) said Sunday that’s she troubled by the Clinton Foundation’s failure to disclose foreign donations it accepted while Hillary Clinton was still secretary of State. On “Fox News Sunday,” Harman was asked whether the latest reports bother her. “Yes, there was a process set up. All of the other contributions were reviewed, as I understand it. There was transparency. This was an unsolicited donation of $500,000 at a time when U.S. was deluged with help for Haiti. I guess it got lost in the system. I think it needs to be explained. I don’t understand why the money wasn’t returned, or after the fact, approval wasn’t sought.” The Clinton Foundation recently admitted that it had received an unsolicited donation of $500,000 for its Haiti earthquake relief fund from the Algerian government in 2010. “I think the appearance of what is happening is poor,” said Harman, who serves as president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Harman said it’s okay for foreign governments to give limited amounts of money to groups as long as it’s disclosed. Clinton is expected to run for president next year and would be considered the Democratic frontrunner. Hillary Clinton Already Is a Brand (Bloomberg) By Albert Hunt March 1, 2015 Bloomberg View Hillary Clinton has enlisted a Coca-Cola marketing whiz to help brand her expected presidential campaign. This is quintessential Clinton. The most politically savvy couple in America has a penchant for seeking out the latest shiny toy, a magic bullet to make everything work. By many accounts, the Coca-Cola executive, Wendy Clark, is able. She has worked closely with Roy Spence, a longtime Clinton ally. But more than branding or marketing, it'll be experience, ideas, vision and character that will determine the success of Clinton's presidential quest. The Clintons usually don't do well when they lose sight of that. Their most infamous miscalculation of this kind was in late 1994, when in the depths of Bill Clinton's presidency, the couple secretly turned to a political consultant named Dick Morris to fix things. He came up with a bunch of small bore issues and then told the press Clinton would run as a moral guide for the country. This recasting had little bearing on Clinton's re-election in 1996. In any case, Morris wasn't around to enjoy that triumph: He had to step down after he was found to have hosted a call girl in a Washington hotel room paid for by the Clinton campaign, and had let his companion listen to his conversations with the president. There are plenty of other examples, though they are more benign. After a rocky start in the White House, Bill Clinton enlisted a smart veteran Republican, David Gergen, as a cure-all. It was mismatch from the get-go. The Clintons later turned to self-help promoter and motivational pitchman Tony Robbins. This time around, there are reports that Hillary Clinton was ecstatic when pollster Joel Benenson joined her probable team, believing that he would bring the secret formula that helped catapult Barack Obama. Benenson is very capable, but he didn't perform magic and he isn't any better than Geoff Garin, who was Clinton's pollster in 2008. In fact, the former secretary of state has already made her most important hire: John Podesta, the veteran Democratic operative, who will be her campaign chairman. He is the Democrats' equivalent of Jim Baker -- the legendary Republican in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations -- with unsurpassed judgment and potentially the ability to bring order to the unwieldy Clinton constellation and talk to the candidate, and her spouse, as a semi-peer. Podesta appreciates the need to bring in fresh faces such as Benenson and maybe Clark. One of the flaws of the 2008 Clinton campaign was its insularity. Another major -- and even bigger -- shortcoming was that she followed the advice of chief strategist Mark Penn for her to run as a tough commander-in-chief who supported the Iraq War. The tactic, which de-emphasized her gender, was a misreading of the times. Obama, who defeated her, understood that. There have been many reports that this time, Hillary Clinton will strongly stress women's issues and the gender angle. She's been a feminist her entire adult life; the only difficulty here would be if the effort looks too contrived. All campaigns adapt or tweak their pitch to meet political realities. In 2008, Obama didn't really oppose gay marriage, and one wonders if Jeb Bush really believes the Iraq War was such a noble undertaking, as he suggested in a recent speech in Chicago. Clinton will also adjust. But as she tries to convey a vision for governing, she's going to have to run as who she is: smart, if not especially innovative; disciplined; experienced in the ways of Washington and the world; hawkish on national security (witness her leading role in the military intervention in Libya in 2011, and her support for the Iraq War in 2002); and moderately liberal on domestic issues with a bit of a soft spot for Wall Street. No amount of rebranding will change those basics. For Hillary and Bibi, a long and sometimes fraught relationship (Washington Post) By Anne Gearan March 1, 2015 Washington Post JERUSALEM — The phone call between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lasted 45 minutes. For 43 of them, she talked and he listened. The U.S. secretary of state lectured the Israeli leader, accusing him of trying to do an end run around American opposition to settlement-building and embarrassing Vice President Biden during a visit to Israel, according to interviews with people present during the 2010 call or who were briefed on it afterward. She read from a script for part of the lecture, so as not to miss any key points. “The word ‘humiliation’ appeared very prominently,” recalled Michael Oren, then the Israeli ambassador in Washington. “As in ‘You have humiliated the United States of America.’ ” There probably aren’t many times in Netanyahu’s professional life when he has listened to anyone for 43 minutes. Netanyahu prefers to do the lecturing, as he will Tuesday when he addresses a joint meeting of Congress over the objections of the Obama administration. And there aren’t many people who could make Netanyahu sit still for a tongue-lashing. Clinton is one of them. “I was often the designated yeller,” Clinton said last year. Should Clinton win the presidency in 2016, her long and complicated history with Netanyahu will enter a new phase. If Netanyahu survives an election this month, the same issues that cloud the U.S.-Israel relationship now — negotiations with the Palestinians and a disagreement over outreach to Iran that turned sharply bitter over Netanyahu’s Tuesday address — will almost certainly still fester. From Netanhayu’s perspective, Clinton would be an improvement over President Obama, who has all but washed his hands of an Israeli leader he finds overbearing, Israeli officials and observers said in interviews here. But there is also little doubt that Netanyahu would prefer a more hawkish Republican in the White House, these observers said. The question is how brazenly he will make that preference known, as he did in 2012 when he was widely perceived as supporting Obama’s GOP opponent, Mitt Romney. Clinton hosted Netanyahu at the White House as first lady, and their relationship grew more substantive when she was a reliable pro-Israel voice in the Senate and dispenser of tough love to the Israeli government during Obama’s first term. As secretary of state, Clinton defended Israeli security demands and sharply criticized settlement policies. On orders from the White House, she demanded a total freeze of settlement expansion — a demand that made Netanyahu livid. She also praised him publicly for taking “unprecedented” steps toward peace, defended Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip in 2012 and nudged Netanyahu into a cease-fire with old-fashioned shuttle diplomacy. “I learned that Bibi would fight if he felt he was being cornered, but if you connected with him as a friend, there was a chance you could get something done together,” Clinton wrote in her State Department memoir last year. The speech fracas That chance appears remote now, at the nadir of Netanyahu’s relationship with the Obama administration. The White House considers the Israeli leader’s address to Congress partisan meddling intended to sink a potential nuclear deal with Iran. Democrats complain it is another example of Netanyahu’s undisguised preference for Republicans, and many plan to boycott. Netanyahu is speaking at the invitation of the Republican-led Congress. Netanyahu says he has no choice, because the emerging deal leaves Israel exposed to a potential nuclear strike. “I respect the White House and the U.S. president. But on a serious subject, it’s my duty to do everything for Israel’s security,” Netanyahu said at a campaign rally last week. The speech reflects an utter break between Netanyahu and Obama. In bypassing the White House and scheduling Tuesday’s speech just before Israelis vote in a national election, Netanyahu had “injected a degree of partisanship, which is not only unfortunate,” national security adviser Susan E. Rice said on PBS last week, “I think it’s destructive of the fabric of the relationship.” Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who succeeded Clinton as secretary of state in 2013, sought to play down any tensions Sunday, however. “We have an unparalleled close security relationship with Israel, and we will continue to,” Kerry said on ABC’s “This Week.” The U.S. critiques are being delivered indirectly now, in contrast with the 2010 Clinton phone call. Netanyahu will not see Obama, Biden or Kerry during his brief visit to Washington. The White House has offered a diplomatic fig leaf, saying it would be unseemly to host Netanyahu so close to the March 17 elections. Netanyahu is not likely to cross paths with Clinton either, although she is delivering a speech in Washington on Tuesday evening. Netanyahu is also addressing a gathering of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Monday. Clinton, a frequent speaker in years past, will not address the group. She has said nothing about the controversy surrounding Netanyahu’s congressional speech but is on the record as strongly supporting the Obama administration’s approach to negotiating with Iran. The goal of international talks now nearing a deadline this month is a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program and ensure it cannot be quickly converted to bomb-making. Clinton told an audience in Canada in January that the talks, initiated by secret contacts during her tenure as top diplomat, would be damaged by any new Iran sanctions applied by Congress. Wary respect Clinton’s tough line with Netanyahu was born of a two-decades-old acquaintance built on wary respect and a shared sense that each can do business with the other. Their relationship did not seem to suffer from the rougher patches during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, officials said. Clinton and Netanyahu made a point of showing no hard feelings when Clinton visited Israel just two months after the March 2010 settlement debacle and telephonic dressing-down. Clinton quotes Netanyahu from his brief portion of that phone call in her 2014 State Department memoir, “Hard Choices.” “Let me assure you and the president that the timing was entirely unintentional and unfortunate,” she said Netanyahu told her. “I didn’t enjoy playing the bad cop, but it was part of the job,” Clinton wrote. The longtime Likud leader and the likely Democratic presidential contender have sparred and made up enough times to regard one another as worthy adversaries, U.S. and Israeli officials and former officials said. They are familiar with one another in public — she calls him “Bibi.” He calls her “Hillary.” But they are not close personal friends. “Her relationship with him is very bad, just not as toxic as Obama’s,” said Alon Pinkas, who was Israel’s consul general in New York when Clinton was a pro-Israel senator from New York. “As much as it is replete with dislikes and misunderstandings, the relationship has the potential to succeed” if both politicians face one another as national leaders in 2017, Pinkas added. “I suspect it won’t, because he can’t help himself.” Many other observers, including Israeli and U.S. officials who would not speak for the record, described the relationship in more optimistic terms. “They have a long relationship of mutual intellectual respect,” Oren said. “They both are very, very smart people, and people of very strong physical stamina.” Other similarities: ambition, determination and a shared declaration that the bond between their two nations may stretch thin at times but will never break. In her memoir, Clinton calls Netanyahu a “complicated figure” whose hawkish views were shaped by his military and family experiences. “Despite our policy differences, Netanyahu and I worked together as partners and friends. We argued frequently, often during phone calls that would go on for over an hour, sometimes two. But even when we disagreed, we maintained an unshakable commitment to the alliance between our countries,” Clinton wrote. When Clinton was first lady and Netanyahu was the opposition Likud leader and then prime minister, she and then-President Bill Clinton chafed at Netanyahu’s perceived cozy relationship with the Clintons’ adversaries. His Republican contacts included then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) and evangelical leader Ralph Reed. For his part, Netanyahu was outraged in 1999 when Hillary Clinton sat by as Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat’s wife, Suha, accused Israel of poisoning Palestinians and then closed their joint appearance with an embrace. Clinton and Netanyahu dealt with one another occasionally during the years Clinton was in the Senate and Netanyahu held two cabinet posts. He returned as prime minister in 2009, the year that Clinton — having lost the 2008 Democratic presidential nominating contest — joined Obama’s Cabinet as secretary of state. Netanyahu has been the top Israeli leader for all but a few months of the Obama administration, and he called early elections in anticipation of keeping the job. Although opposition figure Isaac Herzog leads slightly in national polls, Netanyahu has the better chance of forming a government, Israeli and U.S. officials said. Clinton became the chief public voice for the administration’s insistence on a settlement freeze in 2009, despite her misgivings that it set too high a bar for Israel. Although viewed as friendlier to Israeli security arguments than Obama, she never wavered from the administration line in her dealings with Netanyahu, U.S. and Israeli officials said. “There was no wink and a nod, no ‘This is what we’re asking, but I really think something different,’ ” said one official who was present in many of their meetings. Netanyahu rejected the U.S. position out of hand, however, and in her book, Clinton called the U.S. position misguided. “In retrospect, our early hard line on settlements didn’t work,” she wrote. Under pressure from Clinton and U.S. envoy George J. Mitchell, Netanyahu adopted a partial, time-limited freeze to help set the tone for talks. A 10-month moratorium went into effect in late 2009, but it did not lead to productive or sustained negotiations. Clinton jawboned Netanyahu for more than five hours to extend the moratorium during a meeting in New York in September 2010. Although he eventually agreed, Netanyahu could not sell the extension to his cabinet and the moratorium expired. The Palestinian peace issue largely languished for the remainder of Obama’s first term. Kerry resumed an intensive push for a settlement that fell apart nearly a year ago despite his long association with Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Possible future partners If Netanyahu and Obama have written off hopes for their relationship during Obama’s nearly two years left in office, Netanyahu may see brighter prospects for the next president. Netanyahu’s Likud party is ideologically close to traditional Republican policy positions, and Netanyahu has not been shy about his connections to Republicans including Romney, an old friend from Netanyahu’s years living in the United States. None of the current crop of Republican presidential hopefuls appears likely to try to muscle Netanyahu on the Palestinian issue, and many of them share his doubts on the potential Iran deal. Netanyahu posted a Twitter message thanking likely Republican presidential contender Jeb Bush for supporting his Iran speech. “You’re welcome Mr. Prime Minister, I’m anxious to hear what you have to say!” replied the former Florida governor. Should Clinton win the White House, however, she and Netanyahu would probably forge an efficient bond, U.S. and Israeli observers said. “I’d bet that under either a third Bush or a second Clinton, things might not be great between the United States and Netanyahu, but they would be better than they are right now,” Wilson Center Mideast scholar Aaron David Miller wrote last week in Foreign Policy. The Iran deal at issue now is likely to be resolved before the 2016 election, but not the underlying fear for Israelis that Iran remains what Netanyahu calls an “existential” threat next door. Clinton is on record voicing much the same concern, along with doubts that Iran would abide by any deal it struck. If a deal is signed, Clinton would carry it forward but would probably also find ways to reassure Netanyahu that the United States will not be hoodwinked. And unless the West Bank security and political situation deteriorates rapidly or Netanyahu severely overplays his hand on settlements, a President Hillary Clinton would be unlikely to push Netanyahu very far on a peace settlement, U.S. and Israeli observers said. A prevailing view among Mideast watchers is that the next big U.S. peace push would probably wait for a different Israeli leader. “She will keep good relations with Netanyahu if he gives her a semblance of movement, and they can all kick the can together,” said a senior Israeli official who requested anonymity because Netanyahu has not yet secured another term. “Hillary can’t afford to fight Netanyahu unless she has a smoking gun, and he’s too smart to give her a smoking gun.” American right unholsters surest shot against Hillary (The Sunday Times) By Toby Harnden March 1, 2015 The Sunday Times SHE has shattered glass ceilings throughout her career, showing herself able to rise to the top in a man's world, and now seems poised to try to win the most powerful job in the world. But the neatly dressed blonde who wowed a raucous crowd inside a convention centre outside Washington was not Hillary Clinton, the Democratic favourite for the White House in 2016, but rather Carly Fiorina, the first woman to lead a company in the Fortune 20 liist of the biggest US businesses. Fiorina has cleverly positioned herself as the "anti-Hillary", the only woman in a Republican field of more than a dozen men and the candidate most prepared to mount relentless attacks on the former US secretary of state — including a few that a male opponent might struggle to get away with. A former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, Fiorina, 60, has never held political office and failed in her 2010 attempt to win a Senate seat in California. While this may make her an unlikely Republican nominee, conservative activists are tipping her as a possible vicepresidential pick, not least because she could help neutralise Clinton. Preferring skirts to her rival's trademark trouser suits, she spoke last week at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland, and served up plenty of red meat for party activists hungry for ideas about how to defeat Clinton. Presenting herself as a freemarket conservative and foreign policy hawk, Fiorina boasted of having done business in more than 80 countries and of serving for several years on the advisory board of the CIA. She spoke of knowing King Abdullah of Jordan and Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. "I have met Vladimir Putin, and I know that his ambition will not be deterred by a gimmicky red'reset' button," she said, referring to her talks with the Russian president at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation event in China and the ill-fated "reset" in relations with the Kremlin announced by Clinton in 2009. She also mocked Clinton — the Democrat frontrunner due to declare her candidacy by the summer— for boasting that she flew nearly 1m miles during her four years as secretary of state. "Like Mrs Clinton, I too have travelled the globe," Fiorina said. "Unlike Mrs Clinton, I know that flying is an activity, not an accomplishment." Fiorina lambasted Clinton over foreign donations to her family foundation. "Mrs Clinton, please name an accomplishment," Fiorina demanded. "And in the meantime, please explain why we should accept that the millions and millions of dollars that have flowed into the Clinton Global Initiative from foreign governments doesn't represent a conflict of interest." Fiorina, who first emerged on the political scene as an adviser to Senator John McCain when he was the Republican nominee in 2008, showed a softer side too, talking of her battle with cancer and her stepdaughter's death. She seems to have got under the skin of the Clinton camp, which has bristled at suggestions their candidate copied the title of her 2014 book Hard Choices from Fiorina's 2007 memoir Tough Choices. Last week Clinton aides were forced to deny claims she had stolen the phrase "unlock their full potential" from Fiorina, whose organisation is the Unlocking Potential Project. After Fiorina's speech the Democratic National committee sent out emails linking to articles criticising Fiorina's tenure at Hewlett-Packard. "Carly Fiorina lacks Secretary Clinton's resumé when it comes to serving and empowering working families and middle-class Americans," wrote Adrienne Elrod, of Correct the Record, a pro-Clinton group. "Hillary's resumé is one of success and this is why Ms Fiorina attacks Hillary and her work to protect children and help every American reach their potential." The CPAC was an opportunity for the full range of potential 2016 Republican presidential candidates to set out their wares. Jeb Bush, the early frontrunner, was credited with a deft performance in front of an audience containing many who viewed him as suspiciously moderate. Senator Rand Paul, a libertarian running against the party establishment, was expected to win the CPAC straw poll for the third year in a row; an outcome, his opponents groused, that was down in large part to his favouring legalising marijuana for medical use — a reform backed by the young activists who dominate the gathering.Spread the love
John Vibes
June 1, 2014
A police officer in Oklahoma has been accused of waving a gun around in a family’s back yard and shooting their pet dog. The entire incident was witnessed by multiple people, including neighbors and small children.
The police were reportedly told not to enter the property, because the family did not want the dogs to anger the police. Unfortunately, the police entered into the family’s fenced in yard uninvited and with an aggressive posture, waving guns around, according to neighbors.
Dog owner Cindy Wickham and her two young nephews were in her back yard when police entered and shot one of her dogs.
“It just happened so fast that I couldn’t do nothing, I couldn’t prevent it.” Wickham said. “The only thing I could do was put my nephews behind my back.”
Wickham said the incident traumatized both her and her nephews. “I’m hurt because I couldn’t prevent my nephews from seeing that.” Wickham added.
Kaci Malicoat, one of the neighbors who witnessed the incident described to a local news crew how the officer pointed his gun not only at the dogs, but at the family as well.
“I could see him waving the gun back and forth at her and the dog,” Malicoat said.
According to the family, the officer shot one of the dogs when it sniffed him, but the officer claimed that the dog bit him.
The local police department said that the incident is under investigation, but no disciplinary measures have been taken against the guilty officer.
Just this week we reported on a police officer in Oklahoma who was charged with murdering 6 dogs in his neighborhood. While this is a systematic problem that exists in every police department throughout the country, police departments in Oklahoma have been in the news a lot recently for crimes against animals.
John Vibes is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war. In addition to his writing and activist work he is also the owner of a successful music promotion company. In 2013, he became one of the organizers of the Free Your Mind Conference, which features top caliber speakers and whistle-blowers from all over the world. You can contact him and stay connected to his work at his Facebook page. You can find his 65 chapter Book entitled “Alchemy of the Timeless Renaissance” at bookpatch.com.John 6:5–14 (RSV)
Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a multitude was coming to him, Jesus said to Philip, “How are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” This he said to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, “There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are they among so many?” Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place; so the men sat down, in number about five thousand. Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten. When the people saw the sign which he had done, they said, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world!”
See also: Matt 14:15-21; Mark 6:35-44; Luke 9:12-17
This miracle takes place just after the beheading of John the Baptist (Matt 14:1-12; Mark 6:14-29; Luke 9:7-9) and just before the miracle of the Lord walking on water (Matt 14:23-27; Mark 6:47-50; John 6:16-21).
John 6:5
Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a multitude was coming to him, Jesus said to Philip, “How are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?”
Why does Jesus lift up his eyes? To show that the Lord had not been looking about idly?1
Bede observes, “That Jesus lifted up His eyes and beheld the multitude coming toward Him is an indication of the divine benevolence, for He is wont to come by the grace of heavenly mercy to meet all those seeking to come to Him” (Homilies on the Gospels).
Then, lifting up His eyes, He asked how they would feed the multitude, directing His question to Philip, who especially needed instruction, as revealed by this later conversation: “Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip?” (John 14:8-9) Therefore, the Lord begins early on to instruct him.
By first questioning him, “How are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” the Lord prompts Philip to acknowledge the shortage of provisions, so that later they would not forget how astounding the miracle that was about to take place would be.
John 6:6
This he said to test him, for he himself knew what he would do.
By the above question, the Lord also tests Philip (Greek πειράζω – peirazō), that is, to make him recognize the weakness of his faith. The Lord does not ask the question because He was ignorant of Philip’s character; He asks in order to show it to others. For He already knew what He would do.
John 6:7–9
Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, “There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are they among so many?”
After testing Philip’s faith and finding it limited by earthly reasoning, He shows the same to be true of Andrew. But Andrew had a slightly better notion of the Lord’s power than did Philip. While Philip declared, “Two hundred denarii2 would not buy enough bread,” Andrew points out an even smaller quantity: five barley loaves and two fish. Perhaps Andrew recalled the miracles of the prophets of old – how Elisha multiplied loaves when Samaria was devastated by famine:
Then a man came from Baal-Shalisha and brought to the man of God the firstfruits, twenty loaves of barley bread and fruit cake. And he said, “Give it to the people and let them eat.” But his servant said, “Why shall I set this before one hundred men?” Elisha said, “Give it to the people and let them eat, for Thus says the Lord: ‘They shall eat and will leave some behind.’ ” So they ate and had some left over, according to the word of the Lord.3
Nonetheless, Andrew, like Philip, fails to grasp the enormity of the Lord’s power: “but what are they among so many?” Andrew thought that the Lord could perhaps multiply the loaves, as did Elisha, but Elisha had twenty loaves plus fig cakes on hand for one hundred men, whereas in this situation there were only five loaves plus two paltry fish for five thousand.
Bede suggests that the boy represents the Jewish people; that the five loaves represent the five books of Moses; and that the two fish represent the Psalms and the Prophets (Ibid.):
The boy represents the Jewish people, who were childlike in their understanding of the literal sense, keeping the words of the Scriptures shut up within themselves. Nevertheless, our Lord, having appeared in the flesh, took the loaves and fish and showed what usefulness and sweetness they had. The five loaves are the five books of Moses. If they are opened up by spiritual understanding, and then multiplied by penetration of their deeper meaning, they daily refresh the hearts of the believers who hear them. They are reported to have been made of barley, because of the stricter ordinances of the law, and the thicker outer husks of its literal interpretation which, as it were, cover the inner pith of its spiritual sense. The two fish signify the writings of the psalmists and prophets. One of these by chanting, and the other by talking to those who listen, tell of the future sacramental mysteries of Christ and the Church. It is also appropriate that it was aquatic creatures that prefigured the heralds of the age in which faithful people could in no way live without the water of Baptism.
This miracle of the loaves is the same described by Matthew in 14:15-21. In Matthew’s account, the disciples tell the Lord to dismiss the people, but here in John’s account Jesus asks the disciples how the crowd will be fed. There is no discrepancy here: taken together, the accounts tell us that the disciples first urged the Lord to dismiss the crowd, then the Lord asked Philip how they would be fed.
John 6:10
Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place; so the men sat down, in number about five thousand.
Christ commanded the men to sit down at once, as if the meal were already prepared. The disciples had lacked faith, but now they quickly seated the people. There was much grass because it was springtime (Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand – John 6:4).
Bede interprets the grass to also represent “bodily concupiscence, which everyone who desires to be satisfied with spiritual nourishment ought to tread underfoot and repress” (Ibid.).
Only the men were counted according to the custom of the law. When Moses took a census of the people, he counted the men who were twenty years and older, not counting the women (Numbers 26:1-2). (Theophylact comments, “From this we learn that God approves and honors only a vigorous and manly disposition.”)
“These five thousand,” |
every expression and statement, the recommended maximum cost for a function is 32.
Corresponding Ada rule:
The inline aspect of a subprogram is optional for a compiler. It notifies the compiler of the programmer’s desire that the subprogram be inlined.
7.1.6. Use class types or typedefs to abstract scalar quantities and standard integer types
Using class types to represent scalar quantities exploits compiler enforcement of type safety. If this is not possible, typedefs should be used to aid readability of code.
Plain char type should not be used to define a typedef name, unless the type is intended for parameterizing the code for narrow and wide character types. In other cases, an explicit signed char or unsigned char type should be used in a typedef as appropriate.
To enhance portability, instead of using the standard integer types (signed char, short, int, long, long long, and the unsigned counterparts), size specific types should be defined in a project-wide header file, so that the definition can be updated to match a particular platform (16, 32 or 64bit). Where available, intN t and uintN t types (e.g. int8 t ) defined in the cstdint header file should be used for this purpose.
Where the auto type specifier is used in a declaration, and the initializer is a constant expression, the declaration should not be allowed to resolve to a standard integer type. The type should be fixed by casting the initializer to a size specific type.
Exception:
The C++ Language Standard places type requirements on certain constructs. In such cases, it is better to use required type explicitly rather than the typedef equivalent which would reduce the portability of the code.
The following constructs are therefore exceptions to this rule:
· int main()
· T operator++(int)
· T operator–(int)
Corresponding Ada rule:
Ada allows the programmer to create simple and detailed definitions of scalar types and subtypes. New integer types can be simply defined by creating a type name and specifying the valid range of values for the type, or they can be derived from an existing type with a restriction on the range of valid values.
For example:
type Counts is range 0..100;
type Normalized is new Integer range -100..100;
Ada also allows the programmer to define subtypes of existing types. Objects of a subtype are members of the base type, usually with a restricted range of valid values.
subtype Natural is Integer range 0..Integer’Last;
subtype Positive is Integer range 1..Integer’Last;
Subtypes can be used in mixed calculations with any other subtypes of the same base type. Objects of different base types cannot be used in an expression without explicit conversion to a common type.
7.1.7. Use a trailing return type in preference to type disambiguation using typename
When using a trailing return type, lookup for the function return type starts from the same scope as the function declarator. In many cases, this will remove the need to specify a fully qualified return type along with the typename keyword.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Ada has no equivalent of a trailing return type.
7.1.8. Use auto id = expr when declaring a variable to have the same type as its initializer function call
When declaring a variable that is initialized with a function call, the type is being specified twice. Initially on the return of the function and then in the type of the declaration.
auto and implicitly deducing the type of the initializer will ensure that a future change to the declaration of foo will not result in the addition of unexpected implicit conversions. Usingand implicitly deducing the type of the initializer will ensure that a future change to the declaration of foo will not result in the addition of unexpected implicit conversions.
Corresponding Ada rule:
This rule is contrary to Ada strong typing. Every variable must be declared to be definite, even if it is a member of an indefinite type. The type returned by an initializing function must match the type of the object being declared.
An object of an indefinite type must be initialized to a definite object. For instance, the type String is an unconstrained array of character. An unconstrained array is an indefinite type. Each instance of a String must have a specified length, which is defined when the String object is initialized. The String object is definite. The String type is indefinite.
7.1.9. Do not explicitly specify the return type of a lambda
Allowing the return type of a lambda to be implicitly deduced reduces the danger of unexpected implicit conversions, as well as simplifying future maintenance, where changes to types used in the lambda would otherwise result in the need to change the return type.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Ada does not allow lambdas.
7.1.10. Use static_assert for assertions involving compile time constants
A static assert will generate a compile error if its expression is not true. The earlier that a problem can be diagnosed the better, with the earliest time possible being as the code is written.
Corresponding Ada rule:
When defining a subtype the programmer should use either a Dynamic_Predicate or a Static_Predicate if the use of a simple range cannot fully define the characteristics of the subtype.
A Static_Predicate expression must be one of
· A static membership test where the choice is selected by the current instance
· A case expression whose dependent expressions are static and selected by the current instance
· A call of the predefined operations =, /=, <, <=, >, >= where one operand is the current instance
· An ordinary static expression
A Dynamic_Expression can be any Boolean expression.
Examples:
subtype Even is Integer
with Dynamic_Predicate => Even mod 2 = 0;
subtype Letter is Character
with Static_Predicate => Letter in ‘A’..’Z’|’a’..’z’;
7.2. Enumeration declarations
7.2.1. Use an explicit enumeration base and ensure that it is large enough to store all enumerations
The underlying type of an unscoped enumeration is implementation defined, with the only restriction being that the type must be able to represent the enumeration values. An explicit enumeration base should always be specified with a type that will accommodate both the smallest and the largest enumerator.
A scoped enum will implicitly have an underlying type of int, however, the requirement to specify the underlying type still applies.
Exception:
An enumeration declared in an extern "C" block (i.e. one intended to be used with C) does not require an explicit underlying type.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Ada enumerations are not numeric types and cannot be converted to numeric types. The compiler chooses the size of the enumeration representation base upon the number of enumeration values.
7.2.2. Initialize none, the first only, or all enumerators in an enumeration
It is error prone to initialize explicitly only some enumerators in an enumeration, and to rely on the compiler to initialize the remaining ones. For example, during maintenance it may be possible to introduce implicitly initialized enumerators with the same value as an existing one initialized explicitly.
Exception:
When an enumeration is used to define the size and to index an array, it is acceptable and recommended to define three additional enumerators after all other enumerators, to represent the first and the last elements, and the size of the array.
Corresponding Ada rule:
When specifying the enumeration representation all enumerated values must be specified.
Example:
type Mix_Code is (ADD, SUB, MUL, LDA, STA, STZ);
for Mix_Code use (ADD => 1, SUB => 2, MUL => 3, LDA => 8, STA => 24, STZ =>33);
7.3. Namespaces
7.3.1. Do not use using directives
Namespaces are an important tool in separating identifiers and in making interfaces explicit.
A using directive, i.e. using namespace, allows any name to be searched for in the namespace specified by the using directive.
A using declaration, on the other hand, brings in a single name from the namespace, as if it was declared in the scope containing the using declaration.
Corresponding Ada rule:
The unit of encapsulation in Ada is the package. Packages provide the name space designation of C++ namespaces.
In Ada one can either use the entire package, use only a specific type defined in the package, or explicitly append the package name to each element accessed from the package.
Any naming ambiguity will be identified by the compiler.
7.4. Linkage specifications
7.4.1. Ensure that any objects, functions or types to be used from a single translation unit are defined in an unnamed namespace in the main source file
Declaring an entity in an unnamed namespace limits its visibility to the current translation unit only. This helps reduce the risk of name clashes and conflicts with declarations in other translation units.
It is preferred to use unnamed namespaces rather than the static keyword to declare such entities.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Each compilation unit specifies its own dependencies in its dependency clauses. There is no visibility to compilation units not defined in the dependency clause.
7.4.2. Ensure that an inline function, a function template, or a type used from multiple translation units is defined in a single header file
An inline function, a function template or a user defined type that is intended for use in multiple translation units should be defined in a single header file, so that the definition will be processed in exactly the same way (the same sequence of tokens) in each translation unit.
This will ensure that the one definition rule is adhered to, avoiding undefined behavior, as well as improving the maintainability of the code.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Each subprogram, generic compilation unit, type, task, task type, protected object, or protected type is defined uniquely in a compilation unit. Dependency upon compilation units which define types or objects with overlapping identifiers results in ambiguity which is flagged as a compilation error and must be corrected before an executable is produced by the compilation process.
7.4.3. Ensure that an object or a function used from multiple translation units is declared in a single header file
An object or function with external linkage should be declared in a single header file in the project.
This will ensure that the type seen for an entity in each translation unit is the same thereby avoiding undefined behavior.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Objects used by multiple compilation units must be declared in the public region of a package. Functions and procedures can either be declared in a package or in a stand-alone compilation unit.
7.5. The asm declaration
7.5.1. Do not use the asm declaration
Use of inline assembly should be avoided since it restricts the portability of the code.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Machine code insertions should be avoided since they restrict the portability of the code.
8. Definitions
8.1. Type names
8.1.1. Do not use multiple levels of pointer indirection
In C++, at most one level of pointer indirection combined with references is sufficient to express any algorithm or API.
Instead of using multidimensional arrays, an array of containers or nested containers should be used. Code reliant on more than one level of pointer indirection will be less readable and more difficult to maintain.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Use of multidimensional arrays is allowed, or one can choose containers or nested containers. Ada arrays do not employ pointer indirection at the source code level.
8.2. Meanings of declarators
8.2.1. Make parameter names absent or identical in all declarations
Although the C++ Standard does not mandate that parameter names match in all declarations of a function (e.g. a declaration in a header file and the definition in the main source file), it is good practice to follow this principle.
Corresponding Ada rule:
All subprogram parameter names must be declared and must match the corresponding subprogram implementation.
Subprogram parameters may be referenced by position or by name when the subprogram is called. It is recommended to use named notation when calling a subprogram. When using named notation the actual parameter is explicitly matched with the formal parameter, and the order of parameters in the called subprogram is not relevant.
Example:
Procedure Get_Line(Item : out String; Last : out Natural);
Length : Natural;
Input : String(1..256);
Get_Line(Item => Input, Last => Length);
8.2.2. Do not declare functions with excessive number of parameters
A function defined with a long list of parameters often indicates poor design and is difficult to read and maintain.
The recommended maximum number of function parameters is six.
Corresponding Ada rule:
While it is seldom useful to declare a subprogram with a large number of parameters, the problem is greatly relieved through the use of named notation.
8.2.3. Pass small objects with a trivial copy constructor by value
Because passing by const reference involves an indirection, it will be less efficient than passing by value for a small object with a trivial copy constructor.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Ada parameters have an associated mode indicating data flow. The modes are IN, OUT, IN OUT. The compiler determines whether a particular parameter should be passed by copy or by reference.
8.2.4. Do not pass std::unique_ptr by const reference
An object of type std::unique ptr should be passed as a non-const reference, or by value. Passing by non-const reference signifies that the parameter is an in/out parameter. Passing by value signifies that the parameter is a sink (i.e. takes ownership and does not return it).
A const reference std::unique ptr parameter provides no benefits and restricts the potential callers of the function.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Ada parameter modes explicitly state whether the parameter is passed IN, OUT, or IN OUT.
8.3. Function definitions
8.3.1. Do not write functions with excessive McCabe Cyclomatic Complexity
The McCabe Cyclomatic Complexity is calculated as the number of decision branches within a function plus 1.
Complex functions are hard to maintain and test effectively. It is recommended that the value of this metric does not exceed 10.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Excessive cyclomatic complexity has been shown to produce code that is difficult to understand and maintain. It is often an indication of poor code design.
8.3.2. Do not write functions with a high static program path count
Static program path count is the number of non-cyclic execution paths in a function. Functions with a high number of paths through them are difficult to test, maintain and comprehend. The static program path count of a function should not exceed 200.
Corresponding Ada rule:
High static path count is an indication of poor software design. All code should be testable and maintainable.
8.3.3. Do not use default arguments
Use of default arguments can make code maintenance and refactoring more difficult. Overloaded forwarding functions can be used instead without having to change existing function calls.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Overloaded forwarding functions provide no maintenance benefit. Use of default arguments and named notation for calling subprograms clearly documents all calls for maintenance purposes without creating a plethora of overloaded subprograms.
8.3.4. Define =delete functions with parameters of rvalue reference to const
A simple model for an rvalue reference is that it allows for the modification of a temporary. A const rvalue reference therefore defeats the purpose of the construct as modifications are not possible.
However, one valid use case is where the function is defined =delete. This will disallow the use of an rvalue as an argument to that function.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Ada has no equivalent to defining a subprogram as =delete.
8.4. Initializers
8.4.1. Do not access an invalid object or an object with indeterminate value
A significant component of program correctness is that the program behavior should be deterministic. That is, given the same input and conditions the program will produce the same set of results.
If a program does not have deterministic behavior, then this may indicate that the source code is reliant on unspecified or undefined behavior.
Such behaviors may arise from use of:
· variables not yet initialized
· memory (or pointers to memory) that has been freed
· moved from objects
Corresponding Ada rule:
The Ada compiler identifies when the value of a variable is used before the variable is initialized or assigned a value. The SPARK subset of Ada requires all variables to be fully initialized.
8.4.2. Ensure that a braced aggregate initialize matches the layout of the aggregate object
If an array or a struct is non-zero initialized, initializers should be provided for all members, with an initializer list for each aggregate (sub)object enclosed in braces. This will make it clear what value each member is initialized with.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Aggregates can be constructed for arrays or records. While aggregates can be constructed using positional notation, similar to C++, named notation should always be used.
Use of named notation will ensure and document that all elements of the composite type have been initialized.
9. Classes
9.1. Member functions
9.1.1. Declare static any member function that does not require this. Alternatively, declare const any member function that does not modify the externally visible state of the object
A non-virtual member function that does not access the this pointer can be declared static. Otherwise, a function that is virtual or does not modify the externally visible state of the object can be declared const.
The C++ language permits that a const member function modifies the program state (e.g. modifies a global variable, or calls a function that does so). However, it is recommended that const member functions are logically const also, and do not cause any side effects.
The mutable keyword can be used to declare member data that can be modified in a const function, however, this should only be used where the member data does not affect the externally visible state of the object.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Packages are the unit of encapsulation in Ada. Tagged types are polymorphic types in Ada. Tagged types can be defined in a package, making them available to multiple compilation units. Tagged types can have primitive operations, which correspond to virtual member functions in C++. A subprogram is primitive to some tagged type T if all of the following are true:
· The subprogram is declared in the visible part of the package in which tagged type T is declared
· The subprogram has a parameter of type T, or an access parameter pointing to an instance of type T, or is a function returning a result of type T
Any subprogram which is declared in the package where type T is declared, and does not meet the above requirements, is not a primitive of type T. Such a subprogram is equivalent to a C++ static member function. Any procedure with only an parameter of IN mode of type T is equivalent to a C++ const member function.
9.1.2. Make default arguments the same or absent when overriding a virtual function
The C++ Language Standard allows that default arguments be different for different overrides of a virtual function.
However, the compiler selects the argument value based on the static type of the object used in the function call.
This can result in confusion where the default argument value used may be different to the expectation of the user.
Corresponding Ada rule:
The Ada Language Standard requires overridden subprograms be conformant in their use of default parameter expressions. When a subprogram overrides another subprogram the parameter profile cannot change regarding default expressions.
9.1.3. Do not return non-const handles to class data from const member functions
A pointer or reference to non-const data returned from a const member function may allow the caller to modify the state of the object. This contradicts the intent of a const member function.
Corresponding Ada rule:
A procedure with an IN mode parameter cannot modify the data passed to it, nor can it return a value of any kind.
9.1.4. Do not write member functions which return non-const handles to data less accessible than the member function
Member data that is returned by a non-const handle from a more accessible member function, implicitly has the access of the function and not the access it was declared with. This reduces encapsulation and increases coupling.
Exception:
Non-const operator [] is exempt from this rule, as in this context the rule conflicts with Rule 13.2.4: ” When overloading the subscript operator ( operator[] ) implement both const and non-const versions ”, which takes precedence.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Ada functions need not return pointers to complex data. Instead they can return entire complex objects including records and arrays. This avoids the lifetime issues associated with C++ member functions.
9.1.5. Do not introduce virtual functions in a final class
Declaring a class as final explicitly documents that this is a leaf class as it cannot be used as a base class.
Introducing a virtual function in such a class is therefore redundant as the function can never be overridden in a derived class.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Ada does not explicitly label a tagged type “final”. Instead, if no subprograms with class-wide parameters are introduced the tagged type has the effect of being “final”.
9.2. Bit-fields
9.2.1. Declare bit-fields with an explicitly unsigned integral or enumeration type
To avoid reliance on implementation defined behavior, only declare bit-fields of an explicitly unsigned type ( uintN t ) or an enumeration type with an enumeration base of explicitly unsigned type.
Corresponding Ada rule:
One must define data types with value ranges that can fit into the specified bit layout of a record. Failure to do so will result in a compiler error message.
Example:
Word : constant := 4; -- storage element is byte, 4 bytes per word
type is (A,M,W,P);
type Mode is (Fix, Dec, Exp, Signif); State(A,M,W,P);Mode(Fix, Dec, Exp, Signif);
type is array (0..7) of Boolean;
type State_Mask is array (State) of Boolean;
type Mode_Mask is array (Mode) of Boolean; Byte_Mask(0..7)Boolean;State_Mask(State)Boolean;Mode_Mask(Mode)Boolean;
type is
record
System_Mask : Byte_Mask;
Protection_Key : Integer range 0.. 3;
Machine_State : State_Mask;
Interrupt_Cause : Interruption_Code;
Ilc : Integer range 0.. 3;
Cc : Integer range 0.. 3;
Program_Mask : Mode_Mask;
Inst_Address : Address;
end record; Program_Status_WordSystem_Mask : Byte_Mask;Protection_Key : Integer0.. 3;Machine_State : State_Mask;Interrupt_Cause : Interruption_Code;Ilc : Integer0.. 3;Cc : Integer0.. 3;Program_Mask : Mode_Mask;Inst_Address : Address;
for Program_Status_Word use
record
System_Mask at 0*Word range 0.. 7;
Protection_Key at 0*Word range 10.. 11; -- bits 8,9 unused
Machine_State at 0*Word range 12.. 15;
Interrupt_Cause at 0*Word range 16.. 31;
Ilc at 1*Word range 0.. 1; -- second word
Cc at 1*Word range 2.. 3;
Program_Mask at 1*Word range 4.. 7;
Inst_Address at 1*Word range 8.. 31;
end record; Cc1*Word2.. 3;Program_Mask1*Word4.. 7;Inst_Address1*Word8.. 31;
for use 8*System.Storage_Unit;
for Program_Status_Word'Alignment use 8; Program_Status_Word'Size8*System.Storage_Unit;Program_Status_Word'Alignment8;
10. Derived classes
10.1. Multiple base classes
10.1.1. Ensure that access to base class subobjects does not require explicit disambiguation
A class inherited more than once in a hierarchy, and not inherited virtually in all paths will result in multiple base class subobjects being present in instances of the derived object type.
Such objects require that the developer explicitly select which base class to use when accessing members. The result is a hierarchy that is harder to understand and maintain.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Ada allows multiple inheritance only of interfaces, not of tagged types. All subprograms in interfaces are abstract, corresponding to virtual inheritance of multiple base classes in C++.
10.2. Virtual functions
10.2.1. Use the override special identifier when overriding a virtual function
The override special identifier is a directive to the compiler to check that the function is overriding a base class member. This will ensure that a change in the signature of the virtual function will generate a compiler error.
Corresponding Ada rule:
An overriding_indicator is used to declare that an operation is intended to override (or not override) an inherited operation.
Syntax
overriding_indicator ::= [not] overriding
Legality Rules
If an abstract_subprogram_declaration, null_procedure_declaration, expression_function_declaration, subprogram_body, subprogram_body_stub, subprogram_renaming_declaration, generic_instantiation of a subprogram, or subprogram_declaration other than a protected subprogram has an overriding_indicator, then:
· the operation shall be a primitive operation for some type;
· if the overriding_indicator is overriding, then the operation shall override a homograph at the place of the declaration or body;
· if the overriding_indicator is not overriding, then the operation shall not override any homograph (at any place).
In addition to the places where Legality Rules normally apply, these rules also apply in the private part of an instance of a generic unit.
10.3. Abstract classes
10.3.1. Ensure that a derived class has at most one base class which is not an interface class
An interface class has the following properties:
· all public functions are pure virtual functions or getters, and
· there are no public or protected data members, and
· it contains at most one private data member of integral or enumerated type
Inheriting from two or more base classes that are not interfaces, is rarely correct. It also exposes the derived class to multiple implementations, with the risk that subsequent changes to any of the base classes may invalidate the derived class.
On the other hand. it is reasonable that a concrete class may implement more than one interface.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Ada only allows inheritance from one base class. Ada allows multiple inheritance of interfaces.
11. Member access control
11.1. Access specifiers
11.1.1. Declare all data member private
If direct access to the object state is allowed through public or protected member data, encapsulation is reduced making the code harder to maintain.
By implementing a class interface with member functions only, precise control is achieved over modifications to object state as well as allowing for pre and post conditions to be checked when accessing data.
Corresponding Ada rule:
There are many uses for packages. One use is to define commonly used constants, while another is to define abstract data types. It is good to use data hiding for abstract data types, but it is also important to openly share commonly used constants. When declaring abstract data types in Ada it is advised that the public view of the data type refers to a private definition of the data structure.
11.2. Friends
11.2.1. Do not use friend declarations
Friend declarations reduce encapsulation, resulting in code that is harder to maintain.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Ada provides child packages rather than friends. Child packages do not reduce encapsulation. Child packages allow the creation of package extensions without compromising or altering the code in the parent package.
12. Special member functions
12.1. Conversions
12.1.1. Do not declare implicit user defined conversions
A user defined conversions can occur through the use of a conversion operator or a conversion constructor (a constructor that accepts a single argument).
A compiler can invoke a single user defined conversion in a standard conversion sequence, but only if the operator or constructor is declared without the explicit keyword.
It is better to declare all conversion constructors and operators explicit.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Ada does not perform implicit conversions.
12.2. Destructors
12.2.1. Declare virtual, private, or protected the destructor of a type used as a base class
If an object will ever be destroyed through a pointer to its base class, then the destructor in the base class should be virtual. If the base class destructor is not virtual, then the destructors for derived classes will not be invoked.
Where an object will not be deleted via a pointer to its base, then the destructor should be declared with protected or private access. This will result in a compile error should an attempt be made to delete the object incorrectly.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Ada controlled types allow user-defined finalization of objects of the type. Finalization is called when an object goes out of scope.
Ada polymorphism does not require the use of pointers to a base class.
12.3. Free store
12.3.1. Correctly declare overloads for operator new and delete
operator new and operator delete should work together. Overloading operator new means that a custom memory management scheme is in operation for a particular class or program. If a corresponding operator delete (plain or array) is not provided the memory management scheme is incomplete.
Additionally, if initialization of the allocated object fails with an exception, the C++ runtime will try to call an operator delete with identical parameters as the called operator new, except for the first parameter. If no such operator delete can be found, the memory will not be freed. If this operator delete does not actually need to perform any bookkeeping, one with an empty body should be defined to document this in the code.
When declared in a class, operator new and operator delete are implicitly static members; explicitly including the static specifier in their declarations helps to document this.
Corresponding Ada rule:
When creating a custom storage pool one must override the abstract type Root_Storage_Pool, including overriding its Allocate and Deallocate procedures and its Storage_Size function. There is no way to implement a custom storage pool without implementing all three subprograms.
12.4. Initializing bases and members
12.4.1. Do not use the dynamic type of an object unless the object is fully constructed
Expressions involving:
· a call to a virtual member function,
· use of typeid, or
· a cast to a derived type using dynamic cast
are said to use the dynamic type of the object.
Special semantics apply when using the dynamic type of an object while it is being constructed or destructed. Moreover, it is undefined behavior if the static type of the operand is not (or is not a pointer to) the constructor’s or destructor’s class or one of its base classes.
In order to avoid misconceptions and potential undefined behavior, such expressions should not be used while the object is being constructed or destructed.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Ada has no concept of a dynamic type, only dynamic type identification. Ada can perform view conversions of a child type to its parent type, but that does not change the type of an object.
12.4.2. Ensure that a constructor initializes explicitly all base classes and non-static data members
A constructor should completely initialize its object. Explicit initialization reduces the risk of an invalid state after successful construction. All virtual base classes and direct non-virtual base classes should be included in the initialization list for the constructor. A copy or move constructor should initialize each non-static data member in the initialization list, or if this is not possible then in constructor body. For other constructors, each non-static data member should be initialized in the following way, in order of preference:
· non static data member initializer (NSDMI), or
· in initialization list, or
· in constructor body.
For many constructors this means that the body becomes an empty block.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Ada records, including tagged records, can be defined with default values for all their record components. The default initialization of a parent tagged record is applied to the child tagged record so that the child need not explicitly call parent initialization functions.
12.4.3. Do not specify both an NSDMI and a member initialize for the same non-static member
NSDMI stands for ’non static data member initializer’. This syntax, introduced in the 2011 C++ Language Standard, allows for the initializer of a member to be specified along with the declaration of the member in the class body. To avoid confusion as to the value of the initializer actually used, if a member has an NSDMI then it should not subsequently be initialized in the member initialization list of a constructor.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Ada does not provide for multiple initialization of an object.
12.4.4. Write members in an initialization list in the order in which they are declared
Regardless of the order of member initializers in a initialization list, the order of initialization is always:
· Virtual base classes in depth and left to right order of the inheritance graph.
· Direct non-virtual base classes in left to right order of inheritance list.
· Non-static member data in order of declaration in the class definition.
To avoid confusion and possible use of uninitialized data members, it is recommended that the initialization list matches the actual initialization order.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Since Ada only allows single inheritance from a base class there is no issue about which base class is first initialized.
12.4.5. Use delegating constructors to reduce code duplication
Delegating constructors can help reduce code duplication by performing initialization in a single constructor. Using delegating constructors also removes a potential performance penalty with using an ’init’ method, where initialization for some members occurs twice.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Ada does not provide explicit constructors. Ada does provide an Initialize procedure for controlled types.
12.5. Copying and moving class objects
12.5.1. Define explicitly =default or =delete implicit special member functions of concrete classes
A compiler may provide some or all of the following special member functions:
· Destructor
· Copy constructor
· Copy assignment operator
· Move constructor
· Move assignment operator
The set of functions implicitly provided depends on the special member functions that have been declared by the user and also the special members of base classes and member objects.
The compiler generated versions of these functions perform a bitwise or shallow copy, which may not be the correct copy semantics for the class. It is also not clear to clients of the class if these functions can be used or not.
To resolve this, the functions should be defined with =delete or =default thereby fully documenting the class interface.
Note: As this rule is limited to concrete classes, it is the responsibility of the most derived class to ensure that the object has correct copy semantics for itself and for its sub-objects.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Tagged types inheriting from Controlled types must define Initialize, Adjust, and Finalize procedures to handle initialization, copy semantics, and deletion semantics.
12.5.2. Define special members =default if the behavior is equivalent
Corresponding Ada rule:
This rule has no Ada equivalent because Ada prohibits inheritance from multiple base classes.
12.5.3. Ensure that a user defined move/copy constructor only moves/copies base and member objects
The human clients of a class will expect that the copy constructor can be used to correctly copy an object of class type. Similarly, they will expect that the move constructor correctly moves an object of class type.
Similarly, a compiler has explicit permission in the C++ Standard to remove unnecessary copies or moves, on the basis that these functions have no other side-effects other than to copy or move all bases and members.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Tagged types inheriting from Controlled types must define Initialize, Adjust, and Finalize procedures to handle initialization, copy semantics, and deletion semantics.
12.5.4. Declare noexcept the move constructor and move assignment operator
A class provides the Strong Exception Guarantee if after an exception occurs, the objects maintain their original values.
The move members of a class explicitly change the state of their argument. Should an exception be thrown after some members have been moved, then the Strong Exception Guarantee may no longer hold as the from object has been modified.
It is especially important to use noexcept for types that are intended to be used with the standard library containers.
If the move constructor for an element type in a container is not noexcept then the container will use the copy constructor rather than the move constructor.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Ada has no equivalent to a move constructor. A move constructor moves ownership of data from one object to another. If the resource is accessed through an access value then the access value of the data in the starting object must be copied to the corresponding access field of the target object. After the access value is copied the access value in the starting object must be set to null.
12.5.5. Correctly reset moved-from handles to resources in the move constructor
The move constructor moves the ownership of data from one object to another. Once a resource has been moved to a new object, it is important that the moved-from object has its handles set to a default value. This will ensure that the moved-from object will not attempt to destroy resources that it no longer manages on its destruction.
The most common example of this is to assign nullptr to pointer members.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Ada has no equivalent to a move constructor. A move constructor moves ownership of data from one object to another. If the resource is accessed through an access value then the access value of the data in the starting object must be copied to the corresponding access field of the target object. After the access value is copied the access value in the starting object must be set to null.
12.5.6. Use and atomic, non-throwing swap operation to implement the copy and move assignment operators
Implementing the copy assignment operator using a non throwing swap provides the Strong Exception Guarantee for the operations.
In addition, the implementation of each assignment operator is simplified without requiring a check for assignment to self.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Use of an atomic swap operation assumes the use of pointers and not full objects. This assumption frequently fails since Ada does not require the use of pointers to complex data types.
12.5.7. Declare assignment operators with the ref-qualifier &
In the 2003 C++ Language Standard, user declared types differed from built-in types in that it was possible to have a ’modifiable rvalue’.
The 2011 C++ Language Standard allows for a function to be declared with a reference qualifier. Adding & to the function declaration ensures that the call can only be made on lvalue objects, as is the case for the built-in operators.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Ada does not allow modifiable rvalues.
12.5.8. Make the copy assignment operator of an abstract class protected ore define it =delete
An instance of an abstract class can only exist as a subobject for a derived type. A public copy assignment operator would allow for incorrect partial assignments to occur.
The copy assignment operator should be protected, or alternatively defined =delete if copying is to be prohibited in this class hierarchy.
Corresponding Ada rule:
Ada does not allow instances of abstract types. Each instance must be a concrete type derived from the abstract type.
13. Overloading
13.1. Overload resolution
13.1.1. Ensure that all overloads of functions are visible from where it is called
When a member function is overridden or overloaded in a derived class, other base class functions of that name will be hidden. A call to a function from the derived class may therefore result in |
to was selected by Time magazine as one of the Best Inventions of 2006 and one of two inventions in the Armed Forces category.[5] San Diego-based CONNECT named the M80 Stiletto as the Most Innovative New Product for 2006 in the General Technology category.
In 2008, the Stiletto deployed on a 70-day mission for USSOUTHCOM as part of a joint agency operation that included the Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Coast Guard.[6]
In July 2012, the US Navy deployed the Stiletto to retrieve the NASA Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment 3 (IRVE-3) test article[7] with 3 m (9.8 ft) diameter heat shield which splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean off North Carolina after being launched on July 23 by a sounding rocket from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility. The Stiletto is referenced as a maritime demonstration craft operated by the Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock, Combatant Craft Division, and based at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Ft Story, Va.
The UK is testing ISR packages compatible with the RQ-20A Puma hand-launched UAV on board the Stiletto in November 2014 under Capability Demonstration 15-1.[8]
See also [ edit ]
HMS Smyge - Swedish trials ship
PentamaranGCN
Allyson Robinson had been married for over a decade when she says she "finally spoke my truth". At the time she was known as Daniel Robinson, and she told her wife – Danielle – that she wanted to be a woman. Formerly an army officer and then studying to be a minister at Texas' Baylor University, the largest Baptist university in the world, it wasn't a decision she took lightly.
In fact, as she wrestled with her sexuality, Robinson was almost driven to take her own life. "I grappled with the truth that was emerging within me at that time in ways I never had before. It nearly led me to suicide," she told Christian Today. She would cry all the way to Divinity school, a 45 minute commute, and again all the way home. One day, she considered deliberately driving into the river; afraid of what coming out as transgender would mean for her wife, children and church. "By grace alone in that moment I caught myself thinking those thoughts and realised that was not the right way forward," she recalls. "I didn't know what the right way was, but I knew there had to be some other way."
She started seeing a therapist, and began an in-depth study of LGBT theology. "It's ironic that the seminary at the largest Baptist university in the world has an incredibly diverse library on faith, sex and gender," she laughs. "It gave me many different perspectives, I realised that there were other perspectives, and that began the journey for me."
She told her family the truth, and Danielle vowed to stand by her, as did the majority of her relatives. The support of her loved ones "has not just empowered my ministry and my work for inclusion, but it has strengthened me, and helped me to see myself as a beloved child of God in ways that I never did before I came out."
Robinson went on to become the first openly transgender minister to be ordained in the Baptist tradition, and served as transitional pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Washington DC. MSNBC called her "the most radical preacher in America".
She realises, however, that not everyone who identifies as transgender or who struggles with their sexuality is fortunate to find such support, particularly within the Church. It's why she's dedicated herself to the promotion of LGBT civil rights, working for a number of key organisations.
This weekend, she's speaking at the Gay Christian Network's (GCN) annual conference in Houston, Texas. It's the world's largest annual LGBT Christian conference, and will explore what's next for the Church as it grapples with issues of sexuality and gender in the midst of a culture war.
"I think it's critically important at this point in history that places like this [GCN] exist. In American culture, we have over the course of a generation or two lost the ability to speak across our differences, and that applies equally to Christians and to those who profess other faiths or no faith," she says.
"One of the things I love about GCN is its tradition and commitment to make a space where people who don't agree on all the details can get together as followers of Jesus and share worship."
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Previous speakers include evangelical author Philip Yancey, blogger Rachel Held Evans and Baptist theologian Tony Campolo, who announced his support of same-sex relationships in June last year. The conference encourages Christians with different perspectives to come together and wrestle with the big questions facing the Church.
The US legalised same-sex marriage last year, though provisions have been made for churches and religious organisations to refuse to perform ceremonies for gay couples. Some denominations, such as American Baptist Churches USA, allows individual congregations to decide whether to ordain LGBT clergy or perform same-sex marriages, but the majority remain in favour of a traditional stance. It's led to renewed accusations that the Church is out-dated and irrelevant.
"I think that that the Church may always suffer from this impression, that it's behind the times, simply because it's rooted in traditions and cultures, many of which date from before the time of Christ, and I think that's okay," Robinson says.
"That said, I think our society has watched the Church grapple with these questions, and many are disappointed that it has taken the church longer comparatively than the rest of society to come around."
Though she commended the Church for its conservative nature; the way that it "measures very carefully the winds of change before it sets sail to them", Robinson says that same caution may be hindering its ability to reach out to those outside.
"It's important for the Church to weigh carefully the pull of the culture in which it lives, and yet that careful weighing serves to set it apart from culture in ways that can be less than helpful for the Church's mission of carrying forth the gospel in to the future," she says.
Sexuality is just one of many issues the Church has faced. Many believe it's become more divisive than necessary, but Robinson says it's crucial we get to grips with it. "The big difference here is that the traditionalist stance on inclusion for LGBT people in the Church is hurting people," she says.
"In fact, I don't think it's alarmist to say it is killing people, because of the influence the Church continues to wield across our society. It gives this conversation a different level of gravity than conversations about worship style of some of the other finer points of theology."
The good news is that Robinson believes there is hope for the future for LGBT Christians struggling to find their place within the faith community. She says it's "very likely but not inevitable" that soon there will be many more Christian leaders who identify as LGBT across the denominations.
"I think that it the future rests upon our ability – and by 'our' I mean LGBT affirming Christian people – to continue to hold the institution accountable while finding new ways to cross the divide; ways that reflect the truth that outside of the walls of the institution, this war is over. The cultural war has come to a close at least on this front, and those of us on the affirming side have won," she says.
"It is critical that we as affirming Christians find ways not to become the kind of church that once rejected us."
The Gay Christian Network Conference is taking place from 7–10 January in Houston, Texas. For more information, click here.tech2 News Staff
We are less than 30 minutes away from the official debut of Android One. Over the weekend, we saw teasers and leaks hinting at the new devices going on sale today, so Google's not wasting any time at all with Android One. See our live blog below.
When it comes to Android One, Google plans to change the image of low-cost Android phones by managing all the software itself, while bringing desirable hardware at low price points. Each of the new launches today will be priced under Rs 10,000 and like we have said it's the evolution of the Nexus series targetted at the masses.
The first phones would likely come with 4.5 inch screens, dual SIM cards and FM radio, Google senior vice president Sundar Pichai told the crowd at the company’s annual developers’ conference in June. Pichai on stage showcased a Micromax device with dual SIM, SD card, 4.5 inch screen and FM radio. Spice and Karbonn Mobiles will also be the OEM partners. “We are going to be launching it around the world, but will launch in India first in the fall of this year,” Pichai said, and now Google is keeping its word.
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.’98-’99 Dallas Stars (51-19-12, 114 points (1st in Pacific), STANLEY CUP CHAMPIONS) ’99-’00 Dallas Stars (43-23-10-6, 102 points (1st in Pacific), Lost in Stanley Cup Final) ’07-’08 Dallas Stars (45-30-7, 97 points (3rd in Pacific), Lost in Conference Final) ’02-’03 Dallas Stars (46-17-15-4, 111 points (1st in Pacific), Lost in Conference Semifinal) ’00-’01 Dallas Stars (48-24-8-2, 106 points (1st in Pacific), Lost in Conference Semifinal) ’93-’94 Dallas Stars (42-29-13, 97 points (3rd in Central), Lost in Conference Semifinal) ’96-’97 Dallas Stars (48-26-8, 104 points (1st in Central), Lost in Conference Quarterfinal) ’05-’06 Dallas Stars (53-23-6, 112 points (1st in Pacific), Lost in Conference Quarterfinal)
The ’02-’03 Dallas Stars were the 20th seed in the inaugural Ultimate NHL Playoff. They defeated the 45th-seeded ’76-’77 Cleveland Barons in five games in the First Round. Then, they upset the 13th-seeded ’34-’35 Montreal Maroons in six games to advance to the Third Round. However, in the Third Round, they were swept by the 4th-seeded ’73-’74 Boston Bruins who made it all the way Semifinal Round.
Players to Watch:
C – Mike Modano – A true legend of the game and one of my favorites ever. He is the greatest Dallas Star ever.
– A true legend of the game and one of my favorites ever. He is the greatest Dallas Star ever. D – Sergei Zubov – He sits second all-time in scoring in Stars history, behind only the Modano. He excelled at the long outlet pass once the league eliminated the two-line pass rule.
– He sits second all-time in scoring in Stars history, behind only the Modano. He excelled at the long outlet pass once the league eliminated the two-line pass rule. RW – Jere Lehtinen – One of the more “underrated” players of his time, in my opinion. He was a great two-way player who put up 20-goal seasons consistently.
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Pelosi the Traitor has just proven that she is on Bush's A-list by granting telecom immunity along with more war funding to boot. In fact, the entire Congress are traitors, and clearly have no intention of straighting out the wrongs done by the Evil Bush-Cheney empire. We have talked and written and called and e-mailed until we are blue in the face, to no avail. It is time we took action.
I propose that we get into our vehicles and make our way toward the east, our convoy growing larger and larger each day, until we arrive at and surround the D.C. area. We will then move to make CITIZEN's ARRESTS of Bush, Cheney, and the entire Congress so that we can reclaim our country. Our government has been hijacked by terrorists, and I am no longer willing to sit here and do nothing while evil flourishes around me.
Who's in?The Problem: I am a keyboard person. I love to use the keyboard to navigate through webpage and scroll up/down the content. It becomes a hassle when I have to shift my hand to the mouse every time I want to click a link or select an item.
The Solution: Need to bind a keyboard shortcut for the left mouse click, and probably move the cursor around.
Apparently, this is very easy in Ubuntu (probably in other Gnome based distro too). Many tutorials will tell you to install xbindkeys and go through complex steps to map the shortcut key.
Here is one quick and dirty way:
1. Go to System Settings. Click on the Universal Access button.
2. Go to the Pointing and Clicking tab.
3. Under the “Mouse Keys” section, turn the “Control the pointer using the keypad” to ON.
That’s it. You can now move your mouse cursor around with the keypad and press ‘5’ to activate the left mouse click. For right mouse click, you can use “Shift + F10”.
Note: This is just a quick and dirty trick. Once the option is turned ON, you won’t be able to enter number via the keypad anymore, even when the NumLock button is ON. The good thing is, it can be turned ON/OFF easily.
Image credit: Big Stock PhotoFeature photo courtesy of Maryland Athletics.
By: Connor Mount, Austin Kleber and Jake Brodsky
Suspended Maryland football players Lorenzo Harrison and DJ Turner were charged in the on-campus airsoft gun incident, according to documents obtained from Prince George’s County Court in Upper Marlboro, Maryland.
According to the statement of charges acquired from the state’s attorney’s office in Prince George’s County, Harrison and Turner were each charged with three counts of second-degree assault, three counts of reckless endangerment and one count of threatening bodily harm to a student on school property.
Turner picked up Harrison and a third player, Antoine Brooks, from study hall, the documents said. With Turner driving and Brooks sitting in the back seat, Harrison pulled out an airsoft gun from his backpack while sitting in the passenger seat. The vehicle was a dark-colored Hyundai Sonata, which is registered to Turner’s mother, the documents said.
The documents said Brooks told police that once the trio was inside the car, Harrison pulled out a BB gun resembling an “AK-47.” Police later determined that the weapons were actually airsoft guns.
“[Brooks] said that they were driving around and that Harrison was shooting at people on his side of the vehicles [sic] and that Turner was ‘test’ shooting it out the driver side of the vehicle,” the statement of charges said. “When asked what he meant by ‘test’ shooting, he said he would go from semi-automatic to automatic to see how it worked.”
After multiple calls, Harrison’s attorney, Melissa A. Miller, could not be reached for comment Wednesday afternoon. Turner’s attorney, John M. McKenna, also could not be reached before publication.
Brooks told police that he was not a shooter, which Harrison corroborated. Harrison, who admitted both airsoft guns were his, also named himself and Turner as the shooters to the police.
Harrison turned in the two AK-47 style airsoft guns, as well as six containers of BB’s, to police on Nov. 9.
Turner contradicted both players’ statements. According to the statement of charges, he told police he was the driver and Harrison and Brooks were the shooters.
Brooks said the only time he had an airsoft gun in his possession was when they were arriving back at their apartment, the statement of charges said. He told police he did not shoot anyone.
The team said Brooks’ suspension has been lifted because he was not charged. He is expected to be available for Saturday’s game against Nebraska if head coach DJ Durkin decides to play him.
The police report stated that the first victim was shot in the arm and the body while he was biking. The victim reported slight bruising on his elbow to police.
“[Harrison] said that they continued driving down Stadium Drive and turned onto Paint Branch Drive when they saw an individual on a bicycle,” the statement of charges said. “Harrison stated that he had the BB gun and shot at the person riding on the bicycle. He said that Turner then took the gun and shot at some people walking in the area of Paint Branch Drive and Technology Drive.”
Shortly after, a witness walking near Ellicott Hall on Stadium Drive reported hearing someone yell, “Hey,” from the car. She turned around and heard what she believed were several shots fired in her direction, the police report said.
While the witness was not hit, the friend she was walking with was struck in the right cheek. The police report said red and white BB’s recovered from one of the guns matched BB’s found in the victim’s sweatshirt when he took it off.
A third victim was shot near Paint Branch Drive and Technology Drive. He and a friend heard what sounded like BB gun shots, and the victim felt something hard hit his elbow, though he was wearing a jacket. The two didn’t see anything but heard a car pass.
The Left Bench previously reported there were five charges of first-degree assault filed against both Harrison and Turner. Online court records showed these charges were dropped on Nov. 15.
John Erzen, the communications director for the Office of the State’s Attorney, said the Prince George’s County commissioner overseeing the case bumped up the second-degree assault charges to first-degree charges without proper evidence.
“They should not have been charged with first-degree assault because there was—from our office’s review of the evidence—nothing to support those charges,” Erzen said. “So, what we did is we dropped all of those charges and then University of Maryland police refiled with second-degree assault and reckless endangerment because that’s really what—based on the evidence we’ve seen to this point—we believe we have here.”
The number of second-degree assault and reckless endangerment charges was also reduced from five counts each to three each, one per victim. This was also based on the evidence presented.
“Why it was five [charges] the first time, I don’t know,” Erzen said.
Harrison and Turner were both charged with one count of threatening bodily harm to a student who was lawfully on the grounds of a higher education institution.
“We are aware of the situation and take these matters very seriously,” the Maryland Athletic Department said in a statement Wednesday. “The two student-athletes involved have been suspended indefinitely for violating the student-athlete code of conduct. This matter has also been referred to the Office of Student Conduct for further review.”
The next step is to issue the freshmen with a summons for a court date, which will happen in the near future, Erzen said. He said he feels the new charges are appropriate based on the evidence presented.
A court date has not yet been issued for the players.
Alex Flum, Danielle Stein, Jarred Belman, Justin Meyer, Lamar Johnson and Michael Stern contributed to this report.After announcing a $99.99 SRP for Booker’s, Beam Suntory has decided to not drastically increase the price from $59. Instead, the company says it will gradually increase the price.
I first learned of this through social media rumors and
Below is the company’s full statement:
“As we’ve previously shared, Booker’s Bourbon will experience supply constraints starting next year. As a result, we must reduce our batch releases to four per year. We apologize to anyone who is unable to locate the product in the future. Because of the rarity and high quality of this liquid, and our need to maintain our supply without sacrificing any production standards, we have decided to increase the price of Booker’s. We’ll be implementing the previously announced price increase over time, and in 2017 you can expect to see Booker’s on shelf for $69.99-$74.99.”
Stay In Touch!India Attracted $14 Billion In Renewable Energy Investment In 3 Years
April 29th, 2016 by Saurabh
Investment trends in India’s renewable energy sector over the last few years have proven that the market remains of the most attractive and fastest growing clean energy markets in the world.
The Minister of New & Renewable Energy, Piyush Goyal, recently told the Indian Parliament that the country attracted Rs 90,841 crore (around $14 billion) over the last 3 financial years in renewable energy investments, that is, between FY2013–14 and FY2015–16.
The minister also reported that the government provided financial incentives worth Rs 6,541 crore (around $1 billion) during the same period. This financial support includes capital cost support for setting up projects, as well as generation-based incentives for power generation.
The wind energy sector remained the most attractive one for the investors who poured in Rs 46,831 crore (around $7 billion). This was followed by the solar power sector, which received investments worth Rs 30,440 crore ($4.5 billion). Bioenergy projects received Rs 7,382 crore ($1.1 billion) of investment while small hydropower projects attracted Rs 6,187 crore ($0.92 billion).
Over the last few years, investment in the wind energy sector has increased again after the government re-introduced financial incentives such as accelerated depreciation. Annual capacity addition in the wind energy sector has been up since then, increasing to 3.3 GW in FY2015–16. However, investments are likely to fall starting next financial year when the incentives are reduced or withdrawn.
Investment in the solar power sector is expected to increase significantly over the next few years and overtake wind energy as the most attractive sector. Over the next 6 years, India plans to add over 33 GW of wind energy capacity and more than 93 GW in solar power capacity.What are the things one can do in Chennai? Credits to the original list organizer. If you know better, mail me at [email protected]. For more info, visit the original website listed below. Chennai, formerly known as Madras: this 369-year-old city is the capital of the southern state of Tamilnadu and is India's...
What are the things one can do in Chennai? Credits to the original list organizer. If you know better, mail me at [email protected]. For more info, visit the original website listed below.
Chennai, formerly known as Madras: this 369-year-old city is the capital of the southern state of Tamilnadu and is India's sixth-largest city in terms of population with an estimated population of 7.45 million (2005). It serves as one of the main gateways to South India and has a thriving local culture and art scene and is one of the major destinations for medical tourism. It is considered as one of the world's fastest growing cities. (from wikipedia)Diplo and Skrillex of Jack U perform during halftime at a basketball game between the Houston Rockets and the Los Angeles Clippers at Staples Center on May 10, 2015 in Los Angeles.
With Coachella just around the corner, Diplo has shared word with CBS News’ Charlie Rose that Jack Ü plans to release new material around festival time.
Watch Diplo and Charlie Rose Discuss Landmark Cuba Show
The Major Lazer frontman recently performed in Cuba for a reported crowd of 400,000, a historic event recounted by Rose himself.
On their drive around Havana, Diplo told Rose, "Before I came down to you, I was sitting on my computer editing some new songs for the Jack Ü project, because we want to put something out around Coachella."
Diplo Reveals Collaboration With The Weeknd Dropping Around Coachella
Back in November, the Mad Decent boss told 103.3 AMP Radio host Vanessa Hale that Major Lazer also has a single dropping around Coachella with The Weeknd.
The two-weekend event takes place from Apr. 15-17 and 22-24 in Indio, Calif.Archives Archives
User:Senegambianamestudy, I was quite right to remove the tags on the article here. There is no ongoing discussion here about the issues, the AfD voted keep, and you are not instituting any processes (RfC's or similair) to remedy - what you see as - the faults. Tags are not meant to be permanent 'badges of shame' simply because one editor doesn't like an article, but has failed to get it deleted.
For what it is worth - I also think the article is fairly crap, merely a list of groups which SPLC have described as espousing Bl Sup rhetoric or ideology. The only good things which can be said about this article are that is much better than what existed before AfD 1, and probably better than any article which would be created if this one were deleted by someone who would think "we have an article on white supremacy, why not on the black equivalent?" A logic that ignores the fact that whilst Wh Sup is a much studied and potent force in US politics (and to a lesser extent other countries' politics), Bl Sup is a marginal force - little more than an occasional rhetorical position among fringe groups, though something that probably "scares the shit out of white folks". Thus your 'notability' argument I agree with, though not necessarily all others.
I have little interest in the subject, which to me is little more than an ocassionaly used term, (barely even defined since its use is deemed self-evident), not a significant (or significantly studied) phenomenon. I suspect other editors, apart from myself, only watchlist this article because they know it is an occasional WP:OR and PoV magnet, and occasionally the subject of niave editing.
You should actively take steps to remedy faults if you want the tags to remain - otherwise they are futile and should be removed.
BTW, finally, please don't give orders to other editors in your edit reasons - it is needlessly rude and counter-productive unless you have the power/authority to back them up or unless the other editor was clearly at fault (which I was not I believe). Pincrete (talk) 11:25, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
Can you please explain to me how does one improve an article which fails our notable guidelines in the first place - coupled with WP:SYNTH and original research? I asked that question when I put up this article for deletion but none of those voting keep answered that. See discussions above: Original Research, factual accuracy, synth and one main source. Also, is this article a list? [1] Also, my editor summary was not an order, but a direct reference to our policies. You do not remove tags when the issues discussed in the article's talk page have not been addressed. Senegambianamestudy (talk) 10:01, 9 September 2018 (UTC) No I can't explain how to improve the article - because it is possibly/probably unimprovable. Not enough has been written about the subject to make much of an article. I don't agree about WP:OR - single source is self-evident. But having twice passed the AfD 'notability' test, the matter is out of your or my hands. I restrict my activity here to watching. I said from day one that I understood your frustration, but tags shouldn't be used as a permanent 'badge of shame', because you and/or I think the article is low grade. Pincrete (talk) 13:33, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
If "not enough has been written about the subject to make much of an article", then surely it is too soon and therefore fails our notability guidelines. In any case, Doug Weller: Senegambianamestudy (talk) 15:19, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
@Senegambianamestudy: see Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup which says "Tags must be accompanied by a comment on the article's talk page explaining the problem and beginning a discussion on how to fix it, or for simpler and more obvious problems, a remark using the reason parameter as shown below. Tagging editors must be willing to follow through with substantive discussion."
An example: {{Disputed}} states
Usage First add a new section named "Disputed" to the article's talk page, describing the problems with the disputed statements. Then place {{Disputed}} at the top of the disputed article. If the talk page discussion is not in a section named "Disputed", use {{Disputed|talk page section name}} (for a talk page section named "Disputed information", use {{Disputed|Disputed information}} in the article). If there is no talk page, the tag won't refer to it (in which case it's recommended to consider whether the tag should be there, since there is no reason given). Articles using this template as shown above are placed into Category:Accuracy disputes.
We also have a content guideline on this at Wikipedia:Accuracy dispute which again calls for a specific section on the talk page.
Template {{original research}} says it should be removed if it isn't obvious or explained:
Note: This template should not be applied without explanation on the talk page, and should be removed if the original research is not readily apparent when no explanation is given.
So, start sections for each one, then add the tag. Doug Weller talk 10:45, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
Okay! Thank you Doug. Senegambianamestudy (talk) 08:17, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
Firstly, separatism and supremacism are not synonymous, I suspect that there are -or have been historically - many groups which believed in separatism, but not supremacism. While not all 'our' groups are necessarily separatist. Secondly the navbox lists only the same groups as this article (ie those described as supremacist - or using supremacist rhetoric by SPLC).
Should the navbox be removed and/or renamed? I'm posting here because others have more knowledge than I of the US-scene.
The navbox appears to have been here since time immemorial and may be simply missed 'clear-up'. Pincrete (talk) 13:47, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
Until July, the template was called "Black supremacist organizations". It was moved and revised, and as you indicated, it's probably inappropriate for this article now. — MShabazz Talk/ Stalk 14:29, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
Primary sources [ edit ]
Primary sources don't indicate notability. We need reliable and high-quality secondary sources for all the groups included here or they may be subject to removal. ♫ RichardWeiss talk contribs 19:19, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 10 February 2019 [ edit ]
I’m writing to Wikipedia to amend the story of black statements as violence, molesting, financial violations compared to white supremacy Wikipedia statements. That’s my arguments. Bade047 (talk) 11:04, 10 February 2019 (UTC)Food truck phenom The Peached Tortilla has announced that they are going brick and mortar in Allandale this year. The restaurant will open up at 5520 Burnet Road, a location that was previously home to Austin Plumbing Supply (which still boasts a collection of some impressively heinous Yelp reviews). Per the press release:
Austin – January 21, 2014 – Eric Silverstein's Peached Tortilla is officially putting down roots. Silverstein announced today The Peached Tortilla's first full service brick and mortar concept is slated to open fall of 2014 in Central Austin.
The concept will focus on serving urban Asian and Southern comfort food with a modern twist. The restaurant will expand on the flavors from the existing food truck and catering company, serving some of their greatest hits in addition to new items such as unique rice bowls and savory noodle dishes. While the restaurant is under construction, the company will continue to use their pop-up dinners as a test kitchen to solicit feedback from diners. The next installment of the popular series is set for late February 2014.
"We want to provide an affordable and accessible neighborhood dining experience without sacrificing the sophistication of our food," said Silverstein, owner and founder of The Peached Tortilla. "In trying to merge urban Asian and Southern flavors, we are going to play around quite a bit and try to push the boundaries."
The space will be located in Allandale, TX, an area known for its burgeoning dining scene, with recently opened Lucy's Fried Chicken and Noble Sandwiches on the way. Collaborating with Silverstein and team on this project is Austin architect Kevin Stewart, and Seattle Restaurateur Joshua Henderson of The Huxley Wallace Collection.The French government has postponed a long-held target to reduce the share of nuclear energy in the country’s power production after grid operator RTE warned it risked supply shortages after 2020 and could miss a goal to curb carbon emissions.
Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot said on Tuesday (7 November) it was not realistic to cut nuclear energy’s share of electricity production to 50% by 2025 from 75% now and that doing so in a hurry would increase France’s CO2 emissions, endanger the security of power supply and put jobs at risk.
“It will be difficult to maintain the target of reducing the share of nuclear to 50% by 2025,” Hulot told reporters following a cabinet meeting.
He later said in an television interview the government would be working towards a 2030 to 2035 timeframe.
Hulot said that while there was a delay, the government would in a year’s time have a clear programme on which reactors to close and when.
Report: Nuclear power on the decline Nuclear power seems on its way out, as construction of only one new nuclear reactor was undertaken in 2017, according to the World Nuclear Industry Report 2017. EURACTIV France reports.
In 2015, the previous government of Socialist François Hollande passed an energy transition law setting out the 50% target by 2025. But Hollande took no concrete steps towards closing any reactors.
Centrist President Emmanuel Macron, elected in May, had promised to keep the target and Hulot, France’s best-known environmentalist, said in July it might have to close up to 17 of its 58 reactors by 2025 to achieve it.
RTE said in its 2017-2035 Electricity Outlook that if France went ahead with plans to simultaneously shut down four 40-year-old nuclear reactors and all its coal-fired plants as planned, there could be risks of power supply shortages.
For this winter, RTE said electricity demand was expected to be stable, although unplanned nuclear reactor outages and a prolonged cold spell could squeeze supply.
Concerns that nuclear-reliant France could face tight supplies similar to last year have contributed to wholesale power prices touching new highs in recent weeks, as utility EDF announced delays in the restart of several reactors for safety and regulatory reasons.
The prolonged nuclear outages have forced EDF to cut its nuclear output target twice this year, and it issued a profit warning on 27 October.
Poland to treat coal addiction by embracing nuclear power Poland’s ongoing large-scale investment in three new coal-fired power plants may be the country’s last fossil fuel venture, its energy minister said on Wednesday (6 September), indicating a possible energy shift in the EU’s largest eastern member amid revived plans to embrace nuclear power.
Hulot’s credentials
Widely seen as the guardian of the Macron government’s green policies, the popular Hulot – a former television documentary maker turned environmentalist – had in recent months repeatedly said France needed to close several nuclear plants.
But he received little public support from Macron, a strong supporter of nuclear, or Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, a former employee of state-owned reactor builder Areva.
Two weeks before the government was formed in mid-May, a source close to Macron told Reuters he was considering delaying the target for reducing France’s reliance on nuclear, although an official spokesman had later denied it.
State-owned EDF, the world’s biggest operator of nuclear plants, has long said it made no sense to shut down functioning reactors and instead wants to extend the lifespan of its nuclear fleet from 40 to at least 50 years.
German nuclear damage shows atomic and renewable power are unhappy bedfellows A Germany nuclear plant was damaged because its operators increased and decreased its output to respond to energy grid fluctuations. The incident supports the theory that nuclear and renewable energy generation are incompatible. EURACTIV’s partner Der Tagesspiegel reports.
EDF shares closed up 1.3% after Hulot’s announcement, outperforming the French bourse’s 0.5% decline.
EDF stock had plunged as much as 7% on the day Hulot was appointed environment minister on the expectation he would push for less nuclear and more renewable energy.
Hulot, who made a failed bid to become the green candidate in the 2012 presidential election, had been courted by both Hollande and his conservative predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy to be environment minister.
Hulot told French daily Le Monde last month he had given himself a year to see whether he could reform French energy and agricultural policies.
Greenpeace said Hulot had already shown weakness in fighting fossil fuels and was now jeopardising France’s energy transition.
“He should be a bulwark against the oil and nuclear lobbies,” the campaign group said in a statement.« Yup...They Hate Us, And We Are Starting To Hate them Right Back | Main | Tom Brady's Super Bowl Jersey Stolen; Might Be Worth $500,000 » Oh My: The Federalist Documents The Hysterical Freak-Out Media's Fake News Stories Since the Election, and It's Quite a Long List I suggested that someone start documenting not just the fake news but how many times the fake news gets retweeted (especially by journOlisters, or, as John Ekdahl calls them, the Blue Checkmark Mafia), versus how many times the retractions get retweeted. The Federalist hasn't counted the journOlisters retweet totals, but they have noted the retweets of the fake news vs retweets of the retractions, as well as the Patient Zero for spreading these Fake News viruses -- which of the Blue Checkmark Mafia legitimized and "normalized" the fake story by tweeting it out to their lunatic followers. It's quite a list. Here's one I'm particularly pissed off by. If you're ever reading a story and you notice it's by Josh Rogin, stop reading. It's likely fake news. He spreads fake news, and he doesn't like correcting it. On January 26, the Washington Post’s Josh Rogin published what seemed to be a bombshell report declaring that “the State Department’s entire senior management team just resigned.” This |
on Pavilion.
Plummer hit.432 (20-4-37) while collecting seven digs, two blocks and an ace to lead the Cardinal. Freshman Meghan McClure turned in a solid all-around performance with nine kills, a career-high 11 digs, while matching her career-highs in blocks (3) and aces (3).
After a rough start offensively, Stanford (7-2) finished the match with a.291 attack percentage, including a.586 clip in the third set. The Cardinal held the Gaels (4-6) to a.181 hitting percentage.
Sophomore setter Jenna Gray tallied 43 assists, six digs, three blocks and three aces for Stanford. Sophomore middle blocker Audriana Fitzmorris totaled seven kills and season-best eight blocks.HockeySam18
Dúnadan
posted 05-24-15 03:09 PM CT (US) 29 / 608 By the way, while adding the new Indian Gates, I noticed that the "/" orientation (namely GTAX2 and GTAX3) build in 30 seconds rather than 70. This is still the case in 3.9F. Interesting. Passed it on Balt palisades are still considerable inferior to stone walls at any given time, but you may have a point there. Doesn't matter. It's still way more convenient to wall with Palisades as they cost only 2 wood as opposed to 5 stone. Stronger palisades make walling in the early game even stronger than it already is. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons that we scrapped the palisade wall upgrade in AoF back in 2012 or so (you can find the building in the editor and in some scenarios still).
Re specific units, some of my feedback may not apply, given that I know nothing about their specific bonuses and the civ's tech tree. The Ayrudzi looks way too strong for that cost, but then again massability is an issue. Missing Bloodlines and Husbandry is a huge blow to the viability of their Knights and Scout-line, though, even with their bonuses. I'd almost certainly go Crossbows in Castle Age instead.
Any UT that adds just +1 attack is fundamentally flawed due to the fact that it's usually just not worth the cost. Blacksmith techs do more and cost less. Range (see the Briton, Magyar and Indian UTs) is a different story as outranging your enemy is so crucial. I'd beef up the effect of the UTs that add only +1 AP to certain units. Greek Phalanxes were quite effective against heavy infantry, but late Swiss Pike formations and their copies tended to be countered with swordsmen, especially two-handers. Greek Phalanxes were the heavy infantry. The name Hoplite (the soldier-type of which Phalanxes were comprised) itself derives from the large amount of equipment they carried. The combination of being well-equipped and disciplined allowed smaller Greek armies to defeat larger Persian forces, for example, the majority of whose protective armor amounted roughly to tinfoil. Late-Medieval Pike Squares were countered not by swordsmen (the range of the pikes and their close formation would shred forces of swordsmen in most cases) but by the emergence of the "pike and shot" combined arms tactic that would dominate the battlefield for a good while.
Skirms do not solve the issue of vulnerability to archers, and this is why:
Imagine two armies facing off. One is comprised of units A (Archer-line) and B (Knight-line) and the other is comprised of units C (Pike Square) and D (Skirm-line). The array is like this:
AB | CD
Ranged units are hardcoded to autofire at the enemy unit closest to them. This means that the archers (A) will be shooting at the enemy Pike Squares (C), while the Skirms (D) will be shooting at the enemy Knights (B). Naturally, this will result in many kills for army AB and next-to-no kills for army CD. By the time the armies actually get to a melee fight, most of the Pike Squares will be wounded or dead and the combination of Archers and Knights will kill off the Pike Squares and then the Knights shred the Skirms. It's partially for this reason that the Crossbow-Knight combo is used in Castle Age over the Pike-ESkirm combo (and because the Crossbow upgrade is so cheap, while the ESkirm upgrade is so expensive).
The better Imperial combo for Helvetians will likely end up being Pike Square - Halb - Siege. Rams in front can tank arrow fire, while Onagers and Scorps will mow down infantry/archers and the spear units beat cavalry. The Celts operate under a similar philosophy. In a similar vein, the Kamayuk-Onager combo for Incas and the Genoese Xbow - Onager combo for Italians is hard to counter without Bombard Cannons. Besides, an infantry killing infantry that dies horribly to archers seems so... Aztec. Agreed. It's a shame that Jaguar Warriors rarely appear unless as a counter to EEW raiding or Goth infantry spam, and even in these cases Champs are better (though either way Goths will win cost-effectively and production-wise). I'm interested to see how people end up using Levy. The Khmers aren't blessed with strong versions of those particular units, and the gather points can't be used except to garrison in the production building, so I'm not sure how strong it really is. Interesting. You should talk to Daniel Pereira about the.exe edits required to fix the gather points, to polish up the feature a bit. It appears the Tufans will need another set of nerfs.
They have essentially nothing helping them until the Castle Age, and not too many options besides their cavaliers. No crossbows, no bloodlines for their camels and light cav, and fast monks will now take some investment. Give them bloodlines, remove the free cavalier bonus, and give them an eco bonus early on. Even without Bloodlines the free Cavalier in Castle Age would be way OP. Every game would go Drush-wall-FC-Cavaliers- gg. Free cavalier upon hitting Imperial might not be too OP, but reduced cost of all stable techs is probably the way to go.
Even with the heavy cav archer discount, nobody would ever use HCA when lacking both Bloodlines and Bracer. Cavalry Archers are underused anyways because they cost too much except for Huns (for whom they are OP). Note that when I talk about Cavalry Archers I mean the Cavalry Archer-line, not the UUs classed as Cavalry Archers.
EDIT: Just noticed this: · Coinage, Banking Free Dispense with this bonus and send it to the bowels of oblivion - slinging is way too strong already and this bonus will turn the Helvetians into slingers every TG. Storm on the Steppe | Galderton Hill RP | Proud member of Stormwind Studios
"Cattle die, kindred die, every man is mortal:
But the good name never dies of one who has done well." - Hávamál
"Hockey is the only sport left for true men." - ax_man1 [This message has been edited by HockeySam18 (edited 05-24-2015 @ 03:11 PM).]Jamarcus Applewhite was nearly finished with an eight-hour day hauling cars to Wisconsin early Thursday morning when he thought he popped a tire on the Bishop Ford Freeway just minutes from his destination.
Applewhite, 34, pulled his truck and trailer off to the side of the road near 147th Street in Calumet City and got out to inspect the damage.
"I felt a lot of shaking," Applewhite said. "I got out and was looking down, checking the tires when I hear an engine running... and I look and see a truck up there."
The pickup truck had run up the ramp of Applewhite's empty car carrier as the vehicles sped south down the highway. The pickup stopped just feet from the cab.
As Applewhite stood by the trailer, looking up, the driver leaned out and asked, "Can we pull over?"
"I'm like, 'We are pulled over,' " Applewhite said.
Applewhite said he didn't know how to get the driver and his truck off the carrier, so he called the state police.
"They all said they'd never seen anything like it in their entire career," he said. "I still don't believe it.
"Is this Dukes of Hazzard or something?" Applewhite said. "Did he always want to do this as a child?"
The pickup driver was taken to Community Hospital in Munster, Ind., with minor injuries, state police said.
The driver, Asa S. Cole, 23, of South Holland, was cited with operating an uninsured motor vehicle, following too closely and failure to reduce speed to avoid an accident, Illinois State Police District Chicago spokesman Sgt. Jose De Jesus said in an email Friday.
Reached Friday, Cole declined to comment.
Applewhite said the man appeared "confused and dazed" but was able to walk to the ambulance on his own.
Applewhite figures the driver must have been going very fast. Applewhite had been driving about 55 mph and didn't see the pickup approaching.
He said a regular car could not have made it up the carrier's ramp, but the pickup truck's tires were big enough. If one of the carrier's decks hadn't been tilted, Applewhite said, the pickup could have crashed into his cab or flown right over it.
Applewhite said he has been driving trucks for four years but has only been hauling cars for about 13 months. He's the rookie at his company, he said.
But when he got back to the truck yard Thursday morning, he said none of the veterans could match his story.
"They said 'You take the cake,' " he said. "It was definitely a crazy night."There are many monuments in the world to greatness. There are the great wonders of the world, structures of immense thought, diligence, and man’s fortitude to making his mark.
Ever since the invention of fire, man has been putting flesh to flame to intensify its flavor. Gaucho’s brought us Asado, Korea brought us Gogigui, and in 1952 George Stephen created the first Weber kettle to grill the perfect steak. We have evolved from beef, to chicken, fish, and vegetables. Everything we eat has benefited from fire, smoke, and grilling!
BBQ and Grilling has its great moments. The moment when you put your steak to the flame and the aroma hits your senses for the first time. The burger that exudes juice and drips down your chin. The sausage that pops when you take your first bite, and that piece of chicken skin that you sneak in your mouth when nobody is looking and titillates your tongue with crispiness and buttery flavor.
These are the moments when you know that all your hard work and diligence over the flame is making your monument to the grill.
So here are my Mt. Rushmore of Grilling!
Chicken is the most enduring and durable meat to hit the flame. On average 134,000,000 chickens are consumed daily worldwide. We roast, fry, bake, sauté, and grill amongst other techniques to make the bird tasty and juicy. Served whole, sectioned, or cut up into bite sized pieces, the chicken is the top of the list. Parts that were once thrown away and discarded are now getting top dollar in the grocery store because of demand. Wings (thanks to Buffalo) and thighs that we stayed away from for years now cost just as much or more than breasts. Let’s face it, Chicken is a blank canvas that takes on the flavor of whatever it’s introduced to or seasoned with, but with the addition of a wood fire and coals, the bland bird becomes stellar! My favorite is spatchcock over wood with garlic, oregano, and ricotta stuffed under the skin.
If chicken is the king, then beef is the president! (I couldn’t make it the queen because that just wouldn’t be right). We do more variations on the grill with beef than anything else. Steak, burgers, tenderloin, short ribs, heart, meatloaf, skewered, and stuffed. According to The Boondock Saints II, John Wayne died with 5 pounds of undigested red meat in his system. We eat a lot of beef. Good or bad it’s just a fact. It doesn’t need the internal temperature of pork or chicken when we consume it. Hell we can eat it raw if we want. But introducing that succulent piece bovine to a hot grill and adding a little char to it. A simple ribeye steak seasoned with salt and pepper over a high heat to sear the juices and served rare to medium rare. There’s no better experience in the world!
Pork is a tricky one to suggest on my part but I know that if I don’t give it a high rating that I’ll hear from the maddening throng. How could you not mention pork? How could you rate it low on Mt. Rushmore? So here are my thoughts.
Pork is a wonderful meat and needs love for it to bring it’s “A” game. Low and slow is what I think pork needs to accentuate its goodness. Grilling in my mind is not the way to go with pork in general, but, the smaller cuts and techniques do benefit from the grill. We’re talking chops, bacon, souvlaki (Shish Kabobs), sausages, and tenderloin. But when we’re talking shoulder and roasts, it needs time. Rubs, marinades, injections, whatever you want, but time and preparation is what’s needed to bring out its destiny.
Fish! I tire of people that think battered fish is fish. Don’t judge me! I like British style fish and chips but if you haven’t had a trout or salmon on your grill, you haven’t had fish. Picture yourself riverside, a little melted butter in the hot pan and dropping in your catch of the day. Now think about battered fish? No comparison. If it’s whole or filleted it doesn’t matter. Beer in hand straight out of the pan on your plate still sizzling. Everyone has their own favourite. Mine is catfish! Marinated in tequila and lime zest with a little hot chili flake on top. Butter in a hot cast iron pan on the grill. Spectacular!
Shellfish! Really, shrimp, clams and mussels are a great addition to your arsenal and are easy. Grilling over fire was a necessity and people have been doing it for centuries. You don’t need to boil water. Shrimp grilled over wood brings out a new dimension compared to the shrimp cocktail you had at the last wedding you were at. Deveined and shelled, skewered and drizzled with lemon juice and olive oil. My favourite are mussels smoked on the Big Green Egg. They will open up the same as they would over a steam bath but this way they get a nice smoke sauna when they pop open. On the side a little reduced white wine with butter, garlic and shallot to toss them in. Haven’t tried it yet? What’s the hold up.
So your criteria, a grill! You’re limited only by your imagination.
Grilling food is an age old art. Backyard cooking and tailgating has taken over as one of the biggest pastimes worldwide.
Be well and eat well
The Artisanal Grill
http://theartisanalgrill.com/
On Twitter @artisanalgrill"Drummond says she's caught her guests stuffing these little guys into their purses."
Jalapeño poppers have no redeeming nutritional value, no cult following (at least not one I am aware of), and aren't exactly the classiest of foods. But I love them, shamelessly. I have been known to make secret late-night pilgrimages to the Jack in the Box drive-thru solely to obtain these nasty little treats (with extra ranch dressing, of course). I'm even guilty of buying the frozen supermarket version in dire times.
So you can only imagine my joy when I found the first recipe in Ree Drummond's The Pioneer Woman Cooks was for BBQ Jalapeño Poppers. For years I'd been wanting to make them at home and now was my chance! And the best part, this recipe doesn't force you to choose between stuffing the poppers with either cream cheese or cheddar—it calls for both.
Armed with a bag of jalapeños, a pound of bacon, blocks of cheddar and cream cheese, I headed into the kitchen. Throwing caution to the wind, I halved and seeded my peppers without the protective aid of rubber gloves. Sure, my fingers tingled a bit, but I'll chalk it up to nervous excitement. I mixed the cheeses and scallions, stuffed the peppers and lovingly wrapped each one in bacon.
I'm not a big fan of store-bought barbecue sauce and decided to go with the only jam that happened to be in my fridge, Damson plum. Strange choice, I know, but it worked out pretty well.
I placed my swaddled peppers in the oven and let them bake for a little over an hour. The low-and-slow cooking meant that the peppers cooked through without becoming soggy, the cheeses heated evenly without oozing out of their shells, and the bacon was crisp and caramelized with a hint of sweetness from the jam.
I took them out of the oven and against my better judgment, popped a still-steaming and sizzling popper straight into my mouth. Did I burn my mouth? Of course. Was it totally worth it? Yes, there are no words to describe the deliciousness of these homemade jalapeño poppers. I ate an embarrassing amount of them at temperatures ranging from mouth-scorching to hot, warm, room temperature, and even downright cold.
Drummond says she's caught her guests stuffing these little guys into their purses and I can see why. There are few hors d'oeuvres that have the potential to turn regularly honest people into petty thieves.
As always with our Cook the Book feature, we have five (5) copies of The Pioneer Woman Cooks to give away this week.Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Saturday praised US President Barack Obama for taking up the issue of Tibet “very seriously” with Chinese leaders on his recent trip to China.
During a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao last Tuesday, Obama discussed the thorny issue of Tibet and urged early resumption of talks between China and representatives of the Dalai Lama over the region’s future.
“He, actually publicly as well as behind the scenes, has really taken up the issue of Tibet with Chinese leaders very seriously,” the Dalai Lama told reporters in the Indian capital.
The Dalai Lama has been living in India since he fled Tibet following a failed uprising in 1959 against Chinese rule.
In Beijing on Tuesday, Obama said the United States recognised Tibet as part of China.
But Obama added Washington “supports the early resumption of dialogue” between the Dalai Lama’s envoys over Tibet where violent protests erupted last year against Chinese rule.
The Dalai Lama’s office said after Obama’s comments that the Tibetan leader was ready for the resumption of discussions with China.
China in March said it was open to fresh talks over Tibet with the Dalai Lama. But it repeated demands for the spiritual leader to renounce “separatist” activities.
The spiritual leader has consistently denied claims by China he is seeking independence for Tibet, saying he is only seeking “meaningful autonomy.”
China has stepped up pressure on world leaders, including Obama, not to meet the Dalai Lama.
Obama came under fire from critics who accused him of caving in to Chinese pressure for not meeting the Buddhist leader when he visited Washington in early October.
But officials said the two leaders were likely to meet after Obama’s trip to China though no date has been set.Construction is well underway for Apple’s new circular “Spaceship” campus, and a recent drone flyover courtesy of Apple Insider gives us an excellent look at the project’s progress.
The futuristic Apple Campus 2 is designed by Norman Foster’s firm, Foster + Partners, and will eventually feature curved glass panels, an underground parking lot, a private auditorium for keynotes and product launches, and a 360-degree view of nature.
Here’s what it’ll look like when it’s complete.
Apple has been sharing photos of the construction from time to time, but Apple Insider has gone one step further and stealthily flown a drone over the construction site to capture a video of the campus from multiple angles.
The video shows that Apple has made some progress on the circular main “Spaceship” ring of the headquarters, with the new addition of concrete floor panels.
Significant progress has also been made on Apple’s $161 million auditorium, an underground theater in which Apple will eventually unveil new products and hold press events. You can also see the circular lobby of the auditorium taking shape.
The campus will also feature two above-ground parking structures, and the first parking structure is nearing completion and will soon see solar panels installed on the roof.
While there’s still a ways to go before Apple’s new campus starts to look like the concept rendering seen before, a fair amount of progress has been made since construction began, which you can see below.
Work on Apple’s new headquarters is slated to conclude in 2016, and you can see a full timeline of its construction over at the official Cupertino website.We've shown you how to make char cloth so you'll always be able to start a fire in an emergency, but char cloth is dangerous to keep and transport. These cotton fire-starting wafers are much easier to make, safer to stash in an emergency kit or go bag, and all you need to make them is a candle and some cosmetic cotton pads from your local drug store or pharmacy.
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Making the wafers is easy: just put the candle into a pan you don't mind getting some wax in, and turn up the heat, low and slow. Wait until you have about an 1/8 to 1/4-inch of liquid wax in the bottom of the pan. Then use some tweezers or tongs to put a few cotton pads at the bottom of the pan, all in one layer so they don't overlap. In a few seconds, they'll absorb a good bit of the wax, but just enough to coat the outside. Take them out and let them cool on a sheet of wax paper completely before tossing them into a zipper bag. That's all there is to it.
The next time you need to start a fire quickly, just grab one of the pads, tear it open partially to expose the cotton fibers inside, and light it up. You'll get a slow-burning fire-starter that won't go out before the rest of your kindling has caught on too. The tip was inspired by the old cotton balls and vaseline trick, and is clearly intended for camping or emergency kits, but we can't see why it wouldn't work for any kind of fire you might need to light, whether it's a fireplace or even a charcoal grill. What do you think? How would you improve it? Let us know in the comments below.
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DIY Fire Starter Wafers | JERMM's Outside via TipNutArchival services share a common objective: provide wider accessibility to the exceptional heritage materials in their possession.
As part of their sustained efforts over the last decades to promote archives, the twenty or so members of the Group of Archivists of the Region of Montréal (GARM) have pooled their resources and joined the Web.
We are delighted to offer you, with the permission of Éditions du Boréal, the condensed version of the first edition of Brève histoire de Montréal, by the historian Paul-André Linteau, containing over 700 archival documents, as well as a quiz and educational resources.
We are grateful to the Department of Canadian Heritage, Library and Archives Canada, as well as the Canadian Council of Archives, for providing the financial assistance to properly carry out this project.
We sincerely hope that all Montrealers will take full advantage of the precious archives at their disposal. Meanwhile, archivists will continue to promote individual and collective memory, essential for understanding the past and defining the future. That is how societies develop.
Denys Chouinard
President, GARMWhat if I told you that one of the brightest stars in contemporary science fiction is a freelance technical writer who earns a living writing documentation for programmers? What if I told you that this author from a small town, hailed as one of the best short story writers of our day by people such as China Miéville, Harry Harrison, Greg Bear and Tom Disch, has never written a single novel? What if I told you that with only 16 pieces of short fiction – one as short as three pages – he has won more prestigious awards than many win in a lifetime, including multiple Hugos and Nebulas?
Well, I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t believe me. Because Ted Chiang – for that’s his English name – is a little unfamiliar outside SF circles. And that’s a crying shame, because his short stories, while putting the science in science fiction, are nothing less than good literature and tales even people with no interest in science fiction would enjoy, as long as they like good stories.
Brilliantly conceived, meticulously crafted, full of ideas that make you think, cerebral, emotionally moving, philosophical, dazzling in their clarity of thought, haunting, brilliant endings – when writing about Ted Chiang or describing his stories, one will never fall short of adjectives. Even though many will be superlatives and tend towards hyperbole, most of them will be well deserved. Except perhaps ‘prolific’, for as an author who values quality over quantity, he has published hardly a dozen short stories in the past decade.
Perhaps the widespread anonymity of Ted Chiang will end with the arrival of Arrival – the Dennis Villeneuve-directed Hollywood film starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker – an adaptation of Chiang’s short story, Story of Your Life.
What if exposure to an alien language forever changed our perception of time and memory? In Story Of Your Life, that’s exactly what happens. Aliens have arrived and they’re not green or furry and neither are they even remotely humanoid. A woman, a linguist, is called upon to help decipher their language and communicate with them. But the catch is that these seven-legged aliens, heptapods, have two languages, one spoken and one written. While the former sounds vaguely like that of a wet dog shaking water out of its fur, the latter is unlike any human language.
That’s because unlike humans, the heptapods have a very different perception of time. They know what is going to happen. And in trying to learn this language, our linguist sees how the heptapod’s language is changing the way she perceives reality, and remembers the future (yes, the tense is correct there!). For the heptapods, there is no such thing as free will. They know the future which makes life deterministic. Interwoven within this narrative is the linguist’s own personal story of grief and hope, and that of her daughter. In just about 55 pages, Ted Chiang tells a story of alien first contact, ruminates on the nature of free will, time and mathematics, invokes the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity where language shapes reality, touches upon Fermat’s principle of least time – all in the context of an all-too-human story with an astonishingly moving resolution.
Yes, all in less than 60 pages! And in simple, lucid prose to boot. Read it before watching Arrival, I’d recommend, because however good it is as an adaptation, it is bound to miss out on thoughts unfilmable, which make Story of Your Life a modern classic.
Originally published in the Starlight 2 SFF anthology, Story of Your Life is now available in a short-story collection that brings together eight of Ted Chiang’s masterpieces, seven of which were published elsewhere first, where, as mentioned earlier they won a whole bunch of awards. In fact, this collection – Stories of your Life and Others – by itself won Ted Chiang yet another award, a Locus this time for ‘Best Collection’. Yes, it’s THAT good a collection.
While Story of Your Life by itself is worth the price of admission, the other seven stories in this collection, including one written specially for this collection, are no less mind-blowing or mind-expanding, to various degrees of course. You’d be hard pressed to choose three favourites, let alone one.
What if men built a tower from Earth to Heaven and broke on through to the other side? The short story Tower of Babylon tells how this could be so and comes to pass; not in religious terms as the Biblical phrase may imply, but in purely mechanistic terms, creating a world where people use tools and technology to create marvels to break into Heaven’s vault to learn about the very nature of creation itself, and our place in it. Read it for its ending.
What if we discovered that the fundamentals of mathematics were arbitrary and inconsistent? Division by Zero begins with a mathematician being checked out of a mental facility by her husband who thinks he can help her out with her suicidal tendencies as he’s himself grappled with it earlier. And yes, she attempted suicide when she suffered an extreme crisis of faith; her faith in mathematics shattered with a proof that mathematics is inconsistent and that all its wondrous beauty just an illusion.
The question of faith returns in another story Hell is the Absence of God, albeit in a twisted, harrowing manner. What if all the beliefs of Christianity were literally true, and the sight of sinners being swallowed into fiery pits were a routine event on city streets? Angels in this world are very real, as real as earthquakes and natural disasters in themselves, and the tale is told from the perspective of a man who endures the death of his wife at the hands of an angel, but sorrow and anger apart, he must now learn to love God in order to be reunited with her in the afterlife.
While it sounds metaphysical and theological, it isn’t quite what you’d expect. The line between science fiction and fantasy is a very nebulous one at best. And even when he takes a leap into the fantastic, Ted Chiang does not sacrifice rationality and scientific underpinnings, even if created ones, which puts his stories squarely within the traditions of good science fiction.
But at the heart of it all is the profound questions he asks of us, and of our understanding of the world. To do full justice and to speak in depth of all the stories in this collection would perhaps — in the hands of a lesser writer — require a word count that would be more than all the stories put together. But here’s a quick glimpse into what else awaits you within the pages of this collection.
In Liking What You See: A Documentary, a story Chiang wrote specially for this collection, we meet students on a campus who make a political statement by disabling their ability to recognise beauty — through a voluntarily accepted condition known as ‘calliagnosia’. Why? Because they’re protesting against a deeper societal problem, ‘lookism’. For decades people have been willing to talk about racism and sexism, but they’re still reluctant to talk about lookism. Yet this prejudice against unattractive people is incredibly pervasive. People do it without even being taught by anyone, which is bad enough, but instead of combating this tendency, modern society actively reinforces it. Narrated using transcripts of a documentary, the story examines what happens, and the reactions thereof from different perspectives, when we switch off our ability to see beauty.
Interestingly, Ted Chiang refused a Hugo nomination for this story because he felt it wasn’t up to the mark as it was rushed out due to deadline pressures. If not, he perhaps would have had one more award on his already-groaning shelf full of awards.
The Evolution of Human Science, a very short story that was first published in Nature magazine as Catching Crumbs from the Table, offers a tantalising glimpse at a future where post-humans have advanced beyond the ability of humans, and human scientific exploration depends on deciphering and comprehending the work of these ‘metahumans’.
The Evolution of Human Science offers a tantalising glimpse at a future where post-humans have advanced beyond the ability of humans
Heightened abilities and super-intelligence is also the theme of Understand, where a man almost dead, is given an experimental hormone to heal the supposedly irreparable brain damage. The drug does more than just regenerate his damaged neurons, ending up exponentially improving his intellect and motor skills to the point of super-intelligence. What happens next will shock you!
What happens now will maybe not shock you as much, because the NWWonFD contest is back! To save you the trouble of looking for, and ordering this must-read collection of great short stories, we’re giving away a free copy. All you have to do is tell us why you think this book belongs on your shelf. As simple as that! Cloaking your reasons in science-fictional terms would help, so would keeping it short and impactful, like a Ted Chiang story. Have your say in the comments section below, leave a note on the FactorDaily Facebook page or tweet to us, with the hashtag #NWWonFD, (that’s New Worlds Weekly on Factor Daily, by the way), before October 22, 2016 and prepare to read The Stories of Your Life and Others.
On that note, I’ll see you next week when we shall foray further into science fiction. Until then, and beyond, Live Long and Prosper!Hip-hop music program keeping young WA men out of jail
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A unique music program is helping men in a minimum security prison in Perth's south get out of jail and stay out.
Re-offending rates at Wandoo Reintegration Facility are less than half the state's average and the music program Rap'N'Radio is considered by many as one of the main reasons why.
The program is created and run by musician Scott Griffiths, aka MC Optamus, from the group Downsyde, and teaches participants about "Aussie hip-hop".
The Monday morning music classes have been popular with inmates since they started when the prison opened more than three years ago.
"With Scotty, I've listened to his music for many years... so when I heard he was running this program it was a huge opportunity," one participant said.
It's two years of my life that's been taken but at the same time I've gained so much from it as a person. Wandoo resident
For this resident, as they are referred to at Wandoo, writing and rapping lyrics has become a form of self-reflection.
"For me it's like talking to somebody and getting problems off my chest," he said.
"It's about the expression and I feel so much better after.
"They're personal lyrics about my time in here and my family that have supported me through it and are waiting for me. That it hasn't been all for nothing.
"It's two years of my life that's been taken but at the same time I've gained so much from it as a person."
The young man is due for release soon and said he was looking forward to being reunited with his son.
He said Rap'N'Radio has helped him imagine a life outside.
"Work commitments are prioritised over everything. Got a little son out there so being in his life and giving him a good life is my priority," he said.
"Music will come second to that but it will always be up there."
His track Hold Tight will be recorded and produced by Griffiths and then released on CD along with other songs from the residents.
His said the lyrics were a way of asking his family, particularly his son, not to give up on him.
"I got my boy waitin'
I got my mum sayin'
You gotta man up boy
It's time to stop playin'
I hear what you're sayin'
And I know that it's true
I'm a pick up my game
And do it all for you."
Hip-hop not deserving of negative rap
Griffiths has done a lot of outreach and educational work including in remote communities and said the program was about engagement.
"The incarceration rates of Indigenous people in WA is way too high," he said.
"Rap'N'Radio helps them have the chance not to become another statistic."
While hip-hop is sometimes thought of as angry or aggressive music, Griffiths said its expressive nature and youth-driven focus related to the men.
"Hip-hop culture suffers from stereotypes, as many cultures do," he said.
"I think one of the false accusations of hip-hop is the 'gangsterisms' and disrespecting women and stuff like that but in actual fact it's a very positive culture.
"Once people get drawn into it they realise it supports people being able to be expressive and it doesn't have to be negative."
A partnership between the Central Institute of Technology and Wandoo enables residents to learn how to write lyrics, scratch on turntables, and produce, edit and record music.
Course turns 'yard-talk' into self-reflection: MC Optamus
Griffiths said the change he saw in the men that took part was often overwhelming.
"A lot of residents come into the program from other prison facilities where it can be quite tense," he said.
"One of the transitions you see in the program is guys writing primarily what we call yard talk, or tough ego-driven lyrics, but then after a certain amount of time they write reflective lyrics.
By the time they've come in here they have failed. They've failed in school, they've failed at work, they've probably let their family down, they have failed in society. Wendy Sinclair, Wandoo manager
"They're looking at the fact that they've separated from their children, separated from their partners and they also look at the journey here and the journey out."
Walking around the facility it is easy to forget that you are in a prison. The residents move freely through most areas and many have jobs either within the facility or outside.
With the prison population in WA growing at three times the rate of the adult population, Wandoo's manager Wendy Sinclair said all efforts needed to be made to reduce re-offending.
She said Rap'N'Radio was one of the best initiatives at the facility.
"By the time they've come in here they have failed. They've failed in school, they've failed at work, they've probably let their family down, they have failed in society," she said.
Ms Sinclair said giving the men the tools to imagine and begin a life outside was the only way to stop the cycle.
"We talk a lot about them being a prisoner of their life and an architect of their future and what Rap'N'Radio does is it grips them," she said.
"It's their language. They understand music and they're passionate about music.
"Some of them have clicked onto learning, they've learned to read and write so they can go on to college."
Griffiths would like to see similar |
uses data from InFuse to populate its interactive maps of the UK.
Census data downloaded from InFuse informed the Welsh Government for policies to engage Gypsy and Traveller families in education, showing that over 60 per cent aged over 16 from these communities had no qualifications.
Executive recruitment firm Sapphire Partners used census data from InFuse in a report on female representation on boards, revealing that 77 per cent of FTSE board members are men, and 70 per cent of new board appointments go to men.
A study by the Marie Curie charity into the differing needs of Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups in Scotland for end-of-life care used InFuse to determine that the minority ethnic population in Scotland has doubled since 2001 from 100,000 to 200,000 – highlighting the need for greater and more appropriate provision.
A Knowledge Transfer Partnership between homelessness charity Llamau and Cardiff University used InFuse data to show that Welsh young homeless people participating in the study were over twice as likely to have left school with no qualifications compared to UK-wide figures for their age group and gender.
About the resource
UK census data are fundamental to improving the understanding of life in the UK, enabling informed decisions by providing relevant and independent statistics. In the past, analysis of UK census data has been constrained by the separation of data and metadata, limiting social science investigations and research. InFuse is one of a range of advanced search and exploration applications developed by the ESRC-funded UK Data Service Census Support team.
In November 2013, the data held in InFuse were made open to all, providing easy access to 'aggregate statistics' from the UK 2011 and 2001 Censuses (ie counts of the numbers of people and households with a particular set of characteristics). Combining data supplied by each of the three national statistical agencies into InFuse has widened the scope for research projects that require access to UK-level census aggregate data and those that compare areas across the UK. The opportunity for users to access these data from a single integrated system is a unique feature of InFuse, and access to data via InFuse underpins a wide range of research across the higher education, public policy and commercial sectors.
Usage of InFuse is increasing, with the majority of downloads coming from UK higher education institutions. Other users include local and central government, commercial organisations, the NHS, charities and non-profit organisations.In 2014, voter turnout hit new lows for a midterm election: The most recent census data suggest turnout was a measly 41.9 percent. It’s likely that turnout was even lower, since the census data, while the best we have, is slightly inflated by the fact that people overreport socially positive behaviors like voting. Data that directly examines the number of votes counted suggest that turnout was around 36.6 percent of the voting-eligible population. But, while census data aren’t perfect, they allow us to examine turnout among different demographic groups (though even here, there are flaws). Looking at the data, I find a pretty stunning gender gap among one racial group: Black men are far less likely to vote than black women, and this is likely the legacy of mass incarceration.
The numbers are stark. In 2014, turnout among non-Hispanic white men was 45 percent, but among black men it was 36 percent (among Asian men it was 26 percent and among Latinos 25 percent). While the male/female turnout gap was 2 points on average, it was 1 point among non-Hispanic whites, 3.5 points among Latinos and 1.7 points among Asians. Among blacks, the gap was 7.7 points.
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Validated data (which are far more accurate, but only available for some years) tell a similar story. A 2013 study by Stephen Ansolabehere and Eitan Hersh showed, using validated data, huge gaps in turnout between black (and Latino) men and women in the 2008 election. They write that, “The largest gender gap is among Blacks: black women are 17 percentage points more likely to vote than black men.”
A sound reason for low-turnout among black men (and possibly among Latino men as well) is felon disenfranchisement. One recent study finds, “1 of every 13 African Americans of voting age is disenfranchised, a rate more than four times greater than non-African Americans.” The reason for why mass incarceration might depress black male turnout is simple: Both the Census Bureau and Ansolabehere/Hesh measure turnout as a share of citizen voting age population. However, a not insignificant share of the citizen population above the age of 18 cannot vote because they are either incarcerated or live in a state that disenfranchises former felons. (McDonald adjusts for this in his turnout data -- though not for lifetime felon disenfranchisement.) As political scientist Bernard Fraga has shown, once this is controlled for, black male turnout actually exceeded that of white men and women in 2012.
There are other reasons to suspect that the carceral state is behind low black turnout, and could explain some of low Hispanic turnout. Vesla Weaver and Amy Lerman find that interactions with the justice system reduce civic participation, trust in government and voting. The effect is powerful: “The probability of voting declined 8 percent for those who had been stopped and questioned by the police; by 16 percent for those with a history of being arrested; by 18 percent for those with a conviction; by 22 percent for those serving time in jail or prison.” The relationship holds even after controlling for socioeconomic status and the propensity to commit crimes.
Politicians like Rick Scott, governor of Florida, have used felon disenfranchisement to maintain power. In 2011, Scott overturned an executive order that had previously allowed felons to regain access to the ballot box after navigating a complicated process. The result is that the number of disenfranchised felons in 2010 in Florida (although data on ex-felons are difficult to come by) was 1,541,602. For comparison, in 2014, 6 million ballots were cast in the Florida midterm, and Scott won by a mere 66,127 votes. One study estimates that former felons would turn out at a rate of about 24 percent in a midterm election. Assuming that level of turnout in Florida, nearly 370,000 more people would have voted -- possibly costing Scott his seat.
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The consequences of felon disenfranchisement are real. As I’ve noted before, voter turnout helps to determine the distribution of government, and depressed turnout means that many low-income and black counties receive less funding. In a 2003 study, Paul Martin found that counties with higher turnout receive more funding from the federal government, and, more recently, he and Michele P. Claibourn find that “districts that vote at lower rates have less impact on their representatives’ policy positions.” That could be a part (though certainly not the full) explanation for why African-Americans aren’t represented as well as whites. Disenfranchisement also creates other problems: research suggests that restoring voting rights reduces recidivism rates.
Ending mass incarceration and felon disenfranchisement is a first step toward healing our democracy, but it is certainly not enough. Another glaring disparity is turnout among Asians and Latinos, which can partially be explained by lower registration rates among those populations. Among registered Latinos and Asians, the gaps in turnout are far lower (see chart). But that’s only the first step: nonpartisan get-out-the-vote operations, competitive districts and easier access through both early voting and increased use of technology would also boost turnout. The policies politicians advocate can also boost turnout. But the results of Weaver and Lerman’s study suggest something further: we need to make sure that government is working to the benefit of Americans. When people primarily associate the government with policing and incarceration, they are far less likely to be active in their society and community. America cannot claim to be a true and vibrant democracy with so many still denied the basic right to vote and large shares of the population are locked in cages.Australian commandos could work alongside soldiers from the feared Iranian Quds forces in the battle against the Islamic State group in Iraq, Defence Minister David Johnston has said.
Senator Johnston said the crisis created by the Islamic State's brutal capture of vast tracts of territory was sufficiently acute that differences should be put aside in the common interest of stopping their reign of terror.
The government is deploying airforce personnel and special military advisers to the Middle East.
His remarks came as the government revealed that Australians were continuing to join extremist groups such as the Islamic State either as fighters or supporters, with the total now reaching about 185.
Senator Johnston, when asked whether Australia's commandos, who will advise and assist Iraqi forces, would work alongside Iranians, told Sky News: "They may be. I don't see a problem in that, given the nature of the threat."Pope Francis is a pioneering pontiff in many ways — he’s the first to take the name of Francis, the first pope from South America, and the first to don the papal robes with an unusual medical condition.
DYLAN MARTINEZ / REUTERS Newly elected Pope Francis, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina appears on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica after being elected by the conclave of cardinals, at the Vatican, March 13, 2013.
Pope Francis is a pioneering pontiff in many ways — he’s the first to take the name of Francis, the first pope from South America, and the first to don the papal robes with one lung.
According to the Associated Press, the new Pope had one of his organs removed as a teenager, presumably after a bout with an infection. At that time, it’s possible that antibiotic treatments that are commonly used today to treat such infections were not as available, and to protect patients from further health problems doctors removed the lung as way to stop the infection from spreading.
“It was probably a pretty bad infection, and maybe even an abscess, that might have caused him to bleed,” says Dr. John Belperio, association professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California Los Angeles. “If he were bleeding a lot in the lung, the only thing to do is to resect the lung, take it out, to stop the bleeding.”
MORE: Habeus Papam: Francis, the First Pope from the Western Hemisphere
Most bacterial infections wouldn’t cause such serious damage to the lung tissue, but, says Dr. Ronald Crystal, professor of medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, some strains, such as staphylococci, are more destructive and could eat away at the delicate organ, leaving doctors with no choice but to remove the affected tissue to prevent more widespread health problems.
(PHOTOS: Pope and Circumstance: the Road to the Papacy)
Anything from pneumonia to a fungus or even tuberculosis could have caused the initial infection, which, if it wasn’t controlled properly, would have resulted in removal of the lung.
Other possible reasons for the surgery include a birth defect that caused an abnormality in the lung tissue, or an unusual growth of blood vessels into the air sacs that would obstruct normal breathing.
MORE: Why the Election of Pope Francis Is Important for Latin America
Fortunately, the lungs are a redundant system, and losing one lung doesn’t seriously compromise health. The only concern Pope Francis faced, and will continue to face, is that he has less respiratory reserve than someone with two intact lungs. That means he may be at slightly higher risk of complications from influenza or more vulnerable to succumbing to pneumonia. But, says Belperio, the fact that the 76-year old has lived a relatively healthy life so far demonstrates that his surgery did little to hamper his ability to live a full and active life.
(PHOTOS: Catholics in Latin America Rejoice)
In fact, animal studies suggest that the lung has a remarkable ability to regenerate, and some preliminary work in young children shows that they may be able to regrow some amount of lost lung tissue as well.
As long as the Pope takes extra precautions to protect against infection — including getting vaccinated against pneumonia and having a flu shot every year — there’s no reason to believe the health of the Church’s 266th pontiff will be an issue. “He’ll do fine,” says Crystal.The SpaceShipTwo carrier plane WhiteKnightTwo takes off in an April 20, 2009 flight test, a 4-hour endurance trip that marked its longest flight
The mother shipfor a commercial suborbital spaceliner fleet made its longest flight yet Mondayin a test apparently marred only by some slight damage to thevehicle?s tail.
The large WhiteKnightTwocarrier aircraft?Eve? took off from the Mojave Air and Space Port inCalifornia, flying to some 20,000 feet on a successful four-hour flight? the longest sofar and a good initial endurance test, noted Will Whitehorn, President ofVirgin Galactic.
While theflight test expanded the flight regime of the WhiteKnightTwo, an incidentcaused a heart-stopping moment for ground watchers when an apparent crosswind duringa landing strip maneuver pitched the vehicle up steeper than expected, causingslight tail damage, according to a SPACE.com source.
Virgin Galacticis the spacetourist travel firm backed by U.K. adventurer and billionaire RichardBranson and his Virgin Group. Eve is named after Branson?s mother. TheWhiteKnightTwo is the mother ship for SpaceShipTwo? also built by a workforceat Scaled Composites in Mojave, California.
Whitehorn saidthat the aircraft?s gear was successfully retracted and extended in flight,with the craft running up in speed in both the gear up and down configuration.Furthermore, the aircraft?s flightenvelope was expanded in the areas of gross weight, as well as G-loadbroached, he said.
?We are delighted with the programso far and are meeting every milestone we are setting,? Whitehorn told SPACE.com.?Sir Richard Branson is looking forward to flying in Eve this summer and thenseeing SpaceShipTwo attached later in the year,? he added.
The WhiteKnightTwo waspublicly unveiled at the Mojave Air and Space port on July 28, 2008.
Pucker factor
While details remain a tad murky, thetail damage was apparently caused during a touch-and-go runway approach by WhiteKnightTwo,which created a?pucker factor? in eyewitnesses watching the flight.
According to a SPACE.comsource, during the maneuver, the WhiteKnightTwo appeared to have been caught bya cross wind and pitched up steeper than expected. The result was a tail strikeby both rudders of the large craft, according to one observer.
However, the damage appeared to beminimal, with the WhiteKnightTwo later making a smooth touch down on thetarmac.
Following a roster of testevaluations of the WhiteKnightTwo at the Mojave Air and Space Port, the craftwill carry the now-under-construction SpaceShipTwo - the two pilot/sixpassenger suborbital rocket plane.
Virgin Galactichas ordered fiveSpaceShipTwo rocket planes and two of the carrier craft, with options onmore.
The buckle-up pricetag per seat for a suborbital trek onboard SpaceShipTwo is $200,000.
Video - Space Tourism: Virgin Galactic Way - Part 1, Part 2
Video - SpaceShipTwo Revealed
Images - SpaceShipTwo Mothership Unveiled
LeonardDavid has been reporting on the space industry for more than four decades. Heis past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society's Ad Astra and SpaceWorld magazines and has written for SPACE.com since 1999.The Catch
The San Francisco 49ers ruled the 1980s with eight seasons of 10-plus wins and a perfect 4-0 record in Super Bowl appearances. The remarkable run of success is marked by a handful of plays, none more recognizable than "The Catch", one of the most memorable plays in NFL history.
It's the NFC Championship game, January 10, 1982, against the Dallas Cowboys. Dallas has the lead 27-21, but Joe Montana has the ball for a potential game-winning drive. The clock is winding down. Third-and-3 at the Dallas six-yard line. Just under a minute left.
Ed "Too Tall" Jones and the Dallas front chases Montana out of the pocket, and Montana's main option, Freddie Solomon, is perfectly covered. Montana retreats to the sideline and launches the ball high toward the back of the end zone on a play that head coach Bill Walsh believed was a throwaway. He was already preparing for fourth down options. Suddenly Dwight Clark leaps and this happens:
Joe Cool was born.
Ickey Shuffle
Elbert L. Woods had a short NFL career, but the man known as Ickey Woods lives on in our hearts thanks to his signature touchdown dance: the Ickey Shuffle. The former Cincinnati Bengals fullback grabbed plenty of attention after a stellar rookie season with 15 rushing touchdowns in 1988 (and another three touchdowns during the Bengals' Super Bowl run). Unfortunately, a torn ACL and subsequent knee injury knocked him out of football after only four seasons. The Shuffle, however, lives on.
Check out Darrell Waltrip doing the Ickey Shuffle after winning the 1989 Daytona 500:
LT breaks Theismann
Lawrence Taylor stood with his hands on his helmet for a second before waving for help. It's that stance that says it all. Perhaps the most dominant defender in the NFL sacked dozens of quarterbacks in his career, but this tackle on Joe Theismann is the most memorable. It's also the most gruesome.
Theismann, Washington's longtime quarterback, had just received the ball back from running back John Riggins on a flea flicker that met the New York Giants blitz head-on. After escaping Harry Carson's grasp, Taylor jumps and awkwardly pulls down Theismann. It was a shocking play that resulted in a career-ending compound fracture for Theismann and one of the most ghastly plays ever seen in NFL history. Of course we'd share it.
Montana to Taylor
The NFL's best player of the 1980s deserves two spots on this shareable list, because Twitter would have been alive with Vines and GIFs of Joe Montana's touchdown throw to John Taylor with 38 seconds left in Super Bowl XXIII. If not for The Catch, this touchdown pass to Taylor at the end of a long drive would likely be known as Montana's finest moment.
The final drive went the length of the field in 11 plays, and Montana completed eight of nine on the drive. He'd already hit Jerry Rice with completions of 27, 17, and seven yards on this final possession, so it made sense for the Bengals to sit on Rice as he went in motion. John Taylor hadn't caught a single pass for all four quarters. It created the perfect decoy and Montana found his man for a 10-yard touchdown and third Super Bowl victory in as many tries.
49ers head coach Bill Walsh said after the game, "There's only one thing to say about Joe Montana. He's the best there is and the best there ever was. Period."
Fridge scores/Super Bowl Shuffle
The Niners may own the decade, but the Chicago Bears Super Bowl victory might be the most memorable of all. The team's dominance of the New England Patriots in a 46-10 win in Super Bowl XX was just the tip of an iceberg that also included the unforgettable touchdown run by defensive lineman William "Refridgerator" Perry and the subsequent Super Bowl Shuffle.
We are the Bears Shufflin' Crew
Shufflin' on down, doin' it for you.
We're so bad we know we're good.
Blowin' your mind like we knew we would.
Byner fumbles
Let's give Cleveland their moment. They deserve their time in the spotlight in recent weeks with the arrival of LeBron James and Johnny Manziel in town. Cleveland is once again a relevant sports town.
Of course this is all before LeBron takes the court or Manziel takes the field. While the Cavs seem destined for success, Browns fans will have to see it to believe it given the team's depressing history. They've had only three winning seasons since 1990, and even their successful seasons in the '80s came with moments like The Fumble, the most heartbreaking play in team history.
The Browns are on the road and on the ropes at Mile High Stadium in the AFC Championship game against the Denver Broncos. The Broncos are up by a single touchdown, and the Browns are driving down field once again. Once up 21-3, Bernie Kosar had ralled the Browns back for what seemed to be one of the NFL's greatest comebacks of all time. At the eight-yard line, running back Earnest Byner has his name called. Then this happened.
The Browns enjoyed a strong run of success that included five straight playoff appearances in the late '80s, but this is the only lasting memory for most NFL fans from those days.2016 Election: Republicans seem to like nothing more than kicking one of their own when he's down. So it's not entirely surprising that dozens of Republicans decided that now is the time to declare Donald Trump unfit for office. But in doing so, they've made themselves, not Trump, look like idiots.
One reason for the rise of Trump is, arguably, the anger at the fact that so many establishment Republicans refuse to attack Democrats with the same vigor as they attack their own. Now that Trump's poll numbers are slipping and his campaign is in disarray, they are at it once again.
First came a blistering letter signed by 50 officials who've served in various national security capacities in past GOP administrations. "None of us," they said, "will vote for Donald Trump."
They say Trump "lacks character, values and experience," has "little understanding of America's vital national interests" and "lacks the temperament to be president."
Fair enough. We haven't been shy in our criticism of Trump, particularly on foreign policy matters, either.
But many of the examples these erstwhile Republicans provide to back up their decision apply as much to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as to Trump.
The authors complain that "despite his lack of knowledge," Trump "claims that he understands foreign affairs." Yet it was greenhorn Obama who once bragged that "I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors."
These Republicans say Trump "appears to lack basic knowledge about and belief in the U.S. Constitution... religious tolerance, freedom of the press." But they ignore the fact that Obama, with Hillary's full knowledge and consent, has spent almost eight years running roughshod over the Constitution, attacking religious freedom and intimidating the press.
They say Trump "persistently compliments our adversaries and threatens our allies." We could devote thousands of words providing examples of Obama committing this sin.
So where were these high-minded Republicans when Obama was running for president and seeking re-election? Where was their blistering attack as Obama's policies led to the decline of U.S. influence abroad, the rise of ISIS, an increasingly aggressive Russia and China, and a soon-to-be nuclear-armed Iran? Their silence was deafening.
And how is it that all these national security experts can bring themselves to say about Hillary Clinton is that they "have doubts" about her?
Trump has serious character flaws, to be sure, but Clinton has an actual record of failure in just about everything she did as secretary of state. And that's to say nothing of the cavalier disregard for national security with her use of an unsecured private email server while at State. Even the head of Obama's FBI admitted that Clinton's recklessness likely put classified information in the hands of our enemies.
If there's anyone who, on national security grounds, is unquestionably disqualified for the highest office, it is Clinton, not Trump. Yet these spineless Republicans are either too afraid or too politically correct to say so.
Next came a statement by Republicans who once headed the EPA and complain that Trump isn't sufficiency liberal when it comes to the environment.
Trump "hasn't a clue about Republicans' historic contributions to science-driven environmental policy," write William Ruckelshaus and William Reilly, who ran the EPA during the Nixon and George H.W. Bush administrations, respectively.
"We Republicans should be shocked, outraged even, at the prospect that all this progress, this legacy will be repudiated and rolled back by Donald Trump."
This is, to put it charitably, sheer lunacy.
The EPA is the most out-of-control, unaccountable, scientifically unmoored and economically hazardous agency in the federal government. Under Obama, the courts have repeatedly blocked the EPA's lawless power grabs. The latest is its alleged climate-change-fighting "clean power" rule, which the courts put on ice after two dozen states sued to stop it. Republicans should be uniform in calling for this agency to be reined in, not showering it with praise.
Constructive criticism of any candidate is important. But there's a difference between constructive criticism and the tawdry political opportunism on display this week by Republicans who ought to know better.Story highlights New comic book "The Star Wars" adapts and illustrates George Lucas' rough draft script
"It's so similar, yet so different at the same time," says writer J.W. Rinzler
Characters such as Kane Starkiller and a lizard-like Han Solo populate this universe
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...
An Empire has spread across the galaxy, and the few remaining Jedi defend themselves against the Sith. At the same time, a dispute over trade and treaties is interrupted by... General Luke Skywalker?
A little confused?
That's because these familiar elements from "Star Wars" lore are part of George Lucas' rough draft for the first movie ("Episode IV: A New Hope" for the uninitiated), illustrated for the first time by Dark Horse Comics as "The Star Wars." The first of eight issues of the comic book series is out now.
When Luke is a much older man, Vader doesn't wear a helmet, Han Solo resembles a lizard and there is a character named Kane Starkiller, it might take some getting used to. But it's a fascinating part of movie history, no doubt.
CNN spoke separately to J.W. Rinzler, who adapted Lucas' script for comics, and artist Mike Mayhew.
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CNN: What captured your interest when adapting this script?
Rinzler: It's so similar and yet so different at the same time. All the puzzle pieces are there but arranged to form a different picture. You've got Sith and Jedi, you've got a desert planet. You've got a planet with twin suns, an imperial city and a cloud city. When I read the rough draft, it had all those things which made me want to make it into a comic book. It's such a great story, George is a great storyteller.
CNN: Was it difficult to illustrate this story from a script written nearly 40 years ago?
Mayhew: Not at all. I've been in comics 20 years, and when I read the rough draft, I thought, I can make a comic of this tomorrow. It was just a very well-written screenplay, and that's what a comic book script is. This is genuinely George's first complete screenplay story of this tale, and it's wildly different.
You can see why some of it was changed because there's no way they could have done it. It was just too ambitious.
When you look at movies now like "Avatar" and "The Avengers," it seems prophetic. Audiences expect all that action and set pieces, and one thing after another. I'm sure back then they looked at this and thought, "What's this guy thinking?"
The other interesting thing is you see the origins of the characters we know and love. Darth Vader is kind of a general, he's one of the main heavies but he's not a lord of the Sith. Here, Vader is really three characters: General Vader, this Lord of the Sith named Valorum, and this mechanical man. You think you know these characters and then you discover their truer origins.
CNN: What do you think fans will take away from this book?
Rinzler: Based on early fan feedback from the first issue, they're really enjoying this alternate universe, and they're getting to read a story that's being told by George. Even through my adaptation, you feel his voice. You see many of the things you love in "Star Wars" but in a slightly different way.
You have the Tusken raider moment surging in front of the binoculars, except it's not a Tusken raider, it's a different character. Fans are saying they're reading it two or three times to take it all in.
Mayhew: This to me is the greatest "what if" story in comics. What if this made it to the screen? The mind reels at the possibilities.
CNN: Is there one particular thing that is farthest away from the "Star Wars" we know and love?
Rinzler: Everyone seems to latch onto the fact that Han is a big green alien. That's pretty far! He doesn't have his own ship. His character is probably the most different, although he can already talk to Wookies. It's fascinating to see all this stuff starting out, in a way.
What's really fun is that R2-D2 talks in this one. There's a couple of points where I felt like "R2-D2 should say something here," and I added a line and that was really fun.
Mayhew: The characters in this story are much different than the characters in "Star Wars." The relationships are a lot different and to me, more intense. Leia's story is a little more complicated, and she's more a part of the action. Annikin is more of a trained Jedi than Luke was. The older General Skywalker to me is so much cooler than Obi-Wan. This character is like Captain America, a bigger than life hero.
CNN: Is there a possibility that this alternate version of "Star Wars" could live on beyond these eight issues, at least in the fans' minds?
Rinzler: Fans have been asking already about this, because so many things are hinted at particularly in the first issue, about the past, or characters in the periphery, or just spoken of and not seen. They'd love to see those mysteries explained, but we have a little movie called "Episode VII" coming up and that will take precedence.(Image: Alan Massey/R. J. Bostock) (Image: Alan Massey) (Image: Alan Massey) (Image: Alan Massey) Advertisement (Image: Alan Massey) (Image: Alan Massey)
A rare insight into the folk beliefs of 17th-century Britons has been gleaned from the analysis of a sealed “witch bottle” unearthed in Greenwich, London, in 2004.
Witch bottles were commonly buried to ward off spells during the late 16th and 17th centuries, but it is very rare to find one still sealed.
“So many have been dug up and their contents washed away down the sink,” says Alan Massey, a retired chemist formerly at the University of Loughborough, UK, who has examined so-called “magical” artifacts and was asked to analyse the contents of the bottle. “This is the first one that has been opened scientifically.”
During the 17th century, British people often blamed witches for any ill health or misfortune they suffered, says Massey. “The idea of the witch bottle was to throw the spell back on the witch,” he says. “The urine and the bulb of the bottle represented the waterworks of the witch, and the theory was that the nails and the bent pins would aggravate the witch when she passed water and torment her so badly that she would take the spell back off you.”
The salt-glazed jar was discovered 1.5 metres below ground by archaeologists from The Maritime Trust, a Greenwich-based charity that preserves historic sailing vessels. When it was shaken, the bottle splashed and rattled, and an X-ray showed pins and nails stuck in the neck, suggesting that it had been buried upside down.
Further computed tomography scans showed it to be half-filled with liquid, which later analysis showed to be human urine. The bottle also contained bent nails and pins, a nail-pierced leather “heart”, fingernail clippings, navel fluff and hair. The presence of iron sulphide in the mixture also suggests that sulphur or brimstone had been added.
“Prior to this point, all we really knew about what was in witch bottles was what we read from documents from the 17th century,” says Brian Hoggard, an independent expert on British witchcraft who helped analyse the bottle. These texts suggest “recipes” for filling a witch bottle, but don’t tell us what actually went into them.
Sulphur is not mentioned in any recipe Massey has seen, although a previously discovered bottle seemed to contain the remains of some matches, he says. “If you think about where sulphur came from in those days, it spewed out of volcanic fumaroles from the underworld. It would have been the ideal thing to [kill] your witch, if you wished to.”
Further analysis of the urine showed that it also contained cotinine, a metabolite of nicotine, suggesting that it came from a smoker, while the nail clippings appear quite manicured, suggesting that a person of some social standing created the bottle.
“It’s confirming what 17th-century documents tell us about these bottles, how they were used and how you make them,” says Owen Davies, a witchcraft expert at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, UK. “The whole rationale for these bottles was sympathetic magic – so you put something intimate to the bewitched person in the bottle and then you put in bent pins and other unpleasant objects which are going to poison and cause great pain to the witch.”
Journal reference: British ArchaeologySince we first heard of the resurgence of VR, we envisaged that someone would bring this product to market (and which regular gym attendees hadn’t?). It seems that Widerun are very close to market with their version of the gym-expanding virtual bike ride.
On Yer Bike!
Do you get bored on cycles at the gym? Does cycling around the city scare or frustrate you? As a cyclist, if you’ve ever been cut up by a driver on their mobile, knocked on your arse by someone who thought you were too small to do any real damage or just gotten bored of traffic lights and bad weather, then this might be the product for you. It’s aiming to solve problems associated with cycling on the streets with a solution that not only let’s you do it from the safety of your own home, but actually puts you anywhere you want. At the time of writing, there are more than a dozen different environments, but Widerun are committed to opening their platform for developers to create experiences of their choosing.
Although prices have not been set, Widerun are aiming to keep them as low as possible, to ensure everyone can benefit from the perks of virtual reality biking. It’s clearly going to be a Big Thing, and they know it.
Smart Bike Trainer
Downloads of their software will be available from the Widerun marketplace, for which access is granted with the purchase of their smart bike trainer – the hardware that your bike sits in while you explore virtual realms. The trainer device tracks your position, weight and even height, in order to feed back the slopes and rises of your experience, giving you truly synchronised stimulii and keeping you in the zone. There will be free environments as well as premium offerings, which will presumably drive community efforts. Widerun are working on an SDK with a track generator plugin for various game engines, though Unity is the primary target at present. They’re about the launch a Kickstarter campaign and we’ll update with a link when that arrives.
If you’re wondering about fogging/misting up and all the other problems that come from sweating your way along a grueling version of the Hobbit’s Shire, then you’re not alone. This is something Widerun are taking very seriously and are weighing up various options before committing. We’re interested to see what they come up with, but are guessing that some sort of mask between you and your beloved Rift would be a good place to start…
So what is it?
In order to run your own personal VR bike-treadmill, you’ll need a standard bicycle with 26-29″ wheels, which is placed on their ‘trainer’, allowing you to pedal without going anywhere. Their software is installed to the platform your HMD is attached to and you select the virtual experience from their marketplace. It’s uncertain whether you need to be online while you enjoy the ride, but in some cases it would definitely help as there are multi-player options, such as races and time-trials. It’s easy to see this being a massive hit with those trying to keep fit as well as professionals looking to hone their skills on the slopes of Mont Blanc in readiness for the Tour de France.I have always claimed – and not altogether jokingly – that you could build a house with Elmer’s glue and Duct Tape. Both items are readily available, relatively inexpensive and easy to tote around. I will set aside the Elmer’s for another time, though. Today, I thought it would be fun to look as some of the practical uses of duct tape around the house, camping and of course, in a survival situation.
As an invaluable resource, duct tape is easy to carry around and with that it is equally as easy to use. With its durability and many uses it probably stands on its own unlike other building, construction and repair products which you might need practice, training or advanced online degrees in engineering or architecture to use safely and efficiently.
First a bit of history
This miracle stuff was created during World War II when the US military needed a flexible, durable, waterproof tape to use making repairs in the field. A strong tape was created by Permacell, a division of Johnson and Johnson for this purpose. As the story goes, the GIs called it “duck tape” because it was waterproof – like a duck’s back.
Enough of the boring details. Just how can you use this miracle tape?
34 Uses of Duct Tape for Survival and Emergencies
Repair a tent: You open your tent at the campsite and oops — a little tear. No problem as long as you’ve brought your duct tape along. Cover the hole with a patch; for double protection mirror the patch inside the tent. You’ll keep insects and weather where they belong.
Make a rope: Twist one or several lengths of duct tape into a cord or rope. Of course paracord would be a lot better and you do have some of that, right?)
Make a clothesline: Twisting a long piece of D |
ware. Every Android device has several different “layers” of apps. The lowest layer is the default apps like the clock, the calculator, the phone dialer, the SMS messaging app etc. These are common to every Android device, however some of the standard AOSP apps on your device may have been replaced by ones written by the OEM. The next layer is the Google apps, all the apps related to Google’s services like the Play Store, YouTube, Maps, Gmail and so on.
A phone with only the standard built-in Android apps and Google’s apps doesn’t have any bloatware. Next comes the OEM’s app. These are apps written by the OEM and come pre-installed on your device to “add value.” These apps aren’t normally available on the Play Store for devices by other manufactures. Examples of such OEM apps include Samsung’s S-Health or S-Voice. This is the edge of the bloatware phenomenon. If an OEM adds badly written apps that no-one wants then they are no longer perceived as adding value, but rather as being a nuisance.
The layer above the OEM’s apps are the partner apps. If the OEM or carrier has signed a deal with another company then those apps will also come pre-installed. For example your phone might come with Amazon’s Kindle reader installed by default or with some of Microsoft’s apps, like Microsoft Word, Outlook, or Skype. Here we are firmly in bloatware territory. However how this bloatware is perceived depends on which apps are installed. For example, I always install Kindle and Skype on my Android phones, so I wouldn’t call these bloatware, however I never install Polaris Office, MobiSystems’ OfficeSuite, or WPS Office. So if these come pre-installed then I would call them bloatware. Your opinion on these apps may differ from mine, but any pre-installed “partner” app that you don’t like is probably bloatware in your mind.
The final layer are the OEM apps. Carriers all around the world including Verizon, T-Mobile, Orange, Vodafone etc, have all been known to install their own apps on the phones they sell to their subscribers. For example, the Verizon branded Samsung Galaxy S7 comes with 7 or 8 Verizon apps including a replacement SMS messaging app, My Verizon Mobile, and VZ Navigator. These apps are only available on Verizon branded devices, and are meant to add to the user experience.
The good, the bad and the ugly
My guess is that any pre-installed apps, above Google’s services, will be liked or disliked according to their quality and usefulness. This means that apps which behave badly will be branded as bloatware. While apps that add to the overall experience won’t be seen as bloatware. And that brings me to my first caveat. No matter what conclusions we draw about bloatware and about battery life, there are always going to be examples of badly written software. And if that badly written software comes pre-installed on your phone then it is going to cause you problems.
So in what ways can bloatware be bad? Here is a little overview of some bloatware related issues:
Crashes, freezes and unpredictable behavior – Any app, bloatware or otherwise, that crashes and is generally unstable is going to leave users screaming with frustration. When a phone comes pre-installed with such and app then that just adds insult to injury. If you download an app from the Play Store and it doesn’t work as you expect, then you can just uninstall it. But that isn’t always the case with bloatware.
– Any app, bloatware or otherwise, that crashes and is generally unstable is going to leave users screaming with frustration. When a phone comes pre-installed with such and app then that just adds insult to injury. If you download an app from the Play Store and it doesn’t work as you expect, then you can just uninstall it. But that isn’t always the case with bloatware. Ads and nagware – This is something that is seen more on personal computers, but any pre-installed app that adds advertising to your user experience or keeps telling you to buy the “full” or “pro” version is going to annoy users.
– This is something that is seen more on personal computers, but any pre-installed app that adds advertising to your user experience or keeps telling you to buy the “full” or “pro” version is going to annoy users. Spyware and data gathering – Hopefully the days of carriers putting spyware like CarrierIQ on our devices has passed, however I wouldn’t be too sure. Even now when the Android ecosystem is relatively mature and user’s concerns over spying and bloatware have been made very clear, carriers like Verizon are still adding services like DT Ignite to their devices.
– Hopefully the days of carriers putting spyware like CarrierIQ on our devices has passed, however I wouldn’t be too sure. Even now when the Android ecosystem is relatively mature and user’s concerns over spying and bloatware have been made very clear, carriers like Verizon are still adding services like DT Ignite to their devices. Battery drain – A badly written app can drain your battery. It doesn’t matter if it comes from Google, from your OEM or from your carrier, if an app is broken it can drain your battery. This is even more so if the app is installed as some kind of service that runs in the background. However, well written apps, apps that have been tested and optimized shouldn’t drain your battery, even those that run in the background.
Battery drain
When it comes to battery life we need to understand that there is a difference between the questions, “Can bloatware drain my phone’s battery?” and “Does bloatware drain my phone’s battery?” The answer to the first is an unequivocal yes, of course it can. As I have mentioned above, a badly written app can do bad things including drain your battery. However the more pertinent question is “does it,” not “can it.”
To test out the current state of bloatware I took a Verizon branded Samsung Galaxy S7 and analysed the impact the pre-installed apps have on the battery. The Verizon S7 comes with all three types of “bloatware.” As well as apps from Samsung (including Samsung Gear, S-Health, and S-Voice), this S7 includes partner apps from Amazon (including Kindle and Amazon Music), and Verizon apps (including Voice Mail, go90, Verizon Cloud and VZ Protect).
The Samsung Galaxy S7 comes with some sophisticated battery monitoring statistics. Tapping on an app under Settings->Applications->Application Manager will show you how much of the total battery that app has used since the last full charge. The things that consume the most battery are the screen, the various radios (i.e. cell standby) and the Android OS itself. After these big three, it is the individual apps and services that drain the battery. So if you play a 3D game for several hours then the Application Manager will show you how much of the battery that game used.
Every app that runs uses battery, there is no way around that, but if an app is optimized and doesn’t run very often then its presence won’t be felt. So to answer the question, “does bloatware drain my phone’s battery?” we need to look at the battery usage statistics for each of the these “bloatware” apps.
To test the battery usage of the Verizon S7’s pre-installed apps, I setup each app to make sure that it can run and any services it might want to run in the background have been installed. For example I ran the NFL mobile app and enabled notifications to ensure that it would run in the background. I used the phone throughout the day but I didn’t intentionally run any of the apps. This is important because if I spent 3 hours reading an eBook using the Kindle app then the Kindle app will have a recorded battery usage, which is what we would expect!
I did this over a period of more than 24 hours until the battery was less than 25%. I then checked all the pre-installed apps (the bloatware) in the Application Manager to see how much battery they had used. The answer…. 0% each.
What does 0% mean? The S7 has a 3000 mAH battery. Divide that by 100 and you get 30 mAh for every percentage point. If the Application Manager says 0%, it doesn’t meant zero, as in nothing, but it means less than 30 mAh. It could be 1 mAh or 29 mAh, we can’t tell. So the theoretical worse case scenario (and this isn’t what is happening, by the way) is that the 18 or so pre-installed apps, other than Google’s services and the default apps, could be using up to around 500 mAh (18 apps multiplied by 28 mAh).
Bugs exist, as do bad decisions.
However in reality that isn’t happening. For example, if I don’t use Samsung’s file manager or Samsung’s email client then their battery drain will be zero, as in nothing. My best guess is that only 4 or 5 of the pre-installed apps could be running in the background. Which again theoretically means around 5% of the overall battery life. I think the reality however is closer to the best case scenario of less than 1% of the battery capacity.
Can badly written bloatware flatten your battery? Yes. Do well written, properly tested apps drain your battery? No. What this basically means is that if the bloatware consists of apps from some of the major app makers like Amazon, Samsung or Microsoft then you don’t have anything to worry about. Even if the app is from a carrier (like Verizon) then you shouldn’t have any concerns. However, if for some reason, your phone has some pre-installed apps that no-one has ever heard of, then there could be a risk!
Having said that, bugs exist, as do bad decisions. So the possibility remains that a well known OEM could include a pre-installed app that drains your battery, however we would hope that the carrier or OEM would fix the issue with an OTA update.
Uninstalling bloatware
If you really don’t want a piece of bloatware on your phone then there are (sometimes) ways to disable them, but maybe not uninstall them. On the Galaxy S7 there is a simple way to disable pre-installed apps. Open the app drawer and find the app you want to disable. Long press on it and then drag it to the “Turn off” (possibly “Disable) icon at the top of the screen. That will kill any running copies of the app and then disable it. On other Android phones you can go into Settings, tap on Apps (or Application manager) and then tap the app you want to disable. Finally, tap Disable.
Wrap-up
Does bloatware drain your battery? No, it shouldn’t… but there are always exceptions! The exact effect of bloatware on your battery life will largely depend on the bloatware itself – specifically, which carrier apps have been preinstalled – as well as the handset, any OEM apps and the internal hardware of the smartphone.
If you have found bloatware on your device that drains your battery then please tell us about it in the comments below.HONOLULU — Twenty years into his Hall of Fame career, one of the top priorities for Kobe Bryant — and the Lakers as a whole — is to make the most of every minute the 37-year-old spends on the floor.
Head coach Byron Scott and Bryant himself have already alluded to him playing fewer minutes and having more days off during the 2015-16 season, but there are other ways to stretch Bryant’s value, while simultaneously furthering the development of L.A.’s young core.
One of these changes, which Bryant has embraced, is to allow the backcourt of First Team All-Rookie selection Jordan Clarkson and second-overall pick D’Angelo Russell to assume the majority of the ballhandling responsibilities.
“All minutes aren’t created equal,” Bryant said. “I think we’ve got some guys here this year that can really take a lot off me; D’Angelo and Clarkson and their ability to handle and create and make plays, and Julius (Randle) making plays. I think the minutes that I do play won’t be as heavy of minutes as they have been.”
In addition to lowering his workload, playing off the ball — which Bryant says “won’t beat your joints up as much” — is simply preferable to him. Though he has been a ball-dominant shooting guard for the majority of his career, he says that it was at former coach Phil Jackson’s insistence that he became L.A.’s primary ballhandler in the first place.
Now — especially with Russell, whose passing has been raved about by teammates over the summer and in training camp — Bryant is looking forward to having more opportunities to spot up instead of creating so many looks for both himself and his fellow Lakers.
“I do not like setting up the offense,” Bryant said. “I hate it. Phil made me do it years ago, and I had to learn how to do it years ago to set up the triangle. I haven’t played with point guards that are playmakers at heart, and D’Angelo is a ridiculous playmaker. I’d much rather catch and shoot or catch then one, two dribble pull-up. You guys know I like scoring the ball.”
Another minutes-stretching move is, by Bryant’s account, not much of a move at all. Right from the first game of preseason, Bryant is starting at small forward, leaving Russell and Clarkson to keep up with the explosive backcourts of the modern NBA.
Playing the three does have its matchup problems, like Kawhi Leonard or Kevin Durant, but typically the mileage should be less strenuous for Bryant. Still, having served so many roles in his two decades in the NBA, he says that his transition from shooting guard to small forward is nonexistent.
“I’ve been playing small forward for 10 years,” Bryant said. “It’s old hat. That’s been my spot for years.”Above image from WABC 7, below images from WNBC 4
Leaving no potential curse to chance, the Yankees had the Red Sox jersey (allegedly) buried in cement at the new Yankee Stadium removed with great fanfare in front of press yesterday. The David Ortiz jersey, buried by a Yankee-hating construction worker, was found thanks to a $50,000 excavation in the future behind-home-plate restaurant.
Yankees President Randy Levine said the team was initially going to leave the jersey where it was, "The first thought was, you know, it's never a good thing to be buried in cement when you're in New York. But then we decided, why reward somebody who had really bad motives and was trying to do a really bad thing?" And $50,000 is a small price to pay instead of future headaches of "The Curse of the Jersey."
As for the construction worker who buried the jersey, Gino Castignoli told the Post, "Anybody with half a brain knows it was all done in fun. I didn't hurt nobody." Still, Yankees Chief Operating Officer Lonn Trost said, "We were in touch with the DA of the Bronx and the ADA and we were discussing, analyzing and understanding whether or not there is criminality involved whether it is mischief or criminal mischief or trespassing or in fact nothing."
The jersey will be donated to the Jimmy Fund, part of the Boston-based Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Levine said, "Hopefully the Jimmy Fund will auction it off and we'll take the act that was a very, very bad act and turn it into something beautiful."
And Levine thanked the Post, for making this their lead story for the past few days--"We want to thank The Post for raising this issue"--which is probably why the Daily News is quiet on the jersey front.The Spanish giants have agreed to meet the Gunners' valuation of the Cameroon international midfielder after a breakthrough in negotiations between the two clubs
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By Wayne Veysey | Chief Correspondent Arsenal are on the brink of selling Alex Song to Barcelona for £15 million following a breakthrough in talks,can reveal.The Spanish giants have indicated they will meet the Londoners’ valuation of the midfielder in a development in negotiations between the two clubs.Arsenal are ready to give the 24-year-old the green light to become the fourth player in five years to make the move from Emirates Stadium to Nou Camp.Song is set to follow in the footsteps of Thierry Henry in 2007, Alexander Hleb in 2008 and Cesc Fabregas in 2011.Barcelona were encouraged when their exploratory enquiries for Song were met with the response that indicated the player would be available for the right price.The Catalan club had initially refused to meet Arsenal’s £15m valuation of the player, but sources have told Goal.com that a deal at that price has now been agreed.Song, who joined Arsenal, initially on loan, in 2005, is poised to be granted permission to discuss personal terms with Barcelona.He explained in the wake of the club’s pre-season victory over Cologne on Sunday that he was flattered by Barcelona’s interest."I am not going to lie if I said there is no interest but I am at Arsenal and I am happy at Arsenal," he told Sky Sports. "Barcelona are the best team in the world, and speculation will always continue until the window closes."Arsene Wenger will come under pressure from Arsenal fans to secure an immediate replacement for Song, who is the closest player in the Frenchman’s squad to a proven defensive midfielder.Arsenal announced on Wednesday night that they had agreed to sell Robin van Persie to Manchester United for a fee believed to be worth £24m.With £39m swelling the club’s coffers, Wenger will be expected to find a battle-hardened replacement for the Cameroon international, especially given that the squad is packed with attacking midfielders.The Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah is billed as "America's toughest stage race", and with challenging mountains every day, there's no doubt the organisers take that tagline seriously. In 2014 the seven-day tour featured two tough mountain-top finishes and plenty more big climbs besides, and for the second year in a row it was Garmin-Sharp's Tom Danielson who took out the overall title. Here's a gallery of photos from the race and a brief explanation of how the race unfolded.
The Tour of Utah began in the south west of the state with a 183km stage starting and finishing in Cedar City. The day featured two challenging climbs but ended with a long descent off Bristlecone and then three, flatter circuits around Cedar City. Moreno Hofland (Belkin) took victory in a sprint and would wear the yellow leader’s jersey the following day.
Stage 2 saw the riders head 210km east then north from Panguitch to Torrey via four categorised climbs. Again the stage finished with a descent and a flatter run-in to the finish and it was Michael Schar (BMC) who took a memorable victory, attacking from a six-man breakaway and holding off the peloton by just two seconds. Team SmartStop’s Jure Kocjan moved into the overall lead with his second-placed finish.
Stage 3 began just south of Salt Lake City in the town of Lehi before heading south over the Eureka climb en route to the finish at the Miller Motorsports Park. A breakaway was caught in the closing kilometres before Moreno Hofland took his second win in three stages. Kocjan held on to the overall lead.
On stage 4 the general classification got its first real shake-up thanks to the North Ogden Divide climb and the brutally tough Powder Mountain climb (10km at 10%) to end the stage. Tom Danielson and Chris Horner (Lampre-Merida) climbed to the front of the race on the final ascent before Danielson rode away with 5km to go, winning the stage by nearly a minute and putting himself in the overall lead ahead of Chris Horner and Ben Hermans (BMC).
Stage 5 began across the border in Evanston, Wyoming, before heading south into Utah and on to the long climb to Bald Mountain. The closing kilometres into Kamas were considerably flatter though, with Eric Young (Optum p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies) taking a sprint victory. Danielson held on to his overall lead.
The following day, with the race finishing with a climb to the Snowbird Ski and Summer Resort, Cadel Evans (BMC) put on a masterclass. He escaped from the peloton early in the day to join the breakaway, working hard with his fellow escapees for the rest of the stage. On the final climb the break looked doomed, but he and Joey Rosskopf (Hincapie Development Team) held on. Rosskopf attacked late but was marked by Evans who punched past to take a thrilling victory. The GC remained unchanged with Danielson finishing sixth on the stage.
And on the final day of racing, Cadel Evans again used his experience and talent to secure back-to-back stage wins. On the climb up to Empire Pass Evans was behind a lead group of four (which included Danielson and Horner) and on the descent toward the finish Evans put on a descending clinic and joined the front of the race. He sat at the back of the lead group until the final corner before the finish, swooping around to take the lead then sprinting to victory.
Tom Danielson finished fifth on the stage, securing back-to-back wins in the Tour of Utah. Chris Horner was second overall (as he was last year) while his teammate Winner Anacona rounded out the podium.
We hope you enjoy some of the many great photos from the race below.One of the handier voice commands that users can give to Google Now is "remind me to [whatever]," which will automatically start a function that adds a reminder and alarm to the cards. Follow that up with a specific time or day, and it will make the necessary adjustments to your command. Now it's even faster: the dialogue used to create a short countdown in the form of a blue line. But if you try the same command today, it will create a card instantly.
Once the card appears on screen (either from a voice command or a manual text input), the reminder is now set - no need for a second voice command or tapping the check button. It's only if the command needs to be adjusted with a specific time or other variable that users need to tap the "Edit" button.
We're seeing this change on some but not all current installations of the Google app, and Google Now cards do need to be enabled to access the reminder feature. (If you don't want cards, I suppose you could just set an alarm in the stock Clock app or use an alternative.) Check it out the next time you need to remember to forget.conditions means she struggles to go outside and quit her job
A former Stars in Their Eyes winner who used to run eight miles a day has been left a 'prisoner in her own body' by a crippling illness.
Just 18 months ago, Faye Dempsey had a career and loved nothing more than a night out with friends.
Now, the 33-year-old says she is wracked with pain and there are days when she is virtually bedridden.
In 1997, the then 15-year-old won the television programme Stars in Their Eyes as Olivia Newton-John.
Now she has been diagnosed with fibromyalgia - coupled with chronic fatigue syndrome (ME) - which means simple things like going out can take days to recover from.
Faye Dempsey, 33, struggles to go out after being diagnosed with debhilitating diseases fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome
In 1997, the then 15-year-old won the television programme Stars in Their Eyes as Olivia Newton-John but now struggles to go out after developing crippling illnesses
Fibromyalgia is an incurable musculoskeletal condition that leaves sufferers in agony while ME causes persistent fatigue that a doesn't go away with sleep or rest.
'I try to keep active by taking short walks and I've even tried swimming, but it's unbelievable how hard things are,' she said.
'I ache the whole time and I'm so sensitive to everything - noises feel like hot rods in my ears.'
Miss Dempsey who lives in West Kirby, Wirral, first noticed a radiating pain in her back, going down her legs in the summer of 2014.
She said the symptoms were on and off at first and put them down to the depression and anxiety she'd suffered since being a teenager.
'As it got worse, and I was rarely having a good day, I knew in my heart that something else was wrong,' she said.
WHAT IS CHRONIC FATIGUE/ME? Chronic fatigue syndrome is also know as ME. The condition affects millions of people worldwide - and the combination of symptoms can devastate a patient's life for decades. Jose Montoya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University and a leading expert in CFS, has previously described the condition as 'one of the greatest scientific and medical challenges of our time'. He said: 'Its symptoms often include not only overwhelming fatigue but also: Joint and muscle pain Incapacitating headaches Food intolerance Sore throat/enlarged lymph nodes Gastrointestinal problems Abnormal blood-pressure and heart-rate events Hypersensitivity to light, noise or other sensations
She went back to the doctors and asked for tests and a routine blood check revealed neutropenia - a low white blood cell level.
This can be a sign of blood or bone cancer and her family were worried this was the cause behind her ill health before a bone marrow biopsy came back clear.
'I should have been jumping for joy but part of me thought, if it's not cancer, what the hell is going on? What am I going to do?' she said.
Last autumn, following an agonising year of investigations, autoimmune and viral conditions were also ruled out.
After a process of elimination, her haematologist and rheumatologist diagnosed fibromyalgia with an overlapping sleep disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome.
Miss Dempsey said she had never heard of fibromyalgia before, but was conscious of a stigma surrounding fatigue syndrome and ME.
'I know some people think you're just tired, or using it as an excuse, but it's so different from normal tiredness.
'Sometimes you can't lift your head off the pillow. I can have a full night's sleep but in the morning it's like my eyes are glued shut and I've not slept at all.'
There is no known cure for fibromyalgia and its cause is uncertain.
Doctors believe it is related to abnormal levels of certain chemicals in the brain and changes in the way the central nervous system processes pain messages carried around the body.
Miss Dempsey still has her Sandy outfit from when she won Stars In Their Eyes but says her life has changed a lot since then as she is in constant pain
'I've never been sat down and told why I suddenly developed it, but from what I've researched myself it can strike after illness or trauma,' she said.
'I had been in a car crash, and I'd been through some emotional trauma over the past few years, so that's the most likely explanation for mine. I think my body just decided it couldn't take anymore.'
Both conditions have meant she has had to give up work as a manager and is now resigned to dealing with the pain on a day by day basis.
She is on liquid morphine every two to four hours and the maximum dose of codeine, when the pain is most severe.
There are good days and bad days, she adds and it can be very isolating but she is determined not to let the conditions overwhelm her.
Miss Dempsey impressed with her performances on the popular TV show
'I live with my parents so I'm lucky, I'm definitely not the worst case scenario,' she said.
'There are people suffering with fibromyalgia who never move from their house.
'I live near a park so I can walk out and get some fresh air, even though sometimes it feels impossible even to take my dog for a walk.
'But the best thing for me has been social media, that's been a tremendous support.
'I've been able to reach out to people who don't know me and they've reached back so I've gradually built up this virtual friendship group.'
Despite her support, she still has days when she says she feels almost bereaved.
'A part of me has died and I don't think it will ever come back.
'When you can't get out you spend so much time alone, looking at yourself in the mirror and wondering where you've gone.'
But with an informal group already established, Miss Dempsey now wants to create a network to join forces with other sufferers and supporters and spread understanding.
Miss Dempsey hopes to reach out to others using her Twitter account.
'The biggest problems are the stigma and people thinking, I've heard of that but I'm not sure what it is,' she said.
'But I am strong enough to campaign, to get the word out there and push for more help to be available, and I'm happy to do it because it gives me a purpose.- The Native American-owned Graton Casino in Rohnert Part is making good on its promise to provide the North Bay with a total resort experience.
On Tuesday, a milestone celebration was held to honor construction workers for the new hotel expected to open this fall. Construction crews placed the final beam atop what will, in November, become a $175 million, six floor, 200 room hotel, spa and huge convention and auditorium center.
"The North Bay really needs that. We have no place for big conventions. So, here it is," says Greg Sarris, the Graton Indians Rancheria Tribal Chairman.
The hotel was always planned and permitted. "We certainly have plenty of guests. We draw from the greater Bay Area, as far away as South Bay, certainly the City [and] the East Bay when guests want to stay overnight. They want the convenience of that nice hotel product, great caliber product," says Joe Hasson, the Graton Resort & Casino Manager.
When it comes to gambling, in California, amenities are everything.
"Sonoma County has been in the tourism business forever. This is simply one more reason to come to Sonoma County or stay for another day or so," Hasson said. With this hotel, the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria have now invested more than a billion dollars here in the last two and a half years.
"We've created already, 2,000 jobs and a thousand jobs just building this building right here; a thousand construction jobs. There will be many more to come when the hotel opens," says Tribal Chair Sarris.
When it was first planned and opened, locals complained it would be over congested, environmentally unfriendly and degrading to community morals.
Today, the concerns appear more muted. "It's a form of entertainment for everyone because it's pretty boring out here; there's not a lot to do. On the other hand, there are people who can't control their gambling habits and they lose a ton of money.
But, without that casino, there are other casinos that people can go to and lose their money," said Rohnert Park Resident Edward Price Woolley.
Like many others, William Raymond does not go. "No I don't. I don't smoke and that's the reason. I would if I smoked or if they didn't allow cigarettes there, but I just can't handle the cigarette smoke," says Mr. Raymond.
Then, there are benefits. "I am just happy they're here because they are providing us with some tax revenues," says William Raymond. "Money is coming in to Ronhert Park for sure. People are coming in from other places and bringing money into Graton," says Edward Price Woolley.This article is a long read, and includes detailed analysis of several research studies. Interested readers may want to review the bibliography and familiarize themselves with the relevant studies in order to engage most meaningfully with this post.
As with all articles and comments on 4thWaveNow, the views expressed by the author in this piece are his own.
by Hacsi Horváth, MA, PgCert (Sheffield)
I am an adjunct Lecturer in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). I’m an expert in clinical epidemiology, particularly in systematic review methods, epidemiologic bias and evidence quality assessment. As a researcher at UCSF, I managed the Cochrane HIV/AIDS Group for over a decade and on several occasions served as a consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO) in their HIV guideline development processes.
For about 13 years, I also masqueraded “as a woman,” taking medical measures which suggest, shall we say, that I was completely committed to that lifestyle. Most men would have recoiled from this, but in my estrogen-drug-soaked stupor it seemed like a good idea. In 2013 I stopped taking estrogen for health reasons and very rapidly came back to my senses. I ceased all effort to convey the impression that I was a woman and carried on with life.
As you may imagine, I have a lot of anger at transgenderism and its enablers, as well as an “inward bruise” (as Melville called it). I am not a happy camper. I have been badly harmed. However–as a father myself–I am far angrier that thousands of young people are being irreversibly altered and sterilized as they are inducted into a drug-dependent and medically-maimed lifestyle. I’m furious that women and girls are being steamrolled by trans activists into accepting any man who claims to be a woman in sex-segregated changing rooms, prisons, shelters, women’s sports, and elsewhere. If any man can simply announce that he’s a woman, then what is a woman?
My strong feelings often show through in what I write. On Twitter, in blogs and elsewhere online, I have often taken a very strident, confrontational tone. I have offended many with my refusal to utter words that I consider to be unsubstantiated, politically motivated jargon, along with my unrepentant “misgendering,” among other sins. In contrast, in real life, I try to get along with everyone and tend to be diplomatic with people whose views conflict with mine. I’m somewhat reclusive and generally not very keen to blast other people with peremptory critique.
Prologue
Where gender dysphoria (GD) is discussed, “suicide risk” and “transphobia” may lurk nearby, especially when the topic concerns adolescents and young adults (AYA). Why is this so? In this article, I will demonstrate that activists have created the false impression that the risk of suicide in adolescents and young adults (AYA) with GD (AYA-GD) is unique and unparalleled, that AYA-GD suicides are common and that “transphobia” is the main cause of such suicides. I will show why the shockingly high suicide attempt rates they commonly cite are not credible. I will also show evidence that AYA-GD suicide attempt rates are likely similar to those of other populations with similar risk factors. While these rates are higher than in the general population, they are much lower than they are touted to be in transgender activist propaganda.
Finally, I will look at the statistics for completed suicide in AYA-GD, before closing with some observations about losses to follow-up in studies looking into outcomes in people with GD, some years after their trans-related surgeries.
GD is a poorly-defined syndrome comprising one or more mental health problems, commonly including anxiety or depression, among others. It includes a “strong desire” to “be” the opposite sex, or at least to perform its stereotypes. At minimum, patients may have come to believe that they are utterly unsuited to fulfil the stereotypic roles and gestures socially prescribed for their actual sex, even if they have had tremendous lifelong success in doing so, and even though they are quite free to ignore such stereotypes. Gender dysphoria’s concomitant cognitive bias may keep the patient from ever getting better. The reason they may never recover from it is that this cognitive bias tells them this mental illness is really “mental wellness” (Levine 2018). They typically only visit doctors and psychotherapists who are willing (or even eager) to “affirm” their opinion that they are somehow inhabiting the wrong body. They are steered with increasing ease into a transgender trajectory and the mysteries of “transition.” Costume change, with or without cosmetic surgery, is an ineffective means of changing sex. Indeed, changing sex is impossible. “Transition” is thus mostly concerned with personality expression and receiving (in my view) unnecessary medical care. It can begin almost at a moment’s notice. In the US, self-diagnosed adolescent and adult GD patients may even receive prescriptions for cross-sex synthetic hormone drugs on the day of their first clinical visit.
Until recently, having GD and “being trans” were considered synonymous. This belief has shifted somewhat, as the phenomenon of “non-binary” people emerged. Also, it’s apparently no longer necessary even to have GD to be considered transgender. In San Francisco, if you want to be “trans,” they will “rubber-stamp” you and you’ll have your genitals inverted (or your breasts will be gone) in no time.
I don’t believe GD reflects any kind of problem or glitch in the human body. Here’s what I suggest, in broad strokes, is going on with adolescents and adults:
Heterosexual males (the vast majority of men with GD) have autogynephilia.
Homosexual males with GD enjoy “femininity” and mistakenly believe this means they are “trans” or even women.
Females with GD have internalized misogyny and/or internalized homophobia.
In my opinion—which is based upon extensive research, as well as my own 13-year-long experience in pretending to be a woman–GD is only superficially concerned with one’s sex. It’s more a disturbance of identity, of mistaking the signifier for the signified. Patients have whatever mental illnesses they may have, or that develop while in the ruminations and hypomanic states that typically precede “coming out as trans.” I propose that GD is a moody, brooding syndrome that accompanies these mental illnesses. People with GD have cultivated an idealized vision of themselves as the opposite sex. At a critical point of rumination, after the patient has sufficiently disparaged his or her actual life and idealized life as the opposite sex, he or she realizes that body parts of the opposite sex may be obtained through the services of doctors (Raymond 1979, Billings 1982). Actually transforming into the opposite sex starts to seem feasible. The self-conception “splits” in two, and idealization becomes identity. Having negated any value in their actual male or female presence in the world, and now feeling themselves to actually be the self-generated persona, patients perseveratively ask themselves, “what’s stopping me?” “Feasibility” seems to trigger the split. Here begins the acute phase of GD.
Patients become obsessed with “transition.” To the same extent |
His position within the OSI was considered so important that Goldman arranged standing orders to be killed in the event he was captured to prevent him from being interrogated or converted into a double agent if he was released or rescued (these orders were revealed in the three-part Six Million Dollar Man/Bionic Woman crossover arc, "Kill Oscar"). However, when this situation arose, Steve Austin disobeyed the order and rescued Goldman, unaware that he actually extracted an android imposter. Eventually after the imposter was discovered and defeated, the real Goldman was rescued in defiance of his own orders.
Goldman was a snappy dresser, who had a propensity for loud patterns (which were in style at the time). His briefcase featured in many episodes, as he would often open it to produce a solution to various problems. Goldman, who served as head of the OSI under six presidents,[4] wielded considerable influence in the Federal government, and was able to get the Secretary of State on the telephone on short notice.[5] He is not immune to attractive females; while in Monte Carlo for a mission, nearby bikini-wearing women so distracted Goldman that an amused Sommers had to block his view with a parasol.[3]
Although never explicitly stated during either series, it was implied that Oscar is Jewish - or, at least, that others would assume him to be. In one episode of The Bionic Woman, he used a pseudonym when travelling to a Middle Eastern country because he thought the “Goldman” name would not make him any friends.[6] In another episode, the shah of a fictional Persian Gulf country told Sommers he would never deal with a man named “Goldman”.[3]
Anderson reprised the role of Oscar Goldman in three highly rated two-hour TV movie sequels to the series that aired in the late 1980s and early 1990s: The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman, Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman, and Bionic Ever After?, indicating that, in the Six Million Dollar Man universe, Goldman remained in a high-ranking position with the OSI well into the 1990s.
The character of Oscar Goldman is absent from Bionic Woman, a remake of the 1976 series which aired on NBC starting in September 2007. Goldman has been replaced by a new character, Jonas Bledsoe, played by Miguel Ferrer.
References [ edit ]American Gordon Lake (left) and his Spanish husband Manuel Santos (right) with their daughter, Carmen
Gay couple Gordon Lake and Manuel Santos have won the custody of their one-year-old daughter, Carmen, who was born through a Thai surrogate, after more than a year of legal battle.
The 41-year-old American-Spanish pair, with Carmen and their 2-year-old son Álvaro, have been stuck in Bangkok, Thailand, since January 2015 because their Thai surrogate mother, Patidta Kusolsang, refused to sign the paperwork after she found out that Lake and Santos are a same-sex couple, and wanted to keep Carmen for herself.
In past interviews, Kusolsang was quoted saying that gay couples aren’t natural and can’t be good parents.
Yesterday, Bangkok’s Family Court ruled that the legal guardian of the child is Lake, her biological father from the U.S.
‘The court has granted legal custody of [the child] Carmen Lake to Gordon Lake, my client, and [said] that my client is her only guardian,’ said lawyer Rachapol Sirikulchit.
Legal consultants had previously commented that the case is especially complex, because even though Carmen was born before Thailand passed a ban on commercial surrogacy, the country’s legislation does not recognise same-sex marriages, and also considers the woman who gives birth to the child as its legal mother.
However, the egg came from an anonymous donor, not Kusolsang.
Sirikulchit believes that Carmen has the right to be with her biological parent, Lake, and has successfully convinced the court just that.
Walking out from the court, Santos was seen smiling and tearful.
‘We won,’ he told the journalists. ‘We are really happy… This nightmare is going to end soon.’
Love and truth won. Thank you Thailand! A photo posted by Twopapas (@twogaypapas) on Apr 26, 2016 at 12:52am PDT
On Facebook, Lake and Santos, shares their overwhelming joy and feeling of victory:
‘There is no way to express with words what we are feeling! We are crying, our family is crying, our friends are crying, and we are sure all the Thai people who showed their love for us during this time are crying too.
‘Today is a huge day for love, for family and for truth. And it is also a big day for LGBT rights.’
The couple say that the family will be moving back to Valencia, Spain, where they were living previously. They also reveal that they would be coming up with a tell-all book to share about this ‘crazy experience,’ including the ‘bad people’ and the ‘good ones.’
Lastly, the elated gay dads announced that their hashtag #bringcarmenhome shall be changed to #carmensgoinghome.Over the weekend, dud San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick decided to take a stand: He sat during the national anthem. He announced that he was doing so in order to join the Great Crusade for Social Justice: “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”
The media quickly hailed Kaepernick as a hero. “Colin Kaepernick stood tall while sitting down,” wrote Ian O’Connor of ESPN. “In fact, what he did in benching himself for the national anthem on Friday night was the hardest thing he could possibly do.... He made his statement loudly and clearly.” DJ Gallo of The Guardian wrote, “No matter your opinion of Kaepernick’s stance on not standing, he’s sticking his neck out... impressively devoted to his cause, consequences be damned.” Beyoncé’s mother, Tina Knowles, said Kaepernick was “truly being brave.”
Naturally, critics on the right have called Kaepernick a coward or a gloryhound. They’ve said — rightly — that if Kaepernick truly wanted to fight against supposed racial injustice, he could give up his $19 million per year to help develop inner cities. They’ve pointed to the fact that legless military veterans stand for the anthem, so Kaepernick can damn well do the same. They say that Kaepernick is on the verge of being cut, and that he’s playing the race card so that he can claim political victimization when he ends up on the chopping block.Welcome back to the Way of Kings reread on Tor.com. This week I’m covering chapters 21 and 22, which means that after an incredibly long time I get to return to Kaladin’s viewpoint. I hope he’s been doing well in my absence. In addition, Wit barrages us with lame humor, Sadeas pulls a dastardly scheme, Dalinar and I agree on the excesses of Vorin culture, and a certain Queen Mother rears her well-coiffed head. All this and more awaits you, so let’s get to the reread.
Chapter 21: Why Men Lie
Setting: The Shattered Plains
Point of View: Kaladin
What Happens: Kaladin wakes up intensely sore, but forces himself out of bed and walks out of the Bridge Four barracks, where several bridgemen are watching him. He checks on the wounded from the last run, who haven’t attracted rotspren yet. Leyten is on the edge of death, Hobber is awake and thanks him, and Dabbid is staring catatonically. Kaladin diagnoses him with battle shock. Kaladin knows that without antiseptic the bridgemen are easy prey to infection and death.
Kaladin stretches and then goes to the lumberyard to resume his bridge-carrying exercises. He’s not able to run with the bridge right now, but he jogs when he can and tries to maintain a brisk walk when he can’t. Many bridgemen watch him with open hostility, and none of his own crew joins him.
Syl lands on the plank and tells Kaladin that people are talking about him, speculating that he’s gone mad. They discuss what madness is, whether it’s just noticeable deviation from the mental average. Syl asks why men lie, and whether it’s a kind of madness, but Kaladin doesn’t think so, since everyone lies. Syl says Dalinar has never lied. Kaladin quashes that argument: “He’s a lighteyes. That mean he lies.”
This quiets her for a little while, but after some prompting she mentions hearing talk about a time without lies. Kaladin says there are stories about the Heraldic Epochs and the honor that persisted there, but he thinks that’s just a story people tell to make themselves feel better. He says you can’t trust anyone with power, you can only give it to lighteyes, let it corrupt them, and try to stay as far away as possible. Not exactly advice he’s been able to follow himself.
After his run, Kaladin is accosted by Gaz. He’s received orders from Sadeas by way of Lamaril: Kaladin won’t be strung up, but the wounded bridgemen will be forbidden food or pay so long as they can’t work. Kaladin curses the highprince, but accepts the order not to try to get extra food for the wounded. He tries to come up with a plan to get extra food and antiseptic. Without either, his wounded soldiers will die.
Kaladin returns to Bridge Four, and asks for them to pool their resources to buy medicine and food. Most of them laugh in his face, but afterwards Rock, the huge Horneater, approaches him. He volunteers to give up some food for Hobber, and says that because Kaladin saved his life by switching places with him on the last run and because he can see Syl (a “mafah’liki”), he’s willing to help Kaladin. Bridge Four only lost eight men in the last run, far fewer than most other bridges, and Bridge Four never loses the fewest men.
Suddenly, Kaladin comes up with a plan. He goes to Gaz and requests a duty change, to switch Bridge Four to rock-gathering duty, one of the worst jobs there is. He and Rock recruit Teft to help them, and he begins to lay out his plan. It involves “a reed that grows in small patches outside the camp.”
Quote of the Chapter:
Beside Gaz, Bridge Three’s leader shot Kaladin a scowl. The way the other bridgemen had been treating him suddenly made sense. They were perturbed to see Bridge Four come out of a battle in such good shape. Bridge Four was supposed to be unlucky. Everyone needed someone to look down on—and the other bridge crews could be consoled by the small mercy that they weren’t in Bridge Four. Kaladin had upset that.
This makes me wonder how Bridge Four developed. I see a couple of options. It could be part of Sadeas’ original plan for the bridges, supporting his callous program with a miserable set of scapegoats so that the rest of the bridgemen won’t mutiny or roll over and die. I think this is giving Sadeas too much credit, though. Another option is that his low-level officers dreamed up Bridge Four. This is more likely, since those officers are closer to the bridges, see and understand the bridgemen better, and have the most to lose from a mutiny. I think the most likely situation, however, is that the bridge team’s reputation developed naturally. Bridge Four had a couple terrible runs in a row and started to develop a reputation as the worst of the worst. The lower-level officers realized this and encouraged it by continuing to staff the bridge with the dredges. And so, a legacy of despair began.
Commentary:
I’d like to begin by saying how nice it is to come back to Kaladin at last. I haven’t covered a Kaladin chapter in months! And what’s more, he’s back to trying to lead. Kaladin’s leadership tactics aren’t exactly met with instant acceptance here, but he’s making huge inroads. Rock and Teft are clearly regenerating their personhood quickly through their association with Kaladin. Not only has he gotten them to reject death once again, he also has them caring about each other’s names and accepting goals beyond the limits of their own self-interest.
This may hurt my general Stormlight know-it-all cred, but I have no idea what’s up with Rock. He sees spren when they don’t want him to, which seems to imply an unusual relation between the Horneaters and spren. There’s definitely a culture of respect for spren at play here. I hope we learn more about this sooner rather than later.
Kaladin and Syl’s discussion of madness leaves me scratching my head. Yes, defining madness is psychologically and philosophically difficult, but to claim that being mad just means deviating from the psychic average of your community seems… reductive. Especially from Kaladin, a trained medic who regularly recognizes and diagnoses soldiers with “battle shock.” This ailment is a clear stand-in for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, a non-inherited psychological condition with a discernible cause and obvious effects. All that being said, I suppose Kaladin’s weird definition of madness isn’t that out-of-place in a conversation where he also opines that all lighteyes are liars. His heart’s in the right place, but Kaladin is still essentially an angry young man with angry-young-man opinions.
Not that Sadeas isn’t callous lying scum. He totally is! Kaladin nails his psychology here: “He wants the other bridgemen to see the wounded suffer and starve. He wants it to seem like he’s doing a mercy by leaving the wounded behind.” What’s most amazing about this is how Gaz react; by falling silent. He knows! He realizes how low the value is on bridgemen, and he realizes he’s not that high above them himself.
Chapter 22: Eyes, Hands, or Spheres?
Setting: The Shattered Plains
Point of View: Dalinar
What Happens: Dalinar and his sons attend a feast in Elhokar’s feasting basin, a lavish artificial lake full of dining islands where lighteyes compete in duels, the men with blades, the women with paintbrushes or songs. Dalinar heads to the men’s segregated dining island, scornful of his class’s frippery and waste.
Wit is perched on a high stool at the entrance to the dining area, insulting each person who walks by, although he gives Dalinar a pass. Dalinar engages with him, and learns that everyone is talking about his talk of abandoning the Vengeance Pact, despite Dalinar’s expectation that he had spoken to the king in confidence. Dalinar thanks him for the warning and turns to go, and Wit resumes his stream of insults, concluding with a name that catches Dalinar totally off guard: “Ah, and is that Lady Navani behind you? How long have you been back at the Plains and how did I not notice the smell?”
Dalinar is shocked. Navani, the king’s mother, his brother’s beautiful widow, is not supposed to be here, and he’s not prepared to face her, or his feelings for her. Society dictates that she now be treated as his sister, and on top of that he feels that loving her is a betrayal of his own wife. “Dead these ten years, wiped by his foolishness from his mind. Even if he couldn’t remember her, he should honor her.”
Dalinar takes refuge at his segregated dining table, and is presented with a dinner of imported peppered chicken. As he eats it he watches the competitions, and sees Navani gathering a group of important women to show them some kind of fabrial. As he observes it, she notices him, and flashes him a smile.
Adolin approaches, concerned by the rumors he’s been hearing. When Dalinar confirms them he groans, but Dalinar asks his son to trust him, and confides that he’s already trying a different strategy: winning the war. Adolin agrees that this is a good plan, but asks him to do something about the rumors. An official refutation isn’t good enough for Adolin; he wants his father to duel their detractors, or failing that to let him duel in his father’s place. Dalinar refuses both options, not just because the Codes forbid it, but because of a lesson from The Way of Kings:
“There’s a passage about the nature of forcing people to follow you as opposed to letting them follow you. We do too much forcing in Alethkar. Dueling someone because they claim I’m a coward doesn’t change their beliefs. It might stop them from making the claims, but it doesn’t change hearts. I know I’m right about this. You’ll just have to trust me on this as well.”
Adolin accepts this, then sees his aunt approaching. Dalinar realizes that he’s critically miscalculated; his dinner has been consumed, and there’s no longer any social boundary preventing Navani from approaching him. She arrives, and they talk about Adolin’s courtship tendencies, to the young man’s chagrin. Adolin hurries away to tell Renarin she’s returned, leaving Dalinar alone with his sister-in-law.
Navani gets a chair set up for her within speaking distance of the king’s table and tells Dalinar they have a lot to discuss. The Vedens have perfected their “half-shard” technology, shields that mimic Shardplate’s ability to stop a Shardblade. She realized that leaving the warcamps had been a political mistake, as the warcamps are more central to the kingdom than the capital, and Elhokar’s wife is more than capable of governing in his absence, which is good, because Navani knows her son isn’t doing a very good job ruling. They argue over this for a while, before Dalinar asks him for her third reason. “She smiled a violet-eyed, red-lipped smile at him. A meaningful smile.” Gulp. Navani asks to talk with Dalinar in private, to get a sense of things in camp. Dalinar feebly protests, but she wears him down.
Then Elhokar makes an announcement: He is appointing Sadeas as Highprince of Information, and tasking him with figuring out who cut his saddle girth. Navani is mostly all right with this, until Dalinar explains that the strap snapped on one of his hunts, while the king was under his protection, and that he had been tasked with investigating it. “‘You still argue he isn’t a bad king?’ Navani whispered. ‘My poor, distracted, oblivious boy.’”
Dalinar confronts Elhokar, asking why he let Sadeas be Highprince of Information but didn’t make Dalinar Highprince of War. Elhokar explains that this is a way to ease the highprinces into the idea. Sadeas said it would be better to start with something less threatening. Yes, Sadeas suggested this appointment, why do you ask, uncle? Elhokar is confident that Sadeas will vindicate Dalinar in his insistence that the king’s in less danger than he claims.
Dalinar is far less convinced that Sadeas is going to vindicate him.
Quote of the Chapter:
“Wit,” Dalinar said, “Do you have to?” “Two what, Dalinar?” Wit said, eyes twinkling. “Eyes, hands, or spheres? I’d lend you one of the first, but—by definition—a man can have only one I, and if it is given away, who would be Wit then? I’d lend you one of the second, but I fear my simple hands have been digging in the muck far too often to suit one such as you. And if I gave you one of my spheres, what would I spend the remaining one on? I’m quite attached to both of my spheres, you see.” He hesitated. “Or, well, you can’t see. Would you like to?” He stood up off his chair and reached for his belt.
First of all, groan. Second, this is Wit at his very most Shakespearean. This speech could belong to any of Shakespeare’s fools. It’s full of philosophically revelatory puns and stupid body humor.
Now that I’ve read this speech three or four times, though, new depths are revealing themselves to me. In compact succession Wit manages to problematize Dalinar’s sense of self (Eyes/I’s), poke fun at the rigid, caste- and gender-based norms of Dalinar’s society which are so prominently on display in this chapter (Hands used for labor and covered in muck both physical and social not being fit for a highprince), and the extravagance of lighteyes wealth, plus a balls joke for good measure.
Commentary:
Vorin lighteyes culture is so weird, you guys.
In this chapter we learn that Vorin men and women are expected to eat and enjoy different cuisines entirely. Men eat very spicy food, women eat very sweet food, and ne’er the twain shall meet. Not only that, but lighteyes men and women don’t eat at the same table. That is incredibly inconvenient!
What actually weirds me out the most about this is the fact that the male/female cuisine divide persists at Kaladin’s social level. This means that even those who aren’t particularly well-to-do are expected waste hours preparing two separate meals every night. This is another indication of how Vorinism has been structured to ossify the cultural practices of the ruling class.
On top of that we have the incredible extravagance of the ruling class. They made a lake to have parties on! They have art duels! Everyone is dressed in lace in a time of war! They’re even eating chicken! This last may seem mundane, but it isn’t at all. The Shattered Plains are about as far east as people go on Roshar, and chickens only live in Shinovar, on the far western end of the supercontinent.
This chapter introduces us to Navani Kholin, widow to Gavilar, would-be lover of Dalinar, and generally terrifying social presence. I really like Dalinar. He’s maybe my favorite character. And I also really like Navani as a brilliant scientist and powerful social force. There are aspects of their relationship that I’m ambivalent about, however. I like Dalinar’s internal conflict between doing what he knows he wants and honoring what society demands, and I like how that conflict helps reveal the nonsensical nature of those demands. And in a way, I find Navani’s ongoing pursuit of Dalinar to empower her. But I also feel like his perception of her as a predatory force in his life is a problem.
What I do love is the way the Dalinar/Navani romance plot interfaces with Dalinar’s guilt over forgetting his wife. Dalinar believes he loved her, that he was devoted to her, but that is based entirely on his self-image and the testimony of his family and friends. He doesn’t have any vestige of her to remain loyal to, but he badly wants to. Whether for the sake of his children or for the preservation of his public image, or perhaps simply because he doesn’t want to see himself as someone who would betray her, Dalinar is struggling to maintain his loyalty to a woman whose face is a blank to him, whose name he can’t remember, who no longer has any presence in his mind at all.
Navani does provide us with another glimpse of fabrial technology. Roshar is actually in the middle of something of a scientific renaissance. Vedenar is getting close to reproducing Shardplate, Navani and her cohort are doing incredible things with fabrials, inventing things like spanreeds that enable near-instant communication at a great distance, and all of this before the magic has begun to reenter the world. I wonder whether the powers that Jasnah, Shallan, Kaladin and Dalinar reintroduce will meld with this technological progress or compete with it. With Sanderson, I’m willing to bet on the latter.
Sadeas completely and totally outplayed Dalinar here. True, it isn’t exactly as bad as Dalinar suspects, but it’s nevertheless chilling how easily Sadeas maneuvered Dalinar’s request to his own advantage. And I agree with Dalinar, Highprince of Information is just as threatening a position as Highprince of War.
That’s it for this week, but you should keep an eye out for more exciting Sanderson news and content on Tor.com in the coming week. Until then, I’ll see you all in the comments!
Carl Engle-Laird is the editorial assistant and resident Stormlight Archive correspondent for Tor.com. You can follow him on Twitter here.Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
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OJ Simpson is one of the greatest Trojans of all-time. A unanimous two-time All-American, Simpson won the 1968 Heisman Trophy and was a member of USC’s 1967 national championship team.
OJ Simpson will also soon be a free man.
Granted parole from his felony armed robbery conviction last week, Simpson will be free on Oct. 1. The question, then, if you’re a reporter at Pac-12 media days is whether or not USC will welcome back one of its most accomplished — if not favorite — sons.
The answer? Uh, no.
Clay Helton on OJ: "Right now what the administration and the athletic department have said is, no, OJ will not be a part of our functions" — John Hayes (@johnP_hayes) July 27, 2017
To be clear, Simpson has not indicated he wanted to be part of USC football again. The 70-year-old indicated to the parole board he would return to Florida if granted his freedom.
USC has distanced itself from Simpson ever since his 1994 double-murder trial, but his Heisman Trophy remains on display at Heritage Hall.The L.A. Riots. The Northridge Earthquake. The AIDS crisis. Proposition 187. Fires. Mudslides. White flight. Recession and joblessness. The departure of the aerospace industry. The departures of the Rams and the Raiders. The OJ Simpson trial. The murder of Biggie Smalls. Gang warfare.
“The ’90s,” as Zócalo Public Square publisher Gregory Rodriguez put it, “were rough” on Los Angeles. Rodriguez was moderating a Zócalo/Museum of Contemporary Art event at MOCA Grand Avenue provocatively titled, “Were the ’90s L.A.’s Golden Age?”
Tallying up the iconic Southern California disasters mentioned by the panelists over the course of the evening, the question might seem almost laughable. “But the reaction to the roughness was pretty extraordinary as well,” Rodriguez told an energetic crowd, many of whom clearly had lived through it. “There was this sense of vitality to the era.”
While the first half of the decade “was horrendous,” said Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, the second half marked a comeback that built the Los Angeles of today, and gave the city a greater sense of self. He recalled a UCLA professor telling him he was “parochial” for choosing the L.A. economy as the focus of his scholarship. But after watching the city nearly fall apart, almost every major institution of higher education formed a department dedicated to studying the city. “We rediscovered Los Angeles as academics in the 1990s,” he said, noting that today it can be hard to keep up with all the literature written about the city, a sharp departure from the early 1990s.
“For me, Los Angeles in the ’90s was all about culture,” recalled MOCA’s chief curator, Helen Molesworth. “When the needle dropped on NWA’s Straight Outta Compton, something shifted for me and a lot of my friends.” That was 1988, but for her it was when the ’90s began. “L.A. was all of a sudden a place where culture was made,” she said. MOCA’s 1992 exhibition “Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s” was a landmark event, as was watching the emergence of artists like Mike Kelley and Catherine Opie, “artists to be reckoned with,” said Molesworth. “The birth of L.A. as a culture engine is really the 1990s.”
Why, asked Rodriguez, did L.A. begin to take itself seriously in the 1990s?
Hollywood had always been the producer of mainstream culture for most of America, noted Harold Meyerson, the current executive editor of The American Prospect who served the same role at L.A. Weekly throughout the ’90s. The change came thanks to growing cultural legitimacy, but also to a political evolution that resulted from the chaotic events of the first half of the decade. It was “a story of the rise of a kind of Latino working class finally finding itself, finding an identity, and finding some power,” he said. The backlash in response to Proposition 187—a ballot initiative that banned undocumented immigrants from using state services including public education and non-emergency health care—changed Los Angeles politics. It birthed a new generation of Latino activists and brought together Latinos, the labor movement, and progressives in a coalition that changed the city and eventually the state then the country, Meyerson said.
Guerra elaborated on the changes brought about by this new coalition, including bringing Latinos into positions of political power, helping Los Angeles pass a 1997 bond measure allocating $2.4 billion to the building of new LAUSD schools, and passing propositions that led to the building of mass transit for those who couldn’t afford cars.
Turning to University of Southern California race and pop culture scholar Dr. Todd Boyd, Rodriguez asked how these changes, both political and demographic—as Anglos left the city and a Latino majority emerged—manifested themselves in depictions of Los Angeles at the time.
Boyd listed a number of movies that showed “Los Angeles as a destination but also as a unique identity”: Boyz n the Hood, Menace II Society, American Me, Boogie Nights, and Short Cuts. West Coast hip-hop emerged as a major force in music during this period as well. Today, the gang activity of the time and the way it seeped into popular discourse is “safe” and “nostalgic”; Straight Outta Compton was a blockbuster movie last summer. “But at the time, the elements that make up that film were taking place in the streets,” said Boyd. “It’s one thing to sit here now and look back on it fondly. But it’s another thing to have lived in the midst of it.”
These changes weren’t necessarily in evidence in the contemporary art world at the time, said Molesworth. In “Don’t Look Back: The 1990s at MOCA,” on view at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA through July 11, 2016, only one work makes any mention of the 1992 riots. It was made, said Molesworth, by an African-American artist in New York who was depicting a white German critic’s obsession with these events. “This was still an extremely white institution concerned with problems of whiteness,” said Molesworth. And at the time, they would not even have been called “problems of whiteness … because they were just the problems of the culture.” She added, “When we look back on the ’90s, we look through the frame of the current moment.”
As the event drew to a close, Rodriguez asked the panelists to reflect on what is better and worse about the Los Angeles of today versus the Los Angeles of the 1990s.
“There was an edge, a sense of momentum, having been through these hells,” said Meyerson.“Recovering from all this there was a certain sense of bouncing back.” He added, somewhat ruefully (and with the caveat that he is only a visitor to the city and no longer a resident), “I don’t get a sense of a kind of momentum and edge today.”
Boyd recalled visiting downtown Los Angeles before he moved here in 1992. “I just remember how amazed I was at how barren downtown L.A. was,” he said. “It was not centralized, and there really wasn’t much going on at all.” A few years later, he decided to move downtown; people thought he was crazy. Not anymore. “This has become the hottest part of L.A. To go from it being barren and nothing to being crowded with traffic, multiple cultural options, multiple dining options, to have witnessed this and to have had it grow up around me—is one of the most interesting changes to L.A.,” he said.
Before turning the discussion over to an audience question-and-answer session that touched on the decline of Westwood as a destination and the problem of homelessness from the 1990s to the present, Rodriguez turned back to the central question of the evening: “I think we can conclude that while we had an edge and sense of momentum in the 1990s, it was not L.A.’s golden era.”Unlike most Englishmen, I am lucky enough to have lived in Scotland. Better still, I did so as a small and impressionable child who has ever afterwards been comforted and reassured by Scottish voices and moved by Scottish landscapes.
I enjoy the seriousness of the place. You can keep your Golden Gate and your Sydney Harbour Bridge – no prospect gives a more powerful demonstration of man’s heroic triumph over gravity than the original Forth Bridge, and the setting – stern and wild – is matchless. Though, like many such imperial prospects, it would look even better with a few huge grey warships nearby.
I wept when I left – for an England I didn’t know – on a steam-hauled southbound sleeper, and still remember looking longingly from the train through the flashing diagonals of the great bridge, wishing I wasn’t going.
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Alex Salmond takes a moment to take in the Forth Bridge as he flew over it on his way to Edinburgh
To this day I’m thrilled whenever I return. I love the exhilarating difference between us and them, and have enjoyed most of the growing assertion of Scottishness in recent years, though I can manage without Gaelic signs on railway stations, which I suspect are as baffling to most Scots as they are to me.
So I could never really join in what I saw as a shallow English resentment at the Scottish aspiration for independence. The Scots are a people, Scotland is a country, and the demand for self-rule is reasonable.
We wasted many years, and made enemies out of friends, by refusing Home Rule to Ireland. Why make the same mistake again? I couldn’t be romantic about it because I understand – as most in Britain do not – that there is no true independence for any territory ruled by the EU. But I could see why Scots got cross when they were told separation from England would make them poorer.
So what? The power to rule yourself is priceless. Isn’t our history full of people who put liberty above money? So I set out for my old home in Rosyth, and the lovely ancient capital in Dunfermline, in two minds.
I didn’t fit neatly into anyone’s preconceptions, and nor did the Scots I spoke to. It was easy to fall into conversation with people, easier than it would have been in England.
There was the quietly humorous shopkeeper who gave me a quick run-down on Dunfermline’s modern political geography – still very much a matter of Catholic and Protestant, whatever anyone may tell you. It wasn’t all that different from what you might have heard in Armagh City in Northern Ireland.
He was keener on the Union than I was, one of the lost legion who once made the Tory Party the biggest political force in Scotland, most of them now well over 50. They are not making them like that any more, and when they are gone the ‘yes’ vote will be far more powerful.
His Scotland was the country I remembered, the smell of coal smoke on the sharp winds, the mines and heavy industry, and the thin-faced, serious people educated in stern and rigorous schools. That’s all gone.
Scots living in England were unable to vote in the referendum, but people of foreign nationality living in Scotland were
The schools these days are as soppy and comprehensive as ours, and outside one of them – being used as a polling station – I encountered another feature of the new Scotland.
I was chatting to a teller from the ‘No’ campaign when we were approached by a man who could barely speak English and who looked to me as if he might well be Burmese. Touchingly, he had no idea how to vote, and wanted to have it explained to him.
We sent him inside for official advice, but I had two sharp opposite thoughts. The first was a sort of joy at a fellow-creature having his first taste of democracy; the other was to wonder why such a person should have more power than I did to change the face of my country.
The next person I met was a cheerful citizen who had decided that morning to vote ‘Yes’. It was a pure gamble, a gesture of revolt against a life that hadn’t offered him much – he hated, above all, the absence of any work except on miserable wages.
Independence (as I think he knew) wouldn’t change that one bit. He just wanted to show he was alive, and relished the power to hurt those who had done nothing for him.
Then I took a train to Cowdenbeath, once a coal-mining town, deep in Gordon Brown territory, its wonderfully bleak name best known from the weekly recitation of the football results.
Now it’s a town of people who used to work, their occupations gone – though it has somehow managed to acquire a sizeable Polish population and a small Turkish community.
A magnificent, upright old lady with an umbrella, walking stoutly to the polls through the drizzle, filled me with guilt by denouncing, in beautiful, grammatical and clearly enunciated English, the silly delusions of the ‘Yes’ campaign, who were promising to spend money they hadn’t got on things they couldn’t afford.
She wouldn’t say how she was voting – like a lot of ‘No’ voters – partly because she had been brought up to believe in the secret ballot. But it wasn’t hard to guess. Yet the young woman with the two children, one in a pushchair, made an equally moving case for ‘Yes’.
Deserted by her husband, stricken early in life with cancer, anxious to work but compelled to travel |
there. It’s very clean, very quiet. That was the approach to Du Pont as well, to reveal bits and pieces of him, and not reveal too much.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Carell in his breakthrough role, The 40-year-old Virgin. Photograph: Allstar/UNIVERSAL/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar
Dwelling extensively on Du Pont’s psychosexual disposition would have made Foxcatcher a different film, but Carell – perhaps betraying a little of the uncertainty of someone dipping their toes into water outside their comfort zone – appears somewhat in awe of his director. He is fulsomely outspoken in his praise for Miller (“a special and talented film-maker”) and still appears slightly baffled how he got the role at all. “He saw in me the potential to do something I hadn’t done before.” Carell says his agent put him forward for the role without telling him; when he got the call from Miller it was “a pleasant surprise”. He also seems happy to be steered by Miller’s assessment of his career profile: “Bennett says I have a benign public persona, and Du Pont did too. I think that’s why he cast me.”
Miller is not wrong. Carell, for all his renowned comedy-improv skills, exudes a niceness that verges on the bland. It’s hard enough to connect him with the stellar goofiness of Anchorman’s Brick Tamland, let alone the creepy self-infatuation of John du Pont. In the nicest possible way, Carell gently knocks back any suggestion that he has “dark places” himself that may have proved rewarding to disinter. “That would be a discussion with a therapist,” he says coyly. “But I didn’t need to do anything. Just to feel those rhythms, and feel where Bennett is going, and what the other actors are doing.”
The closest Carell gets to suggesting anything remotely off-beam is the effect on his fellow cast members when he climbed into the unpleasant teeth-hair-skin additions necessary for the Du Pont role. “I was treated differently when I looked like that. It wasn’t anything we anticipated. Once I arrived on set, people kept a distance from me. I think that, in a way, paralleled how Du Pont felt in life, so it was a good thing.”
This, apparently, extended to a remoteness from his co-stars Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo. “I didn’t get to know Mark or Channing very well while we were shooting. It wasn’t anything planned, we just naturally didn’t interact, aside from the scenes we were doing. We didn’t hang out, or bond.”
However Carell takes fright at any suggestion he may be getting into method acting – “I’m so hesitant to talk about that, because it sounds so pretentious” – preferring instead to heap more praise on Miller. “To be honest, it comes from the director. Bennett set a tone that the film wasn’t going to be glib.” It also seems to have helped that both the real-life Mark Schultz and Dave’s wife, Nancy, turned up to watch the filming: “That added a responsibility and a weight to what we were doing. I think we all felt the impetus to take it seriously.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Carell with Mark Ruffalo in Foxcatcher. Photograph: Sony Pictures/Courtesy Eve/R
All of which is a far cry, of course, from the competitive chuckleheadedness of Anchorman; he rolled on to the sequel straight after finishing Foxcatcher. “God, it could not have been more different. There was no levity at all when we were shooting Foxcatcher. Anchorman 2 was nothing but silly.” It begs the question: how did he manage it? Wasn’t there a culture shock? “I try to approach it all in the same way. I don’t think a character knows they are in a comedy or a drama. If Du Pont’s life hadn’t ended the way it did, it could be an absurdist comedy: a millionaire who likes wrestling.”
Yes, but Carell is far from the first comic who has headed over to the serious side of town – and more than one has ended up losing the funny. Is he concerned? “Not really. To me, they are different styles of entertainment, with different methods.
“I’ve never cared about being taken seriously – I just see myself as an actor. Most of my career, I’ve just taken what I’ve been offered. I always feel most comfortable as part of a ensemble. Whether it’s a comedy or a drama, I like to fit in. It’s best not to stick out.”
By now, I’m thinking Carell is a most cautious film star. Perhaps the clue to it all comes via a throwaway line as it gets close to chucking-out time. Discussing his near-ubiquity since he hit the big time with The 40-Year-Old Virgin and the US version of The Office in 2005, Carell suddenly turns hard. “You know, that didn’t happen till I was 40. All of that came to pass after I had a long career as an actor. It sounds such an aw-shucks kind of thing to say, but I just wanted to make a living. That was the goal: to be able to have a family and support them.”
All the carapace of professionalism, the studious responses, the thoroughly non-anarchic kidding around make a lot more sense if you consider what must have been a 20-year hack through the lower reaches of the improv comedy circuit, the painful process of guest-actor auditions and down-the-bill status jockeying. Carell has always been a bit of a poster boy for the joys of family life, but his stories about the impact of parenthood become intensely resonant. He launches into a well-rehearsed anecdote about trying out for a Julia Louis-Dreyfus sitcom called Watching Ellie shortly after the birth of his daughter. For him, the point is that fatherhood made him “relaxed”, and he ended up nailing it. But his analysis is telling: “For so long, the struggle was the career. The aim and goal was how to get the part, how to audition better, how to get ahead.”
For once, I don’t feel sceptical when Carell says he feels “very thankful to be part of a movie like this” and “even more thankful for the success” he’s had in general. Hollywood cliches they may be, but in the decade or so since The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Carell has defied all expectations – his, as well as ours – to find himself inching closer to the very top of the tree. An Oscar nomination may or may not be waiting for him in the next fortnight, but he remains admirably phlegmatic about his future acting prospects. “You always strive to be part of something decent, or even good. That’s the hope. But I don’t have a masterplan; I never did. The worst thing that could happen is that you’re terrible. And you learn from that.”
• Foxcatcher is released in the UK on 9 JanuaryWhen The 100 premiered last year, it looked a lot like any other science fiction show on The CW: a bunch of pretty people acting out a concept that had a tinge of social awareness. But this season, the show broke out of its post-apocalyptic reenactment of Lord of the Flies and became an interesting, challenging story.
Top image via Popinsomniacs.
The 100 did come to our TV sets with an interesting premise: a while back, the Earth was scorched by a nuclear war. Some of humanity managed to escape into space, where they’ve survived for a century aboard a space station called the “Ark.” At the start of the show, the Ark’s leadership decides to find out if the Earth has become habitable again, so they send 100 teenage criminals, including main character Clarke Griffin (Eliza Taylor), to the surface.
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That first season goes much the way you might expect: the kids scrabble on the surface, forming love triangles and alliances. They kill each other and get each other killed. They learn that they aren’t the only humans on Earth; the descendants of the war’s survivors are known as “Grounders,” and they’ve formed a brutal civilization in order to survive. There are insane, cannibalistic humans called Reapers (a bit of an obvious grab from Firefly). Clarke emerges as an important leader, one who uses cunning and her friends’ resourcefulness to keep the 100 alive.
The 100 was part of a pack of genre shows that the CW released over the last couple of years, a bit of science fiction spaghetti that the network decided to throw against the wall. Amidst shows like Star-Crossed and The Tomorrow People, The 100 was the one that stuck. And it hasn’t simply clung to life; The 100 has thrived. Last week, it wrapped up its second season, and viewers have been lauding it as the young adult answer to Battlestar Galactica.
So, how did The 100 go from pretty teenagers killing each other to a nuanced story of post-apocalyptic survival? Spoilers ahead.
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It Asks Hard Questions About What People Do To Survive
This season, The 100 saw two major changes: First, the Ark was evacuated and its inhabitants joined the remains of the 100 on Earth. And second, Clarke and 47 other kids found themselves inside the confines of Mount Weather, an underground city whose residents would die of radiation poisoning if they stepped outside. Both of these new developments led to some interesting questions, namely: What kind of people deserve to survive?
Fortunately, The 100 doesn’t try to nail down an answer to that question. It would be easy for The 100 to become a colonial narrative, with the Arkers portrayed as a civilizing force for the savage Grounders. But the show goes to great lengths to show us that the Grounders are, in fact, civilized. Their society is steeped in rules, religion, and tradition. But their lives are harsh and so they have a civilization that matches. And many of the Grounders are both intelligent and morally complex; in Season Two, we saw the Grounder commander Lexa outmaneuver and betray Clarke, even though Lexa was clearly in love with the Arker. The 100 is clear that these aren’t noble savages; these are people.
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Similarly, the show doesn’t turn Grounder culture into some idealistic font of brutal wisdom — even if Grounders do get the best makeup and clothes. Life on the Ark could be just as harsh in many ways — because of the limited resources in space, inhabitants were often executed for minor crimes — but that doesn’t mean that the Arkers should give up their identities or their hopes for a peaceful life. We spend a lot of time with the Grounders in Season Two, and yet, by the end of the season, it’s clear that the Ark survivors will have to build their own surface civilization. They don’t have to embrace Grounder values and traditions, even if they should respect how the Grounders have managed to survive.
The 100 is, in many ways, very anti-nationalistic. You don’t root for tribes; you root for individuals. The people under Mount Weather are, effectively, post-apocalyptic vampires. Because their bodies can’t filter out radiation, they steal blood from Grounders to treat incidences of radiation exposure. (It’s a plot conceit. Don’t overthink it.) But even after Mount Weather scientists start harvesting Arker kids for their bone marrow, we understand that many of the Mountain folk are ambivalent about the nature of their survival. It’s satisfying to watch the Grounder Lincoln get his revenge on Mount Weather’s sadistic usurper President Cage Wallce, but it’s heartbreaking to watch the city’s civilians lay down and die due to radiation exposure during the Arker-Mount Weather war.
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Image via Hypable.
In the second season finale, Clarke, shaken by the events under Mount Weather, laments to her mother that she tried to be the good guy. Abby responds, “Maybe there are no good guys.” We’re not left to celebrate the actions of the characters; we’re left to chew over them.
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Its Main Characters Get Genuinely Interesting Arcs
I will admit that, during the first season, I was not a huge fan of Clarke. She struck me as self-important and she kept getting caught up in boring love triangles. But in Season Two, we see her genuinely struggle with her values. Clarke needs to decide who and what she is willing to sacrifice to ensure her people’s survival. She needs to decide how much she should emulate the stoic Lexa and how much to listen to her mother’s admonitions. And, in the end, she comes to a rather mature realization: that being leader during these harsh times means being a moral scapegoat.
She realizes that there is value in being the bad guy, as long as her people don’t have to be bad guys. There is something gratifying about watching a protagonist who recognizes that she can’t just drive her swords into ploughshares when the battle is done, who recognizes that leadership means not just the sacrifice of others, but the sacrifice of self. It’s character growth where a character realizes that she isn’t necessarily better or stronger; she’s just a different person than she was before. (Plus, the revelation that Clarke is bisexual? Pretty cool.)
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She’s not the only one struggling with identity. Octavia, a girl whose very existence on the Ark was forbidden (the Ark had a one-child policy and Octavia was a second child) found some acceptance in Season Two among the Grounders. But even as she thrived in her role as a warrior and liaison, the show kept throwing personal choices at her. Octavia has had to decide who she is: Grounder, Arker, or just plain Octavia, and her choices are sure to have consequences for Season Three.
Another character who is bound to have an interesting third season is Jasper, who went full badass in order to protect his group from the great Mount Weather bone marrow harvest. Jasper became a leader, but he also saw the girl he loved, Mountain lady Maya, die in his arms. Even John Murphy, a character who was simply obnoxious in Season One, found purpose in Season Two as Thelonious Jaha’s surrogate son.
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It Keeps Moving The Ball Forward
Sometimes, The 100 still manages to be ridiculous. There are moments of turn-of-your-brain off goofiness (one episode, for example, revolved around a gorilla attack), and sometimes its best not to poke too hard at the show’s plot devices. But this is a show that keeps opening up its world. At the end of the first season, we got our first glimpse under Mount Weather and the second season revealed that survival on Earth has taken many forms. At the end of Season Two, we learned that an AI may have been responsible for starting that apocalyptic nuclear war a century ago, and she may not be done. Yes, we will be watching Season Three, thank you.
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We may have been lukewarm on The 100 at the start, but after this season, we’ve added this show to our must-watch list.
This article was originally published on March 19th, 2015.Would you play Magic Online if it was free?
David R Blocked Unblock Follow Following Feb 5, 2016
Assuming you play Magic in paper, I’m willing to bet you’d at the very least download the client, create an account, and give it a try. Maybe you don’t like the interface, maybe for you playing Magic about getting together with some friends and having a good time. But if you wanted to practice or just play more than you can at your local game store, I’m willing to bet a free Magic Online experience would be something you’d jumped into.
I don’t think Magic Online should be free. It’s a product that Wizards of the Coast is selling, just like paper magic. But I do think Wizards would benefit greatly from having the strong majority of players interested in their game on Magic Online. I don’t know what percentage of the total Magic-playing population uses Magic Online. If it was free, I could imagine that number being as high as 80–90%. If that many people playing Magic used Magic Online, Wizards could advertise and promote to the majority of their users in real time. Having direct access to your customers — no intermediaries involved — is incredibly beneficial to a business.
If we assume that Wizards wants us all to be playing Magic Online, what’s the best way to make that happen? Completely free is not the answer — the players gain everything, Wizards only gains easy access to their playerbase, while losing all the revenue that Magic Online provides. However, there is one incredibly obvious way to get the strong majority of players using Magic Online while still maintaining the entire revenue stream:
What if all “Constructed Open Play” rooms allowed you to play with cards you don’t own? This alone would be enough to get me using Magic Online daily. I could try out various decks across formats, see what I like, and very likely consider buying that deck and playing in 8-mans, dailies, and leagues.
Yes, some people would just play in these “free to play” constructed rooms. But it doesn’t take much for Wizards to get you to spend money on a game you love once you’re in the door. Analytics can help guide Wizards’ efforts to convert players to paying (e.g., if they see someone logging in often but never joining paid events, offer a discount for the first). I think this would drastically increase the number of players using Magic Online, and believe strongly that it would result in increased revenue overall (if perhaps less revenue per active user).
What do you think? If you don’t now, would you play Magic Online if you could play any deck for free in the constructed open play rooms?The political earthquakes of recent years can be summed up by the Brexiters’ rallying cry: “Take back control.” Across the world, rising insecurity, a lack of agency over the things that matter in our lives and a growing minority whose concerns and priorities are not heard or acted upon has created unprecedented political anger.
This “age of anger” is a global phenomenon and it has deep roots. The dominance of multinationals, now more powerful than many nation states, has entrenched a system that is built on an army of insecure, low-paid workers whose lives are not properly their own. A state that feels itself powerless to change the system instead tries to deal with the consequences, not the cause, getting tough on benefits claimants and demonising unemployed people.
When capital is dominant, purchasing power becomes a prerequisite for such basic human rights as safe, clean, affordable housing. In recent months, a single tower block in one of the most affluent areas of London horrifyingly came to symbolise the inhumanity of modern capitalism. Those who are poor also lack political strength, power or control over fundamental goods such as love, work, time and dignity.
The state must also act to limit the power of corporations. It will require courage and conviction to do this
Liberal socialism provides an essential counterbalance, built on the restatement of equal worth and guaranteed by a human rights framework. But it is in communities most deprived of these freedoms that the concept of human rights has become most widely discredited. Labour’s failure to embrace human rights – at worst viewing them as incompatible with socialism – is one of the great tragedies of our recent history.
The Grunwick strikers, feminist activists and race-relations campaigners of the 1970s understood that the struggle for liberty was at once a fight for social and economic emancipation; an individual and a collective struggle. Those collective rights, celebrated and championed throughout our history, have been lost in recent years and must be restored.
This is true of the Human Rights Act, which is often portrayed as simply advancing freedom for some groups of individuals over others. But take the case of Richard and Beryl Driscoll, who in 2006, at 89 years old, were told after a lifetime together that council rules prevented them from living out their lives in a care home together. The courts disagreed, judging that family life takes precedence over bureaucracy, not just for them but for any one of us. It is just one example of how the Human Rights Act enables us, collectively, to protect ourselves against arbitrary interference with our liberty.
In recent years, with judicial reviews restricted and legal aid slashed, those who seek redress through the courts find themselves faced with insurmountable obstacles. Charities and trade unions that have so often advanced these rights have themselves come under attack through the Lobbying Act and Trade Union Act. Restoring access to justice and repealing those restrictive laws are essential.
Welcome to the age of anger | Pankaj Mishra Read more
The state must also act to limit the power of corporations. This can only be achieved through international action, through those very institutions – the EU and Nato – that have been so attacked and discredited in recent decades. It will require courage and conviction to change this. Action cannot be limited simply to regulation, but must instead restate the dominance of democracy to ensure that decisions are driven by the interests of people, not profit, and that shared challenges, such as climate change, are negotiated in the interests of the many. It means nothing short of a reimagining of the relationship between government and private interest, creating a transparent, accountable global system in which no company is too powerful to be held to account and in which an economy exists to work for us, not us for it.
More challenging for the left is the pressing need to reimagine the role of the state. In recent decades the left has come to believe that the state’s inherent purpose is simply the redistribution of wealth, and in doing so has neglected the restoration of power in its widest sense. The era of a state in which decisions are made by a small few is over. In future the role of governments will be to facilitate shared decisions, not simply to make them.
It requires a left that takes seriously the prospect of devolution. Not just the George Osborne model of transfer of decision-making from one group of men in Whitehall to another in the town hall, but a commitment to a genuinely federal model in which real power is held much closer to people.
Now that we have seen the disastrous political consequences that despair breeds, it would be criminal not to take heed. If the fractures that have emerged can be healed, it will demand of us nothing less than a commitment to liberal socialism, underpinned by an unshakeable belief in our intrinsic human rights that restores power to its rightful owners once more.
• Lisa Nandy is the Labour MP for WiganEighteen-year-old Tyler Akeeagok thought his dreams of playing junior hockey were shattered after he was robbed and left penniless during the tryouts for the Sault Ste. Marie Thunderbirds, but the kindness of a local cop and fire department turned things around.
"I was sleeping and two guys came to my room," Akeeagok said. "They broke the door and told me to get under the blankets."
Akeeagok, who has been playing hockey since he was a young boy, had worked the entire summer to pay for a trip from Iqaluit to the Junior A tryouts.
The motel where Akeeagok was robbed. (submitted by Tyler Akeeagok) The men stole the young hockey player's cellphone, passport, laptop and all of his money. They also cut his motel room's phone cord and threatened to harm his family if he spoke to the police.
"I was just really scared, I felt so vulnerable, I was just thinking about my family," says Akeeagok.
The young hockey player spent the night alone and afraid in the motel room until the sun rose, then he made his way to a nearby gas station and called his family.
His family encouraged him to report the robbery to the police.
'I just really wanted to help him'
The officer who responded to the call was Const. Beau Neveau, who just happened to be from the Batchewana First Nation and who once played hockey for the Thunderbirds, the team Akeeagok was trying out for.
'I was alone,' says Tyler Akeeagok, 'this guy comes along and he helps me out a lot.' (submitted by Tyler Akeeagok)
"I just really wanted to help him," says Neveau, "I felt I had the same kind of background and the same interest and love for hockey."
Neveau invited Akeeagok to live with him and his family for the remainder of the tryouts.
"I was so happy, it was probably like winning a lottery ticket," said Akeeagok.
Having Neveau's support made all the difference.
"I was alone, a kid from the North — didn't really know what was going on — no family, no one to talk to, didn't know anyone — this guy comes along and he helps me out a lot."
When some of the firefighters in town involved with the hockey league heard Akeeagok's story they also decided to lend a hand.
'We didn’t want to leave Tyler with a sour impression of our town,' says Jeff Toms chair of the charity committee for the Sault Ste Marie firefighters. (submitted by Tyler Akeeagok )
"We didn't want to leave Tyler with a sour impression of our town," says Jeff Toms, chair of the charity committee for the Sault Ste Marie firefighters.
The firefighters raised $500 to help Akeeagok make it through the rest of the tryouts.
'It shows how strong our community is and how tight-knit the hockey community is," says Neveau.
In the end Akeeagok didn't end up making the Thunderbirds, but the coach got him a tryout for the Elliot Lake Wildcats.
And after just one practice session, Akeeagok made the team as a forward.Found on r/AskReddit.
The identity of the Sea Peoples. Around 1200 BC civilization was progressing rapidly in the Eastern Mediterranean, with the Egyptians, Hittites, Greeks, and Minoans all having advanced cultures. Then suddenly a bunch of Bronze Age vikings appear out of no where and destroy everything, setting back civilization by 1000 years. To this day, no one knows who they were or where they came from.
How about the Great Leap Forward? All of a sudden, out of the blue, about 40,000 years ago we develop cave painting, music, burial, simple jewelery (clay beads and the like). No evidence I’m aware of showing any of that before then.
I wish we knew more about the rise and fall of the Incas. Being able to develop a city like Machu Picchu buried deep within the Andes Mountains, with engineered lands for farming and massive stone formations, while only lasting for about 85 years before the city was completely abandoned.
Linguistically, the Great Vowel shift. For an unknown reason during the Middle Ages the British speakers of English changed virtually all vowel pronunciations over the short span of 1-2 generations. Incredible cultural mystery.
Antikythera Mechanism. It’s an analog computer dating back 2000 years ago that was used to display astronomical cycles. Nothing as complex as it was seen for another 1000 years. (PBS Link)
The Voynich manuscript is a pretty interesting one.
I submit the 12,000 year old city of Gobekli Tepe – Who built it? Why? Where did they go?
I don’t know about most amazing, but the Money Pit on Oak Island is pretty amazing. There are some YouTube videos on it, basically a pit that is man made that can’t be dug out.
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This ancient city (Mohenjo-daro) with a load of skeletons and glazed rock as if a nuke had gone off.
Easter Island Heads. Not an event per se, more their actual existence and the mystery behind their creation.
What’s the meaning of Stonehenge?
I’m surprised no one has said coral castle or at least I haven’t seen it. Very interesting place built by hand by one man who took the secret of how to his grave and only left hints in an insane and rambling book that no-one has decoded yet.
The Nazca Lines are pretty interesting.
For me, I think it would be the ‘Dancing Plague of 1518’. Some people have theorized it was psychedelic fungus, others think it was just massive stress driving people to have breakdowns and dance until they died. Whatever the reason, I find it incredibly interesting.
Benjamin Kyle. Man who woke up behind burger King with absolutely no memory of who he is. Every test done to find his identity has failed, his fingerprints, DNA, etc. do not match any person on file. Nobody has a clue who this guy is.
Who the hell was Kaspar Hauser.
What was held inside the Library of Alexandria? What was the knowledge inside of that library that still, as present day, we have no evidence of what ancient secrets it held.
The Tunguska event sounds pretty interesting. The leading theory is that an airburst meteorite caused it, but nobody’s completely sure.
Rasputin, seriously. What was he, where did he come from? He couldn’t have been human.
The Black knight satellite, supposedly a 13,000 year old satellite that has been in polar orbit. The Red Headed Giants. A group of people that existed a few thousand years ago, supposedly the “Nephilim.”
The Green Children of Woolpit freaked me out when I first heard of them.
What was that silent mile wide V shaped object up in the air. Thousands of people saw it. Even the mayor admitted later that he didn’t know what it was.
What about the Philadelphia Experiment? Where a naval ship “cloaked” and then re-materialized, embedding some men within the bulkhead. Hoax or no?
Mysterious Russian radio signal that’s never been fully explained (and a few others like it). I know the truth is probably boring as hell, but I’d still like to know!
Not an ‘event’ but the life of Edgar Cayce.
Tens of thousands of people saw the sun dance around in the sky one day in 1917. Catholics claimed it was a miracle from God, but I don’t buy that explanation. Something weird happened though.
Where the Etruscan Language came from, it isn’t so much a Indo-European Language as it is a language more closely related to the Turks or the Finnish, which is strange as to how those people got there and built an extremely advanced civilization that would eventually be annexed by the Romans through a mix of war and Cultural marriages.
Polynesians populating the Pacific ocean islands and even parts of South America as early as 1800 B.C. DNA tests have been done and confirmed the extent of their “Explorations”, but the things that gets me are why they decided to travel into the great unknown in the first place? and a how advanced their technology had to be to find these islands. They didn’t just randomly drift into them. Tests have been done showing how unlikely this is. They would have to possess complex knowledge of currents and what not. Just incredible stuff!
In 1948 a dead man was found on Somerton Beach, Australia, with the cause of death and identity of the man both being unknown. What separates this case from other unidentified, unexplained deaths are the highly bizarre details in the case, leading many to assume that international espionage or other conspiracies might have been involved. Despite being newly deceased, no one has been able to identify the man, who carried no identification or passport, only a pack of English cigarettes, Juicy Fruit gum, several unused train tickets, and most mysteriously a scrap of the last page of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyat -a collection of Persian Sufi poems and very rare book at the time- sewed into a hidden compartment in his pants. On this scrap the words “Taman Shud”, “it is finished” in Persian, were wrote. As the only clue, police issued a search for all copies of the Rubiayat, looking for a copy missing the final page. An tip came forward that a private citizen living in Somerton had such a book. Upon examining the book, the investigators noted that not only was the final page missing, but a jumble of letters was written on the inside back cover. Tests showed the paper found on the body matched the book, and police assumed the writing was some kind of code. According to the man, who remained anonymous, several weeks before the body was found he had left a copy of the Rubaiyet in his car, unlocked. Cryptologists have been unable to break the code. The autopsy revealed absolutely nothing, aside from the fact that the man had eaten shortly before his death. No apparent cause of death lead authorities to assume poisoning, yet toxicological reports found no identifiable poisons in the body, and the cause of death remains a mystery. And finally, during the course of the investigation authorities discovered an eerily similar case had occurred 3 years earlier in which a Singaporean man by the name George Marshall was found dead in Sydney. No cause of death could be determined- and a copy of the Rubaiyat was found on his body.
There are a lot of theories, but no proof of what they were actually used for (as far as I know). But really cool to think that an ancient civilization might have had some form of electricity for everyday use.
The color blue is never mentioned in any form of writing amongst all cultures up until a few hundred years ago.
A couple years ago there was a strange noise heard all around the world. A lot of people try and say it’s that HARRP government thing but honestly i don’t see how any technology could make such a loud noise. There are hundreds of videos online of the same type of noise from Europe, Russia, America, Canada. literally all over the world.
The riddle about the Yonaguni Island. Is it man made and if so, who built it?
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And read this blockbuster new novel — about a teenager who wakes up with memories that don’t belong to him.Maidstone is a 1970 American independent drama film written, produced, and directed by Norman Mailer.
It stars Norman Mailer, Rip Torn, and Isabelle Dufresne. Mailer plays a filmmaker running for president who makes a movie while campaigning, fights with every political party and his wife, and has his life threatened. Critical reviews were rather negative for the film.
The film's title refers to a town in England called Maidstone.
Synopsis [ edit ]
When famous film director Norman Kingsley, a symbol of Norman Mailer's "The White Negro" runs for President, a group of friends, relatives, employees, and lobbyists gather to discuss possible assassination plots against Kingsley's life. While producing his latest film about a brothel, his brother Raoul continues to cling to him for his money.
Cast [ edit ]
Actor Role Norman Mailer Norman Kingsley Rip Torn Raoul Rey O'Houlihan Joy Bang Joy Broom Beverly Bentley Chula Mae Kingsley (Kingsley's wife) Jean Campbell Jean Cardigan Lee Cook Lazarus Terrayne Crawford Terry Crawford Buzz Farber Luis Robert Gardiner "Secret Service Chief" Leo Garen "The Producer" Luba Harrington "Russian Delegate" Ultra Violet Ultra Violet
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Paul Austin
Ann Barry
Eddie Bonette
Steve Borton
Robert Byrne
Paul Carroll
Lang Clay
Harold Conrad
Billy Copley
John De Menil
Tony Duke
Tim Hickey
Ron Hobbs Kahlil
Evelyn Larson
Robert Lucid
Mara Lynn
Diana MacKenzie
John Maloon
John Manazanet
Michael McClure
Carolyn McCullough
David McMullin
Penny Milford
Glenna Moore
Leonard Morris Adeline Naiman
Ula Ness
Alfonso Ossorio
Noel E. Parmentel, Jr.
Maggie Peach
Alice Raintree
Jack Richardson
Joe Roddy
Lee Roscoe
Bianca Rosoff
Peter Rosoff
Barney Rosoff
Shari Rothe Cliff Sager
Lucy Saroyan
Brenda Simley
Lane Smith
Sally Sorrell
Greer St. John
Carol Stevens
Danae Tom
José Torres
Hervé Villechaize
Jan Pieter Welt
Bud Wirtschafter
Harris Yulin
Penelope Milford
Justin Bozung points out Norman Mailer's determination to cast non-actors in Maidstone and other films accompanied his belief that "we are all actors in our daily lives". Mailer's determination to blur reality and fiction as scenarios unfold could only be achieved by capturing true responses to situations. Many of Mailer's casts were chosen from friends who "reflect facets of his persona".
Plot [ edit ]
Norman T. Kingsley is a filmmaker who is known as the "American Bunuel", and he is working on a sexually provocative drama about a brothel with both female and male employees. Throughout this documentary,which is broken down into twelve chapters, Kingsley has his friends, actors, "wanna-be" actresses, and other colleagues join him on his estate in Upstate New York to audition for and work on his sexual drama. The different chapters in Maidstone are filmed in documentary form, The movie depicts Kingsley's everyday lifestyle as an actor and filmmaker. Kingsley chooses the cast for his film which is made of several different men and women. Kingsley refers to himself as a narcissist. Several nice looking women are shown auditioning for a role in Kingsley's film, and Kingsley is shown criticizing them heavily. He places himself within the film to show the women actresses what he is looking for in his film. Kingsley is very realistic and convincing in his own acting. In addition to directing his film, he is also campaigning to become the president and, in doing so, he attracts journalists, scholars, and some African American radicals who question him about his campaign. Some of the attention that he draws leads to a group of people, known as PAX,C, discussing the need to have Kingsley assassinated. One scene in Maidstone also shows a boxing style fight scene between Norman Mailer and Co-Star Rip Torn. The fight scene contributed to the legacy of Maidstone (See Legacy). Below is a general breakdown of what takes place in each chapter of Maidstone. Mailer decided to break the film into twelve chapters. Besides number 12, "Silences of an Afternoon", all of the chapters refer directly to the context of the plot. Chapter details are included in the chapter summaries below.
(Note: Norman Mailer intentionally spelled out the numeral "Eight" in that chapter of the film.)
Chapter One: A Meeting of High Officials [ edit ]
The film opens with a male voice presenting a series of news casts by British commentator, Jean Cardigan, who is known in England for the intimacy in her portraits of the great and the near |
’re aiming for a girls’ manga style, so from the very beginning we thought a woman’s delicate styling would be best. Then we heard about a woman named Yukie Sako who could draw really strong likenesses (laughs) and thought “It would be interesting if Ms. Sako would illustrate Sailor Moon!” That’s how we had you come to the audition.
Sako: Thank you very much. It was a shock.
– Including the tokusatsu of 10 years ago, this will be the third time the series has been brought to life on film. What are your goals this time?
Sakai: Ever since the beginning our concept has been to bring the world of the manga just as it is to life on screen, so my thoughts were “Let’s aim this at the women who watched the show in real time years ago and offer them something that glimmered in their childhood.” I thought it would be good if we could make a show that made women in their late twenties think “How beautiful!” or “How cool!” or even “This makes me nostalgic!” These women have become members of society, experienced their own hardships and have experienced a reality that’s different from that childhood dream of “a prince on a white horse.”
Sako: In other words, it’s so that “jaded” women who are tired of real life can forget it for a while? (laughs)
Sakai: Ahahaha. I hope they’ll remember the dreams they had when they were young girls. So I want to portray beauty, coolness, and aestheticism from a woman’s perspective. I hope to give them the delicate acting of a girls’ anime, the beautiful flow of the clothes and hair and make every important detail beautiful.
– Ms. Sako, as you worked on your designs what things did you focus on?
Sako: For me, this isn’t a remake; it’s “the first anime based on the original manga.” The only thing is that the original manga is 20 years old, so I had to match Ms. Takeuchi’s illustration style while making it more modern and also more anime-like… the hurdles were pretty high (laugh). I started with the cover illustrations from the Perfect Edition manga as the base for my designs.
Sakai: I know you started with Sailor Moon’s design, but it took you a pretty long time to finish it, right?
Sako: That’s right. That was because it was essential that I decide the direction I was going to take the design in. I just couldn’t achieve the balance of Ms. Takeuchi’s style. It was hard to notice it myself, but I kept drifting towards a more modern anime style so my aim was to figure out how to disrupt that. It took several months, but finally I arrived at “the best balance to turn Ms. Takeuchi’s drawings into anime.”
– When we think of Ms. Sako’s style, we also have high hopes for the beautiful male characters.
Sako: This time I had the large task of matching Ms. Takeuchi’s art, so please don’t get any weird ideas about Mamoru, the Four Generals, or the other male characters. I’m going to do them right! On other works I have been the “go-to person for naughty pictures,” though! (laughs)
Every Voice Acting Audition Was Held with Ms. Mitsuishi
– We’d like to hear from you about the casting process.
Sakai: Aside from Ms. Kotono Mitsuishi, all of the others were chosen by audition. They all came with a lot of excitement, but we had each and every person audition alongside Ms. Mitsuishi.
Sako: All of a sudden they had to work along with the real Usagi!?
Sakai: Exactly (laughs). First we had them read from the script alone and then Ms. Mitsuishi would come in and they’d read dialogue together.
Sako: That sounds like a hidden camera show! (laughs)
Sakai: The final deciding factor was inspiration. As in whether or not they suited the character. For example, Ms. Hisako Kanemoto seemed to fit a calm, intelligent character.
Sako: In the manga Ami says things like “Studying is the only thing that matters to me…”, doesn’t she?
– Lastly, please share with us your enthusiasm about the upcoming premiere in July.
Sakai: We’re aiming to do something new, so I would like it to align with a different vector than previous works aimed at girls. It will have a bit of a mature feel… so it will include a love story and also themes of not always being a “good girl.”
Sako: The relationship between the five girls illustrated by Ms. Takeuchi is realistic. They complain about things, they don’t always act super clingy, but they’re still good friends. I also have vivid memories of how jealous Usagi got when Chibiusa appeared.
Sakai: One of the great things about the manga is how relatable it is for girls.
Sako: Anime are often made by men, so I think it’s pretty difficult to convey the nuances of a manga written by a woman… For example, Usagi and Mamoru have a very close relationship in the manga, so they must have a special way of talking and thinking about each other. Because we’re following the manga closely, I hope we can convey that sort of atmosphere correctly.
Sakai: Above all, I want to portray this drama properly. I want to focus on realistic emotions and I hope we can do a good job of portraying the life of normal girls who transform into magnificent guardians.
Synopsis page:Once considered a long-shot, Toronto’s chances of hosting the 2024 Summer Olympics are suddenly on the rise. In fact, the success so far of the 2015 Pan Am Games now underway across the Greater Toronto Area is prompting international Olympic organizers to take a long, hard look at the city again as possible host for the 2024 Games.
International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach said last week that Toronto could be a good candidate for the 2024 Games. ( Jean-Christophe Bach / AP )
That’s great news because, despite the incessant groaning by critics about traffic delays and poor ticket sales for some of the relatively more obscure sports, the Pan Am Games have been good for Toronto. And the truth is the Olympics could be even better for the city. Winning an Olympic bid would result in improved transit infrastructure, development of underused parts of the city and the city’s waterfront, a revival in economic development and a showcasing of local arts and culture to the world.
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At the same time, the gross overspending and mismanagement that have plagued recent Olympics, most notably at the 2008 Beijing Games and the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, appear to be over. Olympic organizers have learned hard lessons and last December instituted sweeping reforms designed to control costs and make it easier to bid for the Games. With that in mind, Toronto city council, with help from Queen’s Park and Ottawa, should move quickly to submit a bid for the 2024 Olympics. The deadline for bids is Sept. 15, barely two months away. The International Olympic Committee will select the winning city in the summer of 2017. Tokyo will host the 2020 Olympics. Already bidding for the 2024 Games are Boston, Paris, Rome, Budapest and Hamburg. IOC president Thomas Bach told the CBC last week that Toronto could be a good candidate for the 2024 Games, but he wanted to see how the Pan Am Games work. “A successful organization of such a big multi-sport event like the Pan Am Games can give a boost to a candidate,” Bach said. Preparing a full bid would require a lot of fast work, but it could be done.
The initial step would be for Toronto’s economic development committee to reverse a decision it made in early 2014 against spending money to do a detailed pre-bid analysis of the pros and cons of hosting the Games. The next move would be to update the formal proposals for the Pan Am Games as well as the city’s failed 2008 and 1996 Olympic bids. Those in-depth documents included details of all the proposed Olympic venues, from basketball at the Air Canada Centre to boxing in Hamilton and skeet shooting in Oshawa.
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The biggest expenses would be for a new stadium, likely in the Toronto Port Lands area, a new athletes’ village and the inevitable security costs. Obviously, though, Toronto should bid for the Olympics only if it makes sense on several levels. First, the bidding process must be fair. That hasn’t been the case in some past years. When Toronto bid for the 2008 Games, it was clear the IOC was leaning heavily toward Beijing because China had never hosted the Games. The same is true when it came to the 2016 Olympics, with Rio de Janeiro becoming the first South American city to host the Games. However the bidding for 2024 appears to be truly open. The Summer Olympics haven’t been held in North America since the 1996 Atlanta Games. That could mean either Boston or Toronto, if it decides to join the bidding, could be the top front-runners. Second, the bid must make economic sense. The easy answer to that can be seen by taking a look at the impact the Pan Am Games have had on southern Ontario. The Toronto area has never experienced a boom in infrastructure and development as it has over the last five years. A total of 10 new sports facilities have been built and 15 existing sports facilities have been improved or renovated. In addition, Union Station has been modernized, a rail link has been built to Pearson airport, an athletes’ village built, the waterfront and Queens Quay improved and a subway to York University and Vaughan is nearing completion. As the Toronto Star said in an editorial on July 10, “the result is an extraordinary legacy that will serve Toronto residents, and those in surrounding regions, for decades to come.” Indeed, Toronto has accomplished a lot with the Pan Am Games. We can accomplish even more with the 2024 Olympics. Bob Hepburn's column appears Sunday. [email protected] NZ rowing squad seek London gold Drysdale, men's pair our best hopes MARC HINTON
FAIRFAX MEDIA
It is the largest Olympic rowing squad in New Zealand history, and looks well capable of surpassing the record haul of a gold and two bronze medals from four years ago.
The record medal haul from Beijing looks well within the reach of a crack New Zealand Olympic rowing team unveiled today at its Cambridge HQ.
A total of 39 rowers were named in a squad consisting of 11 pre-qualified boats and two others - the men's eight and men's lightweight four - who will attempt to make eleventh-hour efforts to secure their passage to London at the 'Last Chance' regatta in Lucerne, Switzerland, beginning May 20.
It is the largest Olympic rowing squad in New Zealand history, and looks well capable of surpassing the record haul of a gold and two bronze medals from four years ago.
All of the big guns, and gold medal hopefuls, were confirmed in boats they had qualified last year in impressive fashion.
Heading the team is five-time single scull world champion Mahe Drysdale. It will be the Aucklander's third Olympic regatta and he will be chasing redemption after having to settle for the bronze medal in Beijing when he fell ill during the week of the regatta.
The three-time men's pair world champions Hamish Bond and Eric Murray are also confirmed and will be warm gold medal favourites. Also named are two-time women's pair world champions Juliette Haigh and Rebecca Scown and twice world men's double sculls champions Nathan Cohen and Joseph Sullivan.
As expected, 2009 world champions Storm Uru and Peter Taylor were also rubber-stamped in the men's lightweight double scull, taking the total number of current and former elite level world champions in the team to nine.
Emma Twigg, who has been knocking on the door of gold in the world championships (silver in 2010, bronze in 2011) is selected for the women's single scull, while Fi Paterson and Anna Reymer, bronze medallists in 2011, remain in the promising women's double scull, the boat in which the Evers-Swindell twins won back-to-back golds in at the 2004 and '08 Games.
But the national selection panel have been prepared to tinker below the elite tier of the squad.
There is a change to the women's lightweight double scull from the 2011 crew which qualified for London. Rotorua's Julia Edward replaces Dunedin's Lucy Strack as the partner for Louise Ayling.
The women's quad remains in the bronze medal winning combination of 2011 with Eve Macfarlane, Fiona Bourke, Louise Trappitt and Sarah Gray.
But there are new lineups for the two other qualified boats - the men's four and the men's quad.
The four, coached by Dave Thompson, consists of Sean O'Neill, Chris Harris, Jade Uru and Tyson Williams, while the quadruple scull will be crewed by Robbie Manson, Matthew Trott, John Storey and new recruit Michael Arms. Mike Rodger will continue to coach this boat.
Considerable focus now goes on the two boats that will try to qualify at Lucerne in May.
The lightweight four will be crewed by three-time world lightweight sculling champion Duncan Grant and also feature double U23 world champion Graham Oberlin-Brown, world silver medallist James Lassche and Curtis Rapley. They will be coached by Thompson and will need to finish top two in Lucerne to book their tickets for London.
Waikato coach Ian Wright will bring together the men's eight for Lucerne. The crew will be Richard Harrison, Hamish Burson, Tobias Wehr-Candler, Adam Tripp, Ian Seymour, Ben Hammond, Fergus Fauvel, David Eade and cox Ivan Pavich. Only victory will seal their passage to London.
Legendary coach Richard Tonks remains an integral figure, in charge of Drysdale, Twigg, Bond and Murray and the women's quad, with John Robinson guiding the lightweight women's double scull in addition to Haigh and Scown. Calvin Ferguson stays with the men's lightweight and heavyweight double sculling crews, and Gary Hay remains with the women's heavyweight double scull.
Secretary General and selector Kereyn Smith said the squad would head to London with high hopes.
"Rowing is already a very successful Olympic sport for New Zealand and the outstanding team named for London will cement rowing's place in Olympic history."
Rowing has won 16 Olympic medals since Darcy Hadfield took bronze at the Antwerp Olympic Games in 1920 and sits equal with sailing as New Zealand's second-most medalled sport behind athletics (20).
New Zealand Olympic rowing team:
Men's single scull
Mahe Drysdale
Women's single scull
Emma Twigg
Men's pair
Eric Murray and Hamish Bond
Women's quadruple scull
Eve Macfarlane, Fiona Bourke, Louise Trappitt and Sarah Gray
Women's pair
Juliette Haigh and Rebecca Scown
Women's lightweight double scull
Julia Edward and Louise Ayling
Men's double scull
Nathan Cohen and Joseph Sullivan
Men's lightweight double scull
Peter Taylor and Storm Uru
Women's double scull
Fi Paterson and Anna Reymer
Men's quadruple scull
Robbie Manson, Matthew Trott, Michael Arms and John Storey
Men's four
Sean O'Neill, Chris Harris, Jade Uru and Tyson Williams
- StuffCelal Bayar peered forward over his desk in the heart of Çankaya Mansion. The very latest information was scattered all over it; black on white with the occasional red 'Confidential' or 'Top Secret' stamped on for good measure.
The 4th Corps was making its way south to capture; or re-capture as the public was being made to see it as, the island of Rhodes. Ships had been requisitioned from all along the south coast and were gathering to ferry across two of the newly formed semi-motorised brigades.
The Turkish navy and its two submarine squadrons had put to sea last week, and were already reporting in thousands of tonnes of downed Italian shipping.
Historical Side Note: Celal Bayar is HOI4's default leader for Democratic Turkey, despite not becoming Turkish president until 1950. İsmet İnönü was president of Turkey for the entire duration of World War 2.
Reports on the world strategic situation were not so good. The foul forces of Facism had almost completely overrun Poland, and French armies were being hard pressed along the Italian border.
Celal reached for a cup of coffee that held down another stack of reports.Overall, this grand alliance was winning at sea, but not making such good progress on land.
Celal silently thanked God for placing the Dardanelles to divide his Turkey from Europe. He took a sip of coffee and grimaced. It had gone cold.
Haluk stayed silent at his station in the battery room of the TCG Dumlupinar. The submarine was a hundred meters underneath an Italian destroyer escort, and had been pinged by SONAR a moment before.
Hopefully the British subs they were hunting with could come around and sink the destroyer before it began dropping charges.
Just as he was thinking that, Haluk heard the dull blast of a depth charge detonating. It sounded distant.
Haluk began to mutter a prayer his mum would say to him before bed.
Another dull thud sounded and the submarine quivered slightly with the force of the blast, but all then returned to stillness.
It hadn't found them.
Haluk let out a breath he didn't know that he'd been holding.
Then another blast sounded, much louder this time.
The whole submarine quaked and rolled slightly to port. The glass coverings to pressure dials all up and down the ship shattered, sending sharp slivers of glass everywhere. The hull creaked and groaned, but it held.
Then a call came in from the ship's PA for all spare hands to go to the engine room to help stop a leak. Haluk turned and rushed to the stern. There was no time to worry about another depth charge.
Unbeknownst to the crew of the Dumlupinar, the destroyer that had been attacking them was itself headed underwater, with the complements of the Royal Navy.
Enver sighted down his rifle, pulled the trigger and missed again. He muttered a curse and ducked back behind his tree to reload his weapon.
The Italians were scrambling for cover in the exposed sandy bay beneath him. They didn't seem to be in any sort of good order, but there certainly were a lot of them.
Enver stripped a new clip into his rifle and poked out from behind the tree to shoot again. He levelled his rifle and-
PAIN
Enver screamed and dropped his gun. He dropped himself to the ground, clutching at his left arm.
Someone ran over to him, and he heard the sharp retort of return fire, but that was unimportant because right now his world had turned into pain.
Enver had been rushed to a rudimentary field hospital set up several miles from the hotly contested bay. He lay in a tent while field surgeons rushed around treating burns, shrapnel wounds and bullet holes.
He had been tanked up on some opiate or other and was rather enjoying his blissfully painless time in the field hospital. As a result, he did see, but didn't really register the import of, the Soviet-made BA-6 armoured cars rushing past the field hospital towards the battleground.
Historical Side Note: The Russian T-26 tank and the BA-3 and BA-6 armoured cars were what made up the single Turkish armoured brigade at the beginning of World War 2. Germany, trying to sway Turkey to their side, gave Turkey 150 Panzier IV's in 1941. Despite all this international pressure, Turkey managed to stay out of the war.
Celal Bayar peered forward over his desk in the heart of Çankaya Mansion. The very latest information was scattered all over it; black on white and red all over now, just in case a spy with scruples tried to read it.
It had taken two days for two divisions of the 4th army to ship across to Rhodes after the Italians surrendered after their disastrous attempted invasion of the Turquoise Coast. There had only been 36 Turkish Casualties.
The submarine Dumlupinar had docked at Istanbul for repairs last night. It had been involved in a battle out in the Mediterranean and had limped home with half its engine cylinders waterlogged. Its sister ship, the Atilay, had not been so fortunate.
'Ah well', thought Celal. 'At least it wasn't one of our newer submarines.'"
Women who have objections to marriage, I have no problem with. Men who vocally object to marriage from the left, claiming some sort of ideological purity, I find laughable. The refrain of “let’s not sign any PAPERS, that’s giving in to the MAN, man” started being used by leftist men in the mid to late 1960s.
Not particularly coincidentally, this is when the women’s movement was making huge strides in getting no-fault divorce laws into legislatures, eventually seeing the first passage of such a law in California in 1969. Once women made huge strides in custody and divorce proceedings, and could divorce men without having to submit onerous requirements of proof, leftist men suddenly decided they could do without the “oppressive institution” of marriage.
Cohabitation still means, due to resource disparities between men and women, that cohabiting women in hetero relationships (especially impoverished ones) often find themselves homeless and propertyless after a breakup. Divorce provides an arbitration mechanism for the fair division of property obtained in the marriage and a separation of property obtained prior to the marriage.
Women who are against marriage often have sound reasons. Men are typically rather transparently self-serving."But I know exactly why this isn't possible. With the Pro Controller person, it's impossible to Super Jump and use Special Weapons due to the lack of a second screen. Special Weapons like the Inkstrike would be unusable on it. I don't really know a way around this... but I think if Nintendo found a way to allow a second person play would be great..."
While playing on my 3DS for the first time in forever I realized how Splatoon could have a successful Turf War, Splat Zones, etc. mode for multiple players on one system! The 3DS is just that! Considering it can be used in Smash Bros as a controller I don't see why this wouldn't work for Splatoon!
The controls would line up pretty well! Shouts, Jump, Ink Shoot/Attack, Touch Screen Use, and Squid Form could all work the same on 3DS as the Gamepad. The only thing that would need another button would be the Sub Weapon Button. On New 3DS, this wouldn't be a problem, but for standard 3DS, Sub Weapons could just take the place of the X or Y buttons.
Now to accomplish this. The 3DS would need something to link it to the Wii U Splatoon. You need to have a copy of Smash Bros 3DS to use the 3DS as a controller on Smash Wii U, so how would it work? Easy. A Free or Extremely cheap (I would hope Nintendo would make it free) Application on the eShop that would allow the 3DS to connect to the Splatoon Game. An update could add the connect feature to Splatoon.
And there! Great Multiplayer! The 3DS even has a Gyroscope to handle Motion controls! The bottom screen would have the map and the top would either put some info on the current game or just some placeholder, as the 3DS obviously couldn't handle the match on the top screen.
This would ensure local multiplayer Turf Wars for possibly up to all 8 people (if you have that many 3DS). And CPUs could be generated for remaining Team Members.
As for online, it could be possible, but a little less likely as the 3DS isn't usable online in Smash Wii U, so it would be Nintendo's call.
I would praise this idea to come true, as I've quite a few people want to bash it out in Turf Wars with me locally and we were unable to do so.EXCLUSIVE: MVC, ESPN deal to allow BU to stream on ESPN 3
On Thursday night, in front of a small gathering of communication students, Athletic Director Michael Cross announced Bradley University as a frontrunner in a potential partnership between the Missouri Valley Conference and ESPN.
The deal, which has been in the works for a year, is still incomplete but would feature Bradley athletics streamed on the ESPN family networks, starting with ESPN 3.
“Bradley and the Missouri Valley Conference have been in discussion for a while with ESPN,” Cross said. “This is going to be a Missouri Valley Conference based package, [but] it is not fully formed yet.”
Cross also said the process was sparked by the MVC, with assistance from ESPN, in putting the deal together, but the meeting last night was strictly regarding Bradley athletics.
“This is a Missouri Valley Conference-driven process,” Cross said. “The Valley and ESPN, in conjunction with all the schools, have put this all together. We’ve framed it as a Bradley conversation.”
The package will also feature universities other than Bradley, all of which are MVC schools. Associate Athletic Director of Communications Bobby Parker said until the deal is released, the school’s identities could not be given.
“The goal is there’s four of us that have been identified, and [Bradley] is one of the four,” Parker said. “We’re kind of the guinea pigs, but a lot of that has to do with what we’re already doing.”
Once the deal is announced, it is set to primarily focus on Bradley men’s and women’s basketball but will eventually expand to include all Bradley athletic teams.
Cross also pointed to Braves Vision, a student video and web streaming production team, as a major starting point for the potential deal.
Cross said the plan is to let Braves Vision develop into what will be the production for ESPN.
“The ideal scenario is that Braves Vision will really disappear, [and] this will be done entirely on ESPN all the time,” Cross said. “Anything we used to do on our own webpage, on our own website, is going to be done now in the ESPN family of networks.”
However, before Braves Vision completely dissolves into an ESPN production, the Athletic Department stressed a need for student support to begin the transition to ESPN.
Although the meeting consisted of mostly sports communication and television arts majors, Cross said the Athletic Department would welcome any student that applies.
“We’d love to have engineers, people from the business side, from the liberal arts…any major [or] discipline can contribute to what we are doing,” Cross said.
With ESPN family networks working as a major distributor of Bradley athletics to the public, Parker said there are unlimited opportunities for students to get involved.
“As this gets rolling, there’s a lot of possibilities,” Parker said. “It’s really hard to try and think of a cap. We think this will be an unbelievable opportunity.”
To express interest in working with Bradley athletics, students should email their name, major, resume and the reason for their interest to Parker at [email protected] year's 38th issue of Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine is revealing on Monday that Tite Kubo's Bleach manga is getting a live-action film adaptation that will open in Japan in 2018. Sōta Fukushi (live-action Toshokan Sensō / Library Wars'Hikaru Tezuka, live-action Strobe Edge's Ren Ichinose, live-action Kami-sama no Iu Toori's Shun Takahata) will star in the film as Ichigo Kurosaki, and Shinsuke Satō (live-action Gantz, Gantz II: Perfect Answer films, Oblivion Island anime film) is directing the film.
Shueisha is publishing Bleach's final chapter in the 38th issue on Monday. The combined 36th-37th issue had teased on August 8 that the 38th issue would have an "important announcement" for Bleach.
Bleach entered its final story arc in February 2012. The manga's 73rd volume then announced that the 74th volume will be the final volume.
Kubo launched the manga in Weekly Shonen Jump in 2001, and Shueisha published the manga's 73rd volume on July 4. Viz Media is publishing the manga in North America digitally in English as new chapters are published in Japan. The company is also publishing the manga in print and published the 67th volume on July 5.
The manga inspired a television anime adaptation that ran for 366 episodes from 2004 to 2012. Viz Media obtained the television and home video rights to the anime in 2006. The series premiered with an English dub on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block that same year, and eventually aired all the episodes by 2014. Viz Media announced in June that it will release the television anime series on Blu-ray Disc, and the first volume shipped on July 19.
The manga has also inspired four anime films, a series of novels, and several video games. A series of stage musical adaptations launched in 2005, with the latest entry finishing its run on August 4.This vegan eggplant pasta recipe is ready in just 15 minutes and has an extra-creamy sauce you’ll love! It has a subtle spicy taste and a lovely blend of flavors.
Schar created another awesome bloggers’ competition here in Romania and in the next few weeks, you’ll start seeing some delicious, vegan and gluten-free recipes on my blog! I will create gluten-free pasta, appetizer and dessert recipes, all of them ideal for a romantic lunch or dinner.
I will start my series of gluten-free recipes for Schar with a simple but extremely flavorful recipe – creamy vegan eggplant pasta. This instantly became one of my favorite pasta recipes! I discovered that soy yogurt is incredibly good as a base for pasta sauces and the combo between eggplant, tomatoes, and garlic is pure bliss! 😀
This is a really quick pasta recipe, as the prep time takes only 5 minutes and the sauce can be made while the pasta boils. So if you’re looking for quick and easy eggplant recipes, you’re in the right place! This eggplant pasta recipe is just perfect for a quick lunch and, as I discovered, it tastes great when served cold as well, so you can pack it for lunch at work or school.
It’s time to stop worrying about what you’re going to eat! I created the meal planner app to help you! Get your personalized meal plan with delicious, healthy, and budget-friendly recipes! GET YOUR MEAL PLAN!
If you don’t have coeliac disease or gluten sensitivity, then you can use any other pasta you want. I would suggest using whole grain pasta. 🙂
So, here it is! I hope that my extra-creamy vegan eggplant pasta recipe will become your favorite too! Let me know in the comments below if you gave it a try! 😉 Thanks!Good news everyone! German robotics researchers have built a hyper-strong hand that can withstand hammer blows! Come and shake the hand that will someday wring our species' collective neck.
This hand and its high-tech robophalanges come to you courtesy of the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics at The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V.). For those of you entertaining visions of robopocalypse, don't get your hopes up — each of these puppies costs somewhere between €70,000-€10,000, so any would-be Terminators or Cylons would have to hold a lot of bake sales. The DLR hand is one of the most durable robotic hands ever built and was specifically built tough for jobs that might ding it up. From IEEE Spectrum:
The hand has the shape and size of a human hand, with five articulated fingers powered by a web of 38 tendons, each connected to an individual motor on the forearm. The main capability that makes the DLR hand different from other robot hands is that it can control its stiffness. The motors can tension the tendons, allowing the hand to absorb violent shocks. In one test, the researchers hit the hand with a baseball bat-a 66 G impact. The hand survived [...] The hand has a total of 19 degrees of freedom, or only one less than the real thing, and it can move the fingers independently to grasp varied objects. The fingers can exert a force of up to 30 newtons at the fingertips, which makes this hand also one of the strongest ever built.
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Additionally, the hand can catch heavy balls, adjust its level of stiffness to accomplish tasks that require a daintier touch, and snap its fingers. That's right, we're looking at the next star of the future's all-robot revue of West Side Story."In the last few days, Ottawa popped up and I thought it would be a good fit," Burrows said. "They have a great team, a lot of good pieces. That's the good part. The sad part is I care a lot about this team. I've been here for 12 years. They gave me my first chance. I have lots of good memories, lots of good friendships in the locker room."
The Canucks received forward prospect Jonathan Dahlen, 19, who was selected by the Senators in the second round (No. 42) of the 2016 NHL Draft.
With top-six forward Clarke MacArthur out for the season because of a concussion, Senators general manager Pierre Dorion knew he'd eventually have to replace him.
"I made a list of potential candidates that could come and take [MacArthur's] spot in the lineup and I feel Alex is going to do that with the intangibles, the character that he brings, the leadership that also Clarke had," Dorion said. "We hope [MacArthur] can be back at some point in time next year. Until then if we could add somebody like Alex... we had to do something like this."
Burrows, a pending unrestricted free agent, signed a two-year, $5 million contract worth an average annual value of $2.5 million on Tuesday, the Senators announced. It also includes a 10-team no trade list. Burrows has 20 points (nine goals, 11 assists) and 53 penalty minutes in 55 games this season.
A native of Pincourt, Quebec, Burrows said he welcomed the chance to move closer to home.
"I wanted to go to a team that was a good fit for me hockey wise, but at the same time, family wise," Burrows said. "There wasn't really a perfect situation, but I think Ottawa is pretty close to perfect for me. Close to home, back east, my parents will be able to watch games at 7 instead of 10 o'clock. It's going to be an easy drive for my friends and my family to come down to Ottawa and cheer me on.
"It's a Canadian city, a Canadian market and I like their team and I really believe they have a shot at winning. Their window is just opening right now. They have a lot of pieces. They seem to have a total buy in of what [coach] Guy Boucher is selling. They're playing well, they're playing the right way. That's really interesting for me. I could really see the Sens and myself come out of the division if we get to the playoffs and everything goes accordingly."
Signed as an undrafted free agent by the Canucks, Burrows has 34 points (19 goals, 15 assists) in 70 Stanley Cup Playoff games.
"We're elated," Dorion said. "The fun for me is when I have three of four, I think it was five key veterans in our locker room come up. One wanted to hug me and the other three shook my hand and felt this was a great move for our organization today.
"I think we have become a tougher team to play against [this season], but with the acquisition of Alex Burrows today we've become an even tougher team to play against."
Video: Hradek breaks down Burrows for Dahlen deal
Vancouver Canucks general manager Jim Benning talks with the Senators had been ongoing for three or four days.
"There was a lot of interest," Benning said. "A lot of teams called on [Burrows] to see if he would be willing to move his no-trade. I talked to him about a week ago and he wanted me to keep him in the loop as to which teams had called. We did that through his agent. It was this morning that he made the decision, when I came into the office this morning that he would agree to move his no-trade to go to Ottawa.
"It's been a hard day. Alex Burrows has been the heart and soul of our franchise for a long time. He's given us everything that he's had. He's been so good with our young players this year, but given where we're at right now we just felt it was time to make the move. We got back, we feel, a good, young player in Jonathan Dahlen so we're excited about that."
Benning said the Canucks like Dahlen's competitiveness.
"He's a player we've had our eye on," Benning said. "He's a goal-scorer, he's good around the net, he's sure-handed, he's got a good nose for the net and he'll pay the price to get there. At the [2017 World Junior Championship] this year he scored seven goals [for Sweden]. We watched him through that and we thought the parts of his game we worried a little about last year had improved. I think at the end of the day where we're at right now and Ottawa's at, it was a fair deal for both teams."It’s one thing when a humanist attacks the Bible. That’s expected. It’s another thing when a humanist attacks a Christian denomination for using the Bible as a moral guide. But that’s exactly what humanist author Clay Farris Naff did in the Huffington Post on April 29.
Naff was upset that the highest court of the Methodist Church struck down the consecration of Bishop Karen Oliveto. Her only infraction was being married to another woman. How, he wondered, could the church punish her for love?
He writes, “To anyone free of ancient prejudices, the injustice of condemning Oliveto is plain. How can love be wrong? How can love enfolded in commitment and fidelity be wrong?”
The answers are simple and self-evident. Love is not always right, even when it’s “enfolded in commitment and fidelity.”
Marriage Has Meaning
A father may love his adult daughter in a romantic way, but that doesn’t make the relationship right. |
'm lazy), but he might do this to someone else who's more gullible then you in the future too. Blackmail is despicable...
chriswen
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Hero MemberActivity: 756Merit: 500 Re: Just-Dice.com : Invest in 1% House Edge Dice Game October 02, 2013, 12:59:07 AM #3192 I don't think we should have instant investing and divesting. Cause people could actually trade even smaller ranges with instant which is not the best. I think a 15 s to 30 s delay on investing and divesting will be a good idea. And this should solve short term day trading. It will still not protect on longer term day trading but that should be fine. As shown before there can be some benefits to day trading.
Also, having an investing and divesting fee doesn't sound like the worst thing in the world but that might be against Dooglus's vision for the site.
Keyser Soze
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Sr. MemberActivity: 470Merit: 250 Re: Just-Dice.com : Invest in 1% House Edge Dice Game October 02, 2013, 04:55:35 AM #3195 What if instead of investing a specific amount of bitcoin, there was an option to invest a specific percentage of the bankroll? For example, as others change their investment, yours would automatically adjust stay the same percentage, assuming you had the balance to support it. Not sure if it would realistic, but it is an interesting idea.
Edit: This would be in addition to the existing investing method.
dooglus
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LegendaryActivity: 2590Merit: 1126 Re: Just-Dice.com : Invest in 1% House Edge Dice Game October 02, 2013, 05:27:41 AM #3196
Quote
21:41:24 (1) <dooglus> hi mechs
21:41:40 (12141) <mechs> Hey Doog, can you help me with a withdrawal?
21:41:47 (1) <dooglus> sure mechs
21:42:36 (1) <dooglus> mechs: request it on the site as usual. if the hot wallet doesn't have enough, I'll do it manually
21:42:45 (12141) <mechs> ok
21:45:28 (12141) <mechs> Doog: I out request through
21:45:32 (12141) <mechs> put
21:45:46 manually debiting user 12141 with amount 1767.51610189
21:45:47 (1) <dooglus> mechs: ok
21:45:53 (12141) <mechs> doog: ty
21:46:07 (1) <dooglus> mechs: sent
21:46:12 (1) <dooglus> got it?
21:46:33 (1) <dooglus> mechs: I had just enough. 108 BTC left in my wallet now
21:47:06 (12141) <mechs> doog: I do ot see it yet
21:47:09 (12141) <mechs> not
21:48:17 (12141) <mechs> Doog: can u send me the txid?
21:48:26 (1) <dooglus> here mechs?
21:48:33 (12141) <mechs> hold on, let me check blockchain.info
21:49:02 (1) <dooglus> mechs; it's confirmed already
21:49:24 (12141) <mechs> ummm
21:49:26 (12141) <mechs> Doog: I hope you kidding
21:50:02 (1) <dooglus> mechs: I hope you gave the right address to withdraw to
21:50:26 (169587) <crissy> we can only hope
21:50:26 (12141) <mechs> Doog: I put in my emergency withdrawal one!
21:50:32 (12141) <mechs> Doog: but you used a old one
21:50:43 (12141) <mechs> Doog: how that happen....oh shit
21:51:02 (145007) <fizzwont> O.o indeed
21:51:18 (1) <dooglus> mechs: I sent it to the one you put in the withdrawal request
21:51:19 (1) <dooglus> it's different than the emergency address
21:51:35 (145007) <fizzwont> hopefully not a paste-fail
21:51:38 (12141) <mechs> DoogL no i changed it to the emergency one! Put it kept the old one
21:51:45 (12141) <mechs> Doog: I think that was an old paper wallet which is gone
21:51:49 (12141) <mechs> fuck fuck fuck
21:52:01 (145007) <fizzwont> omg
21:52:14 (1) <dooglus> no way
21:52:28 (2) <Deb> i'm scared to ask what that means, exactly
21:52:45 (145007) <fizzwont> mechs has got to be pulling our chain
21:52:57 (1) <dooglus> it sounds like it means I just sent mechs' entire balance to an address nobody can access
21:53:13 (145311) <Orrus> uh oh
21:53:17 (145311) <Orrus> shit just got real
21:53:22 (12141) <mechs> Doog: it all gone.
21:53:32 (145007) <fizzwont> gotta check that address 5 times before pasting in for withdrawal imo
21:53:35 (12141) <mechs> Doog: it fucked up. I changed the address
21:53:39 (145007) <fizzwont> mechs: how can you not have the key?
21:53:44 (12141) <mechs> Doog: but you sent it to an old withdrawone
21:53:52 (2) <Deb> omg no way
21:53:52 (12141) <mechs> Doog: I am fucked
21:53:55 (1) <dooglus> mechs: you never withdrew to that address before. how did it get into the form?
21:54:04 (145007) <fizzwont> ohboy
21:54:08 (169694) <crissy> you throw out your paper wallets?
21:54:11 (169694) <crissy> i keep all mine, just in case
21:54:17 (12141) <mechs> Doog: I am going to vomit
21:54:17 (145311) <Orrus> Dont think its doog's fault if you gave wrong addy
21:54:25 (145007) <fizzwont> why would you throw out a wallet/private key?
21:54:35 (12141) <mechs> Doog:I did withdraw to their once before
21:54:39 (145007) <fizzwont> sounds odd
21:54:43 (12141) <mechs> Doog: I 100% put in the new address
21:54:50 (12141) <mechs> Doog: J-D fucked up
21:54:55 (12141) <mechs> Doog: that paper wallet gone
21:54:57 (145007) <fizzwont> ohboy
21:55:12 (169587) <crissy> fun
21:55:16 (145311) <Orrus> Doog how often do people try to scam you? A daily basis?
21:55:28 (145007) <fizzwont> --^
21:55:29 (1) <dooglus> mechs: I sent to the address you requested
21:55:30 (12141) <mechs> Doog: i gotta go - doog, how could you not double heck such a large withdrawal???
21:55:40 (160345) <SickWhale> how much was it?
21:55:52 (1) <dooglus> mechs: I did double check it. I always do
21:55:52 (12141) <mechs> Doog: I did ot! Your site fucked up;.. I put in new address but it still showing old one
21:55:52 (145007) <fizzwont> just trolling imo
21:55:53 (12141) <mechs> Doog: I gotta go, just lost 1767 BTC
21:56:17 (169587) <crissy> fun
21:56:17 (160345) <SickWhale> oh shit
21:56:18 (145007) <fizzwont> if that's the case, lets watch the address, i bet it moves within 10 years 21:41:11 (12141) Deb: Doog around?21:41:24 (1) hi mechs21:41:40 (12141) Hey Doog, can you help me with a withdrawal?21:41:47 (1) sure mechs21:42:36 (1) mechs: request it on the site as usual. if the hot wallet doesn't have enough, I'll do it manually21:42:45 (12141) ok21:45:28 (12141) Doog: I out request through21:45:32 (12141) put21:45:46 manually debiting user 12141 with amount 1767.5161018921:45:47 (1) mechs: ok21:45:53 (12141) doog: ty21:46:07 (1) mechs: sent21:46:12 (1) got it?21:46:33 (1) mechs: I had just enough. 108 BTC left in my wallet now21:47:06 (12141) doog: I do ot see it yet21:47:09 (12141) not21:48:17 (12141) Doog: can u send me the txid?21:48:26 (1) here mechs?21:48:33 (12141) hold on, let me check blockchain.info21:49:02 (1) mechs; it's confirmed already21:49:24 (12141) ummm21:49:26 (12141) Doog: I hope you kidding21:50:02 (1) mechs: I hope you gave the right address to withdraw to21:50:26 (169587) we can only hope21:50:26 (12141) Doog: I put in my emergency withdrawal one!21:50:32 (12141) Doog: but you used a old one21:50:43 (12141) Doog: how that happen....oh shit21:51:02 (145007) O.o indeed21:51:18 (1) mechs: I sent it to the one you put in the withdrawal request21:51:19 (1) it's different than the emergency address21:51:35 (145007) hopefully not a paste-fail21:51:38 (12141) DoogL no i changed it to the emergency one! Put it kept the old one21:51:45 (12141) Doog: I think that was an old paper wallet which is gone21:51:49 (12141) fuck fuck fuck21:52:01 (145007) omg21:52:14 (1) no way21:52:28 (2) i'm scared to ask what that means, exactly21:52:45 (145007) mechs has got to be pulling our chain21:52:57 (1) it sounds like it means I just sent mechs' entire balance to an address nobody can access21:53:13 (145311) uh oh21:53:17 (145311) shit just got real21:53:22 (12141) Doog: it all gone.21:53:32 (145007) gotta check that address 5 times before pasting in for withdrawal imo21:53:35 (12141) Doog: it fucked up. I changed the address21:53:39 (145007) mechs: how can you not have the key?21:53:44 (12141) Doog: but you sent it to an old withdrawone21:53:52 (2) omgno way21:53:52 (12141) Doog: I am fucked21:53:55 (1) mechs: you never withdrew to that address before. how did it get into the form?21:54:04 (145007) ohboy21:54:08 (169694) you throw out your paper wallets?21:54:11 (169694) i keep all mine, just in case21:54:17 (12141) Doog: I am going to vomit21:54:17 (145311) Dont think its doog's fault if you gave wrong addy21:54:25 (145007) why would you throw out a wallet/private key?21:54:35 (12141) Doog:I did withdraw to their once before21:54:39 (145007) sounds odd21:54:43 (12141) Doog: I 100% put in the new address21:54:50 (12141) Doog: J-D fucked up21:54:55 (12141) Doog: that paper wallet gone21:54:57 (145007) ohboy21:55:12 (169587) fun21:55:16 (145311) Doog how often do people try to scam you? A daily basis?21:55:28 (145007) --^21:55:29 (1) mechs: I sent to the address you requested21:55:30 (12141) Doog: i gotta go - doog, how could you not double heck such a large withdrawal???21:55:40 (160345) how much was it?21:55:52 (1) mechs: I did double check it. I always do21:55:52 (12141) Doog: I did ot! Your site fucked up;.. I put in new address but it still showing old one21:55:52 (145007) just trolling imo21:55:53 (12141) Doog: I gotta go, just lost 1767 BTC21:56:17 (169587) fun21:56:17 (160345) oh shit21:56:18 (145007) if that's the case, lets watch the address, i bet it moves within 10 years
Associated logfile content:
Quote 2013-10-02 04:41:11 (12141) chat: <mechs> Deb: Doog around?
2013-10-02 04:41:40 (12141) chat: <mechs> Hey Doog, can you help me with a withdrawal?
2013-10-02 04:42:45 (12141) chat: <mechs> ok
2013-10-02 04:43:43 (12141) setting btcaddr to "1AG5ahS2rMrPy8XmDZQcuB1X76kcWnTcqi" type addr (1AG5ahS2rMrPy8XmDZQcuB1X76kcWnTcqi)
2013-10-02 04:43:49 (12141) ACTION (divest, "[addr]") ALL 1767.51610189 BTC
2013-10-02 04:45:07 (12141) requiring 7 confirmations to withdraw 1767.51610189 BTC
2013-10-02 04:45:08 (12141) sending 1767.51600189 to 19WHFhiB9aCeUvWUsJSHQHFnVv837cqTSY
2013-10-02 04:45:08 (12141) ACTION (withdraw, "[addr]") Error: Insufficient funds (code -4)
2013-10-02 04:45:28 (12141) chat: <mechs> Doog: I out request through
2013-10-02 04:45:33 (12141) chat: <mechs> put
2013-10-02 04:45:45 (12141) ACTION (manual, "[addr]") manually debited 1767.51610189 by user 1
2013-10-02 04:45:45 (12141) crediting -1767.51610189 BTC
2013-10-02 04:45:45 (12141) added log(withdraw) eid: 156122 value: {"amount":1767.51610189,"address":"manual debit","txid":"","eid":156122}
2013-10-02 04:45:53 (12141) chat: <mechs> doog: ty
2013-10-02 04:47:06 (12141) chat: <mechs> doog: I do ot see it yet
2013-10-02 04:47:11 (12141) chat: <mechs> not
2013-10-02 04:48:17 (12141) chat: <mechs> Doog: can u send me the txid?
2013-10-02 04:48:34 (12141) chat: <mechs> hold on, let me check blockchain.info
2013-10-02 04:48:52 (12141) setting btcaddr to "1AG5ahS2rMrPy8XmDZQcuB1X76kcWnTcqi" type addr (1AG5ahS2rMrPy8XmDZQcuB1X76kcWnTcqi)
2013-10-02 04:49:24 (12141) chat: <mechs> ummm
2013-10-02 04:49:35 (12141) chat: <mechs> Doog: I hope you kidding
So it looks like he changed his emergency withdrawal address, then requested the withdrawal, used the default address, which is whatever he used last time he made a withdrawal request, and submitted it. Then changed the emergency withdrawal address again, to the same address again.
In the chat I said he'd never withdrawn to the 19W... address before - but the site remembers the addresses you have *tried* to withdraw to before, even if the withdrawal fails because there are insufficient funds in the hot wallet and I ended up making the withdrawal manually.
I hope there's some way he can find the old paper wallet that he withdrew to. I feel sick and can only imagine how mechs is feeling. Something horrible just happened:Associated logfile content:So it looks like he changed his emergency withdrawal address, then requested the withdrawal, used the default address, which is whatever he used last time he made a withdrawal request, and submitted it. Then changed the emergency withdrawal address again, to the same address again.In the chat I said he'd never withdrawn to the 19W... address before - but the site remembers the addresses you have *tried* to withdraw to before, even if the withdrawal fails because there are insufficient funds in the hot wallet and I ended up making the withdrawal manually.I hope there's some way he can find the old paper wallet that he withdrew to. I feel sick and can only imagine how mechs is feeling. Just-Dice ██
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██████ 1% House EdgeMost of the Chateau readers are probably familiar with the latest Roosh controversy. If you don’t know about it, here’s a primer. Executive Summary: Roosh had to cancel a bunch of multi-city Return of Kings meet-ups with his readers because an assortment of life’s biggest losers and ghastly freaks — SJWs, feminists, neckbeards, fatties, uglies, cucks, and the governments of Britain, Canada and Australia — were offended by this exercise of free association and set about to rectify the situation with literal death threats and port of entry bans.
The degenerate freak mafia found an old, satirical (maybe we should call it satyrical) Roosh post about rape and the lost art of female personal responsibility, that they deliberately and disingenuously misinterpreted as a pro-rape statement of intent. The big lie then spread like wildfire through the leftoid Hivemind media, and the death threats flowed like John Boehner’s tears when he thinks about cradling his future mixed race grandchild. The fucking UK Parliament had a debate about the international threat known as Roosh. Clown world.
It’s clear what’s going on here. Antiracist shitlibs and feminists mentally frazzled from willfully ignoring and excusing actual rapefugees are using Roosh as an outlet to vent. It makes one recall that old axiom: Liberals love humanity (brown rapefugees) but hate humans (huwhyte Roosh). Conservatives love humans but hate humanity. Personally, I’m fond of the latter character trait. Humans are part of my daily life; humanity…. eh, not so much.
Which brings us to the title of this post. Roosh held a press conference to clear the air and his good name. Fat lot of good it did? Not so fast. Read the transcript. This was nothing less than a public raping of the corrupt shitlib media and everything they represent.
Reporter: Why do you think people think of you as a rapist? Roosh: They need a target to get all the rage that the citizens have to put it on someone that doesn’t conflict with the agenda of your bosses and the ruling establishment. Roosh, go after him, it doesn’t matter if he gets hurt but we can’t go against our immigrant agenda. We can’t go against the feminist agenda. So we need to get the masses (the idiots who believe the stuff that you write) and put it on to something else. So you put it on me. I’m just a scapegoat. They are just using me. But, I’m going to harness this. I’m going to harness all this coverage that you guys are giving me and convert it to money and women. That’s what I’m going to do. That’s the job that I have to do. I’m getting emails from a lot of girls right now and I plan (once this drama dies down if I can survive it) I may have to get in touch with them. That’s what you given me. You have made me one of the most famous men in the world. Granted, it was a lie. It was a lie. But hey, this is where we are right now so I’m going to work with what you gave me. Female Reporter: Do you acknowledge that any of your writing might be genuinely offensive or upsetting to some people? Roosh: So what?
😆 Trump smirked approvingly.
I get that Roosh is first and foremost a self-promoter. No doubt he invites a fair share of his clickbait controversy. But on the basic facts of this travail, he’s right. The SJWs lied (as per usual). The media lied (as per usual). And shitlibs are raging hypocrites for looking away when Muslim migrant real rapes occur while frothing at the mouth over a blog post satirizing modren feminist hysteria about a nonexistent, totally imaginary White male “rape culture”.
It was a small press conference, only a few reporters there, but the message delivered will have an impact beyond the confines of that room. The media is slowly, inexorably, being put on notice that The People know they’re a den of zero integrity liars and hired propagandists for the open borders, pro-feminist crank, anti-White ruling class.
I know many on the alt-right aren’t fans of Roosh. This post isn’t a defense of everything Roosh has written, nor is it meant to change their minds about him. All I’d say to them is, know your true enemies. The alt-right has a lot of great writers and thinkers, but how many are standing up to leftoid reporters at conference rooms and smacking them down to their smug faces?
We in the West live under an occupation force. Alt-right allies willing to speak publicly against the Poz, to take the fight directly to them, are hard to find. When you find them, embrace their efforts on your cause’s behalf. Purity is the enemy of the good.The worst is always the best at E3.
Cutting edge technology becomes dated. Memorable demos are quickly forgotten. An impressive trailer means nothing when the game attached comes out and bombs.
But CEOs talking about "hot chicks" and “RIIIIIDGE RACER!” live on forever.
We love to see E3 disasters – the more ridiculous, the better. Press conference embarrassments and PR nightmares conjure a much-needed laugh among a week of endless caffeine, alcohol, and writing. As long as no one gets hurt, it’s all in good fun.
These infamous E3 mistakes have been seen and ridiculed by many. They remind us why we love this gigantic and gigantically silly conference: for every great press conference reveal, there is always a memorable and unintentional screw-up to follow.
10. “BAM! There it is!”
It’s odd to think back to the days when people were skeptical about Kinect.
Okay, so we are still skeptical that the hardware will have any worthwhile games in 2011-2012, but back in the summer of 2009 many doubted if the Kinect (then called Natal) would work at all.
Microsoft’s E3 2009 press conference was its proving ground for the device. After Steven Spielberg waxed ecstatic about the hardware and a flashy video was shown, our attention was captured.
Then, Kinect creative director Kudo Tsunoda takes the stage and gives a demonstration of the device’s ability to match body movement with his on-screen avatar. It looked pretty damn great, until Kudo got cocky.
“You ever wonder what the bottom of an avatar’s shoe looks like?”
Kudo turns around for dramatic effect and suddenly kicks out his leg.
“BAM! There it is!”
Virtual Kudo suddenly flips out, bending backward, throwing his arms crosswise and contorting his legs in a way one can only imagine would elicit an unbearable amount of pain. Someone must have hit the “OH SHIT!” button backstage, because the avatar suddenly suffered a spell of narcolepsy – the unexpected shift to the avatar standing, hunched over in a sleep-state only added to the hilarity.
Or, perhaps, Virtual Kudo was some sort of soothsayer, predicting gamers’ collective apathy toward Kinect’s showing at E3 2009.
9. Sega Saturn’s announcement and imminent failure
During Sega’s 1995 E3 conference – the first E3 ever – the company’s president dropped a bomb on retailers, developers and consumers: he announced the Saturn is out in U.S. store shelves the day of the presentation, four months before the scheduled U.S. release.
It hurts to put this here, because, in all honesty, Saturn’s U.S. stealth launch was kind of awesome – at least, in theory. It’s a classic E3 moment. It’s the moment everyone waits for: The sort of huge announcement that takes everyone by surprise and gets everyone talking.
The problem is that Sega didn’t think things through. There were only six launch games, since most developers were depending on having four more months before sending their games out to retailers. Not to mention most retailers were out of the loop and had trouble stocking the systems.
The lack of games along with a high price tag ($399) made the console unpopular with consumers who instead chose the graphically superior and $100 cheaper PlayStation the following September.
The real shame is that the Dreamcast’s 1999 launch got everything right, but it was too late for Sega.
8. Rock Revolution: It’s the notes that you don’t play, man!
During Konami’s demonstration of Rock Revolution, its uninspired Rock Band clone, the on-stage (virtual) bassist failed so hard that the game canceled out of the song. Maybe it was due to on-stage jitters or faulty hardware -- although, she said it was her fault afterward.
A YouTube commenter said it best: “There's nothing worse than being booed by a real crowd and a virtual crowd at the same time.”
Watching this virtual bassist miss nearly every note to the most basic song (The Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop”), as her drummer companion nailed is it, is incredibly awkward and hilarious. At least it got everyone’s attention on the game, if for only a short while and for all the wrong reasons.
7. Battle Tag: the future of overpriced crap
Despite the naysayers who said Ubisoft would never be able to outdo their 2009 snorefest, featuring Pelé and James Cameron, the publisher came out swinging in 2010.
After presenting Child of Eden and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, the audience was loosened up and expectations were lowered.
“Oh, more video games. Whatever,” we all thought.
Then, things got real.
All of a sudden girls ran through the auditorium, doing cartwheels and firing infrared laser weapons of the future. What is this bizarre technology that was totally never on sale at Walmart six years ago for $40?
Why, it’s Battle Tag of course and you can experience the game that “gamers have been waiting for” at the insanely reasonable price of $130!
Even Innergy, Ubisoft’s state-of-the-art breathing simulator couldn’t get the audience excited afterward. Then again, maybe they were still baffled from what they just witnessed prior.
6. Mortal Kombat steps up 2 the streets
Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct always had a grudge.
Which game had the best combos?
Which one had the best promotional dance soundtrack?
At E3 1995, the games settled the score once for all with their floor show unveils that involved … choreographed dance?
To be fair, Mortal Kombat’s showing was more of a sexy ninja fight between Jax, Sonya and Kung Lao. If you, distinguished reader, can appreciate tight-latex pants and bad 80's hair like I do, then you will find much to love in this clip.
What really makes this a contender is the press representative who gives the most ridiculous speech, laden with embarrassing buzz words and marketing nonsense.
“To make sure this MEGA event is also a MEGA success for retailers, Williams is tagging up this product release with the most comprehensive, fully integrated marketing program in the industry’s history.”
She then runs through the goods: Mortal Kombat movie, cartoon series, live tour (!) action figures, and the Mortal Kombat: SUPER book (!!!!)
That’s MEGA impressive but …
5. Killer Instinct beats it
With double the tight, latex pants and one of the most killer dance routines to ever hit E3’s floor, how could Killer Instinct not win?
Gamers and press waited all day to see Rare’s arcade fighter demoed on the Ultra 64, but that wouldn’t come to fruition until a year later. Nevertheless, minds were blown and asses were shook as six bodacious dancers got down to a Killer Cut. Behind the dancers, screens displayed the game’s characters dancing, while a giant animatronic tiger, between the screens, hypnotized anyone watching the debacle.
Its red eyes glaring, a voice echoed in the mind of everyone standing before it: “Best E3 presentation ever. Must buy Killer Cuts.”
4. Wii Music drum solo
Nintendo’s presentation of Wii Music was a low point during its uneventful 2008 E3 presentation, for several reasons.
The game sounded terrible. It was as if Nintendo recycled midi sounds from Mario Paint’s music composer. It was bad enough seeing Miyamoto play virtual sax, but things sunk to new lows when DJ Ravi Drums (actual name) performed a minute long drum solo that left the audience dumbfounded.
The game’s lifeless, emulated drum sounds paired with Ravi’s gestures and faux-hawk lent an unprecedented air of douchebagginess at Nintendo press conferences. Attendees looked on in horror, as Ravi soldiered forward and put on his “Slyvster-Stalone-pre-ejaculation” face. Those outside the auditorium, fretted something awful must have happened.
“Perhaps, someone is having a seizure on a bargain bin drum machine and there is no one around to help,” they may have thought.
3. Sony’s historically accurate crab battle
The best jokes are all about perfect timing.
While many walked away from Sony’s E3 2006 conference snickering over Kazuo Hirai’s “RIIIIIDGE RACER!” or in disbelief of the PS3’s $599 introductory price, it’s the Giant Enemy Crab spotting that pops up the most Google results, five years later.
During a demonstration of PS3 launch title Genji: Days of the Blade, a timeless internet meme was born. Producer Bill Ritch, demoing the game on stage, introduced it as being historically accurate. Before the level loads up, he says the battles in the game “actually took place in Ancient Japan.”
“Sure, dude,” we thought, impressed enough with a HD Dynasty Warriors look-a-like.
Without missing a beat, the level starts up and a giant crustacean fucker leaps across the screen, toward the player.
“So, here is this giant enemy crab,” the producer says nonchalantly. He then goes on to talk about flipping over the crab in order to “attack its weak point for massive damage.”
Text doesn’t do the clip justice, as so much of the hilarity comes from Ritch’s oblivious, dead-pan delivery. In 2006, he carried the promise of being the next Bill Murray.
2. Jamie Kennedy’s E3 meltdown
Many doubted whether Jamie Kennedy would ever be able to top his flawless, incendiary performances in Son of the Mask and Malibu’s Most Wanted, but in 2007 Kennedy made his comeback in a way no one expected: drunk and high as hell, hosting Activision’s E3 press conference.
It’s amazing to think Activision would let Kennedy emcee the event. Rather than focusing on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground, the attention was put on Kennedy himself and his drunken banter. His jokes weren’t as much jokes as they were half-assed musings that focused on three topics: sex, drugs and not having sex. Maybe this would appeal to Call of Duty’s demographic, but the fact remains that this was supposed to be a press conference.
Not only does Kennedy embarrass the developers on stage and Tony Hawk, he starts calling the audience a bunch of virgins: “There are so many virgins in here that Richard Branson is doing this event.”
The amount of awkwardness on display makes the clip hard to watch, yet it’s impossible to look away.
At this time, Activision has neither confirmed nor denied whether Jamie Kennedy will be able to get out of jail in time to host its conference this week. Keep up with our E3 coverage for updates!
1. Konami's 2010 press conference: All of it!
Konami’s 2010 press conference, when dissected part by part, could fill in a top ten list of its own.
Traditionally, Konami’s press conferences are rather dry, focusing on Hideo Kojima’s latest Metal Gear Solid projects and running through trailers of upcoming titles. My guess is that Konami was tired of being overlooked at E3 – due to their time spot that takes place during show floor hours – so they decided to make the show more eventful, in the hope that people would talk about it. Mission accomplished, Konami.
Between Dance Masters producer Naoki Maeda and Ninety-Nine Nights II producer Tak Fujii, there is an abundance of quotes that came from this conference. Fujii even has his own soundboard!
My favorite Maeda quote:“Now you can move your fat body freely."
My favorite Fujii quote: “If you just continue to press the same |
in and Archie comics and was influenced and inspired by comics from a young age. In middle school she became interested in Marvel comics like X-Men; in high-school she started reading comics from Fantagraphics and other underground publishers. It was around that time that Gill set her sights on a career as a cartoonist, a focus that continued through her years at Evergreen State College.
This month, things come full circle for Gill as the Capitol Hill artist is slated to appear at Georgetown’s Fantagraphics store on November 14 to promote her latest work.
Gill launched her career as a cartoonist in the mid-1990s, doing mostly illustration. She simultaneously consumed copious quantities of alcohol. She didn’t consider her drinking a problem — her sweet spot for drawing came after a drink or two. From there it often felt like the drinks were helping, though after three or four she acknowledges that was probably an alcohol-fueled delusion.
“I stopped drinking six years ago, I had drunk myself into the emergency room and was consistently black out drunk,” said Gill. Quitting hadn’t been on her radar before that, she instead embraced the dark humor of alcoholism. The darkly humorous cartoons she drew during those days are now available in book form.
First came Blackoutings: How I Quit Drinking. “I didn’t draw very much at all for years, and when I did draw it was little pieces of raw emotion,” said Gill. “I drew little comics and put them online.”
Blackout became a hit on Facebook and a friend helped her publish it. Next came Omnibusted, featuring highlights of Gill’s drinking escapades from 1999 to 2009.
Then there’s the 500-page compendium Living in the Now, also available online. For more than two years, Gill chronicled her life through comics — one page for each day.
Gill’s other work includes Plus, a candy-colored collection of body-positive illustrations of women who don’t conform to western standards of beauty.
“Men draw traditional archetypes of western beauty,” said Gill. “I’d always drawn curvier women; a few years ago I gained a bunch of weight and that’s when this really started I started drawing bigger women and discovered this body positive movement happening on line.”
Gill self-published her latest book and will also be marketing it herself. “It’s tough because I work in marketing but I don’t like to do it,” said Gill who supports herself working as a contractor at Microsoft. “Drawing is my passion, so it’s an interesting balance.”
Sharing such intimate details of her life hasn’t gotten weird for Gill — not yet, at least. There is a lot of sex and substance abuse and lost dignity in her books.
“My mom did some tell-all auto-bio comics,” said Gill. “In my teens I was reading these auto-bio comics from women like Roberta Gregory who were telling stories about the trouble they got into last night, so I was like, ‘that’s awesome,’ it’s always what I wanted to do.”
Things got a bit more difficult when she got sober, though. She got quieter and didn’t want to share as much. “I used to be more like, ‘Boom, there I go, just got up on the bar.’” said Gill.
You can learn more about Gill’s work at tatianagill.com.According to Fairhope Police, a resident notified the Fairhope Police Department that her dog had been shot on Sunday.
The victim, Jacqueline Reed, said she was walking two pet dogs, each on a leash, in her yard. She stated that three juveniles approached her and one of the juveniles was armed with a shotgun.
The juvenile shot the dog, and then the three youths ran from the scene.
Reed told Local 15 that she's devastated at the loss of her dog.
She says it happened Sunday evening when she was walking her two dogs Boozie and Major.
Police say the suspects - 15, 12, and 11 year old boys - walked out of the woods and approached her.
Reed says she asked the kids what they were doing and that's when police say the 15 year old - who was carrying a shotgun - shot Major and the suspects took off.
They were later found nearby and arrested - at which time police recovered the shotgun as well as a rifle.
Reed says major died right outside her home...
"I just like raised major and I miss him and I love him," Reed said. "He was part of the family. I can't believe someone would be that cruel to shoot your dog right in front of you."
Police say both firearms were stolen but the owner has not been identified.
All three suspects were taken to the Baldwin County juvenile detention center - where they face serious charges
----------------------------------------------------
ORIGINAL STORY
According to Fairhope Police, on September 10, 2017, at approximately 5:45 p.m., a resident of the 7000 block of New Era Road in Fairhope notified the Fairhope Police Department that her dog had been shot. According to the victim, she was walking two pet dogs, each on a leash, in her yard. She stated that three juveniles approached her and one of the juveniles was armed with a shotgun. The juvenile shot the dog, and then the three youths ran from the scene.
Responding officers from the Fairhope Police Department located the three juveniles in the area of Kirkman Lane and Pecan Avenue and took them into custody. Due to their status as juveniles, their identities are not considered public information, but they are:
A fifteen (15) year old black male;
A twelve (12) year old black male; and,
An eleven (11) year old black male.
All three juveniles are residents of Fairhope.
Officers recovered a shotgun and a rifle. The investigation revealed that the firearms were stolen from a residence, but at this point the owner of the firearms has not been identified. Also, the investigation indicates that the fifteen-year old male was the one who shot the dog. All three juveniles were taken to the Baldwin County Juvenile Detention Center in Bay Minette.
The juveniles will face charges of felony cruelty to an animal as well as misdemeanor reckless endangerment. The victim, a fifty-two (52) year old female, was uninjured, but due to her close proximity to the leashed dog when the shotgun was discharged, there was a substantial risk of serious bodily injury, prompting the reckless endangerment charge. The dog died as a result of the injuries.
Investigators are attempting to identify the owner of the firearms, at which point additional charges relating to the theft of the firearms will be considered.
Residents are strongly encouraged to store firearms in a manner which will prevent thefts. If anyone has additional information about this incident, they are asked to call the Fairhope Police Department at (251) 928-2385.Climbing partners Tom Randall and Pete Whittaker share at least two things, a passion for difficult climbs and a birthday. Every year on their cake day they celebrate with a new, and increasingly weird challenge. They have climbed in suits, they have climbed in drag, but this year, they wanted more - much more. Watch as they attempt a birthday ascent of the world-famous Master's Edge (E7) in possibly the worst style ever imaged. Rather than take on the usual methods of the top athletes with intelligent diets, careful preparation, and good conditions, they head out on a rainy day with giant fat suits. If you have never tried climbing with butt that weighs 15 lbs, Tom and Pete recommend it, but not if you actually want to send. On another note, these guys take very big falls as if they are routine. Climbing in Fat Suits Is an Awesome Idea | Don't Expect Anything Normal with Tom Randall, Ep. 4Wild weather has hammered parts of the country overnight, with strong winds for much of the country and the season's first snow in the south.
Photo: Supplied / James McKenzie
The first snow of the season hit the country yesterday, with MetService saying there was probably snow on Arthur's, Lewis and Porters Pass, though it was yet to confirm that.
It was thought to have cleared at Arthur's and Porters Pass shortly after it began, and was expected to clear in Lewis Pass by early this morning.
Some areas in central Otago had sub-zero temperatures, with Alexandra getting down to -2°C.
Mt Hutt ski area manager James McKenzie said the mountain had heavy snow fall, with access to the ski fields only possible by using snowmobiles.
"It's pretty wintry right now", he said. "It's currently -9°C at the top of the mountain and there is an 80km/h southerly."
Photo: Supplied / James McKenzie
He said this was relatively normal for this time of the year, but the strong southerlies were expected to continue throughout May.
Mr McKenzie said the weather was so wild, it took a construction crew, who were building a new toilet block, several hours to get up the mountain yesterday.
"The snow just got too deep for our four wheel drives... so we had to shuttle [the workers] up on the snowmobiles," he said.
Cardrona skifield spokesperson Jen Houltham said it was very cold on the mountain yesterday for the last day of April, with snow now coating cabins and diggers as they prepared for the ski season.
Photo: Supplied / Cardrona Skifield
It was not the first snow of the year, however, with a heavy dump of snow during the off-season in January after a summer storm that also cut power to parts of Auckland.
MetService meteorologist April Clark said while conditions were expected to ease today, colder temperatures would become more common over the coming weeks.
"For most people in the North Island, they're probably going to notice that it's got colder.
"We've sort of escaped it - a really cold outbreak - so far."
MetService had been forecasting snow down to 700m in some places likes Arthur's Pass and Porters Pass, she said.
"It does look like temperatures got cold enough and they did get precipitation down there."
Photo: Cardrona Skifield
Heavy winds for North Island
MetService said there were also strong winds and heavy rain for the east coast of the North Island, and gusts in Wellington topping 100km/h.
The winds brought down trees around the city - one of them damaging three vehicles and a power line. The city council said trees were down in Brooklyn, Karori and Melrose.
All train lines between Petone and Wellington were also being replaced by buses because of damage to balustrades along the waterfront, while all trains into Melling Railway Station in Lower Hutt were been cancelled until further notice due to bad weather.
The Johnsonville line was however back up and running after delays caused by a train hitting a tree about 5.30am.
High winds also forced the closure of parts of Marine Drive in Lower Hutt after waves crashed onto the road, leaving behind debris and logs.
Ms Clark said Wellington was the windiest place in the country last night.
"Right at MetService in Kelburn were the highest gusts, about 120km/h, and that was around 10 o'clock last night."
One flight was also diverted back to Auckland from Wellington after it was unable to land.
A MetService spokesperson said they expected winds to ease this morning with better weather forecast for the North Island for Tuesday.
People were urged to take care on the roads.
Further south, State Highway 1 north of Orari, near Temuka in South Canterbury, was closed because of a crash.When it comes to their neighbors in Norway, the good people of Denmark and Sweden have a limitless fount of jokes, many of which are reductive and in questionable taste; none of which should, under any circumstance, be repeated.
Here’s one of the funniest:
A Dane, a Swede and a Norwegian are shipwrecked on a desert island. The Dane finds a magic shell, which, when rubbed, entitles each of the castaways to a wish. The Dane says: “I wish to go home to my cozy flat in Copenhagen and relax on my soft sofa beside my sexy girlfriend with a six-pack of beer.” He promptly disappears. The Swede says, “I wish to return to my large and comfortable Stockholm bungalow, with its sleek Ikea furniture.” He vanishes, too. After mulling his options, the Norwegian says,
“I’m terribly lonely now. I wish my two friends were here with me.”
For much of the last decade, Roderick Sloan has been viewed as something of a Norwegian joke. By Norwegians, no less. The 44-year-old émigré Scot makes his home 88 miles north of the Arctic Circle—little more than a cod’s toss from Nordskot (pop. 55), one of Norway’s darkest, bleakest, remotest coastal villages.
The farm he shares with his wife (Lindis), young sons (names withheld by request) and dog (Sisko, an aged Labrador with bad joints and a worse aroma) spans 500 scraggly acres. The land is speckled with birch and encircled by mountain—lofty, sharp-edged and shaped like dragon’s teeth. It’s an agreeable enough place in what American travel writer Bill Bryson might call a thank-you-God-for-not-making-me-live-here sort of way. “Summer is special in Nordskot,” cracks Christopher Sjuve, an Oslo-based wine blogger. “It’s everyone’s favorite day of the year.”
Sloan embraces the isolation. “I love the tranquility here, you understand,” he says in a soft Scottish burr, rolling his r’s and stretching out his vowels. “I love the clean air and the changes of the seasons. It’s not perfection, but then if life is too perfect, it can be perfectly dull.”
What makes Sloan perfectly risible in the eyes of many is the precarious career he has carved. In weather that would be considered mild only on Neptune, he dives into the icy fjord to gather sea urchins, those wee beasties that look like squash balls encased in pine thistles. Sloan’s aquatic treasure hunts for krakebolle (“crow’s balls” in Norwegian) are as dangerous as they are daring. Waves are often treacherous; squalls, gusty; and storms can appear in an instant. “Roddie swims alone, down to 50 feet deep,” Sjuve observes. “You’ve either got to be drunk or crazy to do what he does.”
Crazy, say the locals. “When I started to harvest urchins in 2002, everyone thought I was bananas,” Sloan says. “They’re not a traditional catch in north Norway.” He means urchins, not bananas. Though plentiful, urchins are not exactly standard fare in Norway, a nation of largely unadventurous eaters who annually consume 48 million frozen pizzas—about 10 per capita. Sloan is practically a cottage industry unto himself. “We’ve got seals and killer whales,” he says, “but I’m the country’s only full-time urchin diver.”
In the brave new world of fine dining, the roe of the humble urchin—a shellfish once cursed as a pest to lobstermen, mocked as “whore’s eggs” and routinely smashed with hammers or tossed overboard as unsalable “bycatch”—is a prized and slurpily lascivious delicacy. Unlike caviar, which is the eggs of fish, the roe of the urchin is its wobbly gonads. Every year more than 100,000 tons of them slide down discerning throats, mainly in France and Japan, where the chunks of salty, grainy custard are known as uni and believed to be an uplifting tonic, if not an aphrodisiac. The Japanese exchange urchins as gifts during New Year celebrations.
Sloan supplies Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis, or “Norwegian greens,” to dozens of the most revered restaurants in Europe, from London’s meaty, masculine mecca of English food (St. John) to the 12-seat Fäviken in the wilds of northern Sweden, where chef Magnus Nilsson stalks lingonberries in bearskin with his gun dog, Krut.
Master chefs buzz among themselves about Sloan’s urchins like discoverers of a latter-day Beatles—or, in the case of René Redzepi, beetles. The founder of “New Nordic” cuisine, Redzepi runs Noma, a Copenhagen eatery that Restaurant magazine has judged to be the world’s best in four of the last five years.
Redzepi’s 28-course celebration of local and seasonal ingredients foraged from the woodlands and seashore is designed to demonstrate nature on a plate. He fashions culinary bouquets from wild herbs and edible soil, toasted hay and reindeer moss, live ants and fermented grasshoppers. (“Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup!” “Yes, and for the next course...”) In one signature dish, raw North Atlantic shrimp are washed up on a “beachscape” of grasses, frozen pebbles and dried-urchin “sand” that showcases the Norwegian green’s murky orange innards. Sloan provides the urchins, which the Danish have dubbed søpindsvin (sea hedgehogs). Redzepi says they’re as luscious as anything he’s ever eaten.
“It’s like Roddie invented a new product, a new culinary sensation,” echoes fellow chef Esben Holmboe Bang, whose Maaemo is the most shimmering of Oslo’s Michelin-starred chow houses. “His Norwegian greens are sweet and tender and you can taste the wilderness in every bite. It’s like you’re making out with the sea.”
***
The night before the greens first appeared on Noma’s menu, a waiter asked, “Where do sea urchins come from?”
“They grow on trees,” said another waiter, helpfully. Which even by Scandinavian standards wasn’t much of a comeback. It so happens that urchins can be found in almost every major marine habitat from the poles to the Equator, and from shallow inlets to depths of more than 17,000 feet. Sloan mostly targets exposed reefs with rich forests of kelp, which urchins eat ravenously.
At dawn on this brutal spring morning, Sloan and his one-man crew—a Frenchman who answers to J.C.—clamber onto a red polar work boat he’s christened Big Betty. Out to sea, a white-tailed eagle is wheeling and, beyond that, to the northwest, you can see the lumpy peninsula jutting toward the Lofoten Islands. Under an immense sky (sea clear, light swell) Big Betty putters along until reaching a craggy cove, where Sloan spies the familiar dark shadows. He zips up his dry suit, yanks on rubber gloves and straps on 65 pounds of scuba gear. Plopping backward into the water, Sloan shimmies through dense clusters of seaweed, propelled by the surge of each wave.
Urchins have hundreds of adhesive tube feet and move over the sandy seafloor at a fairly leisurely pace. Sloan collects them with diligence and a certain tenderness, placing the prickly krakebolle one by one into the mesh sacks that flutter in his wake. After 30 minutes he surfaces through the surf, and is quickly hauled onto the deck by J.C., who then sorts the urchins according to color, size and condition. A typical daily haul is between 200 and 300 pounds.
Sloan’s frozen lips are the same pale blue as the water; his breathing is so labored he can barely speak. “Welcome to my office,” he says at last. “This is a magic place to be. Every day I feel like I’m parachuting into the Amazon jungle, without the piranhas. I have no idea what’s going to happen. It’s quite exciting, but it can be terrifying as well.”
He smiles gently. Sloan is an engagingly modest, gruff and diffident fellow with an untamed beard and a sharp sense of humor—in three languages. “I’m quite a sane guy,” he says, “but I’m a bit mad, too.” He’s never bothered to pry out the urchin spike his right thumb has harbored since 2004. “The first year it’s interesting. After that, it becomes part of you.”
The English writer P. G. Wodehouse wrote that it’s never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine. Though Sloan has a copious supply of inner sunshine, he holds strong opinions—about politicians, whaling, the sustainable and ethical consumption of fish, the 1970s TV spy show “The Man From Atlantis” (which he loves), Nordic mosquitoes (hates), the medicinal value of periwinkles—and he doesn’t hesitate to express them. If he invites you to spend a day aboard Big Betty, then you’ve passed some very stringent, very idiosyncratic test of character.
At this moment he’s standing astride Betty’s stern, holding forth on the perils of his profession. He recalls a five-hour battle through 20-foot waves to get his first tiny boat the final kilometer home. (“If you steer the wrong way, you die. It’s as simple as that.”) He compares disentangling himself from a clump of underwater kelp to squeezing through a hawthorn hedge. He describes being flung into a churning washing machine of surf and currents. “I’m upside-down, swirling above jagged rocks, unable to see my oxygen bubbles. During a whiteout, I can float for five minutes with no idea where I am.”
Sloan is awed by the milky nothingness he confronts during urchin spawning season, when the sea teems with delicate, transparent creatures of great beauty. The currents and low visibility make diving too risky. “Imagine if you could see all the pollen spores in the air. It’s like snorkeling in a tub of bathwater after you dropped a bar of soap in it. This is the soup of life, you understand.”
He first dipped a toe into that soup at age 5, during a fishing holiday to the Scottish Highlands. (The family motto: Sleep long and prosper.) When the lure of his older brother, Robbie, got snagged on some slimy seaweed, Roddie volunteered to fetch it. “I must have walked only a few yards, but it seemed like a few miles,” he says. “I remember thinking that the sea is this wonderful place.”
Which, growing up in the land-locked hamlet of Dunscore he never much got to experience. “At 19, I kind of struggled off into life,” he says. “I was bitterly disappointed with it.” He drifted through Europe, finding work in restaurants as a porter, a cook and a manager. At 27, he landed in Oslo and got a job in a sports lounge. While tending bar he met his future wife, Lindis, a college student who had come to watch a British soccer match on the widescreen TV. She asked him to change the channel. He complied. They’ve been a couple pretty much ever since.
It was Lindis’ brother who suggested that Roddie move to Arctic Norway and hunt the feral urchin. “The big problem was not fishing them,” Roddie says. “The big problem was selling them.” Business was never easy, though Sloan began to source some of the continent’s top restaurants, like Alain Ducasse’s Le Louis XV in Monaco. But when his Paris wholesaler went bust in 2008, he decided to return to school and pursue a degree in engineering. A phone call from René Redzepi changed all that. The Noma chef asked Sloan to ship his greens to Denmark. Sloan was reluctant, but at Lindis’ urging—and after tripling the price as a disincentive—he gave in. “I was ready to throw in the beach towel,” he says. “René saved my career.” Noma now has a standing order for 100 pounds a week.
The greens are at their prime from November to the end of February. When the season winds up, Sloan switches to mahogany clams, which Norwegian fishermen once used as cod bait. The clams stop reproducing after 25 years, and some that Sloan harvests are hundreds of years old. “They’ve spent centuries just lying in their beds,” he says. Bored, not happy as, well...clams. “If a mahogany clam had a brain, it might think, ‘I’ve just turned 350. Why wasn’t I born a dog? Twelve years of this crap and it would all be over.’”
Urchins lack brains, too. The test—its spiny outer shell—protects what is basically an eating and breeding machine. The skeleton is divided into sections running from top to bottom, like the segments of an orange. Inside the body are five corals of roe, sometimes called tongues. On the underside of the test are a muscular system and five self-honing calcium carbonate teeth that allow the urchin to chomp through stone. This chewing apparatus is known as Aristotle’s lantern, from a description in the fourth century B.C. philosopher and naturalist’s Historia Animalium. (Scholars recently proposed that he was actually referring to the test, which resembles the bronze lamps of ancient Greece.)
Urchins are among the earliest forms of life known to have existed. Their fossils date back some 450 million years. “The little buggers are believed to share a distant common ancestor with humans,” says Sloan. Which sounds like the setup for another Norwegian joke.
Around 800 species of urchins are still extant. All have roe that’s edible, though not necessarily palatable. In the kitchen of his farmhouse, Sloan demonstrates how to cut around the Norwegian green’s mouth and scoop out the tongues. In theory, urchins should be opened with a coupe oursin—a tool specially designed for the job. Sloan doesn’t own one, so he uses his wife’s nail scissors. Inserting the tip into the mouthparts, he snips off an itty-bitty piece and trims the top third of the shell to reveal the roe. He spoons out a fillet and places it on your tongue: The sensation is soft and pillowy. “I love the taste of urchin when it’s really good,” Sloan says. “You start with sea salt, then you get a big iodine hit, and, at the end, a distinctive sweetness that sits in your mouth for hours.”
***
Oyster farmers in the United States have lately twisted the term terroir to create “merroir,” which refers to the flavors imparted by different areas of the sea. In the urchin’s case, flavor depends on the species and the seaweed it eats, says John Lawrence, who wrote the book on the subject (it’s for sale: Sea Urchins: Biology and Ecology, $200, Academic Press).
The merroir of oysters varies widely—generally, smaller varieties tend to have a slightly metallic taste. We ask: In the urchins’ briny universe, does size matter? “The urchin gonad is both a nutritive reserve organ and a gametogenic organ,” says Lawrence, a professor at the University of South Florida. “It is a nutrient reserve organ because it produces nutritive phagocytes that store protein and glycogen. These are produced in the gonads during the first part of the reproductive cycle and are transferred to the gametes. The gonads are most flavorful when they consist primarily of nutritive phagocytes and not gametes. It is possible the gonads of small urchins consist primarily of nutritive phagocytes.”
Simply said, Sloan’s finest urchins are much like a juicy cut of Wagyu steak: lots of energy stored. The nutritive phagocytes of the roe and the fat of well-marbled beef account for their robustness. Sloan has an even simpler explanation for why his greens are so exquisite. “By June, when the midnight sun arrives, there’s lots of algae for them to eat,” he says. “Everything grows slowly up here, so the urchins taste better.”
***
Both fragile and destructive, the urchin is a tempest in an environmental seapot. In every corner of the planet, there seem to be either too few or too many. The French and Irish exhausted their resident stocks years ago. In Maine, Nova Scotia and Japan, urchin populations have been drastically reduced by overfishing and disease.
Meanwhile, off the coasts of California and Tasmania, overfishing the animal’s natural predators and large-scale change in ocean circulation—believed to be an effect of climate change—have turned vast stretches of seafloor into “urchin barrens” that remind you of moonscapes. The urchins multiply, chew down the kelp and devastate marine ecosystems. “Management of the sea is the only way,” says Sloan.
He culls his wild urchin beds on a five-year rotation, and wants Norway to adopt a hands-on approach—instituting quotas and establishing fishing zones. In return, a hunter of urchins might produce an underwater map or feed them kelp washed ashore when natural supplies are scarce.
***
From a jetty in Nordskot Harbor, Sloan gazes over the sea, but a gray mist obscures the cliffs and slopes. “I’d like to plant maple trees on my land,” he says, a bit wistfully. A neighbor told him the trees wouldn’t produce sap for at least 25 years: “You’ll be very, very old.” Sloan told the neighbor, “That’s not the point. I’m looking to the future.”
Sloan would be happy if the future looked a lot like the present. “I’ve got a smart woman as a wife and an old, fat Labrador,” he says, laughing at the Norwegian jokiness of it all. “I don’t need a Ferrari. I can’t watch more than one TV. I can’t sleep in more than one bed. If you have enough in life, that’s all that matters. I’m just clearing sand off the bottom of the ocean.”By By Christopher Szabo Dec 2, 2013 in World Budapest - Twenty-three years after the end of Communism in Hungary, the country has taken a tentative step towards opening the secret files of the era to the public, the last former East Bloc country to do so. Politics.hu says the creation of the Neither the liberal LMP nor the ultra right-wing Jobbik were satisfied with the terms of reference of the new bill, arguing all the names could be revealed at the stroke of a pen, if the government wanted to. However, Bence argued, according to Historians have had access to the material for decades, but those affected now have hope that they can find out who violated their rights under the Communist regime. It should be noted that unlike in Western countries, the end of WWII did not mean the end of the killing in these countries. Hungary, like Poland, Austria and Germany, suffered most under the Soviet regime, but with Soviet troops withdrawing from occupied eastern Austria, the suffering ended. However, in Poland, some 2 million people were deported, in Hungary over 600,000 and a vast number from Germany. In an in-depth article, Even people who weren’t active collaborators with the secret police could be considered passively compliant and therefore ‘complicit. Vaclav Havel, the revered Czech dissident and former President of the Czech Republic, described how the systemic complicity forced citizens to “live within a lie”. While Hungarian society has been one of the slowest in facing its Communist past, none of the former East Bloc nations have had it easy. It is generally thought that Poland and the Czech Republic addressed the issue in a timely manner and also actually compensated victims. Romania and Bulgaria, along with the former Soviet republics, have not done well either. Russia, the legal successor of the Soviet Union is still in denial, with any wrongdoing on the part of mass murderers like Lenin or Stalin being swept under the carpet. Hungary is hardly better. People are interested not in what they see as the distant past, but in their daily problems and with the EU, of which the country is a part, in constant crisis since 2008, this is not surprising. The Gyarmati said: Looking at the current state of the investigation of documents, the Historical Archive could offer close to a million people information compensation, if those, or their legal descendants, who were really spied on/persecuted came forward. Meanwhile, a promising film has been released on Soviet rapes committed against Hungarian women during the "liberation" of the country. So it seems, the country is slowly and painfully, beginning to face its Communist past, a period which killed some 350,000 people between 1945 and 1989. Justice minister Tibor Navracsics said in parliament that a new bill would cater for the creation of an Committee of National Memory, which would make it possible for individuals who were spied on or otherwise victimised by Communist informers or agents, will investigate these activities. Hirado.hu says the victims will have the choice of making the identities of those who informed or spied on them public.Politics.hu says the creation of the Committee would give a better understanding of how people lived under Communism. The subject is not taught in schools and people under 30 years of age have little idea of what their parents went through. Politics.hu reports that during the parliamentary debate, deputy president of the ruling coalition Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP), Bence Rétvári said the government was making efforts to compensate victims of the previous (Communist) regime, both morally and financially.Neither the liberal LMP nor the ultra right-wing Jobbik were satisfied with the terms of reference of the new bill, arguing all the names could be revealed at the stroke of a pen, if the government wanted to.However, Bence argued, according to mno.hu that this way the victim would be in charge of the process and not again be a victim as previously. LMP joint president, András Schiffer, called for the immediate release of all the files.Historians have had access to the material for decades, but those affected now have hope that they can find out who violated their rights under the Communist regime.It should be noted that unlike in Western countries, the end of WWII did not mean the end of the killing in these countries.Hungary, like Poland, Austria and Germany, suffered most under the Soviet regime, but with Soviet troops withdrawing from occupied eastern Austria, the suffering ended. However, in Poland, some 2 million people were deported, in Hungary over 600,000 and a vast number from Germany.In an in-depth article, Cynthia Horne of Western Washington University, writes:While Hungarian society has been one of the slowest in facing its Communist past, none of the former East Bloc nations have had it easy. It is generally thought that Poland and the Czech Republic addressed the issue in a timely manner and also actually compensated victims.Romania and Bulgaria, along with the former Soviet republics, have not done well either. Russia, the legal successor of the Soviet Union is still in denial, with any wrongdoing on the part of mass murderers like Lenin or Stalin being swept under the carpet.Hungary is hardly better. People are interested not in what they see as the distant past, but in their daily problems and with the EU, of which the country is a part, in constant crisis since 2008, this is not surprising.The PB Blog, in an interview with Dr György Gyarmati, director of the Historical Archive, revealed that much is known and could be revealed to the victims or their descendants immediately.Gyarmati said:Meanwhile, a promising film has been released on Soviet rapes committed against Hungarian women during the "liberation" of the country.So it seems, the country is slowly and painfully, beginning to face its Communist past, a period which killed some 350,000 people between 1945 and 1989. More about Hungary, Communist, Files More news from Hungary Communist FilesGetty Images
Updates from Wednesday, Sept. 3
Bruce Levine of WSCR-AM passes along the latest on Starlin Castro's injury:
The Cubs' official Twitter feed previously provided an update on Castro:
Original Text
Chicago Cubs shortstop Starlin Castro exited Tuesday's game against the National League Central division rival Milwaukee Brewers with an ankle injury.
CSNChicago.com's Patrick Mooney provided the details on Castro's condition:
A slide into home was to blame for Castro's injury, and now the Cubs are without one of their premier young players for the foreseeable future. At least there is hardly any incentive to press Castro back into action, because the Cubs are nowhere near playoff contention.
Holding out Castro to ensure a full recovery is important not only for Chicago, but for the trade partners it may attract this winter. Amid speculation that has swirled about a possible move to the New York Mets, Castro asserts that he's content in the Windy City, per the New York Daily News' Anthony McCarron:
Whatever happens, happens. I can't control this. I know myself. I know I can be a good player and I know a lot of teams can want me. But I’m here and I don’t want to leave here. I feel comfortable here and I want to be a part of this team when we compete, when we win playoffs and stuff like that.
Rotoworld's D.J. Short highlighted a couple of qualities that makes Castro attractive to multiple other clubs:
For the Cubs to part ways with such a promising prodigy would go against their long-awaited rebuilding plan under President of Baseball Operations Theo Epstein.
Castro has the attitude and production to warrant keeping him in a Cubs uniform for years to come; to contribute to the team's eventual turnaround. Whether the front office views Castro that way remains to be seen.
Whatever the case may be regarding his long-term future, Chicago will be cautious with Castro for the remainder of the 2014 MLB season in light of the injury he suffered Tuesday at Wrigley Field.A study of Hans Bellmer's eroticized images and the psychological origins of his disturbing art.
The German-born Surrealist Hans Bellmer (1902-1975), best known for his life-size pubescent dolls, devoted an artistic lifetime to creating sexualized images of the female body--distorted, dismembered, or menaced in sinister scenarios. In this book Sue Taylor draws on psychoanalytic theory to suggest why Bellmer was so driven by erotomania as well as a desire for revenge, suffering, and the safety of the womb. Although he styled himself as the quintessential Oedipal son, an avant-garde artist in perpetual rebellion against a despised father, Taylor contends that his filial attitude was more complex than he could consciously allow. Tracing a repressed homoerotic attachment to his father, castration anxiety, and an unconscious sense of guilt, Taylor proposes |
I will not seek reelection," he says.
Update: Perry Plugs Texas Economy
Perry says he's most proud of creating 1.6 million jobs in his tenure as governor; he says thirty percent of net job creation in the United States has been in Texas.
Perry touts his Texas Enterprise Fund, saying it "has planted seed capital for entrepreneurs and innovators" who are changing the world.
Perry touts Texas' status as the top economy in America, underscored by his choice of the Caterpillar dealership as the location of his announcement.
After an introduction from Texas First Lady Anita Perry, Gov. Rick Perry has begun his speech.
Original Post: Gov. Rick Perry will soon announce his “exciting future plans” for public life, at an event San Antonio.
There’s plenty of speculation regarding what Gov. Perry could do:
There’s chatter that Perry could announce plans to depart the Governor’s Mansion to join a think tank;
Others speculate that he will announce plans with a political action committee for a potential 2016 presidential bid;
Some have speculated that Perry could launch another campaign for governor of Texas, or;
Who knows? Perry has a long history of surprising the press.
The announcement should be made shortly after 1 p.m. in San Antonio, at the country's largest Caterpillar equipment dealership. KUT News will have more updates as the story continues. You can watch the event live on the Office of the Governor's website.A suicide booth is a fictional machine for committing suicide. Suicide booths appear in numerous fictional settings, including the American animated series Futurama and the manga Gunnm/Battle Angel Alita. Compulsory self-execution booths were also featured in an episode of the original Star Trek TV series entitled "A Taste of Armageddon".
The concept can be found as early as 1893. When a series of suicides were vigorously discussed in United Kingdom newspapers, critic William Archer suggested that in the golden age there would be penny-in-the-slot machines by which a man could kill himself.[1][2]
Modern writer Martin Amis provoked a small controversy in January 2010 when he facetiously advocated "suicide booths" for the elderly, of whom he wrote:
There’ll be a population of demented very old people, like an invasion of terrible immigrants, stinking out the restaurants and cafes and shops...There should be a booth on every corner where you could get a Martini and a medal.[3]
Early mentions [ edit ]
Following Archer's statement in 1893, the 1895 story "The Repairer of Reputations" by Robert W. Chambers featured the Governor of New York presiding over the opening of the first "Government Lethal Chamber" in the then-future year of 1920, after the repeal of laws against suicide:
"The Government has seen fit to acknowledge the right of man to end an existence which may have become intolerable to him, through physical suffering or mental despair." [...] He paused, and turned to the white Lethal Chamber. The silence in the street was absolute. "There a painless death awaits him who can no longer bear the sorrows of this life."[This quote needs a citation]
However, as Chambers's protagonist who relates the story is suffering from brain damage, it remains ambiguous whether or not he is an unreliable narrator.
In Robert Sheckley's Immortality, Inc. (1959), the protagonist wakes up in an unfamiliar future and, while wandering dazed in a starkly changed New York, finds himself in what he thinks might be a bread line, but turns out to be a line for the suicide booths.[citation needed] In the movie Freejack (loosely based on Immortality, Inc.), suicide booths are not shown, but advertisements for suicide-assistance services are visible against the city skyline.[citation needed]
In Ivan Efremov's 1968 novel The Bull's Hour, suicide booths are referred to as the "palaces of tender death" (Russian: Дворцы нежной смерти). They're commonly used on the planet Tormance to control population growth.[citation needed]
Kurt Vonnegut's "purple-roofed Ethical Suicidal Parlors" appear in two stories: "Welcome to the Monkey House" and "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater". In these Ethical Suicide Parlors, a patron receives a free meal in the adjoining Howard Johnson's diner before committing suicide. It is considered a citizen's patriotic duty to commit suicide, again as a means of population control.[citation needed]
In John Christopher's novel The City of Gold and Lead, human slaves in the aliens' domed cities voluntarily use the "Place of Happy Release" when they are no longer able to serve. The slave is killed instantly and then cremated.[citation needed]
While not a booth, suicide chambers are used to allow people to choose a pleasant form of euthanasia in the movie Soylent Green.[citation needed] The character Sol Roth (Edward G. Robinson) leaves a note saying that he is "going home," a euphemism for committing state-approved suicide via a large, well-appointed, attended suicide chamber. Music and a video chosen by the client are played while he or she waits for the drugs to take their fatal effect. Roth chooses Ludwig van Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony and a video of Earth's natural wonders and scenes of pastoral beauty.
In Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars, set well over a billion years in the future, in the city Diaspar, human beings resort to suicide when they are tired of life, but with the provision of being re-created at some future date. The computers that store memories of suicided humans decide when and whom to resurrect. Sometimes they create a person who has never existed before.[citation needed]
Futurama [ edit ]
In the world of Futurama, Stop-and-Drop suicide booths resemble phone booths and cost one quarter per use. The booths have at least three modes of death: "quick and painless", "slow and horrible",[4] and "clumsy bludgeoning"[5] though, it is also implied that "electrocution, with a side order of poison" exists,[6] and that the eyes can be scooped out for an extra charge.[5] After a mode of death is selected and executed, the machine cheerfully says, "You are now dead. Thank you for using Stop-and-Drop, America's favorite suicide booth since 2008", or in Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs, "You are now dead, please take your receipt", and at this time many untaken receipts are shown.[7]
The first appearance of a suicide booth in Futurama is in "Space Pilot 3000", in which the character Bender wants to use it.[4] Fry at first mistakes the suicide booth for a phone booth, and Bender offers to share it with him. Fry requests a collect call, which the machine interprets as a "slow and horrible" death. It then turns out that "slow and horrible" can be survived by pressing oneself against the side of the booth, leading Bender to accuse the machine of being a rip-off. In Futurama: Bender's Big Score, after failing to initially chase down Fry in the year 2000, Bender wants to kill himself, but mistakes a regular phone booth for a suicide booth.[8] A suicide booth reappeared in Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs where Bender once again attempts to end his life, but is saved when dropped into the League of Robots' lair.[9] During the season 6 episode "Ghost in the Machines", Bender commits suicide in a booth named Lynn that is still angry at him over the end of their relationship six months earlier; his ghost eventually makes its way back to his body so he can continue living.[10]
According to series co-creator Matt Groening, the suicide booth concept was inspired by a 1937 Donald Duck cartoon, Modern Inventions, in which Donald Duck visits a Museum of the Future and is nearly killed by various push button gadgets.[11] The suicide booth was closely enough associated with Bender's character that in 2001 it was featured as the display stand for the Bender action figure.[12] It was also one of the many features of the series which troubled the executives at Fox when Groening and David X. Cohen first pitched the series.[13]
In other media [ edit ]
In the Star Trek episode "A Taste of Armageddon", people who were deemed war casualties by the government of Eminiar VII were required to enter suicide booths. Treaty arrangements require that everyone who is calculated as "dead" in the hypothetical thermonuclear war simulated using computers actually die, without actually damaging any infrastructure. In the end, the computers are destroyed, the war can no longer be calculated in this way, the treaty breaks down, and faced with a real threat, (presumably) peace begins.[citation needed]
After the Heaven's Gate mass suicide event was linked by tabloids to an extreme fascination with science fiction and Star Trek in particular it was noted that multiple episodes, including "A Taste of Armageddon", actually advocated an anti-suicide standpoint as opposed to the viewpoint expressed by the Heaven's Gate group.[14]
In the seventeenth season Simpsons episode "Million Dollar Abie", a suicide machine called a "diePod" (a pun on the iPod) is featured. The diePod allows the patient to choose visual and auditory themes that present themselves as the patient is killed. It also shows three different modes, namely, "Quick Painless Death", "Slow and Painful Death", and "Megadeath" (a pun on a band of a similarly spelled name). It was a reference to the suicide building in Soylent Green. Being a direct parody of the aforementioned scene, Abraham Simpson receives the opportunity to select his final vision and musical accompaniment: 1960s-era footage of "cops beatin' up hippies" to the tune of "Pennsylvania 6-5000" by the Glenn Miller Orchestra.[citation needed]
In the Battle Angel Alita series, the suicide booth is located in Tiphares and is called 'EndJoy'. The Endjoy was a public suicide booth located in the Dome Park of Tiphares. As the Endjoy was entered it played soothing music and a message stating "Welcome to Endjoy, now just relax and step into the inner hatch". After Alita destroyed it, she pulled out a giant grinder from down below the structure. According to Dr. Russell it is every Tipharian's right to end their own life if they wish. Using the Endjoy is considered a privilege and the invention of a superior race. Presumably constructed by the Medical Inspection Bureau (M.I.B.), Alita noticed people going into it, but not coming out after she was resurrected on Tiphares by Desty Nova. She entered the Endjoy to investigate and tore it to shreds, ripping out the grinder and exposing a current of water that she used to wash herself of the dead Tiphareans' blood. Russell was shocked at Alita's actions, but was forced to reveal what had happened to Lou Collins. Despite Alita's actions, she was not targeted by the M.I.B.[citation needed]
In the movie Logan's Run, set in 2274 CE, the remnants of human civilization live in a sealed domed city, a pseudo-utopia run by a computer that manages all aspects of their lives, including reproduction. The citizens live a mostly hedonistic lifestyle, but have been told that, in order to maintain the city, every resident must undergo the ritual of "Carrousel" at the age of 30, where they are vaporized with the promise of being "Renewed".[citation needed]
In reality [ edit ]
This euthanasia device was invented by Dr Philip Nitschke. Four terminally-ill Australians used it to end their lives with a lethal dose of drugs after they answered "yes" to a series of questions on the lap-top screen. This procedure was legal in Australia's Northern Territory between 1995 and 1997.
The closest thing to a suicide booth to have been actually constructed is the "Euthanasia Machine" invented by Philip Nitschke, consisting of software titled "Deliverance", which asks the patient a series of questions, and automatically administers a lethal injection if the correct answers are made. The system and questions are so constructed that the supplier of the machine cannot be held responsible for ending the life of the patient, who takes responsibility by operating it.
The machine was legalized for a short time as it was solely constructed for those suffering from various diseases to end their life.
See also [ edit ]
Euthanasia device
Euthanasia Coaster, an art concept for a steel roller coaster designed to kill its passengers
Right to Die
Assisted suicide
Jack Kevorkian (1928–2011), best known for publicly championing a terminal patient's right to die via physician-assisted suicideOverdoses related to prescription opioids have quadrupled since 2000, a fact not lost on this state's politicians. A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers will introduce six bills during the 2018 session of the Colorado Legislature session that target the epidemic, and just before Christmas, Representative Jared Polis asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to lift its public-health warning on kratom, or what the Democrat from Boulder calls a "natural alternative to opioids."
"The beneficial potential, safety, and efficacy of kratom has been discussed, studied, clinically researched and found to be as safe as coffee," states the letter, which was signed by seventeen lawmakers. "We have heard from many constituents who have used kratom to successfully end their dependence on dangerous opioids, and maintaining legal access to kratom is important for many Americans to maintain sobriety."
Jared PolisNEW YORK, April 29, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Bitcoin Shop, Inc. (OTCBB: BTCS) is a blockchain technology company that provides transaction verification services for digital currency like bitcoin. The company operates an ecommerce Website. It enables users to engage in the digital currency ecosystem through one point of access, a universal digital currency platform.
Bitcoin is a payment system developed as open source software in 2009. The system is peer-to-peer; users can interact directly without needing an intermediary. All transactions are verified by network nodes and recorded in a public distributed ledger called the blockchain.
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http://www.brokerbanksecurities.comCINCINNATI—Describing it as a major time-saver over traditional napkins, Procter & Gamble announced Thursday the release of its new Bounty pre-sauced napkins, which have been expressly designed to be removed from the package and immediately thrown into the trash. “With this new innovation, we’ve cut out all the extra steps between procuring a napkin and then crumpling it up and discarding it,” said the company’s director of marketing, Chase Henderson, explaining that the ready-soiled paper goods completely eliminate the need to first spill something and then wipe it up. “For our initial rollout, the napkins will come partially saturated in your choice of chili, ranch dressing, or spaghetti sauce. Down the road, we’re hoping to introduce napkins that are already wadded up into a big, messy clump, so customers can simply place the entire 200-count package in the garbage all at once.” Henderson added that the company was also developing a new paper plate that comes pre-stained with a triangle of pizza grease.
AdvertisementThe death of martial arts and movie legend Bruce Lee is investigated tonight on ReelzChannel’s docuseries Autopsy: The Last Hours Of… — with host Dr. Michael Hunter asking whether he died of undiagnosed epilepsy.
The star, who was also a film director and artist, died in Hong Kong at the age of just 32 in July 1973, ahead of a planned dinner with James Bond star George Lazenby to discuss a new movie.
Lee had complained of a headache earlier while visiting his friend, actress Betty Ting Pei, at her home, before she gave him the analgesic Equagesic, which contained both aspirin and meprobamate.
After taking the medication, he went to take a nap before dinner but never woke up. He was rushed to hospital but was dead on arrival.
His passing was officially ruled “death by misadventure”, but many conspiracies emerged at the time including that he had been murdered by Chinese crime syndicate the Triads.
Cannabis was also found in his stomach.
His death came just over two months after he had collapsed with seizures and headaches during a voice recording session for his last movie Enter the Dragon, before being diagnosed with cerebral edema.
Forensic psychologist Dr. Michael Hunter, who examined Lee’s medical records in detail, says on tonight’s Autopsy The Last Hours Of…: “It’s one of the most mysterious deaths of all time, and the official verdict has rarely been accepted.”
He adds: “I found something deep in Bruce Lee’s medical records that has me really surprised.”
Speaking about whether the recording studio collapse and his death were linked, and whether Lee may have had epilepsy, he says: “There was something in the way that Bruce collapsed that makes me wonder whether he had a condition that was potentially deadly.
“It involves a seizure. It causes the heart and lungs to stop and it’s brought on by a lack of sleep and stress.
“When Bruce collapsed in the studio weeks prior to his death, he was clearly stressed. And the seizure that followed had all the hallmarks of an epileptic fit.
“So did bruce have undiagnosed epilepsy, and if so did he die following another seizure?”
Here is a sneak peek at Autopsy: Bruce Lee before it airs Saturday at 9ET/PT. Posted by ReelzChannel on Thursday, July 13, 2017
Autopsy: The Last Hours Of… airs Saturdays at 9pm ET/PT on ReelzChannel.About
OUR PLAN...
Hooking YOU up first with NEW MUSIC and AWESOME REWARDS!
We aim to spread our music and positive vibes from coast to coast and record our new music on the mainland. Not only do we want to bring Natural Vibes music to people that may never make it to the islands, we want to give YOU an EXCLUSIVE PRE-RELEASE of our new single "MAKE YOU STAY", CD's, T-SHIRTS and other AMAZING REWARDS for supporting us. For the last 15 years we've been limited to playing shows for our fans in Hawai'i and the surrounding areas but its time to bring Natty Vibes music east of the Rockies and beyond. Our goal is to TOUR through cities and towns, gain the support and recognition that will keep us touring all over the country and RECORD NEW MUSIC to keep your feet movin and heads rockin. You can help us bring those who may never make it to Hawai'i, a piece of the island's roots and culture through our music and energy. On the right side of the page theres a list of different levels of support and how we will HOOK YOU UP for contributing to our mission.On a recent visit to “The Howard Stern Show,” “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” director J.J. Abrams recalled his experience of screening the first cut of the movie, which had no visual effects, for Disney execs Bob Iger, Alan Horn and Alan Bergman.
“We screened the movie, and it was horrifying,” Abrams admitted. “I’m nervous beyond words, I’m showing this movie that I know is so far from finished, there’s not an effect in it…”
Abrams said he was even trying to temper their expectations before they saw the film: “It was a lot of me giving excuses before the screening,” he said. “I’m reading their body language while they’re watching it … I couldn’t tell if they were miserable or in ecstasy.”
Apparently, he needn’t have worried, because hearing their positive reaction after the screening was “the biggest relief of my life. And then of course I laughed and all I could think was ‘what do they know? They spent four billion dollars, they have to love it!'” Abrams chuckled. “I’m so critical about it, and their response was so kind. I’m like, ‘they’re just being nice.'”
Abrams also shared what led him to direct the film, after initially turning it down because he was tired of directing sequels and, as a “Star Wars” fan, just wanted to go to the theater and watch it like everyone else. After being invited to sit down with producer Kathleen Kennedy, Abrams said the story just started to flow.
Related Carrie Fisher Pressured to Lose Weight for ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ ‘Star Wars’: Princess Leia’s New Title and 4 More Teases for ‘The Force Awakens’ New ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Spot Focuses on Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren
“We just started talking about what the story could be and as we were talking about it I found myself suddenly on fire about what this movie could be,” Abrams said.
The idea that Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia would be myths to people was what excited Abrams, especially if the story was told from the perspective of “a new, young female character,” who ended up becoming Daisy Ridley’s Rey.
“That question of this young woman asking ‘who is Luke Skywalker?’ I don’t know why, but it made me feel like ‘f–k, that’s so cool,'” Abrams admitted. “These would be essentially kids who didn’t see ‘Star Wars’ themselves, in this movie, who would be in this universe,” Abrams continued. “The idea of discovering or re-discovering this world that had been created.”
The “Force Awakens” director also spoke, for assuredly the umpteenth time, Luke’s absence from the trailers.
“I hate when I go and see a trailer and I feel like I’ve just seen the whole movie in an encapsulated form, it makes me nuts,” Abrams said. “I’d rather be asking questions and feel that they’d been answered for me [by the film].”
He also touched on the controversy that emerged following the casting of John Boyega as Finn, a Stormtrooper who happens to be black.
“All I know is that John Boyega is extraordinary in the movie,” he said. “I think the people who are complaining probably have a lot bigger problems than [that] there’s a black Stormtrooper.”
“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” opens on Dec. 18.Bud Selig has been giddy watching baseball teams attract bigger and bigger local television deals. More local TV revenue to a team means more money for the league to spread via revenue sharing and greater competitive balance. And Bug Selig sure loves competitive balance. On a recent visit to PNC Park, Major League Baseball’s commissioner told Pittsburgh Pirates broadcasters that he got “goosebumps” watching the Reds and Pirates square off in last year’s postseason.
But big local TV contracts aren’t all Skittles and puppies. Certainly not for fans who are forced to pay higher and higher cable and satellite TV bills to watch their home team. Nor for cable and satellite TV customers who don’t care about baseball but have to pay the higher prices as part of their bundled programming.
It turns out that big local TV contracts aren’t always good news for teams either. That has turned Selig’s mood quite sour.
When a regional sports network agrees to pay millions of dollars to an MLB team, that RSN has two principal ways to recoup that investment: (1) sell ads during the game broadcasts; (2) charge a carriage fee to the cable and satellite operators in the region who want to carry the RSN. But what happens when the cable and satellite companies balk at the carriage fees?
The San Diego Padres were the first to find out the answer to that question. When FoxSports San Diego launched before the 2012 season, the RSN was available in only 40% of the San Diego TV market because DISH, AT&T U-verse and Time Warner Cable hadn’t agreed the carriage fee FS San Diego sought to charge. DISH and AT&T came on board before the 2013 season, but TWC held out until this year.
The FS San Diego situation was irksome, but mostly to the Padres and their fans. It didn’t garner much attention from Selig or national baseball writers (although we covered the issue extensively) and it didn’t take long to resolve.
That hasn’t been the case in Houston. Comcast SportsNet Houston launched in October 2012 and, since then, has been seen only by Comcast cable customers. The new RSN — a joint venture among the Houston Astros, Houston Rockets and Comcast Sports Group — couldn’t come to agreement on carriage fees with any other cable or satellite company in the region. With the RSN bleeding cash, Comcast forced the venture into bankruptcy court last September, where the parties have been fighting ever since. Astros owner Jim Crane also sued Comcast and former team owner Drayton McLane for fraud in the sale of the team. That did not make Bud Selig happy at all.
The bankruptcy process has dragged on, as they often do. The Astros and Rockets have worked feverishly to find a new broadcast partner to buy out Comcast’s interest, and there was news yesterday that such a deal could be close. When and if a deal gets done, though, the Astros will have played at least two seasons with little in the way of TV revenue and without anyone watching their games on TV. Sure, the Astros haven’t had much of a product worth watching the last few years, but their ratings are clearly a reflection of how few Houstonians have access to the games.
That brings us to the Los Angeles Dodgers. As I explained before the season started:
SportsNet LA launched in February with around-the-clock Dodgers programming, but only customers with TWC or Bright House can view the network in their homes.Every other cable and satellite operator in the Los Angeles market has balked at the network’s carriage fee demand. And TWC hardly counts as an arms-length agreement, as it is the Dodgers’ broadcast partner in SportsNet LA. Indeed, TWC will essentially pay itself the carriage fee for SportsNet LA, and then pay the Dodgers their monthly rights fee as part of the 25-year, $8.3 billion megadeal.
No deal’s been reached. A vast majority of Dodgers fans in LA missed Josh Beckett’s no-hitter, Clayton Kershaw’s no-hitter and every Yasiel Puig bat flip — unless they watched with a friend or at a bar with TWC. Even Vin Scully is without Dodgers’ broadcasts when he’s at home during the team’s long road trips.
Now members of Congress and the Federal Communications Commission have stepped in and urged the parties to reach a deal as quickly as possible. A local congressman suggested TWC and DirecTV agree to binding arbitration on the outstanding issues: the carriage fee; length of contract; and whether SportsNetLA would be bundled to every customer, or offered a la carte. TWC is prepared to take the dispute to arbitration and Bud Selig recently chimed in with his support for that plan.
MLB statement regarding the Los Angeles Dodgers: pic.twitter.com/UlPxpEPZDT — MLB Public Relations (@MLB_PR) July 29, 2014
DirecTV hasn’t budged and sports media experts don’t expect that it will. Which means the team in the second-largest TV market in the country, with the largest player payroll in the league, won’t be seen by its local fans as it battles for the National League West title. Bud Selig isn’t happy.
When it comes to Selig, though, these carriage fee disputes pale in comparison to fight between the Washington Nationals and the Baltimore Orioles over the money flowing into the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network. I explained the origins of the dispute in a November 2012 post:
[MASN] was created as part of the deal that moved the Expos from Montreal to Washington, D.C. to become the Nationals. Orioles owner Peter Angelos opposed the move as an encroachment on the Orioles’ exclusive broadcast and commercial region. [This is different from the dispute between the Giants and the A’s over the territorial rights to San Jose and Santa Clara County.] As part of the negotiated settlement between MLB (which then owned the Expos) and Angelos, MASN was created with the Orioles to own 90 percent and the Nationals to own ten percent. The deal also called for the Nationals to be paid $20 million/year in broadcast rights, although that figure would increase by $1 million every season. In 2011, MASN reportedly paid the Nationals $29 million in broadcast fees and $7 million for its now 13 percent share of the network. The MASN agreement also includes a re-set provision by which the Nationals can re-negotiate the broadcast fee structure every five years. Early in 2012, the Nationals proposed that MASN pay between $100 million and $120 million per year in broadcast fees. The Orioles countered at $34 million per year. The two sides have been in protracted negotiations ever since. Commissioner Selig asked representatives from the Pirates, Rays, and Mets to mediate the dispute. A resolution was expected over the summer but never materialized and the parties reportedly remain far apart.
No resolution came and parties remained far apart, through 2013 and the first half of 2014.
On Wednesday, The Hollywood Reporter published detailed of a secret arbitration overseen by the representatives of the Pirates, Rays and Mets which ruled in favor of the Nationals at the end of June. That sent the Orioles to court in New York in an effort to undo the arbitration. The Nationals countered with their own suit to confirm the decision. Both cases were filed under seal.
Selig was furious.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Selig sent a letter to the Nationals and the Orioles that included this passage:
“Both the Orioles and the Nationals have at various times made threats to institute litigation in connection with this dispute, despite my office’s extended, good-faith efforts to have this matter resolved by agreement. On a personal note, I owned a Club for decades and I can honestly say that under no circumstances would I have threatened, let alone commenced, litigation against Baseball. Please be advised that nothing in the Agreement authorizes the parties to file any lawsuit. … I want there to be no doubt that, if any party initiates any lawsuit, or fails to act in strict compliance with the procedures set forth in the Agreement concerning the [Revenue Sharing Definitions Committee of Major League Baseball]’s decision, I will not hesitate to impose the strongest sanctions available to me under the Major League Constitution.”
No matter. Attorneys for the two teams and MASN have continued to launch attacks and counter-attacks. The Orioles think the MLB-sponsored panel was predisposed to rule for the Nationals because the league stands to gain financially the more the Nationals receive as a rights fee. For their part, the Nationals have threatened to terminate MASN’s license to broadcast their games if the panel’s ruling isn’t confirmed.
The MASN mess may shed some light on Selig’s unwillingness to make a final decision on the Oakland Athletics’ proposal to move to San Jose. He may fear that any resolution of the territory dispute between the A’s and the San Francisco Giants that involves the A’s compensating the Giants could lead to in-fighting for years down the road.
All these TV deal disputes bring to mind the adage “Be careful what you wish for.”Provismet's Sandbox
SCP-████-1
Item #: SCP-████
Object Class: Safe Euclid
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-████-1 and SCP-████-2 are to be kept in a secure vault in Site-77. SCP-████-1 is to be placed in secure storage locker at Site-76. At all times during secure containment, SCP-████-1 is to remain deactivated and positioned so that the exit point of SCP-████-1 is facing towards the concave of SCP-████-2.
SCP-████-2 is to be secured in Unit-07 of Site-76, in a constantly monitored chamber of at least 3m*3m*3m in volume. Any objects found in the concave of SCP-████-2 are to be promptly removed and tested for potential anomalous properties; any organisms found in SCP-████-2 are to be removed from the chamber and documented; all non-anomalous terrestrial organisms are to be released; all extraterrestrial or otherwise anomalous organisms are to be taken into Foundation custody and secured at Site-104, autopsies are not to be carried out on currently living organisms unless permitted by level 4 site personnel or a member of the Ethics Committee.
SCP-████-1 and SCP-████-2 are not to be separated unless required for the purposes of testing.
Knowledge of SCP-████-3 is only permitted to site personnel with a security clearance of level 4 or above, and to personnel currently responsible for the testing of SCP-████-1 and SCP-████-2. Unauthorised personnel with knowledge of SCP-████-3 are to be administered either class C or class B amnestics. Any unauthorised attempt to replicate SCP-████-3 is to be met with force and possible termination if deemed necessary.
Description: SCP-████-1 is a white, 30cm*30cm*30cm, cube comprised of silicone, acrylic, and marble. Two openings, of radius 5cm, lead into SCP-████-1, one located on the top face (henceforth the entry point), and one located on a side face (henceforth the exit point), which is to be considered the front. A power cable extrudes out from the back of SCP-████-1, with a head that matches that of plugs used in Western Europe. SCP-████-1 is held together by welding on the edges of all faces except the bottom; the bottom face of SCP-████-1 is held in place by a single screw in each corner and can be removed for disassembly.
Disassembly has revealed the entry point and the exit point to be connected by a tube with an L-bend within the interior of SCP-████-1. Within the interior of SCP-████-1 are numerous components that resemble simple and complex clockwork components. Components can be removed to reveal a microprocessor permanently affixed to SCP-████-1. Replaced or otherwise repaired components retain compatibility with the mechanisms of SCP-████-1.
The primary anomalous effect of SCP-████-1 activates when the item is supplied with 270V of power through the cable. During a period of activation, all objects inserted into the entry point of SCP-████-1 completely dematerialise and become undetectable from Foundation instruments are expelled out of the exit point at a speed of [REDACTED].
SCP-████-2 is a concave, circular object with a radius of 75cm. The surface of SCP-████-2 is devoid of any markings or etchings, and is smooth to the touch. Chemical analysis reveals that SCP-████-2 has a consistency matching that of SCP-████-1. For ease of use, SCP-████-2 has been placed on a crude, oak stand built by Junior Researcher P████.
SCP-████-2 on its stand.
The primary anomalous effect of SCP-████-2 is its ability to instantly convert an object's kinetic energy into a mixture of heat, light, and sound upon collision with the concave surface of SCP-████-2. Neither SCP-████-2 nor the object of collision are damaged during this process, henceforth, the concave of SCP-████-2 is to be considered indestructible at this time.
The secondary anomalous effect of SCP████-2 is that it can instantly recreate objects that have been dematerialised by SCP-████-1, provided that SCP-████-1 was facing towards the concave of SCP-████-2 at the time of insertion.
The secondary anomalous effect of SCP-████-2 is that it has a degree of presence along a hypothetical W-axis in hyperspace and can "catch" objects that collide with this presence, shifting them along their W-axis to match that of our 3-dimensional space. To date, several objects and organisms have been "caught" in this way.
[RESTRICTED TO LEVEL 4 SECURITY CLEARANCE AND PROJECT PERSONNEL] [ACCESS GRANTED] Information regarding SCP-████-3 has been redacted to reduce the risk of personal attempts to achieve SCP-████-3. SCP-████-3 refers to the speed at which objects are expelled by the entry point of SCP-████-1. This speed, as measured by Foundation instruments is 5m/s faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. It is currently unknown whether objects can achieve SCP-████-3 without the aid of technology similar to SCP-████-1. Objects achieving this speed shift on their W-axis at a speed of 5m/s and experience neither the dilated time nor friction damage normally observed in objects of high velocity.
Recovery Log: SCP-████-1 and SCP-████-2 were recovered after a Foundation raid on a bunker operated by the Church Of The Broken God in ██████████, ████████, USA. Multiple reports of thefts and apparent religious fanatics in the area prompted a police investigation. After a report of numerous deaths caused by an unknown pathogen, the Foundation took control of the investigation and agents were dispatched into the area. Soon after discovery of the bunker, a Foundation raid was executed. Agents administered class C amnestics to the populous of the town and terminated the resisting members of the Church Of The Broken God. SCP-████-1 and |
of the closet, kill a spider, go to the dentist. Now imagine having to do all those things with your dick hanging out. I rest my case.
Buy the episode and make sure to celebrate Maddox Apologizes day, January 4th, by apologizing to everyone in your life. It doesn't matter if you mean it, Maddox meant it enough for all of us.
Finally, here are the 3D printed "gadgets and contraptions" that fan Chris sent in:
Sources: Independent.co.uk - Annual painkiller usage Independent.co.uk - History of Underpants Scientific American - The unconsious brain can do math Wikipedia - Sandwich history WhatsCookingAmerica.net - The claim that the first sandwich was Jewish The Math Gene: How Mathematical Thinking Evolved, Keith Devlin, p199The Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th dimension, Clifford A Pickover, p18, 20
Thumbnail Sources: Sandwich, math, more math, trefoil, Morin Surface,T-Mobile is asking the FCC for permission to evaluate a microwave radio with integrated antenna for the 71-76 GHz and 81-86 GHz bands, commonly known as the E-band spectrum. The manufacturer of the equipment is Ceragon.
T-Mobile’s application, uncovered earlier by Mobile World Live, notes that it already holds a nationwide license for the 70/80/90 GHz bands and operates many links that are registered through the third-party database manager system. But it still needs a Special Temporary Authority (STA) from the FCC to evaluate this particular gear.
The radio is FCC certified and the antenna under evaluation meets ETSI Class 2 sidelobe suppression requirements, but doesn’t currently meet antenna requirements per the FCC. The rule requires use of an ETSI Class 3 or 4 antenna; the Huber and Suhner Sencity Matrix 70/80 antenna meets the ETSI Class 2 certification.
Mobile World Congress 2019 Attend the 2-Day Executive 5G Panel Series FierceWireless is returning to Barcelona, Spain, during Mobile World Congress 2019 with a two-day Executive 5G Panel Series at the Fira Congress Hotel, conveniently located across the street from the MWC Convention Center. The panel events will take place on Feb. 25-26 and will cover 5G and The Fixed Wireless Access Opportunity, Taking 5G Indoors, and Making 5G Ubiquitous. Attendees will have the opportunity to network and hear from 5G leaders including Verizon, Vodafone, Orange, Sprint, NTT Docomo, Boingo Wireless, Qualcomm, and more over the course of two days.
Secure your spot at the event today! Now is your chance to join fellow industry professionals for networking and education. Registration information and the schedule can be found on the website here. Register today
T-Mobile says it’s working with equipment vendors to evaluate 5G solutions for high bandwidth, short hop radio links for urban cores. This solution under consideration would be perfect for point-to-point hops from one building to another, according to a narrative accompanying the application.
The location of the test will consist of two sites in Bellevue, Washington, which is where T-Mobile has its headquarters. The antenna will be mounted on the roof of each building.
Product specs for Ceragon’s FibeAir IP-20E indicate it can provide ultra-high radio capacity and spectral efficiency of up to 2.5 Gbps over a 500 MHz channel. And its physical footprint, with an integrated flat panel antenna, allows for installation on poles and street furniture.
Currently, the 70/80/90 GHz spectrum in the U.S. is considered “lightly licensed.” In 2003, the FCC adopted a Report and Order establishing service rules to promote non-federal government development and use of the 71-76 GHz, 81-86 GHz and 92-95 GHz bands on a shared basis with federal government operations.
More recently, the 71-76 GHz and 81-86 GHz bands have been considered as a potential candidate for mobile services in the context of the commission’s Spectrum Frontiers proceeding.
RELATED: 60 GHz band particularly appealing for fixed wireless: report
Using unlicensed or lightly licensed millimeter wave frequencies, such as the 60 GHz V-Band or 70/80 GHz E-Band, is a cost-effective choice for deploying fiberlike 5G fixed wireless access (FWA), according to a recent report by Maravedis.
The report notes that Webpass, a gigabit ISP acquired by Google Fiber in 2016, has used commercially available mmWave technology to provide broadband service using a combination of fiber networks and point-to-point mmWave radios for residential and business customers. The radios operate in the 70/80 GHz band, avoiding the licensed mmWave spectrum owned mostly by large ISPs like Verizon and AT&T.'We need to go after 100 percent of the votes,' Jindal said in response to Romney. | AP Photos Jindal vs. Romney
LAS VEGAS — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal forcefully rejected Mitt Romney’s claim that he lost because of President Barack Obama’s “gifts” to minorities and young voters.
Asked about the failed GOP nominee’s reported comments on a conference call with donors earlier Wednesday, the incoming chairman of the Republican Governors Association became visibly agitated.
Story Continued Below
( Also on POLITICO: Mitt: Obama won because of ‘gifts’)
“No, I think that’s absolutely wrong,” he said at a press conference that opened the RGA’s post-election meeting here. “Two points on that: One, we have got to stop dividing the American voters. We need to go after 100 percent of the votes, not 53 percent. We need to go after every single vote.
“And, secondly, we need to continue to show how our policies help every voter out there achieve the American Dream, which is to be in the middle class, which is to be able to give their children an opportunity to be able to get a great education. … So, I absolutely reject that notion, that description. I think that’s absolutely wrong.”
( PHOTOS: Bobby Jindal’s career)
He reiterated the points for emphasis.
“I don’t think that represents where we are as a party and where we’re going as a party,” he said. “That has got to be one of the most fundamental takeaways from this election: If we’re going to continue to be a competitive party and win elections on the national stage and continue to fight for our conservative principles, we need two messages to get out loudly and clearly: One, we are fighting for 100 percent of the votes, and secondly, our policies benefit every American who wants to pursue the American dream. Period. No exceptions.”
The Louisiana governor didn’t just get worked up over Romney’s comments to donors in a Wednesday conference call about the root of President Barack Obama’s victory being “gifts” to various constituencies. He’s been stewing for some time over the damage the GOP nominee did to the party.
( Also on POLITICO: Election causes angst for House GOP)
In an interview with POLITICO earlier in the week, Jindal indicated his anger over Romney’s infamous comments about “the 47 percent” of voters who don’t pay taxes and, Romney argues, are dependent on government for services.by
In his quasi-concession speech last Thursday, broadcast without a live audience (probably due to the fear of loud boos), Bernie Sanders began with the observation, “Election days come and go. But political and social revolutions that attempt to transform our society never end.”
In other words: Even if I concede, I want the movement I generated to continue.
Citing various ongoing mass movements, he declared, “And that’s what this campaign has been about over this past year. That’s what the political revolution is all about.”
Subtext: It’s all about bringing you kids into the Democratic Party—in order to change it.
Then comes the now-familiar self-congratulation about winning 22 state primaries and caucuses, and repetition of his wonted insistence that “our vision for the future” is not a “fringe idea” and not a “radical idea.” “It is mainstream.”
This tells us that what will follow will be very mainstream. It is followed by the observation that in all the primaries Sanders won among people under 45. “These are the people who ARE the future of our country.” He extensively praises the youth for all their phone calls and canvassing, and even youth burdened with student debt for making campaign contributions.
“This campaign has never been about any single candidate. It is always about transforming America.”
This is followed by about one-fifth of the speech devoted to enumerating the various “disgraces” of contemporary American reality without ever once using the word capitalism. He then segues into the Trump issue:
“The major political task that we face in the next five months is to make certain that Donald Trump is defeated and defeated badly.” Meaning, “we” will all have to—as our major task—back the Wall Street candidate Clinton versus the racist buffoon.
The meat of the presentation occurs not quite midway through, with depressing reference to the Wednesday meeting between Sanders and Clinton and their spouses, from which Sanders emerged beaming.
“I recently had the opportunity to meet with Secretary Clinton and discuss some of the very important issues facing our country and the Democratic Party.” In other words: capitulation.
This is where the boos would have started at a rally. Opportunity? Really, Uncle Bernie, you make it sound like an honor to chit-chat with Wall Street’s warmonger.
“It is no secret that Secretary Clinton and I have strong disagreements on some very important issues. It is also true that our views are quite close on others. I look forward, in the coming weeks, to continued discussions between the two campaigns to make certain that your voices are heard and that the Democratic Party passes the most progressive platform in its history and that Democrats actually fight for that agenda.”
In other words, she’s not so bad after all. I want you all to take a second look at Hillary and get ready to work with her.
Then follows a long litany of needed reforms in the Democratic Party and its platform—by all appearances a feisty demand for change—culminating in a call to young people to run for office and “engage on that level.”
Buried in this list is the following milquetoast statement: “We must take a hard look at the waste, cost overruns and inefficiencies in every branch of government–including the Department of Defense. And we must make certain our brave young men and women in the military are not thrown into perpetual warfare in the Middle East or other wars we should not be fighting.”
Just 55 words out of 2752, or under 2% of the speech dealt (elliptically) with Hillary’s forte: imperialist foreign policy, and her particularly bloody role since her days as First Lady, when she cheered on the U.S./NATO destruction of Yugoslavia to her support for the Iraq war as senator to her super-hawkish role as secretary of state always advocating more troops, more bombing, more war from Pakistan to Syria to Libya (and thus creating more hatred, blowback, terrorism and geographical expansion of al-Qaeda and ISIL).
In concluding, Bernie declares, “We have begun the long and arduous process of transforming America, a fight that will continue tomorrow, next week, next year and into the future.”
In other words, with sugarplum dreams in your heads, you will campaign for Hillary (doing it for me, kids!) and get her into office so she can help implement our long-term domestic reform agenda, while she expands the anti-Russian NATO military alliance, provokes Russia in Ukraine and Syria, and almost surely ratchets up the level of U.S. military action in several Middle Eastern countries.
That’s what I call disgraceful.
But the sheep need not allow themselves to be herded by the sheepdog. My two children, 26 and 30, are among the “Bernie or Bust”crowd. They’re the ones who inspired my own limited enthusiasm for the Sanders campaign. There is no way they will vote for Hillary, the virtual heroine of the military-industrial complex.
And if someone says, “Well, you have to! We have a two-party system, and there’s no other option!” they will reply with their own proper logic and explicatives.
* * *
While Sanders prepares to throw in the towel, Chintonites in the State Department posture to get her attention as most useful allies in her Syrian “no fly zone” plans.
It’s unusual for 51 State Department employees to not only sign and submit to their department superiors, but to leak to the press, a petition urging another blatantly illegal and inevitably disastrous, illegal, murderous regime-change war, such as the U.S. has conducted in Iraq and Libya.
That it has occurred is doubtless (as former high-ranking CIA agent Ray McGovern has opined on RT TV) a bid by Hillary Clinton-appointed low-ranking State Department officials to curry favor with the past Goldwater Girl and future President Clinton (known to be a bloodthirsty soulless Kissinger in a pantsuit hell-bent to leave her mark on the Middle East—just like the way her husband left his mark on the butchered, still-bleeding Balkans that our press never mentions). Some promotions in store, no doubt.
Isn’t it obvious that they’re lining up support for a showdown with Russia? The Wall Street Journal reports: “Obama administration officials have expressed concern that attacking the Assad regime could lead to a direct conflict with Russia and Iran.” Well, duh.
My guess is that Hillary will risk that. The sad thing is that she’ll have some erstwhile Bernie supporters (firmly against the “billionaire class” but clueless about U.S imperialism in general) standing there behind her, and likely Bernie himself. Some “political revolution”—that channels its children into another imperialist war, maybe the biggest, most reckless one yet.
Maybe this time the war will occur under conditions of military conscription, targeting as always 18 to 25-year-olds, now including women, no college deferments applicable.NEW YORK—The United States and other countries proclaimed yesterday that an upcoming effort to amend an international ozone treaty to curb refrigerants that contribute to global warming would be a test of the post-Paris Agreement era.
Speaking in a posh Midtown hotel conference room blocks away from the United Nations, where the landmark global warming deal struck in the French capital sailed past its first ratification hurdle Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry said a hydrofluorocarbon phasedown under the Montreal Protocol would be a “huge step” toward making good on the promise of Paris.
“We know that the Paris Agreement itself won’t, in and of itself, get the job done,” said Kerry, who spent much of that summit in the suburb of Le Bourget working to deliver the deal.
“So we need to do more,” he said. “And one of the single most important actions that the global community can take is to amend the Montreal Protocol to include an ambitious amendment that phases down the use of hydrofluorocarbons, HFCs.”
Kerry was joined onstage by foreign ministers from developed and developing countries representing the 100 nations that signed on to a declaration calling for next month’s summit in Rwanda to produce an “ambitious amendment” that would freeze the production and use of HFCs “early” in poor countries, cut them in rich ones and introduce “an ambitious phasedown schedule for all parties.”
The statement was accompanied by pledges of a combined $80 million by 16 countries and a variety of private philanthropists aimed at helping poor countries make a swift transition away from HFCs, and by a statement of support by the coolants industry.
The so-called New York Declaration of the Coalition to Secure an Ambitious HFC Amendment was signed by more than half the world’s countries two weeks before negotiators gather in the Rwandan capital of Kigali with hopes of ironing out continuing areas of disagreement about how the world should phase out these climate superpollutants.
HFCs are used in cooling and refrigeration and can be thousands of times more climate-forcing that carbon dioxide, though they stay in the atmosphere a shorter time.
The amendment has been a long-term priority for President Obama, and securing it is perhaps the most important item still on his climate diplomacy to-do list besides seeing the Paris deal take effect. That agreement moved closer to entry into force Wednesday when a requirement that at least 55 countries join was met. Paris will take effect when countries responsible for 55 percent of greenhouse gas emissions join, which will almost certainly be later this year.
So Kigali is seen as the next opportunity to make a serious impact on warming, but the road to an amendment has been long and bumpy. Countries including China, India and Arab nations have historically objected to amending the ozone treaty to address HFCs, often insisting that climate issues fell under the purview of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
That opposition began to crumble when Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to work together on an amendment during a summit at Sunnylands, Calif., in 2013. Now virtually every country in the world agrees on the need for an HFC phasedown, though they don’t all see eye to eye on how it should be constructed.
Speaking at yesterday’s event, Chinese Ambassador Liu Xiaoming touted Xi and Obama’s agreement earlier this month to collaborate on an “ambitious” HFC amendment, which came the same day the world’s two largest emitters ratified Paris.
But he also made a plug for the continuation of “common but differentiated responsibilities” between wealthy and poor nations—a convention of the UNFCCC that was all but sidelined during last year’s carbon deal but that still holds sway under the Montreal Protocol, where developed and developing countries phase out emissions at different rates and assistance is provided to poor nations.
And while he made a pitch for developing countries to “have their needs met,” Liu pledged that China would “continue to work with all other parties toward an ambitious and comprehensive HFC amendment to the Montreal Protocol this year.”
Negotiators and advocates who follow the HFC debate say they are optimistic that next month’s summit will produce the looked-for amendment, which they hope will help save the world a half-degree Celsius in warming by the close of this century. The long-term goal was to contain postindustrial warming to well below 2 degrees, which would make the Montreal Protocol amendment a hefty down payment on Paris.
Ambition and money
But there are still many questions to be settled as the days count down to Kigali. These divide generally into questions about how ambitious the deal will be and about the resources that will be available to poor countries to help them transition to less climate-forcing coolants.
The ambition of any amendment will be determined by how quickly poor countries’ emissions are capped, how quickly rich nations cut their emissions and ultimately when the chemicals are phased down completely. Also important is the baseline that is used to measure those reductions—the higher the baseline, the more leeway a nation has to keep producing and using HFCs.
During a preliminary meeting in Vienna in July, there were eight proposals, though negotiators say some of those differences have narrowed since and predict that parties will eventually coalesce around a common model in Kigali.
The world’s developed countries proposed that developing nations begin cutting their emissions in 2019 from a baseline average of 2011 to 2013 levels. But China, Argentina and the Persian Gulf states put forward slightly different models that capped HFC growth in the middle of the next decade, while India held fast to a freeze date of 2031.
Poor countries note that they are responsible for emitting far less HFCs than developed nations. They also are still gaining access to refrigeration and air conditioning, making it harder to stem HFC growth. Advocates, meanwhile, argue that the rapid proliferation of air conditioning in the developing world is exactly why an early freeze date is important.
Observers say China and Argentina—both signatories to yesterday’s New York Declaration—have shown considerable flexibility in negotiations since Vienna.
Argentina Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra, who is also a top-tier contender for U.N. secretary-general, said at yesterday’s event that while developing countries’ needs for time and support must be addressed, the work of phasing down HFCs belongs to everyone.
“I am convinced that we will be able to sort this out, and as proud as I was yesterday when my president presented to the secretary-general our confirmation of joining the Paris Agreement, I’m sure we will be proud to in Kigali share this common and shared responsibility,” she said.
India has shown little movement coming out of Vienna and is not a party to the declaration. But a senior State Department official said that is likely a negotiating tactic. Progress was made during a work session earlier this week in Beijing, and there may be more progress in the days leading up to the summit in Rwanda.
Developing countries have also expressed concern about the cost of transitioning to non-HFC coolants, particularly as some of those alternatives are still under patent.
The State Department source said the issues of ambition and finance are “linked” for developing countries, which might have more confidence in embracing an earlier phasedown if resources are assured.
Sixteen developed countries including the United States responded yesterday with a combined $27 million pledge toward the Montreal Protocol Multilateral Fund to help poor nations transition away from HFCs and improve energy efficiency. Nineteen private donors, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates and billionaire financier Tom Steyer, supplemented that with $52 million for efficiency. The money is contingent on an “ambitious” agreement. The public-sector resources would only be provided for action taken next year, and are earmarked to help poor countries comply with an amendment with “a sufficient early freeze date,” to be adopted this year.
Paris leaders see a link to a ‘sister’ agreement
The protagonists of Paris implementation say a Montreal Protocol amendment is crucial to the success of last year’s deal. HFCs drive so much warming in the short term that taking them out of the atmosphere will have a near-immediate benefit, they say, buying time for the more comprehensive agreement to go into effect.
“This is the fastest way to cool the Earth, you know? And the most easy one,” Morocco’s environment ambassador, Hakima El Haite, told ClimateWire.
In New York to represent the upcoming Moroccan presidency of the next round of UNFCCC talks, El Haite recalled how fraught the negotiations in Paris were over where to set the long-term temperature target to guide future ambition.
“We made many, many, many nights to discuss and to struggle against other parties to say in the Paris Agreement one word—’well below 2 degrees C,’” she said. “That was a struggle.”
But if curbing HFCs can contribute half a degree’s worth of warming avoidance, she said, “we don’t need to struggle.”
U.N. climate chief Patricia Espinosa wrote in an op-ed published earlier this month by Project Syndicate that Paris’ long-term targets would eventually demand a universal HFC phasedown.
“Ultimately, all countries will have to find a way forward on reducing HFCs and climate change generally, through national action plans and emissions reductions agreed to under the 2015 Paris agreement,” she wrote in the column, co-authored by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Mario Molina. “Frameworks established by sister agreements like the Montreal Protocol can help to do this.”
Durwood Zaelke of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development said that because manufacturers improve efficiency at the same time as they transition from HFCs, the true benefit of an amendment could be to avoid a full degree of warming, rather than a half. The efficiency gains would save consumers money, further offsetting the cost of transitioning to less climate-forcing sources, he said.
Zaelke, who follows these negotiations closely, said India’s apparent opposition will not prove a significant stumbling block to hopes of securing a deal in Kigali.
“There’s a tremendous amount of bilateral initiative going on around the world, and India is the No. 1 country that this broad coalition for an ambitious amendment know they have to deal with,” he said. The July session in Vienna showed enough progress from all players that an amendment should be possible next month, he said.
‘We cannot afford to fail’
But participants in yesterday’s HFC events in New York said if Kigali fails to deliver, it will deal a blow to international confidence since Paris.
“Kigali gives us an opportunity to demonstrate action on Paris,” said Vidar Helgesen, minister of climate and the environment for Norway, which was one of the donor countries. “Just imagine if we’re not successful in Kigali. What signal would that send about Paris? It would be disastrous. So we know our responsibilities.”
Kate Hampton, CEO of the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, which contributed to the private-sector fund, said donors were buoyed by the success of Paris and the sense that governments are committed to a low-carbon transition.
“If Kigali is in some sense a failure, there will be a massive retreat of interest and capital,” she said at a briefing at U.N. headquarters. She said a consistent government message would encourage private donors to offer help with other aspects of climate response.
“Politicians particularly have a real opportunity here to send a very, very strong signal that this transition is inevitable, and that will mobilize resources that you can’t imagine,” she said.
Vincent Biruta, the Rwandan environment minister, who is preparing to host next month’s summit, noted that Africa stands to suffer more from climate change than most continents. All 54 African countries signed yesterday’s declaration, and Africa and small island states have pushed for tougher reductions for developed countries than the developed world has proposed for itself.
“We cannot afford to fail,” he said.
Reprinted from ClimateWire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. E&E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net. Click here for the original story.Former Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman seems to be making preparations for life after office, having signed up as a paid adviser to the Republican Jewish Coalition earlier this week.
The move is one of the clearest indications to date that the St. Paul Republican is preparing for the possibility that he will lose his legal challenges for the state's still vacant Senate seat. The position at the RJC is salaried -- something he could not hold if he were still in office. And, according to officials with the organization, Coleman is not going to take the new responsibilities lightly.
"This is a real job with a lot of time that he is going to put into it," said Matthew Brooks, president of the RJC. "Norm has been involved in the RJC before he was a senator, since he was mayor of St. Paul. And now that what is happening in Minnesota is in the hands of the lawyers, that gives him free time to do the things he wants to do."
Coleman, as Brooks notes, could still win reelection should his legal challenges be upheld. And if that were the case, his position at the RJC would be terminated. "There is very specific language on this," said Brooks. "This is an important time to take advantage of his counsel and time... fully recognizing that he could be back in the Senate in a few months."
From RJC's perspective, the hiring of Coleman represents a chance to expand the Republican Party's Jewish outreach efforts. Coleman would help the group with fundraising and, ostensibly, legislative programs, though the official description is "consultant and strategic adviser." The RJC insists he will "not engage in any lobbying on behalf of the organization."
UPDATE: A Republican source emails in to rightfully note that Coleman, who is one of the Senate's least rich members, needs the money to help pay his legal bills for the election challenge.
"It's pretty simple, Sen. Coleman is not a member of the millionaires' club and he needs to work to a earn a living," spokesman Mark Drake told the American Spectator. "This changes nothing in the current contest, which we expect Sen. Coleman to prevail in."New York City is back at it again with the protected bike lanes. After the 2015 campaign which saw the Big Apple lay down more protected bike lanes than any previous year, the city that never sleeps plans on breaking that record in 2016.
While 2015 saw bike lanes laid majorly in Queens and Brooklyn, 2016’s plans have more targets in Manhattan East and West including 1st, 2nd, 6th and Amsterdam Avenues to name a few. The city is planning to hit the streets with 17.6 miles of protected bike lanes in 2016 with 2.5 miles of construction already in progress. Columbus Avenue to Pulaski Bridge, the Department of Transportation is looking to crush the 12.4 miles it created in 2015 which included 3.3 miles along Vernon Boulevard in Queens and 2.7 miles down Queens Boulevard.
Credited with bringing modern protected bike lanes to the U.S., the city’s been fighting the good fight amid naysayers and detractors who insisted that reinforcing and revamping bike infrastructure would have detrimental effects on the city’s transportation which was running like a well oiled machine before the pro-bike initiative. Bike haters insisted the loss of parking and bike traffic would hurt business and confuse traffic.
Not surprisingly, encouraging cycling and improving low cost infrastructure did not cause the havoc the pessimists predicted. The parking spaces sacrificed for the new bike lanes did not come back from the dead to haunt retailers or commercial venues as parking remains available and no less according to demand than before. Those who want a car (and can afford one) can still ride in style while those who don’t have a safer and more efficient alternative way to get around.
But don’t take my word for it – feel free to peruse this extensive literature outlining the numerous streets set to receive biking upgrades throughout the five Boroughs.Martin Castrogiovanni has been ruled out of the rest of the World Cup because of a tumour in his sciatic nerve which requires surgery.
The veteran tighthead is one of three Italians who have left the squad ahead of their final game against Romania, however Italian medics are optimistic that Castrogiovanni's tumour is benign.
It appears he will require surgery on the problem, and was the reason for his absence during Sunday's narrow loss to Ireland.
That ended Italy's hopes of reaching the last eight, but they need to beat Romania to finish third in the group and secure qualification for the 2019 edition.
"Martin has pain on a sciatic nerve and after a check doctors found a tumour pressing on his fifth vertebra that is causing inflammation and pain,” team manager Luigi Troiani said.
“We are sure it is benign and tomorrow he will fly to Milan to see a specialist. The likelihood is he will require surgery.”
Joining Castrogiovanni on the sidelines are prop Michele Rizzo and centre Gonzalo Garcia who have both suffered knee injuries.
Earlier in the tournament centre Andrea Masi tore his Achilles tendon, while centre Enrico Morisi and wing Angelo Esposito were ruled out before Jacques Brunel’s squad had left for England.
The team also had to do without captain and talisman Sergio Parisse for their first two matches as he was recovering from surgery to reduce a haematoma on his left calf.
There was better news for vice-captain Leonardo Ghiraldini, who missed the 16-9 defeat by Ireland at the Olympic stadium on Sunday with a thigh injury.
He has continued his work with the squad’s medical staff and the hope is he will be back for the Romania match, which Italy must win to secure third place and a spot at the 2019 World Cup.
“Leo is better and confident he can play on Sunday,” Troiani said. “He will have some checks over the next couple of days to make sure.”
Italy have called up two front row forwards to prepare for the clash against Romania, with Alberto de Marchi and Andrea Lovotti set to join the squad.DOT Unveils New Murals in 191st Street Tunnel View Full Caption
FORT GEORGE — Bright geometric patterns, colorful typography and naturalistic landscapes now fill the 191st Street pedestrian tunnel group of artists who brought their signature styles to the formerly dark and dingy passageway.
The Department of Transportation gave a sneak preview Monday of the public art project, in which four artists and one two-artist team were selected from more than 150 applicants to paint the space.
Last year residents had complained that the tunnel, which leads to the 191st Street 1 train station, felt filthy, dark and dangerous. Since then, the DOT has installed new LED light fixtures, painted over the graffiti and cleaned the tunnel more regularly.
The art project was the final step in beautifying the passage, with contributions from well-known street artists Andrea Von Bujdoss, aka Queen Andrea, and Fernando Carlo Jr., aka Cope2.
Margaret Forgione, the Manhattan Borough Commissioner for the DOT, said the tunnel's new LED lights will not just brighten the pathway.
“They will now also serve another function as gallery lighting for the amazing murals that grace these walls,” she said.
Each artist was assigned a 200-foot section of the 900-foot long tunnel.
“We all feel pretty proud of it and we had a great time working together,” said Von Bujdoss, who lives in Washington Heights.
She also painted the entrance to the tunnel from Broadway, choosing to focus on sending positive messages to the community. Rainbow-hued slogans including “Today is Your Day” and “Bright Lights, Big City” now greet pedestrians making their way through the tunnel on their daily commutes.
Von Bujdoss, who said the tunnel has long been an eyesore for local residents, was excited to be a part of the transformation.
“The community here is families, mostly Latino,” she said. “People aren’t necessarily exposed on a daily basis to the kind of art we’re doing here.”
Carlo Jr. began his career as part of the graffiti movement that grew out of The Bronx in the 1980s. He and other graffiti writers illegally tagged buildings and subway cars, but since then he has been commissioned to paint billboards and design images for a video game.
He said he was pleasantly surprised to be picked for the project.
“I’m a graffiti purist,” Carlo Jr. said. “Sometimes New York doesn’t embrace that. It can still be seen as vandalism.”
Like Von Bujdoss, he also wanted to send a positive message, in this case to other city kids like him.
“A lot of kids walk through here to go to school and sometimes they have no hope,” he said. “I want them to see the words “Follow Your Dreams” every day because it might inspire them to do it.”
Sandra Garcia-Betancourt, director of the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance, said that the various pieces were united by their vibrancy.
“It’s all about the community having fun, having a good day, having a good journey,” she said.
While most of the artists who worked on the project are not from Uptown, Garcia-Betancourt felt they have tapped into the spirit of the neighborhood.
“This community is so positive and the people have such a great energy,” she said. “I think they really captured that.”
The tunnel will reopen to the public on Tuesday morning after 5 a.m. The artists will continue to place the finishing touches on their pieces after the tunnel reopens.42 SHARES
By Chloe Kiple
For consumers looking for more natural food, the answer might be right in their backyards.
Plant foraging, or harvesting wild edibles like fruits, vegetables and nuts, is an ancient practice with a slew of benefits.
“There are literally tens of studies demonstrating that they’re more nutrient-dense than cultivated plants,” says Arthur Haines a Maine foraging expert and guide. “While we have a surplus of calories in the U.S. we do not have a surplus of micronutrients. It’s chronic, low-level malnourishment.”
To get started, a forager needs to be equipped with some plant knowledge from a guidebook, an app or a local expert.
Forager John Holzwart of Wisconsin was initially attracted by the low cost of wild food harvesting when he was 18. “I looked around me and I was pretty excited about the free food as a young bachelor living on pizza and beer.”
Holzwart recommends a sustainable approach to the hobby. He follows the general principle of taking only 20 percent of what he finds in any given patch so that he doesn’t hurt plant populations.
For Haines, responsible foraging is a way to combat national problems like deforestation and the overharvesting that come from producing typical American groceries.
“The way we interact with environment is like this egocentric view on the world: It’s ours to have,” says Haines.
In some cases, foragers are encouraged to harvest as much of some plants as they can.
“There’s a long list of species where you basically can’t do any environmental damage” says St. Cloud State (Minnesota) University biology Professor Bill Cook. “You can only help the environment by foraging certain species. There are quite a lot of wild edible plants that are abundant weeds in farms and people’s gardens.”
That list includes garlic mustard, an invasive species imported from Europe. The plant spreads quickly, covering the forest floor and sucking up nutrients intended for native plant species. It’s ravaged its way through the Midwest and is difficult to stop.
Foragers can use garlic mustard as a garnish for soups and salads.
“It’s best used as a spice,” says Cook. “The leaves and stems have a pungent taste.”
For the most part, foraging is harmless but becomes a problem when foragers harvests plants for commercial sale, according to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. As long as foragers stay within the legal limits, foraging can be fruitful.
Holzwart encourages people getting into the hobby to do their research before they forage. That means using three to five sources to identify plants. Without proper verification, foragers risk eating poisonous plants.
“There was a woman who wanted to make a green smoothie, so she took what she thought were mullen leaves, but they ended up being foxgloves, and she died,” says Holzwart.
“People get caught up in this trendy thing. I don’t want people to live in fear of plants, but I do want people to do their homework,” he says.
Editor’s note: In Pursuit of Plants is a series of stories about the wild plant trade in the Great Lakes region.
Read the second, third and fourth stories in the series.A BRITISH pharmaceutical company was working today to develop a new breed of cannabis-based products aimed at treating a range of conditions including diabetes, epilepsy and Crohn's disease.
GW Pharmaceuticals, which launched a cannabis-derived medicine for symptoms of multiple sclerosis last year, has cross-bred different types of the plant to produce a new strain that could treat a wide range of disorders.
The new varieties contain enhanced levels of therapeutic compounds, including an appetite suppressant cannabinoid called THCV, which the company hopes will be used in the treatment of type 2 diabetes, obesity and other metabolic disorders.
Research leader Dr. David Potter said, "We |
are the problems with this policy: a TTC bylaw officer must be present to issue the fine, making effectiveness on any vehicle basically non-existent. It doesn't factor in how quickly vehicles begin moving after passengers board, leaving absolutely no time for a disabled person to negotiate a seat they're legally entitled to, putting them and everyone else on the vehicle at risk.
It is a policy without teeth, relying on people "being kind." It makes the TTC look good in the media but it doesn't make lives easier. Without practical means to prove disability status, it's just lip service, and I have to imagine a violation of human rights for anyone who doesn't look disabled.
As the TTC reports it is looking at ways to improve the safety of women, including those with disabilities, I hope it includes working with Ontario's Ministry of Transportation to open the Accessible Permits program to pedestrians, enabling us to safely participate in our communities instead of fleeing them.
Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on FacebookMoments before their truck was rammed from behind, people inside described hearing the approach of a “high-revving” engine as they were stopped at the intersection of 22nd Street and Avenue P in Saskatoon.
Dustin Joseph Gordon Lalonde was driving his quad-size truck westbound on 22nd Street, going 139 km/hr just seconds before he violently rear-ended the truck at 113 km/hr, Crown prosecutor Michael Pilon said.
When Justice Daryl Labach asked what led to someone driving that fast down one of Saskatoon’s main arteries, defence lawyer Ron Piche said he’d never asked his client that question.
Lalonde, 28, pleaded guilty on Tuesday in Court of Queen’s Bench to dangerous driving causing bodily harm, accounting for the three people injured in the chain-reaction crash that damaged four vehicles on March 28, 2015. The victims described prolonged headaches, neck and back pain as well as anxiety issues stemming from the severe impact.
According to an agreed statement of facts, Lalonde’s truck ramped into the air, hit a telephone pole and flipped onto its roof, sliding into the intersection. When police arrived, they noticed he was stumbling around, slurring his words and smelled like alcohol.
Pilon said although Lalonde’s alcohol consumption was an agreed fact, there were issues with the obtaining of blood samples. As a result, his initial 11-count indictment, which contained charges of impaired driving and driving with a blood-alcohol content over.08 causing bodily harm, was withdrawn and replaced with a single charge of dangerous driving causing bodily harm.
Pilon argued for a one-year jail sentence followed by some sort of driving ban. He said the high rate of speed and injuries are aggravating factors.
Lalonde had prior tickets for stunting, speeding and driving without due care and attention as well as another at-fault rear-end collision in 2015, according to an SGI driver’s abstract listed in court. He also took the Driving While Impaired program three times and “apparently learned nothing,” Pilon said.
There is no evidence that Lalonde was driving for a prolonged period of time and none of the victims were significantly injured, Piche noted when arguing for a 90-day intermittent jail sentence followed by three years of probation.
He said the sentence should not include a driving ban, as Lalonde hasn’t had a licence since his arrest yet continues to work for an employer who describes him as “reliable and hardworking.” Piche called Lalonde a “salt of the earth person” who found himself in a difficult situation.
Court heard he is also paying off $30,000 for the four vehicles that were damaged in the crash.
A written decision is expected in June.
[email protected]
twitter.com/breezybremc(CNN) Obesity is already a big issue in aviation, now a court case in Australia could make it even bigger.
Abu Dhabi-based airline Etihad is being sued by a man who claimed that being seated in economy next to an overweight passenger during a flight from Dubai to Sydney left him with back injuries.
James Bassos says he was required to "contort and twist" his body to avoid contact with his neighbor, who coughed frequently and "expelled fluid from his mouth," according to court papers
"After repeated requests of cabin crew, Mr Bassos was given limited access to a crew seat but was still required to spend long stretches of time in a position which he claims caused a back injury and aggravation of an existing back condition," the papers reveal.
Eithad has tried to have the case, which relates to a flight in October 2011, dismissed.
Read MoreA Tennessee man was arrested over the weekend after he beat a Florida woman because he said that he loved her.
According to WPLG, the 63-year-old woman was in her Islamorada apartment early Sunday morning when a man knocked at her back door.
She told Monroe County Sheriff’s Office deputies that when she opened her door, she saw 66-year-old William Roberts of Tennessee wearing only underwear and a sweater that he had stolen from her car.
Sheriff’s spokesperson Becky Herrin said that when the man began beating the woman with a stick, she asked why he was doing it. And he allegedly told her that he was doing it because he loved her.
The woman tore at the man’s sweater as she struggled to get away. Eventually he backed away from her, allowing the victim to run back inside her apartment and call police.
The victim later said that she had never met Roberts before.
Roberts was arrested on charges of aggravated battery and burglary of a vehicle.SLC Marathon course map
SALT LAKE CITY — The Salt Lake City Police Department reminds the public to plan accordingly for road closures and parking issues due to the Salt Lake City Marathon Saturday morning.
The department has 208 officers assigned to 197 traffic posts for the safety of participants, spectators and residents. Officers will accommodate through-traffic when it is safe to do so, but motorists and residents should expect delays as race events progress throughout the morning.
Course closure is set for 1:30 PM, at which time any participants yet to finish must move to the sidewalk or follow normal roadway rules.
Starting times for marathon events:
6:00 AM Bike Tour 6:10 AM Hand Cycle, Wheel Chair 7:00 AM Full/Half Marathon 7:10 AM 5K 10:45 AM Kids K
Street closures, anticipated times:
Streets Community Times 200 East between Washington & Library Squares SLC 12:00 AM – 6:00 PM 500 South between 300 East & State Street SLC 3:00 AM – 3:00 PM Federal Heights Dr. & 11th Avenue SLC 5:30 AM – 9:00 AM Bonneville Blvd. & State Street SLC 5:45 AM – 9:30 AM South Temple, 900 East, 1100 East SLC 5:45 AM – 10:30 AM 1500 East, Sugar House Park, 1700 South SLC 6:15 AM – 11:00 AM 2100 South, 1700 East, 2700 South, 2000 East SLC & Millcreek 6:15 AM – 11:30 AM 2300 East & Holladay Blvd. Millcreek & Holladay 6:15 AM – 12:15 PM 4500 South & 3900 South Millcreek & SLC 6:30 AM – 1:00 PM Highland Dr., 2700 South, 600 East Millcreek & SLC 6:30 AM – 1:30 PM Liberty Park (east side) SLC 6:30 AM – 2:00 PM 900 South, 300 East, 400 East, 500 East SLC 6:45 AM – 9:00 AM
For course maps and other information, please visit www.saltlakecitymarathon.com.
###A 25-year-old North Vancouver woman was beaten and sexually assaulted early Saturday morning after hailing what she believed to be a taxi cab, according to Vancouver police.
The victim flagged down what she believed to be a cab in the 100-block of Water Street near Abbott Street in Gastown at around 2:30 a.m., according to VPD Const. Brian Montague.
“She got inside and realized quite quickly that she wasn’t inside a cab,” he said.
The victim was then driven to an area in East Vancouver where she “severely beaten and sexually assaulted” before managing to escape her attacker, get help from the public, and called 911.
Police believe it was an isolated incident with no link to other sexual assaults.
“There was no indication that the van was disguised in any way to make people believe it was a cab,” Montague said. “It was strictly a misunderstanding, where someone wasn’t fully paying attention.”
The unidentified woman is reportedly “very traumatized” and is still working with investigators as they try to get more information about the incident.
The suspect is described as an Aboriginal man, approx. 35-39 years old and 5-foot-11 to 6-foot tall. He is “fat with a big belly,” about 230-250 pounds and a shaved head, said Montague.
The vehicle driven by the man is an older model dark minivan with sliding doors on both sides.
Anyone with information about this attack or who may know the identity of this suspect is asked to call the Vancouver Police Sex Crimes Unit at 604-717-0602 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.Plentiful torque is nice, but exemplary fuel economy may be the GLK250’s greater virtue.
Most automakers’ representatives will then present a sad but salient argument against diesel in the US. Not Mercedes-Benz. The company has a long and unbroken history of diesel power – the longest, in fact: Its 1936 260D was the world’s first diesel-powered passenger car, and the first in a line that stretches to this one: the new GLK250 BlueTEC, the first diesel in the compact-SUV segment of the market, one that includes the Audi Q5 and the BMW X3.
A thorough freshening for 2013 gave the GLK more style and substance, with smartly revised front-end styling, an upgraded interior and, in the gasoline V6-powered GLK350, more power and improved fuel economy. Mercedes considers its smallest SUV to be a gateway to the brand, a first three-pointed star for buyers who, with careful cultivation, may become regulars. As such, it is a model that gets a lot of attention The GLK250 BlueTEC is a late-year addition to the range.
Providing the motivation in this newest GLK is a 2.1-litre, 4-cylinder diesel engine, matched to Mercedes’ excellent seven-speed automatic transmission and 4Matic all-wheel drive (there is no rear-wheel-drive GLK250). With twin turbochargers and direct fuel injection, the engine delivers 200 horsepower and 369 foot-pounds of torque. The turbos are sequential – a small, high-pressure turbine that spools up quickly and a larger one that comes on later and provides the bulk of the oomph. The result is seamless power delivery, with minimal turbo lag. A testament to its versatility, this 2.1-litre diesel, which debuted in Europe back in 2009, is set to power Mercedes' rear- and all-wheel-drive E-Class models for 2014, as well as the company's full-size Sprinter van.
Price-wise, the GLK250 BlueTEC starts at $39,495 (inclusive of the $905 destination charge), placing it neatly between the rear-wheel-drive GLK350 ($37,995) and the all-wheel-drive GLK350 4Matic ($39,995). That said, like all Mercedes-Benzes (and all vehicles from premium German automakers, for that matter), that price is bound to escalate. A Mercedes spokesman noted that the average transaction price for a GLK is $43,000, but the tested vehicle, loaded to the gills with all manner of optional safety, comfort, convenience and style features, ballooned to an eye-widening $57,635.
And yet, the GLK’s fiscal liberty is forgiven (or at least momentarily forgotten) with a stab of the throttle. On the road — on any road, truth told — the GLK250 BlueTEC is a winner. Over smooth asphalt, the SUV reveals its sporty C-Class origins with predictable body motions and admirable grip in the curves, and on rougher patches – and even off the pavement entirely – it is never less than fully composed, thanks to a stout structure and generous wheel travel. The GLK350’s V6 is a model of decorum, but the GLK250’s diesel four is hardly unrefined. The engine manages to conceal its cylinder count during all but the most full-on acceleration. And the monumental rush of torque, which peaks at a very low 1600 rpm, is thoroughly satisfying.
Plentiful torque is nice, but exemplary fuel economy may be the GLK250’s greater virtue. Even with standard all-wheel drive, the SUV returns an admirable 24mpg in the city and 33mpg on the Interstate, handily topping the GLK350 4Matic’s 19mpg city and 24mpg highway – figures, it should be noted, that are achieved on pricier premium fuel. Like the six-cylinder diesel engine in Mercedes’ M- and GL-Class SUVs, this engine receives minute injections of AdBlue, a water-based urea solution that mitigates noxious emissions, ensuring that the diesel GLK is meets the same standards of cleanliness as its gasoline-powered sibling, even in California, whose California Air Resources Board has crafted some of the nation’s toughest emissions regulations. The solution is contained in a small on-board reservoir, which is refilled at regular service intervals, says Mercedes.
Refined and easy to live with, the GLK250 joins a growing field of diesel-powered passenger vehicles, from the $24,290 Volkswagen Beetle TDI to the $93,905 Mercedes-Benz S350 BlueTEC. These modern diesel-powered vehicles are neither noisy nor smelly, and thanks to the ever-improving availability of ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel in the US, drivers are no longer forced to fill up alongside the big rigs at highway truck stops. And that, unless you have a yen for a greasy burger and a free shower, is very good indeed.
The 2013 GLK250 BlueTEC is landing in North American Mercedes-Benz dealerships now.
Vital stats: 2013 Mercedes-Benz GLK250 BlueTEC 4Matic"The marijuana that kids are smoking today is not the same as the marijuana that Jeb Bush smoked 40 years ago."
The Republican presidential candidates sparred over many issues in the CNN debate, including the potency of pot.
On drug policy, there was talk about expanded rehabilitation and prison reform to reduce the number of nonviolent prisoners. When it came to marijuana, one candidate, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie took the hardest line, saying he would enforce a federal ban nationwide.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul favored allowing states like Colorado do as they please. So did former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who explained his position by acknowledging his own use. "So, 40 years ago, I smoked marijuana, and I admit it. I'm sure that other people might have done it and may not want to say it in front of 25 million people. My mom's not happy that I just did."
Former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina shared the view that states should decide for themselves, but she offered an important caution.
"The marijuana that kids are smoking today is not the same as the marijuana that Jeb Bush smoked 40 years ago," Fiorina said.
We thought it would be good to explore whether pot has become more potent since the 1970s. This is something we’ve looked at before.
The main psychoactive agent in marijuana is THC, or delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol. When researchers discuss the potency of marijuana, they typically are measuring the concentration of THC.
THC levels differ depending on the part of the plant used, and how it is processed for consumption. In addition to marijuana, there are materials such as sinsemilla (the flowering tops of unfertilized female plants), hashish or cannabis resin, and hash oil (a concentrated extract from cannabis plants). Hashish oil tends to have much higher concentrations of THC than marijuana or even sinsemilla. Both of these have become more popular in recent years.
But what about marijuana itself? Has weed as we once knew it become more potent?
The answer is yes. THC levels are on the rise, and they have been for quite some time.
The University of Mississippi Potency Monitoring project analyzed tens of thousands of marijuana samples confiscated by state and federal law enforcement agencies since 1972. The average potency of all seized cannabis has increased from a concentration of 3.4 percent in 1993 to about 8.8 percent in 2008. Potency in sinsemilla in particular has jumped from 5.8 percent to 13.4 percent during that same time period.
Back in the late 1970s, the mean potency for marijuana was about 3 percent, Mahmoud ElSohly, director of marijuana research with the monitoring project, told us in an interview for a prior fact-check.
Further, the number of samples confiscated with a THC concentration greater than 9 percent has increased significantly, from 3.2 percent in 1993 to 21.5 percent of the 1,635 marijuana samples collected in 2007.
But while the average is up due to the availability of marijuana with a higher THC count, the high mark in potency (somewhere around 25-27 percent) remains relatively unchanged in the last couple decades and isn’t likely to increase, ElSohly said.
For the average adult recreational or habitual user, there’s uncertainty about what rising THC levels mean.
Only a handful of studies have looked at how users smoke marijuana with varying THC levels. Several of these studies noted that when test subjects were using more highly concentrated marijuana, they often smoked less than they did when consuming product with a lower THC level.
In that regard, THC would seem to mimic how people consume beverages with different alcohol content: People tend to drink whiskey in shots, wine by the glass and beer by the mug. Marijuana may work the same way, said Carl Hart, a psychology professor at Columbia University who studies the effects of psychoactive drugs.
Roger Roffman, a social work professor at the University of Washington and author of the upcoming book Marijuana Nation, noted that there has been little research on the impact of potency in cannabis at the levels seen today, especially in products like hash oil, meaning we don’t know everything about its potential impact.
Our ruling
Fiorina said the marijuana kids smoke today is not what it was 40 years ago. Studies back that up. THC potency is up, with a growing fraction of seized marijuana having a concentration of 9 percent or more. There is some evidence that users smoke less when the pot is more potent, but that doesn’t detract from Fiorina’s main point.
We rate this claim True.Remember the original specs of Watch_Dogs. One of the Ubisoft dev claimed that these were not the final specs and they will release updated specs soon. Now Ubisoft has finally released their revised specs and they seem to be even more demanding than the original reveal.
You can see the revised specs below
Minimum Specs
Supported OS: Windows Vista SP2 64bit, Windows 7 SP1 64bit, Windows 8 64bit
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 @ 2.66Ghz or AMD Phenom II X4 940 @ 3.0Ghz
RAM: 6 GB
Video Card: 1024 VRAM DirectX 11 with Shader Model 5.0 (see supported list)
Sound Card: DirectX 9 compatible Sound Card
This product supports 64-bit operating systems ONLY
Recommended Specs
Processor: Core i7 3770 @ 3.5Ghz or AMD FX-8350 @ 4.0Ghz
RAM: 8 GB
Video Card: 2048 VRAM DirectX 11 with Shader Model 5.0 or higher (see supported list)
Sound Card: Surround Sound 5.1 capable sound card
Supported Graphics Cards (at launch)
nVidia GeForce GTX460 or better, GT500, GT600, GT700 series;
AMD Radeon HD5850 or better, HD6000, HD7000, R7 and R9 series
Intel® Iris™ Pro HD 5200
You can check out the original specs here. They were far less demanding than the revised ones.
Also read:
Watch_Dogs is a upcoming open world action adventure game from Ubisoft. It seems to sport a lot of similarity to the TV Show “Persons of Interest”. Watch_Dogs is coming to almost all platforms including current and next generation. We have to wonder after looking at minimum specs that how Ubisoft is going to run this on current generation platforms with just 512 MB of RAM.
Stay tuned to GearNuke for latest news and info on Watch_Dogs.Andrew Hoyle/CNET
HTC unveiled a slew of products Sunday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, including a new version of its One flagship smartphone, a virtual reality headset and a fitness band.
HTC's new One M9sports a metal body with a gold and silver finish, a 5-inch screen with sapphire glass, a 20-megapixel camera on the back, and Snapdragon 810, Qualcomm's newest high-end processor. The handset offers immersive 5.1 surround sound through front speakers.
Now playing: Watch this: Hands-on with the sumptuous metal HTC One M9
"This is our third generation of our iconic design," HTC CEO Peter Chou told conference attendees. "People say M8 is the most beautiful smartphone on the market, but we wanted to strive higher."
The M9 also features HTC Sense 7, an Android skin that allows users to personalize their handsets, recommending restaurants in new neighborhoods and creating special themes for social media.
The HTC One M9 will be available in mid-March in Asia in four colors.
The company also announced its entry into the burgeoning virtual reality sector with the Vive, a lightweight headset that allows users to look around and walk around without getting sick. HTC is teaming up with game developer Valve, as well as other developers, and entertainment giants HBO, Google and Lions Gate.
The headset is expected to be available to the public by the end of the year.
"We believe that VR will totally transform the way we interact with the world. It will become a mainstream experience," Chou said.
HTC also unveiled the Grip, a GPS-enabled fitness band that can track your walking, running, cycling, or a gym session. It can connect it to your smartphone so you don't miss calls or notifications. The fitness band will work on both the Appel iOS and Google Android operating systems.
The Grip will be a US-only product that will arrive this spring for $199.CLOSE Police say they're looking for two suspects: one for the sexual assault and one who pepper-sprayed the teenager. Video provided by Newsy Newslook
Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump wait in line to enter a campaign rally at the Holiday Inn Express hotel on March 29, 2016, in Janesville, Wis. (Photo: Scott Olson, Getty Images)
Corrections and Clarifications: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified the group involved in this week's protests in Janesville, Wis.
JANESVILLE, Wis. — As GOP frontrunner Donald Trump prepared to speak to supporters in Wisconsin on Tuesday, a 15-year-old girl outside the venue was pepper-sprayed after striking another bystander, police said.
Police said the girl was peppered-sprayed in the crowd by a non-law enforcement person. Hundreds of anti-Trump protesters and supporters had gathered outside the Holiday Inn Express in southern Wisconsin, where Trump was holding his maiden rally in the state ahead of Tuesday's primary.
In video posted on social media of the tense scene, the teen appears to be arguing with a middle-aged man and shoves or punches him before the pepper spray is deployed by a second man. The girl appears to hold a sign that accuses Trump of supporting white supremacy. She is standing next to another young woman holding a Black Lives Matter sign. Others in the crowd could be heard chanting, "All lives matter."
Police said they are reviewing several videos taken at the scene and have spoken to several eyewitnesses. The young woman told officers she was groped by a man before pushing him away, police said in a statement.
The department on Wednesday published a photo of a young man wearing a red "Make America Great Again" baseball cap who they want to question about the incident. Police asked the public with help identifying the man.
Janesville Police Chief David Moore said Wednesday that the investigation has been turned over to the department's bureau of detectives. "We intend to learn the true events that occurred and make the appropriate arrests," he said.
Here's a video (and prev photo) taken by @derek94gt of the punch/pepper spray incident at the Janesville Trump rally pic.twitter.com/iVCHvsISDi — Molly Beck (@MollyBeck) March 29, 2016
On Monday, six protesters were arrested on charges of disorderly conduct, obstructing an officer and trespass after refusing to leave the lobby of the Holiday Inn Express as part of another anti-Trump protest at the venue, police said.
Police said the protesters identified themselves as belonging to the group Showing Up for Racial Justice. Members of the group had locked themselves together inside of PVC piping before occupying the lobby area. About 60 other protesters who entered the lobby left the hotel at the request of police.
No photo of the punch, but here's a photo of the pepper spray. Woman received medical treatment, police said. pic.twitter.com/1EOyBbAWQz — Molly Beck (@MollyBeck) March 29, 2016
Trump has faced criticism from rivals that the tenor of his campaign has created an unsafe environment at his rallies.
Earlier this month, Trump abruptly canceled an event in Chicago out of safety concerns after hundreds of protesters filled the arena where he was scheduled to speak. In another incident this month, a 78-year-old man was charged with assault and disorderly conduct after he sucker-punched a protester during a rally in Fayetteville, N.C.
Inside the hotel conference center, Trump on Tuesday dismissed Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker as an ineffective leader, arguing that the Badger State governor has been a poor steward of the state's economy.
Trump went after Walker hours after the Wisconsin governor threw his support behind Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for the GOP presidential nomination.
"By the summer of 2015, Wisconsin was facing a $2.2 billion, two-year budget deficit," Trump said. "That's terrible...Twenty thousand fewer people in Wisconsin's labor force than seven years ago even though the population has grown by 100,000."
Polls show that the race for Wisconsin is tight, and a win for Cruz would go a long way in complicating Trump’s hopes to win the nomination outright before the party’s national convention in Cleveland this summer.
Gov. John Kasich is polling a distant third. But because the state’s 42 delegates are allocated on the basis of state and congressional district winners, the Ohio governor’s showing could have a significant impact on shaping the GOP race ahead of several winner-take-all contests coming up.
The rally in Janesville, home of Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, marked Trump’s kickoff campaign event ahead of next week’s Wisconsin primary. Cruz and Kasich have been campaigning throughout the state for days. Trump says he’s planning to spend much of this week with rallies planned in Appleton and Green Bay.
"If we win Wisconsin, it's over," Trump said
Trump arrived in Wisconsin on a day when his campaign faces plenty of headwind.
His campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, was charged with simple battery for an altercation with a reporter in Florida earlier this month. Trump, however, says the allegations against Lewandowski are baseless and charged that the reporter, Michelle Fields, greatly exaggerated what happened.
"Don't forget, initially she said 'thrown to the floor,'" Trump said. "If somebody squeezed your arm or hurt you wouldn't you start screaming or something? Did you see any change in her face?"
"(Lewandowski) has got a beautiful wife and children," Trump added. "I'm not going to destroy a man for that."
The New York businessman also faced a trio of tough interviews on conservative talk radio Monday, including sharp criticism from influential talk show host Charlie Sykes, who told Trump he sounded like a “12-year-old bully on the playground” with his threats to go after Cruz’s wife.
Trump made his threats after an anti-Trump Super PAC ran an ad with a nude photograph of Trump’s wife, Melania, a former model, ahead of the March 22 Utah caucuses. Cruz has accused Trump’s “henchmen” of engineering a National Enquirer story saying the senator is being investigated for extramarital affairs.
In his comments to supporters Tuesday, Trump steered clear of the war of the words with Cruz over their spouses, but he resurrected questions about the Texas senator's eligibility to run for president because he was born in Canada. Cruz maintains he meets the criteria of "natural-born" citizen because his mother is American-born. Several lawsuits by voters, including suits brought in Illinois and Indiana, on the issue have been tossed.
"The first thing that's going to happen (if Cruz wins the nomination) is that the Democrats are going to sue Ted Cruz," Trump said. "Remember this, if he gets the nomination, within the first few days, he will be sued from the Democrats that he doesn't have the right to be president. And I think they're right."
Follow USA TODAY Chicago correspondent Aamer Madhani on Twitter @AamerISmad
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1MzVJ1xThere are many reasons why Bernie Sanders poll better than Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump. Pundits may be underestimating voter intelligence.
Lawrence O'Donnell presented an interesting segment that should give Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and political pundits alike pause. A new Quinnipiac poll shows that Bernie Sanders would beat Donald Trump by twice as much as Hillary Clinton would in the general election. Clinton beats Trump 47/40 while Sanders beats Trump 51/38. It's a mix bag for the other GOP candidates.
O'Donnell used the similarities between Trump and Sanders to identify the reason. In effect many Trump voters that are anathema to Clinton would switch their vote to Sanders if he were the nominee. Why?
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O'Donnell played clips that clearly show why. Trump claims he is self-funding on the stump. Bernie highlights that he has no super PACs. Both speak out vociferously against lobbyist and big donors. They are both against trade deals like NAFTA, CAFTA, and TPP. They both slam bankers and Wall Street.
In effect, Donald Trump is usurping Bernie Sanders' populist message. Unfortunately for Trump many of his voters would migrate to the real populist candidate.
Pundits on O'Donnell's panel were a bit skeptical. One panelist said that these numbers did not mean much because Bernie Sanders' Democratic Socialist moniker was not yet challenged.
It is likely that most likely voters know that Sanders has in fact labeled himself a Democratic Socialist. So far Sanders has been doing a good job of defining it in bread and butter terms Americans understand.
Pundits have been undermining and misreading the populace all year. Donald Trump should have been knocked off the leader's board in the GOP race. Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, or Marco Rubio should be on the ascent by now as everyone coalesced next to an establishment candidate.
This year could be a change election above and beyond 2008. The fallibility of the punditry in their prognostication so far may in fact be probative.A U.S. Army veteran filed an official complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Division against Winter Park Resort alleging the resort discriminated against her by not allowing her service dog to ride up the resort’s chairlifts.
VailDaily reports Winter Park offered former U.S. Army Captain, CarrieAnn Grayson, alternative transportation of her service dog Guinness by driving her and her dog to the top of the mountain but the resort would require five-day notice. Grayson says that is discrimination and is not acceptable. Grayson originally requested to ride the lift with Guinness so they could meet up with friends for dinner at the mountaintop restaurant:
“I initially contacted Winter Park in June asking if I could take my service dog on the chairlift. They said they don’t allow dogs. I volunteered to come to Winter Park to talk about different options, to talk about how it can work, to talk about different accommodations.” Winter Park Resort explained their response was out of concern for safety. Steve Hurlbert, spokesperson for Winter Park Resort, had this to say:
“For a number of safety reasons that involve the animal, the handler and other guests, we cannot allow people to bring their service animals on the lifts. We suggested alternatives. We offered free transportation from the base to Sunspot for her and her dog. We wanted a heads-up with some advance notice; unfortunately that was unacceptable to her.”
Grayson’s case has the potential to set precedent as officials from the Rocky Mountain ADA, part of the national network of ADA centers, have never fielded any questions regarding service dogs riding chairlifts at ski resorts. A Rocky Mountain ADA spokesperson was unable to comment saying only:
“We get all kinds of calls for service animal information, but this is the first one about animals on ski lifts.” The Rocky Mountain ADA is reaching out to in-house legal experts to inform their interpretation on the responsibilities of ski resorts when it comes to accommodating service animals and their owners. We will be sure to update this story as the developments come in.
[images from winterparkresort.com, VailDaily, winterpark instagram]The Bread for the World study draws links between long-term health issues as consequences of ‘food insecurity’ or lack of affordable, nutritious food
Hunger and malnutrition cost the United States an extra $160bn a year in the treatment of chronic health conditions, according to a report released to coincide with Thanksgiving that exposes the consequences of “food insecurity” among poorer American families.
The study, commissioned by Christian charity Bread for the World, is believed to be the first to apportion a share of the long-term costs of illnesses such as diabetes that are linked to a lack of access to affordable, nutritious food.
Although most attention has focused in recent years on reducing American obesity rates, the authors of the report claim there is in fact a “two-headed pandemic” in the US, caused by both a lack of healthy food and obesity.
Government statistics suggest that between 2008 and 2014 at least 48.1 million people a year were classed as “food insecure”, meaning they could not always afford to eat balanced meals, including 19.2% of all households with children. Census researchers define food insecurity as both an inability to afford regular nutritious food or periods of outright hunger.
At the launch of the report, Dawn Pierce, a nurse from Idaho who was forced to rely on food stamps after losing her job, gave an emotive account of the difficulty she faced in feeding her son and herself in a way that helped her manage her type II diabetes.
“Food stamps are wonderful, but if you only get $317 a month, you are going to buy the most food you can buy with that money, and the most food you can go buy is a case of Top Ramen for $4.20 and cans of chili for 69 cents,” she said.
“I gained 40lb on food stamps. I mean, how can you be hungry and be fat? But that’s totally possible when you are eating junk and Top Ramen instead of salad and a roast and mashed potatoes and homemade gravy.”
Pierce also spoke of the stigma of being forced on to food stamps, now known as the supplemental nutrition assistance program (Snap), and the difficulty of juggling her son’s needs with her own diet and medication.
“Sitting in the parking lot I cried for an hour before I went in, because I could not believe I had to ask for help,” she said.
“It’s humiliating and embarrassing. I dreaded the day my son came home and asked me for cookies for school or muffins for some project or pot luck because I didn’t plan for that. I didn’t have that in the food budget.
“I brought healthier stuff just for my son but not me, because he was more important,” added Pierce.
“One night I was lying in bed and hardly slept at all, and I was trying to figure out why my heart rate was close to 120 and why I had a raging headache and I ran through the list of things I ate that day and it was crap. It was chili cheese Fritos and I had coffee and some corn nuts and grabbed an 89-cent hamburger from McDonald’s and I realised that this has got to change. My blood sugar was 279.”
The study found that food insecurity increases by nearly 50% the chances of becoming a “high cost user of healthcare services” within five years.
Healthcare costs have soared in the US and account for 24% of all federal spending, while federal food assistance is just 3% of spending.
“Nowhere are the hidden costs of hunger and food insecurity greater than in health care,” said the Rev David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World.
“Access to nutritious food is essential to healthy growth and development, and can prevent the need for costly medical care. Many chronic diseases – the main causes of poor health as well as the main drivers of healthcare costs – are related to diet.”Most smartphone users know data speeds can vary widely. But how do the different carriers stack up against each other? The Federal Communications Commission is hoping the public can help figure that out, using a new app it will preview next week.
The FCC on Friday said that the agenda for next Thursday’s open meeting, the first under new Chairman Tom Wheeler, will feature a presentation on a new Android smartphone app that will be used to crowdsource measurements of mobile broadband speeds.
The FCC announced it would start measuring the performance of mobile networks last September. All four major wireless carriers, as well CTIA-The Wireless Association have already agreed to participate in the app, which is called “FCC Speed Test.” It works only on Android for now — no word on when an iPhone version might be available.Loading... Loading...
Five police officers were killed and six were injured in Dallas yesterday when snipers opened fire during a protest of the recent police killings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. This mass shooting was a despicable act of murder.
It was also blowback.
“Blowback” is a term generally reserved for foreign policy. It refers to the reverberating ill effects of foreign interventions. Ron Paul famously and persuasively characterized the |
ourselves for our limitations, neither should we be satisfied with them. We should always be pushing ourselves to new challenges and opportunities for growth, whether that’s taking a full-time course load at an Ivy League school while being cast in an Academy Award nominated performance, or just applying for that management position that’s just a little outside our comfort zone.
Just keep pushing forward and never be afraid to reinvent yourself. Who knows what your wikipedia entry might read someday? 🙂The Aggies and the Sun Devils will play in Houston on the first Saturday in September in what is one of the more appealing non-conference showdowns of the weekend. Both teams are exciting to watch, and both feature head coaches entering their fourth seasons who have settled into their spots naturally as good fits.
They are also familiar foes.
The two met three years in a row in Conference USA from 2008-2010, with Kevin Sumlin's Houston team holding the edge 2-1. But the first meeting was perhaps the most memorable.
Todd Graham's Tulsa squad started out the 2008 season by wheeling off eight straight wins and climbed as high as #19 in the polls. They were still undefeated in conference play and 8-1 overall when they rolled into Houston to face the 5-4 Cougars under first-year coach Kevin Sumlin and sophomore QB Case Keenum.
Then this happened:
It was ugly if you were a Tulsa fan, and glorious if you weren't. It was a classic Kevin Sumlin offensive approach of early attacks, with a generous amount of help from the defense and special teams thrown in. Tulsa would score a touchdown late in the second quarter to cut the score to 35-17. Houston returned the ensuing kickoff with only nine seconds left in the half.
It was just one of those games for Tulsa. Keenum had six touchdowns. Houston scored on defense. The Golden Hurricane got punched in the teeth and would have had to play a perfect game to come back, and they didn't come close.
Houston would go on to win two of their next three games, including a bowl win against Air Force, and they'd parlay that momentum into a ten-win campaign in 2009, Sumlin's second year. Of course, a lot of that had to do with the staff that Sumlin assembled in his first year at Houston:
Not bad for C-USA. (Zac is Jake's brother; we knew you'd ask. He's now the DB coach at Texas Tech.)
Beating Arizona State won't be this easy, obviously. Todd Graham has faced Sumlin a few times now, and he's beaten him. He's also got a lot more in his arsenal at Arizona State than he did at Tulsa. But so does Kevin Sumlin.
Either way, it's going to be a great show, and since we've still got a few weeks to play with, why not dig up some old games and crow over past results for a while?
Here's a #classy clip from a Houston fan from late in that game to hold you over:On MSNBC Live Thursday, host Ali Velshi refused to listen to his guest, Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) after he started to give the liberal host an answer he didn’t like. Hosts Ali Velshi and Stephanie Ruhle first asked the member of the Armed Services Committee about Trump’s handling of North Korea’s threat against the U.S. territory of Guam. As soon as Franks tried to explain that the situation would be harder to handle now than in years past, because of past mistakes presidents like Clinton and Obama made handling North Korea, Velshi cut him off, saying “I really don’t want to talk about Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.” He then self-righteously scolded the GOP rep, saying “This is not a political game, Sir!”
Before all that, the interview started off straightforward with Ruhle asking Franks what his assessment was on how the U.S. should be handling North Korea. Towards the end of his answer, Frank admitted, “We shouldn’t be where we are,” placing blame on the past failed negotiations Clinton and Obama made with North Korea and Iran that didn’t require any accountability of our enemies.
STEPHANIE RUHLE: What's your assessment of how we should be handling North Korea? REP. TRENT FRANKS: Well I think that, first of all, this threat to launch intermediate missiles at Guam has to be considered carefully. Because we only have a short period of time to ascertain the trajectory and whether or not those missiles are actually on track to hit Guam. It's something that we cannot just ignore that reality because indeed if we think that trajectory is on track, we would have to engage our own missile defense capability. And my overall assessment is that we shouldn't be where we are, but Bill Clinton had had an opportunity to negotiate with the North Koreans. He made a deal. He paid the ransom but didn't secure the hostage. Barack Obama did the the same thing and turned around and did the same thing with Iran. We're now starting into an area where we could find some of the most dangerous enemies to America in the world that would be armed with nuclear weapons. That's not good news for our children or our future generations.
Bringing it back to Trump, Ruhle asked Franks if Trump was “correct” in “inciting” Kim Jong-un:
RUHLE: Alright well maybe we have been dealt a difficult hand, but thus far, is the president playing that hand correctly in firing off ‘fire and fury,’ inciting, for a lack of a better term that irrational foreign leader in Kim Jong-un? FRANKS: Well, the reality is that we only have two ways to defend this nation against intercontinental ballistic missiles that bare nuclear warheads. That's either to interdict them in flight, kinetically or otherwise or to be able to prevent them from being launched. And the main predicate for decades now against very dangerous enemies with nuclear arms has been deterrent. They have to believe that there's no gain in attacking United States. I think the president is making it clear to North Korea that should they attack the United States with nuclear weapons that there will be absolutely no gain to them and great harm to them if that occurs.
Velshi got his first question in then and it was hostile from the start. He mocked the GOP rep. for saying that Obama’s Iran Deal was a failure. “They had no missiles by the way, so the comparison’s not very good,” he snarked. Velshi also claimed that the Obama Admin had “absolute solid intelligence as to where the nuclear capability is,” (despite the fact that the deal relied solely on self-reporting from Iran itself, because it wouldn’t allow outside agencies like the IAEA to robustly inspect the country’s military facilities.) But Velshi was so confident in his statement that Franks asked Velshi to clarify:
FRANKS: I’m sorry can you repeat that again? Are you saying Iran has no nuclear missiles? VELSHI: Iran has no nuclear capable missiles. That's a fact. FRANKS: Well, Let me just suggest to you--if North Korea has those--- VELSHI: Congressman Congressman [repeatedly] -- let's talk about the present please. This is an important topic. I'm asking you a question. Let's talk about the present. How do we establish deny of capability with North Korea? We don't have nearly the information that we had on Iran.
After that rude interruption, Frank pushed back again, saying that the U.S. had “a great deal of information for decades” on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, but that past presidents had severely limited our current options with their deal-making failures. But as soon as Franks name-dropped Obama and Clinton, Velshi angrily interrupted again:
FRANKS: The fact is we have a great deal of information on North Korea. We had a great deal of information for decades and we had an opportunity to deny them the capability and two components to any threat. That's the capability and intent. And President Obama and President Clinton--- VELSHI: Congressman I really want to move forward. I really want to have a discussion about how we stop a war with North Korea. I really don’t want to talk about Bill Clinton or Barack Obama or George W. Bush or Jimmy Carter or Nixon. Because this all started--- FRANKS [being talked over by Velshi]: I can understand you wouldn't, but the bottom line is if we continue to make the mistakes of the past.
“This is not a political game, Sir! This is about war! Can we get answers?” Velshi scolded.
He continued:
VELSHI: Do we really know where the missiles are in North Korea? Because Intelligence sources tell me that we do not have the degree of information we did in a place like Iran where our spy capabilities are really good, our aerial capabilities were really good. I'm asking a military question. I’m not asking about--- [talking over each other] FRANKS: If you give me a chance to answer, maybe that would help us both. It is true that North Korea has the ability to disperse their capability, such as it is, in ways that are harder for us to deal with because there's not as much information in North Korea. That part is true. VELSHI: That's what I'm trying to get to. FRANKS: So what? VELSHI: So the fact is when we talk about denial of capability, which goes back to the question I asked 2.5 minutes ago, when Lindsey Graham says there's denial of capability -- FRANKS: That ship has sailed. What we have to do now is to try to deter their intent. That's what I'm trying to suggest to you. The ship of capability has sailed under Mr. Obama and Mr. Clinton. And now what we have to do is we have a president now that has far limited options and some of those options are much more grave than the options that we had before so consequently he has to make it clear to North Korea that should they intend or should they proceed to attack the United States, that it means devastation to them. That's dealing with intent. I hope the president succeeds because the implications, as you say, are profoundly ominous.
What Trent Franks was trying to explain to the head-in-the-sand MSNBC host was that we’ve been here before, so we should learn from our past mistakes. But all the media seems to care about is Trump’s “scary rhetoric.” Instead, they should be taking a look at how they covered past presidents’ reactions to nuclear threats.
The media hailed both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama’s “historic” deals with North Korea and Iran, respectively, which turned out to be failures. The 1994 deal reached with Korea by Clinton required little from the country, and even those requirements they eventually violated. The deal was meant to prevent Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons, which clearly didn’t work. But at the time, the media praised Clinton for “ending the Cold War,” not giving any scrutiny to the lax measures placed on Korea in the agreement.In July 2014, Muhammed H., from the German city of Wuppertal, apparently decided to leave territory under the control of Islamic State after a stay of one month. His decision was duly processed by the IS bureaucracy and his file was updated accordingly.
The terror officials noted both his real name and his nom de guerre ("Ismail al-Almani" or Ismail the German). In addition, the officials noted that H. had served the terror group as a "fighter" and that he was leaving IS territory via the city of Jarabulus; the reason for his return was listed as "family." They returned his passport to him and then he was free to go.
His file, though, stayed behind with IS. For a time, at least.
The word "state" in the terror group's name is no accident: IS seeks to establish a country-like entity and the group's followers dream of a caliphate. A corollary of that desire is the maintenance of an IS bureaucracy that keeps what seem to be halfway decent records. But for supporters of the militia, this urge to play state could have unpleasant consequences. Recently, exit forms such as the one filled out upon the departure of Muhammed H. have been smuggled out of Islamic State territory and have ended up in the hands of German security officials. SPIEGEL and SPIEGEL TV have obtained a significant trove of these explosive records in Arabic. In total, they provide information about some 400 jihadists who have left IS territory, including around 20 Germans.
Many of these IS personnel files specify why jihadists left the group's territory. Most often, family or medical reasons are noted, but other entries sound more ominous. IS bureaucrats wrote "secret mission" on the form of one man who could be German but whose identity hasn't yet been firmly established. "Skills: Murder," the form reads.
The discovery of the files has provided investigators with important evidence. German federal prosecutors are currently pursuing more than 130 cases in connection with the civil wars in Iraq and Syria, with an additional 50 having been referred to state prosecutors. The numbers are unprecedented, but it has been difficult for justice officials to prove wrongdoing. It is, after all, impossible to question witnesses, carry out raids or monitor telephones in the warzones. As such, it is often difficult to obtain evidence that will stand up in a court of law.
But the newly discovered IS files could now help investigators prove that returning jihadists were indeed members of a terrorist organization.
Wife on a Chain
Some of the extremists named in the papers currently remain at large. Security officials are keeping a close eye on them because they are considered dangerous. But it isn't possible to arrest many of them because investigators haven't thus far been able to prove their Islamic State membership. In several instances, including that of Muhammed H., officials didn't even know prior to the discovery of the files if they had really been in Syria and joined Islamic State.
Following his return from jihad, Muhammed H., 20, didn't act as though he sought to avoid attention. In early 2015, he led his wife on a chain through Wuppertal, with one end of the chain around his spouse's wrist, the other -- as can be seen on photos in his case file -- affixed to his backpack. His wife was completely veiled.
On a Wednesday in July, reporters from SPIEGEL TV approached Muhammed H. on the street, a muscular man with a beard and a cap. His appearance was reminiscent of those seen on Islamist propaganda videos: arrogant and resolute. When asked if he had been with IS, H. answered brusquely: "You're lying. You are a liar. I don't want anything to do with you." He then walked away.
H. was on the way to visit an apartment he was hoping to rent for himself and his wife -- an affordable three-room place with a kitchen and a bathroom. During his apartment search, he had told other landlords in the town of Ennepetal, just outside Wuppertal, that he and his wife were both on welfare.
In his father's apartment, H. is thought to have established a kind of living-room mosque with other radicals. One senior security official says that H. is extremely well connected and is one of the "key figures in the scene." He says H. is "completely unpredictable."
H. is part of the second generation of the notorious Islamist scene in the Wuppertal region -- a scene that once formed around the Salafist group Millatu Ibrahim, which was banned in 2012. The group produced the German-speaking IS propagandists Christian Emde and Mohammed Mahmoud in addition to the formerly Berlin-based rapper Denis Cuspert, now an IS poster boy. The first German to carry out a suicide attack for Islamic State -- Robert B., who killed 50 people in the Syrian province of Homs -- likewise belonged to the group.
No Incriminating Contacts
Police believe that Muhammed H. could be capable of carrying out an attack at any time and is classified as a so-called "endangerer," denoting someone who could pose a security risk. Federal and state police officials currently list around 500 Islamists in this highest risk category and they are monitored as intensively as possible. Around half of them are currently in Germany.
Last August, H. tried to travel to Syria once again, but federal police stopped him and his wife at the Düsseldorf airport before they could board a flight to Istanbul. Investigators believe that they were planning to make their way to Islamic State-held territory. Wuppertal security officials established a task force to investigate Muhammed H. -- which they named "Chain" in reference to his walk through Wuppertal with his manacled wife.
H. was kept in investigative custody for a month after his detention, but officials ultimately had to let him go because they were unable to come up with proof that he had really been intending to travel to Syria. His telephone and computer produced no evidence -- no incriminating contacts, messages or chat protocols. He also wasn't found to be in possession of any compromising documents. "He is clever, there is no doubt," says one investigator familiar with the case.
Since then, H., a German of Turkish origin, has been free and has remained so despite the discovery of the Islamic State files. One reason is that officials are currently in the process of determining whether the files are authentic. Terror investigations must meet high legal standards and Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) is carefully examining the IS lists and how they got to Germany. "Much of the data is plausible and consistent with what we know," says BKA head Holger Münch. "That would seem to indicate that the material is authentic." But investigators must prove that the files are real; it's not enough that they look real. Otherwise, the documentation won't hold up in court.
The documents originally came through the black market on the Turkish-Syrian border, a place where antiquities, drugs and oil are secretly brought into Turkey from areas under Islamic State control. Files, too, are among the goods smuggled, and not all of them are authentic.
This spring, a massive IS data leak became apparent. Thousands of digital personnel files found their way from the IS to Turkey and were sold for significant amounts of money to journalists, agents and activists. In some instances, files from different batches were pulled apart, newly packaged and changed. In the process, there were frequent data transfer errors, with names and dates sometimes being changed. That makes the data even more difficult to deal with for German officials.
Additional Information
One informant who is well networked in Syria says that the IS fighter responsible for the data leak wasn't fully aware of the importance of the data he passed along. It was, the informant says, a Syrian rebel who ultimately recognized the value of the files and bought almost 50,000 data files. SPIEGEL received them through an intermediary. Other media outlets, too, have examined elements of the data trove, most of which were entry forms kept by the terror militia. Islamic State didn't just interview foreign volunteers when they left IS territory, but also interrogated them upon arrival in Syria and kept records of their answers.
For security officials, the departure records that have now appeared will likely be of particular significance, because they could provide additional information about who has returned to his home country and when. Of the 800 German Islamists who traveled to Syria and Iraq, for example, around one-third have returned to Germany.
One of those is Lennart M., a married watch-maker who fought for Islamic State. That, at least, is what it says in his IS file. He lives in a neighborhood behind the Hamburg airport, an area that, with its subterranean garages and broad balconies, looks like a showcase for social housing. There is designer garden furniture on his ground-floor terrace.
A social welfare recipient in Germany, M. crossed into Islamic State-held territory in Syria on May 17, 2014, according to the IS files. As a deposit, M. handed over his passport, two iPads and an iPhone. The electronic devices remained behind when he left IS territory again that summer.
SPIEGEL approached M. in Hamburg on a recent Ramadan evening shortly before 8 p.m., about two hours before it was time to break the fast. The 23-year-old M. was walking to the subway. "You're allowed to travel abroad," he said, when confronted with his IS file. "There's nothing wrong with it." He added: "That's a fake."
It is thought that M. became radicalized via contacts in the Hizb-ut-Tahrir movement, a group that emerged out of the Muslim Brotherhood. It has been banned in Germany since 2003, but has continued operating underground and its aim is that of establishing a caliphate.
Names, Nicknames and Nationalities
A veiled woman peaked out from behind the curtains of M.'s apartment, likely his 19-year-old wife Betül. She is known to the authorities because she asked a passerby in Duisburg to borrow his mobile phone two years ago. The man informed the police because something didn't seem right to him about the girl in the veil. Later, her parents lodged a criminal complaint, saying that their daughter was being held against her will, but the complaint went nowhere. Lennart M.'s presumed involvement with the IS terror group has likewise not resulted in his arrest.
IS collected information about those returning home in Word documents. The files now in circulation were compiled between the end of 2013 and spring 2015 and are named after months in the Islamic calendar: Rajab, for example, the seventh month, or Ramadan, the ninth month. Up to 62 Islamists are listed per month, with their names, nicknames and nationalities recorded in various fields, in addition to other information.
The data isn't just of interest to security officials the world over, but also for researchers. A team under the leadership of Bryan Price, at the West Point military academy in the US state of New York, was the first to systematically analyze the Islamic State files. The team examined the IS entry forms of 4,173 foreign fighters that US broadcaster NBC made available to the researchers.
"If we are going to effectively combat our enemies, we must understand them first," says Lieutenant Colonel Price, who is the head of the donation-funded research institute Combating Terrorism Center (CTC). The research team examined the information provided by the jihadists, most of whom traveled to Syria in 2014, upon their arrival in the war zone. They compared their origins, age, education background, religious knowledge and skills.
"The diversity in all areas is of particular interest," says Price. "From teenagers to people in their sixties, from the uneducated to university graduates, there are people from all walks of life." Many in the West, he says, hold the cliché that only frustrated, single men are interested in joining IS. That, though, says Price, is inaccurate. The myth of a state based on Islamist principles -- one which also needs educated members -- exerts a powerful attraction on educated sympathizers as well, Price says.
Vague Indications
He says that IS also possesses the ability to learn and adapt quickly. In contrast to previous groups, the terror organization has a personnel management system worthy of the name, Price says, adding that IS officials make special note on the forms of exceptional skills or knowledge exhibited by the recruits.
"Especially interesting for IS bureaucrats seem to have been people who had military and hacking experience, in addition to people with visas for Western countries," says Brian Dodwell, an IS specialist at CTC. Indeed, it looks as though Islamic State was already planning attacks by those returning to their homelands at a time when Western security officials still believed such attacks were unlikely in Europe.
Among recruits traveling to IS-held territories from Germany, CTC researchers noted a stark lack of religious knowledge. That likely also holds true of Sinan A., a Turkish German whose name can be found in the IS files. The 27-year-old is currently being tried in Berlin for alleged membership in the terror group Deutsche Taliban Mujahedeen. The group was close to the Taliban and was active on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border several years ago.
Until recently, officials only had vague indications that A. may have made his way at some point in 2014 from Waziristan to Turkey and then onward to Syria. In September 2015, he reported to a German consulate in Turkey and was arrested on Dec. 18 that year after he landed at Tegel Airport in Berlin.
The recently discovered IS document pertaining to Sinan A.'s departure from Islamic State-held territory indicates that he belonged to the militia for two months in the early summer of 2014. IS bureaucrats noted the reason for his departure as "therapy." The entry has proven helpful to investigators, who now have an additional piece of evidence in their attempt to convict A. Whether he sought out therapy upon his return is unclear.Today we are finishing up our look at possible cuts on offense with a focus on the interior of the offensive line. In general I think this is a position where cuts don’t happen as much because salaries are generally on the lower end, except for younger players who have recently signed and are in no danger of a release.
1. Brandon Fusco, Vikings
Cap Saved: $3.2 million/Cash Saved: $4 million
The Vikings probably have the worst offensive line in the NFL and Fusco is certainly part of that. Among right guards Fusco’s $4 million salary ranks 7th and his $4.8 million cap number ranks 8th so it’s difficult to see the justification for his return. The $3.2 million in cap savings is actually the second highest figure at his position so the reward is clearly there for Minnesota if released.
2. Evan Smith, Buccaneers
Cap Saved: $4.5 million/Cash Saved: $4.5 million
Smith lost his starting job to Joe Hawley last season and is little more than a backup at this stage. $4.5 million is far too high a figure for any of the interior positions to pay for someone who may start one or two games and play in about 15% of the team’s offensive snaps. Smith has looked good at times in the past but things didnt really work out with the Bucs. Perhaps a hance of scenery will do him well.
3. Orlando Franklin, Chargers
Cap Saved: $2.8 million/Cash Saved: $6 million
The Chargers need to begin the process of upgrading their offensive line, not expecting the norms to change by simply awaiting another year. I would see the Chargers retaining Franklin simply because he has a salary guarantee that vests early in free agency and long before the draft, but I’d expect them to approach him about a pay cut similar to King Dunlap last season.
4. DJ Fluker, Chargers
Cap Saved: $8.8 million/Cash Saved: $8.8 million
I get the concept of chasing draft expectations and allowing that bias to sometimes cloud your judgement, but it would be hard to believe that the Chargers will objectively look at Fluker as a top tier player, which this salary makes him. Fluker allowed over 4 sacks on the season and has been hit with 6 penalties, which is an improvement from 2015 but not enough of one to justify the salary. I would not be stunned if the team extends him on a contract that guarantees him $8 million for the next four or five years, but they should not lock into this season which will become fully guaranteed at the start of free agency.
5. Nick Mangold, Jets
Cap Saved: $9.1 million/Cash Saved: $9.1 million
As a Jets fan this is a difficult one to write about. Mangold has been the best Jets player for the last decade and will clearly wind up in the teams ring of honor whenever he decides to retire. But Mangold is coming off of an injury filled season and the Jets look to be in need of a total makeover, which normally would not include a 33 year old highly compensated center. The Jets could offer him a retirement special contract that might keep him around until he wants to retire and pay him his $9M in exchange for playing out his career at a lower cost.
6. Alvin Bailey, Browns
Cap Saved: $1.6 million/Cash Saved: $2 million
The Browns certainly don’t need the cap space, but Bailey was one of the new regimes few free agent signings. Bailey did not contribute much, though I’m not sure he was expected to do so, but I think the late season suspension could be enough to move on. The team will need to make an effort to improve their line next season regardless of what they decide.Stores across South Korea are seeing salt disappear from shelves.
Buyers say they want to stock up ahead of possible contamination from radiation in Japan. Others are under the impression that ingesting it offers protection from radioactive iodine.
South Koreans have gone on a salt buying binge. That has prompted the price of salt to nearly double since this time a year ago.
Some are calling it an irrational reaction to the nuclear power plant accident in Japan.
Seoul housewife Lee Jeong-hwa says she heard that sea water could start being affected by radiation from Japan by Wednesday, if not earlier.
Lee says that is why she went out today to buy some salt produced before the nuclear accident. She explains she is trying to get pregnant and does not want to eat contaminated salt.
The branch manager of a Lotte Market in downtown Seoul, Kang Dae-hee, says his store used to sell one or two packs of salt per day.
Kang says recently that has increased to seven or eight packs and, even, sometimes 10 daily. He explains that foreign tourists are coming by frequently and also buying unusual quantities of seaweed products, such as kelp, which also is a source of iodine.
Panic salt buying was reported last month in China. That prompted the government there to launch a crackdown on hoarding and price gouging.
Scientists and authorities express skepticism about such reactions from consumers. They note that radiation, except for the immediate areas surrounding the Fukushima, Japan nuclear facility, is not likely to register at any level of concern to human health. They also say ingesting salt will not protect against radioactive iodine fallout.
Dr. Ahn Young-sil, a professor of nuclear medicine at the Ajou Medical Center in Suwon city, says seaweed and salt products do not contain enough iodine to prevent the thyroid gland from absorbing the amount of radiation that would be spewed from a significant nuclear disaster. And she warns that consuming these products in large quantities could cause other health problems.
The Salt Institute, in the United States, says a person would have to eat more than one-and-a-half kilograms of iodized table salt daily to stop the thyroid from being able to absorb harmful particles.
South Korea’s Institute of Nuclear Safety reports that very small amounts of radioactive iodine and cesium have been detected in the country. It says analysis of air samples taken at 12 locations across the nation Sunday and Monday revealed traces of radioactive iodine in all areas.
The Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant, on Japan’s northeastern coast, was severely damaged by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami on March 11. Overheated nuclear fuel rods and steam from the crippled plant have vented radiation into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, radioactive water from the facility has been spilling into the Pacific Ocean. That includes water containing radioactive iodine measured at levels millions of times the legal limit.Atletico Madrid President Enrique Cerezo Torres has refused to rule out a January move for Sime Vrsaljko to Napoli, but has insisted that they have yet to hear from the Italian club.
Vrsaljko joined Los Rojiblancos last summer from Italian side Sassuolo on a five-year deal, making 24 appearances for the club last season. However, he has only managed five appearances so far this campaign for the club.
The Croatian international now looks like he could be set for a return to Italian football after just over a year in Spain, with Serie A league leaders Napoli reportedly interested in the right back.
According to reports earlier in the week, Vrsaljko has already agreed to join Napoli, with the Serie A leaders set to offer the player a five-year deal, but negotiations between the clubs have yet to take place.
Atletico Madrid President Enrique Cerezo Torres has now hinted that Vrsaljko could move in January but that he has not heard from Napoli about the player yet.
Speaking to Radio Kiss Kiss Napoli, via Football Italia, he said: "As of today, I haven't heard from Napoli President Aurelio De Laurentiis for Vrsaljko. I can say that we have faith in the player, as well as a lengthy contract.
"I won't rule out that Napoli could make an approach for the January transfer market. Obviously, what the player wants will make the difference, but at the moment Vrsaljko is concentrated on his season with Atletico Madrid.
"In January we'll talk and see what might happen."
Atletico Madrid will play rival's Real Madrid this Saturday in La Liga, a game which Vrsaljko will perhaps be hoping to be a part of, as Los Rojiblancos will hope to win to keep the pressure on league leaders Barcelona.In an effort to make sure everyone who has a vagina knows that it is beautiful, BuzzFeed had six women (1) check their vaginas out, (2) describe them to a professional portrait artist, and (3) pick their own vaginas out of a vagina lineup.
When asked to describe what they've got going on down there, the responses were varied. "A smaller version of the Rocket Pops," one woman tells the artist. Others turn to fruit for comparison: "Have you ever had a dried peach?" and, "It's like a very healthy raisin" were helpful descriptions. The overall consensus about the exercise was summed up perfectly by one of the women: "OK, it's awkward, but there's no shame in having a vagina."
Seeing six vaginas staring back at them was a weird (but educational!) experience for everyone involved. Three of the six ladies were able to pick their vaginas out immediately. "I learned a lot about myself for sure," the proud lady below says of the whole situation.
YouTube
"It was an uncomfortable but enlightening experience," this woman says after flipping over a few vaginas that did not belong to her.
YouTube
So that's a fun weekend activity you can try: Get naked and see what's going on down there. Describe it to a stranger and let her have artistic license with it. Kidding. But all vaginas are beautiful yay!
Follow Tess on Twitter.[Sheldon wrote this article largely from memory, based on his long experience in the bicycle retail sector. His coverage is uneven, as he did not go so far as to research topics of which he had little personal knowledge. I leave the article largely as he wrote it, though I have run a spell check and made a few additions. Sheldon left a few headings only as notes to himself with no content following, and undoubtedly he left other topics unmentioned. If you can help fill out the article, please feel free to write in. Also see Frank Berto's article "Sunset for SunTour" -- highly recommended. -- John Allen]
Japanese Bicycles
Japanese bicycles are often of very fine quality, but few are available in the U.S. market today, due to unfavorable currency exchange rates. There are still many very fine Japanese bicycles available on the used market, and this article is intended as a guide to them.
Japanese Bicycle Brands...Quick Jump
Japanese Parts...Quick Jump
History of Japanese bicycles in the U.S.
The Dark Ages...through the early 70's
After the Second World War, Japan was primarily known for making cheap knockoffs of foreign designs, competing on the basis of cheap labor. This began to turn around in the camera and electronics industries in the 1950s, but Japanese companies didn't figure out how to make and sell bicycles for the U.S. market until the early 1970s. As the 1970s opened, the U.S. market for adult bicycles was basically owned by the French and English. While Japanese bicycles were manufactured to very tight tolerances, and nicely finished (considerably better than their European competition), the Japanese had not yet come to terms with the average American's being taller and heavier than the average Japanese. (This gap was wider at the time than it is now, due to the privations the Japanese population suffered during and after the war.) Royce Union he most widely distributed Japanese bike of this era was sold under the name Royce Union. This was a 10-speed, pretty much all steel except for the handlebar stem and the Dia Compe brakes. This bike was only available in one size, 20", which was considerably too small for an average American man. It was equipped with Araya steel rims, which were beautifully made, much smoother and truer than European steel rims of the era...but not strong enough to withstand the weight of an average American rider. This was partly due to design, and partly due to the fact that Japanese steel was not as good as European (nor American) steel. Even though these bikes were not durable, they did have their good points, most particularly the Shimano Lark rear derailer. Although the Lark was quite heavy, it shifted markedly better than the French Huret Allvits and Simplex Prestiges that were coming through on the bikes from Europe.
Cotterless cranks
Aluminum-alloy cotterless cranks had been a high-end item, not found on the run-of-the-mill European ten-speeds that sold for around $150 in the early 1970s bike boom years. The Sugino Maxy cotterless crank was a game changer. The inner chainring was attached using the 110 mm bolt circle, which survives to this day in very wide use. The Maxy's outer chainring was swaged to the right crank, and so was not interchangeable -- though it was possible to saw off a worn chainwheel and bolt a replacement one to the remaining spider.The Maxy was much lighter and easier to work on than cottered cranks, and gave a competitive advantage to mid-priced Japanese derailer-equipped bicycles.
The Invasion...Mid '70s--Early '80s
The SunTour Derailers
Although Japanese derailers had appeared as original equipment on Japanese bikes, the SunTour VGT was the first model to make a big splash in the aftermarket. The VGT was a wide-range touring derailer, using SunTour's patented "slant parallelogram" design. The VGT was a reasonably light derailer, with a large chain take-up capacity, and a very light action, compared to the early '60s designs from Simplex and Huret. The shifting ease and performance were dramatically superior. When a rider who had been using French derailers first tried out a VGT, the effect was as startling as the later transition from friction to index shifting. [Agreed -- been there, done that. My first ten-speed had a |
iques. If we want to make this truly embarrassing for Left and Right, how about we compare them to Bran Stark, or Shireen Baratheon, or Jorah Mormont, or even less amazing 2-drops like The Tickler, Edric Dayne or Viserion. All of those are clearly several orders of magnitude better in a straight comparison for one reason or another: keywords like Renown or Stealth, powerful triggers, extra icons/STR/both, traits that actually do things - all of those characters have at least 2 of the above over Left and Right.- Hopefully by now I've established that these characters live and die by their textbox. So is it any good? Big. Fat. No. You will only get this text activated in one of two scenarios: the first, if you get very lucky and find both of your single copies of these characters (that I would not recommend including for all of the reasons above); the second, if you compromise either your deckbuilding (by including several copies of terrible characters) or your play (by playing to get the combo, for example playing Summons to fetch one or using Olenna's Cunning, when you could get actually GOOD characters). The first one is not a common enough occurrence to be a realistic point in their favour; the second one makes me start asking some serious questions. Even in the core set environment, what exactly are you cutting to make room for these copies of Left and Right? Why have you built a deck around two characters very obviously intended to be claimsoak? Who are you killing instead? Unless you've built a deck with an extremely low cost curve - all the characters being cost 4 or below, say - then you're killing better characters than these chumps just to keep your synergy going. And if you're building that deck, then I hope you remembered that Wildfire Assault is a card that exists, because I doubt your three characters are better than your opponents' three characters. In fact, I doubt your three characters are better than ONE of the characters of your opponents'. For starters, two of yours are Left and Right.- Ok, so let's ignore that. Maybe the text is hard to make meaningful without compromising my deck, but it's at least a powerful effect, right?...Eh. I mean, I don't have my head in the sand, it's not a terrible effect or anything, but considering how bad they are individually and how bad your deck has to be to actually get the combo, it's just a 6/10 sort of ability. You get a solid defensive wall on military (if the opponent doesn't have stealth or kneel or icon removal), and an okay defensive wall on the other challenges (if [see above]). I'd expect better.- So in short, if you run them 3x then you're eating up deck-space and forcing yourself not to choose them for claimsoak, if you run them 1x then you'll almost never actually get the combo off, and if you choose them 2x you're hitting some unsatisfactory medium between the two. The only solution is to run them 0x.- So I'd like to think I've established that they're bad. But why am I expending so much energy, vitriol and hatred for them? Essentially, it annoys me greatly that they are in the core at the expense of other cards. No Renly? No Brienne? No Mace? No Willas? No Garlan? I know not everyone can be in the core, but compare it to Stark, say. Granted they're a bigger part of the books, but I'm not seeing them stuck with Fat Tom in the evergreen core, they're getting the Stark children and rightly so.- What upsets me more than that however is that we aren't only getting one terrible card for Tyrell in the core, but two. Over 10% of the different cards making up Tyrell's portion of the core are dedicated to this terrible nonbo, featuring terrible characters that I don't care about or want to play. For an evergreen product, that's a disappointingly large chunk to dedicate to cards I'm not sure I even want to sully my binders with.- There's also a chance I got more steadfastly-entrenched in my views the more people told me it wasn't that bad and to stop complaining.Ire & WWDrakey - 2 out of 5Don’t mind JC, our resident Tyrell-fanatic has not much sanity Left, he’s just not quite Right in the head anymore.Istaril - 1 out of 5Umm. Feeling squeeze out by JC. Running them 1x they’re worse than Burned Men/Braided Warriors etc, 3x that’s a lot of deckspace to cards that risk being worse than Burned Men. Until there’s some cost-limited deck search for a character, these are bad.mnBroncos - 2 out of 5James took all my room to type. But, they aren’t that bad.rave - 2 out 5As much as I like these guys, by my own standard, I can’t rate them more than a two. By themselves they really are sub-par 2 cost cards. They claim soak the same as any other 2 cost card though. There’s no point in running more than 1x of each, but it’s worth it when the combo hits. Left and Right together really are very very annoying. It’s amusing.scantrell24 - 2 out of 5Yeah, they’re both terrible and a waste of valuable real estate (from the competitive player’s perspective). But FFG has to satisfy their Shagga-minded fan base on occasion. Jaw-dropping effects, no matter how unlikely to work, probably help drive sales among more casual gamers.VonWibble - 1 out of 5I wrote a review basically saying they are bad but not terrible, but James has convinced me! It may just see play in a Tyrell Fealty deck out of 1 core set.Siroma - 2 out of 5Tyrell is an ideal house to banner out of or into, due to Margaery and Randyll being non-loyal (I just dislike the QoT and KoF) and often times there will be better options for claim soak. During the rare times you get both of them out they can be good but overall they’re lackluster.cockbongo - 2 out of 5Unique claim soak is not proper claim soak. I like the fact that it shows new players how some cards can interact and depend on each other, so I credit FFG for including that kind of Shagga tech in the coreset… but right now there’s little reason to run these guys.Ire & WWDrakey - 3 out of 5Not a terrible card, albeit not that exciting. Does being a Maester matter in 2.0 as much as it did in 1.0 Istaril - 3 out of 5I imagine that Maester trait will matter eventually, but for the moment he discourages chump intrigue challenges, which is decent, and he doesn’t have to be participating.JCWamma - 2 out of 5As with Dornish Paramour, 3 cost for a 3 STR monocon is not particularly great when the effect is only okay. The combo with Queen of Thorns (win with the Queen of Thorns on defence, drop Lomys in and trigger him immediately) is nice, but far from top-drawer, and ultimately all he'll do in practice is stop an opponent making chump intrigue challenges. There's a specific challenge-denial deck exploiting Highgarden that he'll be okay in, but even then not essential.mnBroncos - 3 out of 5Shuts down chump challenges and allows you to benefit more from winning as defender. When card pool grows this card won’t see a ton of play but could be a common x1.rave - 2 out 5More defense abilities :/ On a monocon. He doesn’t have to participate though, which can make him threatening...ish.scantrell24 - 3 out of 5Lomys and Caleotte are both 3 gold Maesters with slightly annoying abilities, but I prefer the Martell’s style of annoying (and the extra icon to the extra point of strength), at least until Tyrell gets more “surprise” challenge win cards or additional reasons to care about defending intrigue challenges. He’s not horrible though.VonWibble - 3 out of 5He gets a point for the fact he doesn’t have to participate in the challenge, and you may be able to use strength pumps to ensure that win happens unexpectedly. However, I’d rather use the boosts to win my own challenges.Siroma - 2 out of 53 cost 3 str monocon is pretty bad, though with Insight or a keyword it might have been a different story. As it is, he is too conditional to matter. The Maester trait is looking up though.cockbongo - 3 out of 5I’m looking forward to future Maester tech, and this isn’t a bad ability. One icon is a bit tight mind you. If it causes your opponent to think twice about attacking with an INT weenie then all the better, and lets face it, if the Queen of Thorns is on the table it’s in your opponent’s interest to hit your hand before you can bounce in something useful.Ire & WWDrakey - 5 out of 5While we can’t really see the thematic link to Margaery, as she’s usually the one in the political/intrigue spearhead and thus being supported by others, the card itself is a good one.Istaril - 5 out of 5A phenomenal 3 coster, with the option of initiating challenges of her own and a threat of activation right up until you do, not to mention the synergy with Randyll or win-by-five-str events. At this ‘low’ 2.0 price point, you can’t possibly ask for better.JCWamma - 5 out of 5So strong, and very versatile. A reason to banner to Tyrell.mnBroncos - 5 out of 5Tyrell staple for the entire length of the game.scantrell24 - 5 out of 5In another faction without the Tyrell “strength pump” theme, she’d earn a solid 4, but considering that Margaery stands Randyll, helps trigger the Mander, etc., she’s essential.rave - 4 out of 5She’s very good, and enables Randyll Tarly to do horrible things. The effect is not exactly a surprise or efficient though. All around, a nice toolbox card to have.VonWibble - 5 out of 5She is effectively a tricon who can join a challenge at any point. Very efficient.Siroma - 5 out of 5Flexible character that also helps against burn. cheap and being non-loyal also makes her an ideal target to banner away.cockbongo - 5 out of 5The poster child for the Banner agenda. And a pretty one at that. Was going to give it 4 until I remembered she’s a 3 coster and is vital for those win by 5 abilities. So I gave her an extra one. Ahem.Ire & WWDrakey - 4 out of 5Those gold tokens are good for you, I hear.Istaril - 3 out of 5Non-limited economy is good, Lord trait is nice. It can be hard to use that event reduction reliably, and you’re already paying a premium over his icon/str, so I’d call him a worse Littlefinger. Which is by no means damning. He’s fine, and becomes great (⅘) if you ensure an event distribution that can take advantage of his text more often than not.JCWamma - 4 out of 54 cost for a monocon isn't great, but giving you 1 or 2 gold (depending on if you play an event that costs gold) every round means he'll pay for himself very quickly. The body he's on isn't too impressive, but the effect does the work here.mnBroncos - 4 out of 5Gives you extra gold to use a turn as well as giving you reducer every turn. Events are still real strong in 2.0 but with a gold cost they are harder to play but Paxter really helps you out.scantrell24 - 4 out of 5If you consistently utilize Paxter’s cost reduction for events, then he essentially matches Tywin’s +2 gold modifier. Tears, Torch, and Growing Strong become free, so you can at least bluff that you have one of them in hand even with zero gold in your bank account. Paxter’s single icon and relatively low strength won’t scare anyone though.rave - 4 out of 5The Thing about Paxter is that he causes Big Trouble to opponents who leave him out over a few turns. The Fog created by having events cost one less is enough to keep your opponent from predicting your next move.VonWibble - 4 out of 5As long as you were intending to play an event that turn (costing 1 or more) you can think of him as having cost 3. He then has +1 gold, and lets you have 0 gold stockpiled to play an event? There are lots of good 1 cost events out there, so its tough to say no.Siroma - 4 out of 5Though the cost to strength isn’t exactly great, he is a pseudo Tyrion. He can help get those Put to the Swords and tears of lys off, which is always nice.cockbongo - 3 out of 5Another INT monocon? If you’re packed with the right events then he’s vital I, but non-Limited economy is also pretty important. I like being able to bluff that you’re holding playable events even without any gold once he’s on the table, and Supporting The Faith becomes an interesting option, but aside from that I don’t think he’s that strong.Ire & WWDrakey - 4 out of 5Randyll’s a really strong Rush character. Not a stand-alone one precisely, but when supported he can really have a big board impact.Istaril - 5 out of 5He’s really a sort of 4.5 - rock solid, and one of the few sources of renown (and very few reusable renown) in the core, and he’s non-loyal, and he’s a pretty decent body to boot. Having to build around him a bit should realistically drag him down to a 4, but the limit “twice” rather than “2 times”, and that stern look on his face convinced me he deserves a 5. Now where is my limit thrice...JCWamma - 4 out of 5Needs work to be good, but I hear a renown character than can stand is powerful. As a non-loyal card, he'll see a lot of play.mnBroncos - 5 out of 5This is the true “rush” card in the core set. He can gain power real fast and even in just the core set their are a number of ways you can stand him, will only get stronger with more cards in the pool.scantrell24 - 4 out of 5Randyll can do work -- this beatstick boasts high strength, renown, and the potential to participate in multiple challenges per round. He’s good in several decks, but only shines when you’ve built around him with multiple copies of Margaery, Heartsbane, and Growing Strong. The downside is that your opponent can see these combos coming from a mile away and will be prepared with Milks, Tears, and Swords on your stud, and cancels for the strength pumps.rave - 5 out of 5My god. This guy looked decent on paper, but when playing the actual game, he really shines. He’s a great choice to stack for the late game, because he’s out of the STR range for burn. Probably my choice for one of the worst characters to come up against in the core set.VonWibble - 5 out of 5Any character that can be used up to 3 times in challenges is going to make decks. He needs other characters and strength pumps to help him, but Tyrell aren’t lacking such effects.Siroma - 5 out of 5Tyrell’s biggest and baddest character, and the fact that he’s non-loyal makes it all the more appealing to banner him away. Lannister can make good use of him by ambushing in Widow’s Wail and since Heartsbane and Growing Strong aren’t loyal either they can also be potentially used. Comboes very nicely with Maegaery.cockbongo - 5 out of 5Renown and standing - Tarly is a monster. Ambush a Widow’s Wail on to him for extra fun.Ire & WWDrakey - 2 out of 5Right, we still had the second one Left.Istaril - 1 out of 5Umm, now that JC has given us enough space to right* our reviews, there’s nothing left to say.*sorry.JCWamma - 1 out of 5I don’t particularly care for this guy either. In fact I think he’s slightly worse, because I’m left-handed.mnBroncos - 2 out of 5Fine card.scantrell24 - 2 out of 5Yeah, they’re both terrible.rave - 2 out of 5See Left.VonWibble - 1 out of 5Right is just wrong. At least James didn’t copy and paste his review of Left for this.Siroma - 2 out of 5Read Left's review.cockbongo - 2 out of 5So much better than Left.Ire & WWDrakey - 5 out of 5While Randyll is strong when supported, KoF here doesn’t really need any support to be a beast. On top of that, he’s at a really affordable price-point, and sports several likely positive traits. Expecting to see a lot of him.Istaril - 3 out of 5His ability is very good to push through challenges against big boards…. but in the core environment, with Wildfire/Beefy characters, not reaching its potential. Don’t ignore the damage potential with margaery/str pumps, but don’t be surprised if you’re often adding him into a challenge with someone else, just trying to maximize renown over the ‘efficiency’ of his ability (especially if Randyll/Jaime is the ‘other’, since not using them would be a waste). Renown alone practically pulls him to a 4, but as he falls just short and I overrated Randyll...JCWamma - 5 out of 5In aggro/rush decks, he's great for pushing through renown challenges (especially with his sister); in control decks that handle large boards on the opposing side, being able to push through challenges by himself is a huge deal. As another great non-loyal card, he'll be splashed a lot.mnBroncos - 4 out of 5Almost always wins a challenge by himself, not much you can complain about with that.scantrell24 - 4 out of 5Knight of Flower synergizes with The Mander (which he can trigger by himself if the challenge is unopposed) but sadly not Highgarden (which can't remove defenders). His renown at a relatively cheap price makes Tyrell a favorite faction for rush builds.rave - 5 out of 5Very strong. Late game ready at a low price. Unlike Randyll, KOF is a bargain = 5 for a 5str renown bicon, who doesn’t need help to do anything. The pseudo-joust keyword is actually nice in this version (as opposed to v1), because the card pool is so small he probably isn’t competing with anyone for renown, and strength buffs can help push his challenges through.VonWibble - 5 out of 5His ability is a blessing and a curse if used. He prevents you getting multiple renown from the challenge, or using stealth characters to help get unopposed. Any “remove from challenge” effects are all but guaranteed to stop you doing anything with him. On the other hand, he is very likely to win his challenges given you will be boosting his strength if the opponent does use up his best character, and having renown himself means good power grab.Siroma - 4 out of 5With support from Margaery, he can be a decent threat. Once again, he is non-loyal but it’s hard to compare him to cards like Asha, Melisandre and Tyrion.cockbongo - 4 out of 5He doesn’t look particularly strong, but in practice with the relevant buff he’s dynamite. Obviously both he and Tarly are serious Tears of Lys bait, but that’s what Little Birds are for. Sometimes his ability won’t be that useful - you might just need a final renown boost near the end of the game so you’ll throw him into a challenge with others regardless - but it’s a nice option to have.Ire & WWDrakey - 4 out of 5The Queen of Thorns is an interesting card. Unlike the other big hitters, she doesn’t really need to stick around the board for a long time to facilitate a win, but rather you want to see her early on, have her help in setting up your other big hitters and afterwards you won’t need to care about losing her as much. Her work should usually be done in 1-2 turns, and in that time she has often paid her whole cost back in other characters.Istaril - 4 out of 5Basically, non-limited economy, with everything that entails. If you can keep her fueled with targets (harder than it might sound) and push challenges with her, she’ll win games. Still, you may find that 5 strength just isn’t enough to win those challenges without some backup, and needing both the backup *and* suitable cards in hand constrains her.JCWamma - 4 out of 5Possibly the best 7 cost character? The effect is simply amazing and firmly plants Queenie as the centre-piece of Tyrell decks for a while to come. She still costs 7 and has no keywords, so you're relying on superior draw and a steady stream of big characters for her to be truly, truly sensational.mnBroncos - 5 out of 5I think when the card pool grows this will be the best 7 cost character in the core set. Only thing she needs is more strong targets to put into play.scantrell24 - 3 out of 57 gold. No keywords. Only triggers from a single challenge type, and if she’s participating. At least the trigger works on defense as well (unlike the Viper).rave - 5 out of 5A huge threat. She can play any in-faction character besides herself. That’s never bad. She’s also outside the range of Dracarys!.VonWibble - 5 out of 5Its hard to ignore that huge tempo boost she grants, especially in an environment with less reset abilities. Simply put, she is one of the strongest cards in the core set, albeit fairly costed.Siroma - 4 out of 57 for 5 bicon without keywords is honestly actually pretty disappointing. She can net you a lot of cards, but is shut down by Milk and Catelyn. Given Tyrell’s abundance of non-loyal characters and the likelihood of banner raising your cost curve as well as lack of natural attachment control, until further notice I’ll say she’s a bit hyped.cockbongo - 4 out of 5At the moment there aren’t quite enough characters to use this with, making it a bit unspectacular (and predictable) out of the core set, but she’s going to be the heart of most Tyrell decks for years to come once there are multiple surprise characters that can be brought into play. Not as good as Arianne Martell in the great scheme of things.Ire & WWDrakey - 3 out of 5Good and solid cheap characters are important, and she fits the bill nicely.Istaril - 3 out of 5Did you know this was the art from the event “Spy in their Midst” from 1st edition? No, you didn’t. Perfectly fine, and, as JC points out, you need to smoothen out that cost curve somehow, right?JCWamma - 3 out of 5Closer to 2 than to 4, but given the, ahem, competition Tyrell has at the lower cost slots the Courtesan will be an important card for a while to come just by default.mnBroncos - 3 out of 5Solid character that you play in every deck.scantrell24 - 3 out of 5Passable for now. 3x in most decks for setup and claim soak purposes until better alternatives are added to the card pool.rave - 3 out of 5I can’t decide what to rate these 2 for 2 icon guys. I suppose she is average.. she doesn’t really add anything to the faction except low cost and stats. But there is absolutely nothing wrong with her.VonWibble - 4 out of 5This card has decent icons and strength for cost, making it a fairly easy include.Siroma - 3 out of 5Decent bicon, Tyrell’s still on the weak side of military defense though so expect to be killing them often.cockbongo - 3 out of 5aaaaaand here’s the sexy claim soak. Low cost INT characters are, in my opinion, the best kind of weenies.Ire & WWDrakey - 4 out of 5Extra-challenges are nothing to sneeze at. Combine them with a multi-challenge participating character like Asha or Jaime, perhaps even a 2-claim plot, and you’ve got a recipe for victory right there. The combinations with Queen of Thorns and Arianne are also neat.Istaril - 4 out of 5The value of additional challenges is easily demonstrated by the prevalence of Khal Drogo in the current core-only environment. Sure, the ambush is pricey - but with the Queen of Thorns or some help from Tyrion, she can add some excellent (and versatile) pressure to a deck.JCWamma - 3 out of 5Cool effect, expensive to pull off (though the synergy with Queen of Thorns is nice). Best in Melee probably, for the unexpected power challenge (though any good Melee player will most certainly be wary of it at all times).mnBroncos - 4 out of 5Extra challenges can win the game! Also, there is multiple ways to cheat these cards into play just in the core set, assuming will get even more. I have won games with that extra challenge and will always be a strong play.scantrell24 - 3 out of 5Nearly worth 4 stars, but Olenna’s Informant takes some work. Winning a second military challenge after you’ve cut through the opponent’s claim soak can be potent, and a second power challenge in the later rounds could be game-winning. But you need enough bodies with which to initiate the extra challenge, and you want higher claim (Winds) or some bonus for winning the challenge (ex: Asha, Lannisport, Clash of Kings) to maximize the value.rave - 4 out of 5Lots of potential here, and that potential isn’t just tied to Tyrell. Asha immediately comes to mind. Not a bargain by any means, but definitely a threatening card.VonWibble - 4 out of 54 gold is pricey but the extra challenge on a claim 2 turn is a big effect indeed. The lack of loyalty means I think we will see a lot of this card.Siroma - 3 out of 5Potent ability when comboed with QoT or with Tyrion, especially for repeated power challenges. 4 cost is a hefty price to pay though, so she’s really more of a win more card.cockbongo - 4 out of 5Getting to choose an extra challenge is gold dust, so they’ve correctly made it tricky and expensive to pull off. Seems fair to me. The value of having this in hand during a 2-claim round cannot be underestimated.Ire & WWDrakey - 3 out of 5Dudes on horses, the Jedruszek art is awesome. The card itself? An ok mid-cost challenge-pusher, but nothing to write home about.Istaril - 3 out of 5I compared it to Drowned Men in my review of them, and said they were probably better (and will probably scale better). Still, these guys are fine.JCWamma - 4 out of 5Tyrell's reducer having The Reach as its trait makes this thing strong. It's probably not going to stick around too much in the long-term, but for now? It's one hell of a beatstick in practice, I suspect.mnBroncos - 2 out of 5Just not a fan of these type of characters...Blank text on a four cost character isn’t great (plus strength is virtually blank).scantrell24 - 3 out of 5Better than the Drowned Men because Tyrell cares about winning big, and this guy can do it.rave - 3 out 5Good potential, but coming into play underpowered hurts.VonWibble - 3 out of 5There aren’t very many reach locations, so how good this card gets long term is going to be very dependant on this Trait.Without any such locations in play this card is reasonable but nothing special.Siroma - 3 out of 5The Mander and their reducer help contribute to this thing’s strength, putting them on about the same level as the drowned men. Overall a solid army that helps shore up Tyrell’s weakness in military.cockbongo - 3 out of 5Same score as the Drowned Men but i’m rating this slightly higher as for Tyrell it’s a more helpful icon spread and helps trigger The Mander.Ire & WWDrakey - 4 out of 5A good blade, that.Istaril - 3 out of 5It’s no Widow’s Wail (but what is). Synergy with Loras/Randyll aside, the STR alone is good, but some minor things hold it back; the vulnerability to first-player Burn, and that annoying little “Tyrell character only” restriction.JCWamma - 4 out of 5I want to rank this lower because of the comparison to Widow's Wail, but if we compare every STR-pumping attachment to Widow's Wail it'll get tiresome because that's amazing. +3 STR for 1 gold is not to be sniffed at at all, and +3 STR as a triggered effect is cute for using with Randyll. This won't be a centrepiece of a deck or anything, but as a 1x it will see a lot of play I suspect.mnBroncos - 3 out of 5Key card for Randyll in the core set. Also, cheap way to push through challenges on any character.rave - 4 out of 5Very very threatening on Randyl, and even KOF, for everyone else it’s pretty good, and cheap.scantrell24 - 3 out of 5Heartsbane stands Randyll of course, but he only gets the +3 bonus in one challenge. I’m much more inclined to run positive attachments like this under the new rules (can be setup & bounce to hand).Siroma - 4 out of 5Amazing on Randyll, good on everyone else. A nice, cheap source of strength.VonWibble - 4 out of 5This one is possibly my favourite of the weapon attachments. It is cheap and efficient, with not too much restriction on who can use it.cockbongo - 4 out of 5Not as, ahem, surprising as Widow’s Wail but cheap and synergises nicely with Randyll.Ire & WWDrakey - 5 out of 5Despite the 5, Highgarden won’t make every Tyrell deck, but rather facilitates the existence of completely different decktypes in Tyrell. Where most of the Tyrell cardpool is aimed at an “old Baratheon Rush/Aggro” feel, Highgarden is a pureblooded Control location. With Jousting Contest also in place, it won’t take many more pieces for a Tyrell Control build to surface, likely through a Martell, Lannister or Baratheon Banner for the missing Control events.Istaril - 5 out of 5Not for every deck, but boy do I love this card. The interaction with Game of Thrones or Jousting Contest is already great, and this card is extremely versatile for both neutering opponent’s characters, and using it on your own for a ‘feint’ to draw in attackers. The cost of the location and the trigger means it’s too pricey for a deck that isn’t playing the longer game to milk this repeatedly, but if you are, you want this.JCWamma - 4 out of 5Part of me wants to give this 5 because of the importance it will have to a lot of decks. The combo with Jousting Contest, in particular, is pure evil, and it's also great with A Game of Thrones. However, a lot of decks won't have time for this card, and even in the decks it is fantastic in, it's still a 3 cost unique location that costs further gold (and a kneel) to get any use out of. Hard to play, easy to disrupt, but in the right circumstances it's a game-winner.mnBroncos - 5 out of 5This is a strong card that will only get stronger. Saving a gold for the effect is a little annoying but it doesn’t matter when it can stop your opponent from winning any one challenge you don’t want them to win.scantrell24 - 4 out of 5Potent, but it’s hard to make room for both Highgarden and Mander. That’s six gold you’ve spent (7 by the time you’ve triggered HG) on cards that can’t attack, defend, or fulfill military claim. Shame it can only remove attackers, or else rush decks like Tyrell Bannered to Greyjoy would love removing defenders for extra unopposed.rave - 5 out of 5Great card in v2 with the tendency for big characters in the late game. Its lack of cost-efficiency is offset by the fact that it can remove anyone without restriction.VonWibble - 4 out of 5It is expensive but very powerful. Whilst location control isn’t too common this will have a big influence on games.Siroma - 4 out of 5Works great with jousting contest and game of thrones. An investment of 4 to trigger it the first time however is pretty damn hefty, and the fact that it stands the character is also more often than not a drawback than a boon.cockbongo - 4 out of 5If you compare it to it’s nearest equal control location, Ghaston Grey, it’s more expensive to marshall and to use, but it’s reusable and combos with other Tyrell effects. The “stand” part of the effect makes it a bit less useful if you’re going second, but this still has the potential of reducing your opponent to 2 useful challenges a turn if you’re able to invest the gold.Ire & WWDrakey - 4 out of 5While Highgarden was a pure-blooded Control location, the Mander is definitely an Aggro/Rush one. It’s at it’s best when your deck is steamrolling and at it’s worst when you’re in a tight spot. The fact that it’s pretty easy for a skilled opponent to deny the triggers, puts it one step below The Red Keep (which also has a secondary effect) and The Great Kraken (which is harder to deny).Istaril - 5 out of 5We can split hairs as to which draw location(s) are better/best, but you’re obviously running this 3x in every deck that can, because it’s great. Even when your opponent manages to deprive you of your draw, they typically did so by committing to challenges in a way they wouldn’t have otherwise.JCWamma - 5 out of 5If you're behind on the table, this won't help you come back. But if you aren't, it sure as seven hells will keep you rolling along nicely. 2 cards should absolutely not be underestimated, and while this isn't as good as, say, The Red Keep, which gets you the 2 cards with an easier condition and with an extra boost besides, it's still very good.mnBroncos - 5 out of 5x3 in every Tyrell deck ever. Possibly best location in the game right now.scantrell24 - 5 out of 5Mander can be harder to trigger than the other engines (Red Keep, Great Kraken, Lannisport) so I like it a touch less, but with draw at a premium it’s still required at 3x. You can use the drawn cards immediately, and you’ve already won by 5 to trigger Superior Claim, Torch or Sword.rave - 5 out of 5Repeatable draw with a trigger that isn’t too difficult. Couldn’t be anything less than a 5.VonWibble - 4 out of 5Whilst drawing 2 cards is a very powerful effect, you are going to have to manage reserve carefully to get the best out of this. 3 cost is also a lot for a location.Siroma - 5 out of 5It’ll keep you rolling and rolling, though you will often be forced to overcommit to trigger it. Makes Tyrell a nice house to run put to the sword and tears of lys out of though. Being Tyrell’s only in- house source of draw, it’s mandatory.cockbongo - 5 out of 5Like Lannisport, Tyrell’s in-house draw isn’t a guarantee every turn, but for the same 3 cost you get two cards rather than one. Harder to trigger if you’re struggling, but a fantastic location nonetheless.Ire & WWDrakey - 4 out of 5A must if you’re running the Mander.Istaril - 3 out of 5How often is this better than For the North? I mean, yeah, sometimes - and the ability to stand Randyll, trigger The Mander, or make Loras into a beast shouldn’t be overlooked, so you’ll probably run this - but as I see it, it’s fine - not great.JCWamma - 4 out of 5Cheap, |
mind is shaped as much by genetic inheritance as it is by culture if not more. There are, Wilson suggests in the chapter, limits on just how much influence social and environmental factors can have in altering human behavior.[22]
Reception [ edit ]
Sociobiology was initially met with substantial criticism. Several of Wilson's colleagues at Harvard,[23] such as Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould, were strongly opposed to his ideas regarding sociobiology. Gould, Lewontin, and others from the Sociobiology Study Group from the Boston area wrote "Against 'Sociobiology'" in an open letter criticizing Wilson's "deterministic view of human society and human action".[24] Although attributed to members of the Sociobiology Study Group, it seems that Lewontin was the main author.[11] In a 2011 interview, Wilson said, "I believe Gould was a charlatan. I believe that he was... seeking reputation and credibility as a scientist and writer, and he did it consistently by distorting what other scientists were saying and devising arguments based upon that distortion."[25]
Marshall Sahlins's 1976 work The Use and Abuse of Biology was a direct criticism of Wilson's theories.[26]
There was also political opposition. Sociobiology re-ignited the nature and nurture debate. Wilson was accused of racism, misogyny, and sympathy to eugenics.[27] In one incident in November 1978, his lecture was attacked by the International Committee Against Racism, a front group of the Marxist Progressive Labor Party, where one member poured a pitcher of water on Wilson's head and chanted "Wilson, you're all wet" at an AAAS conference.[28] Wilson later spoke of the incident as a source of pride: "I believe... I was the only scientist in modern times to be physically attacked for an idea."[29]
Objections from evangelical Christians included those of Paul E. Rothrock in 1987: "... sociobiology has the potential of becoming a religion of scientific materialism."[30] Philosopher Mary Midgley encountered Sociobiology in the process of writing Beast and Man (1996) [31] and significantly rewrote the book to offer a critique of Wilson's views. Midgley praised the book for the study of animal behavior, clarity, scholarship, and encyclopedic scope, but extensively critiqued Wilson for conceptual confusion, scientism, and anthropomorphism of genetics.[32]
The book and its reception were mentioned in Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind.[33]
On Human Nature, 1978 [ edit ]
Wilson wrote in his 1978 book On Human Nature, "The evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have." Wilson's use of the word "myth" provides people with meaningful placement in time celebrating shared heritage.[34] Wilson's fame prompted use of the morphed phrase epic of evolution.[6] The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1979.[35]
The Ants, 1990 [ edit ]
Wilson, along with Bert Hölldobler, carried out a systematic study of ants and ant behavior,[36] culminating in the 1990 encyclopedic work The Ants. Because much self-sacrificing behavior on the part of individual ants can be explained on the basis of their genetic interests in the survival of the sisters, with whom they share 75% of their genes (though the actual case is some species' queens mate with multiple males and therefore some workers in a colony would only be 25% related), Wilson argued for a sociobiological explanation for all social behavior on the model of the behavior of the social insects.
Wilson has said in reference to ants "Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species".[37] He meant that while ants and other eusocial species appear to live in communist-like societies, they only do so because they are forced to do so from their basic biology, as they lack reproductive independence: worker ants, being sterile, need their ant-queen in order to survive as a colony and a species, and individual ants cannot reproduce without a queen and are thus forced to live in centralised societies. Humans, however, do possess reproductive independence so they can give birth to offspring without the need of a "queen", and in fact humans enjoy their maximum level of Darwinian fitness only when they look after themselves and their offspring, while finding innovative ways to use the societies they live in for their own benefit.[38]
Consilience, 1998 [ edit ]
In his 1998 book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, Wilson discussed methods that have been used to unite the sciences, and might be able to unite the sciences with the humanities. Wilson used the term "consilience" to describe the synthesis of knowledge from different specialized fields of human endeavor. He defined human nature as a collection of epigenetic rules, the genetic patterns of mental development. He argued that culture and rituals are products, not parts, of human nature. He said art is not part of human nature, but our appreciation of art is. He suggested that concepts such as art appreciation, fear of snakes, or the incest taboo (Westermarck effect) could be studied by scientific methods of the natural sciences and be part of interdisciplinary research.
The book was mentioned in Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind.[33]
Spiritual and political beliefs [ edit ]
Scientific humanism [ edit ]
Wilson coined the phrase scientific humanism as "the only worldview compatible with science's growing knowledge of the real world and the laws of nature".[39][full citation needed] Wilson argued that it is best suited to improve the human condition. In 2003, he was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto.[40]
God and religion [ edit ]
On the question of God, Wilson has described his position as provisional deism[41] and explicitly denied the label of "atheist", preferring "agnostic".[42] He has explained his faith as a trajectory away from traditional beliefs: "I drifted away from the church, not definitively agnostic or atheistic, just Baptist & Christian no more."[17] Wilson argues that the belief in God and rituals of religion are products of evolution.[43] He argues that they should not be rejected or dismissed, but further investigated by science to better understand their significance to human nature. In his book The Creation, Wilson suggests that scientists ought to "offer the hand of friendship" to religious leaders and build an alliance with them, stating that "Science and religion are two of the most potent forces on Earth and they should come together to save the creation."[44]
Wilson made an appeal to the religious community on the lecture circuit at Midland College, Texas, for example, and that "the appeal received a'massive reply'", that a covenant had been written and that a "partnership will work to a substantial degree as time goes on".[45]
In a New Scientist interview published on 21 January 2015, Wilson said that "Religion 'is dragging us down' and must be eliminated 'for the sake of human progress'", and "So I would say that for the sake of human progress, the best thing we could possibly do would be to diminish, to the point of eliminating, religious faiths."[46][47]
Ecology [ edit ]
Wilson has said that, if he could start his life over he would work in microbial ecology, when discussing the reinvigoration of his original fields of study since the 1960s.[48] He studied the mass extinctions of the 20th century and their relationship to modern society, and in 1998 argued for an ecological approach at the Capitol:
Now when you cut a forest, an ancient forest in particular, you are not just removing a lot of big trees and a few birds fluttering around in the canopy. You are drastically imperiling a vast array of species within a few square miles of you. The number of these species may go to tens of thousands.... Many of them are still unknown to science, and science has not yet discovered the key role undoubtedly played in the maintenance of that ecosystem, as in the case of fungi, microorganisms, and many of the insects.[49]
Wilson has been part of the international conservation movement, as a consultant to Columbia University's Earth Institute, as a director of the American Museum of Natural History, Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund.[14]
Understanding the scale of the extinction crisis has led him to advocate for forest protection,[49] including the "Act to Save America's Forests", first introduced in 1998, until 2008, but never passed.[50] The Forests Now Declaration calls for new markets-based mechanisms to protect tropical forests.[51] In 2014, Wilson called for setting aside 50% of the earth's surface for other species to thrive in as the only possible strategy to solve the extinction crisis.[52]
Awards and honors [ edit ]
Wilson at a "fireside chat" during which he received the Addison Emery Verrill Medal in 2007
Wilson addresses the audience at the dedication of the Biophilia Center named for him at Nokuse Plantation in Walton County, Florida.
Wilson's scientific and conservation honors include:
Main works [ edit ]
Edited works [ edit ]
From So Simple a Beginning: Darwin's Four Great Books, edited with introductions by Edward O. Wilson (2010 W.W. Norton)Hill figure on Windover Hill near Wilmington, East Sussex, England
Coordinates:
Sussex The Long Man of Wilmington situated on the South Downs
The Long Man of Wilmington or Wilmington Giant is a hill figure on the steep slopes of Windover Hill near Wilmington, East Sussex, England. It is 6 miles (9.7 km) northwest of Eastbourne and 1⁄ 3 mile (540 m) south of Wilmington. Locally, the figure was once often called the "Green Man". The Long Man is 235 feet (72 m) tall,[2] holds two "staves", and is designed to look in proportion when viewed from below.
Formerly thought to originate in the Iron Age or even the neolithic period, a 2003 archaeological investigation has shown that the figure may have been cut in the Early Modern era – the 16th or 17th century AD. From afar the figure appears to have been carved from the underlying chalk; but the modern figure is formed from white-painted breeze blocks and lime mortar.
The Long Man is one of two major extant human hill figures in England; the other is the Cerne Abbas Giant, north of Dorchester. Both are Scheduled Ancient Monuments. Two other hill figures that include humans are the Osmington White Horse and the Fovant regimental badges. The Long Man is one of two hill figures in East Sussex; the other is the Litlington White Horse.
Origins [ edit ]
Artist's impression
The origin of the Long Man remains unclear. For many years the earliest known record was a drawing made by William Burrell when he visited Wilmington Priory, near Windover (or Wind-door) Hill, in 1766. Burrell's drawing shows a figure holding a rake and a scythe, both shorter than the present staves.[3] In 1993, another drawing was discovered in the Devonshire Collections at Chatsworth House which had been made by the surveyor John Rowley in 1710, now the first definite date on which the figure is known to have existed.
An early suggestion, sometimes stated to be a local tradition, was that the Long Man had been cut by monks from nearby Wilmington Priory, and represented a pilgrim, but this was not widely believed by antiquarians, who felt that monks were unlikely to have created an unclothed figure.[5] Until fairly recently the Long Man was most commonly asserted to have been cut in the neolithic period, primarily due to the presence of a long barrow nearby, or given an Iron Age attribution based on a perceived similarity to other hill figures.[6]
Professor John North wrote that during the centuries around 3480 BC the figure would have been positioned to mark the constellation Orion's movement across the ridge above it. The figure, according to this interpretation, may have been a manifestation of a Neolithic astral religion.[7] Another suggestion was that the figure had a Romano-British provenance, while an origin in the time of Anglo-Saxon England gained credence after the 1965 discovery at Finglesham in Kent of an Anglo-Saxon brooch depicting a figure, (possibly Odin), holding two spears in a similar fashion to the Long Man.
Archaeological work performed in 2003 by Professor Martin Bell of the University of Reading, in association with Aubrey Manning's Open University programme Landscape Mysteries, strongly suggested that the figure dates from the Early Modern period – the 16th or 17th century AD.[8] Bell found that the slope on which the Long Man was cut had gone through a period of instability in this time, after a very long prior period of stability, suggesting that the figure was first cut then.[6] This has opened up the possibility that the Long Man could be a Tudor or Stuart-era political satire in the manner recently posited for the Cerne Abbas giant, or possibly a religious image associated with the Reformation: Professor Ronald Hutton noted that "we can at least celebrate the fact that we have our first, apparently unequivocally, Early Modern hill figure, and historians now have to reckon with it."[6]
Pre-20th century history [ edit ]
Whatever the figure's origin, for much of its history it seems to have existed only as a shadow or indentation in the grass, visible after a light fall of snow or as a different shade of green in summer: it is described or illustrated as such in 1710, 1781, 1800, 1835 and 1851. Indeed, the figure was once known locally as the "Green Man". Earlier depictions, such as those of Rowley and Burrell, show other details such as a possible scythe blade on the right-hand staff and the suggestion of a helmet or hat on the figure's head: they also indicate a different, albeit indistinct, position for the feet. The current outline of the Long Man is largely the result of a'restoration' of 1873-4, when a group led by the vicar of Glynde, Reverend William de St Croix, marked out the outline with yellow bricks whitewashed and cemented together, though it has been claimed that the restoration process distorted the position of the feet.[3]
The archaeologist John S. Phené, who was co-opted into the project and whose 1873 talk to the Royal Institute of British Architects had originally inspired it, initially expressed his reservations with both the bricking and the design used. The original intention of the'restoration' had been to cut the figure down to the chalk bedrock, but had been abandoned after trials showed that the soil depth made this too difficult.
In the years after the'restoration' several people familiar with the figure commented that the feet were altered, having originally both pointed outwards and downwards so that "the Giant appeared to be coming down the hill", in the words of Ann Downs, who had grown up at Wilmington Priory in the 1840s. Resistivity surveys conducted in the 1990s by R. Castleden, combined with examination of apparent shadow marks shown in early photographs, have provided strong evidence that the feet had in fact pointed outwards as described by 19th century observers and had been slightly lower than in the current outline. The surveys showed that the figure had likely been originally cut by trenching, in the same manner as other chalk hill figures, but had been abandoned after only a few scourings.[12]
There was also some evidence to suggest that the feature on one staff similar to a scythe blade, flail or shepherd's crook was genuine, along with a suggestion of a "helmet" or hat. It seems likely that the proportions of the figure have been distorted slightly by the 1873 bricking and the 1969 replacement of the bricks with breeze blocks, with the Long Man having been up to 75.5 metres (248 ft) tall prior to 1873.
20th and 21st centuries [ edit ]
In 1925, the site of the Long Man was given to the Sussex Archaeological Trust (now the Sussex Archaeological Society) by the Duke of Devonshire. During the Second World War it was painted green to avoid it being used as a landmark by German aircraft.
The 1993 book, The Druid Way by Sussex author Philip Carr-Gomm, drew attention to the supposed significance of the Long Man as a sacred site for the modern world.
At dawn on May Day, the Long Man Morris Men dance at the foot of the Long Man.[2] The Long Man plays host to neo-pagan rituals on Sundays closest to the eight Pagan Festivals through the year.[14]
In 2007, the Long Man of Wilmington was used in Trinny Woodall's and Susannah Constantine's television fashion show Undress the Nation. Trinny, Susannah and 100 women gave the Long Man a temporary female form by using their bodies to add pigtails, breasts and hips. ITV stated that they were given permission for the event by Sussex Archaeological Society and that they took "the utmost care... to protect this historical site".[15] The Long Man was not permanently changed or affected, according to the owners, the Sussex Archaeological Society. The stunt prompted local Druid Greg Draven to form a protest during filming. Sussex Archaeological Society later apologised for any offence caused to any "individuals or groups" by the filming.[16] The Council of British Druid Orders claimed the stunt would "dishonour an ancient Pagan site of worship".[17]
Overnight, between 17 June and 18 June 2010 a giant phallus was painted on the Long Man rivalling that of the Cerne Abbas Giant. Observed by locals it appeared that a football pitch marker or similar object was used to paint the phallus onto the Long Man.[18]
Inclusions in media [ edit ]
Eleanor Farjeon, in her book Martin Pippin in the Daisy Field (1937), gives a fancy origin of the giant in a form of a folktale told by Martin Pippin the bard to six young girls in the daisy field.
In his comic The Sandman #19 (1990), Neil Gaiman interprets the figure as the guardian of a gateway into Faerie.
Electronic pop group Kissing the Pink shot the promotional video for their 1982 single "Mr Blunt" at the Long Man.
The Long Man plays a prominent role in the Spike and Suzy comic book "The Circle of Power" (1998).
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]
Castleden, Rodney (2002). "Shape-shifting: The changing outline of the Long Man of Wilmington" (PDF). Sussex Archaeological Collections (140).US sends drones, assassination squad to South Korea
By Peter Symonds
14 March 2017
The Trump administration has further exacerbated the extremely tense standoff on the Korean Peninsula by dispatching attack drones to South Korea and sending special forces units to participate in massive war games already underway. The military build-up takes place as the White House considers launching strikes on North Korean nuclear and military sites.
US Forces Korea announced on Monday that the company of Gray Eagle Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) will be permanently stationed at Kunsan Air Base, south of Seoul. “The UAS adds significant intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability to US Forces Korea and our [South Korean] partners,” it stated.
While the US announcement emphasized reconnaissance, the Gray Eagle drones can also carry up to four Hellfire missiles that have been used to carry out assassinations and strike military targets. The lethal drones can stay aloft for up to 24 hours.
The South Korean military was in no doubt as to the purpose of the deployment. An unnamed official told the Yonhap news agency: “In case of a war on the Korean Peninsula, the unmanned aircraft could infiltrate into the skies of North Korea and make a precision strike on the war command and other major military facilities.”
The dispatch of attack drones to South Korea coincides with the involvement of US special forces in annual Foal Eagle war games, including SEAL Team 6, the highly-trained assassination squad that killed Osama bin Laden. The SEAL team will take part in the joint exercises in South Korea along with US Army Rangers, Delta Force and Green Berets, according to Yonhap.
A military official told the news agency that bigger numbers and more diverse US special operations forces were taking part, in order “to practice missions to infiltrate into the North, remove the North’s war command and demolition of its key military facilities.” The joint Foal Eagle drills are the biggest ever, involving more than 320,000 troops backed by a US aircraft carrier strike group, stealth fighters and strategic bombers.
Commenting on US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s trip to Japan, South Korea and China later this week, State Department spokesman Mark Toner absurdly claimed that the US military was taking “defensive measures” against “an increasingly worrying, concerning threat from North Korea.”
Neither the drones nor the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-ballistic missile system to which Toner was referring are “defensive” in character. The drones, along with the special forces units, are rehearsing for pre-emptive attacks on North Korean military sites and “decapitation raids” to kill North Korean leaders. This is in line with an aggressive new joint operational plan, OPLAN 5015, agreed to between the US and South Korea in late 2015.
The THAAD deployment is part of the Pentagon’s broader build-up of anti-ballistic missile systems and military forces in Asia, primarily for war against China. Beijing has repeatedly voiced strenuous objections to the THAAD installation in South Korea, which has a powerful radar system capable of peering deep into the Chinese mainland and giving the US military much greater advance warning of Chinese missile launches in the event of war.
The Trump administration, which is currently reviewing US strategy towards North Korea, is exploiting North Korea's test launch of four ballistic missiles last week to advance longstanding military preparations on the Korean Peninsula. According to the Wall Street Journal, the White House is actively considering “regime change” in Pyongyang and military strikes on North Korea.
“We have to look at new ideas, new ways of dealing with North Korea,” US State Department spokesman Toner blandly declared. “China understands that threat. They’re not oblivious to what’s happening in North Korea.”
The reference to China underscores the aims of Tillerson’s upcoming trip. Firstly, he intends to brief Washington’s Japanese and South Korean allies on US plans and to encourage closer military cooperation in the event of conflict. Then he will fly to Beijing, where he will attempt to bully the Chinese government into taking tougher punitive action against Pyongyang.
The mounting US threats towards North Korea are also directed against China, which the Trump administration is targeting as the chief obstacle to maintaining US dominance in Asia and internationally. Tillerson has provocatively declared that the US should block Chinese access to islets under Beijing’s administration in the South China Sea. The only way to carry out such a reckless plan would be through a US military blockade—an act of war that could provoke conflict between the two nuclear-armed powers.
Tensions in the South China Sea have been further strained by the decision of the Japanese military to dispatch its largest warship, the JS Izumo, for three months of operations, including in disputed waters. According to Reuters, the Izumo will make stops in Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka before joining the Malabar joint naval exercise with Indian and US naval vessels in the Indian Ocean in July. It will also train with the US navy in the South China Sea.
Over the eight years of the Obama administration and its “pivot to Asia,” the US has engaged in a systematic military expansion throughout the Asia Pacific, strengthened alliances and strategic partnerships and greatly aggravated dangerous regional flashpoints, including the Korean Peninsula and the South China Sea. The Trump administration, which has been critical of the “pivot” for not being sufficiently aggressive, is now embarking on a course that greatly heightens the danger of war.
The response of the North Korean regime to Washington’s actions is reactionary through and through. Its nuclear and missile tests, along with its bloodcurdling threats and Korean chauvinism, in no way defend the Korean people, but do provide the US with a pretext for its military build-up in North East Asia. According to the 38north.org web site, affiliated with John Hopkins University, commercial satellite imagery indicates that Pyongyang could be preparing for another nuclear test.
Confronted with an intense political crisis in Washington, the Trump administration is not simply considering, but actively preparing for reckless provocations and military moves against North Korea that have the potential to trigger a cataclysmic war that draws in the entire world.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.AUBURN HILLS, Mich. (AP) - The Detroit Pistons are two games over.500 for the first time in more than six years, and the most encouraging sign may be Andre Drummond’s free throws.
Drummond had 18 points and 10 rebounds, going 8 of 11 from the line, and the Pistons beat the Utah Jazz 92-87 on Wednesday night for their second consecutive victory to start the season. Drummond, who shot 39 percent on free throws last season, made two with 4:42 remaining to give the Pistons a five-point lead.
“He made six in the first half, then he shot three that didn’t look good at all, and then he comes back and hits two big ones,” coach Stan Van Gundy said. “Great for him to be 8 for 11. We’re seeing that in practice. It’s nice to see him bring it into the game.”
The Jazz, playing their season opener, scored seven consecutive points late in the fourth quarter and took an 87-86 lead on Gordon Hayward’s driving bank shot with 23 seconds to play. After a timeout, Detroit’s Reggie Jackson got to the basket quickly for a layup with 17 seconds left to put Detroit ahead to stay.
“Stan puts a lot of faith in us,” Drummond said. “At the end of the day it comes down to us to close the game up.”
It’s the first time the Pistons have been two games over.500 since they were 33-31 in March of 2009, according to STATS.
After Jackson put Detroit up 88-87, Alec Burks missed a jumper for Utah, and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope made two free throws to put the Pistons ahead by three. Rodney Hood then had a tying 3-point attempt blocked by Caldwell-Pope.
Drummond went 6 of 10 on free throws in a season-opening win at Atlanta, and if he can even become average from the line it will be bad news for opposing big men.
The Pistons looked like they were in good shape when they took an 86-80 lead on Jackson’s 3-pointer with 3:32 remaining. Utah then rallied behind a couple jumpers by Burks.
“We had our shots, we had some good looks on offense and Reggie Jackson made a heck of a play,” Jazz coach Quin Snyder said. “We got a couple big stops to get right there and couldn’t get one at the end.”
Jackson had 19 points and Caldwell-Pope added 16. Marcus Morris scored 14 for the Pistons.
Derrick Favors led Utah with 26 points, and Burks finished with 18.
Drummond made all six of his free throws in the first half, looking comfortable while doing it. His two free throws in the fourth quarter put the Pistons ahead 83-78.
Detroit was up 16-15 after the first quarter and trailed 44-41 at the half. The Pistons scored the first six points of the third.
EMPTY SEATS
The home opener was not a sellout for Detroit. The attendance was announced at 18,434, with plenty of empty seats in the upper level. Owner Tom Gores spoke to reporters before the game and was asked if renovations at the Palace meant the team wouldn’t be moving to downtown Detroit any time soon.
“I don’t rule out downtown, but right now, this is our home,” Gores said.
OFF THE MARK
Hood missed all seven of his 3-point attempts, and the Jazz were 2 of 12 as a team.
TIP-INS
Jazz: Utah was without F Trevor Booker, who was suspended for this game because of an altercation with the Los Angeles Lakers’ Roy Hibbert in a preseason game. … The Jazz had won 17 of their previous 19 against Detroit.
Pistons: Detroit G Jodie Meeks left with a fracture in his right foot. … Rookie Stanley Johnson had 11 points and five rebounds.
UP NEXT
Jazz: Play at Philadelphia on Friday night, part of a three-game road trip to start the season.
Pistons: Host Chicago on Friday night.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC.Brisbane-based Aria Property Group has submitted a new development application for a striking 33 storey residential tower for 77 Hope Street, South Brisbane which has been inspired by Queensland’s rainforest’s and sub-tropical climate.
A design competition between four architectural firms (Koichi Takada, Elenberg Fraser, RotheLowman & Woods Marsh) was undertaken across the country to determine the most successful design.
The winning design by Koichi Takada Architects fosters all elements of Brisbane City Council’s ‘Buildings that Breathe’ guidelines. It is a scheme that boasts endless hanging gardens and overflowing planters that creep up the sides of the building.
The tower oozes of unique sub-tropical style design elements which could only be achieved in sub-tropical cities like Brisbane and Singapore.
Development Mix
1 Bedrooms 2 Bedrooms 3 Bedrooms Total Retail 27 162 27 216 3
The Waterfall
Koichi Takada has proposed a 118 metre (33 level) high waterfall that runs the full length of the western elevation of the tower.
Water will start off on the rooftop pool deck and slowly cascade down the tower via glass panels, visually dividing the tower into two parts. As the waterfall reaches the podium of the tower, just like a natural waterfall, the water will dissipate with a misting affect created on the podium green walls and ground level planting.
“Watching water cascade over the lip of a waterfall is hypnotic. Starting as a steady stream, and as it falls feathering into a cloud of mist and soaking everything around.” – Koichi Takada
The podium misting feature forms part of the maintenance of the plants as well as providing a visual clue to the water features in the design. The misting will carry down to the public domain creating a cooling effect to pedestrians and visitors to the retail.
The waterfall and green walls will be illuminated at night, a constantly moving and dancing light as it bounces off the water.
“The concept of ‘Waterfall’ captured ARIA Property Group’s vision to create iconic Residential and Retail properties that we will be proud to walk our families past in 20 year’s time. This vision and attention to detail is what sets us apart and we always strive to improve with every project, to achieve our goal of being the best quality apartment developer in the country.” – Aria Property Group
Architecture
A plethora of expansive green walls cover large portions of the tower’s facade, especially on the long west-facing side which is heavily shaded using building and landscape elements such as screens and green planting. The greenery will incorporate a misting irrigation technique to cool the air as it passes through the green facade.
The majority of apartments face north-east towards the city and enjoy cross ventilation. An open and natural ventilated western corridor allows access to the majority of apartments.
This naturally ventilated corridor reduces energy consumption on an otherwise temperature controlled area. According to Koichi Takada, natural ventilation makes for a healthy building environment and contributes to sustainable building initiatives.
Taking queues from the QLD design vernacular, large screens make up a defining feature of the building’s facade, rooftop feature and ground floor awnings.
The architectural screens are said to enhance the form, and create a sculptural element to the design. It is hoped that the screens will enhance the slender and vertical nature of the design when viewed along Hope Street.
Throughout the common corridors of the proposed tower, a dramatic work of natural art has been proposed using the power of the sun. Light from sunrise and sunset will be amplified by tinted glass and also emulating the feature full high waterfall.
During sunrise, it will cast a blue and lilac colour into the residential corridor and lift lobbies forming what will be a continually changing ambience for residents on their way in or out of the building.
Similarly the afternoon will bring dramatic colours and shades of red into the corridor, patterned with the effect of the real water that flows down the western facade’s waterfall.
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New Park & Fish Lane Retail
As part of the development proposal, Aria Property Group will also create a new urban common park located next to the tower – underneath the railway lines. Along with the urban common, Fish Lane will be transformed into a newly activated laneway featuring public art, landscaping, signage, lighting and retail activation.
Fish Lane has recently become a vital link from South Bank to South Brisbane and continues to grow in prominence as one of Brisbane’s newest retail and dining laneways.
“Careful curating of the retail user to ensure the mix of tenants is complementary and not cannibalistic, maximises the entire laneway’s potential for long term public acceptance.” – Aria Property Group
According to the development application, public art is the major component of the Fish Lane collaboration between BCC and Aria and plans to create what is known as ‘the soffit of the rail line’.
The soffit presents a blank canvas for art, with the possibility of including a digital project art form, that can be changed over time, for specific events, or for public events.
A high level of landscaping, deep planting and public dining areas, including rainforest planters, feature stone pavement, misters, seating pods, outdoor stage and green walls are also planned for the park.
The Fish Lane Masterplan has identified opportunities to incorporate the rail underpass’ pylons for public art and highlights lighting as an integral part of the laneway’s future.
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The concepts for the public art in the rail underpass site, could also extent to creative lighting events and installations such as moving light projections. The concepts of using this space for public events could allow a Vivid Sydney style event with projected artwork, the integration of integrative lighting installations, or the play of events such as a silent disco.
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It is anticipated that by the time this project commences construction there would have been 30 new public art installations in the laneway.
Residential Recreation Deck
The planned rooftop recreation deck features a myriad of indoor and outdoor residential amenities, delivering views over Austin towards the Brisbane River and CBD.
The rooftop itself, with an area of 1040m2, has 40% indoor amenity including gym, yoga room, change rooms, theatre, and bookable dining rooms equipped with a full commercial kitchen.
The theatre offers a flexible environment for movies, kids games, and when the screen is retracted, a quite room to relax also with city views. The screen will be retractable, dropping down in theatre mode in front of the picture window.
The external amenities include a 50m lap pool, BBQ Area, built in seating, sunken lounges and landscaping. The outdoor space is partially sheltered by the feature awning structures, incorporating hanging gardens and creating dappled light.
The rooftop amenity areas open space, indoor and outdoor amenity, exceed the minimum requirements for multi-dwelling housing, with more than 7 times the communal open space requirement.
The DA number for this development is A004623409.FLINT, MI -- A congressional committee wants additional information from Gov. Rick Snyder about when he first learned of a Legionnaires' disease outbreak in the Flint area.
In a letter to Snyder Thursday, Oct. 12, Republican and Democratic leaders of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform asked for the governor's help in resolving a discrepancy on the subject.
On March 17, 2016, Snyder testified before the committee, which was investigating the reasons for the Flint water crisis, saying he didn't learn of the Legionnaires' outbreak "until 2016."
"And as soon as I became aware of it, we held a press conference the next day," the governor testified.
Snyder's Flint Legionnaires' timeline contradicted by aide's testimony Aide testified he told the governor of Legionnaires' in 2015, but Snyder testified to Congress that he didn't know of it until 2016.
Harvey Hollins, director of the state's Office of Urban and Metropolitan Initiatives, contradicted that timeline when he testified under oath in a preliminary examination in the criminal case against another state official -- Nick Lyon -- last week.
Lyon is charged with involuntary manslaughter and misconduct in office for his role in the Legionnaires' outbreak.
Hollins testified that he told Snyder about Legionnaires' problems in December 2015, weeks before the governor has said he was first made aware of the outbreak.
Snyder announced the potential connection between Flint water and Legionnaires' in a news conference on Jan. 13, 2016, the day after he has said he became aware of the issue.
Breaking down the conflicts with Gov. Rick Snyder's Flint water timeline
The governor's press secretary told MLive-The Flint Journal this week that Snyder stands by his congressional testimony, which was also given under oath.
In their letter to Snyder, ranking members Trey Gowdy, a Republican from South Carolina, and Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat, reference the federal law that describes perjury.
According to the law, "a witness commits a crime if he or she 'knowingly and wilfully' makes a statement 'knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitous or fraudulent statement,' " the letter says.
Hollins said he told the governor about the surge in Legionnaires' and participated in a staff meeting in which the governor's expected response was discussed.
Hollins said Snyder told him in December that he had not been aware of the Lengonnaires' issues before Hollins informed him.
At least a dozen victims died from Legionnaires' disease in parts of 2014 and 2015, a time that coincided with the city's use of the Flint River as a water source.Salt Lending is a company aiming to provide users with cash loans backed by their existing crypto-currency assets[1]. It has Erik Voorhees (CEO of Shapeshift) on the Board of Directors. To join the Salt platform users must have a certain amount of Salt tokens, which act as membership, and allow access to different tiers of loans.
Salt completed their Token Sale in August, 2017 and had a curious ICO, |
the most highly cited researchers in the world, Ioannidis, a professor at Stanford, has built a career in the field of meta-research. Earlier this month, he published a heartfelt and provocative essay in the the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology titled “Evidence-Based Medicine Has Been Hijacked: A Report to David Sackett.” In it, he carries on a conversation begun in 2004 with Sackett, who died last May and was widely considered the father of evidence-based medicine. We asked Ioannidis to expand on his comments in the essay, including why he believes he is a “failure.”
Retraction Watch: You write that as evidence-based medicine “became more influential, it was also hijacked to serve agendas different from what it originally aimed for.” Can you elaborate?
John Ioannidis: As I describe in the paper, “evidence-based medicine” has become a very common term that is misused and abused by eminence-based experts and conflicted stakeholders who want to support their views and their products, without caring much about the integrity, transparency, and unbiasedness of science.
RW: You also write that evidence-based medicine “still remains an unmet goal, worthy to be attained.” Can you explain further?
JI: The commentary that I wrote gives a personal confession perspective on whether evidence-based medicine currently fulfills the wonderful definition that David Sackett came up with: “integrating individual clinical expertise with the best external evidence”. This is a goal that is clearly worthy to be attained, but, in my view, I don’t see that this has happened yet. Each of us may ponder whether the goal has been attained. I suspect that many/most will agree that we still have a lot of work to do.
RW: You describe yourself as a “failure.” What do you mean?
JI: Well, I still know next to nothing, even though I am always struggling to obtain more solid evidence and even though I always want to learn more. If you add what are probably over a thousand rejections (of papers, grant proposals, nominations, and other sorrowful academic paraphernalia) during my career to-date, I think I can qualify for a solid failure. Nevertheless, I still greatly enjoy my work in science and in evidence-based medicine.
RW: You say that your first grant, which you applied for 17 years ago, was “not even rejected.” Tell us about that grant.
JI: It was a randomized controlled trial of antibiotics versus placebo for acute sinusitis. Hundreds of millions of people were treated with antibiotics without good evidence back then, and hundreds of millions of people continue to be treated with antibiotics even nowadays even though most of them would not need antibiotics. I sent in the application to a public funding agency, but have not heard back yet. Probably they felt that requesting funding for a randomized trial and not going to the industry for such funds was a joke. Many public funding agencies are accustomed to funding only research that clearly has no direct relevance to important, real-life questions, so perhaps they didn’t know where to place my application.
RW: You write that clinical evidence is “becoming an industry advertisement tool” and that “much ‘basic’ science [is] becoming an annex to Las Vegas casinos.” Provocative — what do you mean?
JI: Since clinical research that can generate useful clinical evidence has fallen off the radar screen of many/most public funders, it is largely left up to the industry to support it. The sales and marketing departments in most companies are more powerful than their R&D departments. Hence, the design, conduct, reporting, and dissemination of this clinical evidence becomes an advertisement tool. As for “basic” research, as I explain in the paper, the current system favors PIs who make a primary focus of their career how to absorb more money. Success in obtaining (more) funding in a fiercely competitive world is what counts the most. Given that much “basic” research is justifiably unpredictable in terms of its yield, we are encouraging aggressive gamblers. Unfortunately, it is not gambling for getting major, high-risk discoveries (which would have been nice), it is gambling for simply getting more money.
RW: Studying what ails science doesn’t make you popular with other researchers — until they want to publish with you, of course, as you point out in your piece. But those criticisms can also lump you in with those that you describe as “pseudo-scientists and dogmatists…trying to exploit individuals and populations and attack science.” How do you differentiate your own work?
JI: I definitely can’t complain for lack of popularity. I feel privileged to have worked with thousands of other scientists over the years and to have learnt from them. It is not possible to make everybody happy all the time, but the work of my team is aiming to protect science, defend the scientific method, question dogma, and enhance the capability and efficiency of research methodology and research practices. In this regard, it is at the very opposite pole than those who want to attack science, question the scientific method and promote dogmas.
RW: You’re worried that Cochrane Collaboration reviews — the apex of evidence-based medicine — “may cause harm by giving credibility to biased studies of vested interests through otherwise respected systematic reviews.” Why, and what’s the alternative?
JI: A systematic review that combines biased pieces of evidence may unfortunately give another seal of authority to that biased evidence. Systematic reviews may sometimes be most helpful if, instead of focusing on the summary of the evidence, highlight the biases that are involved and what needs to be done to remedy the state-of-the-evidence in the given field. This often requires a bird’s eye view where hundreds and thousands of systematic reviews and meta-analyses are examined, because then the patterns of bias are much easier to discern as they apply across diverse topics in the same or multiple disciplines. Much of the time, the solution is that, instead of waiting to piece together fragments of biased evidence retrospectively after the fact, one needs to act pre-emptively and make sure that the evidence to be produced will be clinically meaningful and unbiased, to the extent possible. Meta-analyses should become primary research, where studies are designed with the explicit anticipation that they are part of an overarching planned cumulative meta-analysis.
RW: What are your hopes for evidence-based medicine moving forward?
JI: The right ideas are there, and there are many superb scientists and clinicians who want to do the right thing, so I am always cautiously hopeful. We should keep trying.
RW: The essay is really personal and full of interesting stories. We’d like to end with a quote from when he was an early career researcher questioning entrenched research attitudes in Europe:
A senior professor of cardiology told a friend of mine that I should not be too outspoken, otherwise Albanian hit men may strangle me in my office. I replied that they should make sure to get correct instructions to my office – turn left when they come up the stairs. I would feel remorse, if the assassins entered the wrong office and strangled the wrong person.
Hat tip: Mohammad Zakaria Pezeshki
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TOPEKA (KSNT) - Two Nebraska roofers have been temporarily banned from doing business in Kansas, Attorney General Derek Schmidt said today.
In a lawsuit filed in Shawnee County District Court last week, Schmidt accused Mark Wagner, a/k/a Mark Schneidewind, Susan Cuthill and Dollhouse, Inc., a/k/a MWR, Inc., and Midwest Restorations, of numerous violations of the Kansas Consumer Protection Act. Dollhouse, Inc., is a Kansas Foreign For Profit Corporation organized under the laws of Nebraska. Dollhouse, Inc., is owned and operated by Wagner, a/k/a Mark Schneidewind, and Cuthill. MWR, Inc., is a fictitious company and not registered with the Kansas or Nebraska Secretary of State's office.
The investigation found that the defendants have been doing roofing business in Kansas despite not having obtained a valid registration certificate through the attorney general's office as required by Kansas law. Additionally, the defendants used door-to-door salesmen to solicit their roofing services and did not give consumers notice of their three day right to cancel the transaction and duplicate notice of their three day right to cancel the transaction as required by law. The defendants are also accused of misrepresenting their status to consumers by claiming their company, MWR, Inc., is a valid corporation when it is not. Many of the consumers solicited were elderly.
Shawnee County District Judge Rebecca Crotty has entered a temporary restraining order prohibiting the defendants from operating in Kansas pending the outcome of the case. The attorney general is seeking civil penalties and restitution for Kansas consumers.PASADENA, Calif. - NASA-funded researchers have created the first complete map of the speed and direction of ice flow in Antarctica. The map, which shows glaciers flowing thousands of miles from the continent's deep interior to its coast, will be critical for tracking future sea-level increases from climate change. The team created the map using integrated radar observations from a consortium of international satellites."This is like seeing a map of all the oceans' currents for the first time. It's a game changer for glaciology," said Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California (UC), Irvine. Rignot is lead author of a paper about the ice flow published online Thursday in Science Express. "We are seeing amazing flows from the heart of the continent that had never been described before."Rignot and UC Irvine scientists Jeremie Mouginot and Bernd Scheuchl used billions of data points captured by European, Japanese and Canadian satellites to weed out cloud cover, solar glare and land features masking the glaciers. With the aid of NASA technology, the team painstakingly pieced together the shape and velocity of glacial formations, including the previously uncharted East Antarctica, which comprises 77 percent of the continent.Like viewers of a completed jigsaw puzzle, the scientists were surprised when they stood back and took in the full picture. They discovered a new ridge splitting the 5.4 million-square-mile (14 million-square-kilometer) landmass from east to west.The team also found unnamed formations moving up to 800 feet (244 meters) annually across immense plains sloping toward the Antarctic Ocean and in a different manner than past models of ice migration."The map points out something fundamentally new: that ice moves by slipping along the ground it rests on," said Thomas Wagner, NASA's cryospheric program scientist in Washington. "That's critical knowledge for predicting future sea level rise. It means that if we lose ice at the coasts from the warming ocean, we open the tap to massive amounts of ice in the interior."The work was conducted in conjunction with the International Polar Year (IPY) (2007-2008). Collaborators worked under the IPY Space Task Group, which included NASA; the European Space Agency (ESA); Canadian Space Agency (CSA); Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency; the Alaska Satellite Facility in Fairbanks; and MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates of Richmond, British Columbia, Canada. The map builds on partial charts of Antarctic ice flow created by NASA, CSA and ESA using different techniques."To our knowledge, this is the first time that a tightly knit collaboration of civilian space agencies has worked together to create such a huge dataset of this type," said Yves Crevier of CSA. "It is a dataset of lasting scientific value in assessing the extent and rate of change in polar regions."For a video animation of the new Antarctic map, visit: http://1.usa.gov/poJq1P For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
News Media Contact
Alan Buis 818-354-0474Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, [email protected] Cole 202-358-0918NASA Headquarters, [email protected] President Joe Biden unloaded on Donald Trump today for the 'damage' he's doing to the political fabric of the nation and America's reputation abroad.
Incensed by Trump's proclamation that the election is 'rigged' and he might not accept the outcome, Biden said the Republican Oval Office aspirant is 'genuinely a threat to the democratic process.'
His overtures to Russian President Vladimir Putin are an 'indictment of who we are,' Biden screamed.
'He plays into the hands of our enemies so uniquely. He is so stupid that he doesn't understand - no no...it's possible,' Biden said, talking over laughter in the audience, 'it’s possible he doesn’t understand the damage he’s doing.'
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Vice President Joe Biden unloaded on Donald Trump today for the 'damage' he's doing to the political fabric of the nation and America's reputation abroad
Biden acknowledged that Trump had gotten under his skin.
The vice president said he had a positive speech prepared for today but then he felt a 'nagging feeling' that was'more than frustration' and realized why he's so angry about the election.
'Trump has been so outrageous,' Biden said, that the presidential contest hasn't been about the candidates' ideas.
A congressman and senator before he his eight-year stint in White House, Biden declared: 'I don't know anybody who knows more about foreign policy than I do.
'Just because I've been doing it for so long, not because I'm so smart, he added after rally-goers erupted into laughter, 'because I've met every major world leader.'
The tee-up was so that Biden could explain that his trip to the Baltic states in August was a direct response to Trump's threats to abandon the United States' NATO commitments.
'Think about how much damage has already being done by this continued romance with Putin,' Biden said.
Throughout the New Hampshire speech, Biden dipped back and forth between deep-rooted fury at Trump's promises to set fire to the Obama administration's foreign policy and despair.
He refused attempts to be consoled. 'No, I'm not looking to be clapped,' he said.
Biden was campaigning for Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire when he made the remarks. He was swings of depression and shouting in his remarks - but was back to his smiling self by the end of the rally, taking selfies with attendees of the event
Russia's meddling in the U.S. election through its hacking of Democratic Party and Clinton campaign emails and Trump's claim in Wednesday's debate that 'our country had no idea' if the Kremlin is behind it, had Biden in an uproar.
'What an indictment of who we are. What an indictment of our capabilities, what an indictment of our military, sending a message that flies into what Putin is doing in Russia,' Biden screamed.
'Saying America's weak, they're crippled and cannot move forward, that's how he's keeping support in Russia.
Switching back to Trump, Biden said that for a major party's political candidate to say 'for the world to hear, playing into the hands of Putin, that our country has no idea....can you fathom any presidential candidate ever,ever having said that?
'Ladies and gentleman this guy is far beyond a bad character with women, that's enough to disqualify him,' the VP contended.
Trump's claim yesterday that Iraq launched an assault on ISIS in Mosul to help Clinton win the Nov. 8 election was one step too far for Biden, the ranking member of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee when he was in the upper chamber.
'Can you imagine this guy becoming commander in chief and getting one ounce of respect from a single solitary military man or woman?' he asked.It's Sunday night after a great weekend. You got your halal meat shopping done, took the kids to the park, had dinner at a friend's house, watched some football, and even folded and put away the laundry. As you get ready for bed, you prepare yourself for the upcoming week. You have meetings for an annoying project at work. Things are awkward between two of your co-workers because of an argument they had a few days ago and you're caught in the middle. Your manager doesn't have time to look at something important that you keep emailing her about. And on a larger level, you're simply not happy about the prospect of going back to sit in your cubicle for another week and repeating the same charade over and over. So as you lie down to go to sleep, you take out your phone. And you start seeing stuff like this (and it's always on a sunset).
Then the thoughts start to drift. Am I as happy as I should be? What are my unfulfilled dreams? How do I achieve greatness?
https://twitter.com/ibnabeeomar/status/763602586654023680
This post will explore the impact of the constant influx of unabashed follow your dreams and unrealistic positivity. It is not simply about envy from seeing others' success and combating it with gratitude. It's a level deeper than that. It's how the current hybrid of success as displayed on social media, modern self-help literature, and a culture of entitlement affects us at a deep spiritual level without us realizing it.
The Secret is Visualizing Your Way to Success
The internet has filled our lives with unrealistic positive expectations. It says we can all be happier, healthier, smarter, faster, more popular, have more friends, live your dreams, and so on. To do this, you only need to follow the advice being dispensed everywhere on how to improve.
What starts with a noble intent of helping us achieve more by being positive actually creates a downward cycle. It really focuses on what we lack.The only alternative to being optimized and maximized and happy 24/7 is failure. This is why exercises like visualization and chanting mantras have become so popular. They say if you just keep imagining something positive to you, it will happen (Dave Chappelle mocked this in a brilliant bit you can watch here [warning: vulgar language]).
They make us hone in on what is wrong, and then try to offer a shortcut to fix it. To top it off, every time we get online, we are bombarded with images of people who are succeeding, having seemingly overcome all the shortcomings that hold us back (see: Jealousy, Attention, and the Social Media Highlight Reel).
This creates not only envy, but stress. In the following Ted Talk, Alain De Botton expounds on this concept in detail (I have put the text of a couple of important excerpts below the video).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtSE4rglxbY
Never before have expectations been so high about what human beings can achieve with their lifespan. We're told, from many sources, that anyone can achieve anything.... we are now in a system where anyone can rise to any position they please. And it's a beautiful idea.... There is one really big problem with this, and that problem is envy. Envy, it's a real taboo to mention envy, but if there's one dominant emotion in modern society, that is envy. And it's linked to the spirit of equality.... The closer two people are -- in age, in background, in the process of identification -- the more there's a danger of envy... So there's a spirit of equality combined with deep inequality, which can make for a very stressful situation. It's probably as unlikely that you would nowadays become as rich and famous as Bill Gates, as it was unlikely in the 17th century that you would accede to the ranks of the French aristocracy. But the point is, it doesn't feel that way. It's made to feel, by magazines and other media outlets, that if you've got energy, a few bright ideas about technology, a garage -- you, too, could start a major thing. The consequences of this problem make themselves felt in bookshops. When you go to a large bookshop and look at the self-help sections... there are basically two kinds. The first kind tells you, "You can do it! You can make it! Anything's possible!" The other kind tells you how to cope with what we politely call "low self-esteem," or impolitely call, "feeling very bad about yourself."...There is another reason why we might be feeling more anxious -- about our careers, about our status in the world today, than ever before. And it's, again, linked to something nice.... A meritocratic society is one in which, if you've got talent and energy and skill, you will get to the top, nothing should hold you back. It's a beautiful idea. The problem is, if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you'll also, by implication, and in a far more nasty way, believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there. In other words, your position in life comes to seem not accidental, but merited and deserved. And that makes failure seem much more crushing.
Mark Manson refers to this as 'The Feedback Loop from Hell" in his book (which is one of the best I've ever read on self-development). He says we feel sad or guilty about our situation, and then feel guilty about how we feel. Because everything is so perfect (or 'can be' perfect) on social media, we start to think it is not okay to feel any type of sadness, fear, or anxiety.
We get made fun of a lot for having first world problems. Alhamdulillah, we enjoy a large degree of material success relative to others. The problems we have now are more spiritual in nature - and they're exacerbated by what we consume online, often without us realizing it. We live in an age where we can have or know an infinite number of things. Paradoxically, we have an infinite number of ways we feel we don't measure up.
The relationship between material over-abundance and spiritual crisis should come as no surprise. At one end of the spectrum, more and more "successful" people are turning to mindfulness and meditation as a form of, essentially, spiritual heroin to escape savage capitalism. At the other end is entitlement and envy. The commonality on both ends is an obsession with the nafs (self). There is a deep unhappiness underpinning our success, or lack thereof, and it manifests itself as a spiritual crisis.
Alain De Botton explains this in the above Ted Talk:
The other thing about modern society and why it causes this anxiety, is that we have nothing at its center that is non-human. We are the first society to be living in a world where we don't worship anything other than ourselves. We think very highly of ourselves, and so we should; we've put people on the Moon, done all sorts of extraordinary things. And so we tend to worship ourselves. Our heroes are human heroes. That's a very new situation. Most other societies have had, right at their center, the worship of something transcendent.
Manson puts it more bluntly saying that most "life problems" are actually "side effects of not having anything more important to worry about."
We stop deriving our happiness from our values, and instead chase what is fed to us. It becomes almost formulaic. We consume all this material online and conclude that we need to fix certain shortcomings. And then once we fix them, we will be happy. So to fix them, we need a magic bullet - a LifeHacker article, another top 10 list from a blog, an expensive course, a book, a YouTube video, a podcast. We are looking for something, anything, that will 'fix' our problem so we can attain that level of greatness we are destined for. A life where everything is sunsets and rainbows and unicorns (in other words, Instagram).
American Idol Syndrome
The first episodes of American Idol would always be the best because you got to see Simon ripping on a terrible contestant. They would take a contestant, and before the audition, do a bio of them. You would see footage from their hometown and everyone there would talk about how this person was in the school choir and how talented they are. Then they'll talk to friends from the neighborhood also testifying to how amazing of a singer this person is. There's no doubt they were created for this contest and will win. This is their dream, and they've been working every day nonstop to attain it.
Then they get on stage and start singing. The judges cut them off with Simon saying something snarky like, 'do humanity a favor and never sing again.' The person is then emotionally devastated. They can't believe what they're hearing. They legitimately thought they were going to win the entire competition. They start crying, yelling, screaming. They say the judges don't know what they're talking about, and vow to show everyone that they're the best.
Sitting on the outside, we know they're foolish.
On the other hand, they are following self-help advice to the T. They believe in themselves. They're following their passions. They are working on their dream. They will not accept rejection. They vow to be resilient and bounce back in the face of crisis.
They go back to their friends who will no doubt tell them that the stupid judges on American Idol simply "can't handle how amazing they are."
We can see they're delusional.
Yet, if you were to ask anyone who has achieved fame in that industry how they got there, they would no doubt repeat those same cliches. Never give up, believe in yourself, follow your dreams, live your passions, ignore the haters, and persevere.
The delusion and foolishness is actually a result of an entitlement mentality. The underlying theme here is that this person somehow deserves success, or deserves to feel good. So even when they're not actually doing anything, they keep feeling like they are accomplishing something and are on the pathway to their dreams (sound familiar?). They are confident they will become a multi-platinum star despite what the judges and millions of viewers think. Hence the rise of how-to gurus and, as Manson says, "life coaches [who] charge money to help others, even though they're only twenty-five years old and haven't actually accomplished anything substantial in their lives."
We usually think of entitlement in regards to attaining a certain position or some material gain. The entitlement about needing to feel good all the time is a step beyond that. And by needing to feel good all the time, a person ends up in a cycle of narcissism and selfishness (the consequences of which I wrote about in detail here). They're constantly thinking about themselves and how they feel. When something awesome happens, it is because of their awesomeness, and when something bad happens its because people can't handle their awesomeness.
[The nature of] man is that, when his Lord tries him through honour and blessings, he says, ‘My Lord has honoured me,’ but when He tries him through the restriction of his provision, he says, ‘My Lord has humiliated me’ (89:15-16).
This comes about not because people really truly believe they are that amazing (although some do). It is, as Manson says, "because they feel that they need to be great to be accepted in a world that broadcasts only the extraordinary."
We are only shown the extraordinary because Instagram and other social media outlets bombard us with only those stories. They appear immediately achievable. We only need to do what they did and we can have it too. This is also known as Survivorship Bias.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k7jeQQdqPA
People who succeed tend to look at the past with blinders and ignore many important factors that got there (see: Why Bad Leaders Rise to the Top, and Why We Keep Following Them).
Then when we try and don't succeed in the same way we develop envy. We become insecure. When we combine that with entitlement, we believe it is ok to transgress certain boundaries to get what we deserve.
Manson lays out two types of entitlement that play out in a person:
I'm awesome and the rest of you all suck, so I deserve special treatment. I suck and the rest of you all are awesome, so I deserve special treatment.
To constantly make yourself the victim requires the same level of selfishness. We want everyone to know about our problems, and how we are uniquely afflicted with these problems, how they make us feel bad, and how we need everyone around us to stop doing the things that are making us feel bad. Cue Shaykh AbdulNasir Jangda saying 'Nobody Cares.'
https://twitter.com/AbdulNasirJ/status/186576334003249153
It's strange that in an age when we are more connected than ever, entitlement seems to be at an all-time high. Something about recent technology seems to allow our insecurities to run amok like never before. The more freedom we're given to express ourselves, the more we want to be free of having to deal with anyone who may disagree with us or upset us. The more exposed we are to opposing viewpoints, the more we seem to get upset that those viewpoints exist. The easier and more problem-free our lives become, the more we seem to feel entitled for them to get even better. -Mark Manson
In short, we've lost the middle ground. We go to the extremes in our opinions and refuse to see the other side.We see only the success stories. We see only the top most upvoted posts on Reddit. We watch only the most viewed YouTube videos. Read only the most highly reviewed books on Amazon. Our Netflix queue is full of only 4 or 5 star shows. The craziest photos, memes, news. We start to believe that being extraordinary is being normal. This, by the way, is why the greatest casualty of YouTube is the local Imam.
We don't realize most of life is actually lived in the middle of the extremes, and so we feel bad and put ourselves through the feedback loop of hell (especially when all the gurus say being average is mediocre). You can either be super successful, or super miserable. We de-incentivize ourselves to live a life of moderation. We need to be super successful (not realizing that if everyone was extraordinary, it would by definition become the new 'ordinary'). And if we can't be successful at that level, then it's better to show how miserable we are, because at least then we can get attention for how terrible our life is.
Inspiration Junkies
The misery, insecurity, envy, and entitlement creates an addiction to motivation. I haven't gotten my life together like the guy driving a Lamborghini on Instagram, therefore, I must not be motivated enough. So in response, I am going to follow 10 more inspirational quote accounts on Instagram to make sure I keep up my positive energy and vibes.
The khutbah below by Hasib Noor lays out the issue in detail. We keep crying over the same problems over and over again, using spirituality as a way to feed the inspiration junkie addiction. We go from conference to conference without making any tangible change in our lives. We share articles without reading them to look woke even though we don't give that much attention to the actual issues.
Don't misconstrue this to throwing the baby out with the bath water. Pay attention to whose advice you follow via their social media, books, podcasts, videos, and so on. If you're still following the same people and discussing the same issues you were 2 years ago, then it's a sign you aren't progressing. You should be in a state of 'graduating' and inching forward.
We let our worries overcome us without taking any action to create meaningful change. Part of the problem is by seeing so much inspiration, we think inspiration is the answer. So you hear people saying things like, "I'm not spiritually ready to make hajj yet" or "I can't concentrate in my prayer, so I don't want to pray because then I will be a hypocrite." There is a faulty assumption that motivation → action. The reality is action creates its own motivation and inspiration. This is why consistently doing good deeds is so vital, as the khutbah here explains.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5izY3xnolc0
We learn that our focus really should be about the process. What are your daily habits and routines? What do you do each day to actually close the gap between where you are and where you want to be? Many of us are infatuated with the end outcome, but don't want to put in the daily work to get there.
Inspiration to follow your passions is about trying to eliminate pain. "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life" is complete nonsense. When you do what you love, you trade in one set of problems for a different one (just one that you'd rather work on). The real test of what you love is not about the end result, it is about the daily process to get there. The goal is not to eliminate your problems, but rather to upgrade them to a different set of problems.
How many of us want to be Huffaz, but can't put in the work daily? One level of problems is not being able to read every day. Then not memorizing every day. Then it's not revising enough every day. The further you progress, the more you are exchanging one set of obstacles and issues for another. If you can't find satisfaction, happiness, and fulfillment in simply reading every day, you will never attain the end result of memorizing no matter how much you visualize it, put it on a vision board, chant mantras, or make a motivational sunset quote your desktop wallpaper.
How many people want to be known as students of knowledge or become famous Islamic speakers, but haven't dedicated the time to actually study for years and years? How many of us want to be entrepreneurs but are more obsessed with having a 4-hour-workweek than actually building a legitimate business? If you don't love the process, you will always fail at achieving that desired result. We want perfect marriages with the exotic vacation photos to prove it, but don't want the daily process of doing laundry, changing diapers, and buying dishwashing detergent in bulk from Costco. It is much easier to say things like, "well I could have done that if I wanted to" than it is to actually dedicate yourself to something.
Who you are is defined by what you're willing to struggle for: People who enjoy the struggles of a gym are the ones who run triathlons and have chiseled abs and can benchpress a small house. People who enjoy long workweeks and the politics of the corporate ladder are the ones who fly to the top of it. People who enjoy the stresses and uncertainties of the starving artist lifestyle are ultimately the ones who live it and make it. -Mark Manson
The inspiration trap is not a problem of positive thinking - it is substituting hard work for positive thinking. It is not about eliminating problems, but understanding for what purpose you are working through them.
Trust The Process
*Shout out to Sam Hinkie
The process begins with identifying why you want to do something. That should be no surprise, everything ultimately boils down to intention. Take whatever it is that you're seeking inspiration for and ask why. Why do you want to lose weight? Why do you want to start a business?
The career aspect of life is an interesting one in this regard. Many people are made to feel bad for having a career because they don't have the same lifestyle as an entrepreneur. Conversations around this topic will be about being'stuck' in a cubicle your whole life, building someone else's dream instead of your own, being a slave to 'the man', moving up the corporate ladder to buy a bigger house, and so on. And so we feel guilty for being stuck with a 9-5 job and try to become an entrepreneur. Then come the thousand dollar courses, hours spent building a business, time away from the family to sacrifice for the dream, and after a couple of years not succeeding and going back to the 9-5 gig. Cue the feedback loop from hell. You feel guilty for your job, you feel bad about not living your dreams, and then you feel bad because you feel like your life is over.
This is what happens when a person doesn't have a strong why. What is the ultimate goal? Which problems do you want to solve? Do you want to solve the problems that come with a cubicle life but include a steady paycheck, health insurance, and open weekends? Or do you prefer the problems of making payroll, dealing with vendors, and working on your business all the time?
See it's not that one is better than the other. It depends on what you value and then acting accordingly. One person might hate the idea of a desk job and want to be an entrepreneur, and for someone else it is the opposite. The problem arises only when you project your value system onto someone else's life and judge them based on it.
What we value is determined by our faith tradition. Take the debate between career and entrepreneurship. Ultimately, it doesn't matter. The more accurate guiding principle would be this hadith:
The Prophet (saw) said about a man, "If he is striving to provide for his young children then he has gone out for the sake of Allah. If he is striving to provide for his aged parents then he has gone out for the sake of Allah. And if he is striving to provide for himself to avoid being dependent on others then he has gone out for the sake of Allah" [Tabarani].
Once that value is established, then the actions follow in whatever way is best suited for you.
The underlying theme with happiness in this regard is the ability to choose our problems. Many people become entrepreneurs and feel shackled and want to go back to a corporate job - and vice versa. We get down most often when the problems we have are things we feel we can't control. When we choose our problems, we feel empowered. The internet, however, makes you think you can just escape the problems altogether. If we feel that we are stuck in a job against our will, then we feel victimized and miserable.
Strong iman (faith) helps significantly in this regard. There are certain things we know are the decree of Allah and we cannot control. For example, when we are born, who our parents are, when we are going to die, and even how much money we make. Our faith demands that we take responsibility for our actions and our response. That is fully within our control. Manson points out that people hesitate to take responsibility for their problems because it would mean admitting that they are at fault for those problems.
You don't get to pick everything that happens to you, but you are responsible for it.
Fault is past tense. Responsibility is present tense. -Mark Manson
One way to take responsibility is focusing on the actions you do every day. The reason we avoid doing that is because it seems insignificant. Or we |
of the object at the two times at which the X-ray pulses hit., Using a mathematical reconstruction procedure, the researchers can then simply associate the images with the respective X-ray puses and thus determine the image sequence in correct temporal order.
Using their method, the scientists recorded two pictures of a micro-model of the Brandenburg Gate, separated by only 50 femtoseconds. "In this short time interval, even a ray of light travels no further than the width of a human hair," says PhD student Christian Günther, the first author of the publication. The short-wavelength X-rays used allow to reveal extremely small detail, since the shorter the wavelength of light you use, the smaller the objects you can resolve.
"The long-term goal is to be able to follow the movements of molecules and nanostructures in real time," says project head Prof. Dr. Stefan Eisebitt. The extremely high temporal resolution in conjunction with the possibility to see the tiniest objects was the motivation to develop the new technique. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a movie made up of several pictures can tell you about an object's dynamics.
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Contact Press Office:
Dr. Ina Helms, Tel.: +49 30 8062 42034
[email protected] saxophone virtuoso undertakes his first project since finishing with epic New History Warfare trilogy
Colin Stetson had a very busy 2013. After completing his New History Warfare trilogy he performed on Arcade Fire‘s sprawling double album Relektor and came on board for their lengthy world tour. Though he spent most of last year in the touring, he found time to get into the studio to make Never Were The Way She Was, a new collaborative album with Arcade Fire violinist Sarah Neufeld. It is Neufeld’s first album away from her main band since 2013’s solo effort, Hero Brother. From the sound of the first single, ‘The Sun Roars Into View,’ they’re a perfect match for each other.
Listen to the single below and grab the album from Constellation April 28.For anyone who cares about transforming America’s criminal justice system, pivotal elections are fast approaching. It’s not the congressional elections we are talking about, though — it’s the more than 1,000 local prosecutors that will soon be up for election in counties across the country in 2018.
Criminal justice policy is shaped mostly at the local and state level, and elected prosecutors have more power than any other single actor to influence the trajectory of these policies. With more than nine out of every 10 cases resolved by a plea bargain where a judge has little or no role, prosecutors unilaterally decide who gets a second chance and who goes to prison and for how long. Mandatory minimum sentencing and other laws allowing extraordinarily harsh sentences have only increased prosecutors’ power to extract guilty pleas and prison terms. In addition, their extraordinary influence is wielded every year at the statehouse, where prosecutorial opposition can easily undermine or sink even modest criminal justice reform legislation.
The upcoming elections of local prosecutors come at a unique and potentially fragile moment. After years of steadily building power and momentum, criminal justice reformers are now facing a federal government enthralled with brutal and ineffective ’90s-era criminal justice policies. The outcome of these local prosecutor elections may prove to be the most significant in history for the movement to end mass incarceration.
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Research suggests that prosecutors’ “tough on crime” practices have been a major driver of mass incarceration over the last several decades. Yet polls suggest that majority of the American public — across demographics and across the political spectrum — prefer second chances and treatment over long prison sentences and overflowing jails.
If this is true, why do “lock ‘em up” prosecutors keep getting elected?
Although prosecutors are politicians elected to serve their local communities, they rarely have any incentive to act like it. In 2016, more than 70 percent of prosecutors ran unopposed. District attorneys who decide not to run for re-election can maintain control by resigning and picking a successor who then runs as an incumbent.
For the most part, voters say they have little understanding of what a district attorney does or the extraordinary impact a prosecutor’s decisions have on their local community. Research has also shown that high percentages of voters who cast a ballot for their county supervisor or mayor do not go down the ballot to vote for their district attorney.
In between election years, prosecutors operate with near impunity. State oversight over district attorneys is notoriously ineffective. Prosecutors’ budgets are often approved without question by county boards despite the fact that it is the prosecutor’s decisions that drive a county’s biggest expenses — the county jail. Lawsuits seeking to hold prosecutors accountable in court for unconstitutional policies are rare, in part because prosecutors have broad legal immunity from suit in many cases.
Finally, prosecutors have long shielded their actions from public scrutiny, making basic information about their policies or data on the outcomes of their decision-making unavailable. This lack of transparency prevents the public from holding prosecutors accountable.
The outcome of these local prosecutor elections may prove to be the most significant in history for the movement to end mass incarceration.
But times are changing. In 2016, an ever-increasing awareness of prosecutors’ authority swept new prosecutors into office on the promise of reform, from Houston to Chicago to Kansas City to Orlando. The electability of these reformers proved that a growing number of Americans are fed up with criminal justice practices that are shamelessly punitive, tear apart low-income communities, and target people of color.
This year, the ACLU’s Campaign for Smart Justice, dedicated to reducing the number of people in prisons and jails by half while reducing racial disparities, announced a new initiative to transform the incentives that drive prosecutors. This initiative aims to directly tackle the unchecked prosecutorial power that has been such a major contributor to mass incarceration.
Over the next three years, the Campaign for Smart Justice will support state ACLU offices in educating voters about the importance of elected prosecutors and on ways to hold them accountable between elections. The campaign will fight for legislation to require prosecutors to make their policies and data public and for laws that would create or strengthen oversight of these offices. And finally, prosecutors who violate the constitution to get convictions or otherwise flout the law should expect to see the ACLU in court.As the calls for more direct intervention in Iraq grow and the US drops their first bombs, Andy Cunningham looks at what the rise of the Islamic State means for the wider Middle East.
Following discussions with other comrades, this article was revised by the author on 14/8/14 to remove a factual error and to avoid confusion in other areas. Details of the changes made can be found in the comments.
Who are ISIS?
When the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) exploded onto Western news screens in June this year, it was as if an army of Jihadis had sprung fully formed from the desert to scream across Northern and Western Iraq, conquering all in their path. This was a seismic shift in Middle Eastern politics, with one commentator calling it the biggest change since the Sykes-Picot Agreement that divided the region between the UK and France.
The truth about ISIS is a little less dramatic. ISIS, now simply called the Islamic State, grew out of an amalgamation of Sunni militias that have been fighting first the US and UK occupation, then the corrupt government of Nouri al-Maliki. Often described in the west as an ‘offshoot of Al Qaeda’, one of its constituent parts was previously known Al-Qaeda in Iraq. ISIS, however, has undergone a lot of development since those days (including a shooting war with official Al Qaeda fighters) and is now a more formidable organisation than anything that Al Qaeda can call upon.
So how did ISIS grow from a ‘terrorist’ network into an organisation that can claim to control a territory covering 9 million people and roughly equivalent to in size to Britain? Understanding this is key to analysing what ISIS means for the Middle East.
Resisting the occupation
ISIS’s rapid success in Iraq is partly due to the legacy of the 2003 invasion. After the initial collapse of the Ba’athist state in the early months of 2003, an ongoing popular mass resistance had developed across Iraq. Neither Sunni or Shia but compromising of a patchwork of militias rooted in both communities. This resistance rattled the US occupation so much that it began to turn to that old imperialist method of divide and rule. The resulting rise in sectarian violence spiralled until entire districts of Iraq and its major cities were cleansed of minorities. It was the occupation that was key to defining the Iraqi resistance in sectarian terms.
Following the US retreat from Iraq, leaving behind a corrupt Shia-led government in Baghdad, this sectarianism has become deeply rooted within Sunni militias. It is precisely those militias, some based on tribal groupings, others on the old Ba’athist officer class, that ISIS have been able to draw into a coalition big enough to control most of Northern and Western Iraq.
The Syrian crucible
The current Civil War in Syria is proving to be an incredibly important theatre in terms of defining the future direction of the Middle East. It was ISIS’s involvement in Syria that was the key catalyst to its transformation into force that could occupy entire territories. Not only did the Civil War give ISIS an opportunity to develop new military tactics, its involvement in fighting Assad has given it a steady stream of recruits from around the world and allowed it to control large territories for the first time.
These developments were also encouraged by Saudi Arabia who had turned a blind eye to money and volunteers headed for ISIS before 2014. The Saudi ruling class obsession with countering Iranian influence in the Middle East has often meant a hands off approach to challenging reactionary groups such as ISIS. Imagine the rage in the palaces of Riyadh when ISIS screamed across Iraq and declared their own Caliphate, claiming the allegiance of all Muslims in the region.
The experience of Syria and their growing hegemony within the Sunni resistance in Iraq encouraged ISIS to act more boldly. In January this year it declared the City of Fallujah in Iraq as an Islamic State and after recapturing the Syrian city of Ar-Raqqah (from which it was expelled by other Syrian opposition forces in January 2014) it instituted its variant of Sharia law there. These experiences laid the ground work for its capture of Mosul in June this year and the declaration of an Islamic Caliphate on 29 June.
Caliphs and class struggle
Since the declaration of a new Islamic Caliphate centred on Mosul, ISIS has moved to consolidate its position in areas under its control. On our TV screens we witness the most obvious result of this consolidation: the masses of refugees, those who have fled in fear to mountains and deserts and who know face starvation and disease. Many refugees have tried to make it to Kurdish controlled areas, as the Kurdish government in Northern Iraq is currently the only force offering any sort of coherent resistances to ISIS.
The plight of these refugees is a logical extension of ISIS’s ideology and position. The extreme sectarianism not only extends to Shia Muslims but also other ‘People’s of the Book‘ such as Christians in the area. For those who don’t fit either of these categories, like the Dawaaseen (Yazidi people) or those not ethnically Arab such as Turkmen or Kurds, life in the new Caliphate has become near impossible. ISIS itself is doing everything possible to cleanse areas under its control by arresting and killing dissenters and blowing up shrines that its sees as heretical.
ISIS rule is also based on an extreme social reaction. They have ordered women in Mosul to wear full face veils and stay indoors unless they have good reason to be out on the street. In a period of chaos and shortages, stealing is now punished by amputation and, according to some reports out of Syria, other crimes can attract crucifixion as a punishment.
Alongside this purge of religious and political dissent in its territory, ISIS is also carefully trying to dismantle the Sunni coalition that helped it win such spectacular gains in Iraq. This process has seen the arrest and liquidation of Ba’athist and tribal militias that fail to swear allegiance to the new ISIS Caliph and the willing incorporation of other militias into the new Islamic State.
A similar process is also under way in Syria, with ISIS fighting for control in rebel-held areas of the country. As it gains hegemony over the Islamist opposition in Syria, it has been able to push other Syria opposition groups into ever smaller territories. Many of these groups (previously championed by the West, like the Free Syrian Army) are collapsing under the pressure of a twin assault from Assad and ISIS. ISIS has reportedly reached the Eastern outskirts of Aleppo, the city at the heart of the Syrian Revolution and also has de facto control over Raqqa and Deir Ezzor provinces.
It’s important to understand that while these actions are ideologically inspired, they are also the result of the political and military position of ISIS – a group of a few thousand fighters attempting to control a population of 9 million and found a new state. To help the numbers stack up, ISIS are carrying out a calculated purge of elements it may find hard to govern in the short and medium terms.
This quest for longevity is also what’s driving further ISIS expansion. While it would be impossible for ISIS to hold Baghdad with its huge Shia population (and it may have calculated that the fall of Baghdad would have triggered a much stronger US response), ISIS is still trying to expand its new Caliphate into other areas. This expansion is crucial in gathering new allies to its cause.
But this process cannot continue forever and in order to survive. The new Caliphate will quickly have to adjust to normal capitalist governance. With this will come all the contradictions faced by ruling classes everywhere. Put simply, if ISIS wants to exploit the gas and oil reserves its now sitting on, or run the power stations it now controls, it will need engineers. This reliance on the Sunni working class, with none of the normal ideological props that capitalism has, may prove a more difficult challenge than defeating the Iraqi Army.
New fault lines in the Middle East>
The rise of ISIS has created new fault lines across the region. As the ISIS advance threatened Baghdad, it almost looked like the US and Iran might launch joint air strikes to halt their expansion. In the North and East, Turkey, once a secure supply route for ISIS, is now helping to arm the Kurdish guerrillas it has spent decades trying to kill. In Syria, some fighters supported by Britain, France and the US as ‘moderate Islamists’ are now voluntarily pledging allegiance to ISIS. The strange bedfellows thrown up by the current crisis make for a confusing situation that cuts across the established fault lines of Middle Eastern politics.
From the point of view of western imperialism in the region, they are running out of options fast. In the Syrian theatre, Washington and its allies have to choose between a dictator they’ve consistently likened to Hitler (Bashar al-Assad) or a group of jihadis that even Al Qaeda thought were beyond the pale (ISIS).
In Iraq, the situation is even more serious. Whether al-Maliki’s government stays or goes, the situation doesn’t seem recoverable – what we are witnessing is the partition of Iraq. Even if ISIS were to collapse tomorrow, there is now an independent Kurdistan that has expanded its territory and is offering the only coherent resistance to the new Caliphate. With that territory bought and paid for with the blood of Peshmerga fighters, it would be hard to see them voluntarily submit to Baghdad again, whatever figurehead changes may occur.
Standing in the way of this too is the dominant view in the Shia south of Iraq. Rather than face the reality of the Iraqi Army’s collapse when confronting ISIS, the dominant narrative among the Shia elite is one of Kurdish betrayal leading directly to an ISIS victory. Al-Maliki himself, desperately trying to cling to power in the face of domestic Shia and international pressure, has blamed the fall of Mosul on the Kurdish government in Hewlêr (Irbil). Racist attacks like this make a united front with Kurdish forces increasingly difficult.
For the various sub-imperialisms in the region, ISIS has proved a real challenge. For the ruling class of Saudi Arabia, the reactionary force that shares their ideology has become a danger to their own rule. Saudi troops have been moved to the border with the new Caliphate and recruiters for ISIS have been arrested. The example of a Wahhabi-inspired Islamic State on their borders is providing a real ideological threat to the House of Saud, previously seen as the champion of this reactionary variant of Islam.
For Iran too, the rise of ISIS contains a real threat. Iran was one of the big winners from the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Its vocal and material opposition to the occupation won it influence with Shia militias and with the post-occupation Iraqi government. It now sees that government under threat, along with its allies in Assad regime and in Hezbollah in Lebanon. In their place is a new state that stands in complete ideological opposition to Iran and its majority Shia population.
The declaration of the Caliphate has also exposed Turkey’s weakness. At the height of his regional popularity, Recep Erdoğan was the figurehead of a self-style neo-Ottomanism but Turkey’s role in helping ISIS to grow, as well as its reliance on Kurdish fighters to contain its expansion has shown just how superficial such ideas are.
As these various imperialisms try to come to terms with a new situation that is shaking ruling classes from Baghdad to Amman, the missing piece on the Middle Eastern chessboard is the role of the Arab masses and the Arab working class. The rise of ISIS is a direct consequence of the Arab Spring and its failure to win any significant improvement for the Arab masses.
When the Egyptian Revolution brought down Hosni Mubarak in 2011 it represented a high point in the uprising of the Arab masses. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the disintegration of the Stalinist left and the betrayals of the Arab nationalists, Islamism has become the dominant mode of protest in the Middle East. While Islamist movements take different forms, they are all characterised by an elitist approach to the involvement of the masses. Since the start of the Egyptian Revolution, there has been a different method on show – the active participation of the masses in winning their own liberation. It is instructive that following Egypt, the first uprising in Syria were nationalist and democratic rather than Islamist. But the triumph of Sisi’s counterrevolution in Cairo, which has brought so much horror to Gaza, paved the way for political Islamism to make a comeback. Now when you survey the Middle East, the two success stories to draw lessons from are Islamist ones – Hamas in Palestine and ISIS in Iraq and Syria, though this does not necessarily equate the two groups, as the Egyptian comrade Mostafa Omar’s article makes clear.
This fact opens up some serious questions for revolutionaries across the world. Revolutionary Socialists active in the Middle East have made the case for working class independence in the struggle against ISIS, as well as making it clear that any outside involvement in Iraq is unwelcome. The experience of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt shows that the economic policies of these new Islamic capitalists can often encourage the development of independent class action in opposition to neoliberal policies. Ultimately, raising the confidence of the masses inside the Caliphate to challenge both ISIS and the various imperialist players in the region is the only way to ensure a long term solution for Iraq and Syria.
Here in the West, there are two key task for revolutionary socialists. The first is to oppose any intervention by our governments in Iraq or Syria. It is this very intervention that has birthed ISIS and strangled the Egyptian Revolution. US airstrikes on ISIS territories will simply close down space to challenge the group and are more about rehabilitating the idea of ‘humanitarian intervention‘ than they are in helping starving Yazidis. Equally, looking to the various regional imperialisms, such as Iran, does nothing but confirm the sectarian nature of the conflict and close down space for Sunnis to challenge the Caliphate.
For socialists here we have to demonstrate the idea of working class independence in practice by opposing such interventions. The huge movement currently active around the question of Palestine, and the BDS movement is excellent starting point that can make the principle of international working class solidarity concrete to those fighting for liberation in the Middle East.
I also think it is time that we debate whether the ISIS control over large parts of Syria qualitatively changes the nature of the uprising there – does it still represent a progressive mass movement? Can we unconditionally but critically support a Syrian Uprising when its victory would put ISIS in control a territory stretching from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates? These questions, which have already been raised in the movement and workplaces following ISIS consolidation, will require an answer from revolutionary socialists over the coming weeks and months.
The second key task for revolutionaries in Britain is to work to oppose the rise in Islamophobia that ISIS have helped to create. Whether it be the media focus on the Christian minority in Mosul, the underlying message of which is that Islam and Christianity cannot coexist, or the focus on British Muslims who have gone to fight for ISIS, there is a clear attempt to stoke Islamophobia by conflating ‘Islamism’ with ‘ISIS’. Playing out the worst fears of every UKIP voting racist, the implication is that the imposition of Sharia law on Mosul shows just how dangerous the Muslim down the street is. This sort of reactionary propaganda can be most successfully challenged by practical unity with working class Muslims to build solidarity with masses of the Middle East, whether that be in Gaza, Aleppo, Irbil or Baghdad.NEW YORK -- Police in New York say they've deployed extra units to crowded areas of the city "out of an abundance of caution" in the wake of the attacks in Paris, France.
No known threat to the city at this time, but until we learn more, we are deploying more police out of an abundance of caution #ParisAttacks — NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) November 13, 2015
A New York Police Department statement released Friday stressed police have "no indication that the attack has any nexus to New York City."
It said security units were sent to French government locations in the city immediately after the attacks.
Multiple terror attacks across Paris leave scores dead and wounded
Police have sent units to the New York embassies and consulates of countries experiencing attacks in the past.
The department's intelligence division has detectives based in France. Police say those detectives are serving as liaison and will help police in Paris as needed.
Officials say several dozen people have been killed in Paris attacks at a theater, restaurant and elsewhere. Some unverified reports put the death count at over 100 people.
The full NYPD statement can be read on their Twitter page.Now that things cooled down, let's talk about Batman v Superman (the ultimate edition that is). This movie simply works on every level and is a work of art. From the cinematography, the fantastic score by Hans Zimmer, the themes and characters. I love how serious Zack takes his world and manages to keep you on the edge of your seat for 3 hours long. From that beautiful opening where we see the death of the Wayne's (sidenote: best version of it yet). So poetic. And then seeing the Black Zero event from Bruce's perspective.
Snyder delivered a work of art, but is misunderstood. I think that audiences and critics simply don't like (or are incapable of) using their brain while watching a movie. The story is told through it's visuals, but in this day and age you need 10 minutes of boring exposition of every single detail without people getting confused.
Time will be kind to BvS and Zack Snyder. Who once and for all proved he is one of the best directors of all time and maybe the very best walking this earth. Thank you Zack, thank you for everything.
You might be thinking this is some weird parody. But I mean every single word. Too bad his genius is misunderstood.Posted February 27, 2019 at 12:01 am
Panel 3: “Remind you of anyone?” is a direct reference to a recurring line on my beloved but long-departed The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, which ran from 2005 to 2014 on CBS. Ah, the fond memories I have of wrapping up work on the late (third) shift and checking out the first three breaks of that show before crashing out for the night. Ah, but then the thrilling “digital TV revolution” came along in 2009 and ensured that my backwoods home could no longer receive broadcast TV signals, thus ending my time of watching over-the-air TV. No great loss, tbh, but I am sorry I missed out on the final years of Ferguson’s show.
Panel 5: Here, the “plumbing repair” line is a reference to my own years of using duct tape to strap insulation around freezing-prone water lines and drain pipes in a poorly insulated cellar. Considering that I often encountered surprising difficulty securing wholly inanimate lengths of fiberglass insulation around likewise inanimate pipes, I’m reasonably sure that trying to duct tape a struggling human being would be exponentially more vexing and frustrating—but, hey, kids, this story is a work of shortcut-intensive and cheerily unrealistic fiction, after all.
-Adam WarrenHere’s a fun fact for conspiracy theorists, history buffs and trivia mavens: In the latest episode of “The Americans,” we learn that the passcode for opening the safe room of the counterintelligence section of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is 9331. Reverse those digits and you get 1339. As it happens, 1339 is the year when the walls around the Kremlin were built. Get it? The FBI is the reverse of the Kremlin.
Now, I can’t say for sure whether the showrunners had this little detail in mind when they wrote the episode. But it wouldn’t surprise me. Because along with the intricate plotting, realistic dialogue and fantastic acting, the attention to such details is what sets “The Americans,” now in its fifth season on the FX network, apart from everything else on television.
This business of getting the background minutiae of the period exactly right, pioneered by “Mad Men,” is now de rigueur for TV shows set in the recent past. But nobody is as passionate about accuracy as Joe Weisberg, the former CIA case officer who created “The Americans.”
For the uninitiated, the show revolves around Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, a couple living comfortably in a suburb of Washington during the Reagan administration. They experience the usual run of domestic problems, particularly those that arise from raising two children in the era when strict parental authority is falling apart.
They also have to go out at night a lot, supposedly to meet clients of their travel agency, but really because they are Soviet spies. They were born in the Soviet Union, but raised from an early age to pose as Americans.
Like “The Sopranos,” the program demystifies and humanizes a subject usually dealt with as fantastic and absurd melodrama — there the Mafia, here espionage — by placing it within the confines of an otherwise ordinary family with otherwise ordinary problems.
Elizabeth and Philip aren’t Stepford Spouses. Their marriage began as a pose but has long since become the real thing, with all the ordinary ups and downs that one would expect after all these years. Recently, the writers have wisely put the family’s focus on their daughter Paige, who’s growing uneasily and rebelliously into her teen years.
Still, I will confess that I particularly enjoy the period details. Anachronisms bother me enormously. Among the most admirable qualities of “The Americans” is the determination of the showrunners to get things right.
And it’s not just music and automobiles and clothing that change as time passes for the characters. Half the fun of watching is spotting the smaller things.
In the first season, set in 1981, FBI agent Stan Beeman, pressed by his boss to draw a conclusion from insufficient evidence, asks whether he should put on his Carnac the Magnificent hat. In an episode set early in 1982, the family is off to see “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” In 1983, the show’s characters pause with the rest of the country to watch the ABC broadcast of “The Day After.”
In Season 4 we see a box of Banana Frosted Flakes on the kitchen counter. The kids eat Jif peanut butter, and the grownups drink Miller beer. In Season 2, the Jennings’ young son, Henry, covets the Intellivision video game system.
In Season 3, he does a passable Eddie Murphy imitation after watching the comic do a “Mr. Robinson’s neighborhood” skit on “Saturday Night Live.” And according to one eagle-eyed observer, a character in the most recent episode is wearing a Debbie Gibson scrunchie.
The show also traffics accurately in then-current events. There are no fictional ticking bombs. We see the Soviets’ fear of Ronald Reagan driving the spies to take ever-greater risks to steal American military technology. The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan generates both espionage and personal dilemmas.
In Season 2, terrified of ARPANET (and not exactly sure what it is), the Soviets decide to try to bug the network. The current season builds in part on the Soviet Union’s increasingly desperate need for grain as the 1980s wore on — and an accompanying paranoia about why exactly the Reagan administration is being so helpful.
The spycraft too is well done. Former US intelligence officials praise the show’s accuracy. Former Soviet spies agree.
And here, too, “The Americans” strives to get the details right. The tranquilizer gun used in Season 2 was not a reproduction: It was a vintage firearm used by spies in the early 1980s.
In Season 4, a Soviet spy gets his hands on the plans for the Centaur-G, a rocket stage that NASA would indeed have been testing at the time, although the program would later be canceled after the Challenger explosion.
It’s all part of why “The Americans” remains the best show on television.
Stephen Carter is a Bloomberg View columnist. © 2017, Bloomberg ViewWith the launch of Ethereum on the eToro platform, we wanted to give you a handy guide to this cryptocurrency. Here’s what you need to know in order to integrate Ethereum into your trading strategy.
The launch of Bitcoin in 2009 created a new form of currency, called a cryptocurrency, whose existence is entirely digital. It is no surprise that other such currencies were quick to emerge, and one of the most recent ones is Ether – the second-largest cryptocurrency. Similarly to Bitcoin, Ether (ETH) is decentralized, therefore, it is less-affected by changes in the currency market. Now, you can trade Ether on the eToro platform.
Cryptocurrencies can fluctuate widely in prices and are therefore not appropriate for all investors. Trading cryptocurrencies is not supervised by any EU regulatory framework. Your capital is at risk.
What is Ethereum?
Launching in 2015, Ether was created as a currency leaning on Ethereum technology. Similarly to Bitcoin, Ethereum is a blockchain-based system. However, unlike Bitcoin, which created for the sole purpose of serving as an alternative currency, Ethereum could be used to create a variety of decentralized applications. From a trading standpoint, the focus is on the Ether currency, since it serves as an alternative to traditional currencies.
Ether launched in August, 2015. Initially, Ether price was valued at around $2.8, and has seen steady increases since. The all-time Ethereum price high was $21.5, and it is currently trading around $12, with a market cap of just over $1 billion. Unlike Bitcoin, Ether has yet to solidify its status as a mainstream currency, and therefore it is mostly affected by events immediately related to its development.
Ether vs. Bitcoin: Main differences
Ether was not created to replace currencies: While Bitcoin was conceived as a form of alternative payment, the Ether currency was initially created to serve the users of the platform, as an Ethereum wallet to use with the apps they develop. Ether’s supply is infinite: While the supply of Bitcoin is finite (scheduled to cease in the year 2140), Ether has no top limit, and currency supply is driven by its creators and miners. Bitcoin is slower: A Bitcoin transaction takes some 10 minutes to complete, and Ether transactions are processed within approx. 15 seconds, contributing to its liquidity and volatility. Ownership: While almost all of the Bitcoin in existence was mined by early adopters, Ether’s launch was crowdfunded, meaning most of the currency is owned by people who purchased it. It is predicted that the balance will shift in favor of the Ethereum miners within five years.
What drives Ether prices?
Internally, Ether price is driven by changes in the Ethereum platform. Ethereum is constantly progressing, and periodically reaches milestones known as “hard forks,” which change the way the platform works in a way that makes it backwards incompatible. Each hard fork is designed to add stability and improve the platform’s overall function. However, the third hard fork, known as the DAO, which launched in June 2016, inadvertently opened the door to a hack that took control of Ether worth $50 million. This led to a crash in Ether prices, losing 30% of its value. However, the platform has been modified since, and the hack was dealt with, causing prices to revert back to gains.
Externally, one of the most influential factors driving Ether prices is Bitcoin. Since Bitcoin is the largest and most popular cryptocurrency, when its price shows significant increases, other cryptocurrencies are also perceived as viable investment options, and rise accordingly. Naturally, since Ether is the second-largest cryptocurrency, it could also be affected by such events.
Trading Ether
Since its introduction, Ether has displayed high volatility at times, with the biggest single-day change being 30% following the DAO hard fork hack. Therefore, it has attracted many day-traders, who wish to profit from such fluctuations. Alternatively, Ether has become a hedging tool for Bitcoin traders. Unlike Bitcoin, there is no top limit for the amount of Ether to be introduced into the market through Ethereum mining, and Ethereum users who contribute computing power to the platform could mine the currency, which results in 5 Ether to be created every 15-17 seconds.
Ether could be suitable for both day-trading and long-term investment. Day-traders could try and profit during times of high volatility, staying up-to-date on hard forks, Bitcoin prices, the Ethereum chart, and other events which could influence Ether price. Long-term investors might view it as “the next Bitcoin,” investing in it today with the hopes that it will show significant gains, like Bitcoin did in its early days.
The introduction of Ether on the eToro platform gives traders and investors a new way to diversify their portfolios. Since there are no overnight fees for Ether on the eToro platform, long-term investors could take a buy-and-hold mentality, if they believe that prices will rise in the long run.
Cryptocurrencies can fluctuate widely in prices and are therefore not appropriate for all investors. Trading cryptocurrencies is not supervised by any EU regulatory framework. Your capital is at risk.Many fighters arrive in the UFC with a reputation that precedes them. Then there’s
Owner of a 17-2 record that included a 15-fight winning streak and knockouts of Marvin Eastman,
And before Teixeira made that walk and defeated
A native of Sobralia, Teixeira made the trip to the United States to begin a new life in Connecticut, not realizing that he was starting a journey of another sort.
“The first time I went to the gym, it was here in the United States in Danbury, and I wanted to be a boxer,” he told me in 2015. “But that changed three months later when my friend showed me a tape of Many fighters arrive in the UFC with a reputation that precedes them. Then there’s Glover Teixeira Owner of a 17-2 record that included a 15-fight winning streak and knockouts of Ricco Rodriguez Marcio Cruz and Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou before he stepped foot in the Octagon for the first time in 2012, the Brazilian didn’t just have a reputation. He was an urban legend, the Bigfoot UFC fans had heard about but never saw with their own eyes.And before Teixeira made that walk and defeated Kyle Kingsbury, kicking off a UFC career that has put him at the top of the light heavyweight division and in a co-main event against Anthony Johnson next Saturday, some thought they never would.A native of Sobralia, Teixeira made the trip to the United States to begin a new life in Connecticut, not realizing that he was starting a journey of another sort.“The first time I went to the gym, it was here in the United States in Danbury, and I wanted to be a boxer,” he told me in 2015. “But that changed three months later when my friend showed me a tape of Royce Gracie in UFC. That changed my whole dream about being a fighter. He was like, ‘This is crazy, man,’ and I wanted to do this crazy thing. (Laughs) That’s what I wanted to do.”
RELATED CONTENT: Teixeira on UFC 202 Embedded | Free Fight: Teixeira vs Saint Preux | Fighter bio | Matchup with "Rumble" Johnson
By 2002, the 22-year-old Teixeira was a pro mixed martial artist and he rapidly built a reputation as a fighter to watch. Plus, he had some pretty impressive backup on fight night in the form of John Hackleman and
“My first fight was against one of his guys and later on, he called me and told me that if I wanted to train with him, he could make me a better fighter,” Teixeira recalled. “When I went to train with John and his camp at The Pit, I didn’t know anything, and Chuck taught me pretty much everything. I knew jiu-jitsu, and that was my background, but wrestling and striking, Chuck was telling me everything.” By 2002, the 22-year-old Teixeira was a pro mixed martial artist and he rapidly built a reputation as a fighter to watch. Plus, he had some pretty impressive backup on fight night in the form of John Hackleman and Chuck Liddell. It was after Teixeira’s first pro fight that he met The Pit master, and Hackleman soon began training the Brazilian prospect with an assist from “The Iceman.”“My first fight was against one of his guys and later on, he called me and told me that if I wanted to train with him, he could make me a better fighter,” Teixeira recalled. “When I went to train with John and his camp at The Pit, I didn’t know anything, and Chuck taught |
raise money through players sales before they can buy.
18.23 BST: Barcelona are in "advanced negotiations" with Valencia over Spanish international striker Paco Alcacer, according to Catalan outlet Mundo Deportivo. The 22-year-old scored 13 times in 34 La Liga appearances last season, and appears set for a move to the Camp Nou in a €30m deal, despite having an €80m buyout clause, that could see Munir El Haddadi move in the opposite direction.
18.01 BST: As question marks begin to emerge over Shkodran Mustafi's move to Arsenal, the Telegraph is reporting that the Gunners have made a bid for Barcelona's Jeremy Mathieu. At 32, Mathieu does not represent the long-term investment that Mustafi does, but he would likely come at a lesser cost and could step into Arsenal's first team immediately.
17.40 BST: It seems that Everton are in negotiations for another central defender. According to Valencian newspaper Super Deporte, the Merseyside club has been locked in negotiations with Valencia over a €20m deal for Tunisian international Aymen Abdennour, who moved to the Spanish club from Monaco just last year for €22m.
17.18 BST: Spanish outlet Mundo Deportivo reports that Barcelona want to bring in Valencia's Paco Alcacer as a back-up forward. It says talks are advanced and the player is keen to move to the Camp Nou.
17.09 BST: DONE DEAL Birmingham striker Alex Jones has moved to League One Port Vale on loan until January.
Delighted to have joined League 1 side @OfficialPVFC on loan until January. Looking forward to the game tomorrow ⚽️ #pvfc - Alex Jones (@Alex_Jones94) August 12, 2016
17.03 BST: End of a saga? West Bromwich Albion striker Saido Berahino has told the club he plans to see out his contract before leaving for free next summer, sources close to the player have told ESPN FC.
Berahino's future has been the subject of speculation for several months, with West Brom rejecting bids from Stoke and Crystal Palace.
16.59 BST: DONE DEAL League One Fleetwood Town have brought in Burnley striker Chris Long on a season-long loan:
16.00 BST: DONE DEAL Middlesbrough have completed the signing of defender Fabio Da Silva, who joins from Cardiff for an undisclosed fee and has signed a two-year deal:
15.44 BST: DONE DEAL Scottish attacker Greg Stewart has completed a move from Dundee to Birmingham City. He joins the Midlands club for an undisclosed fee and has signed a three-year contract.
15.16 BST: West London Sport reports that QPR, whose boss Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink wants to sign another striker, are interested in Hamburg forward Sven Schipplock.
15.09 BST: Championship club Leeds have moved a step closer to signing defender Liam Bridcutt from Sunderland after he agreed a deal to sever the final year of his contract, the Yorkshire Post has reported.
It says the two clubs "have been negotiating a permanent transfer throughout the summer following the midfielder's successful loan spell at Elland Road last season -- only for progress to be held up by haggling over the termination of his deal on Wearside."
14.49 BST: And here is Traore arriving in Amsterdam:
Bertrand Traoré is gearriveerd op de Toekomst! ⚽️���� #WelkomTraore pic.twitter.com/0snbmh2khu - AFC Ajax (@AFCAjax) August 12, 2016
14.37 BST: DONE DEAL Chelsea attacker Bertrand Traore has joined Ajax on loan for the season after signing a new three-year deal at Stamford Bridge.
Bertrand Traore has signed a new three-year contract with Chelsea and joins Ajax on loan for the 2016/17 campaign... https://t.co/ST7UOY4OOF - Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) August 12, 2016
14.24 BST: DONE DEAL Sheffield United have brought in winger Harry Chapman from Middlesbrough on a season-long loan deal:
Middlesbrough winger Harry Chapman arrives at Bramall Lane on a season-long loan #twitterblades pic.twitter.com/BSLxt4fLoE - Sheffield United (@SUFC_tweets) August 12, 2016
14.07 BST: Leicester defender Liam Moore has reacted angrily on Twitter to reports about his future. Moore has been linked with a move to Reading, Leeds and Bristol City and claims "I have no squad number, now no place in the 1st team dressing room now training with the u21s."
@NEWSLCFC for your information I have no squad number, now no place in the 1st team dressing room now training with the u21s. Yet haven't - Liam Moore (@liammoore93) August 12, 2016
The 23-year-old added that he has "Just kept my head down worked hard and asked for some kind of stability" before ending on "I like to stay quiet on things like this as don't think it should be plastered all over here".
13.54 BST: Aston Villa have a DONE DEAL to announce -- they've signed James Chester from West Bromwich Albion on a four-year contract.
Transfer news: James Chester has joined us on a four year deal. #AVFC #WelcomeJames pic.twitter.com/trh13GITyG - Aston Villa FC (@AVFCOfficial) August 12, 2016
13.38 BST: Manchester United have wished Adnan Januzaj all the best at Sunderland. Can he rediscover the spark that made him such an Old Trafford hit under David Moyes' management?
All the best to Adnan Januzaj, who follows Paddy McNair and Donald Love to Sunderland on a season-long loan. #MUFC pic.twitter.com/SGIY6hdKym - Manchester United (@ManUtd) August 12, 2016
13.32 BST More from Sunderland, where manager David Moyes has said he intends to keep defender Lamine Kone, a reported target for Everton:
MOYES: "Lamine is a big part of the team, the fans like him and we need him." - Sunderland AFC (@SunderlandAFC) August 12, 2016
13.03 BST: DONE DEAL Manchester United winger Adnan Januzaj has, as long mooted, joined Sunderland on loan where he links up with former Old Trafford manager David Moyes:
12.43 BST: DONE DEAL Rotherham United have added to their defensive options by completing the permanent signing of Tottenham's Dominic Ball:
SIGNING | #rufc can confirm the signing of Dominic Ball from @SpursOfficial for an undisclosed fee on a 3 year deal pic.twitter.com/M36xhcyGKr - Rotherham United (@OfficialRUFC) August 12, 2016
12.41 BST: Inter Milan president Erick Thohir has said he will provide backing for new coach Frank De Boer in the transfer market and thanked Roberto Mancini for the job he did.
Thorir met De Boer on a visit to the club's Appiano Gentile training centre on Thursday and told Inter Channel he would make funds available for the Dutchman's transfer targets.
12.21 BST: DONE DEAL Queens Park Rangers defender Darnell Furlong has moved to League One Swindon on a season-long loan deal:
DONE DEAL: Town have completed the signing of @DarnellFurlong on a season-long loan from QPR. #STFC pic.twitter.com/YZ79dnmCTx - Swindon Town FC (@Official_STFC) August 12, 2016
12.15 BST: Chelsea striker Patrick Bamford is set to join Aston Villa on loan, sources have told ESPN FC. Bamford has recently had loan spells at Middlesbrough and Norwich.
12.04 BST: There's a DONE DEAL in Italy where Lazio have announced the signing of Moritz Leitner from Borussia Dortmund.
11.52 BST: Portugal international Joao Mario could be Inter Milan's first signing under Frank De Boer, according to Gazzetta dello Sport.
The Sporting Lisbon midfielder is linked with a €40m move and a five-year contract.
11.40 BST: Timothy Fosu-Mensah has agreed a new long-term deal to stay at Manchester United, according to British newspaper reports.
The Daily Telegraph claims he will sign a new four-year contract with the Daily Mail adding an official announcement will take place in the coming days.
11.32 BST: Everton will be one of the busier clubs before the transfer window closes, if Ronald Koeman gets his way at least.
ICYMI: When asked about his squad, @ronaldkoeman says the Blues are hoping to add 'three or four' more signings.https://t.co/x26T06XWwy - Everton (@Everton) August 11, 2016
The Toffees have signed Maarten Stekelenburg, Idrissa Gueye and Ashley Williams so far this summer.
11.20 BST: Gillingham is the latest stop for former Tottenham, Portsmouth, Wolves, Blackpool and Fulham midfielder Jamie O'Hara.
O'Hara, who is originally from the area, has signed a two-year deal.
He told the club's official website: "I moved back home to Dartford over the summer, and I spoke to Justin [Edinburgh, Gills manager] a lot, and the move felt right. I know the club really well, my family have season tickets here, and I think Gillingham are a club going places."
11.09 BST: Barcelona dropped out of the bidding for Paul Pogba this summer because of his inflated price tag, according to the Catalan club's international transfer advisor Ariedo Braida.
"Nobody is worth that amount of money," he said. "All footballers are overvalued. When you reach such levels, the gap to normality is truly too great. We're talking about an operation of €150m, excluding the salary. How must one feel to be overvalued? Probably they don't think about it, otherwise they would not be able to play. The pressure must be enormous."
10.57 BST: Lamine Kone has asked to leave Sunderland just days before the start of the new Premier League season as Everton lead the chase for his signature.
Kone reportedly travelled to Merseyside earlier this week with a view to pushing through an £18 million move to Goodison Park, where the Toffees are looking to rebuild their defence following John Stones' £47.5m departure for Manchester City.
10.42 BST: Aston Villa have wasted little time following defeats against Sheffield Wednesday and Luton in their opening two games with manager Roberto Di Matteo confirming they want to sign James Chester from West Bromwich Albion.
RDM confirms #AVFC in negotiations for the transfer of #WBA defender James Chester. "We hope he comes here." pic.twitter.com/TJdCmnNWGP - Aston Villa FC (@AVFCOfficial) August 12, 2016
Villa are also linked with a move for Crystal Palace midfielder Mile Jedinak.
10.34 BST: Schalke sporting director Christian Heidel has said they will sign more players this summer. So far Breel Embolo, Coke, Naldo and Baba Rahman have arrived at the Bundesliga club as they plan to regain Champions League football.
Heidel told Sky Sport News Germany: "You have to get used to it that I don't give any updates. But that doesn't mean that we are putting our feet up. We're active and nobody has to worry New players will arrive at Schalke this summer. I don't want to be put under pressure, my concern is with the result."
10.18 BST: Southampton have started the day with good news by announcing that Dusan Tadic has signed a new four-year contract.
We're delighted to announce playmaker Dušan Tadić has signed a new four-year contract with #SaintsFC: https://t.co/rZ4XwYFtJR - Southampton FC (@SouthamptonFC) August 12, 2016
In two seasons with the Saints, Tadic has managed 11 goals and 14 assists.He told Southampton's official website: "I am really pleased. I have had two beautiful years here and a great connection with the supporters and everyone in the club -- all the players and the staff.
"I am really happy that I have signed a new contract. The club showed a lot of effort to keep me. There were also other possibilities, but we recognised that the best is that I stay in Southampton, and I want to mention they put in a lot of effort for that, and I appreciate that."
10.03 BST: Livorno forward Andrea Favilli is happy to be linked with Real Madrid, according to his agent.
"There is interest to stay in Italy, now he is just thinking about training with Livorno," Rispoli said. "Obviously the rumours linked to Real Madrid are very good. Even some Spanish journalists rang me to ask what was happening with Los Blancos, and we are happy about this."
09.47 BST: More from Arsene Wenger's news conference this morning via ESPN FC's Arsenal correspondent Mattias Karen.
Wenger on transfers: "If we find somebody who will strengthen our team in any position and gives us a superior quality, we'll do it."
Wenger says there's no progress on Ozil, Sanchez contracts but that "there is no reason for Arsenal fans to be concerned."
09.30 BST: The plot thickens... In Spain SuperDeporte reports that Shkodran Mustafi's father claims to know nothing of interest from Arsenal.
Buenos días!! #FelizViernes a todos!! Aquí os dejamos la portada de hoy!! pic.twitter.com/Mx8dB164gz - Superdeporte (@superdeporte_es) August 12, 2016
09.22 BST: Arsene Wenger is giving his first prematch news conference of the season and the Arsenal manager has spoken about the chances of signing Shkodran Mustafi from Valencia.
Wenger says "I can't tell you" anything about a deal for Mustafi. - Mattias Karén (@MattiasKaren) August 12, 2016
09.17 BST: Bayern Munich striker Robert Lewandowski says he is in no rush to decide his future, as he has another three years left on his contract.
"My contract theoretically expires in 2019, which is still a long time. My focus is on the preseason and season," Lewandowski told Sky Sport News Germany. "We can always have talks and find a solution, but it's not an important subject for me at the moment. My deal will hold valid for three years, it's best if everybody keeps calm for now."
08.57 BST: Melbourne City have released Jacob Melling and Jack Clisby, allowing the pair to pursue another opportunity in the A-League.
08.30 BST: Sassuolo have expressed an interest in signing Mario Balotelli from Liverpool, according to the cousin of the Italian forward's agent Mino Raiola.
PAPER TALK
Mustafi closing on Arsenal move
Arsenal have agreed a five-year contract to sign Shkodran Mustafi from Valencia, according to reports, with the deal to be announced before their Premier League opener against Liverpool on Sunday.
An agreement between the two clubs is not in place but described in the report as "a formality" with the 24-year-old expected to undergo a medical.
The £30m transfer would be Arsenal's second major signing of the summer following the arrival of Granit Xhaka and would give Arsenal a much-needed option in defence with Laurent Koscielny having taken an extended break following Euro 2016 and Per Mertesacker and Gabriel injured.
Benteke West Brom bound?
With deals for Paul Pogba and John Stones now complete there is a vacancy for the next long-running transfer saga of the summer and Liverpool striker Christian Benteke has his eye on making it his own.
Linked with a move to Crystal Palace, the 25-year-old Belgium international is now being lined up by West Bromwich Albion too. It is claimed Liverpool want to recoup most of the £32.5m they paid out for Benteke 12 months ago and that might be possible thanks to the newly rich Baggies who were the subject of a takeover just last week.
Benteke may not be the only target, though. The Daily Mail claims Tony Pulis is also considering £25m-rated Sporting Lisbon striker Islam Slimani, Aston Villa's Jordan Ayew, Charlie Taylor of Leeds, and Leicester's Jeffrey Schlupp as he looks to take advantage of the club's new spending power to strengthen his squad.
Tap-Ins
- Juventus have turned their attention to signing Blaise Matuidi to replace Paul Pogba after Antonio Conte convinced Nemanja Matic to reject a move to Italy and remain in the Premier League with Chelsea.
According to the Daily Mail, Matic, who was also a target for Manchester United earlier this summer, has an attractive contract offer from Serie A champions Juve who are attempting to build a squad capable of challenging for the Champions League.
- Manchester United defender Daley Blind has emerged as a target for his former manager Frank de Boer at Inter Milan. The pair won four Eredivisie titles together at Ajax between 2010 and 2014 and La Gazzetta dello Sport claims a reunion could be on the cards at the San Siro.
- The signings show no sign of slowing down at Liverpool, who are set to add Juanma to their squad after the 19-year-old defender impressed during a trial. The Liverpool Echo reports that, subject to a medical, the former Barcelona man will link up with the Reds' under-23 team this season.Ever since Warner Bros announced plans to do a movie remake of the hit TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer last year, the show's creator Joss Whedon and stars Sarah Michelle Gellar and Nicholas Brendan have all publicly called the idea to reboot the series a terrible one.
Now, half-Spanish actress Charisma Carpenter tells Latina.com what she thinks about the idea to reboot Buffy. "Personally I think it stinks," said Charisma, who played the popular high school mean girl Cordelia Chase on the hit series. "It's just an opportunity to take something that was loved and cherished and lucrative and franchise it—and make more money from it."
EXCLUSIVE: Charisma Carpenter: "You Need To Get It Out That I'm A Proud Latina!"
Last year, when plans to reboot the series were first announced, it was widely reported that Warner Bros was not looking to hire Joss Whedon (the creator of the TV show) to direct the movie adaptation. Charisma says excluding Joss is also a really bad idea. "I'm on Twitter, I'm @AllCharisma, and all of the fans that are on my Twitter say, 'that makes no sense. Why wouldn't they involve Joss?' she says.
"To not include the creator is insulting," she adds.
We asked Charisma what she would think if Warner Bros were to recast all of the roles from the hit show—including her character Cordelia Chase—with a new generation of actors. "They do that with a lot of shows," she replied. "Gilligan's Island did that. Lots of shows over the course of history have recast— but it was never like the first time. The chemistry between each of our characters and the years that we had to develop it—you know, these people that I worked with, I worked with for seven to eight years of my life from Monday through Friday and it was very intense long hours. So to duplicate that, good luck,' she said.
EXCLUSIVE: Charisma Carpenter on Julie Benz’s Wedding: “I Was Asked To Be a Bridesmaid!”
But Charisma does have an idea that she thinks will help the reboot. "Just leave it alone," she says. "Leave good alone. It was brilliant what it did and what it meant to people is sentimental. To try and cultivate that with a whole new group—for what? The answer is that it's money and that's not a good motivation for anything," she said.
We asked Charisma if she still hangs out with some of her old Buffy pals. "Yes!" she said. "I'm in touch with David {Boreanaz} and Julie {Benz} mostly and a little bit of Alyson Hannigan. I adore Amy Acker. I would be happy to visit with them again. We hang out!" she said.One of the jet skis thrown from the trailer after the pick-up truck hit several vehicles including a police car Monday night (Photo: WBOC)
CAMBRIDGE, Md.- A 49-year-old man is facing attempted murder and related charges after his pickup truck hauling two jet skis struck several vehicles before colliding head-on with a Cambridge police car on Monday night.
Cambridge police said the incident happened just before 9 p.m. on Locust Street. Witnesses on the scene tell WBOC a pickup truck, hauling two jet skis, was driving down Locust Street when it hit several parked cars. The witnesses said the truck then continued on and hit a marked Cambridge police car head-on.
Cambridge Police Chief Daniel Dvorak said the driver of the pickup truck, identified as Craig Martin Souris, of Cambridge, was injured and flown to Peninsula Regional Medical Center in Salisbury. The police officer, who has not yet been identified, was also taken to the hospital for his injuries. He is expected to make a full recovery, according to Dvorak.
Dvorak said that all told, 20 cars were involved in the incident.
Maryland State Police and the Dorchester County Sheriff's Office are assisting in the investigation.
Souris is charged with first- and second-degree attempted murder, first- and second-degree assault, second-dgree assault on law enforcement and reckless endangerment. He is being held without bond. Police said they are awaiting toxicology results to see if drugs or alcohol were a factor in the incident.During GAMA this year, Games Workshop made a major announcement that they were lifting several restrictions in regards to online selling of their product. Starting in May 2017, online websites will be allowed to list products along with pictures and descriptions. Games Workshop products can now be bought and sold just like everything else listed on our website. There will be a M.A.P. (Minimum Advertised Price) associated with these products at 15% off of the SRP.
Over the next few weeks we are going to be stocking up and making room in our warehouse for more than 1,000 Games Workshop products. When the restriction is lifted, we will send out an email notifying everyone once the items are available for purchase. We will not be selling any Games Workshop products prior to that date. Be sure to sign up for our Games Workshop newsletter to be notified of product updates and news.
But wait: there’s more …..
In addition to carrying their products on our website, we also want to help build the Games Workshop community. From 2009 to 2011 our local retail shop in St Louis would frequently host Games Workshop events. There would often be 30 to 40 people in attendance. We plan to bring these events back to our retail storefront. The St Louis gaming community has been missing a reliable place to play and we hope to fill that void. To be notified of local Games Workshop events, please be sure to sign up for our Retail Store Events newsletter.
Finally, two years ago we created a section on our website called the Review Corner. We have more than 1,000 reviews from gamers and we plan to expand this section to include table top games. Games Workshop reviews and podcasts will be a major addition to the Review Corner in 2017.
Steve
CEOThis is the last of a series of comics by my fellow webcomic creators and the creme de la creme of visual entries to the FutureWorldProblems contest I mentioned the other day. If you like this charming entry, check out the original post with FutureWorldProblems here, or the first comic on the subject here.
Today’s comic is by Bill “All New Issues” Ellis. I caught a link to Bill’s stuff through Girls With Slingshots a couple months back, and have been reading ever since. All New Issues is the tale of comic book collectors, drinkers, and graphic designers. You can see why I might be on board with such a comic.
I had the pleasure of meeting Bill (and seeing his cohort Danielle again) at Wild Pig Con 1 a couple months back and see them again at WPC2 a couple weeks ago. While their comic is only 40 pages in, it is off to a great start. Be sure to check it out here.
Tomorrow we go back to the normal insanity that is The System drawn by myself, though I admit I’m going to miss the #FutureWorldProblems posts. Have you been enjoying the guest time? Found any new comics to like? Like all the #FutureWorldProblems jokes? I’m listening, so post your thoughts in the comments.Climategates I and II have done enormous damage to the ‘science’ underpinning the alarmist view of man-made CO2 driven global warming. From the exposure of the ‘hide the decline’ trick which destroys the hockey stick graph, to the realization that the unaltered, clearly represented data and results from the CRU actually cannot prove today’s climate is any warmer or cooler than previous period, to the shoddy code exposed in Climategate I, the mathematical confidence underlying the alarmists claims has been rotting away. See here for many, many posts over two years on where the math does not meet the claims.
I am here to attempt to uncover the final straw that should (in any other scientific field) provide the final nail in the coffin of alarmists claims. As I have said many times, if the claim that today’s climate cannot be accurately compared to the well documented Medieval, Roman and Bronze age warming periods, then there is no way to claim the Earth is experiencing runaway warming due to anything (let alone human generated CO2).
The entire proxy and tree ring paleoclimate effort (historic climate derived indirectly from geological, chemical or biological indicators) is founded on the assumption that the Uniformitarian Principle used in geology can be applied to biological and global climate systems. This is patently absurd!
Here is what the Uniformitarian Principle requires in order for the paleoclimate results to have a shred of confidence:
The theory that all geologic phenomena may be explained as the result of existing forces having operated uniformly from the origin of the earth to the present time.
In terms of plate tectonics, mountain building, erosion, etc this is a valid assumption. It means the complete set of physical interactions that drive a geological system today are EXACTLY the same in past periods, so we can compare today and infer the past. This is why we can measure erosion in rivers or in ancient mountain ranges and infer how Niagara Falls was created and migrated to its current location, or how The Great Lakes formed from the last glacial retreat, etc.
But it makes NO SENSE when talking about biological systems and how they respond annually to the local environment (which is NOT local climate). When searching the Climategate II emails I discovered this statement (email #2836) from Keith Briffa in July of 2009 referring to a NERC project that was/is addressing the ‘decline’ seen in tree rings so sinisterly hidden by Mann and Jones circa 2000:
Palaeoclimate reconstructions extend our knowledge of how climate varied in times before expansive networks of measuring instruments became available. … Inferences about variations in past climate, based on this understanding, necessarily assume that the associations we observe now hold true throughout the period for which reconstructions are made. This is the essence of the uniformitarian principle. … The existence of divergence casts doubt on the uniformitarian assumption that underpins a number of important tree-ring based (dendroclimatic) reconstructions.
The divergence of modern tree rings in the cherry picked proxies of some areas of the Northern Hemisphere (NH) with present day temperatures (1960-2010, the most accurate portion of the record) used to compare past and present tenps really shook the alarmist camp. It is no surprise why this disconnect between proxy and local temperature had to be hidden in the Hockey Stick graphs. This would undercut the entire alarmist case.
And we know from work by Jeff Condon at Air Vent that Briffa, Mann, et al cherry picked tree rings for proxies since there is no real clear temperature signal in the rings anyway. It must have been a shock to have the divergence show up after filtering for any signal they could pretend existed. This cherry picking in itself is a violation of the Uniformitarian Principle, because if the forces or indicators are IDENTICAL in all cases, then all tree rings should have a clear and unambiguous temperature signal of the same order. Since they had to cherry pick to find rings with a signal, then it is obvious rings do not respond to temp in an identical fashion (over time, space, altitude or whatever).
An October 1999 email (#1731) from Jones in response to some comments makes it clear how foundational this assumption is to IPCC:
His two points are basically wrong! 1) ‘Patterns during the 20th century are applicable to earlier epochs’. This assumption applies to all paleo reconstruction papers ever written. OK, it is an assumption called the ‘Principal of Uniformitarianism’ and we could have stated it clearer, but it is one that has been made by countless thousands before us. If it is not valid we might as well give up.
So, is the long held assumption that identical processes are in place over 1000 years for a stand of trees in a large region valid? Of course not. As many have pointed out tree rings are influenced by numerous factors that would overpower any temperature impact. These include amount of water available, amount of nutrients (which in turn can be influenced by fire, wind damage, migration paths of animals that deposit fertilizer, pestilence, etc), sunny days, canopy, early warm or late warm starts for spring, etc.
Each year over the centuries that these dynamic ‘eco systems’ existed around trees measured for temperatures, the Uniformitarian Principle was violated in so many ways it is absurd to make the argument it could ever apply. As Phil Jones said: they should just give up and start over.
Even worse, the biological proxy itself is not unchanged over this time. Genetically each species has evolved since the Medieval Warm Period. Therefore its response to the widely fluctuating local climate has also changed. It’s response to pestilence is different. Its efficiencies in nutrient or solar processing has evolved. Everything has changed as a species to some degree.
In email #4454 there is a great debate on when one cannot apply the Uniformitarian Principle to paleoclimate factors. Here is a snippet:
>David M. Lawrence wrote:
> > Uniformitarianism is perfectly appropriate here. Just because there are individual variations in a process,
> > whether in stomatal response to water stress or in erosion and deposition rates of sandbars, doesn’t mean
> > that one cannot make generalizations of how the process works for all from observations of how the
> > process works in some. … >Nope, I don’t think so. You have found yourself forced to resort to generalisations: stomata respond.
>Uniformatarianism is exact. Not “nearly the same” but “the same”. If you could guarantee that the
>biochemistry and the genetics of the plant species were exactly the same, then I would agree. But you can’t
>assert that. Quartz sand IS exactly the same over time – no genetic variation.
>
>Hil … Water availability is not the only regulatory factor and is not directly responsible for the turgor of guard cells. The turgor pressure of the guard cells is regulated by alteration of the osmotic potential of the cytoplasm (H and Ca ion transport across the plasma membrane) in response to stimuli including ABA in terms of drought stress or the internal CO2 concentration, resulting in the changes in Water Use Efficiency, which is increased in elevated CO2 environments. Even mechanical stress, such as that induced by wind sway, can result in a short term closure of stomata. Mutants in the production of ABA or sensitivity to ABA have very altered stomatal responses. This implies a genetic component to stomatal function, so I’d be hard pressed to generalize that “all guard cells work in the same way” with out really investigating each tree one samples to verify that ‘hypothesis’. Frank
What this exposes is the foundational fault in ALL Alarmist AGW claims. Without unambiguous proof today is significantly warmer than prior periods, there is no fire for the alarm bells. There is no runaway global warming.
And if this logical, scientific argument is not enough, then let me allow one Keith Briffa to communicate his until now hidden views (email #2999; July 2007):
Subsequentlty other researchers have reported “divergence” phenomena, but again associated with high latitudes only. There is as yet, no definitive answer or even concensus that these studies represent the same phenomenon. Most suggested “solutions” (see Rob’s comments)to the cause are problematic and it is important to study the nature and possible causes further. At present such studies are hampered by a lack of recent tree-ring and tree-density data (especially post 1980). The answer may lie in a mixture of methodological and biological factors. … Tree-ring based and virtually all proxy reconstructions (including of the NH) are subject to large statistical uncertainty, arising out of diminishing quality and coverage of predictors back in time. The methods used to translate these data into quantitative estimates of past temperatures also assume uniformitarianism in the relationships between predictors and predictand. This is hard if not impossible to prove.
Briffa goes on to point out humankind has changed the environment, so the principle will not hold for that reason as well. But even if humankind did not have an impact, the forces of evolution and the dynmnics of annual diversity for any ecosystem nullifies the use of this foundational assumption.
Therefore, the house of cards that is the AGW theory of human produced CO2 in the atmosphere has NO scientific or mathematical basis. None.Forty people are facing prosecution after police raids in west and central Africa rescued nearly 500 victims of human trafficking, Interpol said on Thursday.
Raids were carried out in Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal as part of a German foreign ministry funded initiative targeting organized crime in the region.
Of the nearly 500 people rescued, 236 were children, Interpol said in an emailed statement. The operation happened between November 6 and 10, it added later.
Those arrested are accused of forcing their victims into begging and prostitution and face charges including human trafficking, forced labor and child exploitation.
In one case, a 16-year-old Nigerian girl was duped into thinking she would be working in Mali but was instead made to go into sex work to pay back her travel costs to a "sponsor".
Police inspector Yoro Traore, from Interpol in Mali's capital, Bamako, said the operation -- codenamed Epervier or Sparrowhawk -- had been effective.
"This operation has opened a number of ongoing investigations to further disrupt the crime networks involved in trafficking human beings," he said.
Focus in recent years has largely been on the west Africans trying to reach Europe via the treacherous route on the Mediterranean Sea.
Most are undocumented migrants seeking to flee poverty. But the same factors see migration between countries in west and central Africa.
Organized crime groups also take advantage of desperation to earn, as well as porous borders and ease of travel between members states of the regional bloc ECOWAS.Fresh off his reelection as House speaker Wednesday afternoon, John Boehner emphasized the need for bold leadership in order to repair the ailing economy, telling reporters that job creation remains the top priority for congressional Republicans.
"Our majority is a primary line of defense for the American people against a government that spends too much, borrows too much when left unchecked," said Boehner, R-Ohio. "With so many challenges that are ahead of us, the American people need to see us act courageously, think selflessly and lead boldly. And our majority is up to the task, and I expect the president is, as well."
A short time earlier, the House Republican Conference voted Boehner in to another two-year term as speaker.
Boehner rejected the president's call earlier Wednesday for House Republicans to quickly pass Senate legislation that would extend middle class tax cuts, and he alternatively called on the Senate to take up House-passed legislation to extend all of the current tax rates for one year.
"Instead of the House moving on the Senate bill, the Senate ought to move on the House bill," Boehner said. "We are not going to hurt our economy and make job creation more difficult, which is exactly what that plan would do. It's not the direction that we want to go because it's going to hurt job creators in America."
Boehner is set to join President Obama, Senate Majority Harry Reid, D-Nev., Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., at the White House on Friday to begin conversations on the fiscal cliff.
The fiscal cliff, which includes expiring tax cuts for the rich and middle class, $1 trillion in automatic spending cuts set to take effect next year, and a debt limit increase, remains the most daunting challenge for Congress during the lame duck session.
Despite the vast disagreement between Republicans and Democrats on taxes, the speaker said he remains "optimistic" that leaders will be able to avert a crisis.
"If you've looked closely at what the president had to say and you look closely at what I have had to say, you know, there are not barriers here to sitting down and beginning to work through this process," Boehner said. "I don't think anyone on either side of the aisle underestimates the difficulty that faces us.
"You've got members on both sides of the aisle, you know, who have their own ideas about how to resolve this," he added. "If we stay focused on what's in the best interest of our country and what's in the best interests of the American people, I'm confident that this issue can be resolved."Pin +1 0 Shares
By Dr. Paul Eastwick, in collaboration with Drs. Eli Finkel, Ben Karney, Harry Reis, & Sue Sprecher*
*The latter four authors are listed alphabetically
For centuries, entrepreneurial types have claimed to possess the secrets of romantic attraction, promising that their charms, potions, or drugs are the solution to the search for a perfect mate. With the rise and now ubiquity of the Internet, those offers have moved online and become increasingly sophisticated, but the promise remains the same.
Now, the potions come in the form of mathematical matching algorithms, a new alchemy that takes the basic elements of people—their attitudes, values, and personalities |
, said he is running "because I believe we deserve a representative who puts Utah first." His post noted his pioneer ancestors, as well as his father's time in politics.
"I learned from watching my father's career in public service that listening is more important than talking and that you always answer to the people you represent — not a political party or special interests in Washington," Owens said.
Owens was not available Tuesday for interviews about his announcement. He had been talking about a rematch with the former Saratoga Springs mayor since coming within four points of a win in 2014.
"The timing is a little curious," University of Utah political science professor Matthew Burbank said, especially since Owens did not follow up his posts with interviews. "It doesn't seem like it's well-planned from the kicking off the campaign perspective."
Burbank was also taken aback by Hansen's threat of a negative campaign.
"That's not what I would have expected him to say. It is a little surprising given the dynamic this time around," he said, since Love is now an incumbent seeking re-election. "It does seem like an odd tone."
Another U. political science professor, Tim Chambless, labeled Hansen's strong words as a "pre-emptive strike" in the campaign. Chambless, affiliated with the U.'s Hinckley Institute of Politics, said he expects the race to be close.
"She's going to have a record to defend," he said. "We'll see. So far, she has not misstepped. She has not said something or done something that has been out of the ordinary."
As a newcomer to Congress, Love has focused on learning the job, not making speeches and television appearances as the first black Republican woman in Congress, Burbank said.
"I think that will work just fine for her," he said. "There haven't been any mistakes. There haven't been any big problems."
Love attracted national attention when she first challenged Matheson in 2012. Matheson, the last Democrat to represent Utah in Congress, was narrowly re-elected then to a seventh term.
Because Matheson's decision not to run again didn't come until less than a year before the election, Owens got a late start last time, Chambless said, something he obviously wants to avoid.
By declaring his candidacy, Owens will not only be able to raise money, he'll also be able to campaign in the district while Love is in Washington, D.C., potentially a big advantage, Chambless said.
Love filed for re-election on July 16 with the Federal Election Commission and reported raising more than $515,000 in the second quarter of the year for a total of more than $1.1 million so far this election cycle.
Her contributions include money from a number of political action committees associated with banking interests. Love is a member of the House Financial Services Committee, which has jurisdiction over the banking industry.
Utah Democratic Party Chairman Peter Corroon said what he called a "flood of PAC money flowing into Rep. Love's campaign is troubling" and that her appointment to the committee "has benefited her campaign war chest."
Hansen said the same people criticizing Love for accepting the contributions supported Matheson, who also received plenty of money from political action committees over the years.
"That's just kind of a natural progression in fundraising," Hansen said, when candidates move from being a challenger to an incumbent. "That's the way the process operates."
He said donors "like the job she's doing on financial services and make contributions to ensure she stays there." Her priority, Hansen said, continues to be representing the 4th District, when extends from Salt Lake County's west side to Sanpete County.
Corroon said he's excited Owens has decided to run because he "prioritizes the issues Utahns care about — education, pro-business reform, health care and the idea of giving a person a hand up when he's down, not a hand out."
The Democratic leader said he believes that if voters "take the time to get to know the issues and the candidates, they'll realize Doug Owens is overwhelmingly the right choice."
But Utah GOP Chairman James Evans said the likelihood that the Democratic nominee for president will be Hillary Clinton will hurt Owens. Former President Bill Clinton, her husband, finished third in Utah in 1992.
"I am confident that when the dust settles in November, not only will Congresswoman Love be re-elected, but she will be re-elected with a signficantly larger majority," Evans said.
Love spent more than $5 million to defeat Owens in 2014. She claimed throughout the race he ran a negative campaign that distorted statements she had made in her 2012 race about eliminating the U.S. Department of Education and other issues.
As Owens rose in the polls, Love launched a TV commercial late in the race that featured President Barack Obama and told voters, "We can do better than the policies of Obama and his Democrat candidates."
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Related StoriesNetflix is finally explaining why they didn’t pick up Agent Carter.
When ABC axed the series after two seasons in May, fans held their breath hoping the streaming company would swoop in and add Carter to its mounting collection of Marvel titles, such as Daredevil and Jessica Jones. Instead, Carter became Marvel’s first canceled title in this modern era.
We asked Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos what about the series did not work for his company.
“We’re looking for truly original brands to own,” he says, “and in that Marvel space we already have [original comic book shows] — so that was mostly why.”
Netflix also tries to own and distribute its titles worldwide, releasing seasons globally and simultaneously, and the structure of Marvel’s existing international deals for Agent Carter made that tricky. “They also have some output deal complexities,” he adds. “So when you pick it up, being able to pick it up globally is difficult even after it’s canceled. Some of those output partners still had it on the air, so they would argue its covered by their output [deals]. Unfortunately, it was a business decision more than a creative one.”UPDATE:
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Hamza Kashgari has been detained in Malaysia. He was detained yesterday at the Kuala Lumpur International airport, the Journal reports, citing Malaysia’s state news service.
Amnesty International has confirmed that Hamza Kashgari is being held in Malaysia at an undisclosed location. He was arrested Thursday morning, Malaysia time, as he tried to board an 8:50am flight to New Zealand, where friends told the Daily Beast Kashgari hoped to apply for asylum.
Cilina Nasser, a researcher in Amnesty’s North Africa and Middle East program, tells the Daily Beast that Kashgari may be at “imminent risk” of deportation to Saudi Arabia, where he could face charges of apostasy, which is punishable by death. “We are calling on the Malaysian authorities to immediately disclose the location where Hamza is being held and to immediately grant him access to his lawyer,” she says.
While it remains unclear whether the Saudi authorities have made an official extradition request, Nasser says, Amnesty believes the Saudi authorities may have requested Kashgari’s arrest in Malaysia. “We call on the Malaysian government to stop any deportation proceedings that may have started,” she says.
A friend of Kashgari’s, who asked not to be named, told The Daily Beast on Wednesday that she had accompanied him to the airport and witnessed his detention. “We were just watching him, waiting for him to pass the immigration checkpoint. Once he submitted his passport, they asked him to step away for a few minutes,” the friend said, still noticeably shaken. “And suddenly these two people without uniforms just arrested him.”
A spokesman for the Malaysian police confirmed Hashgari’s detention to Reuters today, saying that the arrest was “part of an Interpol operation which the Malaysian police were a part of.”
Last week, just before the anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad’s birth, Hamza Kashgari, a 23-year-old Saudi writer in Jidda, took to his Twitter feed to reflect on the occasion.
“On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you’ve always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you,” he wrote in one tweet.
“On your birthday, I find you wherever I turn. I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more,” he wrote in a second.
“On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile at you as you smile at me. I shall speak to you as a friend, no more,” he concluded in a third.
Twitter quickly flooded with responses to Kashgari, registering more than 30,000 within a day. He was accused of blasphemy, and enraged Saudis called for his death. By the time he removed the tweets and issued a long apology, backtracking on his comments and begging for forgiveness, the danger had already expanded beyond the Web. Someone posted Kashgari’s home address in a YouTube video, and, his friends say, vigilantes came looking for him at his local mosque. The Saudi information minister banned Kashgari’s local newspaper column and barred outlets across the country from publishing his work. Nasser al-Omar, an influential cleric, called for him to be tried in a Sharia court for apostasy, which is punishable by death. Other leading clerics decried Kashgari on their own, and Saudi Arabia’s council of senior scholars issued a rare and harshly worded communiqué condemning him and his tweets and demanding that he be put on trial. Yesterday, Saudi Arabia’s leading news site, SABQ, reported that the king himself had issued a warrant for Kashgari’s arrest.
With the pressure mounting, Kashgari fled to Southeast Asia earlier today. Hours later, in his first interview with the press, he told The Daily Beast that he was stunned by the turn of events but resigned to the fact that he can never return home. “It’s impossible. No way,” he said. “I’m afraid, and I don’t know where to go.” Kashgari says he is now planning to apply for asylum abroad.
Though Saudi Arabia has seen uproars over controversial newspaper articles or scholarly works before, no great calls for Sharia trials have ever sounded in the kingdom on account of a few tweets—and the furor has gone viral, snowballing into a bigger scandal than anything the country has seen in the recent past.
When he caught wind of the tweets, Fouad al-Farhan, a respected liberal and Saudi Arabia’s most influential blogger, knew Kashgari was in trouble. He quickly got in touch with the young writer and urged him to issue the apology. “Don’t try to be a hero,” he told him. “You will lose big time.”
By tweeting about the prophet, al-Farhan says, Kashgari crossed a line that even Saudi liberals won’t dare to touch. Even so, al-Farhan was surprised by the level of rage that Kashgari inspired, and how quickly it spread. In a span of just days, the issue came to dominate social media—from the onslaught of tweets under the hashtag #HamzahKashghri to vitriolic YouTube videos and a Facebook group, currently boasting nearly 8,000 members, called “The Saudi People Demand the Execution of Hamza Kashgari”—and reached all the way to top clerics and the king. “There was an amazing anger. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,” al-Farhan says, noting that the outrage in Saudi Arabia has exceeded even the levels seen after a Danish newspaper infamously published a cartoon of Muhammad in 2005.
“I think it’s because this is an extremely unique case. We’ve never had our own Salman Rushdie before. We’ve never had a case as extreme as this one of someone crossing the line,” al-Farhan says.
Al-Farhan has been harshly critical of Kashgari’s tweets. Even Kashgari’s friends, all of whom requested anonymity, say they’re reluctant to come to his defense—and have even felt the need to attack him themselves. “Everyone who tried to objectively deal with this case was immediately stigmatized and labeled an enemy of the prophet, who therefore should suffer the same fate Hamza is awaiting,” says one.
Adds another: “Right now we’re not worried about freedom of speech. We’re worried about the safety of our friend. And right now we can only help his safety if we condemn him, and [from there] try to rationalize what he said.”
Kashgari says he never expected such an outcry—“not even 1 percent.” But he knows the mindset of his critics well. He was raised as a religious conservative in a traditional Salafi community, becoming more liberal and “humanist,” in the words of one friend, as he grew older and embraced the Web. His writing also grew more provocative, particularly on Twitter, where he had attracted the ire of conservatives who kept a close eye on everything he wrote. Ahmed Al Omran, who keeps the popular blog Saudi Jeans, says it’s common for conservative activists to keep watch over liberal-minded social-media feeds. “They wait for the moment when they say something controversial to use it against them. Hamza is apparently one of the people they’ve been monitoring,” he says. “Most people feel strongly about the situation. But at the same time, I feel that conservatives are trying to take advantage of the situation, make an example out of him, and show their strength.”
Kashgari says he knew he was being watched online; since the controversy arose, someone released a compilation of his past tweets on the Web. “I knew I was being monitored. I considered it a form of psychological warfare,” he says. “But I didn’t give it that much attention, because I didn’t want them to think I was losing the battle.”
Kashgari has since deleted his Twitter account, and he says some like-minded friends have done the same. He declined to comment on his apology and retraction but insisted his battle was still not lost. “I view my actions as part of a process toward freedom. I was demanding my right to practice the most basic human rights—freedom of expression and thought—so nothing was done in vain,” he says. “I believe I’m just a scapegoat for a larger conflict. There are a lot of people like me in Saudi Arabia who are fighting for their rights.”iOS 9 built for security
two-factor authentication was introduced by Apple to preserve the use of user’s Apple Id for fraudulent purchases. However, it seems not sufficient to protect user’s files stored in the cloud. In June researchers at ElcomSoft, a Russian company specialized in the providing of forensics software for cracking passwords and system auditing, reported that in case an attacker was able to access user account credentials despite the Apple adopted a two-factor verification he is anyway able to access data stored in the user’s cloud account. Apple announced new security enhancements for its new operating system iOS 9. Thewas introduced by Apple to preserve the use of user’s Apple Id for fraudulent purchases. However, it seems not sufficient to protect user’s files stored in the cloud. In June researchers at, a Russian company specialized in the providing of forensics software for cracking passwords and system auditing, reported that in case an attacker was able to access user account credentials despite the Apple adopted a two-factor verification he is anyway able to access data stored in the user’s cloud account.
Revamped two-factor authentication process
(2FA), the improved two-factor authentication process is built directly into the operating system in order to make harder the access to the user’s Apple ID.
“Enhanced security features in iOS 9 keep your devices and Apple ID secure by strengthening the passcode that protects your devices and improving two-factor authentication by building it directly into iOS, making it harder for others to gain unauthorized access to your Apple ID. iOS 9 apps and the user interface now take advantage of Metal™ to deliver faster scrolling, smoother animation and better overall performance.” states Apple.
iOS devices come with new Touch ID technology designed to improve users’ security and the user experience. According to Apple fingerprint makes an unforgettable password.
iOS9 Jailbroken in No Time! Now Apple has implemented a stronger passcode and a revamped the two-factor authentication process, the improved two-factor authentication process is built directly into the operating system in order to make harder the access to the user’s Apple ID.devices come with new Touch ID technology designed to improve users’ security and the user experience. According to Apple fingerprint makes an unforgettable password.
Meanwhile, Apple praised the security of its iOS 9, just within 24 Hours after the launch the popular hacker ‘iH8sn0w’ announced the first untethered jailbreak for unreleased iOS 9. iH8sn0w is a well-known hacker who developed the popular jailbreak applications Sn0wbreeze and P0sixspwn.
The hacker published a video PoC on YouTube last night, demonstrating the untethered jailbreak for the iOS 9. iH8sn0w has demonstrated the jailbreak on his iPhone 5 running the iOS 9 GM seed. The video shows the iOS 9 jailbreak, including Verbose booting, Cydia, and code injection.
iH8sn0w confirmed his jailbreak works with the iOS 9.1 beta, both iOS 9 Gold Master (Build 13a340) and iOS 9.1 beta 1 (Build 13B5110e) versions are available for download on the Apple’s Developer Center.
Despite iH8sn0w announced he does not have any plans to release the Jailbreak but it is likely that other developers, like Pangu and TaiG team, will soon release their versions of the untethered iOS 9 jailbreak.
Must Read : Mabouia: The first MAC OS X Ransomware in the world
Also Read : Task Hijacking Attack: Another Dreaded Android Vulnerability iH8sn0w confirmed his jailbreak works with the iOS 9.1 beta, both iOS 9 Gold Master (Build 13a340) and iOS 9.1 beta 1 (Build 13B5110e) versions are available for download on theDespite iH8sn0w announced he does not have any plans to release the Jailbreak but it is likely that other developers, likeand, will soon release their versions of the untethered iOS 9 jailbreak.
On the wake ofand the consequent leak of the nude pictures of a number of celebrities, Apple has decided to strengthen its security. Apple announced the secure iOS 9 but a popular hacker demonstrated thein a video PoC before its release. The new version of the Apple OS, iOS 9, will be available from September 16th on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod. According to the security experts, it is designed to improve the security of its customers against a wide range of cyber threats.I am eating nachos on a cloudy day at Oakland’s Coliseum in a field box behind first base, when the extremely handsome man I am with offers to give me a massage. “Massaged while eating nachos” would be a pretty decent afternoon for anybody, but for two things: 1. We had just watched a randy older couple in matching Rollie Fingers jerseys gamely explore one another’s bodies in the seats in front of us, encouraged by the supportive hoots of the loudly day-drunk Athletics fans. 2. Because I am paying for the extremely handsome man’s company. A glob of nacho cheese falls off of a nacho I am holding and onto my knee. The handsome man takes a clean, white hand towel out of his bag and wipes the cheese off my leg with a smile. “Oopsie,” he says. I decline the massage. “ManServants” are not hookers. They are not escorts. They are not gigolos. Dalal Khajah and Josephine Wai Lin — the two women behind the freshly launched, completely real San Francisco business that sends attractive men to do the bidding of (mostly) female clients for an hourly rate — would emphatically like you to know this. “The Ladies” of ManServants (not my embroidery —“The ladies” is their shared email address) emphatically wanted me to know this when they made nervy, cautious arrangements for me to experience their “signature service” in the American citadel of sex work and absurd technological enterprise. The splash page of the company’s website promises “WHAT WOMEN REALLY WANT,” operating under the premise that while men would like to pay a woman to take her clothes off at a party, women would like to pay a man to come to a party and be nice to them. Though the men are available for a host of events, they are primarily intended to act as all-purpose-but-That-One entertainment for groups of women who want to spice up a girls’ night or hen party with some hard-core courtesy. Women, asserts ManServants, don’t actually want the female analogue of the bachelor party stripper. That stuff — the gyrating and the grinding and the ambient possibility of ejaculation — is men stuff. “It’s not a stripper who gets naked and rubs his greasy body all over you,” the site reassures or disappoints, depending on your idea of a good time. “It’s a ManServant: a gentleman who treats you like a queen. Book one for a bachelorette party or any gathering to be your personal photographer, bartender, bodyguard, and butler all in one.” The start-up, which is currently available only in San Francisco, feels equally motivated by the wedding industrial complex and a long night of flavored vodka: At its core, it’s Uber for good-looking men you can order around. I’d heard about ManServants over the summer when its wildly over-the-top video trailer lobbed a saucy pinecone at social media’s spotty wasp nest. It showed attractive women with perfect blowouts being attended to by a mostly white cadre of model-hot guys. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArxSNlfsgXQ One ManServant wheels a baby carriage for a woman in a cocktail gown. Another emerges from a pool in a tuxedo to refill a gorgeous woman’s champagne glass while the kind of music plays that you might hear in a hotel lobby and think, “Whoa, people in this building are probably having sex.” Tech Twitter responded rationally to the ManServants promo by eating its own head. Several blogs provided incredulity and outrage in both male and female flavors. There were many comments made in comments sections by people who write comments in comments sections. Comments like, “No women are going to use this” or “Women don’t need to pay for attention” or “Okay, no *hot* women will use this.” “But do they FUCK you?” everybody seemed to want to know. No. Not according to the literature. So if I have this straight (and I don’t know that I do), the idea is to provide a group of classy high-femme straight girls with a fully clothed, light-submissive Chippendale. A stripper who doesn’t strip. Khajah and Wai Lin both have advertising backgrounds, so some of the copy on their site is surprising in its schizophrenic, Manichean approach to female sexuality. Beneath the repeated oath that women don’t want to leer at a man’s body or see his penis is the promise that you can pick the exact kind of man’s body that you won’t leering at: “Blonde to brunette, James Bond to Middle-Earth, if your type lives to serve, we’ve got him,” they promise. Well, great. I’ve always wanted to not fuck James Bond.
The sum total seems less cheeky and fun than forbidding and legally problematic. ManServants are supposed to address you as “My lady” and respond to your demands with “As you wish.” As part of the “Standard Service,” your ManServant must also act as “a bodyguard” and “human shield against douchebags.” I’m the daughter of a personal-injury lawyer, so all I could think of is that if my ManServant decks an unlikely interloper during our chaste rendezvous, there’s no way I’m not going down for it. When it first gained internet notoriety, a lot of people thought ManServants was a spoof or hoax. And, conceptually, it is almost paradoxically retrograde. Yes, okay: I concede that some women may not want a set of oily testicles jingle-jangled in their faces before their big day. But what woman really wants a man to “always remain two steps ahead so she may gracefully make an entrance” or be sent “as a gift to a lady friend’s cubicle, so she’ll have a personal assistant for the day to do her bidding.” Personally, I would rather have the testicles in my face — or drink a large glass of lead paint. Choosing your ManServant is not the salacious exercise you might imagine, and feels a lot like ordering online from a large corporate pizza chain. I was hoping there would be some kind of lookbook for the men, so I could feel like a Reagan-era skeeze picking out a “girlfriend experience.” Alas, The Ladies choose the man who will be at your service, from their small stable of non-stitutes, via a fairly standard internet form. In fact, you don’t get to see any pictures at all — you only get to specify hair color, facial hair preference, age, and body type. I found the last category particularly lacking in diversity: your choices are “Lean,” “Toned,” and “Jacked.” I prefer a physique in the range from “just now sort of giving up” to “fanatical devotion to the outdated food pyramid.” However, lest you worry that there is not ample opportunity for the discomfort of ordering up a human being to obey you via the internet, never fear: You can also give him whatever name you want, and enumerate any crazy things you might want him to do via a special requests section. Don’t get too excited, though, as suggested special requests include “feeds you grapes while fanning you,” and not, say, “defecates on a glass coffee table while you lie underneath furiously masturbating.” An email from The Ladies with suggestions for my outings included one where a ManServant would “blast Beyoncé” while I walked “the hipster streets of San Francisco.” There were also a picnic, a piano bar, and a gasoline-huffingly tone-deaf trip to Whole Foods with a “sassy” ManServant who would “selectively pick out all the best organic produce, take kale shots with you, and throw an impromptu photo-shoot with the best-looking fruits.” Do you think they mean… GAY? Feeling like a sultan appraising a rich harem of mannequins, I settled on two ManServant experiences: a fancy girl’s night on the town, and an afternoon baseball game in deeply non-sexual Oakland.
I meet a friend at a hotel bar about an hour before we’re supposed to meet Theodore Roosevelt — which is what I named my first ManServant. This is because the ManServant form encouraged me to “get creative.” Accordingly, I have specified that my ManServant should be a brilliant expert in local history who also believes in ghosts. Theodore is meeting us at the Tonga Room, a touristy tiki bar in the Fairmont Hotel that I chose both for the absurdity of meeting a fake escort in a tiki bar and for the fact that our drinks will come served in bowls. I am as nervous as a person who is meeting an actual hooker. So I’m relieved when my friend Isa shows up carrying a gigantic vase and smelling vaguely of sauerkraut and ground beef. “What’s this?” I ask of the vase. She tells me that it’s a present for me. Her Cuban grandma recently died and they’re trying to get rid of all her stuff. I explain to Isa that I flew in from Los Angeles with only a weekend bag and cannot accept a two-foot-tall piece of pointy beveled glass. Isa says that’s fine, on our way to the Tonga Room she can stick it in her trunk, which, she admits, is mostly full of sauerkraut and ground beef. Isa is here at the behest of Josephine and Dalal. The co-founders fretted more or less constantly about whether or not I was going to imply that you could in any way fuck or fondle or otherwise molest their staff — so they asked repeatedly if I wouldn’t mind bringing a few of my local girlfriends with me on the two totally-on-the-up-and-up cheerful servitude excursions we planned for my coverage. I guess it would be a bit like having a party clown come to your house just for you, but it did not escape me that the attractive men were being protected from being alone with me. My only local “girlfriend” is Isa. We briefly attended a Cleveland-area Catholic school together. As a teenager, Isa was an asexual X-Files obsessive who loathed showering. The last time I had seen her, she had blossomed into an asexual X-Files obsessive who loathed showering. As we exchange a little small talk, it emerges that since I last saw her, Isa has moved out of her car and into her uncle’s garage. She is working as a tutor for wealthy unpleasant children, which we both agree is an exciting step. Isa’s sexuality has always been a bit of question mark for me, as she dresses kind of like a cross between a confident dad on a tropical vacation and a color-blind lesbian. Today, it’s cargo shorts and a paisley top with an aquamarine scarf wrapped around her neck. “And this is what you do now?” she asks. “Yes,” I said. “This is real weird,” she says, and we head up the hill toward her car with the large vase.
Theodore Roosevelt has flowers. The Ladies seem to have interpreted my (admittedly not that funny) requests as a demand for historical role-play. After our initial fumbling introductions and handshakes, it becomes clear that my ManServant intends to stay in character as the 26th president. For the three hours he’s on the clock with me. He is blond-ish, built-ish, and would be declared empirically “very handsome” by an unbiased panel of attractiveness judges. He wears a suit and tie. The overall look is more American Psycho than Rough Rider, and he speaks with a slight twang I can’t place. ManServants are supposed to compliment you every 15 minutes, and he tells us right out of the gate that we look “beautiful.” I look like a sebum-glazed donut after a day of travel, and Isa had to stop and rest on the way up the hill to the Fairmont just in order to deal with her sweating situation. We sit down, and he tacitly deals with our hygiene by offering us some amenities he’s brought along in a bag: some Purell and a tiny fan. After our introductions and a brief history of hauntings in the area, he goes off to get some water, but not before he tells us again how great we look. For a minute, I get the appeal of prostitutes, and I get it deeply. When he returns, I order a round of mai tais (nothing for him, he says firmly), and we pass perhaps the most awkward minutes of my life while he attempts to recount the first episode of the Ken Burns Roosevelts documentary, in the first person. I am not being figurative here, because he later explains to me that he was going to watch the whole thing in dutiful Meisnerian preparation, but only got through the first hour or so, and fudged a little bit by scanning the Wikipedia page. But before the fourth wall breaks, we spend a good 20 minutes in a fashion not unlike this: Theodore Roosevelt: So how are you ladies doing tonight? Me: Good. And yourself? Theodore Roosevelt: I am not very good because my wife, Alice, recently died in childbirth. I nod and nod and drink rum out of a fake coconut and listen to a live band play “She Bangs” and think about all of the friends who knew I was doing this and encouraged me to ignore The Ladies and journalistic integrity and really try to fuck one of these platonic feelings-hustlers. But I know from minute one with TR that I’m not going to even flirt with him, because that is exactly where my gendered lack of sexual entitlement comes into play. At some point I thought to myself, this guy is way too hot for me to hit on. And he’s working. Let us now discuss price, as one does in these situations. ManServants are not cheap: They cost $125 an hour before assorted extra fees. The base rate does not include anything that you eat or drink, cover charges, or transportation. While they are paid handsomely (per the website, beginning at $80 an hour), you can’t buy your ManServant booze or snacks or really anything, which is both atypical of the traditional escort experience and deeply unsettling, even if you think of them as cater-waiters with a dash of boyfriend cosplay. To pay someone to talk to you and compliment you quarter-hourly and provide you with company and not “take care of them” feels borderline negligent, like those high school football players who die of heat stroke because they’re not allowed to have water. The bottom line is that I was very worried about making this guy pretending to be Theodore Roosevelt uncomfortable.
He offers to show us a few other garish tourist hotspots in the area, and I ignore the anachronism and say sure, just for something to be able to do other than carry on this way. Isa has been struck dumb by this interpersonal Heart of Darkness, and I wish I were in her trunk with the vase. To give you some idea of my humiliation threshold: The words “bananas Foster” give me hives, because I don’t want to be perceived as a person who invites the public spectacle of a flaming dessert. And here I am spending a night with a guy who is begrudgingly giving me the tableside equivalent of Colonial Williamsburg. It is nearly impossible to ask him any questions as a ManServants employee, because he has clearly been told not to break character. He does, however, indicate pretty baldly through half-concealed gestures of exhaustion that he longs to speak candidly. Also, that he wants to go home and drink heavily. After much prompting from me, he drops the TR act. He still tries to be a garden-variety ManServant, which seems to involve doing a lot of stuff I’d just feel more comfortable doing myself, like ordering drinks and talking to door people. It’s like having an interpreter who speaks the same language as the person you’re talking to. He takes us to a lounge with panoramic city views, and I ask him to watch our table while Isa and I do a loop of the room just to get some relief from the still-mutually-excruciating pageantry. We hit a few more bars and I attempt lame attempts at interrogating someone whose employment hinges on not answering any of my questions. I am loathe to speak ill of fake Theodore Roosevelt, but, man, he would not make a very good real hooker. He would not even make a very good Ruby Tuesday waiter on a day he was cranky. He clearly didn’t want to be there. He also helpfully told me at one point how he’d write this article, as he had some pretty strong ideas about real vs. nonreal journalism — let’s just say the name Hunter S. Thompson was invoked. “I’m all about being real,” he said, asserting that in the end, I should be real about how uncomfortable I definitely seemed in the company of such male beauty. Sure, he tried admirably not to betray ManServants to the awkward, smelly press, but he also seemed to have a pretty low threshold for pretending he wasn’t miserable. That’s sort of a must for paid companions of any type, whether you’re doing “girlfriend experience” or sugar-babying, or giving somebody who picked you up under an overpass a hand job. I’ve never done sex work or private entertainment of any kind, but I think part of doing it is not acting like you’d rather be anyplace else — and possibly dead. He did, however, offer to take some bros making gross sex talk next to us to task. “I don’t want you to get into a bar fight,” I said, which was the truth. “I’m not afraid of those guys, and I can be pretty intimidating with my words,” he said, and I realized that this guy would probably be totally cool with getting into a bar fight. In fact, he seemed like that was the only thing that would save his night. He looked at his watch. “I like your scarf,” he tells Isa. There’s an old Twilight Zone episode about a robotic nanny, in which a grieving widower takes his three children to a fun robot boutique, where they gleefully trick out a replacement matriarch like a bunch of coke dealers customizing a Honda. They name her “Grandma.” It’s all very troubling. Only little Anne (future X-Files guest star Veronica Cartwright) is sensibly wigged out by Grandma and just won’t cotton to her like her extremely dumb siblings, Tom and Karen. Every time I see it, I wait for the pretty old robot woman’s eyes to transform into a pair of menacing red rhombuses, and her hands, into pinchy, crescent claws. This clearly has to end in Grandma ripping the children limb from limb, beating Tom with parts of Karen as Rod Serling intones some of his menacing flimflam about the supremacy of human love. But the scary part is: It doesn’t happen. Grandma raises the children to graceful, attractive maturity. She effectively replaces their mother and is even more valuable to them because she will never ever go away or die. When it’s time for the kids to leave the house and go to college, she politely leaves for God knows where. I felt like Anne when I designed my ManServants and gave them personalities and names. I felt like Anne, but also a little like Tom and Karen. I hoped that he would make me feel loved and cared for and safe, and then go away forever.Commonwealth Games gold medallist Kim Mickle has been rookie listed by Fremantle as one of four new signings for the club in the national women’s league.
Mickle, 31, who competed in javelin at the Rio Olympics, joins priority picks Ebony Antonio and Kirby Bentley and fellow rookie Gabby O’Sullivan in Fremantle’s squad for the league’s inaugural season in 2017.
The quartet will join recently announced marquee players Kiara Bowers and Kara Donnellan at Fremantle.
Mickle played mixed football as a junior but pursued athletics after her mother became worried she would |
fire the weapon under ideal conditions and out-manoeuvred by the MoD which was "achieved by giving the impression of full-cooperation and by bowing their heads to criticism that would be forgotten within months, if not weeks"27, they still managed to level these criticisms at the MoD for their handling of the £384m project28 :
Thirty-two faults were corrected at a cost of £24 million AFTER the first weapons had entered service; The ISD slipped (due to various factors) from 1983 to 1986 and that the Committee expected "the Ministry to be able to show real and quantifiable improvements in procurement performance as a result of the present risk management initiative"; That the weapon was accepted into service at a premature stage in its development and that the faults that became evident soon after it entered service should have been detected and corrected during the Ordnance Board, Main User and Troop Trials. The Committee summarised that the "lesson the Ministry have learned is that the general usage of the weapon should be tested in the hands of soldiers during the design and development phase. We have to express some surprise that it has taken over three hundred years of personal weapon usage by the British Army to discover this fact"; The Committee was "astonished that the Ministry should accept into service, and pay for, equipment such as the cleaning kit that appears to us to verge on the shoddy. We do not believe that a commercial organisation would have been prepared to accept and pay for goods which subsequently turned out to need so many modifications"; The length of time required to fix faults had been far too long (up to four years in some cases) and urged the MoD to examine "its arrangements for making modifications to in-service equipment to determine where time savings can be made"; The weapon that was accepted into service could only be fired from the right shoulder, causing problems to left-handed shooters, especially those with strong left-eyes and causing problems in urban patrolling situations, such as firing around the left of cover; That better export sales have not been achieved; The Committee accepted the MoD line that the LANDSET report represented a grassroots view of the performance of the weapon but should not be considered as the full picture and that the modifications that had been introduced and were being retrofitted solved many of the problems alongside the use of the correct cleaning regime. Nevertheless, they were concerned that it was only on the eve of a major conflict that the correct cleaning regime for sandy conditions began to be disseminated and that this "delay could have had disastrous consequences and we look to the Ministry to ensure that it does not happen again". The fact that the incorrect cleaning drills were still being used by some troops was a cause for concern and that "the Ministry investigate why this was so and what lessons can be learned." That overall, the "SA80 is a highly accurate weapon which is now sound when properly maintained. Its accuracy puts it into a different generation of weapon from earlier rifles. It needs to be treated with respect for its higher technology. However, it was delivered late and had many defects that, in our view, should have been detected and put right before it entered service. We trust that the MoD have learned from this costly story and we will be seeking evidence of this when examining future procurement cycles."
One thing the HCDC didn't pick up on was the inconsistencies in the results of the accuracy trials between the SA80 and L1A1. The L1A1 was fired over open sights while the SA80 was fired using the SUSAT optical sight, which has a set four-power magnification. Naturally, the better results were used to highlight the improvement in accuracy that the new system would give the troops but the bias in the trials was never picked up. Surely a more 'level-playing field' and truer indication of the difference in accuracy would have been to hold trials that compared the L1A1 firing both over its iron sights and using the SUIT optical sight with the SA80 firing both over the optional iron sights and using the SUSAT optical sight. While there is little chance that this would have altered the outcome, it would have given a more accurate picture as to the rifles' relative accuracy but also proved that the L1A1, fitted with the SUIT optical sight, was a more accurate rifle than it was ultimately given credit for.
The Problems Continue
By the second-half of the 1990s, with all the 'quick-fix' remedies applied to the SA80, it finally seemed as if things were beginning to improve – "this is the first chance I've had to shoot one extensively. One criticism of the rifle has been the lack of reliability, but my shooting companion and I put over a thousand rounds through our test rifle with only two malfunctions, neither attributable to the rifle."29 However, events continued to point towards issues that still remained unresolved and user confidence in the weapon remained low – "unlike the case of the M16, complaints about the qualities about the SA80 have continued to simmer underneath the surface."30 As a result, the IW and LSW were suspended from the NATO Nominated Weapons List, a list of those weapons used within the Alliance for testing ammunition that is seeking NATO qualification, in early 1997 - a move that was embarrassing for the MoD and Government Ministers.
But by then, even the MoD had been driven to the point of despair, with the Defence Procurement Agency (DPA) ordering a full appraisal of the weapon, in work that was carried out by Heckler & Koch GmbH (then a subsidiary of British Aerospace) between 1995 and 1997. The team from Heckler & Koch, led by Ernst Mauch, reported in 1998 with a list of modifications that they felt would improve the weapons' performance. At the same time, if confirmation were ever needed as to the astonishingly uncritical evaluation undertaken by the ITDU on the SA80 weapon system (and in particular the LSW) during the User Trials, the Commandant of the ITDU ordered an investigation to be carried out in 1998 into exactly this point. The report, entitled 'LSW Trials Investigation 1981 – 1996', was to assess the outcomes of the trials, not to prove how critical or uncritical they had been of the weapon but to highlight any areas that might leave the organisation open to criticism should any awkward questions be raised in the future. No particular priority was given to this, as only a single Warrant Officer was asked to carry out the investigation, but he approached his work diligently and with an open mind. The report, dated 8 July 1998, concluded that:
The reports stated facts that were not even mentioned in the recommendations; That the guidelines set out in the GSR and GST pointed the ITDU in a particular direction as regards the suitability of the LSW but which were ultimately irrelevant as the MoD were going to accept the LSW whatever happened; Personnel reading the reports may not have interpreted them correctly; Not enough trials were done on the LSW; It was not until faults really became obvious that they started to trial the weapons properly; Decisions taken during the early part of the LSW's development were politically orientated and that someone further up the chain of command wanted the LSW accepted, whatever its performance, for some unspecified reason.
Heckler & Koch Become Involved
Meanwhile, following their recommendations, Heckler & Koch were awarded a contract in mid-1998 to modify 200 L85A1 and L86A1 weapons to the new 'A2' standard so that comprehensive climatic trials could be undertaken. This batch of weapons was delivered in January 1999, with the MoD conducting trials at: the US Army's Cold Regions Test Centre in Fort Greely, Alaska (cold / dry); Small Arms School, Warminster, Wiltshire, UK (temperate); Seria, Brunei (hot / wet); and Kazma, Kuwait (hot / dry) with a range of different ammunition NATO types. The majority of these trials were completed in July 1999 and the final report delivered to the Minister of State for Defence, Geoff Hoon, in December. The report concluded that Heckler & Koch had indeed solved the problems encountered during the previous twenty years by intensive and in-depth testing of both materials and their designs. As a result, the Government decided to award Heckler & Koch the contract to modify around 200,000 SA80 rifles to the new 'A2' standard. This however was only part of the story, as the MoD, in its review, had also looked at more drastic options:
"Industry experts also confirm that the UK MoD had considered replacing its entire armoury of 300,000 5.56 mm SA80 rifles with Colt M16 systems, prior to Heckler & Koch's (H&K) GBP92 million (USD179 million) revamp of the weapon in 2000."31
"After various attempts at denial, and years of applying minor fixes that eased some problems but failed to solve the big ones, the Ministry of Defence bowed to the inevitable in 1997. They considered buying the M16 and M4 "off the shelf", but in the end commissioned HK to undertake a thorough revamp of the SA80 (HK was by this time owned by Royal Ordnance, so was in effect a British company - it has since been returned to German control)."32
The planned upgrades were given urgency when it was revealed that the troops had continued to have problems with the weapons system during the operations in Kosovo (Operations Allied Force and Joint Guardian) and Sierra Leone (Operation Palliser). This extra work however, would mainly be undertaken by Heckler & Koch at their factory in Oberndorf, near Stuttgart with a small amount being undertaken by the small contingent located on the RO Nottingham site. The closure of RSAF Enfield and the movement of production to Nottingham had been greeted locally as an indication of long-term job security but restructuring within BAe would see the manufacture of large ordnance move to Barrow-in-Furness and with the contract to refurbish the SA80 going to Heckler & Koch, the site finally closed in late 2001 due to a lack of orders and sold for redevelopment, another pool of skills and experience being dissipated forever. "The politicians had finally won, and the British Armed Forces of the future would perforce need to buy a foreign weapon system manufactured by foreign workers, but paid for by British taxpayers."33
The new 'A2' version was officially unveiled by the Rt. Hon Adam Ingram, Minister of State for the Armed Forces, on 18 October 2001, the coincidence being that it was sixteen years, almost to the day, from when the SA80 was first handed over and about the same time as the RO Nottingham site was being closed. While a lot of rhetoric was being banded about, especially in terms of the weapon being "probably the most reliable rifle in the world"34, nothing was said about "the fact that Britain lay bereft of any domestic small arms manufacturing capability whatsoever."35 On top of that, the cost of the programme had risen, from £80m to modify 300,000 weapons, to £92m to modify 200,000 weapons, with the remaining 100,000 being cannibalised and used for spares or being made available for export sale. The SA80 weapon system was finally admitted back onto the NATO Nominated Weapons List after the 'A2' variants began to be issued, in March 2002, with the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence, Dr Lewis Mooney, confirming that the MoD would not seek to obtain the re-admission of the A1 variant as that was the weapon being replaced. The changes to the weapon include:
A new cocking handle, made of shaped nylon polyamide, which doubles as a cartridge case deflector; A new magazine, which is slightly longer, more curved and comes with a smoother spring feed action; The LSW has a heavier barrel; A new gas plug and cylinder made from superior materials; The catch spring has been widened to prevent jamming in the gas feed during re-assembly; The gas blowback cycle has been improved; One-and-a-half locking nuts removed from the barrel extension / chamber to accommodate a different extractor shape, which should also guide empty cases away from the ejection port; An all-new bolt head that has a larger, more robust extractor; The cartridge ejector has a new rim and a stronger multi-wire spring; The carrier has been polished to reduce the friction between it and the top-most cartridge in the magazine; A new sturdier firing pin has been installed, made from high-strength, quenched and tempered steel, with the stop moved from the rear to the front; The ejection port has been enlarged to improve the round ejection pattern; The magazine housing has been reinforced with additional welding to prevent it breaking; The weight of the hammer has been increased by 9g to prevent misfires caused by 'bouncing'; The bolt release catch has been strengthened; A new recoil spring with a higher compression has been installed to even out the rate of fire.
And Even More Problems...
With Heckler & Koch converting some 3,000 weapons per month, the new A2 variant was due to be supplied to the 3rd Commando Brigade in March 2002. However, the UK's commitment to operations in Afghanistan (Operation Herrick) accelerated that process and the SA80A2 was first fired in anger by troops from the 2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment (2 Para) during fighting around Kabul in February. The fighting in Afghanistan, where British forces have been involved in operations against the Taliban as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), as well as the invasion of Iraq (Operation Telic) in 2003 and the subsequent conflict there, have all proven major testing grounds for the new weapons. At the same time as the 'A2' variants were being issued, the MoD also purchased 149 FN Herstal Minimi LMGs for use by the troops in Afghanistan, a number that would quickly rise to over 300, which were bought under an Urgent Operational Requirement (UOR) and designated either the MG L108A1 (the standard version) or the MG L110A1 (the para version). This presents an interesting turnaround, as the standard FN Minimi was trialled and rejected in 1984 as it did not meet the GSR accuracy requirement but it seems that "the GSR was conveniently ignored rather than put lives at risk."36 While 2 Para did not have any major issues with the weapons, at least three major stoppages were reported by the Marines of 45 Commando during operations in June and July. This sent the alarm bells going all the way back to the MoD and the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, ordered an immediate investigation with a team from the ITDU, DLO and Heckler & Koch under the command of Colonel Fraser Haddow, going out to Afghanistan to investigate the failures. The team interviewed the members of the patrol who had experienced the problems, inspected the weapons and the Marines then prepared their weapons for firing and conducted an exercise on the firing range. Of the twelve weapons used, only two performed to standard. The team looked at this outcome and concluded that:
The Marines could not clean their rifles properly due to worn out, missing or incorrect brushes (not neglect); They were not oiling the weapons according to instructions in the cleaning pamphlet; Magazines became damaged easily; Safety catches were difficult to operate; Muzzle covers expanded in the heat and fell off, exposing the bore to dust and sand.
The Marines were then instructed in cleaning their weapons using the correct procedures and in a re-run of the test, this time using twenty-four Marines, only one rifle failed. The team concluded that the problems had been caused by not using the proper cleaning regime. To prove the point, they set up a trial using two Chinook helicopters, with a group of twenty-four and another group of twelve Marines (the control group) who disembarked seven times, in conditions approximating what would be found on operations, followed by firing their weapons on the range. The group of twenty-four Marines who had followed the new regime had a reliability rate of 87 percent while the control group had a reliability average of only 17 percent. It seemed that the team had proved their point and that the problems were the fault of the User. What the report also mentioned were recommendations that a replacement muzzle cover was required, a weapon cover was needed to prevent dirt and dust getting into the mechanism, the safety catch should be made of stronger material and the instruction leaflet needed to be clearer. With the blame being placed squarely on their shoulders, the Royal Marines reacted angrily, arguing that the weapon was inherently difficult to clean under operational conditions, the quality of the cleaning and maintenance kit was poor and the instructions, running to thirty pages, was difficult to follow. The CO of 45 Commando, Lt Col Tim Chicken, defended his troops against the accusations. A stand-up row even occurred back in the MoD between the Army and the Royal Marines with senior Army officers suggesting that the Royal Marines had caused the problems deliberately as they viewed themselves on a par with the Special Forces and wanted to be issued with the Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifle. However, in an unusual show of solidarity, the Parachute Regiment agreed with the Royal Marines, with a former officer in the Parachute Regiment dismissing the claims that the Marines were to blame and calling the weapon an "unmitigated disaster" and that the "first time I had concerns was when the magazine fell out onto my boots on exercise."37 Royal Marine officers branded the report a "whitewash"38 and stated that if "you're jumping out of a Chinook into that kind of heat and dust, it wouldn't matter how clean the rifle was beforehand. The minute you got off, it would be covered in shit."39
Arguments continued through 2002 with the MoD seeming to waver between first, replacing the rifle altogether and then deciding to keep the weapon and start a confidence building exercise. The trials were however, exposed as being conducted under controlled conditions, with hessian matting being laid on the firing points at the ranges being used during the trails, ammunition being drawn from factory-sealed boxes, the use of brand new magazines and SA80A2 weapons being transported to the trials in sealed bags. Despite this, the MoD maintained that the weapon would be in service until at least 2015 and has in fact seen service in Afghanistan until the present day as well as Iraq during the invasion of 2003 and the conflict that followed, until British forces were withdrawn in 2009. Although criticism of the IW seemed to die down as time went on, the same cannot be said for the LSW. With continued complaints coming from deployed units over its lack of firepower in the suppressive role, something highlighted when it was first introduced and related to the use of a 30-round magazine and non-changeable barrel, an alternative had to be found, and quickly. The DPA then began trials at the US Army's Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, of four weapons, which included the Minimi, the Heckler & Koch MG43, the Israeli Military Industries Negev and the South African Vektor Mini SS. The DPA then selected the Minimi and MG43 for further testing in cold and hot-wet environment trials. Both FN Herstal and Heckler & Koch were then asked to submit tenders by the middle of February 2003 to supply 2,472 LMGs, with an initial batch of 200 being delivered by the end of the year and the remainder being delivered within three years. The MoD subsequently selected the Minimi but how unbiased was the trial? How could both the Viktor and Negev have failed the initial tests when their country's armed forces operate in arid, dusty conditions and surely would have been tested in such environments? With no small arms manufacturing capability left in the UK, both the Negev and the Viktor would have to be made under license and imported, the problem being that the main contenders for such a contract would have been FN and Heckler & Koch who were fielding their own weapons. The clear favourite was probably the MG43 as Heckler & Koch were the company that had just been awarded the contract to revamp the IW and LSW but given that the British Army already using the Minimi in substantial numbers, the decision had effectively been made. The MoD extended its purchase of the FN Minimi LMG to 4,000 units, as well as additional firepower upgrades including 9,000 night sights and 2,000 under-slung grenade launchers at a cost of around £30m, with another £35m of additional funding available if necessary. By the end of 2005, every infantry battalion was re-equipped, giving an eight-man section, four-times the capability of its World War II equivalent. Each section is split into two four-man fire teams, each with 1 x SA80A2, 1 x SA80A2 with grenade launcher, 1 x SA80A2 LSW and 1 x FN Minimi.
Conclusion
To conclude, the history of the SA80 weapon system is one that almost beggars belief. Given that the system was first unveiled in mid-1976, a year before the NATO Standardisation Trials, it has taken some thirty years for the British Army (and by extension the Royal Marines and RAF Regiment) to finally be equipped with an assault rifle that combines phenomenal accuracy with a decent level of reliability, particularly in adverse environmental conditions. This however, is only one half of the overall SA80 weapon system. The LSW too has had problems in reliability, in accuracy while firing on fully automatic (the split group syndrome) and in overheating (with the lack of a changeable barrel), which produced an inability to conduct sustained fire in order to fully suppress a target. It has therefore been relegated to the position of being a long-range rifle, its place being taken by the FN Herstal Minimi. It is almost inconceivable that after that length of time and the expenditure of over £500m on almost continuous modifications and upgrades, only one half of the weapon system is functioning correctly (and still being upgraded with lighter, improved sights and new handgrips that contain a quadruple Picatinny rail adaptor system). The other half has finally been recognised as being incapable of performing the job it was designed and produced for, to be replaced by a weapon that was first trialled nineteen years before and only rejected because it didn't quite meet the GSR accuracy requirement.
In retrospect, the main points of concern are...
Firstly, the SA80 was built around the major components of the Armalite AR-18 system, which the designers at RSAF Enfield used virtually unchanged, with the initial prototypes being put together through the purchase of several AR-18s by the MoD for use in trials. This was followed by a visit from Stan Carroll, then the Director of Small Arms at RSAF Enfield, to see what manufacturing processes Sterling were using to produce the AR-18 (built under license), being shown around the factory by David Howroyd, the General Manager, as Sterling were interested in obtaining any work that might be sub-contracted out. None however would be forthcoming, as RSAF Enfield obtained a similar capability through the acquisition of similar machines from the same manufacturer (probably the real reason for the visit). Indeed, the use of the AR-18 mechanism was confirmed by James Edmiston, the former owner and managing director of the Sterling Armament Co. Ltd at Dagenham and until the late 1980s, a successful British private arms company:
"In 1976 Edmiston and his designer, Frank Waters, saw the prototype SA80 at the British Army Equipment Exhibition in Aldershot. It was a bullpup design, a squat rifle with a minimal butt, and its operation looked curiously familiar.
'Frank was allowed to take it apart,' Edmiston told The Observer. 'He found our bolt carrier, our magazine, and parts out of our gun. These weren't even copies. They had bought some of our guns and were using the parts to make the SA80 prototype.'
A former weapons designer with Royal Ordnance confirmed that claim. He added that the original prototypes, basically an amalgam of the Armalite AR18 and the bullpup design of the old RO EM2 were good, promising guns... 'but the design was fiddled with by committees in the MoD and Royal Ordnance.' The gun, he says, has never been the same since."40
"Not once did Enfield ever ask Sterling for information on the AR18... I know of at least one component that they 'copied' incorrectly which could well have made a difference to reliability."41
In their enthusiasm to embrace the AR-18 design (produced by Arthur Miller after Eugene Stoner had left the company), the design team overlooked the original thinking behind the weapon. The multi-lugged rotating bolt had its roots in the.30 calibre automatic rifle designed before World War II by Melvin M Johnson and the short-stroke gas piston was based on that used in the German Gewehr 43 rifle, itself based on the Soviet Tokarev SVT40. The AR-18 was designed to meet the requirements of less-developed countries, lacking the fine engineering facilities required by the AR-15 / M-16 and so made extensive use of sheet-metal stampings and spot welds which would only require basic metal tooling, common in most countries. The multi-lugged, front locking, rotating bolt was seen by both Armalite and Enfield as a solution to the problem of body weight with the AR-18 utilising a single metal pressing to form the body, while plastics, alloys and case-hardening of metal components provided the remainder. Thus the AR-18 was seen as an inexpensive export weapon to supply in military aid packages to allies around the world and was never seen as a serious alternative to the AR-15 / M-16. Low production costs have a trade-off however, in terms of the quality of components and materials used as well as the weapon's reliability under adverse conditions. Equipping Third World militias with such a weapon was one thing, using it as a basis to equip the British Army was a different story.
There was also a misunderstanding over the impact that moving away from the traditional means of manufacturing small arms components would have. The precision components that made up the bolt-action Lee Enfield and the L1A1 SLR were machined by hand from solid blocks of metal while the EM-2 was made from the same sort of machined components as well as wood. The SA80 however was made from pressed steel and plastic – such materials would not go together with the same tolerances that properly machined components would, in this case, one or two microns. "Critically, Hance and his successors failed to come to terms with the realities of a new way of mass-producing guns, pioneered by the Germans during the second world war and taken up by the Americans." 42
Secondly, two aspects of the design were always going to cause problems, both of which were inter-dependant. First, the method by which the breech was locked involved a multi-splined bolt which was always going to be highly vulnerable to any foreign matter which managed to get into the weapon. Second, the reciprocating cocking handle meant that, even with an ejection cover fitted, it necessitated a slot running two-thirds the length of the body through which dust, sand and dirt could enter and an open or broken ejection cover just made the situation worse.
Thirdly, the LSW, a light-weight magazine-fed 5.56x45mm support weapon, firing with a closed bolt and a fixed non-changeable barrel was always going to have problems related to its rate of fire and overheating and the MoD has now purchased the FN Minimi to replace it in section support – "of the Gulf conflict one can say that the case for replacing the present LSW with the Minimi, Ameli or a similar seriously configured light machine gun was never more amply demonstrated."43
Fourthly, there has been a major question over the propellants used in the ammunition manufactured by the UK. Prior to the NATO Standardisation Trials in the late 1970s, 5.56mm /.223 ammunition had been manufactured for several years here in this country but not specifically for military use. With the NATO decision to adopt 5.56mm as a second round (more specifically the Belgian SS109 cartridge), the UK started producing 5.56mm ammunition (the M193 cartridge) initially for its M16A1 weapons but also in anticipation of the adoption of its own 5.56mm small arm. It was decided that the ammunition would be boxer primed for ease of manufacture, while propellant would be bought in until a home-developed alternative was available. In 1980, the first bulk order for propellant for use in the RG ammunition was for ball powder from Pouderie Belge (PRB) as used in the M193 ammunition being used at the time. In 1982, an NNN type of propellant was developed by Nobels Explosive Co. Ltd, which at the time was a subsidiary of ICI Ltd, who in turn ran the Government-owned factory at Powfoot on a management basis. Given that cut tubular propellant is generally cheaper than ball powder, it was natural that ICI would produce that type of propellant in order to minimise costs, a right they had under the terms of the contract and even had the Government recognised the disadvantages inherent in the use of cut tubular propellant as opposed to ball powder, there was nothing they could do about it. Thus the 5.56mm ball round that was approved in 1984 was loaded with 23.46gn of NNN cut tubular propellant. Cut tubular propellant has a slower and more progressive burn rate as compared to ball powder, which results in lower chamber and gas port pressures, which have a direct impact on cyclic rate and functional reliability. In addition, ball powder is smaller and compacts better than cut tubular propellant and so more propellant can be used in a cartridge case. Given that just about everyone else who uses 5.56mm ammunition uses ball power propellant, that fact should be seen as an indication as to its impact on how a weapon functions.
Added to this, is the multi-lugged Stoner type of bolt used in the SA80, a direct derivative of the bolt used in the AR-15 / M16 and AR-18. In all these weapons, the locking lugs require a movement of 22.5° to lock / unlock the bolt, but differences exist in the 'dwell time' (the time its takes the carrier to move in order for the bolt to lock / unlock) with the AR-18 having a much shorter 'dwell time' than the SA80. This, combined with the greater chamber and gas port pressures associated with ball powder which is used in the USA and most other countries that have 5.56mm weapons, means that greater energy is given to the parts of the weapon that need it, resulting in a faster and more positive action as well as the extraction and ejection of the spent case, the picking up of a fresh round out of the magazine and its placement in the chamber with the weapon's action ready to fire again. Therefore the action of the AR-15 / M-16 and AR-18 is able to overcome a greater degree of fouling than that of the SA80 due to it being inhibited by its slower, more sluggish action. It is unclear as to why something as basic as the propellant used and its impact on the cycling of the SA80 has not been investigated – even the £92m Heckler & Koch upgrade was mainly focused upon reducing friction within the system (indirectly easing the problem). Such an impact was admitted to in the questions posed by the HCDC:44
"Mr Trotter.
1640. Could I, before doing that, follow up on the ballistic matter? Would the range be different?
(Lieutenant Colonel Cook) The propellant will alter slightly the rate of fire of the weapon and that can have consequences on the functional reliability and indeed mechanical reliability.
1641. So there may be more jamming?
(Lieutenant Colonel Cook) It is possible but not necessarily so.
(Major General Stone) Different manufacturers of different ammunition produce a different energy in their round. Depending on the propellant you can have either a higher or lower energy. Clearly if you fire a low energy round the recoil, the movement of the working parts, is less precise perhaps than a higher energy round. Conversely, if you have a very energetic round it might force the working parts to the rear too severely. That is the sort of difficulty we are talking about."
Fifth, one of the most telling criticisms has been the almost complete lack of export orders. Bar a small number of weapons that have been supplied to Nepal, as well as Jamaica, Zimbabwe and Mozambique as foreign aid, there have been no other significant enquiries. The exception to this is Venezuela, whose Special Forces trialled the weapon in the mid-1990s with an eye to replacing their FN FAL rifles, but was so discontented with the weapon that they didn't proceed with the project any further. "Lucrative overseas sales are usually the result of a successful weapons system and exports of SA80 speak for themselves."45 The Falkland Islands Defence Force (FIDF) chose the Steyr AUG, as did Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. "FIDF conducted comparative trials and found that the AUG outperformed the SA80 in every respect and vastly outclassed it in terms of functional reliability."46 On top of the lack of export orders, the rifle was dropped from the NATO Nominated Weapons List in 1997, only being readmitted in March 2002. Finally, the SA80 has always been rejected by British Special Forces units, who have tended to go for the Colt 5.56mm M16 rifle or M4 carbine (or the examples made under license by Diemaco, a Canadian company, known as the C7 rifle or C8 carbine) or more recently the Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifle. In addition, the Pathfinders (from the Parachute Regiment) and Brigade Patrol Troop (from 3rd Commando Brigade) have also used these weapons whenever they can, although the improved reliability of the SA80A2 has caused this to be a less common event.
Sixth, there is a massive question mark over the roles of the Ordnance Board and the ITDU, as well as the trials they conducted. As mentioned above, the range, suitability and rigorousness with which these trials were conducted are all in question, given that most of the initial faults that were found were done so after the IW had been accepted for service and had to be corrected at a cost of £24m. In addition, Heckler & Koch, who had been subcontracted to do some work on the training ammunition, rang one of the officers on the project in 1985 and reported that the weapon went off if you dropped it. The officer immediately went to the armoury to source a weapon and dropped it – it went off. A dangerous safety flaw had been discovered after supposedly exhaustive testing by the Ordnance Board and ITDU, whose trials were later revealed to be far too biased towards tests in the laboratory, rather than conducting those in conjunction with tests conducted in the field by combat troops. "The second area of concern, or where we have learned a major lesson, is the need to have sufficiently comprehensive user-trials during design and development and to test the general usage of weapons in the hands of soldiers and not necessarily rely solely on clinical tests which we might assume have covered all sorts of angles".47 The MoD and Army realised, too late, that there was a huge difference between the weapons used in the pre-acceptance trials which were hand-built using traditional techniques and those rolling off the mass production lines. There was little in the way of proper project management – the soldiers would demand a change, the engineers would introduce the change but due to time pressure, the change would not be properly tested. The change would fail and another quick-fix solution sought. Plus it would take time for the changes to be fitted to all the weapons in service, totalling over 300,000 by the time production ceased. Instead of starting production slowly, and introducing properly tested modifications as faults were found, the Government and the MoD moved heaven-and-earth to get the weapon into service, ignoring any criticisms that came in:
"We were under a lot of pressure in those days to get something in as quickly as possible. The self-loading rifle was becoming increasingly expensive to maintain and the user had set us the demands of an in-service date of 1983."48
"Initially it was the plan that we would have a low rate of production such that as soon as difficulties became apparent with the small number in the field, we could take action quickly to put that right. Now, as you will be aware, we had the problem of the in-service date, we were slipping like mad, and the was increasing pressure from the user to get this weapon into service to replace the aging self-loading rifle and so we made the error, if you like, of increasing the rate of production to satisfy the pressures and demands which were upon us."49
Seventh, there was a missed opportunity to extensively trial an after-market modification in the form of the Datestyle Muzzle Stabilizer, designed in 1980 by Richard Cave. This was originally designed as a recoil reducer on a 7.62mm long-range pistol. Further trials on a FN FAL rifle and M16 rifle proved promising, with the company coming to the conclusion that if fitted to the IW and LSW, it may well improve the firing groups of both weapons. Apart from a muzzle brake being fitted to two '0' series LSWs, one of which was the only model to have a changeable barrel, the issue of using the muzzle blast to help control the weapon and for improving performance, seems to have been completely neglected. The ITDU conducted a two-day trial and included an AR-15, an L1A1, an IW and an LSW, all of which were fired in the keeling and standing positions. All the weapons involved showed a marked improvement in group size of between thirteen and sixty-one percent for the AR-15, of between twenty-six and fifty-five percent for the L1A1, of between eighteen and seventy-seven percent for the IW and between forty-one and sixty-eight percent for the LSW. An interesting side-effect seemed to be that the stoppages caused by poor ejection seemed to have diminished. As a result of the trial, a letter was sent by Andrew Watt of Datestyle to Royal Ordnance on 9 March 1992, asking for 10,000 rounds to continue trials at Warminster which gained a positive response from Royal Ordnance via a letter from Mike Kennedy over the signature of Ken Malia on 23 March 1992 indicating they would be prepared to proceed with the trials. Three days previous to that, Datestyle had sent a letter to LSOR2 outlining their proposals. On 14 April 1992, a letter arrived from Major P H Williamson MBE at LSOR2 indicating the MoD had 'no |
foreign arrangement of this room All you can muster from your foggy sleepy brain is the wordless question Where am I? This is not my bedroom this is not my home It usually takes a few seconds a few blinks and rubs of the eyes but soon you remember the American Airlines flight How you sat so far back in the plane you thought you’d wait forever for all the folks yanking their belongings back down that narrow aisle. Now you remember how your sister picked you up at the airport and got a parking ticket as you were putting your bag in her trunk. You felt guilty knowing you weren’t going to help her with that ticket even though she was there to fetch you and you only. Oh that’s right, she took you out to sushi, you had wine in her living room, you were surprised by how many keepsakes she kept from your childhood home and even the home of your grandparents. She put you to bed in the guest room at the end of the hall. It all comes back. That is the room you are peering at now in the darkness. But for a few seconds there the Challenger exploded OJ was found innocent Kurt Cobain died and none of it made any sense to you in your time capsule buried in front of the local library We make sense of things by putting them in order but really nothingmakes any sense Not at all
Submarine: On the eve of my twenty-first birthday, I nearly drowned. Or very nearly drowned, or was close enough to drowning that in retrospect I (occasionally) silently and (rarely, only when it comes up) publicly cite this incident on my last day of being twenty as the closest I’ve come to dying – at least that I recall – which seems seminal. Or formative. Important. Right?
Anyhow.
The night of my twenty-first birthday, I drank Flaming Dr. Peppers, of course. Not drinking for the first time but for the first time legally, so there’s a distinction there.
Or could be. A Flaming Dr. Pepper is one of those drinks where a shot is dropped down into a beer and this one tastes like Dr. Pepper, sorta, and it’s on fire when it is bombed into the half a beer, which puts the fire out and it’s a whole thing.
On the night of my first birthday (which isn’t when I turned one year old- your first birthday is your actual BIRTH DAY, y’know… when you’re BORN- even though we call turning One a first birthday, it’s the second one, which means every year since has been one number off, ‘cause it’s more of an anniversary than a birthday, really) I was in an incubator because I was blue blue, because I was six weeks early and back then that was really early, so when I came out blue they put me in the incubator and I spent several weeks there until I could handle using my lungs on my own and then I went home. When the circumstances of me being in what I call the Baby Microwave come up (seldom) in conversation, that’s what I call the incubator: Baby Microwave, because it’s a self-deprecating name for it and takes away some of the awkwardness of having arrived early and frail. My MOM and DAD were watching ‘Charlie’s Angels’ on their new color TV, it was like the second or third episode ever, and my dad was loving it and my mom went into labor six weeks early, so dad didn’t finish watching the episode but instead went to the hospital because his wife’s water broke.
Sometime around the time I was twenty-six I built a contraption which I drove off a three-story platform into Lake Michigan. Not on my own, I was the only one driving but not the only builder. The reason was because a bunch of other people also built these contraptions as a part of a contest to build things and fly them off a platform into the Lake while spectators watched the production. I had a hard time walking for a week or so because instead of building a contraption which broke apart, thereby taking most of the force of impact, I (We) built one that would survive the crash, thereby making me the absorber of the velocity, so naturally I was very sore.
It seems to me that maybe wanting to have a good survival story is essential. Most generations before mine have gained good survival stories by great wars or bus boycotts or huge waves of social change or fleeing famines in Europe. The men who survived these things got their stories and good nicknames: big guys named “Tiny” and scrappy little guys named “Murph” and these guys still get together to swap stories and call each other by names that they gave each other to take their mind off of the fact that on a daily basis they were perilously close to dying or losing a part of their physical being. Not that I would want to go to war or anything, but I would like a cool nickname and you can’t give yourself a nickname- it’s just not protocol.
The thing about the almost-drowning that is (mildly) interesting to me is that I am a strong swimmer and very comfortable around water, but it was October and when I was in the water I had warm clothes on and they got very heavy when they were wet so I started to take my boots off, meaning I guess I didn’t panic and how I remember this experience probably is much more dramatic than it was because wouldn’t I have felt panic if I really was that close to dying – the whole Life-Flashes-Before-Your-Eyes thing didn’t happen.
Does that diminish the experience?
When I trained to be a lifeguard we had to learn how to defend ourselves against a drowning victim and practice getting away from them because a drowning person wants to be on top of the water and they’ll try to climb on your head and that will pull you both down, making rescue impossible. So the maneuver we learned was, as the drowner reached for your head and neck, to grab them by the wrist and kick them as hard as you can in the stomach, thereby knocking the wind out of them so you can get away, then you keep your distance until they tire out, because an unconscious person is way easer to pull to safety than a flailing person who wants to climb on your head. You are just supposed to wait and then you get to be the Hero.
I never had to save anyone when I was a lifeguard, which is too bad because that would’ve made a great story.
Submarine: Winchuski The dog’s collar says “Winchuski”. No number. No address. No microchip. Yes, I felt around the scruff. No chip. Just “Winchuski”. What am I supposed to do with this thing? Jo always tells me to keep the gate locked when I play music in the garage. Says it’s not safe. She’s unsure around Latinos. Here’s some water good girl. Fourth walk around the neighborhood and nobody is claiming “Winchuski”. I haven’t even had anyone express a concern. I guess we look like we belong together. Probably my beard. It’s got that redgrey thing happening. At this point my dog breed would be: Bonaduce border collie.
Crap. Sal Nattano watering his grass. Nooooo. Shitters. Pass. I can’t handle the awkward conversation… Turning around. Nope, crosshairs, and…I’m back.
“Luker.”
“Hey, Sal. Hi.”
“You got a new friend?”
“Nope.”
“What’s her name?”
“Winchuski.”
Sal’s petting her. Breathing kinda panty. He’s balding? He’s back.
“Winchuski!!!?? Luker, you are something rich! How’d you come up with that one?
“It’s not my dog, Sal.”
“Hunh. Too good looking to be a stray. You check the tag?”
“Of course, yes.”
“And it just says Winchumski?”
“Winchuski.”
“Fine. I’m trying to offer some help. Maybe take her to the shelter downtown if you can’t.”
“I know. I’m going to take her to my sister’s house.”
“Why?”
“Bye, Sal.
“Fine. OK.”
I’m not taking “Winchuski” to my sister’s. She lives in Jacksonville. It’s just easier to say because Sal’s never met my sister so she can be anyone I need her to be at any time. Last Superbowl Sunday, my sister came in town with her two little kids. I watched the Superbowl, stoned, by myself. Win. Sal dropped a couple Boston cream pies off. Win.
I should actually call my sister. 6:08. East coast is 8:08… Nah. Where’s Jo? Is my phone dead? “Winchuski” is peeing. Again. She’s peed seven times since I started looking for her home. Again. On Dr. Yamamoto’s Rosemary bush. Eight. Egghh. I have a stray dog with a urinary tract infection. Yamamoto-
“Luke.”
“Hi.”
“This is your new dog.”
“No. The dog walked into my yard while I was playing.”
“Ah huh. What’s the name?”
“Her name is “Winchuski”.”
“Why?”
“Not sure.”
“It’s a surprise for Jo?”
“No.”
“Jo doesn’t like a dog?”
“She does. It’s just that the dog showed up through the gate-
“Maybe keep the gate closed.”
“Yes.”
“He hungry?”
Dr. Yamamoto heads into his house to get some homemade beef jerky, I’m guessing. He’s yelling from the house. I’m yelling from outside the house.
“The dog?!”
“Yes. Winchester.”
“Winchuski.”
“Are you sure that’s the name?”
“It’s right on the tag.”
“Winchuski?” “Winchuski?!!!!” “Winchuski!!!!!!!!!!!”
Submarine: 8/28/1994
Dear Mermaid Journal,
Today totally sucked! Being the only mermaid in an all girls Catholic high school is such a curse! This year is going to be hell!!! For starters, I have to take showers to hydrate in-between periods, which means I’m always walking into class late and wet! Plus I have to hydrate in the gross girls locker room. Even the gym teacher Mrs. Placek, was checking out my tail fin. As if!
I tried skipping before lunch so I could sit at a good table, but that turned disastrous. One minute I’m eating my sandwich and talking with some really fun girls, being normal, and the next thing you know the whole cafeteria is throwing water on me to keep me alive. They ended up putting me in the pool until things calmed down. Worst first day ever! I don’t know what to do…
Oh well, at least it can’t get any worse from here. Right???
Mood: Cautiously optimistic
What I’m listening to: Oasis “Live Forever”
8/29/1994
Dear Mermaid Journal,
I was wrong. Things got worse! I totally laid eggs during English class. I didn’t even feel it coming. The girl behind me started to complain about a smell and then everyone started to smell it and then I noticed that under my skirt a billion eggs just started to fall onto the floor. Oh my God!!! I wasn’t prepared at all. I was so embarrassed. It was a mess! The janitor came in to clean it up right away. You think he’d just sweep them up and throw them in the garbage can. But no, he put them in mason jars. Then he asked, “You think I could eat this like caviar?” Weirdo!
My stupid mother had to come all the way from Jackson Pier to save me. She brought me a new skirt and a Caribbean bottom feeder fish to put in my panties to control my flow. I was soooooo embarrassed!!!!
On the bright side, I met a cool sophomore girl named Vanessa. She was telling me that at her old school they had a girl from Texas and by her Sr. year she was like the coolest girl in school. Gives me hope too I guess! She also invited me to her improv comedy show on Friday. She doesn’t seem that funny, but I want to check it out! I know my Mom and Dad were planning on swimming to St. John’s this weekend to watch the whales give birth. I hope I can get out of it! More importantly I hope this whole year doesn’t suck like today and yesterday did! Yuck!
Mood: Don’t ask! But looking forward to the weekend.
What I’m listening to: Nirvana “Heart Shaped Box” R.I.P. Kurt!
9/24/1994
Dear Mermaid Journal,
A boy asked me to the homecoming dance at Notre Dame boys academy!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ok so I know that it’s not that big of a deal, but it is! I didn’t think anybody would want to take a stinky stupid fish to homecoming. His name is Jeremy, he’s a Senior and he’s a friend of Vanessa’s. He’s also on the Cross Country team and he looks like a young Rivers Cuomo from Weezer! Will he kiss me? Will I freak out and need to Hydrate like fifty million times? Will I miss most of the dance because I’m in the stupid school pool? I sound like my mother. Always thinking the worst. Everything will be fine Coral! I just got to keep telling myself that.
Vanessa and I have been getting to be really good friends. She’s planning on diving down for a visit if she can get her Mom to buy her all the Scuba gear. She really wants to see our place. I’ve never had a real friend over. Not to say that the rock crabs and the porpoises aren’t my friends. They just are too… fishy. I need to be a teenager and not worry so much about stuff like Hurricanes, Sharks and Red Tide. I want to go to concerts and hang out with boys and stuff that the other girls do. The sea is so boring!!! It’s so big and empty. And when something exciting does happen, usually it’s because somebody I know or my parents know either got eaten by a predator or they got caught in a net or on a hook. I wish I could just live on land all the time!
Oh well, no time to get down about my crappy home life. I have to go shopping for a homecoming dress!
Mood: Excited
What I’m listening too: Weezer!!!
10/29/1994
Dear Mermaid Journal,
Where do I start? I’ve been living away from the ocean for a couple of weeks now. I had a blow-out fight with my bitch mother and got kicked out of our ship wreck. So I’ve been staying in my friend Vanessa’s bathtub. Her parents are divorced and her Mom travels a lot for work so it’s no big deal. A bathtub is definitely not as comfy as sleeping in the ocean, but it’s all I have for now. Vanessa is such a good friend.
The fight all started because I asked my Mom about egg fertilization. It was an honest question. She told she wasn’t ready to have that kind of talk and told me I could never see Jeremy again. She said she knew this was going to happen. She should have never sent me to school on land. Blah Blah Blah. And then she dropped the bomb on me, I was going to live with my Aunt and Uncle in Gulf of Mexico. Whatever!
So I ran away.
I don’t know what to do. I can’t live on my own in the ocean. I’ll get eaten or caught. I can’t sleep in Vanessa’s mom’s tub forever. She’s got her own issues besides me to deal with.
I haven’t seen Jeremy since our talk. Life sucks! To make things worse, I’ve started to really fall behind in school now. I haven’t been going. I don’t know what to do.
Mood: Scared
What I’m listening to: Hole’s “Doll Parts”
11/11/1994
Dear Mermaid Journal,
We started seeing each other again after running into each other at a Halloween party. He came dressed as a Centaur. At first I took offense, but he wasn’t trying to be a dick, he wore the same costume the last 2 years. I was dressed as a sexy slave. We started to talk and I told him all about my last 2 months. He responsible, so he called his step mom and asked her if it was ok if I stayed in their pool. So I started to live at Jeremy’s house.
At this point I was like Whoa! Like a year ago I barely ever left the ocean, now I’m living in a pool at my boyfriends house. Crazy right?
His place is amazing though. Big house. Nice pool. His step-mom is super nice to me. She’s super cool. Like a sister. And I still really like Jeremy. I just don’t want to go back home. Not yet.
Mood: Nervous
What I’m Listening to: Ace of Base
11/13/1994
Dear Mermaid Journal,
So I guess me and Jeremy are going to be parents…
Well, naturally, me and Jeremy started to spend more time together. We were getting really close. Like really close. Anyways, one thing led to another. We were messing around and kissing and he was touching my orphus and then he got naked and got into the pool and the next thing you know he completely fertilized all of my eggs. So now I’ve been watching over like, I don’t know, like, 10,000 eggs waiting to be hatched. Crazy huh?
Jeremy is acting really cool about it though. He is being supportive and he is totally going to take responsibility for everything. He is looking for a job right now. Plus, we can stay in his parents pool for as long as we need. I wish my parents were cool like his. Needless to say I still haven’t talked to them so I haven’t told them that they are going to be grandparents yet. I’m sure they would disown me! But I don’t really care anymore, because I love Jeremy so much and I want to be with him!
Mood: Love
What I’m listening to: “Creep” TLC
11/17/1994
Dear Mermaid Journal,
In a baby castle, just beyond your eye,
Your baby plays with angel toys that money cannot buy.
Who are you to wish him back into this world of strife,
No, play on your baby, he’ll have eternal life.
At night when all is silent and sleep forsakes your eyes,
You’ll hear his tiny footsteps come running to your side
His little hands caress you so tenderly and sweet,
You’ll breathe a prayer and close your eyes and embrace him in your sleep.
Now you have a treasure that you rate above all others
You have known true glory,
You are still his mother.
After an unfortunate bird attack, we said goodbye to several thousand of our babies today. I go to the bathroom for 5 minutes to brush my teeth and put cream on my orphus and when I come back out to the pool, gone. Jeremy told me he saw the bird land in the pool and by the time he got outside it was too late. The vet told us that several thousand more eggs would not make it and to consider any egg that makes it full term lucky. He then took a look at my orphus and told me to stay in the pool for 24 hours to help heal my infection. The uncle then scooped the remainder of eggs into mason jars and took left with the vet. Jeremy and his step-Mom reassured me that the vet knew what he was doing. The family trusted him ever since he saved the family terrier from anal cancer the year before.
Mood: Heart-broken
What I’m listening to: “Streets of Philadelphia” Bruce Springstein
11/18/1994
Dear Mermaid Journal,
This morning was bitter. Still in the pool according to the vet’s orders. Found out that none of my babies were going to make it. Truthfully, I knew this could happen. Armies of sea horses protected the mermaid eggs in the sea. Mine were being kept in an in-ground pool. I should have known better. Jeremy spent all morning consoling me. He made me a special breakfast and just floated with me.
I miss my parents. I miss being in the ocean. This weekend I would be going to the Octopus festival. I’m thinking about contacting my parents to see if I can come home…
Mood: Don’t want to talk about it.
What I’m listening to: Nothing.
11/29/1994
Dear Mermaid Journal,
This will be my last journal entry. I’ve decided that life is no longer worth living. My parents won’t let me come home or even talk to me. Jeremy and I broke up and I have no place to go. I’ve been sleeping in a retention pond near Highway 6 for the last week. I’m sick, I’m tired, I’m depressed and I have no one. I’ve decided to walk to the desert tonight. Without any water I should be dead by noon tomorrow.
All I ever wanted was to be a normal 14 year old high school girl. But I kept forgetting I really am. I’m a mermaid. But now I don’t want to be either. Life isn’t worth living if you don’t have the people you love the most, love you back. But I know if I told my parents the truth about Jeremy and the bird attacking my eggs, they would never talk to me again anyway.
Suicide is the only option…
If someone ever finds this journal please tell my parents what happened to me. And please give them the necklace that I have wrapped around this Journal. And tell them I love them and I’m sorry.
Submarine: First Interlude (blub) (blub) (blub) (blub) (blub) Mermaids Wait, merpeople appear perhaps always there just now witnessed by the subject Witnessed by Math Witnessed by Biology Witnessed Civics and Gym and Art and Shop But most importantly the merpeople are witnessed by the subject of a test a woman whose blood is replaced by a special kind of juice A juice so concentrated and full of antioxidants she can survive the rigors of even the most hostile of environments Or relationships Would you want to meet her? Someone so tough? and brave? and practical? and glorious? Someone who could survive it all? Never to suffer a lack of courage? A Wolverine of sorts but this time metal is “juice” And what is her kryptonite, you ask? (For every superhero has a very secret thing or place the back of the heel when he or she was dipped in the river) Where or what was hers? She doesn’t know. Will it ever be discovered? Soft as rising bubbles weightless in the water strong and vulnerable brave and shy She weaves and dips and rounds the underwater mountains Sea monkeys see (blub) (blub) (blub) (blub) (blub) >blip< >blip< >blip< >blip<
Submarine: Window View
FADE IN EXT. THE OCEAN- DAY
EXT. Swooping down from the SKY, CLOUDS and TREES and the CLIFFS of Portugal. CRASHING FOAM below the Cliffs. We dive below the surface through the water past the rocks and coral reef and schools of swarming mackerel and bubbles in the deep. Greens and blues and sun shadow turtles and jelly fish bobbling past sea rays and Lobster herds. Monk fish, eels, and octopi. We dive deeper and further out to sea past a couple of hump back whales until we see a glow below. It is the SUBMARINE CRUISE LINE’S: BALTROX. The closer we come to this mammoth ship, we hear a country/reggae tune over a radio. SONG VO Hello, I am a submarine. My name is peter the submarine. I have a blow hole and a cottonwood walking stick. Been up and down this trail from the mountain to the coast. Take a look at these shoe-boots. Tracking around and away from the massive ship we see inside where passengers are busy with vacation activities such as sitting at a computer, playing ping pong, taking calls, butchering meat, laboratory tests, classrooms, handball, water slides, you name it this submarine-cruise ship has it all. As we pass the front of the ship, the country song fades away. Silence. RADIO CRACKLE. VO And now a word from our Captain. CAPTAIN VO Gutten Tag, Meine Dame un Herans. Good morning. It is a new day. Good things. Possible. Hope, charity, Trust, Sacrifice… The massive ship floats closer. The closer it gets, the closer we zoom in on the CAPTAIN’S QUARTERS. INT. CAPTAIN’S QUARTERS - DAY The CAPTAIN’s quarters. Captain is speaking melodic reminders into the microphone on a desk. CAPTAIN …discipline, and persevere, and diligence, and forthcoming, and responsible, and focused, and… INT. MESS HALLS - DAY The food promenades are full of passengers young and old quietly eating while half listening to the Captain’s voice from the speakers on the walls. Many have already been drinking since ten. CAPTAIN VO …lucky, and encouraged, and emboldened, and up to snuff, and rigorous, and… INT. BOILER ROOM - DAY MEN are shoveling white glowing rocks into blue burning furnaces. STEAM pisses into the air. They are covered in steam and listening to the Captain from the speakers on the wall. CAPTAIN VO …tough, and brave, and practical, and glorious, and nifty, and better than nifty… INT. PILOT’S DECK - DAY The Deck is full of buzzing busy conversation amongst well dressed OFFICERS. Underneath all of the conversation, the Captain’s voice can be heard from the speakers on the wall. CAPTAIN VO …and sacrifice, and vultures, and lion heart, and thunderous applause, and golden gates, it’s happening, we can do it, and team work, brothers… INT. THE CAPTAIN’S QUARTERS - DAY The Captain’s quarter’s is well lit. He sits at a carved desk facing the open ocean floating up towards us. The carvings recount the heroics of Captain Nemo against the furies of the Sea. The Captain finishes his pep talk prayer. CAPTAIN …and trust us, and someday, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty place from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to watery death. We shall arrive upon the shores of Lisbon at approximately 6 am tomorrow morning. And we will- A DEEP THUD trembles throughout the Submarine that quiets even the MESS HALL, the OFFICER’S MESS, and even the steam within the BOILER ROOM. Like the breath of doom, it has caused fear, and it is gone. The captain’s reaction echoes from the speakers on the walls. CAPTAIN VO uh- The Captain’s EYES refocus and return to the page beside the microphone upon the Dark Belgium Walnut Pine. CAPTAIN Thank you and have a pleasant afternoon. BOILER ROOM, MESS HALL, AND OFFICER’S MESS Everyone returns to their meals, drinking, shoveling coal, steering the ship. INT. CAPTAIN’S QUARTERS - DAY Captain hangs up. He sighs. He stands, unzips his uniform and steps into a bathrobe into the next room where PRETZEL lounges on a Ukrainian polar bear skin love ottoman. Pretzel wears gold diamond bracelets and snake skin socks. PRETZEL How did it go? CAPTAIN Exhausting. The cowards. Brandy? PRETZEL Portugal. CAPTAIN Pardon? PRETZEL We’re headed towards Portugal aren’t we? CAPTAIN Savages, morons. Yes. Portugal and then Algeria, Egypt, Rhodes, Azerbaijan, and back. PRETZEL What was that noise? CAPTAIN What noise? PRETZEL Stop that! The underwater thunder sound. CAPTAIN The what? PRETZEL Like a giant put his butt cheeks on the side of the metal ship and farted. (she imitates it) CAPTAIN Uhm. PRETZEL It was like, all bass! Not a beat or anything fancy. Just bas, then, it was gone. What was it? CAPTAIN …Shark Wave. Captain, casually slams a snifter of brandy as casually as a snifter of brandy can be “slammed”. PRETZEL Shark? CAPTAIN Wave. Is this about getting caught? Is that what this is? Don’t worry, no one will ever know you are here. PRETZEL I’m not worried. I know what they’ll do to me. What would they do to you? CAPTAIN It would be different. PRETZEL Yeah, I know, but what do you think they would do? CAPTAIN Maybe, I don’t know, beat me up a little bit. PRETZEL No, really? Me? I’m kicked off the ship. You? I don’t know. What are they going to do to you? CAPTAIN They’re not “going” to do anything. I’m fine. We’re fine. Everything’s fine. They kiss. PRETZEL So let’s say one of them walk in right now. Sees me. Sees you. Puts it all together. I’m not supposed to be here! CAPTAIN Do you want to get off in Portugal, is that it? She kisses him. PRETZEL I’m just saying I wanna know what would happen to you if you got caught with a passenger in your quarters. CAPTAIN My Cabin. PRETZEL What did I say? CAPTAIN You said Quarters. It’s cabin. PRETZEL I have a right to know what they are going to do to you. CAPTAIN You keep talking about it like it’s gonna happen. Nothing’s going to happen. No one is going to find you. Everything you need for the whole trip is right here. The bed, the Jacuzzi, the living room area, the Nordic Track, robot room service, iTunes, blue ray, yoga mat, stationary bike. PRETZEL I told you I didn’t need the stationary bike. CAPTAIN I like it better than the Nordic Track. PRETZEL Why don’t you use the treadmill? CAPTAIN Why don’t you relax? Everything is going to be fine. You’re here now, isn’t that proof enough? They kiss. CAPTAIN Besides, we’ll have the whole night together before Lisbon. PRETZEL and then? They kiss. CAPTAIN you are free to choose and i am free to want you to choose me. They kiss. PRETZEL What about that short weird looking guy- CAPTAIN Mick? PRETZEL -yeah Mick, what if he walks in here and sees me. He seems like he’d run and rat you out the Submarine Cops. Then what? CAPTAIN First of all, they’re Submarine Security Officers, and second, I probably wouldn’t make it out of this room alive. PRETZEL Really?! (really excited) CAPTAIN Because I would die from loosing you. PRETZEL Oh- CAPTAIN -Wait, why did you get so excited? She kisses him. PRETZEL You love me? CAPTAIN I love you. PRETZEL You’re sweet. They kiss. CAPTAIN Do you love me? PRETZEL Yes. CAPTAIN Do you trust me? PRETZEL No. CAPTAIN Why not? PRETZEL Because. You’re hiding something from me about hiding me. Out of fear you are hiding me. No matter how much you give me you are still hiding me from the rest of the world. CAPTAIN Just the ship really. PRETZEL That’s not the point. The point is, we’re both hiding. And you’re the only one who knows why. The Captain’s FACE can not hide he knows what she is talking about. PRETZEL I know you know what I’m talking about. If they find us; if they find me here; something will happen to the both of us. CAPTAIN Just a slap on the wrist really. PRETZEL Bullshit! She is up and off the Polar Bear and striding towards the ocean view. Captain follows her to the endless window between them and the hovering depths. Their faces are lit by the glow below the ship upon the bottom reefs and sloping coral forests. Pretzel’s tears are silver in the light. PRETZEL Maybe I should get off in Lisbon. CAPTAIN Huh? PRETZEL Maybe you’re right. CAPTAIN OK. PRETZEL OK. They kiss. He lifts her up and carries her over to the Polar Bear Skin Love Ottoman. Her legs wrapped around his chest and Golden White hair spilling down his the captain’s back. Setting her on the couch he whispers. CAPTAIN Maybe you should stay. PRETZEL No, I’m pretty sure I’ll get off in Lisbon. CAPTAIN Seriously? PRETZEL Yeah. What? CAPTAIN What? PRETZEL What? CAPTAIN Why? PRETZEL Cause you said I could. Why won’t you tell me what they will do to you if they find me. CAPTAIN Seriously? They make love while having a normal conversation. PRETZEL Cause now I gotta know. I’ll never be able to let it go. I have to know what they are going to do to you. CAPTAIN First of all, stop talking about it like it’s gonna happen. PRETZEL Oh, it’s gonna happen. CAPTAIN What? PRETZEL If I stay on this ship, it’s gonna happen. Someone or that weirdo lieutenant- CAPTAIN Mick PRETZEL Whoever. Somebody’s gonna know. She gets excited and throws a bowl of goldfish across the room smashing against the giant window of sea. CAPTAIN Look, nobody’s gonna know. PRETZEL That’s exactly my point. Why does nobody have to know all the time. Why are you hiding me? She slaps the Captain’s haunches. The Captain makes bubble sounds with his finger and his lips. She flips him. He flips her. Polar Bear GROWL! They collapse across the wet floor, beside the flopping goldfish and the broken glass. They are holding one another in each other’s eyes. The glow from the ocean’s light. They kiss. PRETZEL What’s happening? CAPTAIN Your Husband awaits you in Azerbaijan. A KNOCK at the door. …to be cont…
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Submarine: Dad Time
Dad left when I was four because he said living with us was unsustainable. He didn’t tell me that then, though. He just told me he loved me, and he loved Mom, he would always be in my life and he would always be my dad. Now I stay with him for one week on top of every month. I’ll be at the kitchen table for breakfast or at my desk at school or back at the kitchen table doing my homework, and I’ll hear wind chimes. Then I’ll blink and there will be two capsules sitting there next to me where there wasn’t anything before. One’s always red and one’s always blue. That’s how I know it’s time for a visit. I’ll pop them in my mouth and swallow. (At first, when I was little and before I could swallow capsules, I would have to chew them up and I could feel little pieces of grit swarming around my mouth like a colony of tiny spiders.) Then I’ll blink and I’ll be with Dad in 2074. Dad’s not from 2074, but we have to meet in the middle. We stay in the same motel room because Dad says there aren’t many places around anymore that have the kind of bathroom I need. Plus he says he has to be careful what I see. He’s afraid of being Amished. I never minded at first that there wasn’t much to do. I was just happy to be with Dad and we’d spend most of the week wrestling and jumping on beds and watching movies and playing video games and eating the smoke that came out of the table. But now I get bored because I’m not little anymore. And that’s an understatement if ever there was one. I meant it before when I said I stay with Dad one week on top of every month. Not out of every month. On top of it. See, when the week is up and the pills wear off or whatever, I blink and I’m right back at the kitchen table or my desk or the kitchen table. Like I never left at all. So while everyone else lives four weeks every month, I live five. That adds up after awhile. I’m in Seventh Grade and all my classmates are thirteen, but because of spending time with Dad, I’m more than two years ahead of them. I’ll be twenty-one when I finally graduate from high school. When I wake up the pills are on the corner of my nightstand. My hand stops halfway to grabbing them. I usually take them as soon as I see them—without question, but today I don’t. Today I question. I put my hand back in my lap and just look at them. For the next minute my face warms, my lips numb, and my heart beats faster. And then it passes and I go to the bathroom instead. The pills are still there when I return. Insisting. I won’t take them. It’s not like I don’t like Dad. I’m not mad at him. I just don’t want to go right now. I don’t want to go just because he says so. I have my own opinion, and it should be considered. No one asked me. Well, maybe I have something to say about it. I cram the pills into the pocket of my jeans before I go downstairs for breakfast. Mom’s in the kitchen eating peanut butter toast with coffee and watching the morning news from WCTS out of Three Sisters. Wind chimes sound while I pour a bowl of cereal, and I find two pills on the place mat when I sit down at the table. Mom can’t hear the chimes, but she sees the pills. “Aren’t you going to take those?” “I don’t know.” “Hmmm.” Mom doesn’t like when I go stay with Dad, but she tries not to say anything bad about it. She doesn’t talk much about Dad at all. I think she’s mad at him, and I |
of the campaign to generate any momentum. “There’s no masses,” he told his staff, “in this mass movement.” 12 POCAM
Structural problems with the Poor People’s Campaign notwithstanding, the effort faced another obstacle: the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Poor People’s Campaign might not have seemed like much of a threat to American capitalism, but the FBI certainly believed that it was. They secretly carried out a surveillance program targeting SCLC, and King in particular, ever since the 1963 March on Washington. J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI considered King “the most dangerous Negro in America.” 13 Now, Hoover’s famous COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program), which was tasked with disrupting “Black Nationalist/Hate Groups,” created a special subunit to disrupt the Poor People’s Campaign. 14 POCAM, as the FBI’s program was called, gathered information from wiretaps and hotel room “bugs.” It was on the basis of that surveillance that Hoover could report to President Johnson the week-to-week progress or failings of the Poor People’s Campaign. Hoover reported at one point, for example, that after eight rallies in Mississippi, King had raised only $1,000 for the campaign. 15 POCAM successfully interceded to prevent King from receiving grant money, and planted stories in the press to demonize King and the Poor People’s Campaign. An SCLC organizer claimed that in one instance they lost two hundred recruits because of planted stories that King was going to “strand them sick and penniless in Washington.” 16 Memphis
While King struggled to get the Poor People’s Campaign off the ground, 1,300 Black sanitation workers walked off the job in Memphis to win union recognition. Here was a poor people’s campaign of another sort. Here was a struggle for racial and economic justice—one that put more “meat” on the civil rights bone. And here, rather than depending purely on moral witness, Black people were trying to use their power as workers—withholding their labor—to make change. Neither the Black sanitation workers nor their white supervisors were long removed from the plantation life. In many ways, the relationship between them in the latter workplace was reproduced exactly in the former. James Robinson, one of the workers, recalled: “Before the union, it was whatever they decided to pay you. If they wanted to pay you they did, if they didn’t want to, they wouldn’t.… I wasn’t makin’ a damn thing. You can’t pay the light bill on no 96 cents an hour. 17 By 1968—after fifteen years on the job—his pay was only up to $1.60 an hour, or only five cents above the federal minimum wage. In addition, there were no set hours. Workers had to haul garbage until their route was finished, whether it took eight hours or fourteen. If it rained, they could be sent home with little or no pay. Workers could be fired for being one minute late, or for “talking back.” They had no breaks. They had to eat their lunches in fifteen minutes and couldn’t be seen in the shade of a tree. The shade of the truck was their only refuge from the Memphis heat, even though the trucks were old, outmoded, smelled horrible, and would often have maggots falling off the sides. The city did not require residents to pack their garbage up or to even bring it to the curb, so the sanitation workers had to just grab everything as it lay, including tree limbs, dead animals in the road, and unpacked garbage. They had no sick days, and without a union, no recourse to protest any of this. In the early 1960s, a group of sanitation workers who had military backgrounds and experience organizing in the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) began trying to build a union. T. O. Jones, the leader of what became AFSCME Local 1733, got support from civil rights activists, Black ministers, and some limited support from AFSCME’s national office, but the effort ran up against a wall. In 1966, Jones had five hundred workers ready to strike, but called it off at the last minute because the city had scabs ready to take their jobs and the courts issued an injunction declaring strikes against the public illegal. For the next few years, Jones persevered, despite the fact that the union had only about forty dues payers out of 1,300 workers. Jones was desperate to strike a deal with the mayor, Henry Loeb, but Loeb refused to recognize the union on principle.
On February 1, 1968, the proverbial back of the camel was broken by a final straw: two sanitation workers—Echol Cole and Robert Walker—were crushed to death as they rode in the back of a garbage truck. They were seeking shelter from the rain at the end of a long day, and there was no room for them in the cab of the truck. Faulty wiring is believed to have set off the compactor, and the two were mashed up like so much garbage. 18 Within a week, the deaths of these men created a new situation. P. J. Ciampa, a field operative for AFSCME, remembered that “The thing just got away from” T. O. Jones. Jones organized a meeting at the Memphis Labor Temple, and hoped that if 500 showed up he might have a force for negotiation. Instead, somewhere between 700 and 900 arrived, and by 11p.m., when they realized that the city would not negotiate, they shouted for a strike. “It wasn’t T. O. Jones,” remembered worker Ed Gillis. “It was all of us labor got together and we was going to quit work till we got a raise and got a better percentage, see, and could get justice on the job from the way they’s treating us.” 19 Strikers quickly reached out to civil rights activists and clergy for support and solidarity. One reverend compared the sanitation workers’ struggle with the sit-down movement in General Motors auto factories in 1936. When the NAACP got involved, “alarm bells went off in white Memphis.” 20 The workers actually avoided explicitly making the strike a “racial” issue at first, but their treatment at the hands of the police and the mayor was blatantly racist. Other city workers had unions, why not the all-Black sanitation workers? Again and again the intransigence of the mayor galvanized the strikers to press on with their struggle. The slogan they carried on placards, “I Am a Man,” said it all: this was a question of racial justice and economic justice. Rather than sitting at home, the strikers were involved in constant, daily activity: By Wednesday, February 21, a regular routine had been established: a union meeting of nearly a thousand strikers at noon, addressed by community supporters; a march to the downtown from Clayborn Temple; and mass meetings in various Black churches. 21 Jericho road is a dangerous road
King’s staff tried to convince him not to go to Memphis. He would get “snared,” “bogged down” as he usually did, and they would have to postpone the Poor People’s Campaign (which they had already done at least once). 22 On Monday, March 18, King spoke to the sanitation workers for the first time, at the Mason Temple in Memphis. King was exhausted and depressed by his failed attempts to pull together a coalition to get behind the Poor People’s Campaign. The sanitation workers were exhausted and depressed by a strike that was dragging on, and having to endure wave after wave of police brutality and abuse. When these two joined forces, however, they energized each other and gave each other courage to carry on. Fifteen thousand people came out to see King that night. King told the Biblical story of Dives, who went to hell because he passed Lazarus every day and refused to see his plight. King warned, to raucous applause, “If America does not use her vast resource of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life, she too is going to hell.” He went on to show how the strike was a part of the new direction the movement needed to take. With Selma and the voting rights bill one era of our struggle came to a close and a new era came into being. Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality. For we know that it isn’t enough to integrate lunch counters. What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn’t earn enough money to buy a hamburger and cup of coffee? Honey describes how the intense energy of the situation pushed King to put forward practical ideas about how to carry the struggle forward. After this high-powered, emotional speech, the issue came down to, What should we do next? Amid cheering and applause, a new level of energy had been created—so much so that King could not end simply with rhetoric. He needed to take the Movement to a higher level. He paused for a moment, and seemed to be thinking out loud. “You know what?” he asked the crowd. “You may be able to escalate the struggle a bit.” Then he dropped the bombshell: “I tell you what you ought to do and you are together here enough to do it: …you ought to…have a general work stoppage in the city of Memphis!”.… Pandemonium broke loose. 23 Having convinced his staff to work on the Poor People’s Campaign, King now had to convince them to put all of that on hold, and to throw themselves into the Memphis struggle. “Memphis is the Washington campaign in miniature,” he told them.” 24 He won that argument, and over the next month—the last of his life—tried to build on the energy of March 18. Here, King was unsuccessful again. When the day of the work stoppage came, a snowstorm kept everyone home from work and school anyway. The rescheduled mass march turned into a riot, and King had to flee for his life. King, his staff, and the strikers eventually regrouped, and planned to try again on April 8. On April 3, King warned, in an impromptu speech: “You see, the Jericho road is a dangerous road…. The question is not: if I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me? The question is: if I don’t stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?” Prophetically, King spoke about his own mortality. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve s-e-e-e-n the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we as a people will get to the promised land. 25 The dam bursts
The next day, as King playfully joked with companions on the balcony of his hotel room, an assassin’s bullet ripped through his jaw and neck. Within hours, America’s urban centers erupted in anger. Four thousand National Guard troops were ordered into Memphis that night, as “unidentified persons” began shooting at the Memphis police from rooftops and windows. 26 The next day, four thousand Army and National Guard troops were ordered to protect the Capitol and the White House. Looting and fires would come within two blocks of the president’s home. In twenty-four hours, rioting had spread to at least six other cities, including Boston, Detroit, and Chicago. Fourteen people were dead, and eight hundred had been arrested. 27
“African Americans everywhere,” Honey writes, recognized King’s death as a watershed moment that required a massive response. Riots destroyed Black communities most of all, but riots also hurt white owners of capital far more than any economic boycott or nonviolent protest. King’s death burst the dam of whatever patience held back the rage of Black America at Depression-level unemployment; job, housing, and school discrimination; pervasive police brutality; useless deaths of Black soldiers in Vietnam; and the plethora of ills that stalked the ghettos. 28 For millions, King’s death signified the death of any nonviolent road to racial justice. In Boston, Black youths roamed the streets in large groups, telling business owners to close their stores and pasting flyers in the windows: “This store is closed until further notice in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, the fallen martyr of the Black revolution.” A group called the Black United Front distributed leaflets proclaiming, “Non-violence is Dead.” 29 Capturing the mood, Black radical Stokely Carmichael told television cameras in D.C., “White America has declared war on Black America.” Further, there was “no alternative to revolution.” He said, “Black people have to survive, and the only way they will survive is by getting guns.” 30 In Kansas City, Missouri, protesting Black students were chased into their own school by the police and attacked with tear gas inside the school. The rioting that followed claimed six lives. “We want to know where we belong,” a Black resident told a reporter in passing, “That’s all we want to know. Where we belong. And don’t say Africa.” 31 At Howard University, a crowd of a thousand cheered protesters when they lowered the American flag, burned it, and raised a red, black, and green flag in its place. 32 By April 8 (in less than four full days), there had been riots in at least 125 American cities. Johnson deployed 73,000 Army and National Guardsmen, and had another 50,000 standing by at military bases. This was the largest domestic deployment of military forces since the Civil War. 33 By April 10, Chicago alone had 5,000 troops, plus 6,700 National Guardsmen, and 10,500 police on duty. More than 5,000 people in Chicago were crowded into jails that were designed to accomodate less than half that number. 34 Mayor Richard Daley ordered the police to “shoot to kill” arsonists and looters. 35 Some, like Memphis sanitation striker Clarence Coe, thought a new civil war had begun:
And then I was ready for the worst, I was ready for whatever. I drove from the plant, I told the guy that was riding with me, I said, “We’ll probably get stopped.”… And I told some of the other guys out there that we’d probably never see each other again…. And I had a plan. Here where I live I got a pretty good little arsenal. I’d planned to go over to the cemetery across the street and get behind that concrete wall, take me a can of gasoline and burn the bridge down in the cemetery, which is a wooden bridge, and that was going to hem up a lot of certain folk in that, you know. That’s what I thought everybody else was going to do.
And then, when I found out they [blacks] weren’t going to do nothin’, I’m tellin’ you, it took a lot out of me. It took a lot out of me. I just expected to go to war. I mean, that’s what I came home for, that’s what I was planning on. And I thought it would just happen all over the world. 36
Clarence Coe wasn’t the only one who saw revolution in the air. But it was not to be. “White fears and Black fantasies to the contrary,” argues historian Clayborne Carson, “the uprisings after King’s death demonstrated the absence of political coordination or even communication among Black militants.” 37 Riot or rebellion?
But that is not to say that the riots were not political. The forces of reaction pointed to the riots as examples of “lawlessness,” and wrote them off as the work of a criminal underclass. But as the stories mentioned above show, the riots were clearly not just about looting, and were not even just about grieving the loss of Dr. King. The riots were actually a quite natural political response to the conditions of the urban ghettos. The Washington Post estimated that the D.C. riots had involved as many as 20,000 persons. “It was a workingman’s riot,” the Post concluded. “At least three out of four had so-called blue-collar jobs. Only one in eight was unemployed.” 38 Studying the riots that had swept across American cities since 1964, a government-commissioned study likewise found that most of the rioters were regular, city-dwelling young people. In a New York Times editorial published less than a month after King’s death, Leftist Michael Harrington wrote: These risings, the Kerner Commission documented, are not made by the most destitute, but by young people, often employed in dead-end jobs, who see the society moving away from them despite their hard work. The Government bears a responsibility for this angry disenchantment, for Washington has, in recent years, promised boldly and performed timidly. The “unconditional” war on poverty was proclaimed more than four years ago; yet last January the Council on Economic Advisers announced that there had been an increase in substandard housing in the central cities. It is dangerous to raise up people’s hopes and then dash them down. 39 But none of this was news to people who lived in the ghettos. Half a world away, in Vietnam, a reporter asked a Puerto Rican–American sergeant from Spanish Harlem why people were rioting. He responded: Take a middle-class white of 19 from Oregon. You could never make him understand the resentment of a cop pushing you off a street-corner just because you’re there, the credit gyps and landlord leeches and the feeling you come to have that if you ever get anything, you’re going to have to take it. People talk about burning down their own neighborhood. Hell, the people there don’t own a damn thing, and the Government should’ve burned down those rat traps years ago to give people a chance for a better life. But how do you make people understand that who’ve never seen it, lived it? 40 The riots were not just about poverty, but were about the cruel mixture of poverty and racism that trapped and confined the lives of northern Blacks. One Black woman, a D.C. resident and government employee, felt liberated by the riots: They tell you to go to school and get educated and then they give you some penny-ante job and expect you to feel like the world has been so gracious. But even that white secretary feels that she is better than you because she is white. I was on 14th Street during the looting and burning but no one hurt or threatened me…. The men there were talking to me and laughing. When the cops came down the street with the tear gas guns, the men turned around to make sure I was all right. I have never felt like that in a white world… the black people in this city were really happy for three days. They have been kicked so long and this is the one high spot in their life. Most of the buildings that got burned should have. 41 The ruling class feared that it was losing control of the situation. The New York Times urged the government to grant reforms quickly in jobs, housing, and education, lest the president fail to “remove the causes of urban unrest.” 42 To regain control, the government did grant some concessions. The day after King’s funeral, Congress passed the last piece of major civil rights legislation: the Fair Housing Act. President Johnson sent a personal emissary to Memphis to force Mayor Loeb to settle the sanitation workers’ strike, which he did. Across the country, private foundations distributed millions of dollars to fund new Black business ventures. 43 The riots prompted the power structure to promote a Black elite. As one Black businessman observed, Unless there were people running around in the streets throwing bricks, I wouldn’t be where I am. It wasn’t until the riots that we got legislation in the Johnson administration. It took a Rap Brown and a Stokely [Carmichael] to make [white] business look around and talk to Whitney Young. If they weren’t burning down the cities and having riots, the business environment wouldn’t have asked, “who can we talk to?” 44 The legacy King died trying to build a multiracial, working-class alliance to fight for racial and economic equality. Since the mid-1960s, however, radicalizing young people began looking to the ideas of Black nationalism and revolution. King, to his last day, remained an integrationist, and argued that Black nationalism was a dead end. He continued to oppose all forms of violence, and to advocate for nonviolent movement strategies. Still, it would be a mistake to view King’s ideas as purely religious or moral. They were also based on serious strategic considerations. Since Blacks were a minority of society, King believed they had to build a coalition with other groups. Thus, when it became clear that the northern liberal establishment would not support him in opposing the war in Vietnam, or in fighting for economic equality, King looked to build a new coalition with working-class whites and other oppressed groups. King wrote, “There are, in fact, more poor white Americans than there are Negro. Racism is a tenacious evil, but it is not immutable…. White supremacy can feed their egos but not their stomachs.” 45 Nonviolence, King believed, was not just morally superior as a means of change, but strategically superior. In a debate with the self-defense advocate Robert Williams, King wrote, regarding the advocacy of violence as a tool of advancement: There are incalculable perils in this approach. It is not the danger or sacrifice of physical being which is primary, though it cannot be contemplated without a sense of deep concern for human life. The greatest danger is that it will fail to attract Negroes to a real collective struggle, and will confuse the large uncommitted middle group, which as yet has not supported either side. [ emphasis added] 46 Setting aside the question of nonviolence as a principle, King’s words foretell the strategic cul-de-sac in which many radicals found themselves after his death.
Nevertheless, King’s death, and the riots that followed, effectively ended the phase of Black struggle based on the politics of nonviolent civil disobedience. Black radicals, feeling that attempts to persuade the American government were futile, began to organize groups that aimed to overthrow it. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense is the most well known, but there were others. In Detroit, the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement attempted to organize a Black revolutionary party inside America’s auto factories. We can never know what King would have said about these developments, but we should remember that he was far more than a dreamer—he was a fighter—and the changes he fought for posed a serious challenge to American capitalism. And we should never forget 1968, when King dared to stand up to what he called, “the giant triplets”: racism, extreme materialism, and militarism. BRIAN JONES is a teacher, actor and activist in New York. His article, “On the road with Marx” (ISR 23) chronicles his early experiences portraying Karl Marx in Howard Zinn’s one-man play, Marx in Soho.
1 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Where Do We Go From Here?” August 1967, http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/speeches/Where_do_we_go_from_here.html. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Quoted in Michael Eric Dyson, I May Not Get There With You (New York: Touchstone, 2000), 87. 6 Ibid. 7 Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years 1965–1968 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 654. 8 Michael Honey, Going Down Jericho Road (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2007), 177. 9 Branch, At Canaan’s Edge, 721. 10 Honey, Going Down Jericho, 186. 11 Branch, At Canaan’s Edge, 672. 12 Honey, Going Down Jericho, 189. 13 Dyson, I May Not, 80. 14 Branch, At Canaan’s Edge, 668. 15 Ibid., 722. 16 Ibid., 709. 17 Michael Honey, ed., Black Workers Remember (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999), 305. 18 Honey, Going Down Jericho, 1–2. 19 Ibid., 104. 20 Ibid., 145. 21 Ibid., 162–63. 22 Branch, At Canaan’s Edge, 718. 23 Quoted in Honey, Going Down Jericho, 303. 24 Quoted in Branch, At Canaan’s Edge, 742. 25 Quoted in Honey, Going Down Jericho, 423–24. 26 Earl Caldwell, “Guard Called Out,” New York Times, April 5, 1968. 27 Ben A. Franklin, “Army Troops in Capital As Negroes Riot; Gaurds Sent Into Chicago, Detroit, Boston,” New York Times, April 6, 1968. 28 Honey, Going Down Jericho, 444. 29 J. Anthony Lukas, Common Ground (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 13–14. 30 Quoted in Franklin, “Army Troops,” New York Times, April 6, 1968. 31 Quoted in Douglas E. Keenland, “Behind the Violence: Despair and Spring Madness,” New York Times, April 12, 1968. 32 Mike Marquesee, Redemption Song (London: Verso, 1999), 241. 33 Honey, Going Down Jericho, 444–46. 34 Donald Janson, “Negroes Crowd Jails in Chicago,” New York Times, April 10, 1968. 35 “Mayor Daley Orders Chicago’s Policemen to Shoot Arsonists and Looters,” New York Times, April 16, 1968. 36 Honey, Black Workers Remember, 313. 37 Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 288. 38 Ben W. Gilbert and the staff of the Washington Post, Ten Blocks from the White House; Anatomy of the Washington Riots of 1968 (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1968), 151. 39 Michael Harrington, “It Is Dangerous to Raise Up People’s Hopes and Then Dash Them Down,” New York Times, April 28, 1968. 40 Quoted in Thomas A. Johnson, “Negro in Vietnam Uneasy About U.S.,” New York Times, May 1, 1968. 41 Gilbert et al., Ten Blocks,153–54. 42 Editorial, “Riot Act vs. Riot Report,” New York Times, April 29, 1968. 43 Between 1968 and 1972 one fund in Boston gave out $1 million in loans to Black-owned small businesses, most of which failed. See Lukas, Common Ground, 41. 44 Quoted in Ahmed Shawki, Black Liberation and Socialism (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2006), 239. 45 Quoted in Jack Bloom, Race, Class, and the Civil Rights Movement (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 212. 46 Quoted in Robert Williams, Negroes With Guns (New York: Marzani & Munsell, Inc., 1962), 13.The project may help to cut down on the need to clear forests
By James Painter
BBC News, Trinidad, Bolivia
Poor farmers in the heart of Bolivia's Amazon are being encouraged to embrace the annual floods - by using a centuries-old irrigation system for their crops. They are experimenting with a sustainable way of growing food crops that their ancestors used. It could provide them with better protection against the extremes of climate change, reduce deforestation, improve food security and even promise a better diet. These are the bold aims of a two-year-old project being carried out by a non-governmental organisation near Trinidad, the capital of the department of Beni. The system is based on building "camellones" - raised earth platforms of anything up to 2m high, surrounded by canals. Constructed above the height of flood waters, the camellones can protect seeds and crops from being washed away. The water in the canals provide irrigation and nutrients during the dry season. See the idea behind camellones Pre-Columbian cultures in Beni from about 1000BC to AD1400 used a similar system. We are only just now learning how our ancestors lived and survived
Maira Salas
Copacabana farmer "One of the many extraordinary aspects of our camellones project is that poor communities living in the Beni today are using a similar technology to that developed by indigenous pre-Columbian cultures in the same region to solve a similar range of problems," says Oscar Saavedra, the director of the Kenneth Lee foundation. He experimented for six years in his own garden to develop the complex system of hydrology. Ancient and modern communities face the same problems - regular flooding followed by drought. "The floods were the basis for development and the flourishing of a great civilisation," says Mr Saavedra. There were bad floods in 2006 and 2007, but last year the region saw the worst flooding in at least 50 years. The floods affected some 120,000 people - a quarter of Beni's population - and caused more than $200m (£119m) of damage. That experience prompted many local women to enlist in the camellones project. "I had planted rice, maize, bananas and onions on my plot of land. But the water left nothing," explains Dunia Rivero Mayaco, a 44-year-old mother of three from Puerto Almacen near Trinidad. "I lost my house too. We had to live three months in temporary accommodation on the main road. The children got ill there. "So that's why I am working here on the camellones. I didn't want to lose everything again." The canals remain full after the floods recede About 400 families are now enrolled in the project in five locations, growing mainly maize, cassava and rice. Many of the sites are still in an experimental phase, but the early signs are promising. Productivity appears to be on the increase. "These camellones will help us when the floods come," says Maira Salas from the village of Copacabana, a 20-minute boat ride down the river Ibare. "Crops like bananas that die easily have a better chance of survival. We are only just now learning how our ancestors lived and survived. "They did not have tractors to build the camellones, and they survived for years. It's incredible." Villagers are encouraged to embrace the floods and see them as a blessing, not a curse. During the rainy season, large expanses of land in Beni are under water for several months - except for the raised areas. When the water recedes into the tributaries that run into the Amazon, it takes nutrients with it leaving a sandy brown soil in which it is difficult to grow crops. But in the camellones project, the water left by the floods is harnessed to bring fertility to the soil and irrigation during times of drought. In short, from being victims of the floods, poor people could become masters by turning the excess water to their advantage. Extreme weather events International charity Oxfam is supporting the project in part because it offers poor people the possibility of adapting to climate change. If, as predicted by many experts, the cycles of El Nino/La Nina are going to increase in intensity and frequency, then the project has the capacity to help poor families cope better with the extreme weather events and unpredictable rainfall that are to come. "It should not matter when the rains come as the water can still be managed at whatever time of the year," says Mr Saavedra. Other potential advantages of the scheme include: The system uses natural fertilizers, and in particular an aquatic plant in the canals called tarope which both purifies the water and acts as a fertilizer when spread over the soil
The canals can also provide fish stock, animal fodder and nutrients for the soil
The camellones can act as a natural seed bank which can survive flooding
The system can reduce the need to cut down the forested areas around the communities. This is because the soil on traditional plots of land is often exhausted after two to three years. This forces the farmers to clear more land for planting by cutting down the forest. All this seems too good to be true. Some of the women say the real test will come when there is a bad year of flooding or a severe drought. So far, 2009 has not been one of the worst. There are other huge challenges ahead. One is to try to provide the families with an income from tomatoes or garden produce. Another is to overcome the scepticism from some local people about the time and physical effort invested in the camellones compared to other sources of local employment. Mr Saavedra is convinced the camellones project can be expanded, even to other countries. "This process could be repeated in various parts of the world with similar conditions to the Beni like parts of Bangladesh, India and China. "It could help to reduce world hunger and combat climate change," he says.
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionBy Craig Wong
OTTAWA — The Bank of Canada has hiked its benchmark interest rate to 0.75 per cent from 0.5 per cent, its first increase in nearly seven years, amid expectations of stronger economic growth this year.
Such a move is bound to increase the costs of mortgages, home equity lines of credit and other loans linked to the big bank prime rates.
The Bank of Canada cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point twice in 2015 to help the economy deal with a plunge in oil prices, but it said Wednesday that adjustment has been made.
“The very strong growth of the first quarter is expected to moderate over the balance of the year, but remain above potential,” the bank said in a statement.
“Growth is broadening across industries and regions and therefore becoming more sustainable. As the adjustment to lower oil prices is largely complete, both the goods and services sectors are expanding.”
In its outlook for the Canadian economy, the Bank of Canada estimated growth to be 2.8 per cent this year, 2.0 per cent next year and 1.6 per cent in 2019. That compared with its April forecast for growth of 2.6 per cent this year, 1.9 per cent next year and 1.8 per cent in 2019.
The rate increase, the first since September 2010, was widely expected by economists following “hawkish” comments by Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz and senior deputy governor Carolyn Wilkins in recent weeks.
The hike comes as inflation remains below the bank’s two per cent target, however it said it believes the recent softness is temporary, with the effects of food price competition, electricity rebates in Ontario and changes in automobile pricing expected to fade. The bank expects inflation to ease further this year due in part to Ontario electricity rebates, but return to close to two per cent by the middle of next year.
The Bank of Canada said it also anticipates exports to pick up in the coming quarters and make an increasing contribution to growth, while business investment is also expected to rise.
Consumer spending is expected to continue to be a significant contributor to the economy, but the bank said it believes high levels of household debt and a slowdown in the housing market will weigh on spending.
The announcement follows signs that the housing market, a key economic driver in recent years, is adapting to government changes meant to cool the real estate sectors of Toronto and Vancouver and help improve financial stability.
“Looking ahead, residential investment is anticipated to contribute less to overall growth,” the bank said. “Macroprudential and housing policy measures, as well as higher longer-term borrowing costs resulting from the projected gradual rise in global long-term yields, are all expected to weigh on housing expenditures.”
The Bank of Canada’s next scheduled rate announcement is set for Sept. 6.News in Science
Long work hours linked to higher risk of stroke
Occupational risk Need another reason to leave work on time?
Working 55 hours or more can significantly increase your risk of having a stroke, according to a new study.
The study, published in The Lancet, analysed data from 25 studies that tracked the health of over 600,000 men and women from Europe, the US and Australia for up to eight and a half years.
"Pooling of all available studies on this topic allowed us to investigate the association between working hours and cardiovascular disease risk with greater precision than has previously been possible," says the study's lead author Professor Mika Kivimäki of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London.
The data showed that people working 55 hours a week had a 33 per cent greater risk of having a stroke than people who worked a standard 35 - 40 hour week.
And, the more hours people worked beyond standard hours, the higher their chance of having a stroke - even after accounting for other factors such as smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity, blood pressure and cholesterol.
Working beyond 55 hours a week was also linked to a modest 13 per cent increased risk of developing coronary heart disease.
"Our findings suggest that more attention should be paid to the management of vascular risk factors in individuals who work long hours," say the researchers.
The researchers say a number of factors such as stress, physical inactivity, and high alcohol consumption may contribute to the higher risk of stroke seen in people who work longer hours.
Professor Dino Pisaniello of the University of Adelaide says physical inactivity for extended periods is an underlying risk factor for both stroke and coronary heart disease.
"Long working hours is a proxy for other risk factors, which may be more common in workers of low socio-economic status," says Pisanello.
"The [study] should provide a stimulus for workplaces and regulators to re-examine long working hours and in particular, long periods of physical inactivity for men in lower paid jobs."
Tony LaMontagne, a professor of work, health and wellbeing at Deakin University says the study reinforces a growing body of research that has linked long working hours to a variety of adverse health outcomes, as well as with work-family conflict.
Recent research by LaMontagne's group found that working over 49 hours was associated with lower mental health, especially for women working in jobs at higher occupational skill levels.
"[We] need to control working hours as a hazard to health just like we have controlled other |
evidence of such perceptions. The document was distributed to reporters and congressional offices this week by the conservative Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for limited immigration. It is a summary of interviews May 28 with 230 youth and women from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador who were apprehended trying to enter the United States. The main reason the migrants had crossed into the U.S. was “to take advantage of the ‘new’ U.S. law that grants a free pass or permit” from the government, referred to in their home countries as “permisos,” the memo stated.
It seems overly partisan to blame these predictable events solely upon Democratic politicians. What about, say, Eric Cantor. Breitbart reported before his primary:There are only three Saharan addaxes — corkscrew-horned antelope native to the sandy deserts of eastern Niger and western Chad — left in the wild.
The startling new finding comes from a comprehensive survey of addax habitat led by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. In March, researchers were only able to identify three addaxes in the region the animals are known to inhabit. They characterized the animals as seeming "very nervous."
Thomas Rabeil/Sahara Conservation Fund
"We are witnessing in real time the extinction of this iconic and once plentiful species,” Dr. Jean-Christophe Vie of the IUCN Global Species Programme said in a news release.
The social animals used to live in herds of five to 20, though sometimes these smaller herds would band together with others to form groups of hundreds moving across the desert. They adapted to harsh desert conditions, producing highly concentrated urine to conserve water.
Inga Spence/Getty Images The only hope for wild addax populations is to introduce captive-bred animals, researchers say.
Niger has outlawed hunting the addax, and the animals are protected in Chad under U.N. environmental legislation. But oil extraction in the Niger desert by the China National Petroleum Corporation has been disastrous for the addaxes' habitat, destroying many of the areas where the creatures graze on shrubs and other vegetation, according to the IUCN. Additionally, soldiers guarding the oil operation have been known to poach the animals for meat.
Martin Harvey/Getty Images An addax mother and calf at a Sous Massa National Park in Morocco.
It’s possible that the researchers missed some animals while taking their survey. But even if the real population is five times what they counted, that’s still too small for the species to sustain itself, according to science news site Phys.org.
That means the only way to save the wild population would be to introduce animals that have been bred in captivity. But doing so is expensive and extra challenging when there are so few of them in the wild already, the IUCN’s Alessandro Badalotti told Phys.org. It’s also a pointless endeavor if the threats to the animals in the wild aren’t mitigated.Ford is working with Amazon to develop a system that would allow drivers to connect with at-home Internet of Things devices via Amazon's cloud-based Alexa virtual assistant. (Photo11: Ford)
LAS VEGAS — Ford announced Monday at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show that it is working with Amazon and Internet of Things platform Wink toward granting Ford owners unprecedented access to their connected-home devices from their cars, and vice versa.
The idea is that a Ford automobile owner will soon be able to use the vehicle's Sync Connect system to use touch or voice commands to open a garage door, check a thermostat setting or turn on home lighting. While at home, that owner could ask a Ford smartphone app what the car's remaining driving range is or even program a time to start the engine.
The voice commands issued at home would be routed through Amazon Echo, a free-standing speaker that interfaces with Alexa, Amazon's cloud-based virtual assistant, similar to Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana.
Information about the status of a homeowner's various Internet of Things devices would be provided through Wink, a venture between General Electric and Quirky. Last fall, failing Quirky sold Wink to Flex. Wink's platform integrates IoT products from companies such as Nest, Philips Hue and Schlage.
"We working to see if we can come up with a product that we can commercialize," Ford CEO Mark Fields tells USA TODAY. Fields is expected to make a variety of company announcements Tuesday morning at CES. "The key is finding the right software protocols, so that the integrations with Amazon Echo and Alexa works. We'll aim to bring it to market as soon as possible."
As cars gradually become little more than rolling computers, automakers are furiously looking for ways to distinguish their brands. These days that means bragging not about horsepower and torque figures, but about connectivity and app integration. Fields acknowledges as much.
"The question we ask is, 'How do we make the Ford ownership experience sticky?' We think we have a holistic approach that is simply about making people's lives easier," he says. "This is just us aggressively accelerating the integration of our vehicles into the Internet of Things."
According to Gartner, some 21 billion IoT devices are expected to be online by 2020. Automakers, which traditionally lagged behind when it came to in-car electronics, are stepping up their efforts in the battle for buyers, who increasingly expect inside their cars the same smooth connectivity they experience at home.
That push has even led to some collaboration, as with the news Monday that Toyota is among a number of automakers adopting smartphone software technology developed by Ford, which it has shared openly in order to push for a unified in-car app platform.
Follow USA TODAY tech reporter at CES all week @marcodellacava.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1R8y3TdBy Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
Is atheism necessary for religion? Rabbi Zusya would say yes.
The great Russian Hassidic Rabbi, who lived more than two hundred years ago, was one day teaching his students when he emphasized the necessity of atheism and agnosticism. His students were aghast. Had the master lost his mind? He proved his point. “Say you’re walking down the street and you see a hungry man or a homeless woman. If you’re certain there is a G-d you’re reaction might be, ‘I need do nothing because G-d will provide.’ But if you don’t believe in G-d, or if you doubt his existence, then there is only you who can provide.'”
Religion is the most powerful tool known to mankind. It is capable of inspiring the artistic wonders of the Italian Renaissance and the reliefs of Michelangelo, and it is capable of inspiring nineteen young men to fly airplanes into buildings. It can lend mankind a vision of a perfect world in which ‘the wolf lies down with the lamb’ and it can impart to the world a vision of people needing to be burned at the stake as infidels.
Without intelligent and earnest critics of the faith the heavenly vision of religion can easily spill over into the hell on earth. Hence, the necessity of atheism and agnosticism. I would argue that religion learns more about itself from its critics than it does about its admirers.
I have debated many atheists in my time, from Richard Dawkins to Daniel Dennett to Sam Harris to Christopher Hitchens. Of them all Hitchens stands alone. He has by far been the most formidable and the most interesting opponent, the one I have most loved and the one that has most gotten under my skin. Religious people have no real interest in Dawkins whom they find extreme, clinical, mechanical, and monolithic. But Hitchens is passionate, utterly unpredictable, contrarian, and fluent. And while he has been, at times been, in my opinion, highly unfair in his criticism of religion, he redeems it all by being all too human. It is his most likable quality. He is also supremely entertaining.
I believe this is the reason that my upcoming debate with Hitchens on 16 September in New York City at the Cooper Union on ‘Is there an afterlife’ has generated such considerable interest, particularly among religious people. The news that Hitchens has esophageal cancer and may be terminally ill has provoked sadness all round, particularly among the faithful. When I told my friends at the excellent Baron Herzog vineyards in California that Hitchens was ill, we all immediately decided to send him fine bottles of kosher wine so he and his friends could toast L’Chaim, to life, for his recovery. Religious prayer groups for Hitchens’ healing have sprung up all over America.
Are the faithful praying for Hitchens recovery because they want to have enough time to convert and win a great victory? Is it because they want a miracle in Hitchen’s life to open his eyes to G-d’s presence? I cannot say. I can only speak for myself.
I have no interest in converting Christopher Hitchens to religion. His atheism has not stopped him from being a singular champion of human rights throughout the world and he can teach we religious people a thing or two about courageously standing up to tyrants. I am not so naïve as to believe for a moment that Hitchens would be so intellectually dishonest as to suddenly now change his antipathy toward religion because of the possibility of impending death. Only a coward would forsake his personal truth out of fear of death and one thing Hitchens certainly is not is a coward. I am not a believer in religion-in-the-foxholes and deathbed confessions. Religion is too important to be embraced out of fear or trepidation.
Rather, what I intend with our debate is to finally dismiss this notion that religious people invented the idea of an afterlife out of a sense of weakness and insecurity. We’ve heard it all before. Religion is the opiate of the masses. It’s a drug that weak-minded people take to help them deal with the meaninglessness of life. They invented the afterlife because they couldn’t accept the finality of death. Then they invented G-d to give purpose and design to a fundamentally chaotic and unjust world.
The afterlife in Judaism is none of these things. It is not an escape from the flaws of this world or a reward for the suffering endured here. Any religion that promises an eternal reward for living righteously is better characterized as a business promoting celestial remuneration. Worship G-d so that he’ll pay you in the hereafter. Judaism certainly demands that we do the right because its right and never for the consideration of any external reward.
Most Jewish sages understand the World to Come as the world the way it will be when it reaches a state of perfection through human endeavor and G-d’s finishing touches, what we call the messianic era. Judaism’s focus is not on the heavens but on the earth, not on a disembodied existence in the sky but on souls animating bodies and doing good deeds here on earth. Our ground zero is not G-d’s celestial throne but the earth’s sacred spaces.
I have no intention of converting Hitchens to my religious point of view and do not believe I could do so even if I wished.
But I can convince Hitchens that his ideas about religious people are wrong. That we are strong rather than weak, focused on this life rather than the next, dedicated to healing the world rather than gaining entry into the heavens, fundamentally opposed to fundamentalists, extremely suspicious of any kind of extremists, and open to ideas – and criticism – from every quarter.
And that’s what Rabbi Zusya was trying to demonstrate in his story. Religious people learn how to serve G-d and humankind better from all whom they meet.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the host of ‘The Shmuley Show’ on 77 WABC in NYC, America’s most listened-to talk radio station. He is the international best-selling author of 23 books and was the London Times Preacher of the Year at the Millennium. As host of ‘Shalom in the Home’ on TLC he won the National Fatherhood Award and his syndicated column was awarded the American Jewish Press Association’s Highest Award for Excellence in Commentary. Newsweek calls him ‘the most famous Rabbi in America.’ He has just published ‘Renewal: A Guide to the Values-Filled Life.’ Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.World
Ukrainian government to buy weapon from NATO
16.01.2015
16.01.2015 0 Comment
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The Ukrainian government intends to join the NATO weapon procurement system in the near future, Oleh Hladkovskyi, states the Chairman of the Commission on Military-Technical Cooperation and Export Controls at the National Security Council of Ukraine.
This intention was considered by the parties during the last meeting of the joint Ukraine – NATO working group held in Kyiv on Thursday, when there was discussed the condition and prospects of military-technical cooperation between Ukraine and NATO, Hladkovskyi said.
"We've discussed the possibility of Ukraine's accession to NATO's global information platform where the partners can offer and ask for weapon systems," Hladkovskyi said.
"We hope that Ukraine will join the project in the near future," he added.
The Chairman of the Commission expressed his confidence that Ukraine's joining the weapon procurement system of the Alliance will help to take their MTC (military-technical cooperation) with NATO member countries to a new level.
Earlier it was reported that Senator John McCain said that this year he would make every effort to provide Ukraine with more serious assistance from the U.S., and yesterday, during the consideration of the draft resolution, the European Parliament supported the idea of providing Ukraine with military assistance.I have been working closely recently with a few extraordinary nutritional researchers, and I find that the information they have compiled is quite eye opening. Interestingly, what these highly esteemed doctors are saying is just beginning to be understood and accepted, perhaps because what they are saying does not conveniently fit in with or support the multi-billion dollar food industries that profit from our "not knowing". One thing is for sure: we are getting sicker and more obese than our health care system can handle, and the conventional methods of dealing with disease often have harmful side effects and are ineffective for some patients.
As it is now, one out of every two of us will get cancer or heart disease and die from it - an ugly and painful death as anyone who has witnessed it can attest. And starting in the year 2000, one out of every three children who are born after that year will develop diabetes--a disease that for most sufferers (those with Type 2 diabetes) is largely preventable with lifestyle changes. This is a rapidly emerging crisis, the seriousness of which I'm not sure we have yet recognized. The good news is, the means to prevent and heal disease seems to be right in front of us; it's in our food. Quite frankly, our food choices can either kill us - which mounting studies say that they are, or they can lift us right out of the disease process and into soaring health.
In the next few months, I will share a series of interviews I've conducted with the preeminent doctors and nutritional researchers in the fields of their respective expertise. And here it is straight out: they are all saying the same thing in different ways and through multiple and varying studies: animal protein seems to greatly contribute to diseases of nearly every type; and a plant-based diet is not only good for our health, but it's also curative of the very serious diseases we face.
Cancer
On the subject of cancer, I've asked Dr. T. Colin Campbell, Professor Emeritus of Cornell University and author of the groundbreaking The China Study to explain how cancer happens and what we can do to prevent and reverse it. Dr. Campbell's work is regarded by many as the definitive epidemiological examination of the relationship between diet and disease. He has received more than 70 grant years of peer-reviewed research funding, much of which was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), and he has authored more than 300 research papers. He grew up on a dairy farm believing in the great health value of animal protein in the American diet and set out in his career to investigate how to produce more and better animal protein. Troublesome to his preconceived hypothesis of the goodness of dairy, Dr. Campbell kept running up against results that consistently proved an emerging and comprehensive truth: that animal protein is disastrous to human health.
Through a variety of experimental study designs, epidemiological evidence, along with observation of real life conditions which had rational biological explanation, Dr. Campbell has made a direct and powerful correlation between cancer (and other diseases and illnesses) and animal protein. Following is a conversation I had with him so that I could better understand the association.
KF: What happens in the body when cancer develops? What is the actual process?
TCC: Cancer generally develops over a long period of time, divided into 3 stages, initiation, promotion and progression.
Initiation occurs when chemicals or other agents attack the genes of normal cells to produce genetically modified cells capable of eventually causing cancer. The body generally repairs most such damage but if the cell reproduces itself before it is repaired, its new (daughter) cell retains this genetic damage. This process may occur within minutes and, to some extent, is thought to be occurring most of the time in most of our tissues.
Promotion occurs when the initiated cells continue to replicate themselves and grow into cell masses that eventually will be diagnosed. This is a long growth phase occurring over months or years and is known to be reversible.
Progression occurs when the growing cancer masses invade neighboring tissues and/or break away from the tissue of origin (metastasis) and travel to distant tissues when they are capable of growing independently at which point they are considered to be malignant.
KF: Why do some people get cancer, and other don't? What percentage is genetic, and what percentage has to do with diet?
TCC: Although the initiated cells are not considered to be reversible, the cells growing through the promotion stage are usually considered to be reversible, a very exciting concept. This is the stage that especially responds to nutritional factors. For example, the nutrients from animal based foods, especially the protein, promote the development of the cancer whereas the nutrients from plant-based foods, especially the antioxidants, reverse the promotion stage. This is a very promising observation because cancer proceeds forward or backward as a function of the balance of promoting and anti-promoting factors found in the diet, thus consuming anti-promoting plant-based foods tend to keep the cancer from going forward, perhaps even reversing the promotion. The difference between individuals is almost entirely related to their diet and lifestyle practices.
Although all cancer and other diseases begin with genes, this is not the reason whether or not the disease actually appears. If people do the right thing during the promotion stage, perhaps even during the progression stage, cancer will not appear and if it does, might even be resolved. Most estimates suggest that not more than 2-3 percent of cancers are due entirely to genes; almost all the rest is due to diet and lifestyle factors. Consuming plant based foods offers the best hope of avoiding cancer, perhaps even reversing cancer once it is diagnosed. Believing that cancer is attributed to genes is a fatalistic idea but believing that cancer can be controlled by nutrition is a far more hopeful idea.
KF: You said that initially something attacks the genes, chemicals or other agents; like what?
TCC: Cancer, like every other biological event--good or bad--begins with genes. In the case of cancer, gene(s) that give rise to cancer either may be present when we are born or, during our lifetimes, normal genes may be converted into cancer genes by certain highly reactive chemicals (i.e., carcinogens).
Consider 'cancer genes' as seeds that grow into tumor masses only if they are 'fed'. The 'feeding' comes from wrongful nutrition. It's like growing a lawn. We plant seeds but they don't grow into grass (or weeds) unless they are provided water, sunlight and nutrients. So it is with cancer. In reality, we are planting seeds all of our lifetime although some may be present at birth, not only for cancer but also for other events as well. But this mostly does not matter unless we 'nourish' their growth.
The chemicals that create these cancer genes are called 'carcinogens'. Most carcinogens of years past have been those that attack normal genes to give cancer genes. These are initiating carcinogens, or initiators. But more recently, carcinogens also may be those that promote cancer growth. They are promoting carcinogens, or promoters.
Our work showed that casein is the most relevant cancer promoter ever discovered.
Aside from chemicals initiating or promoting cancer, other agents such as cosmic rays (energetic particles) from the sun or from the outer reaches of space may impact our genes to cause them to change (i.e., mutate) so that they could give rise to cancer'seeds'. The most important point to consider is that we cannot do much about preventing initiation but we can do a lot about preventing promotion. The initiating idea is fatalistic and outside of our control but the promotion idea is hopeful because we can change our exposure to promoting agents and reverse the cancer process, thus is within our control.
KF: What exactly is so bad about animal protein?
TCC: I don't choose the word "exactly" because it suggests something very specific. Rather, casein causes a broad spectrum of adverse effects.
Among other fundamental effects, it makes the body more acidic, alters the mix of hormones and modifies important enzyme activities, each of which can cause a broad array of more specific effects. One of these effects is its ability to promote cancer growth (by operating on key enzyme systems, by increasing hormone growth factors and by modifying the tissue acidity). Another is its ability to increase blood cholesterol (by modifying enzyme activities) and to enhance atherogenesis, which is the early stage of cardiovascular disease.
And finally, although these are casein-specific effects, it should be noted that other animal-based proteins are likely to have the same effect as casein.
KF: Ok, so I am clear that it's wise to avoid casein, which is intrinsic in dairy (milk and cheese), but how is other animal protein, such as chicken, steak, or pork, implicated in the cause and growth of cancer?
TCC: I would first say that casein is not just "intrinsic" but IS THE MAIN PROTEIN OF COW MILK, REPRESENTING ABOUT 87% OF THE MILK PROTEIN.
The biochemical systems which underlie the adverse effects of casein are also common to other animal-based proteins. Also, the amino acid composition of casein, which is the characteristic primarily responsible for its property, is similar to most other animal-based proteins. They all have what we call high 'biological value', in comparison, for example, with plant-based proteins, which is why animal protein promotes cancer growth and plant protein doesn't.
KF: Isn't anything in moderation ok, as long as we don't overdo it?
TCC: I rather like the expression told by my friend, Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr., MD, the Cleveland Clinic surgeon who reversed heart disease and who says, "Moderation kills!" I prefer to go the whole way, not because we have fool-proof evidence showing that 100% is better than, say, 95% for every single person for every single condition but that it is easier to avoid straying off on an excursion that too often becomes a slippery slope back to our old ways. Moreover, going the whole way allows us to adapt to new unrealized tastes and to rid ourselves of some old addictions. And finally, moderation often means very different things for different people.
KF: Are you saying that if one changes their diet from animal based protein to plant-based protein that the disease process of cancer can be halted and reversed?
TCC: Yes, this is what our experimental research shows. I also have become aware of many anecdotal claims by people who have said that their switch to a plant-based diet stopped even reversed (cured?) their disease. One study on melanoma has been published in the peer-reviewed literature that shows convincing evidence that cancer progression is substantially halted with this diet.
KF: How long does it take to see changes?
TCC: It is not clear because carefully designed research in humans has not been done. However, we demonstrated and published findings showing that experimental progression of disease is at least suspended, even reversed, when tumors are clearly present.
KF: Consider a person who has been eating poorly his whole life; is there still hope that a dietary change can make a big difference? Or is everything already in motion?
TCC: Yes, a variety of evidence shows that cancers and non-cancers alike can be stopped even after consuming a poor diet earlier in life. This effect is equivalent to treatment, a very exciting concept.
KF: This is sounding like it's a cure for cancer; is that the case?
TCC: Yes. The problem in this area of medicine is that traditional doctors are so focused on the use of targeted therapies (chemo, surgery, radiation) that they refuse to even acknowledge the use of therapies like nutrition and are loathe to even want to do proper research in this area. So, in spite of the considerable evidence--theoretical and practical--to support a beneficial nutritional effect, every effort will be made to discredit it. It's a self-serving motive.
KF: What else do you recommend one does to avoid, stop, or reverse cancer?
TCC: A good diet, when coupled with other health promoting activities like exercise, adequate fresh air and sunlight, good water and sleep, will be more beneficial. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
For help on how to lean into a plant based diet, check out my blog post here; and for recipes click here.The Court Classic is inspired by the classic tennis shoes and sneakers that we grew up wearing. We developed the court classic because we felt that a simple yet traditional high quality leather sneaker at an affordable price was missing from the US market. We put our three generations of shoemaking knowledge into this project, that was two years in the making, to bring you one of the finest leather sneakers in the world. The uppers are cut from a full-grain cowhide called "Weston" that is tanned right here in Maine by Tasman Leather Group. The uppers are lined with Horween's soft and supple Casco horsehide leather lining. The soles are made in Italy by Vibram and is their first cup/sneaker sole ever. We've also incorporated a molded latex/leather removable footbed that is made in Germany to our specifications for unparalleled comfort and support. We truly believe that a pair of sneakers has to be versatile and comfort is the most import part of that equation. Like all Rancourt & Co. footwear, the Court Classic is 100% Made in Maine, USA.
*The Court Classics cannot be re-soled, however we opted to use Vibram soles because of their reputation for durability.
DISCONTINUED: The sizes shown here are the only sizes available. If you'd like to order another size please contact us and we can make you a pair at full priceFrank Jordans, The Associated Press
BERLIN -- It's been likened to a parachutist trying to land on a mountaintop. Or a person attempting to leap from one speeding car to another.
The European Space Agency is planning to land an unmanned spacecraft on a comet next year in an unprecedented and exquisitely tricky mission that has been underway for almost a decade and is about to enter a critical new phase.
The agency announced Tuesday that its Rosetta probe, which has been journeying through space since its launch in 2004, will be awakened from hibernation next month and will aim to drop a lander onto the icy surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Nov. 11, 2014.
The plan is different from NASA's Deep Impact mission, which used a probe to fire a projectile into a comet in 2005 and create a plume of matter for scientists to study. That was just a drive-by compared with the rendezvous the Europeans are planning.
Scientists hope that by flying Rosetta alongside the comet and sending down a barrel-size lander to collect and analyze samples, they will get an even better idea of what comets are made of and what role they played in the formation of our solar system.
"Nobody has ever done this before," said Paolo Ferri, head of mission operations at the European Space Agency.
Ferri noted that while NASA managed to land a probe on an asteroid in 2001, comets are much more volatile places because they constantly release dust and gas that can harm a spacecraft. A comet is essentially a dirty snowball; an asteroid is a rock.
To catch 67P as it orbits the sun at up to 100,000 kph (62,000 mph), Rosetta has made several fly-bys of Earth, Mars and the sun, using their gravity to accelerate.
Once the spacecraft picked up sufficient speed and was on course to rendezvous with the comet, ESA put Rosetta into hibernation for more than two years to conserve energy.
This also gave engineers the time to find workarounds for two glitches that threatened the mission: a problem with two of the four reaction wheels used to turn the spacecraft, and a small helium leak that could affect the thrusters vital for its final manoeuvrs.
For now, scientists have a tense wait to see whether the probe wakes up as planned when its alarm clock goes off at 1000 GMT (5 a.m. EST) on Jan. 20.
The spacecraft will be about 800 million kilometres (500 million miles) from Earth at the time, and signals will take 45 minutes to travel each way.
If all goes according to plan, Rosetta will begin searching for 67P -- a lump of rock and ice about four kilometres (2.5 miles) in diameter that is invisible to the naked eye.
By November, Rosetta will have drawn up alongside the comet and found a suitable place for the lander, called Philae.
The cylindrical lander -- which is roughly the size of a chemical drum, at about 80 centimetres high by 100 centimetres wide (3.3 feet by 2.6 feet) -- will gently glide down to the surface and latch onto the comet with a harpoon, to prevent it from drifting off into space because of the icy lump's weak gravity.
Using drills, Philae will dig up samples and analyze them with its on-board instruments.
Researchers hope to gain fascinating insights, because comets have remained largely unchanged since our solar system formed.
"This time capsule's been locked away for 4.6 billion years," said ESA director of science Mark McCaughrean.
One key question scientists hope to answer is whether comets are responsible for the water on Earth.
Rosetta and Philae will keep sending back data until their batteries die or the debris streaming off the comet irreparably damages their sensitive instruments.
Ferri said Philae's useful lifetime could be as short as three days, while Rosetta is unlikely to survive beyond late 2016.
NASA, meanwhile, is also planning another space rock mission between 2019 and 2021. The agency is looking into sending a robotic spaceship to lasso a small asteroid and haul it close to the moon, where spacewalking astronauts would explore it.Windows PC
Python 3.x (tested with 3.5.1)
Java JRE (tested with 8u74)
A Kodi APK (tested with Kodi 16.0 ARM APK)
Download and unzip MakeKodiLauncher.zip Put the desired Kodi APK in the extracted "in" folder Run MakeKodiLauncher.py When prompted, enter the full name (with extension) of the APK you placed Let script decompile the APK and insert Launcher intent (Optional) When the script pauses, make further modifications to APK source files in "temp" folder (ie. insert skins, addons, etc) Let script recompile and sign the APK Find newly signed APK in the "out" folder
Warning: A new update to the FTV has been pushed out (version 51.1.2.0), and is reported to be unrootable. If you haven't done so yet (and haven't received the update) I highly recommend disabling automatic updates.
If your device does get the update, XBMC should continue to work but will lose Launcher functionality.
Set Android intent to run as Launcher
Set Android intent to run as Launcher
Included my XBMC addon repo. See description below. All other modifications that were built into my Gotham builds can be installed as needed from my repo.
Set Android intent to run as Launcher
Set XBMC on FireTV splash screen
Pre-configured Alternate keymap 3 (includes functionality for FF and RW buttons on the FTV controller)
Pre-set "Remote control sends keyboard presses"
Pre-set "Libstagefright" for video acceleration
Removed unnecessary built-in skin "Touched"
Included my "Confluence++" skin, set as default. See description below. (original Confluence skin is still included).
Included my "Android Power Options" screensaver. See description below. Now XBMC can automatically put the FTV to sleep!
Included my XBMC addon repo. See description below.
rooted
Prequisites:
Important Notes:
This package is signed with One Click APK Signer, so it will have a different signature than official releases of XBMC. As such, you will need to uninstall any official XBMC releases first, and may lose any previous settings in XBMC. I recommend using the XBMC Backup addon in the official XBMC.org Repo to backup and restore your XBMC settings.
Make sure you actually enable rbox's Xposed module by ticking the checkbox in Xposed Installer's Modules section. This may require a mouse.
Life's been really crazy. Development computer is on it's last leg. XDA hasn't been sending me notifications for this thread. Lots of excuses.I really don't have much time to be maintaining all this, and I do apologize to any of you I've inconvenienced. But I have put together a present for you guys. A Python script that will decompile an APK, modify its intent to act as a Launcher, then recompile the APK. No guarantees on this one, and things could blow up if intent strings don't match up in the future, but hopefully some find it helpful and carry on what I've been doing.Requirements:I don't know if I'll ever get to updating my skin and addons, as I'm pretty set with staying on 15.2 myself and there is a lot of other great work out there. If anyone wants to fork my repo and make changes though, feel free.----------------------------------------------------I created a slightly modified package of XBMC/Kodi for the Fire TV that I've been using as the main launcher. I thought I'd share it with anyone interested.Jarvis:Helix & Isengard:Gotham:Includes my "Confluence++" skin and "Android Power Options" screensaver, so that they can pull down updates automatically. The repo also includes some other addons that are simply shortcuts to open apps on the FTV, allowing them to be added to the Home screen on any skin. To access, go to System > Settings > Addons > Get Addons > elmerohueso's repo.My modified "Confluence" skin. Changelog/list of modifications This provides ability to automatically Sleep or Power OffAndroid devices, along with the option to logoff your XBMC profile prior to sleeping. It includes a SU Permissions check in Settings so you can give XBMCSuperUser permissions.. To enable, go to System > Settings > Appearance > Screensaver and select the "Android Power Options" screensaver. Make sure to check its Settings after selecting it.For additional changes since the initial version, please see the addon changelog.Note: I don't recommend having the screensaver power off the FTV as it has no power button. This ability is geared toward other Android devices.Kodi 16.0AndroidFileHost: signed-launcher-kodi-16.0-Jarvis-armeabi-v7a.apk MD5: bb2ff4132e3eead785ef2c16dd7c153cKodi 15.2AndroidFileHost: signed-launcher-kodi-15.2-Isengard-armeabi-v7a.apk MD5: b06b152f3d872a1e36f55a00fa2a223eKodi 15.1AndroidFileHost: signed-launcher-kodi-15.1-Isengard-armeabi-v7a.apk MD5: 67d6193208301a78c209d2fff5ed8947Kodi 15.0AndroidFileHost: signed-launcher-kodi-15.0-Isengard-armeabi-v7a.apk MD5: 6e68aed89437bc47a0b551a98bc3cab7Kodi 14.2AndroidFileHost: signed-launcher-kodi-14.2-Helix-armeabi-v7a.apk MD5: ce52c8b78cbf7c7150134c59b266f993Kodi 14.1AndroidFileHost: signed-launcher-kodi-14.1-Helix-armeabi-v7a.apk MD5: 50b3a50bbd9d66058e446db32aaff060Kodi 14.0AndroidFileHost: signed-launcher-kodi-14.0-Helix-armeabi-v7a.apk MD5: 3ba955488d1293bb7106140930993d5bXBMC 13.2Google Drive: signed-xbmc-13.2-FireTV(v8).apk Dev-Host: signed-xbmc-13.2-FireTV(v8).apk MD5: ebd85f240253add67197112911ae68f0XBMC 13.1AndroidFileHost: signed-xbmc-13.1-FireTV(v6).apk MD5: 0b3e5cdbc8e058102595418fb78964fdWindows 7 Service Pack 1 is quite close to being released to manufacturing, reportedly. This piece of information comes from a third-party source, and was not confirmed by Microsoft in any way.
In fact, while it’s not 100% certain, it appears that Windows 7 SP1 could have already hit the RTM development milestone.
The Redmond company has been extremely quiet on the progress of the Windows 7 SP1 development process, and the evolution from Release Candidate to RTM makes no exception to this rule.
And while there were voices claiming that Windows 7 SP1 would RTM ahead of the end of 2010, the software giant was immovable when it came to refusing to share a timetable with the public.
Wzor published what it claims are Build strings from various Windows 7 branches as they were on December 24, 2010, just ahead of Christmas, namely: win7 branch: 7601.17125.101210-1930; win7sp1_rtm branch: 7601.17514.101119-1850; and win7_spdev branch: 7601.17125.101221-1630.
Build 7601 |
0.4mm using my custom toolchain to compensate for substrate unevenness.The binaries of the toolchain are available here:The source is available here:(please note that google drive reported both files as viruses which is why I switched to Dropbox. If you don't trust me, just go through and recompile the source. there is nothing to worry about)Be sure to read the readme included in the download, there are some more tips and tricks as well as a few instructions.Notes:. This means that you have to use programs like GCodeRipper to convert all G2/G3s to smaller G1 moves. Since pcb-gcode does not use arcs this is no issue if you want to make PCBS. May get implemented in a later release.To see some more information on how your gcode file was parsed, select the file in the list on the left in HeightToGCode3. you will see some basic info as well as all lines that could not be parsed.Abu Dujana’s plans for a late-night rendezvous with wife +
NEW DELHI: Just likegave him away, leading to his elimination, there are several cases of foreign terrorists exposing themselves to surveillance on account of affairs and sexual misadventures with local Kashmiri girls.“Most foreign terrorists of Lashkar-e-Toiba come from low-level families in Pakistan’s Punjab. They are often tempted to court the attractive Kashmiri girls from well-off families. Wielding power of the gun and riding on their nuisance value, they either manage to impress local girls or force them into reciprocating their advances,” said an officer of J&K police.Of course, the affairs are fraught with serious security risks. “Their movements are compromised due to their frequent visits to meet their love interests or sexual partners. The police are in a far better position to generate human intelligence regarding their presence or movements,” the officer said.There have been several cases of top terrorists of Pakistan-based terrorist outfits like LeT coming under the radar either due to an identified pattern of movements in a locality where their love interests reside or even a tendency among dumped girlfriends and wives to get even by blowing their cover and alerting the agencies. A LeT commander in Srinagar, Abu Talha, was killed in 1999 after the father of one of the girls he had taken fancy to tipped off the SOG and Intelligence Bureau.Talha was smitten by the daughter of a superintending engineer in state PWD and made this amply clear to him. He asked the engineer to let his daughter, a cultured and highly-educated girl, be with him. The bewildered father did not know what hit him and packed off the girl to her grandparents’ place. A miffed Talha got Dukhtaran-e-Millat to issue a ‘fatwa’ against the girl saying that she wore too much make-up. When the girl still did not show up, Talha threatened her entire family with dire consequences.Luckily, the father of the girl had a relative in SOG, who he decided to confide in. The SOG alerted IB, whose officers then decided to lay the trap for Abu Talha. Somehow, the operation was slightly delayed. A BSF officer got whiff of the intel and decided to take things in his hand. He broke into the Shivpora house where Talha was hiding, and in the encounter that ensued, the LeT commander was eliminated. His killing, needless to say, had a positive effect on militancy in Srinagar.LeT terrorist in Sopore, Abdullah Uni, was killed in 2012 in similar circumstances. He was known to have 4-5 girlfriends. He was a terror in Sopore and a difficult catch for the forces. But his affairs put him on radar of the intelligence agencies, which closely followed his meetings with girlfriends. “Finally, on the basis of a tipoff from one of his girlfriends, he was cornered and killed. His death led to a dip in militancy graph in Sopore, which till then was a major problem area,” said a former J&K police officer.On 24 June 1909, Everton Chile were formed as a result of the English Everton's first South American tour.
The Blues and Tottenham Hotspur had been invited to play a number of matches in Argentina and Uruguay because football was becoming a popular sport in South America and it was thought a visit from two, strong, professional clubs would enhance this development.
Both clubs had finished runners-up - in the First and Second Divisions respectively - before setting sail from Southampton in May. Well, Everton did. Unfortunately, Spurs literally missed the boat and had to arrange a hasty lift to catch up with R.M.S. Araguaya in the Solent!
Excitement was high in Argentina and Uruguay as home fans sought to measure their skills against two of the best representatives from England. Since the first game played in South America in 1867, the sport had been dominated by migrant workers from Britain and the local elite, although there was a growing movement amongst the local working class to set up their own clubs. Boca Juniors, Racing and River Plate were all founded in the immediate years before this tour.
Power had still not shifted from the elite British-based sides however, so the tourists found themselves facing teams made up, on the whole, of amateur Britons.
Everton and Spurs played each other in the first match of the tour and drew a crowd in excess of 10,000, with the Argentinian President and assorted ministers witnessing a fine exhibition of football which ended in a 2-2 draw.
The visitors then spent the next month taking on teams from Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Rosario. All the matches against local opposition were won and there was then one more game between the two English sides, with Everton running out 4-0 victors. The star of the game and, indeed, the tour, was the Blues’ England forward Bert Freeman, who amazed the opposition with his tenacity and dribbling skills.
The truly lasting legacy of the tour, however, came in neighbouring Chile.
As the tour of Argentina was drawing to a close, news of Everton's successes had reached over the Andes to the Chilean city of Valparaiso - at the time a busy, bustling port visited by all ships travelling between Europe and the west coast of the Americas, as the Panama Canal wasn't opened until 1914.
A group of Anglo-Chileans aged between 14 and 15-years-old decided to establish their own team - and they called it Everton Football Club. Although all were Chilean-born, there remained a firm link back to England. The leader of the group was David Foxley, whose grandparents David and Anne had emigrated from Liverpool in 1859 to set up the first steam-driven flour mill in Valparaiso.
The early days of the club were spent playing friendly games against mainly British clubs in the winter and practicing athletics in the summer. The latter element became so successful that in 1919 they changed their name to Club Deportes Everton, partly to reflect the Chilean nature of the club but also to reflect the prominence that the athletic branch had achieved in the region and also at national and international level. Several Everton athletes had been crowned South American athletics champions; Rodolfo Hammersley in 1910 and Harold Rosenqvist in 1918, for example.
Since its foundation on 24 June 1909, the club had been considered, because of its British roots, somewhat elitist. Although open to anyone, the aspiring candidates not only had to be seconded but also find a considerable membership fee.
As the years went by, many of the older established clubs fell by the wayside, some folding as their players returned to Europe to fight for king and country, never to return. This was the case of two founder members of Everton Chile - Frank Boundy & Malcolm Fraser, who were both killed in the Great War.
But Chile's Everton began to attract fans from a wider area. In 1925, after years of being an athletics club with a football division, they relaxed their rules on membership, attracting keen and skilful players from all sectors of Valparaiso society. The impetus the football section needed was provided with a 2-1 victory over the visiting Uruguayan team Bellavista of Montevideo, who had no less than seven players who had taken part in their nation's Olympic victory in Paris in 1924.
The club went through a number of highs and lows over the next few decades but, in 1944, were elected to the national professional league, along with city rivals Santiago Wanderers. One of the conditions for their entry to the league was to transfer five miles up the coast to the town of Viña del Mar. The Ruleteros, as they became known because of the famous casino in the town, have remained there ever since.
In 1950, they became the first provincial club to win the Chilean league title - a feat repeated again in 1952, 1976 and 2008.
The Ruleteros Society, formed in 2002, is a supporters' group who aim to develop links between fans of both clubs – and they played a key role in a strengthening that bond in 2010.
Everton Chile famously came to Goodison Park to take on the forefather Everton in a friendly game held to celebrate the associations between the two sides 101 years after the former’s formation. Jermaine Beckford and Diniyar Bilyaletdinov scored the goals as the hosts recorded a 2-0 win in the historic encounter.
To this day, Everton Chile, or Everton de Viña del Mar to give them their full title, continue to go from strength to strength. In May 2016, they secured a return to the Primera division before this month announcing fresh investment from a Mexico-based firm and an aim of becoming a giant on the nation’s sporting scene once again.
For more information on The Ruleteros Society, click here.TribLIVE's Daily and Weekly email newsletters deliver the news you want and information you need, right to your inbox.
Pittsburgh Glass Works says “a combination of difficult realities” could lead to closing its Creighton plant next year.
In a news release issued Wednesday, the company, a division of Mexico-based Vitro, confirmed that discussions about the future of the plant in East Deer are under way.
Nearly 200 people work there.
The facility is one of the company’s eight automotive glass manufacturing plants in the United States.
In the release, PGW said the aging facility can’t keep up with the auto industry’s increasing technological demands, and would need significant upgrades and improvements.
Under one scenario, the company said the plant would not shut down until next summer, about nine months from now. Work would be sent to PGW’s facility in Evansville, Ind.
The plant’s workers are represented by the United Steelworkers. In a statement, District 10 Director Bobby McAuliffe said the union will “leave no stone unturned in our fight to preserve jobs for members.”
“We intend to continue working with the local union, the company, members of the community and political leaders in the effort to preserve the livelihoods of our members and their families,” he said.
East Deer Commissioner Tony Taliani said the plant’s closure would be a big blow to the small community.
“They’re our largest taxpayer, our largest employer, our largest water customer. They own a major portion of the most prime property in our township,” he said. “I’m very concerned about the future use of that property.”
The plant opened in 1883 as Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co.’s original glass plant, Works No. 1.
“I always hoped they would keep that plant open no matter what since it was the birthplace of PPG Industries,” Taliani said. “Pittsburgh Plate Glass was started there. I always hoped from a historical standpoint they would keep that facility operating.”
Employees react
PGW officials met with workers Tuesday and Wednesday.
“You can feel the different morale when you walk in,” said Hunter Pacek of New Kensington, who has been inspecting windshields for five months. “I don’t really know how to explain it. It just feels different.”
Beverly Close of Lower Burrell doesn’t believe the warning is a bargaining tactic. A process technician, she’s worked there for 39 years.
“I don’t believe that they’re saying it to scare us, to get us into thinking we’re going to have to take concessions,” she said. “It’s an old factory. How much money would they have to put into the plant to make it viable and competitive?”
Gary Endlich, 60, of Burrell Township, Armstrong County, has worked at the plant since 1978. He said workers are feeling a variety of emotions, including anger over Vitro deciding to shut it down just a few months after buying it.
“I can’t believe that the jobs that we do there and the amount of profit they make from us, now they’re going to close the plant down,” he said. “I’ve never been involved in a plant closing.
“Now I know the feeling that after all these years you’ve dedicated to this company and given them your life, basically they say, ‘Sorry — there’s nothing for you anymore.’ ”
Endlich said he had hoped in three to five years to retire from the plant, like his father, uncle and aunt had done.
Now there’s talk of retraining, which he isn’t sure will help him.
“I’m 60 years old,” he said. “Who is going to want to hire me for another five or six years? Who is going to want to hire me for that?”
Other business impacts
The plant’s closing could have a ripple effect across the Alle-Kiski Valley.
ALKAB in New Kensington makes custom equipment such as tooling, components and machinery.
“When I started the business in 1990, they were our first customer, and our only customer,” said Bill Kabazie, an ALKAB corporate officer.
But while the plant once counted for more than a quarter of ALKAB’s yearly revenues, 27 percent in 1998, it’s down to about 3.25 percent today, Kabazie said.
“Over the years, we’ve weaned ourselves off them and diversified our customer base,” he said. But, “There will be an impact.
“Nobody likes to lose a customer,” he said. “I have a history with them. I used to live in that place, pretty much.”
The PGW plant has been a top 10 account for Alle-Kiski Industries in Allegheny Township since it started 12 years ago, its president, Kevin Hartford, said. Over the past three years, it has made up about 5 percent of its total annual sales.
His business has two employees dedicated to the plant.
“This is a sad day for not only us vendors, but for the entire A-K Valley,” Hartford said. “That plant created wealth for many and supported thousands of families throughout the area.”
Hartford said its loss won’t threaten his company’s viability.
“Our primary concern is for the employees who have been so loyal and have added so much value to the company,” he said. “Most of the people we work with appear to truly appreciate their jobs and have a sense of pride knowing that they work for one the oldest companies in the area.
“Hopefully for all involved, Vitro will reconsider a complete shutdown and find a place in their business plan for the Creighton plant,” he said. “The skill level at that plant is outstanding.”
‘Serious challenges’
PGW CEO and President Joe Stas said the Creighton plant faces a combination of “serious challenges.”
“We reviewed every realistic business scenario, and all indications lead us to the likelihood of the closure of Creighton in 2018,” Stas said in a statement.
“We must stay ahead of future technologies and customer demands, which require strategic reinvestment in our future,” he said.
Creighton is the oldest facility in the PGW system, with a two-story production layout that creates “significant operational challenges,” the release said.
The plant is no longer capable of making many of the new glass technologies the automobile industry is demanding, such as cameras, electronic sensors, advanced antennas and other technologies needed for new safety, warning and autonomous driving features.
“The 130-year-old facility also would require significant utility upgrades and additional infrastructure improvements to be able to support further production investments,” the company said.
The company said it is facing an ongoing downturn in new car production in the United States, rapidly increasing demand for sophisticated technical windshield content and increased competition.
Overcapacity is a problem, the company said.
“Of the products manufactured at Creighton, PGW has the capacity to produce 2 million more units per year than the current market demands,” the company said.
Headquartered in Pittsburgh, the company reiterated its commitments to Pennsylvania.
In addition to Creighton, PGW operates plants in Tipton and Meadville and a research facility in Pittsburgh, which combined employ 650 people.
Vitro, Mexico’s largest glass maker, completed its purchase of PGW earlier this year from Chicago-based LKQ Corp. for $310 million.
Brian C. Rittmeyer is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 724-226-4701, [email protected] or via Twitter @BCRittmeyer.
Brian C. Rittmeyer is a Tribune-Review staff reporter. You can contact Brian at 724-226-4701 or [email protected], Ariz. -- Braves power-hitting prospect Alex Jackson is back where his pro career began, playing in the Arizona Fall League for Peoria in the same stadium where he was once a high first-round draft pick playing rookie ball in the Mariners organization. Not only that, he’s playing on a fall-league team, the Peoria Javelinas, that also has some of his former Mariners minor-league teammates.
Those Mariners hopefuls could be excused if they didn’t initially recognize Jackson. He’s added considerable muscle since his days in the Mariners organization and is now positioned behind the plate rather than in the outfield, having made the position switch after a November trade to the Braves.
“Most of the guys aren’t used to seeing me play a different position on the diamond, let alone being the guy who’s catching them and calling their pitches,” Jackson said one morning last week, smiling as he sat in the shade, the Arizona sun having already raised the temperature to 86 degrees at 10 a.m. “But we all have a good relationship and we’re out here enjoying it together as one team.”
The Braves and Mariners have four pitchers and the maximum eight total players apiece on the Peoria roster. Several Braves have excelled including premier prospect Ronald Acuna, third-base prospect Austin Riley and left-hander Max Fried. But none has shone any brighter than Jackson, a 6-foot-2, nearly 240-pound slugger who’s hit for average and head-turning power while displaying behind-the-plate skills that have improved dramatically since spring after three years away from catching.
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He leads the AFL with five home runs in 48 at-bats while batting.333 with a 1.105 OPS that ranks fourth in the league. “Between Austin and Alex in batting practice, it’s fun to watch,” Fried said of daily power displays from the Braves.
Still, it’s Jackson’s work behind the plate – blocking balls, making strong throws, calling games -- that’s most impressed Peoria pitchers and others.
“He looks like a natural catcher; he’s a great athlete,” said Javelinas pitching coach Yoel Monzon, who was a pitching coach for the Mariners’ rookie-league team in Peoria the past two seasons. “He’s really good calling the game, blocking the ball, and he looks like he has a lot of confidence behind the plate. He has some tools and he’s doing what he loves to do. I’m very happy and very excited that he’s been able to do the things he’s doing right now.”
Peoria manager Luis Salazar is the Braves’ Double-A Mississippi manager and had Jackson on his team for the last five weeks of the minor league season after a promotion from high-A Florida. He also saw Jackson plenty at spring training in his initial weeks back behind the plate.
“His game-calling is getting better and his blocking is outstanding,” Salazar said. “I’ve been shocked at the way he’s blocking here. Yesterday (a game last week) he was 9-for-9 (blocking balls) with three tough blocks. He’s been outstanding. Game calling, he gets together with a pitcher and has a good idea now. Lot of times with pitch sequence, I’ll explain to him in the dugout, to let him know about situational hitting, like with runners in scoring position, to let him know that’s the most important thing for him – know the situation, who’s pitching, what’s the strength of the pitcher in that particular situation.
“But he’s been good. He’s been working and he wants to get better.”
Jackson caught Fried’s last Double-A start Aug. 1 before the lefty was promoted to the majors, and has caught all four of his starts in the fall league.
“Tremendous,” Fried said. “I mean, for a guy that hasn’t caught in a couple of years, to come back and just – obviously his bat is unbelievable; he hits the ball farther than almost anyone out here. These home runs have been pretty impressive. But he caught my last outing in Mississippi and he’s caught me every time here. I trust him back there. I have no reservations about throwing a curveball in the dirt, knowing that he’s going to block it. It’s really comforting knowing that I can put one in the dirt and he’s going to keep it in front or he’s going to try to do his best job to frame a pitch and try to get us out of the inning.”
Fried also likes how Jackson works with a pitcher to better understand what makes him tick and what are his strengths.
Braves beat writer David O’Brien offers you a unique behind-the-scenes look at the Braves and major league baseball. You’ll find more on myAJC.com.
“We talk a lot about sequencing and what we like to do and how we want to attack guys,” Fried said. “So I’ve been really impressed with his understanding of catching and managing the game, and I think that’s also kind of helped him on the hitting side, too. Kind of gives him a different perspective.”
Monzon said, “I like that when Max Fried pitches, they look like they’re on the same page a lot. I like that (Jackson) goes to the mound, talks to him, gets him back on track again. That’s something really good for a catcher, to be able to have that leadership and help the pitchers. It’s really important.”
Salazar gives credit for Jackson’s improvement behind the plate to the player and also to Jeff Datz, the Braves’ minor league catching coordinator.
“Datzy took him under his wing from the get-go in spring training, because he hadn’t caught much,” Salazar said. “We stay in contact, (Datz) gave me some advice on what to work with (Jackson) out here, on blocking and receiving and stuff like that. But man, the kid -- I’ve been impressed with how he’s been out here. Because I had him for almost two months at Mississippi and this is a totally different guy. He just keeps making progress.
“He’s going to hit for power, there’s no doubt about that. And he’s got a strong arm – oh, he’s got a hose.”
And a potent bat. Or, as Chipper Jones put it after checking out Jackson on a backfield at spring training, “That kid has light-tower power.”
The Mariners gave up on Jackson after three unproductive seasons as a miscast outfielder, and the Braves got the still-young former first-rounder for a modest price, sending low-level pitching prospects Rob Whalen and Max Povse to the Mariners.
In his first season in the Braves organization, Jackson hit a combined.267 with an.808 OPS and career-bests in doubles (21), homers (19) and RBIs (65) over 96 games (402 plate appearances) between high-A Florida and Double-A. He made 56 starts at catcher and 39 at designated hitter, after making the position switch from outfield at the beginning of spring training.
“He hadn’t caught in three years since high school, so he was a little rough around the edges to start in spring training,” said Braves assistant farm director Jonathan Schuerholz. “But he wanted to do it. We sat down with him after we traded for him and said, Hey, do you want to do this? This is something we’re thinking about and you have to be all in. And he’s like, ‘I’m all in, I want to do it.’ So he comes in and, it’s about getting your body back used to it, going through a full season of playing professional baseball, catching for a full year in the Florida State League for most of the year, in the heat.
“You look at where he came from, the work that Jeff Datz did with him, the work that (high-A Florida hitting coach) Carlos Mendez did with him, and (Jackson) needs to be credited too – he works his tail off and he really cares, he wants to be a good catcher. And if you took a before-and-after picture from where he was in spring training to where he is now, and if he makes those strides again, then he’s done it, for me.
“The bat plays, we know that, and we’re really encouraged by the future for him.”
As strong a season as he produced at the plate, Jackson has taken his offense to another level in the Arizona Fall League.
“It’s just a combination of everything,” Jackson said. “Trying to be myself. Having fun. Enjoying the time out here. It’s a privilege to be able to participate in the Arizona Fall League, and just going about my business the right way. Having fun, and offensively getting good pitches to hit, putting good swings on it, not trying to do too much, and just enjoying myself.”
He’s facing better pitching on a far more consistent basis in the prospect-laden AFL than during the minor league season, and it’s seemed to suit his approach.
“I would definitely say there’s more of a plan, both from the offensive side and the pitching side of things,” Jackson said. “Pitchers here, they’ve got a plan, they execute their pitches, they throw pitches where they want to throw them. And from a hitter’s perspective, you’ve got to look for your pitch, and once you get that pitch you’ve got to put a good swing on it. Because guys out here, they’ve all got really good stuff. So you look for that pitch and when you get it, you want to put a good swing on it. If you’re able to do that, good things will happen.”
Fried said it’s not one particular pitch that Jackson has feasted upon in the fall league.
“He hit a 3-2 slider out (last week), so it’s kind of a little of everything,” Fried said. “He’s putting really good swings on it. Balls fly here, so he’s definitely taking advantage of that. But he’s putting together really good at-bats. I’m just glad he’s on our team.”
Jackson is still just 21, with a birthday coming on Christmas. And with only 33 games caught above Single-A, the Braves will be careful not to rush him up the ladder before he’s ready. The Braves’ are bringing back Tyler Flowers and Kurt Suzuki, who formed one of the majors’ top offensive catching tandems in 2017, for at least one more season, but both are eligible for free agency after 2018.
By then, Jackson should have more than 1 ½ seasons of experience in the high minors.
“We’ve been very pleased with him,” Schuerholz said. “He’s a great kid, has done everything we’ve asked of him. He handles the staff and it seems like the pitchers really enjoy pitching to him. But we’re just thrilled for what the future has in store for him. Big power. And it’s easy power, it’s not forced power. It’s bat speed, it’s strength, but it’s not muscled.”Preface
Tether has been ramping up their USD₮ market issuance to the tune of 3 Million USD in the Month of June alone!!
Year to Date tether has increased the amount of USD₮ issued, more than 5 fold; from 951,600 to 5,951,591 USD₮.
This maybe due to the downfall of NuBits at the start of June 2016 leaving a good market opportunity for the team at Tether; Learn more about the Nubit downturn at HERE - posted on the 1st of June; Also a follow up 2 weeks later HERE
After some digging around i have come to the conclusion that Tether is gearing up to launch their Euro pegged crypto currency 'EUR₮'; this is purely speculation and their is no concrete evidence or official word from Tether as yet but i am putting my money on it.
About Tether
Before we jump into the detail here is a bit of an overview of tether the company
Tether.to
Tether is a centralised entity providing price stable crypto currencies. Their Flagship product is USD₮ sometimes known as Tether.USD; but they also have other product such as EUR₮ and JPY₮; These FIAT currencies pairs and known as 'tethers'; these 'tethers' are pegged 1:1 with their associated FIAT currency.
EUR₮ and JPY₮ are not actively traded as yet.
'tethers'(USD₮, EUR₮ and JPY₮) are tokens issued on the OMNI platform (previously known as Mastercoin); OMNI is a meta-protocol running on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. Some other notable OMNI issued assets are MAID, Agoras Tokens and Synereo AMP.
Tether the company is incorporated in Hong Kong with offices in Santa Monica, CA and East Coast USA; and have partnership's with many exchanges including the leading US Exchange BitFinex.
How does Tether work?
Tethers exist on the Bitcoin blockchain through the Omni Protocol. The Omni Protocol is open source software that interfaces with the Bitcoin blockchain to allow for the issuance and redemption of cryptocurrency tokens.
Tether Platform currencies are 100% backed by actual fiat currency assets in our reserve account. Tethers are redeemable and exchangeable pursuant to Tether Limited’s terms of service. The conversion rate is 1 tether USD₮ equals 1 USD.
The Tether Platform is fully reserved when the sum of all tethers in circulation is greater than or equal to the balance of fiat currency held in our reserve. Through our Transparency page, anyone can view both of these numbers in near real-time.
For a more detailed technical explanation of how the Tether Platform works you can check out their Whitepaper HERE
Tethers flagship asset USD₮ adds 3 Million to supply in the last 30 days
At the time of writing 5,951,591 USD₮ have been issued with a market cap of $5,951,591; interestingly the reserve fund is showing 325,100 USD less than the amount of USD₮ issued (you can see the total amount issued via Omniwallet as well) the issuance pool is also showing $325,100 which i think is incorrect and maybe better stated as -$325,100.
My understanding (which may be incorrect) is as follows:
Reserve Pool = amount of FIAT collateral stored in the bank
Issuance Pool = amount of surplus funds (Total Authorised - Reserve pool)
Total Authorised = amount of tokens issued via the OMNI protocol
You can view the current issuance statistic on the Tether transparency page
To me this shows that USD₮ tether is under collateralised by $325,100 USD. it maybe an accounting mistake or maybe the banks audit has not been updated. One thing is for sure there has been a lot of activity in issuing USD₮ in the last month.
Looking at the asset itself shows Tether in the month of June has tripled their issuance from 1.9Million USD₮ to 5.9 Million USD₮
Also looking at the 24h trade volumes it show that USD₮ is beginning to be quite a popular stable currency with 24h trade volumes in the last week averaging $2,000,000 USD when looking at all trading pairs combined.
Where Does USDt Trade?
BitFinex
PoloniEX
Bittrex
OpenLedger
C-CEX
Shapeshift
Go Coin
and more
Conclusion
There is a large market for price stable crypto currencies and it looks like Tether is attempting to stamp their position in the market and looking at the latest market volumes they seems to be attracting a lot of attention. Tether is generally seen as a centralised entity operating within the legal framework of the real world and providing liquidity via a reserves of FIAT currencies in bank accounts; this leaves it vulnerable to government, financial and political intervention; looking at their whitepaper they are looking to comply with legislation enforced on them and only operating in countries and states where there are clear regulation in regards to their operations. This centralisation also mean they have a much easier job at maintaining the pegged currency as it is literally pegged to some FIAT currency held in a back account and therefore the can offer spreads much closer to 1:1 and do not need an advanced free market mechanisms with incentive's to users to maintain the peg.
This is of-course only valid while they remain in operation; if they were to be forced to close or have their asset ceased the peg would crumble faster than the news would hit the internet.
Some decentralised players in the stable crypto currency game which do not have to conform to such regulations and therefore can serve users from all corners of the globe are Bitshares offering BitUSD, BitEUR, BitCNY, BitGold and many more and the soon to be release Steem Dollars via the Steem Network.
Comparatively the decentralised solutions have a harder task at bootstrapping their networks due to the need to incentive's in place for the free market to maintain the peg no so much in the case of Steem Dollars as the currency is a loan from the network; but if successful will be superior to the centralised alternative due to their trust-less nature, censorship resistance and ability to bypass laws imposed by local governments.Australia will send a mission to Mars as soon as possible to check for irregular maritime vessels, following a report from NASA that there may be flowing water on the planet.
Announcing the program, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said it was important to send a clear message to would-be boat people. “Where there’s water there’s boats. And where there’s boats there’s votes. Or should I say, where there’s boats there’s a high chance of illegal people-smuggling activities and drownings. We need to stop this before it starts,” he said.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull echoed Mr Dutton’s concerns. “Look, the last thing we want to see is people drowning on Mars. We have to, we must, stop people getting on boats in Mars,” he said. The PM said the Government’s strong policies had meant there had been no deaths at sea to date on Mars.
Mr Dutton said he hoped to have a Border Force team on Mars within 12 months. “What we are telling people is that if you get on a boat in Mars you won’t be settled in Australia”.
Labor says it will support the $200 billion expedition.
Become a Shovel member. Or follow us on Email | Facebook | Twitter | InstagramWin, lose or draw, UFC legend Randy "The Natural" Couture expects his fight versus Lyoto Machida at UFC 129 on April 30 to be the final time he steps into the Octagon.
"I believe this is my last fight," Couture told ESPN.com on Monday. "I know the UFC is probably going to have other ideas, especially with acquiring Strikeforce and all that. They're probably going to try to draw me into another fight but I don't think that's going to happen. I want to stick to my guns and this is the last one."
The light heavyweight tilt, Couture's 30th professional mixed martial arts contest, is scheduled to take place in front of over 55,000 fans in Toronto's Rogers Centre. Couture's career began in May 1997 at UFC 13. Four bouts later he defeated Maurice Smith to become the UFC heavyweight champion. Couture (19-10) won the heavyweight title three times, and also added two light heavyweight championships.
Couture, who turns 48 in June, holds UFC records for most title reigns
(six) and most championship fights (15). With his win versus Tim Sylvia in March 2007 -- his comeback fight after retiring for 13 months -- Couture, at the age of 43, became the oldest fighter to win a UFC title.
"I will miss the competition immensely but I want to go out on my terms," Couture said. "I want to go out when I think it's time to go out and not because I lost this fight or lost that fight or because I had an injury that precludes me from training the way I want to train.
"I want to make the decision on my own."
Couture said he will remain active in mixed martial arts as a trainer and personality, and lend his voice to issues surrounding fighters'
rights as the need arises. In recent years, Couture has focused on acting. He is scheduled to shoot the sequel to last summer's Sylvester Stallone-led vehicle "The Expendables 2" this August.
Josh Gross covers mixed martial arts for ESPN.com.Phil Mickelson's ball started left and kept fading. Left of Winged Foot's 72nd-hole fairway; left of the rough, the crowd, the trees lining the fairway, and into a hospitality tent stationed on the neighboring hole. After four more shots, Phil held his head in his hands before making a meaningless putt.
"I just can't believe I did that," he said afterward. "I am such an idiot."
The worst collapse of Mickelson's career was complete. He had lost the 2006 U.S. Open by one shot with a double bogey on the final hole.
But that's not where the story ends. After making the obligatory media stops and signing autographs, Phil sought out Winged Foot's staff members. He thanked them for their work, shook their hands, and discreetly handed each a wad of cash: $1,000 here, $1,500 there. Phil had spent a lot of time preparing at Winged Foot before that year's Open, so he wanted to thank everyone.
It's reasonable to estimate that Mickelson handed about $10,000 in tips to staff throughout the week, according to people who were there. But as he was driving away |
reviews. filter ( r => r. critic === critic && r. title === title ). map ( _. rating ). update ( rating ) result <- rowsAffected match { case 0 => reviews += Review ( critic, title, rating ) case 1 => DBIO. successful ( 1 ) case n => DBIO. failed ( new RuntimeException ( s "Expected 0 or 1 change, not $n for $critic @ $title" )) } } yield result }
Let’s walk down the body of this method:
We’re trying to update a review. The generator (to the right of the <- ) is a DBIO[Int]
Next we use the rowsAffected to produce another DBIO[Int] : reviews +=... inserts new row, and is a DBIO[Int] DBIO.successful(1) produces a DBIO[Int] for a constant value DBIO.failed produces a DBIO[Nothing] for an exception, signalling failure.
As an exercise, you can de-sugar that for comprehension into flatMap and map to see how the DBIO s combine. The main thing to notice, though, is that we can produce DBIO[T] for the arbitrary logic we need for our application.
Finally, notice that because we’re mixing database queries and user logic in a for comprehension, we need to also have an ExecutionContext in scope. Our logic will run on the context we supply to the method. Slick will sensibly release a session for the duration of our custom logic, unless it is pinned.
Get or Create
You should be able to see how this kind of code can deal with “fetch the row or create one”. Let’s add that into the mix for postReview, forgetting about critics to keep the example shorter:
def postReview ( title : String, rating : Int ) : DBIO [ Int ] = for { existing <- reviews. filter ( _. title === title ). result. headOption row = existing. map ( _. copy ( rating = rating )) getOrElse Review ( title, rating ) result <- reviews. insertOrUpdate ( row ) } yield result
We’re now fetching a row and modifying it, or creating a new one and persisting it. It’s the same pattern we’ve seen, combining DBIO s:
result.headOption is a DBIO[Option[Review]]
is a we use the Option like any other option, using getOrElse provide a default of a new row
like any other option, using provide a default of a new row we upsert the row, giving a final result: a DBIO[Int].
Conclusions
Slick contains a convenient way to upsert database records, based on the availability of a primary key.
But it is not limited to just that. You can combine database actions together, mixing in your own custom logic.
There’s a Github project where you can try the code out. This example is likely to appear in the upcoming revisions to Essential Slick.I can tell you're waving your hands back and forth, and given that we can't see exactly what your arms are doing, the most likely explanation I can think of is when waving your hands back and forth, you're shaking the table (directly or indirectly) which is causing the water to move a bit.
I can do this too with my computer monitors. If I wave my arms around like you seem to be doing, it causes my chair to move back and forth with me, which shakes the floor, shaking the table, and ultimately shaking my computer monitors.
Alternatively, you could also easily be pushing air around by waving your hand like that, and if the air passes over the cup, the air in the cup will resonate, also causing the water to move. This is most likely what's happening, if you really can make the water "dance with music" - sound waves are resonating in your cup and making the water vibrate.
You're high. Go to bed. Sleep it off.Around 90 percent of ivory seized by law enforcement comes from African elephants that died less than three years before seizure, a study of ivory samples finds. The results confirm what many conservationists have suspected: Long-term stockpiles don’t contribute much ivory to illegal trade, and poached ivory quickly ends up in illegal markets.
Thure Cerling of the University of Utah and colleagues analyzed 231 ivory pieces seized in 14 raids in Asia and Africa from 2002 to 2014 (including a 2002 raid in Singapore, shown). Radiocarbon dating of tusks pinpointed elephants’ time of death.
Just one tested specimen came from an elephant that died more than six years earlier, the team reports online November 7 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In geographic trends, ivory from East Africa appeared on the market faster than ivory from a forested area of Central Africa.A partial count indicates a center-right coalition led by the Conservative Party will take power in Norway for the first time since 2005.
The forecast by Statistics Norway based on a quarter of the vote indicates Conservative Party leader Erna Solberg will become the new prime minister, ousting Jens Stoltenberg of the Labor Party from office.
The forecast was published as polls closed Monday.
The Conservative Party is expected to form a coalition government either with the anti-immigration Progress Party, the Liberal Party, the Christian Democrats or all three.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
Norwegians cast ballots Monday in a parliamentary election that could see the power in the oil-rich nation shift for the first time since 2005 to a center-right coalition, including an anti-immigration party.
Despite Norway's strong economy and low unemployment, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg's center-left coalition has been trailing in opinion polls for months. The Conservative Party, headed by Erna Solberg, has seen a surge in support amid pledges to increase the availability of private health care and cut taxes on assets over $140,000.
As she voted in the morning, Solberg told reporters she had "been working for four years, intensively to build a wider and stronger platform for the Conservative Party."
The conservatives have said, for the first time, that they are prepared to form a coalition government with the anti-immigration Progress Party, which appears to have lost support since 2009 but is still the third largest party in Norway. It may also seek the support of the Liberal Party and the Christian Democrats.
The discovery of oil and gas in Norway's waters in the 1960s turned the Scandinavian nation into one of the richest in the world, with a strong welfare system and a high living standard. The oil helped Norway withstand Europe's financial crisis and has allowed it to create an investment fund for the country's future that is now worth around $750 billion.
One political expert said Stoltenberg's main challenge Monday was simply that he had been in power for so long.
"I call it government fatigue. The Labor coalition has been in power for eight years and one would expect that some voters now think it is time for a change," said Frank Aarebrot, professor of comparative politics at the University of Bergen.
This is the first parliamentary election since Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people in 2011. Thirty-three survivors of the massacre on Utoya island, mostly teen members of the Labor Party youth wing, are seeking national office in the election.
Stoltenberg was admired for his calm demeanor after the 2011 terror acts and there was a short-lived boost in support for his Labor Party. But last year a report criticizing Norwegian police for a litany of institutional failures before and during the attacks dented his government's prestige.
---
Malin Rising reported from Stockholm. Associated Press television producer David MacDougall contributed to this report.21st March 2010 81tYr4Or · Gallery/Carousel/Slider, JQuery · Comments Off on jPhotoGrid – Zoomable jQuery Image Gallery
This plugin takes a simple list of images and captions and turns it into a grid of photos that can be explored and zoomed. Nearly all of the styling for this plugin is done in css. The trick is to layout the grid by floating the list items. The first thing the plugin will then do, is convert these all to absolutely positioned. This is what allows the plugin to zoom in on an individual image and then return it to its place.
Html for this plugin is simply an unordered list of images and captions. The CSS is also fairly straight-forward. The key things to notice are the.active and.selected classes. When you hover over a list item, it is given the class ‘active’. Once you have clicked the list item, it is given the ‘selected’ class.
The javascript is easy enough to set up. It needs to know the sizing of the thumbnails as well as the sizing and positioning of the zoomed image. This is how the plugin is able to zoom and restore each of the images.
Demo: http://www.newmediacampaigns.com/files/posts/jphotogrid/example.htmlWe pick up where we left off from last episode, with Kimberly trying to make a second first impression. Or is it a first second impression? Doesn’t matter because *spoilers* she goes home. First date card arrives and it’s a group date. The ladies start eyeing each other up and are whisked away in the limo to see what sort of antics Chris has up his sleeve for the date.
(Just a side note that frustrates the hell out of me. Chris doesn’t plan the dates. Chris doesn’t do anything. He goes where they tell him to. Please don’t thank Chris for putting together the bungee jump date that will inevitably happen or think that was all him when there is some band that is really desperate for a gig to come play for you) /rant
So at the group date Chris says let’s have a pool party. What a subtle way to find out what all of these girls are working with. This is then followed by them all walking down the streets of LA in their pool attire to eventually have a tractor race in the street. Again, subtle. Ashley I is the “winner” which means sitting in Chris’s lap for 20 minutes on a tractor. Chris then returns to the group and takes each one for some alone time while we find out just which girls are jealous and bitter. Chris decides to pick Mackenzie to spend more time with and they head out. This is when shit starts getting weird. Mackenzie has a kid at the age of 21 and has trouble trying to tell Chris. What better way to break the ice then start talking about aliens. I don’t think there has ever been a successful first date in which someone resorted to aliens. Someone has been watching too much M Night Shyamalan. But I did look up Chris’s farm on google maps and saw this:
While the group date was occurring Jillian and Megan (Dumb and dumber) decide that they need to bust into where Chris sleeps to do some recon. Jillian has on bikini bottoms and there is a black bar covering her. Seemed odd at the time but later on when one of the girls are drunk she says that Jillian has a hairry ass. Jillian also looks like she takes steroids with Jose Canseco so we’ll bookmark this development. While at Chris’s they find his motorcycle. Megan decides to try his helmet on to make sure it’s safe. The result is below:
This scene immediately reminds me of Gus Frerotte of the Washington Redskins famously doing this after scoring a touchdown:
Gus sprained his neck and was never the same afterwards. I have a feeling that Megan has been doing these kind of things for a long time.
So the second date card arrives with one of it’s cheesy lines like let’s explore our love or something and it’s addressed to Megan. Megan has no clue it’s an actual date and thinks it’s just a note to her. I’m left to ponder 3 possibilities. 1) That helmet has some sort of magical power that makes you stupid 2) The helmet is paper thin and Megan actually concussed herself while running into things 3) Megan really is that big of an air head. If I were Chris I would find a new helmet. Just to be sure. They fly over the hoover dam in a helicopter and then have a picnic after landing. I’m pretty sure Megan thought the dam was built by beavers and looked like this before actually seeing it:
Our last date has 2 limos taking the remaining ladies to what looks like a haunted ruins area. They get all scared as people bang on the windows until Chris pokes his head in and saves the day. As the girls get out he says to Amber (the black girl) “I didn’t see you there”. It’s pitch black out. Amber is the black girl….Anyway, he tells them that they will be shooting zombies with paintball guns. Remember when I said not even the Mexican drug cartels would mess with Ashley S? You can add zombies to that list. I’m not sure there are words to describe the crazy in this girl. Vegas has her at 2 to 1 odds of ending up here while everyone else is filming the after the final rose special at the end of the season:
Once she gets the paintball gun she needs to be told several times that they aren’t shooting each other but the fake zombies that come and attack them. She then repeatedly shoots the zombies at point blank range after they are “dead”. She wanders off to places you aren’t supposed to go. She interrupts Chris while he is trying to talk to the camera. And she looks like this:
I don’t even have the time to mention what she was talking about the whole night (to be honest I don’t remember. Just know it didn’t make sense). I’m not sure Megan is from this planet. I could see M. Night doing a remake of ET where Ashley takes the place of Drew Barrymore as Elliot’s sister that freaking loves skittles and needs them to survive while Elliott pals around with ET all day. But here’s the twist, (M Night style) Ashley is really the alien and it turns out ET is Elliot’s sister. I’m not sure even M Night would go for that script but one thing is for certain, this extra terrestrial needs to phone home.
We then head back to the house and fire up yet another cocktail party. That one on one time is valuable so girls start making out with Chris like he’s the last guy on earth. Ashley I must be a big fan of Aladdin because she dressed up as princess Jasmine and gave Chris 3 wishes. I wonder what one of them was….
But not so fast. Ashley let’s a few girls know that she’s a virgin. Mackenzie is one of those girls and is floored by this. She acts like she just saw some mythical creature:
(I know you are jealous of my photoshop skills)
At the rose ceremony this happened:
And for those of you that said your good byes:
See you next week
- NickMeet the Press moderator David Gregory did his best to condemn Congressman Paul Ryan’s new anti-poverty proposal during an interview on Sunday, July 27.
The NBC host played a clip of Ryan from 2013 in which he criticized a “dependency culture” in America which Gregory interpreted as not sounding “like there’s a lot of sympathy for people you think need the government's help. What you seem to be saying is that people have a problem with their own dependency here the government is only furthering.” [See video below.]
Gregory began his questioning of Ryan by pushing liberal talking points that more government policies are needed to combat poverty:
Skeptics have cited one thing that really struck me which is that some of the poor states are run by Republican governors who have refused to even expand access to Medicaid under the ObamaCare law. So you can understand why people would be skeptical that giving them that kind of power would actually lead to constructive solutions to deal with people who are poor.
For his part, Congressman Ryan pushed back against Gregory and argued that “these programs don't work with each other. In many ways, they end up being counterproductive, because poverty is a complicated problem and it needs to be customized. And secondly, we had basically a poverty management system with respect to the federal government.”
After the Meet the Press moderator maintained that Ryan’s view towards poverty lacked compassion, the GOP congressman shot back:
We don't want to have a poverty management system that simply perpetuates poverty. We want to get at the root causes of poverty to get people out of poverty. And I would argue that that is the best way to go forward and that's what we're proposing here. Which is have benefits that are customized to a unique person's problems because poverty is very complicated. To not just keep them where they are but help them get to where they want to be.
Gregory’s criticism towards Ryan’s anti-poverty program is especially ironic given recent reports that the NBC host just purchased a new $5.4 million house in D.C. but he then finds it appropriate to then criticize someone else for supposedly lacking compassion.
See relevant transcript below.Mexican drug lord assassinated by killer clowns
Francisco Rafael Arellano Félix, the eldest brother in Mexico's once-dominant Tijuana drug cartel, was shot to death by gunmen disguised as clowns at a children's party on Friday.
The 63-year-old drug lord was also known by the nicknames "El Pelón" (the baldie) or Menso, ("stupid/crazy"). He was assassinated by a man in a clown suit during a family gathering at an upscale resort in Cabo San Lucas, a popular tourist destination on the Baja California peninsula, state special investigations prosecutor Isai Arias told Associated Press on Saturday:
An official of the Baja California Sur state prosecutor's office told the AP that the costumes included a wig and a round red nose.
"He was hit by two bullets, one in the chest and one in the head," Baja California state government official Isai Arias told press on Saturday. The motive for the attack and the gunmen's disguise are under investigation, he said. Mexican police report that the body was identified by one of his sons.
Mexican newspaper El Universal reports that the murder took place in the Ocean House ballroom at the Hotel Marbella in Cabo San Lucas, Baja California, Mexico.
Reuters reports that there was one gunman, with two male accomplices.
El Universal de Mexico has a backgrounder on the crime family. They were thought to be the most brutal, most bloody, and most powerful in Mexico for some time.
Arrellano Félix did time in US prison, then returned to Mexico.
From BBC News:
The former cartel leader was arrested in 1993 but released nearly 15 years later after spending time in prison in Mexico and the United States. His brother Eduardo was jailed in August in the US for 15 years after pleading guilty to money laundering. Security experts believe the Tijuana cartel is now run by his sister Enedina and her son Fernando, known as "The Engineer", according to AFP news agency.
El Universal quotes Brian White, his attorney, as saying that "his client's freedom was achieved after a reduction of sentence for good behavior."
As @andresmh pointed out to your faithful blogger on Twitter, there's a drop of bloody irony in this story: "Se lo cargó el payaso" is a vernacular phrase (a "dicho") in Mexican Spanish which literally translates to "he was carried by the clown" but means something bad happened to someone. It's like saying, "he's fucked."
As the top commenter in this news article noted, Francisco Rafael Arellano Félix was indeed mortally fucked by clowns.
@xeni apparently the expression comes from rodeo culture where injured people are carried by clowns http://t.co/zOwdD7MfjX — Andrés Monroy H (@andresmh) October 20, 2013
Related Boing Boing post: "NSA hacked email of Mexican president and drug-war reformers"
"Killer Clowns" have precedent in popular culture. Above, the trailer for the cult film "Killer Klowns from Outer Space."When my mother died, I stopped seeing in color. I was 14 and afraid to tell anyone. Our lawn, which had never been particularly emerald, became gray-white. Our modest postwar house, once mustard, was now bleached sepia. Our ancient Dodge Dart, which actually was white, remained so—but its glacier-blue interior looked ashen. I memorized the one detail without which I could not survive: red was at the top of the light; green was at the bottom.
Suspecting a neurological problem, I feared I might have to go to the hospital, which was out of the question. We were broke. My mother had entered Long Beach Memorial Medical Center in Long Beach, California, in March 1970. Her doctors had not expected her to survive until April. But she lasted until Labor Day. My father’s insurance did not cover this length of stay. Oppressed by the bills that arrived after her death, he was forced to sell the one object he and my mother had most cherished: their house in La Jolla. The house where I, their only living child, had been born five weeks prematurely on the kitchen floor. The house under whose avocado trees I was photographed in a sailor-themed hat at Easter and in a red stocking cap at Christmas. The house we’d had to leave when my father lost his aerospace job in San Diego and found another one near Los Angeles.
In a rented house, the colorless one, I learned the dark side of mothering—caring for the 65-year-old toddler who was my father. He had designed the flight controls for the HL-10, one of NASA’s first lifting bodies, a precursor to the space shuttle. But he claimed not to understand the controls on the washing machine. Or, for that matter, on the stove, vacuum, and steam iron. Not to mention the basic principle of the hamper. He dropped his socks and shirts on the floor wherever he removed them. I honestly don’t think he did this to torture me. For his entire life, some woman—his mother, my mother—had picked up after him. They had cooked for him. He had no clue that another way was possible. We couldn’t afford a housekeeper. After one of my inept meals—some components were burned; others sickeningly undercooked—I asked him why he never even tried to throw together a dinner. “Men don’t do that,” he said.
ARE YOU HUNGRY? Over 40 million Americans don’t have enough to eat and we want to know why. From redlining to the opioid crisis to the flint water crisis, we're exploring why and what is making food insecurity worse in the United States. Listen Now
c. 1970: Wearing a space helmet her father gave her, Lord delivers a presentation about the space program to her Girl Scout troop.
A teenager focused on quick solutions might have become a heroin addict. But I plotted. I had greater aspirations than housekeeping and adult-infant care. And my mother had had greater aspirations for me; I knew she had secured a savings account for college that my father couldn’t access. Somehow I found time to edit the school newspaper, serve as senior class president, weather exhausting swim-team workouts, generate endless homework, and get myself into Yale, which, miraculously, was three thousand miles away from Long Beach.
This admission changed my life. In the 1970s, many people viewed New Haven as an emblem of urban blight: crumbling, crime-filled, edged by brutal public housing. But to me it was a Technicolor wonderland. I remember the postcard blue behind the tawny masonry of Harkness Tower. I remember the bottle-green grass on the Old Campus, the verdigris lions guarding Wright Hall, the scarlet foliage that burst out everywhere in October. I remember the frail orange light inside the marble walls of my favorite structure, the Beinecke Library.
For the first time since my mother’s cancer diagnosis, I saw rainbows—in their full, giddy, ROYGBIV splendor. Each day, I worked hard, astonished that I did not have to plan meals, do other people’s laundry, or scrub the bathroom floor. On the university health plan, I saw a therapist for the first time—as well as a neurologist and an ophthalmologist. We discussed my sight. They found no physiological problems. Acute depression, the therapist speculated, may have caused my plunge into black and white.
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My color vision remained intact for more than 35 years, some of which were bumpy. They included professional false starts, a 14-year marriage, a divorce, and a breast lumpectomy. They included deciding after my divorce to date women, and conveying this confusing information to some less-than-welcoming friends and relatives. They included a move from New York to Los Angeles for work. But no pothole was so deep—no incident so traumatizing—that it robbed me of color. Until two years ago, when my then–life partner unilaterally decided to adopt the fifth offspring of a 22-year-old middle-school dropout in Florida, a woman whose biological mother had herself died in her 20s of a drug overdose.
Eight years ago, when I met Helen—which is what I will call my former partner to protect her privacy—we clicked. Such clicking was not, for me, a frequent occurrence. She was smart, well educated, and droll enough to make me laugh. I was 50; she was 41. I responded to a profile on an online site that she had planned to delete but somehow forgot. Its headline, as I recall, was “Soprano Seeks Mezzo.” I think I signed my email “Octavian,” and she knew I was alluding to Der Rosenkavalier, my favorite opera. Having weathered many apocalyptically mismatched dates, I found this knowledge so stunning as to be a sign from God.
Helen had studied film, music, and art history. She had worked as a music editor for film and television. We obsessed over identical things. Well, almost identical. Even eight years ago, she dreamed that she would one day be someone’s mother. I dreamed that I would one day win the Publisher’s Clearinghouse sweepstakes and a Nobel Prize. I was flippant about my “dream” and assumed she had been the same. But she wasn’t. Three years ago, she became deadly serious. We were collaborating on several projects, but suddenly—and, for me, bafflingly—engaging work took a backseat to a new fixation: securing a human newborn.
Many women who lost their mothers as children go on to flourish as mothers themselves. Some claim to have healed their grief through parenting. I wanted to be one of those women. When the prospect of a baby loomed on my horizon, I felt pure horror. But I thought I could white-knuckle my way through this and become a different person, a better person. I pictured myself not so much as a co-parent but as a benign auntie, who would take care of Helen—making sure she ate and even occasionally slept—while she took primary care of a newborn. The simple acts of diaper changing and feeding might connect me with an infant; I would finally understand and feel an attachment that I didn’t believe was possible. My body, however, was not onboard with this plan. It slowed me down. It gave me weekly 18-hour migraines. Then it clobbered me with its nuclear weapon: loss of color vision. It gave me no choice. I had to look back at my past to discern why I could not move into the future.
Even as a child, I never wanted to nurture. I hated baby dolls, but not nearly as much as I hated actual babies. They stank, yowled, and interfered with my greatest pleasure: reading. In elementary school, my mother helped me memorize multiplication tables and write book reports. She had, for reasons she never made clear, dropped out of graduate school in chemistry. But she loved to explain science. When she squeezed fresh orange juice, she pointed out the molecular difference between ascorbic acid (in citrus) and acetylsalicylic (in aspirin), molding me into the pedant that I am today. She co-led our Brownie troop, and held me hostage in the backyard for a week while she taught me to hit a baseball. She was a natural athlete, a good tennis player, and her daughter would not be the last chosen for a team. (I became the second-to-last.) For all these gestures, and for just paying attention, I loved my mother. I know I survived my difficult years, the years after she was gone, because I had once felt so deeply loved by her.
Lord, 3 years old, with her mother.
At home, she toed the party line: “The greatest calling for a woman is to be a Catholic wife and mother.” But I sensed that she hated the 1960s convention of stay-at-home motherhood. In my 30s, when my father shipped me my old Barbie-doll cases that had been sealed in storage since my mother’s death, I found evidence of her unhappiness. My Barbie stuff was a mirror of her values. She never told me that marriage could be a trap, but she refused to buy my Barbie doll a wedding dress. She didn’t say, “I loathe housework,” but she refused to buy Barbie pots and pans. What she often said, however, was “Education is power.” And in case I was too thick to grasp this, she bought graduation robes for Barbie, Ken, and Midge.
I also got the sense that giving birth was the worst hell imaginable. People say mothers “forget the pain,” but mine didn’t. It wasn’t that she told people about her excruciating 36-hour labor with my older sister, who was born with Down syndrome and died two weeks later. But she would recount my birth as a comic monologue in contrast to it. In November 1955, feeling what she thought might be labor, she rang her OB-GYN, who scoffed that I wasn’t due for at least a month. Shortly thereafter, I plopped out on the kitchen linoleum. Our next-door neighbor ran to help. But at the sight of blood and amniotic fluid, the neighbor passed out. When the EMTs arrived, they found two women on the floor. “Which one do we take?” they asked. Nor did my mother convey that a child with developmental challenges—a child like my dead sister—was something to be sought out. My mother was not a social worker. “If the Lord sends you a trial,” she told me, “you rise to meet it.” But you’d have to be nuts to take on an unnecessary trial.
After her first surgery for colon cancer, when she was 49, she took me with her to six o’clock Mass every morning. If anyone deserved a miracle, she did. And at 12, I enjoyed the liturgical component of the Mass: So many idioms in common speech had their roots in the Old or New Testament. But three years and as many surgeries later, when her cancer proved fatal, I raged against God. This troubled her. To my amazement, she had not, apparently, lost her faith. On the day before she died, she told me to hold my ear close to her face. Her five-foot-ten-inch body now weighed about 80 pounds. She had tubes and bruises everywhere. She clutched a jade-green rosary in one gaunt hand and held mine with the other. “I love you,” she rasped, barely able to form words through the morphine. I fought back tears. “God gave you gifts. Use them. And remember”—her weak voice became even softer— “God showed you one great mercy. He took your sister from us before you were born.”
Because of my sister, I had no illusions about childbearing. It is a gamble, as is most of life. Money managers use the “Monte Carlo method” to evaluate portfolio risk—and to keep that risk within an investor’s comfort zone. NASA never expects a risk-free launch, but it tries to fire rockets when they are less likely to blow up.
Similarly, when two healthy young adults conceive a baby, the baby may have problems—even if the mother shuns drugs, alcohol, and nicotine during pregnancy. But the odds favor a healthy baby.
In contrast, I knew that the biological child of drug-addicted felons might be at a higher risk for problems. But given how badly my partner wanted a baby, any baby, I wanted to believe that nurture could defeat nature. If a child with no genetic advantages grew up in a loving, cultured home with attentive parents (or an attentive parent), the child would turn out well. This idea gave me comfort—until circumstances conspired to prove that it was not necessarily true.
Sometimes coincidences are so strange and pointed that it’s hard to believe the universe is random. About a year after Helen began her quest to secure a baby, I agreed to be a judge for the National Book Award in Nonfiction. To do my job, I had to pore over stuff I otherwise would have avoided—books about recent breakthroughs in genomics and gestational biology, books that dwelled on the genetic determinants of behavior, books that examined the specific havoc drugs and alcohol can wreak on a fetus.
These books alerted me to things that I never wanted to see and, worse, that I couldn’t put out of my mind. Cigarettes, I knew, were bad for pregnant women, but I’d had no idea how little nicotine was required to cause intellectual disabilities or aggressive behavior in kids. “If a mother smokes during pregnancy,” neuroscientist and criminologist Adrian Raine writes in The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime, this “not only has negative consequences on brain development, but it also leads to increased rates of conduct disorder and aggression in her offspring.” (One has to wonder how many behavorial disorders were undiagnosed in, say, the 1960s, when smoking during pregnancy was less stigmatized than it is now.) He continues: “Studies have documented impairments in selective attention, memory, and speed in processing speech stimuli.” More startling, “secondhand exposure to cigarette smoke predicted conduct disorder even after controlling for antisocial behavior in the parents, poor parenting practices, and other biological and social confounds.”
Studies of identical twins raised in different environments—a loving home versus a home rife with domestic abuse—revealed that the twins turned out the same. Their genes dictated who they were, not their upbringing. One Northern European study showed that not only did the home make no difference, but also that the children of criminals tended to grow up to be criminals. Raine’s book and others like it gave me nightmares. In one recurring dream, I saw an illustration from The Anatomy of Violence that compared the MRI of a normal brain and the brain of a child with fetal alcohol syndrome. The normal brain had coils and whorls; the fetal alcohol one looked like a cauliflower.
Still, I did not break up with my partner. I didn’t want to be this fearful person, saddled with inconvenient knowledge that I could not banish from my thoughts. I didn’t want to see the world as it was. I wanted to see it through a rosy, hopeful scrim. I loved having a partner; banal chores like cooking and shopping became adventures when done together. I loved watching great episodic TV with her—shows like The Wire and House—and analyzing how the TV writers had achieved what they did. I loved writing with her, in forms that were collaborative.
If only I had been 25 years younger! A quarter century ago, when I was married to my ex-husband, I had tried without success to bring a baby to term. A biological child made sense to me then—wanting to continue my genes, even if those genes carried depression so intense it could steal color from vision. But at my present age, with not that many productive years left, the last thing I wanted was a child—especially, I am ashamed to admit, one that might have disabilities as severe as those of my sister.
In the second decade of the 21st century, popular culture focused on nontraditional families—families with gay parents, or it-takes-a-village childcare arrangements with “families” of nonbiologically related adults. In response to my hesitation about adopting this baby—and the weekly migraines that accompanied it—my partner proposed that we devise such an arrangement. When the baby arrived, I could live in my “office” (a loft I owned) and escape baby duty from time to time. To defray the costs of a private adoption, she proposed teaming up with a close straight male friend who lived nearby and longed to be a dad.
In retrospect, I should have left the relationship. I should have heard my body’s message. It knew who I was and how far I could travel from my core self without breaking. But my brain, or at least part of it, was intrigued to be part of a social experiment. My partner and the aspiring dad registered with an adoption lawyer and, after a few months, a birth mother on the West Coast contacted them. The biological father of the baby was in prison, but we were prepared for this sort of news. My partner had warned me that it was not unusual in this situation for fathers to be incarcerated, or for mothers to be uncertain as to who the fathers were. In choosing my partner to raise her baby, this birth mother seemed both open-minded and admirable. Unlike many women in her situation, she had made it to her 20s without having had any babies and was enrolled in a community college. She was eager to take prenatal vitamins and to submit to drug and alcohol tests during her pregnancy. Because of her conscientiousness, I allowed myself the luxury of hope.
What happened next is what often happens. The mother decided to keep her baby. Because she was not a drug addict, she was hit hard by the oxytocin that her body released when she held her infant daughter. (For active drug addicts, oxytocin can’t always compete with the pull of methamphetamine or heroin.) My partner was devastated—perhaps all three of us were. We had fleshed out a collective fantasy about making a “better” life for a kid, a life with love (from my partner) and financial advantages. We had to regroup.
Call me monstrous—and I’m sure some will—but after the disappointment, I was relieved that the mother had kept the baby. In the months that followed, the three of us rescued a dachshund-beagle mix, which mostly lived with the potential dad. To my shame, I hoped that dog would satisfy Helen’s desire to nurture.
Then the 22-year-old pregnant woman from Florida entered the picture. Even my therapist, who tends to see good in all things, sensed danger. The woman had given birth to four kids since she had left school at age |
in time, you guys will be able to see what we see in SADO, but it might take some time. We are very excited about every one of our players and that includes SADO.By Renuka Sane and Vrinda Bhandari
On 23rd March 2016, the Government of India enacted the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016 (” Aadhaar Act “), touted as India’s biggest welfare legislation. The Act aims at the targeted delivery of subsidies, benefits, and services by providing unique identity numbers based on an individual’s demographic and biometric information. The passage of this Act has been controversial, especially since the Lok Sabha rejected the amendments passed by the Rajya Sabha. Given the magnitude of data collection about individuals that would arise under the Aadhaar system, the law needs strong safeguards about privacy. In this article, we review the law from the viewpoint of concerns about privacy.
In this task, we use the conceptual framework that was constructed in our previous three articles: Protecting citizens from the State: The case for a privacy law (16 February 2016), Elements for the proposed privacy law (9 March 2016) and Analysing the Information Technology Act (2000) from the viewpoint of protection of privacy (18 March 2016). In these articles, we have setup an eight-fold path for evaluating laws from the viewpoint of privacy, which (in turn) builds on the nine privacy principles of Notice, Consent, Collection and Purpose Limitations, Access and Correction, Disclosure, Security, Openness, and Accountability. In this article, we use this approach to think about the Aadhaar Act, 2016.
Component 0: Objective of the law
By virtue of the large-scale and centralised collection, storage and use of an individual’s demographic (e.g. name, date of birth, address) and biometric (e.g. iris scan, fingerprint, photograph etc.) information, the Aadhaar Act has great privacy implications. However, the Aadhaar Act does not consider privacy as one of its objectives. The word privacy does not even find mention in the Act. In fact, even the government’s arguments in the Supreme Court during the challenge to Aadhaar, make it clear that it (and therefore, the Aadhar Act) does not view privacy as a fundamental right. Thus, while the text of this law is better than the UPA’s 2010 draft, it is weak on privacy.
Component 1: Value of personal data
While the Aadhaar Act, on first blush, seems to understand the value of the information it collects, it is not underpinned by an understanding of the right to privacy. As discussed before, laws are shaped by the value we place on personal data, and function on an underlying premise of privacy being valuable in and of itself. However, the Aadhaar Act lacks any understanding or articulation of the importance of privacy of personal data. Privacy considerations in the Act appear to be a minor afterthought, especially when juxtaposed with the needs of ‘national security’ which is given prominence in the Act.
Component 2: Scope and ambit of the law
The scope of the Aadhaar Act is a bit unclear since the working of key provisions have been left to regulations that are to be notified in the future. For instance, Section 2(g) of the Act defines ‘biometric information’ to mean photograph, finger print, Iris scan, or such other biological attributes of an individual as may be specified by regulations. It is thus possible that DNA can be included under this definition, and become part of a centralised government database. The consequences of DNA-based profiling and its potential misuse are terrifying.
The Act oddly defines ‘core biometric information’ in Section 2(j), which is the same as biometric information, except that it excludes photographs.
Another example of the lack of clarity is found in Section 23(2)(k), which permits the Unique Identification Authority of India (“UIDAI”) to share information about individuals in such manner as may be specified by regulations.
Similarly, Section 29(2) permits the sharing of identity information, other than core biometric information, in such manner as may be specified by regulations. Even more worryingly, Section 29(4) permits the publication and display of an individual’s core biometric information or Aadhaar number for purposes as may be specified by regulations.
Together, these examples undermine the idea of a watertight database that will be used exclusively by the government for the purposes of giving subsidies, benefits or services. Even if the first wave of subordinate legislation is drafted with thought and care, the Act leaves the possibility of future changes to these rules and regulations in ways that undermine privacy.
Component 3: Coverage
The Aadhaar Act justifies the collection, storage, and use of personal data on the premise that it is a “condition for receipt of a subsidy, benefit or service”, as stipulated under Section 7 of the Act. Thus, the Act is portrayed as covering (or regulating) only the interactions between the State and its residents.
However, a closer look reveals that under Section 57, the Act also facilitates interactions between private parties and residents of India by allowing “body corporate” to use the Aadhaar number for their own purpose. This raises concerns about violations of privacy when UIDAI shares data with private entities.
For instance, TrustID is an app that allows the user to verify any individual using their Aadhaar number, and offers a range of services including pre-employment, credit background, tenants, business partners, employers, and property owners’ verification. It is not clear that the information access by TrustID is taking place in ways that protect the privacy of individuals. As Usha Ramanathan notes, many private companies have begun the process of trying to expand and leverage the uses of Aadhaar. The use of Aadhaar by a large number of private persons has long been touted as a contribution of the Aadhaar system to the Indian economy. There may be many conflicts about privacy in this process of expansion.
These applications suggest that the Aadhaar system will not be narrowly limited to the applications described in Section 7. The Act potentially covers everyone. It can include all the transactions conducted between an individual and the State in relation to benefits and subsidies; and the transactions between an individual and a corporate entity, where the private entity uses the Aadhaar number for identification and authentication.
The expanded scope of coverage, along with the absence of protection privacy, implies that this Act has reduced the overall privacy protections enjoyed by residents in India – whether in their interactions with the State to access subsidies/benefits or in their interactions with corporate entities.
Component 4: Collection and retention of personal data
With regard to data collection and its retention, it is important to provide an opt-in/opt-out clause to users, as this is consistent with the ‘Choice and Consent’ principle. This is particularly important in the Aadhaar Act, given our ownership over our own personal (demographic and biometric) data and the pervasiveness of our biometric data (e.g. we leave our fingerprints wherever we go).
The Aadhaar Act does not provide an opt-out clause, wherein Aadhaar number holders can choose to leave the system (and forego all its benefits) and ensure that their identity information is permanently removed from the Central Identities Data Repository.
Mr. Jairam Ramesh proposed an amendment to Clause 3 of the Bill in the Rajya Sabha, allowing a person to ‘opt out’ even if they had already enrolled, with the consequence that their authentication, biometric, and demographic information would be deleted from the system within 15 days. Although passed by the Rajya Sabha, the amendment was rejected by the Lok Sabha.
The absence of an opt-out clause is closely related to the issue of retention of personal information inasmuch as there are no time limits for the retention of data. This is unwelcome in light of the inherent non-revocability of biometric information and the fact that traces of our biometric data, for instance fingerprints, are left everywhere.
Component 5: Use and processing of data
The principle of ‘Purpose/Use Limitation’ is lacking in the Act. For instance, Section 33(2) carves out an express exception to Section 29(1)(b)’s stipulation of “using” core biometric information for any purpose other than generation of Aadhaar numbers and authentication under this Act if it is in the interest of [undefined] `national security’.
Section 3(2) and Sections 8(2)(b) and 8(3) of the Act require the enrolling agencies to inform the individual about the manner in which their information shall be used and shared and ensure that their identity information is only used for submission to the Central Identities Data Repository.
At first blush, thus, the Act seems to incorporate principles of ‘Purpose Limitation’, especially since Section 41 imposes a penalty on the requesting entity for non-compliance. However, the lack of an effective enforcement mechanism, as discussed later, undermines these provisions. For instance, the Act does not detail how an Aadhaar number holder can escalate the issue (since only the UIDAI can file a complaint) or what standard will be used to determine whether the requesting entity has provided the information in a clear and suitable manner.
Further, the Aadhaar number holder’s identity information can be used both by the State and body corporates, without any further regulation governing the use by third parties.
Component 6: Sharing and transferring of data
This component of privacy design focuses on the ‘Disclosure’ principle, namely the sharing of personal data with third parties. In the case of Aadhaar, this entails the identity information of the Aadhaar number holder. One of the most controversial sections of the Aadhaar Act is Section 33, which provides for the disclosure of information, including identity information or authentication records, under certain circumstances.
Section 33(1) permits the disclosure of such information pursuant to a judicial order by a Court not inferior to that of a District Judge. Nevertheless, the proviso only requires a hearing to be given to the UIDAI, and not to the Aadhaar card holder, whose information is being disclosed. Consequently, this deprives the individual of their essential right to be heard.
Section 33(2) is even more controversial because it makes an exception to the security, confidentiality and disclosure provisions on the direction of the Joint Secretary in the interest of national security. Such a direction has to be reviewed by a three member ‘Oversight Committee’, consisting of the Cabinet Secretary, the Secretary of the Department of Legal Affairs and the Secretary of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology. The second proviso further provides that such a direction shall be valid for three months, after which it can be reviewed and extended every three months. This is problematic for various reasons.
As Mr. Jairam Ramesh and Mr. Sitaram Yechury noted whilemoving an amendment to Section 33(2), “national security” is an undefined term, and thus there is no transparency concerning covert surveillance. Consequently, the Rajya Sabha passed an amendment to replace the phrase “national security” with “public emergency or in the interest of public safety” (as is present in the Telegraph Act dealing with wiretapping). Unfortunately, this amendment was rejected by the Lok Sabha, and Section 33 remained as is. The scope of Section 33 is vague and it seemingly permits, and even facilitates, the furnishing of personal information to any third party, if it is in the interest of `national security’. The Oversight Committee is basically a committee of three Executive nominees. Thus, the possibility of effective oversight remains low.
Component 7: Rights of users
As discussed previously, the right to access and correct one’s own information, the right to data breach notification, and the right to data portability are extremely important from the perspective of the user.
Unfortunately, the Aadhaar Act does not grant these rights to the Aadhaar number holder. With respect to the right of access, it is instructive to examine the proviso to Section 28(5) of the Act, which states that an Aadhaar number holder may “request” (not demand) the UIDAI to provide access to her identity information. Nevertheless, the proviso excludes requests for her core biometric information.
It is unclear what the powers of the UIDAI are to accept or deny such a request or why a carve out has been made to restrict access to one’s own finger print/iris scan, especially considering they can be wrongly entered in the system, as has been documented in Rajasthan (where the biometric information of potential food ration beneficiaries did not match the data stored on the Aadhaar servers).
Correction or change of demographic information (e.g. on getting married) or biometric information is governed by Section 31 of the Act, which requires the Aadhaar number holder to “request” (not demand) the UIDAI to alter such information in their records. The section states that the UIDAI, on the receipt of such a request, “may, if it is satisfied” make such changes. It is unclear what the standard for such “satisfaction” is, and the Act does not prescribe any statutory penalty or means for judicial redress for the delay/failure to act. Given the centrality of the Aadhaar number in linking various databases and services, such truncated rights of access and correction are worrying.
The Aadhaar Act also fails to prescribe ‘data breach notification’ requirements, mandating the UIDAI to inform an individual, the Aadhaar number holder, that their identity (biomentric and demographic) information has been shared or used without their knowledge or consent. Similarly, there is no concept of ‘data portability’ since information cannot freely be transferred amongst different service providers, since there are no alternatives to the UIDAI.
Component 8: Supervision and redress mechanisms
Effective supervision and redress mechanisms require individuals to be informed when there is a breach of confidentiality or disclosure of their personal information.
Section 47 of the Act prescribes that only the UIDAI or its authorised officer can file a criminal complaint under the Act. Thus, all the criminal penalties prescribed under the Act (e.g. for disclosing identity information under Section 37 or for unauthorised access to the Central Identities Data Repository under Section 38) can only be initiated by the UIDAI, and not the aggrieved Aadhaar number holder.
Consequently, even though the Act prescribes civil and criminal remedies for unauthorised access, use, or disclosure by the prescribed authority, the criminal remedy is not available to the aggrieved Aadhaar number holder. Such a person only has recourse to civil law, and the fines prescribed under the Act.
Unfortunately, a conjoint reading of Sections 28 and 47 of the Act disclose the possibility of conflict of interest since it may be in UIDAI’s interest to cover up breaches of privacy. Without the UIDAI’s proactive action, an individual Aadhaar number holder is left without remedy.
Section 30 of the Act treats biometric information as “sensitive personal data or information”, as understood in Section 43A of the Information Technology Act. The treatment of such information under the IT Act has been dealt with in detail in our previous post. The IT Act itself fails to handle sensitive personal data or information in ways that embed privacy concerns.
Finally, as discussed in the sections above, the supervision mechanism for one of the Aadhaar Act’s most controversial sections (Section 33), is the constitution of an ‘Oversight Committee’. This Committee is tasked with reviewing the disclosures made in the interest of `national security’, and thus serves to fulfill the ‘Accountability’ and ‘Security’ principles of privacy law. However, this three member Committee comprises of three government bureaucrats, especially after the Lok Sabha rejected the Rajya Sabha amendment to include either the CVC or the CAG as part of the Committee.
Conclusion
In this group of four articles, we have established a systematic eight-fold path for analysing laws from the viewpoint of concerns of privacy. We have used this framework to analyse two laws: The IT Act, 2000, and the Aadhaar Act, 2016. Both these laws have important failures in enshrining privacy. These laws thus hamper India’s emergence as a mature democracy.
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Renuka Sane is a visiting assistant professor at the Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi, and a visiting fellow at the IDFC Institute, Mumbai. Her research interests are in household finance, especially on household choice in financial instruments such as credit, pensions, insurance and equity markets, as well as consumer protection in finance. She is also interested in research and policy on the criminal justice system in India. She has been involved in the first crime victimisation survey in Mumbai and Delhi. She has a PhD in Economics from the University of New South Wales and holds an M.A. in Economics from Mumbai University.
Vrinda Bhandari is an Advocate at the Delhi High Court. She completed her B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) from National Law School of India University, Bangalore ands read for the BCL and the Masters in Public Policy program from the University of Oxford. She is interested in issues of free speech, criminal justice, and court administration and reform.”When your heavy metal band’s gimmick centers around barbarian, mutant warmongers from outer space splattering blood and slime on the front row of the audience like a more disturbing version of watermelon-smashing comedian Gallagher, you’re bound to raise more than a few eyebrows. Add a sexual element that involves simulating the rape of infants - regardless of the satirical intent - and you’ve put a might large bullseye on your back.
So it was surprising to no one in the band GWAR, who anticipate getting arrested all the time, that lead singer Dave Brockie (known to fans under the alias Oderus Urungus) found himself in jail after a North Carolina performance in 1990. He was charged with disseminating obscenities, which is a felony.
Brockie was taken into custody in the backstage dressing area, where a Charlotte police officer took a polaroid of the semi-nude singer wearing a fake rubber penis, which was later used as evidence in the court case. According to Brockie, the official charges listed in court were “simulating the eating of feces” and “simulating anal sex with a priest.” Reports after the show also mentioned “mock ejaculation” and the subsequent “spewing forth of what appeared to be bodily fluids” as an inciting incident.
Brockie, a Canadian citizen, was worried about being deported for the felony charge and entered a plea bargain, agreeing to a total ban from the state for a full year.I really love vegetables… I love all the different tastes, colours, shapes, textures and personalities of vegetables. So when it comes time to select this season’s varieties the struggle is real!
In a perfect world I could just plant each and every variety of each and every crop and call it a day. But that would mean losing consistency, not being able to buy in bulk, always planting things that are new to me and really just an overwhelming amount of vegetables.
As I am sure many of you know, there are hundreds of varieties of each vegetable. You can find things like green and yellow stripped tomatoes, purple broccoli, dino kale, blue potatoes and squash as long as I am tall. So how do we choose between them?
Let me tell you what I do to make my choices a little easier.
First thing – write out a list of what crops you want to plant. I find that it works best to pull up a seed website and take a peek at the headings, that way I don’t forget anything important.
2017 Annuals
Salad Greens
Cooking Greens
Carrots
Beets
Radishes
Salad Turnips
Rutabegas
Parsnips
Onions
Leeks
Garlic
Potatoes
Summer Squash
Winter Squash
Tomatoes
Peppers
Beans
Peas
Cucumbers
Cabbage
Kohlrabi
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Brussels Sprouts
Eggplant
Tomatillos
Ground Cherries
Melons
Herbs
Flowers
This is a very basic list and it’s already a good length. From here we want to organize and specify vegetables. I like to organize by families/field location.
2017 Crops (Detailed)
Aliums
– Onions
– Leeks
– Garlic
Salad Greens
– Arugula
– Head Lettuce
– Leaf Lettuce
– Mustard
– Asian Greens
– Spinach
Legumes
– Beans
– Peas
Cool Season Roots
– Radishes
– Salad Turnips
Cooking Greens
– Kale
– Collards
– Swiss Chard
– Pac Choi
Brassicas
– Cabbage
– Kohlrabi
– Broccoli
– Cauliflower
All Season Roots
Carrots
Beets
Rutabegas
Parsnips
Potatoes
Summer Squash
– Zucchini
– Scallopini
Melons
Winter Squash
– Butternut
– Delicata
– Hubbard
– Speghetti
– Kabocha
Greenhouse
– Tomatoes
– Peppers
– Cucumbers
– Eggplants
– Tomatillos
– Ground Cherries
Herbs
– Basil
– Cilantro
– Dill
– Fennel
– Marjoram
– Oregano
– Parsley
– Sage
– Savory
– Shiso
– Thyme
Flowers
– Borage
– Chamomile
– Calendula
– Nasturtiums
– Bergamot
– Sun Flowers
This is starting to look like a serious garden! Now the real fun begins!
We are ready to go seed shopping!
You need to decide where you are going to get your seeds. If you are planting a small garden I recommend Greta’s Organic Gardens, she is located just outside of Ottawa and I’ve only had positive experiences when using her seeds. It’s always good to purchase seeds from plants grown in the same conditions you will be growing in. This makes Greta’s seeds ideal. If you are looking to purchase a larger quantity of seed, or for different varities I use West Coast Seeds. Unfortunately not all of their seeds are organic which limits my choices. Lastly, if you are looking to buy seeds in bulk for a large garden or market garden the best choice in our area is Homestead Organics. They sell their own seeds (mostly grains and cover crops), and they source organic non-GMO vegetable seeds and seed potatoes. If you don’t mind paying US pricing High Mowing Seeds and Johnny’s Selected Seeds are also a good options for a large garden. I purchase my seed garlic from The Cutting Veg, a farm outside of Toronto.
Selecting Seeds
As I said above, I only purchase organic, non-GMO free seed. This limits my choices from the get go, a blessing in disguise really. I don’t even consider seeds that don’t meet those qualifications.
It’s important to keep track of how varieties perform, taste and sell. That way you can get a solid list of go to varieties and know which ones to stay away from. Feel free to send me an email if you’d like a list of my favorite varieties.
When selecting new seeds you should look at:
Growing Conditions : Will they perform well in your garden? Do you have a space that will provide enough sunlight, water and protection?
: Will they perform well in your garden? Do you have a space that will provide enough sunlight, water and protection? Disease Resistance: When growing organic you need to be prepared for diseases and pests (a post is coming with more on the specifics). It helps to select resistant varieties from the start.
When growing organic you need to be prepared for diseases and pests (a post is coming with more on the specifics). It helps to select resistant varieties from the start. Average Yield: Sometimes really interesting plants just don’t produce much. If you are looking to have a productive garden make sure to look at what you are buying.
Sometimes really interesting plants just don’t produce much. If you are looking to have a productive garden make sure to look at what you are buying. Flavor and Texture: Different types of tomatoes can taste completely opposite. You should read up on the descriptions to make sure you will be satisfied come harvest. A side note to this is nutritional value – some plants are higher in certain vitamins and minerals.
Different types of tomatoes can taste completely opposite. You should read up on the descriptions to make sure you will be satisfied come harvest. A side note to this is nutritional value – some plants are higher in certain vitamins and minerals. Days to Maturity: This is super important if you are doing succession planting. It varies plant to plant and should be considered when planning the garden.
I usually start my seed shopping with the crops I will be growing the most of: potatoes, onions, beets, carrots and greens. I’ll go to my bulk supplier for all of those and then check if they have anything else I may be interested in. Usually Homestead Organics offers all your basic crops in bulk. So after that I go to the West Coast Seeds website to select the fun varieties I might want a larger quantity of: purple carrots, colourful lettuces and so on. Finally I finish off my shopping with Greta’s Organic Garden. Here I select my specialty crops and new things I want to try… like all the fun varieties of tomatoes she offers. Before finalizing the purchases I look over everything I’ve selected, I make sure I have everything I need and no more than three or four varieties of most crops (squash and lettuce excluded). I also check my Garden Planning Charts to make sure I have the correct quantities of seeds for each crop. At this point I would also create my final list of this years varieties. I’ll be doing an in depth garden planning post in the near future but until then here are a couple resources to help you out.
Side note: How to Grow More Vegetables is an incredible resource for any gardener. It is the foundation for most of my garden planning. I highly recommend!
That’s it!
Now you are ready to submit those orders and eagerly await seeding season! If you have any questions about selecting seeds, or gardening in general, don’t hesitate to send me an email or comment on the post! Happy planning!!
AdvertisementsBesides, Hannah is very much a product of her generation (if not its defining voice). In the age of Twitter, we're no longer afforded time to silently grieve. The internet calls for immediate reaction, be it snark or pathos. Hannah and Adam's conflicting reactions to Gawker's insensitive report on David's death speaks to their respective familiarity with online media. Adam is horrified, labeling Gawker writers as sexless losers with a kind of archaic dismissiveness. But Hannah, fully enmeshed in internet culture, understands exactly what Gawker is doing. For a blog, snark — like Hannah's repeated questions about her e-book — is a pragmatic response to death.
Unlike the more tactful among us, Hannah is incapable of keeping her thoughts to herself. She speaks freely, sometimes to her credit, sometimes to babble that, "I actually feel nothing. Like, I literally feel nothing. Like, maybe I'm numb, but I don't even feel numb, I feel nothing." Hannah is not, as Jessa (Jemima Kirke) articulates on Adam's behalf, "callous and disconnected" — at least, not more so than the average person — but she does have a pathological need to share all of her internal thoughts at all times. And a person's internal thoughts, more often than not, return to the simple question of, How does this affect me?
Hannah is not, as Ray (Alex Karpovsky) goes on to suggest, a "fat-free muffin of sociopathic detachment." Once again, she's simply a reflection of the all-too-human qualities so many of us struggle to suppress. When people criticize Hannah for being an unlikeable character, they're generally responding to her self-involvement. And yes, there are few things more selfish than immediately considering the practical repercussions of a person's death. But it's not sociopathic so much as uncomfortably relatable. It's a feeling nearly everyone has experienced — if not voiced out loud.
In "Dead Inside," last night's brilliant episode of Girls, Hannah learns that her editor David Pressler-Goings (John Cameron Mitchell) has died suddenly. In self-professed shock, she shares the news with everyone around her — while also wondering what's next for her e-book memoir, which David was set to publish. For Adam (Adam Driver) — and surely for many Girls viewers — it's occasionally unbearable to watch Hannah appear to shrug off David's death, except in terms of its impact on her career. Does she not have "just one crumb of basic human compassion"?
The common wisdom is not to judge anyone for something as personal and specific as her grieving process, but when Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham) responds to the death of her editor with a morose, "And no one even began to tell me what was next for my e-book," it's hard not to cringe.
Hannah can't snark about David's death — aside from her own concerns, she can't really respond at all. "It's my first death," she explains, "so I'm kind of numbed." But while shock is a very real part of the grieving process, that doesn't seem to be what's happening with Hannah. As a writer, her inability to grieve is less about discomfort with her emotions, something Hannah has never had trouble with, and more about difficulty articulating herself properly. Her numbness is akin to writer's block.
That's something Adam can't quite grasp, and in fact, might be foreign to anyone who isn't a writer. It's a type of self-involvement, to be sure, but it goes beyond that: For Hannah, life is only experienced through narrative. (In the next episode of Girls, she remains stuck on the memoir that may never get published, because those stories are her entire life.) Hannah can't grieve until she learns what story to tell. Even in her theoretical conversation with Adam over death, she admits that she thinks of his mortality only in terms of how she would be able to express it: "I think all the time about what I'd say at your funeral, about how I'd say that you were my partner and you were my lover, and how one summer you lived in the tent on a roof in Bed-Stuy and you drank rainwater."
Hannah understands the importance of feeling: Emotion is essential for a writer. When Hannah, Caroline (Gaby Hoffmann), and Laird (Jon Glaser) visit a graveyard, Caroline admits that, "Medication did make me feel less." "See, that's really not good for a writer," Hannah answers. She needs to experience everything — but she also needs to get it right. When Caroline goes on to tell Hannah a story about her fictional cousin Margaret who died, Hannah has no emotional response. Instead, she focuses on the details, asking why Margaret's dress was so small, if she was physically smaller because of her illness. As inhuman as she may seem in that moment, these are the concerns of a writer — how to encapsulate death and loss in a narrative.
And that's why, in the next scene, Hannah is regurgitating the Margaret story to Adam, telling it through tears. That it's not true doesn't matter to her, because she understands its power. (Laird, sobbing in the graveyard, notes, "Just 'cause it's fake doesn't mean I don't feel it.") Ultimately, Hannah overcomes her numbness not by feeling but by creating. "It always takes me a while to process my emotions," she says as she explains the connection that she had to David, and how grateful she was that he had faith in her as a writer. And those feelings are real, however Hannah came to express them. Despite being fiction, the story that follows is not a cop-out but a coping mechanism.
Of course, there's an aspect of meta-commentary to all of this: Girls is itself fiction. While not a documentary, its power lies in its ability to convey essential truths about human experience through its narrative. So whether or not viewers can personally identify with Hannah in her "mourning" doesn't matter, ultimately. There is resonance to be found in what her personal reaction to grief says about death — the randomness, the search for meaning, and the eternal struggle to find the right words.ES Football Newsletter Enter your email address Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in or register with your social account
Former Vitesse Arnhem owner Merab Jordania is planning to buy the Dutch club again so he can end their relationship with Chelsea.
Chelsea’s close ties with Vitesse are being investigated by the Dutch Football Association after Jordania accused the Blues of instructing them not to win the League.
UEFA rules dictate two clubs with a shared owner cannot enter the same European competition and Vitesse have slumped from challenging for the title to fourth in the table. Only the two top in the Eredivisie qualify for the Champions League.
Vitesse owner Alexander Chigirinsky is friends with Roman Abramovich and Chelsea have sent a number of their youth players there in recent years to get first‑team football.
Jordania lost control of the club to Chigirinsky at the start of this season and was then banned from attending their matches for three years after allegedly sending threats to chief executive Joost de Wit. However, he is now putting a consortium together to take control again and said: “Will I actually return? There are always discussions. If I find an opportunity to return, I will certainly not let it pass.”
Chelsea players facing the axe 12 show all Chelsea players facing the axe 1/12 David Luiz Chelsea could attract bids of up to £30m for the Brazil international. Paris St-Germain and Barcelona are both interested in his services. 2/12 Fernando Torres The club have run out of patience with Torres, who has two years left on his £175,000-a-week contract. 3/12 Hilario Back-up Blues goalkeeper Hilario is another facing the exit door and will be surplus to requirements particularly if the club bring Thibaut Courtois back from his loan at Atletico Madrid. Getty 4/12 Samuel Eto'o Eto’o has been Chelsea’s best forward with 11 goals and the club have an option to keep him for another season when his contract runs out in May but no decision has been made. 5/12 John Obi Mikel Defensive midfielder Mikel has found himself frozen out since the arrival of Nemanja Matic. 6/12 Marko Marin Marin is currently on loan at Sevilla and Chelsea will seek to move the German out on a permanent deal. 7/12 Ashley Cole The full-back is coming to the end of his contract at Stamford Bridge and has lost his place to Cesar Azpilicueta this season. 8/12 Gael Kakuta Kakuta is one of several youngsters to have failed to live up to expectations at Chelsea and is likely to be shipped out. 9/12 Demba Ba Former Newcastle striker Ba has confirmed he will be leaving Stamford Bridge after failing to make an impact since joining 15 months ago. 10/12 Mark Schwarzer The experienced Schwarzer is likely to be released at the end of the current campaign. 11/12 Victor Moses Moses has struggled to make any real impact on loan at Liverpool and is not part of the Chelsea coach’s future plans. GETTY 12/12 Josh McEachran Talented youngster McEachran has spent a large part of his Chelsea career out on loan at other clubs. He is currently at Wigan and looks poised to move on permanently. 1/12 David Luiz Chelsea could attract bids of up to £30m for the Brazil international. Paris St-Germain and Barcelona are both interested in his services. 2/12 Fernando Torres The club have run out of patience with Torres, who has two years left on his £175,000-a-week contract. 3/12 Hilario Back-up Blues goalkeeper Hilario is another facing the exit door and will be surplus to requirements particularly if the club bring Thibaut Courtois back from his loan at Atletico Madrid. Getty 4/12 Samuel Eto'o Eto’o has been Chelsea’s best forward with 11 goals and the club have an option to keep him for another season when his contract runs out in May but no decision has been made. 5/12 John Obi Mikel Defensive midfielder Mikel has found himself frozen out since the arrival of Nemanja Matic. 6/12 Marko Marin Marin is currently on loan at Sevilla and Chelsea will seek to move the German out on a permanent deal. 7/12 Ashley Cole The full-back is coming to the end of his contract at Stamford Bridge and has lost his place to Cesar Azpilicueta this season. 8/12 Gael Kakuta Kakuta is one of several youngsters to have failed to live up to expectations at Chelsea and is likely to be shipped out. 9/12 Demba Ba Former Newcastle striker Ba has confirmed he will be leaving Stamford Bridge after failing to make an impact since joining 15 months ago. 10/12 Mark Schwarzer The experienced Schwarzer is likely to be released at the end of the current campaign. 11/12 Victor Moses Moses has struggled to make any real impact on loan at Liverpool and is not part of the Chelsea coach’s future plans. GETTY 12/12 Josh McEachran Talented youngster McEachran has spent a large part of his Chelsea career out on loan at other clubs. He is currently at Wigan and looks poised to move on permanently.
Referring to his role in the investigation by the Dutch FA, he said: “They want to know exactly how it is. I see it as my job to tell you what’s going on at Vitesse.”
He cites Chelsea’s signing of midfielder Marco van Ginkel for £7.4m last summer as an example of their influence, saying: “Wolfsburg offered €15 million [£12.4m] for Van Ginkel but he went to Chelsea. It felt like giving him away.”
Chelsea have refused to comment on Jordania’s claims about them trying to influence Vitesse but it is believed they are dismissing them on the basis that their youth players would benefit from being involved in a title bid.
Highly rated quartet Lucas Piazon, Bertrand Traore, Patrick van Aanholt and Christian Atsu are on loan there from Chelsea.Diagram of treble, alto and bass clefs with identical-sounding musical notes aligned vertically
A clef (from French: clé "key") is a musical symbol used to indicate the pitch of written notes.[a] Placed on a stave, it indicates the name and pitch of the notes on one of the lines. This line serves as a reference point by which the names of the notes on any other line or space of the stave |
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Apropos of Hillary Clinton’s forever e-mail problems, it’s worth marking the approach of the 30th anniversary of the very first government electronic-mail scandal. On Friday, November 22, 1986, Oliver North sat down at his National Security Council computer and began deleting e-mails related to Iran/Contra, the far-reaching conspiracy in which North, along with others in Ronald Reagan’s administration, traded high-tech missiles to revolutionary Iran, diverting the proceeds to fund the Nicaraguan Contras, in violation of Congress’s Boland Amendment. North, with the scandal about to explode in the press, deleted about 750 e-mails from his “notelogs.” North’s boss, the head of the NSC, John Poindexter, deleted another 5,012. Ad Policy
The other day, Peter Van Buren, a 24-year career officer at the State Department, provided a fascinating firsthand account of the very late adoption of e-mail by the department. Well past 2000, State was still using an old Wang mainframe and barely had the ability to send e-mail out of department. The White House, in contrast, was using e-mail as early as 1982, using an IBM application called PROFS (PRofessional OFfice System). PROFS had no “select all,” “delete all” function. So, in addition to the paper documents that needed to be shredded, and the other records smuggled out of the office in Fawn Hall’s boots, North and Poindexter had to sit at their respective terminals and delete each message individually. A massive amount of information was destroyed that weekend.
Since e-mail was so new, North and Poindexter presumed that the communications weren’t subject to either the Presidential Records Act or the Freedom of Information Act. They thought they had a secure back channel to organize the many different tentacles that comprised the Iran/Contra octopus: not just trading arms with Iran, but raising money from various domestic (including Ross Perot!) and foreign (such as the Sultan of Brunei, Saudi “princes,” and Colombian drug traffickers) sources to support a myriad of off-the-books covert operations, including running an illegal propaganda campaign within the United States to isolate critics and build support for Reagan’s foreign policy. Ready to Fight Back? Sign Up For Take Action Now
The digital ether, however, was a short-lived covert utopia. Career service officers in charge of recycling the White House’s magnetic backup tapes, learning of the various crimes being committed in the Reagan White House, handed the tapes over to the FBI. In subsequent years, the e-mails that North and Poindexter thought they had destroyed were used by the various Senate, House, and independent-counsel investigations into Iran/Contra, including Senator John Kerry’s inquiry into the use of drug traffickers. Poindexter was convicted of conspiracy, destruction of records, and obstruction of Congress, among other charges; North, of altering and destroying documents.
Both men, along with all others convicted in Iran/Contra, were pardoned by George H.W. Bush. Just after 9/11, Poindexter, who has a PhD from CalTech, would make a brief public comeback, after years in the private defense sector, as director of George W. Bush’s short-lived Information Awareness Office, which in those innocent pre–Edward Snowden days was much ridiculed for its Orwellian mandate to “turn everything in cyberspace about everybody—tax records, driver’s-license applications, travel records, bank records, raw F.B.I. files, telephone records, credit-card records, shopping-mall security-camera videotapes, medical records, every email anybody ever sent—into a single, humongous, multi-googolplexibyte database that electronic robots will mine for patterns of information suggestive of terrorist activity.”
This first e-mail scandal had long legs, and links up to Clinton’s e-woes in various ways. Just as the Reagan presidency was about to come to an end, the National Security Archive, a nonprofit based in Washington, DC, sued to prevent the administration from deleting roughly 7 million e-mails. This was the beginning of bringing the digital dominion under the sovereignty of the Freedom of Information Act and the National Archive and Records Administration, creating the public oversight that Hillary Clinton, in setting up her private server, apparently tried to bypass.
The lawsuit dragged on for decades, in various forms, with not just the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations arguing for the right to destroy e-mails, but Bill Clinton continuing the fight. On a procedural level, what was at stake in Iran/Contra was the running of the NSC as a rogue, independent outfit not subject to oversight. Conventional wisdom has that ending with the exposure of Iran/Contra. But in a way, the Clinton White House continued to fight for the principle, arguing in 1994, against the National Security Archive’s suit, that the NSC, as David Gerwirtz writes in his Where Have All the Emails Gone?, was “not an agency” and “therefore is not subject to Freedom of Information Act regulations.”
The National Security Archive won on a number of points related to its original lawsuit, as it applied to Iran/Contra. But in some ways, the case continues on, with as many legal tangents as the Amazon has tributaries, tied up in the new secrecy justified by the endless “war on terror.” You can read about it here, here, and here.
Government operatives have other ways, besides deleting e-mails and using private servers, to keep secrets. Henry Kissinger, for instance, “rarely put anything on the record in normal diplomatic channels if he could devise a more secretive back channel,” according to a sympathetic biographer. Kissinger himself admitted that what he did write down might often be a smokescreen. Historians, he wrote in one of his memoirs, have “no criteria for determining which documents were produced to provide an alibi and which were genuinely guided decisions.”Here is an Email from "Voice in the Dark" about IBM and outsourcing. VID writes...
Hello Mish
I read your blog every day. I do not comment much, but I think the MSM and most blogs are missing out on the greatest story not being told.
Large corporations are abandoning the US. I work for IBM. Here is a snapshot of IBM's US headcount:
2005 133,789
2006 127,000
2007 121,000
2008 115,000
2009 105,000
2010 98,000 estimate
These are all good paying jobs that can support a family and pay taxes.
Today, 75% of the total headcount is overseas. The overseas revenue is 65%. The company reported record profits last year. IBM decided to stop reporting their US headcount this year.
You know that many companies are moving their resources overseas. China is the new spot to build development centers. These incremental loses are adding up. But the saddest thing is that they are giving away the building blocks for innovation.
I just read a few weeks ago the Applied Material is planning to replace their US research center for a new one in China. That is another example of what is going on.
And no venture capitalist would attempt to build a solar panel factory from scratch in the US. The costs and the EPA will prevent that.
Please tell this story.
Sign me: Just Another Voice in The Dark
Goodbye Silicon Valley, hello Xi’an China. Applied Materials will do new cutting edge research on solar panels in Xi’an....
Two Drivers For Outsourcing
Obama Seeks To End Corporate Tax Breaks
In 2004, U.S.-based multinational corporations paid about $16 billion in U.S. taxes while earning about $700 billion offshore, an effective tax rate of about 2.3 percent, according to the administration statement. The top marginal tax rate for U.S. companies is 35 percent; drug companies such as Amgen Inc. and technology companies such as Microsoft are among companies that make the biggest use of tax-deferral benefits.
The rules were originally designed to reduce paperwork for companies and the IRS by allowing companies to classify entities within their corporate structure in the most tax-efficient manner without inviting a tax challenge.
Unintended Consequence
Clinton administration officials realized they also had made it easy for multinationals to create entities whose only purpose was to shift profits into low-tax countries and out of reach of the tax authorities, according to a January Government Accountability Office report that found 83 of the 100 biggest companies had subsidiaries in tax havens.
Once the assets were in the haven, the U.S. parent company borrowed from the subsidiary. The interest payments were deductible in the U.S. and tax-free in the haven, the GAO said. The nonpartisan congressional Joint Committee on Taxation recommended in 2005 that the rules be repealed.
GE, for example, has deferred tax on a cumulative $75 billion over the last decade, according to filings. Palo Alto, California-based Hewlett-Packard Co. has deferred U.S. tax on $12.9 billion since 2005, while Microsoft has accumulated $7.5 billion that has never been taxed by the U.S. Even American International Group Inc., bailed out by the U.S. in 2008, deferred $3.9 billion in taxes on its foreign earnings in the same year.
Shifting Gains To Low Tax Countries
As you work on your taxes this month, here's something to raise your hackles: Some of the world's biggest, most profitable corporations enjoy a far lower tax rate than you do--that is, if they pay taxes at all.
The most egregious example is General Electric (GE). Last year the conglomerate generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.
How did this happen? It's complicated. GE's tax return is the largest the IRS deals with each year--some 24,000 pages if printed out. Inside you'll find that GE in effect consists of two divisions: General Electric Capital and everything else. The everything else--maker of engines, power plants, TV shows and the like--would have paid a 22% tax rate if it was a standalone company.
It's GE Capital that keeps the overall tax bill so low. Over the last two years, GE Capital has displayed an uncanny ability to lose lots of money in the U.S....
It only makes sense that multinationals "put costs in high-tax countries and profits in low-tax countries," says Scott Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation. Those low-tax countries are almost anywhere but the U.S. "When you add in state taxes, the U.S. has the highest tax burden among industrialized countries," says Hodge. In contrast, China's rate is just 25%; Ireland's is 12.5%.
Corporations are getting smarter, not just about doing more business in low-tax countries, but in moving their more valuable assets there as well. That means setting up overseas subsidiaries, then transferring to them ownership of long-lived, often intangible but highly profitable assets, like patents and software.
Who Is Hurt By US Corporate Tax Policy?Colorado Rapids added experienced midfielder Marcelo Sarvas to their roster on Thursday.
The 33-year-old Brazilian arrives from LA Galaxy along with an international slot. In exchange the Rapids have given their third spot in the allocation rankings and allocation money.
During his MLS career, the skillful Sarvas has been mostly used as a central midfielder but he is capable of playing on either wing as well.
“He is an incredible competitor," said Rapids head coach Pablo Mastroeni. " He is a leader and, above all else, he wants to win with the group. I could not think of a player that better complements the young talent we have in our side. He commands instant respect. Not with words, solely with actions.
“On the pitch he is going to be an important player for us but also the way he acts and the way he lives his life will be another important aspect for our young group as we continue to build going forward.”
Sarvas is another highly experienced acquisition by the Rapids, in addition to the likes of Michael Harrington, Bobby Burling and Zac MacMath.
“The idea going into the off-season was to get in experience to help the young players. We did not have enough of them. The experienced players we are bringing in will have the physiological immunity to be able to hold the group together in tough times.
“They are also players of character. That will be an important piece as we try and build a group of like-minded individuals and winners.”
Sarvas won MLS Cup for the second time in December, playing all 120 minutes in the Galaxy’s dramatic win over New England Revolution.
Before that, he rose through the ranks at his hometown club, Corinthians, in São Paulo before spending five years in Swedish football. He has also had spells in Poland and Costa Rica, during which time he played in the UEFA Europa League and CONCACAF Champions League.
He arrived at LA Galaxy in 2012, winning MLS Cup that year. In all he amassed 88 appearances for Bruce Arena’s team, scoring nine goals.If you’ve never had a child, it’s almost impossible to understand just how amazing it feels when your baby is born. It’s like the happiest sensation imaginable, times a thousand. It’s pure, eye-opening bliss, and to be honest, it’s actually a better high than I’ve ever gotten from taking ecstasy.
And I’ve done a lot of E.
It’s a cliché, but you just don’t know what real happiness is until you see that little baby lying there on your chest. So pure, so innocent. I’ve had some great drugs in my day, but seeing my baby for the first time? I wouldn’t trade that for all the ecstasy in the world. Not even the crazy shit I used to get from this guy in San Diego. “White Versace,” I believe it was called.
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Of course, I never could have prepared myself for the intensity of giving birth. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, but when I finally looked into the eyes of my little Jasmine, it was more powerful than the time I danced to Crystal Method for 11 straight hours. That was an awesome night, to be sure, but feeling my daughter clasp my finger in her tiny little hand was even more awesome.
I used to spend almost every weekend rolling on E. It’s an amazing party drug, because you love everyone around you, and music and sound seem to move through you like a liquid, but it can be a quiet, introspective drug, too. Well, when I heard my baby make her first sweet coos and gurgles, it was like that, but more intense.
Without the amazing body buzz that you get from ecstasy, though.
I can definitely say having a baby is better than weed, though I don’t really smoke these days because it doesn’t do shit for me anymore.
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Trust me, I’ve put every kind of mood-enhancing chemical imaginable in my body, but none of them compare to the rush of joy and peace you get when you come home from the hospital with your newborn. Although that one time me and the Wizard went to Joshua Tree was totally bonkers. We peaked under that massive, eternal sky, and we were literally, like, fucking the stars. That comes close, but overall the baby thing was still better.
I have to warn you, though: When you see your baby in pain, it’s the worst feeling in the world, worse even than coming down from ecstasy. Oh, God, the time we took that dirty E—it must have been laced with meth—I literally lost five pounds of sweat in one night and tried to push over a tree and take it home with me before having the worst panic attack of my life, which felt like I was trapped in an endless black cave filled with dead souls. I didn’t just want to die; I wanted to obliterate any record of my having ever existed. When Jasmine has a fever, it’s exactly like that.
It’s possible that feeling my daughter’s heartbeat, her tiny little heartbeat in her tiny little chest, may not be as mind-blowing as dropping ecstasy and LSD together, but tripping is totally its own thing, and it’d be unfair to compare the two. Nothing feels as good as that. Except maybe having a baby on LSD or psilocybin. That would be incredible. Seeing all those doctors dissolve into a swirling shimmer of color and emotion. Little Jasmine’s first cries echoing through the whole hospital like a thousand golden trumpets. That would be fucking amazing.
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I can definitely say having a baby is better than weed, though I don’t really smoke these days because it doesn’t do shit for me anymore.
The truth is, I never expected to be a mother. All I ever wanted was to party and get high, to feel good all the time. I can tell you firsthand that holding my little angel in my arms is so much better. So much more real. Though I just popped some Molly, which is supposed to be pretty fucking intense, so we’ll see if I still feel that way in an hour or so.Dwarf Fortress may not look real, but once you’re hooked, it feels vast, enveloping, alive. To control your world, you toggle between multiple menus of text commands; seemingly simple acts like planting crops and forging weapons require involved choices about soil and season and smelting and ores. A micromanager’s dream, the game gleefully blurs the distinction between painstaking labor and creative thrill.
“Playing Dwarf Fortress is like taking the controls of a plane right as it’s taking off,” says Chris Dahlen, editor in chief of the gaming magazine Kill Screen. And, he added, “flying a jet is a lot more interesting than just riding in a jet.”
Dwarf Fortress is too willfully noncommercial to have any discernible influence on gaming at large, but it is widely admired by game designers. Programmers behind The Sims 3 reportedly played Dwarf Fortress when they were making their game, and several homages to Dwarf Fortress appear in the blockbuster fantasy game World of Warcraft. Richard Garfield, who created the hit card game Magic: The Gathering, once attended a Dwarf Fortress fan meet in Seattle to introduce himself to Tarn. “I told him there’s nothing out there quite like it,” Garfield recalled. He suggested ways of broadening the game’s appeal, but “that stuff didn’t matter to Tarn. The charm of it is that he’s making exactly the game he wants to make.”
After nine years of development, Dwarf Fortress is, from the perspective of game play, perhaps the most complex video game ever made. And yet it is still only in “alpha” — the most recent release is version 0.31. By version 1.0, Tarn says, the game will include military campaigns and magic, along with scores of other additions. He showed me a four-inch stack of index cards, color-coded and arranged into umbrella categories, to keep track of his goals. “I like being able to hold the game in my hands,” he says.
I asked Tarn when he thought he and Zach would reach version 1.0. “Twenty years from now,” he replied. “That’s the number we talk about.” He chuckled at the prospect, adding that even when that milestone arrived, Dwarf Fortress would keep growing. “This is going to be my life’s work.”
Tarn, 33, lives in an apartment complex abutting one of the many shopping plazas that make up Silverdale, a town he calls “a strip mall.” His place has two bedrooms, the larger of which he uses for programming and which is nearly empty except for his computer desk, a framed picture of his part Manx, part Maine Coon cat, Scamps, and a fuzzy cat tree. In the living room are two gray folding tables for playing board games like Arkham Horror and Descent, and a box of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games. Tarn said he seldom touches these because “most of them suck.” The only furniture in the small dining room is Scamps’s litter box.
If much of Tarn’s apartment suggests a tenant who never fully moved in, his bedroom suggests a tenant who never sets a sock outdoors. When I peeked inside, rumpled underwear, discarded boxes and books lay scattered across the carpet. A sheet of plywood, edged with black foam rubber, was wedged into the window frame and affixed there by metal clamps. Tarn wakes up around 3 p.m. every day, codes through the night and goes to bed around 6 a.m. The plywood keeps slumber-disturbing daylight out of the room, making it a chamber fit for a vampire dwarf — or at least for a computer programmer.
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Tarn and Zach’s parents live on several wooded acres in nearby Bremerton, and Zach, who is 35 and between jobs, has lived with them since 2002. Zach brought over a drinking glass from the house in case I got thirsty, because Tarn owns only a couple of dishes. In the fridge were three sodas and a jug of water and nothing else. Tarn said I was welcome to anything, although the jug technically belonged to Scamps — the tap water has something in it that makes the cat refuse to drink it. Tarn consumed “maybe one glass” of water in the last three months, hydrating with soft drinks instead. “Water’s not doing it for me these days,” he said. “I know it’s bad, but the sugar goes right into programming the game. If I don’t drink soda now, I get a headache and can’t do any work.”
Near midnight one evening, after a chat with Zach about incorporating sewers into the game, Tarn settled into his coding routine, opening his C++ software and firing up a Pandora playlist of upbeat soul. (Zach, less adept at programming, contributes to the game by brainstorming ideas.) Tarn surveyed the code, arrayed before him in tiny type, and began rocking in his swivel chair so vigorously that its joints squawked. The rocking had nothing to do with the music. “It’s a tic,” he explained later. “Sometimes I don’t even notice I’m doing it. During tests at college, people would yell at me to knock it off.”
As Tarn got into the zone, his muttered profanities and grumbles about “x distances” took on a mantralike quality. Conjuring sewers, he would type out lines of code, let the software effect his changes, frown at the results, then tweak. Initially, the sewers appeared as an illogical tangle of blue gashes, but line by line, Tarn worked them into coherence.
At about 1:30 a.m., a family of hippos, represented by light gray H’s, swam into the tunnels from a nearby river. Their arrival was an unintended development born entirely of the game’s internal logic. Tarn was pleased. “The hippos like the sewers!” he said. He took a celebratory swig of Dr. Pepper and rocked back and forth.
Despite the modesty of Tarn’s setup, he has a lot riding on Dwarf Fortress. For much of his adult life, he was headed in a very different direction. He’d enrolled at the University of Washington, where he became a star math student. He wasn’t much interested in the social atmosphere of dorms and spent his freshman year splitting a Seattle apartment with Zach, who was a senior majoring in ancient history at the university. When Zach graduated, Tarn moved into a string of “dingy one-bedrooms” with “bad moisture problems” — in one, he discovered a shelf fungus growing behind his couch. Tarn didn’t take notes in class, such was his facility with the material, and he still “4.0’d almost everything.” In his final year, the faculty named him best math major.
Tarn applied to 17 Ph.D. programs, got into 15 and, wavering briefly between M.I.T. and Stanford, chose the latter. He earned his doctorate in 2005 with a dissertation called “Flat Chains in Banach Spaces,” a rumination on concepts in advanced geometry that he describes as “not that interesting to that many people, but a nice little paper.” He published a version of it in The Journal of Geometric Analysis and, landing a postdoc at Texas A&M, seemed destined for the academic career he envisioned since his undergraduate days.
But Tarn wasn’t entirely happy. He’d had doubts about pursuing a career in math since the “pressure cooker” of his first year at Stanford, when he failed his qualifying exams (students get two chances; he passed the second time). Faced with the school’s highly competitive and professionalized environment, he came to regard himself as a “second-rate mathematician.” The issue wasn’t aptitude so much as passion. He wanted to do math but also to make video games, a juggling act he managed as an undergraduate. This had become impossible. “They wanted 60 hours a week from you, giving you problems that would take 20 hours to solve,” he said. He grew depressed and, in his only encounter with drugs, snorted meth.
For Tarn, making games “scratches all the same itches” as math: “At the end of a math problem, you have a paper and maybe you publish it, and the paper can be a building block for the edifice of mathematics, but to me that’s not so important. But working on a problem and having a game when you’re done? That’s pretty damn cool.”
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In the summer of 2006, after a year at Texas A&M, Tarn went to his department head and, breaking into tears, quit. “It wasn’t easy,” Tarn recalls. “Being a mathematician was part of what I’d been doing for years. But it was easy in another sense, because I was so sick of it.” His plan, if it counts as one, was to move home and devote himself fully to Dwarf Fortress, which he’d been developing as a hobby. He figured he’d burn through his $15,000 savings and sort things out from there. To Tarn’s relief, Texas A&M offered to keep him on another year, paying him a $50,000 salary. “I woke up the morning after I gave notice, like, I can actually make this work.”
Tarn has been programming computers for as long as he can remember. “My earliest real memory is when my dad taught me how to use a ‘FOR loop’ in BASIC when I was 6, to make something go across the screen,” he says. His father, Dan, worked in wastewater treatment, writing software to crunch data and run sewage plants, and he furnished the house with the latest computers. Tarn coded little animations and, in fifth grade, wrote his first fantasy game with Zach.
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Tarn’s grandmother, Elinor Ringland, who lives a short drive from Silverdale, says he was a restlessly curious child. “I remember Tarn taking my hair dryer and burning a hole into a chair cushion,” she told me. “It wasn’t mischievous; he was just inquisitive. We had to make sure he wouldn’t go into the medicine cabinet and start mixing potions.” (The brothers’ parents declined to be interviewed; “Calling them private is an understatement,” Zach explained.)
Despite Tarn’s adventurousness at home, he was withdrawn at school. “Occasionally I’d have a friend, and we’d talk or joke around or whatever, but I didn’t play sports or talk to people or have that experience,” he says. “I was a get-home-from-school, get-on-the-computer kind of kid.” In high school he made one close friend, Alan Ames, who still corresponds sporadically with Tarn. “We’d spend weekends making video games, or these silly ‘ Star Trek ’ parodies with his dad’s video camera,” Ames, who is now an aerospace engineer, recalled. “He never cared about socializing.” He had to be pushed to join the math club.
Growing up, Tarn was enamored of Dungeons & Dragons and J.R.R. Tolkien, but he has never been a lockstep member of the geek culture so much as a wanderer on the fringes. He didn’t read superhero comics as a kid, and later, he never became obsessed with the “Game of Thrones” books, say, or with “Lost.” He graduated from D&D to the more obscure pen-and-paper game Cyberpunk 2020, and he and Zach would download indie computer games from early bulletin boards. They adored 1985’s Hack 1.0.3, which, with its randomly generated levels, elaborate mechanics and primitive graphics, helped to popularize a microgenre of fantasy games known as roguelikes, which in turn influenced Dwarf Fortress. “We liked that you could choke to death on your food or fall down a stairway and fall on something poisonous you were carrying and poison yourself,” Tarn said.
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Tarn calls Zach his best friend. The brothers’ closeness is largely a function of frequent moves the family made for Dan Adams’s work: by the time Tarn was 18, the family had been uprooted from Washington to California to New Hampshire and back to Washington. The brothers were the only constants in each other’s lives besides their parents. “There’s been a couple times when I’ve gone off and done my own thing,” Zach says, “but I always come back to Tarn.”
In 2007, when Tarn left Texas and moved back to Washington, he lived at home before moving to Silverdale. “I wanted to be close to Zach,” he says, to collaborate more easily on the game and because Zach, who worked after graduation in an Amazon.com warehouse and as a stevedore, was “going through some stuff.” Zach, who alluded to past problems with alcohol (he no longer drinks), told me his marriage of two years had collapsed; neither brother wished to comment further. Zach’s background in ancient history often helps in devising the imagery that gives Dwarf Fortress its atmosphere. For example, goblins hang the skin of conquered foes from towers, a gnarly detail the brothers got from a book on the Assyrians that Zach recommended.
When the weather permits, the brothers take walks along a trail that wends over marshland past plastic picnic tables near State Route 3. They watch crime procedurals at their parents’ house and follow a one-meal-a-day rule (most local restaurants are open for just a few hours after Tarn wakes up), which can mean Quiznos, a turkey sandwich from the supermarket or root-beer popsicles and handfuls of dry Crispix (Tarn is lactose intolerant).
Tarn has been single since graduate school, when he dated a Cisco systems administrator for a short time. I asked him whether he wanted children. “I don’t mind the idea of never having kids,” he said. “I want to stay focused on the game, and if I had kids, I’d wind up paying attention to them instead.”
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He expressed similar ambivalence about finding a romantic partner. “If I were in the supermarket one day and someone came on really strong and it was a mutual thing, I’d probably get pushed along, but it’s not something I’m anticipating,” he said. His interest has dwindled. “It’s easier not to care about that stuff when you’re in your 30s.”
Dwarf Fortress began life as “a simple mining game, like Dig Dug,” Tarn says. The brothers worked for about four years on an adventure title, rendered in 3-D graphics, called Slaves to Armok: God of Blood. Between battles, “you could zoom in on your character, and it’d tell you how curly his leg hairs were, and the melting and flash points of various materials,” Tarn said. “It was insane.”
The brothers started a company called Bay 12, nicknaming themselves Toady One (Tarn) and ThreeToe (Zach), posting games that could be downloaded free and building a fan base of about 300 people. Tarn found 3-D graphics agonizingly time-consuming to program, and Dwarf Fortress was conceived as an undemanding side project: its full title is Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress. Soon enough, Armok was scrapped and Dwarf Fortress took over, inheriting its predecessor’s fetish for complexity but none of its looks. It’s like a jalopy with a V-12 under the hood. “The processing power that Dwarf Fortress uses is on the same scale as modern engineering software for designing aerospace hardware,” says Ames, the engineer. “You have more complicated simulations in Dwarf Fortress than when you model the aerodynamics of a wing.”
Though it may seem ungainly at first, the game’s interface — rendered in what are known as extended ASCII characters — has a sparse elegance. As seasons change, trees, represented by various symbols, shift from green to yellow. Goblins’ eyes appear as red quotation marks; if you shoot out an eye with an arrow, the symbol becomes an apostrophe. On a message board, one fan likened the ASCII experience in Dwarf Fortress to the immersive pleasures of reading a book: “You can let your imagination fill in the gaps.”
The community that has arisen around Dwarf Fortress is remarkable. Fans maintain an extensive wiki, which remains the game’s best (and, effectively, only) instruction manual, and which even Tarn and Zach admit to consulting. There are fan-organized podcasts, and meet-ups where players converge on bars in homemade Dwarf Fortress shirts. On the Bay 12 forums, fans make suggestions for the game, and Tarn has implemented some of these. Last spring, a player calling himself Jong89 logged on with brain-bending news. Using “672 pumps, 2,000 logs, 8,500 mechanisms and thousands of other assorted bits and knobs like doors and rock blocks,” he’d built a crude but functioning computer within Dwarf Fortress.
Perhaps most fascinating are the stories that fans share online, recounting their dwarven travails in detailed and sometimes illustrated narratives. In a 2006 saga, called Boatmurdered, fans passed around a single fortress — one player would save a game, send the file to another player and so on, relay-race style — while documenting its colorful descent into oblivion. (After a vicious elephant attack: “A single untrained marksdwarf stands ready to defend the crossing, but I doubt he’ll be enough.”) Boatmurdered spread across gaming sites and made the front page of MetaFilter, a popular blog. “That did a lot to make people aware we existed,” Tarn says.
Shared projects like Boatmurdered mark the extent to which Tarn accommodates multiplayer participation. Massive multiplayer online games have been a lucrative industry trend for years, but Tarn disdains M.M.O.’s. To him, they replace the deep pleasures of imaginative game design with the novelty of community and are invariably oriented toward mass, lowest-common-denominator appeal. “Half the people I met were 12-year-olds yelling homophobic slurs,” he says.
At bottom, Dwarf Fortress mounts an argument about play. Many video games mimic the look and structure of films: there’s a story line, more or less fixed, that progresses only when you complete required tasks. This can make for gripping fun, but also the constrictive sense that you are a mouse in a tricked-out maze, chasing chunks of cheese. Tarn envisions Dwarf Fortress, by contrast, as an open-ended “story generator.” He and Zach grew up playing computer games with notebooks in hand, drawing their own renditions of the randomly generated creatures they encountered and logging their journeys in detail. Dwarf Fortress, which never unfolds the same way twice, takes that spirit of supple, fully engaged play to the extreme.
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Tarn sees his work in stridently ethical terms. He calls games like Angry Birds or Bejeweled, which ensnare players in addictive loops of frustration and gratification under the pretense that skill is required to win, “abusive” — a common diagnosis among those who get hooked on the games, but a surprising one from a game designer, ostensibly charged with doing the hooking. “Many popular games tap into something in a person that is compulsive, like hoarding,” he said, “the need to make progress with points or collect things. You sit there saying yeah-yeah-yeah and then you wake up and say, What the hell was I doing? You can call that kind of game fun, but only if you call compulsive gambling fun.” He added: “I used to value the ability to turn the user into your slave. I don’t anymore.”
Tarn’s scruples have certainly cost him fans, but he says he’s doing fine. He has no plans to charge for the game; he subsists entirely on PayPal donations from players. “I like that it’s free, and if you care about it, you pay,” he says. In 2010, he earned $50,000. (He calls that year, in which he released a major update after a long delay, anomalous, and expects to make $30,000 in 2011.) His expenses are low — $860 a month in rent, $750 a month to Zach for his help and a few hundred dollars for utilities and food — and as long as Dwarf Fortress is self-sustaining, he’s happy. He |
carry dirty oil from Canada’s tar sands region in Northern Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast. McKibben and a few organizers, who now work for his climate group 350.org, had made this pipeline a national issue in August 2011 when they held two weeks of sit-ins in front of the White House. This protest, which led to 1,253 arrests, was the largest organized act of civil disobedience in the United States in decades. [Full disclosure: I was one of those arrested.]
Still, many consider the construction of the Keystone pipeline inevitable—after all, even 54 percent of Democrats support it. It’s for this reason that critics such as New York Times columnist Joe Nocera have called the protests “boneheaded.” They believe environmental action could be better spent on some other goal, like perhaps encouraging people to reduce their carbon footprint.
But these critics are missing something vital about the anti-Keystone movement: It was never about just a pipeline. McKibben and a handful of others had another, less talked about goal—to remake the environmental movement into something far more active, creative, and formidable for years to come. The gap that once existed between mainstream environmental groups and grass-roots activists has now largely dissolved, resulting in widespread action that has not been seen in the United States for decades—perhaps even since the first Earth Day in April 1970.
On that day, mainstream environmental groups with roots going back to the conservation movement of the early 20th century united with grass-roots activists for a day of teach-ins, influenced by the burgeoning student anti-war movement. Amid the thousands of demonstrations that took place across the nation, there was at least one major act of civil disobedience, in which 15 people were arrested for holding a mock funeral inside Boston’s Logan Airport. Interestingly enough, it was a sort of proto-climate protest against a supersonic plane and its accompanying release of water vapor—a major greenhouse gas.
After that Earth Day, however, the two strands of environmentalism largely went their separate ways, with mainstream groups preferring a more professional approach that took them to courtrooms, shareholder meetings, and the halls of Congress rather than street demonstrations. And for a time, that approach succeeded wildly, earning some of the most important and long-standing environmental gains in this country’s history. But according to a 2012 report by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, such efforts have yielded no “significant policy changes at the federal level in the United States since the 1980s.” For perhaps no issue is that fact more clear than with climate change.
“We knew enough way back then to act,” says James Gustave Speth, who has advised two presidents on the environment and co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1970. “When I was chair of President Carter’s Council on Environmental Policy, we issued several reports calling for climate action. So much for my effectiveness.”
Speth has since turned to activism and was among the first people arrested during the two weeks of sit-ins outside the White House.
And he wasn’t the only former bureaucrat turned activist. NASA scientist James Hansen, who was the first to testify before Congress about the urgency of climate change in 1989, was also among those arrested at the White House, both in August 2011 and last February. In fact, his description of what would happen if Canada’s vast tar sands oil reserves were further developed—in short, “game over for the climate”—served as inspiration for the White House sit-ins. Recently, he has decided to step down from his post as the director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and pursue activism full-time.
“Our scientists sounded an early warning, and explained it to the world,” McKibben said. “They were ignored because of the power of the fossil fuel industry. So, we’ve had to add moral suasion to reason.”
That, of course, wouldn’t have amounted to much more than his first attempt at civil disobedience in the Capitol Rotunda, had he not set about building a broad base of supporters over the last five years with 350.org. Known for its massive days of global action, the group drew people in with its creative approach to activism—from staging gigantic aerial art pieces that could be seen from space to holding work parties, where actual climate solutions such as solar panels and community gardens were implemented on the local level.
The real push toward civil disobedience, however, came from a University of Utah student named Tim DeChristopher, who disrupted a federal oil and gas auction in December 2008 by posing as a bidder. It wasn’t his plan. He actually didn’t have one. All he knew was that the protest outside the auction was going nowhere. So he walked in, thinking maybe he’d make a speech. But auctioneers handed him a paddle instead, which he used to buy 22,500 acres—worth nearly $1.8 million—before federal agents caught on to the ruse. DeChristopher quickly became a cult icon for a growing climate movement, particularly as his unrepentant nature forced a criminal case that landed him in jail for two years. Coincidentally, his first full day out of custody will be this Earth Day.
“Tim did something that really resonated with a lot of the general public, where they felt emboldened with power, and started to reassess their own capacity for what they can do to make this world a better place,” said Matt Leonard, the principle organizer of the White House sit-ins. “We’ve definitely seen a ton of stories from people who were inspired by Tim and said that was the tipping point for them.”
Knowing, however, that most people were not prepared to risk receiving long jail sentences, McKibben and his team of young organizers crafted an action that was both simple and symbolic. They decided on holding sit-ins because, as Leonard explained, “It’s a tactic that resonates with people’s historical understanding of civil disobedience—for instance the lunch counter sit-ins of the civil rights movement.” Also, it is something that anyone can do and the point, after all, was to turn passive allies into active members of a movement.
Tar Sands Action, as the campaign was known, positioned itself as a bridge between the grass roots and the mainstream. In effect, it was radicalizing the latter by using a very basic and low-risk tactic of the former. At the same time, it was making use of the mainstream groups’ strengths, such as generating publicity, writing reports, and coordinating legal action. Getting these groups to work together on the same project was a big accomplishment not only because some of them work in different areas but also because, as Leonard explained, “there’s actually some real political disagreements.”
Yet, as much as this newfound cooperation was the result of the organizers playing the middleman, it was also a direct result of what organizer Linda Capato called “the history of the last couple years in the environmental movement.” With nothing happening on the political front, everyone working on the climate issue realized that, as Capato explained, “We need to start showing up in mass numbers. The reason the president is able to ignore the environmental movement is because he doesn’t think the environment is an important issue to Americans.”
Tar Sands Action challenged that perception by creating the largest civil disobedience action in decades, followed several months later in November 2011 by 12,000 people encircling the White House.The president’s reluctance to make a final determination reflects this newfound environmental activism. But what may end up being more important, in terms of the bigger fight to stop climate change—is what comes next.
“We sort of opened up this realm of possibilities,” said Rae Breaux, another Tar Sands Action organizer. “In terms of organizing civil disobedience campaigns, it’s a thing that people consider an option now.”
Many other climate-oriented campaigns saw an influx of participants last summer, as major actions were held against mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia, fracking in the Northeast, and coal exports in the Northwest. But the biggest campaign that emerged from this was Tar Sands Blockade, which united Occupy activists, rural East Texas landowners, and indigenous and minority communities in a struggle to physically block construction of the Keystone XL pipeline already under way.
Since August, the group has coordinated 19 actions in more than a dozen counties in Oklahoma and Texas, leading to 68 arrests—including a 79-year-old grandmother who u-locked her neck to construction equipment. The campaign has also spurred nationwide protest. During one week in March there were 55 actions in 15 states, with hundreds risking arrest.
“It’s not just about the anti-KXL message,” said Kim Huynh, an organizer with Tar Sands Blockade, “but also the anti-KXL messenger. We have sought to elevate the voices and perspectives of the individuals and communities most impacted by tar sands—communities being poisoned like the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation at the point of tar sands extraction and like the primarily Latino neighborhoods in Houston at the point of tar sands refining.”
This kind of work has excited longtime environmentalists like James Gustave Speth, who says, “I think we will soon see a real climate victims movement. That is very different from a movement based on intellectual understanding and forecasts.”
No one knows how the Keystone pipeline decision will be decided, but even if it’s a loss for the environmentalists, it’s just one battle in a much bigger fight. And judging by a recent online “Keystone XL Pledge of Resistance”—which gathered nearly 60,000 signatures for acts of peaceful civil disobedience “should it be necessary”— people are ready for that fight.
“The success of the campaign is not measured just on the pragmatic side of stopping the pipeline,” Leonard said. “As far as that goes, I think we made a noble effort. I’m not going to say we’ve lost, but I think it’s certainly a deeper debate and question. In terms of being able to transform the movement in a really positive and productive way for any issue or campaign moving forward, we’ve had tremendous success there. To me, that’s arguably the more important side of things.”
For McKibben, the sight of nearly 50,000 people on the National Mall in February was more than he could have ever imagined on that day of his first arrest, when he and a few others were the only voices of resistance. Now, he sees an “emerging fossil fuel resistance,” adding, “and it’s nice to be a small part of it.”Former Republic of Ireland international Sean St Ledger has spoken to RTÉ about his struggle to find a club, just two years after playing at the European Championships.
The 29-year-old was released by Leicester City in May after three years at the club.
"It's been quite tough," he told Saturday Sport. "I was very close to signing for Huddersfield at the start of the season but that didn't materialise.
"Since then I've just been going to the gym trying to stay fit but it's pretty difficult, you can't replicate football fitness in the gym really.
"I was offered something but then it just didn't happen, I wasn't happy with [the terms]. It was going to be more [incentive-based] and only a three-month contract so I felt I was taking all the risk.
"I said 'what happens if I pull my calf' but they were fine, [manager] Mark Robins said 'okay we'll sort something out on Monday'.
"But then I woke up on Sunday morning and he'd got the sack or resigned. I was like: 'How's your luck?'
"They said, 'We still want to sign you,' but as time started going on, I started wondering. They said, 'We can't sign you because we have no manager.' I said I completely understand. Then they signed someone on loan!
"I don't really do anything because I'm obviously hoping that tomorrow I'm going to get a phone call"
"I rang my agent and they said, 'Oh we're still going to sign you, don't worry.'
"We told them we had [also] some interest from America.Then it was transfer deadline day and I'm watching it and I saw that they had signed Mark Hudson, another centre-half, and I didn't hear from them again.
"I knew that once they had signed a centre-half, that was it."
The 37-cap defender believes that the recently introduced Financial Fair Play rules, which limit clubs' spending relative to turnover, has made it harder for free agents to find clubs outside of the transfer windows.
"The [FFP] rules have slightly made a change. In my situation, as well, I was injured, so that doesn't help. They [the manager] are under pressure from people upstairs and looking to their budgets. Is the chairman going to take a fine? Not really.
"Once August has come they've mainly got their players in. If they want, say me, to come in then usually a player has to come out."
St Ledger pointed to some other high-profile players currently without a club as evidence of a growing trend.
"Tomas Kuscazk, who's been at Man United, he's just recently got a club [he joined Wolves two weeks ago], there's Matthew Etherington, Chris Eagles, Jermain Jenas."
St Ledger, who scored Ireland's only goal at Euro 2012, said that his unemployed spell has opened his eyes to the harsh realities of professional football and that he has found it hard to adjust.
"It feels like I've finished football, it's been the weirdest feeling ever.
"I always say 'there are no friends in football'. I think that's so true, that they'd probably stab you in the back.
"I've found this period really lonely. I ring my friends and say, 'What have you been up to?' and they say 'I've been training, what about you?'
"I've just gone to the gym or gone to do Bikram Yoga and come home. I don't really do anything because I'm obviously hoping that tomorrow I'm going to get a phone call.
"It's been quite difficult. My family have been great. And the lads at Leicester, I still speak to them. But it's not the same, they're going in day-in day-out, having the banter in the changing room and I'm just not a part of that.
"The PFA have been brilliant. There are services if you need to talk to them, they'll pay you for you to keep fit for three weeks at St George's [English FA's National Football Centre], I can't speak highly enough of them."
St Ledger isn't giving up hope on resurrecting his career, however, and is hopeful of earning a fresh start in the United States' MLS next year.
"I still 100% want to try and get a club," he said. "It's not been great too far but you have to see the positive side of things. Hopefully, if I can go to America in January that would be great."(REAL SIMPLE.COM) -- When it came to change, my father had it licked. His motto was simply "Don't let it happen to you."
He proudly wore the same tie he'd had since college. He moved house just three times -- ever. But his town and his life were epicenters of low upheaval.
For most of us, change is an unavoidable fact, something I (re)discovered when, several years back, I lost my job in a shrinking industry. Far from ruining my life, that seismic shift gave me the chance to do two things I had always hoped to do: live in India and learn a new language (Hindi).
In the process, I discovered a lot about how to survive when head-rattling transformations are thrust upon you. Here are some of the tricks I picked up along the way.
1. Don't just do something; sit there. If you're facing a massive rescaling of your life, your first impulse will be to go into a whirring spin of activity, which is exactly what I did right after I was fired.
I later discovered there's a lot of value to sitting quietly instead. In the realm of language learning, there's a stage called the silent period: Adults may try to avoid going through it, but if you take a kid and plop her down in Paris for a spell, she'll naturally clam up for a few months. When she opens her mouth, her French will have flowered. Making sense of a major change is a lot like that. You need to allow yourself a fallow period before you can blossom.
Real Simple.com: How I stopped the multitasking madness
2. Mother yourself a little. When familiar routines suddenly dissolve, it can seem as if all your supports are gone. For a while after I lost my job, I had the sense that I was in free fall. It's crucial, while absorbing the shock of the new, to make yourself feel well taken care of. Prepare nutritious meals for the week ahead. If you can spare the cash, have someone come in and clean the house.
Yes, you need to take some time for yourself, but don't let the pizza boxes pile up.
Real Simple.com: 10 ways to cope with anxiety
3. Ignore your inner reptile. There's a part of the human mind that is often referred to as the "lizard brain," because it existed in even the earliest land animals. The lizard brain is concerned with survival; it likes the tried and true, so it's likely to pipe up right now, flooding you with adrenaline warnings of "Danger!" as you veer off course.
This was a handy function to have when deviating from the familiar path to the watering hole may have led to an encounter with a saber-toothed tiger. But in the modern world it's like a misfiring car alarm: pointless and annoying.
4. Silence your inner know-it-all, too. When I interviewed the eminent linguist Alton Becker, I asked what makes someone good at languages. It helps not to be too smart, he said, explaining, "Smart people don't like having their minds changed, and to learn a language, you have to change your mind."
If you're so smart that you can't rethink your positions, all your IQ points won't do you much good when your life is turned upside down. Becker's advice applies across the board.
5. Seek out new perspectives. Zen practitioners cultivate the "don't know" mind; they work to assume they don't know anything and in that way see the world fresh. This is a great way to approach change -- as an opportunity to start anew, to consider all possibilities.
Ask naive, wide-eyed questions of anyone who is doing anything you might be interested in trying. Listen seriously to arguments you might once have dismissed.
Real Simple.com: How to Make Good Decisions
6. Try something new and slightly scary. Why? Because now is the time to explore what it is that you really like. Catch yourself off-guard and see what happens.
At a time when I was feeling most stuck, I spontaneously volunteered to get up onstage at an open-mic storytelling evening in New York City. The experience was elating and terrifying and showed me that I wanted to lead a more creative life.
7. Be skeptical of common wisdom. It's dangerous to live in the aggregate, especially when you're trying to figure out your next move. One year, everyone knows you need an M.B.A. to succeed at anything. The next, they're saying that there are no jobs out there anyway, so don't even try. In my case, everyone but I knew that you can't learn a language at age 43. But since no one alerted me to that fact, that's what I set my sights on.
8. Learn to live with uncertainty. When I began learning Hindi, my teacher encouraged me to get out and practice with native speakers in New York. I wound up asking a waiter for love (pyar) when I'd meant to request a cup (pyala). But in that way I inched into a new language. That anxious feeling does not signal that you're doing something wrong, only that you're trying something new.
9. Say "really?" a lot. When you start to turn this sudden shift in your life to your advantage, you might shake up a lot of people, especially the ones who aren't happy with how they're living. To them, your efforts to move forward may feel like a glaring searchlight that needs to be switched off and fast.
To their descriptions of the terrible fates that will surely befall you if you dive headlong into a new life, respond with "Really?" Alternatively, "Oh, yeah?" works, too.
10. Shed your old skin. Discard physical clutter, tired ideas, old routines. Seeing things through another's eyes can help. I had that chance when the Hindi school I enrolled in asked me to list my daily requirements.
I could honestly have said, "For the past 62 days, I've eaten pineapple sandwiches for breakfast: toast, butter, canned pineapple (sliced, not crushed). Bedtime: white-noise machine (surf, not rain), four pillows (two hard, two soft)." Instead I wrote, "None."
It's only when you have cast off what has been weighing you down that you can finally move on.
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Copyright © 2011 Time Inc. All rights reserved.No one really knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is, but he is believed to be the anonymous inventor behind bitcoin.
And now he could be up for a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. Yes, the mystery man behind the digital currency that’s created so much stir has been thrown into the mix by economist Bhagwan Chowdhry, a professor at UCLA. Chowdhry, who was selected by the committee to nominate someone for the 2016 prize, chose to nominate the man responsible for bitcoin.
“I then started thinking whose ideas are likely to have a disruptive influence in the twenty-first century. The name of the inventor of bitcoin suddenly jumped up in my consciousness, and I have not been able to get it out of my mind since then: Satoshi Nakamoto,” he wrote in The Huffington Post in a contributed piece explaining his nomination.
In his letter that explains why he believes “Nakamoto’s contribution [will] change the way we think about money” and the role banks play in moving money around the world, he rattles off a list of why bitcoin is “nothing short of revolutionary.”
“[Bitcoin] offers many advantages over both physical and paper currencies,” he wrote, listing off its ability to bypass “governments, central banks and financial intermediaries.” That’s ironically what’s also gotten bitcoin a bad rap.
But he goes on to push for the reason bitcoin is the invention that deserves a Nobel Prize.
“Beyond demonstrating the possibility of creating a reliable digital currency, Satoshi Nakamoto’s bitcoin protocol has spawned exciting innovations in the FinTech space by showing how many financial contracts — not just currencies — can be digitized, securely verified and stored and transferred instantaneously from one party to another. The implications of this are immense,” Chowdhry wrote.
The open, decentralized public infrastructure and the moving of money securely and without hardly any costs are a few examples he believes support his case. The ability to transform how money is moved and how smart contracts are conducted are others.
And even though Nakamoto’s identity is not known, Chowdhry claims that it can be verified. But Chowdhry explained in his letter that he will accept the award on behalf of the inventor if he wins the award. Nakamoto’s identity is likely a pseudonym for bitcoin’s true creator, and he has been mysteriously out of the spotlight for the past few years.
“I can barely think of another innovation in economic[s] and finance in the last several decades whose influence surpasses the welfare increases that will be engendered by Satoshi Nakamoto’s brilliant, path-breaking invention. That is why I am nominating him for the Nobel Prize in Economics,” he wrote.
To check out what else is HOT in the world of payments, click here.Advertisement
Manchester United had to abandon Sunday’s Premier League clash with Bournemouth because a dummy bomb was left in the stadium by mistake after a training exercise.
Old Trafford was evacuated after a mobile phone was found strapped to piping. The match, which was being broadcast on Sky Sports, was postponed before a bomb disposal unit carried out a controlled explosion.
The results of the explosion showed the device was actually a mock-up, described by police as ‘incredibly lifelike’.
In what appears to be a staggering blunder, the ‘bomb’ was left at the stadium in error by an external training company in the days leading up to the game. A training exercise was held at the venue and the device, designed to look authentic, was not returned at its conclusion.
The match will be replayed at 8pm on Tuesday night and will be shown live on Sky Sports.
One security official, who saw the device, said: ‘It certainly did not look like something you would want to mess with.’
A bomb disposal vehicle arrives at Old Trafford during the evacuation of the 76,000-seater stadium ahead of the Premier League final-day clash between Manchester United and Bournemouth following the discovery of an 'incredibly lifelike explosive device'
Bomb experts were sent to the Manchester stadium to investigate what was later found to be a dummy explosive device
The Sky Sports team which was working inside the ground were also told to evacuate and had to broadcast some of the programme outside. The pundits are seen above reporting from outside Old Trafford while the bomb disposal van arrives at the 76,000-seater stadium
GREATER MANCHESTER POLICE CONFIRM OUR EXCLUSIVE STORY 'I am grateful to the Manchester United and Bournemouth supporters for their support and assistance today. 'Following today’s controlled explosion, we have since found out that the item was a training device which had accidentally been left by a private company following a training exercise involving explosive search dogs. 'Whilst this item did not turn out to be a viable explosive, on appearance this device was as real as could be, and the decision to evacuate the stadium was the right thing to do, until we could be sure that people were not at risk. 'Everyone remained calm, followed instructions, and worked with officers and stewards to ensure that a safe evacuation was quickly completed. Those present today were a credit to the football family and their actions should be recognised. 'I would also like to thank all those involved in the operation today for such a professional response, which includes police officers, stewards, MUFC staff, media representatives and commentators and the Bomb Disposal Team.' Greater Manchester Police Assistant Chief Constable John O'Hare
The Premier League felt abandoning the fixture had been the right course of action after discussions with both clubs and the police.
‘When it comes to matters of security it is obviously right that Manchester United and the Premier League place the safety of supporters and employees foremost,’ the League said in a statement.
‘It is always the last resort to abandon one of our fixtures and while we apologise for the inconvenience caused to fans we are sure, in the circumstances, they will appreciate the need to do so.’
United’s executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward said: ‘The safety of fans is always our highest priority. The club takes security very seriously and staff are regularly trained with the police and emergency services to identify and deal with these incidents.
‘We will investigate the incident to inform future actions and decisions.’
Greater Manchester Police Assistant Chief Constable John O’Hare said: ‘We have since found out that the item was a training device which had accidentally been left by a private company following a training exercise involving search dogs.
'While this item did not turn out to be a viable explosive, on appearance this device was as real as could be, and the decision to evacuate the stadium was the right thing to do, until we could be sure that people were not at risk.’
Greater Manchester’s Mayor and Police and Crime Commissioner Tony Lloyd — a United fan — demanded a full investigation.
He said: ‘It is outrageous. A full inquiry is required to urgently find out how this happened, why it happened and who will be held accountable.
‘This fiasco caused massive inconvenience to supporters who had come from far and wide, wasted the time of huge numbers of police officers and the Army’s bomb squad, and unnecessarily put people in danger, as evacuating tens of thousands of people from a football stadium is not without risk. It is unacceptable.’
An expected crowd of 76,000 were settling into their seats when a steward spotted the device and raised the alarm. After a police officer trained in recognising suspect packages inspected the find and decided it looked viable, the bomb disposal unit was called.
Players were kept inside the stadium while fans dispersed as the device, on the opposite side of the ground from the dressing-rooms, was not thought to be big enough to threaten their safety even if it was authentic.
A team of sniffer dogs were sent round the stadium hunting for clues that would help detectives in their investigation at the ground
Sniffer dogs search the West Stand after stands were evacuated before the football match between Manchester United and Bournemouth
At around 3.20pm the remaining fans from all the stands began to filter out of the ground - with the stadium's PA system informing supporters of the latest information. The final-day Premier League clash has now been postponed until Tuesday night
A bag is searched in the stands prior to the match being abandoned at Old Trafford which has a capacity for almost 76,000 people
Police and sniffer dogs were in the ground after they were told about the suspicious device found by stewards
A suspect package was identified in the north-west corner of the ground which police and sniffer dogs were brought in to investigate
Manchester United's Twitter account and Greater Manchester Police confirmed that a suspect package was found and a controlled explosion carried out. The match was abandoned before it even started with officials sending tens of thousands of fans home
Manchester United's official Twitter account confirmed an 'incredibly lifelike explosive device' was found and safely detonated by officials
Manchester United's Marcus Rashford leaves Old Trafford following the security alert yesterday later found to be a mistake
Manchester United's David De Gea (left) and Ander Herrera (right) leave Old Trafford after the game was abandoned
Police on horseback were drafted in to help control the crowds and were directing people away from the stadium during the evacuation
A fan cradles a small child in his arms (right) while police officers direct tens of thousands of fans away from the ground (left) earlier today
Tens of thousands of fans pile out of Old Trafford this afternoon after the game had to be abandoned due to a suspect package found
Old Trafford was evacuated just minutes before kick-off due to a security alert when officials discovered a suspicious package in a toilet
A steward evacuates fans from the ground prior to the Premier League match between Manchester United and Bournemouth at Old Trafford
Empty stands at Old Trafford following the evacuation of the 76,000-seater stadium due to a 'code red' security warning
Fire engines and police officers were scrambled to Old Trafford alongside bomb disposal units after the suspect device was discovered
Dozens of police officers were scrambled to the scene after a 'Code Red' warning was issued following the discovery of a suspect device
Police had told fans to stay away as detectives and sniffer dogs flooded the stadium to carry out their investigations and a warning was broadcast to those inside 30 minutes before kick-off. Stewards ushered around 20,000 from the Sir Alex Ferguson Stand and the Stretford End when the warning was announced.
At about 3.20pm, the remaining fans began to filter out of the ground. The controlled explosion was carried out at around 4.45pm.
Bournemouth flew back to the south coast following the abandonment. Manager Eddie Howe said: ‘The players were doing their warm-up as normal and everything was good. Then, they came in early and we were a little unsure what was happening at that time.
‘Word got back to us that there had been a suspect package spotted. Very quickly it became apparent the game was not going to take place. We decided to come back to Bournemouth because there was no sign of the game being played the next day.’
With tension high, extra measures were introduced. Sky Sports pundit Graeme Souness claimed he and co-analyst Thierry Henry were searched amid heightened security ahead of the evacuation. He said: ‘For the first time today we were patted down, I can’t remember that here. Unless they were given a tip-off.’
As supporters left the stadium, there was inevitably disappointment that the game did not go ahead.
Sports commentator Stan Collymore tweeted about the suspicious package while others revealed the 'Code Red' warning has been issued
Fans on Twitter had concerns that a suspect package managed to get into the stadium but were glad that people appeared to be safe
A sniffer dog takes a rest from searching the stands at Old Trafford following a 'Code Red' security alert prompted by a suspect package
Fans await news after being evacuated from Manchester United's ground ahead of kick-off. The Premier League match was later postponed
Fans wait outside the ground for the latest news after being told to evacuate due to a security alert. They were later sent home by officials
Stewards line up outside Old Trafford after the stadium was fully evacuated ahead of kick off following the discovery of a suspect package
Sam Stride, a United supporter from Bristol, said: ‘This is the first time I have been to Old Trafford to see a game. My mate and I have known each other for 63 years and we travelled up together. We sat in the Stretford End for about five seconds before they asked us to leave. It’s very disappointing.’
Billy Ifrose, from Cardiff, said: ‘I came on a coach from Cardiff. It is the first time I have been to see Manchester United live. It is a beautiful day and I am a bit sad.’
A United fan from Sierra Leone, whose dream trip to Old Trafford was ruined, will have an extended trip funded by supporters.
The man, known as ‘Moses’, who works in security in the west African country, had been invited by friends at the Manchester United Supporters’ Trust, who have offered to pay for a later return flight home and to give him a ticket for Saturday’s FA Cup final at Wembley between United and Crystal Palace.
Ian Stirling, vice-chair of MUST, said: ‘A friend of mine worked with Moses in Sierra Leone and he said he should come over for a game. The poor lad was distraught — being so close to the ground and not being able to go in, not knowing when he might get this chance again.
‘We’ve agreed to rearrange his flight and sort him out with a ticket for the FA Cup final. A couple of friends will put him up as well. He’s still distraught at not getting into Old Trafford — that was his dream.’
The Premier League game was scheduled to kick-off at 3pm and was pushed back to 3.45pm. The match was evetually cancelled
Fans streamed to the exits in both the Sir Alex Ferguson Stand the Stretford End on Sunday after officials told them the ground was being evacuated over safety concernsVitomir Simić, 53, points at the faded, black and white photograph of his parents, still hanging on the wall of the home he abandoned in Radljevo, a village south-west of Belgrade, Serbia. Its modest frame hides only an inch of the giant fractures that ripped open the walls of the house where he was born, and forced him and his three children to flee.
Simić works nearby in the Kolubara coal mine, helping to maintain the giant excavators that gouge the earth day and night. This relentless quest for coal has expanded the boundaries of the mines, threatening whole villages and causing the landslides and tremors that have destroyed homes like his. Like many others from the villages in the Kolubara basin, Simić has been displaced by the very mine he works for.
Kolubara is the heart of Serbia's coal-dependent energy sector, and the fact that it powers every second lightbulb in the country is savoured by politicians and state officials increasingly under pressure to justify its social and environmental impact. In recent years, Kolubara has been marred by complaints from local communities, targeted by environmental campaigners, and tainted by allegations of corruption.
Tensions between the mine and local residents escalated in 2011 when hundreds of police arrived in Vreoci, 10km from Radljevo, to stand guard as workers dug up the village cemetery. "We were under siege," recalls Zeljko Stojković, a community activist with the Ecological Society Vreoci, a local NGO. Not only was it painful for those with relatives in the cemetery, he says, but it stands as a prime example of how the mine is choosing what to move, and how, based on its needs alone.
"It was done by force to expand the field," says Stojković, who was also president of the village council at the time of the excavation. "Our demand was first they give us a plan for collective resettlement, including public infrastructure, and not first the graveyard and leave people here with all these pits."
Vitomir Simić indicates damage to the wall of the home he abandoned in Radljevo, a village south of Belgrade, Serbia. Photograph: Claire Provost/guardian.co.uk
While Radljevo is now on the frontline of Kolubara's westward expansion, Vreoci is at the centre of the complex, sandwiched between two of its largest pits. This has had devastating consequences for the local environment, says Stojković. "All the coal comes through Vreoci … and all negative impacts remain here, even waste water from this dirty processing ends up in the centre of the village. There are health problems, breathing problems, cancers, life expectancy is shortened. People are constantly under stress."
Politicians and state officials are quick to argue that Kolubara's expansion is critical to securing a stable supply of electricity for the country and that in comparison, complaints are very few. "Usually, the demands have been met. If you look at it [people are] mainly satisfied," says Dragan Alimpijev, mayor of Lazarevac, the municipality to which Vreoci belongs. "People who are complaining, it is not a large number."
"The problem is this from the past: we could not move the mines," says Ljubomir Aksentijevic, special adviser to Serbia's energy minister, who acknowledges that the resettlement of homes near the mines has moved too slowly but argues that a distinction must be drawn "between individual cases, which can be tragic, and the general picture". The government is working to avoid problems like this, he says, and will plan for new hydropower plants, for example, to be built away from settlements.
This is likely to be little consolation to Stojković, whose organisation is now trying to hold Kolubara's financiers to account. In July 2011, more than 70 people travelled from Vreoci to the Belgrade offices of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), to demand it take responsibility for the actions of Elektroprivreda Srbija (EPS), the state energy company that owns the Kolubara mine.
Last year, the Ecological Society Vreoci and the village council filed a formal complaint (pdf) with the EBRD, requesting that the bank susp |
development and release process stays on track.
"I can be proud when the release process really works and people get things done and we don’t have a lot of issues,” Torvalds.
During the past 10 years, the release schedule has stayed remarkably consistent. A new kernel is released every nine to 10 weeks, working at an average rate of 7.8 changes per hour. For the 3.19 to 4.7 releases, the kernel community added nearly 11 files and 4,600 lines of code every day, according to the report.
It has not always been smooth sailing, however. As Torvalds pointed out, “it really did take a while before it turned professional, and some of us still struggle with it at times.”
When Linus Torvalds Almost Quit
Fifteen years ago, when commercial interest in Linux began to increase but the kernel community was still very small, the process started to become unmanageable, Torvalds said. The community decided to switch to the Bitkeeper revision control system, which was a lifesaver for Torvalds “because the process before that was such a disaster,” he said.
“That was probably the only time in the history of Linux where I was like, “this is not working,” Torvalds said. “In retrospect that might have been the moment where I just gave up.”
He later created Git to further scale the development process, when Bitkeeper became too unwieldy.
Since then, things have run much more smoothly. To be sure, there have been points when Torvalds became so frustrated he considered walking away, he conceded. He would get angry and pledge to take a week off, but he would inevitably be back the next day after taking some time to cool off.
“Power management was such a bummer for so many years. We really struggled with that, where you could just take a random laptop and suspend it and resume it and assume it works,” Torvalds said.
Torvalds’ own mistakes during the 2.4 cycle also created problems with memory management that took a long time and a lot of effort to fix, he said.
For the most part, however, the technical issues have been small compared to the social challenges involved in organizing a project largely consisting of volunteers at first, and then kernel developers paid by companies with competing interests, operating in disparate markets with vastly different computing needs.
"I used to be worried about fragmentation and thought it was inevitable at some point,” Torvalds said.
This is where the GPLv2 (Gnu General Public License) license -- which governs how the software can be copied, distributed, and modified -- has been critical to the success of the project. The license requirement that changes to the code be made available, has been key to avoiding fragmentation that plagued other open source projects, Torvalds said. Under the GPL, developers can rest assured that their code will remain open and won’t be co-opted by corporate ownership.
"I love the GPL2,” Torvalds said. “It has been one of the defining factors of Linux.”
Today, the newest operating systems such as Zephyr and Fuchsia are being developed for tiny systems designed for the Internet of Things. Torvalds admitted that he does not look at the source code for these projects anymore. He contends that it isn’t helpful for him to look at source code for a project unless he wants to fix it. However, he stated that in order for a project to become big and attract contributors, the license is important.
“Under the GPL... nobody will take advantage of your code, it will remain free,” he said.Photo: http://worldsoccertalk.com
I come to be with my second dad, with the legend who leaves us a very clear legacy that we can not betray. Anyone who believes that Cuba is weak because this great has gone is wrong, former Argentine footballer Diego Armando Maradona stated on arriving in Havana.
Having traveled to the island to participate in the tributes to the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Maradona thanked the historic leader for welcoming him during the difficult time of his recovery from drug addiction.
He also praised Fidel’s leadership, noting that among many other players, he was the leader of the world team of politicians.
Maradona, who maintained a close friendship with the Comandante en Jefe since 1987, when he visited the island for the first time, said that he had come to say “Hasta siempre Comandante!”
I want to send my greetings to all Cubans and tell them that my heart is with them; I am a Cuban soldier…I would give my heart and all my body for this flag, for Cuba, Fidel and for Che, he concluded.
(With information from ACN and Radio Habana Cuba)For Oscar Olivares’ neighbors, life in their south Charlotte apartment complex is a daily struggle with little way out.
The apartments off Arrowood Road look kept up on the outside. On the inside, two, even four, families often share the rent and meals. Some sleep in cars when they can’t afford to rent. Nights can bring trouble – many residents stay locked inside.
Olivares, 59, and wife Claudia, who both grew up in desperate poverty in Chile, chose to live at the complex to conduct mission work. He is a part-time chaplain for Forest Hill Church and works with the nonprofit Learning Help Centers of Charlotte, two groups among many that help poor residents try to overcome poverty.
“You don’t have to go overseas to do mission work,” Olivares said. “It’s right here at the back door.”
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The poverty he lives among is invisible to most. But since 2000, concentrated pockets have mushroomed throughout Mecklenburg County and major North Carolina cities.
U.S. Census Bureau estimates released in late June show that North Carolina had the country’s largest increase in the percentage of people living in distressed neighborhoods, more than doubling in the decade since 2000.
In Mecklenburg, 1 in 4 residents lived in distressed neighborhoods in 2010, up from 1 in 10 in 2000, the Observer found. These neighborhoods have at least 20 percent of residents living below the federally established poverty level – for a family of four, a yearly household income of $23,850 or less.
Distressed communities, or “poverty areas” as the census calls them, aren’t festering slums. They may be areas where at least 20 percent of residents are poor, but also can be home to middle- and upper-income residents.
The census data was taken from surveys done from 2008 through 2012, some of the worst years of the recession in Charlotte. The bureau’s five-year estimates offer a snapshot of changing conditions in small areas. The estimates don’t take into account recent social and economic changes in those communities.
The pockets of poverty have moved beyond uptown’s periphery and crept into suburbia, along major corridors such as South Boulevard and South Tryon Street to the south, and Central Avenue and Albemarle Road to the east.
At risk are once proud and thriving sections of Mecklenburg descending into daunting distress, and longtime residents who provided stability leaving, some experts say.
“When poverty expands, pathologies – crime, poor health, unemployment, lost property values – often rise,” said Gene Nichol, director of the UNC Center on Poverty, Work & Opportunity in Chapel Hill. “The pathologies affect those in poverty and (residents) who live around those in poverty.”
The fears can be largely perception but “strong enough that people leave,” said Owen Furuseth, associate provost for metropolitan studies at UNC Charlotte.
“They may be replaced by more poor people and the concentration of poverty grows,” Furuseth said. “Government can’t just stand passively by... once the economic stability begins to crumble.”
Overcoming impoverishment is especially daunting in Charlotte. A study by Harvard and the University of California at Berkeley showed that upward mobility for children living in poverty is more difficult in Charlotte than any of the country’s 50 largest cities.
Last January, the study prompted Mecklenburg County commission Chairman Trevor Fuller, in his state of the county address, to bemoan the “intractable” poverty, promising a task force to find a “blueprint for action.”
Fuller has yet to announce the group but expects it to get started in late summer. It will include leaders from academia, the business and faith communities, nonprofits, philanthropy and low-income residents.
“We’ve been so focused on building the prosperity, we just haven’t paid attention to what’s been happening in our county,” Fuller said. “We assumed that everybody was sharing in the prosperity – that’s not been the case.
“It is vital for the economic health and future of this county that we find reasonable solutions.”
Not on ‘the main route’
In 2000, Mecklenburg’s deepest pockets of poverty appeared as a crescent on the city map, just north of uptown’s skyscrapers. Now they are in the town of Pineville in the south, at the Cabarrus County line in the northeast and moving eastward toward Mint Hill.
In recent years, Loaves & Fishes food pantry opened satellite pantries in Pineville and Mint Hill, said Executive Director Beverly Howard.
“They are places that 10 years ago I never would have dreamed would have the need for our help,” Howard said. “But everywhere in the county there is so much low-income need and it’s stretching farther and farther out.”
Often distressed neighborhoods are tucked out of the way in areas of low-rent houses and sprawling apartment complexes.
“Charlotte has done a good job of making sure these pockets of poverty aren’t on the main route,” Howard said. “These are people who mow your grass, assist in nursing homes, clean your office. They are people you interact with without a clue that they’re working for $7 or $8 an hour.”
Behind the scenes in these neighborhoods, many people are unemployed and receive government assistance such as food stamps, said John Chesser, a senior analyst at UNC Charlotte’s Urban Institute.
Nearly 232,000 residents, 25 percent of the county’s population, receive some sort of government assistance, commission Chairman Fuller said.
Charlotte Mayor Pro Tem Michael Barnes said he began to see the rise in distressed neighborhoods before the recession hit Charlotte in 2008. He attributes it partly to federal policy that has allowed the income gap between rich and poor to widen. He said the City Council has worked to recruit companies that pay decent wages for blue collar workers.
Barnes said the problem of spreading pockets of poverty is not unique to Charlotte but affecting cities across the country.
Many distressed neighborhoods are filled with immigrants from around the world, drawn to Charlotte by stories of plentiful jobs, good weather and good schools.
In North Carolina, about 350,000 people live out of compliance with federal immigration laws, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Other agencies believe nearly 50,000 live in Charlotte.
But poverty in Mecklenburg is not solely an immigrant problem. Of the 132,000 people in poverty in 2010, 46 percent were black, 37 percent were white and 23 percent were Hispanic.
Yet the influx of immigrants has “introduced into the mix a new complication,” Barnes said.
“We need to make sure these people get the education and learn the skills they need to succeed,” he said. “Most municipalities don’t have funding to do those things. That needs to come from Washington or Raleigh.”
‘Expensive to be poor’
A common image of poverty in North Carolina for generations has been the dilapidated houses and junked cars on the way to the beach or into the mountains.
But since 2000, as rural residents and immigrants moved to the state’s urban centers for jobs, the more pervasive and intense poverty began to grow in Charlotte and other North Carolina cities. Today, two-thirds of the state’s distressed areas are in urban centers.
“The general portrait of rural poverty masks another reality – the deepest poverty in the state is located right in the middle of Charlotte, Durham, Raleigh, Greensboro and Winston-Salem,” said Nichol, the UNC poverty center director.
It accelerated during the recession, when the state ranked seventh in the country for jobs lost.
From 2008 to 2010, North Carolina lost more than 335,000 jobs, a large chunk in manufacturing, said Larry Parker, spokesman for the Division of Employment Securities. The Charlotte area lost 70,000 jobs, many of them high-paying jobs in the financial industry.
“If people lose their jobs completely, you go from middle class to poverty really fast,” said Chesser of the UNCC Urban Institute.
Since 2010, the state has regained more than 280,000 jobs, and the Charlotte region 92,000, Parker said.
Still, wages have dropped the past five years across the state. In the jobs that have come back, low-wage work outnumbers high-wage jobs, with middle-income jobs coming in last, said N.C. State University economist Michael Walden.
Many of the state’s factories were shuttered by 2000, taking with them thousands of jobs that once lifted workers into the middle class – even with little education. Those jobs have been replaced by thousands of low-wage service-sector jobs: cleaning offices or hotel rooms, cutting grass, construction, assisting at nursing homes and working in big-box stores, fast-food restaurants and hospitals.
“It used to be you could stop at high school and go into the factory and work and do OK,” Walden said. “Now if you’re someone in North Carolina and you’ve not gone to college, your job prospects are not very good.”
That’s a problem for people trying to claw their way out of poverty, Nichol said. So many conditions work against poor people, he said. For residents who can’t afford cars, public transportation doesn’t always serve them well in their neighborhoods.
Child care often isn’t affordable, and economic development is slow. “It’s often more expensive to be poor,” Nichol said.
‘Needs are so basic’
Oscar Olivares hears those sad stories every day.
He and wife Claudia came to the United States from Chile in 1982 and have lived in Charlotte three years. They moved into the Arrowood Road apartments in October.
Last week, giving a tour, Olivares stopped Juan Fuentes to chat. Fuentes is a newcomer from Honduras, lured by two nephews in Charlotte with stories of work. He shares a four-bedroom apartment with 12 relatives.
He came to make money “so my family in Honduras can survive,” he told Olivares.
He found quick work laying carpet but hasn’t worked in a month. “I want to work, I want to make better life for my family,” Fuentes, 45, told Olivares.
Olivares and Claudia feel they are making a difference. They say they are still winning trust but the solutions are elusive. Oscar runs a summer camp and after-school program for the children. He brings in experts to help neighbors set a budget and provide information on health care and education opportunities.
“I give a bicycle to a kid and go home and say, ‘Thank you, Lord, because today I was a good guy and you gave me the opportunity to make a child happy.’ But the whole time, her father is thinking, ‘How will I pay rent tomorrow? How can I get 20 bucks to get gas and go to work?’ ” he said. “Those are the real issues we deal with. I can’t talk to that man about prophesies – he don’t care.
“All his needs are so basic and he can’t get them.”[social_buttons] Editor’s Note: This post was provided by one of our paid sponsors, Mr. Solar. For more information, solar or wind power consultation, or to purchase solar panels or complete solar or wind power systems and system components, please visit MrSolar.com. At MrSolar.com, we know solar panels!
One of the most troubling issues facing consumers, businesses, and homeowners today is the steadily rising cost of energy. With the price of energy feed stocks, including coal, natural gas, and oil, trending upwards, the pain-in-the-pocketbook is sure to become more acute. Add to that increasing fossil fuel production and operating costs and we add insult to injury. Meanwhile, the International Panel on Climate Change claims that the burning of fossil fuels is the driving force behind climate change, more familiarly known as “global warming”. Also, there is some concern that fossil fuel production and supplies are having trouble keeping up with demand, especially crude oil. In this article we’ll take a look at some of the things we can do to reduce our dependence on fossil fuel generated energy – with special emphasis on solar energy.
Why are Energy Prices Rising?
Some of the factors that are contributing to the rise in electric energy costs are as follows:
Demand for electricity is growing at an ever-increasing rate. The Energy Information Administration estimates that 258 gigawatts of new electric generating capacity will be needed by 2030 to meet the growing demand. This equates to an additional 250 to 500 baseload power plants rated at between one-half and one gigawatt of capacity.
Infrastructure costs are increasing. The cost of maintaining the nation’s electric power grid including high-voltage transmission lines and towers, power sub-stations, and electric distribution systems is advancing in an upward trajectory. In a three year period ending with 2009, electric utility companies will need to invest $31.5 billion, a 60 percent increase over the three years from 2002 to 2005. For the next ten years electric utilities will invest $14 billion per year on infrastructure.
Compliance with environmental laws and regulations and related litigation is becoming more expensive for electric utilities. The Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, as well as a host of other state and federal laws and statutes create a maze of bureaucracy to negotiate.
Rate caps which were put in place beginning in 1997 have begun to expire giving the impression that rates are rising when in actuality costs that have already been incurred by electric utilities are being passed on to consumers.
Increased demand on power grids, especially in the summer when air-conditioning places a huge strain on electric grid capacity, can cause brown-outs and black outs and can prompt some electric utilities to institute what are known as “rolling blackouts” in order to prevent a full-blown disruption.
Considering all of this, and assuming you’ve already determined that doing so is financially practical, investing in renewable energy sources becomes a much more viable alternative to paying increasing costs over the mid- to long-term. So, what can we as individuals and businesses do to alleviate some of the pressure from high energy prices while reducing the demand for fossil fuels? We can turn to the sun to provide much of our electricity by “going solar”!
Seven Ways to Incorporate Solar Energy into Your Home or Business
Following are seven ways that solar energy can be used to reduce the demand on the main electric power grids as well as reducing greenhouse gases and conserving fossil fuel supplies and providing a clean and renewable source of electrical energy.
Solar-powered home – If you have not already done so, convert all your major appliances to clean-burning natural gas or propane. This eliminates all electrical heating elements and compressors which consume copious amounts of electricity. What you have left is lighting and electronics. This can all be powered, completely or partially, by solar energy. Take out all of your incandescent lighting and replace it with more energy-efficient CFLs. Garage or workshop – Have a detached garage or workshop that is separate from your home? Take it off the grid and install a solar power system. Off-grid home, remote cabin or out-building – It can be very expensive in some cases to bring the main power grid to your remote location where electricity may be needed. Diesel or gas generators are loud, they contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, and fuel has to be hauled in. Clean, quiet, renewable solar power, however, can be installed to provide most if not all of your remote power needs. Sign and landscape lighting – Most business signage can be retro-fitted or designed with solar power. Sunlight collected during the day is stored in batteries that power sign and landscape lighting at night. Water pumps – Solar energy can be used to power water pumps in remote locations where grid power is not available. Solar can also be used to power landscape water features such as fountains. Solar energy can also be used to power essential activities like irrigation and drinking wells. Portable Power Systems – One of many examples where solar power can be used to supplant grid power and reduce greenhouse gases and fumes from the burning of fossil fuels in generators is to use portable solar power systems for special events such as concerts or festivals. Solar building and construction – Many builders across the country have discovered that solar-powered homes will sell more quickly than conventional homes. More and more builders are incorporating solar technologies and passive solar techniques to increase the value and salability of the homes they build.
There are many other ways to take advantage of solar power and they are limited only by our imaginations. Thomas Edison once famously exclaimed “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy.” That’s the same guy that brought electric light to the world and if I were to hazard a bet on it, I’d put my money on Mr. Edison any day of the week!
Ron Curtis is the website administrator for MrSolar.com and writes energy and alternative energy articles for several websites and blogs.Howdy folks, Faultie here. Just wanted to take a minute to drop in and let you all see my most recent mad science project. Fret not, dear readers, for this time the mad science is not used for fell purposes.
As you may know, TempleCon is upon us, and Lost Hemisphere will be there in force…as a force for good! In addition to playing games, partying, drinking, nattering, and sleeping (just a bit), Gdaybloke and Co. will be selling off raffle tickets for their annual charity fundraiser, this year benefiting the Hope Alzheimer’s Center.
Well, if there’s to be a raffle, there need to be prizes! Last year, I donated a gorgeous Ghordson Earthbreaker to the raffle, painted by the fantastically talented Chris Oelhafen. As a lazy person, I have decided to just donate the same thing again. However, to go just a little bit further on the effort-road, I’ve decided to modify it just a bit.
When I first saw the Ghordson Earthbreaker model, I had an idea. Its six legs, squat, elongated profile, and the guns all over gave me the feel of a walking fortress. I pondered and pondered, and started imagining it with crewmen all over, a strange hybrid of a WWII-era B-17 and a grot megatank.
The problem, of course, is that I don’t play rhulfolk. I have no need for a landship. On the other hand, I wanted to make one! LH’s charity raffle gives me just the opportunity to create this monstrosity, and (hopefully) have someone walk away happily with it.
STEP 1: HAVE ALL THE THINGS
The Earthbreaker has a lot of parts. Each of these parts is made up of a bunch of other parts. Those other parts have sub-parts. It’s a lot of bits, I mean. And each bit needs to be cleaned, sanded, mold-lines cleaned up, etc., before even getting to the assembly stage. This took several hours (I don’t recall how many). I thought I took a picture, but I didn’t. Anyway, it took forever.
STEP 2: PUT THE THINGS TOGETHER
After everything was cleaned, I started looking at the model to figure out exactly how to change it. My original idea was to build a fighting platform on top of the model for the torpedo cannons, bore out the inside and have High Shields manning the machineguns in the chest, and have a pilot driving it from the head-spot. I chatted with Gdaybloke for a bit, and we settled on the idea that actually the big guns should be housed in the hull, and their crew could be internally held. The blaster cannons would be turned into manned turrets, maybe on a fighting platform on the back or shoulders?
With this in mind, I started assembling. And my first step in assembling was to start disassembling! If the landship were going to have a crew, they’d need somewhere to sit. So I began cutting. My poor dremel, though, and its cutting blades were not up to the challenge. So it turned into drilling and routing time. Drill, route, drill, route, and so on. Fortunately, my model had an air pocket in the center of the hull, so I was about to route down to it in a vague shape, then pull out a huge chunk of resin. A bit of sanding later, and I was ready to go! A similar process near the front produced the pilot’s compartment.
This is the second colossal I’ve assembled, and I learned my lesson: PIN IT ALL. Is it 2 different parts? Pin them. Is it 1 part that connects to anything else? Pin it. So it look flimsy? Pin it!!! To be fair, as an almost entirely resin model, the Earthbreaker is surprisingly light. Still, I was going to be putting a lot of weight on the legs and shoulders, so various gauges of brass rod were used in all the legs, feet, and shoulders.
STEP 3: PLASTICARD AND GUNS
You’ll notice there there is some plasticard up top, and some guns in the chest. I wanted more than just thin walls holding the upper and lower hull together, as I imagine there are smoke stacks, pipes, tubes, etc. that have to run between the two. Therefore, I wanted the primary connections to be like gigantic pipes, reinforced to each side, and with some actual substance to them. Hollow plasticard tubing and I-beam were used, and then a 1mm brass rod was run down the middle to give the roof something solid to connect with. I also used the doors for the chest-guns to bulk out the rear portion of the wall, which looked quite well. The torpedo cannon blast shields were used to fill in some gaps along the bottom of the hull where the cannons were supposed to sit. Some extraneous 40k ork claws provided added gribblies as well.
The main cannons are simply Horgenhold Artillery Corps mortars turned sideways, with one of the side pieces removed. I wanted them to look like they could traverse, and to reinforce this actually have them pointing slightly different directions. I had intended to give them long barrels, so I sawed off the muzzles…then I decided I didn’t want to do that and glued the muzzles back on. This is why you should plan things a lot better than I did. Some ladder rungs were added in the rear right of the hull, because why not? I also closed the right claw, so there would be some contrast.
For the upper hull, I assembled it pretty normally, but added the Hammerfall UA standard to the upper right for added gribbliness. I also added the extra HAC mortar pieces to the underside so that it looked like it was more connected. Finally, 3 holes were drilled into the upper hull so that the 1mm rod would slot in. I’m still not sure if I will glue it on after painting, or leave it removable for transport.
At this point, the landship started looking like it could actually move around and do stuff.
The finishing touch was to add to add the glass cockpit from a WWII model kit. I went with a model of a P-38 Lightning because it had lots of glass pieces…and because it was on clearance at the hobby store. It took some cutting, greenstuffing, and fitting, but it looks good I think. I did not secure it in place, as I still must paint the model, and painting over a glass windscreen defeats the purpose.
STEP 4: GUN TURRETS
The most fiddly part of the project was creating the gun turrets to represent the blaster cannons. My inspiration came from WWII-era naval AA guns, like this or this. After perusing the PP store, I settled on a pair of Maxwell Finn belt-fed sluggers with drum-magazines, and Ghordson Avalancher shoulder pieces for the gun-shields. I wanted to use Hammerfall High Shields for the gunners, as they have a good look about them, and the Tommy-hat style helmets fit well with my vision.
This is where I had another happy accident.
The Earthbreaker I got had two right shoulder armor pieces. I filed my report, and started waiting. In the meantime, I kept staring at the model and its missing piece, and slowly it dawned on me that the flat-top of the shoulder was actually very useful for my design. In fact, the guns would not be mounted behind the shoulder but on it! So I changed how the guns were mounted, built little platforms for them to stand on, and there we go! I cut out some Relic Knights Black Diamond 40mm bases to create a mounting, bored through that, and set the guns to the shoulders.
The last step was to fit the top of the colossal, which (as shown above) needed to have its shoulder-indentations bored-out so that the gunners would have a place to stand. This took a lot of routing, again, but worked swell! At long last, I was (mostly) done! I had to pull some parts off I had attached previously, thanks to the new gunnery positions, but I think it worked out well.
STEP 5: PAINTING
My next article will cover the painting of this beasty. The influence will obviously be WWII bombers, with their olive drab, squadron markings, and (of course!), a sassy Rhulic pinup girl on the front hull!
This glorious piece was made by my good friend Brian Parker, and it really turned out way better than I could have imagined. I think Gdaybloke likes it too, as you might be able to tell by the new Lost Hemisphere Swag Bag offerings! Proceeds of sales of Steamin’ Sally merchandise contribute to Lost Hemisphere’s charity fundraising efforts.
So…that’s it! What are your thoughts?!Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) supplementation has been proposed as (adjuvant) treatment for major depressive disorder (MDD). In the present meta-analysis, we pooled randomized placebo-controlled trials assessing the effects of omega-3 PUFA supplementation on depressive symptoms in MDD. Moreover, we performed meta-regression to test whether supplementation effects depended on eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) or docosahexaenoic acid dose, their ratio, study duration, participants' age, percentage antidepressant users, baseline MDD symptom severity, publication year and study quality. To limit heterogeneity, we only included studies in adult patients with MDD assessed using standardized clinical interviews, and excluded studies that specifically studied perinatal/perimenopausal or comorbid MDD. Our PubMED/EMBASE search resulted in 1955 articles, from which we included 13 studies providing 1233 participants. After taking potential publication bias into account, meta-analysis showed an overall beneficial effect of omega-3 PUFAs on depressive symptoms in MDD (standardized mean difference=0.398 (0.114-0.682), P=0.006, random-effects model). As an explanation for significant heterogeneity (I(2)=73.36, P<0.001), meta-regression showed that higher EPA dose (β=0.00037 (0.00009-0.00065), P=0.009), higher percentage antidepressant users (β=0.0058 (0.00017-0.01144), P=0.044) and earlier publication year (β=-0.0735 (-0.143 to 0.004), P=0.04) were significantly associated with better outcome for PUFA supplementation. Additional sensitivity analyses were performed. In conclusion, present meta-analysis suggested a beneficial overall effect of omega-3 PUFA supplementation in MDD patients, especially for higher doses of EPA and in participants taking antidepressants. Future precision medicine trials should establish whether possible interactions between EPA and antidepressants could provide targets to improve antidepressant response and its prediction. Furthermore, potential long-term biochemical side effects of high-dosed add-on EPA supplementation should be carefully monitored.culture Scene: Vintage Bike Show at Trinity Bellwoods
A showcase of the coolest bicycles no one in their right mind should ever try to ride.
SHOW CAPTION ✉ Share on: 325291 A series of retro rides from the 1950s, including one with a built-in radio. VintageBikes https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/VintageBikes-100x100.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/VintageBikes-640x426.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/VintageBikes.jpg 640 426 https://torontoist.com/2014/07/scene-vintage-bike-show-at-trinity-bellwoods/slide/vintagebikes/ vintagebikes 0 0 325281 This man claims his penny-farthing is "from the '70s," and he does not mean the 1970s. 1870sBike https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/1870sBike-100x100.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/1870sBike-640x426.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/1870sBike.jpg 640 426 https://torontoist.com/2014/07/scene-vintage-bike-show-at-trinity-bellwoods/slide/1870sbike/ 1870sbike 0 0 325290 This seat does not look especially comfortable. TorontoBicycle https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/TorontoBicycle-100x100.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/TorontoBicycle-426x640.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/TorontoBicycle.jpg 426 640 https://torontoist.com/2014/07/scene-vintage-bike-show-at-trinity-bellwoods/slide/torontobicycle/ torontobicycle 0 0 325289 A large-tired Schwinn with a distinct handlebar design. Schwinn https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Schwinn-100x100.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Schwinn-426x640.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Schwinn.jpg 426 640 https://torontoist.com/2014/07/scene-vintage-bike-show-at-trinity-bellwoods/slide/schwinn/ schwinn 0 0 325288 "Huffy-Radio," which turns on with a key and only picks up fuzzy AM signals. RadioBike https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/RadioBike-100x100.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/RadioBike-426x640.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/RadioBike.jpg 426 640 https://torontoist.com/2014/07/scene-vintage-bike-show-at-trinity-bellwoods/slide/radiobike/ radiobike 0 0 325283 This would look good on any living room wall, assuming that living room was a garage. BikeClock https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/BikeClock-100x100.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/BikeClock-426x640.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/BikeClock.jpg 426 640 https://torontoist.com/2014/07/scene-vintage-bike-show-at-trinity-bellwoods/slide/bikeclock/ bikeclock 0 0 325284 A vintage Cleveland emblem. ClevelandBike https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/ClevelandBike-100x100.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/ClevelandBike-426x640.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/ClevelandBike.jpg 426 640 https://torontoist.com/2014/07/scene-vintage-bike-show-at-trinity-bellwoods/slide/clevelandbike/ clevelandbike 0 0
325285 One of the earliest model bikes at the festival, a metal skeleton from the 1860s. MetalBike https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/MetalBike-100x100.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/MetalBike-640x426.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/MetalBike.jpg 640 426 https://torontoist.com/2014/07/scene-vintage-bike-show-at-trinity-bellwoods/slide/metalbike/ metalbike 0 0 325286 Are we mourning the loss of bike plates? We don't think so. MontrealBicycle https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/MontrealBicycle-100x100.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/MontrealBicycle-426x640.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/MontrealBicycle.jpg 426 640 https://torontoist.com/2014/07/scene-vintage-bike-show-at-trinity-bellwoods/slide/montrealbicycle/ montrealbicycle 0 0 325282 "I could teach you to ride this in about an hour." BigWheel https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/BigWheel-100x100.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/BigWheel-426x640.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/BigWheel.jpg 426 640 https://torontoist.com/2014/07/scene-vintage-bike-show-at-trinity-bellwoods/slide/bigwheel/ bigwheel 0 0 325287 The term "vintage" at this showcase was loosely synonymous with "customized." MotorishBike https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/MotorishBike-100x100.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/MotorishBike-640x426.jpg https://torontoist.com |
methods of providing care for patients.
Trump's health plan has been less clear, but he has mentioned "doing away with the lines" between states. This appears to mean that state regulation of health insurance — all 50 states have their own insurance commissioners and regulation agencies — would be done away with in favor of unified regulations. The exact coverage proposals are unclear, according to Cox.
These moves, however, cannot affect some of the other measures, such as the inability of insurers to deny people based on a preexisting condition.
"Some of the coverage aspects of the law would stay in place," Cox said. "Gender rating where women can't be charged more than men, older people can only be charged three times more than young people, younger people can stay on their parents' insurance until they're 26 — those can't be changed though reconciliation."
This doesn't mean the Trump administration couldn't influence major pieces of the ACA, according to Jost.
"Much of the act is administrative, so a new administration could simply not give it support," Jost said. "They can not put resources into outreach, discourage people from signing up for insurance through the law instead of encourage. They can dive insurers out of the market. They can cause a lot of trouble."
Even in the short term, the Trump election could be a negative for the ACA. According to Cox, since Obamacare exchanges are going through their open-enrollment period right now, Americans could be discouraged from getting health insurance through the exchanges if they think they will soon be gone.SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria’s parliament speaker Dimitar Glavchev resigned on Friday in a move he said was to avoid political upheaval as the country prepares to take over the six-month rotating European Union presidency in January.
The opposition Socialists had demanded Glavchev’s resignation and said they would boycott parliament sessions until he stepped down after he banned their leader, Kornelia Ninova, from the chamber over what he called offences to deputies and members of the government on Wednesday.
Glavchev, who described his resignation as “a moral act”, said it was his intention to restore calm in the parliament and not cast a shadow over Bulgaria’s EU presidency.
“I have always said that the state and its stability are more important than anything,” said Prime Minister Boyko Borissov.
Parliament voted to appoint Tsveta Karayancheva, a senior member of the ruling center-right GERB party, to replace Glavchev.
“Glavchev made a mistake, but his resignation is just a preventative measure and it will not lead to a parliamentary crisis or the fall of the government,” Daniel Smilov, an analyst with Bulgaria’s Centre for Liberal Strategies, told Reuters.
“GERB is trying not to complicate the situation.”
The center-right GERB, led by Borissov, returned to power for a third term since 2009 after a snap election in March. His coalition government has a one-seat majority but is also supported by a small populist party.Will the Chiefs go after Peyton Manning following an injury as they once went after Joe Montana? US Presswire
The Peyton Manning saga will surely be the story of the NFL offseason. The question in the AFC West is, will the Kansas City Chiefs be the story along with the legendary Indianapolis Colts quarterback?
As of now, we have to think it is a real possibility that the Chiefs will heavily pursue Manning -- who may be cut by the Colts as soon as next week -- if he becomes a free agent. Manning, who will turn 36 on March 24, missed all of last season with a neck injury and there is no certain date when he will be 100 percent, although there have been reports he will be ready to play in 2012.
If the Chiefs end up signing Manning, it won’t be the first time the organization brought in a living legend at the end of his career after he suffered a serious injury. The Chiefs traded for San Francisco’s Joe Montana in 1993.
The Chiefs have been connected to Manning in recent weeks. A Kansas City radio station has even reported that the team has had multiple conversations with Manning’s agent about finances and that the Chiefs feel comfortable about what Manning may want. That would constitute tampering and it is highly unlikely any team would talk finances with Manning before giving him a physical and knowing more about his recovery timetable. Still, the Chiefs have a load of salary-cap room and they can easily construct a deal for Manning in addition to making other improvements.
Of course, Kansas City coach Romeo Crennel did nothing to take the scent off a potential Chiefs-Manning pairing when he said this at the NFL combine last Saturday: “With a talent like that, I would be crazy not to consider it if he’s available. I’ll leave it at that.”
The Chiefs are not necessarily looking for a new starting quarterback. At the combine, Kansas City general manager Scott Pioli wouldn’t say the job is open. He said the starter is Matt Cassel. However, there will be competition at every position. The translation is the Chiefs expect Cassel to be the starter, but if a better option comes along, they will consider it. There’s no doubt a healthy Manning would be a better option.
Matt Cassel may find himself backing up Peyton Manning next season if the Chiefs make a move. Dak Dillon/US PRESSWIRE
If the Chiefs do want to go deep into the Manning sweepstakes, they will have competition, likely beginning with Miami and Washington. There will surely be other teams that show interest in the player who many consider one of the greatest NFL players of all time.
In addition to their interest and financial means, here’s another reason the Chiefs could be favorites to land Manning: They may be the best team interested in him. That would surely appeal to Manning when he is making his choice. I’m not sure many of the interested teams can offer Manning a better supporting cast.
The Chiefs have a strong running game and Manning would have plenty of receiving options. No. 1 receiver Dwayne Bowe is expected to be franchised, 2011 first-round pick Jonathan Baldwin is a potential game-changing deep threat and Steve Breaston is a solid possession receiver. Tight end Tony Moeaki is expected to be healthy after missing the 2011 season with a knee injury. He was terrific as a rookie in 2010.
In addition to appealing offensive weapons, the Chiefs have the makings of a strong defense. A healthy Manning would immensely help any team. But Manning could be a difference-maker in Kansas City. Matt Williamson of Scouts Inc. said adding Manning would make the Chiefs -- who finished 7-9 in 2011 despite major injury issues -- “the clear favorite to win the AFC West” in 2012.
Putting Manning in the Heartland would make many teams in the AFC nervous.
I would think Manning would also be fine with working with Crennel and Pioli. He is close with New England quarterback Tom Brady and Brady won Super Bowls with both men. I’m sure Brady would give Manning glowing reports on both of his potential bosses. And don’t think Manning would have trouble working with a defensive-minded coach like Crennel. Remember, the man Manning won his Super Bowl ring with, Tony Dungy, was a defensive-minded coach.
Cassel is also a factor in this scenario. Because Manning will be signed before there are any guarantees he’ll be ready to play, any team that signs him must have a good fallback plan. There are fewer better fallbacks than Cassel.
If Manning is signed and he has a setback, the Chiefs can rely on Cassel, who shined as Brady’s injury replacement in 2008. While Cassel wouldn’t be thrilled with the idea of backing up Manning, I’m sure he’d understand the Chiefs taking advantage of a rare opportunity to pick up a future Hall of Fame player.
There are a lot of reasons this pairing makes sense. If it happens, the Chiefs will be at the center of the NFL universe.COMPARTMENTALIZATION is a method of information control designed to create groups of people in varying degrees of intellectually challenged states. It is a mind control system which allows a set of bosses [who designed the system and so are allowed to know everything] to control the remainder of the population by allowing them to know only what they "need to know" to do their respective slave jobs to serve the ruling bosses.
HISTORY
There were similar systems of control long before modern government sponsored compartmentalization came into existence.
Adam Weishaupt, founder of the Illuminati, designed a system of levels [with himself as the boss, of course] and is quoted as giving out instructions to his "higher" followers for recruitment of "lower" followers as follows:
"These good folk swell our numbers and fill our money-box. Set yourselves to work; these gentlemen must be made to nibble at the bait... but this sort of people must always be made to believe that the grade they have reached is the last."
This basic model is common to modern government sponsored compartmentalization systems as well as those used by various religions, cults, and secret societies.
All of these groups obtain their energy - usually in the form of money - from the lower levels of the group who are generally good and well meaning people who have no idea what the leadership is doing with their money but assume it must be something good. Churches and cults scare money out of their followers with threats about punishment in the "afterlife". Governments, of course, just order people to pay taxes and deal with them by force if they refuse. However, in all cases, money is extracted from the lower levels and sent to the higher levels so that the people in the higher levels can have every luxury they want at the expense of the lower levels.
In the US System, ordinary people have no idea that everything they do is, directly or indirectly, for the benefit of the group we call "gods". They do not know that this group exists.
Huxley's classic book "Brave New World" describes a system of population control where most people are chemically damaged to make them suitable for some level of slavery. The master class consists of people who are not damaged, i.e., people who are allowed to develop unique personalities and have independent thought. They are equivalent to the "gods" in the "New World Order" model. The people in our model who are "below the gods" do not have to be grown in test tubes and damaged with chemicals as they are in Huxley's novel to be functional slaves - they simply have to be given an inferior education. This works just as well. We even publicly recognize this when we use terms such as "blue collar" and "white collar" to separate classes or "casts" of people based upon level of education.
EXPLAINING THE COMPARTMENTALIZATION MODEL
THE MAJOR LEVELS
The major levels of the system are (1) The gods, (2) The Top Secret Group and (3) The Compartment Group. Basically, the Compartment Group "houses" the general population who do the general jobs needed to maintain social infrastructure. The Top Secret Group consists of "executive level slaves" who control the Compartment Group. Most people in the Compartment Group do not know that the Top Secret Group exists. At the top we have the group of "gods". They live free of all controls and are allowed to know all available knowledge and are provided with every conceivable luxury. Their existence is generally unknown to the two lower groups.
THE COMPARTMENT GROUP
The compartment group is symbolized by the cross hatch pattern to represent the "intellectual boxes" in which these people live. They probably do not realize that they live in an "information cage" from which they cannot escape. As stated by
Adam Weishaupt, they are conditioned to believe that "the grade they have reached is the last". They are happy because they do not know anything better exists.
Most people in the Compartment Group are so stupid that there is no reason for the government to pay any attention to them. Therefore, they are not even looked at and form the "not evaluated" level.
Above them is the level of people who may have some capacity for independent thought who must be "checked out". If hired to do something related to government they are coded "black" for "no security clearance" but they have been checked out to make sure they are no threat.
The two levels above this are Confidential and Secret. The color code used on government ID badges is blue for confidential and red for Secret clearance. Confidential and Secret clearances involve information which is "temporary". For example, the combination to a safe may be a secret but it is not permanent - if you leave your job the combination can be changed and you will no longer know it. Therefore, as a function of time you are gradually "relieved" of your secrecy oath simply because the secrets you once knew no longer exist. Certain secret codes also change periodically and so you are only bound by your secrecy oath while the codes you know are current.
THE TOP SECRET GROUP
The fundamental difference between the compartment group and the top secret group is the permanence of the information. Top Secrets are generally information which the government never intends that the general population will ever know. Consequently, Top Secret clearances require an oath that the person will "never leave the service of the government" and will be bound by his oath of secrecy for life.
Examples of knowledge and events that you would never be allowed to talk freely about would be contact with aliens, time travel, information about other planets [detailed information like you would have if you were actually there], the underground cities and installations, and anything about the "gods".
Even though people in the top secret group must take the most serious oath of secrecy, they do not necessarily know all that much. There are 15 levels of Top Secret and, following the Weishaupt model, people in the Top Secret group are conditioned to believe that whatever level they are [TS1 - TS15] is the highest level there is.
For example, if you interview a person with a security clearance and ask, "Do you have a security clearance?" they are trained to say "Yes". But, when you ask "What level?", they are trained to answer "The Best". This is because they believe that whatever they have is "the best". So, now you have to guess the level. So, you may say, "Is it Q?". If you guess the correct level they are supposed to confirm it. This is the little game you play when making a new contact.
In the Top Secret Group there are mainly intelligence people like G2, MI6 and the like and others whose job - like scientists - is not in intelligence work. Intelligence uses a green stripe on their ID badges and Q uses a yellow stripe.
Code Word Clearances
In addition to the main 15 levels, there are special clearances called "Code Word Clearances". These clearances create special working groups in unique areas whose members share a set of "code words" to communicate information to each other. People in different "code word groups" would have a different set of words common to that group which would not be recognized by other groups.
By example, a friend of mine knew a famous doctor. He had won awards and international recognition for his research on the eye using dogs for destructive testing. My friend saw him at a party and, it so happened, she had a sick dog with some kind of eye trouble. She approached the man and asked his advice since he was so famous for his dog research. She was speechless when he replied, "Dogs? - I don't know anything about dogs. We don't use dogs. We use niggers. Niggers are better than dogs." DOGS was a code word for black people. In this way the doctor was able to "operate in plain sight" and even receive public awards for his research. Of course, people with code word clearance knew what "dogs" really meant and what was really going on but the general public was clue less. This is how code word clearance works in everyday life.
THE GODS
The gods are the main subject of this book and we will get into much greater detail about them later. At the present, we want to go over some misconceptions you may have when you look at the schematic model for compartmentalization. Although there is a progression from the bottom to the top where we label "gods", this system is not a "social ladder" that you can climb if you have persistence. This is a control system. It is designed to keep you where you are. It is not designed to encourage you to progress and reward you with higher status for your good efforts.
The gods are not people who were once ordinary people. Most of them are from ruling bloodlines who, in the past, considered themselves to have "the divine right of kings" by virtue of birth into certain families. They have always contemplated making the Earth into a global dictatorship. When they learned of the "seed knowledge" they set about creating a scheme to violate the agreements and use the knowledge for their personal benefit and for world domination in violation of the Universal Laws. Although there are exceptions, in general you cannot buy your way into this group with money or anything else. Membership is a birth right. You must be born into a family of gods to become a god. Nothing else matters.
The gods are equal among themselves. They are above "security clearances" and knowledge control and are allowed to know all that is currently available to know. They live "above the game" which they created and are the "game masters" watching the general population fumble around in the maze [or matrix] they created for their personal needs and enjoyment.
"Comfortable Clothes" is the general code word for these people. When you "agree to put on the comfortable clothes" you leave the general population of the Earth forever and enter the special world of the gods. There is no return from this.
BELIEF SYSTEMS
INTRODUCTION
BELIEF SYSTEMS are sort of fairy tales that are used as a substitute for reality when (1) reality is not known or (2) reality is preferred not to be known. Although a belief system may be a logical construct, it is not necessarily true. Truth has no relationship to logic. Logical constructs can be designed to prove anything. The classic example is the science which "proves" that a bumble bee cannot possibly fly. Clearly, the bumble bee lives in a different belief system because it seems to have no trouble at all flying around. Essentially all the population of Earth lives under one or more of many belief systems.
THE CATHOLIC BELIEF SYSTEM
The Catholic belief system is a good religious example because there is documentation available on them and their exploits have recently become popular with the press and the US court system. Let's take a look at this belief system.
The Sex Sub-System
We may as well begin with the sex sub-system since that is what Catholic Priests have become known for in recent history. To understand the sex sub-system, first realize that the Catholic Church is simply a continuation of the Roman Empire. When it was realized that the Roman Empire could not take over the world by military power, it converted itself into the Catholic Church and set about taking over the world by scaring people into obeying it with its special take on religious truth. This approach has been quite successful although the church must share power with other religions using similar methods.
Now, in the Roman Empire, there was a belief system concerning men and women. In this belief system, women were considered a secondary creation and therefore inferior to men. Consequently, it was considered wrong to have sex with a woman for fun because she was an inferior being like a dog or a goat or whatever. Therefore, when a man wanted sex for fun he should choose his equal for his partner, i.e., another man. And, just like men today prefer young women, the Roman men preferred young boys for sex partners. This was considered the correct way to do things at that time. Sex with the inferior women was considered occasionally necessary so she could make more people to keep society going. Women generally stayed pregnant from about 12 years old until they died or lived long enough to reach menopause (rare).
Today, there is a legal problem with this belief system because our society considers raping young boys to be a crime. However, the Catholic Priesthood does not live under the rules of the modern world. They live under the rules of the Roman Empire. And, their activities are protected by church secrecy. Their very way of life depends on following their ancient beliefs and rituals and to change would spell and end to their collective identity as priests. Therefore, no matter how much trouble they get into for raping children, they are going to continue to find a way to do it. They will just get better at keeping it a secret form outsiders. In the past, they were protected by an "aura of goodness" which presumed that a priest could do no wrong. Since that is shattered now, more direct methods will need to be employed so that they can continue "business as usual".
Incidentally, many "primitive" cultures operating in the world today still use the belief system about women being a secondary creation and therefore inferior to men. It is really only in the United States that the women's liberation idea has taken hold.
Blind Faith Sub-System
Until relatively recently in Catholic history, sermons were given in Latin. This is really weird. The "bell rings" and you report to church to hear some priest talk for an hour or so in a language you can't understand and then you turn over 10% of your money to him as payment for his "service". What did you learn to enhance your spiritual advancement by listening to Latin for one hour? Why is this worth 10% of your money. Well, you do not consider these questions because this is a belief system and a belief system is based on raw belief and nothing else. You are not supposed to question your belief.
Recent Pope History
The Catholic Church elects a "god" periodically which it calls the Pope. The last Pope was John Paul II. When John Paul was a young man, he worked for a chemical company. He was the salesman who sold the cyanide to Hitler for the gas chambers. [For documentation please see "Behold A Pale Horse" by William Cooper]. Now we step ahead to Pope Benedict. He is not just someone who helped the Nazis - he is a for real Nazi. He joined the Hitler Youth at age 14 or so as reported by the national news. Of course, both of these "good men" were duly elected as "gods" and now they want to hurry up and make John Paul a "saint".
Buy what stretch of the imagination do we conclude that there is anything remotely spiritual or "godly" about a guy who sold Hitler his poison gas chemicals or his Nazi successor form the Hitler Youth group. It is said that Benedict is "strong defender of the faith". I guess he is. He's a Nazi. Remember, "master race", "rightful rulers of the world", etc. Come on!
Catholic Level of Spirituality
We are going to talk a bit about Spirituality - legitimate Spirituality - because it is very real and important to all souls. Just because most churches are run buy assorted quacks, nuts and weirdoes does not mean that the for real GOD does not exist or that we should not seek Spiritual Enlightenment. It is important to seek Spirituality. It is your duty as a Human Being to do this. Animals do not have this inclination or ability but you do and to make best use of it is the true purpose of human existence.
Having cleared that up, let's look and see what - if any - Spiritual goodies the Catholic Church has to offer.
The above diagram is the Catholic schematic model for its "path to heaven". The vertical line represents the path and the semicircle to the right at the top represents the end of the path. The "X" is a symbol used for a gate. Since there is only one gate in the model, this is a path to some location on the right (good) side of the Astral Plane. So, this is a psychic path. It is not Spiritual. To reach the Spiritual realm you need to go thru at least two more gates - to the Causal and then to the Mental-Etheric Plane. After that you must cross a barrier (which usually requires a competent guide) to get into the Spiritual zone. So, there is nothing great about this path. Once you die yougo to some Astral plane because there is no other place you can go to [unless you are Spiritually advanced and can get above the Astral Plane somewhere]. Even dead people who are earthbound running around graveyards or haunting houses are technically on the first Astral sub plane. So getting to "somewhere" on the Astral Plane is automatic for most people even if the have no type of religious training at all.
The Astral Plane contains about 100 sub planes and these sub planes also have sub planes. These are sometimes called "groves". When you spend your life in some belief system which conditions you to believe that "heaven is like this" the force of the group imagination creates such a place somewhere on the Astral Plane. When you die you go there and your desires are fulfilled. All garden variety religions have such a place on the Astral Plane. The concept of "groves" or compartments means that they never meet each other. Baptists would gather and believe that "they made it to heaven" but the "other religions" must have been false and those people must be burning in hell because they are not there with them. But the other groups are there, in their own little "grove" and they feel the same way - that they "made it" and the others did not. Since you can instantly create your desires with imagination on this plane, most souls are convinced that they are happily in heaven forever. Eventually, the time comes when their "heavenly buddies" can't find them. This is because they have reincarnated and must now "do it all again" and hopefully make a more realistic choice in how to find true Spirituality. Those who achieve this do not have to return to the physical creation.
So, basically, you would probably be much better off if you just led a decent life and never heard of the Catholic belief system because you would not be conflicted with all of their out of date teachings not to mention the trauma of possibly being raped as a kid. You would most likely reach a higher level after death without their "help".
CULTS AND PSYCHIATRIC GROUPS
Cults are "custom made" belief systems that are generally designed to indoctrinate followers with some seemingly logical construct which makes them want to stay with the cult and obey and follow the leader. A certain level of skill is required to be a successful cult leader because you cannot force people to stay with you - you must somehow convince them that they need you or scare them somehow into not leaving you. Of course, you will want money and services from the followers.
Psychiatric groups are generally sponsored by governments. Therefore, they do not need to con people into following them. They have the authority to force people to obey them and to brainwash them into obedience with mind control drugs. Although the general psychiatric language remains the same throughout the world, how it is interpreted does not. For example, a young girl in Saudi would be considered abnormal if she wanted a barbie doll but a young girl in America would be considered abnormal if she did not want a barbie doll. The old Soviet Union loved psychiatry because it could call anyone who did not "love the party" abnormal and then torture them until they changed their mind as "treatment" for their "illness".
One main hallmark of cults is some scheme to control sex. If you can control someone's sex desire you can control that person. Therefore, it will be found that cults have worked up some belief system saying that followers should give up sex. Psychiatrists simply use drugs to make people under their control incapable of having or enjoying sex.
An interesting recent development in the United States is the attempt to use this classic cult technique on the general population by threatening them with death if they have sex. Now that the US Government has successfully spread the AIDS virus that it developed and manufactured at Fort Detrick, MD. around the world, it can argue that "if you sleep around you will surely die" and so you "should be celibate if you want to live". This argument is straight out of "how to make a cult 101". Of course, all the "important people" have been vaccinated with the antidote to AIDS so they are free to have all the sex they want with no worry. Visions of the "Junior Anti-Sex League" from 1984. You can't have them but the "inner party" members can.
BELIEF SYSTEMS BASED ON GENETICS
Genetic based belief systems argue that a certain group with a common genetic trait is "special" and apart from "ordinary people" who do not share this specific genetic sub code. Let's look at some examples:
Hitler's System
Hitler's system argued that blue eyed blondes were the "master race" and should rightfully rule the world. Although, mainly due to the concept of political correctness since the US champions integration and race equality, people look down on Hitler's argument that blue eyed blondes were somehow superior, it should be noted that the United States used the same genetic selection system when it was fighting Hitler. If you go back and find some color pictures of men in the US Navy during the late 1940's to early 1950's you will find that they are ALL blue eyed blondes. And, they are not just blue eyed but are the special "azure blue" which sort of shines as if it was lit up. There are no exceptions. People do not seen to realize that the different US armed forces were populated with specific genetic types before the services were ordered integrated. The Air Force also liked the Hitler model SS genetics [incidentally, the "SS" is a schematic symbol for the double helix of the DNA molecule]. The Army was for the "lower genetic classes" which means brown eyes and not necessarily white skin.
The Jewish System
When the bodies we use on this planet were being manufactured, the different races were created for different specialties. The Jewish race was programmed with a predisposition for administrative jobs like accounting, working with money and so on. Somehow, as time passed, this became interpreted to mean that "god" [by which is apparently meant the genetic engineers from the Orion Empire who wrote the codes and made original people] "gave the world to them". Hitler knew about this special sub code and, since he had decided that his chosen genetic type should rightfully rule the world, obviously he wanted to make the competition extinct. It is because of this belief system that Jews are taught to bread within their race and so preserve the special sub code. It is also why they do not actively seek to convert people to their religion. You cannot "make someone a Jew" because they must be born with this sub code in order to be really a Jew.
Sub codes in the ruling bloodlines of the world
The ruling families or ruling bloodlines of the world also seek to inbreed to preserve special genetic sub codes which they feel make them special or give them special powers that others do not have. It is essentially impossible to rise beyond a point in the power structure of the world without coming from one of these special ruling bloodlines. You could call it a sort of "genetic glass ceiling". The ruling bloodlines are above it and the rest of humanity is below it and there is no inclination to change things.
By example, in the recent election for US President, George Bush and John Kerry were cousins. They were from the same bloodline. It did not matter who you voted for - either way that bloodline would rule. It is very doubtful that Bush and Kerry do not know they are cousins. They are probably fast friends and meet at "family reunions". If US news people were watching some other country where the only two people running for leader were some guy and his cousin, you can bet they would be crying about how this was not legitimate and fair and so on. But, the press know to behave themselves when talking about this country and so you never heard a peep about this fact and you probably did not know it until just now!
Effect of Genetic Engineering on the Sub Code Concept
In the past, the only way to duplicate a genetic trait was to mate in the usual way with an appropriate person. However, with nanotechnology, scientists can sit down and hand assemble a molecule - which means that they can hand assemble a DNA molecule and write any code into it that they want. So, this sort of "cheapens" the concept that you are somehow of great value because you are from some special bloodline since the codes that are supposed to make you so special can now be made in the lab. Also, by tinkering, you might manufacture a new person with some revolutionary special power or special predisposition. The alien genetic engineers had no trouble doing that tens of thousands of years ago and we now have or will soon have the equivalent abilities. So, this puts a whole new slant on the "superior by reason of genetics" concept.
THE US MONETARY SYSTEM
Not very long ago, US money was "real' because it was backed up by gold. Now, US currency is called "fiat" which means "faith based imaginary currency". It has value only because people believe it has value. It is purely and simply a belief system that gives value to the various pieces of paper that the government prints. As long as everyone accepts the money belief system, it works just as well as the real system based on a real substance [gold] as opposed to imagination. However, should it occur to people to ask "where's the beef", they would find themselves with hands full of worthless paper because there is no "beef".
Obviously, faith is harder to maintain than hard reality. Someone would be hard pressed to accept the argument that a block of gold was worthless crap. However, should someone argue that US currency is worthless crap it would be hard to logically argue against them since it is imaginary and has nothing backing it but blind faith. In order to stabilize this belief system, it is important that people are conditioned to "just not ask" but "accept on faith" that "everything is fine". Consequently, anyone who tried to "undermine the faith" would be a threat to the nation and would have to be quickly dealt with to "preserve the faith".
The plan to convert from real currency to imaginary currency appears to be inherently sinister as supported by the following quote:
Edward Mandell House had this to say in a private meeting with Woodrow Wilson (President) [1913-1921]
[Very] soon, every American will be required to register their biological property in a National system designed to keep track of the people and that will operate under the ancient system of pledging. By such methodology, we can compel people to submit to our agenda, which will affect our security as a chargeback for our fiat paper currency. Every American will be forced to register or suffer not being able to work and earn a living. They will be our chattel, and we will hold the security interest over them forever, by operation of the law merchant under the scheme of secured transactions. Americans, by unknowingly or unwittingly delivering the bills of lading to us will be rendered bankrupt and insolvent, forever to remain economic slaves through taxation, secured by their pledges. They will be stripped of their rights and given a commercial value designed to make us a profit and they will be non the wiser, for not one man in a million could ever figure our plans and, if by accident one or two would figure it out, we have in our arsenal plausible deniability. After all, this is the only logical way to fund government, by floating liens and debt to the registrants in the form of benefits and privileges. This will inevitably reap to us huge profits beyond our wildest expectations and leave every American a contributor or to this fraud which we will call Social Insurance. Without realizing it, every American will insure us for any loss we may incur and in this manner; every American will unknowingly be our servant, however begrudgingly. The people will become helpless and without any hope for their redemption and, we will employ the high office of the President of our dummy corporation to foment this plot against America.
MAINTENANCE OF BELIEF SYSTEMS
Once you have established a belief system, you must maintain it. There must be some method to constantly reinforce the belief or it will gradually weaken and fade away. There are various ways to do this. Also, there are static and dynamic belief systems.
Static systems, such as many church systems, cling ot a set of beliefs from long ago no matter how much the real world changes. Because of this, sometimes they die out of attrition. But, some seem to hang on.
Dynamic belief systems, such as the US consciousness belief system, are always changing. Today's belief is not the same as a past time belief. It is sort of like the "1984" model where you are at war with one country and love the other one day and the reverse is true the next day. Incidentally, if you have not read this classic novel by George Orwell, you really should.
Using the US belief system as an example, some principles completely reverse. By example, in the 1950's, the only people allowed to have knowledge of the female reproductive system were doctors. They were forbidden to tell women anything about how their body worked. Vice squad agents would send pregnant undercover officers to doctors and they would beg to be told how to avoid becoming pregnant again. If the doctor said anything, he was busted.
Today, we have the reverse. Grade school kids get sex-ed. The schools pass out condoms. There is an abortion clinic on almost every corner and 25% of pregnant girls kill their babies.
In the US, the belief system is maintained by the daily mass media news. Every day, there are five or six news stories that are used by everyone. You may find it strange that thousands of "independent" TV and Radio stations and print media companies just happen to report the same set of stories every day. Anyway, this "information fix" keeps you locked into the US belief system for another day - until your next "news fix". It has been suggested that, if something somehow went wrong with the mass media so that it stopped operating, the US government would quickly loose control of the people and possibly would not be able to regain control. If mass media stopped, people would have to resort to independent thought to decide what to believe and what to do. Once they learned how to do this again, it could be difficult to "recapture" them.
BELIEF SYSTEMS AND COMPARTMENTALIZATION
Belief systems go hand in hand with compartmentalization. Belief systems create a compartment and compartments created by compartmentalization develop internal belief systems.
Belief systems cause followers to voluntarily limit their life activities. Church systems teach followers that they are "chosen" and the rest of the world is not so people limit their relationships to members of that specific system so as not to get "tainted by the non believers". They may also have weird dietary and other obsessive compulsive habits that they feel they must have to be "saved".
Government SCI groups [sensitive compartmentalized intelligence] may drift so far away |
progress toward a more secure and stable world. Nor has it produced an especially efficient military – one closely adapted to the current security environment. The road not taken during the past decade – at a cost of some trillions of dollars – would have involved some combination of:
1. A more forceful and thorough-going approach to Pentagon reform,
2. An integrated or “joint” service approach to force modernization that also closely tailored the acquisition of equipment to new era conditions, and
3. Greater restraint and greater specificity in setting post-Cold War military goals and missions.
That this has not occurred suggests a lapse in attention to the strategic costs and benefits associated with our chosen defense posture. It is as though the nation has trillions of dollars to burn.
Can defense spending be rolled-back? A key enabling condition for the types of problems identified above is the “permissive spending environment” that insulates the Pentagon budget. At present, both Democratic and Republican leaders seem disinclined – each for their own reasons – to rethink the ways America uses its military or to press for the type of budget constraints that might prompt reform. Put simply, there seems to be little political gain (and much political risk) in stumping for DoD budget restraint. But emerging fiscal realities may soon compel increased attention to how the nation allocates its resources among competing goals – foreign and domestic, military and non-military. And this might put the nation on the road to a more disciplined defense.
Bibliography
An Undisciplined Defense: Understanding the $2 Trillion Surge in US Defense Spending, PDA Briefing Report #20, 18 January 2010. Print copies are available for $11 ($16 to overseas addresses) by check or money order to Commonwealth Institute at POB 398105, Cambridge MA 02139. On request one copy will sent free to non-profit libraries.
The President's Dilemma: Debt, Deficits, and Defense Spending, PDA Briefing Memo #45, 18 January 2010.
Forceful Engagement: Rethinking the Role of Military Power in US Global Policy, PDA Briefing Report 19, December 2008
Re-Envisioning Defense: An Agenda for US Policy Debate & Transition, PDA Briefing Memo #44, December 2008.
Toward a Sustainable US Defense Posture: An Option to save $60+ Billion Over the Next Five Years, PDA Briefing Memo #42, 02 August 2007.
Data Sources
Chart 1. DoD Budget Authority with and without contingency operations.
US Department of Defense (DoD), National Defense Budget Estimates for FY 2010 ( Washington DC : US DoD, June 2009), Table 6-8 DoD BA by Appropriation Title, FY 1948 to FY 2010;
US DoD, FY 2010 Budget Request Summary Justification ( Washington DC : US Department of Defense, May 2009), Figure 1.1 Historical DoD Funding, p. 1-6;
US Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Analytical Perspectives, Budget of the United States Government: Fiscal Year 2010 ( Washington : GPO, May 2009), Table 26-1 Budget Authority and Outlays by Function, Category, and Program; and
Nina M. Serafino, Peacekeeping and Related Stability Operations: Issues of U.S. Military Involvement ( Washington DC : Congressional Research Service, may 2006).
Chart 2. DoD Budget Authority 1948-2019. See sources for Chart 1.
Chart 3. Gross Federal Debt as % GDP, 1940-2019.
US OMB, Mid-Session Review, Budget of the US Government, Fiscal Year 2010 ( Washington DC : GPO, August 2009), Table S–15. Federal Government Financing and Debt;
US OMB, Historical Tables, US Budget Fiscal Year 2010 (Washington: GPO, 2009), Table 1.1 Summary of Receipts, Outlays, and Surpluses or Deficits 1789–2014; Table 1.2 Summary of Receipts, Outlays, and Surpluses or Deficits as Percentages of GDP 1930–2014; Table 1.3 Summary of Receipts, Outlays, and Surpluses or Deficits in Current Dollars, Constant Dollars, and as Percentages of GDP 1940–2014.
Chart 4. US Federal Budget Surplus/Deficit as % of GDP 1946-2019. See sources for Chart 3.
Chart 5. DoD Per Person Budget Authority for Modernization 1978-2010.
US DoD, National Defense Budget Estimates for FY 2010 ( Washington DC : US DoD, June 2009), Table 6-8 Budget Authority by Appropriation Title FY 1948-FY 2010, Table 7-5 DoD Manpower FY 1940 to FY 2010.
For 2009 and 2010 data see: US DoD, Budget Amendment to the FY 2010 President’s Budget Request for Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO), Summary and Explanation of Changes (Washington DC: Office of the Undersecretary of Defense Comptroller, August 2009), pp. 6-9;
US DoD, FY 2010 Budget Request Summary Justification ( Washington DC : US DoD, May 2009), p. 1-9; and
US OMB, Analytical Perspectives, Budget of the United States Government Fiscal Year 2010 ( Washington : GPO, May 2009), Table 26-1 Budget Authority and Outlays by Function, Category, and Program.
Chart 6. US Military Full-Time Personnel 1978-2010.
US DoD, National Defense Budget Estimates for FY 2010 ( Washington DC : US DoD, June 2009), Table 7-5 DoD Manpower FY 1940 to FY 2010.
Chart 7. Figure 5. DoD Per Person BA by Appropriation Title 1978-2010.
See sources for Chart1 and also: US DoD, National Defense Budget Estimates for FY 2010 ( Washington DC : US DoD, June 2009), Table 7-5 DoD Manpower – FY 1940 to FY 2010.
Chart 8. Trends in Military Construction 1951-2010.
US DoD, National Defense Budget Estimates for FY 2010 ( Washington DC : US DoD, June 2009), Table 6-8 DoD BA by Appropriation Title FY 1948 to FY 2010;
OMB, Historical Tables, Budget of the US Government, Fiscal Year 2010 ( Washington DC : US Government Printing Office, 2009), Table 5.1 Budget Authority by Function and Subfunction 1976-2014; and,
Daniel Else, et. al., Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies: FY 2009 Appropriations; –FY 2008 Appropriations ( Washington DC : CRS, February 2009, February 2008).
Chart 9. World Military Spending Shares 1986-2006
Chart 9 counts as US allies all NATO states plus Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. The category of “potential adversary and competitor states” includes, for 1986: the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Treaty states, China, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Libya, Syria, and Vietnam. For 1994, it includes the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Treaty states are replaced by Russia and Belarus. In 2000, Vietnam is removed from this category. In 2006, Libya is also removed, but Venezuela is added.
Sources:
US ACDA, World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers 1995, 1999-2000 (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1996; 2001); and,
International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 1996/97, 1995/96, 1994/95, 1993/94, 1992/93, 2002-2003, 2008 (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2008; London: Oxford University Press, 2002, 1996-1995; London: Brassey's, 1992-1994).
Inflation estimates
US OMB, Mid-session Review, US Budget Fiscal Year 2010 ( Washington : GPO, August 2009), Table 3. Comparison of Economic Assumptions;
US OMB, Historical Tables, US Budget Fiscal Year 2010 ( Washington : GPO, May 2009), Table 10.1 Gross Domestic Product and Deflators Used in the Historical Tables: 1940–2014; and,
National Defense Budget Estimates for FY 2010, Table 5-6 DoD Deflators, BA by Appropriation Title.
project on defense alternatives
cambridge ma & washington dc
pda(at)comw.orgAccording to a report from Sacramento CBS affiliate, Walmart has been bottling its water from a Sacramento water district during California's historically devastating drought-- and it's making a grotesquely large profit off of it.
CBS 13's Adrienne Moore reports:
Advertisement:
Sacramento sells water to a bottler, DS Services of America, at 99 cents for every 748 gallons—the same rate as other commercial and residential customers. That water is then bottled and sold at Walmart for 88 cents per gallon, meaning that $1 of water from Sacramento turns into $658.24 for Walmart and DS Services. For comparison, the city of Sacramento says the average family uses 417 gallons of water a day.
The news comes shortly after California Governor Jerry Brown signed an executive order mandating a one-quarter reduction in urban water use state-wide.
Starbucks recently was criticized for bottling its Ethos water in drought-stricken California -- so it stopped. Walmart would be wise to adopt the same policy.
"It's certainly leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouth when you can't fill up a swimming pool, if you're building a new home in West Sacramento; you can't water your lawn if you're living in this region," said public relations expert Doug Elmets. "And to find out they're making a huge profit off of this, it's just not right."
A spokesperson from Walmart said the company is "tracking [the drought] closely."
"Our commitment to sustainability includes efforts to minimize water use in our facilities. We have and continue to work with our suppliers to act responsibly while meeting the needs of customers who count on us across California."QPR 3-2 West Bromwich Albion
Roger Morgan (63); Rodney Marsh (75); Mark Lazarus (81)
Clive Clark (7); (36)
Attendance: 97,952
‘So we walked into the Lancaster Gate hotel the night before – and in the foyer were these Swedish birds with dresses up to their bums.”
They must have been good, because Frank Sibley can see them in his mind's eye 47 years later.
The man who would later manage Rangers briefly as well as assist at Fulham under Ray Wilkins and Kevin Keegan, was left-half in the old ‘W’ formation at Wembley that day. And apart from the unique luxury of a hotel stay (‘we’d never been away before’) plus the female distraction, it was plonking his disappointed backside on the dressing room bench at half time that came to mind.
“We played so well leading up to the final, and in that first half, we were not very good,” said the man still living in Hillingdon, not a couple of miles from where he was born in Uxbridge 66 years ago.
Top tier West Brom led 2-0 against the side from the equivalent of League One.
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But, this was the stuff of fairy tales and manager Alec Stock galvanised his troops at the break, with one Rodney Marsh playing a vital part in the magnificent 3-2 win.
Rangers captain Mike Keen hoisted the cup aloft at the end - the first third tier winner of a major knockout cup in modern times.
The white shirts worn that March 4 day were the result of losing the toss on who played in their home kit.
Albion’s blue-and-white stripes and Rs hoops of the same colour demanded the toss losers come up with a different strip.
“Real Madrid were the team of the day, and we thought we were them,” said Sibley with a chuckle, who made his Rs debut at the age of 15 in 1963.
Not that Rangers had a chance to mix it in foreign parts.
They were denied from entering the following season’s Inter-Cities Fairs Cup - now the Uefa Cup - by an archaic rule that forbade an entry to teams outside the first tier.
That 1967 QPR side had its fair share of veterans. Jim Langley at left-back was a venerable 38, Les Allen, father of Clive, was almost 30, and Mark Lazarus, scorer of the winner on 81 minutes, was nudging 29.
It’s that mixture of experience and youth Sibley believes will get Rangers over the line against Derby.
“You need big players for the big occasion,” he said. “Sure, when you’re a young side like Derby you fear no-one. But when you come back into a bit of form like Rangers, and you’ve got Charlie Austin, I think they’ve got enough to handle it better.”
Sibley is away this Saturday, but his two season-ticket holding sons will be at Wembley in Rangers colours along with grandson Cormack.
“I think he could be one for the future,” added Sibley, ‘that would be nice.”
Just one question: what happened to the leggy Swedes?
“We all had a meal together, and Alec said we should have a beer or two before going to bed,” remembered Sibley, who battles Parkinson’s Disease with medication.
“The girls? They were nowhere to be seen - and no, they weren’t in Rodney’s room.”
QPR: Peter Springett; Tony Hazell; Mike Keen, Ron Hunt, Jim Langley; Frank Sibley, Mark Lazarus, Keith Sanderson, Roger Morgan; Les Allen, Rodney Marsh; sub: Ian Morgan; manager: Alec StockTango no Sekku (端午の節句) also known as Ayame no hi (Iris festival) is one the five annual ceremonies that were traditionally held at the Japanese imperial court called Gosekku. It is the Japanese version of Double Fifth and was celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth moon in the lunar calendar or Chinese calendar. After Japan switched to the Gregorian calendar, the date was moved to May 5.[1] The festival is still celebrated in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau as the Duanwu Festival or Tuen Ng Festival (Cantonese), in Korea as the Dano Festival, and Vietnam as the Tết Đoan Ngọ on the traditional lunar calendar date.
Tan (端) means "beginning" and go (午) is a simplified form of ⾺ (horse), referring to the Chinese zodiac name for the fifth lunar month. Days of the week also have zodiac animals. Thus, tango originally meant "the first horse day of the fifth month". However, go is a homonym for 五 (five) in Japanese, so during the Nara period the meaning shifted to become the fifth day of the fifth month.[2] Sekku means a seasonal festival. There are five sekku, including O-Shogatsu (January 1), Hina Matsuri (March 3), Tanabata (July 7) and Kiku Matsuri (September 9th) along with Tango. Tango no Sekku marks the beginning of summer or the rainy season.
History [ edit ]
Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs, by J.M.W. Silver, illustrated by native drawings, published in London in 1867 "Japanese Festival in Honor of the Birth of Children" from, by J.M.W. Silver, illustrated by native drawings, published in London in 1867
Although it is not known precisely when this day started to be celebrated, it was probably during the reign of the Empress Suiko (593–628 A.D.). In Japan, Tango no Sekku was assigned to the fifth day of the fifth month after the Nara period.
Until recently, Tango no Sekku was known as Boys' Day (also known as Feast of Banners) while Girls' Day (Hinamatsuri) was celebrated on March 3. In 1948, the government decreed this day to be a national holiday to celebrate the happiness of all children and to express gratitude toward mothers. It was renamed Kodomo no Hi (Children's Day) and changed to include both boys and girls.
Before this day, families raise the carp-shaped koinobori flags (carp because of the Chinese legend that a carp that swims upstream becomes a dragon, and the way the flags blow in the wind looks like they are swimming), one for each boy (or child), display a Kintarō doll usually riding on a large carp, and the traditional Japanese military helmet, kabuto. Kintarō and the kabuto are symbols of a strong and healthy boy.
Kintarō (金太郎) is the childhood name of Sakata no Kintoki who was a hero in the Heian period, a subordinate samurai of Minamoto no Raikou, having been famous for his strength when he was a child. It is said that Kintarō rode a bear, instead of a horse, and played with animals in the mountains when he was a young boy.
Mochi rice cakes wrapped in kashiwa (oak) leaves—kashiwa-mochi (mochi filled with red bean jam) and chimaki (a kind of "sweet rice paste", wrapped in an iris or bamboo leaf)—are traditionally served on this day.
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]NEW DELHI: The government plans to issue an advisory to states asking them to crack down against unfair imposition of service charge on food and drink bills, Food and Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan said today."Service charge does not exist. It is being wrongly charged. We have prepared an advisory on this issue. We have sent it to the PMO for approval," Paswan told reporters here.A senior ministry official said the advisory, once approved by the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), will be issued to all states and union territories.The advisory will also be useful for Voluntary Consumer Organisations (VCOs) fighting for consumer right, he said."No customer should be forced to pay service charge. If customers want they can pay a tip to waiters or give their consent to levy the charge in the bill," the official said while explaining the nature of proposed advisory.The levying of service charge without seeking customer consent will be considered as unfair trade practice under the Consumer Protection Act, he added.The minister said consumers should be informed about service charge in the menu card itself.Earlier too on several occasions, Paswan spoke against unfair imposition of service charge on food bill and had even sought explanation from hotels and restaurants' bodies.In January, the Department of Consumer Affairs stated that service charge on food bills is not compulsory and a customer can choose to have it waived if not satisfied with experience.States were told to ensure that hotels/restaurants disseminate this information through displays in their premises."A number of complaints from consumers have been received that hotels and restaurants are following the practice of charging'service charge' in the range of 5-20 per cent, in lieu of tips, which a consumer is forced to pay irrespective of the kind of service provided to him," it had said.Highlighting provisions under the Consumer Protection Act, 1986, the ministry had said a consumer can make a complaint to the appropriate consumer forum against unfair trade practices."Our Department's view is that imposing service charge is an unfair trade practice and consumers need not pay," Paswan had said in January.The minister had said there was no provision under the existing law to take action against hotels/restaurants.However, he said that in future such cases would be addressed effectively by the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) proposed in the new Consumer Protection Bill.On food wastage at hotels and restaurants, Paswan said the government will not bring a law or issue any advisory, rather it will encourage them to take voluntary steps.Hotels and restaurants have been asked to take voluntary measures such as training its staff to create awareness amongst customers on portion of dishes served.xmuller Junior Member
Join Date: Feb 2009 Posts: 15
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:
DIY PVC pipe Canister Filter. Step by step.
the materials are (sorry for the metric system):
1m of 160mm PVC pipe
1 PVC cap
1 PVC screw lid
4 PVC screens
PVC glue
1 1/2 elbow
2 double sided screw 1/2 plastic tubes
2 gardening valves
1 simple valve
1 compression gland
seals
2 hose adaptors
1 700lph pump
thick flexible hose
we cut 30cm of pvc tube. we make a hole for the water entrance and a semicircular hole on the bottom lid.
then, we make a hole for the water exit on the top lid and placed the screw tubes with seals.
we glue the pvc pieces, cleaning them well and sanding them lightly.
then we make a hole for the compression gland.
for the baskets, we cut the bases of the pvc screens. then from the rest of the pvc pipe we cut three 6cm pieces, making them a bit smaller to fit inside the canister. then glue the pieces.
we glue the pump to the top lid and adapted the water exit from the pump to the other 1/2 pipe with a little piece of hose.
we put the compression gland and let dry for 24 hours.
we cut the filtering material to fit the baskets. sponge, fiber and biceramic.
we put the baskets inside the canister. first the sponge, then fiber, then bioceramic. and top it of with a single pvc screen to prevent things from getting sucked by the pump.
we connect the hoses to the valves using the adaptors. the valve in the water entrance is permanent and is used for keeping the water from spilling when servicing the filter. same thing with the other valves, we shut them and can leave the hoses in the aquarium.
we do a 24 hour hermeticity test.
we put the in and outflow pipes in the aquarium (note the horrible filter that used to be in that tank).
and there it is. two weeks after installation. working like a charm.
hi everyone. here is the pvc pipe canister filter i built, it was quite easy to make and probably 60% less of the cost of purchasing one with a brand. (which are actually almost impossible to find where i live in ecuador).the materials are (sorry for the metric system):1m of 160mm PVC pipe1 PVC cap1 PVC screw lid4 PVC screensPVC glue1 1/2 elbow2 double sided screw 1/2 plastic tubes2 gardening valves1 simple valve1 compression glandseals2 hose adaptors1 700lph pumpthick flexible hosewe cut 30cm of pvc tube. we make a hole for the water entrance and a semicircular hole on the bottom lid.then, we make a hole for the water exit on the top lid and placed the screw tubes with seals.we glue the pvc pieces, cleaning them well and sanding them lightly.then we make a hole for the compression gland.for the baskets, we cut the bases of the pvc screens. then from the rest of the pvc pipe we cut three 6cm pieces, making them a bit smaller to fit inside the canister. then glue the pieces.we glue the pump to the top lid and adapted the water exit from the pump to the other 1/2 pipe with a little piece of hose.we put the compression gland and let dry for 24 hours.we cut the filtering material to fit the baskets. sponge, fiber and biceramic.we put the baskets inside the canister. first the sponge, then fiber, then bioceramic. and top it of with a single pvc screen to prevent things from getting sucked by the pump.we connect the hoses to the valves using the adaptors. the valve in the water entrance is permanent and is used for keeping the water from spilling when servicing the filter. same thing with the other valves, we shut them and can leave the hoses in the aquarium.we do a 24 hour hermeticity test.we put the in and outflow pipes in the aquarium (note the horrible filter that used to be in that tank).and there it is. two weeks after installation. working like a charm. Last edited by xmuller; 05-04-2009 at 04:56 PM..There's unusual lunchtime chatter at ACE Charter School in East San Jose: Students are actually raving about lunch. School lunch. And so are some teachers.
Just ask Arallana Sanchez, 11, in between her munches on a chicken barbecue sandwich and sips of organic, hormone-free milk. "At my old school everyone always drank chocolate milk because the regular milk tasted like it had expired."
Serving healthful meals at school is tougher than ever - most campuses don't even have kitchens anymore. And the federal government's low reimbursement rate - $2.68 for each poor child who qualifies for free lunch - makes it tough to buy high-quality produce. As school budgets get squeezed, many districts are going with the vendors offering the best bargain, not the best food.
But now a national push is under way to improve students' midday meal.
Schools like ACE Charter are contracting with companies that provide organic lunches. "Farm to School" programs that connect schools with local farms - like the relationship between Full Circle Farm in Sunnyvale and Santa Clara Unified School District - are popping up nationwide. And Slow Food USA is organizing "Time for Lunch," a campaign designed to "get real food in schools." The effort kicks off on Labor Day with more than 300 "Eat-ins," or community pot lucks, planned across the nation.
Advocates hope the momentum will lead to an overhaul of the Child Nutrition Act, the bill that governs the National School Lunch Program and is up for reauthorization in Congress this fall.
"It's the right time for this campaign," said Gordon Jenkins of Slow Food USA. "People are more food conscious overall. We have Michelle Obama planting a garden in the White House lawn. Now the burden is on us to show that there's a political will for this."
Most local school districts contract with large food service companies that prepare food off-site, often in other states, then freeze it and ship it to school districts. The food is then heated in microwaves or warmers. Corn dogs, pizza, and nachos - meals that are high in fats and cholesterol - are standard fare.
"Schools don't have kitchens anymore," Jenkins said. "If we really want healthy food, the food needs to be prepared at the schools."
But cost is an enormous barrier. Advocates such as Slow Food, which was founded in opposition to fast food and emphasizes eating locally grown food, are urging Congress to raise the reimbursement rate so schools can buy fresher ingredients.
On Monday, Eat-Ins are scheduled in Hollister, Mountain View, San Jose, Sunnyvale, Santa Cruz and several other locations statewide. But it's not just California: organizers are thrilled that Eat-Ins have sprouted up in Iowa, Georgia and Wisconsin.
The Sunnyvale Eat-In takes place at Full Circle Farm. At the potluck lunch, open to the public, people will discuss the farm's efforts to promote healthful eating at local schools. Kids and parents will be encouraged to write letters to President Barack Obama asking for better school lunches and sign a "Time for Lunch" petition to Congress.
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"If kids can see a green bean on the vine, and meet the farmer who grows it, versus watching it defrost or slosh out of a can, they are more apt to try it and make it a part of their diet," said Emma Mae Hoag of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers.
But as the school year gets under way, some students are already eating better.
Revolution Foods, which operates out of a vast kitchen near the Oakland airport, is rapidly expanding. It has contracts with ACE and other charter schools, the Santa Cruz City Schools and is expanding to other cities. The meals are not exotic: spaghetti and meatballs with steamed zucchini; burritos with brown rice; honey-glazed chicken with roasted potatoes and garlic braised collard greens. The food is never frozen, and it is shipped within 24 hours of preparation; there is no high fructose corn syrup or trans fats.
Vanessa Sifuentes principal of ACE Charter School in the Mayfair neighborhood of East San Jose, said "Rev Foods" makes an enormous difference in the lives of her 217 middle school students.
"Food absolutely affects their learning," said Sifuentes, who took the additional step of banning soda, candy, chips and fast food from the campus. "Usually kids eat lunch and get a sugar high; they're bouncy and can't concentrate. Then they crash from the sugar and have headaches. Now they're eating balanced meals, and they can focus. Some of our students are actually losing weight."
Revolution Foods sells high-end snack items through a partnership with Whole Foods. A percentage from the snack sales allows the company to charge school districts a sliding scale. Prices are less than $3 a meal for low-income schools - close to the federal reimbursement rate.
Kirsten Tobey, one of the company's co-founders, says there are a lot of misconceptions around what kids will and won't eat.
"Kids love fruit," said Tobey, who has a 2-year-old daughter. "But they want high quality fruit, not old fruit that's been bashed and bruised. They love food that is well prepared, and fresh. They respond to quality."
So far, the meals appear to be a hit. Though most teachers bring lunch from home, several ACE teachers say they regularly buy Revolution Food lunches, which cost $4.50 at full fare.
Dan Martinez, 11, was first in line for lunch earlier this week, and he knows the company's menu by heart.
"Yesterday we had my favorite: spaghetti," Martinez said. "Now if I eat too much junk food, I feel like I want to burst."Chris Kitching, CP24.com
This cat may have been a goner if not for a passerby and Toronto police officers who scooped it out of a garbage can.
The days-old kitten escaped death when someone found it in a trash bin near St. Clair and Arlington avenues overnight, and then flagged down 13 Division officers for help.
Police suspect someone dumped the tiny cat in the bin. Officers aren't sure where it came from or where the rest of the litter is.
“I don’t understand it. I can’t understand how anybody can do that," said 13 Division Const. Shawn Kinghorn. "There’s lots of way to find a good home. How you can shove an animal like this into a garbage can, I can’t understand.”
After the cat was pulled out of the trash, it was taken to a veterinarian, who checked it over and gave it a clean bill of health.
With its nine lives still intact, the kitten was adopted by Kinghorn, who named the little feline Django in a nod to legendary jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt.
As Kinghorn cradled the sleeping animal in his arms as it curled up with a teddy bear, he said Django is believed to be 10 to 12 days old.
Until Django can eat solid food, Kinghorn must hand-feed the orphaned kitten formula from a syringe or bottle.
@ChrisKitching is on Twitter. For instant breaking news, follow @CP24 on Twitter.Nine months into his tenure as chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, former Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd finds himself in the middle of a war. Proposed legislation (SOPA in the House, PIPA in the Senate) to combat piracy by foreign websites is on the verge of collapse amid criticism from such tech titans as Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and such political heavyweights as President Obama. Critics say the entertainment industry is losing the PR war and has allowed the tech community to define the debate. On Wednesday afternoon, Dodd answered his critics, defended his strategy and talked in an exclusive interview with THR's Alex Ben Block.
The Hollywood Reporter: Almost everyone agrees that piracy of movies and TV shows is wrong. But the opponents of the SOPA and PIPA legislation have effectively characterized this as a debate about issues such as the First Amendment and Internet security.
Chris Dodd: [Security issues have] to do with what they call the Domain Name Systems, or DNS systems, and the filtering or blocking of those DNS systems. I think 25 or 30 countries have imposed that. The industry itself has. But in response to the criticism a week or so ago, the two chairs of the committees, respectively, in the Senate and House dropped the DNS provisions of the bill entirely. So it doesn’t exist any longer. And even when it was in the bill, it was completely misrepresented as something new that was going to break the Internet. If that was the case, the Internet would have broken a long time ago given that DNS filtering has gone on all over the world for years.
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THR: You and the MPAA are OK with dropping that provision.
Dodd: Well, we don’t like it, but to try and get people together to support a bill that will do some good, in one of those rare moments when everyone agrees that foreign criminal sites stealing American content and jobs ought to be stopped — we're not debating about what ought to be done. The question is how do you do it. DNS filtering is a very effective way of doing that. It's been used on child pornography, to block phishing and all sorts of activities that can put the Internet at risk. But obviously it's something the Google crowd didn’t want to have done, so they took it out of the bill. It hasn’t been there.
THR: As a veteran legislator, you realize compromise is often necessary.
Dodd: Absolutely. There isn’t a bill I’ve ever worked on in over 49 years of the legislative process that you don’t compromise on. So I’m a great advocate of doing it. You don’t want to compromise your principles on things and you don’t want to give away everything so your bill ends up being meaningless, but the decision was to drop that. They felt they had a good bill without it and I don’t disagree with that.
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THR: How do you answer critics who say this legislation would be a threat to free speech online?
Dodd: That’s the most offensive line of all. First of all, think about who the two authors of this bill are — Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Democrat, chairman of the Judiciary committee, member of the Judiciary Committee for 38 years, one of the greatest advocates of First Amendment free speech rights; John Conyers of Michigan, African-American member who's been on the Judiciary committee for years, as the chief co-sponsor of the House bill; Howard Berman, not likely to be associating himself with any effort that would deny people freedom of speech. The film and television business, the greatest advocates of free speech and the ones who have had to fight for it so many times over the years, would never be involved. Illegal conduct is not protected by the First Amendment. The Internet is not a law-free zone. It doesn’t create exceptions for illegal activity. Stealing is wrong. The First Amendment doesn’t protect stealing. There’s nothing in this bill in any manner, shape or form that would deprive people of their First Amendment rights.
You know the great H.L. Menken line: "When they tell you it's not about the money, it's about the money." So they bring up freedom of speech, break the Internet. But the fact of the matter is, it’s a huge revenue stream off of this.
THR: And how do you answer critics who say the legislation would hamper innovation on the web?
Dodd: That was the same argument made 14 years ago when the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was adopted. And it’s the same argument — the sky is falling. You only need to go back and take a cursory look to see what happened in the last 14 years, the advances and innovations in technology despite the claims in 1998 [of what would happen] if [Congress] passed that act. It did not break the Internet. It did not deprive anyone of freedom of speech at all. And it certainly did not curtail or stymie creative innovation in new technology.
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THR: They also say it will slow growth in the technology sector.
Dodd: Again, that was sort of the argument 14 years ago. There’s no great surprise. This has happened in other areas of the law where the operators of these illegal sites realized they were subject to the jurisdiction of U.S. courts and injunctions brought by the Attorney General, who is the only one who can bring an injunction to shut down one of these places by the way, contrary to what they say in some of their criticisms of the bill. These guys are off-shore. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out if you want to avoid the jurisdiction of American courts then go someplace beyond their reach. So we’ve realized we have to do something to go after these foreign sites that are now proliferating and [causing] the same problems the domestic sites were that the legislation covered 14 years ago. That’s all this does.
THR: How do you feel about those in Congress who supported this legislation but now have come out against it?
Dodd: Look, I’ve never tried to be critical of people’s motivations and why they do what they do. But it's awfully difficult to explain how sponsors and co-sponsors can do this. This bill was around long before me. They recruited me nine months ago to get involved. This legislation had been pending for some time. And this bill has had hearings. The Senate and House bill are somewhat different, but nonetheless it isn’t something that sprang up a week or two ago. It has passed the Judiciary committee 19 to nothing. Hearings were held on it. Every amendment discussed by the House committee was defeated on average 24 to 8, and there |
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Moshe Sebbag, the rabbi of the Grand Synagogue of Paris, announced this week that he supports the French ban on burkinis, the modest swimwear some Muslim women wear to cover up on the beach.
Wearing a burkini, he said, is not “innocent” and it sends a message.
But, we ask Sebbag, what difference exactly is there between the garb Orthodox Jewish women wear to the beach than the burkinis that some Muslim women wear?
And why should one religious group of women be allowed to follow their traditions over another?
Muslim woman at the beach.
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Orthodox Jewish woman at the beach.
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Muslim woman.
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Jewish woman.
Burkini
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Modest Swimsuit for Orthodox Woman.
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Enough said.
Thea Glassman is the Forward’s multimedia fellow. Contact her at [email protected] or on Twitter, @theakglassman
This story "Seriously, What Orthodox Women Wear to the Beach Is No Different From a Burkini" was written by Thea Glassman.Unlike just about every other developing country’s carbon print, Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions are falling—fast. That’s according to an independent study (link in Portuguese) carried out by over 30 non-government organizations focused on climate change, including the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace.
Brazil’s emissions for 2012 dropped 5% from a year earlier, and registered as the country’s lowest in 20 years, according to Observatorio do Clima, the network of NGOs that carried out the study. The latest decline caps a steady decline since the country’s emissions hit a near peak in 2004. The Union of Concerned Scientists said in 2011 that Brazil cut down on deforestation of the Amazon so much so that the drop-off in its heat-trapping emissions over the last five years surpassed that of any other country in the world.
Brazil’s drop is remarkable given how concerned environmentalists are about a global increase in greenhouse gas emissions as developing economies industrialize. According to a study by the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, the total cumulative greenhouse gas emissions by emerging countries, including China and Brazil, since 1850 should surpass those of developed countries this decade. China, which accounted for 29% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions in 2012, saw emissions increase 3% (pdf, p.4) last year from the year before.
Brazil is a unique case among industrializing countries, given that most of its emissions don’t result from energy use. Instead, the bulk of Brazil’s emissions come from what’s referred to as land-use change and forestry. In Brazil, that largely amounts to deforestation of the Amazon.
Brazil is the world’s largest emitter of land-use change-related gases. Deforestation of the Amazon, which accelerated dramatically in 1995, is believed to have emitted some 200 million metric tonnes (220 million tons) into the atmosphere per year. Over 20% of the over 1.5 million square miles of rainforest are estimated to have been cleared to date. Much of the land has been used to graze cattle and grow soybean, Brazil’s two largest exports.
So, Brazil has drastically cut its carbon footprint over the past couple decades but not because it’s cutting back on energy production or industrial output, but because the country’s rate of deforestation has fallen considerably since 1995. Brazil has launched state and federal-level campaigns to protect swathes of land, punish loggers, farmers and miners who illegally seize land, and encourage the country’s soybean and beef industries to be more productive. The move came on the heels of growing international ire over Brazil’s destruction of the Amazon.
The bad news is that Brazil’s energy, industry and agriculture sectors’ emissions have been rising steadily in recent decades. Brazil’s energy sector emits more than twice what it did back in the early 1990s; gasoline emissions have jumped 64% in the past four years alone. And emissions from agriculture and industrial processes are up, too—38% and 55%, respectively, since 1992. Even with its dramatic carbon reductions, Brazil is still the world’s seventh largest emitting country.
Curbing Brazil’s deforestation-led carbon contributions has had major impact, but there are signs that the country is getting lax, allowing Amazonian razing to pick up again. This isn’t just bad for the environment; it’s ultimately bad for business in Brazil, since chopping down more trees hurts the country’s global reputation and prevents its agribusiness sector from selling sustainably sourced goods.Karen Bass of Flatbush, Auckland discovered this brown sludge splattered around her property.
Photo / supplied
An Auckland woman is furious after her flash house was turned into an outhouse by what she believes is flying human waste.
Karen Bass told the Herald on Sunday yesterday that her two-storey Flat Bush home and her silver car were covered in splotches of excrement dumped from a passing plane overnight.
Her home is directly in the flight path for planes flying into Auckland International Airport.
"The first thing when I walked out of my door this morning and I saw it, I thought an airplane s*** on us. You open the door and it smells like s***," she said.
"I'm absolutely disgusted at the moment. The amount of crap everywhere is horrendous."
Bass said she "absolutely" believed that the brown clumps, which also dotted the footpath, was human excrement.
She has collected a sample which she will get independently tested.
"There's no way it's a bird or animal poo, it's horrible. I"m sure it's human, what else could it be with huge clumps like that?" she said.
"It honestly smells like s*** out there. I came back in and my stomach was turning, thinking what it could be."
A spokeswoman from Airways New Zealand told the Herald on Sunday that "it's not something we would know about" and suggested Bass called the airline to complain.
But as it happened overnight, Bass did not know which airline had flown over her home as she slept and her call to complain to Airways NZ was "fobbed off", she said.
A resident who lives in rural Auckland says waste dumping is not uncommon.
The man, who did not want to be named, said planes had dumped waste on his Karaka home at least three times, most recently, a month ago.
He had complained to the Civil Aviation Authority, but had "given up" after years of fighting.
"I fought it hard, we got tests done that proved it was human matter and even at that point the CAA still kicked their heels in, they wouldn't have a bar of it," he said.
"I've given up now, they're too big and powerful to fight."
The man said the CAA put the waste down to migrating ducks, but the first time it happened he had seen the plane fly overhead and it had fallen directly on him, his wife and children.
He added that he had also spent about $20,000 to get a borehole put in to his property after waste continually fell into their water tank.
A spokesman for the CAA last night said they had received no complaints to date. They would only investigate after a file had been lodged with them.
Aviation expert Peter Clarke said that it was "very, very rare" for aircraft to dump effluent.
"All big commercial aircraft contain all waste products, especially from toilets. The only waste product that can possibly leave the aircraft is when they vent away some of the fluids from the galleys, just water," said Clarke.
He added that the foul debris dotting Bass' home could be one of several things, including bird droppings, but admitted that "nothing is impossible".
"The tanks on the aircraft can leak, they've been known to leak but it's a very uncommon occurrence," he said.
"Manufacturers go to great extremes to develop safe systems and operations of aircraft to contain the waste. Planes do not fly around dumping waste."
- Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nzBrian Davidson/Getty Images
The Boston Red Sox are going to make moves this winter.
Sure, they've won back-to-back American League East titles, but each time they've failed to advance past the division series. They already fired their manager, John Farrell.
Now, expect executive Dave Dombrowski and his brain trust to be aggressive in the free-agent and trade markets.
On the free-agent side of the ledger, here's a name you're going to hear linked to Boston: Eric Hosmer.
In fact, it's already happening. According to FanRag Sports' Jon Heyman, "there is an expectation" the Sox will target Hosmer to fill the void at first base. That's not confirmation from the front office, but it's enough of a rumor to hang our hats on. And it's only early November.
On the surface, Hosmer makes sense for Boston. Scratch deeper, however, and the Red Sox should run away from a Hosmer signing—fast and far.
First, to stipulate: Boston needs an upgrade at first base.
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Mitch Moreland got the bulk of the starts last season and acquitted himself well enough, hitting 22 home runs with a.769 OPS. Moreland is also 32 years old and a free agent himself.
Hanley Ramirez made just 18 starts at first last year and is a designated hitter going forward (provided he can still hit). Rookie Sam Travis is intriguing but not a sure bet. Brock Holt is a versatile utility player, yet he's no one's idea of an everyday first baseman.
Enter Hosmer, who turned 28 in October and posted career highs in average (.318), hits (192) and OPS (.882), and tied a career high with 25 homers in his contract year with the Kansas City Royals.
That's the profile of a guy any team with a need at the position would covet, right? It depends on the price tag.
Charlie Riedel/Associated Press
The Royals, Heyman reported, could be willing to offer Hosmer a $100 million pact to remain in K.C. It would be a bold move by general manager Dayton Moore to keep a popular franchise figure in town, and Boston should step aside and let him make it.
An unnamed National League executive said he expects Hosmer's agent—the infamous Scott Boras—to seek eight years and $200 million for his client, per Sam Mellinger of the Kansas City Star.
A nine-figure contract for Hosmer would hamper Boston's ability to upgrade in other areas, including the starting rotation. And it's possible Hosmer's 2017 stat line was more an anomaly and less a harbinger of things to come.
Hosmer was an All-Star in 2016, but he also struck out a career-topping 132 times and posted a respectable but less-robust.761 OPS.
Prior to that, he'd never hit as many as 20 home runs in five full big league seasons. In 2014, even as the Royals won the pennant, he hit just nine.
The Red Sox are looking for thump after hitting the fewest home runs in the American League last season and the 27th fewest in baseball, ahead of only the Atlanta Braves, Pittsburgh Pirates and San Francisco Giants. Hosmer isn't guaranteed to provide it.
The projection systems aren't bullish. Steamer foretells a.288/.358/.480 slash line with a scant eight home runs, per FanGraphs. Even if you think that's pessimistic—and it is—it shows where the low bar is set.
Gregory Bull/Associated Press
Hosmer is reportedly a great clubhouse presence and a natural leader. Those intangibles count for something. Maybe he could speed up the timetable of Boston's talented young offensive core.
"What does he mean to a franchise? Well, he means a lot," Moore said in a recent interview with 610 Sports. "I don't know if you can measure that."
Intangibles don't hit the ball over the fence, however, and they aren't worth crippling the budget.
Instead of throwing gobs of cash at Hosmer, the Red Sox should sign a less-expensive player such as Carlos Santana, who has averaged 24 homers a season over the past seven years, owns a solid.365 career on-base percentage and who posted 10 defensive runs saved at first base for the Cleveland Indians in 2017.
Santana is three-and-a-half years older than Hosmer and will likely command far fewer years and dollars. Other options include Logan Morrison, Yonder Alonso and Lucas Duda, all of whom have pop but wouldn't bust the bank.
The Red Sox are going to make moves this winter. They have to if they want to fend off the ascendant New York Yankees for AL East supremacy.
When it comes to Hosmer, however, Boston should move away.
All statistics courtesy of FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference.A majority of Americans believe that President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey to hinder the investigation into possible ties between Trump's campaign and Russia, according to a poll released Thursday.
Fifty-nine percent of respondents said it is either very or somewhat likely that Comey was ousted for the purpose of slowing down or fully stopping the FBI investigation, according to the Monmouth University poll.
The poll found that a 50 percent of respondents disapproved of Trump's decision to dismiss the FBI director, while only 36 percent approved of the move.
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The survey also found that 73 percent of Americans want the Russia investigation to continue.
Trump's decision to fire Comey drew widespread condemnation from a number of prominent Democrats, who questioned the timing of the president's move.
The White House, however, defended the decision, arguing that Trump fired Comey because he lost the confidence of the FBI after the Clinton email probe.
Monmouth University Poll surveyed a pool of 1,002 adults between May 12 and 17. The margin of error is 3.1 percentage points.Let us discuss a new Star Trek that people have to pay for instead of watching for free. One in which the Klingons have been completely redesigned, one in which the technology looks completely different from what we would expect, as do the uniforms—all without a word of explanation. One in which one of the main characters has to reconcile human and Vulcan values. And one in which the production was fraught with behind-the-scenes difficulties.
I am, of course, talking about Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979.
Nothing changes, and it’s amusing that there’s been so much fulminating on the Internet about things that Trek has done before. Both Enterprise and the Bad Robot movies have given us time periods before the original series that, nonetheless, have technology more advanced than what we saw on TOS. (Hell, take out the warp drive and transporter and the original Enterprise was less technologically sophisticated than a modern Manhattan office building.) The Klingons have been redesigned more times than I can count, starting with the complete revamping of them in The Motion Picture, and the discrepancy wasn’t even acknowledged for another 17 years (in DS9’s “Trials and Tribble-ations” in 1996), and not actually explained for another nine (in Enterprise’s “Affliction”/”Divergence” in 2005).
But this is not the first time Star Trek has switched to a pay model rather than a free one, since everyone had to shell out their $2.50 for a movie ticket to see The Motion Picture 38 years ago. This is not the first time they’ve gone backwards rather than forwards in the timeline. This is not the first time they’ve gone with a hip, new way of watching television, as nobody was doing first-run syndicated dramas in 1987, but The Next Generation paved the way for a renaissance in the 1980s and 1990s of such shows, which only petered out due to the growth of the FOX network, the rise of the WB and UPN (later merged into the CW), and tons of cable stations starting to produce their own original programming rather than just reruns of other people’s. For all those complaining about CBS All Access, that service was going to happen no matter what, and it’s a sign of CBS’s confidence in Star Trek that they are using it to try to get people to subscribe to it.
(I’ve also been amused listening to people complain about continuity violations that aren’t. Complaints, for example, about other ships having the delta as their symbol, even though other ships had different symbols in TOS—except in the first season, all Starfleet personnel had the delta, cf. “Court Martial” and “The Menagerie.” The notion of other ships with different insignia wasn’t seen until “The Doomsday Machine,” and it’s something that was abandoned by the time the movies came around. Also Klingons don’t have cloaking technology—except, of course, the Klingon Empire doesn’t have it here, either, only the one ship does, and it’s unique. How could Sarek have a human ward and us not know about it, never mind that Spock wasn’t actually on speaking terms with his father when this takes place and it’s not like Spock ever talked about his family ever unless forced into it, cf. “Amok Time” and “Journey to Babel.” And of course the use of holography, which hasn’t been seen in prior Trek productions purely for budget reasons—they had a bit of it in first-season TNG, but had to drop it because the effects were too expensive. It was Gene Roddenberry himself who provided a good explanation for this back when the Klingons suddenly became bumpy-headed in 1979: they always looked like that, we just lacked the budget to show them looking that way. Ditto the technology…)
Enough of that, though, as all of this is ultimately irrelevant in comparison to the much more important matter: Is Discovery any good?
Yes. Yes, it is. It’s not perfect and has a lot of head-scratchers, but they’re obviously telling a single season-long story here involving the Klingons, and I’m definitely along for the ride.
Having said that, let’s get a few problems out of the way. First of all, I love that they’re using Marc Okrand’s Klingon language. The movies and early TNG used the Klingonese Okrand created for The Search for Spock pretty religiously, but with each spinoff, they moved further and further away, mostly just pulling harsh-sounding words out of their asses.
But just because you’re having Klingons speak their own language among each other doesn’t free you from the obligation of making it sound conversational. Chris Obi does the best he can as T’Kuvma, the person trying to unite the Klingon Empire in a war against the Federation, but his delivery is so labored, his speeches so long, that it grinds the episode to a halt every time he talks. Obi (who is excellent as Anubis on the other current series with Bryan Fuller’s name on it, American Gods) really would have been served better by speaking a language he’s actually comfortable in, especially since the Klingon makeup remains death on facial expressions, and the power of his voice is muted by forcing him to wrap his tongue around a made-up language.
The dialogue in these first two episodes is awkward in spots. Georgiou and Burnham’s landing party conversations at the opening have been blessed a little too aggressively with the exposition fairy, and Connor’s flight-attendant riff right before Burnham goes to check out the beacon isn’t nearly as funny as the script wants it to be. In general, the scripts are a bit of a mess tonally, no doubt a result of all the different hands on it, all of whom have “executive producer” as their title.
Also, must everything be underlit? I thought we got over this with Battlestar Galactica. The bridge of the Shenzhou is way way too dark…
Having said that, there’s some excellent stuff here. The relationship between Georgiou and Burnham is a strong one. It’s rare enough to see two women of color in this kind of mentor-mentee relationship, and I’m grumpy that we won’t get to see more of it except maybe in flashbacks. As it is, seeing a TV show not only pass the Bechdel Test, but also take the extra-credit portions of it, is a welcome thing, and exactly the sort of barrier Trek should be breaking. And also why I’m disappointed that, based on the previews, Burnham is going to wind up teamed up with a white guy, with all due respect to Jason Isaacs.
Still, the Georgiou-Burnham relationship is a good one, an interesting variation on the human/Vulcan dynamic that was such a pivotal part of the original series, as well as Voyager and Enterprise. Sonequa Martin-Green’s portrayal is delightfully nuanced, showing the Vulcan training, but still giving us the human emotionalism. She tries to use logic to convince Georgiou to fire on the Klingons, but Georgiou (rightfully) stands her ground. Now it’s possible—likely, even—that the massacre we get in “Battle at the Binary Stars” would have happened regardless. But the Federation is a nation of peace who will only attack when attacked first. Yes, the Klingons will respect a show of force. However, it’s obvious that T’Kuvma was going to attack no matter what.
(By the way, if you want to see more of the Georgiou-Burnham dynamic, pick up David Mack’s Discovery novel Desperate Hours, which goes on sale tomorrow, the 26th of September, and takes place during Burnham’s early days serving on the Shenzhou.)
As someone who has written a lot about Klingon history (and made some of it up, too), I’m fascinated by the political dynamics of the empire here. The reference to not seeing a Klingon in person for a hundred years indicates that the Klingons have mostly stayed out of galactic affairs since the last season of Enterprise (when the Augment virus led to some Klingons becoming smooth-headed, thus explaining the ones we saw on TOS), with occasional exceptions like the Battle of Donatu V (first referenced in “The Trouble with Tribbles,” and also mentioned here) and the attack that killed Burnham’s family. Internecine fighting among Klingon noble Houses is a story as old as the hills, but it’s one that fits with the Klingon history we have seen unfold on screen both chronologically before and after this storyline.
What I especially love is that we see the clash of cultures. Humans unwilling to fire first, but willing to fight back if attacked. Klingons who view “we come in peace” as an insult and a lie, for whom battle is all important, and to sue for peace the way of cowards and fools. Vulcans who let logic and science dictate their actions, and who view emotionalism as something to be overcome. That clash is what leads to a state of war at the end of “Battle at the Binary Stars,” as Georgiou’s human peace offering, Burnham’s Vulcan approach of firing first based on past evidence, and T’Kuvma’s personal mission of redemption-through-war all crash into each other and explode.
It’s obvious from the previews that finding their way back to peace, finding a way to reconcile these disastrously divergent POVs, will be the macrocosmic arc of the season, with Burnham’s redemption being the microcosmic one. I gotta say, it’s nice to see a Starfleet officer commit an act of mutiny and actually suffer for it. I also was highly amused by Burnham whipping out that old Trek standby of out-logic-ing a computer, in this case escaping the damaged brig before the force field died, only unlike when Kirk did it, Burnham’s logic actually made sense…
These two episodes set things up nicely. The acting is uniformly strong. I’ve been a fan of Martin-Green since she appeared as an obnoxious boarding school student on a 2008 Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode, and she was also in the tragically short-lived NYC 22, and it’s good to see her take the lead here. I particularly like the flashbacks to her arrival on the Shenzhou, where she’s so very Vulcan (it reminds one favorably of Michael Dorn playing Worf as so very Klingon). Nobody ever went wrong casting Michelle Yeoh in anything—and hey, she even got a hand-to-hand combat scene!—as she imbues Georgiou with compassion and wit and effortless grace and wisdom. (Isaacs, who hasn’t been seen yet, has a lot to live up to following in her footsteps.) James Frain is excellent casting as Sarek (helluva lot better than Ben Cross, that’s for sure). And Doug Jones’s Lieutenant Saru is a delight, his earnestly snide commentary providing a nice dose of salt on the proceedings.
Doing this as a prequel may have been a mistake. Besides the technological issues, there’s also the fact that we know this war can’t go on too long because the Klingons had a cease-fire in place with the Federation in the early days of the original series—we know this because it was broken in “Errand of Mercy,” and another war would have started, but for the Organians shaking their fists and telling those kids to get off their lawn. Knowing the outcome is frustrating, and there’s really nothing in this story that requires that it take place in the 23rd century—the same basic story could have been told by doing what The Next Generation did so successfully three decades ago and jump the timeline by 80 years after the end of the Dominion War, Data’s death, and Voyager’s return home. The only thing we’d lose is Sarek as Burnham’s mentor, but so far there’s nothing about that character that requires it to be Sarek except for the nerdy continuity hit, and we’ve got plenty of those already.
Still, a prequel is what we got, and there’s a lot of story meat here: the war-vs.-peace dynamic, the redemption of Michael Burnham, the Klingon politics, and more. Can’t wait to see what happens next. Keep an eye on this space each week for reviews of each episode as CBS All Access releases them.
Keith R.A. DeCandido has written a metric buttload of Star Trek fiction, including 16 novels, 13 novellas, six comic books, seven short stories, and a coffee-table book, the latter being The Klingon Art of War. He’s also written about Star Trek for Entertainment Weekly, Star Trek: The Official Magazine, Outside in Makes It So, New Worlds and New Civilizations, and this very web site, including detailed rewatches of the original series, The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine. His latest work includes the Orphan Black reference tome Classified Clone Report, the omnibus Marvel’s Thor: Tales of Asgard, collecting all three books in his trilogy starring Thor, Sif, and the Warriors Three, and short stories in the anthologies Nights of the Living Dead (co-edited by the late George Romero), Aliens: Bug Hunt, The Best of Bad-Ass Faeries, TV Gods: Summer Programming, Stargate SG-1/Atlantis: Homeworlds, and Baker Street Irregulars.If there’s one November tradition less digestible and more shart-inducing than Thanksgiving dinner (sorry, Mom!), it’s the seasonal and ritualized fixation over the assassination and broad legacy of John F. Kennedy.
Each fall since November 22, 1963, regular programming is pre-empted and whole rainforests are clear-cut to bring us books filled with the latest minor (and often delusional) variations on who killed Kennedy and why; the supposedly transformative effect of the “Camelot” years on contemporary geo-politics and, more plausibly, the hat-wearing habits of the American male; and counterfactuals about just how awesome—or awful—JFK’s second term would have been.
Whatever emotional immediacy, contemporary relevance, and news value this all once inarguably possessed, can we now admit that the topic has grown thinner than the post-1963 resume of Kennedy impersonator Vaughn Meader? It now lives on mostly as a sort of repetition-compulsion disorder through which the baby boom generation (born between 1946 and 1964) seeks to preserve its stultifying cultural hegemony even as it slowly—finally!—begins to exit the stage of American life on a fleet of taxpayer-funded Rascal Scooters. (Full disclosure: As someone born in 1963, I am at the very tail end of the baby boom.)
Among the three-dozen-plus books published in this, the 50th year after the assassination, are two volumes titled November 22, 1963, one devoted to the 39-hour life of Patrick Kennedy, and Jesse Ventura’s They Killed Our President: 63 Reasons to Believe There Was a Conspiracy to Assassinate JFK. (What is it that Barack Obama’s former preacher, Jeremiah Wright, likes to say?: “God bless America? God damn America!”)
There are new novels about the event; a fully enjoyable, if equally unpersuasive, “case against LBJ” as murderer-in-chief; and a breathless expose by prominent Obama-birther Jerome Corsi promising “stunning new revelations about the JFK assassination” (to help readers avoid his books and concisely signal the crazy, Corsi graciously affixes Ph.D. to his byline).
The big, broad, deep lessons of the Kennedy saga have been duly taught, if routinely forgotten when it serves our fleeting partisan purposes. Among them: that history is a series of strange and often ugly contingencies, good-and-bad-faith mistakes, and wanton acts of evil, insanity, or a mixture of both; that our leaders—especially the ones with whom we fall in love—often lie, cheat, and obfuscate their way to power, which they then routinely abuse; and that governments cannot and should not be trusted, especially when they claim to speak the truth. “Trust but verify”—Ronald Reagan’s wise dictate toward Soviet compliance on disarmament—is equally true when applied to our government, media, and power elite.
Americans knew all of this even before Kennedy became president and was gunned down not by a generalized atmosphere of right-wing “hate” (as Frank Rich would have it) but by a self-declared Marxist-Leninist who had defected to the USSR (Peter Savodnik’s new The Interloper: Lee Harvey Oswald Inside the Soviet Union is a real addition to the Kennedyania published over the past half-century). And if we as a nation refused to grok fully the dark side of power prior to JFK’s assassination, everybody got it by the time the Warren Commission report and the Pentagon Papers came out, Dion scored his last huge hit with “Abraham, Martin and John,” Teddy Kennedy strategically donned a neck brace, and Dick Nixon flew off to San Clemente.
Indeed, by the early 1970s, what American over or under 30 didn’t agree with the sentiments expressed in a 1971 New York Times Magazine story on youth politics co-authored by Louis Rossetto, the future cofounder of Wired magazine? “John F. Kennedy, one of the leading reactionaries of the sixties, is remembered for his famous line, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country,’” seethed Rossetto and Stan Lehr. “Today, more and more young people are instead following the advice of [author] David Friedman: ‘Ask not what government can do for you… ask rather what government is doing to you.’”
But boomers were so much older then, they’re younger than that now, right? Despite the raft of revelations not just about governmental abuses of power generally but those involving JFK specifically, boomers just can’t quit him (or their airbrushed image of him) as their own mortality comes into focus. Here’s Vanity Fair’s James Wolcott, known for an “artful nastiness that’s long disappeared from his peers’ arsenal,” still going weak in the knees for Jack:
I remember the light at the end of the school hallway reflecting off the floor as word went round and the weight in the air the days after. For kids my age, it was like losing a father, a father who had all of our motley fates in his hands…
As Splice Today’s Russ Smith—himself a boomer old enough to remember where he was when Kennedy was shot—notes, this is pure overstatement: “It wasn’t ‘like losing a father,’ and to suggest so is an affront to all the children who actually did lose their own father at a tender age.” Smith, who as the founder of the Baltimore and Washington City Papers and The New York Press knows a thing or two about reader appetites, is “betting that most of these books bomb, mostly because for most Americans those tumultuous days in 1963 are ancient history. Kennedy’s assassination might as well have occurred in the 19th century. Save for ascending and budding historians, where’s the audience for yet another encore of Camelot?”
That’s something that Wolcott simply can’t or won’t conceive. The deluge of books is “too much and it’s not enough,” he huffs and puffs. “It will never be enough. Readers will never be sated, because too many hidden dimensions and murky links remain, an atticful of unanswered (and unanswerable) questions, hints of the possible future of which we were robbed. History left us hanging.”
Even though I am technically a boomer, I’m left asking, “Who’s us, kemo sabe?” If the past 50 years has been being robbed, all future generations should have it so good.
In such moments, the baby boomer’s deeply engrained generational arrogance and solipsism is made clear. Since they were born, they were told—and came to believe—that the world existed always and only for them (remember when Steven Speilberg, in promoting Saving Private Ryan, declared that World War II's deepest meaning somehow involved a generation not yet born: “It was as simple as this: The century was either going to produce the baby boomers or it was not going to produce the baby boomers”?). Their obsessions, their memories, their hopes and dreams and fears are everybody else’s.
But after 50 years, here’s hoping that particular fever is breaking. Not because Kennedy’s assassination wasn’t a horrible event or because questions around it and the world in which it took place still linger, but because no generation should monopolize the past, present, and future to the extent the boomers have tried. At the very least, we owe our literal and figurative children the breathing space to get on with their lives as free of their parents' shadow as possibleIn January 2010, five months after the unmanned moon probe Chandrayaan was abruptly terminated—a year before its completion, since radio contact with the mooncraft was lost—the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) announced a manned mission to outer space. It would take off in 2016 and cost Rs 12,400 crore. Dr K Radhakrishna, additional director of the Defence Food Research Laboratory (DFRL) in Mysore, was then put in charge of another mission: preparing an Indian menu suitable for space.
The first items of the space menu are now ready—tiny idlis, the size of Rs 2 coins, accompanied by flaming orange sambhar powder and creamy coconut chutney dust. The idlis are cooked and dried using infrared radiation at a temperature of 700º C, and then further dried by microwaving. The moisture is zapped out of them, but not the taste, smell or nutrients. “They do, however, lose some of their colour,” says Radhakrishna. “It is slightly browned if you notice, not like the jasmine-white idlis you get here.” The idlis and sambhar are to be eaten after adding hot water; the coconut chutney needs only cold water. Each idli is 12 gm and swells to 25 gm when soaked in water. The desiccation makes it impossible for micro organisms like bacteria to grow and increases the idlis’ shelf life to more than a year. The removal of moisture also reduces the weight of food sharply, something crucial to the needs of both Isro and the armed forces. The sambhar and chutney are also dried completely with infrared radiation, a technology that has been used in the preparation of food over the past six years or so.
The pack, as it has been designed now, has ten such idlis. It is the equivalent of three normal sized idlis. “It is the perfect snack,” says Anil Dutt Semwal, senior category F scientist at DFRL, “And the cost, though I haven’t calculated it precisely, is minimal: Rs 8 or 10 for a pack.” He worked two months on creating the idli-sambhar-chutney pack and then sent samples to the Army. The reviews, he says, were “very good”. The technology can also be used for cooking vegetables—a powdered mix of spices becomes a curry once water is added to it.
Radhakrishna has also been working on space rasgullas. They look like white naphthalene balls and are freeze-dried from cottage cheese. Freeze drying involves chilling foods to |
weapons by definition are dangerous things, Cole retorted: "So are trucks driving into crowds."
Cole said he doesn't see banning any particular firearms as the solution to U.S. gun deaths.
"There's not an easy legislative fix here, and I think people that suggest there is are not very persuasive in that regard," he said.
Cole was asked during Wednesday's interview whether he was alarmed authorities had recovered more than 40 weapons belonging to the suspected Las Vegas gunman.
"I have friends with that many weapons. That's not uncommon in my part of the country," Cole said.
He added he's very "fierce" about protecting the Second Amendment.
"Most of the people that own these weapons, I mean like 99.99 percent aren't a threat to anybody," he said.
"You can turn almost anything into a weapon of mass destruction if the evil intent is there to do it."A new Deus has dawned, a day of augmented cyber soldiers and gruff, goateed blokes stabbing each other with rulers. Yep, there's a brand new Deus Ex game on the way. It's called Mankind Divided, and it's great. Well, probably. It certainly looks good. The last game in this illustrious series, 2010's Human Revolution garnered plenty of praise for its inventive gameplay and amusing array of gadgets. These so-called 'augmentations' allowed users to tackle their objectives in almost any manner they saw fit - with the obvious exception of those damnable boss battles.
Still, these 'augs' were pretty damn great, oftentimes feeling more like traditional superpowers than feasible, albeit highly futuristic technologies. The difference between the two is that one day we may very well see the latter in action. All the toxic goo in the world isn't going to grant you powers, but mad-eyed Mr. Science just might. So, what on earth are we going to do with all of these abilities? Help one another? Hah, this is humanity we're talking about. I'll bet we're going to utilise these sci-fi marvels the same way we use everything else: moronically. Here's just a few examplesThe most dangerous verse in the Quran
In light of the terrible crimes against humanity in Berlin, Germany, and Ankara, Turkey, let's review some of the basic bedrock facts about Islamic violence. Let's first begin with a startling fact. All the verses (except one) in the Quran about qital (war, fighting, slaughter, killing) can be explained and limited by their historical context. Even the famous so-called Sword Verse in Chapter 9:5 (see it four Sunni translations) can be dismissed as applying only to pagans in Muhammad's day who supposedly broke a treaty with him. Like it or not, believe it or not, many Muslim scholars of a more moderate persuasion speak of these limiting historical contexts over and over again. However, there is one verse that cannot be limited by its historical context because it is open-ended. Chapter 9:29 is about Muhammad's military campaign to Tabuk (today in northern Saudi Arabia). He had heard a rumor that the Byzantines were gathering an army of 200,000, and he rode up north to meet them with his own qitalists of 20,000 to 30,000. But his prophetic powers did not work, because the rumor was false; no army materialized. Not all was lost. On his journey south, he met Jewish and Christian tribes, who must have been impressed to see such numbers.
At that time he got a "revelation," so convenient for his political and military agenda, that said he could exact tribute, or the jizya tax, from these tribes. Here is the verse in a translation by Hilali and Khan (see it in three other Sunni translations), with parenthetical points they added for clarity: Fight against those who (1) believe not in Allah, (2) nor in the Last Day, (3) nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger (4) and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. The verb "fight" is in the imperative or command from qatala, which is much more narrow than jihad. It means slaughter, fight, kill, and wage war. (In fact, ironically, Chapter 47 can be titled either "Muhammad" or "Qital.") The weakness in the term "jihad" is that nearly every time it is used in the Quran, it really does mean "struggle" and encompasses all of life, from a struggle against one's own soul to imposing Islamic finances on a society. (One of my students was actually named Johnny Jihad, which was an honor for him. The struggle!) Yes, sometimes it does mean military warfare, but of course the Islamic left, like Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, more broadly translated "jihad" into and from Marxism, which advocated the "struggle." It would be clearer for our defense and offense if we stopped using "jihad" and instead picked up the term "qital" when a violent act is committed. Of course "jihad" will never go out of fashion because it elevates the struggle in Muslim eyes. But qital and qitalist are more accurate than jihad or jihadist, in much the same way that "war" and "warrior" are more accurate than "struggle" or "struggler" in a context of violence. Thus, the most dangerous verse in the Quran is 9:29, because it is continuous and admits of no expiration date. The violent military war (qital) will continue for as long as Islam is alive and radicals keep reading that verse. Jews and Christians need to be aware that they are the verse's unending targets today and tomorrow. It staggers belief that the politicians around the Western world refuse to acknowledge this unpleasant truth. James Arlandson's website is Live as Free People where he has posted Qital (Warfare) Verses in the Quran, All the Jihad Verses in the Quran, and Islamic Martyrdom: The Economy of Death in the Quran.CLOSE One person dies after a shark attack at New Zealand's Muriwai Beach. VPC
New Zealand filmmaker was training for endurance swim when shark estimated at 14 feet long attacked.
Police in rubber boats shoot at a shark off Muriwai Beach near Auckland, New Zealand, as they attempt to retrieve a body following a fatal shark attack. (Photo: Ross Land, AP) Story Highlights Swimmer was about 220 yards offshore when the shark attacked
Police estimate the shark was 12 to 14 feet long
Fatal attack was one of only about a dozen in New Zealand in 180 years
An award-winning short-film director was killed Wednesday in a bloody shark attack off New Zealand while police in a helicopter watched helplessly from above, local media are reporting.
Police Inspector Shawn Rutene said in a statement that the swimmer, identified by his family as Adam Strange, was about 220 yards offshore when the shark attacked.
A police helicopter flew over the scene as the man battled the shark, The New Zealand Herald reported. But by the time a police officer in a boat drew near, the victim was dead, the Herald said, citing a police source who declined identification while the investigation continued.
The officer fired up to 12 shots before the shark, apparently hit, released the body. "It rolled over and disappeared," Rutene said, estimating the shark was about 14 feet long.
The Herald said that up to three sharks, most likely great whites, had been feeding on fish and birds, and that the victim swam into the middle of them.
Pio Mose told the Herald that he watched the shark attack while fishing on nearby rocks. Mose said he saw the "huge" shark attack the victim, who was swimming alone from the bay back to the beach, about 50 yards from where Mose was standing.
Mose said the man struggled with the shark and it swam away — but quickly returned. He said three or four other sharks came to the area after the second attack.
"I yelled at him to swim to the rocks. There was blood everywhere," Mose told the Herald. "The water was red. It's pretty scary.... All I was thinking was I wanted to jump in the water and help, but I didn't want to get attacked by a shark, too."
The body was later retrieved. Muriwai Beach near Auckland was closed after the fatal attack.
The 46-year-old Strange was training for a 2.8-mile endurance swim Sunday from Auckland to Rangitoto Island. He was testing new goggles during a planned 1-mile swim when the shark struck.
About 150 friends and family gathered at the beach Thursday morning to say goodbye.
"He was a very robust, big, barrel-chested surfer," his friend Adam Stevens. "He was basically completely obsessed with the ocean, with paddle boards and body surfing, everything. His garage was like a museum of surf craft."
His family released a statement calling the married father of one "a glorious and great father, husband and friend." His website says his films, including Aphrodite's Farm, have been featured at numerous international festivals.
Shark expert Malcolm Francis told One News that based on the reports it is likely the attack was by a great white shark. Clinton Duffy, a shark expert with the Department of Conservation, said New Zealand is a hotspot for great white sharks, and other potentially lethal species also inhabit the waters.
Attacks are rare. Duffy estimated that only 12 to 14 people have been killed by sharks in New Zealand since record-keeping began in the 1830s.
Around the world, sharks attacked humans 80 times last year, and seven people were killed, according to the University of Florida's International Shark Attack File. The death toll was lower than it was in 2011 but higher than the average of 4.4 from 2001 to 2010.
Contributing: Associated Press
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/VNeVwrSINGAPORE - The first car-free Sunday in parts of the Central Business District (CBD) and Civic District will take place on Feb 28, National Development Minister Lawrence Wong confirmed in a blog post on Tuesday (Feb 16).
This will be part of a six-month pilot held on the last Sunday of each month from February to July.
"From 7am to 9am, the roads around the Padang - St Andrew's Road, Stamford Road and Connaught Drive - and Fullerton Road will be fully closed to vehicles, while Shenton Way and Robinson Road will be partially closed for you to cycle, jog or walk," Mr Wong wrote in his post.
The entire route will span approximately 4.7km, the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) said in a press release on Tuesday.
Mr Wong and Minister of Transport Khaw Boon Wan will flag off the event at 7am outside the National Gallery Singapore, along St Andrew's Road, URA added.
Having spoken last month about how Singapore needed a "cultural shift" towards a car-lite future so as to be more sustainable in the long run, Mr Wong said "Car-Free Sunday SG" will take the vision a step further.
"Over the past few weeks, I've met and spoken to many Singaporeans who support the vision of a car-lite and people-friendly city," he added.
"It will take tremendous effort and time to make our vision a reality. But if we want a future city that's cleaner and greener, and provides an even better quality of life for all, we must start to make changes now."
Mr Wong added that the government has been working hard to improve Singapore's public transport and infrastructure for active mobility options like walking and cycling.
Unveiling the "Car-Free Sunday SG" logo for the first time in his blog, Mr Wong also invited the public to "come and experience for yourself what a car-free city is like" on Feb 28.
According to URA, activities will be held at the various public spaces, including Empress Lawn (in front of Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall), Esplanade Park and along Connaught Drive.
The public can take part in fitness group exercises or try different sports, such as three-a-side basketball, mini tennis or fun football, conducted by ActiveSG Football Academy principal Aleksandar Duric.
There will also be a special breakfast picnic session - Breakfast@Empress - serving local delights like roti prata and nasi lemak, while two food trucks will be stationed along Connaught Driver from 8am to 7pm.
The National Gallery Singapore, Asian Civilisations Museum, and Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall will open earlier at 9am.
Street performances will also be held at Esplanade Park, Connaught Drive and Empress Place throughout the day till 6pm.
The public can visit the URA website for more information.
A full list of activities and more details about the various routes can be found below.A couple of months ago, I blogged about Peak Hard Drive, that hard drive capacities were leveling off and how this would impact the footprints of data centers in the era of Big Data. Since then, there have been two major announcements about SSDs that indicate they may come to the rescue:
SanDisk announced 4TB SSD "this year" and 16TB possibly next year. Given that such technologies are typically delayed by one calendar year from their press releases, in the above chart, I've indicated those as becoming available in 2015 and 2016, respectively. Japanese researches develoepd a technique to improve SSD performance by up to 300%
The 16TB in 2016 is phenomenal and would be four years sooner than the 20TB in 2020 predicted by Seagate. Much more than that, if the 16TB SSD will be in the same form factor as its announced 4TB little brother, then it will be just a 2.5" drive in contrast to the presumed 3.5" form factor for the 20TB Seagate HAMR drive. As you can see in the chart above, the 16TB puts us back on track of the dashed gray line, which represents the storage capacity steady growth we enjoyed from 2004 to 2011.
Photo by Paul R. Potts in the Wikimedia Commons.
It is because of the varying form factors that in my blog post two months ago I adopted the novel "Bytes/Liter" metric, which is a volumetric measure in contrast to the more typical "aerial" metric that applies to spinning platters but not to SSDs. (Actually I changed the metric from log10(KB/Liter) from two months ago to log10(Bytes/Liter) now, reasoning that Bytes is a more fundamental unit than KB, that it eliminates the KB vs. KiB ambiguity, and that it makes the chart above easier to read where you can just pick out the MB, GB, TB, PB by factors of 3 of the exponent of 10.) This volumetric metric can handle everything from the 5.25" full-height hard drives of the 1980's to the varying heights of 2.5" hard drives and allow us to linearly extrapolate on the logarithm chart above.
The direct overlay of the SSD line over the HDD line for the years 1999-2014 came as a complete shock to me. SSDs and HDDs have vastly different performance, form factor, price and performance characterstics. Yet when it comes to this novel metric of volumetric density, they've been identical for the past 15 years!
Photo from tomshardware.com comparing 9.5mm height 2.5" drive to 15mm
Now, the announced 4TB 2.5" SSD and presumably also the 16TB SSD are not of the typical notebook hard drive form factor. The typical notebook hard drive is 9.5mm tall, whereas these high-capacity SSDs are 15mm tall. They're intended for data center use, such as in the 2U rack below.
The configuration in the 2U chassis above is typical for 2.5" drives: just 24 drives, because they are all accessible from the front panel. I'm not aware of any high-density solutions for 2.5" drives such as those that exist for 3.5" drives, such as the one below that puts 45 drives into 4U.
In time, there should be some higher density rackmount solutions for 2.5" drives appearing, but for now, today's available solutions don't take full advantage of the compactness of 2.5" SSDs portrayed in the above chart, which measures volumtric density of the drive units themselves and not the chassis in which they reside.
Also not clear is whether the 16TB SSD will be MLC or TLC. The 4TB drive is MLC, which means two bits per cell. If the 16TB drive is TLC, then three bits are stored in each cell (eight different voltage levels detected per cell), which can reduce lifespan by a factor of 3 and for that reason are often not considered for enterprise data center use.
For the moment, we're stuck at the inflection point in the above chart at 2014, wondering which dotted line data centers will be able to take in the future.
Due to a combination of increased use of VMs in data centers and increased physical server density, projections were that we had reached peak physical square footage for data centers: that no more data centers would have to be built, ever (aside from technology improvements such as cooling and energy efficiency). My blog on Peak Hard Drive threatened to blow that away and require more data centers to be built due to plateauing hard drive density combined with exploding Big Data use. But now with the two SSD announcements, we might be -- just maybe -- back on track for no more net data center square footage.BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Joint Base Andrews was placed on a lockdown Thursday after reports of an active shooter.
According to officials, the base was scheduled to conduct an active shooter exercise, however, reports of a real-world active shooter situation were reported at Malcolm Grow medical facility.
“Reports of a real-world active shooter situation at the medical facility were miscommunicated before the exercise was able to begin,” said Joint Base Andrews officials. “There was a misidentification of the security forces emergency services team who were conducting a routine inspection of the medical facility, which caused the distress call to the base defense operations center.”
The base was placed on lockdown as a precaution around 9:00 a.m. Thursday. The base even sent out tweets telling people to shelter in place.
JBA is currently on lockdown due to a report of an active shooter. All personnel are directed to shelter in place. More info as it comes. — Joint Base Andrews (@JBA_NAFW) June 30, 2016
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson even interrupted his testimony during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to address the threat.
“Fortunately, this was not a life-threatening situation,” said Col. Brad Hoagland, 11th Wing and JBA commander. “We take all threats seriously and reacted to ensure the security of those on the base. I applaud the quick reaction of our first responders in keeping the safety of our JBA family a number one priority. In addition, we thank our local authorities for quickly standing by and offering their assistance.”
An “all clear” was given for the entire base around 11:30 a.m.
Top officials, including White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest applauded the quick response to ensure everyone’s safety.In March, a copy of the series' first issue sold for $7,000, while a year earlier another went for $2,500.
AMC’s The Walking Dead is known for smashing basic cable records, and the comic book that inspired the series continues to earn its own bragging rights, too.
A copy of The Walking Dead No. 1 sold on eBay on Wednesday for $10,100, an unusually large sum for a comic book published in the 21st century. The copy earned a 9.9 out of 10 mint rating from CGC, the benchmark comics appraisal service.
“This is an investment as The Walking Dead is now a permanent part of our pop culture and continues to grow in popularity,” touts the comic’s eBay description from the seller, FlyersComics.
PHOTOS: 'The Walking Dead's' Most Shocking Deaths
The seller could be right about the “investment” part. A 9.9 copy of The Walking Dead No. 1 sold for $7,000 in March. A year earlier, an identically graded copy went for what now seems like bargain, just $2,500.
The zombie series from Image Comics debuted to low sales in October 2003, with reportedly just 7,300 copies printed, a small number that helps account for its high value today. But the series has since become a phenomenon. In July, its 100th issue sold 375,000 copies in its first day, making it the best-selling comic book issue of the century.
The Walking Dead was created by writer Robert Kirkman, who serves as an executive producer of the AMC zombie drama. The Image series, printed in stark black and white, released its 104th issue Wednesday.This past week, I’ve been in the final stretch of The Witcher 3, trying to finish up the game before the release of Arkham Knight. This isn’t entirely necessary of course, I could easily just put it down and pick it up later, but to me it’s like stopping a movie midway through and starting another. It’s a jarring storytelling experience, and I wanted one to be complete before I moved on to the other.
I did finish the game, but what I’ve been worried about since is open world fatigue syndrome. I’ve felt it a fair amount lately with a host of sprawling open world games that demand anywhere from 20 to 100 hours of my time to complete, and after probably 120 hours of The Witcher over the past few weeks, I thought that may damper my enthusiasm for Arkham Knight in many respects.
That hasn’t happened. In fact, the opposite is true. The games are really, really great complements to each other as despite both being “open world,” they share little else in common, as they’re on opposite ends of the spectrum. It also helps that both might be the best examples of their respective open world subclasses in years (this is of course ignoring Arkham’s awful PC issues, as I’m playing on console).
The Witcher 3 is the current king of open world RPGs, where other examples of the genre include the recent Dragon Age: Inquisition and older games like Skyrim, Fallout and you could even put GTA 5 in that category, in my opinion. These games are marked by their absolutely massively size and RPG elements that include things like levelling, skill trees, loot and gear.
The Witcher has found great success mainly because of how it treats its quests. It does lack a customizable main hero, which is a hallmark of the genre most of the time, but it tells Geralt’s story extremely well, and even in 120 hours, I almost never felt like I was wasting any time. It’s less focused on exploration like Fallout or an Elder Scrolls game, but the quests it develops are significantly more involved than most we see in the genre. Combat isn’t perfect, but compared to its counterparts which are often even clunkier (don’t gets me started on V.A.T.S.), it’s practically leading the pack.
Arkham Knight, meanwhile, is an Ubisoft open world game. Of course I don’t literally mean it’s an Ubisoft game, it’s a WB/Rocksteady game, but the sub-genre was essentially created and defined by Ubisoft, who now has Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and Watch Dogs making up their line-up of smaller open world games.
“Smaller,” is of course a relative term, as many of these maps are rather huge, but the games themselves are usually about 20-30 hours long instead of a hundred. The only way you could get to triple digit playtime is to hunt down every single collectible and secret in the world, but only a scarce handful of players will be that devoted.
An Ubisoft-style open world game is marked by a map full of minigame-like activities, and a desire to make the player “clear out” enemy forces from the map in one way or another. Scatter some collectibles, insert a main storyline with a handful of sidequests, and you’ve got yourself a stew. Bonus features include “cinematic” combat and/or car chases, and some kind of slow-mo during fights and X-ray vision for stealth stalking.
But anyone who has played the Arkham series and Arkham Knight in particular knows that Rocksteady has out-Ubisofted Ubisoft. They’ve taken all the good elements of the genre, and stripped away almost all of the bad. The result is a tight open world experience that “only” clocks in at about 25 hours or so, or at least that’s what I’m looking at for completion for the main story and a large chunk of the major sub-missions in Arkham Knight.
Though the game does indeed want you clearing out the Arkham Knight’s militia forces from the map, the game doesn’t make the streets so infested with them where you literally can’t move or make progress without spending hours and hours clearing checkpoints or blowing up drones. The map is fully revealed from the start, there are no radio towers to climb to lift the fog of war from it. Outside of restricting Batmobile access to a select few areas, there’s little stopping you from gliding anywhere you want from practically moment one.
And while Gotham is full of “minigames,” they’re creatively designed in ways we often don’t see from most wave clear/hacking/car chase minigames in similar games. They integrate the other villains of Gotham in interesting ways (Two-Face’s bank robbery missions make you test your stealth skills, Riddler’s puzzles make you problem solve using your car, etc.), and no two activities feel alike. Each encounter feels carefully designed in a way that adds some new challenge you haven’t seen before, however minor.
Past all of this, however, the central story is incredibly well-told, a rarity for open world games of any type, frankly. This is one of the best Batman-centric tales I’ve ever seen play out on screen or in comics (though I know it borrows from elements of what came before, no matter how “original” the Arkham Knight claims to be). Batman haunted by the Joker’s madness makes for a great storytelling device, and there’s a running theme of Bruce pushing away all his support staff for “their own safety,” which ends up playing out in some truly jaw-dropping ways. It’s a story that actually feels like it’s trying to make a larger point about a character we’ve known for decades, and it does it very well.
Obviously I have more to say about Arkham because I’ve already devoted thousands of words to The Witcher, but it’s pretty stunning to be able to play two open world games within this span of time that have almost nothing in common, yet are both on top of their respective sub-genres. The Witcher 3 makes 100+ hours of gameplay worth playing, while Batman uses a (relatively) smaller scope to tell an effective story and perfect its combat and puzzle systems to the point where this game is an impeccable finale for Rocksteady’s series.
It’s rare that spring/summer manages to produce two games this amazing within such a short period of time, and you would be remiss to miss out on either. If you think you’re too burned out by one to start the other, don’t let that stop you. They’re very different experiences, and each will be able to energize you in its own way. I’m not sure either is a perfect 10, but it’s a double-barrel of 9.5s at the very least, and should make for one hell of a great gaming summer.
Follow me on Twitter, on Facebook, and on Tumblr. Pick up a copy of my sci-fi novel, The Last Exodus, and its sequel, The Exiled Earthborn, along with my Forbes book, Fanboy Wars.
Watch below to see when Call of Duty may return to World War II:Where will Arian Foster land? That is a question that will likely be answered in the next several weeks. Last week, Pro Football Rumors analyzed potential landing spots for running back Arian Foster after his departure from the Houston Texans. Taking a deeper look, the Indianapolis Colts should be the team leading the way for Foster’s talents.
Arian Foster Should Sign with the Colts
Why the Colts are a Good Fit
The Indianapolis Colts need a running back in a big way. Currently the depth chart for the Colts consists of Frank Gore, Robert Turbin, and Jordan Todman, respectively. Not necessarily the most intimidating “3-headed monster” for opposing defenses. With Andrew Luck coming off of his worst season as a professional, and probably his entire playing career at any level, the Colts will need a spark of some sort. Foster could come into camp with this team and compete for a starting role immediately. Of course his injury concerns are legitimate and need to be taken seriously, but his ability to play the running back position at an elite level is also legitimate, which makes him a serious candidate for the Colts. Prior to last season, Foster was performing as one of the top running backs in the NFL. Totaling over 1,200 rushing yards, over 300 receiving yards, and accounting for 13 total touchdowns, Foster was a dominant force in only 13 games in 2014. When this season begins, Foster will have reached the dreaded 30 years of age mark and will likely not be bringing those kinds of overall numbers to the table any longer; however, he still may be able to be effective with his receiving ability and yards per carry. Bringing in Foster to go along with veteran Frank Gore could give Foster the protection from injury he needs while also giving Gore the rest he needs. That combination may not be the “thunder and thunder” that the Tennessee Titans are so hopeful for, but could be a decent enough tandem to make a playoff run.
The Depth Chart
Jordan Todman has barely played at all in his three NFL seasons, amassing just over 100 total carries. Although he has shown explosive, play-making ability, which is likely much of the reason why he was brought into the Colts’ organization, Todman’s consistency to be a full-time contributor has not been demonstrated early in his career. Robert Turbin has shown some consistency throughout his four NFL seasons with a 4.0 yards per carry average, however he has not established himself as any kind of explosive threat. With a long carry of only 26 yards, Turbin is more of a fullback-halfback hybrid who really needs his offensive line to perform well for him to make plays; unfortunately, the offensive line for the Colts was one of the team’s biggest weaknesses last season. The Colts know what they have in Turbin, but he will not be enough to get them over last year’s woes and help Andrew Luck’s offense get back to where it needs to be. Last but not least, the veteran Frank Gore will lead the charge once again for Indianapolis. Last year, Gore just missed the coveted 1,000 yard rushing mark (967) for the first time since 2010, when he only played in 11 games. Looking past the rushing totals, Gore’s 3.7 yards per carry and 60.4 yards per game were the lowest of his very lengthy and productive career. Not having rushed for over 100 yards in any game last season and clearly losing a step in the explosive department, Gore still managed to do a decent job in 2015 without much, if any, help from his offensive line. Now at age 33, Gore cannot be expected to see the 260 rushing attempts he did a year ago, but will surely still be effective if he is given some help and some rest.
The Salary Cap
With nearly $16 million in cap space, Indianapolis Colts general manager Ryan Grigson has the opportunity to take some chances over the next several weeks leading into training camp. Having been set to make $6.5 million this coming season, with a potential cap hit of $8.7 million, not only will Foster not touch those numbers in 2016, we know why he was cut. Likely to get a one- or two-year deal, Foster will probably receive between $1.2 million and $1.5 million per year with very little guaranteed and incentives that could lead to a total of approximately $2 million. If this is the case, the Colts will have plenty of room for him on their roster, and just as importantly, under their cap.
Summing It All Up
The Indianapolis Colts need Arian Foster and Arian Foster needs the Indianapolis Colts. If an organization can bring in an experienced veteran, who may still have some gas left in the tank (and for a cheap price), then why not at least give him a shot? If the 2016 Foster experiment fails, the Colts lose nothing except for some minor money. However, if the Colts are willing to take a chance and are successful, then not only does their offense have an increased chance to get back to its expected form, but this team will also make a legitimate run for a division title.Aaron Dessner added that the band will take a year out once they finish touring 'Trouble Will Find Me'
The National‘s Aaron Dessner has said that the follow-up to this year’s ‘Trouble Will Find Me’ will be “raw” and “simple”.
Speaking to NME, Dessner explained that the band would like their seventh album to be a reaction to their very “detailed” 2012 LP. “We’re actually thinking for the next album we make a very raw, un-produced simple record, that nobody will like!” he said.
He added that song offcuts from the ‘Trouble Will Find Me’ sessions, of which there are around 10, might end up on a new album. “We’ve talked about it,” said Dessner when asked about when they’ll start working on their next LP. “I’m sure that once we’ve done touring we’ll take at least a year away from the band, but I think that we’re also excited about an idea – like, everyone seems interested in making an album a different way. It might mean a more louder, more live record that is less produced and more, just like, raw and shredding.”
The National recently revealed new song ‘Lean’, their contribution to The Hunger Games: Catching Fire soundtrack. Scroll down to hear the song now.
The National are set to tour the UK this month, playing shows in Belfast, Manchester and London as well as Dublin, Ireland.
The National will play:
Sharethrough (Mobile)
Belfast Odyssey Arena (November 9)
Dublin O2 Arena (10)
Manchester O2 Apollo (11, 12)
London Alexandra Palace (13, 14)
To check the availability of The National tickets and get all the latest listings, go to NME.COM/TICKETS now, or call 0844 858 6765.Zombies are big business, in more ways than one. Zombie books, movies, costumes, make-up, computer games, and more are probably worth billions to our economy, not to mention the value of extra sales of axes, chainsaws, and shotguns to people who never hunt or cut down trees.
But not all zombies are fictional, and some are potentially really dangerous – at least to our pocketbooks and environment. These include zombie water projects: large, costly water projects that are proposed, killed for one reason or another, and are brought back to life, even if the project itself is socially, politically, economically, and environmentally unjustified. Here are four kinds of zombie water projects that have been repeatedly beaten down for a variety of reasons but that keep rearing their ugly heads. Keep those chainsaws lubed and fueled:
1. Water transfers from the Great Lakes or the Mississippi River or Alaska and Canada to the arid southwestern U.S.
These are perennial favorites: people look at the vast amount of water in the Great Lakes, or flowing down the Mississippi River, or flowing north to the Arctic Ocean and think, gee, what could make more sense than to take that water and move it to where we really need it, like California or Arizona or Las Vegas. After all, we've been moving water around since the beautifully designed Roman aqueducts, and even earlier. But most of these mega-projects are zombies – killed off years ago, only to linger, undead.
Patricia Mulroy, who runs the Southern Nevada Water Authority, recently revived the idea of moving floodwaters from the Mississippi River all the way to Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona to free up Colorado River water that could then be given to feed Las Vegas. Fear that similar projects would take water out of the Great Lakes led to a provision in the new international agreement signed by the U.S. and Canada that effectively prohibits transfers of water out of the basin because of fear that such diversions would lower the Great Lakes levels and threaten the health of fragile natural ecosystems. And of course there is the granddaddy of all water diversion proposals – called NAWAPA (the North American Water and Power Alliance) – proposed in the late 1950s and early 1960s by a consulting/construction company to divert around 150 million acre-feet of water annually (ten times the flow of the Colorado River) from the Yukon, Copper, Kootenay, Fraser, Peace, and other Alaskan/Canadian rivers all the way east to the Great Lakes and south to the southwestern U.S. and even Mexico. And a smaller version of this zombie is the Million Conservation Research Group proposal (named after Aaron Million – if it had anything to do with the cost, it would be the Billion Conservation Research Group) to build a pipeline from Wyoming to eastern Colorado to take 250,000 acre-feet of public water to sell for private gain. Professor Robert Glennon from the University of Arizona quipped that he sees many obstacles to the project, "not the least of which is the Rocky Mountains."
These mega-projects are certainly technically feasible: there's no mystery to building dams, aqueducts, pumping plants, and pipelines. What kills these projects is their massive political, environmental, and economic cost. They would cost tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars and lead to vast environmental destruction and devastation. Half a century ago, we didn't know about the ecological consequences of massive water diversions, or we didn't care, but those days are over. On top of this, any such project would require unprecedented political and legal water sharing agreements and anyone who believes such agreements can be reached is living in a fantasyland. But that doesn't stop these zombies from periodically coming back to life.
2. Water transfers from Alaska or Norway or the Arctic/Antarctic to Asia or the Middle East through the ocean |
children experiencing homelessness by addressing shortcomings in our current federal laws, which make educational success difficult for homeless youth due to issues of legal guardianship, residency, record keeping and lack of transportation. By ensuring that homeless children have access to the academic resources they will need to avoid poverty and homelessness as adults, the legislation aims to stem the tide of generational homelessness.
Specifically, the bill:
* Strengthens the academic support programs for homeless students within schools by providing additional funding for professional liaisons for homeless youth within school districts and expanding access to summer school programs and early childhood education.
* Additionally, the bill takes steps to keep homeless students in their original schools by increasing the authorized funding level to help assist with the costs of transportation and provide resources to speed up the enrollment of homeless students who may not have access to the necessary paperwork.
* Importantly, the legislation focuses on outreach and identification for homeless students by requiring wider dissemination of information relating to homelessness and the services available to homeless students and families.
"A recent report from the U.S. Conference of Mayors stated that family homelessness in Philadelphia rose 4 percent in 2009, a figure which likely underestimates the true effects of the current economic crisis," Joe said. "Failing to address this reality risks the future success of our nation by depriving more children of the educational opportunity they need to succeed."
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Back on Martin Luther King Day, I mentioned in a post the steady stream of e-mails I receive from PA Rep. Joe Sestak's Democratic primary campaign against incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter, the now-and-then Democrat. I tried to point out two things: (1) that the campaign has for months now been putting out a voluminous quantity of substantive "e-papers" on a wide range of subjects generally unrelated to the hot-button issues that seem to be all we ever hear about, and (2) despite our ritual claim to want more substance in political campaigns, we hardly ever pay any attention to campaigns that try to do it.I made clear that I consider myself as guilty, or almost as guilty (at least I raised the question) as anybody. I barely glance at these e-mails, even though they seem to be solidly based, addressing real-world issues with attempts at real-world solutions. When I noticed yesterday that my e-mailbox had a new e-mail from the campaign ---- I determined that this time I would read the damned thing. In case maybe you would like to read it too, here it is:I don't know about you, but I haven't given a lot of thought to the problem of homeless schoolchildren as exacerbated by the economic meltdown. It appears that Joe Sestak has. Of course he's a member of the House of Representatives, so this is just the sort of thing heto be concerning himself with. I don't know that this means he deserves to be a U.S. senator (although it didn't take much to persuade me that he would represent a decisive upgrade over the incumbent), but it does seem to me a better qualification than I'm aware of from an awful lot of people currently occupying seats in that august chamber.I'm just saying.
Labels: Arlen Specter, children's issues, economic meltdown, homeless, Joe Sestak, Pennsylvania, Senate 2010Alexandria Vera was an English teacher at Stovall Middle School in Houston, Texas where she allegedly had a sexual and romantic relationship with a 13-year-old student.
According to court documents, Vera originally met her underage paramour during the 2015 session of summer school. Initially the student was very rude to her, but eventually became flirty and started pestering Vera for her Instagram handle.
Eventually, the student found her on Instagram and sent her a follow request. She rejected it.
When the fall term began, the student was assigned to one of Vera’s English classes and made frequent inappropriate comments toward her. Despite telling him to stop, the raunchy comments toward her would persist.
One day the student was absent from class, and worried about him, Vera broke down and sent him a message on Instagram.
After reminding him about an upcoming assignment, the student asked Vera for her phone number. She complied. The student then asked her if they could “hang out” and she agreed. She picked him up and drove him around town before making out with him in her car.
Their relationship escalated from there. By the end of September 2015, Vera visited the student at his home when his parents were not home and they had sex. She didn’t meet the student’s parents until October, when the school had an open house for all parents to meet their student’s teachers.
After the open house, she accompanied the student to his home where she was introduced as his girlfriend to the parents. Vera said that she was received very warmly, and the student’s parents even began inviting her to family functions. The student and his teacher’s relationship grew, and they saw each other and had sex often.
The student would routinely sleep over at his English teacher’s place, and then she would drop him off at his place in the morning to be picked up by the bus. According to the report, they “had sex on an almost daily basis at her home and that they loved each other.”
Alexandria Vera, middle school teacher impregnated by 8th grade student just arrived at court. She will be sentenced today #khou11 pic.twitter.com/8TItPonbqT — Lauren Talarico (@KHOULauren) January 13, 2017
In January, Vera became pregnant with the student’s child. His family was initially very excited about the child, but she eventually opted to get an abortion.
In February she was questioned by Child Protective Services about her relationship with a student. Some people have some very interesting (aka dumb) opinions on Vera:
Don’t these people understand statutory rape is crime? Nevertheless, there are Facebook pages filled with thousands of people defending Vera.
Luckily their support means little to the judicial system, and Alexandria Vera has now been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Update: This piece is based on the language and storyline directly from police investigations. Nowhere does the writer show support for someone who committed statutory rape. Language has been added to the piece to make it abundantly clear that Vera was in the wrong, and that those defending her are incorrect.Sony’s film and television groups have not had a harmonious relationship, and it has been further exacerbated by the recent hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment, linked to the Sony feature The Interview.
For the most part, television has been taking a back seat at SPE, viewed primarily as a workhorse contributing to the bottom line, even after SPE CEO Michael Lynton announced a year ago that the company will make “a significant shift in emphasis from motion pictures to higher-margin television.”
Despite television’s increasing importance and status as a cash cow, SPE is run by film executives, Lynton and Co-Chairman Amy Pascal, with major decisions that impact the television part of the company sometimes made unilaterally, without conferring with TV executives.
There had been rumblings about friction between the film and TV leadership, and we saw a glimpse of that in the leaked emails of top SPE executives, including Lynton, Pascal and SPT President Steve Mosko.
There was a cancelled dinner and a heated email from Mosko in February over a series of newspaper stories, in which Pascal appeared to be taking credit for running Sony’s TV business. Pascal’s now-infamous “black baby” comment was in response to a July email by Mosko, in which he expressed frustration over the film unit’s decision to announce a television deal with major talent without informing their TV colleagues. “Once again, this will cause major confusion in the television group because (he) has never talked to me or anyone else in our group and I will have to be on the defensive with my own team and not sure what to say to outside world,” Radar quoted him as saying.
That leads us to another decision made unilaterally by Lynton and Pascal that has had a major impact on the television side of the company: the move to greenlight comedy feature The Interview, featuring the graphic “assassination” of current North Korea leader Kim Jong-un.
Just like their feature colleagues, SPT employees had their personal records hacked, left scrambling to protect their identity and social security/credit card information. Also stolen and put on the Internet was confidential information on off-network sales and other SPT deals that may hurt the company’s competitiveness in feature negotiations and an unreleased script of its hit drama Breaking Bad among other proprietary content.
While Sony’s film staff seem to have been selectively targeted by hackers’ disturbing emails, TV employees were not immune to the messages that suggested possible physical harm to Sony employees and their families in retaliation for the movie’s release.
Since the very first days of the hacking scandal, there had been a strong sentiment in the TV circles at Sony to pull The Interview, with most television staffers supporting such a move.
As weeks went by, with SPE’s leadership standing by the movie as hackers’ threats grew more brazen, the resentment among Sony’s TV constituency also grew. In private conversations, some of them express anger at being dragged into a controversy they had no part in.
Despite the growing discontent, SPT staffers have proceeded with their daily work, keeping the trains on time amid the major distraction from the hack attack that reportedly brought other divisions of the company to a standstill. Episodes of 8 primetime series, including The Blacklist, The Goldbergs, Marry Me and Community, filmed as scheduled over the past three weeks, along with episodes of SPT’s daytime dramas Days Of Our Lives and The Young And The Restless, and game shows Wheel Of Fortune and Jeopardy. Deals were closed and announced, including the acquisition of Australia’s Playmaker Media and international sales for Marry Me and The Goldbergs.
Following Sony’s decision today to finally shelve The Interview after all major theater chains pulled out, the storm surrounding the unprecedented hacking will eventually pass. But its impact within the company will likely be felt for a long time. The rift between Sony’s film and TV operations now runs so deep, SPE’s (possibly new) leadership will have to work hard to repair it.• Bill Sweeney of British Olympic Association wants teams at Games • English FA fears losing sovereignty if an Olympic team is sent
After the overall success in Rio British Olympic officials will have another go at persuading the home nations to enter men’s and women’s football teams for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
The lack of a British women’s side in particular was seen as a missed opportunity to grow the game.
Neymar the shootout hero blasts Brazil to Olympic football gold against Germany Read more
While the English FA was keen to enter a side in Rio, the other home nations would not agree.
They feared it would undermine their sovereignty and refused to be pushed into the move, even though Fifa has given guarantees it would not affect their status.
If the women’s side, who qualified because England finishing third at the World Cup in Canada, had taken up their place it would have denied the eventual Olympic silver medallists, Sweden, a slot.
“We are all desperately disappointed that there isn’t a football team for Team GB, primarily the women’s because they are so strong, had a great season leading up to this, but also on the men’s side as well,” said Bill Sweeney, the British Olympic Association’s chief executive.
Denying GB women footballers a place at the Olympics is an atrocious decision | Owen Gibson Read more
“And we’ll be having meetings when we get back to try and sort that out with the FA. If you look at the success of women’s hockey here, to have had a similar sort of story in football would have been absolutely fantastic.”
UK Sport chief executive Liz Nicholl said the FA had been in touch to learn some of the lessons of its Olympic success and that it would be “fantastic” to have the women’s side, in particular, on board in Tokyo.
“The FA has been in touch, particularly in relation to women’s potential success,” she said. “And I would say here, we could win more medals in Tokyo, actually we could win one more medal in Tokyo from a sport like football, if we had the GB women’s football team here. I have no doubt they would have also won a medal here in Rio.”
New England manager Sam Allardyce has also backed the return of a British team to the Olympics, which happened on a one-off basis for London 2012.
“When you see the delight on Justin Rose’s face when he won the gold medal in golf it shows what it all means,” he told the BBC. “It’s something we may look at in the future and try to compete in.”
But any attempt by the BOA to return to the subject is bound to be politically sensitive and it may look to lead the discussions itself rather than through the English FA.
“I think the athletes would have loved the environment and would have loved to have had the chance to perform at their best in a country like Brazil, which is so passionate about football,” said Sweeney.In an Irish court on Thursday, a FBI agent admitted publicly for the first time that the agency had control of a Tor hidden service operator’s company, Freedom Hosting, for a period of time. It had been widely suspected that the FBI or another American law enforcement agency used a particular Tor exploit to gain control.
Eric Eoin Marques, a dual Irish-American citizen, is currently facing extradition from Ireland to the United States on four charges of child pornography. (On Thursday, the Irish judge in the case allowed Marques to file for a new bail motion.) Marques is accused of running Freedom Hosting, a major hidden services provider on the Tor network that was notorious for hosting child porn sites.
According to the Irish Independent, “Investigators claimed that after his initial arrest at the end of July Marques managed to get back on the server—which had been taken over by the FBI—and change the passwords.”
As Ars reported previously, security researchers found malicious JavaScript embedded in Freedom Hosting pages. The attack code sent the compromised information back to a server in Virginia.
"Because this payload does not download or execute any secondary backdoor or commands it's very likely that this is being operated by an LEA [law-enforcement agent] and not by blackhats," independent researcher Vlad Tsrklevich wrote on his own website last month.Legal challenge launched against DUP and Conservative government deal alleging it will 'breach Good Friday Agreement' BelfastTelegraph.co.uk A Northern Ireland politician has launched a legal challenge against the proposed government deal between the DUP and the Conservatives. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/uk/legal-challenge-launched-against-dup-and-conservative-government-deal-alleging-it-will-breach-good-friday-agreement-35855734.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/incoming/article35849393.ece/a66bf/AUTOCROP/h342/Election%20%202.jpg
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A Northern Ireland politician has launched a legal challenge against the proposed government deal between the DUP and the Conservatives.
Solicitors acting for Ciaran McClean, who stood for the Green Party in West Tyrone in the General Election, served a letter before action on the government alleging that it would breach the terms of the Good Friday agreement.
Read more: Sir John Major 'dubious' over DUP deal with Theresa May - warns of need to protect Northern Ireland peace process from 'hard men' returning to streets
Talks are ongoing between the DUP and the Conservative party, with DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson saying there is a "very good chance" of a deal.
The DUP remains confident that it can secure a deal with the Tories involving a substantial cash investment for Northern Ireland - but the party has dismissed reports that it could be up to £2 billion.
Read more: DUP denies demanding £2bn to shore up May and Tory government
DUP MP hails'very good' chance of deal to prop up Tory minority government
London law firm, Edwin Coe's letter says the basis of the claim is that any deal between the Government and DUP will be in breach of the Good Friday Agreement under which the Government undertook to exercise its power in Northern Ireland “with rigorous impartiality on behalf of all the people in the diversity of their identities and traditions".
It says any agreement is "unlawful" because it "compromises the Government’s independence and breaches the reasonable expectation of the citizens of Northern Ireland, including Mr McClean, that the Government will act with rigorous impartiality".
Mr McClean said: “I campaigned for the Good Friday Agreement and remain absolutely committed to it. I was horrified when I heard that the Government was thinking of getting into bed with the DUP so that it could survive crucial votes in the House of Commons. Both in spirit and, as I am advised, in law, such an agreement flies in the face of the obligations of rigorous impartiality under the Good Friday Agreement and is simply unacceptable.
"It’s almost too late for the Government to correct the position because whatever it now does in relation to an agreement with the DUP, even if it abandons it and continues in office there will always be the suspicion of some sort of deal having been done.
"My lawyers have written to the Government and we must now see what they say in response.”
Belfast Telegraph DigitalJapan is expected to win the right to construct India’s first bullet train, after losing an Indonesian high-speed rail deal to China, the Nikkei business daily reported on Tuesday.
Japan will offer more than 1 trillion yen ($8.11 billion) in loans to construct India’s Rs 98,000 crore fast train, according to the report.
Japan recently lost the bid to build Indonesia’s first fast-train because Beijing provided a $5 billion loan without guarantees.
The Japanese and Indian prime ministers -- Shinzo Abe and Narendra Modi respectively -- are expected to issue a joint statement on the deal, the Nikkei said. Abe is due to visit India later this week.
Tokyo was picked to assess the feasibility of building the 505 km corridor linking Mumbai with Ahmedabad, the commercial capital of Gujarat, and concluded it would be technically and financially viable.
Construction of the high-speed railway link will start from 2017 and will be completed in 2023, the Nikkei reported.
First Published: Dec 08, 2015 10:46 ISTGetty Images
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones says quarterback Tony Romo needs to adopt a Peyton Manning-style work ethic. But Romo’s good buddy and teammate Jason Witten says Romo already does plenty.
Asked about the Cowboys’ plans to have Romo more involved in the game planning, Witten said he has always thought Romo had a strong command of the offense.
“I’ve always felt like Tony was very involved in the process of the plays and our scheme, how we attacked,” Witten told Calvin Watkins of ESPNDallas.com. “I think in any organization where you have an elite quarterback like that, you want him to feel comfortable. I think that’s something we’ve always tried to do, and it sounds like we’re going to continue to do that.”
Witten thinks people who have linked Romo’s new six-year, $108 million contract to a need to work harder don’t realize that Witten already works hard.
“Sometimes maybe more is made of that than it is,” Witten said. “I know he understands the expectations to play that position, probably even more so now after the contract than ever before. I think that’s something he embraces and says, ‘Hey, let’s get this started.’ I think we’re all excited. But we all know at this point, our actions will speak a lot louder than anything we say or talk about.”
Whatever anyone else says about Romo, he knows he’ll always have Witten in his corner.BERLIN (Reuters) - German Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks said on Thursday higher taxes for diesel vehicles were not on the political agenda, hours after she had suggested Berlin should think about ending tax breaks on diesel cars and promoting electric ones.
German Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks gestures during the weekly cabinet meeting at the chancellery in Berlin, Germany August 12, 2015. REUTERS/Stefanie Loos
“For me, higher taxes for diesel vehicles are not on the political agenda,” Hendricks said in a statement, adding that a “demonisation of the diesel technology” would be a wrong reaction to the Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) emissions scandal.
Only a few hours earlier, Hendricks had suggested in a television interview that Berlin should think about ending tax breaks for diesel fuel and set more incentives for consumers to buy electric cars.
“That’s an idea we should consider,” Hendricks told broadcaster ZDF, adding the government could also increase taxes for cars with relatively high fuel usage.
Hendricks said in her later statement: “My comments on ZDF television’s morning programme... have led to misunderstanding.”
The French prime minister’s office said on Wednesday Paris was planning to reduce a tax break on diesel fuel.
Hendricks told ZDF Berlin was still aiming to get one million electric cars on German roads by 2020.
“But if we want to come closer to that goal, we really have to do something,” said Hendricks, a member of the Social Democrats (SPD), junior coalition partner to Chancellor Angela Merkel Christian Democrats (CDU).
Hendricks and Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel have called for a binding quota for electric cars, with Hendricks also calling for a government subsidy for buying such vehicles.
Germany’s largest carmaker Volkswagen admitted last month it had installed software in diesel vehicles to deceive U.S. regulators about the true level of their toxic emissions, leading to a backlash against diesel motors.But new multi-gig broadband platform working better than expected in early going
DENVER – The early reviews of DOCSIS 3.1 are in, with engineers with some of the top MSOs in North America reporting that the technology is performing better than expected.
But if there’s one near-term issue they are all grappling with is getting access to integrated DOCSIS 3.1-based gateways that enable the in-home network to match the speeds that are entering the home from the network and eliminating those potential bottlenecks.
The availability of DOCSIS 3.1 gateways is a “little behind” where Mediacom Communications would like it to be, JR Walden, SVP of technology and CTO of Mediacom, said here at Light Reading’s Cable Next-Gen Technologies & Strategies conference.
In fact, in-home WiFi testing is becoming a major focus for DOCSIS 3.1 rollouts, added Cyrille Morelle, president and CEO of test and measurement firm VeEX.
“Having a very powerful WiFi device is critical” for DOCSIS 3.1, agreed Damian Poltz, VP of technology strategy and networks at Shaw Communications.
Comcast is trying to address this with the XB6, a full-featured DOCSIS 3.1 gateway that will also integrate speedy WiFi, ZigBee and other connectivity technologies.
For its initial D3.1 deployments, Comcast has been pairing stand-alone modems with a separate gateway to serve “thousands of customers.”
While acknowledging that such a set-up is not ideal, Jorge Salinger, VP of access architecture at Comcast, confirmed that Comcast is building versions of the XB6 that use Broadcom and Intel chipsets. He said Comcast is completing employee trials shifting toward customer trials and on to commercial deployments, which are expected to begin in the next month or so.
RELATED: Comcast Taps Arris, Technicolor for ‘XB6’ Gateways: Sources
Vendors such as Hitron Technologies are building and developing DOCSIS 3.1-based gateways and network extenders to help bridge that gap. Hitron, said company CTO Greg Fisher, has about 30 D3.1 gateway trials underway around the world.
RELATED: Rogers Rolling Out Hitron’s DOCSIS 3.1 Gateway
Short-term gateway issues aside, MSOs are pleased with the performance they’ve seen from DOCSIS 3.1 in the early going.
DOCSIS 3.1 is working “really well” regardless of now clean the HFC plant is or the size of the node sizes that are serving customers. “It [DOCSIS 3.1] works better than 3.0 in noisy plant,” said Walden. Mediacom has already upgraded its entire HFC network to support DOCSIS 3.1 and is in the process of deploying D3.1-based broadband services.
RELATED: Mediacom Goes Big With DOCSIS 3.1
Walden said the economics of D3.1 has been a major driver for Mediacom after it analyzed assumed broadband capacity demand and how much it would cost to stay with DOCSIS 3.0 to keep up with it, or start to shift to D3.1. (DOCSIS 3.1 modems are hybrids in the sense that they can support both D3.0 and D3.1-based traffic.)
He said Mediacom expects to get better economics for all tiers of service, not just billboard 1-Gig services.
Mediacom isn’t pinpointing how many subscribers are taking the MSO’s fastest offered speed tier, but Walden offered a range that 3% to 10% of new subs are taking 1-Gig.
Salinger said DOCSIS 3.1’s ability to support multiple modulation profiles is a “significant benefit” as Comcast continues to expand its reach.
RELATED: Comcast Sets DOCSIS 3.1 Expansion, Launches 1-Gig in Detroit
“It’s in full swing of execution,” he said of that deployment. “The idea is to have gigabit service everywhere.”
Salinger also talked about the importance of an MSO having its own speed test tools to show or demonstrate that D3.1 is performing at the right levels as some subscribers don’t have in-home equipment that can support 1-Gig.Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump kept repeating a line that stuck in the Establishment’s craw like a cherry pit stuck under a denture: “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get along with Russia?” Russia and specifically Russian President Vladimir Putin are consistently portrayed in the US media as implacable enemies of the US and the West: it’s simply taken as the given. And yet, the biggest revelation in Oliver Stone’s recent four-part series of extensive interviews with Putin is how consistently and desperately Putin has tried to get along with us. In the second interview, Stone points out that, after the 9/11 attacks, Putin was “one of the first to call [George W. Bush] and offer condolences, and Putin elaborates that more than a phone call was involved:
“Yes, we had planned military exercises of our new strategic forces for the next day. And I canceled those exercises and I wanted the president of the United States to know that. Certainly I understood that heads of state and governments in such a situation need moral support.. And we wanted to demonstrate this to President Bush.”
Contrast this with the behavior of the US government when Russian cities came under attack from Chechen Islamic terrorists in the 2010 bombing of the Moscow Metro system. While there was a pro forma denunciation of the attack, the American propaganda network, “Radio Free Europe,” ran a piece entitled “In Wake of Metro Bombings, Putin’s War On Terror Is Under Fire.” The gist of the article is that Putin, not the terrorists, was responsible for the attacks. There is even a quote from Boris Nemtsov, the leader of a tiny opposition movement whose death two years ago was naturally blamed on Putin, implying that the whole thing was a “false flag” operation carried out by the authorities:
“’This happened right under the security services’ noses,’ Nemtsov said, noting that the attack at the Lubyanka metro station took place in close proximity to the headquarters of the Federal Security Service….
”Nemtsov adds that many disturbing questions remain about the attacks.
"’Nobody can explain how two female suicide bombers got to the center of Moscow. Nobody can answer how they got the explosives. Nobody can answer what the police and security services were doing to prevent this.’”
Radio Free Europe also referred to the 1999 apartment bombings that took place in Moscow and other major cities as “mysterious,” bolstering the “truther” views of fringe Russian oppositionists – including exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky – that the Russian intelligence services were behind the attacks. According to the Russian “truthers,” it was all a plot to hand total power to Putin.
Yet here is Putin telling Stone that allowing the US military access to Russian bases in Tajikistan in order to fight the Taliban was right and necessary because “We believe that this cooperation is in our national interest.” This says something important about Putin, and his conception of how Russia’s foreign policy should be run: he never allows emotions to get in the way of pursuing what he regards as his country’s interests, objectively defined. And there are plenty of emotional reasons for him to obstruct the US at every turn, for as the interview continues Stone brings up Washington’s “regime-change” operations aimed at the Kremlin, specifically CIA chief Bill Casey’s plan to utilize Islamic radicals against the Russians after the fall of Afghanistan. Putin’s reply is revealing:
“You see, the thing is, these ideas are still alive. And when those problems in the Caucasus and Chechnya emerged, unfortunately the Americans support these processes…. Even though we counted on American support. We assumed that the Cold War was over … but instead we witnessed the American intelligence services support terrorists. And even when we confirmed that, when we demonstrated that Al Qaeda fighters were fighting in the Caucasus, we still saw the intelligence services of the United States continue to support these fighters.”
Longtime readers of Antiwar.com, and of this column, may recall this piece exposing the US-based support network enjoyed by the Caucasus “rebels” via the “American Committee for Peace in Chechnya,” and the myriad connections of Metro bomber Rezvan Chitigov, a US resident with a green card, to Al Qaeda’s terrorist activities in the region.
US government support to the Chechen terrorists wasn’t just propagandistic: as Putin points out, they provided technical and logistical support, moving them around the battlefield. When Putin met with George W. Bush, he brought this up, and the then President said “I’ll sort this out.”
He never did. Instead, the CIA actually sent a letter to their Russian counterparts in response to Putin’s concerns, which said, in summary: “We support all the political forces, including the opposition forces, and we’re going to continue to do that.” So in public, the Bush administration was bloviating about the centrality of the “war on terrorism,” while they were covertly canoodling with Al Qaeda and allied forces in the Caucasus in a relentless campaign against Russia.
And the same thing is happening in Syria today, with US support to Islamist “rebels” intent on overthrowing the regime of Bashar al-Assad. “It’s a systemic mistake,” says Putin, “which is repeated always. This is the same thing which happened in Afghanistan in the 1980s. And right now it’s happening in the Middle East.”
Stone presses the Russian leader for evidence of Western support to Chechen terrorists, and Putin’s reply is that it was no secret, which it certainly was not. The British government granted asylum to Akhmed Zakayev, former “Prime Minister” of the breakaway Islamist “Chechen Republic of Icheria” – whose forces carried out the bloody Beslan attacks on Russian schoolchildren. The National Endowment for Democracy, the European Union, and the Norwegian government funded the “Russia-Chechen Friendship Society,” which published Chechen separatist propaganda. When the Kremlin moved to shut this operation down, the Western media pointed to it as evidence of Putin’s “authoritarianism,” and yet imagine if the Russians started funding, say, a Texas secessionist movement in the US. American lawmakers and officials can’t even meet with the Russian ambassador without being accused of “treason”! Our National Endowment for Democracy has honored the former “Foreign Minister” of the Chechen Isalmic “republic,” Ilyas Akhmadov, with a fellowship, and he regularly participates in NED events. Wanted on terrorism charges in Russia, he was granted asylum by the Bush administration.
Putin’s complaints about US policy are centered on three issues:
Washington’s “regime change” campaign against the Kremlin.
The US decision to unilaterally abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
The eastward expansion of NATO.
These are all interconnected, but it’s worth noting where and when they originated: during the presidency of George W. Bush – when the neoconservatives were in the drivers’ seat. And these policies continued throughout the Obama years, with the Democrats now signing on to the Hate-on-Russia campaign and escalating it beyond anything yet seen. As Putin put it to Stone, “And there’s one curious thing – the presidents of your country change, but the policy doesn’t change – I mean on principled issues.” That’s because the national security bureaucracy – what conservatives these days are referring to as the “Deep State” (without crediting Noam Chomsky!) – and not our elected officials are the ones really in charge.
While there’s some controversy surrounding the alleged promise made to the Russians that NATO would not expand if the Kremlin agreed to allow German reunification, the fact that the agreement was verbal and not enshrined on paper doesn’t obviate its significance. And there is plenty of evidence to show that there was indeed such an agreement. As Joshua Shifrinson pointed out in the Los Angeles Times:
“In early February 1990, U.S. leaders made the Soviets an offer. According to transcripts of meetings in Moscow on Feb. 9, then-Secretary of State James Baker suggested that in exchange for cooperation on Germany, US could make “iron-clad guarantees” that NATO would not expand ‘one inch eastward.’ Less than a week later, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to reunification talks.”
Yet NATO pushed eastward without interruption during the Bush years, and this process continued under his successors, until today, with Trump in the White House, tiny Montenegro is now hailed as the latest entrant into the club – a country whose borders are ill-defined, and whose combative internal politics are a constant struggle between pro-Russian and pro-Western forces. Against whom, Putin asks, is NATO protecting its members from? Who is the “enemy”? Clearly the answer is Russia, as the alliance expands to the very gates of Moscow and Western forces engage in provocative “exercises,” simulating a NATO invasion of Russian territory.
The ABM Treaty, once the cornerstone of détente, was nullified by the United States – but why? The official explanation – at least, the one given to Putin – was that the US had to build antimissile defenses against the alleged “threat” from Iran. Aside from the credibility of the contention that the Iranians were getting ready to strike Warsaw or Prague, the Iran deal, says Putin, makes this rationalization obsolete. Yet still the antimissile shield is being expanded, and the Russians are obliged to take countermeasures, lest the US gain a first strike capability.
As I pointed out in the first installment of this review, it’s fascinating to see the contrast between Stone, a committed man of the left, and Putin, who’s closer to being a paleoconservative than anything else. In reviewing the history of Russo-American relations since 1917, Stone avers that “The United States and the allies did nothing to help the Soviet Union when the Soviet Union was warning the world about the fascist threat in Spain and throughout Europe.” He goes on to echo Stalin’s complaint that the Western allies weren’t doing enough to help the Soviets, who were taking the brunt of Germany’s assault. Left out of his historical account is the fact that the Soviets were allied with Hitler’s Germany, that the Soviets and the Germans jointly invaded and divided up Poland, and that this was the genesis of the Second World War. Just a minor oversight!
Juxtapose Stone’s uncritical view of Soviet foreign policy with Putin’s perspective: the Russian leader considers the Warsaw Pact a mistake. Citing the Soviet withdrawal from Austria, a move which he see as creating an “asset,” and the agreement over the neutral status of Finland, Putin contends that Russia – if it had followed this course – would’ve been able to deal with the West “on a civilized basis. We would have been able to cooperate with them. We wouldn’t have had to spend enormous resources to support their inefficient economies.” Yes, Putin realizes what American policymakers don’t see: that empires are a burden, not an asset.
The creation of the Warsaw Pact gave the West an “excuse,” as Putin puts it, “to create NATO and launch a Cold War.” And he makes a very salient point about how and why US foreign policy went off on a dangerous tangent in the post-Soviet era:
“I think that when the United States felt they were at the forefront of the so-called civilized world and when the Soviet Union collapsed,, they were under the illusion that the United States was capable of everything and they could act with impunity. And that’s always a trap, because in this situation, a person and a country begins to commit mistakes. There is no need to analyze the situation. No need to think about the consequences. No need to economize. And the country becomes inefficient and one mistake follows another. And I think that’s the trap the United States has found itself in.”
He takes his argument further, positing that the whole society becomes infected with this unrealistic hubris, and it becomes politically necessary for the leadership to follow this irrational course to the very end.
Stone is excited by this kind of talk: he goes into a riff about how what he’d like to talk about in their next interview “is this pursuit of world domination” by the US. At which point, Putin draws back:
“Well, let’s agree on something. I know how critical you are of the United States’ policies. Please do not try to drag me into anti-Americanism.”
I had to laugh when I heard that. It underscores Putin’s view of the US, and the whole spirit of these interviews: while Putin believes that the present foreign policy of US leaders is misguided, he holds out hope that this is not a permanent condition. While Stone has this one-dimensional view of the US as the Global Villain – as if this is an inherent quality of American society, perhaps due to the nature of American capitalism – Putin sees the consequences of what calls “the logic of imperialism” as an aberration.
It’s a view with which I very much concur: American imperialism is an aberration, a radical deviation from the course set for us by the Founders of this country, and completely out of character for the overwhelming majority of the American people, who just want to live in peace.
In the first installment of this series, I said that there is plenty of real news buried in these interviews, and certainly Putin’s revelation that the Russians rejected Edward Snowden’s first contacts with the Russians, which occurred when he was in China, qualifies. Apparently a request for asylum was made, either by Snowden or his representatives, “but I said we wanted nothing to do with that,” says Putin. The Russians didn’t |
to closer Dylan Moore.
Marks, Moore, reliever Eric Carter and centerfielder Kyle Clement all were named to the All-Tournament Team, which had UL catcher Nick Thurman – who went 5-of-16 with one double, one home run, six RBI and six runs scored – as its Most Outstanding Player.
That crop of Cajuns helped No. 1-ranked UL become the first team in Sun Belt history to win three straight tourney titles.
“If anybody else can do it, hats off to them,” Thurman, who joins second baseman Stefan Trosclair from last season and shortstop Blake Trahan in 2014 as tourney MVPs from UL, said of the accomplishment. “But I think what we did was pretty special, and it’s gonna take some work to top it.”
What Marks did Sunday also was particularly special.
From the last two outs of the third inning through the first two of the sixth, the St. Thomas More product retired 10 in a row.
Marks did allow two men on with one out in the top of the first inning, but he escaped with one of his 10 strikeouts on the day and a groundout.
It helped that his slider was working.
“But I also was pitching off my fastball too,” Marks said, “which opens up the slider.”
“He got out of that jam in the first inning,” Robichaux added, “then from there he really just dominated his opponent and gave us a lot of energy.”
Even Georgia Southern coach Rodney Hennon was impressed.
"Today out (hitting) approach wasn't good," Hennon said. "Marks had lot to do with that. He did a nice job of mixing his pitches. We had a hard time laying off his breaking balls and changeup, a lot of the off-speed stuff that we chased out of the zone at times."
The first inning was when Thurman knew Marks was going to be on.
“Whenever he got out of that jam, the first jam he was in, whenever he can get out of that with his slider, and once he’s pitching off his fastball,” Thurman said, “it just opens up so much more depth and perception to that slider.
“His arm speed, his motion, is so good on that,” the Cajun catcher added, “he was able to just fool most of the hitters.”
With Marks getting out of the mini-mess in the first, UL went scoreless with Georgia Southern for four-and-a-half innings.
Cajun bats came alive in the fifth, though.
After Thurman struck out but reached on a wild pitch from Georgia Southern starter Evan Challenger, who was working after throwing 111 pitches Wednesday, then moved to second on Hunter Kasuls’ sacrifice bunt, Brian Mills broke the tie with a double that scored Thurman.
The run marked the first time in the tournament Georgia Southern, which shut out its prior two opponents, had trailed.
But UL wasn’t done, as Joe Robbins drove in Mills to make it 2-0.
After the first Georgia Southern didn’t really threaten again until the seventh, when the Cajuns escaped a first-and-third situation.
Marks got the first out, making a heady play with the throw to first when he realized he didn’t have a chance to get the lead runner.
With runners on the corners, CJ Ballard was caught trying to steal.
Thurman made the throw to Trosclair at second, and Trosclair made the tag in a rundown without the runner from third being able to score.
Marks then struck out Kent Rollins to end the half-inning with UL’s lead intact at 2-0.
“The big thing … was being able to get to DMo (Moore) with six outs,” Robichaux said.
“At that point we were up, so just getting an out was a big thing,” Thurman added with reference to the slow-developing caught-stealing play. “And Trosclair did a great job of holding onto the ball, making sure that if the guy from third did take off that he was gonna be able to get him out at home.”
The Cajuns tacked on one more run in the bottom of the seventh, when Clement’s bases-loaded sac fly scored Hunter Kasuls, and another two in the eighth, when pinch-runner Jam Williams scored on a wild pitch after Brenn Conrad originally reached with a single and Thurman added a solo homer.
UL advanced to Sunday’s title game by beating No. 8 seed Arkansas State 7-4 on Wednesday night, host No. 5 seed Texas State 4-2 on Friday and Arkansas State 17-10 again on Saturday.
The Cajuns learned also Sunday night it will host one of 16 NCAA Regional tournaments.
“What you’ve got to hope for is you’ve got to keep this going now, because this is not it for us,” Robichaux said. “This is pieces of the puzzle along the way, and the field’s gonna get salty now.”So then, we test and review the Gigabyte Force M7 THOR Gaming Mouse. We mentioned in our mouse reviews many times now, it is a very crowded place to be in the PC gaming hardware arena, especially when it comes to keyboards and mice. Whether you have 5 bucks to spend or 100 EUR, there WILL be a product matching that budget. Simple mice, small mice, mice dedicated to games, mice with multiple scanning lasers, mice with adjustable weight systems, and on and on.
A year or two maybe three ago Gigabyte launched their Keyboard and mouse series of products onto the market as well, and ever since delivers some of the hottest amongst them to you, the end user.
Their Aivia products are aimed at the gamers and more-overly are segmented in mice and keyboards for an enthusiast grade of end user. This review will come from Gigabyte's Force lineup. The more simple and affordable products. The Gigabyte Force M7 THOR Gaming Mouse as such Is a stylish 6000 DPI mouse that comes with a professional-grade laser sensor offers lightning fast 12,000 FPS image processing capability.
We stated it already, these are the more affordable budget mouses and as such a lot has been stripped away, no braided cables, no macro programmable profiles, no weight system. However the FORCE M7 THOR mouse does come in a ergonomic design, has great looks and DPI programmability.
But please a peek at the product and then let's head onwards into the review, will the 29.99 EUR price tag be worth it with regards to features and functionality? Let's find out.Boateng to City for Balotelli?
By Football Italia staff
Adriano Galliani has dropped another hint that Milan are pushing for Mario Balotelli, as reports emerge Kevin-Prince Boateng could be included in the €20m deal.
The Rossoneri Vice-President had said on Saturday that SuperMario was 99.9 per cent unlikely to arrive.
“Is it still 99.9 per cent? No, now it’s 99.5 per cent,” smiled Galliani on Milan Channel.
There are numerous reports that agent Mino Raiola has flown to Manchester in order to present Milan’s €20m offer.
Rai Sport suggest that Boateng could be included as part of the deal to swing it in the Rossoneri’s favour.
Many sources claim that Monday will be decisive in negotiations for Balotelli.
Meanwhile, previous transfer target Didier Drogba has reportedly agreed a transfer to Galatasaray, where he will play alongside Wesley Sneijder.Fine Gael Deputy David Stanton has called for summertime to be extended.
During the Topical Issues Debate, he called on the Government to raise the issue at EU level.
By not putting back the clocks an hour, Deputy Stanton said we could improve road safety, reduce crime, boost tourism and reduce obesity levels.
In response, Minister Alan Shatter said summertime begins on the last Sunday in March and ends on the last Sunday in October.
He said all EU member states begin summertime simultaneously.
Therefore, he said, we would have to convince all member states to change their time arrangements.
The minister said he had no plans at this time to change the time zone or to conduct an analysis of extending summertime.
Mr Shatter said the issue is clearly complex and it is in our interest that our time zone remains the same as Britain and Northern Ireland.
There would be some value in the matter being pursued at committee level, he added.Scottish soldiers at the Battle of Flodden Field (9 Sep 1513)
The Lancashire Bowman.
The longbow was to go out of military fashion in a blaze of glory, to achieve a victory in the old classical style so that it left a glow in the hearts of the yeoman of England, but no pangs of regret in the hearts of his enemies.
The events which led to the Scottish invasion of England in 1513 need not be recapitulated; suffice to say that King James IV of Scotland had crossed the border in mid-August of that year with, for that time, an enormous army of 40,000 men. They were well furnished with the latest artillery of the day. His leaders were all those of the highest rank in the Scottish kingdom; it may be fairly said that no grown-up member of any family of position was absent from the expedition. After some initial skirmishing, the Scots had Northumberland at their mercy; but after taking the castle of Ford, stronghold of the Heron family, James loitered in the neighbourhood whilst his army daily grew less in numbers. Said to have been infatuated by the captured Lady Heron, King James appeared to be regardless of the increasing desertions of those gorged with plunder in addition to those starved through the land being foraged-out. Finally, his army numbered less than 30,000, but those that were left represented the cream of the whole and were claimed to have been one of the noblest bodies of fighting men ever gathered together. To back them, James had a most efficient train of thirty pieces of artillery which had been cast for him at Edinburgh by the master gunner, Robert Borthwick.
Against the Scots was sent the veteran Earl of Surrey, over seventy years of age, and forced, on account of his rheumatism, to travel mostly by coach. Chiefly from the northern counties, he hastily gathered together an army of between 20,000 and 26,000 men. Whilst encamped at Alnwick, Surrey sent a formal challenge to King James, naming Friday, 9th September, as the day of battle; the challenge was duly accepted in the most formal manner. At the time of acceptance, James was encamped in the low ground and, according to the old rules of chivalry, his acceptance from this spot implied that he would give battle on that site. But before long James had moved his camp from there to Flodden Hill, an eminence lying due south of Ford Castle, running east and west in a low ridge. Here, on the steep brow of Flodden Edge, in the angle between the Till and its small tributary, the Glen, James’s defensive position was so strong that no sane foe would dare to attack it.
Realising this, Surrey sent James a letter of reproach in which he pointed out that the arrangement had been made for a pitched battle, and instead James had installed himself in a fortified camp. He concluded by challenging him to come down on the appointed day and fight on Millfield Plain, a level tract south of Flodden Hill. King James refused even to see the herald who brought the message.
Surrey then marched his army up the river Till; put his vanguard with the artillery and heavy baggage across at the Twizel bridge, whilst the remainder of his force crossed at Sandyford, half a mile higher up. Now was presented to James an excellent opportunity of attacking the English whilst they were split into two parts. By failing to grasp it, James now found his foes placed between himself and Scotland; he was left with little alternative but to reverse his order of battle. Setting fire to the rude huts that his men had constructed on the summit of the hill, he moved his force on to Branxton Hill, immediately behind Flodden Edge; the movement was partially obscured from the English by the clouds of smoke that trailed over the brow of the hill. As they formed up on the ridge above Branxton, the Scottish army that had faced south were now drawn up facing north.
The two armies faced each other, both formed into four divisions and both with a reserve. Beginning on the English right, the first division was commanded by Sir Edmund Howard, the younger son of the Earl of Surrey; opposed to him were the Gordons under the Earl of Huntley and the men of the border under the Earl of Home. The second English division was led by Admiral Howard, who was faced by the Earls of Crawford and Montrose. The Earl of Surrey, with the third division, was opposed by King James himself; while Sir Edward Stanley, with the fourth division, had to try conclusions with the Earls of Lennox and Argyle, whose troops were mainly highlanders. The English reserve, mainly cavalry, was commanded by Lord Dacre; that of the Scottish under Bothwell.
It was not until four o’clock that the battle commenced. Then, as an old chronicler says: ‘Out burst the ordnance with fire, flame and a hideous noise….’ The Scottish artillery was far superior in construction to the English, which was constructed of hoops and bars, whilst the Scots master gunner had cast his weapons; there were, however, more English guns. It seems as though the English gunners were superior to those serving the Scottish cannon, the latter committing the error of firing at too great an elevation so that their shots passed over the heads of the English and buried themselves in the marshy ground beyond. The old writer goes on to say: ‘… and the master gunner of the English slew the master gunner of the Scots, and beat all his men from their guns.’ The early death of Borthwick, brought down by a ball, set up a panic in his men, who ran from their guns – but it was not by artillery fire that Flodden was to be won or lost. James realised this fact and ordered an attack; the border troops of the Lords Huntley and Home appear to have been the first to come to close quarters with the English.
In an unusual silence the Scots rushed forward, their twelve-foot-long pikes levelled in front of them; the initial impetus of their onslaught carried them far into the English lines, so that at first they achieved absolute success. The English right, under Sir Edmund Howard, was thrust back, their leader thrice beaten down and his banner overturned. The English fighting line was in disorder on this flank. Some Cheshire archers, who had been separated from their corps and sent out to strengthen the right wing, fled in all directions and chaos came to Howard’s wing. John Heron, usually known as the Bastard Heron, at the head of a group of Northumbrians, checked the rout long enough for Dacre to charge down with his reserve. This committing of the reserve at such an early stage did not succeed in restoring the English line, but it did put Huntley to flight, whilst the undisciplined borderers of Home had no further idea of fighting. In a border foray, no more was expected after routing one’s opponents; Home’s men did not grasp that Flodden was no ordinary foray – ’We have fought and won, let the rest do their part as well as we!’ was their answer to those trying to rally them.
Whilst this was going on, Crawford and Montrose were furiously attacking the division of Admiral Howard; so much so that the Admiral sent to his father, the Earl of Surrey, for assistance. But Surrey was fully occupied in holding his own against the division commanded by King James, strengthened by Bothwell, who had brought up the reserve and flung them into the struggle. The battle was now at its height and was being hardly contested all along the line; it seemed, here and there, as though the English halberds were proving more deadly weapons at close quarters than the long Scottish pikes.
On the English left, the archers of Cheshire and Lancashire, under Sir William Molyneaux and Sir Henry Kickley, were pouring volleys of arrows into the tightly packed ranks of the Scottish right, highlanders under the Earls of Lennox and Argyle. Galled by the hail of shafts which spitted their unarmoured bodies, the wild clansmen finally found it to be more than they could bear. Casting aside their targets and uttering wild, fierce yells, they flung themselves forward in a headlong rush, claymore and pole-axe waving furiously in a frenzy of anxiety to bury themselves into English flesh and bone. The bowmen and pikemen were shaken, so tremendous was the initial shock, their bills and swords, which had replaced the bows, reeling and wavering under the onslaught; but discipline prevailed and their formation remained unbroken. The archers on the flanks of the mêlée stood back and poured in volley after volley at close quarters, while the inner line of pikemen and men-at-arms held off the wild highlanders. Their arrows gone, the archers threw down their bows, drew their swords and axes to fling themselves into the fray, both in front and on the flanks. It was a deadly struggle whilst it lasted, but gradually the clansmen gave way, fighting at first, but then, suddenly, in complete rout – both earls died trying to stem the tide.
Stanley pressed forward, won his way up and crowned the ridge. He did not make the error of pursuing from the field the thoroughly broken Scots whom his men had just beaten. Facing about, he charged obliquely downhill to take the Scots divisions of King James and Bothwell in flank. This struggle in the centre, between Surrey and King James, had been proceeding fiercely; the King was fighting on foot like the rest of his division, conspicuous by the richness of his arms and armour. Stanley’s flank attack, coinciding with a similar attack on the other flank by Dacre and Edmund Howard, proved disastrous to the Scots. Hemmed in on all sides, they began to fall by hundreds in the close and deadly mêlée; no quarter was asked by either side and none was given. The blood flowing from the dreadful gashes inflicted by axes, bills and two-handed swords made the ground so slippery that many of the combatants were said to have taken off their boots to gain a surer footing.
As a battle, all was over by now and nothing remained but the slaughter. Surrounded by a solid ring of his knights, James refused to yield until he finally fell, dying with the knights who had formed a human shield around him. He was said to have been mortally wounded by a ball fired by an unknown hand; he had several arrows in his body, a gash in his neck and his left hand was almost severed from his arm. Ten thousand men fell on the Scottish side; to list the slain is almost to catalogue the ancient Scottish nobility. With the exception of the heads of families who were too old or too young to fight, there was hardly a family of top rank that did not grievously suffer. The English lost about 5,000 men.
On the Scots side, the archers of Ettrick, known in Scotland as the ‘Flowers of the Forest’, perished almost to a man. To this day the sweet, sad, wailing air known by that name is invariably the Dead March used by Scottish regiments.
AdvertisementsRep. Mo Brooks (R., Ala.) — who finished third in last week’s Senate vote between establishment favorite Sen. Luther Strange (R., Ala.) and conservative firebrand and former state Supreme Court justice Roy Moore — said Steve Bannon’s West Wing departure and President Trump’s endorsement of Sen. Strange is a sign that the establishment swamp has seized control of the White House.
“Have I made a decision? No, I have not,” Brooks told the Washington Post regarding who he would back in Alabama for a Sept. 26 primary runoff. “But it looks like the establishment and Washington swamp have taken control of the White House with Bannon’s departure and with Luther Strange.”
In the wake of former chief strategist Steve Bannon’s departure from the White House, political turbulence between establishment Republicans and economic nationalists will only intensify according to the Washington Post.
Upon resigning as President Donald Trump’s chief strategist — and returning to serve as Breitbart News executive chairman — Bannon told the Post that “no administration in history has been so divided among itself about the direction about where it should go.”
In his time in the West Wing, Bannon had reportedly helped persuade President Trump to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords and make Israel the first stop on his first trip abroad — both wins for the conservative base, in which Bannon, as Trump campaign CEO, helped galvanize to boost the billionaire to victory over Hillary Clinton.
But Bannon warned that there’s a deep divide within the White House that’s similar to the political split throughout the country.
“The tensions in the White House are slightly different than the tensions in the country. It’s still a divided country. Fifty percent of the people did not support President Trump. Most of those people do not support his policies in any way, shape or form,” he told the Post.
To be sure, at least according to one Republican said to be close to the White House, Bannon’s exit has raised spirits of Trump’s staffers because there’s less “tension” in the West Wing.
“I think it raises the morale of staffers and brings more of a sense of normalcy to the White House on a day-to-day basis,” a Republican strategist told the outlet. “You don’t have such an unorthodox staffer breathing down people’s necks and creating tension every day.”
“What it does not do is remove the person who’s creating the most drama in the White House, and that’s Donald Trump,” the strategist continued. “He’s going to continue to do what he’s going to do.”
What’s more, Bannon’s White House departure comes a month before Congress returns to face a full legislative slate that doesn’t necessarily prioritize President Trump’s desire to sign a tax reform bill, a border wall funding plan, and a healthcare act that guts Obamacare.
While Trump needs both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R., Wis.) support to pass the aforementioned parts of his agenda, the president has grown sour on both men in recent weeks.
Trump ripped McConnell earlier this month for failing to pass an Obamacare repeal.
“Mitch, get back to work and put Repeal & Replace, Tax Reform & Cuts and a great Infrastructure Bill on my desk for signing,” Trump wrote on Twitter.
Mitch, get back to work and put Repeal & Replace, Tax Reform & Cuts and a great Infrastructure Bill on my desk for signing. You can do it! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 10, 2017
Meanwhile, getting back to work is what Bannon says he intends to do.
“If there’s any confusion out there, let me clear it up: I’m leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents — on Capitol Hill, in the media, and in corporate America,” Bannon told Bloomberg News on Friday.
A day later, President Trump thanked Bannon for his service and endorsed his former strategist in giving “fake news” some much needed “compassion.”
“I want to thank Steve Bannon for his service. He came to the campaign during my run against Crooked Hillary Clinton – it was great! Thanks S,” Trump wrote on Twitter Saturday. He later tweeted: “Steve Bannon will be a tough and smart new voice at @BreitbartNews…maybe even better than ever before. Fake News needs the competition!”
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudsonAs David Rohde reported in The Times today, Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, speaking on Pakistani television about his decision to suspend his country’s Constitution, compared himself to Abraham Lincoln.
The general, dressed in civilian clothes, quoted from Abraham Lincoln and cited the former president’s suspension of some rights during the American Civil War as justification for his own state of emergency.
Speaking in English, General Musharraf began his discussion of Lincoln as follows:
“I would at this time venture to read out an excerpt of President Abraham Lincoln, specially to all my listeners in the United States. As an idealist, Abraham Lincoln had one consuming passion during that time of crisis, and this was to preserve the Union… towards that end, he broke laws, he violated the Constitution, he usurped arbitrary power, he trampled individual liberties. His justification was necessity and explaining his sweeping violation of Constitutional limits he wrote in a letter in 1864, and I quote, ‘My oath to preserve the Constitution imposed on me the duty of preserving by every indispensable means that government, that Nation of which the Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the Nation and yet preserve the Constitution?'”
Below is video, posted on YouTube, of this part of Gen. Musharraf’s address. The full text of Abraham Lincoln’s famous letter — in which he also wrote “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong” — is posted on the Library of Congress Web site, in Lincoln’s own handwriting, here, here and here.Image: YouTube. Composition: Author
A few things are instantly recognizable as being quintessential Star Trek: Brightly-coloured jumpsuits, the Starship Enterprise gliding through space, and dubious alien makeup all come to mind. Another of the franchise's hallmarks is a little more subtle, and maybe even obscure at first. But when you see it, it's every bit as Star Trek as luxury space communism. It's an awkward, two-handed punch.
The punch is the opening salvo of a scuffle in Star Trek: The Original Series that's known online as the "worst fight scene ever." Captain Kirk and an alien called Gorn circle each other and wrestle in slow-motion. It's a bit like watching paint dry, but it's also charmingly hokey. The move that starts the battle sets the campy tone: Kirk clasps his fists together and swings with both arms, hitting Gorn with the (I guess) mega-punch. It is ineffective. Kirk himself appears to be thrown off-balance by the effort. And, as legions of Star Trek fans have noted on the internet over the years, it looks rather silly.
Maybe the move looked cool in 1967, when the episode first aired. After all, the airwaves at the time were filled with homelier fare like The Andy Griffith Show and Bonanza. The punch continued to make appearances in later Star Trek entries: It's featured in the 1980s TV series The Next Generation, and throughout the 90s in Deep Space Nine. Its resilience has led to a ton of speculation among fans: Is the punch somehow an official element of Star Trek's mythos? It doesn't look threatening at all, so there must be some other reason that explains why it's so prominent.
"The punch takes away everything about a punch that makes it dangerous," Corey Erdman, a boxing analyst who hosts The Breakdown podcast on Showtime Sports, said over the phone. "By clasping your hands together, you're taking away your own torque and hip mobility. If you punch with one hand, you can have full force. If you clasp your hands together, it's going to be painfully slow."
According to Erdman, the "double ax-handle," as the move is known, was prominent in early professional wrestling. It eventually fell out of fashion because it "looks ridiculous, even in the completely fantastical world of professional wrestling," he said.
To find out why and how the punch became a long-running aspect of Star Trek, I reached out to stunt performers who worked on various entries of the franchise. Eventually, I found Dennis Madalone.
Madalone is an industry veteran who coordinated stunts for nearly 400 Star Trek episodes spanning The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. Recently, he coordinated stunts for the ABC series Castle. Madalone might be familiar to you even if you've never watched Star Trek. In 2002 he released a song dedicated to the 9/11 victims called "America We Stand As One." The saccharine music video became a viral hit and was branded the "scariest music video" in the press. Clearly, Madalone and his creations have a knack for being memorable, if not exactly chic.
When I called Madalone in California, he was candid about Star Trek but less so about himself. He's "40-ish," he said, because he "doesn't count the Earth years." The Internet Movie Database says he was born in September of 1960, which would make him nearly 57.
Madalone on the 'Star Trek' set with his wife Linda. Photo: Dennis Madalone
The way Madalone tells it, there was very little oversight from the higher-ups on set regarding how fights should look. It was up to him. (This likely precludes the notion that there's some thought-through, in-universe explanation for the move.) Madalone was simply after something that looked uniquely Star Trek. He had a green light to do what he wanted, and he wanted to make the show's action look "futuristic," he said.
"When you're doing something in the future, you can't show the old cowboy punches," Madalone said, referring to the fighting style on Western TV shows. You know the move: The good guy leans back, winds up one arm, and lands a righteous haymaker. In contrast, Madalone said, "the double-hit looked modern, futuristic, and not barbaric."
That's not to say that Madalone is claiming to have invented the double ax-handle on television. He had inspiration, including the original 60s Star Trek series and Westerns. In other words, it's a relic of old-timey TV.
"It was something I saw as a kid—when I saw Kirk fighting back then, that was the one move that stuck in my mind," Madalone said. He saw the move on the 1960s TV show The Wild Wild West, he said. "That was a move that looked more realistic [for Star Trek] than the old cowboy punches, because those didn't work for me in any futuristic context." The punch looked like it could be from the past, he said, or from the future.
There was a logic to the move's deployment on the show, if a subconscious one. A careful viewer may note that the ax-handle is often used to take out more powerful enemies. Kirk used it against the towering Gorn. Twenty years later in TNG, a young Captain Picard deployed it against a much larger alien. Major Kira from Deep Space Nine often used it against an alien race called the Cardassians, who are much stronger than humans.
Madalone said that at the time he didn't necessarily think of the move as allowing small characters to take out bigger ones, but in retrospect it may have been used that way. In the more recent Castle, Madalone said he got the character Kate Beckett to use it in order to incapacitate physically larger opponents.
Regardless, Madalone said he's under no illusions that the move would ever work in real life. "I don't think it's realistic at all, or that anyone would be in a fight and double-hit anybody," he said. "It's not a real thing, but it looks real in movies and TV. It's a cool move to see and watch."
Clearly, not everyone agrees with Madalone on that last point, including many Star Trek fans who are frankly baffled by the punch's long-running legacy. But in terms of creating something that's now considered unique to the show's universe, something that feels out of time (if a bit confusing), there's no doubt he succeeded.
Get six of our favorite Motherboard stories every day by signing up for our newsletter.The Complete Clinton Calendar Four Years of Presidential misdoings, missteps and mistakes Complete Clinton Scandals Chronology Day by day, scandal by scandal, flip-flop by flip-flop... why three years seems like a lifetime 1960's The Clintons' association with the McDougals begins when Bill Clinton and Jim McDougal work together on the staff of then-U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright (D-Ark.) Before going to work for Fulbright, McDougal also had previously worked during the early 1960's for Senator John L. McClellan, on the Rackets Committee ---------------------------------------------------------- 1974 Bill Clinton is recruited to serve on the special staff being assembled by John Doar and attached to the House Judiciary Committee (not the regular committee staff) to handle the Nixon impeachment inquiry. He declines, and tells them to hire his girlfriend, Hillary Rodham, instead. Or at least that is the most logical deduction. On the staff Hillary engages in some unethical behavior, lying to the permanent committee staff. Hillary tells everybody close to her that she expects Bill Clinton to be President one day and promises Bernard Nussbaum that when that happens, he will be named White House counsel. He does not the offer seriously. Hillary is very close to John Doar and one weekend, while visiting Arkansas, gets called back to come to Washington, (possibly in order to make a false transcript of one of the tapes? It may be that she writes the words "I want you all to stonewall it. My thoughts. The tapes are never publicly aired so no one notices this, although they can be listened to without stopping) Bill Clinton's kindergarten friend, Thomas F. "Mack" McLarty, becomes the chairman of the Arkansas Democratic Party.A t the Washington Examiner, the shrewd political columnist Byron York points out that the Democratic field for the 2016 presidential race is more than a little gray around the gills:
There are five Democrats who have either declared or are thinking about running for president. Three — Joe Biden, Bernard Sanders, and Jim Webb — will be over 70 years old on Inauguration Day 2017. Frontrunner Hillary Clinton will be nine months short of 70. Only Martin O'Malley, who will turn 54 a couple of days before the 2017 swearing-in, has not reached retirement age already.
What explains this last wheeze of the Boomers? York lets an anonymouse do the talking:
"It's the snuffing out of young talent by the strength and size and sheer velocity of the inevitable nominee," says a well-connected Democratic strategist. "The Clintons took all the air out of the collective Democratic room. There are a lot of people who would be running who are much younger, but they've got their future in front of them, and they don't want the Clintons to ruin it, in this campaign or after this campaign. So they're waiting for a moment when there is enough oxygen to run." "If Hillary Clinton weren't running, we'd have a field that looks like the Republican field — young and vibrant and diverse."
That first paragraph rings true (it certaintly seems hazardous to a Democrat's future to stand in the way of the Clinton juggernaut), but the second sounds like wishful thinking. One key reason why there aren't any attractive young Democratic candidates running is that there aren’t many attractive young Democrats to choose from.
Don't believe me? Consider the ballyhooed young talent the party trotted out at the 2012 Democratic National Convention: Laughably dishonest campaign hack Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Shultz (D-Florida). Failed ex-Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Banal San Antonio mayor-turned Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, whose keynote speech at the convention contained such calorie-free bromides as "We have to come together and invest in opportunity today for prosperity tomorrow."
Such goo-goo '70s-style economic liberalism (with its policy repudiation of 1990s-style Bill Clinton Third Way economics) is what sells within the party establishment, even if the American public has been stubbornly resistant to any salesman not named Barack Obama. (Consider how much of the Democratic talent pool has simply been run out of Congress and various statehouses in 2010 and 2014.) Meanwhile, what gets hearts racing among the progressive base is not the occasional libertarianism of unorthodox young'uns like Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) and Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-Texas), but rather the explicit class warfare of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, and failed Chicago mayoral candidate Chuy Garcia.
If there was to be a Tea Party-style wave of contested Democratic primaries (and there won't be any time soon), it would likely not be on the issues of drug policy or surveillance (alas!), but rather income inequality, Robin Hood taxes, and jacking up the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Progressives who think those are winning national issues may want to reflect that the only likely 2016 candidate to fully embrace them will be a geriatric socialist from Vermont.
So the base is trying desperately to foist the Blue State model onto recalcitrant Red State America; the party establishment is coughing up deeply unlovable dynastic schemers like Hillary Clinton and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and meanwhile the Clinton machine is neutralizing potential challengers by God knows what means. I know it's fashionable among some to bemoan the "clown show" of the 2016 Republican presidential field, but at least there's an actual contest there, and a detectable pulse.“They hit me — and they kept hitting me,” said 15-year-old Palestinian American Tariq Abu Khdeir of Israeli police, who beat him during a protest at the home of his slain cousin Mohammed Abu Khdeir.
Tariq Abu Khdeir spoke about his experience in a video published by Addameer after he was released from Israeli custody on Sunday afternoon. He said that he was a mere bystander and not a participant in the July 3 protest, despite various reports in the Israeli media claiming that he resisted arrest, attacked policemen and carried a slingshot or a knife.
“I was standing and watching the group of people,” he said. “They came from the side of me and grabbed me.”
He lost consciousness and woke up in Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, where he was held under police guard. Asked if he was treated well while in Israeli custody after the beating, he said yes.
Tariq Abu Khdeir, a high school sophomore from Tampa, Fla. who was visiting his Palestinian relatives in the Shuafat neighborhood of Jerusalem for the first time in over a decade, has not been charged with a crime. An Israeli judge released him from jail and placed him under house arrest. His lawyer said he would be restricted to a relative’s home for nine days.
This story "VIDEO: American Cousin of 'Revenge' Victim Speaks Out After Beating" was written by Sigal Samuel.Fifty years ago this Tuesday, Martin Luther King delivered his “Beyond Vietnam” speech. USA Today recently noted: “On April 4, from the altar of Riverside Church in New York, King condemned the war. He did so against the wishes of his advisers |
Iranologists writing in 1968, the numerous Iranian personal names in Greek inscriptions from the Black Sea coast indicated that the Sarmatians spoke a North-Eastern Iranian dialect ancestral to Alanian-Ossetian.[22] However, Harmatta (1970) argued that "the language of the Sarmatians or that of the Alans as a whole cannot be simply regarded as being Old Ossetian".
Genetics [ edit ]
In a study conducted in 2014 by Gennady Afanasiev et al. on bone fragments from ten Alanic burials on the Don River, DNA was extracted from seven.[clarification needed][23]
In 2015, the Institute of Archaeology in Moscow conducted research on various Sarmato-Alan and Saltovo-Mayaki culture Kurgan burials. In these analyses, the two Alan samples from the 4th to 6th century AD turned out to belong to yDNA haplogroups G2a-P15 and R1a-z94, while two of the three Sarmatian samples from the 2nd to 3rd century AD were found to belong to yDNA haplogroup J1-M267 while one belonged to R1a.[24] Three Saltovo-Mayaki samples from the 8th to 9th century AD turned out to have yDNA corresponding to haplogroups G, J2a-M410 and R1a-z94.[25][clarification needed]
Appearance [ edit ]
Like the Scythians, Sarmatians were of a Caucasoid appearance. Sarmatian noblemen often reached 1.70–1.80 m (5 ft 7 in–5 ft 11 in) as measured from skeletons. They had sturdy bones, long hair and beards.[citation needed]
In the late 2nd or early 3rd century AD, the Greek physician Galen declared that Sarmatians, Scythians and other northern peoples had reddish hair. They are said to owe their name (Sarmatae) to it.[27]
The Alans were a group of Sarmatian tribes, according to the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus. He wrote, "Nearly all the Alani are men of great stature and beauty, their hair is somewhat yellow, their eyes are frighteningly fierce".
Greco-Roman ethnography [ edit ]
Herodotus (Histories 4.21) in the 5th century BC placed the land of the Sarmatians east of the Tanais, beginning at the corner of the Maeotian Lake, stretching northwards for fifteen days' journey, adjacent to the forested land of the Budinoi.
Herodotus (4.110–117) recounts that the Sauromatians arose from marriages of a group of Amazons and young Scythian men. In the story, some Amazons were captured in battle by Greeks in Pontus (northern Turkey) near the river Thermodon, and the captives were loaded into three boats. They overcame their captors while at sea, but were not able sailors. Their ships were blown north to the Maeotian Lake (the Sea of Azov) onto the shore of Scythia near the cliff region (today's southeastern Crimea). After encountering the Scythians and learning the Scythian language, they agreed to marry Scythian men, but only on the condition that they move away and not be required to follow the customs of Scythian women. According to Herodotus, the descendants of this band settled toward the northeast beyond the Tanais (Don) river and became the Sauromatians. Herodotus' account explains the origins of their language as an "impure" form of Scythian. He credits the unusual social freedoms of Sauromatae women, including participation in warfare, as an inheritance from their Amazon ancestors. Later writers refer to the "woman-ruled Sarmatae" (γυναικοκρατούμενοι).[28]
Herodotus (4.118–144) later relates how the Sauromatians answered the Scythian call for help against the Persian King Darius I, to repel his campaign in Scythia, along with the Gelonians and the Boudinians. The Persians invaded much of the Sauromatian territory, but were eventually forced to withdraw due the tribespeoples' tactics of delay and use of a scorched earth policy.[29]
Hippocrates[30] explicitly classes them as Scythian and describes their warlike women and their customs:
Their women, so long as they are virgins, ride, shoot, throw the javelin while mounted, and fight with their enemies. They do not lay aside their virginity until they have killed three of their enemies, and they do not marry before they have performed the traditional sacred rites. A woman who takes to herself a husband no longer rides, unless she is compelled to do so by a general expedition. They have no right breast; for while they are yet babies their mothers make red-hot a bronze instrument constructed for this very purpose and apply it to the right breast and cauterize it, so that its growth is arrested, and all its strength and bulk are diverted to the right shoulder and right arm.
Polybius (XXV, 1) mentions them for the first time as a force to be reckoned with in 179 B.C.[16]
Strabo[31] mentions the Sarmatians in a number of places, but never says much about them. He uses both the terms of Sarmatai and Sauromatai, but never together, and never suggesting that they are different peoples. He often pairs Sarmatians and Scythians in reference to a series of ethnic names, never stating which is which, as though Sarmatian or Scythian could apply equally to them all.[32]
Strabo wrote that the Sarmatians extend from above the Danube eastward to the Volga, and from north of the Dnieper River into the Caucasus, where, he says, they are called Caucasii like everyone else there. This statement indicates that the Alans already had a home in the Caucasus, without waiting for the Huns to push them there.
Even more significantly, he points to a Celtic admixture in the region of the Basternae, who, he said, were of Germanic origin. The Celtic Boii, Scordisci and Taurisci are there. A fourth ethnic element interacting and intermarrying are the Thracians (7.3.2). Moreover, the peoples toward the north are Keltoskythai, "Celtic Scythians" (11.6.2).
Strabo portrays the peoples of the region as being nomadic, or Hamaksoikoi, "wagon-dwellers", and Galaktophagoi, "milk-eaters". This latter likely referred to the universal koumiss eaten in historical times. The wagons were used for transporting tents made of felt, a type of the yurts used universally by Asian nomads.
Pliny the Elder writes (4.12.79–81):
From this point (the mouth of the Danube) all the races in general are Scythian, though various sections have occupied the lands adjacent to the coast, in one place the Getae... at another the Sarmatae... Agrippa describes the whole of this area from the Danube to the sea... as far as the river Vistula in the direction of the Sarmatian desert... The name of the Scythians has spread in every direction, as far as the Sarmatae and the Germans, but this old designation has not continued for any except the most outlying sections...
According to Pliny, Scythian rule once extended as far as Germany. Jordanes supports this hypothesis by telling us on the one hand that he was familiar with the Geography of Ptolemy, which includes the entire Balto-Slavic territory in Sarmatia,[citation needed] and on the other that this same region was Scythia. By "Sarmatia", Jordanes means only the Aryan territory. The Sarmatians were, therefore, a sub-group of the broader Scythian peoples.
Tacitus' De Origine et situ Germanorum speaks of "mutual fear" between Germanic peoples and Sarmatians:
All Germania is divided from Gaul, Raetia, and Pannonia by the Rhine and Danube rivers; from the Sarmatians and the Dacians by shared fear and mountains. The Ocean laps the rest, embracing wide bays and enormous stretches of islands. Just recently, we learned about certain tribes and kings, whom war brought to light.[33]
According to Tacitus, like the Persians, the Sarmatians wore long, flowing robes (ch 17). Moreover, the Sarmatians exacted tribute from the Cotini and Osi, and iron from the Cotini (ch. 43), "to their shame" (presumably because they could have used the iron to arm themselves and resist).
By the 3rd century BC, the Sarmatian name appears to have supplanted the Scythian in the plains of what is now south Ukraine. The geographer, Ptolemy,[citation needed] reports them at what must be their maximum extent, divided into adjoining European and central Asian sections. Considering the overlap of tribal names between the Scythians and the Sarmatians, no new displacements probably took place. The people were the same Indo-Europeans, but were referred to under yet another name.
Later, Pausanias, viewing votive offerings near the Athenian Acropolis in the 2nd century AD,[34] found among them a Sauromic breastplate.
On seeing this a man will say that no less than Greeks are foreigners skilled in the arts: for the Sauromatae have no iron, neither mined by themselves nor yet imported. They have, in fact, no dealings at all with the foreigners around them. To meet this deficiency they have contrived inventions. In place of iron they use bone for their spear-blades and cornel wood for their bows and arrows, with bone points for the arrows. They throw a lasso round any enemy they meet, and then turning round their horses upset the enemy caught in the lasso. Their breastplates they make in the following fashion. Each man keeps many mares, since the land is not divided into private allotments, nor does it bear any thing except wild trees, as the people are nomads. These mares they not only use for war, but also sacrifice them to the local gods and eat them for food. Their hoofs they collect, clean, split, and make from them as it were python scales. Whoever has never seen a python must at least have seen a pine-cone still green. He will not be mistaken if he liken the product from the hoof to the segments that are seen on the pine-cone. These pieces they bore and stitch together with the sinews of horses and oxen, and then use them as breastplates that are as handsome and strong as those of the Greeks. For they can withstand blows of missiles and those struck in close combat.
Pausanias' description is well borne out in a relief from Tanais.[citation needed] These facts are not necessarily incompatible with Tacitus, as the western Sarmatians might have kept their iron to themselves, its having been a scarce commodity on the plains.
In the late 4th century, Ammianus Marcellinus[35] describes a severe defeat which Sarmatian raiders inflicted upon Roman forces in the province of Valeria in Pannonia in late AD 374. The Sarmatians almost destroyed two legions: one recruited from Moesia and one from Pannonia. The latter had been sent to intercept a party of Sarmatians which had been in pursuit of a senior Roman officer named Aequitius. The two legions failed to coordinate, allowing the Sarmatians to catch them unprepared.
Decline in the 4th century [ edit ]
The Sarmatians remained dominant until the Gothic ascendancy in the Black Sea area, Oium. Goths attacked Sarmatian tribes on the north of the Danube in Dacia, in what is today Romania. Roman Emperor Constantine I called his son Constantine II up from Gallia to run a campaign north of the Danube. In very cold weather, the Romans were victorious, killing 100,000 Goths and capturing Ariaricus the son of the Goth king. In their efforts to halt the Gothic expansion and replace it with their own on the north of Lower Danube (present-day Romania), the Sarmatians armed their'servants' Limigantes. After the Roman victory, however, the local population revolted against their Sarmatian masters, pushing them beyond the Roman border. Constantine, on whom the Sarmatians had called for help, defeated Limigantes, and moved the Sarmatian population back in. In the Roman provinces, Sarmatian combatants were enlisted in the Roman army, whilst the rest of the population was distributed throughout Thrace, Macedonia and Italy. The Origo Constantini mentions 300,000 refugees resulting from this conflict. The emperor Constantine was subsequently attributed the title of Sarmaticus Maximus.[36]
In the 4th and 5th centuries, the Huns expanded and conquered both the Sarmatians and the Germanic Tribes living between the Black Sea and the borders of the Roman Empire. From bases in modern-day Hungary, the Huns ruled the entire former Sarmatian territory. Their various constituents flourished under Hunnish rule, fought for the Huns against a combination of Roman and Germanic troops, and went their own ways after the Battle of Chalons, the death of Attila and the appearance of the Bulgar ruling elements west of the Volga- current Russian territory.
The Sarmatians were eventually decisively assimilated (e.g. Slavicisation) and absorbed by the Proto-Slavic population of Eastern Europe around the Early Medieval Age.[38] A related people to the Sarmatians known as the Alans survived in the North Caucasus into the Early Middle Ages, ultimately giving rise to the modern Ossetic ethnic group.[39]
Legacy [ edit ]
Sarmatia Asiatica and Europea [ edit ]
Sarmatia Europea in map of Scythia, 1697
Maciej Miechowita (1457–1523) used "Sarmatia" for the Black Sea region and further divided it into Sarmatia Europea, which included East Central Europe, and Sarmatia Asiatica.[40] Following him, cartographers created several maps of these regions. In the 19th century several authors tried to locate their extent.
In the Funeral Oration for the Burial of Charles XI of Sweden, [41] composed in Church Slavonic language and published in Latin script in 1697, the Sauromations were mentioned among other peoples who lamented the king’s decease in the following context:
Placzewnaja Recz: Funeral Oration for the Burial of Charles XI of Sweden. 1697. p. 4
“Also under such a humble as well as such an eloquent vicar of God, having put aside their barbarian mores, once unwise and gnashing Sauromatian people, in a voice although sorrowful but rather favourable, feel pity for (as befits) this unripe demise.”
Cyrillic transliteration: Тҍмже под смиренным тако, и тако благо-речливым Бога наместником, варварския отложивше нравы, неразумный нҍкогда и скрежещущий савроматский народ, и гласом хотя плачевным, паче благоприятным недозрелаго ради (яко подобице) сего преставления жалеет. (Placzewnaja Recz, p. 4, lines 12-16)
Sarmatism [ edit ]
Sarmatism (or Sarmatianism) is an ethno-cultural concept with a shade of politics designating the formation of an idea of Poland's origin from Sarmatians within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.[42] The dominant Baroque culture and ideology of the nobility (szlachta) that existed in times of the Renaissance to the 18th centuries.[42] Together with another concept of "Golden Liberty", it formed a central aspect of the Commonwealth's culture and society. At its core was the unifying belief that the people of the Polish Commonwealth descended from the ancient Iranic Sarmatians, the legendary invaders of Slavic lands in antiquity.[43][44]
Tribes [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]Citing public criticism and a need to focus on “our key priorities,” Canada’s top border enforcement official last fall recommended that his agency end participation in a popular-but-controversial reality/documentary TV series that follows the day-to-day lives of officers, newly released records show.
But Luc Portelance, president of the Canada Border Services Agency, either had a change of heart or was overruled by federal Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney because filming is now underway for a third season of Border Security: Canada’s Front Line, one of the most popular shows on the National Geographic Channel.
Critics, who have complained that the show is exploitative and tramples on the privacy rights of citizens, said Wednesday the reversal demands explanation.
“If the CBSA itself recommended dropping the show because it was not directly linked to CBSA’s priorities, then which priorities does this reality show serve?” asked Josh Paterson, executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. “What new information caused the CBSA to change its view? Who ultimately made this call?”
Esme Bailey, a spokeswoman for CBSA, said Wednesday that “after thorough internal discussion, it was subsequently concluded that the benefits of the series warranted continued participation.”
Viewers get a better understanding of the agency’s mandate and get to “witness the professionalism with which the agency performs every day,” she said.
Jason Tamming, a spokesman for Mr. Blaney, confirmed that the minister approved filming for a third season, and noted that the series has attracted more than 11 million Canadian viewers per season.
However, Mr. Portelance wrote to Mr. Blaney last October to say that he was “unable to recommend that we consider a third season at this time,” according to a briefing note obtained by Postmedia News through access-to-information legislation.
While the program represented “good value for money,” elevated the profile of border officers and fostered a “growing sense of pride in our work,” there continued to be “some risk” in continuing to participate in the show after two seasons, Mr. Portelance wrote.
He cited the backlash that followed the controversial filming in March 2013 of an immigration raid at a Vancouver construction site that ensnared several undocumented workers. Community organizations, human rights groups and other critics expressed concerns over privacy and whether individuals were provided an opportunity to give informed consent. They also complained that the filming of enforcement actions was “undignified.”
A complaint was lodged with the federal privacy commissioner. There was also a complaint to the commissioner of official languages regarding CBSA’s participation in an English-only television series. Both reports are still pending.
Even though CBSA spent a “relatively modest” $200,000 per season in “communications support,” the program also required managers to devote time to screen episodes, Mr. Portelance wrote. “Given that the project is not directly linked to either our key priorities or our core business, the ‘risk/reward ratio’ for the project is questionable.”
Mr. Paterson said he understands that government agencies and their ministries have discussions and that views can change. “But when the head of the CBSA writes a recommendation to cancel a program that has prompted significant human rights and privacy concerns, and then CBSA does exactly the opposite of that recommendation, that raises serious questions,” he said.
The series, modelled after a successful Australian program, is produced by Vancouver-based Force Four Productions and airs in more than 50 countries.Shaun Bailey lost his job as a special adviser earlier this year before several former public school pupils were drafted in to senior roles at No 10.
Mr Bailey, who was moved to a part-time role in the Cabinet Office, has told friends that he was excluded from Mr Cameron ’s inner circle because he was “different” and repeatedly asked difficult questions about the Government’s priorities.
He is understood to have told the Prime Minister that he was concerned about the Conservative Party’s lack of appeal in black, working class communities, and has now expressed his frustration privately that his concerns were not heeded.
The Daily Telegraph understands that Mr Bailey believes he was ignored for months by Mr Cameron’s inner circle before being moved to a “non-job” outside the Prime Minister’s office in January.
He is still hoping to become a Conservative MP, so his friends say he has decided not to speak out publicly about his concerns, which echo complaints made about Mr Cameron’s operation by a growing number of observers.
“They just didn’t get what Shaun was saying,” said one of Mr Bailey’s friends last night. “He kept challenging them saying, 'Why are we not saying this?’ … He went into Downing Street and the first thing he said was, 'The only political conversation you need to have publicly is about the cost of living’.
“He also gave plenty of warning that if they wanted to talk about being a diverse party, people have to see it. But they didn’t want to hear about it. Shaun was frozen out.
“Shaun always says that you can see from space that the place is dominated by those from Eton.”
Mr Bailey, a father-of-two in his early 40s, has discussed his concerns with a number of Tory MPs. One has told him that there is a “class war” going on within the party.
The disclosure will be damaging for Mr Cameron, who is already facing claims that he is running a “chumocracy” in Downing Street after he promoted several Old Etonians in recent weeks, including Jo Johnson, the brother of the London mayor Boris Johnson, and Jesse Norman.
Mr Cameron was also educated at Eton, as was Ed Llewellyn, his chief of staff, Oliver Letwin, the Cabinet Office minister, and Sir George Young, the Chief Whip.
Mr Bailey, who was paid a salary of £60,000 to advise the Prime Minister on youth, crime and race issues, is the first insider to raise concerns about the elite backgrounds of those in the inner core of No 10.
His appointment after the 2010 general election was lauded as a sign of the inclusive nature of Mr Cameron’s office, a view which took on particular importance after the summer riots of 2011.
However, in January he was moved quietly to the Cabinet Office, becoming the Government’s “youth and engagement champion”. His appointment to the new position was not publicly announced.
Mr Bailey is being paid substantially less for this part-time role — £36,000 a year — and is only on a one-year contract. He does not have his own desk or office, but a source in the Cabinet Office insisted that if he needed a seat he would be “accommodated”. Last night, it was unclear what exactly Mr Bailey’s new role involves.
Mr Bailey, who stood unsuccessfully in Hammersmith, west London, as a Tory A-list candidate in the 2010 election, is understood to have clashed with colleagues and became so dispirited that he did not even turn up for work during one week last autumn.
“It was very difficult for Shaun,” one friend said. “He was never included. He got the distinct impression they tried to keep him away from the Prime Minister.”
The friend added: “It got to a point where Shaun just stopped saying things because it was just getting him in trouble. There was even one week where he decided not to go into the office because he wanted to see if they would even notice. They didn’t. None of them.”
Mr Bailey is understood to have appealed directly to the Prime Minister, with whom he is understood to have no personal issues, over concerns that the party was not appealing to a “broader set”. He is said to have been “horrified” when Frank Luntz, an American polling expert, visited Downing Street and addressed a group of advisers.
The friend said: “The pollster asked them what kept them awake at night and they didn’t even have the wit to understand that he meant it was the electorate.
“When the pollster pointed that out to them, they literally said, 'Nothing keeps us awake’. How can you be advising people and nothing keeps you awake? Then someone said'school fees’.”
Friends added yesterday: “Shaun believes that the bottom line is that him being of a different class is probably equally, if not more, important than him being black. For him being both of those things made him uniquely helpful.”
Mr Cameron has rejected claims that he is running a “clique” in Downing Street, and stressed that William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, and Patrick McLoughlin, the Transport Secretary, were educated at comprehensive schools. He said this month that he only appointed people “because I think they’ll be good”.
Mr Bailey declined to comment.
A Downing Street source said: “Shaun was a highly valued member of the No 10 team, and he is continuing that good work at the Cabinet Office.”Labor senator Lisa Singh and MP Linda Burney express personal concerns about ‘cruel’ and ‘inhumane’ plan, but Shorten has reserved the party’s position
Bill Shorten says it seems “ridiculous” a refugee would be banned from coming to Australia as a tourist or on a business trip, as several Labor MPs came out against the government’s proposal to prevent refugees in offshore detention ever visiting the country.
But the Labor leader has not committed to opposing the government’s plan.
Labor senator Lisa Singh and MP Linda Burney have expressed personal concerns.
Singh said: “I don’t know what Labor will decide to do … Obviously I hope we vote this down and see it for what it is.”
Under the proposed laws announced on Sunday, refugees and asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru would not be able to come to Australia even on a tourist visa, unless they were children when placed in detention.
New asylum laws pave the way for third-country resettlement, Peter Dutton says Read more
Singh, who has been seconded to the Australian delegation at the United Nations, believed the policy was “clearly contrary to the New York declaration” on refugees and migrants that the Australian government agreed to in September.
In a Facebook post, she said the proposal was “cruel” and “out of step with the rest of the world”. She said it was “stupid” because of the economic contribution of refugees to Australia and the harm it would cause Australia’s bid for a UN human rights council seat.
“And if their turning boats back is working, why on earth is this needed? Sounds like a government with no ideas, no policy solutions and no heart.”
Burney said she was “deeply concerned” by the proposal.
“I have had many people contact me today and yesterday who were very distressed at the prospect that this is what government is moving,” she said. “Their concern is that it’s inhumane, that it’s something they can’t reconcile as decent Australians.”
Shorten said the opposition would “look closely at the legislation when the government can be bothered releasing it”.
“It seems ridiculous to me that a genuine refugee who settles in the US or Canada and becomes a US or Canadian citizen is banned from visiting Australia as a tourist, businessman or businesswoman 40 years down track,” he said.
Shorten said “people who come via a people-smuggler should not be allowed to settle here” but labelled the proposal a distraction from “the Liberals’ total failure to secure any durable and credible third country resettlement”.
Shorten accused Malcolm Turnbull of “sucking up to One Nation to fight off Tony Abbott and keep his job”.
Addressing concerns the law would breach international law because it amounted to penalising people for seeking asylum, the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said on Monday the proposal was “absolutely consistent with our international obligations”.
According to the immigration minister, Peter Dutton, the attorney general’s department, the Australian government solicitor, and the immigration department’s counsel have all cleared the proposal.
At a press conference in Sydney, Dutton said Labor “either supports it or they don’t” and were acting like an “undisciplined rabble” by declaring their personal views on social media.
At a press conference in Yalata in South Australia on Monday, Turnbull said Labor had failed to stop asylum seeker boats and the government was now dealing with that failure.
“All we are seeking for them to do now is to support this legislation,” he said. “It sends a strong and unequivocal message. It is critically important.
“There is a battle of will between the people of Australia and their government and the people smugglers.”
The treasurer and former immigration minister, Scott Morrison, said Bill Shorten had “already blinked” because he had not responded to the policy within 24 hours.
“There’s no time for blinking” he said. “You need to know what you stand for, and you need to know what you’re going to do.”
He said Labor was “vexed” and “totally paralysed” on the issue. “The Labor party is being asked to legislate their articulated policy before the 2013 election … The fact that they’re tying themselves in knots tells everybody what they need to know about the Labor party on this issue.”
Asylum seekers face lifetime ban from entering Australia if they arrive by boat Read more
Labor MP Terri Butler said the government must explain the motivation for the law. “They must explain why it is consistent with international law – not just make assertions to that effect,” she said.
A number of other Labor figures including the former MP Melissa Parke and the former New South Wales premier Kristina Keneally have expressed opposition.
Melissa Parke (@MelissaParke01) Govt's new asylum laws will be another flagrant violation of Int'l law. Meanwhile Aust seeks seat on UN human rights council...
Kristina Keneally (@KKeneally) So now we're banning refugees who found refuge in other countries from even visiting Australia? That's ridiculous. Shameful. Appalling.
On Monday Labor frontbench MP Andrew Leigh told Sky News the key was to ensure the 800-odd people on Manus and a similar number on Nauru were resettled, and the bill would do nothing to achieve that.
Dutton has said the law may pave the way to a resettlement deal with a third country to clear the camps, as it would prevent those resettled from returning to Australia through a “back door”.
The Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, told Radio National the government’s plan was “barbaric, cruel, shameful, cynical politics”.
“I just hope and urge the Labor party and the crossbenchers to join with the Greens and make sure it doesn’t get past the Senate,” he said.
Nick Xenophon and Derryn Hinch have said they will wait to see the details; One Nation strongly supports the move.AUSTRALIANS would face an $863 hike in annual household costs when a price is put on carbon pollution, new Treasury modelling predicts.
Advice to Treasurer Wayne Swan reveals a $30 a tonne carbon price would lift household costs by $16.60 a week, before any compensation is offered.
Treasury modelling released under Freedom of Information laws also warns against using carbon tax compensation as an instrument of tax reform, as suggested by climate change adviser Ross Garnaut.
Read Next
Another document, among hundreds of pages released today, says a carbon tax would have to be frequently adjusted in the early years, dealing a blow to business certainty.
The modelling of price impacts, presented to Mr Swan in February, includes rises for electricity, gas, fuel and food.
It excludes any rebate of petrol price rises through adjustment of the petrol excise.
"The overall CPI impact of a $30 carbon price without fuel tax concessions is 1.48 per cent," the advice said.
Price rises under Kevin Rudd's dumped carbon emissions scheme were estimated at 1.1 per cent under a carbon price of $25 a tonne.
Treasury told Mr Swan in October last year the best way to provide compensation for carbon price impacts was through income tax cuts.
But it warned against changes that would skew existing tax relativities, and said compensation should closely match the price impacts to avoid wages blowouts.
"Since the scheme's primary purpose is to change behaviour it should not be used to change the distribution of the tax burden across different household incomes," the advice said.
"Avoiding real reductions in household incomes reduces the risk that wage earners will seek assistance through wage demands."
The advice said "clear and simple household assistance is critical" to countering community concern about cost of living impacts.
"The best assistance that can be provided is direct cash assistance to households," it said.
While a carbon tax is usually considered a more simple method of pricing carbon, Treasury warned in September last year that the rate of such a tax would have to be frequently adjusted.
"Adjustments are particularly likely in the early years when there is little data to inform a carbon tax rate," it said.
It acknowledged the approach meant businesses would have less investment certainty under a carbon tax.
"In effect, the risk of adjustment means that businesses would likely continue to forecast the carbon price in order to inform their investment decisions," it said.on •
THE GUERRILLA ANGEL REPORT — While it is unclear exactly why the unnamed trans woman was beaten, or who beat her, it does, however, appear the beating occurred in Istanbul near an area where both residents and police have been targeting trans people for one reason or another, mostly it seems, over sex work issues.
A report in The Gay Star news is the only source of information on this incident. The victim’s name was not disclosed in the report, nor were the reasons for her beating.
Social Policies, Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Studies Association in Turkey’s Rozerin Seap Kip has stated that the victim died on March 9th in a hospital four days after a severe beating.
Earlier news reports have stated police in the area in recent weeks have been harassing trans sex workers in the area, mainly for ‘providing space for sex work’. However, I do not see a connection between that to the victim’s death in the Gay Star report.
We are missing a lot of information as to the exact reason this woman is dead.
Stay tuned.
I’ve written about a number of trans women killed in Turkey during the past 9 months. The most recent occurred in December: https://lexiecannes.wordpress.com/?s=turkey
More from Gay Star: Trans woman dies in Istanbul amidst police altercations | Gay Star News.
Wipe Out Transphobia has started a petition to help prompt the Turkish government into take action: https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/the-turkish-government-the-unhcr-and-taksim-police-address-transphobic-human-rights-abuses-2
Wipe Out Transphobia’s facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/wipeouttransphobia?ref=ts&fref=ts
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You’re welcome to share this entire article!
Follow this topic on Lexie Cannes’ Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/lexiecannes
Support this site, get the transgender-themed feature film “Lexie Cannes“ DVD here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0963781332
The Guerrilla Angel Report is associated with Wipe Out Transphobia: http://www.wipeouttransphobia.com/
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Categories: Deaths, Murder, Transgender, Transsexual, TransAfter flirting with a Top 4 finish last season and falling one spot short, Everton have enjoyed an active summer in the transfer market carefully addressing their needs to make Champions League dreams become reality.
Renowned as a club tied to a shoe-string budget, Everton shattered that reputation this summer when manager Roberto Martinez convinced theater producer-come-chairman Bill Kenwright to smash the club’s transfer record and pony up $47 million to acquire Romelu Lukaku from Chelsea. Scoring 16 goals in all competitions, the Belgian striker was a revelation at Goodison Park while on loan last year and the Toffee faithful will hope he can replicate the effort this year as the club once again eyes that elusive Top 4 finish.
[Related: Full PL season preview]
Transfers In: Romelu Lukaku (Chelsea, $47 million), Muhamed Besic (Ferencvaros, $3 million), Gareth Barry (Manchester City, $3 million)
Transfers Out: None
| Full PL schedule | Watch Chelsea live via Live Extra | BPL on NBC schedule |
Last Season: Expectations were exceeded during Martinez’ first year at the helm as the Toffees finished 5th and qualified for the UEFA Europa League. Arguably even more important was the stylistic transformation the Blues endured, going from a conservative, Route 1-infused approach under David Moyes to a Barcelona-esque, sweet-passing side under Martinez.
Star Player: Romelu Lukaku
You don’t pay more than double what the club typically spends in any given summer and not call Lukaku the star player. Only 21-years-old, this is the reputation Lukaku deserves and will be forced to live up to at Goodison. An absolute nightmare to mark, the 21-year-old behemoth can beat defenders as easily on the ground as he can off the ball or in the air. Fortunately, the weight on his shoulders shouldn’t prove too heavy as this Everton side is loaded with more stars than perhaps ever before. Leighton Baines and Seamus Coleman are a pair of marauding full-backs, Tim Howard has aged like fine wine and is one of the Top 10 keepers in the world, the powerful Ross Barkley is fast becoming one of the dominant young attackers in the league, Phil Jagielka is a rock at center-back while the pace and clinical finishing of Kevin Mirallas can not be understated.
Coach’s Corner: Roberto Martinez
In just one season on Merseyside, Martinez single-handedly transformed the club into one of most stylish and competitive in England. His brilliant tactics combined with his charming personality have made him a hit with pundits and players alike, with the coup of Lukaku proof-positive of the latter.
PST Predicts: Life in the Premier League will be more difficult this season with the addition of Europa League play but Martinez has done well to strengthen his squad in key areas. Lukaku’s presence up top will be immense but Arouna Kone, healthy after an ACL injury |
day arrives in Springfield, Mass., McGrady will at last be appreciated for what was, rather than what could have been.
McGrady never doubted his own worthiness and said this week he was "one of the greats."
On Friday, it will be official, the ultimate rejoinder to the debate.
"It was great because you could sense there was a feeling among his people that 'finally, he gets his due,' " former Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy said. "I didn't sense that as much with Tracy. He's always been at peace with who he is and what he accomplished in the game. But … Friday, he gets his due and that's really cool."
For McGrady, induction will be the championship he never won.
He famously never advanced to the playoffs' second round - he was out with an injury when the Rockets broke through in 2009 - before going along for the ride on the bench with San Antonio in his final NBA season. But from the April announcement that he had been selected to the private August celebration in Houston to this weekend in Springfield, McGrady has felt the elation that escaped him as a player.
"I'm damn proud of going into the Hall of Fame," McGrady said. "When I see myself play, there was no doubt I was one of the best players playing. There's no doubt about that. Now, if you take what I did and put me on a winning team, now you're talking about one of the best of all times. So yes, I was one of the greats."
Window of opportunity
McGrady, as with Yao Ming heading to his induction a year ago, always will be evaluated in part by the disappointments that came first from back issues, then by knee problems. But the injuries were not just his.
If Grant Hill was not hurt in Orlando, if Yao was not hurt in Houston …
"Then, we're playing for a championship," McGrady said, jumping in. "They were devastating blows to me. You only have a short span in this league to really win it. Kobe (Bryant) had long, extended time winning. Very few have that. When it's your time when you're considered one of the best, that's the time you have to capitalize on winning as a team."
McGrady was heavily criticized when he said "anybody" can win a championship. But he said his experience with the Spurs, when he played just 31 minutes in six postseason games, offered evidence that good fortune can deliver a championship ring. But not the Hall of Fame jewelry he will wear this weekend.
"When I made that statement that anybody can win a championship but everybody can't get in the Hall of Fame, it was not to discredit the greats that have won championships," McGrady said. "I'm saying if you want to talk about me getting in the Hall of Fame without winning a championship, I have to come at you and say, 'anybody can win a championship,' which is so true.
"Anybody means any individual person. It doesn't mean 'everybody.' I was one shot (Ray Allen's corner 3) from winning a championship, and I didn't even play. If you're offended by that, tough …"
As much as McGrady's career was filled with first-round losses, his own play generally improved in the postseason, averaging more points and assists in the playoffs than in the regular season.
"He was one of the best to ever do it," Rockets general manager Daryl Morey said. "People get into rings, rings, rings, rings when they judge players. It's ridiculous when you look at the great players who haven't won championships. Every playoffs, he elevated his game in a big way. That's the true nature of a superstar, a guy who can get better when the competition gets better. That's extraordinarily difficult."
Passing his true forte
Beyond that, McGrady clearly looked the part, with abilities that were greater than his numbers. Van Gundy cited McGrady's years as "an unbelievable defender" in Toronto and marveled about his vision and passing in Houston where he played parts of six seasons.
"How can you be a scoring champion and it's not your best attribute?" Van Gundy said. "His best attribute is he's one of the best passing forwards to ever play the game."
Carroll Dawson, the GM who put together the trade that brought McGrady to the Rockets after consecutive scoring championship, cited the 13 points in the final 35 seconds McGrady scored to beat the Spurs in 2004. But he, too, needed time to get past the disappointments.
"What could have been bothered me for a long time," Dawson said. "When we lost the team that won (the championships), we started over. Tracy went down, then Yao. It was disheartening. We had such high hopes. But when I think of Tracy, I think about him scoring those 13 points. In all my years, that's the most jaw-dropping thing I've ever seen.
"He was always known for his scoring, but the way he saw the floor was just amazing. He was a great passer. People here got just a glimpse of how great he was."
When McGrady takes the stage Friday, that glimpse will come into focus. What could have been will at last be a distant second to what was.
"I didn't have the opportunity to win a championship," McGrady said. "I gave everything I possibly could. I tried to lead in the way I could, with my play. It didn't happen. I'm not happy I didn't win a championship, but very excited to be getting inducted into the Hall of Fame. This is my championship."Best Answer: Okay so first you put a boiled deer penis in a mixing bowl. Then you put a sea sponge covered in semen in with it. Then you pour in about 1/2 a cup of chicken urine and stir it in. Pour this mixture in a pan and bake it for 40 minutes on 350 degrees F. Take this out and mince it with a diamond axe. Put the result and leave it to sit in a glass of sulfuric acid. The mixture should dissolve into the acid. After this is done, pour in about 3/4 cup of Mountain Dew Code Red. If you drink this potion along with the person you want to love you, you should have everlasting love with them forever.
Source(s): You're a dumbass if you believe in potions and shitt.
Anonymous · 7 years ago
0 Thumbs up 1 Thumbs down Report AbuseIn late March astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will take off in a Soyuz rocket from the steppes of Kazakhstan, heading to the International Space Station (ISS) for a yearlong stay. NASA bills their mission as a crucial stepping-stone toward sending humans on a multiyear trip to Mars. That interplanetary voyage, part of our human drive for new frontiers, is the greatest dream of the space age. Yet rather than making that dream a reality, this mission seems to be a distracting detour.
During their orbital sojourn Kelly and Kornienko will undergo rigorous medical testing designed to show researchers what long-term spaceflight does to human beings, particularly how prolonged weightlessness and radiation exposure cause harm. The results, NASA says, could lead to medical breakthroughs that make interplanetary hauls safer.
Could—but it likely won’t make them safe enough. More likely, Kelly’s and Kornienko’s tests will just confirm in greater detail what we already know from several previous long-duration missions: Our current space habitats are not adequate for voyages to other worlds. The lack of money to build these habitats, more than any lack of medical knowledge, is what keeps humans from Mars and other off-world destinations.
For instance, we already know that living without gravity is a problem. Long periods of weightlessness atrophy muscles, weaken bones and worsen vision. Vigorous exercise can minimize some of these effects, so astronauts on the ISS spend hours each day working out. Even so, no matter how much they sweat in space, when Kelly and Kornienko return to Earth they will almost certainly be weaker than when they left.
Investigators have known how to solve this problem since 1903, when Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky described a spinning space habitat that would generate a force pulling away from the structure’s center and toward the outer edges, thereby mimicking gravity. This effect varies with the structure’s spin rate, creating any gravitational strength the structure can withstand, whether the comfortable one g of Earth or the languorous 0.38 g of Mars. (No one yet knows the optimum g-levels for healthy, affordable long-duration spaceflight, and Kelly’s and Kornienko’s mission won’t tell us.)
Why doesn’t NASA avail itself of this solution? Because it costs a lot, and the agency has already spent more than $75 billion on the weightless ISS. A rotating habitat would be more costly and complex than a weightless one (although it need not be a prohibitively pricey behemoth like the doughnut-shaped space station from 2001: A Space Odyssey). Two modules connected by a long spoke, set spinning by modest bursts from thruster rockets, could create artificial gravity at a more reasonable price, although this solution would still be more expensive than simply performing more medical tests in weightlessness.
What NASA should be testing is how to build such a craft, and how to live and work within it without becoming disoriented and dizzy. As a starting point, a scaled-down centrifuge could be installed on the ISS to test how lab animals respond to varying levels of artificial gravity. The station was originally designed to include such a facility, the Centrifuge Accommodation Module. NASA, however, scuttled the project by removing it from ISS assembly flights during the shuttle era, in part due to budgetary concerns.
Radiation, the other health threat in space, is a more pernicious danger. Showers of solar protons and galactic cosmic rays can rip through cells, wreaking biological havoc. The current remedy is to clad living quarters in layers of dense material, which adds weight and increases the amount of fuel needed to get off the ground. It doesn’t have to be this way. Advanced space propulsion systems paired with cheaper rocket launches could allow properly shielded craft to make faster interplanetary trips, decreasing a crew’s overall radiation exposure. Such protection will be possible only if NASA rekindles and follows through on developing advanced solar- and nuclear-electric propulsion, efforts which have been started and canceled several times over the past half century.
It would be unfair to blame NASA alone for this shortsightedness. Integrating artificial gravity and better propulsion into its human spaceflight program would require many billions of dollars, and that money is not forthcoming from Congress. So NASA has struck a pragmatic course, tinkering with well-worn technologies instead of spending the financial and political capital to develop new ones.
This path of least resistance is not going to take us to Mars—or on long-duration trips to the moon, asteroids or other deep-space destinations. NASA leadership should take a page from the playbook of Elon Musk and SpaceX and be bolder, pushing technologies for future exploration rather than relying on those from the past. If the American people do not feel that it is worth the money to take these next steps, the nation should face facts and abandon this dream of sending space travelers to worlds beyond our own.Thousands of gallons of radioactive waste leaked from the inner shell of double-shell storage Tank AY-102 as Hanford workers pumped sludge from the tank during the weekend.
Workers were emptying the tank, Hanford’s oldest double-shell tank, because it had waste leaking into the 2-foot-wide space between its shells — called the annulus — in three places.
About 70 gallons of waste had been estimated in recent years to have leaked, drying in three separate patches. The leak detected this weekend added about 3,000 to 3,500 gallons.
Checks on Sunday and again Monday revealed that no waste breached the outer shell of the underground tank and none reached the surrounding environment, according to Department of Energy contractor Washington River Protection Solutions.
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Work to retrieve sludge from the tank and move it to a sturdier double-shell tank stopped Sunday, and preparations were under way Monday to pump the leaked waste in the annulus back into the inner shell of the tank.
“Operations took a challenging, but not unanticipated turn,” said Rob Gregory, chief operating officer for the tank farm contractor, in a message to employees Monday.
8 inches Depth of sludge in the annulus ringing the inner shell of Tank AY-102
An alarm for a level detector in the annulus sounded about 3:30 a.m. Sunday as sludge was pumped from the 1-million-gallon capacity tank.
Work to retrieve waste from the inner shell stopped when the detector showed 2 inches of waste had accumulated in the annulus.
The waste continued to seep into the annulus throughout the day, stabilizing at about 8 inches deep.
Early on Monday, the level of the waste in the annulus changed again. It dropped by about three-quarters of an inch, which would be about 180 gallons of waste, raising the possibility that it might be leaking from the outer shell.
Hanford workers checked a leak detection pit that sits like a saucer beneath the underground tank both Sunday and Monday, with no indication that waste had breached the outer shell of the tank. The level of the contents of the pit, which can collect precipitation, had not increased.
The pH level of the contents of the pit also were checked, with results early Monday evening showing they did not match the high pH waste in the tank.
The pit check does not rule out that waste could have leaked somewhere else from the outer shell but did not reach the pit.
There is no indication of waste leaking into the environment or risk to the public at this time. Washington state Department of Ecology
However, another possibility under investigation is that some waste has flowed into the ventilation channels in the platform the inner shell sits on above the outer shell, reducing the level of waste measured in the space between the tanks.
The Washington Department of Ecology, the regulator on the project, has been working with Hanford officials since Sunday.
“There is no indication of waste leaking into the environment or risk to the public at this time,” the state confirmed in a statement Monday.
The increased rate of leakage likely occurred because waste retrieval work inside the tank dislodged material that was partially blocking leak sites, according to the Department of Ecology.
Increased leakage was an anticipated possibility as the state ordered DOE to empty the tank under a settlement agreement, and a contingency plan was developed to address it.
Before Washington River Protection Solutions started to remove waste from the tank in March, it placed a pump in the annulus.
The pump could not be hooked up while sludge was being pumped from the tank, but work was completed Monday to hook up a transfer line from the annulus to return waste to the main tank. Radioactive shielding was expected to be added Monday evening to the line to protect workers when waste is removed from the annulus.
We expect to resume sludge retrieval simultaneously with annulus pumping. Rob Gregory, Washington River Protection Solutions
Pumping from the annulus could begin within two days, DOE said Monday.
“We expect to resume sludge retrieval simultaneously with annulus pumping,” Gregory said in the employee message.
Waste was emptied quickly from the tank until Sunday.
DOE met a deadline with a day to spare in early March to start emptying an estimated 650,000 gallons of liquid waste that sat on top of about 150,000 gallons of sludge in the tank.
It started the more difficult work of emptying the sludge at the end of March, working mostly weekends. By Sunday, just 14 inches of sludge remained on the bottom of the tank, or about 46,000 gallons by Washington River Protection Solutions estimates.
Ninety-five percent of the liquid and sludge waste has been removed, DOE said.
DOE and Washington River Protection Solutions have a deadline under the settlement agreement to have the tank emptied enough that the cause of the leak may be investigated by March 4, 2017.Tiny Lego tourist captures beauty of PORTSMOUTH as he is pictured exploring city in all weathers
Photographer Andrew Whyte took photographs all around the city
The 38-year-old wanted to introduce a common theme to his photographs
The Lego man is snapped at the beach, trainspotting and shopping
With its grey shingle beach, often deserted seafront promenades and rows upon rows of terraced houses, Portsmouth is hardly known as Britain's most picturesque city.
But one diminutive tourist managed to capture the true beauty of the UK's only island city from a different perspective.
At just a few centimetres high the tiny Lego tourist can be seen photographing Southsea beach, trainspotting and even slipping on a banana skin.
Little tourist: Andrew Whyte has been photographing a Lego man at a variety of locations in Portsmouth, Hampshire, since August last year
Seaside visit: Andrew's tiny subject is seen taking a picture of a bench along the beachfront in Southsea
Historic: The diminutive tourist managed to capture the true beauty of the UK's only island city, known as the birthplace of Charles Dickens, from a different perspective
Beautiful: The Lego man, seen treading carefully on some ice, left, and photographing Southsea Pier, right,
The unique set of pictures was taken by local photographer Andrew Whyte who began taking shots of the Lego man in August last year when he wanted to add a common theme to the snaps he was taking.
Since then he has captured the figure in a range of weather conditions and at various locations around the historic city, famed for its Navy base and as being the birthplace of Charles Dickens.
Andrew, 38, said: 'The project isn't about the Lego, it's about the character.
'I used to walk around all the time taking photographs of random things like sunsets, textures, locations, but they had no connection.
'To capture those moments is great, but they had no theme. By following the lego figure day to day it makes the photographs easier to follow.
Tiny: The Lego man is dwarfed by some fungi as he continues his tour of the Hampshire city
Write caption here
Connection: Andrew Whyte started taking pictures of the Lego man, seen here on the city's shingle beach at sunset, because he wanted a common theme running through his photography
Photo diary: Since the turn of the year, Andrew has taken 150 images as he seeks to complete a year long project charting 2013 through from the perspective of his little Lego subject
'The banana skin photo was an obvious one. People always say about it but I'd never seen it so I decided to make it happen.
'It's making everyday things fun.'
Since the turn of the year, Andrew has taken 150 images as he seeks to complete a year long project charting 2013 through from the perspective of his little Lego subject.
Far from employing the latest in photographic technology, Andrew takes all of the images using his mobile phone.
Explorer: The Lego figure is seen photographing a sea shell out of its usual environment and exploring textures on the wall of a Portsmouth building
Slippery: Andrew says that his choice of photographing the Lego man slipping on a banana skin was an 'obvious' one
Trainspotting: The Lego figure is captured climbing up a rusty fence to get a better view of a passing train
Andrew added: 'I enjoy the challenge of doing it all on my phone.
'Sometimes the weather can be really difficult. If there's the slightest wind I feel just as frustrated as the little guy would if he could feel falling over.
'I call him either "the little guy" or "the legographer". I think giving him a real name would be going a step too far.
Shellshocked: Andrew pictured his tiny subject looking at the word 'Boo' spelt out on the beach using pebbles
All aboard: Andrew takes the figure everywhere in his pocket in case he comes across an ideal photo opportunity
Action shot: The Lego figure takes care not to get trampled as he photographs a running race in Hampshire
'So far I've had really positive feedback. I don't think it's something you can look at negatively.
'People say they can relate to his mood in the photographs, they warm to them.
'It's a surprise to me that it's been so popular. I think it helps people look back on their childhood.'
Andrew now carries his lego companion in his pocket everywhere he goes.
Almost all of the images are shot in and around Portsmouth.
Out and about: Andrew's subject is seen visiting some buildings that are more suited to his size, left, and doing a spot of shopping, rightAnother NYPD Terrorist 'Investigation' Turns Up Nothing But Privacy Invasions And Rights Erosion
from the when-all-you-have-an-'elite'-anti-terrorism-squad,-everything-looks-like dept
Shamiur Rahman... who has now denounced his work as an informant, said police told him to embrace a strategy called "create and capture." He said it involved creating a conversation about jihad or terrorism, then capturing the response to send to the NYPD. For his work, he earned as much as $1,000 a month and goodwill from the police after a string of minor marijuana arrests.
Police recruited Rahman in late January, after his third arrest on misdemeanor drug charges, which Rahman believed would lead to serious legal consequences. An NYPD plainclothes officer approached him in a Queens jail and asked whether he wanted to turn his life around...
In an Oct. 15 interview with the AP, however, Rahman said he received little training and spied on "everything and anyone." He took pictures inside the many mosques he visited and eavesdropped on imams. By his own measure, he said he was very good at his job and his handler never once told him he was collecting too much, no matter whom he was spying on.
He said he sometimes intentionally misinterpreted what people had said. For example, Rahman said he would ask people what they thought about the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya, knowing the subject was inflammatory. It was easy to take statements out of context, he said. He said wanted to please his NYPD handler, whom he trusted and liked.
"I was trying to get money," Rahman said. "I was playing the game."
Rahman, who was born in Queens, said he never witnessed any criminal activity or saw anybody do anything wrong.
It's no secret that the "War on Terror" has resulted in little more than steady paychecks for those in the loop and plenty of rights erosion everywhere else. As was detailed earlier this year, the New York Police Department has decided to follow in the clumsy footsteps of the FBI's anti-terrorism efforts, crafting its own "elite" agency (with the help of the CIA) to infiltrate the Muslim community and smoke out terrorists. The end result? Not a single lead generated Via Reason comes this Associated Press story about another NYPD anti-terrorism failure. Shamiur Rahman, a 19-year-old American of Bengali descent, was put to work by the NYPD's intelligence unit as an informant, earning $1000 a month in exchange for "baiting" Muslims into making inflammatory statements.There's nothing like a little leverage in the form of dangling prison sentence to "motivate" your informants into giving you as much "information" as possible, even if most is unverifiable, exaggerated or simply made up. Rahman was no exception:That wasn't all Rahman did. In order to avoid the sentence constantly hanging over his head, he went above and beyond. According to the AP article, Rahman took pictures inside mosques and at events, eavesdropped on imams, spied on the Muslim Student Association at John Jay College, wrote down license plate information and collected cell phone numbers. All of this activity resulted in Rahman drawing this conclusion:NYPD spokesman Paul Browne refused to comment but has denied widespread spying in the past, insisting that "police only follow leads." It's the sort of statement you expect from a spokesman, even in the face of so much evidence to the contrary. Even the "targeted" Demographics Unit cast a very wide net, assembling databases on where Muslims lived, shopped and worked and cataloguing every Muslim who adopted an Americanized surname.Furthermore, former NYPD officials confirmed that the tactics used by Rahman were common. Rahman received little training or instruction, something that may have helped focus his efforts. Of course, if his handlers wanted a wide net cast, the last thing they would have done is give him some guidelines.The assault on constitutional rights continues, and privacy continues to be violated, all under the dubious heading of "anti-terrorism."
Filed Under: nypd, privacy, terrorism0
If you were to pick a comic book character that would have to go head-to-head with Superman and Batman, would you choose Ant-Man? That’s the decision Marvel landed on as it has moved the Edgar Wright picture from a November 6, 2015 release to a summer release of July 31, 2015. This puts the pint-sized hero smack into the warpath of Batman vs. Superman, opening July 17, 2015. A bold move from Marvel, wouldn’t you say? Perhaps this means we’re also a couple of months closer to some casting news?
This makes four summer films for Disney in 2015 (Ant-Man, The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Pixar’s Inside Out and Pirates of the Caribbean 5), which makes it even more likely that Star Wars: Episode VII will be moving toward a Christmas 2015 release. It’s also worth noting that the previous release date would have had Ant-Man opening up against James Bond 24, which is not too box-office friendly either. The move doesn’t change how epic 2015 is going to be, but it does add a bit more tension to the summer box office race. (Via Deadline)Update: Apparently it's a personalized print commemorating "everything you've achieved as a PS+ member."
Playstation+ is five years old today, and Sony is celebrating. According to a recent post on the PS Blog, the company will be sending out special gifts to anyone that's been with the service since day one. The company writes:
"To celebrate those of you that have been with us from the very beginning, a limited edition gift will be arriving in the mail for those of you that have been part of the journey since the very start. Think you may be one of them? Then keep a close eye on your emails as we’ll be getting in touch today."
The distinction here between "mail" and "email" is an interesting one: it opens up the possibility of an actual physical gift, which would certainly be an improvement over a special raft of free games, or deals. I didn't sign up for PS+ five years ago, so we'll have to wait until the loyal subscribers start posting the reward to reddit to find out. Check back here later for more info.
PS+ began, in a certain way, as a competition for Microsoft's Xbox Live Gold, except it offered a whole lot more value. Where Microsoft gated most online content behind its gold subscription, Sony already offered most of those services for free, and instead PS+ offered subscribers access to an instant game collection every month, a great idea that Microsoft has since adopted but not quite matched. PS+ is now also required to play most online games on Playstation now representing a curious meeting of concepts between the two services. Looking back on it, PS+ came towards the beginning of offering ultra-cheap digital downloads on consoles, representing the shifts in game pricing that came along with the transition to digital marketplaces. Steam pioneered the idea with its famous rock-bottom sales, but PS+ took it a step further with the subscription service.
Sony recently announced that players would be able to vote on which games would be included in each month's bundle, which is a fun twist on the now well-established system. This month's games include Limbo, Sound Shapes, Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris, God of War: Ascension, Castlestorm: Complete Edition, and Stealth inc. 2: A Game of Clones.
Unfortunately, I don't think the gift is going to be a more stable PSN. But it would certainly be nice...The News Minute | March 26, 2015 | 4:50 pm IST Indian vice captain Virat Kohli let down a lot of fans when he went out to bat against Australia in the World Cup semi finals and got out after scoring just a single run. As soon as Virat got out, his girflriend Anushka Sharma, who was present at the Sydney Cricket Ground watching the match, became the target of twitterati. The entire playing field of the micro blogging site divided itself into three teams. One team that abused the actor, another that cracked jokes and the last one that defended her. @dhanyarajendran who asked her to go to scg? can't she watch on TV? kohli wasted all his energy previous night with her.his 1 run is proof — Manoj Sebastian (@IamManoj7) March 26, 2015 I know we would loose when Anushka Sharma showed up at Australia today. — LOLism (@WeLoveLOLism) March 26, 2015 Couldn't she enjoy her honeymoon after worldcup.#anushkaSharma — Ainwe hi (@gl525) March 26, 2015 Anushka is responsible for this debacle #IndvsAus — Prakarshen Shant (@WatratPoraga) March 26, 2015 Anushka thanks for coming to Australia.. Hope u have great time with virat in flight.. 😑 — Prashanth (@im_hprashanth94) March 26, 2015 Anushka, you made NH10 but Virat didn't even make 10..... — Padmanabhan Vijay (@PadmanabhanVJ) March 26, 2015 Anushka sharma why did you do this, why did you go to watch the semi final??? You have proved that you are very unlucky for virat kohli!!! — M Subramanian (@MeenakshiS9) March 26, 2015 Dear Anushka, it's always a bad idea to increase pressure on someone you love (Kohli) by being in stands that too in a crucial match. RIP. — Gayatri Reddy (@Gayatritwit) March 26, 2015 #Anushka Sharma went all the way to Sydney to see Virat Kohli hit one run. why you came to sydney idiot!#IndvsAus #CWC15 # — nida fatima514 (@nidafatima514) March 26, 2015 Why @AnushkaSharma... why? why you came down to Sydney!! #IndvsAus — Yogesh Sharma (@YoGuess) March 26, 2015 And then there was this guy... I request to public to boycott Anushka Sharma's films. He is real #DESHDROHI whoever will watch her film anymore. #AUSvIND — Kamaal R Khan-KRK (@kamaalrkhan) March 26, 2015 I request to all the people to go n throw stones at the house of Anushka Sharma who is the main reason for the defeat of India. #AUSvIND — Kamaal R Khan-KRK (@kamaalrkhan) March 26, 2015 But the NH10 actor also got her fair share of support. Cricket fans trolling #Anushka for #Kohli's poor show are calling her a "panauti". Such medieval idiots living in the 21st century! — Anna MM Vetticad (@annavetticad) March 26, 2015 Possibility of defeat in #CWC15 and sexist, distasteful 'jokes' about #Anushka and #ViratKohli start doing the rounds. Sets my teeth on edge — Sanjeev Verma (@sanjeevve) March 26, 2015 When indians blame Anushka for Kohli getting out. I'm sorry what? Ya'll are so quick to blame.. win or lose u should back him #sorrynotsorry — Zara. (@ZaraKhan_xx) March 26, 2015 Those blaming Anushka are losing it themselves — Rana Safvi رعنا राना (@iamrana) March 26, 2015 Simply hated the comments regarding Anushka and Kohli.. Morons - get a life #IndvsAus #CWC15 — Abhishek Mukherjee (@bultai12) March 26, 2015 Well - if u didn't credit anushka sharma for india's good run at WC till now, why blame her for the loss — pallavi ghosh (@pallavighcnnibn) March 26, 2015 Anybody who blames Anushka for Virat's score tonight deserves to have a pineapple shoved up their rear. — Daniel Fernandes (@absolutelydanny) March 26, 2015 To ppl dissing team #IND & making sexist remarks abt @AnushkaSharma...hope you got this memo. #IndvsAus pic.twitter.com/NzfQ1IPhQd — Raheel Khursheed (@Raheelk) March 26, 2015 Indian and Pakistani sports channels are 20% talking about the match results, 80% about Anushka Sharma. — Imaan Sheikh (@SheikhImaan) March 26, 2015 Blaming @AnushkaSharma for India's loss how irrational some people can be. What did she have to do with it! #PKforAnushka — Yasser Latif Hamdani (@theRealYLH) March 26, 2015 Well - if u didn't credit anushka sharma for india's good run at WC till now, why blame her for the loss — pallavi ghosh (@pallavighcnnibn) March 26, 2015 Accha of course this is Anushka Sharma's fault. Classy. — Rohan (@mojorojo) March 26, 2015 Tweet Follow @thenewsminuteWhen you see No Man’s Sky trending these days, it’s almost certainly not going to be good news, and that’s the case this week as the game is being investigated for claims of false advertising by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority.
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I’m not going to dive into another debate about how No Man’s Sky didn’t deliver on its promises, and whether its hype and ads were just regular misleading or “legally culpable” misleading (despite the outcry, I doubt it’s the latter). But I do want to talk about the game all the same, though it appears Hello Games does not share that notion.
It’s been nearly two months since the release of No Man’s Sky, and the usually chatty Hello Games team, including its founder, Sean Murray, have been strangely silent. They have yet to publicly respond to serious questions about the game’s functionality in meaningful ways, nor have they talked about sales of the game, future plans, anything, really.
The last official news update from Hello Games was on September 2nd where they said they would be working on bug-hunting before moving on to unspecified new features. The last time Sean Murray tweeted (where his account is inexplicably also the official No Man’s Sky account) was August 18th.
I don’t want to act like Hello Games has done nothing with No Man’s Sky. They have indeed continued bug hunting, with their 1.09 patch out just last week that fixes a number of seemingly minor (and a couple major) issues with the game. Everyone knows about NMS’s terrible crashes in the first week or so, but Hello Games is still stamping out bugs, and there’s no telling how long that will take.
I bring this up now because I remember back when No Man’s Sky launched, the game was being compared to Destiny in the sense that the “game we see a year from now will be totally transformed from what we saw now” or something along those lines. The idea was that over time, No Man’s Sky would add in all the lost features that were once promised, and when 2017 rolled around, the game would be on its way to being the thing everyone wanted in the first place.
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While I have watched games like Destiny and Diablo 3 turn pretty significant corners after launch, the shocking amount of silence from No Man’s Sky two months after launch amid some pretty serious controversies makes me wonder if this is the case. So does fan reaction, which has all but turned the game into a meme representing over-promise and high expectations.
To date, we have no word on what future features are being worked on, only wishy-washy statements on whether or not No Man’s Sky would get paid DLC, with previous indications being that future updates would be free. But free or not, we have no idea what is actually coming, or what is being worked on other than bug fixes. The company and Murray have gone from chatty and all over the news to completely silent, or dragged into the spotlight in weeks like this one for very bad reasons. Before this, it was Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida telling the press that Murray did in fact over-promise features.
What I have to wonder, however, is that even if No Man’s Sky is secretly working on new features, what exactly could they add to the game that would bring players flocking back at this point? A game like Diablo 3 had pretty obvious strengths and weaknesses. Combat is great, but loot was terrible, so fix that, and the game could thrive. But No Man’s Sky’s problem is…what, exactly? It’s boring? That’s a much more vague problem to solve.
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I can imagine Hello Games spending a lot of time implementing features like multiplayer or base-building or adding new flora and fauna, but that not being enough to really get anyone back into the game. Even if these would be significant additions to the game and a lot of work, it’s hard to imagine No Man’s Sky converting players back into fans with features like those.
Part of the “goal” of No Man’s Sky was to be this kind of never-ending experience of exploration, but one of the biggest problems with the game was the “ending” where (spoilers) both the Atlas and Center of the Galaxy quests led nowhere. It’s too late to simply change how either of those operate, but maybe new actual “missions” could help? |
publishing the original 1931 black and white edition would cause less controversy than releasing the 1946 colour version. After more delay, in 1991—sixty years after its original 1931 publication—it was the last of The Adventures of Tintin to see publication in English. The 1946 colour version appeared in English in 2005, published by Egmont.
Critical analysis [ edit ]
Hergé biographer Pierre Assouline believed that Hergé's drawing became more assured throughout the first version of the story without losing any of its spontaneity. He thought that the story began in "the most inoffensive way", and that throughout the story Tintin was portrayed as a Boy Scout, something he argued reflected Hergé's "moral debt" to Wallez. Biographer Benoît Peeters opined that Tintin in the Congo was "nothing spectacular", with some "incredibly cumbersome" monologues, but he thought the illustrations "a bit more polished" than those in Land of the Soviets. Believing the plot to be "extremely simple", he thought that Tintin's character was like a child manipulating a world populated by toy animals and lead figurines. Michael Farr felt that, unlike the previous Tintin adventure, some sense of a plot emerges at the end of the story with the introduction of the American diamond-smuggling racket. Philippe Goddin thought the work to be "more exciting" than Land of the Soviets and argued that Hergé's depiction of the native Congolese was not mocking but a parody of past European militaries. By contrast, Harry Thompson believed that "Congo is almost a regression from Soviets", in his opinion having no plot or characterisation; he described it as "probably the most childish of all the Tintin books." Simon Kuper of the Financial Times criticised both Land of the Soviets and Tintin in the Congo as the "worst" of the Adventures, opining that they were "poorly drawn" and "largely plot-free".
Farr saw the 1946 colour version as poorer than the black and white original; he said it had lost its "vibrancy" and "atmosphere", and that the new depiction of the Congolese landscape was unconvincing and more like a European zoo than the "parched, dusty expanses of reality". Peeters took a more positive attitude towards the 1946 version, commenting that it contained "aesthetic improvements" and "clarity of composition" because of Hergé's personal development in draughtsmanship, as well as an enhancement in the dialogue, which had become "more lively and fluid."
In his psychoanalytical study of the series, Jean-Marie Apostolidès highlighted that in the Congolese adventure, Tintin represented progress and the Belgian state was depicted as a model for the natives to imitate. In doing so, he argued, they could become more European and thus civilised from the perspective of Belgian society, but that instead they ended up appearing as parodies. Opining that Tintin was imposing his own view of Africa onto the Congolese, Apostolidès remarked that Tintin appeared as a god-figure, with evangelical overtones in the final scene. Literary critic Tom McCarthy concurred that Tintin represented the Belgian state, but also suggested that he acted as a Christian missionary, even being "a kind of god" akin to the character of Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899). McCarthy compared the scene where Tintin exposes Muganga as a fraud to that in which the character of Prospero exposes the magician in William Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Criticism [ edit ]
Racism [ edit ]
The King of the M'Hatuvu angry at his failure in battle against Tintin, from the 1946 version of the book; such depictions have widely been labelled racist.
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, several campaigners and writers characterised Tintin in the Congo as racist due to its portrayal of the Congolese as infantile and stupid. According to Tom McCarthy, Hergé depicted the Congolese as "good at heart but backwards and lazy, in need of European mastery." There had been no such controversy when originally published, because it was only following the decolonization of Africa, which occurred during the 1950s and 1960s, that Western attitudes towards indigenous Africans shifted. Harry Thompson argued that one must view Tintin in the Congo in the context of European society in the 1930s and 1940s, and that Hergé had not written the book to be "deliberately racist". He argued that it reflected the average Belgian view of Congolese people at the time, one that was more "patronising" than malevolent. Jean-Marie Apostolidès supported this idea, as did biographer Benoît Peeters, who asserted, "Hergé was no more racist than the next man." After meeting Hergé in the 1980s, Farr commented, "You couldn't have met someone who was more open and less racist."
Contrastingly, biographer Pierre Assouline stated that in 1930s Belgium, Hergé would have had access to literature by the likes of André Gide and Albert Londres that was critical of the colonial regime. Assouline claimed that Hergé instead chose not to read such reports because they conflicted with the views of his conservative milieu. Laurence Grove—President of the International Bande Dessinée Society and an academic at the University of Glasgow—concurred, remarking that Hergé adhered to prevailing societal trends in his work, and that "[w]hen it was fashionable to be a colonial racist, that's what he was." Comic book historian Mark McKinney noted that other Franco-Belgian comic artists of the same period had chosen to depict the native Africans in a more favourable light, citing the examples of Jijé's 1939 work Blondin et Cirage (Blondy and Shoe-Black), in which the protagonists are adopted brothers, one white, the other black, and Tif et Tondu, which was serialised in Spirou from 1939 to 1940 and in which the Congolese aid the Belgians against their American antagonists.
Farr and McCarthy stated that Tintin in the Congo was the most popular Tintin adventure in Francophone Africa. According to Thompson, the book remained hugely popular in the Congo even after the country achieved independence in 1960. Nevertheless, government figures in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have criticised the book. In 2004, after the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs Karel De Gucht described President Joseph Kabila's provisional DRC government as incompetent, Congolese Information Minister Henri Mova Sakanyi accused him of "racism and nostalgia for colonialism", remarking that it was like "Tintin in the Congo all over again." De Gucht refused to retract his statement.
Tintin in the Congo fitted widely held stereotypes about black Africans found in early 20th century Europe. This is a poster for a fitted widely held stereotypes about black Africans found in early 20th century Europe. This is a poster for a human zoo in Stuttgart in 1928.
In July 2007, British human rights lawyer David Enright complained to the United Kingdom's Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) that he came across the book in the children's section of Borders bookshop while shopping with his wife and two sons. The CRE called on bookshops to remove the comic, stating that it contained "hideous racial prejudice" by depicting Congolese who "look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles." Responding that it was committed to letting its "customers make the choice", Borders moved the book to an area reserved for adult graphic novels. UK bookseller Waterstone's followed suit. Another British retailer, WHSmith, said that the book was sold on its website, but with a label that recommended it for readers aged 16 and over. The CRE's attempt to ban the book was criticised by Conservative Party politician Ann Widdecombe, who remarked that the organisation had more important things to do than regulate the availability of historical children's books. The media controversy increased interest in the book, and Borders reported that its sales of Tintin in the Congo had been boosted 4,000%, while it also rose to eighth on the Amazon.com bestseller list. Publisher Egmont UK also responded to racism concerns by placing a protective band around the book with a warning about its content and writing an introduction describing its historical context.
Tintin in the Congo also came under criticism in the United States; in October 2007, in response to a complaint by a patron, the Brooklyn Public Library in New York City placed the graphic novel in a locked back room, only permitting access by appointment. Tintin in the Congo became part of a drawn-out media debate in Sweden after national newspaper Dagens Nyheter reported on the book's removal from a children's library in Kulturhuset in Stockholm in September 2011. The incident, nicknamed "Tintin-gate", led to heated discussions in mainstream and social media concerning accusations of racism and censorship.
In August 2007, Congolese student Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo filed a complaint in Brussels, claiming that the book was an insult to the Congolese people and required banning. Public prosecutors investigated and initiated a criminal case. The matter was eventually transferred to a civil court in April 2010. Mondondo's lawyers argued that Tintin in the Congo amounted to "a justification of colonisation and of white supremacy", and Mondondo called it "racist and xenophobic". Alain Berenboom, lawyer for both Moulinsart, the company which controls Hergé's estate, and Casterman, the book's publisher, argued that the cartoonist's depiction of the Congolese "wasn't racism but kind paternalism". He said that banning it would set a dangerous precedent for the availability of works by other historical authors, such as Charles Dickens or Jules Verne, which contain similar stereotypes of non-white ethnicities. The court ruled in February 2012 that the book would not be banned, deciding that it was "clear that neither the story, nor the fact that it has been put on sale, has a goal to... create an intimidating, hostile, degrading, or humiliating environment", and that it therefore did not break Belgian law. Belgium's Centre for Equal Opportunities warned against "over-reaction and hyper political correctness".
Shortly after, Swedish-Belgian Jean-Dadaou Monyas filed a similar complaint, which was supported by Afrosvenskarna, an interest group for Swedes of African descent. The complaint to the Chancellor of Justice was turned down as violations of hate speech restrictions in the Swedish Fundamental Law on Freedom of Expression must be filed within one year of publication, and the latest Swedish edition of Tintin in the Congo appeared in 2005.
The South African comics writer Anton Kannemeyer has parodied the perceived racist nature of the book to highlight what he sees as the continuing racist undertones of South African society. In his Pappa in Afrika (2010), a satire of Tintin in the Congo, he portrays Tintin as an Afrikaner with racist views of indigenous Africans.
Hunting and animal cruelty [ edit ]
Tintin in the Congo shows Tintin taking part in what Michael Farr described as "the wholesale and gratuitous slaughter" of animals; over the course of the Adventure, Tintin shoots several antelope, kills an ape to wear its skin, rams a rifle vertically into a crocodile's open mouth, injures an elephant for ivory, stones a buffalo, and (in earlier editions) drills a hole into a rhinoceros before planting dynamite in its body, blowing it up from the inside. Such scenes reflect the popularity of big-game hunting among whites and affluent visitors in Sub-Saharan Africa during the 1930s. Hergé later felt guilty about his portrayal of animals in Tintin in the Congo and became an opponent of blood sports; when he wrote Cigars of the Pharaoh (1934), he had Tintin befriend a herd of elephants living in the Indian jungle.
Philippe Goddin stated that the scene in which Tintin shoots a herd of antelope was "enough to upset even the least ecological reader" in the 21st century. When India Book House first published the book in India in 2006, that nation's branch of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals issued a public criticism, and chief functionary Anuradha Sawhney stated that the book was "replete with instances that send a message to young minds that it is acceptable to be cruel to animals."
References [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]After blasting the Senate last week for passing a 600-page bill no one had time to read, Sen. Rand Paul Randal (Rand) Howard PaulThe Hill's Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Trump escalates fight with NY Times The 10 GOP senators who may break with Trump on emergency MORE (R-Ky.) introduced legislation that would force the Senate to give its members one day to read bills for every 20 pages they contain.
"For goodness sakes, this is a 600-page bill. I got it this morning," Paul said Friday, just before the Senate approved a massive bill extending highway funding, federal flood insurance and low student loans rates.
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"Not one member of the Senate will read this bill before we vote on it," he added.
Paul also introduced related legislation Friday, S. 3359, that would prohibit the inclusion of more than one subject in a single bill.
The highway-flood-student loan bill came up just one day before authorization for highway spending was set to expire, and two days before the interest rate on loans was set to double to 6.8 percent. But Paul said that is no excuse for rushing a bill to the floor without giving senators a chance to learn what's in it.
He also noted that Senate rules require bills to be held for 48 hours before they receive a vote so members can read them, but said the Senate failed to follow even that minimal rule.
"At the very least, we ought to adhere to our own rules," he said. "Forty-eight hours is still a challenge to find out everything in here."
The Senate voted 72-22 to waive the rule requiring a 48-hour layover, after Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and other Republicans raised a point of order against the bill because it came up too quickly.
Republicans also raised two other points of order against the bill last week in order to speed it to the floor. One, from Sen. Bob Corker Robert (Bob) Phillips CorkerBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Sasse’s jabs at Trump spark talk of primary challenger RNC votes to give Trump 'undivided support' ahead of 2020 MORE (R-Tenn.), argued that the bill would spend $2.5 billion more than what was agreed as part of last year's debt-ceiling agreement and later enshrined in the Budget Control Act.
The Senate rejected Corker's point of order after Democrats argued that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says it will reduce the deficit over 10 years.
Corker, however, argued that the bill still violates the Budget Control Act, and said it shows Congress still does not have the discipline to rein in spending.
"According to CBO, this is paid for the old way, where we spend all the money in a year or two and then it is paid for over 10," Corker said. He added that voting against his point of order "says we don't have the discipline, the courage, or the will to do what we told the American people we would do to try to get our fiscal house in order."
The other point of order was raised by Sen. Dan Coats Daniel (Dan) Ray Coats58 ex-national security officials rebuke Trump over emergency declaration DNC unveils new security checklist to protect campaigns from cyberattacks Overnight Defense: Trump to leave 200 troops in Syria | Trump, Kim plan one-on-one meeting | Pentagon asks DHS to justify moving funds for border wall MORE (R-Ind.), who argued that the final bill as negotiated by House and Senate leaders included new language requiring an accelerated study on the threats posted by the Asian carp in the Great Lakes. Coats said that provision was passed by neither the Senate nor the House, and should not be included in the final bill.
But his point of order was also waived by the Senate.
Paul indicated that the Asian carp example was one of many new issues that could be in the bill, but would likely go undetected until long after it is passed.
"I passed two senators in the hall going back to their office, still trying to get out something that's been written in this bill that affects their states that they found out minutes ago," Paul said Friday morning. "Had they not found out about it, nobody would have known about it."
The highway bill, H.R. 4348, was ultimately passed 74-19 in the Senate, and was approved 373-52 in the House — all "no" votes in the House came from Republicans.
While the bill officially ended the debate on highway funding, flood insurance and student loans, Congress acted too late to have the measure signed into law by President Obama over the weekend.
Instead, both the House and Senate approved a bill extending the highway and student loan rate for one week, because several days are needed to prepare the bill for the president's signature.Gold was important to the U.S. to nationalize in 1933, to build Fort Knox in 1936 to store it and to stop foreign central bank redemptions of dollars for gold in 1971, but not important enough to ever add more to its reserves.
The Closing of the Gold Window
On August 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon went on national television, interrupting popular program ‘Bonanza”, to announce that the United States would no longer adhere to the gold standard established in 1944 by the Bretton Woods Agreements. Under those agreements, the dollar was to be the world’s reserve currency, backed by gold under which other central banks could redeem their dollars for gold held by the United States Treasury. Coupled with Mr. Nixon’s television appearance, he also signed an executive order directing the U.S. Treasury to “suspend temporarily” the right of foreign central banks to redeem their dollars in exchange for gold.
That suspension is still in effect today, and the dollar is no longer backed by gold.
Nixon’s closing of the gold window was precipitated by the increase in gold redemptions by foreign central banks prompted by the alarming deficit spending the United States was engaged in at the time, including borrowing to fund President Johnson’s massive new government welfare program (the “Great Society”), the United States’ increasing engagement in the Vietnam War and expenditures for the “space race” designed to leap frog the Russians and land a man on the moon. Foreign central banks grew concerned that the U.S. did not have enough gold to back their increasing deficit expenditures and preferred to have gold instead of dollars and increased their redemption requests until Nixon cried “enough’ and closed the gold window.
Having avoided a total drain of her gold reserves by closing the gold window, the United States didn’t try to rebuild them and set about instead to make the dollar the only foreign reserve asset that might matter.
Introducing the Petro Dollar
After gold no longer backed the U.S. dollar, U.S. entered into agreements with the oil producing nations, including Saudi Arabia and convinced them to price their product in dollars and accept only dollars as payment. In exchange the United States would provide military protection. These ‘petro dollar’ agreements coupled with U.S. military and economic preeminence created foreign demand for dollars and U.S. Treasury Bonds. This demand supported the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, even if it was no longer convertible into gold.
Since 1971, the dollar has retained its world reserve currency status, backed only by the ‘full faith and credit” of the United States (and the petro dollar agreements), which to date have been deemed ‘good enough’ for the rest of the world. The United States has issued trillions dollars in U.S. Treasury Notes over the years and they are considered safe and liquid. Nearly all central banks hold U.S. Treasuries as their main reserve asset.
The Way It Was
On April 5, 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued an executive order requiring U.S. citizens to turn in their gold, including any U.S. gold coins then in circulation. People turning in their gold got the then market price of $20.67 an ounce. The gold the U.S. collected from its citizens became the gold of the nation and formed the bulk of the United States’ gold reserves. On January 30, 1934, Congress passed the Gold Reserve Act of 1934 that, among other things, revalued gold to $35 an ounce thus provided the United States with a devaluation of the dollar and a tidy profit on their gold confiscation.
To store the nation’s gold, in 1936, the United States built Fort Knox, a massive vault facility in Kentucky. When Fort Knox opened in 1937 the United States shipped the bulk of the nation’s gold to Fort Knox. At one point in 1941, Fort Knox held nearly 650 million ounces (approximately 20,200 tons) of gold. By August 1971 due in part to a “run on the Treasury” by foreign central banks requesting gold for their dollars, the United States gold held at Fort Knox had fallen to about 150 million ounces, or about 4,600 tons. The rest of the United States’ gold totaling 8,133.50 tons, was and is still held at other locations, with the second largest holdings housed at the vaults of the New York Federal Reserve.
The U.S. gold holdings are the largest in the world but are frozen in time, with no official additions or subtractions since 1971.
At over 8,000 tons, the United States holds the most gold of any nation on earth.
In recent decades, U.S. Presidents and Fed Reserve officials almost never talk about gold, unless asked.
De-Dollarization Begins
During and after the financial crisis of 2008, the United States Federal Reserve, the issuer of the nation’s currency, engaged in ‘quantitative easing’ (QE) whereby they printed dollars out of thin air in order to purchase U.S. Treasury Bonds and mortgage backed securities to alleviate worsening financial conditions. The Fed also took interest rates down to zero percent where they stayed until December 2015.
QE caused a foreign central bank reaction to U.S. monetary policy similar to the foreign central bank reaction to U.S. excessive fiscal policy in the 1960’s. Foreign central banks became concerned about the value and stability of the dollar and U.S. Treasury Bonds. QE was viewed by some central banks, including the People’s Bank of China, as undermining the value of the Treasury bonds they had accumulated as reserves. QE made foreign central banks nervous that the U.S. Federal Reserve would print as many dollars as it needed in an unrestrained fashion and thus undermine the value of their U.S. Treasury reserve holdings.
Over the past two years, the central banks of Russia and China, in particular, have diversified their foreign reserves away from U.S. Treasury Bonds and into gold.
Chinese Reserves
China has added significant amounts of gold to her reserves in recent years and reduced her holdings in U.S. Treasury Bonds.
The Chinese Central Bank added about 130 tons of gold to her reserves from July 2015 – February 2016.
China’s U.S. Treasury holdings fell along with overall foreign reserves since May 2015.
Russian Reserves
The Central Bank of Russia, while smaller than the Central Bank of China, has added even more gold to its reserves in recent months.
The Central Bank of Russia added about 185 tons of gold from June 2015 – February 2016.
Russian U.S. Treasury Bond holdings fell 30% from 2014 -2015.
Why are central banks adding to their gold reserves?
Perhaps they believe, like Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan that “gold is a currency, it is still by all evidences the premier currency where no fiat currency, including the dollar, can match it. If you are looking at a question of turmoil, we will find as we always have in the past it moves into the gold price.”
This article by BGASC is not, and should not be regarded as, investment advice or as a recommendation regarding any particular course of action.Witchknife (Athame)
"BY THE GODS!" THE CLOAKED HUMAN MUTTERED under his breath as he was compelled to plunge into the cold, stagnant waters of the cistern. The rest of the tavern goers, who came out to watch, cackled with glee as the loudmouthed man burst back out of the brown waters, gasping for foul smelling air. The small humanoid he had confronted, stubby red horns atop his head and forming a rough goatee on his chin, grinned proudly before slipping into the crowd and disappearing.
Legend tells of a time when when all creatures spoke one language and athames ruled the world. Their word was law, and other creatures obeyed any command the athames gave. Then a deity interfered and taught the athames' subjects to speak new languages. This broke the athames' power over them and the subjects, who feared and hated the athames despite their magnanimous rule, rebelled and tore the athame empire to pieces.
Thick Bodied
Witchknives have tough skin that ranges in color from dark gray and brown to ruddy orange. They have short, red horns in places where other creatures have hair and their eyes are orange or yellow with red pupils. Their blocky frames rarely exceed 5 feet in height and average 120 pounds.
Enclaves
Witchknives live in small enclaves, with rarely more than two hundred adults, hidden away from the civilizations of other races. These enclaves have a hierarchy of rank determined by birth, but most witchknives are of equal rank and have many rights and privileges. Most witchknives live in a monastic manner inside fortresslike homes, spending their days meditating, training for combat, and learning.
Natural Psionicists
Witchknife is the name other creatures use to refer to the athames because of their power to compel victims to do their bidding with but a single utterance. A witchknife's psionic ability to command others relies on the target creature being able to understand the witchknife, which leads witchknives to seek out and learn as many languages as possible. This is the driving force for any witchknife who leaves the confines of their enclave.
Witchknife Names
Witchknives are given nicknames upon their birth, generally describing the color tone their skin takes. Once a witchknife reaches adulthood, they select a new name for themselves, generally combining it with their nickname. There is little distinction between male and female names and witchknives never assume a surname; choosing instead to use the name of their enclave.
Nicknames: Amber, Ash, Black, Bone, Coal, Ember, Flint,
Grey, Iron, Onyx, Rose, Steel
Adult Names: Amberaxe, Ashblade, Blackrock, Bonechin,
Coalheart, Emberfist, Flintcutter, Greyfox, Ironback
Witchknife Traits
Your witchknife character has an assortment of inborn abilities shared with other witchknives.
Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 2, and your Dexterity score increases by 1.
Age. Young witchknives grow slowly. They reach full size after 30 years but are not considered adults until the age of 50. On average, they live about 250 years.
Alignment. Most witchknives lean towards neutrality. While some fall on either side of true neutrality, most focus on protecting and maintaining their enclaves over the worries of the larger world. Other races often misinterpret the witchknife's abilities and assume ill intent where it may not exist.
Size. Witchknives stand between 4 and 5 feet tall and average 120 pounds. Your size is Medium.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 25 feet. Your speed is not reduced by wearing heavy armor.
Darkvision. Accustomed to life underground, you have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common, Undercommon, and two extra languages of your choice. Witchknives are driven to learn a variety of languages, for their psionic commands are only obeyed by creatures that can understand them.
Psionic Command. You know the message cantrip. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast the command spell once with this trait and regain the ability to do so when you finish a long rest. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells.“I love games and I want to make them for a living, but I don’t know where to start. How can I become a game developer?”
I’ve been asked the above question (or a variant of it) several times ever since I started hosting IndieCon with a few coworkers. So after replying to a bunch of them, I decided to write a small blog post on the subject.
Note that even though I released a couple of games on my own. And created demos using Autodesk’s new Stingray engine as part of a team (check out Nora and The Piano). I am far from being an expert game developer.
The below points are lessons I learned the hard way from my limited experience making games:
Get started: The gaming industry is very diverse with a lot of genres, platforms, business models (etc…), and it’s easy to get overwhelmed.
Don’t worry about not knowing all the answers. Pick a project that you think you can complete (it can even be a clone) and dive into it.
If you make mistakes along the way then start over. Your priority right now is to learn as much as you can about game development, and the best way to grow is by learning from your mistakes. Start small & ship: Once you decide on a concept, make it smaller, make it even smaller, make it EVEN smaller, and then ship it. One shipped average game is worth more than ten amazing games that never see the light of day.
To be clear, I am not advocating releasing bad games and shovelware (see point #9). But actually completing projects and covering the whole development cycle from A to Z. Keep your special project for later: You might have that special game brewing in your head that you always wanted to make. Don’t work on that project until you ship a few games and gain more experience. Attend game jams and other meet-ups: If you are from Israel then start by following GameIS, Unity3D meet-ups, IndieCon (among other events). Global Game Jam is an international event that is also a great place to network with other developers. Don’t quit your day job: I advise you not to quit your day job if you are just starting out. Chances that you won’t earn a lot of revenues from the first few titles you release. Once you feel ready to commit and the risks are well calculated and taken into account, then take a deep breath and take the plunge. Learn the ins and outs of the gaming industry: Follow the news, listen to podcasts, read blogs, know the major players (etc…). You are not working in a vacuum so understand the market well. Pay attention to game design: Gameplay comes first. It doesn’t matter if you use the latest cutting-edge technology or have the prettiest art style. If your game is not fun then no one will care enough to play it.
Learn about game design (I recommend reading “The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses“), get versed on UX, and play games and try to analyse what makes them tick. Find a couple of peers: There will be times that you will be so burned out from crunching (especially if you are doing this as a side job), that you just want to quit. Working with a team helps you stay motivated and focused on your goal. Not to mention that the more you are exposed to people from different disciplines (art, design, production, marketing, etc…), the broader your vision will be. Don’t be afraid to kill projects/features: Sometimes a concept is good and worth investing in and sometimes it’s not. Don’t get too attached to any mechanic or project and know when to sunset. Keep iterating: Game development is all about iteration and balancing. Heads up that a good chunk of your development time will be playtesting and talking to players to find the “fun”.
Games will always have a special place in my heart. Hope this post proves fruitful to you guys :)Guillermo del Toro's amazing looking next film, Pacific Rim, doesn't come out until this summer, but Del Toro is already working on developing the sequel. In a recent interview with The Playlist he's asked if he plans to shoot it in 3D, and this was his reply...
Yes. Provided, at that point, that the technology is becoming easier and easier… Even then they were super respectful. By then we were already getting ILM shots. I was realizing that out of 100 shots, maybe 10% of the shots were risky. They said, "If we go 2D on those shots, we can do it." Then I gave them my list of conditions. They spent twice of what they normally spend on [this process], because they gave me the chance to pay ILM to do every single shot in native 3D. They aren't being converted. So all the big 3D effects shots are being done by ILM from the get go. Normally they give a movie a 14 to 16 week conversion time [for 3D]. I started the conversion back in September. So it's six months for conversion. It's very classy.
Well, it's good to know the 3D on this Pac Rim movie is going to be decent. It seems the films that Del Toro is making are just getting bigger and bigger. He's asking for huge budgets for the films he makes, which is one of the reason At the Mountains of Madness never happened. During the interview he's asked if he'll go back to making smaller films, which in the past have been his best films.
Yeah, but it's not like I have two screenplays under my bed. I successfully reached page 25 for Saturn and the End of Days and on another [script] I have successfully reached page 45. Those things take years to write. Devil's Backbone was like 15 years it took me to make. Pan's Labyrinth it took me two or three years to solve the screenplay. I work on them but they are trickier propositions. As soon as I finish the screenplay to one of them, I'll leave everything I have to go make it.
That's cool to hear! I hope he finishes one of them soon, I'd like to see what they were about. He goes on to give an update on The Haunted Mansion film project saying,
Haunted Mansion is very much alive and in process. Disney is very supportive and we are doing another draft of the screenplay… Yet another draft… And they really want to do it. I know we're going to talk about other possible directors, for me to produce, and having written it, produce it for somebody else. It's going to be scary. Hopefully it will be fun scary, rather than funny scary. It's going to be fun but the idea is to make it scary like when you go through the ride as the kid – part of you is charmed and part of you wants to get out of there.
I'm relieved that the project isn't dead, that's one I really want to see happen! It has potential to be incredibly fun. Then there's the Beauty and Beast film with Emma Watson that he's developing, he gives a little update on that one as well...
We just got the first draft from Andrew Davies, who wrote some BBC Charles Dickens miniseries, to great effect, including two of my favorites of his – "Little Dorrit" and "Bleak House." I love his work. So we just got it. I'm doing a pass myself and then we'll send it to the studio for reactions.
I suggest you head on over to The Playlist to read the whole interview, because there's a lot of good stuff that the filmmaker talks about. Out of all the projects that Del Toro has been developing over the years which one are you looking forward to seeing most?US drafting plan to allow government access to any email or Web search RAW STORY
Published: Monday January 14, 2008
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Print This Email This National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell is drawing up plans for cyberspace spying that would make the current debate on warrantless wiretaps look like a "walk in the park," according to an interview published in the New Yorker's print edition today. Debate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act will be a walk in the park compared to this, McConnell said. this is going to be a goat rope on the Hill. My prediction is that were going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens. The article, which profiles the 65-year-old former admiral appointed by President George W. Bush in January 2007 to oversee all of America's intelligence agencies, was not published on the New Yorker's Web site. McConnell is developing a Cyber-Security Policy, still in the draft stage, which will closely police Internet activity. "Ed Giorgio, who is working with McConnell on the plan, said that would mean giving the government the autority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer or Web search," author Lawrence Wright pens. Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation, he said," Wright adds. "Giorgio warned me, 'We have a saying in this business: Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'" A zero-sum game is one in which gains by one side come at the expense of the other. In other words -- McConnell's aide believes greater security can only come at privacy's expense. McConnell has been an advocate for computer-network defense, which has previously not been the province of any intelligence agency. According to a 2007 conversation in the Oval Office, McConnell told President Bush, If the 9/11 perpetrators had focused on a single US bank through cyber-attack and it had been successful, it would have an order of magnitude greater impact on the US economy. Bush turned to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, asking him if it was true; Paulson said that it was. Bush then asked to |
out on Xbox Live Arcade. While the world is 3D, the player can only move in two dimensions, like that of a classic side scroller. It has a pretty amazing story and really fun gameplay elements, very similar to Metroid.
S.t.a.l.k.e.r – Shadow of Chernobyl
So the novel basis for this is a little confusing; the game is based on a novel, which was derived from the screenplay of a movie of the same name, which was derived from a Russian novel called Roadside Picnic. With that behind us, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R franchise has spawned 3 games, all of which have done very well in sales and reviews.
Related articlesISLAMABAD: Summers will continue to be hotter and longer each year if short and long term steps are not taken to tackle climate change, various environmentalists said on Monday, one of the hottest days so far this summer.
“Every year we are facing hotter and longer summers mainly because of our fast depleting forest cover. Mercury has touched 54 °C in some parts of the country during the last two weeks, which is a new record in Pakistan’s history,” said environmentalist Shahida Kausar Farooq in a statement. Ms Farooq heads the NGO Subh-i-Nau.
She stressed on the need for allocating budgets wisely for tackling the effects of climate change including changing weather patterns, shortage of water and the energy crisis. The government should devise a mechanism to monitor projects related to the environment, she said, adding that though the government announces to have set aside substantial sums of money for tree plantation drives and other such campaigns each year, but no real change has been seen for many years.
We should learn from the heat waves the last many years and this environment day should be the beginning of all these efforts.
The prime minister, the chief ministers of all provinces and other high-ups should take steps to save our current and future generations from disasters and protecting the environment, she said.
Talking to Dawn, Ms Farooq said planting trees also requires a lot of water.
“The government should take steps to arrange water for which rain harvesting should be done and small dams should be constructed in order to provide sufficient water for planting trees.
In the long term, Pakistan should invest in big dams as there will be irregular rains with long intervals in the future, she added.
“Air conditioners harm the environment a lot as well. The more we use air conditioners, the more the temperature will increase,” she said.
A number of countries have banned plastic bags which Pakistan should do as well as rivers and oceans are being polluted by plastic bags, Ms Farooq said.
“Mega projects in which tons of concrete is used are also harmful for the environment because they increase the temperature,” she said, adding that birds and honey bees are also disappearing due to the lack of trees.
She said local trees should be planted along with fruit trees, which provide shade and fruit.
“There should be a proper solid waste management programme to ensure waste is used for the production of energy and fertilisers rather than being burned in cities which contributes to pollution,” she said.
Published in Dawn, June 6th, 2017We recently celebrated the Jewish holiday of Purim, celebrating a political victory for the Jewish community of Persia living under King Xerxes 2,500 years ago. The Purim story articulated a masterful gambit of backdoor politicking against potentially violent discrimination, and today we celebrate with masquerades and community inebriation.
Regarding masquerades, I have never been one to indulge, for one simple reason -- a mask is placed on a face which must be anchored in reality. If there is no reality there, the mask will float away. Before I transitioned, and was living what I felt was an existentially fraudulent life, putting on a woman's mask would have called attention to the unreality beneath. Today I am uncomfortable reconnecting to that sphere -- the memory of that anxiety is still too raw.
I bring up the Purim story because in Maryland we are finally moving a bill in the state legislature to ban discrimination against trans and gender non-conforming persons. We have built support over the seven years during which this bill has been introduced, a period that began in 2007 just before trans issues hit the national LGBT stage in force with the introduction of an Employment Nondiscrimination Act inclusive of trans persons. That experience kick-started the open debate about trans inclusion in the larger gay community, a debate which led last year to victories in the 11th circuit and the EEOC.
One particular facet of that support over the years has been the state's civil rights commission. This is not a new phenomenon; civil rights laws are often sparked into existence with the support of local commissions which have been tending to such matters for many years before legislation is even a possibility. That was true for our Montgomery County law in 2007, for instance, where our County Executive, Ike Leggett, who signed the legislation, had sat on the County Human Rights Commission twenty years earlier, his first appointed office in the county.
The Maryland Commission on Civil Rights has supported us each year, but this year, because of the appointment of two new members, orthodox religious believers, support for the bill was questioned. The appointment of these believers is indicative of the growing clout of the fundamentalist community over the years, even in Maryland, though it feels to me that their degree of influence has peaked. What became evident, particularly from testimony in opposition to the gender identity bill, was just how out-of-touch these people are, speaking of the trans community in terms redolent of the '50s and '60s.
I can discuss questions of human sexuality as they relate to Jewish tradition and Jewish law. One basic point that is raised is that since Jewish society was strictly sex-segregated for the past 2000 years, it should continue to be so. This isn't a particularly anti-trans position; rather, it is a generally anti-modernist, sexist one. Such a questioner has the sense that most trans persons are simply male cross-dressers, not understanding that not to be the case, nor knowing that a majority of those who identify as cross-dressers would transition if they were able. And, of course, it completely ignores the other half of the trans community, composed of transgender men. They are ignored out of willful ignorance, because they cannot be described as male predators; they are viewed by our opponents as female. This undermines the "trans woman as male sexual predator" theme, and is therefore almost invariably ignored.
This attitude is actually demeaning to the Jewish community. A large majority of Jewish residents of Maryland are not fundamentalist in any sense of the word, and would agree with none of these arguments. Judaism, being a highly decentralized system, deliberately allows a wide variation of beliefs, and few Jewish leaders would try to make a case in a secular legislature for the entire Jewish community, particularly one based on a very narrow reading of halacha, or Jewish law. More important, however, is the fact that Jewish law and tradition have a very progressive history, with an understanding of sex, and in particular, intersex conditions including transsexualism, that date to the Hellenistic period as written down in the Talmud. Those rabbis recognized a variety of human manifestations of intersex conditions, and even five hundred years earlier the prophet Isaiah wrote about the sarisim, or eunuchs, which included transsexual women, in deeply honorific terms, praising them above common men and women (Isaiah 56:4-5).ASHEVILLE — Nutz R Us is no more.
The corporation that operates three Buncombe County family care homes for mentally ill adults filed paperwork with the North Carolina Secretary of State’s Office on July 12 to change its name to Haywood Heights Family Care Home, reflecting one of the company’s two West Asheville homes that was already operating under the “Haywood Heights” name.
But there’s no indication that anything changed other than the name of the organization, despite state inspectors citing its homes for repeated violations over the last year.
And Carolina Public Press has discovered additional evidence that the staff at Nutz R Us facilities not only treated their clients with contempt, but bragged about it on social media.
Under pressure
The name change comes following a Carolina Public Press investigation published June 25.
That article appears to have received wide readership and already has become one of the most-viewed articles in CPP history, according to Google Analytics’ statistics for CPP articles. Several other publications also reprinted or linked to the CPP article by agreement.
WUNC radio interviewed CPP’s managing editor about Nutz R Us for statewide broadcast on its midday program, the State of Things. The interview discussed not only the company but concerns about state health inspections and the for-profit guardianship companies that sometimes make placements at such facilities.
The California-based debunking website Snopes.com published an article June 27 citing CPP’s reporting as evidence that the state of North Carolina actually allowed an organization serving mentally ill adults and calling itself Nutz R Us to operate and the company was not just urban legend.
Several individuals working with various advocacy groups for the mentally ill in Western North Carolina contacted CPP about the situation, indicating they were pushing local and state government agencies, especially in Buncombe and Henderson counties, to stop doing business with Nutz R Us. However, they also described divisions even with advocacy groups as some parties were concerned about the political fallout of pushing the state to crack down.
In the end, Nutz R Us appears to have acted on its own, though its possible that some government officials were encouraging the change behind the scenes. Several public officials CPP spoke with during the original investigation described their revulsion at the company’s name alongside a legal inability to do anything about it.
The company’s paperwork to change its name indicates that its board of directors and shareholders agreed on the name change on July 11, as an amendment to its articles of incorporation. There’s no indication of any change in leadership as owner Forrestene “Tina” Muckelvene continues to serve as the company’s president.
Muckelvene has never returned calls from CPP seeking to interview her about the organization.
Social Media boasts
N.C. Department of Health and Human Services inspections of Nutz R Us turned up a range of violations, including disgusting and unsanitary conditions in food areas and bathrooms, delays in building maintenance and lapses in patient services, including “forgetting” the injections a schizophrenic patient needed to avoid hearing voices.
Those infractions apparently earn family care homes in North Carolina a loss of a star under the state’s four-star rating system. In theory, repeated serious violations should result in the closure of a home.
DHHS was apparently unaware that at least one employee of Nutz R Us has posted to Facebook joking about mistreatment of residents. CPP has downloaded screenshots of some posts in order to preserve a record of the comments.
On August 8, 2015, a self-identified Nutz R Us employee, Tanya Michelle, posted her status as “feeling proud at Nutz R Us” in Asheville. In the same post, she asked, “How do you convince a 66 yr old man that hasn’t had a shower in months to let you give him one??? … you buy him cigarettes! Yes I’m good at my job!”
In response to comments from friends, she posted, “I almost thought I was gonna have to starve next month cause washing dirty balls and ass that hasn’t had soap & water for months was most definitely out of my comfort zone this evening!!! Lol.”
A friend told Michelle she shouldn’t be giving a patient cigarettes and advised her to”just Lysol him down and call it a day.”
Michelle responded, “Lol you can bribe them though.”
DHHS inspectors have cited Nutz R Us facilities for serving food that didn’t comply with approved nutritional meal plans. Michelle’s posts also seem to back up the idea that deviating from the scripted meal plan was common practice and viewed as a way for employees to ingratiate themselves with residents.
“I love spoiling my peeps I take care of!” she posted, immediately before her posts about the unwashed resident. “Once again #beastmode in the kitchen for my guys … BBQ ribs, greens, cornbread and cheesecake for dessert. And yes I am loved.”
Because no one at the company formerly known as Nutz R Us has returned CPP’s calls, it has not been possible to determine whether Michelle continues to be employed with the organization.Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
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Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports provides the story:
Right-hander Randy Messenger, who has spent the last three seasons dominating Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan for the Hanshin Tigers, has set a Nov. 15 deadline to entertain offers from major league teams, said his agent, Matt Sosnick.
Messenger truly has been exceptional in Nippon Professional Baseball, boasting three straight sub-3.00 ERA seasons. He led the Central League in innings pitched this year with 196 1/3 and strikeouts with 183. The 32-year-old native of Reno, Nevada has a standing three-year contract offer to return to the Hanshin Tigers that carries $10 million in guaranteed money and another $5 million in performance-based incentives, according to Tim Dierkes of MLB Trade Rumors.
Messenger wants a guaranteed two-year contract in the $8-10 million range to return state-side.
He was an 11th-round draft pick of the Marlins back in 1999 and made a total of 173 appearances in Major League Baseball (for Miami, San Francisco and Seattle) before taking his talents over to Japan.
HardballTalk’s Matthew Pouliot ranked him 46th on the official HBT Top 150 Free Agents list.
Follow @drewsilvDemocratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE is blasting Donald Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE in a new video that asks what the presumptive GOP presidential nominee is hiding in his still-unreleased tax returns.
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The video shows a range of statements Trump has made in the past about when he would release his tax returns.
“Maybe I’m gonna do the tax returns when Obama does his birth certificate,” he says in one clip, before the video shows the president discussing the release of his birth certificate.
In another clip, Trump says, “If I decide to run for office, I’ll produce my tax returns, absolutely.”
It also shows Trump saying he will release the returns when the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has finished auditing him, followed by a clip of a news anchor saying the IRS has no problem with Trump releasing his returns while the audit is ongoing.
Watch the video above.With the holiday season upon us, you might notice your stress levels rising. Like it or not, you will be close to family, friends, co-workers and even strangers. Emotions run high during office and dinner parties, shopping malls and waiting in long lines. To get through this time of year with little or no emotional damage, take a tip from the psychics.
Whether or not you are psychic, you can use these methods to protect yourself from harboring another person’s negative emotions, either from the physical or spirit worlds. Your mind and body are great receivers. Sensitivity to stimuli around you triggers gut feelings on an emotional level. Although you cannot avoid all of your emotional responses, you can protect yourself from many of the unwanted ones. These negative feelings may not have come from within you; they may have come from an outside source.
The auras around your body reveal information about your emotions and responses. Because you can project your auras to others, this makes you vulnerable to other people’s aura projections.
For example, some people have difficulty being in large crowds or get the feeling that someone is sucking out all of their positive energies, like a psychic vampire. This makes them feel dizzy and closed in — not feeling like themselves and even having disturbing dreams. Whether you are a psychic, empath, intuitive, highly sensitive person or a healer working with energies, you have probably experienced these feelings at some time in your life.
At times it is difficult to identify the cause of your discomfort. It can take a lot of soul searching and insight into your encounters with others. It may take another psychic to help pinpoint the source, as he or she is sensitive to positive and negative energies, and particularly to those coming from the spirit world.
For example, you may be enjoying yourself at a party and all of a sudden you experience a downward spiral and anxiety. You feel overwhelmed, want to get out and do not understand why. Don’t blame yourself. These feelings might be caused by another individual at the party who is harboring negative energy or a lot of sadness due to either his/her own bad memories about the holidays or is reminded of a tragedy or death that occurred during this time of year. This would be an instance in which you could implement psychic protection techniques. If this situation has happened before, it would be a good idea to perform the protection exercises prior to attending any party or gathering. There are quite a few simple solutions and ones that work rather quickly.
The following steps should be taken in order to keep you protected from invasion. Stay physically, emotionally and spiritually healthy. Focus on personal grounding. When you are weak in any of these areas you are more susceptible to illness and depression. Many meditations focus on grounding, particularly those that incorporate the chakras. Balanced and aligned chakras are a main factor in keeping your auras healthy and protected. A heightened sense of awareness and good feeling will be realized.
Also, you can visualize that your body is being showered with an imaginary bubble of white light. This white light is your protection. It emotionally guards you from the negative energies and feelings that are projected on you from others. Continue by imagining your auras glowing in a bright, blue light. This visualization amplifies your positive emotions of morality, good and love. There is no room for any opposing energies.
Finally, call upon your angels, spirit guides and God for protection. With their assistance, you will further empower yourself and be shielded from any psychic attacks or negative attachments.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM PSYCHIC LIBRARY!
Join our FB Fan page!As long as people keep mix tapes from a high-school sweetheart up in the attic, Mr. DuBravac said, there will still be the urge to hear them. “People have a tremendous amount of installed content and an innate curiosity when coming across a box of tapes to say, ‘Hey, what’s on these?’ ” he said.
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The tapes started to really take off in 1979, the year that a radical new cassette player — the Sony Walkman — was introduced, enabling people to listen to Donna Summer and the Knack’s “My Sharona” while they were jogging (remember jogging?). The heft of the early Walkman — slightly smaller and lighter than a brick — is comical by today’s wispy iPod standards, but during the Carter administration it seemed sleek.
Nowadays, listening to music on cassettes is a dying pastime. None of Billboard’s Top 10 albums last week were issued on cassette, though half were released on vinyl, which has been resurging. Last year, only 400,000 music tapes were sold, representing one-tenth of 1 percent of all physical and digital music sales, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. In 1997, the figure was 173 million, and that was when cassettes were already getting a drubbing by CDs. (The iPod wasn’t introduced until 2001.)
“I would not expect to see a revival of cassettes like we’ve seen in the LP market,” Mr. DuBravac said. While vinyl records have always been prized artifacts for their devotees, the plastic cassette tape has little sex appeal.
Such was the case for the eight-track format as well, which was popular in the late 1960s and ’70s. It died relatively quickly with the advent of cassettes because eight-tracks were not widely used for personal recording or mix tapes, Mr. DuBravac said.
While the chances of finding cassette players in a dorm room today are slim, they are still available for sale: on Amazon, Sony alone offers 23 tape players, from the Walkman to boomboxes.
Popping a cassette in the car tape deck is also passé. Only 4 percent of vehicles sold in the United States during the 2007 model year had factory-installed cassette players, according to Ward’s Automotive Yearbook. As recently as the 2005 model year, 23 percent of vehicles had them.
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Given that the median age of a car in the United States is nine years old, said Alan K. Binder, the editor of Ward’s yearbook, it is most likely that the majority of the 200 million cars and light trucks on America’s roads have cassette players (though how many have had the same Bob Seger tape lodged unplayable in them for 11 years is impossible to determine).
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Cassette tapes’ tendency to hiss — and to melt in the summer and snap in the winter — turns off audiophiles. But for audio books, the cassette is an oddly elegant medium: you can eject it from your car, carry it home and stick it in a boombox, and it will pick up in the same place, an analog feat beyond the ability of the CD.
Cassettes accounted for 7 percent of all sales in the $923 million audio-book industry in 2006, the latest year for which data is available, according to the Audio Publishers Association. While many publishers, like Random House and Macmillan, stopped producing books on cassette in the last couple of years, there are holdouts.
At Blackstone Audio, which produces cassette versions of its roughly 340 annual titles, Josh Stanton, the executive vice president, said there was still demand from libraries and truckers, who buy them at truck stops. But he could forecast only that his company would produce cassettes through 2009.
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Recorded Books, whose authors include Philip Roth and Jodi Picoult, still issues cassettes of all its titles, roughly 700 a year. Retailers like Borders and Barnes & Noble have essentially stopped ordering them, but libraries have been slower to abandon them, said Brian Downing, the company’s publisher.
The Web sites of Barnes & Noble and Borders, however, indicate that they still offer some cassettes, though publishers say the stores’ buyers have expressed little interest in ordering more in the future.
At some point, the cassette will go the way of the eight-track, Mr. Downing acknowledged, and his company will publish only in other formats.
“I would guess it would be pretty much gone in three years,” he said.If you sift through the recent photos on PornHub's Instagram account, it will look a little something like this: female porn star, female porn star, heaps of butts, dick pic memes, photo of a street roller hockey team from Perth. Obviously, one of these things is not quite like the others. The roller hockey team is called PerthHub: Two Girls One Puck—and recently it scored sponsored from PornHub, after the team sent off a "really average email" to the multi-million dollar company. The porn giants slung them a bunch of cash for uniforms and equipment, asking only for a photo of the players in their new jerseys in exchange.
"All they wanted from us was a team photo in our jerseys," says Maddy, a player and the team's marketing manager. "So basically, we convinced PornHub to pay women to put on clothes."
But how did the team get the attention of a company that gets hundreds of thousands of clicks a day? Is there any porn involved? (The answer to this one is a resounding: no). And what the hell is street roller hockey? "I literally wrote a message to PornHub saying, 'Hey, we're an all-girl roller hockey team in Perth. We think this would be a really good opportunity for you,'" explains Maddy. "'We'll give you exposure to a young local audience.'"
Street roller hockey kicked off in Perth in 2013, with just a few groups of mates falling over as they tried to push a puck around local tennis courts. By 2016, Perth boasted over 140 local teams, and leagues have begun in Melbourne and Sydney. "Basically, it's ice hockey on a field," says Maddy. Only four people play at once, the goals are generally a couple of milk crates, and there's no official padding. It's technically supposed to be a non-contact sport, and there are no goalkeepers. "There are no umpires either," says Bec, another Two Girls One Puck player. "You just have to be a good dude, basically. It's a bit street, a bit underground."
All photos by Daniel Martin
The women of Two Girls One Puck all started off playing in mixed teams, before deciding to join forces for the 2016 season after a big night out. "We're like the Mighty Ducks, but where you drink a few beers before you start playing," says Maddy. The team confirm that beverages are often on the agenda pre-and post-game, because "being on roller blades makes you a bit terrified, so a few beers take away the fear."
The seven players came up with PerthHub: Two Girls One Puck after some rather robust discussions with "basically no boundaries." Maddy designed the team jerseys, and sent the notorious email off to PornHub, "thinking they would send us a hilarious rejection letter that we could put on social media." The team didn't "desperately need" sponsorship, they were partially only doing it to one-up another team who were being sponsored by a local pizza joint. And they knew that if they pulled off the PornHub thing they would be underground heroes. "When they wrote back and said they were interested, we were really excited, but nobody believed us!" says Bec. "Seriously everyone thought we were lying until it went up on Instagram."
The team was terrified that they would be "ripped to shreds" after the Instagram photo was posted, but all they got was positivity—and a bunch of typically unsettling comments from creepy Internet dudes. "The funniest comment was the guy who was genuinely confused as to whether the team was legitimate or actually the cast of a porno," Maddy says. Other ace comments include declarations like: "Can I fuck u all" and "Girls DM for something big." Needless to say, they have not yet DM'd that dude.
Although they are sponsored by a company that gets their dough by oiling up attractive people and getting them to mash body parts, Two Girls One Puck are fairly indifferent to porn itself—and the entire situation is just pretty funny. "Porn is definitely not going anywhere any time soon, and we think it's just one of those things it's best to accept," says Maddy. The team's families have also been really pretty accepting of their daughters being sponsored the largest porn site on the internet. "They actually think its hilarious," says Bec. "Some parents even come to watch us sometimes, just like sport when you're a kid."
"The response has been really positive," agrees Maddy. "There are obviously some people who don't really understand why the team is named as it is or why we sought sponsorship but they aren't really our target audience; you can't please everyone!"
Despite all their self-deprecation, Two Girls One Puck were undefeated in the women's league in 2016—though, there was a small hiccup with the grand final. "We made it to the grand final; however, half of the team, including myself, booked a holiday on that date," says Maddy. "I flew back, but it didn't help—we lost."
"We were winning for the majority of the game, I swear," adds Bec—explaining they were playing in 45 degree weather. "Next season though. PornHub will be so proud."
Two Girls One Puck are gunning for the top of the women's league again in 2017, with their season starting in a few weeks. They plan to keep their purely platonic relationship with PornHub going. "We've got some good ideas for merchandise that we might hit them up about. We don't want to both them too much though, they are a professional business," Maddy says.
Follow Chloe on TwitterHow stupid does the Senate background-check vote look now, I ask the pundits and others who thought it was dumb politics for Obama and the Democrats to push for a vote that they obviously knew they were going to lose. I’d say not very stupid at all. The nosedive taken in the polls by a number of senators who voted against the bill, most of them in red states, makes public sentiment here crystal clear. And now, for the first time since arguably right after the Reagan assassination attempt—a damn long time, in other words—legislators in Washington are feeling political heat on guns that isn’t coming from the NRA. This bill will come back to the Senate, maybe before the August recess, and it already seems possible and maybe even likely to have 60 votes next time.
You’ve seen the poll results showing at least five senators who voted against the Manchin-Toomey bill losing significant support. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire is the only one of the five from a blue state, so it’s probably not surprising that she lost the most, 15 points. But Lisa Murkowski in Alaska lost about as much in net terms. Alaska’s other senator, Democrat Mark Begich, lost about half that. Republicans Rob Portman of Ohio and Jeff Flake of Arizona also tumbled.
Egad. Could it possibly be that those pre-vote polls of all these states by Mayor Bloomberg’s group were... right? All the clever people pooh-poohed them, because, well, they were done by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and because it just seemed impossible that 70 percent of people from a red state could support the bill. But the polls were evidently right, or at least a lot closer to right than the brilliant minds who laughed at Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey and Harry Reid.
Something remarkable is happening here. Now, the pressure is on the other side. It’s on the NRA—gathering this Friday and Saturday, incidentally, for its annual convention, its first annual convention since Newtown. I think you’ll agree with me that the group has put a tremendous amount of thought into how to change its image, do a little outreach, present a picture of itself that will confound its critics. Or not: Sarah Palin will open the meeting, and Glenn Beck will close it. The list of eight political speakers—current and former elected officials plus John Bolton—features not a single Democrat. They’re really battening down the hatches.
And they are going to lose. I talked with a couple of knowledgeable sources about what’s going on now. Five Republicans, I’m told, have expressed some degree of interest in the bill: Ayotte, who would appear be a near-certainty to switch her vote; Flake, also a likely; Murkowski; Dean Heller of Nevada; and Bob Corker of Tennessee. Tennessee seems like a tough state to be from when casting such a vote as a Republican, but Corker is someone who at least tries once in a while to have conversations with Democrats.
On the Democratic side, as you’ll recall, four Democrats voted against Manchin-Toomey: Begich, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, and Max Baucus of Montana. I’m told that Begich would like to switch, just needs to figure out how he can get there. Heitkamp is a bigger question mark. Pryor is probably lost.
That leaves Baucus. Shortly after the last vote, he announced he was retiring. That ought to mean that he should feel free enough to vote for the bill this time. It’s hard to know what Baucus actually believes—if that matters. He has a solid NRA career rating, but he’s cast enough votes the other way (supporting the assault weapons ban and the Brady waiting period) to make the other side suspicious. Before he announced he was quitting, the NRA was running ads against him.
What he believes may matter less than how he wants to spend his Senate afterlife. If he wants to stay in Washington and make money, he’ll be more likely to vote for Manchin-Toomey, because he’ll be dependent to some extent on Democratic money networks that were furious with him after the vote. If he just wants to move back to Montana, who knows.
That’s eight potential switches, where six are needed. One of those six, remember, is sure to be Harry Reid. He cast a procedural no vote because only senators who vote against a bill can bring it to the floor again, but obviously, if it is going to pass, he'll vote for it. Even so getting to 60 will still be a heavy lift. And then there’s the House. So certain matters remain unclear.
But some things are quite clear. Manchin and Toomey deserve great credit for sticking with this. Democrat Kay Hagan of North Carolina, also up for reelection next year but a supporter of the bill, is every bit as at risk as Pryor and Begich are, and she makes them look like cowards. And clearest of all is the fact that, far from that vote being some kind of devastating blow to Obama or the Democratic Party, it accomplished a lot. It pulled a few bricks loose from the wall. Next time, that wall just might crumble.While joining the boycott was her own decision, Dr. Daubechies said the International Mathematical Union was debating whether to take a position.
The defecting scientists represent a small fraction of the roughly 600,000 authors Elsevier says it publishes. In an open letter responding to some of the grievances, Elsevier said it was “proud of the way we have been able to work in partnership with the research community to make real and sustainable contributions to science.”
Still, David Clark, the senior vice president in charge of Elsevier’s mathematics journals, acknowledged that the boycott had drawn attention.
“When one prominent person raises concerns, other people will raise concerns, too,” he said in an interview. “We certainly want to hear those concerns.”
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For 2010, Elsevier reported a 36 percent profit on revenues of $3.2 billion. “It’s a secure, viable business, which is a good thing,” Mr. Clark said.
The most recent flashpoint in the dispute was the Research Works Act, a bill introduced in Congress in December that would prohibit federal agencies from requiring open access to research, even if it is financed by taxpayers.
On Thursday, a competing bill, the Federal Research Public Access Act, first drafted in 2006, was reintroduced in Congress.
“The Research Works Act was the straw that broke the camel’s back for many people. Also for me,” said Dr. Daubechies (pronounced DOHB-shee), a Duke University mathematician known for her work on wavelets that improve the quality of compressed images.
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Mr. Clark, of Elsevier, said: “We’ve seen a lot of pushback on this issue. As a publisher, we never like a government mandate that says you should do this in this way.” But he also acknowledged: “We left a lot of editors feeling annoyed and confused. And we really shouldn’t have done that.”
Dr. Daubechies said she was contacted by Mr. Clark and was willing to talk, but did not want the company to think, “now we have vented and now we have calmed down.”
Dr. Gowers, of Cambridge, said his original blog post was intended not as a way of “starting a campaign but making my own position public.” But he added, “It had so much momentum that it seemed wrong to squander that momentum.”
He said he hoped the boycott would lead to more alternatives to commercial publishers.
“You can expect movement on that within the next few months,” he said.Reports: Police Pursued Manslaughter Charge In Trayvon Martin's Death
Enlarge this image toggle caption Mario Tama/Getty Images Mario Tama/Getty Images
There are reports from The Miami Herald and CBS News that police in Sanford, Fla., were looking to arrest George Zimmerman on a manslaughter charge for the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26.
But the local state attorney's office "held off pending further review," the Herald says. According to CBS: "On March 12, police gave the case to State Attorney Norm Wolfinger. He told them they needed more evidence to arrest Zimmerman."
ABC News adds that it has been told by multiple sources that "the lead homicide investigator in the shooting... recommended that [Zimmerman] be charged with manslaughter the night of the shooting."
He has not been arrested or charged with any crime. Another state attorney is now handling the case and will be taking it to a grand jury.
Martin's father told CNN Tuesday evening that he's convinced Zimmerman wasn't arrested because "the police profiled Trayvon Martin" and concluded that because he was a young black man, he had probably been up to no good.
Zimmerman, 28, has told police he acted in self defense. The shooting, and what Martin's family and their supporters say was a lack of follow-up on the part of police and prosecutors, has ignited a national discussion about race and racial profiling.
In its report, CBS also lays out some of the evidence about what police |
” and “faggot” in terms of the actions that they contain. Both words are used to refer to the same type of individual and hence could easily feature in the expression of one’s opinions. However, while the former does not seem to do anything apart from its denotative function, the latter does much more than the conventional use of language as expression — it has a distinct act: the act of demonizing, abnormalizing, or stigmatizing that particular identity. Hence, to use the latter term to describe gays today is to perform an act of condemnation more so than it is to communicate meaning. We shudder at such politically incorrect language, not because of its intended meaning, but because of its unintentional act — one that attaches a stigmatized meaning to a particular group and intends to deprive them membership into society.
Political correctness is not, as formerly understood, a blind censorship of opinion, but a suppression of harmful speech acts. It is disingenuous to suggest otherwise; doing so would be to equate the derogatory words of our language with words used primary to communicate — in other words, to refuse the relationship between speech and action.
Today, we live in a society in which shoplifting is a punishable crime, but characterizing Mexicans as "rapists" can be rubbed off as an exercise of free speech. In this case, we seem to have severely misunderstood the nature of speech acts. It is quite possible to celebrate our freedom of expression protected under the First Amendment while simultaneously condemning the violent nature of hate speech, which should be evaluated as harmful actions more so than words of communication. But only by recognizing this distinction can we see through the false dichotomy between curtailing harmful speech acts (political correctness) and our right to free speech. It’s time we abandon the assumption that actions speak louder than words because, more often than not, words do more than actions.
Chang Che is a comparative literature major from Ann Arbor, Mich. He can be reached at [email protected] welcoming church in Charlotte, North Carolina was broken into, vandalized and burglarized in what churchgoers are calling a targeted attack on the LGBTQ community.
The perpetrator, or perpetrators, broke in through the window of Caldwell Presbyterian Church’s all gender restroom on Wednesday night, before tagging a painting of a rainbow colored North Carolina with a Bible verse condemning, in part, homosexuality.
They also stole a number of items from the church’s in-house retail coffee shop, including a grinder, a kettle and bags of coffee.
That same bit of scripture, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, ironically enough also condemns thieves as unworthy of entering into “the Kingdom of God.”
The church was broken into the previous week as well, but that nothing seems to have been taken at that time and the only damage done was a busted window.
“This one has a different feel about it for some reason. It almost seems like a message of some sort. We don’t know,” a church member told WSOC-TV.
“We are not going to let it stop us,” they added.
Whoever broke in “clearly meant to send a message. This doesn’t fit the description of a hate crime, but it’s a clear attempt at intimidation,” Rev. John Cleghorn told The Charlotte Observer.
Mayor Jennifer Roberts, whose husband is the accompanist for the church choir, sent her “thoughts and prayers” to what she called “an inclusive, welcoming, and diverse church.”
She added that the “break-in, vandalism and hateful messages left show that we have a lot of work to do to end discrimination in our community.”
My thoughts and prayers are with the Caldwell Presbyterian Church family. pic.twitter.com/tyGfjRKrlw — Jennifer Roberts (@JenRobertsNC) February 19, 2017
Charlotte voted to expand their non-discrimination ordinance to include LGBTQ protections, which was nullified by House Bill 2 (HB2), passed by the North Carolina General Assembly.
The church has hosted events for both Charlotte Pride and Charlotte Black Gay Pride in the past.
This Story Filed UnderPoliZette Agent’s Name May Have Been Exposed on Hillary’s Server State Department releases recovered Clinton-Abedin email chain that includes redacted name of an unknown agent
Hillary Clinton and top aide Huma Abedin may have shared the name of a covert agent on her private server, according to newly released documents from the State Department.
According to a July 29, 2011, email, Clinton asked Abedin the name of an agent “across the aisle” from her.
“It’s possible the agent in question was not supposed to have his or name mentioned on a privately owned email server.”
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Abedin promptly replied.
But when the State Department released the email exchange on Thursday, they redacted the name.
It’s possible the agent in question was not supposed to have his or name mentioned on a privately owned email server. He or she may have been undercover for the CIA, FBI, or the State Department security agency. In any case, the discussion of a federal agent doesn’t fit with Clinton’s contention that the emails deleted and not turned over to the State Department from her server were personal in nature.
Of even greater concern is the possibility the name may have been exposed to bad actors and enemies of the United States. State Department emails recently obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from conservative legal watchdog Judicial Watch revealed that Clinton’s private server underwent at least 10 hack attacks in just a two-day period in 2010.
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The email exchange and the redacted information highlights the problem with Clinton running her email through a private server at her home. The server address, clintonemail.com, was used by Clinton for both official government and private business, such as the Clinton Foundation.
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The newly released emails were among a batch originally deleted from the private server, but later recovered by government authorities as part of the FBI investigation into the issue. A judge has since ordered the recovered emails released in batches.
The FBI said it was relaunching an investigation into the server on Oct. 28.
Once emails are reviewed for security reasons, the State Department releases Clinton’s emails in portions, and have since June 2015. Many of the emails have redacted information.1. The J is silent – both of them First up – how do you pronounce his name? Adnan, that’s straightforward enough (more on that later), but over the weekend there have been more variations on Januzaj than you’ll find in a Schubert symphony. Janussaj, Janussigh, Yanoossajh, we’ve heard them all. There was even a Yan-You-Sigh from Sky Sports’ very own Geoff Shreeves:
The Manchester United press office assures us that it is pronounced YANN-uh-zai. Not a J in sight – or sound.
2. A flicker of genius Born and raised in Belgium, Januzaj joined the Anderlecht academy at the age of 10 before being scouted by United after performing tricks at a skills school. The Premier League club signed him for £297,000 shortly after his 16th birthday in 2011 in the hope of grooming another world-class No 7 – so far so good, it appears.
3. International man of mystery For all his burgeoning promise, Januzaj has not yet kicked a ball in anger in international football. Born in Brussels to Albanian parents, he is eligible to play for either – along with Turkey through his grandparents, Serbia on account of the disputed status of his parents’ homeland of Kosovo, and the Kosovans themselves, should they ever join Fifa.
For his part, Januzaj is keeping his options open. In June, Marc van Geersom, former coach of the Belgian Under-18 and Under-19 teams, said that the 18-year-old had turned down the chance to play for them, though he has trained with the Belgian Under-20 side.
“Januzaj’s father has always been clear about his future as an international,” his agent, Dirk De Vriese, said. “He must have a starting spot somewhere and then he can decide from there.
“There have already been many emails and faxes from the respective bodies to inquire about his future. In Albania, there are even entire television shows about him that have been organised to convince him to choose their national team.”
Belgium coach Marc Wilmots is determined to convince Januzaj that he should represent the country of his birth.
“I will soon do it and it is up to him to decide,” he said earlier this year. “Januzaj has never played for the Rode Duivels [the Red Devils, the Belgian national team]. Not even for the youth teams. He has always refused.”
4. Three Lions on his shirt?
As if he didn’t have enough options, Roy Hodgson revealed that the FA have been in touch with Manchester United to make enquiries about his international eligibility – even though the Belgian national would not be able to represent England until 2018, on the assumption that he remains in the country until he turns 23.
“He’s been here since he was 16, but I’m not sure of the rules,” said team-mate Wayne Rooney. “I’m sure the FA will be doing everything they need to do to get him to play for England. It’s not down to me, but hopefully, I don’t know.”
Fifa statute 17 allows a player to change his international allegiance if “he has lived continuously for at least five years after reaching the age of 18 on the territory of the relevant association” – but the Home Nations have opted out of this ruling, choosing instead to allow switches only once a player has received five years’ education in elsewhere in the UK before the age of 18.
Having joined United at the age of 16, Januzaj does not meet the criteria. But the Home Nations Agreement is aimed at preventing a talent drain between the four nations, it could in theory be overlooked should Januzaj and the FA sit it out for five more years – however unlikely that may seem.
5. He’s a water-carrier
An Aquarian, that is, not a Didier Deschamps-type midfielder. What's more, he shares his birthday – February 5 – with Cristiano Ronaldo, Carlos Tevez and Neymar. And Ben Ainslie. Now there’s a water baby…
6. Sir Alex’s parting gift
It’s probably not the first story that he comes out with at dinner parties, but Sir Alex Ferguson gave Januzaj his first taste of Premier League football in his final game in charge of United – the 5-5 draw with West Bromwich Albion.
“Adnan is a beautifully balanced player,” Ferguson said of the youngster. “He's only 18 and has to grow into his frame but he has good balance, good acceleration and is a very good technical player.”
Januizaj still wears the No 44 given to him for his non-playing appearance at the Hawthorns. David Moyes then gave him his debut in the Community Shield against Wigan Athletic.
7. Plenty in reserve
Januzaj was voted United’s reserve team player of year by a landslide in 2013 after a season in which he learned to mix it with the big boys following an injury-laden 2012. Previous winners include Darren Fletcher, John O'Shea and Nicky Butt.
Reserves coach Warren Joyce was credited with allying a newfound tenacity and work ethic with his natural flair and creativity as United won the Under-21 Premier League, beating Tottenham in the final.
8. Brace yourself
Only two players have scored twice on their full league debut for Manchester United – Januzaj and one Ruud van Nistelrooy, who struck twice in a 3-2 win against Fulham on the first day of the 2001-2 season. The Dutchman went on to score a staggering 95 goals in 137 league appearances for United. Nothing like setting the bar nice and high...
9. Contract killer
Januzaj’s initial contract with Manchester United expires this summer, and while the club are confident of retaining his services the situation is vaguely reminiscent of the Paul Pogba affair. Like Januzaj, the Frenchman was a skilful forward with limited playing opportunities at Old Trafford in his teenage years – so he waited out his contract and left to join Juventus in the summer of 2012.
Ferguson’s departure has apparently stalled negotiations as Januzaj’s representatives monitor the situation at Old Trafford – Barcelona and Bayern Munich are said to be circling – but David Moyes is unconcerned.
“It’s [Januzaj’s contract] not something I’m giving too much thought too at the moment,” the Scot said. “If I was a young player there is nowhere I’d rather be than at Manchester United.”
He certainly seems happy at the club – they’re even his weapon of choice when playing FIFA:
10. What’s in a name, part 2
The name Adnan is Arabic in origin, meaning ‘settler’ or ‘to stay’. Good news for United, presumably, though perhaps not for England. First of all, he must settle on his best position – which is easier said than done for a player of such potential.
“I like to play is in midfield or an inside winger but I can also play as a No 10 behind the striker or a No 8, or I can play on the wings as well,” he said this summer. “Last year, I played striker for the reserves, so I can help the team in each position and try to do my best.”It’s a quiet Sunday as July 4th approaches, and this felt like the perfect thing to share today. Friend of the site Dylan DeSimone took some time on Sunday to tweet out a whole bunch of Patrick Willis GIFs that are floating around the Internet. You can go through all of them on his timeline here.
I decided to pull a bunch of them out and embed them in an article. This won’t cover everybody’s favorite plays, but I’m guessing this is a pretty good cross-section. My personal favorite remains this first one. He ran down an Arizona Cardinals receiver to make what proved to be a game-saving tackle. Sean Morey had a wide open field in front of him for what would have been the game-ending touchdown in overtime. Willis chased down Morey and the Cardinals were forced to try and field goal. Neil Rackers missed a 32-yard attempt, and the 49ers would eventually win the game a couple series later. It showed his speed, but also his determination not give up on a play.
Enjoy!
Patrick Willis had speed I'd never seen in a linebacker. And I don't know if we'll see it again. pic.twitter.com/5tIFG0Y9RS — Dylan DeSimone (@DylanADeSimone) July 2, 2017
Willis often looked like he was mind-reading when playing coverage underneath. His body reacted in sync with QB processing. pic.twitter.com/jizObyrYwi — Dylan DeSimone (@DylanADeSimone) July 2, 2017
Even against Brady, he knew where the ball was going. And not even 300-pound lineman was going to stop Willis from getting to his mark. pic.twitter.com/a4eVTURZZM — Dylan DeSimone (@DylanADeSimone) July 2, 2017
Willis owned the flats (and Steven Jackson) pic.twitter.com/NG2vOnKgVS — Dylan DeSimone (@DylanADeSimone) July 2, 2017
Willis broke through this block and still had the speed to not let the receiver catch that edge. pic.twitter.com/rK3lfwJKI3 — Dylan DeSimone (@DylanADeSimone) July 2, 2017
Reggie whiffed so hard, and Brees barely gets through his first read pic.twitter.com/LwKT7Uw7fw — Dylan DeSimone (@DylanADeSimone) July 2, 2017
Patrick Willis' first career interception, a pick 6 against the Seahawks in Week 2, 2008. pic.twitter.com/xNmyJvdH0g — Dylan DeSimone (@DylanADeSimone) July 2, 2017
You just couldn't mess up around this guy, at all pic.twitter.com/q0h8a92Nq4 — Dylan DeSimone (@DylanADeSimone) July 2, 2017
Tipped balls can be tricky to catch, not just because of the rotation, but since they change speed/depth. #52 was good at corralling those. pic.twitter.com/frggNn1tjs — Dylan DeSimone (@DylanADeSimone) July 2, 2017
He had that hit at Ole Miss vs. LSU – this was the NFL version. pic.twitter.com/pT33PxYZxq — Dylan DeSimone (@DylanADeSimone) July 2, 2017
Willis was an animal with how he tackled some of the guys he did. This is FB Hynoski (6-1, 266). pic.twitter.com/X9UNJKhPlT — Dylan DeSimone (@DylanADeSimone) July 2, 2017
He ragdolled Ricky and Ricky was a dense back pic.twitter.com/JdNWTNck4b — Dylan DeSimone (@DylanADeSimone) July 2, 2017
Almost identical to how he got Brees. Blocks haven't even developed yet. pic.twitter.com/Vtmp7Pj8r7 — Dylan DeSimone (@DylanADeSimone) July 2, 2017Did the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, say that his predecessor, Manmohan Singh was part of a conspiracy involving a former Indian vice president and Pakistani diplomats to call him a “low-level” type of man, and that Mani Shankar Aiyer was the messenger? Or, did he say that Manmohan Singh was part of a Pakistani conspiracy, also involving a former Indian vice president, to interfere with Indian elections? From the prime minister’s innuendo-laden speech in Palanpur on Sunday, it seems like he did say both things.
This is what he said:
“Across the media yesterday there was a discussion…that at Mani Shankar Aiyar’s house…Pakistan’s high commissioner, Pakistan’s former foreign minister, India’s former vice president, and India’s former Prime Minister…Manmohan Singh…they had a meeting at Mani Shankar’s house. The meeting lasted three hours. And the next day, this Mani Shankar called Modi ‘neech”/”low-level’… “It is a serious matter… that Pakistan … its a sensitive issue… at that time what is the reason to have such a secret meeting with the Pakistan high commissioner? And while elections are on in Gujarat, what is the reason for this type of secret meeting?”… “The second matter, Pakistan’s former Director General of Army, Arshad Rafiq, he says this, that to make Ahmed Patel Gujarat’s chief minister, we should do a contract. That Pakistan’s retired army chief should interfere in Gujarat’s election, that a meeting of Pakistani people should be held at Mani Shankar’s place, and the day after the meeting Gujarat is insulted… Modi is insulted… All these matters raise questions, do they not; they cause concern, do they not?”
The accusations in Modi’s speech are at once serious and utterly absurd.
Saying that Manmohan Singh, the un-named vice president and Mani Shankar Aiyar are conspiring with Pakistani officials to influence an election in India and a retired Pakistani army officer is simultaneously interfering in the process, is tantamount to accusing a former prime minister, a former vice president, and a former MP of sedition.
Yet the prime minister’s accusations are laughably absurd because the outcome of the grand conspiracy to interfere with the election amounted to Mani Shankar Aiyar calling him a “low-level” type of person.
‘Secret meeting’
The prime minister’s claims in his Palanpur speech, about the “secret meeting”, were first reported in the media the previous day when a BJP functionary Ajay Agrawal told ANI: “On 6th evening a meeting took place at Mani Shankar Aiyar’s residence where Pak envoy, former PM Manmohan Singh, former VP Hamid Ansari and some Congress leaders were present. Heavy police deployment was there and the road was blocked.” Heavy police deployment by a police force controlled by the prime minister’s government, at a well known address, is not characteristic of a “secret meeting”.
The prime minister’s claims about interference by the retired Pakistan army officer were also reported a few days ago – by the TV channel NewsX and the leading fakenews website Postcard. These reports were about a “print out” of an ostensible Facebook post by a “director general” in the Pakistan Army declaring that Congress official Ahmad Patel, “our guide and leader of the nation is going to be chief minister”.
When the prime minister of a country makes accusations amounting to sedition against people who have held high office, including his own, they would in the normal course of things be taken very seriously. But Prime Minister Modi, it is now fairly established, is given to hyperbole and has no great affection for facts. His political morality permits him to freely purvey untruths as weapons against his political rivals.
Starting with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s campaign in the 2014 general election, he has pursued a form of divisive politics anchored in incendiary lies and that defines anyone opposed to him as anti-national. Over the last three and a half years, the BJP has determinedly gone after people who have been critical of the prime minister. The police cases filed across the country against ordinary people who have mocked him on social networks or even in private communications are but one example of this.
Fifth columnists
There has been a systematic effort to portray anyone in public life – actors, writers, politicians – who is critical of the prime minister or his actions as fifth columnists. In the BJP’s lexicon, this means Pakistani. Thus far it is likes of Adityanath, Giriraj Singh, Kailash Vijayvargiya and bruisers like BJP spokespersons GVL Rao and Sambit Patra, who have kept the nationalist vs anti-national rhetoric alive.
Now the prime minister has said the very thing himself. He has called Manmohan Singh, Hamid Ansari and Mani Shankar Aiyar fifth columnists – men who are part of a Pakistani conspiracy to interfere in an Indian election. Modi has used bizarre half-truths and innuendo – conflating a quite routine private meeting and a political critic’s rude description of him – to suggest that senior leaders are a bunch of seditious anti-nationals.
By doing this, he has this formally redefined the political Opposition as the enemy.
Much has been written about the coarse language and low-level of the political rhetoric in the Gujarat campaign. Modi has previously held that the bitter words of election campaigns don’t get carried into government. But Modi’s words in Palanpur go beyond mere coarseness or low-level rhetoric that may be forgotten once an election is done and dusted. His speech in Palanpur – unmindful of the dignity of the office he holds, repeating carefully crafted untruths –
sends a clear message: the BJP sees democracy as instrumentally useful as a means to power. It respects no institution of democracy and will use means fair or foul to undermine political parties in opposition. This is the route to the BJP’s “New India”. We have been warned. Again.Vienna, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, had, during the period from the 1870s to the 1930s, a liberal and cultural atmosphere which nurtured intense activity by an intellectual elite.
The roots of psychoanalysis have major convergences with liberalism.
Not only in literature with Stefan Zweig, music with Gustav Mahler, and psychology with Sigmund Freud and the creation of psychoanalysis, but also in research in economy with the Austrian School of Economics represented by its founder Carl Menger, Ludwig Von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, as highlighted by Professor Guido Hülsmann in his biography of Mises The Last Knight of Liberalism, and the researcher Erwin Dekker, author of The Viennese Students of Civilization.
What is not so well known, however, is that not only a nexus between Freud and certain Austrian economists existed, but moreover, psychoanalysis can be considered as having multiple ramifications for liberal thinking! Such connections would certainly be much greater in number than with Marxism, even though there were several failed attempts to forge a “Freudo-Marxism” marriage between the two revolutionary theories during the 20th century. The “Freudo-Marxist” psychoanalyst heirs of Freud failed to reconcile psychoanalysis centered on the individual, with the ideal of collectivist freedom.
“Subjective Theory of Value” accentuates the subjective dimension of an individual.
Freud: Liberal Inside
After an in-depth study of the history of ideas, it seems that the roots of psychoanalysis have major convergences with liberalism.
Freud, heavily influenced by an education which was incontestably liberal, was in turn influenced by enlightenment philosophy and major thinkers of the liberal movement. By virtue of his education and Viennese culture, he was not very far from liberalism even if he didn’t write much on the subject.
In fact, one day he declared that he was an “old school liberal.” From a letter he wrote in his youth, one can see that he considered Adam Smith’s magnum opus The Wealth of Nations to be a fundamental work (in The Letters of Sigmund Freud to Eduard Silberstein). Furthermore, it is worth noting that in his youth he translated several works by the liberal thinker John Stuart Mill.
The Missing Link
How did Freud come to translate Mill? Thanks to the Aristotelian philosopher and psychologist Franz Brentano, who presented one of his philosophy students, the assiduous Freud, to a publisher who was looking for a translator! Franz Brentano, therefore, constitutes, symbolically, the missing link between liberalism and psychoanalysis. The propitious environment for intellectual stimulation in Vienna at the end of the 19th century saw the creation of both Freudian psychoanalysis and the Austrian School of Economics, sometimes called the “psychological school”! Why this term? Probably because its founder, the economist Carl Menger, was a close friend of Franz Brentano, whose most well-known work is: Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint.
Mises understood the nature of human action; purposeful behavior entails acts of choice.
Carl Menger developed his “Subjective Theory of Value” which accentuates the subjective dimension of an individual. At the same time, the history of ideas reveals some unexpected filiations: Freud was an assiduous student of Brentano who without a doubt influenced him! Brentano particularly concentrated his reflections on intentionality; how we can represent things that don’t exist outside of the mind. The concept was taken up by his disciple Husserl, the founder of phenomenology.
Although in his above-mentioned work, Franz Brentano seems to be categorically opposed to the notion of the unconscious. Freud was very much influenced by his master and close to him in terms of methodology; Brentano defended an empirical approach, based on observation. However, it has been demonstrated that Freud wanted to go much further.
Freud does not allude to Brentano in his works, but as researchers have demonstrated, he was thinking about him when he refers to “philosophical objections to the unconscious." In fact, we can consider that “in reality Freud continues in the direction taken by Brentano, being that of scientific psychology; he completes and goes even further than the project described by Brentano” (as explained by Maria Gyemant in Dictionnaire Sigmund Freud, Ed Robert Laffont).
Ludwig Von Mises: Freud's First Liberal Admirer
It is not by chance that Ludwig Von Mises, a disciple of Menger, was probably the first liberal economist to have written in glowing terms about psychoanalysis and Freud (See article from Jeffrey A. Tucker Why Ludwig von Mises Admired Sigmund Freud).
According to Mises, the psychoanalytic approach based on the unconscious and pulsions does not undermine the rational approach of homo economicus. The latter is rational in its choices because it is responsible for them. Psychoanalysis, however, poses the question as to why we make certain choices. This is what Mises understood in his praxeology theory, being the science of the nature of human action; purposeful behavior entails acts of choice.
Praxeology explains the action of an individual, and psychoanalysis provides the same individual if so desired, with an interpretation of the motivation behind the origin of the action. They are two different but complementary domains, as Mises clearly explains in his masterpiece, Human Action.
Freud hoped that science would signal progress for civilization, and help save the world.
Furthermore, Mises was the first to perceive that psychoanalysis had developed because it had escaped being controlled by the state! He insisted, for example, on the fact that Freud, like him, was a “Privatdozent," a university lecturer who received fees from his students rather than a university salary paid for by the Austrian State education system. To my knowledge, no historian of psychoanalysis or biographer of Freud has expounded on Mises’ writings on this subject.
We are, however, certain that Freud and Mises communicated with each other, at least in an epistolary manner. Two letters were addressed by Freud to Mises. Unfortunately, these letters formed part of his working papers and library which were confiscated from his apartment by the Nazis during the Anschluss in Vienna in 1938 (as explained by Guido Hülsmann in The Last Knight of Liberalism).
Hayek and Freud: A Misunderstanding
Experts on liberalism will object that Friedrich Hayek, the best known of the “Austrian School” economists and a disciple of Mises, was very critical of Freud. For my part, I consider that Hayek did not really read Freud’s works, apart from The Future of An Illusion, one of his most political books. And Hayek seems to ascribe Freud to the latter’s Freudo-Marxist heirs, whom he considered to be dangerous. Because of that, he puts Freud in the same camp as the social constructivists, like Marx.
Psychoanalysis is primarily an individual act.
It is true that given the pessimistic context that reigned prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, Freud hoped that science, as a source of progress for civilization, would save the world from the current destructive tendencies at that time. Nevertheless, Hayek was interested in the unconscious, a word he also used, in terms of the economy and to clearly show “what we see and what we do not see," according to the famous expression by Frédéric Bastiat. It seems to me that this way of dealing with economic problems is not too far removed from the Freudian approach, which breaks with the previous dominant form of medical mechanism, and opens new perspectives to understand psychic phenomena.
There is substantial evidence to support the theory where psychoanalysis and liberalism work well together, as we will see in the next part of the article.
Psychoanalysis and Liberalism: Same Combat
It is, therefore, permitted to consider that psychoanalysis constitutes, to some extent, a branch of traditional liberalism. A branch which “turns in on oneself and investigates oneself” as suggested by the Canadian preeminent historian of psychoanalysis Paul Roazen in Freud’s political and social thought.
To be clear, Freud didn’t want any state involvement at all.
In reality, what is psychoanalysis? Psychoanalysis, or depth psychology, remains a powerful therapeutic exercise and a disruptive interpretation system which puts words to individual or collective problems. Whether practiced by purists, taught as part of a philosophy course, used by psychiatrists alongside other therapies, or used in a variety of different ways, psychoanalysis is still an important branch of psychology and continues to influence other disciplines.
Psychoanalysis is primarily an individual act: an individual decides to follow a course of therapeutic treatment to create personal empowerment and self-mastery to resolve their problems. A person undergoing psychoanalysis carried out between the analyst and the “analysand” (the person who is being psychoanalyzed), who, verbally expresses their deepest inner feelings, can attempt to reappropriate their personal history and generate a new feeling of freedom.
Psychoanalysis is a process where individuals attempt to increase their own freedom and to regain self-ownership. This simple definition of psychoanalysis is indisputably close to the family of liberal thinking. Liberalism relies on the pre-eminence of the individual, the importance of the individual’s freedom, which goes together with individual responsibility and the notion of property.
Psychoanalysis: A Scalable Startup!
Freud developed his discipline in the same way as one would launch a startup on the international scene. He showed a real entrepreneurial attitude by making a disruption in the healthcare market with the introduction of his Psychoanalysis startup. He had a vision, an intense production activity through his numerous published works, an approach almost like the founder of a franchise network with the International Psychoanalytical Association, and he controlled as much as possible education and training.
Laissez-faire!
Freud was incredibly liberal in his vision of the role the State should play in his discipline. To be clear, he didn’t want any state involvement at all. He supported psychoanalysis by laymen, meaning practiced by people who were not medical doctors. He even says it in the text, and simply, in two words. Wanting only one thing from the state for his discipline: laisser faire, quoting with French words the famous expression by Gournay and Turgot in his book The Question of Lay Analysis! He judged that « interventionism by public authorities » was less efficient than « natural development ». He was wary of the tendency to instinctively make people subject to a guardianship order, and the excesses of legal actions and interdictions.
In France and in England, it is possible to demonstrate that free competition between different movements and different schools of psychoanalysis has allowed the discipline to see substantial growth and development during the 50s and 60s, and to become popular. It is worth noting that famous psychoanalysts can clearly be classed as being liberal.
The most explicit on the subject is the American Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, who was close to Ayn Rand’s libertarian philosophical group. In his essay, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis: The Theory and Method of Autonomous Psychotherapy, he considered that the role of a therapist is to help their patient, with whom they have a contract, to become, as an individual, free and owner of their life. He considers that a psychoanalysis which allows individuals to better understand themselves and increase their free thinking and self-confidence is similar to a liberal reform at the state level!
The most surprising, however, was the famous French pediatrician and psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto (see for instance Les Étapes majeures de l’enfance — « Major stages of childhood -), who did a lot to democratize the Freudian practice in France, including presenting a radio program. She used the same words with regard to children that liberals or entrepreneurs would use relative to startups or management in general! She strongly recommended that the education of children should be made in a climate of liberty that was a source of confidence, with a set of rules, of course, but limited to those necessary for their security.
Psychoanalysis + Liberalism = Freudo-Liberalism
On top of the pleasure of absorbing the intellectual history of ideas and trying to establish as yet unknown connections, it could be useful to analyze the Freudo-Liberal approach, as conceptualized in my essay, Freudo-Liberalism the liberal sources of psychoanalysis, which consists of cross-fertilising liberal ideas with psychoanalysis.
The unconscious will remain the ultimate property of each individual.
States that have become too big and have too much debt, hindrances to entrepreneurial freedom, monopolies over the issuance of “paper” money, the rise of fundamentalism… are so many threats which would scare Benjamin Constant who defended « individual freedom in everything: in religion, philosophy, literature, industry, and politics ». So many problems which need solutions. Let’s take the examples of the welfare state and transhumanism.
A Relevant Analysis of the Welfare State
Authors have used psychoanalysis to explain more symbolically the problems they are confronted with, particularly in France where the welfare state is the rule. In Big Mother Psychopathology of Political Life, the ex-senior civil servant and psychoanalyst Michel Schneider asked questions concerning France, the only country which continues to have « enormous State involvement which is expensive, powerless and ineffectual »… a sort of nanny state.
In La France Adolescente, « Teenaged France », the co-authors Mathieu Laine, a French expert in liberalism, and Patrick Huerre, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, compare France to a teenager who has a lot of potential but is in the middle of a crisis. They advocate therapy treatment and work to « regain confidence in our capacities and abilities, and to relearn how to act and behave like adults».
Liberal Countervailing Power Faced with Transhumanism
The rapid development of nanotechnology, biotechnology, computer systems and cognitive science will, perhaps, allow those who are interested in becoming superhumans or post-humanists. Some of us will, perhaps, one day become hybrid beings, half man, half machine, with the ability to live much longer.
When faced with absolutism, liberalism will always advocate the rule of law and the establishment of countervailing powers. Therefore, psychoanalysis remains a formidable concept of individual countervailing power, which allows man to think about himself and others.
The unconscious — our personal history, that of our grandparents, our childhood, our desires — will remain the ultimate property of each individual. It is improbable that we will be able to translate into digital data, and subsequently interpret using big data, the productions of the unconscious, such as desire or repression…
Conclusion
Having to confront a world that is more and more uncertain and complex, where freedoms are that much more fragile, it is necessary to resort to transversal approaches with contributions from different theories and social sciences. For instance, the psychologist Professor Daniel Kahneman’s Nobel Prize in 2002 and his work on cognitive biases, have had a major influence on economic sciences in recent years. Using the two consanguineous « software » of psychoanalysis and liberalism, in particular, the liberal Austrian School of Economics, is fully part of this plural-disciplinary approach.
Reprinted from Medium.The 2nd Book of Ruth
Or, the Rabbi, the Blonde, and Their God
By Zalman Velvel
The Laboratory Theater of Florida, Fort Myers, Fla.
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In future, genetic engineering could produce city trees with trunks and branches that glow in the dark as future 'green' cities could resemble fairylands filled with radiant buildings and glowing trees. The bright vision of environmentally friendly cities was unveiled by Arup, the engineering and design consultancy behind London's Garden Bridge project 23/100 March 2014 An artist's impression of solar-powered pathways that shine at night which could help reduce street lighting in future cities as future 'green' cities could resemble fairylands filled with radiant buildings and glowing trees. The bright vision of environmentally friendly cities was unveiled by Arup, the engineering and design consultancy behind London's Garden Bridge project 24/100 March 2014 Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne speaks with CEO of Tata Steel Europe Karl Koehler during a visit to the Tata Steel works in Port Talbot, Wales 25/100 April 2014 Butterflies emerge from their chrysalises in the Natural History Museum's 'Sensational Butterflies' outdoor butterfly house in London 26/100 April 2014 Chelsea Pensioners Audrey Merton (L) Ron Ward (C) and Frank Treasure (R) react, during afternoon tea, at The Cavendish hotel in London 27/100 April 2014 Workers inspect one of the 30-storey Red Road residential blocks in north Glasgow 28/100 April 2014 People dressed as a 'Viking warrior-crew' sail along the River Thames near the Houses of Parliament in central London 29/100 April 2014 Bluebell flowers cover a woodland floor in Scunthorpe 30/100 April 2014 250 model lifeboats take to the River Thames in the RNLI's Alternative Boat Race to raise awareness and funds for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) 31/100 April 2014 Prime Minster David Cameron sows poppy seeds with pupils from Cathedral Primary School in Soutwark in the Downing Street garden in London, to help launch the Royal British Legion's poppy campaign - whereby the RBL will send every school in the country free poppy seeds to plant with the aim of helping to raise childrens awareness of conflict 32/100 April 2014 Jean Paul Gaultier poses with a metre high mohican in the Punk Cancan section of 'The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk' at the Barbican Art Gallery in London 33/100 April 2014 Prince William and Catherine Duchess of Cambridge talk with members of the Maori welcome group at an official welcome on the grounds of Government House in Wellington 34/100 April 2014 Guests listen during a speech by Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in honour of the President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins at the State Banquet during the Irish president's state visit in Windsor, west of London 35/100 April 2014 The new graffiti street art piece, suspected of being a Banksy, which appeared on the side of a house on Fairview Road adjacent to St. Anne's Terrace, Cheltenham 36/100 April 2014 The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge with Prince George of Cambridge looks at a toy bilby at the unveiling a plaque, opening the Bilby enclosure during a visit to at Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia Chris Jackson/PA Wire 37/100 May 2014 The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, jokes with a crowd of hundreds of women priests who posed on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral before going inside for a special service to celebrate twenty years since the ordination of women priests in London 38/100 May 2014 City Hall in London is turned into a giant rugby ball through light projection onto the building to mark 500 Days to go until the start of Rugby World Cup 2015 39/100 May 2014 The 'Queen Mary 2' ocean liner sails into dock alongside her sisters ships 'Queen Elizabeth' and 'Queen Victoria' to celebrate her 10th anniversary in Southampton 40/100 May 2014 Jamie Oliver joins children as they celebrate Food Revolution Day 2014 by cooking bread, making smoothies and creating salads at St Paul's Whitechapel CE Primary School in London 41/100 May 2014 An exhibitor takes photographs of her stand at the 2014 Chelsea Flower Show at Royal Hospital Chelsea in London 42/100 May 2014 Members of Her Majesty's Body Guard of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen wait in the cloisters before the Order of the Bath service at Westminster Abbey in London 43/100 May 2014 British Prime Minister Prime Minister David Cameron (L) and Mayor of London Boris Johnson wait for a train at Newark station in central England, following a visit to the town were they campaigned ahead of the Newark by-election 44/100 May 2014 A punk enjoys the atmosphere as they attend the Nice N Sleazy punk music festival at the Trimpell Social Club in Morecambe 45/100 May 2014 The Mayor of London Boris Johnson wears a traditional headdress during a visit to the Shree Swaminarayan Mandir, a major new Hindu temple being built in Kingsbury in London 46/100 May 2014 A photo of Stephen Sutton stands in Lichfield Cathedral ahead of a two-day vigil in his memory 47/100 June 2014 Queen Elizabeth II unveils a plaque marking the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Channel Tunnel and the launch of international high speed rail services between the UK and mainland Europe at St Pancaras railway station in London 48/100 June 2014 Participants take part in the Color Me Rad 5km run at Ingleston in Edinburgh where the runners are blasted with bombs of different colours during the race 49/100 June 2014 Decorations and flags outside The Robin Hood public house in Jarrow 50/100 June 2014 A girl walks on the Bournemouth beach as a 25 foot high sea creature resembling Richard Branson emerges from the sea in Dorset, carrying a TV, laptop, phone and mobile to celebrate the launch of Virgin Media's Big Kahuna quad-play bundle 51/100 June 2014 US actress and UN special envoy Angelina Jolie (R) embraces Neema Namadamu of the DRC during the second day of the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict in London 52/100 June 2014 An England fan with his face painted in the colours of his national flag and wearing a chain mail costume cheers prior to a Group D football match between England and Italy at the Amazonia Arena in Manaus during the 2014 FIFA World Cup 53/100 June 2014 Race-goer Jin Ye from China poses for a photograph in London 54/100 June 2014 Comedian Russell Brand holds a flyer for a pro-NHS demonstration as he speaks to a members of a crowd of thousands that gathered in Parliament Square to protest in London 55/100 June 2014 Fans of Andy Murray gather on 'Murray Mount' to watch the Gentlemen's Singles first round match between Andy Murray of Great Britain and David Goffin of Belgium on day one of the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club at Wimbledon in London 56/100 June 2014 Thousands of participants show up for the annual Gay Pride Parade in London 57/100 July 2014 Sheep painted in the colors of the Tour de France winners jerseys in fields near Harrogate where the race will pass 58/100 July 2014 Construction of new Crossrail stations in London hits halfway mark 59/100 July 2014 A large quantity of tyres alight at a recycling site in Renfrew, outside Glasgow 60/100 July 2014 Routemaster buses are driven through Finsbury Park during a gathering of the buses to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the Routemaster in London 61/100 July 2014 The winning Henri Lloyd Clipper Round the World yacht returns to London as part of a victory parade, mooring at St Katharine's dock in London 62/100 August 2014 A reflection in a puddle of the light installation'spectra' - made up of 49 individual spotlights which shoot up into the sky - by Japanese artist Ryoji Ikeda and ArtAngel, at Victoria Tower Gardens in London 63/100 August 2014 Volunteers sit in wooden boxes at Parliament Square, to represent living conditions in Gaza, during a protest in London 64/100 August 2014 A gold ribbon is displayed in Kings Cross station concourse during the launch of CLIC Sargent's gold ribbon appeal, as part of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, after a study by the cancer charity for children and young people, and their families, revealed a lack of public awareness of the "devastating" impact that childhood cancer has on families across the UK 65/100 August 2014 A giant inflated beach ball sits on the sand at Blackpool Beach in Blackpool 66/100 August 2014 The Blades display team take to the skies above Eastbourne, Sussex, as part of the town's annual Eastbourne Air Show 67/100 September 2014 Final preparations are made to the main conference room in the Celtic Manor Hotel in Newport, South Wales, on the eve of the NATO Summit 68/100 September 2014 'Hippopo Thames' is lifted into the Thames near the Victoria Dock before going up stream to Westminster in London 69/100 September 2014 The Duke and Duchess of Devonshire look at a piece by Chinese artist Xu Bing (L) entitled "Tao Hua Yuan: A Lost Village Utopia" during the Beyond Limits selling exhibition at Chatsworth House in central England 70/100 September 2014 Mayor of London Boris Johnson aboard the deck of the tall ship Tenacious, which is moored at Woolwich, in east London, as part of the month long Totally Thames festival 71/100 September 2014 The Hulk is spotted in London, escorting the brand new videogame Disney Infinity 2.0: Marvel Super Heroes on its journey in the UK 72/100 September 2014 A "Yes" campaign flag flies from a derelict cottage on the Island of Barra in the Outer Hebrides 73/100 September 2014 Technical and maintenance teams spruce up the Royal Albert Hall, during a rare quiet day at the iconic London venue at the Royal Albert Hall in London 74/100 September 2014 Pearly Kings and Queens plant poppies at the Tower of London 75/100 September 2014 Over 350 people take to the water at Druridge Bay in Northumberland during an attempt to break the world skinny dip record 76/100 September 2014 A missing persons poster, requesting for information following the disappearance of 14-year-old Alice Gross from Hanwell, is accompanied by yellow ribbons in Hanwell town centre in west London. The hunt for Alice Gross, who went missing on 28 August is now being described as the largest police search operation since the 7/7 bombings of 2005 77/100 September 2014 A man navigating his barge down the Bridgewater Canal near Walton Hall, Cheshire 78/100 October 2014 Pumpkins at Oakley Farms in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, which have been harvested for Sainsbury's in-store Halloween activity. Following a hot summer and an unusually mild September, the pumpkins were picked earlier than usual. This has resulted in a bumper yield and Sainsbury's expects to sell 1.5 million pumpkins over the Halloween period Jeremy Durkin/PA 79/100 October 2014 Sheep are pictured as Freemen of the City of London re-enact their right to drive sheep across London Bridge in London 80/100 October 2014 A man wearing a British Prime Minister David Cameron mask holds a sign which reads 'Warmonger' stands with supporters of the 'Stop the war' coalition and 'Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament' as they march through central London, calling for the bombing of Iraq to stop 81/100 October 2014 British-American researcher John O'Keefe poses for pictures at his office in London, after winning the Nobel Medicine Prize with Norwegian couple, May-Britt and Edvard Moser, for discovering an 'inner GPS' that helps the brain navigate 82/100 October 2014 Actress Angelina Jolie is presented with the Insignia of an Honorary Dame Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George by Queen Elizabeth II in the 1844 Room at Buckingham Palace, London 83/100 October 2014 Two paddleboarders make their way across Derwent Water near Keswick, Cumbria as autumnal weather continues across the UK 84/100 October 2014 Students from St Andrew's University indulge in a tradition of covering themselves with foam to honour the 'academic family' in St Andrews, Scotland. Every November the 'raisin weekend' which is held in the university's Lower College Lawn, is celebrated and a gift of raisins (now foam) is traditionally given by first year students to their elders as a thank you for their guidance and in exchange they receive a receipt in Latin 85/100 October 2014 Worshipers gather to pray in the temple during Diwali celebrations at Bhaktivedanta Manor Hare Krishna Temple in Watford 86/100 October 2014 Mayor of London Boris Johnson boxes with a trainer during his visit to Fight for Peace Academy in North Woolwich, London 87/100 October 2014 Whitby Abbey in North Yorkshire is floodlit as it takes part in its annual illumination 88/100 November 2014 A woman dressed in a costume is pictured during the biannual 'Whitby Goth Weekend' (WGW) festival in Whitby. The WGW festival brings thousands of goths and alternative lifestyle fans from the UK and around the world over a weekend of music, dancing and shopping 89/100 November 2014 Paddington Bear statues, each with a different celebrity-designed paint job, are pictured in front of Tower Bridge during a photo call ahead of the release of 'The Paddington Trail' film in London 90/100 November 2014 Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, speaks to members of the public at a sold-out public meeting at Hoo Village Institute in Rochester 91/100 November 2014 A giant effigy of Russian President Vladimir Putin to be burned is paraded by participants in costumes as they take part in one of a series of processions during Bonfire night celebrations in Lewes, southern England 92/100 November 2014 A view of a rainbow behind Tower Bridge in London 93/100 November 2014 The shortest man ever, Chandra Bahadur Dangi meets the worlds tallest man, Sultan Kosen for the very first time in London 94/100 November 2014 A customer poll of sweets purchased in favour of the party's contesting the Rochester and Strood by-elecction on display in the Sweet Expectations Sweet Shop in Rochester, Kent, on the final day of campaigning before the by-election later this week 95/100 November 2014 A protestor holds a flare as others parade with banners during a protest against university tuition fees in London 96/100 November 2014 Cadet Harry Alexander Hayes plants the last poppy during a remembrance day ceremony into the ceramic poppy art installation by artist Paul Cummins entitled 'Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red' in the dry moat of the Tower of London 97/100 December 2014 The Trafalgar Square Christmas tree is illuminated during a photocall in central London 98/100 December 2014 Charity runners dressed as Father Christmas await the start of the 'Santa Run' charity fun run in Battersea Park in London. Hundreds of participants dressed in Santa suits and white beards ran through Battersea park in aid of winter sports charity Disability Snowsport in this 6km festive fun run 99/100 December 2014 Bob Geldof with checkout worker Ali Hallam at the Asda Trafford Park store in Manchester for the launch of the Band Aid 30 CD, 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' 100/100 December 2014 Snow drifts over a farm in Teesdale, County Durham after an overnight downfall
Roni Einav, another 8200 veteran who sold his company, New Dimension Software, to an American tech firm for $675 in 1999 and has since invested in dozens of Israeli tech start ups, told The Independent that it was all about bringing the brightest people together.
“The Israeli approach has been to select the very brightest people (doing national service) and then give them the opportunity to do significant projects within the Israeli Defence Force.
“I think if any organisation listens to and gives opportunities to clever people in their 20s then they are preparing well for the future. The fact of the matter is brilliant people are brilliant people and you may get the best of them when they are younger.
“It’s just an assumption but after 40 they may be losing their powers.”
He added: “The culture here is such that it encourages people to take risks. Unlike the UK we don’t have a significant domestic market so if you are a tech entrepreneur you have to look outside Israel’s borders and particularly to the USA if you are going to succeed.”
The UK move is part of wider efforts to ensure that the public sector fully exploits the opportunities of technology to deliver services to the public and cuts costs.
The UK last month hosted the first-ever meeting of a group of countries called the D5 which aims to swap expertise on digital development and commerce.
Cracking stuff: GCHQ's code app
Last month GCHQ released its first education app – to teach basic cryptography to secondary-school students.
The app is part of attempts by Britain’s spy agency to meet the demands of the National Cyber Security Strategy, which is designed to help businesses and the public sector to combat threats such as the North Korean cyber attack on Sony.
The app, called Cryptoy, teaches users how to create encoded messages which can be shared on social media and decrypted with the same app.
It was designed by students on a year-long industrial placement at GCHQ and is free to download on Android; an Apple version is expected later this year.
The agency has also set up 11 university centres and two virtual-research institutes.On May 1, a customer entered a Pompano Beach Subway looking nervous. He paced back and forth across the eatery's lobby before asking employee Joaquin Zapata to ring him up for a soda and chips. Apparently changing his mind at the register, he then inquired instead about the price of a sweeter side dish. Now police are looking for a man who thought the price of cookies was too damned high.
The cashier says the robbery suspect complained about the cookies' cost just before jumping over the counter, grabbing cash, and bolting out the door. Although the Sun Sentinel is reporting the cookies' cost as a possible motive, it seems much more likely that the price inquiry was just a ruse and that the crime was planned long before the suspect walked in.So now I’ve finished my digital Holga project, one of the things I wanted to do was to get a bit creative with it – so here’s my first attempt at an ASCII art generating camera.
This uses the ASCII art script written by Steven Kay, please visit his blog to find out more – I’ve modified the original script to use the python picamera library – this helps speed up the image resize. There’s also a timestamp added to the text file which uses the same script I wrote about in my previous Holga post.
If you just want to run Steven Kay’s script you’ll need the python imaging tools – install with
sudo apt-get install python-imaging
Here’s my modified script:
''' ASCII Art maker Creates an ascii art image from an arbitrary image Created on 7 Sep 2009 @author: Steven Kay ''' import time import picamera from PIL import Image import random from bisect import bisect # greyscale.. the following strings represent # 7 tonal ranges, from lighter to darker. # for a given pixel tonal level, choose a character # at random from that range. greyscale = [ " ", " ", ".,-", "_ivc=!/|\\~", "gjez2]/(YL)t[+T7Vf", "mdK4ZGbNDXY5P*Q", "W8KMA", "#%$" ] # using the bisect class to put luminosity values # in various ranges. # these are the luminosity cut-off points for each # of the 7 tonal levels. At the moment, these are 7 bands # of even width, but they could be changed to boost # contrast or change gamma, for example. zonebounds=[36,72,108,144,180,216,252] #take photo with picamera.PiCamera() as camera: camera.capture('image.jpg'); # open image and resize # experiment with aspect ratios according to font im=Image.open(r"image.jpg") im=im.resize((160, 75),Image.BILINEAR) im=im.convert("L") # convert to mono # now, work our way over the pixels # build up str str="" for y in range(0,im.size[1]): for x in range(0,im.size[0]): lum=255-im.getpixel((x,y)) row=bisect(zonebounds,lum) possibles=greyscale[row] str=str+possibles[random.randint(0,len(possibles)-1)] str=str+"
" print str date_string = time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d-%H:%M:%S") text_file = open('image' + date_string + '.txt', "w") text_file.write(str) text_file.close()
There are lots of settings to tweak – the image above was generated by the script – and bear in mind this is designed to be viewed with black text on a white background. Perhaps I’ll see if I can dig out an old dot matrix printer from somewhere.
For a blog of ‘photos’ updated whenever I take them and am in range of WiFi check out:
http://holga120d.blogspot.co.uk/
This emails the ASCII art in HTML format to blogger whenever I take a photo (and the Pi Holga is in range of the internet).
For more about the Digital Holga check out my previous blog posts on the hardware and building the case.
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EmailAmazon’s rapid rise to prominence in the translation of foreign prose to English — which has drawn appreciation, but also some suspicion by members of the translation community — is yet another sign of the online retailer’s growing cultural significance.
The literary translation community in the U.S. has a tradition of being highbrow, a carefully tended yet narrow reflection of the stirrings of global culture beyond the Anglosphere.
Then Amazon.com jumped in, like a whale into a koi pond.
Armed with financial might and an intimate, machine-learned knowledge of reader behavior, the e-commerce giant made a big splash.
That annoyed some literary types, wary of the leviathan that has shaken up almost every aspect of the media world.
But AmazonCrossing, the publishing unit devoted to scouring the world for good tales, has in a short time become the most prominent interpreter of foreign fiction into English, accounting for 10 percent of all translations in 2016, more than any other publishing house in a field populated by small imprints.
It helps that Amazon is rather numbers-driven about its tastes, which tend toward blockbuster genre fiction — crime thrillers and romance novels — although it also picks well-regarded literary jewels its editors feel would do well with an English-speaking audience.
The goal “is to find great stories, and we think you can find them anywhere,” said Gabriella Page-Fort, AmazonCrossing’s editorial director.
Amazon’s rapid rise to prominence in the translation of foreign prose is yet another sign of its growing cultural significance.
In Hollywood, this newfound power has been recognized by critics and industry peers: In February Amazon Studios garnered three Oscars. Series such as “The Man in the High Castle” and “Transparent” have earned Emmy and Golden Globe awards.
In the book world, Amazon has enabled hundreds of thousands to self-publish their works on Kindle, its digital reading platform. Some of these works — such as Andy Weir’s “The Martian,” which became a best-seller and a movie — have made an impact.
It also has several imprints devoted to various genres, including literary fiction.
Yet Amazon’s shine has been tarnished by a contentious relationship with New York publishing houses, bookstores and some authors. Many bookstores — hurt by the online retailer’s dominance in book sales and its pricing power — have boycotted titles published by Amazon. They’re also less likely to get reviewed by the traditional literary outlets, experts say.
But some members of the literary-translation community, long beset by indifference from major publishers and a lack of resources, appreciate Amazon’s foray in their field.
“It’s kind of amazing. They have the resources and the ability,” says Chad Post, an academic at the University of Rochester who publishes Three Percent, a blog about international literature that draws its name from the estimate that only 3 percent of all books published in English are translated from foreign languages |
DJ will also go before a jury next week with closing arguments set to begin on Monday morning.
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The Republican tax bill could lead to major job losses across the U.S. renewable industry.
Federal tax credits are essential to driving growth in the United States’ wind and solar energy industries. Those credits, which were first introduced in 1992 and only stabilized in 2015, are now on the chopping block.
The government has a long history of subsidizing major industries, from food to fossil fuels. The renewable energy tax credits were supposed to apply through the year 2020, but the GOP tax bill (both the House and the Senate versions) suggests modifying provisions that were key to driving growth in the industry. That could seriously undermine future investment in solar and wind projects, as well as jeopardize existing projects that rely on credits for energy they produce.
And reneging on the 2015 deal could result in significant job losses, too. The current House version of the tax bill would eliminate adjustments to inflation and accelerate the phase-down schedule of federal tax credits, putting 60,000 wind industry jobs at risk.
The House tax bill also would have terminated tax credits for electric vehicles and wind production, but the final compromise will keep those tax breaks, Bloomberg reports.
It’s still unclear what combination of the House and Senate bills will Frankenstein its way to President Trump’s desk, but it’s not looking good for the industry that has created jobs 12 times faster than the rest of the economy.
Update: The agreement reached by House and Senate negotiators keeps tax credits for wind power and other renewables in place. It also preserves a $7,500 credit for buyers of electric cars.If you read the letter circulated by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), and signed by forty-seven GOP Senators, addressed to "the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran," what’s striking is its condescending tone:
"It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system…."
Sounding like Miss Manners instructing a boorish host on the proper placement of table napkins, Cotton goes on to make a series of highly debatable assertions about the how the US Constitution regulates the making of international agreements and the role of Congress in the process. He reminds the Iranians that all treaties must be ratified by a two-thirds vote of the Senate, while neglecting to say how the as-yet-to-be-reached agreement with Iran qualifies as a treaty – say, in the same sense that the establishment of NATO did. This a technical legal point that is nevertheless significant: treaties have no time limit, but a principal objection to the pending agreement with Iran made by its opponents is that it is limited in duration to, at most, ten to fifteen years.
A "so-called congressional-executive agreement," Sen. Cotton avers, also requires congressional approval: that President Obama will doubtless bypass Congress in this matter, however, is left unmentioned. Also ignored is the fact that the members of that august body will have no recourse but to sit there and take it. Many of the measures designed to isolate Iran can be lifted by executive order. Eventually, however, the President will have to come to Congress to lift the worst of the sanctions permanently, but by that time, as Dan Drezner points out in the Washington Post, the political and diplomatic consequences of reneging on the agreement are likely to deter Congress and whoever sits in the Oval Office from backtracking.
The letter, in short, is without any real substance: as Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif noted, it betrays a lack of understanding of international law, not to mention the recent history of US executive agreements with other nations – the overwhelming majority of which have never been subject to congressional approval. Zarif went on to point out that “the world is not the United States," a geographical reality neocons like Sen. Cotton have trouble acknowledging. "If the current negotiation with P5+1 results in a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action," Zarif observed, "it will not be a bilateral agreement between Iran and the US, but rather one that will be concluded with the participation of five other countries, including all permanent members of the Security Council, and will also be endorsed by a Security Council resolution."
Will the United States risk alienating its allies and defying the Security Council in order to appease Benjamin Netanyahu? Sen. Cotton certainly hopes so, but the chances of this happening are close to nil.
The Cotton letter, said Zarif, is a "propaganda ploy," but on whose behalf? Clearly it is a follow-up to Netanyahu’s speech before Congress and is designed to torpedo the ongoing negotiations between the United States and Iran. A shorter version might have read simply: "Are you sure you want to sign an agreement with these guys – when it will probably be rendered inoperative once we Republicans take the White House?"
Given that, the fact that among the signers were three prospective GOP presidential hopefuls – Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul – underscores the propagandistic nature of this ploy. That Rubio and Cruz signed on is hardly surprising: they have been among the most bombastic of the Republican field when it comes to foreign policy, never deviating from the Fox News-neocon party line. The real stunner was the conquest of the sometime anti-interventionist junior Senator from Kentucky.
I say "conquest" because, although he voted for sanctioning Iran in 2012, Sen. Paul has recently been a vocal opponent of imposing new sanctions, and has broken with his Republican colleagues on the whole question of how to deal with Tehran, averring that we must give diplomacy a chance. Less than two months ago, speaking at a forum for GOP presidential aspirants, he directly confronted Rubio and Cruz:
"Are you ready to send ground troops into Iran? Are you ready to bomb them? Are you ready to send in 100,000 troops?I’m a big fan of trying to exert and trying the diplomatic option as long as we can. If it fails, I will vote to resume sanctions and I would vote to have new sanctions. But if you do it in the middle of negotiations, you’re ruining it."
If Sen. Paul is against "ruining it," why did he sign a letter that seeks to do exactly that? Is he now ready to send ground troops into Iran? Is he ready to bomb them?
Under considerable pressure to abjure the anti-interventionist views of his father, the Senator has been engaged in a dizzying tightrope act, balancing the strong opposition to war with Iran of his activist base against the bloodcurdling war cries of his party’s neocon-dominated foreign policy establishment. Indeed, he has gone so far as to formulate his own theory of international relations, which he calls "conservative realism," that seeks to occupy a middle ground between the go-everywhere school of thought and the go-nowhere rule of thumb steadfastly maintained by the elder Paul.
While this is certainly a project that is not inherently misconceived, the result in practice has been a confusing variety of positions that have satisfied no one. As Jacob Heilbrunn pointed out in The National Interest, Paul’s attempts to cozy up to Sheldon Adelson – not to mention his flattery of the staunchly anti-Paul Free Beacon by offering them exclusives on his cruel and ill-conceived legislative attempts to cut off lifesaving aid to Palestinian children and keep the Palestinian Authority out of the International Criminal Court – "suggests opportunism rather than conviction. Nor is this all," writes Heilbrunn:
"There’s also the problem that the neocon opposition to Paul is not rooted in a lack of outreach on his part. It can’t be altered with tidbits about bills he’s proposing. It’s based on a sincere and fervent opposition to his foreign policy stands. Finally, cozying up to his detractors is no way to attract the kind of serious foreign policy thinkers that Paul would need to mount a serious campaign even as Jeb Bush seems intent on nailing down anyone of consequence.
"As the primary season heats up, Paul’s rivals will increasingly seek to use him as a foil to buttress their own positions. If he continues on his current course, Paul could torpedo his chances of promoting a debate about foreign affairs in the primary season before the contest has truly begun."
The moment Sen. Paul signed the Cotton letter, Heilbrunn’s prophecy became a political reality. Rand Paul has pulled the rug out from under his attempts to open up a real foreign policy debate in the GOP – and perhaps also from under his presidential aspirations. After all, his marketing of himself as "a different kind of Republican" has been undermined, perhaps fatally, by his joining the neoconservative "bomb bomb bomb Iran" chorus. The Senator and his supporters may regard this as an unfair characterization of his views, and it no doubt is, but this is how his stance is being perceived – and perception is reality in politics, and in human relations. In politics, and in life, one is judged in large part by the company one keeps – and in this instance, that means Senators Cotton, Cruz, and McCain.
What’s particularly galling about Rand Paul’s opportunism is not only that it reeks of insincerity, as Heilbrunn notes, but also that it isn’t even effective. He gains nothing by it: his neoconservative enemies are still attacking him, and even going at it more viciously once they smell his fear. That’s how bullies operate, and that the Senator allows himself to be bullied so easily speaks to the major flaw in his political persona, one that militates against his presidential ambitions.
The main quality one looks for in a presidential candidate is the capacity to exert leadership – that is, the ability to take a position, hold fast to it, and get others to follow. He gave the appearance of being able to do this with his famous anti-drone filibuster – but who, really, is in favor of giving the President the power to drone Americans while they’re sitting around a Starbucks? That’s why Senators Cruz and Mike Lee (R-Utah) didn’t hesitate to join him on the podium: it’s a popular position, one that almost no one opposes.
When the going gets tough, however, it’s a far different story as far as Senator Paul is concerned. Faced with vicious attacks from the neoconservative wing of his party, Senator Paul has become the libertarian Neville Chamberlain, meeting with Sheldon Adelson, reversing his position on foreign aid to Israel, and doing everything short of asking Jennifer Rubin out on a date. The Cotton letter is Rand Paul’s Munich, a betrayal of his libertarian and anti-interventionist constituency that will not be soon forgotten.
In spite of my early criticisms of Sen. Paul, I have always been a firm believer in the efficacy of libertarian electoral politics and the necessity of political realism, i.e. the idea that politics is not religion. I’ve been encouraged by the Senator’s often eloquent arguments against the War Party’s destructive policies, and for the past year or so I’ve praised him on many occasions in this space. Even when he endorsed bombing ISIS, whilst still holding out against putting US troops on the ground, I gave him the benefit of a doubt.
No more. By joining the wrecking crew of Cotton & Co., Sen. Paul has proven he cares more about gaining the approval of neoconservatives who will always hate him than he does about preventing a major war in the Middle East. What’s more, he clearly lacks the character it takes to be President of these United States – the sense of conviction that is the essence of leadership, whether in politics, commerce, sports, or any human endeavor. No, I’m not saying Sen. Paul has no real convictions: my guess is that he is relying on advisors and "handlers" and getting some pretty bad advice.
It’s a pity, really, and a damn shame, but I’m obligated to say what is. I very much regret having to write these words, and yet I must tell the truth as I see it. My fear is that Sen. Paul will give ammunition to those sectarians who call themselves libertarians and yet are content to sit on the sidelines, criticizing anyone who enters politics as a "sellout": these habitual naysayers are too busy contemplating their own pristine-pure virtue to notice anything going on in the real world, and our movement would be better off without them.
On the other side of the ledger, an even greater danger is that libertarianism will be misperceived and misrepresented as a purely economic doctrine, one that gives short shrift to the vital issue of war and peace – and, worse, ends up on the wrong side of the barricades. The trivialization of what has become known as the liberty movement will be accomplished when its adherents forget their origins in the antiwar and anti-draft movements of the 1960s and become known merely as dope-smoking Republicans who want to legalize gay marriage.
The truth is that a principled libertarian politics is both possible and absolutely necessary if we are to save our old republic and bring about a more peaceful world. We must choose between liberty and empire – and in order to do that, a clear case must be made on behalf of the former. On that score, Sen. Paul has failed.
As I have often done in the past, I turn to Garet Garrett, that old fighter for liberty (and inveterate pessimist), who foresaw our present predicament with such eerie clarity, for some explanation of where we are and where we may go. At the end of his classic essay Rise of Empire, Garrett wrote:
"No doubt the people know they can have their Republic back if they want it enough to fight for it and pay the price. The only point is that no leader has yet appeared with the courage to make them choose."
A very important note: Yes, it’s tough going, in politics and in the world of pushing ideas generally. We have been pushing the idea of a noninterventionist foreign policy for nearly twenty years now, and although we’ve made considerable progress along the way, our fundraising efforts haven’t gotten any easier. Indeed, this time around we are into the fifth week of our quarterly fundraising campaign and we’re still almost $10,000 short.
I must confess to you that writing these words exhausts me: after all, I’ve been writing some variation on them for over a month now – and we have yet to cross the finish line. I seem to remember a time when it was easier, but then again that may be an illusion – perhaps it was always like this and I’m conjuring a happier time that never existed out of mental self-preservation.
There’s not a web site in sight that’s anything like Antiwar.com – I’m not boasting but simply stating a fact when I say this web site is simply irreplaceable. Where else can you get the facts – all the facts – about Washington’s foreign policy of unrelenting aggression? Who else told you the war in Iraq was based on 100% lies? Who else can you turn to for the truth about the Ukraine conflict? Who else had the inside story on the Libyan "liberation" – and predicted the disaster that we see unfolding before our horrified eyes? When Obama decided it was time to bomb Syria, which web site played a key role in mobilizing popular opposition – and forced Congress and the White House to back down, with their tails between their legs?
Look, I hate to keep hectoring you about this, but it has to be done: we simply can’t afford to be short of funds this time around. Before I and the rest of the staff collapse into a heap of pure exhaustion, we need to make our fundraising goal and get on with the job of reversing our senselessly destructive foreign policy. Please, go here right now and make your tax-deductible contribution to Antiwar.com today.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.
I’ve written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).
You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.
Read more by Justin Raimondoby
[This is a guest post by Vitaly Shmatikov, professor at Cornell Tech and once upon a time my adviser at the University of Texas at Austin. — Arvind Narayanan.]
TL;DR: short URLs produced by bit.ly, goo.gl, and similar services are so short that they can be scanned by brute force. Our scan discovered a large number of Microsoft OneDrive accounts with private documents. Many of these accounts are unlocked and allow anyone to inject malware that will be automatically downloaded to users’ devices. We also discovered many driving directions that reveal sensitive information for identifiable individuals, including their visits to specialized medical facilities, prisons, and adult establishments.
URL shorteners such as bit.ly and goo.gl perform a straightforward task: they turn long URLs into short ones, consisting of a domain name followed by a 5-, 6-, or 7-character token. This simple convenience feature turns out to have an unintended consequence. The tokens are so short that the entire set of URLs can be scanned by brute force. The actual, long URLs are thus effectively public and can be discovered by anyone with a little patience and a few machines at her disposal.
Today, we are releasing our study, 18 months in the making, of what URL shortening means for the security and privacy of cloud services. We did not perform a comprehensive scan of all short URLs (as our analysis shows, such a scan would have been within the capabilities of a more powerful adversary), but we sampled enough to discover interesting information and draw important conclusions. Our study focused on two cloud services that directly integrate URL shortening: Microsoft OneDrive cloud storage (formerly known as SkyDrive) and Google Maps. In both cases, whenever a user wants to share a link to a document, folder, or map with another user, the service offers to generate a short URL – which, as we show, unintentionally makes the original URL public.
OneDrive.
OneDrive generates short URLs for documents and folders using the 1drv.ms domain. This is a “branded short domain” operated by Bitly and uses the same tokens as bit.ly. Therefore, any scan of bit.ly short URLs automatically discovers 1drv.ms URLs. In our sample scan of 100,000,000 bit.ly URLs with randomly chosen 6-character tokens, 42% resolved to actual URLs. Of those, 19,524 URLs lead to OneDrive/SkyDrive files and folders, most of them live. But this is just the beginning.
OneDrive URLs have predictable structure. From the URL to a single shared document (“seed”), one can construct the root URL and automatically traverse the account, discovering all files and folders shared under the same capability as the seed document or without a capability. For example, suppose you obtain a short URL such as http://1drv.ms/1xNOWV7 which resolves to https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=48…48&id=48…48!115&ithint=folder,xlsx&authkey=!A..q4. First parse the URL and extract the cid and authkey parameters. Then, construct the root URL for the account as https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=48…48&authkey=!A...q4. From the root URL, it is easy to automatically discover URLs of other shared files and folders in the account (note: the following traversal methodology no longer works as of March 2016). To find individual files, parse the HTML code of the page and look for a elements with href attributes containing &app=, &v=, /download.aspx?, or /survey?. To find other folders, look for links that start with https://onedrive.live.com/ and contain the account’s cid.
The traversal-augmented scan yielded URLs to 227,276 publicly accessible OneDrive documents, including dozens of thousands of PDF and Word files, spreadsheets, media files, and executable binaries. A similar scan of 100,000,000 random 7-character bit.ly tokens yielded URLs to 1,105,146 publicly accessible OneDrive documents. We did not download their contents, but just from the metadata it is obvious that many of them contain private or sensitive information.
Around 7% of the OneDrive folders discovered in this fashion allow writing. This means that anyone who randomly scans bit.ly URLs will find thousands of unlocked OneDrive folders and can modify existing files in them or upload arbitrary content, potentially including malware. Microsoft’s virus scanning for OneDrive accounts is trivial to evade (for example, it fails to discover even the test EICAR virus if the attacker goes to the trouble of compressing it). Furthermore, OneDrive “synchronizes” account contents across the user’s OneDrive clients. Therefore, the injected malware will be automatically downloaded to all of the user’s machines and devices running OneDrive.
Google Maps.
Before September 2015, short goo.gl/maps URLs used 5-character tokens. Our sample random scan of these URLs yielded 23,965,718 live links, of which 10% were for maps with driving directions. These include directions to and from many sensitive locations: clinics for specific diseases (including cancer and mental diseases), addiction treatment centers, abortion providers, correctional and juvenile detention facilities, payday and car-title lenders, gentlemen’s clubs, etc. The endpoints of driving directions often contain enough information (e.g., addresses of single-family residences) to uniquely identify the individuals who requested the directions. For instance, when analyzing one such endpoint, we uncovered the address, full name, and age of a young woman who shared directions to a planned parenthood facility. Conversely, by starting from a residential address and mapping all addresses appearing as the endpoints of the directions to and from the initial address, one can create a map of who visited whom.
Fine-grained data associated with individual residential addresses can be used to infer interesting information about the residents. We conjecture that one of the most frequently occurring residential addresses in our sample is the residence of a geocaching enthusiast. He or she shared directions to hundreds of locations around Austin, Texas, as shown in the picture, many of them specified as GPS coordinates. We have been able to find some of these coordinates in a geocaching database.
It is also worth mentioning that there is a rich literature on inferring information about individuals from location data. For example, Crandall et al. inferred social ties between people based on their co-occurrence in a geographic location, Isaacman et al. inferred important places in people’s lives from location traces, and Montjoye et al. observed that 95% of individuals can be uniquely identified given only 4 points in a high-resolution location dataset.
What happened when we told them.
We made several attempts to report the security and privacy risks of short OneDrive URLs to Microsoft’s Security Response Center (MSRC). After an email exchange that lasted over two months, “Brian” informed us on August 1, 2015, that the ability to share documents via short URLs “appears by design” and “does not currently warrant an MSRC case.” As of March of 2016, the URL shortening option is no longer available in the OneDrive interface, and the account traversal methodology described above no longer works. After we contacted MSRC again, they denied that these changes have anything to do with our previous report and reiterated that the issues we discovered do not qualify as a security vulnerability,
As of this writing, all previously generated short OneDrive URLs remain vulnerable to scanning and malware injection.
We reported the privacy risks of short Google Maps URLs to the Google Security Team. They responded immediately. All newly generated goo.gl/maps URLs have 11- or 12-character tokens, and Google deployed defenses to limit the scanning of the existing URLs.
How cloud services should use URL shorteners.
Use longer tokens in short URLs. Warn users that shortening a URL may expose the content behind the original URL to unintended third parties. Use your own resolver and tokens, not bit.ly. Detect and limit scanning, and consider techniques such as CAPTCHAs to separate human users from automated scanners. Finally, design better APIs so that leakage of a single URL does not compromise every shared URL in the account.WASHINGTON – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s sudden and severe slide in the national polls following claims from several women that he sexually abused them, mixed in with a video that shows him speaking crudely, has some GOP leaders thinking what at one time would have been the unthinkable – the party could lose the House.
Republicans currently maintain a substantial 246-to-186 edge over minority Democrats in the lower chamber – a 60-seat bulge. The 114th Congress began with the GOP holding its largest majority since 1931 – the final Congress before the Franklin Delano Roosevelt tide.
Democrats would need to pick up 30 House seats to grab the majority and reinstall House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, of California, into the speaker’s chair she was forced to abandon after the 2010 Tea Party rout.
A pick-up that large would constitute a political tidal wave, an event that appears unlikely outside of a total Trump collapse. With little more than three weeks to go, Democrat Hillary Clinton maintains a 5.5 percent advantage over the GOP standard bearer, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.
Even at this late date there isn’t sufficient survey data to venture a guess as to how the Trump implosion is affecting down-ballot races. If such information was available, further downbeat disclosures – occurrences many analysts are anticipating -- would make the numbers obsolete anyway.
Immediately after the videotape release about 40 members of the House and Senate announced that they were withdrawing their support from Trump. Some have returned to the fold, but the reaction shows the unsettled nature of the House races.
RealClearPolitics maintains that 231 seats – more than a majority – either lean or are safe Republican, compared to 189 lean or safe Democrats. There remains 15 toss-ups, most of them – 11 – currently held by Republicans.
The most vulnerable appear to be:
Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.): Jolly has held the seat since winning a special election in 2014 to replace Rep. Bill Young, who died in office. He garnered only 48.5 percent of the vote then and this go-round he’s facing a prominent opponent, former Republican governor turned Democrat Charlie Crist.
Jolly originally intended to vie for the Senate seat that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) intended to abandon in favor of a run for president. When that flamed out, Rubio decided to run for re-election to the Senate after all, essentially forcing Jolly to drop out and seek his old congressional seat.
The district was redrawn in 2015 as the result of a Florida Supreme Court order and now is considered safe Democrat by most analysts. Jolly is not helped by the fact that he was not considered a team player by GOP lawmakers – he sponsored legislation to ban members of Congress from personally soliciting funds – and has little money to spend.In spite of a long streak of high-profile busts over the past few months, illegal trading on the dark web seems to be burgeoning – so much so that some vendors have began leaving behind popular marketplaces to set up their own private shops.
Unlike standard dark web markets – which facilitate communication between customers and vendors and also act as an escrow service until transactions have been completed – some vendors have now spun off to accept peer-to-peer (P2P) orders straight from their own independent webshops.
The move towards private P2P shops represents “the natural evolution of a successful vendor that has grown on a traditional [dark web] market,” according to cybersecurity firm Sixgill.
The company, which specializes in monitoring and interpreting activity on the dark web, sees this transition as a logical progression for vendors that have successfully built up a solid reputation and a steady flow of customers over the years.
In fact, Sixgill speculates the trend is likely here to stay. The reason is that, in comparison to marketplaces, private shops give vendors a chance to cut the middleman and maintain full control over their transactions and customer dealings.
This means that, in addition to the ability to request payments straight to their own wallets, vendors also get to save market escrow fees, which could cost between one and five percent on each separate transaction.
The volatile state of dark web markets has also contributed to this development. Sixgill notes that, since vendors no longer feel their money is safe with marketplaces, they are more willing to risk starting private shops where they manage all transactions single-handedly.
While marketplaces continue to dominate the dark web landscape, law enforcement agencies have been gradually catching up with their tricks.
Following a transcontinental sting operation earlier in July, two of the most popular markets, AlphaBay and Hansa, were both seized and shutdown by law enforcement. This bust was followed by rampant paranoia that fellow dark web competitor, Dream Market, might face the same fate.
Despite this chaos, Dream ultimately continued to operate regardless and swiftly established itself as the new go-to place for illegal buyers and sellers. That is until two weeks ago it suddenly vanished out of thin air, along with some of the dark web’s other leading trading places.
Dream is currently accessible via various mirrors, but users are worried something’s not quite right with it.
Indeed, all of this uncertainty has inspired numerous conversations in dark net communities about the possibility of replacing the popular centralized markets with distributed P2P alternatives – though users remain skeptical P2P platforms could be a viable solution.
Sixgill has further observed that some vendors, who have managed to amass favorable reviews, have been able to leverage this reputation into moving their business to encrypted messaging platforms like QQ and Telegram.
Curiously, the cybersecurity firm notes that while vendors would resort to doing business via Telegram, QQ and IRC, they tend to refrain from using services with servers based in Europe or the US, like WhatsApp and Messenger.
Still, though setting up a private shop could be a viable option for vendors, buyers ought to approach such situation with caution.
Unlike in marketplaces, which have incentive to ensure transactions between buyers and sellers have been completed fairly, any complications in private shops will have to be resolved between the customer and the vendor themselves. This could spell trouble for users, given that vendors have their own interest at heart.
In any case: with all of this blackmailing going around the dark web these days, it might be a good idea to stay on your toes – regardless of who you’re dealing with, a marketplace or a private vendor.
Read next: WeWork just bought a coding bootcamp, and it actually makes a lot of senseIt seems clear by now that there's something about Mitt Romney that tends to turn off blue-collar and middle-class Republicans and to turn on rich ones.
In the first three nominating contests, there was a direct relationship between support for the former Massachusetts governor and income level. In South Carolina, for instance, Romney cleaned up among Republicans who make over $200,000 a year, crushing Newt Gingrich by 15 points. But Gingrich won by 20 points among those making between $30,000 and $50,000 and 16 points with those earning between $50,000 and $100,000 -- margins that accounted for his 13-poiunt statewide victory.
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The income gap was less apparent in Florida, where Romney posted a comfortable victory, but a recent Wall Street Journal review found that so far Romney has won 46 percent of counties where the median income is higher than the statewide figure -- and just 15 percent of counties where it's lower.
Now, as the action shifts to the Rust Belt and to the South, this class divide looms as a potentially serious problem for Romney. Every recent poll shows him falling behind Rick Santorum in Michigan, where Republicans will vote on Feb. 28, and a survey released Wednesday also has him losing by 7 points in Ohio, whose primary will take place a week later. Crosstabs from the Ohio poll tell the story:
Likely GOP primary voters with incomes under $30,000 Santorum 35% Gingrich 28% Romney 27% $30,000-$50,000 Santorum 51% Romney 21% Gingrich 20% $50,000-$100,000 Santorum 36% Romney 27% Gingrich 15% $100,000+ Romney 40% Santorum 28% Gingrich 22%
There seem to be two things going on here. One has to do with the lack of blue-collar enthusiasm for Romney, and the other has to do with those same voters' interest in Santorum. What's interesting is that there's no apparent policy-based explanation for either phenomenon. If anything, you might think that Romney's campaign platform would make him slightly more appealing to lower- and middle-income voters than Santorum, whose tax proposals are skewed to favor the wealthy and corporations even more than Romney's.
But the income divide in the GOP race isn't about policy. It's about identity. No matter how much he earnestly pitches himself as a middle-class crusader, everything about Romney -- his income, his tax status, his lifetstyle, his upbringing, his education, his manner -- reeks of privilege and refinement. This, and not his agenda, is what seems to be rubbing blue-collar Republicans the wrong way. Conversely, Santorum may technically be part of the 1 percent (as the tax returns he released Wednesday night confirmed), but his roots and his style are fundamentally middle-class.
So there's a paradox at work. Republican voters are generally hostile to class-based policy agendas; any attempt to draw attention to income inequality is typically dismissed as "class warfare." But class identity is a major factor in how they're voting this primary season. Because of this, tapping into resentment of Romney has required some rhetorical gymnastics from Santorum, who has gone out of his way to say he has no objections to how Romney made his fortune in private equity. Instead, he's raised Romney's wealth as a strategic matter:
“Having someone that wealthy–was it an issue? Was it an issue in John Kerry’s campaign? It was,” Santorum said, referring to Kerry’s 2004 presidential bid. “That may be an issue with Governor Romney and his appeal to people. And I think that’s something that should be considered by people as to what kind of appeal do they have, what kind of relationship do they have with the kind of voters we need to be able to be successful.”
Maybe this logic resonates with some Republicans. But it's more likely that Santorum is tapping into deeper emotions. As Harold Meyerson explained this week:
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Neither Santorum nor Romney will champion policies that could really help the white working class — the unionization of service-sector workers, say, or federal subsidies for strategic industries — but Santorum clearly feels its pain and summons the ghosts of religious and patriarchal orders that once regulated much of working-class life. Romney comes off as the guy who closed the plant, after which those orders collapsed in a heap.
Blue-collar Republicans are apparently fine with a top 1 percent message. But they don't seem to want a top 1 percent messenger. Finding artful ways to stoke that sentiment will be crucial for Santorum if he's going to weather the Romney advertising onslaught that's now underway.
* * *
I talked about the Romney-Santorum fight and the GOP's strange brand of class warfare on "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" last night. The segment is here:Samsung only just announced their curvy N310 netbook yesterday, but the South Korean giant isn’t stopping there, launching yet another mini notebook today called the Samsung N120. This model promises an impressive 10.5 hours of runtime through its long-life 6 cell battery, as well as a full-size 12-inch notebook keyboard for quicker and easier typing.
The N120 comes with the same 10.1-inch display as the aforementioned N310 and will run Windows XP on an Intel Atom CPU. The type of chip, as well as both storage and RAM capacities are not yet specified, however.
The presser does make mention of 3 x USB ports, a 3-in-1 card reader, a 1.3 megapixel camera, 2 x 1.5W stereo speakers with sub-woofer as well as an option of Bluetooth 2.0+EDR. The full 12-inch keyboard will also feature an anti-bac coating that Sammy’s so keen on.
Samsung’s N120 netbook is expected to be available in most markets sometime in April, but they’re leaving us hanging on the pricing also.
Press Release:
South Korea, March 24, 2009. Samsung Electronics, a market leader in consumer electronics and world leader in IT technology, today launched the innovative Samsung N120 mini notebook. Although slim at just 10.1″, the N120 is designed for optimum usability and performance, with its full-size 12” notebook style keyboard, larger touchpad and an ultra-lightweight and robust slim line casing. What’s more, its enhanced sound system means you can experience a rich multimedia experience when you are on the go.
With the N120 you can enjoy high-quality sound anywhere using its integrated SRS 2.1ch system, featuring 2 x 1.5 Watt stereo speakers with a dedicated sub-woofer. It also features a larger touchpad and a full-size 12” notebook style keyboard with optimized key spacing, so you can type faster and make fewer mistakes. Its ergonomic design places less stain on your wrists, which all adds up to a more enjoyable and productive experience.
Shielded by the robust Samsung Duracase, this mini notebook is more than capable of rolling with the punches. Having passed a grueling series of quality assurance tests, ranging from rapid temperature change to electrical surges, it sets new standards for survivability and resilience, giving you much less to worry about when you’re traveling.
As well a being extremely portable, the N120 also delivers a significantly longer battery-powered performance of up to 10.5 hours* with a long-life 6 cell battery, independent of any power supply, for maximum freedom and mobility. The unique combination of its power efficient LED display and optimized processing performance coupled with Samsung’s class-leading engineering ensures that you’re always ready to go anywhere and do anything thanks to the N120’s vastly improved battery life.
To help you get the most out of life when you’re out and about the N110’s small form is packed with comprehensive array of the latest technology for maximum performance on the move, including advanced connectivity tools to help you stay in touch.
An integrated 1.3 megapixel digital motion camera combines the resolution and image quality of a still camera with the sustained high frame rates of a video camera, so it’s much easier to keep in touch with friends and family, |
up $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year for the Xbox Music Pass, but a one-month trial offer is available.
The Xbox Music catalogue is about 18 million songs strong.
By leveraging TargetSpot’s ad insertion technology, the ads Microsoft will be serving will supposedly be highly targeted and relevant to listeners.
With the addition of Xbox Music, TargetSpot’s Internet radio ad network now includes more than 85 radio groups and pure-play online music providers, the company says in a statement.
This includes players like CBS Radio, AOL Radio, Last.fm, Yahoo! Music, Grooveshark, Myspace Music, Playlist.com and more.
Also read:
Nokia launches its Music+ subscription service on Windows 8 and Windows RT
Rhapsody updated for Windows Phone 8 with better audio quality, offline playback and more
Fresh from the rumor mill: Microsoft is in talks to acquire music startup Rdio
Read next: Facebook improves ad targeting with Partner Categories, using third-party data about what you buyStaff members at City Slicker Farms like to tell the story of the West Oakland nonprofit's early days, when volunteers would farm a half-dozen plots of land with a single set of tools, and tote water from site to site via bicycle because some of the locations didn't have a water hookup.
There are a number of ways one can measure how far City Slicker has come from those humble roots — including the roughly 9,000 pounds of affordable produce that staff and volunteers grow each year (all of which gets distributed through a sliding-scale farm stand) and the hundreds of backyard gardens that City Slicker has helped establish, providing low-income West Oakland residents with a measure of self-sufficiency. And, as the organization prepares to start construction on a brand new 1.4-acre urban farm and park at 28th and Peralta streets, there is this:
For the first time in its fourteen-year history, City Slicker Farms is now a landowner.
That may not seem like a big deal, but according to City Slicker Interim Executive Director Ariel Dekovic, it's hardly the norm for Bay Area urban farmers, most of whom depend on some kind of benevolent — but ultimately temporary — partnership with a public or private property owner. And, of course, this is one of the subtexts behind several high-profile cases of "Occupy"-style guerrilla gardening, in which activist farmers have taken over vacant lots and squatted on them. For many urban farmers, even a small plot of land is just too expensive to buy.
But thanks to a $4 million state grant it received in 2010, City Slicker Farms was able to purchase an empty West Oakland lot that has, at various points, housed a junkyard and a paint factory. Now that the soil has been cleared of toxins, the farm's supporters are ready to begin construction in earnest — and for the first time they're making plans without worrying that they'll be forced to move again two or three or five years down the road.
Dekovic estimated that City Slicker itself has farmed on at least ten different sites over the course of its history, and at each site, staffers have eventually had to dig up their garden beds and move them someplace new. And even though all of those arrangements were friendly and mutually beneficial, the lack of permanence made it difficult to make long-term plans, or sink a lot of capital in an ambitious construction project.
"In the end, if you don't own the land, you don't get to decide what happens to it," Dekovic said.
Among other planned features, the new farm will likely include a greenhouse, a fruit tree orchard, and a community garden at which local residents who don't have their own garden can maintain a small plot. One of City Slicker's broad goals is for the farm to be an educational hub — a place at which amateur urban farmers of all ages can come to learn about topics such as beekeeping and carpentry. The farm will also double as a beautiful public park — complete with a playground for kids — that will be open every day from morning to night. To help pay for all of this, the organization has launched a $25,000 crowdfunding campaign on Barnraiser.us.
When taken in combination with the nonprofit's three existing farm sites, the new location should allow City Slicker to double its total production, Dekovic said. And that, ultimately, is City Slicker's mission.
"At the end of the day, we want to put a dent in hunger and lack of access to nutritious food," explained Ernestine Nettles, a member of the neighborhood council that has helped plan the new farm.
Nettles, a lifelong West Oakland resident and avid gardener, said that in the Fifties, her parents fed people with vegetables from their backyard. Back then, she said, all her neighbors knew how to garden. Everyone grew their own onions, garlic, carrots, and mustard greens, and the kids all knew who had the sweetest plums or apricots — "who had the sweetest everything in West Oakland."
That's the kind of culture — in which growing your own healthy food is just a normal part of life — that Dekovic and Nettles would like to see make a comeback in West Oakland. Hopefully, just like the new City Slicker farm, that can be a change that's permanent.A Florida voter wears a sticker showing that she cast her ballot. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
This Election Day, feel free to tell Facebook you voted. Get that jaunty This Election Day, feel free to tell Facebook you voted. Get that jaunty little voting hat on Tumblr. Tweet it on the #election2014 hashtag.
But unless you live in Wyoming, North Dakota or not, for the love of democracy, share a photo of your ballot on social media. “Ballot selfies,” as they’ve been dubbed, are still illegal in most of the country — But unless you live in Wyoming, North Dakota or a small handful of other states, donot, for the love of democracy, share a photo of your ballot on social media. “Ballot selfies,” as they’ve been dubbed, are still illegal in most of the country — and punishable by ballot invalidation, if not significant fines or jail time.
So, in an age where ceaseless self-documentation has become the cultural norm,why do those laws exist in the first place?
“It’s a very unusual case,” says Jeffrey Hermes, the deputy director of the “It’s a very unusual case,” says Jeffrey Hermes, the deputy director of the Media Law Resource Center in New York. “Usually banning political speech would be a violation of the First Amendment. But with photography at polling places, there’s an intersection of two fundamental aspects of democracy: freedom of speech and the integrity of the voting process.”
Hermes breaks it down this way: Suppose you were a nefarious character who wanted to skew the voting process in some way. You could buy votes, but you’d want proof that people actually voted like you told them to. You could mislead people who don’t understand the voting process or don’t speak English well. You could intimidate other voters into voting like you do.
In these cases, photos from inside the voting booth would really help you, the nefarious character, perpetrate election fraud. And so, many states have just banned those photos categorically. In this narrow circumstance, they’ve indicated, there’s something more essential to democracy than free speech.
That is not, needless to say, a universal opinion. On Friday, the New Hampshire ACLU That is not, needless to say, a universal opinion. On Friday, the New Hampshire ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s ballot selfie law on First Amendment grounds. That came after the state attorney general investigated at least two New Hampshire voters, Andrew Langlois and state Rep. Leon Rideout, for taking and sharing photos of their primary ballots in September. Rideout’s ballot can still be seen online
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“Political speech is essential to a functioning democracy,” NHCLU staff attorney Gilles Bissonnette said “Political speech is essential to a functioning democracy,” NHCLU staff attorney Gilles Bissonnette said in a statement. “The First Amendment does not allow the State to, as it is doing here, broadly ban innocent political speech with the hope that such a sweeping ban will address underlying criminal conduct.”
Hermes agrees. Election fraud and vote-buying are serious, legitimate concerns, he says, and states have every right to address them. But he points out that states have other ways to target election fraud, like vigorously investigating and prosecuting it. And he can envision hypothetical situations where ballot selfies would actually prove crucial to avoiding problems at the polls: If you’re in a small district of 100 or 150 voters, for instance, and enough of those voters snap pictures of their ballots, the compiled results could be used to determine if voting irregularities had taken place.
The NHCLU sees some other benefits for voting selfies, too: as forms of protest, as in the case of the New Hampshire man who “wrote in” the name of his dog; or as a powerful, organic measure to get out the vote, as selfie-takers share their ballots across their social networks.
Whatever the benefits, however, voters in most states won’t see them this election year. And that concerns Hermes, who says any laws that “restrict participation in the political process” are worth watching — and warily.
“Discussion is also important to the security of the vote,” he said. “Far from undermining the democratic process, [this type of information] actually strengthens it.”Image: 20th Century Fox, colors edited by author.
Did you watch Dances With Wolves and think "Hmm, maybe Americans have treated the Native American's like crap." Aha! That's what those Hollywood liberals want you to think! "Did you see Wall-E and think "Hmm, maybe I shouldn't litter so much." You did? There they go again! Did you walk out of the theater after seeing Titanic and vow to plant bombs on all the icebergs in the North Atlantic to blow them up and help prevent another tragic iceberg-related shipwreck? I know I did...wait, what? Sorry, I just got finished reading a column that argues that Avatar is propaganda to recruit eco-terrorists and I think some of the crazy rubbed off on me.The column, written by a guy named Richard Swier at the blog Red County is just one of many examples of conservative pundits or bloggers fancying themselves movie reviewers and positing that Avatar is promoting whatever their worst nightmares happen to be. Swier thinks that James Cameron's newest blockbuster Avatar is "the perfect eco-terrorism recruiting tool." Now, I don't want to just write him off as being crazy, because I think he is right about there being underlying environmental themes to Avatar, but I think he comes to the wrong conclusions and I'm going to tell him and you why.
As Andrew Leonard at Salon and Patrick Goldstein of The Los Angeles Times note, there is a growing conservative backlash against Avatar and Swier's column is one of the crazier we've seen.
Among the odd things Swier says in the piece, is this gem. He thinks the film was "a flop in terms of content and outcomes." Having earned more than $1Billion dollars in less than three weeks, I'm not sure what metric Swier is using when he says it is a flop in terms of outcomes. Content, maybe. Art is left to the viewer to interpret, but the outcome of this film has surely been a success in getting butts in the seats worldwide, but perhaps that is what is really bothering Swier. As Leonard writes at Salon,
Big government socialism is not rounding up moviegoers and lining them in front of 3-D-equipped theaters. Individuals, acting on their own desires, are plunking down their cash. This is the free market in action. Simplistic left-wing environmentalist propaganda, as realized by Cameron, turns out to be spectacularly popular! Ouch! That's gotta hurt. For right-wingers convinced that a cap-and-trade mechanism to restrict greenhouse gases is an affront to American values, it must be extraordinarily galling to see the explicit environmental message of "Avatar" embraced so heartily.
After making some odd comparison's to Copenhagen and claiming the film was both successful and a flop, Swier writes, "AVATAR is pure eco-propaganda designed to subtly and not so subtly force the environmentalist agenda on us all." Um, is anyone else confused that the propaganda can be subtle and not-subtle? And could someone explain to me what the "environmentalist agenda" is because just saying it like that doesn't mean anything. If you were paying any attention to Copenhagen, you'd have quickly realized that there's no consensus as to what an environmental agenda should entail.
Swier makes some good, but fairly obvious points about the symbolism of the fictional planet, Pandora. But it just seems silly for him to conclude this film will have any impact on recruiting people to become eco-terrorists. There are plenty of other things you could rationally criticize the film for. Afterall, it could be reasonably argued to have anti-military undertones, racial undertones and even religious undertones as Goldstein highlights in The LA Times. Heck, you could even criticize the film for being a rip off of stories such as Dances with Wolves and Pocahontas, like this this clever Twitpic highlights.
Image via Twitpic
But instead of choosing something logical to criticize in the film, Swier's review turns into an unveiling of his own delusions because he quickly likens the Na'vi tribe to the Earth Liberation Front, Animal Liberation Front and other groups and claims it's "perfect eco-terrorism recruiting tool." Let's think about this. Anything that is a perfect recruiting tool would end up in actually recruiting people. If he seriously thinks people are leaving the theater and deciding to devote their lives to eco-terrorism, he's insane.
At best people are going to leave the theater and maybe think differently about oppressive treatment of indigenous cultures and our consumption of non-renewable resources and that would be a good thing, right? But chances are, most-people are just leaving the theater and talking about how cool the 3D dragons were.
But that's not even what I found to be the most-disturbing part of Swier's thinking. He makes blanket statements about what "environmentalists" believe, as if "environmentalists" are such a small group that it's even possible for all of us to believe the same thing. (Environmentalist has become a useless term because no one seems to know or agree on what it even means. If it means having clean air, water and food, we're all environmentalists.)
He writes that "The enemy of these groups is primarily the human race and companies formed by us humans to access natural resources (e.g. oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear, etc.)." (emphasis mine) I didn't realize nuclear power was a natural resource, but I digress. The important point we need to take from here is that people like Swier have no clue what real environmentalists want to accomplish. He states,
"This is the final goal of eco-terrorists. Deny humans access to the natural resources on earth in order to save the planet. You see environmentalists truly believe that humans are an infestation upon the earth. They believe we must be controlled and prevented from accessing those natural resources in the name of protecting those same natural resources."
(Again, emphasis mine.)
How people can honestly come to believe such things is incredible. Are there groups that think such things? Sure. With 6 billion people on the planet you can probably safely assume there are people that think just about anything. But to think that this is the goal of everyone that would call themselves an environmentalist is preposterous. Part of this is likely just due to Swier lazily grouping environmentalists, in general, with the extremists. This is unfortunate, because I think there is more common ground between Swier and myself than he would like to believe. He concludes his piece with a statement of what he believes.
"Mankind is to use all of these resources but use them wisely. That is what I call American Conservationism. American Conservationism aims to preserve natural resources expressly for their continued sustainable use by humans. That, I believe, is the proper world view when it comes to our planet and its natural resources. What do you think?"
Dr. Swier, I hate to break it to you, but I pretty much agree with you here. And I would wager an overwhelming majority of those whom you label "environmentalists" agree with you. We should act as stewards of our environment and work hard to conserve our resources and use them wisely. We should use our resources sustainably. But what I think you're failing to realize (or refuse to accept) is that our current use is not sustainable. We have not been responsible in our extraction of resources. Man is more powerful than we sometimes realize. Just because we can blow the top of a mountain off doesn't mean we should. As a religious person, Mr. Swier, I think you should read E.O. Wilson's excellent book The Creation. It beautifully lays out why humans - religious and not - must act together to protect life on Earth.
I thought about just doing this post as a way to laugh at how silly conservative outrage over another bit of pop culture they don't like is, especially this guy's movie review, but I just can't get over how wrong his assumptions are about what most people that call themselves environmentalists really believe and want for themselves and the environment.
I speak for myself here, but I just want to be able to get across town without giving money to Saudi Arabia or destroying the Arctic or Gulf of Mexico ecosystems. I want to be able to put some solar panels on my house without having to buy them from China. I want to go into a store and buy Christmas toys without having to worry about toxins. I want to enjoy scenic vistas without seeing mountains with the tops blown off. I want to be able to camp and fish without worrying about the fish being poison to my body. I want to be able to turn on my electricity and know it comes from a clean source of fuel. I want my money to stay in my community and my environment to remain clean at the same time. But our current systems of doing things aren't allowing these things to happen as easily as we need them to. We've subsidized oil extraction, become addicted to cheap coal and aren't allocating enough to true natural and renewable resources such as solar, wind and wave power. People like Swier will likely blame "the free market" for the failure for these technologies to boom, but we don't have free markets when the government is picking winners and losers with the allocation of subsidies.
Mr. Swier, do I think humans are evil and should be treated like an infestation? No. That's crazy talk. And it's ridiculous to think that anyone but a minority of extremists would think that. Rather than lumping everyone together with the extremists, I suggest you try and understand a bit more about the motives of sensible environmentalists so we can more easily work toward the goals we share.
If you made it this far, but didn't go read Swier's column, go check it out and come back here and share your thoughts in the comments.
And if you're a Twitter user and want to say hello you can find me there: @ChrisTackettWALTHAM, MA — When the governor and MEMA sent out a call for volunteer bilingual police officers to help in Puerto Rico, half of the Waltham Police Department's Spanish speaking force stepped forward.
Admittedly, there are only about six police officers on the Waltham Police Department who speak Spanish, but the three who are headed to Puerto Rico said they're sure that had it been an open call for more hands on deck many more would have stepped forward to help.
"It's a pretty good reminder of why we got into this job in the first place. We wanted to help," said Sargent Katilyn MacPherson who leaves with Detective Jorge Orta this Wednesday to help the hurricane devastated U.S. Territory. Officer Patrick Dean will head out when they return on a separate deployment.
(For more information on this and other neighborhood stories, subscribe to Waltham Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)
While the details aren't absolutely clear to them yet, the trio will be deployed in Puerto Rico along with 69 other law enforcement officers from the state to assist local law enforcement with enforcing the curfew, traffic duties, and other security measures. The deployment will be divided into three separate two week rotations and while they're out there they'll be staying on a ship off the coast. It will rain. And they've been prepped to understand that the places they'll be helping aren't cushy. None of them have family or friends in Puerto Rico. But they still wanted to help, so when the call for help came and it matched their skill sets, these three stepped up, say their supervisors.
"This just speaks to their selflessness: They're leaving behind their loved ones to help others," said Capt. Jeff Rodley.
"If we had more bilingual officers I think half or more would have volunteered with us... We like helping," said Dean.
Kaitlyn MacPherson is headed to Puerto Rico on Wednesday. Photo by Jenna Fisher/Patch
For MacPherson, who was recently promoted to sergeant after a dozen years on the force and was engaged, this is the first type of trip for her. She's never been to Puerto Rico before, and although her fiance "wasn't too enthusiastic," she still felt the pull to go. She learned much of her Spanish on the job after taking it in school, it's an obvious way to use her skills for good.
Detective Jorge Orta remembers the days when he first got on the job in Waltham and there were many more Puerto Ricans in the city. Photo by Jenna Fisher/Patch
Detective Jorge Orta who's been on the force for 23 years said he's talked to others deployed and knows to pack extra rain gear in addition to his police gear. Orta's wife was concerned for him, too, but, he said, he remembered the time when he got on the force and there were many more Puerto Ricans in the city.
"I went to high school with a lot of people who were from Puerto Rico, and they feel frustrated and worried," and like Kaitlyn he couldn't just stand by and not do anything.
Officer Pat Dean said he's never been to Puerto Rico. Photo By Jenna Fisher/Patch
"If I lived there I would want help," said Officer Patrick Dean who has been on the force for 13 years. " It's an opportunity for us to help." He was a Marine when he met his wife, so she's a bit more understanding about Dean's pull to travel and to help.
The trio will hop a flight along with the other law enforcement and aid workers headed south. They're not sure if they'll be checking their weapons and gear or even how much they're supposed to bring, but those will details will be cleared up sometime between now and Wednesday.
Once they get to Puerto Rico they'll be be staying on a the USS Empire State VI — a federally-owned training ship operated by SUNY Maritime, which has been bringing pallets of supplies.
The death toll from Hurricane Maria rose to 48 in Puerto Rico, according to reports Saturday. Food, clean water and other basic necessities are still hard to come a month after the hurricane slammed into the island. The island is also still mostly without power, adding to complications.
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Photos: By Jenna Fisher/PatchEven though I don't work at Google, the Google Styleguides have been very helpful for me in adopting consistent, readable style conventions for my code. Unfortunately, there is no Google Styleguide for LaTeX.
Q: For LaTeX, does anyone know of something equivalent to the Google Styleguides?
Quick searches of the web for LaTeX styleguides have returned plenty of styleguides emphasizing how compiled LaTeX documents should appear. I couldn't find anything emphasizing how the uncompiled.tex document should appear.
I suppose if there weren't anything equivalent to the Google Styleguides, a standard, very cleanly written and commented.tex template would suffice.
UPDATE: Over at StackOverflow, I've found a similar post asking about Ruby coding style guidelines. There are a number of helpful links provided there. I'm looking for something kind of similar.Idaho Fish and Game wants to harass and kill pelicans down to half their present population-
IDFG is seeking comments thru April 2 on a long-term plan to manage pelicans for the next ten years.
https://idfg.idaho.gov/form/pelican-plan-2016
The goal of the “Management Plan for the Conservation of American White Pelicans in Idaho 2016-2025” is to “maintain viable breeding populations of pelicans in Idaho while reducing impacts to native fish and recreational fisheries.”
The plan admits that pelicans are classified as a “species of greatest conservation need” in all eight western states in which they breed, including Idaho. In Idaho, this is due to “a low number of breeding colonies in Idaho” and “a vulnerable rangewide conservation status.”
However, the plan outlines actions to haze and kill pelicans across the state to halve their population.
Their crime? Eating fish.
IDFG is primarily concerned with pelican consumption of Yellowstone cutthroat trout in southeast Idaho—in particular, Palisades Reservoir.
IDFG is also concerned with their impacts on stocked rainbow trout and other sport fisheries.
The specific control actions planned include:
*Maintaining a statewide population of 2,800 breeding pelicans. But the current population is about 5,600. Therefore, IDFG wants to reduce the population by half.
*The plan outlines actions it will take in different regions across the state, to “achieve fish management goals,” including killing and hazing pelicans.
*As long as statewide abundance exceeds objectives, IDFG “will use dissuasion techniques where possible to prevent establishment of new colonies.” This is despite the fact that IDFG admits that “from strictly a pelican conservation standpoint it would be desirable to have additional breeding colonies in Idaho.”
The plan is disappointing. There is no discussion as to whether “fish management goals” should be altered in places, as opposed to killing pelicans.
The other threats to Yellowstone cutthroat trout, or other prized sport fisheries, are not discussed. IDFG admits elsewhere that:
Reduction in historically occupied range, habitat loss, fragmentation of current habitat, and isolation of existing populations, and hybridization with rainbow trout and other subspecies of cutthroat trout are the principal issues facing Yellowstone cutthroat trout (May, et al., 2003).
http://fishandgame.idaho.gov/ifwis/cwcs/pdf/Yellowstone%20Cutthroat%20Trout.pdf
Perhaps IDFG should be spending more time partnering with other agencies to address these underlying problems, rather than scapegoating native pelicans.
Comments are accepted through April 2 and can be submitted online here:
American White Pelican Conservation Management Plan Idaho Fish and GameKeira Knightley recently posed topless in Interview Magazine as her own personal protest against photoshopping. Knightley told The Times she demanded the (not safe for work) photos be unedited so people could see what she really looked like.
“I’ve had my body manipulated so many different times for so many different reasons, whether it’s paparazzi photographers or for film posters,” Knightley said. “That [shoot] was one of the ones where I said: ‘OK, I’m fine doing the topless shot so long as you don’t make them any bigger or retouch.’ Because it does feel important to say it really doesn’t matter what shape you are.”
(READ: Keira Knightley and 7 Other Celebs Who Protested Photoshop and Won)
Knightley’s figure was controversially distorted on the poster for King Arthur in 2004: Her breasts were edited to look bigger than they are in real life. Though the studio bore the brunt of that scandal, the actress herself came under fire in 2006 when she and Scarlett Johansson posed nude with a fully clothed Tom Ford on the cover of Vanity Fair, in a picture that emphasized the gap the demands made of famous women and men in terms of playing up their sexuality. (Rachel McAdams reportedly skipped the shoot after realizing the women would be asked to pose in the buff.)
But Knightley is taking a stand now. The Interview shoot captures Knightley’s real figure—including her true breast size. “I think women’s bodies are a battleground and photography is partly to blame,” the Imitation Game actress told The Times. “Our society is so photographic now, it becomes more difficult to see all of those different varieties of shape.”
(READ: This Is What the Same Woman Looks Like Photoshopped in Different Countries)
That’s just one of many candid truths 29-year-old Knightley has been preaching on her current press tour. This month, she also told Net-a-Porter that she’s annoyed as a feminist that most movies reflect only what middle-aged white men want and identify with. She has turned down many a role because she thought she was being asked to do things male actors are never asked to do—specifically gratuitous sex and violence. “It’s actually a difficult question: how much flesh are you meant to bare?” she said. “We’re saying that we should be sexually liberated but then again not that sexually liberated. It’s confusing.”
She added that she long ago left fairy tales behind: “Why should you wait for some f–king dude to rescue you?”
Amen.
Here's What 20 Famous Women Think About Feminism D Dipasupil—Getty Images for Extra Loic Venance—AFP/Getty Images Anthony Harvey—Getty Images Joe Scarnici—Getty Images Jason Kempin—Getty Images Christopher Polk—Getty Images D Dipasupil—FilmMagic Dave Kotinsky—Getty Images (Tabatha Fireman—Redferns/Getty Images) Christopher Polk—NBC/Getty Images Jason Kempin—Getty Images Mandel Ngan—AFP/Getty Images Jason Kempin—NBC/Getty Images Myrna Suarez—WireImage Julio Cesar Aguilar—AFP/Getty Images Isaac Brekken—Getty Images Michael Buckner—Getty Images Dave J Hogan—Getty Images Kevin Mazur—WireImage Traverso—L'Oreal/Getty Images Alex Goodlett—Getty Images 1 of 21 Advertisement
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Write to Eliana Dockterman at [email protected] DeMint's Heritage Foundation is busy at work figuring out how to make sure Republicans are completely marginalized in 2014. As their faux scandals fall apart as rapidly as they're concocted, DeMint's minions are instructing Eric Cantor and John Boehner to please, please just keep attacking the president and forget about governing altogether.
Joy Reid at The Grio:
In a letter to members of Congress, which was obtained by NBC News, Heritage Action for America, the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation (which recently found itself in hot water over the racial IQ theories of the co-author of their widely panned immigration reform study, Jason Richwine, who resigned from the think tank last Friday), urged Republicans on Capitol Hill not to govern, and instead, to focus on the would-be “scandals” plaguing the Obama administration.
The letter, which is addressed to House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, trumpets the negative media buzz surrounding the White House, saying that, “for the first time, the activities of the Obama administration are receiving a sustained public vetting. Americans’ outrage over Benghazi is amplified by the Internal Revenue Service’s intimidation of conservative grassroots organizations and a cascade of negative headlines. There is the real sense the Obama administration has been less than forthright with the American people, the press and lawmakers.”
In light of the white hot media spotlight on the administration, and to deflect attention from the many policy areas where Republicans don’t quite get along, the letter urges: “it is incumbent upon the House of Representatives to conduct oversight hearings on those actions, but it would be imprudent to do anything that shifts the focus from the Obama administration to the ideological differences within the House Republican Conference.”
“To that end, we urge you to avoid bringing any legislation to the House Floor that could expose or highlight major schisms within the conference. Legislation such as the Internet sales tax or the FARRM Act which contains nearly $800 billion in food stamp spending, would give the press a reason to shift their attention away from the failures of the Obama administration to write another ‘circular firing squad’ article.”Lying about Heaven is bad.
Lying to children about Heaven is worse.
But why let a little thing like ethics stop you from making money off of fiction masquerading as truth? That’s what Anthony DeStefano is doing with his new book A Travel Guide to Heaven for Kids:
According to the book’s description:
This long-awaited children’s edition will quickly become a favorite for the reader and the child alike. Imagine the comfort and peace children will experience when they hear about this incredible place God has prepared for them.
Of course, he’s making everything up. Not just the story in the background, but also his idea of what the afterlife is like. It’s no better than‘s vision or‘s — it’s all a comforting lie. It’s the Christian equivalent of whatanddo when they “cross over” and communicate with the dead. They’re conning you by feeding you what you want to hear, and making a ton of money off of it in the process. (DeStefano is coming off a six-figure advance on a previous two-book deal.)
It really makes no sense how some say you can’t be good without God, when this is the sort of thing “good” Christians do with their influence.2.7k SHARES Share Tweet
There is something very odd about the prostitution debate. While the absolute majority of sex buyers are male, an overwhelming majority of intellectuals defending prostitution are women. It’s a strange phenomenon that most definitely needs its own analysis.
The john should, in theory, have every reason to worry right now. He is, for the first time, at the center of discussion. Legislators are increasingly targeting the sex buyer, or “demand” as NGOs call it. The Nordic model has been praised by the EU parliament as the most efficient legislation to curb trafficking, and the survivors’ movement is growing all around the world. Women are speaking out, as in the recently published book, Prostitution Narratives: Stories of Survival in the Sex Trade, about what johns really do to them. It is the first time in history that so many women are collectively revealing what goes on in the world of prostitution — a world where a man, up until now, could do almost anything with a woman and no one would find out. Those times are over — the sex buyer is becoming visible. Tension is mounting. Have we reached the point in history where a man actually has to be liked by a woman in order to get inside her pants?
Despite all this, the john remains, for the most part, silent. He does not need to speak. As always, when a man is threatened, a woman comes along to help him out. At the forefront of international “sex work” discourse, we generally do not find a sex buyer, but a female academic. In any magazine, at any conference, at any event where the john is to be even remotely criticized — a pro-prostitution female academic is there to defend him.
Who is she? Well, she calls herself “subversive,” “revolutionary,” even “feminist.” That is exactly why the john needs her as his ambassador. A defence of prostitution coming from this woman makes prostitution look queer, LGBT-friendly, modern, fair trade, socialist — the very epitome of female liberation. But most importantly, when she speaks, we forget that the sex buyer exists.
The tacit agreement between the john and the pro-prostitution female academic is that she will do anything to defend his acts, while ensuring that he stays in the shadows. She will speak incessantly about prostitution, but never mention him. Her task is to make sure prostitution seems like an all-female affair. The queer academic will use the prostituted woman as a shield, blocking the john from the limelight. She will use the prostituted woman any way she can — analyzing her, re- and deconstructing her, holding her up as a role model, and using her as a microphone (i.e. a career booster), thereby positioning her as “good” vs. the “evil” feminist.
This move perfectly mimics prostitution itself: the prostitute is visible, standing on the street or in a bar, while the buyer only visits and leaves — there is no shame attached to him, and no myths surrounding him. The function of the queer academic is to ensure things stay that way.
What we are dealing with here is a defense of prostitution constructed of a double shield. Anyone wanting to debate prostitution will have a hard time getting to the john, since the female pro-prostitution academic and the “sex worker” are standing in between. Any attempt to speak to what the john does, says, or thinks will bounce back into discussions of female identities and become a cat-fight in an alley of mirrors.
This academic has her own definition of intellectual debate. When she speaks, she calls it “listening.” According to her, she doesn’t actually speak in favor of prostitution, she merely “listens to sex workers.” The louder she speaks, the more proof that she “listens.” When someone opposed to prostitution speaks, however, she calls it “silencing.”
The emergence of the survivors’ movement has, however, shown that this “listening” is anything but unconditional. When survivors of prostitution speak out against prostitution, the queer academic either does not listen, or actively debates against them. Here it is revealed that the person she really defends is not “sex workers” at all, but the john.
She is the type who will start a Twitter storm if a man is caught “mansplaining” or “manspreading,” if someone calls her “sweetie,” or states that women get pregnant instead of “people.” One must wonder how her outrage at details can co-exist with her complete callousness towards an industry which is, according to studies, the most deadly one women could be in.
We must not forget that for her, just like for the john, a woman in prostitution is and remains an “other” type of woman. Sure, she’ll adopt a tone of admiration where the john has a tone of contempt, but the meaning is the same.
Here is the truth: the function of this academic is not that of a revolutionary or a feminist — she is not trying to defend women — rather, she is the sex buyer’s nanny. One of the oldest patriarchal functions that exists. She soothes him when he is worried and takes on his enemies. She makes sure nobody will take away his toys, whatever he does to them.
Remember, the |
security guard station that will be manned around-the-clock.
On the ballot this November, Massachusetts voters will likely decide whether to legalize marijuana for recreational use. Hudson said the Quincy dispensary will only sell medical marijuana for qualifying patients, even if the recreational measure passes.
Ermont has applied for two more licenses to open up dispensaries elsewhere in Massachusetts as part of the state’s Department of Public Health second round of applications. The company has not identified locations of the new sites yet, but said it won’t propose a second site in Quincy.
Local towns that have been identified by other owners as potential locations for dispensaries include Bridgewater, Middleborough, Rockland, Norwell and Sharon.Touch Battle Ninja's JP website:JP Trailer:It's true. After Nintendo Everything posted the upcoming list of Nintendo Download games this week, I had to check on the 3DS itself and there it was.Indeed, after a THREE YEAR absence since they localized ASCII's Fish On for 3DS eShop (almost to the day on Aug 22nd, 2013, and it was a retail launch game in Japan), the publisher most might have associated as the main NA publisher of From Software's catalog on PS2 and PSP like the Armored Core series, is back localizing the spin-off of Silver Star's Touch Battle Tank series that's already on 3DS eShop (and did very well IIRC).Gotta wonder what Agetec's been doing for 3 years. I doubt it was just working on this game. Either way, very glad to see them still active, I was afraid they silently shut down.Edit: Strangely enough, where as Agetec was more or less the exclusive publisher of Silver Star's 3DS eShop catalog in the west, Circle Ent. is taking on Silver Star's Noah's CradleEpisode References Gags Appearances Gallery Quotes Credits
The Musk Who Fell to Earth Episode Number 564 Production Code TABF04 Original Airdate January 25, 2015
April 20, 2015 (Iceland) Special Guest Voices Elon Musk as himself Show Runner Al Jean Written By Neil Campbell Directed By Matthew Nastuk
"The Musk Who Fell To Earth" is the 12th episode of season 26. It premiered on January 25, 2015. Elon Musk guest stars himself in this episode.
Contents show]
Synopsis
When inventor Elon Musk lands in Springfield, he and Homer become fast friends and revolutionize the town's nuclear power plant. But when Musk goes overboard and Mr. Burns wants him removed, Homer must figure out a way to break up with him.
Plot
The family is in the backyard when Elon Musk arrives in his The family is in the backyard when Elon Musk arrives in his spacecraft, which looks similar to a Dragon Capsule. Elon explains that he came to Springfield because he's looking for a source of inspiration. Homer insists that Elon comes to the power plant. The next day, Elon discovers that Homer is filled with new ideas for inventions. Elon soon meets Mr. Burns and convinces him to build a magnetohydrodynamic generator for the plant. Mr. Burns wants to hire Elon, but he refuses, saying that he doesn't care about the money (much to Mr. Burns' surprise).
Elon and Mr. Burns explain to the town that the plant has come up with plans for the city's electrical needs. However, Smithers is suspicious about Elon's intentions. Elon also reveals that he created self-driving cars. Bart and Lisa sneak into the family's car and disable the auto-drive mode (using Elon's master password, which is "MUSKRULEZ") and go for a joyride.
They end up at the plant, where Elon also explains that the town's losing roughly $50 million a quarter, much to Burns' horror. Elon explains that he wants to save the Earth. Burns explains that, thanks to Elon, the plant's facing massive layoffs, and then apologizes to Smithers (he had sicced his hounds on him after he thought that Smithers was spreading false rumors about Elon). Mr. Burns soon plots to kill Elon.
The next day, Elon is hanging out with Homer when Mr. Burns attempts to assassinate Elon. However, the bullet goes towards Homer's direction. Elon saves Homer, but Homer (under Marge's advice) explains that he and Elon can no longer be friends. Elon is taken to his rocketship, and he leaves to go home, but not before coming back to the Simpson home (he was returning Lisa, who was hiding in his rocket). To make Lisa feel better, Elon gives the family a futuristic birdhouse. Elon then leaves, and remembers the things he misses about Homer, such as his revelation of the dolphin in the Miami Dolphins logo.
Citations
Videos
THE SIMPSONS I Don't Care About The Money from "The Musk Who Fell To Earth" ANIMATION on FOX THE SIMPSONS As Vibrant As Detroit Itself from "The Musk Who Fell To Earth" ANIMATION on FOX
Add a photo to this galleryReligion and science seem to be at loggerheads again. This time it is evolution that takes centre stage - the creation of our species on Earth - and it appears aggressive atheism is desperate to turn a theory into "fact".
Recently there have been impassioned debate on this area on two high-profile TV programmes: one an Al Jazeera interview with atheist Richard Dawkins by Muslim political commentator Mehdi Hasan and the other a BBC Big Questions debate over whether it is time for all religions to accept evolution as fact. Many of my co-religionists are left bemused, if not downright confused, by all this kerfuffle.
Why fight on two dissimilar subjects?
In its heyday, Islam brought about harmony between religion and science. With, among other things, the demise of Islamic scholarship, science clashed with religion during the European Renaissance. After this co-existence for many centuries, we are now entering an era of science led by intolerant atheism.
Is a confrontation between religion (I exclude "dogmatism" here) and science necessary? Having a background in both science and religion, I do not think so. We do not have to battle over things that are dissimilar in terms of reference and remit. Let me say why.
"We, as human beings, are not a mere physical entity but have'moral sensitivities' and a spiritual dimension."
Science is about "how": it tries to find natural "facts" through ideas, theory, postulation, experiment and empirical evidence. It is not meant to find "truth". Science is based on statistical probabilities and experimental evidence; during this process of discovery, it is prone to errors.
A scientific approach cannot find for sure whether our universe was created or self-made, for example. As our knowledge expands, many "established" scientific theories have been thrown away. Scientific giants understood this and accepted the "new" knowledge with humility.
On the other hand, religion is about "why": it gives meaning to our life through a metaphysical approach, searching for ultimate "truth". Religion's emphasis is on morality and behaviour. Believers are asked to keep an open mind, observe, question, reflect, contemplate and then act. A verse from the Quran (chapter 3, verse 190) is intuitive - "Surely in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and in the alternation of night and day, there are signs for people of understanding".
Science explores and scientists differ. On the issue of human evolution even Darwin's supporters could not agree, because some thought that "the mental capacities and the moral sensibilities of humans could not be explained by natural selection". This is understandable. Our individual life on Earth is infinitesimal compared to the age of our known universe; our personal sphere is also minuscule compared to the expanse of the universe we are in. To pretend that we would be able to know the "truth" of our life and about the universe would be sheer arrogance.
This does not mean we surrender to our "fate" and sit back; not at all. We, as human beings, are not a mere physical entity but have "moral sensitivities" and a spiritual dimension. We are born with an inquisitive, creative mind that is full of imagination and innovation. We see, hear and observe things and ask questions. Do we get all the answers? No. We are not supposed to; if we did all our uniqueness would disappear and we would end up being dull and stagnant. That is the mystery of human life.
As an experimental physicist until my mid-30s, asking questions and throwing challenges were part of my research. This did not deter me from getting closer to my (Muslim) faith. I have always been fascinated by the life of many ancient scholars from China, Greece or India, who were religious saints and scientists at the same time.
I am enthralled by many pre-Renaissance Muslim scientists and scholars like Al-Khwarizmi and Ibn Sina, who were pioneers in science and at the same time devoutly religious and spiritual. I am still amazed to see this tradition of harmony between science and religion in the personality of scientific giants like Newton and Einstein. Their thirst for knowledge was matched by their humility.
Belief in or denial of God is the main issue
Monotheistic religion is essentially about primary belief in one Living God; the rest follows from this premise. In Islamic belief God has 99 "attributes" eg His Omniscience or Omnipotence. The Abrahamic religions are adamant on monotheism. Yes, there is no way of experimentally proving God's presence, but there are coherent evidences in support of this belief, such as a) all the Prophets who were known to be extremely honest and trustworthy in their life informing us of God, b) numerous signs (ayat, in Arabic) within and around us and in the cosmos testify His presence. These arguments cannot just be brushed aside as irrational or non-progressive.
Dawkins on religion - 'I care about what's true'
The benefit of a resolute belief in God has a positive impact on life: it has created a myriad of highly-motivated, spiritually-uplifted and self-regulated selfless individuals who have spent or even sacrificed their life for the good of others. The belief in God and a sense of accountability in the Hereafter is a catalyst to those actions.
Then there is the classical argument: imagine there is no God. Believers do not lose anything on Earth. But imagine there is one, what happens to deniers in the Hereafter?
It is true that religion was and can be misused to foster division, hatred and cruelty; but history is the evidence that most wars, destruction, ethnic cleansing and killings were the result of manipulative politics or selfish use of religions, rather than the inherent faiths in and of themselves.
The complexity of body, mind, soul and spirit
There is obviously a common ground between the two approaches, the spiritual and the scientific. All living beings have phases or evolution in their life from birth to death. Without a doubt there is biological evolution in the world of low-level living beings, including many animals.
"The human mind may operate faster than light, but it cannot fully understand the mysteries of our universe and our life."
Our "evolution" in a mother's womb, from a zygote into a fully-fledged baby, is mentioned in the Quran - "And certainly We created man of an extract of clay, then We made him a small seed in a firm resting-place, then We made the seed a clot, then We made the clot a lump, then We made the lump bones, then We clothed the bones with flesh, then We caused it to grow into another creation, so blessed be Allah, the best of the creators" (chapter 23, verses 12-14).
So, religion is not irrational. It asks us to think very seriously about our place on this planet. Just because we are physically similar with some primates, I believe we cannot conclude that humans have evolved from them. Yes, gorillas and chimpanzees are biologically closest to humans and their DNA sequences are very similar, but that does not necessarily "prove" that a highly intelligent and spiritual man evolved from them. Even with very close DNA-similarity between two twin siblings we see incredible differences between their personality, ability and creativity.
The human mind may operate faster than light, but it cannot fully understand the mysteries of our universe and our life. It is time we step back and try to comprehend the highly coherent and intelligent universe and the "whole" of our existence. It is also time religious adherents practice their critical autonomy to continuously enhance their knowledge and understanding of our natural world. As for Muslims, I can only say that our belief and reason (aql, in Arabic) are intertwined; we should be the first to use this gift of reasoning.
Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari is an educationalist and parenting consultant.
Follow him on Twitter: @MAbdulBariNinety-one per cent of British Columbians oppose trophy hunting, according to a new poll conducted by Insights West, and disdain for the practice runs equally high in rural areas of the province as it does in urban centres.
The pollster found attitudes towards killing animals for sport were similar in neighbouring Alberta, where 84 per cent of those surveyed said they opposed the idea.
The poll comes amid a growing debate in B.C. over the trophy hunting of the province's iconic grizzly bear – a practice that has not been allowed in Alberta for nearly 10 years. Recently, B.C. Premier Christy Clark defended her province's position, saying B.C. has a record number of grizzlies and the hunt is "scientifically managed." She added that the province did a better job of handling the grizzly population "than anywhere else in North America."
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However, critics of the government's stand say there is considerable disagreement in the scientific community about the actual size of B.C.'s grizzly population.
Beyond that, they say it's not about numbers, it's a question of whether it is morally right to kill a bear, or any other animal, solely to become someone's den-wall trophy or cabin rug. The Insights poll suggests most people in the two Western provinces find that notion archaic and objectionable, with only 7 per cent of British Columbians and 12 per cent of Albertans openly favouring trophy hunting.
"Grizzly bear populations in B.C. are healthy and we have confidence in our science-based management of this population," said Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations Minister Steve Thomson, when he was asked to respond to the poll results.
"B.C. will continue to carefully manage these hunts and only allow the activity where populations are sustained and unthreatened.
"The hunting industry contributes about $350-million annually to the province – comprised of resident hunters and guide outfitters, supporting small and rural communities that depend on jobs from outdoor recreation activities of which hunting is a key component," Mr. Thomson said.
The provincial NDP did not provide anyone to talk about the grizzly kill.
Meantime, large majorities in the two provinces were supportive of eating animals (85 per cent in B.C., 88 per cent in Alberta) and hunting animals for meat (73 per cent in B.C., 81 per cent in Alberta). The survey also asked respondents how they felt about killing animals for their fur. It, too, was unpopular, with 81 per cent of British Columbians and 75 per cent of Albertans saying they oppose the practice.
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The B.C. government has often suggested that opposition to trophy hunting is largely based in Metro Vancouver, and that there is much stronger support for it outside of that region. However, the poll results expose that as myth.
Asked whether they were opposed to or in favour of hunting animals for sport (trophy hunting), 89 per cent of those living in Metro Vancouver who responded said they were opposed. The number jumped to 92 per cent on Vancouver Island and 93 per cent in the rest of the province. Only 2 per cent of respondents across all three regions said they were "strongly" in favour of trophy hunting.
"There is an inherent problem with assuming that the thoughts of a small but motivated group of residents actually represent the views of the entire population," said Mario Canseco, vice-president, public affairs, for Insights West. "A conversation with two hunters does not create a provincewide trend, in the same way a conversation with two vegans does not create a provincewide trend. The argument of urban versus rural has been thrown about with no evidence whatsoever to try to create a controversy over trophy hunting.
"There is no controversy. There is a minuscule number of residents who are in favour of this practice, both in British Columbia and Alberta. It was important to look at this within the context of other issues related to animals. Our views can shift, for instance when assessing aquariums and zoos or hunting for meat. But trophy hunting is thoroughly despised throughout the province."
While bear meat can be eaten, the B.C. government does not condone the practice because of concerns that predators such as grizzlies could be carrying a parasite which can cause trichinosis, an intestinal disease that can lead to extreme abdominal pain among other symptoms. Consequently, trophy hunters usually chop off the parts of the bear they want to take home (head, paws, fur) and leave the rest of the corpse to rot.
The head of the B.C. Association of Guide Outfitters recently told The Globe and Mail that trophy hunting for grizzlies would likely soon be banned, and that the association is recommending that anyone buying a guiding operation in the future not factor in any profits from grizzly bear hunting into their economic equations.
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The Insights poll also canvassed Albertans and British Columbians on other issues related to the treatment of animals and found some surprising results. Nearly two-thirds of Albertans (64 per cent) favoured keeping animals in zoos and aquariums, but only 48 per cent of British Columbians did. While 55 per cent of Albertans supported using animals in rodeos, only 32 per cent of British Columbians shared that opinion.
Insights West said it interviewed 1,003 British Columbians and 590 Albertans of voting age. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 per cent for B.C. and 4.1 per cent for Alberta.Press Releases
Apr 11, 2012
All media inquiries, please contact Enid Doggett at [email protected], or (202)-246-3982.
Cost of Freedom Voter ID App Launched
WASHINGTON, DC – April 5, 2012 – Today the Cost of Freedom Project announced the launch of the Cost of Freedom App to help voters get ready for the November election. Voters can text “Voter ID” or their state abbreviation to find out whether they need to show government-issued photo ID in order to vote.
Since 2008, there has been a wave of new laws that block access to the ballot box. The Brennan Center for Justice estimates five million eligible voters could be disenfranchised by the voting law changes. The most onerous restriction requires voters to present an official photo ID in order to vote. The new requirements have left voters scrambling to produce the documents they need to obtain a “free” photo ID or guessing whether their ID will be accepted at the polls.
“The Cost of Freedom App provides information on photo ID requirements for all 50 states and the District of Columbia,” said Faye M. Anderson, Chief Evangelist for the Cost of Freedom Project. “Election Day is less than seven months away. It’s not enough to take a stand against voter suppression. We must help voters get ready. The Cost of Freedom App jump starts the application process for voters who lack an official photo ID.”
Anderson added: “There is widespread confusion about acceptable forms of ID. Pennsylvania, the most recent state added to the Election Protection Coalition’s Map of Shame, has the third largest student population in the nation. Yet most student IDs will not be accepted because they do not have expiration dates. The Cost of Freedom App empowers students with information to ensure their voices are heard.”
Voters in strict photo ID states can text “Voter ID” to:
Georgia: 404-418-6500
Indiana: 317-474-6605
Kansas: 785-246-5777
Pennsylvania: 215-352-5405
Tennessee: 615-338-7353
Wisconsin: 608-729-7020
Voters in non-photo ID states can text their state abbreviation to 202-609-7909.
Callers in, for example, Ohio will receive this message: No photo ID required. To check your voter registration and polling place location, visit http://bit.ly/OHVoter or call 1-866-OUR-VOTE.
Black Youth Vote, a signature program of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, has partnered with the Cost of Freedom Project. BYV will promote the Cost of Freedom App through their website, social media and traditional voter education materials.
“Voter ID is a priority issue for young voters because we are disproportionately impacted,” said Illai Kenney, Black Youth Vote Fellow. “In Wisconsin, for instance, 78 percent of black men and 66 percent of black women between the ages of 18 and 24 do not have a driver’s license. For us, it’s about having our voices heard. It’s about our future.”
“We are not acquiescing to voter suppression,” said William Kellibrew IV, Deputy Director of The National Coalition. “Instead, we are fighting back against the attack on our voting rights wherever they are being attacked. That means we must continue to educate voters about the acceptable forms of ID. While we push back against these unjust laws at the Justice Department and in the courts, we must help voters obtain a voter ID. We can’t wait until September to get ready. By then, it will be too late. The app is an excellent tool in our arsenal to reach out to the youth.”
The Cost of Freedom App is powered by Twilio. It was developed by Jack Aboutboul, API Evangelist at Twilio. Aboutboul said: “As a sponsor of civic hackathons across the country, Twilio is committed to supporting ‘doers doing good.’ The Cost of Freedom App will help citizens exercise a fundamental right of our democracy.”
About Cost of Freedom Project: The Cost of Freedom Project stems from the Random Hacks of Kindness hackathon at Drexel University. The citizen-led initiative also is developing a web-based app to provide county-level information on how to get a voter ID. The alpha version of the web-based Cost of Freedom App will be launched in late April. For more information, visit Facebook.com/CostofFreedom.
About Black Youth Vote: Launched on April 4, 1996, Black Youth Vote is a national grassroots coalition of organizations and individuals committed to increasing civic engagement among black youth and young adults between the ages of 18 and 35. BYV identifies campus and community-based organizations and engages their youth leaders to foster civic engagement, including issue education, voter registration and voter protection. For more information, visit www.ncbcp.org/programs/byv.
About Twilio: Twilio, Inc. is a cloud communications company based in San Francisco. Twilio is a web-service API that lets software developers use existing web languages and skills to build voice and SMS applications. For more information, visit www.twilio.com.
Media contacts: Faye Anderson Cost of Freedom Project 718-369-6059 [email protected] @andersonatlarge
Michael Selvidge Twilio 415-350-3091 [email protected] @selvianoJurassic World 2 actor James Cromwell was recently interviewed by Collider while promoting his upcoming film, ‘The Promise’. While they do not go into too much detail about the upcoming Jurassic Park sequel, Cromwell chattily shared some of his experiences working on the picture, and what it’s like jumping into such a big budget film.
“The prop people have made wonderful things. The set people have made wonderful things. There’s just so much money and so much power and so much prestige. It’s Jurassic Park. It’s unreal. And then, you do your work and, instead of doing it in a room, you’re doing it in a football field sized set with real recreations of dinosaurs. We had three full-sized dinosaur bone replicas that came from a museum in America, and five other heads.”
He mentions that despite the large budget, director JA Bayona still had to fight for certain creative freedoms while making the movie. Being a fan of Bayona’s prior work, I know he has a good eye and mind, so I do hope we won the arguments!
“Money is no object. You take your time and do whatever you need to do. The director, bless his heart, was trying to fight off all of the executives. I probably shouldn’t say that.”
Cromwell went on to talk about his experience working with Bayona, including a scene where he was surprised by the directors request for him to cry.
“He’s wonderful. I liked him a lot. He does some very strange things. At one point, my character is supposed to care about this thing, and I was doing my caring bit. He came over to me and said, “If you want to break down and cry, you can do that.” I thought, “Oh, really? Thanks! What am I crying about?” And Geraldine Chaplin, who has made three or four pictures with him, said, “Did he ask you to cry? He always asks you to cry!” He evidently has a little recipe book of things to do to heighten an actor.”
Just who is James Cromwell playing, and what scene calls for him to cry? While we’ll have to wait until June 2018 to see why the tears start flowing, we do have some theories on his characters role: the wealthy owner of the mansion from the first set picture. Perhaps his character is even married to Geraldine Chaplin’s – someone else that fans speculated may own the mansion.
As for his motives, perhaps he is a dinosaur enthusiast funding a rescue mission for the dinosaurs of Isla Nublar? His mansion sure is filled with dinos of all sorts, including realistic looking statues, and we know that some characters are trying to save the dinosaurs from the image Frank Marshall shared below:
The animatronic dinos on JW2 continue to amaze me. @JurassicWorld pic.twitter.com/BZfAh0UbJL — Frank Marshall (@LeDoctor) March 3, 2017
Whatever the story of Jurassic World 2 is, we couldn’t be more thrilled to learn more! Sound off in the comments below, and let us know what you want to see from James Cromwell in Jurassic World 2, and stay tuned for all the latest news!
Also, in case you missed it, here is a dinosaur from within that mansion shared by Frank Marshall today!
Source: ColliderThe HP Elite x3 is one of the few smartphones that uses Windows 10 Mobile. In the menu sequence and design, the system does not differ from any other smartphones with Windows 10 Mobile, since there are no provisions for customization by a manufacturer. In the course of the test, our device has received the current Creators Update which brings numerous innovations. For example, further Bluetooth APIs were added, microSD cards can now be encrypted, Windows Hello was improved, and much more. Furthermore, there is now a 3D Viewer app, which allows viewing 3D models on the smartphone. The fbx, obj, stl, and 3mf file formats are supported. You can find a detailed list of the innovations at our colleagues' site at WinCentral.
With the Elite x3, it is also possible to run x86 applications. This does not happen on the Phablet itself, but in a virtual machine in the cloud. For this purpose, HP offers its own Workspace solution. This is offered in two variants, which differ in the performance of the Cloud-VM and the number of programs that can be used. To run a program in the cloud, it is first sent to the HP cloud service, which then checks it and installs it in its own Workspace environment. Data transfer or printing are possible as in conventional VM environments and do not represent any obstacles. The user benefits from the maintenance-free hardware and high system security and can fully concentrate on his work.
HP Workspace is an optional product. The Essential package offers a single workspace with a two-core vCPU, 4 GB of RAM, and up to ten programs that can be installed for unlimited usage. The Premium variant has twice the RAM and enables an unlimited number of programs. HP Workspace is available starting from $579 per year (Euro prices upon request), which represents a comparatively affordable entry into cloud computing. Those who already have their own server infrastructure can also work with a conventional remote connection, which is supported by Windows 10 Mobile and worked well in our test.CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (Reuters) - In the two years since President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, he and his fellow Democrats have largely struggled to articulate the merits of the complex law.
Stacy Lihn greets her family after delivering her "American Remarks" address to the first session of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, September 4, 2012. REUTERS/Jim Young
The law - which requires most people to buy health insurance - bans insurers from denying coverage to children with pre-existing medical conditions. It eliminates lifetime caps on essential benefits, allows young adults to stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26, and can make prescriptions less expensive for people on Medicare, the nation’s health insurance program for those 65 and older.
Even so, Republicans have been able to sway public opinion against the law, in part by casting it as a “job killer” that stifles hiring by raising costs to employers.
But at their convention this week in Charlotte, Democrats showed signs of grasping an effective strategy to sell the healthcare law that Romney has vowed to repeal if he is elected November 6.
Tuesday’s session featured emotional testimonials for “Obamacare,” including one from Stacy Lihn, a mother who said the law will allow her family to afford caring for their young daughter, Zoe, who was born with a congenital heart defect.
“Romney repealing healthcare reform is something we worry about literally every day,” Lihn said. “Zoe’s third open-heart surgery will happen either next year or the year after. If Mitt Romney becomes president and Obamacare is repealed, there’s a good chance she’ll hit her lifetime cap.”
The tears on delegates’ faces made it clear: Democrats had found a simple and touching way to cut through the density of Obama’s signature legislative achievement.
“Expect to see more (Obamacare testimonials) this fall,” one Democratic strategist said.
Here’s a look at some other key themes to emerge during the Democratic National Convention:
**When it comes to 2016, Democrats have a bench, too.
In Tampa last week, Republicans rolled out a new generation of potential contenders for president in 2016.
They included Florida Senator Marco Rubio, 41, and Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, 42, who is Romney’s vice presidential running mate but could be in play for 2016 if Romney loses in November.
This week in Charlotte, a few Democrats rose to the moment.
San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, 37, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, 56, and Newark (New Jersey) Mayor Corey Booker, 43, delivered stirring convention speeches - and signaled that part of Obama’s legacy could be helping to position other minorities to make runs at national office.
Booker neatly summarized the anger that many Democrats feel toward Republicans who portray efforts to make the nation’s wealthiest citizens pay more in taxes as “class warfare.”
“Being asked to pay your fair share isn’t class warfare,” Booker said. “It’s patriotism.”
**How different is 2012? Republicans are talking less about foreign policy, and Democrats are organized.
At the Republican convention that Romney’s team put together in Tampa, Florida, last week, the primary focus was bashing Obama’s stewardship of the weak economy.
Less prominent - aside from a much-praised speech by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice - was foreign policy.
It’s traditionally a Republican priority, but isn’t getting as much attention this year, partly because Romney and Ryan have little foreign policy experience and any debate on the subject inevitably leads to Obama’s success in overseeing the demise of Osama bin Laden.
In Charlotte, Democrats bucked a tradition of their own.
Democratic conventions often have been raucous, disorganized affairs, complicated by various special interests grappling for power in the large, diverse party.
This year, it appeared most everyone was on the same page.
The convention featured memorable speeches (particularly by former president Bill Clinton, President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama), and tightly choreographed messaging on themes such as helping the middle class, abortion rights and support for Obama’s healthcare overhaul.
Divisions remain: Some Democratic activists say the party, in its focus on the middle class, is not devoting enough attention to the needs of lower-income families.
And there was the divide over the party’s platform that led to an embarrassing re-vote on the document to insert a mention of God and language recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
The vote took place after Obama expressed his dissatisfaction that the approved platform had omitted both, and as Republicans began to air commercials criticizing the Democratic platform.
Through the years, U.S. presidents have expressed support for making Jerusalem the capital of Israel, but have not moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv because of a belief that the future of Jerusalem should be decided through talks between Israelis and Palestinians.
Even so, declaring Jerusalem the capital is a signal of support for the most important U.S. ally in the Middle East, and is a nod to the influential Jewish-American community.
**Bill Clinton isn’t going away.
In his speech Wednesday night, the former president showed why many people consider him the most talented politician of his generation.
His folksy, methodical breakdown of the Democratic positions on healthcare, Medicare, taxes and other issues also showed why he could be valuable surrogate for Obama in the next two months.
Hours after Clinton’s speech, Obama’s team said the former president would campaign for Obama next week in Ohio and Florida, politically divided states that are likely to be crucial to the outcome of the November 6 election.
So could Clinton’s re-emergence in presidential politics pave the way for his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, to get back in the game and run for president in 2016, eight years after losing the Democratic nomination to Obama?
It’s safe to say that a good number of loyal Democrats in Charlotte this week hope so. Former U.S. House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi is publicly rooting for Hillary Clinton to run again.
Mrs. Clinton will be 69 on Election Day in 2016 - the same age that Republican Ronald Reagan was when he took office in 1981. She is retiring from the State Department post after the November election.
But whether Obama - the nation’s first African-American president - wins or loses in November, the former first lady will hear calls from Democrats to help her party make history again.Much has been made about the contractor system at Fukushima Daiichi, the worker abuses and cut rate construction. This only looks at one aspect of the contractor system at the plant. Tasks like tank construction have been given out to layers of subcontractors but these subcontractors only do some of the work at the plant. Much of the work falls to what are called prime contractors. These are companies like Toshiba, Hitachi-GE or Kajima. The work they do at the plant is much more significant and frequently flies under the radar.
TEPCO reports work done at the plant including some of the dangerous inspection work to attempt to gain information about the melted down reactors. TEPCO rarely says exactly who is doing this work, if they are TEPCO employees or prime contractors. Workers Happy and Sunny both worked for prime contractors at Daiichi. Both mentioned over time the nature of the projects they worked on including varioius efforts to run scopes into the reactor buildings and efforts to clean off units 3 and 4. These two workers were at the plant through the initial disaster but have reached their maximum exposure this year so they are no longer involved in the hands on work at the plant.
Greenpeace has called for “GE” to be held accountable for the flawed design of the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi. This seems to ignore the reality that “GE” is still there and largely in charge of the disaster response and profiting off of it.
Hitachi-GE
This company has been a major player in the response at the plant. Hitachi-GE is frequently names as just “Hitachi” but it is the GE nuclear company as it exists today in both Japan and the US. This is the company that designed and mostly built the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi. They have also had a heavy presence in the maintenance and repair of these reactors over the decades. This list of open proposals on Hitachi-GE’s website shows the considerable extent to which they are running the response to the disaster and decommissioning efforts. Hitachi is doing everything from inspection efforts to decommissioning planning based on their requests for proposals on their website. Hitachi is also frequently branded on these efforts already underway though TEPCO declines to admit who is doing the work. Hitachi developed the SoRa robot. They were involved in the boat robot project. Hitachi admits involvement in just about every aspect of the response at Daiichi. Hitachi-GE appears to admit their involvement in the fuel removal work at Unit 4 in this detailed presentation they give at Oak Ridge.
Shimizu Corp
This large international construction company installed the tent cover on unit 1 at Fukushima Daiichi. Shimizu was also involved in supplying the defective bolt together tanks for the plant, it appears much of the actual installation work was done by the networks of sub contractors. Shimizu has also been involved in the contaminated rubble removal at the plant.
Kajima Corporation
Kajima is involved in the contaminated rubble removal at the plant. Kajima was involved in the construction of dorms/shelters 2km from the plant that did not meet radiation resistance standards or became contaminated after they were built. The company is tasked with constructing the ice wall to be installed at the plant. An autonomous heavy equipment system used to clean debris off of unit 3 was developed by Kajima. More on this system can be found here.
Taisei Corporation
Taisei is involved in the contaminated rubble removal at the plant. Taisei was also involved in the flawed bolt together tank installations.
Mitsubishi
The company provided the retrofitting of the megafloat that was used to hold contaminated water early in the disaster. Mitsubishi created shielded and remote control heavy equipment to be used at the plant. They have also created some of the robots in use at the plant like the Super Giraffe.
Toshiba
Toshiba is building the ALPS water decontamination system. The SARRY cesium absorption system was built by Toshiba. The reactor cooling systems put together after the disaster were built by Toshiba. Toshiba also created the quadruped robot and a vacuum robot in use at the |
experimenters correctly initialized their RNGs and therefore presented a different stimulus order to each of their participants, and because most studies described tests of randomness passed by the RNGs, it is unlikely but not impossible that orders were consistent across most of the participant runs in one study. However, the chance of this occurring consistently in most of these 26 studies is vanishingly small, and even smaller in studies using hardware-number generators that do not require initialization. In spite of all these assurances, analyses of expectation bias and other order effects are critical to the clear understanding of the mechanisms underlying these predictive but seemingly anomalous anticipatory effects.
One possible way to address order effects is to determine whether a between-participants anomalous anticipatory effect exists when participants perform only one trial in which a single randomly selected stimulus is presented. In such a paradigm, statistical power should be weaker due to the between-participant design, but the ES might be large enough to detect a significant anticipatory difference – unless these unexplained anticipatory effects are by-products of mundane order effects. Interestingly, a post hoc analysis performed on only first trials from several studies using the same guessing paradigm revealed that men produced a large significant anticipatory skin conductance effect (Figure 6; Mossbridge et al., 2010); this effect was not apparent in heart rate data from the same participants (data not shown), but there was also no differential post-stimulus effect for heart rate in these studies. Of course, replications of such single-trial studies are necessary, as is continued use of expectation bias analysis in future studies examining predictive anticipatory physiology in multiple-trial experiments.
FIGURE 6
Figure 6. Group mean traces of first trials only, from the same data set as in Figure 1. Across-participant standard error boundaries were calculated for each point and ±1 standard error of the mean (SEM) are marked with bars. (A) Data from 54 females; (B) data from 30 males. The dependent variable was the average of skin conductance during the 10-s anticipatory period. Based on this conservative method, the comparison between skin conductance values on future correct and future incorrect guesses was not significant for females (t 52 = −0.59, p > 0.554), however there was no appreciable post-stimulus difference between traces for the two types of trials, so the pre-stimulus difference is not a true test of our hypothesis. The same comparison was significant for males (t 28 = 4.02, p < 0.0005, d = 1.49), who also showed a large and significant post-stimulus response (note difference in scales). The sex × correctness interaction was significant (F 80 = 8.90, p < 0.004, η p 2 = 0.10 ; data from Mossbridge et al., 2010; not included in this meta-analysis because they are from a post hoc analysis within that report).
One unfortunate possibility we must examine is either participant or experimenter fraud. Participant fraud can be easily ruled out – it is not clear how participants would be able to change their own physiology, even if they knew the direction in which they should change it in order to produce an effect. Although we did not find studies showing evidence of participant or data selection, optional stopping, or data manipulation, it is still possible that an unscrupulous experimenter in any discipline who is willing to commit what amounts to this sort of scientific fraud would be careful enough not to provide evidence of their fraud for the reader. Thus, no scientific venture can completely rule out fraud. Based on the strong significance of the overall ES estimated from the pertinent studies available between 1978 and 2010, to explain the predictive anticipatory effect examined here, such fraud would have to be widespread and undetected. We find the possibility of such massive collusion highly unlikely.
Another seemingly tractable explanation for the currently unexplained anticipatory effect is that some of the experimenters performing these experiments are using many methods of analysis and reporting the results for the one method that produces the biggest effect. This is an understandable approach in the early stages of the discovery of any phenomenon, as the work is necessarily exploratory because none of the factors influencing the effect are known. However, after performing an exploratory analysis, researchers would ideally settle on both a single paradigm and a single analysis method, then attempt to replicate their work using exactly the same paradigm and analysis. All of the authors of the studies we have examined here are presumably careful researchers. However, for any researcher, it is tempting to tweak paradigms when attempting a replication in order to obtain more information about the phenomenon than is provided by an exact replication. Unfortunately, this temptation may have produced a situation in which a single, replicable unexplained anticipatory physiology experiment with a well-defined paradigm and analysis method is not yet available. Such an experiment is critical for the future understanding of this currently unexplained effect. Because of the potential importance of the phenomenon, we encourage multiple researchers to pursue this aim in parallel.
Critically, this multiple-analyses hypothesis cannot fully explain the results of the present meta-analysis, as the hypothesis tested by most of the studies we examined was different from the hypothesis tested by this meta-analysis. Presumably, researchers would be biased toward methods that supported their hypothesis (any pre-stimulus difference) rather than methods that supported ours (a pre-stimulus difference matched in direction to the eventual post-stimulus difference). Thus, even if all researchers used analyses that maximized the likelihood of supporting their hypothesis (which we personally know not to be the case at least in our own work), and even if there were no real unexplained anticipatory effects, roughly half of the studies should have positive ESs and half should have negative ESs (relative to our hypothesis), which is clearly not the case. However, it is possible that unstated assumptions about the directionality of the effect could bias researchers toward finding analyses for which the post-stimulus effect matched the pre-stimulus effect. This sort of explanation could potentially explain the results. However, if this explanation is correct, it is unclear why the meta-analysis constrained only to electrodermal data produced a highly significant effect. As described previously (see Materials and Methods), the nature of electrodermal responses makes them less susceptible to multiple analyses as compared to fMRI and EEG responses, as only two parameters can be varied in an attempt to find an effect: pre-stimulus and baseline duration. These parameters are unlikely to influence the direction of the result, though they could influence its magnitude (see Materials and Methods). Despite these assurances, only repeated experiments with consistent paradigms and analyses will resolve the concern that multiple analyses could produce these unexplained anticipatory effects.
Prevalence
The remarkably significant and homogeneous results of this meta-analysis suggest that the unexplained anticipatory effect is relatively consistent, if small in size. If so, the effect should be apparent in many experiments that present a series of emotional and calm stimuli. However, we agree with the scientists who design such experiments that both everyday experience and the second law of thermodynamics suggest a single direction for causality; causes normally precede effects. For these reasons, physiological effects preceding a subsequent cause are not generally assumed to exist, and are therefore not usually examined. In fact, one of the first analytical steps in most studies of physiological responses to distinct stimuli is to use the average of a time period preceding the stimulus as a baseline value. If this value is subtracted from all points in the physiological trace, such a baselining practice can effectively remove any evidence of a predictive anticipatory effect by zeroing out the anticipatory period (see below, Implications, for steps that can ameliorate this problem). Regardless of whether such a practice is followed, most researchers do not present much of the pre-stimulus period for comparison across conditions. For these reasons, predictive anticipatory effects may be both rampant yet invisible in mainstream psychophysiology results. Indeed, one study included in this meta-analysis that examined pre-stimulus data for three such experiments found anticipatory effects in all three mainstream studies investigated; one effect was significant (α = 0.05) and the other two were borderline (Bierman, 2000); all three went in the direction predicted by our hypothesis.
To determine whether other mainstream studies also contain evidence for similar anticipatory effects, we requested data from 14 researchers who published emotional physiology studies in non-parapsychology journals after 2000. Four offered to share data, but two of these four could not find the appropriate data files. Here we briefly report our analysis of the two data sets made available to us. For both data sets, multiple dependent variables were analyzed in the two published reports, which both focused on post-stimulus effects. Using the same methods we used to determine ESs for correlated data (see Materials and Methods), one study produced an overall ES of 0.021 (Ribeiro et al., 2007), and the other an overall ES of 0.343 (Lithari et al., 2010). Both ESs are in the same direction as our hypothesis, but we did not receive trial-by-trial data that would allow us to perform an expectation bias analysis. If not explained by expectation bias, results especially from the Lithari et al. (2010) study suggest that unexplained anticipatory activity may be under-reported in the physiology literature. Further, the results from the Lithari et al. (2010) study are independently statistically significant [t(27)], = 3.87, p < 0.0007), indicating that even when researchers are not looking for an unexplained anticipatory effect, such an effect can be found.
Implications
As already briefly discussed, one possible explanation for the present results that may be made to fit the available data is that most researchers have an implicit assumption about the directionality of the effect and they used this assumption to select analysis methods that magnified the similarity between the pre- and post-stimulus effects as well as the ES. We consider this an unlikely but plausible explanation. Unlikely because we ourselves have analyzed our own data in multiple ways that produce larger pre-stimulus effects but feel constrained by scientific rigor to report only the results obtained with the originally selected analysis method. Further, we have had conversations with several of the other researchers whose studies we have examined here, and it is clear that their analysis methods were attempts at replications of previous analysis methods used by other researchers. However, the explanation is plausible because unexplained anticipatory activity is a phenomenon that is not well understood, and some researchers may feel justified in using multiple methods of analysis in order to better understand the effect. However, it is important to note that when researchers reported multiple statistical results from the same dataset we used the results leading to the smallest ES. Nevertheless, until this unexplained anticipatory effect is replicated multiple times using the same paradigm and method of analysis, we cannot completely rule out the multiple-analyses explanation. Further, there may be other explanations of which we are presently ignorant, but that will become clear over time. In the meantime, we speculate below about the implications of these results.
The most mundane implication of these results is that the existence of unexplained anticipatory effects could potentially either: (1) produce what seem to be null psychophysiological results due to baselining when in fact there is a significant pre-stimulus effect, or (2) produce significant psychophysiological results due to not baselining when there is a significant pre-stimulus effect accounting for the post-stimulus difference. Ideally, in future experiments the physiological variables preceding the stimuli or events of interest would be compared across stimulus classes first, before performing the usual baselining procedure. If there are significant baseline differences, then these differences should be reported in addition to any further post-stimulus effects observed after baselining.
More importantly, we feel that these predictive anticipatory effects constitute a fourth category in addition to three broad categories of anticipatory effects that have already been established in psychophysiology and neuroscience. The first category includes physiological anticipation of intentional motor activity, e.g., physiological anticipation of a willed movement begins at least 500 ms before the conscious report of the intention to move (Libet et al., 1983; Haggard and Eimer, 1999; Soon et al., 2008). The explanation for these effects is that human conscious experience is preceded by subconscious initiation of that experience (Libet et al., 1983). The second category consists of experiments for which the EEG signals during the pre-stimulus period from trials on which stimuli will later be detected differ significantly from the pre-stimulus signals from trials on which stimuli will later be undetected. The general explanation for these effects is that specific phases and/or amplitudes of neural oscillatory firing (Ergenoglu et al., 2004; Mathewson et al., 2009; Panzeri et al., 2010) facilitate detection (or non-detection) of an upcoming stimulus.
Recently, a third category of anticipatory effect, dubbed “preplay,” was discovered when the pre-maze activity of mouse hippocampal neurons was shown to mimic the activity recorded during and after being in the maze, even in mice for whom a maze was novel (Dragoi and Tonegawa, 2011). The authors also found that the firing patterns typically recorded in one maze are predictably different from those recorded in another maze. They offer the explanation that preplay patterns may reflect a sort of recycling phenomenon in which the hippocampus uses generalizable firing pattern templates from its recent history to code for an animal’s current spatial exploration experience.
For all three categories of anticipatory effects described above, the usual cause-preceding-effect assumption is sufficient to construct reasonable explanations for the observed phenomena. The seemingly anomalous anticipatory effects investigated in this meta-analysis could have some influence on the each of these three types of phenomena, but these unexplained anticipatory effects are not necessary to explain these three types of established anticipatory effects. Conversely, the three types of established predictive effects cannot explain the unexplained anticipatory activity examined here. Thus we suggest that unexplained predictive anticipatory effects belong in a category independent from, but potentially overlapping with, the three other categories of anticipatory effects already described.
In sum, the results of this meta-analysis indicate a clear effect, but we are not at all clear about what explains it. We conclude that if this seemingly anomalous anticipatory activity is real, it should be possible to replicate it in multiple independent laboratories using agreed-upon protocols, dependent variables, and analysis methods. Once this occurs, the problem can be approached with greater confidence and rigor. The cause of this anticipatory activity, which undoubtedly lies within the realm of natural physical processes (as opposed to supernatural or paranormal ones), remains to be determined.
Conflict of Interest Statement
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Acknowledgments
We thank the Bial Foundation for awards supporting the work of the first and second authors. The first author was also funded under NIH training grant 5T32NS047987-05 during a portion of the period used to write this manuscript. We are grateful to Dean Radin, Rollin McCraty, Norman Don, Ed May, Ed Modestino, George Dragoi, and Barbara Spellman for feedback that greatly improved this manuscript.
Footnotes
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Appendix
Effect Size Measures for Paired Differences
When comparing control and experimental conditions using independent (or uncorrelated) samples, the usual effect size measure is ES = X ̄ E - X ̄ C s C, where E and C represent the experimental and control conditions, respectively, X ¯ is the sample mean, and S C is the sample standard deviation for the control group. However, when the samples are paired, there are two different effect size measures that have been recommended, and which one makes more sense may depend on the situation.
Independent samples effect size
One possibility is to use the effect size used for the independent samples case, which can be estimated if the correlation is known or can be approximated: ES = t 2 ( 1 - r ) n, where t is the paired t-test statistic. We obtain this effect size measure used for independent samples from the paired t-test by noting the relationship between the standard deviation of the differences, σ D, and the standard deviation in the control group, σ C which will be denoted by σ when we can assume that the experimental and control conditions have the same standard deviation:
σ D 2 = Var X E - X C = σ E 2 + σ C 2 - 2 r σ E σ C
where r is the correlation between the paired variables. When the experimental and control conditions have the same standard deviation, this becomes:
σ D 2 = σ 2 + σ 2 - 2 r σ σ = 2 σ 2 1 - r
Therefore, t = n D ̄ - 0 s D = n D ̄ - 0 2 s 2 1 - r = n 2 1 - r X ̄ E - X ̄ C s = n 2 1 - r ES
and
ES = t 2 1 - r n
Effect size based on differences
The other possibility is to use E S D = D ̄ - 0 s D where D ¯ and s D are the mean and standard deviation of the differences. This effect size measures the number of standard deviations the average difference falls from 0, where the reference standard deviation represents the variability in the differences, rather than the variability in the individual groups. This effect size may make more sense if the differences are the primary measure of interest. The paired t-test statistic is t = n ( D ̄ - 0 ) s D, and note that E S D = t n.
Relationship between ES, ES D, and correlation
It is easy to see the relationship between these two effect sizes:
ES = t 2 1 - r n = t n 2 1 - r = E S D 2 1 - r
Therefore, the following relationships hold based on the correlation r:
When r > 0.5, ES < ES D
When r < 0.5, ES > ES D
In particular, when r = 0, ES = 2 E S D
TABLE A1A chill wind is blowing across north-west London, sending litter scattering over the railway tracks and used-car lots of Willesden Junction. Inside a windowless, white-fronted building, next to a printer’s and overlooking a cemetery, it is nearly as cold. The ancient blow heater has broken down and a cavernous space is warmed only by electric lights, hanging from the ceiling like glowing caterpillars.
A rake-thin figure is at one side of the room, grasping a scaffolding tower for support. Rhythmically, she pushes her feet forward, standing on first one leg, then the other. The toes flex and furl, brushing the ground, every muscle at work. Slowly the movements increase in intensity. She raises her legs to the front, to the rear, to the side, letting them fly ever higher, twisting out from the hips so they mark circles in the air.
For 39 years, a variation of these exercises has started Sylvie Guillem’s day. This routine of tendu, rond de jambe, and port de bras began when she was a “little rat” at the Paris Opera Ballet School, her bright hair tied back in a neat bun. They continued through her rise to become the youngest ever étoile in the company, through her gleaming years as a ballerina at Covent Garden and as a guest star around the world. They have sustained her as she ventured into daring new terrain, performing works from contemporary choreographers, and extended her career beyond any normal expectations.
Now, the most important dancer of her generation, the woman who changed ballet for ever, is coming to the end of that life. In December, at the age of 50, she will retire, never to dance again. Having built an entire career on sticking to her guns, she has made one final choice. But first there is one last tour, with two all-new works to create and learn. “I didn’t want to do a Best Of,” she says, smiling. “I wanted to carry on exploring. I like creation even if the process is always a bit difficult. It’s always very exciting, and also less sad than just to go back. Why do again what I have already done?”
So here she is, in icy January, in this big, bare room, muffled up in layers, topped by dungarees with braces, a big white shirt, loose jacket and scarf, her long red hair pulled back in a plait, working from 10am to well past 7pm with the choreographer Russell Maliphant, who is creating a new duet for her and the Italian dancer Emanuela Montanari. Guillem puts on and strips off garments depending on the level of exertion and the temperature in the studio; as each section of dance is made, Maliphant records it on a laptop. At regular intervals they pause to watch and analyse its effects, reading glasses perched on their noses, like two professors.
“They are hinged into my life, those people”: In PUSH, by and with Russell Maliphant, a regular collaborator, at Sadler’s Wells in 2005
This as yet untitled piece is their fourth collaboration. Guillem approached Maliphant in 2003 because she liked the way he made people move; her interest in creating new work has always been propelled by a desire to feel, in her bones, different ways of moving and seeing. It’s an impulse that has made her commission the other choreographers whose work features in her farewell bill: Mats Ek, William Forsythe, Akram Khan. “They are hinged into my life, those people. They are creative people and I want to go into their world, into their mind and also the way they see me. That is what is important.”
Today, getting into Maliphant’s mind is proving a struggle. “You want to give me shit?” she asks, when he suggests a complicated turn. But she laughs as she says it, and carries on endlessly repeating the moves until they are both satisfied. Then she talks to Montanari—in Italian—working through the steps with her, acting as teacher and translator. At times they look like Pippi Longstocking and her little sister, heads together, giggling and grimacing as they strive to learn. Occasionally, they both lean forward, hands on knees, to catch their breath. The atmosphere is one of calm concentration—a mood broken by the arrival of Michael Hulls, lighting designer and Maliphant’s constant collaborator, who brings the dark news of the Charlie Hebdo shootings. “What a world we live in,” says Guillem, as they break for lunch.
Sitting at a formica table, eating crackers and kale soup, she talks about violence and the political situation in France with dismay in her voice. It is not the kind of conversation you often hear in the etiolated world of dance, but Guillem likes to engage with society. She is vegan, on the grounds that “I do not want an animal to die for me”, and a strong supporter of the eco-campaigners Sea Shepherd, who use direct action to draw attention to illegal whaling and the destruction of the oceans. She uses her fame as a weapon to highlight such causes—her last tour, “6,000 Miles Away”, visited tsunami-stricken areas of Japan to point to their plight and raise funds.
In “Sacred Monsters”, the duet she made with Khan in 2006 which was the first time she had spoken on stage, there is a moment when she tells the story of Sally in the “Peanuts” cartoon. She is skipping happily away, then suddenly bursts into tears. Guillem says she knows how Sally feels—both the exhilaration of the skipping, and the sudden realisation of pointlessness.
“It’s the balance,” she says. “Yes, it’s futile what we do, but it’s part of a positive thing. We are not doing wrong, we are not killing, we are not hurting people, we are not exploiting people, we are not lying. There is something true and genuine about it, so in the end it is important. But the thing is, you must do it as well as you can.”
So that is what she does, dancing on under the lights Hulls has assembled, tracing the steps with Montanari when everyone else has left. Even in a drab rehearsal space, she shines; movement seems to spring from the centre of her being and flow to the tips of her fingers. “That line doesn’t stop at the end of her body,” says Maliphant. “It goes out into space. She has been thinking about aesthetics and line and how she looks since she was very young. She can make extraordinary shapes with such ease. It is just part of her.”
S ylvie Guillem never wanted to be a ballerina. She was a gymnast who ended up at the Paris Opera Ballet School on a year-long exchange programme, designed to give athletes added polish. “I was lucky because I had a different status. In the boarding school, from Sunday evening to Friday evening, you are watched all the time. But there were three of us who, three times a week, could escape, take the Métro, go to the National Institute of Sport and train as gymnasts. So we had this little different life, and didn’t have the same mentality of the others. I didn’t really understand that mentality. It was a strange tension. The notion of pleasure was not there at all.”
She describes the teachers, with heavy emphasis, as “witches”, but she didn’t care. Unlike her two friends, she found ballet class easy, and then one day she was invited to take part in the end-of-year performances. “Curtain up. That was it,” she says, with ringing simplicity.
We are talking on Saturday at 7pm in a crowded hotel bar; Clerkenwell is getting geared up for a night on the town. For Guillem it will be supper, a massage and bed. She has been in rehearsal all day. Even at lunch in the Sadler’s Wells café, she didn’t get the chance to relax: she had to clean up a table to make herself space to sit down. Now, make-up free and relaxed, she looks tired but seems happy to look back on her career with the honesty that is her hallmark.
From that moment of revelation at 11, she was destined to be a ballerina. She fixed her eyes on the prize and coped as best she could with the restrictive discipline. “You learn about people, and betrayal and stupidity,” she says, pulling a wry face. “But I knew something was there for me. I really enjoyed the stage. The rest, no, but if you have to go through that to get there, OK fine, you do it. Also it was not very difficult for me. I was lucky. Every year, I came top in the exams. What was in my mind was passing every test, and then getting into the company to see what was interesting there. Just that.”
At 15, she went on tour to Japan with the Paris Opera Ballet School and her virtuosic performances made audiences laugh with pleasure. “It was the moment I discovered the impact I could have. It was like, wow, what have I done? And this I like. This I really do like.”
Nureyev soon saw that, hidden in the corps de ballet, he had a generation of dancers who could shake the world
Then in 1983, Rudolf Nureyev arrived as director of the Paris Opera Ballet, determined to shake up a venerable institution that had become sclerotic. He soon saw that, hidden in the corps de ballet, he had a generation of dancers who could shake the world. They were waiting their turn for promotion, but Nureyev was having none of it. He understood that time is never on a dancer’s side. On December 29th 1984, after a matinée performance of “Swan Lake”, he called everybody on stage and announced that he was making Guillem an éto |
Jose State University’s aero department.
They’ve now built a vehicle known as Blackbird and repeatedly achieved speeds of 2.85 times faster than the wind which was powering the car.
The key to this achievement is that the wind doesn’t directly turn the propeller. Instead the wind pushes the vehicle and the wheels turn the propeller (in the opposite direction to normal wind-powered vehicles). This pushes the wind backwards and thus creates more forward momentum for the vehicle.Story highlights It happened after the car went off the road in Memphis, Tennessee
The driver is rescued and the Bible is found unscathed inside
(CNN) Divine intervention? That's what one witness is calling it after a driver and his Bible survived a car accident that caused the vehicle to burst into flames.
The accident happened on State Route 385 in Memphis, Tennessee, when a Jeep went off the road and quickly caught fire.
Several good Samaritans came to the driver's aid, trying to get him out, according to CNN affiliates WMC-TV and WHNT-TV.
When an officer arrived on the scene, he saved the driver.
A Bible was also recovered from the car, apparently unscathed by the fire, despite the car ending up a total loss, in ashes.
Read MorePrime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to pull the CF18s out of Syria is not a display of cowardice, as the Conservatives would have you believe, but a demonstration of wisdom. As US Vice President Joe Biden put in very candid terms, the only way to defeat the Islamic State is to stop mollycoddling the terror group’s backers: Saudi Arabia,Turkey, and Qatar.
The Saudi Arabian Wahhabis, with the full backing of the ruling House of Saud, are on a self-described ‘crusade’ against the the Shia Muslims. The Saudis nurtured a fledgling ISIS as agents to carry out genocide against Shia populations in Syria and Iraq. They continue to fund and arm the al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria, the so called al-Nusra front. But our former Prime Minister Stephen Harper sold $15 billion dollars worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia and tried to keep the deal secret.
Meanwhile, Qatar is eager to build a pipeline to Turkey to get their natural gas to Europe. This proposed pipeline had to cross Syria but Syrian President Bashar al-Assad rejected the proposal “to protect the interests of [its] Russian ally, which is Europe’s top supplier of natural gas.” The Syrian government, instead, gave the go ahead to the so called ‘Islamic gas pipeline’ which would supply Europe with gas from Iran. The Qatar-Turkey pipeline is backed by the US, the Iran-Syria pipeline by Russia.
Turkey has two motives for supporting the Islamic State. Firstly, they stand to benefit from the Qatar-Turkey pipeline. Secondly, ISIS terrorists have been massacring Kurds in Syria and Iraq. Turkey has escalated the crackdown against the Turkish Kurds who are demanding independence from Turkey.
We have, in Syria, three proxy wars for the price of one: the Wahhabis vs Shias, the Qatar-Turkey pipeline vs the Iran Syria pipeline and Turkey vs the Kurds.
For the civilians caught up in the conflict, the Syrian war is an Alien vs Predator situation. If ISIS wins the Syrians lose. If President Assad wins, the Syrians still lose. Although the President Assad started out as a reformer after the death of his father, the brutal dictator Hafez al-Assad, absolute power has corrupted junior absolutely. The son has shown himself to be as much of a butcher as his father was.
As we so tragically witnessed in Paris yesterday, Beirut the day before, and over the skies of the Sinai a week earlier, the tentacles of the gruesome conflict that has claimed over 250,000 lives, and displaced six million more in the Middle East is spreading to other corners of the globe.
While some world leaders are baying for blood, PM Trudeau has come to the conclusion that you can’t bomb your way out of a conflict as convoluted as the one in Syria. For each terrorist a bomb dropped from the sky kills, it has the potential to create a dozen more. You can’t win a game of chess by checkmating pawns. You have to go after the king. In this grotesque chess game, they’re many kings and an unlimited supply of pawns.
On election night, Justin Trudeau declared to the world: “Canada is back.”
PM Trudeau has stayed true to his words and taken the first correct step in bringing peace to the wretched region by pulling the CF18s out of Syria. He must now use his international début at the G20 summit in Antalya to rally the world leaders to take stern action against the Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the summit’s host nation Turkey.During our first year of living on our sailboat I kept a running list of sailing maintenance tips, tricks and little known secrets. Some of the items noted are big-time money and/or time savers and others are simply common sense that isn’t common when you’re a newbie sailor. Considering that this has been our first year living on a sailboat full time our learning curve has been massive.
I’m sure someone could create volumes of sailing maintenance tips and tricks but those listed below really made an impact on me
And I thought that perhaps a few might make an impact on you too!?
What’s your top sailing maintenance and living tip, trick or secrete? Can you add to list? If yes, please leave a comment below the article.
My top 15 sailing maintenance tips – the list is not ranked in any priority
1. Saving the Gelcoat
When staying in a marina, if there’s enough room either side of the boat, tie your fenders in a way that allows them to rest on the top outside corner of the deck rather than along side of the hull.
By having the fenders pointing out and away from the hull it reduces the likelihood of the hull exterior or gelcoat from being worn down. (If you like my sailing t-shirt I’m wearing below and want to get one for yourself or your partner, visit my shop)
2. Keeping your propeller shiny
Would you like your propeller to look shiny and new even after a whole season in the water?
Avoid buying any fancy shmancy propeller solution! The secrete is to paint your prop with egg whites! When your boat is out of the water (perhaps when you get it antifouled) paint a coat of egg whites on the prop, let it dry and then repeat four more times. I discovered this tip after being laid up next to a boat crane at the end of a season in the Mediterranean.
My family and I watched about eight boats a day for three weeks be hauled out for the winter. One boat, in particular, came out with the shiniest propeller we’d seen the whole time during our stay. My husband had to ask him what product the boat owner used as all the other props were barnacle ridden, brown-green and disgusting.
We were all flabbergasted when we heard the egg whites answer!
Make sure to read the comments below as a reader also suggests that lanolin works wonders too.
3. Putting a stop to squeaky floorboards?
During the evening do you attempted to sneak into the galley to grab a cookie only to be exposed by a squeaky floorboard? Try rubbing candle wax on the underside of your floorboards to prevent floor squeak. Another tip is talcum, or baby, powder.
4. Teak Deck Comfort
Over time the black stuff between your teak boards on your deck expands upwards.
When it gets too high it can become uncomfortable to walk on and worse, it creates areas where water can pool on the teak surface – a no-no. Every so often, you’re suppose to ‘skim’ the black stuff down so that it’s level with the teak boards or very slightly lower.
Most people painstakingly use a chisel to remove the black stuff however the secrete is to use one of those snap off box knife razor blades
By slightly bending the blade and skimming along the black stuff you get the perfect shape and it’s a rather quick method. Make sure to tape something around your fingers, however, as holding the blade in the same position can cause a callus and finger-ache 🙁
5. Here’s how to make sure your stern gland is dripping!
If you have a stern gland it’s suppose to drip every minute while in use.
Read my article “When I thought things couldn’t get any worse, they have – looks like we might have fried our propeller shaft” for more information on the stern gland.
There’s two issues with the stern gland dripping. The first is that it’s hard to make sure it’s happening. If you blink you might just miss the drip! Also, it’s not a good idea to have a flow of salt water making it’s way through your bilge. The solution?!
My husband affixed one side of Velcro on the hull under the stern gland, and then the other onto a Tupperware container
The Velcro was the type with stickers on either side. Now…we can pour the salt water out if gets high and more importantly we can determine whether or not our stern gland is dripping!
Below is a picture of our stern gland with the Tupperware container affixed below the drip area.
When we first got our boat we knew that the gland should have been dripping but we didn’t know how or why. After a full season of sailing we discovered that our gland was closed tight, not enabling the drip and reducing the cooling and lubrication process. Fortunately for us we didn’t damage anything.
6. The magic of warm water and vinegar
What’s the best solution to clean the interior wood, ceiling panels and bathroom? Yep…it’s vinegar.
I think there’s a book out there about the 500 uses for vinegar. The stuff is amazing. I use it to clean the toilets, wash any mould that develops off the walls and on our ceiling. Not only is it environmentally friendly but it works!
And a note about mold…I’ve included a picture below of what mold looks like on wood so you can identify it – this is actually called mildew. When I leave the boat for any duration of time (a couple weeks or more) whenever I come back my walls have a white substance on them. At first I thought it was dust and I was okay with that. Recently I’ve been told that it’s mold. How disgusting is that?! Read my Top 14 Boat Mold Removal tips article for an in-depth explanation of mold. The article includes various ways you can prevent and remove it.
Apparently, if we ran a dehumidifier while we’re gone it will reduce the likelihood of mold but that’s yet another device to buy and store. Anyway, mold can easily come off using a vinegar and warm water solution…
7. Invest in a clothesline unless you want all your clothes to have rips and rust stains!
Now that we’ve spent a year on the boat I’m not exaggerating when I say that every towel, bed linen and article of clothing that we own has a rust stain on it.
The picture below doesn’t really show the rust stains but it does show my ‘mad face’!
Unbeknown to me, I innocently spent the summer drying our laundry on the safety rails that surround the boat. Not knowing the source, rust stains started to appear on everything. It didn’t take long to realize that our safety lines had spots of rust (unseen by the naked eye) and were therefore transferring the stain onto our clothes.
After trying to clean the rust off the safety lines I then had laundry with long black stains across everything – it must have been the rust solution that I evidently didn’t wash off good enough. In the end, I discovered that the best solution is to buy a clothesline and attach it from the mast to the front of the boat. I now only put darks on the safety line!
8. The best clothespins?!
Speaking of clotheslines, I find that the best clothespins are the wooden type.
The plastic pegs will only last a season or two at most
The sun, sea air and sailing conditions seem to destroy plastic quickly. Often, I’ll use a clothespin and it will snap off sending a bit of plastic in one direction or another. The LAST THING our seas need is more plastic. I’ve changed all my clothespins to the wooden type now.
9. Always say ‘no’ to anyone trying to sell you something or to help service your boat
Never agree to buy anything from anyone when you first meet them.
I suppose this tip is the same in the land-based world too
But when you’re a newbie you can often be swept up with the abundance of kindness offered within the sailing community. What am I talking about? Well, the first quote I had for new sails for the boat came to €23k. The person that offered to make them for us was a wonderful guy (and I still think he’s wonderful) but the sails on offer were not only beyond our budget, they were not exactly what we needed.
I gave my word (that I later had to break) that we were going to buy the sails thinking that we were getting a good deal only to find out that what we needed/wanted would cost us around €14k. BIG DIFFERENCE.
Like anywhere in the world, you’ll meet great people that offer a great variety of products and services. Don’t change what you’d normally do – always go out, get several quotes and talk to several people before making a commitment to making a large purchase. See the picture below to discover why we need new sails!
10. Before moving onto your boat, go to IKEA and buy as many plastic containers as you think you can store.
You will use these for all sorts. First of all, anything that comes in cardboard needs to be removed and repackaged. Cereal boxes, pasta boxes, outer cardboard covers. This needs to be done for two very important reasons. The first is that cockroaches lay eggs in cardboard and if you happen to get some cardboard with some eggs on the boat you’ll have a massive situation on your hands.
The second reason is bugs (other than cockroaches)
Bugs are latent in all sorts of products – flour and pasta come to mind immediately. This year I’ve had pasta that I’ve taken out and the bag it was sealed in was full of living, crawling bugs. If that pasta was in a cardboard box, rather than a bag, my whole cupboard would have been full of bugs. The bugs can’t escape plastic or Tupperware but they can easily get out of cardboard boxes. I put flour, polenta, rice, pasta and anything that comes in a box into Tupperware immediately and discard the boxes.
I often use the smaller plastic containers for odd pieces of stuff (screws, etc.), my daughters hair clips or office stuff like paper clips and so on. The pack displayed below is from Ikea and stacks within itself to take up very little space. The cost to buy is cheap so if you give a neighbor left-overs and they forget to return the container it’s no big deal.
11. Use it or loose it – run all your systems every week
Some sailors will disagree with me on this but based on the courses I took I’m a firm believer that on a boat if you don’t use it you lose it. Things like pumps, refrigeration units, air conditioners, engines and so forth all need to run on a weekly, if not monthly, basis.
When we were laid up in Sicily for the winter for five months, every Monday we turn on everything that runs.
Just take an impeller, for example. These little plastic wheels found within pumps are stuck in one position once the pump is turned off. If they’re not moved around they can become weak and brittle.
Perhaps they need lubrication or the pieces that are bent the most need a change of position
If you ask any boat professional, they always say that the majority of issues come from commissioning a boat after wintering. If you’re not wintering your boat, exercise everything at least every month. This also applies to seacocks too. If you don’t move them around, barnacles grow, seawater sets in and they won’t move.
When a pipe busts and you can’t close a seacock it’s not a pretty sight!
12. Another tip about fenders…Fenders are not cheap!
It makes me feel sick if we lose one as ours cost around €80 each. That being noted, if you’re going to moor up along side a cement wall it’s very important to carry a plank of wood to put over the fenders so that it’s positioned between the fenders and the wall. Otherwise your fenders will be slowly eaten up and eventually destroyed by the wall.
Furthermore, make sure to put your boat name and your phone number/email address on the fender. If one goes missing you might just hear from someone that finds it.
13. Make sure you have a multimeter.
At first I was afraid of these handy devices however this year I’ve used it time and time again.
They help to determine if electricity is flowing and the amount that is flowing! They even help to let you know if a light bulb is good or dead. Before taking anything electrical apart, a multimeter helps to troubleshoot a whole variety of issues. Below is my husband checking the voltage of our batteries.
14. Vaseline your hatches and window seals – better yet, use a Silicone Grease.
If you do this on a routine basis it will keep the plastic soft rather than allow it to dry out and become brittle. My husband looks like he’s enjoying this job a little bit too much! (Scary!)
Our first year sailing our new boat has been an incredible year – year on will go down in history as being nothing short of remarkable. We’ve learned so much. At times I thought that my head was going to explode. At other times I put my head in my hands and thought, ‘how are we ever going to survive’?
Well…we’re still here, we’re still learning. And I’m sure we’ll be learning until we decide to dry up back on land. That being noted there is so much we have to learn. If you know of any tips you’d like to impart with us and the readers of this blog, please share! My motto is to learn from my mistakes so that you don’t have to make them yourself.
A must have for boat new boat owners
And if you’re a new boat owner yourself, please consider checking out my ‘Checklists for Sailors Guide – Checklists for Sailors – Passage Planning, Sailboat Maintenance, Cleaning, Medical and more,’ The guide is a boaters must-have checklist reference guide. When you’re first starting out you don’t know what you don’t know! These checklists will help you to:
reduce mistakes
reduce anxiety
discover what you don’t know so that you do know it
start somewhere and build on a solid foundation
The guide can be purchased on Amazon or in my Shop and it comes in paperback and digital versions.The corpses of the unborn baby boys were found packed in a suitcase in his hotel room in Bangkok’s Chinatown district.
Chow Hok Kuen, 28, who holds a British passport but is of Taiwanese origin, confessed to police that he had bought the foetuses several days earlier for almost £4,000. The source of the foetuses is unclear.
He said he intended to smuggle them to Taiwan where they would be sold for as much as six times what he paid on the internet to people who believe that their possession would bring wealth and good luck.
The man told police that that he was hired by another Taiwanese man, named Kun Yichen, who regularly travelled to Thailand to collect the ritualistic foetuses.
Worship of the foetuses — observed by some on the Chinese community — is a Buddhist-animist practice known as Kuman Thong that is described in ancient Thai manuscripts.
In Thai black magic rituals, also observed among some Chinese communities, preserved foetuses are believed to bring good fortune to the owner and are often kept in shrines within homes or businesses.
It required male foetuses surgically removed from the womb that were then dried as black magic incantations were said over the body, before it was covered in gold leaf. Kuman Thong means “golden baby boy”.
Lore has it that if the owner reveres the ritual foetus, its spirit will warn and protect its possessor of danger. In practice the foetuses have been replaced by wooden effigies.
Chow Hok Kuen faces up to a year in jail and a fine of £40 for possession of the foetuses, which police said showed development of between two and eight months.
Officers made the gruesome discovery in the hotel in the Yaowarat district of Bangkok, where they found that the foetuses had also been tattooed and were adorned with religious threads.
Col Wiwat Kamhamnan, of Bangkok police, said: “He said he planned to sell the foetuses to clients who believe they will make them lucky and rich.”
Abortion is illegal in Thailand unless the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, or poses a threat to the mother’s health.
But women’s rights groups estimate that up to 400,000 Thai woman undergo abortions each year.
Last year two undertakers and woman who collected foetuses from illegal abortion clinics were jailed after more than 2,000 corpses were found at a temple morgue when the furnace for the crematorium broke down.Hundreds Of Thousands Take To Barcelona Streets Against Catalan Independence
Enlarge this image toggle caption Gonzalo Arroyo/AP Gonzalo Arroyo/AP
Hundreds of thousands of protesters decrying the Catalan government's push for independence came together in Barcelona on Sunday, in one of the biggest gatherings of Spanish unity supporters.
Waving flags and singing "Viva España," the marchers gave voice to what some have called the silent majority in a region whose government declared independence from Spain on Friday.
Polls show roughly half of the Catalan electorate supports sticking with Spain, while the other half supports forming their own country.
As NPR's Lauren Frayer has reported from Spain, those supporting unity have tended to be quieter than separatists because they are defending the status quo. "Support for staying in Spain had been growing in recent years, despite almost daily independence rallies in Barcelona, the Catalan capital," Lauren says.
Sunday's rally capped a tumultuous weekend that saw the central government taking formal control of Catalonia on Saturday.
Invoking Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy dissolved Parliament and fired Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont.
Puigdemont issued a defiant statement Saturday saying only the regional parliament can elect or dismiss the Catalan government and vowing to "continue working to build a free country," reports The Associated Press.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Gonzalo Arroyo/AP Gonzalo Arroyo/AP
But with their pay suspended, AP reports it is unclear what Puigdemont and other regional leaders will do now that Madrid has stepped in. Some Catalan civil servants have said they will not take orders from Madrid. And Puigdemont has been vague about what steps his supporters should take.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has set new regional elections for Dec. 21.
In a violent and contentious referendum on Oct. 1, 90 percent of voters opted to secede from Spain. But Madrid had already deemed the vote illegal and only about half of eligible voters turned out.
The United States and the European Union also rejected the results of the referendum and support a united Spain.
Catalonia has been part of Spain since the 15th century, yet has retained a unique cultural identity and language, including its own flag, anthem and president. Many in the wealthy region have been unhappy with tax distribution; Catalonia pays $12 billion more in taxes to Madrid than it gets back, according to Spanish Treasury data, reports Reuters.
Rajoy expressed support for Sunday's demonstration, tweeting pictures of marchers waving and wrapped in the Spanish flag and writing, "Harmony, peaceful coexistence and common sense, democracy and dialogue within the law."Just 120 kilometers separated NATO and Russian forces this week, as Georgia hosted U.S. and British troops for live-fire exercises.
The military maneuvers were designed to increase the ability of Georgia's armed forces to work as part of NATO's rapid-response force.
But the high-profile exercises also illustrated something else. Even as Georgia's armed forces become increasingly interoperable with the Western alliance, the door to NATO membership -- while theoretically open -- remains effectively closed.
And to the north, Moscow is biding its time as it seeks to reassert its dominance over Tbilisi -- one way or another.
On this week's Power Vertical Podcast, we discuss Georgia's quest for security against a resurgent and revanchist Russia.
Joining me are James Nixey, head of the Russia and Eurasia Program at Chatham House and an expert on Moscow's relations with former Soviet states, and Tbilisi-based political analyst Ghia Nodia, a professor at Ilia State University.
Enjoy...
Listen to or download the podcast above or subscribe to The Power Vertical Podcast on iTunes.
CLARIFICATION: During the discussion on this podcast, I incorrectly referred to "Association Partnerships" that NATO was reportedly considering offering to Georgia and Ukraine at the alliance's upcoming Warsaw summit. In fact, NATO is not considering Association Partnerships for these two countries. In recent remarks in Kyiv, NATO Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow referred to a possible "Comprehensive Assistance Package," that would consolidate the alliance's support for Ukraine. This would be similar to the Substantial Assistance Package that Georgia received at the 2014 NATO summit in Wales.Last night The CW, home to a string of teen dramas as well as most of the DC comic book series, launched its reboot of Dynasty — and I’m really hoping that it dies a nasty death because, in a nutshell, it is total drek.
Admittedly, the original series wasn’t the greatest but it had its place in the television landscape of the day, with many viewing it as something similar to what the British know as pantomime; and Alexis Carrington Colby Dexter being the ultimate pantomime villain.
I’d watch the original show with my mother and be blown away by the quality of the acting as they’d amaze us by keeping a straight face as they played out some of the most bizarre storylines.
Produced by the legendary Aaron Spelling, the original Dynasty ran from 1981 to 1989 and got a two-part revival mini series in the early 1990s.
Set in Denver, Colorado, the original show followed the family feud between the Carringtons and the Colbys, with the focal point of much of the feuding beyond the personal stuff being the control of oil. Over the course of its nine-year run, it was the natural rival to Dallas, which was absolutely huge throughout the 70s and 80s.
Dynasty would in part be responsible for a career comeback for Joan Collins, who portrayed the cunning and devious Alexis Carrington with great aplomb. It also made Linda Evans a household name and John Forsyth a sex symbol for the mature ladies.
Prior to Dynasty, Forsyth had leant his dulcet tones to the speaker phone as the mysterious Charlie in Charlie’s Angels, which was another huge show for producer Aaron Spelling. Dynasty was the first time that many younger viewers got to see Forsyth and actually put a face to the name.
The reboot, which is set in Atlanta, just doesn’t come close to the bitchiness and feel of the classic. The new crop of characters are bitchy, but it’s in a very 90210 sort of way — in that it’s not very convincing. The new location doesn’t help matters. Denver was as much a character of the original show as the cast were.
The first couple of episodes mainly focus on Blake getting engaged to Crystal, who is much younger in this new show than Linda Evans was. Much of the drama, if you can call it that, is focused on Fallon Carrington not liking the idea of her father’s engagement while simultaneously campaigning to get her old dad to pass the reigns of the company over to her. We also see Blake playing off Fallon against her gay brother Steven.
The acting and writing in this new take on the series is truly atrocious. Making people watch this series should be banned under the Geneva convention as inhumane torture.
Cast as Blake Carrington is Grant Show, who many will remember from Melrose Place back in the 1990s. From an acting standpoint, he is probably the most consistent in the new show. But there is no way that I am buying him as a multi-millionaire ruthless oil tycoon.
The new version of Fallon is played by Vampire Diaries’ Elizabeth Gillies, who is frankly boring to watch. So boring in fact that I doubt even Aliens would bother to abduct her in the same way they did with Fallon from the classic show. I’ve seen more charisma than tree bark. My plants visibly died a minute for each second she was on screen.
Playing Crystal in the series is Nathalie Kelley, who is about as excitable as a Ninja Samurai Snail whacked up on speed. She is basically Blake Carrington’s soon-to-be younger wife and will be likely be set up as one of the strong female characters of the series if it gets beyond a season.
The acting is very one-note and by-the-numbers. As is the writing. The original series has some wild and wacky plots, which were sold by solid acting performances by all of its original cast. This new version needs to do a lot to live up to the legendary status of the original show.
This reboot is so bad that even Gordon Thomson who played Adam Carrington on the original series has condemned it.
“I have had a look at the new Dynasty and I am appalled,” he told The Daily Beast. “What the f**k is The CW doing? It’s utter s**t. The acting is dreadful, truly dreadful. The writing is appalling. I don’t know what possessed the Shapiros to bother.”
He continued: “Why call it Dynasty? It’s nothing to do with Dynasty at all. It’s insulting. If the afterlife exists — it doesn’t, but if it did — Aaron would be having major fits in his grave.
“And the audience The CW is aiming for is going to think it’s s**t because it is such s**t that a cretinous 6-year-old would not be interested. It’s abominable.”
As far as I’m aware, most other surviving members of the original cast have not commented, but a few months back Joan Collins said that she’d love to appear on it. I wonder if that still holds true now?
Dynasty airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on The CW.We’ve seen this play before and before that and before that, but it never gets old: Chinese automakers replicating vehicles from western automakers. One brand that keeps popping up on our cloning radar is Jianghuai Automobile, more commonly known as JAC Motors.
It’s latest accomplishment is the JAC 4R3 pickup truck that makes no attempt to hide the fact that it’s a styling copy of the Ford F-150. Of course, as with other Chinese doppelgangers, the similarities begin and end with the appearance as it’s too costly for automakers to extend the cloning to the mechanical hardware.
The 4R3 will reportedly make its debut at the Beijing Motor Show in April and will then go on sale in China where it will be offered with a 2.8-liter four-cylinder diesel engine pushing out 108-horsepower and 240Nm (177 lb-ft) of peak torque.
Among other clones produced by JAC Motors is the Reni that mimics the looks of the (previous-gen) Chevrolet Silverado truck series and which is already offered for sale in China in five different versions.
By John Halas
Story References: JAC, Pikadd
JAC 4R3 PICKUP TRUCK
JAC RENI PICKUP TRUCKOn Saturday 30th June 1826, Richard Chadwick, eldest son of Richard Chadwick of Perryville, nephew of Mr. Wm. Chadwick, Sadlier Wells (now Kingswell) Tipperary was shot dead on the road-way, between the village of Bohernacrusha & the townsland of Rathcannon, in the parish of Holycross, at a point where a bridge now crosses the railway tracks, which was later erected around 1847.
The body of Mr Chadwick was later buried in Cullen, Co Tipperary.
Mr Chadwick (aged 25) was Weighmaster (A licensed public official who verifies the true weight of various goods) in Tipperary & was employed by his uncle as land agent, in charge of the townsland of Rathcannon. He had previously evicted a number of the tenants on this estate & had served ‘notices to quit,’ on the remainder. A presentment to erect a police barrack at Rathcannon, (Now a Hand Ball Alley,) having been passed by the Grand Jury on June 29th, saw Chadwick visiting the district to arranged to have the foundations of this barrack building laid down. He stayed overnight with Mr. Armstrong at Farney Castle, & on the following morning proceeded on horseback to Rathcannon to oversee his men to work. He had engaged four masons named Mara, natives of Pouldine, in Moycarky parish, to erect the building & had ordered the remaining tenants on the estate to assist with the erection.
About mid-day, leading his horse, accompanied by Philip Mara, Chadwick was proceeding towards Holycross, when at the point already referred too, an armed man stepped out from the fence on the left side of the road. Raising a gun, he ordered Mr Chadwick to give himself up. Philip Mara endeavoured to remonstrate with the assailant, whereupon the man raised his gun & emptied the contents into Chadwick’s body, killing him instantly.
In the meantime another man, also armed, appeared from the opposite side of the road, but took no active part in the proceedings. The man who fired the fatal shot was Mr Paddy Grace, a native of Ballytarsna, born close to the now castle. Grace was well known as a daring individual who had already a record in deeds of violence, blood-shed & robbery. The second man was Mr Lawerence Barry from an area close to this scene & known as The Hough.
When the first shot was fired, Philip Mara turned & ran back towards the barrack. Hearing a second shot, he looked back & saw Paddy Grace standing over the body, searching the pockets of his fallen victim. In the search, Grace had found a pistol & possibly seeing some faint twitch of life in his victim, emptied the contents of this pistol into Chadwick’s brain, through his right eye. Mara continued running & first informed Rev. Mr. Lloyd before then travelling to Thurles to inform the police, telling Capt. Wilson, the then Police Inspector, that he had recognised Paddy Grace as the assassin.
On Chadwick’s body, Grace had found some notes ‘endorsed,’ which on his later arrest, were found in his possession. Now identified by Mara, Paddy Grace was arraigned at Clonmel Assize in July 1827 & convicted of the capital offence on Friday the 17th of August. He was later hanged at Rathcannon on Monday the 20th August 1827, having admitted his guilt on the gallows & exhorted his brothers and others in attendance, to desist from unlawful practises. Barry was also arrested & put on trail, but Philip Mara, not being unable to confidently identify him, he was acquitted.
Shortly after Grace’s execution, work was resumed on the barrack by Philip Mara’s brothers, Lawerence, Timothy & Daniel & an apprentice named Hickey.
In the meantime, Piery Grace, a younger brother of Paddy, was actively engaged in procuring a number of desperadoes from various parts of the country. His intention was to murder Philip Mara’s three brothers. Going to Golden he enlisted the services of Thos. Fitzgerald, Patrick Lacy, Edmond Ryan & one, an individual named Kirby, from Donaskeagh. Others involved in the conspiracy were Edmond Ryan of Ballymoreen, John Walsh, Tom Keogh & his sons Patrick & John, Micheal Treacy, Watt Grace, John Daniel, Micheal Luby, & Thomas & Darby Bryan. According to the evidence at subsequent trials, the conspirators assembled at Tom Keogh’s in Rathcannon on the 23rd September 1827, & arranged to intercept the Mara brothers, on their return from work on the barrack.
On the following morning, Fitzgerald, Watt Grace, Edm. Ryan of Ballymoreen, & Lacy took up position in the Grove at Rathcannon, and awaited the arrival of others. However a gun was accidentally fired during this meeting, which warned the Mara brothers, latter who duly decided to leave off work for some days. Informed some days later that the Mara’s were again at work, a number of the conspirators again assembled in the Grove & were supplied with whiskey & bread by Kate Costello, a servant & relative of the Keogh’s. However that evening the Mara’s left off work earlier than usual, before the conspirators reached the road.
The following day, the Maras were not at work, but the next day, the 1st of October 1827, when the Mara’s left off work, the evening being wet, Fitzgerald, Kirby, the two Edm. Ryans, Walsh, Wat. Grace, Lacy and Bryan were ranged inside the fence of the roadside and fired on them without effect. Armed with pistols, the Mara’s returned the fire and broke away, with Lawrence and Timothy taking to the fields, and escaping. Daniel Mara kept to the road and ran through the village of Bohernacrusha, pursued by the whole party, till he reached the house of Ned Kennedy, situated about 100 yards from the village, on the right side of the road leading to Holycross.
On entering the house, he requested a young girl, Peggy Kennedy, to close and bar the door, which was done. Finding the door barred, Ryan of Golden tried to leap through the window but was struck from inside by Mara with a ‘Gridiron.’ (Latter a utensil of parallel metal bars, used to grill meat or fish.)
Later the door was forced, and Kirby, Walsh and Bryan entered. One of them knocked Mara down with the stock of a gun. Lacy then entered and fired at the prostrate man, killing him instantaneously. Lacy re-loaded his gun and the party being given whiskey by Watt. Grace, & departed. Four of the party proceeded to the house of John Russell at Curraheen, where they obtained food and remained there for some days.
At the March Assizes of 1828, Patrick Lacy and John Walsh were tried for murder and convicted, the principal witnesses for the Crown being their accomplices, Thos. Fitzgerald and Edm. Ryan of Ballymoreen. The trial concluded at |
a puppeteer is to start. There are lots of sites on building your own puppets and learning how to perform with them, including: Puppet 101
Project Puppet
Puppetry Forum at Muppet Central
Puppet Planet
Muppet Origins Rowlf duets with Liberace in 1978. Evening Standard/ Getty Images Given their status today, it's hard to imagine that the Muppets didn't begin as children's characters, or that initially Jim Henson balked at the idea of creating them for "Sesame Street." But "Sam and Friends," Henson's first TV show, was for adults. He started it in 1955 as a college freshman with a classmate, Jane Nebel (whom he later married). "Sam and Friends" Muppets included the lizardlike Kermit as well as Sam, Yorick, Harry the Hipster, Professor Madcliff, Mushmellon and Chicken Liver. The Muppets on "Sam and Friends" mostly lip-synched to popular songs and comedy routines and parodied other TV shows. It ran for six years on a local Washington, D.C., station, and its popularity got Henson invited to perform on shows like "The Tonight Show." During its run, Muppets began to appear in commercials for everything from coffee to dog food. Rowlf the Dog was created specifically for Purina Dog Chow commercials and was a regular character on "The Jimmy Dean Show" from 1963 to 1966. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Henson shot several pilots and TV specials featuring the Muppets, but had not yet gotten a series. In 1968, Joan Cooney established the Children's Television Workshop and was strongly encouraged to bring on the Muppets for "Sesame Street," the new children's education show she was developing. Henson didn't immediately accept, but according to Jane Henson, he agreed in part "because he had begun to realize that children could be a very sophisticated audience" [source: The Works]. The Muppets that Henson and his team created continue to appear on "Sesame Street" and in numerous TV specials. Henson shot "The Muppet Show" pilot, "Sex and Violence," in 1975. In the same year, a new NBC show called "Saturday Night Live" began airing sketches from the "Land of Gorch," featuring new Muppet characters. "Saturday Night Live" writers didn't like writing for the Muppets, however, and the Muppets were "fired" halfway through the first season. ABC passed on the "Muppet Show" pilot, but Henson struck a deal with ITC, a division of the Associated Communications Company. The show was shot in London and syndicated to CBS stations across the United States. Initially, producers had difficulty finding actors and musicians to be "special guest stars," but by the fifth season, they had to pick through a huge list of talent. "The Muppet Show" was unlike anything that had been on TV before -- a variety show with skits, a storyline and musical numbers, mostly acted out by puppets. By the end of its run, people all over the world had seen it. Due to its wild popularity, "The Muppet Show" spawned three movies while Henson was alive: "The Muppet Movie," "The Great Muppet Caper" and "The Muppets Take Manhattan" and six direct-to-video and made-for-TV movies. In 1977, Henson created a TV special for HBO, "Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas," based on a children's book. Its realistic characters were both traditional hand Muppets and marionettes, and much of the technology created for "Emmet Otter" was built upon in the other Muppet movies. Henson's next children's TV series, "Fraggle Rock," aired from 1983 to 1986 on HBO. Very different from "Sesame Street," "Fraggle Rock" depicted the interactions between three "races" of Muppets: Fraggles, Doozers and Gorgs. The shows also contained segments with Doc and his dog Sprocket, inhabitants of Outer Space (the human world). "Fraggle Rock" was also a huge success and appeared in a dozen countries and languages Next, we'll look at Muppet productions from the 1990s to the present."If the private sector does not carry the economy on its back, we cannot expect to see a better fiscal future in Puerto Rico that helps all of our businesses grow."
Now that Puerto Rico's Governor Ricardo Rosselló has introduced a fiscal proposal that will cope with the island's debt and balance the budget, and our decisions are being disciplined by a federal fiscal control board, we need to start thinking about what it will take to create a sustainable economy where more companies like Señor Paleta can grow. If we don't throw more support behind entrepreneurship, young people will continue to flee the island for opportunities elsewhere instead of staying here and contributing to our future growth.
Here are three steps I would suggest, based on my 20 years of experience in building and running a Puerto Rico-based company that now has about 160 employees and will soon begin doing business in the Dominican Republic and Panama.
1. Build a stronger entrepreneurial ecosystem. In an environment where investment capital is scarce, we need to nurture more organizations whose emphasis is on building a support system for entrepreneurs. Without a formal focus on creating more business incubators and accelerators and luring more equity investors, any start-up activity will happen too slowly to move the needle for the economy.
We've had a good start with the Foundation for Puerto Rico, a not-for-profit whose mission is "to transform Puerto Rico … by driving economic and social development through sustainable strategies." The foundation was launched five years ago by one concerned citizen. It has already recruited many private companies and individuals and successfully influenced government policy.
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There are other business organizations that are thriving in Puerto Rico, but while inspirational, these examples are too few and scarce to create the critical mass of start-ups necessary to shift the downward trend of the economy. Business leaders in our community need to come together to form more forward-looking organizations that will help the entrepreneurial community grow.
2. Think beyond our own companies. Puerto Rico is home to some of the most innovative and battle-tested businesses in the world. Their leadership teams know what it takes to survive and grow in a challenging environment. In an economy of "survival of the fittest," what's left now are the fittest.
In these strange times, we need the majority of business leaders to accept a higher level of accountability for reviving the economy, through commitment, innovation and a broader view of success that includes contributing to the island's social and economic advancement. Many more leaders must take up the mantle and usher in a true private-sector renaissance. Simple steps, such as looking for suppliers and vendors on the island, using one's connections to help other local firms tap into demand or meet investors, and expanding one's own business beyond Puerto Rico can all make a difference.
This is not about utopian corporate selflessness; it's about enlightened selfishness. If the private sector does not carry the economy on its back, we cannot expect to see a better fiscal future in Puerto Rico that helps all of our businesses grow.
3. Minimize the role of government. Ensuring liquidity for the government to pay its employees and debt immediately is vital. However, in order for the private sector to drive the economy, the government must get out of the way of economic growth. The Puerto Rican government has great potential to harm the economy and slow a recovery, and unfortunately, that is exactly what it has done for more than a decade. The government must change its identity from a primary employer to the main facilitator of private-sector employment. And it must act consistently and holistically with its support and the elimination of economically hostile policies and laws, such as restrictive labor laws, ever-changing tax policies and an almost exclusive emphasis on funding the government for one more month instead of growing the economy.
Of course, it's unrealistic to imagine government stepping out of the way completely. There are some useful roles it can play to help spur the economy. As I mentioned in a previous commentary, our government needs to promote homegrown entrepreneurs instead of dying manufacturing jobs. It can facilitate this by funding incubators, hosting events to attract investors and introducing them to the local entrepreneurs, refocusing the public university system to emphasize entrepreneurial skills and revamp a municipal and central tax system currently hostile to start-ups. These changes will go a long way to paving a road for a nascent new private sector in the process of recreating itself.
The ingredients are here for our economy to thrive. The government has finally been backed into a corner and is taking the politically unpopular steps needed to foster a turnaround. Many of the weaker companies have been eliminated through a 10-year war with recession. Only a vibrant, skilled set of entrepreneurs are left. Through resourcefulness, inovation and force of will, many companies are growing again. It's a perfect time for capital to reengage in Puerto Rico.
Now it is up to local business leaders to show investors there are great opportunities in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico could have a very bright future ahead if entrepreneurship is allowed to take hold and local private-sector leaders become more actively involved. We all need to adopt the philosophy of enlightened selfishness.
— By David Bogaty, owner of WorldNet, a voice, data, cloud and internet services firm in Puerto Rico, and a member of the CNBC-YPO Chief Executive Network
About YPO
CNBC and YPO have formed an exclusive editorial partnership consisting of regional "Chief Executive Networks" in the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific. These Chief Executive Networks are made up of a sample of YPO's global network of 24,000 top executives from 120 countries who are on the front lines of the economy and run companies that collectively generate $6 trillion in annual revenue.LOS ANGELES (CBS/AP) — The civilian board that oversees the Los Angeles Police Department has put the brakes on the city’s red-light traffic camera program.
The Police Commission agreed Tuesday to reject a proposal from police officials to award a new contract to the company that has been operating the cameras.
An audit last year questioned the effectiveness of the program, finding that a majority of citations have gone uncollected. Commissioner Alan Skobin says that since the courts don’t pursue drivers who refuse to pay the tickets, the camera program lacks enforcement power.
The board’s decision could shut down the cameras in days unless the City Council decides to strip the commission of its authority on the issue and decide whether to continue the program.
The problems for red light cameras go back to 2009 when CBS2/KCAL9 Investigative Reporter David Goldstein found there is no evidence the cameras reduced accidents, deaths or injuries at the intersections where they were placed and in fact, found those numbers actually increased at some intersections.
(TM and © Copyright 2011 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2011 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)Cow Town Opts For Funk Over Funky Smell
Enlarge this image toggle caption Nathan Heffel for NPR Nathan Heffel for NPR
Greeley, Colo., has an image problem. Actually, it's more of an odor problem.
A meatpacking plant is on the northeast side of town, and when the wind blows just right, you can't miss the smell — a cross between a slaughterhouse, a cow farm with manure and other unidentified odors.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Ed Andrieski/AP Ed Andrieski/AP
The Smell, As Described On The Odor Hotline The Odor Hotline has given Greeley residents a chance to describe the hard-to-define smell since 1995. Here are a few examples: "old man breath"
"burnt chicken feathers"
"feedlot, road tar and stale water"
"sweet smelling chemical like fertilizer"
"bad sports shoes"
"sour milk"
and, rather dramatically: "dead rotting corpses set in rotting cheese then set on fire" — KUNC
In fact, the city's website says back in the 1960s, folks joked that that odor was merely "the smell of money." One of the town's main industries was, and is, cattle.
But the northern Colorado city is trying to shake its scent — and its image — in an effort to drum up tourism. A new campaign refutes long-standing presumptions about the city, but a whiff of uncertainty lingers.
The odor didn't truly become a problem until the '80s, when the Denver Broncos held spring training in the city. Media reports about the smell spread like wildfire.
"I think Greeley has got the reputation that we have cattle yards, we have stock yards, we have feed lots within the city limits," says John Pantaleo, a spokesman for Greeley. "And I think that came from the fact that that was true, but that was years ago."
Now, Pantaleo points to an arts community, the University of Northern Colorado, the oldest philharmonic orchestra in the state, and tourism.
The city has taken steps to mitigate the smell, including the creation of an Odor Hotline, which residents can call to report and describe the stench. Reports have declined significantly since the hotline started in 1995; there were 600 calls the year it started and just 25 in 2012. Also, the meatpacking plant now has a smokestack that further reduces the problem.
But the old reputation remains, so the city is constructing a new one.
" 'Greeley Unexpected' is a really nice way to represent the community," says spokesman Panteleo, referring to the city's current slogan. "In fact, it's not what they thought or what they heard in the past."
A $250,000 ad campaign is getting the word out. Of course, this does nothing to actually get rid of the smell — and there's no guarantee it'll work.
This isn't the first time the city has attempted to rebrand itself, either. Nearly a decade ago, it tried, "Great from the Ground Up," which arguably isn't the best slogan for a city with a meatpacking industry.Woo yeah! Time for Photon newsletter #10!
Nightly-57 this week
Way back in newsletter #2, I talked about the Photon program schedule. Briefly, to save you a click: Photon is shipping with Firefox 57, and to allow time for bugfixes, quality, and polish we’ve been targeting August 7th as the date when we’ll be done with “major work.” That gives us 6 weeks of Nightly-57 to do that bugfixing (and another 6 weeks of Beta-57 for any further critical or low-risk improvements).
I’m pleased to report that we’re still solidly on track. Most of the big-ticket features for Photon have already landed, and the last few (notably: rectangular tabs, pinning Page Action items to the URL bar) are in good shape to land soon. That’s not to say Photon is “done” – just that the biggest and riskiest work will largely be behind us, and upcoming work will start to be more about finishing off rough edges.
Recent Changes
Menus/structure:
Added a history view to the Library button
New overflow panel styling landed. This makes the overflow panel look much better in both customize mode and when opened from the toolbar.
Patches landed in github to have a Screenshots entry in the Library. (This won’t be user-visible until the next Screenshots-to-mozilla-central uplift.)
Added a customize footer to the overflow panel.
Animation:
The Stop/Reload animation has been tweaked to run faster.
Animations have been fixed to be positioned correctly regardless of display font size. [1] [2]
The Save to Bookmarks animation has landed in Nightly. (Add the Library button to the toolbar for the full effect!)
The Save to Pocket animation has also landed (Again, you’ll want to ensure the Library button is in the toolbar to see all of the animation.)
Preferences:
Fixed Performance section regression around number of processes and uplifted it to Beta-55.
Started working on visual refresh but are holding off landing until after the uplift. This allows QA to finish verifying the changes (in Nightly) that will ship with Firefox 56, without these 57-only changes getting in the way.
Visual redesign:
Onboarding:
The first uncompleted tour is now shown by default (instead of just the first tour).
Updated the stub installer tagline to “Built for people, not for profit.
Made the “Learn More” button not wrap.
The Sync tour will be automatically marked as completed when you sign in with a Firefox account.
When refreshing a profile, don’t migrate a user’s session (tabs) unless the refresh was invoked by the user. This allows the reset triggered by the stub installer (e.g. for users coming back to Firefox after a long absence) to have a fresh experience, instead of seeing old tabs from months ago.
Made the onboarding UI look better in high-contrast mode.
Performance:
That’s it for now!
AdvertisementsHello Stefan, Pat, Vivian and blah: I'm the Trottier who is heading up the SFU observatory project, and I hope you might like to get a (belated) reply to your posts straight from the horse's mouth :). The reason for putting the observatory in the middle of a suburban area is because it is meant first and foremost to serve the public, as well as SFU students: so we are putting the observatory where people can easily get to it - in the city ;). We have been holding public "star parties" at SFU for seven years, using portable telescopes (sfu.ca/starrynights): two weekends ago we hosted more than 200 visitors, mostly young families, on campus, to see the supernova - you need only hear the expressions of wonder from kids (and adults!) when looking through a telescope to appreciate the value and impact of this kind of public outreach. We expect to have thousands of visitors per year when the observatory is up and running - so we *purposely* accept the limits of light pollution. BTW, the Space Centre has its public outreach observatory right across from downtown! And despite the light pollution, there is no end of exciting things to do with a telescope of this size and sophistication, and every reason to make it available for remote operation by schools in the interior. We will invite schools to submit competitive proposals for time on the telescope, and those that get time will conduct the entire operation remotely: opening the dome, slewing to the target, taking pictures or spectra, whatever - an extremely exciting educational experience. Finally, we know that this telescope can be used for research, in certain limited but interesting areas (supernova searches, near-Earth asteroids studies, among others), however these kinds of projects typically require lots of observing time, over extended periods, and we will have difficulty finding enough observing time just to satisfy our public outreach and student education programs. If on the other hand a valuable research proposal comes along that makes sense in the context of our primary objectives, then we'll take it ;). Wow, a very long post: I hope it gives you a better sense of what we are up to, and why. Howard.It will soon be even simpler to send your professional DSLR into the sky to shoot Hollywood-grade footage.
With the announcement of the S1000 octocopter at CES 2014, DJI has introduced an aerial platform capable of turning almost any aspiring moviemaker into a top-notch sky shooter. Until now, anyone caring to fly a camera bigger than a GoPro essentially had to build their own high-powered machine at home and hope that it’d carry expensive, heavy gear reliably. While a few kit options have been released by smaller specialized companies, the S1000 now offers an out-of-the-box professional system that is ready for those willing to put their $3500 5D Mark III high in the sky.
Its specs are impressive — just over 3.5′ in diameter, a 22-pound weight capacity, 15k or 20k mAh battery options for 15 or 19 minute flight, 15″ propellors, and a new 14-channel flight controller. The fully carbon-fiber frame also conveniently folds down into a compact stance for easy transport.
But one of the standout features i
s the 3-axis brushless gimbal that is specifically designed for a Canon 5D Mark II or Mark III, one of the most popular professional DSLRs for shooting video for movies and TV. With its ability to carry heavy loads, the S1000 gives flexibility for many body/lens combinations.
One downside: DJI’s sales rep at CES said that it uses a closed system, but it’s not hard to imagine inventive pilots finding ways to enable additional options such as DIY telemetry systems, especially with how many have built and now sell numerous add-ons and accessories for the consumer-focused DJI Phantom quadcopter.
Quadcopters and their six- and eight-armed ilk have been a big part of the recent explosion in aerial video, especially with the Phantom’s GoPro capabilities. But with the larger machines traditionally kept to a select few, the S1000 on display at CES already caught the attention of one professional flyer, Nathan Labruzza of LA-based Wild Rabbit Aerial Productions. Examining the S1000 next to me, he had a few questions about how it might affect him and his colleagues. “We’re really just excited where the technology is going with all this,” he said, “but the big thing that we’re really curious about is how this is going to affect a lot of the guys who started out basically out of a garage, doing all of the R&D work, and just picking apart everything, the technology, the programming, all that stuff, and really making it make sense for how we’re applying the drone.”
Labruzza did temper some of the trepidation while hinting some excitement for where it will push things. “The one thing about this, is it’s endless, the possibilities are endless.”
DJI has not yet announced pricing. Sales reps say it should be available Q1 of this year.Tripling of mining royalties won't impact electricity prices, treasurer says. Credit:Phil Carrick By December, storages were at just 24.6 per cent. No worries, the authorities said - the cable would be fixed by February, then March. But three months on, that re-connection date has vanished from the schedule. The damage to the cable is internal and proving hard to locate. Crisis without parallel There is no new estimate of when it will be repaired. Meanwhile, Tasmania's dam storages continue to dwindle, down to 16.1 per cent. "This is very unusual. I don't think there has been a crisis like it," says Hugh Saddler, principal energy consultant with Pitt & Sherry. "The last time I can recall something like this was in NSW in 1983, when there was a problem with the Liddell [black coal] power station, but that was resolved fairly quickly. This is proving quite different."
Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures, and the Tasmanian Liberal government and state-owned power generator Hydro Tasmania have chased solutions to keep the lights on, some more creative than others. Temco has agreed to limit power use. At the obvious end: mothballed gas turbines in the Tamar Valley – shut down since mid-2014 after the soaring price of gas in export markets made them unviable, and partially put up for sale – are back operating at a capacity of nearly 300 megawatts. As a stopgap, the state is also bringing in more than 20 portable diesel generators, at a cost of $44 million to set up and an estimated $20 million a month to run. Industry go slow
While moving to shore up supply, the government has also tackled demand. Just five industrial sites consume about 60 per cent of the state's electricity. Three – Rio Tinto's Bell Bay Aluminium, manganese alloy plant TEMCO and paper manufacturer Norske Skog – have agreed to cut use. Less conventionally, it was announced this week the state would ramp up a cloud-seeding campaign – a controversial rain-milking technique that involves dropping silver iodide particles from a plane. This technique will kick into action a month earlier than usual at a cost of $100,000. No estimate was available of how much extra rain this might produce. This is very unusual. I don't think there has been a crisis like it. Hugh Saddler, Pitt & Sherry From even further left field, it was revealed Hydro Tasmania had considered draining once pristine Lake Pedder – flooded in 1972 in the face of a concerted environmental campaign, and still at near capacity while other storage sites hit record lows – to a level currently forbidden under state law. This suggestion won quick backing from the Greens and conservation groups, which have campaigned for the lake to be restored to its natural state.
Energy security promised but uncertain Tasmanian Energy Minister Matthew Groom said while he could not it rule out, draining Lake Pedder was not part of current plans. In an opinion piece for News Corp on Tuesday, he said other steps already being taken would "substantially exceed" what the cable would have provided. "The plan is designed to maintain Tasmania's energy security without Basslink in operation, even with continued low rainfall and another unprecedented adverse event occurring," he said. Political critics said the state government's approach assumed a wet winter and that the cable would be fixed before spring, and that it had ignored opportunities to develop renewable energy projects. Melbourne Energy Institute director Professor Mike Sandiford does not criticise the government's response, but says there is no guarantee winter will provide a fix.
"The reservoirs will almost certainly get down to 13 per cent, and when the rain comes the land will be very dry, so there will be little run off initially. There will need to be really good rains to recover that storage," he says. He says Tasmania has missed opportunities to build more wind farms, which are a good back-up for hydro generation. Northern Tasmania has a better wind resource than South Australia and Victoria, which have invested more heavily. Carbon cash-in hurts That the steps the government has taken are required is a result not only of the short-term crisis but a decision taken by Hydro Tasmania nearly four years ago, when the carbon price was in force. The scheme introduced under then prime minister Julia Gillard increased the cost of energy from burning fossil fuels, but not emissions-free hydro power. Analysts say that faced with a growing (and ultimately vindicated) expectation that the scheme may not survive under an Abbott government, Hydro Tasmania made a calculated decision to increase output – and run down water storages – to sell as much electricity as possible at the higher rate.UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Penn State women's hockey head coach Josh Brandwene has announced the hiring of former RIT assistant coach Lisa Marshall as an assistant coach with the Nittany Lions. Marshall recently completed her second year on the RIT staff in 2015-16. She will begin her position with the women's hockey program on July 11.
"Lisa brings excellent skill and experience in goaltender development, and possesses a great recruiting work ethic," Brandwene said. "She has won championships both as a player and coach and she has a very positive and approachable coaching style, making her an outstanding fit for Penn State and our program. I am very much looking forward to working with her and am excited to welcome her to the Penn State women's hockey family."
At RIT, Marshall assisted in all aspects of the women's hockey program, including recruiting, on-ice preparation and goalie coach. During her first season on staff (2014-15), the Tigers captured their second-straight College Hockey America (CHA) title and advanced to the NCAA Division I Tournament for the first time in program history.
During the Tigers run to the NCAA Division I Tournament in the 2014-15 season, senior goaltender Ali Binnington went 5-0-0 over a five-game stretch en route to the CHA Tournament title and NCAA Tournament berth.
Including the 2014-15 regular season finale and the CHA Tournament, Binnington started all five contests, made 157 saves, tallied a save percentage of.981, recorded a goals against average of 0.56, allowed only three goals and posted two shutouts.
In addition to her work with Binnington, Marshall was also instrumental in the development and success of netminder Jetta Rackleff during her time on staff with the Tigers. Prior to Marshall's arrival, Rackleff tallied a 3.84 goals against average and a save percentage of.880 in the 2013-14 season. During her junior year (2014-15), Rackleff posted a 2.36 goals against average and a.913 save percentage and in her senior season, she recorded a 2.36 goals against average and a.933 save percentage. Rackleff's save percentage of.933 in 2015-16 was 11th among Division I goaltenders.
"I am very excited to join the Penn State women's hockey program," Marshall said. "The support of which the team receives is encouraging and I am looking forward to working with both Josh Brandwene and Alex Dawes to best build upon the winning traditions of PSU. With utmost enthusiasm and humility, I wish to thank all those who have helped me along the way. Though my time ends at RIT, I am extremely grateful for the opportunities and experiences I've garnered from working with both Scott McDonald and Matt Woodard. Thank you to both athletic administrations for granting me such opportunities and I very much look forward to getting started."
A native of Powahatan, Virginia, Marshall started her collegiate career at Wayne State University before transferring to Elmira College for her sophomore season, when Wayne State discontinued its program.
At Elmira, Marshall excelled between the pipes, recording a 32-8-1 record with a 1.22 goals against average and.947 save percentage and 23 shutouts in three seasons, helping lead the Soaring Eagles to the 2013 Division III Championship.
Marshall garnered All-USCHO.com third team national honors and was an All-ECAC West second team selection during her senior season. She finished her senior year with a record of 16-5-1, posted a 1.26 goals against average and a.951 save percentage in 22 games to go along with six shutouts.
For three seasons, Marshall played at the United States Under-18 Developmental camps (2007, 2008 and 2010), in Lake Placid and Rochester.
Marshall received a bachelor's degree in English literature with an associate's degree in business administration from Elmira in 2014. She was a two-year member of Elmira's Student-Athlete Advisory Committee and also served as a student worker in the athletics and sports medicine offices.Sacramento’s Deftones defy easy classification. The band arose in the early 90s gigging alongside down-coast compatriots Korn at the anguished, aggressive dawn of nu-metal, one of the most unlikely movements in mainstream music history. The NorCal five-piece held court with their rap-metal peers but never quite fit in; in 2000, arguably the apex of the sound, the band’s most successful album White Pony made a darkly seductive cocktail out of their love of synthpop and shoegaze instead. Because Deftones always looked anxiously beyond nu-metal, they outpaced and outlasted it. Because the sound they crafted was singular, each successive album unfurls like a survey of uncharted corners of a world of their creation.
Today marks the release of the eighth Deftones studio album Gore. It is yet another triumph in a career full of them. The album races from pummeling riffs to blissed out choruses on the explosive “Doomed User,” and up through misty turbulence on “Phantom Bride,” a late album highlight set aflame by soulful lead guitar from Alice in Chains’ Jerry Cantrell. It is streamlined in style but adventurous in texture, a beautiful synthesis of singer Chino Moreno’s disembodied whisper-to-a-scream vocals, guitarist Stephen Carpenter’s metal chops, keyboardist Frank Delgado’s spectral aesthetics and bassist Sergio Vega and drummer Abe Cunningham’s stout low end.
I caught up with Chino via the phone on the eve of Gore’s release to ask how he and his band manage to keep pushing past their comfort zones over twenty years beyond their 1995 debut album Adrenaline and the Deftones summer tour schedule, which includes a run of arena shows with reconstituted Swedish post-hardcore gods Refused. Affable and poised, Moreno opened up about his writing process in and outside of his main band as well as the joys and pitfalls of making music with your friends as a day job.
NOISEY: Listening to the new album, I was struck by how varied and different a lot of it is in tone and texture from what you’ve done before. Is that something you consciously pursue in the recording process?
Chino Moreno: I think with every record we kinda try to expand a little bit on what we did last and at the same time try to maintain what it is that we do. Sonically it’s a little different. Our gear, that was one thing that was a little different. Everybody sorta took up a different sonic space on certain parts of this record. The songs themselves, the structure and things like that, we spent a little bit more time refining. The last couple records were pretty much written and recorded in a small frame of time. This one, we branched out into a year process of these really quick little spurts of writing. Like, eight to ten days of locking ourselves in a room and everybody going home for a month or two and coming back. Doing that was cool because we got to reflect on ideas and tweak em and refine things a little more.
Is writing ever a tug of war?
Yeah, it is a lot of times. We try to hold each other and ourselves accountable for trying to expand. We’re good friends also, and everyone is very much outspoken. I think it’s a good thing. It’s not always the easiest thing, but the fact that everybody speaks their minds and gives their honest opinion really helps push each other to see how far we can take things and make it an organic experience. Some days are harder than others, but overall it’s still a very fun process, just sitting together with your friends and making noise and making songs out of that noise.
Does taking time off and having other projects like Crosses and Palms help you to come back to this one with a fresh outlook?
Not necessarily. I mean, if it does, it’s not anything that I realize. Obviously working with other people has always been a learning experience for me, and a fun experience. Everybody has different ways of working, and I’m sure I bring certain things back or whatever. But I never approach things differently, no matter what project I’m working on. I’m only me. The music is created first, whether it’s Crosses or Team Sleep or Deftones. The music is always first, and what I do vocally is usually just a reaction to the music. I might react differently to different sounds, but overall I don’t approach anything differently.
When I look at the artwork for the new album—you’ve got this scene of serene beauty in nature, but there’s also a brutality to it—I feel like the contrast is true to the spirit of the band. Talk to me about naming this album Gore.
That was the idea, to juxtapose the visual with the title. the title is definitely provocative sounding and the art itself, there’s a beauty to it. So those two things right away are a dichotomy of one another. I’ve always felt like our best music always has that dichotomy as well. There’s always those velvety parts and a lot of jaggedness to it as well. It’s one of my favorite parts of what we do as a band. We don’t really have a formula of how we do what we do, but naturally there’s stuff that comes out that’s a lot more aggressive than other parts, and both those things balance out and create our sound. Visually, with the artwork, the concept behind it was to give that sort of energy, to paint what’s inside the songs.
I’ve always wanted to ask you about song titles. Gore’s got some of the most out-there song titles since you named a song after the Contra code on Saturday Night Wrist. What is the process that goes into deciding, “This song is going to be called ‘Geometric Headdress’”?
A lot of times the titles come after the songs. That one in particular, I had the title first and wrote the song around the title. I don’t really write down lyrics or write down thoughts even. I’m not really that type of artist that I have like this book of things I feel like I’m gonna pull out one day and make songs out of. Whenever I’m reading, if a word or a phrase catches my ear or seems interesting to me, I’ll write it down. So after all the music was written for this, that’s when I took it to the next step as far as writing the melodies and the words. Sometimes I’ll look through my notes and I’ll just say wow this song has…
Like that song, for instance, “Geometric Headdress”: the music itself, the way it’s structured and the time signatures are a little bugged out, and that name fit very well. It kinda gave me a template to start writing around, and I wrote words to fit that title. Every time is different. Sometimes the song is written and done, and I just name it something. A lot of times naming it something odd… a lot of the records I like are something that’s a little off-kilter. You read it and you don’t know what it is right away and maybe you never know what it is. That curiosity is always something that draws me in, as a fan of music.
So words tend to come last in the songwriting process for you?
I’ll put the instrumental on in my headphones, and I’ll record three or four passes, all completely different ideas with no words at all. Sometimes words will pop out, and I’ll end up keeping them. Most of em I won’t. It’s more or less to figure out the cadence and melodies and how I’m going to fit my voice into the music as an instrument. And then it’s sorta like a puzzle trying to write the words and fit them into those melodies and structures. It does make it a little bit of a task, but that’s the only way I’ve ever been able to do |
y https://www.reddit.com/r/joinrobin/comments/4cwkbg/there_are_other_related_subreddits_the_mystery/d1lyzov 12:10:10 PM Tiredotyping Oh shit 12:10:18 PM cool12y Mo, just video games 12:10:20 PM Blackblastorss let's trick them in believing hedgefund is one of them too :P 12:10:20 PM Tiredotyping Mohaw, work and hiking 12:10:27 PM cool12y Haha Yeah 12:11:09 PM [robin] polls are closing soon, please vote 12:11:11 PM domo-chuu arg 12:11:14 PM -MoHawgo- oh snap 12:11:15 PM Hannahwert Ooooo 12:11:15 PM Empanser SOON 12:11:16 PM Hannahwert 3 mins 12:11:17 PM Empanser ALL 12:11:18 PM cool12y https://www.reddit.com/r/joinrobin/comments/4cwkbg/there_are_other_related_subreddits_the_mystery/d1lznl6 12:11:23 PM -MoHawgo- see you on the other side! 12:11:25 PM Empanser IT HAS BEEN AN HONOR 12:11:26 PM cool12y GUys reply to that :P 12:11:31 PM yeash 12:11:38 PM Hannahwert Meet up at /r/joinhedgefund if this goes south 12:11:40 PM domo-chuu gg cool12y 12:11:48 PM cool12y Yeah Hannah 12:11:55 PM Blackblastorss see you on the other side
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11:40:22 AM [robin] Welcome to robin. Please type /help or /commands for more information. 11:40:23 AM Voting will end in approximately 31 minutes 11:40:23 AM [robin] connecting 11:40:23 AM [robin] connected! 11:40:23 AM cardshark1234 voted to GROW 11:40:23 AM taqiyya o snap 11:40:23 AM -MoHawgo- voted to GROW 11:40:24 AM Empanser voted to GROW 11:40:25 AM domo-chuu voted to GROW 11:40:25 AM machpe voted to GROW 11:40:26 AM taqiyya voted to GROW 11:40:26 AM Tiredotyping oh 11:40:26 AM cool12y voted to GROW 11:40:26 AM morgonjuce voted to GROW 11:40:26 AM Blackblastorss voted to GROW 11:40:26 AM Usemarne voted to GROW 11:40:27 AM Tiredotyping SHIT 11:40:28 AM machpe hahaha this fucking name 11:40:28 AM domo-chuu Hello. 11:40:31 AM -MoHawgo- Hey everyone! 11:40:31 AM Hannahwert voted to GROW 11:40:31 AM Tiredotyping voted to GROW 11:40:32 AM morgonjuce GROW LIKE CANCER 11:40:34 AM taqiyya so massive 11:40:34 AM iammandalore voted to GROW 11:40:34 AM cardshark1234 ITS GETTING LIT 11:40:35 AM Hannahwert HEYOOOO 11:40:39 AM Tiredotyping GROW GROW GROW GROW 11:40:39 AM cool12y OKAY GUYS CHILL 11:40:39 AM domo-chuu Geez. Who has numbers in their name 11:40:39 AM -MoHawgo- purple and green people! 11:40:39 AM xfernando voted to GROW 11:40:43 AM domo-chuu WOAH 11:40:44 AM taqiyya 31 minutes 11:40:45 AM Empanser HAIL 11:40:45 AM domo-chuu PURPLE PEOPLEE 11:40:47 AM taqiyya time for lunch 11:40:49 AM machpe 31 minutes jesus 11:40:54 AM flycatcher126 voted to GROW 11:40:54 AM Tiredotyping -Mbacoanrdckedaco-rn12iynjarpilbr1lot7erha47de 11:40:55 AM domo-chuu my message. it isnt sending 11:40:57 AM cool12y Yup I see purple 11:40:57 AM Blackblastorss 31 minutes, don't mind me 11:40:57 AM Tiredotyping GUYS 11:40:58 AM domo-chuu Weird. 11:40:58 AM Empanser So 11:41:02 AM Tiredotyping GUYS 11:41:06 AM Hannahwert This is alot of folks 11:41:06 AM Tiredotyping we have an almost bacon 11:41:07 AM Empanser Were you all in a chat with each other before? 11:41:10 AM domo-chuu./remind 11:41:10 AM -MoHawgo- That name looks like an encryption key gone wrong 11:41:10 AM Tiredotyping in our name 11:41:11 AM Empanser Or are you new additions? 11:41:11 AM Tiredotyping WTF 11:41:15 AM cool12y YES EMPANSER 11:41:21 AM domo-chuu We merged with your chat 11:41:21 AM Tiredotyping yo theres purple names now 11:41:24 AM anyone see that? 11:41:25 AM Empanser THANK YOU COOL 11:41:31 AM Tiredotyping and was green a colour before too? 11:41:31 AM -MoHawgo- Your'e still red Tired 11:41:32 AM cardshark1234 What color am I? 11:41:33 AM cool12y GUYS DO GROW 11:41:35 AM Usemarne Yup, Han is purp 11:41:37 AM domo-chuu Praise empanser. He is green. 11:41:39 AM Empanser Am I green> 11:41:40 AM machpe GROW MAN GROW 11:41:41 AM Blackblastorss yes 11:41:41 AM cool12y RED CARDSHACK 11:41:41 AM Tiredotyping han purp, emp green 11:41:41 AM Empanser Yessss 11:41:41 AM -MoHawgo- card yello 11:41:42 AM Usemarne Filthy filthy purp 11:41:47 AM Hannahwert I am i the first purple? 11:41:48 AM flycatcher126 So our group brought over 12, other group brought 11. 11:41:49 AM machpe i already don't want to read all of this 11:41:49 AM Tiredotyping Mo, you're red 11:41:50 AM cardshark1234 I'm yellow? I thought I was red lol 11:41:50 AM domo-chuu okay we should play a game. 11:41:51 AM cool12y WHAT COLOR AM I? 11:41:53 AM Hannahwert blue 11:41:54 AM domo-chuu blue 11:41:55 AM Hannahwert Robin 11:41:55 AM Blackblastorss blue 11:41:57 AM Tiredotyping You're the first purple I've see 11:41:58 AM cool12y Okay Yay 11:41:59 AM Usemarne Cool, you're blue 11:42:00 AM -MoHawgo- Cool 11:42:01 AM flycatcher126 Card you're red 11:42:03 AM Hannahwert Neato 11:42:05 AM Im speical 11:42:06 AM Empanser **Testing** 11:42:10 AM cool12y Usermarne, my first :P 11:42:12 AM iammandalore What about me? 11:42:15 AM Empanser #TEST COMMENT PLEASE IGNORE* 11:42:15 AM -MoHawgo- Empanser you're green 11:42:17 AM domo-chuu 95% of discussion is about the important things- the colors of our names 11:42:20 AM Hannahwert Blue 11:42:25 AM flycatcher126 Mandalore is blue 11:42:28 AM MeatyElbow voted to GROW 11:42:29 AM PunkSpike voted to GROW 11:42:29 AM Blackblastorss you can't tell me what to do. UPVOTE 11:42:30 AM cool12y EMPANSER LOOKS LIKE A SERIOUS GUY 11:42:32 AM machpe where are we all from? 11:42:34 AM Empanser on to other business 11:42:35 AM Tiredotyping The way it should be lmao 11:42:35 AM Hannahwert Team purple 11:42:37 AM cool12y INDIA 11:42:43 AM iammandalore Oklahoma 11:42:43 AM -MoHawgo- So where is everyone from? 11:42:46 AM Idaho 11:42:47 AM Blackblastorss belgium 11:42:50 AM Empanser Our suspicions are correct 11:42:50 AM Tiredotyping Canada represent 11:42:51 AM Hannahwert SCOTLAND 11:42:58 AM Usemarne IRELAND 11:43:00 AM machpe Baltimore, MD, US 11:43:07 AM flycatcher126 Memphis, TN, US 11:43:08 AM Empanser Voting time doubles every time 11:43:12 AM cool12y Guys "/remind <no. of seconds> <Message>" 11:43:19 AM Is a command 11:43:21 AM [robin] use: /remind <seconds> <message> 11:43:24 AM Tiredotyping oh thats cool 11:43:31 AM [robin] set timer for 5 seconds from now 11:43:32 AM cool12y lol 11:43:32 AM Tiredotyping Does it notify you or something? 11:43:36 AM machpe yeah 11:43:36 AM [robin] flycatcher126: test 11:43:38 AM Tiredotyping cool 11:43:41 AM machpe it pm's you 11:43:45 AM cool12y AHhh 11:43:47 AM Empanser sweef 11:43:47 AM Tiredotyping nice 11:43:52 AM domo-chuu How many seconds is 15 minutes 11:43:52 AM cool12y Its 10PM here 11:43:52 AM domo-chuu lol 11:43:54 AM [robin] "/whisper" is not a command 11:43:59 AM Blackblastorss 15*60 11:44:00 AM cool12y 15*60 11:44:03 AM domo-chuu oh 11:44:03 AM [robin] "/w" is not a command 11:44:04 AM domo-chuu yeah lol 11:44:08 AM cool12y = 900 11:44:09 AM [robin] /vote abandon - vote to abandon 11:44:09 AM /vote stay - vote to stay 11:44:09 AM /vote grow - vote to grow 11:44:09 AM /whois <user_in_room> - provide information about <user_in_room> 11:44:15 AM domo-chuu thanks fam 11:44:21 AM cool12y np fam 11:44:23 AM Tiredotyping http://i.imgur.com/T38Ai9R.png 11:44:25 AM Okay so 11:44:30 AM there are actually more than three colours 11:44:35 AM machpe oh shit 11:44:35 AM cool12y Yeah 11:44:39 AM domo-chuu dang 11:44:41 AM cant_read_captchas voted to GROW 11:44:46 AM machpe YEAH CANT 11:44:47 AM cool12y Yeah captchas 11:44:53 AM -MoHawgo- Does anyone want to see a picture of my hedgehog? 11:44:53 AM Hannahwert I am the wizard 11:44:54 AM cant_read_captchas democracy rules 11:44:54 AM Tiredotyping But why are yellow red and blue the most common 11:44:55 AM flycatcher126 so "/commands" doesn't show "/remind", so it'd seem like there's other hidden commands? 11:44:58 AM cool12y Yes MO! 11:45:04 AM Yup fly 11:45:13 AM -MoHawgo- K, just a minute! 11:45:14 AM Tiredotyping wtf 11:45:16 AM Empanser let's test words 11:45:19 AM Tiredotyping testing whois command 11:45:24 AM cool12y Kill and Kick arent commands I tried 11:45:28 AM Hannahwert We akready tested who is 11:45:28 AM flycatcher126 I tried "/whisper" and "/w" 11:45:29 AM cool12y :P 11:45:29 AM Empanser We have solved the whois 11:45:39 AM Hannahwert Grow is Continue 11:45:41 AM cool12y What does who is do? 11:45:41 AM Tiredotyping wow that does almost nothing 11:45:46 AM [robin] "/pm" is not a command 11:45:47 AM Hannahwert Wait 11:45:48 AM No 11:45:53 AM cool12y Hannah? 11:45:55 AM Felixest7 voted to GROW 11:45:58 AM flycatcher126 no "/pm" either 11:45:59 AM cool12y Felix yay 11:46:00 AM Hannahwert Grow is increase Stay is continue Abandon is abandon 11:46:02 AM Ye? 11:46:02 AM PunkSpike http://www.redditblog.com/2016/04/robin.html 11:46:06 AM Tiredotyping alright try all the commands 11:46:08 AM domo-chuu hey i can draw you guys a picture. 11:46:12 AM Empanser I have tested /eat /grow /deliver /consume 11:46:14 AM cool12y Sure DOMU 11:46:15 AM Empanser nothing 11:46:18 AM domo-chuu representative of our chat name. 11:46:22 AM Hannahwert How about /robin? 11:46:28 AM Nothing 11:46:31 AM Felixest7 that not a command 11:46:32 AM Tiredotyping so /help is something 11:46:35 AM cool12y Guys we should have a leader, who will communicate with the next 16 11:46:42 AM Or 20 whatever 11:46:43 AM Tiredotyping it provides a little blurb 11:46:45 AM not much 11:46:51 AM No 11:46:51 AM Empanser nothing from 11:46:54 AM Tiredotyping no leaders 11:46:56 AM flycatcher126 Holy shit this is how countries get started 11:46:59 AM domo-chuu i wish plug.dj was still a thing 11:47:02 AM cool12y haha 11:47:06 AM Tiredotyping I vote for anarchy 11:47:06 AM Empanser nothing from /flash, /sing, /chirp, /fly 11:47:07 AM domo-chuu we could really use some tunes 11:47:11 AM Tiredotyping domo, man 11:47:12 AM [robin] "/emote" is not a command 11:47:14 AM Tiredotyping Dont remind me 11:47:17 AM cool12y More like REPRESENTATIVE 11:47:23 AM Tiredotyping plug is gone and its a shame 11:47:27 AM domo-chuu i was on that thing in like, 2013 before they fully released 11:47:29 AM flycatcher126 we split up into territories by color. 11:47:35 AM Tiredotyping lmao fly 11:47:36 AM cool12y Haha 11:47:42 AM Empanser nothing from /filter 11:47:48 AM flycatcher126 but then Empanser and Hannah have more votes. 11:47:49 AM machpe i wanna know if we can somehow get a list of who was in our chats after the fact 11:47:50 AM Hannahwert Purple is the colour of royalty ( ͡↑ ͜ʖ ͡↑) 11:47:52 AM domo-chuu juqster is a tihng i think 11:47:52 AM machpe y'all are cool 11:47:57 AM flycatcher126 Yellow proletariat 11:48:07 AM Empanser If we do this correctly 11:48:07 AM domo-chuu so is dubtrack 11:48:15 AM Empanser We will always be in chat together 11:48:18 AM Every one of us 11:48:25 AM cool12y I guess the Who is command is helpful when there are like 200 people lol 11:48:30 AM Hannahwert Yeah 11:48:30 AM cool12y Yeah Empanser 11:48:33 AM flycatcher126 Already feel like we've screwed the pooch by not getting an archive of previous rooms 11:48:33 AM Empanser right 11:48:34 AM Tiredotyping its not 11:48:42 AM btw /help works 11:48:43 AM Empanser Oh good point 11:48:44 AM Hannahwert Always grow 11:48:48 AM cool12y Ive been taking screenshots! 11:48:53 AM Hannahwert Grow and Stay together! 11:49:01 AM Tiredotyping based cool 11:49:02 AM cool12y Yup 11:49:04 AM flycatcher126 I'll pastebin this one on 11:49:11 AM Empanser Awesome 11:49:27 AM -MoHawgo- http://imgur.com/ozH25OG 11:49:32 AM iammandalore voted to GROW 11:49:40 AM -MoHawgo- Here is my hedgehog. 11:49:42 AM Hannahwert dang 11:49:48 AM domo-chuu rad 11:49:48 AM Hannahwert thats a sick hedgehog 11:49:52 AM Name? 11:49:52 AM -MoHawgo- I woke him, up so now he's kind of mad at me 11:49:53 AM cool12y Wow nice 11:49:53 AM PunkSpike gotta go fast 11:49:55 AM Blackblastorss cool hedgehog :) 11:49:57 AM cool12y Haha 11:49:59 AM flycatcher126 Did anyone else half expect a picture of a penis? 11:50:03 AM Empanser BEST HEDGEHOG 11:50:03 AM Hannahwert Hedgehog of the year 11:50:05 AM cool12y Yup fly 11:50:06 AM -MoHawgo- His name is Hedge Fund 11:50:08 AM Hannahwert Ha 11:50:13 AM Empanser Hello Hedge Fund 11:50:18 AM I enjoy your toes 11:50:21 AM flycatcher126 I was like "i'll try this URL out buuuut..." 11:50:29 AM PunkSpike id show you my pet kangaroo but hes asleep 11:50:32 AM cool12y Guys do GRO 11:50:35 AM machpe Hedge Fund is the mascot of -Mbacoanrdckedaco-rn12iynjarpilbr1lot7erha47de 11:50:35 AM cool12y GROW 11:50:49 AM Tiredotyping Man 11:50:51 AM this is not 11:50:53 AM cool12y Guys we are 1/3rds of the way there 11:50:57 AM Tiredotyping how i expected to spend my friday 11:51:02 AM PunkSpike lmao 11:51:03 AM cool12y And this is gonna get tiring fast 11:51:03 AM Hannahwert Hedge Fund 4 life! 11:51:05 AM domo-chuu Guys ill draw our mascot. 11:51:11 AM cool12y Okay Domo 11:51:13 AM Hannahwert ALL HAIL HEDGE FUND 11:51:16 AM Empanser HEDGERINO BUENISSIMO 11:51:16 AM domo-chuu Give me a couple minutes. 11:51:17 AM Blackblastorss that'd be awesome 11:51:18 AM Tiredotyping So our mascot is a hedge hog? 11:51:19 AM cool12y Haha 11:51:20 AM Hannahwert HEDGE FUND 11:51:22 AM HEDGE FUND 11:51:23 AM domo-chuu Yes. Gotta go fast 11:51:24 AM cool12y Yup Tired 11:51:25 AM PunkSpike im ok with this 11:51:25 AM Blackblastorss Hedge hund our lord, our saviour! 11:51:25 AM machpe <3 Hedge Fund E> 11:51:26 AM Empanser robin 11:51:29 AM Tiredotyping yeah 11:51:32 AM Blackblastorss Fund* 11:51:32 AM Tiredotyping im okay with hedge fund 11:51:43 AM cool12y Im sleeeppppyyy 11:51:46 AM Hannahwert Hedge fun is best 11:51:54 AM cool12y But im scared yall will become like the biggest chat ever 11:51:54 AM Tiredotyping im gonna go get some food 11:51:56 AM while I wait 11:52:03 AM silenthunter747 voted to GROW 11:52:03 AM Blackblastorss how late is it where you're at? 11:52:09 AM cool12y 10:30PM 11:52:11 AM Blackblastorss what time is it* 11:52:16 AM damn 11:52:21 AM cool12y Yeah 11:52:26 AM India, y'know 11:53:07 AM Hannahwert 18 mins 11:53:10 AM flycatcher126 I guess we need to talk aobut the elephant in the room 11:53:12 AM Hannahwert Get hype bois 11:53:18 AM robin 11:53:21 AM flycatcher126 When do we quit growing? 11:53:21 AM Empanser Define this elephant 11:53:22 AM robin 11:53:26 AM -MoHawgo- Still 18? this may take a while 11:53:28 AM taqiyya got my lunch, I'm ready for all day 11:53:32 AM Empanser NEVER 11:53:33 AM flycatcher126 We got a cool room going. 11:53:36 AM domo-chuu You dont quit growing 11:53:49 AM Puberty never ends here. lol 11:53:49 AM Hannahwert All about the gains 11:53:51 AM Empanser The growth pile must never stop from getting bigger 11:53:53 AM cool12y Some Guy started a poll on clors - http://imgur.com/ozH25OG 11:53:57 AM Blackblastorss when there are no rooms that are as big as us 11:54:03 AM ours* 11:54:03 AM cool12y No wait 11:54:04 AM https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1NpcrHsHdviAqRn282oNcd_YMZ2y6VvaB4BSlHYtl_uE/formResponse 11:54:10 AM Lol 11:54:19 AM Empanser SUCCESSFUL HEDGEHOG 11:54:25 AM Blackblastorss HEDGE FUND! 11:54:35 AM taqiyya are there stats on the different rooms available 11:54:36 AM [robin] "/rename" is not a command 11:54:37 AM cool12y Can you all remember me. 11:54:39 AM [robin] "/renameroom" is not a command 11:54:43 AM Hannahwert We will remember you 11:54:44 AM cool12y Like in case you end up making a subreddit 11:54:55 AM REMEMBER COOL12Y 11:55:03 AM machpe /r/cool12y 11:55:04 AM domo-chuu Never forget cool12y 11:55:04 AM cool12y THE DUMB GUY WHO TYPED IN CAPITALS 11:55:09 AM Usemarne I'll remember you always! 11:55:15 AM Empanser YOU ARE NOW TAGGED 11:55:17 AM Blackblastorss I'll never forget you :'( 11:55:19 AM flycatcher126 My children will hear tales of cool12y 11:55:20 AM machpe guys i think cool12y is gonna do something drastic 11:55:20 AM cool12y Usermarne! :D 11:55:20 AM Hannahwert Hand I will always love youuuuu 11:55:30 AM -MoHawgo- You can always make a subreddit with the title without hitting stay! 11:55:40 AM domo-chuu That could be a lot of work 11:55:41 AM cool12y "/KILL EVERYONE" 11:55:45 AM Its that easy 11:55:52 AM :P 11:55:59 AM -MoHawgo- *blehargh*... 11:56:03 AM Hannahwert do /commands 11:56:15 AM Try /clear 11:56:23 AM What does it do? 11:56:24 AM domo-chuu what if this turns out to be some arg or something o.o 11:56:33 AM machpe oh shit that was a lot 11:56:35 AM cool12y OMG that would be awesome 11:56:43 AM domo-chuu args are really cool 11:56:45 AM Hannahwert DONT DO /clear 11:56:52 AM cool12y I DID CLEAR NOOOOO 11:56:55 AM Hannahwert It deletes all messages 11:56:57 AM taqiyya lol 11:57:00 AM cool12y YEAH 11:57:00 AM domo-chuu RIP 11:57:01 AM cool12y LOL 11:57:05 AM Hannahwert Not fun 11:57:06 AM cool12y WHAT IF I REFRESH 11:57:06 AM Empanser We need a robot 11:57:08 AM taqiyya refreshing page also does that 11:57:08 AM machpe yeah psa don't do /clear goddamn this is taking forever 11:57:13 AM Hannahwert I dont even see your guys messages 11:57:16 AM domo-chuu Yeah 11:57:17 AM cool12y SHOULD I REFRESH 11:57:17 AM Hannahwert DONT CLEAR! 11:57:20 AM Is bad 11:57:27 AM jaf1211 back in time to grow 11:57:27 AM robin 11:57:30 AM Hannahwert robin 11:57:33 AM Empanser WE NEED A bot that will type all of our announcements before the chat gets too heavy 11:57:33 AM domo-chuu woah 11:57:34 AM orange 11:57:37 AM taqiyya hey did u guys hear trump suspended his campaign 11:57:48 AM cool12y Guys 11:57:52 AM -MoHawgo- April Fools! 11:57:52 AM cool12y Refresh is OKAY 11:57:54 AM flycatcher126 http://pastebin.com/15cc1jFF 11:58:03 AM domo-chuu aprils fool aka do not trust anyone 11:58:08 AM which makes this whole thing 11:58:10 AM very suspicious to me 11:58:18 AM cool12y Yeah 11:58:19 AM jaf1211 what about "clear"? 11:58:23 AM don't clear? 11:58:26 AM Blackblastorss don't clear 11:58:27 AM Hannahwert DOnt clear 11:58:27 AM machpe don't clear 11:58:27 AM domo-chuu dont clear 11:58:29 AM Hannahwert Dont clear 11:58:33 AM robin 11:58:34 AM Empanser CLEAR DO NOT 11:58:35 AM robin 11:58:35 AM cool12y Its the "/" that does stuff 11:58:37 AM jaf1211 what's it do? 11:58:39 AM Blackblastorss idk why you shouldn't but just don't 11:58:43 AM cool12y CLEARS CHAT 11:58:44 AM Hannahwert It clears all the messages 11:58:45 AM domo-chuu it clears 11:58:45 AM Empanser it empties chat 11:58:47 AM Hannahwert dont clear 11:58:48 AM machpe also, according to comments you stay in the same chat regardless of device/refresh 11:58:49 AM jaf1211 for everyone?! 11:58:52 AM Empanser just you 11:58:52 AM cool12y if u wanna clear just refresh 11:58:53 AM morgonjuce CLEAR THE CANCER 11:58:55 AM cool12y No Jaf 11:58:56 AM -MoHawgo- Hey guys, guys.... I'm having a really great time 11:59:02 AM jaf1211 okay, I won't be clearing 11:59:03 AM cool12y And Jaf is orange for me 11:59:03 AM machpe hey mo 11:59:04 AM jaf1211 good to be back guys 11:59:05 AM domo-chuu We should play rocket league 11:59:05 AM machpe i love you 11:59:06 AM domo-chuu anyone. 11:59:10 AM morgonjuce CLEARING CANCER IS IMPOSSIBLE 11:59:10 AM Hannahwert I bet you are you have hedge fund 11:59:10 AM jaf1211 love you too machpe 11:59:10 AM Blackblastorss me too, wanna go out some time? 11:59:11 AM flycatcher126 orange! 11:59:11 AM Empanser there is not a command of /kill 11:59:12 AM cool12y Domu PS4/PC? 11:59:16 AM domo-chuu PC 11:59:16 AM morgonjuce THE TUMOR IS TOO LARGE 11:59:20 AM cool12y Sorry :( 11:59:24 AM Im on PS4 11:59:26 AM Empanser JAF 11:59:27 AM domo-chuu 15 MINUTES PASS 11:59:29 AM jaf1211 okay. lunch time. see you all in the next room 11:59:31 AM EMPANSER 11:59:32 AM Empanser THE OG robin 11:59:34 AM jaf1211 robin 11:59:34 AM Tiredotyping Alright 11:59:35 AM Blackblastorss see you in next room 11:59:36 AM Tiredotyping im back 11:59:40 AM Empanser robin 11:59:40 AM flycatcher126 Jaf you haven't voted 11:59:42 AM jaf1211 WAIT 11:59:44 AM machpe yo tired 11:59:44 AM Hannahwert GOOD LUCK JAF 11:59:46 AM jaf1211 I pressed the button 11:59:50 AM why haven't I voted?! 11:59:54 AM domo-chuu Press grow its the green one or refresh 11:59:56 AM Hannahwert vote 11:59:56 AM jaf1211 voted to GROW 11:59:59 AM cool12y It isnt showing Jaf 11:59:59 AM Hannahwert yay 12:00:00 PM flycatcher126 there you go 12:00:02 PM jaf1211 there you go 12:00:03 PM cool12y Yup showed 12:00:03 PM jaf1211 that was close 12:00:04 PM Tiredotyping yo mach 12:00:07 PM Hannahwert Is purple 12:00:10 PM Hannahwert Oooo 12:00:12 PM jaf1211 thanks guys 12:00:14 PM Hannahwert./me works 12:00:16 PM cool12y HANNAH 12:00:18 PM [robin] use: /me your message here 12:00:19 PM -MoHawgo-./me 12:00:20 PM domo-chuu hi 12:00:21 PM cool12y purple 12:00:21 PM taqiyya is 12:00:25 PM cool12y YAY 12:00:27 PM jaf1211 hellow? 12:00:31 PM Hannahwert Purple 12:00:38 PM taqiyya what color am i 12:00:38 PM Empanser we can see it 12:00:42 PM flycatcher126 Is enjoying this more than expected 12:00:44 PM -MoHawgo- color 12:00:49 PM Empanser consumes flesh 12:00:50 PM -MoHawgo- what color am I? 12:00:53 PM jaf1211 red 12:00:54 PM taqiyya red 12:00:55 PM domo-chuu guys lets start a roleplay about being thrown into a chat room experiment and we have to stay grow or abandon 12:00:57 PM oh wait. 12:01:02 PM cool12y Haha Domo 12:01:03 PM Hannahwert Red 12:01:04 PM Empanser praises Hedge Fund 12:01:05 PM -MoHawgo- Thanks still red! 12:01:12 PM Hannahwert Hail 12:01:13 PM domo-chuu we need a sub for hedge fund 12:01:13 PM cool12y Empanser how? 12:01:14 PM jaf1211 i'd like 1 hedge fund please 12:01:15 PM Hannahwert Hedgefund 12:01:20 PM Is our leader 12:01:21 PM Empanser say /me message 12:01:29 PM cool12y is awesome 12:01:33 PM cool12y Oh haha 12:01:35 PM Empanser assents 12:01:40 PM domo-chuu..should i stay or should i grow 12:01:42 PM morgonjuce hali satan 12:01:43 PM cool12y is leader 12:01:46 PM machpe is Hedgefund 12:01:48 PM Empanser du nu nu nu nu nu nu nu 12:01:54 PM Hannahwert is Hannahwert 12:01:55 PM cool12y Domo grow 12:01:56 PM domo-chuu i just got to knowwww 12:01:58 PM morgonjuce hydra agent 12:02:01 PM Empanser if I grow I will be double 12:02:05 PM cool12y Yeah 12:02:08 PM Empanser if i stay it will be trouble 12:02:10 PM morgonjuce hail hydra 12:02:14 PM -MoHawgo- hail 12:02:18 PM Tiredotyping hail hydrate 12:02:19 PM Empanser hail 12:02:19 PM Hannahwert DOUBLE TROUBLE! 12 |
annahouse? Dojo?
We caught up with Isaiah for a Q & A – conducted long distance from goalWA.net – to New York City. Read our conversation below.
How did you get into freestyle soccer?
I grew up playing soccer (since age 4). I was always playing street soccer and playing with the ball. Ronaldinho and Touzani are my hero’s so they we’re a huge influence to my game and passion for the ball.
What is the freestyle soccer scene like in PDX / VAN USA?
The freestyle scene is growing in the NW, we have a small group of about 6 or 7 freestylers that link up in Portland as often as possible. I’m doing my part to spread steet soccer and freestyle in my community with my Street Soccer Dojo program I run within the club I coach for (Washington Timbers FC.)
You’re in New York now – what’s that all about?
I’m in NYC with SISM (SoccerInSlowMotion) working with McDonalds as street soccer and freestyle entertainment for the International Championship Cup game Barcelona vs Juventus. Alan Croft and I ran a soccer clinic for McDonald’s and we got to work with David Villa. It was incredible, such a great guy!
Talk about your travels in soccer and how you fund it or make a living at it.
Growing up I played at some of the highest levels (Oregon ODP, 3x Region 4 player) so I was fortunate to travel all over the country although I never made it out of the State until Street Soccer took me to Copenhagen Denmark to represent America (after winning SoccerInSlowMotion‘s Panna tournament) in an invitational Panna tournament hosted by Pannahouse. My actual job is coaching for the Washington Timbers FC club in Vancouver Washington, I coach 07 Boys. However, I bring in most of my funds through Private Trainings & Group Trainings. Right now I’m currently training close to 30 kids and I have my own Street Soccer School (Dojo) within the Washington Timbers, so far each session has been incredible. My passion is my “job” so I do not consider it work.
Do you ever want ‘day off’ from soccer, or do you have a ball with you most of the time?
Sundays are my only days off, all other day I’m training kids, coaching my team, or doing my own training (Street Soccer and Freestyle) for up to 6 hours a day. If I could only count how many touches on the ball I get in a single day…
What is your next goal in freestyle / futsal / soccer?
My next goal in Street Soccer is to defend my US Panna title and to finish in the top 10 at the next Pannahouse Invitationals tournament against the world’s best. I just got a Coaching / Training job at Rose City Futsal in Portland Oregon so I will begin doing more futsal. I would like to give professional futsal overseas a shot because I do believe I am at that level. As far as Freestyle, my goal is to master basics before anything, I just need to make more time for practice somehow. Between the 6 hours of soccer I’m doing a day and the Street Soccer priorities, it’s hard to balance freestyle in there as well. But I will improve and be better than yesterday. Overall, my goal is go share the passion for the ball to all people.
CONNECT
Isaiah Instagram / Facebook / YouTube SISM: Soccer In Slow MotionThe first issue of a comic book based on an animated series is not normally cause for excitement. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is no regular animated series, and its comic book companion is much more than a throwaway cartoon tie-in.
It's incredibly easy to make a lazy cartoon-based comic book. Recycle some plot lines, drop in some art that looks like stills from the source material, drop in some word bubbles and wrap it up in a cover that catches the eye of the target audience—kids.
That would not have worked with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, largely due to the fact that a large portion of its audience—certainly the portion with the most disposable income—is adult men and women. Older fans might have flocked to a sub-par series for novelty's sake, perhaps kept up with the first few issues, but to truly capture our hearts a comic book has to do what Lauren Faust and company have been doing for more than two seasons of the animated series—cater to us.
I'm not just talking about dropping in fan-favorite characters like Derpy, DJ Pon-3 and Doctor Who homage Time Turner (though their appearances certainly help). I'm talking about art that captures the spirit of the show in an entirely new way; writing that's kid-friendly with the requisite winks. We want to be taken seriously as fans.
IDW has taken us very seriously.
If you've had doubts over a static image's ability to convey motion and life over a half-hour animated program, Andy Price's artwork will put them to rest. His deft, often whimsical lines communicate more in a single panel than a thousand frames. His versions of the beloved Rainbow Dash, Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Rarity, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy are more expressive and dynamic than their television counterparts, aided by black outlines that contrast strikingly with the show's colored ones.
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Price breathes new life into Ponyville and its denizens on every page, and it's quite obvious he's having a hell of a good time doing so.
The energetic imagery couples well with the words of writer Katie Cook, who's quite the artist herself. I've been aware of Cook for several years now, my wife being a huge fan of her work. When I discovered she was handling writing duties on Friendship is Magic I was ecstatic, and not just because it helped me justify buying multiple copies to my spouse. Over the past few years I've seen many examples of Cook capturing the essence of existing characters in her drawings; I was excited to see if that talent carried over to her writing.
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It definitely does. She voices the characters as sincerely as any handful of voice actresses packing scripts. She nails their personalities, right down to the cadence (not that Cadence) of their speech. It's almost too perfect, matching the tone and pacing of the animated series almost to a fault. I knew when the jokes were coming, I sussed how the plot would unfold only a few pages in. Perhaps I've just steeped myself in the subject matter a wee bit too much.
As for the story proper, it's off to a good start. A dangerous enemy from the second season of the television show sets her sights on Ponyville, and the Mane Six are the only ponies left standing. One would think the first thing any returning enemy would do would be to take out the heroes that foiled her evil plans previously, but if there's one thing comic books have taught me, it's that villains are incredibly stupid—even the smart ones. Besides, it's not like she can hire snipers.
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Stay with me here, the My Little Sniper fanfic can wait.
There are battles fought. There are jokes flung. Pinkie Pie finds herself in a situation that strangely echoes a recent episode of the series. Rarity gets angry about fashion. Derpy... well, you'll see.
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"No I won't!" some of you exclaim, slamming your fist angrily upon your desk. That's fine. IDW would love for you to pick up the book I'm sure, but with more than 100,000 preorders (one for every cover variant!) they won't be losing any sleep if you pass. The Bronies and Pegasisters got this.If you live in California and you drive a Honda vehicle, listen up, because the car maker expanded its recall for potentially faulty airbag deployment issues by nearly 500,000 in your area.
The expanded recall, which affects only vehicles in California, brings the total number of Honda vehicles with the issue to nearly 3 million, reports USA Today.
In all, more than 10 million vehicles from at least eight manufacturers have been recalled since last year because of an issue with the passenger- and driver-side Takata-produced airbags.
According to a previous National Highway Traffic Safety Administration notice [PDF] on the same issue, a defect in the frontal airbags could produce excessive internal pressure causing the inflator to rupture upon deployment. At times, pieces of the airbag module can forcefully fly out striking occupants.
That was exactly why the expanded recall was initiated. USA Today reports that a piece of shrapnel was released during the deployment of an airbag in a 2005 Honda Accord in California.
The expanded recall to replace passenger-side airbags includes model year 2003-2005 Honda Accords, Civics, CR-Vs, Elements, Pilots, Acura MDX, and 2005 Acura RLs, as well as model year 2003-2004 Odysseys.
Additionally, the recall was expanded to replace driver’s side front airbags in 2001 to 2007 Accords with four-cylinder engines, 2001-2002 Accords with V-6 engines, 2001 to 2005 Civics, 2002-to 2006 CR-Vs, 2003 to 2011 Elements, 2002 to 2004 Odysseys, 2003 to 2007 Pilots, 2006 Ridgelines, 2003 to 2006 Acura MDXs and 2002 to 2003 Acura TLs and CLs.
Prior to the addition of California, recalls were announced in areas with high humidity including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Since the airbag issue first came to light in 2013, BMW, Mazda, Toyota, Honda and Nissan have recalled more than 7.6 million vehicles.
The most recent issues with Takata airbags began nearly last month when Toyota reissued the 2013 recall of more than 766,300 vehicles because the company may have received an incomplete list of potentially defective airbags from the car part manufacturer.
Just a day later, NHTSA announced an investigation [PDF] into whether Takata airbags made after 2002 were prone to failing after receiving six reports of airbag ruptures in Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mazda and Chrysler vehicles. Regulators are also looking to determine if high-humidity climates contributed to the reported airbag explosions.
While Takata officials say [PDF] they are working with regulators on the investigation, they have yet to admit the airbags include a safety defect.
Honda expands recall by up to 1 million cars [USA Today]As an interactive medium, video games can be valuable teaching tools.
They have the ability to engage students in a way that books and film can’t, and teachers around the world are taking advantage of this fact to impart lessons on things like math, reading, and computer programming.
Some recent studies suggest that video games, even violent ones, can increase a child’s learning, health, and social skills, and many educators are now looking for ways to integrate them into school curriculums.
With that in mind, we reached out to some game designers who are also educators, or who work in educational software, and asked them to name some of the most instructive examples of games that teach effectively--whether they're intended to be educational or not.
1) DragonBox
Jesse Schell, founder of Schell Games and professor at Carnegie Mellon, and Nicholas Fortugno, CCO and co-founder of Playmatics. both single out DragonBox. Fortugno thinks DragonBox is a great example of an educational game because it imparts its lessons in an abstract way.
It's a suite of apps that seek to teach basic math to children as young as four. The Big Numbers app, for example, teaches long addition and subtraction while the player collects resources and decorates alien houses. Algebra 5+, meanwhile, teaches basic algebraic concepts with an instant feedback mechanic to tell you what you’re doing wrong. “It’s elegant and hidden, the way good educational games should be,” says Fortugno, “but since it’s grounded in an abstract mechanic of what algebra is logically, it scaffolds smoothly into actual math. It’s a beautiful experience.”
Takeaway: The best educational games don’t feel like they’re educating.
2) Mario Teaches Typing
Mike Arevalo, lead programmer at Labcoat Studios, thinks Mario Teaches Typing is an obvious choice because it’s the first game that made learning to type actually fun. “It didn't even feel like a ‘typing’ or ‘educational’ game," he says. "It just felt like a new and different way of playing a classic game."
Published in 1991, Mario Teaches Typing used the familiar elements of a Mario game to teach keyboarding. Inputting letters and words made Mario, Luigi, or Princess Peach punch blocks and stomp goombas. A chalkboard at the end of each level detailed how well the player performed.
“A typing game can be more than a learning game,” says Arevalo. “It's just gotta have that same fun factor.”
Takeaway: The trappings of a familiar and beloved game can make an educational game more compelling.
3) Typing of the Dead
"When Typing of the Dead came out, we realized typing games could be fun and exciting," says Arevalo. "Even a little scary."
A remake of Sega’s arcade shooter The House of the Dead 2, The Typing of the Dead trades in a light gun for a computer keyboard. The player, as a secret agent in zombie-infested Venice, must type words and phrases quickly and accurately to kill the approaching undead hordes. The game’s atrocious voice acting and absurdist word play add to its quirky charm, making a pretty mundane task (improving one’s typing skills) a weirdly fun experience.
What makes it so singular--besides the utter bizarreness of it--is that it really is just an arcade-style shooter with a new input device. “Good educational games instrumentalize learning, and this is some of the greatest instrumentalized learning I know,” said Fortugno. “You’re trying to kill zombies before they kill you. You have to type to kill zombies. You don’t think about typing. You just type as fast as you can. So, you rehearse typing hundreds of times without thinking about it, trying to get faster and more accurate, which is exactly what you want to do when you train at typing. And it’s fun. Brilliant.”
Takeaway: Sometimes, simply changing the input method of a typical game can create a great educational game.
4) Minecraft
Although it didn’t begin life as an education game, Minecraft is amazingly good at fostering creativity. That’s why Microsoft recently released Minecraft: Education Edition. It takes the familiar Minecraft experience and adds a collaborative element. Students can work together in teams to solve problems, while in-game tools make it easier for teachers to monitor and help them with their projects.
Eric Zimmerman, co-founder of Gamelab, believes that Minecraft’s ability to encourage creativity is what makes it so important as an educational game. And he's talking about the standard game, not the special educational edition. “Games are not hypodermic needles that inject players with content,” said Zimmerman. “They are spaces where players do things with each other. Minecraft demonstrates that what can happen inside a rich community of players is more important than what happens between one player and a game.”
Takeaway: Collaborative play can be a more effective form of educating than a single-player experience.
5) Human Resource Machine
Human Resource Machine is a puzzle game that teaches the precepts of computer programming via the exciting world of office management. During each level, the boss gives the player a job (i.e. a logic-based puzzle), and the player must automate that job by issuing simple programming commands to the office workers.
“As a learning game, Human Resource Machine is a triumph of scaffolding,” said Brandon Pittser of Filament Games. “Solving puzzles unlock new types of code, which are then used to solve harder puzzles, effectively tying the player's progression, reward, and learning together into a unified experience.”
Takeaway: When trying to teach a new skill, it’s important to start off small. Teach the basics, then build from there.
6) This War of Mine
Although it’s not an education game, Pittser believes This War of Mine gives players a perspective on warfare that games completely overlook -- the impact on civilians in war-torn areas.
Inspired by the Siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War, This War of Mine is a strategy game in which the player controls a group of civilian survivors and tries to keep them alive by scavenging for supplies, crafting useful items, and bartering with NPCs. Sometimes, the game presents difficult moral decisions, like whether or not to rob an elderly couple because you need their food. That growing sense of desperation is what makes the game so effective.
“This War of Mine gains much of it's impact by leveraging players' existing game literacy,” said Pittser. ”In this particular case, the expectation of games as empowering spaces is effectively and devastatingly undercut through the game's use of a standard ‘base-building resource management’ mechanic to mirror a steady descent into desperation, rather than any kind of success or achievement.”
Takeaway: Even if it’s not a traditional education game, a game can offer invaluable insights by giving players a different perspective on the lives and struggles of others.
7) Assassin’s Creed series
Like This War of Mine, Assassin’s Creed isn’t typically thought of as an educational game, but Jesse Schell believes there’s much to be learned from the way the series immerses players in meaningful historical context.
Although ostensibly a visually stunning action game about stealthily stabbing people in the face, Assassin’s Creed also builds realistic environments rooted in history. Over the franchise’s nine main games and various spin-offs, players have visited interesting time periods such as the Crusades, the Renaissance, Colonial America, and the French Revolution. They’ve rubbed elbows with Leonardo DaVinci, George Washington, and Napoleon Bonaparte. By adding these historical elements to its sci-fi narrative, Assassin’s Creed can pique a player’s curiosity about the past in a way that’s fun and engaging.
Takeaway: Exploring historical themes in a game can create many narrative possibilities, all while grounding the game’s world in a rich, realistic atmosphere.Following their rescue, Berry, DeJesus and Knight — now 27-, 23- and 32-years-old — were taken to a local hospital. A cheering crowd gathered at the house, where a joyful community was happy to have found the women after so many years of looking. Knight disappeared in 2002 and was held longest. Berry had gone missing in 2003, while walking home from her job at Burger King, while DeJesus was abducted in 2004 while walking home from school in the same area.
This brings us back to Charles Ramsey, who lives next door to the house where the women were found. Ramsey says he was "eatin' [his] McDonalds" when he heard a woman scream for help. "Help me!" she said. "I'm Amanda Berry!" He rushed outside to see what was going on and recognized the woman standing on his neighbor's porch. After police arrived, Ramsey pieced together what had happened and couldn't believe his neighbor hid such a secret from everyone in the neighborhood.
"You got to have some big testicles to pull this off, bro, because we see this dude every day. I mean every day," Ramsey told the local news reporter about his neighbor at one point. "I barbecue with this dude. We eat ribs and what not and listen to salsa music. Know where I'm coming from?" (This man's going to be an Internet meme for sure.)
Honestly, it's better if you just watch Charles tell the story. Just watch the video, and watch it to the end. Trust us.
This interview from later in the evening is also a must see.
This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to [email protected] — In the face of a storm of controversy and a slew of challengers, U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold indicated Monday he's still running for re-election.
This time around, it will likely be a lonely battle for the Corpus Christi Republican.
"It's lonelier than it's been in past times, but he's not alone," said Farenthold's chief of staff, Bob Haueter, on Monday evening.
Farenthold found himself at the center of the sexual harassment firestorm engulfing the U.S. Capitol on Dec. 1 when Politico reported that he had settled a sexual harassment lawsuit using $84,000 in taxpayer funds.
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Farenthold fiercely denies the accusations, both in public and in private, and he quickly pledged to pay back the $84,000 involved in the settlement.
The issue initially faded away in 2014 after the settlement and after the U.S. House Office of Congressional Ethics, an advisory arm of the House, recommended the member-driven U.S. House Ethics Committee dismiss the charges against Farenthold.
The controversy continued to dog him after the U.S. House Ethics Committee announced recently that it would give the allegations a closer examination.
Then on Friday, the Houston Chronicle reported that Farenthold and his entire congressional staff underwent sexual harassment training in 2016 after the he was accused of gender discrimination. And late Monday, The New York Times published fresh accounts culled from former staffers and legal documents describing Farenthold's office as a "hostile work environment, rife with sexual innuendo."
All this sets the stage for the fight of Farenthold's career.
Five Republicans have launched bids to unseat Farenthold in his 27th Congressional district, most prominently former Texas Water Development Board chairman Bech Bruun, who resigned from that post and filed to run as a Republican for the congressional seat Friday. Others include Michael Cloud, a member of the State Republican Executive Committee and former chairman of the Victoria County GOP. On the Democratic side, at least four Democrats have lined up for potential campaigns.
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Democrats are candid about the seat being out of reach for them, meaning Farenthold’s biggest hurdle is in the GOP primary. The crowded field increases the odds of a runoff, and a rule of thumb in Texas politics is that it is near-impossible for an incumbent to survive the second round of a primary.
Farenthold's political troubles come amid — and in large part due to — an environment of increased sensitivity to sexual misconduct in Washington, D.C.
Two female Republican members from out of state, U.S. Reps. Mia Love of Utah and Barbara Comstock of Virginia, have called on Farenthold to not just retire but resign.
Democrats last week purged two favorites from their ranks: U.S. Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota and U.S. Rep. John Conyers of Michigan announced their resignations. Franken did so in a highly reluctant matter, suggesting he was a sacrificial lamb to allow Democrats to attain the moral high ground on the issue of sexual harassment.
Liberals then quickly made Farenthold the poster boy of alleged harassment, and they demanded he resign. Failing that, they urged GOP leadership to push him out.
But leading Republicans — and Texas delegation members — remained silent. Democrats were quick to construe that as tacit approval of Farenthold's alleged behavior.
In interviews with a dozen or so delegation insiders, they say it is a different story behind the scenes. Texas Republican members would prefer for Farenthold to step aside (he has until Tuesday to withdraw, but there are few signs he intends to do so). At the same time, there is little interest in publicly knifing him — that’s just not how things are done in the tight-knit delegation.
Even so, if a new and credible allegation surfaces, Farenthold could see the political ground swiftly shift underneath him.
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Most Texas Republican operatives predict his fundraising will dry up amid the bad publicity, and it’s unlikely GOP colleagues will rush to donate to his campaign, the common practice when a longtime incumbent is in political trouble.
Despite all of those developments, Farenthold’s close advisers are sticking with him, and there is a clear sense of ire within his inner circle that the Office of Congressional Ethics' investigation and dismissal recommendation did not put the story to rest.
A group of past and current employees circulated a letter defending Farenthold, describing him as having “always treated us fairly and with dignity and respect."
And he has the support of a prominent figure in Texas state politics: pollster Chris Wilson.
“We wouldn’t work for someone who has been demonstrated to abuse women,” Wilson said. “But an accusation, especially one that has already been investigated, doesn’t make him guilty.”
“I sat down with the congressman, his wife and his staff and after learning more about the process undertaken by the Office of Congressional Ethics, I agree with the OCE’s findings that the charges were unfounded,” he added. “And I’m proud to be part of his re-election effort as I believe Farenthold to be an honorable man.”
Cassandra Pollock and Patrick Svitek contributed to this report.A 2009 information report shows a working group of city staffers internally considered and rejected Main-only rapid transit routes before making a recommendation to council. It doesn't say much about the rationale.
But the report does list public meetings that year and a special gathering of B-line businesses where project work to date was presented.
Paul Johnson, the city's LRT point person, said early planners saw Main Street as a better bet for maintaining vehicle traffic flow. Having LRT travel on King through the "true downtown" — think Gore Park — was also considered a plus.
Later, a Metrolinx analysis picked the Main-King combo as the clear winner to spur dense residential and economic development. (That's if we convert Main Street to two-way traffic — a debate that deserves its own story.)
Johnson said some arguments in favour of revisiting a Main-only route are built on bad information.
For example, the width of the municipal right-of-way on both streets is actually identical aside from the infamous King pinch point, which is narrower by 1.5 metres. (Wider sidewalks and bump-outs on King play tricks on the eyes, he said, while Main Street traffic lanes are numerous but notably narrow.)
That means LRT on Main would likely spur similar complaints about lost on-street parking and slower vehicle traffic. "Main looks wider to people, but in reality the amount of space we have to work with is pretty much the same," Johnson said.
Using the Main Street bridge wouldn't be simple, either. Johnson said that structure would need to be "significantly" bolstered or even rebuilt to allow LRT tracks.
Ontario's Ministry of Transportation also has concerns about how LRT tracks would affect Main Street ramps to and from Hwy 403. It has already signed off on a new LRT-only bridge to King Street via environmental assessment.
In theory, council could still ask Metrolinx — LRT project manager and holder of the purse strings — to re-examine a possible Main Street-only route.
But if that happens, stick a fork in the already ambitious schedule to sign a design-build contract by 2018, otherwise known as election year.
Johnson said starting new design work and redoing parts of the environmental assessment "would mean significantly more time and probably significantly more dollars."
We asked: Do you prefer Main or King and why? Richard Blain, 50, Dundas
"You have got to go right to Stoney Creek. If you're going to do it, do it appropriately. (My) preference would be Main because that bridge is not an expense you need."
Monique Gaskin, 33, Central
"Have it on Main Street and have it cater to (Gage) park. Hopefully it brings more cafes and shops to the area. I don't drive and that has been hard for me."
Hassan Abdul Hadi, 30, Dundas
"I came to Hamilton from Toronto six months ago, and I think we don't need it all. It's going to create some huge traffic problems. If the community gets bigger and bigger, we may need it."
Helen Smith, 41, Central
"I would prefer it to go down both Main and King, one way up and one way back, but as long as they are keeping more buses off the road that's good."The Samsung Galaxy Nexus was first launched in December and was also the first smartphone to have Android 4.0 running out of the box. Now a new report claims that Samsung is now working on the successor to the Galaxy Nexus.
The Sammobile.com website claims to have received hardware details on the phone with the code name GT-I9260, which it says will likely be given the "Nexus" name. The device's hardware specs are not much of a step up from the original Galaxy Nexus. It will have a 1.5 Ghz dual core processor, compared to the 1.2 GHz speed of the original.
The display will also get an upgrade. While the size remains the same at 4.65 inches, the next Nexus will reportedly have a Super AMOLED HD display, compared with the Super AMOLED display of the first Galaxy Nexus.
The successor will also have an eight megapixel rear facing camera, compared to the five megapixel camera for the original. The front facing camera for the next Nexus will be 1.9 megapixels. according to the report. It will also have an SD card slot, which the original Galaxy Nexus did not have; the storage amount remains the same at 16 GB.
The report doesn't state when this rumored Galaxy Nexus successor might be released, but if this report is true, it's likely that it could come out before the end of the year.
Source: Sanmobile.com | Image via Sanmobile.comAlthough only flights to Sharm el-Sheikh are suspended, there is worry about Egyptian airports in general over alleged lax screening
Egypt was high on a UK list of Middle East countries whose airports were regarded as a cause for concern even before the Russian plane crash, according to British security sources.
The UK first raised worries with the Egyptians 10 months ago about Sharm el-Sheikh airport. In spite of some improvements after that, screening and other security measures were still regarded as lax.
This assessment, when combined with intelligence hinting that a bomb had been placed on the plane, tipped the balance in the UK’s decision on Wednesday to suspend all flights to the resort.
UK had concerns about Sharm el-Sheikh airport security almost year ago Read more
David Cameron on Thursday told the BBC: “We don’t know for certain it was a terrorist bomb. The reason we’ve acted is because of intelligence and information that we’ve had that it was more likely than not that it was a terrorist bomb.”
A fresh assessment of security procedures at Sharm airport by two aviation security experts from the UK’s Department for Transport, who flew in on Wednesday, prompted the experts to advise the Foreign Office and Downing Street to delay flights.
Russia has described British speculation about a bomb as premature. But Germany’s Lufthansa, along with many other airlines, followed the UK lead on Thursday in banning flights to Sharm.
The Egyptian president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi said on a visit to London on Thursday that a British security team had visited Sharm 10 months ago and decreed the system was fine. But the Guardian has learned that UK officials and operators had raised concerns about the airport on several recent occasions.
British security staff regularly visit countries in the Middle East pressing them to improve security, and while all airports in the Middle East outside of Israel fall well short of US and UK standards, Egypt, Bahrain and Kuwait top the UK list of concern.
Although only flights to Sharm have been suspended, there is worry about Egyptian airports in general over alleged lax screening amid heightened fears over terrorism, a security source said.
Hundreds of stranded British passengers converged on the airport at Sharm on Thursday. The Foreign Office announced it would be increasing the size of the team in the resort to 35, including aviation security officials, a small military team and consular staff.
British aviation security experts sent to Sharm after the crash have begun monitoring passenger and luggage screening at the resort.
According to one employee at the airport, the UK sent an aviation security specialist a year ago and then requested tightened procedures. Asked what he thought the problem was an official at the airport said: “The system was the problem. The British complained then that they weren’t checking people enough. We should have done more. The security could have been improved by putting another scanner outside and updating the others.”
If Isis did target Russian plane, what does it mean for 'war on terror'? Read more
British officials are concerned that security measures could still be bypassed, despite the presence of scanners at several stages in the check-in process.
A Downing Street spokeswoman did not deny that there had been concern about screening of luggage 10 months ago but refused to elaborate on what exactly the UK had requested in terms of improvements.
A British source said there had been alarm after a passenger described how a VIP fixer had secured a speedy passage through security. He added that while the necessary screening equipment had been in place, staff allegedly have not always used it.
There was increased security at Sharm airport on Thursday.
The foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, told Sky News the British security assessment was based on “all the information available”, some of it “sensitive”.
A spokesman for the British embassy in Cairo said: “This is a precautionary measure. After the crash of the Russian airline on Saturday we have become increasingly concerned that it might have been an explosive device. Because of that we have deployed a team of UK aviation experts and after an assessment it was decided to delay UK-bound flights. This is to ensure the safety of British citizens.”
Cameron made a 10-minute phonecall to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, on Thursday to explain why Britain had acted unilaterally to halt the flights.
Asked whether Putin had expressed any criticism of British actions, Downing Street said: “The president underlined that all countries should wait for the investigations to be completed. The PM was very clear that he would be driven by what would be right for the safety of British citizens and we were right to take the actions that we did.”
Britain’s national security adviser has been in touch with his Russian counterpart, but Russian news agencies reported a spokeswoman in the foreign affairs ministry saying the UK had not handed over any new intelligence information. “If they have information and they are not presenting it, that is shocking,” she added.
British intelligence agencies as a matter of routine share information with the US and close European allies but tend not to share with the Russians.
As soon as the Foreign Office was informed about the concerns about security at Sharm el-Sheikh, it had an obligation to inform the public.
Several airlines, including Monarch and easyJet, have said they are hoping to resume flights from the resort to the UK on Friday, but Downing Street said it could not put a timetable on when air travel to Sharm would be allowed to resume.Changeling the Lost Second Edition – Kiths
Changeling: The Lost, Chronicles of Darkness, Open Development, Projects
Hey all. It’s been a bit.
I wanted to share some second drafts with you. This is like… 75% of the kiths that’ll be featured in the core rulebook.
Here’s the document.
With these and the Seemings, you have the foundation for a Changeling the Lost Second Edition character. I’ll be working on Contracts soon, so I expect those to be around to toy and tinker with. Additionally, there’s going to be a simple “tag” system that helps to further organise them, and helps you pick a kith out of the big list.
I spoiled elsewhere, but in Dark Eras, there’s a Grimm’s Fairy Tales era Lost chronicle. It features a seventh Seeming (or eighth, depending on how you want to look at it). That one’s literally about embracing a story to escape, taking on a role from a tale in order to get the edge and flee Arcadia. The Hedge, the first supplement for Lost 2e, will feature an eighth and probably final Seeming. They escaped by embracing chance, chaos, and luck. They closed their eyes and jumped, putting their faith in the universe. But more on them later.
I hope you enjoy the kiths as much as we enjoyed making them.The Trojan Wars ended in Troy’s defeat at the hands of the Greeks, many of whom returned to their homes. But the great Odysseus was not among them. He became marooned on the faraway island of Ogygia, enjoying – or tiring of – the favours of the beautiful nymph Calypso. Homer’s Odyssey, as we all know, is the story of Odysseus’ long journey away from Calypso and home to Ithaca, where his wife Penelope waits, courted in his absence by 117 princes young enough to be her sons.
There are two erotic mysteries at the heart of the Odyssey: the mystery of why Odysseus leaves Calypso, and the mystery of why the suitors are so hot for Penelope. These mysteries shall be deepened in a moment, but first I want to add two others that are equally perplexing, though not, perhaps, equally erotic. The first concerns the savage punishment – death – imposed on the suitors. What have they done to deserve it? In the poem, their behaviour is often likened to that of Aegisthus, who took Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra as his lover, and then murdered Agamemnon on his return from Troy. Yet, on the face of it, the suitors have done nothing nearly so bad. Then there is the mystery presented by the form of the Odyssey itself, with its odd mixture of realism (the suitors and Penelope) and magic (the unreality of the realms that Odysseus visits between the fall of Troy and his return home). The fantastic nature of these realms seems completely mismatched to the reality of what is taking place in Ithaca. In the end, these four diverse mysteries have the same solution.
Why, then, does Odysseus leave Calypso? Or, putting it the other way around, why doesn’t he stay? Maybe you think you know. But I believe the poem intends you to be puzzled. First off, Calypso is a nymph – she will always be a babe. Her breasts will never sag. Her bottom will always be firm. Her hair will be forever luxuriant and silky. She’ll always be fun in bed, and always, it seems, willing to go there. Moreover, she can make |
in Johannesburg previously, I am truly honored to be part of this historic event."
Team Africa was led by team captain Deng (Great Britain; born in South Sudan) and also featured Al-Farouq Aminu (Portland Trail Blazers; U.S.; parents from Nigeria), Giannis Antetokounmpo (Milwaukee Bucks; Greece; parents from Nigeria), Nicolas Batum (Charlotte Hornets; France; parent from Cameroon), Bismack Biyombo (Toronto Raptors; Democratic Republic of the Congo), Boris Diaw (San Antonio Spurs; France; parent from Senegal), Gorgui Dieng (Minnesota Timberwolves; Senegal), Festus Ezeli (Golden State Warriors; Nigeria), and Luc Mbah a Moute (Sacramento Kings; Cameroon). The team was coached by Gregg Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs.
Team captain Paul led Team World, which also featured Bradley Beal (Washington Wizards; U.S.), Kenneth Faried (Denver Nuggets; U.S.), Marc Gasol (Memphis Grizzlies; Spain), Pau Gasol (Chicago Bulls; Spain), Jeff Green (Memphis Grizzlies; U.S.), Trey Burke (Utah Jazz, U.S.), Evan Turner (Boston Celtics; U.S.) and Nikola Vucevic (Orlando Magic; Montenegro). Lionel Hollins of the Brooklyn Nets served as the coach.
The game also featured cameos from NBA legends Dikembe Mutombo and Hakeem Olajuwon, who hit a memorable "Dream Shake" jumper at the age of 52.
"That was amazing," said Deng. "It was great to see them here playing on the continent. It's just the era that we live in that we're very lucky to do this, but those guys have been doing it way before us. And because of them, this is why this is happening today."
Deng scored 20 points, second on his team behind Antetokounmpo's 22 points, along with four rebounds in 20 minutes. Paul recorded 12 points, seven assists and six rebounds in 22 minutes. Jeff Green led Team World with 17 points.
Beal, Green and Paul turned the game around in the fourth quarter for Team World by hitting several shots from beyond the arc to help erase a double-digit deficit. Deng had two chances from the 3-point line near the end of the game to catch up but Green and Burke hit clutch free throws to seal the win.
"The NBA has been taking steps forward [in Africa], and this is a huge step forward," Deng said. "The game is just going to keep on growing. I'm just glad we got to this stage. The fact that we did this, it means we're stepping forward, and hopefully in the years to come we'll be able to do it all over the continent."Columbia�s Planned Parenthood is set to once again offer abortions and will expand insurance coverage to accept Coventry Health Care and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Missouri.
Laura McQuade, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, said the clinic at 711 N. Providence Road received its license as an abortion facility this week. It is now the second licensed abortion facility in the state � a St. Louis Planned Parenthood also provides abortions.
�It made access very difficult,� McQuade said of previously having only one location in the state. �It�s really important there�s another option.�
Columbia Planned Parenthood will begin administering medication abortions Aug. 3, McQuade said. The clinic will add surgical abortions in early 2016.
Kathy Forck, a campaign director with the Columbia chapter of anti-abortion group 40 Days for Life, said she was surprised to hear the Columbia location had received its license from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.
Forck said she contacted the department Thursday and was told Planned Parenthood had not received the license needed to perform abortions.
�This is for the health of women, the reason they make these laws,� Forck said.
Forck said she made a Sunshine Law request Thursday to see the facility�s license. The Health Department�s website was updated Friday and lists Columbia Planned Parenthood as a licensed abortion facility.
Columbia Planned Parenthood was licensed to perform abortions until 2012, when the physician who provided abortions resigned.
The clinic suspended abortion services for more than two years while it searched for a replacement physician.
�It took time to find the right physician for Columbia,� McQuade said.
Planned Parenthood had to find a physician who was willing to provide abortions and who had the necessary skills and experience, she said.
McQuade said Missouri requires a number of additional credentials before authorizing a physician to provide abortions.
Columbia Planned Parenthood, she said, has not seen more protests this week after saying that abortions would soon return to its list of health care services.
McQuade said resuming abortions and expanding insurance coverage were long-term projects.
Coventry Health Care and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Missouri are both widely used in the Columbia area, McQuade said, so she hopes the expanded insurance coverage allows more people to use the clinic�s services.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
A Los Angeles Police Department officer who was seen on video kicking and punching a handcuffed woman who lost consciousness and died was found guilty Friday of assaulting the woman during her arrest.
Officer Mary O’Callaghan, 50, was calledJuly 22, 2012, to the 9100 block of South Broadway Avenue to assist in the arrest of Alecia Thomas, who had been taken into custody by officers investigating a possible child abandonment claim.
Thomas was in the back of a patrol car wearing handcuffs and leg restraints when the police cruiser's camera captured O'Callaghan kick her in the stomach and groin area and push her in the throat, according to a news release from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.
Paramedics were called after Thomas lost consciousness while still in the patrol car.
Dashcam video from another patrol car showed O'Callaghan light a cigarette and look inside the car where Thomas had been placed and say “That ain’t a good sign," the Los Angeles Times reported.
Police cruiser video that showed the assault was played for jurors, and the jury forewoman told KTLA outside the courthouse that those images were the most compelling evidence in the trial.
Thomas was pronounced dead after being taken to a hospital.
O'Callaghan was charged with assaulting an arrestee under the color of authority in 2013.
Prosecutors declined to file an involuntary manslaughter charge, citing insufficient evidence to prove that O'Callaghan's conduct caused Thomas' death.
After conducting an autopsy on Thomas, the L.A. County coroner's office said cocaine intoxication likely played "a major factor" in her death, the Times reported.
O'Callaghan served in the U.S. Marines for 13 years and is an 18-year veteran of the LAPD, her attorney, Robert Rico, said.
She faces up to three years in state prison to be served in county jail, the DA's office said.
Her sentencing hearing was scheduled for July 23. She surrendered herself to custody on Friday, however, to avoid more grief to or expense for her family, Rico said.
"We could have asked for bail, but she made that decision. She's a very strong, tough woman," he said.
Rico said he plans to appeal and will request a new trial.
KTLA's Melissa Pamer contributed to this article.
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Please enable Javascript to watch this videoRoberts Space Industries have shared alarming new details about its upcoming space sim Star Citizen. What would you say about the possibilities of a space mutiny?
No, they didn’t confirm a limping John Phillip Law, but they are saying it is possible for your crew to mutiny on you. That is, if you hire crew outside the United Empire of Earth, there is a chance they could do it, compared to UEE employees. The flip side is hiring outside the UEE allows you to set their pay. If they mutiny, they can kill crew members loyal to you and take over your ship.
Hacking will also be an element in the game, for ships like the Idris. Hackers that get into Idris’ electronics can make the ships airlocks blow out, or lower their shields. Your only countermeasure is to hire counterhackers. Hackers and counterhackers alike are human players, so you are basically guaranteed to play with someone else.
What else is in Star Citizen? Spying. Characters can get fake IDs to enter ships, and wrought whatever havoc they want. Frankly, I can only think of how these game elements can ruin the experience, especially for newcomers, but we’ll see how it plays out.
RSI also described the Idris Frigate in some detail. While it can be managed by one human player, NPCs will simply not have as much potential as other human players. If you will use NPCs, they earn experience that is lost forever when they die.
Flying ships like the Idris will be ‘difficult to take’, implying a complicated, realistic sim experience. It will also have a red alert system that is sure to keep all human players on board on the top of their toes. They’re releasing a variant ships sale at the end of this month. The Freelancer commercial is coming late May, along with their facial capture system. The Connie and Cutlass will be following the Freelancer not long after.
Cargo will be somewhat realistic. There will be individual, separate containers that can be physically arranged, and of course,they will contain actual cargo. They’re still figuring out the specifics of weight capacities and all that, but they’re probably not using the ton as a measurement unit.
Gatling guns blow up when they overheat. I’m sure you’re going to want to try that now.
For those curious, the PC build they’re using at PAX East is a GTX690, with 32 GB RAM and 4770K i7 board. The video card was not optimized, but the CPU was being pushed to its limits.
Finally, no mods for now. Christ Roberts likes the modding community, but they’re not enabling mods yet, presumably so that RSI can reveal their full vision first.
Star Citizen is coming to Windows, MacOS, and Linux, currently scheduled for next year. Check out a spiffy new Star Citizen image gallery below.New Orleans sports fans got some huge news the other day when the New Orleans Pelicans acquired DeMarcus Cousins from the Sacramento Kings in a surprisingly one-sided trade. While most people in the Big Easy are excited about the impact this will have on the city’s basketball fortunes, I’m more interested in the impact it will have on the city’s music.
You see, back in 2014, Mr. Cousins announced that he would be putting out an R&B album called Misunderstood under the moniker “Boogie Smooth.” He even produced a promo video for the release and confirmed that the first single would be a collaboration with Chance The Rapper called “Emotional,” though a bonus track titled “Big Fellas” would also be part of the package.
The announcement came on March 30, but two days later—on April Fool’s Day—he revealed that the whole thing had been a cruel, cruel joke. Fans were shocked and saddened, despite the fact that the original promo video makes it pretty clear that Cousins has no idea how to play the piano.
But Sacramento is no New Orleans. A Boogie Smooth album may have been a pipe dream in 2014, but Cousins will soon be surrounded by a bottomless well of musical talent. If anyone can turn this basketball star into an R&B hit maker it’s the musicians in this town. After all, they’ve been propping up pop stars since Earl Palmer moved to Hollywood back in 1957.
DeMarcus Cousins of the New Orleans Pelicans, if you happen to be reading this, we have suggestion. Why not consider turning your April Fool’s joke into a reality? Some of the best tools in the biz are at your disposal now. And if that’s not in the cards, we’ll settle for a decent playoff run.Compared to plastic, cardboard and paper are just a blip on the radar when it comes to recycling and climate change. Plastic as a whole is far more damaging and is produced in much greater quantities than paper products. Its production also requires more resources, including oil, gas and coal, each of which have their own prominent impacts on climate change and the sustainability of our planet. Plastic also has catastrophic implications for the world’s marine life. Recycling plastic is a crucial element which it comes to thinking about a sustainable future for Australia.
In 2010, Australia recycled 288,194 tonnes of the 376,000 tonnes of plastic packaging produced – roughly 76%. While this is a larger percentage than paper and cardboard, it could still be much higher. Here are some key factors in regards to recycling practice in Australia.
Recycling plastic responsibly can have excellent environmental benefits. The numbers are clear, the recycling process is far easier than producing from raw materials and can make all the difference in the world.
The Facts
• Making PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottle from recycled materials uses 84% less energy than producing from raw materials.
• By recycling just one plastic bottle you can save enough energy to charge your computer for 25 minutes.
• One tonne of recycled plastic will save enough energy to run your fridge for one whole month.
• Recycling 125 milk bottles will yield enough plastic to make a 140 litre bin.
• It can take up to 500 years for plastic bottles to disintegrate in landfill.
• It is estimated that for each square mile of our oceans there are up to 46,000 pieces of plastic waste floating around.
• Making plastic from recycled plastic instead of raw materials saves up to 90% of water usage and energy consumption by up to two thirds.
The Process: How Is Plastic Recycled?
Step 1: Collection
Plastic is collected from homes, offices and industrial spaces by a dedicated rubbish removal service, then is taken to a recycling facility.
Step 2: Sorting The Plastic
Plastic is then separated from other materials and sorted into different polymer types which affect how the plastics can be melted and moulded.
Step 3: Baling
The plastics are then compressed into bales then sent to a processor in order to remove any contaminants.
Step 4: Shredding
After contaminants have been removed, the bales are then shredded, washed and passed under a large magnet to remove any metals.
Step 5: Processing
The plastic is then melted down and passed through a large ‘extruder’ which presses the plastic into smaller sections. It is then cooled, compressed and cut up into small granules.
Step 6: A New Product
These granules are extremely versatile and can be spun into fibres to make new plastic products.
There is no reason why households and offices shouldn’t recycle 100% of their plastic waste products, and considering the environmental benefits it is our duty to do all we can to strive for a more sustainable lifestyle.
• Statistics sourced from SITA.
If you have large quantities of plastic recycling to remove from your house, or have a continuous flow of waste being produced in your office or workplace, contact us today or book a free quote online. Sydney Rubbish Services are more than capable of getting the job done right and in a eco-friendly manner.For release:
Sept. 18, 2017
California housing market defies tight inventory as sales and median price propel higher
- Existing, single-family home sales totaled 427,630 in August on a seasonally adjusted annualized rate, up 1.5 percent from July and 1.3 percent from August 2016.
- August’s statewide median home price was $565,330, up 2.9 percent from July and 7.2 percent from August 2016.
- At the regional level, the San Francisco Bay Area, Inland Empire, and Los Angeles metro area all registered year-to-year sales increases of 6.5 percent, 8.2 percent, and 4.4 percent, respectively.
LOS ANGELES (Sept. 18) – California’s housing market defied gravity as existing home sales and median home price registered increases on both a monthly and an annual basis in August, the CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® (C.A.R.) said today.
Closed escrow sales of existing, single-family detached homes in California remained above the 400,000 benchmark for the 17th consecutive month and totaled a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 427,630 units in August, according to information collected by C.A.R. from more than 90 local REALTOR® associations and MLSs statewide. The statewide sales figure represents what would be the total number of homes sold during 2017 if sales maintained the August pace throughout the year. It is adjusted to account for seasonal factors that typically influence home sales.
The August sales figure was up 1.5 percent from the 421,460 level in July and up 1.3 percent compared with home sales in August 2016 of a revised 422,190. Year-to-date sales are running 2.7 percent ahead of last year’s pace, but have curtailed since the first quarter.
“While August’s strong housing market performance is encouraging, it’s really a tale of two markets. Despite sales growth across all segments of the market, lower-priced homes are particularly inventory constrained, which leads to weaker sales growth, faster rising prices, and fierce competition for the few homes that are listed,” said C.A.R. President Geoff McIntosh. “These homes are selling faster than historically and for top dollar, adversely impacting entry-level buyers who are already struggling to afford to buy their very first home."
The statewide median price reached its highest level in a decade and remained above the $500,000 mark for the sixth straight month. The median price rose 2.9 percent from $549,460 in July to $565,330 in August and climbed 7.2 percent from the revised $527,490 recorded in August 2016. The median sales price is the point at which half of homes sold for more and half sold for less; it is influenced by the types of homes selling, as well as a general change in values.
“A shortage of available homes for sale continues to stoke robust growth in home prices,” said C.A.R. Senior Vice President and Chief Economist Leslie-Appleton-Young. “August marked the third straight month that the median price gained 7 percent or more year-over-year, indicating that prices are not only growing, but are accelerating into the end of the year. For the most inventory constrained segment of the market – the bottom 20 percentile – home prices rose even higher with a double-digit gain (10.7 percent).”
Other key points from C.A.R.’s August 2017 resale housing report include:
• All of the major regions experienced robust month-to-month and annual gains, with Inland Empire jumping 8.2 percent from a year ago, the San Francisco Bay Area rising 6.5 percent, and the Los Angeles metro region increasing 4.4 percent from August 2016.
• San Francisco overtook San Mateo as the most expensive market in the state.
• With consistent home price growth, even the most affordable markets are facing rising prices. California is no longer home to a single county with a median price below $200,000, and only 10 of 58 counties have a median price lower or equal to the national median price of $258,300.
• Statewide active listings continued to decline, dropping 11.9 percent from a year ago.
• With strong sales growth and little new inventory to replenish the housing supply, C.A.R.’s Unsold Inventory Index fell from 3.2 months in July to 2.9 months in August. The index measures the number of months needed to sell the supply of homes on the market at the current sales rate. The index stood at 3.4 months in August 2016.
• Housing supply remained tight throughout the state as every single county in both the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California saw a reduction in unsold inventory, as did most parts of the Central Coast and Central Valley.
• The median number of days it took to sell a single-family home was 18 days compared with 16 days in July and 28 days in August 2016.
• C.A.R.’s sales price-to-list price ratio* was 99.5 percent statewide in August, 100 percent in July, and 98.9 percent in August 2016. At the county level, San Francisco had the highest ratio at 114.8 percent and Mono had the lowest at 93.8 percent.
• The average price per square foot** for an existing, single-family home statewide was $268 in August, $270 in July, and $250 in August 2016.
• San Francisco had the highest price per square foot in August at $871/sq. ft., followed by San Mateo ($863/sq. ft.), and Santa Clara ($668/sq. ft.). Counties with the lowest price per square foot in August included Siskiyou and Lassen (both at $129/sq. ft.), Kern ($135/sq. ft.), and Tulare ($136/sq. ft.).
• Mortgage rates declined further in August as the 30-year, fixed-mortgage interest rate averaged 3.88 percent in August, down from 3.97 percent in July but was up from 3.44 percent in August 2016, according to Freddie Mac. The five-year, adjustable-rate mortgage interest rates ticked down in August to an average of 3.15 percent from 3.22 percent in July but was up from 2.74 percent in August 2016.
Graphics (click links to open):
• Calif. historical existing home sales.
• Calif. historical median home price.
• Sales performance by price range.
• Calif. price per square foot.
• Calif. sales to list price ratio.
Note: The County MLS median price and sales data in the tables are generated from a survey of more than 90 associations of REALTORS® throughout the state, and represent statistics of existing single-family detached homes only. County sales data are not adjusted to account for seasonal factors that can influence home sales. Movements in sales prices should not be interpreted as changes in the cost of a standard home. The median price is where half sold for more and half sold for less; medians are more typical than average prices, which are skewed by a relatively small share of transactions at either the lower-end or the upper-end. Median prices can be influenced by changes in cost, as well as changes in the characteristics and the size of homes sold. The change in median prices should not be construed as actual price changes in specific homes.
*Sales-to-list price ratio is an indicator that reflects the negotiation power of home buyers and home sellers under current market conditions. The ratio is calculated by dividing the final sales price of a property by its last list price and is expressed as a percentage. A sales-to-list ratio with 100 percent or above suggests that the property sold for more than the list price, and a ratio below 100 percent indicates that the price sold below the asking price.
**Price per square foot is a measure commonly used by real estate agents and brokers to determine how much a square foot of space a buyer will pay for a property. It is calculated as the sale price of the home divided by the number of finished square feet. C.A.R. currently tracks price-per-square foot statistics for 39 counties.
Leading the way…® in California real estate for more than 110 years, the CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® (www.car.org) is one of the largest state trade organizations in the United States with more than 190,000 members dedicated to the advancement of professionalism in real estate. C.A.R. is headquartered in Los Angeles.
# # #
August 2017 County Sales and Price Activity
(Regional and condo sales data not seasonally adjusted)
August-17 Median Sold Price of Existing Single-Family Homes Sales State/Region/County Aug-17 Jul-17 Aug-16 Price MTM% Chg Price YTY% Chg Sales MTM% Chg Sales YTY% Chg CA Single-family (SAAR) $565,330 $549,460 R $527,490 R 2.9% 7.2% 1.5% 1.3% CA Condo/Townhomes $446,760 $443,160 $419,260 R 0.8% 6.6% 9.7% 1.8% Los Angeles Metro Area $499,970 $508,810 R $473,300 R -1.7% 5.6% 11.5% 4.4% Inland Empire $341,340 $344,040 R $316,630 R -0.8% 7.8% 10.8% 8.2% San Francisco Bay Area $856,200 $898,880 $777,160 -4.7% 10.2% 9.4% 6.5% San Francisco Bay Area Alameda $867,500 $875,500 $775,000 -0.9% 11.9% 12.9% 6.4% Contra-Costa $627,860 $633,250 $570,000 -0.9% 10.2% 16.6% 11.0% Marin $1,207,120 $1,224,000 $1,200,000 -1.4% 0.6% -15.7% 9.6% Napa $654,000 $695,000 $625,000 -5.9% 4.6% 5.0% -4.5% San Francisco $1,380,000 $1,428,000 $1,257,500 -3.4% 9.7% 1.0% 9.7% San Mateo $1,375,000 $1,500,000 $1,250,000 -8.3% 10.0% 6.1% -7.7% Santa Clara $1,150,000 $1,165,000 $975,000 -1.3% 17.9% -2.0% 11.9% Solano $410,000 $420,000 $410,000 -2.4% 0.0% 21.9% -2.5% Sonoma $625,500 $645,000 $585,000 -3.0% 6.9% 24.2% 8.8% Southern California Los Angeles $575,130 $573,190 R $524,420 R 0.3% 9.7% 14.8% 3.4% Orange $789,000 $785,000 $749,000 0.5% 5.3% 6.1% 0.5% Riverside $388,500 $385,500 $355,000 0.8% 9.4% 6.3% 3.3% San Bernardino $269,950 $266,250 $240,500 R 1.4% 12.2% 18.0% 16.1% San Diego $605,000 $613,000 $563,000 -1.3% 7.5% 11.0% 4.9% Ventura $640,000 $648,500 R $609,000 R -1.3% 5.1% 11.4% -0.2% Central Coast Monterey $580,500 $629,000 $515,000 -7.7% 12.7% 20.0% 9.6% San Luis Obispo $599,000 $590,000 $535,000 1.5% 12.0% 12.5% 6.1% Santa Barbara $631,000 $611,000 $775,000 3.3% -18.6% 24.0% 21.9% Santa Cruz $825,000 $815,000 $824,000 1.2% 0.1% 24.8% -11.6% Central Valley Fresno $259,000 $258,000 $239,000 0.4% 8.4% 12.5% 13.8% Glenn $225,000 $205,000 $230,500 9.8% -2.4% -4.8% 42.9% Kern $235,100 $235,000 $220,000 0.0% 6.9% 4.3% -0.7% Kings $225,000 $222,000 $209,220 1.4% 7.5% 5.7% 18.1% Madera $263,500 $279,250 $245,000 -5.6% 7.6% -26.1% -28.6% Merced $250,000 $260,000 $220,000 -3.8% 13.6% 22.9% 19.3% Placer $462,000 $453,000 $430,000 2.0% 7.4% 16.3% 12.8% Sacramento $348,000 $353,000 $323,500 -1.4% 7.6% 5.0% -4.2% San Benito $600,000 $535,000 $538,380 12.1% 11.4% 28.8% 34.0% San Joaquin $355,000 $350,000 $325,000 1.4% 9.2% 21.1% 12.0% Stanislaus $294,290 $297,000 $272,750 -0.9% 7.9% 12.3% 7.8% Tulare $224,900 $219,950 $204,900 2.3% 9.8% 6.4% 3.6% Other Counties in California Amador $334,500 $320,000 $257,500 4.5% 29.9% -9.4% 4.3% Butte $291,000 $299,900 $264,120 -3.0% 10.2% 4.6% 1.0% Calaveras $345,000 $324,500 $310,000 6.3% 11.3% 40.0% 8.6% Del Norte $214,950 $204,900 $174,500 4.9% 23.2% 36.8% 44.4% El Dorado $485,000 $480,500 $425,000 0.9% 14.1% 29.2% 9.2% Humboldt $316,750 $307,500 $290,000 3.0% 9.2% 2.6% -11.1% Lake $241,500 $265,000 $234,500 -8.9% 3.0% 29.7% -7.7% Lassen $215,000 $171,000 $185,000 25.7% 16.2% 0.0% -13.8% Mariposa $280,000 $262,500 $311,500 6.7% -10.1% 45.5% -20.0% Mendocino $402,500 $370,000 $362,500 8.8% 11.0% -5.3% -15.6% Mono $386,500 $578,000 $532,500 -33.1% -27.4% -36.8% -50.0% Nevada $375,000 $398,500 $343,000 -5.9% 9.3% 2.4% -13.4% Plumas $325,000 $325,000 $275,000 0.0% 18.2% 45.7% 21.4% Shasta $252,450 $255,000 $248,000 -1.0% 1.8% 12.2% 10.9% Siskiyou $212,000 $215,000 $204,500 -1.4% 3.7% 7.0% -11.5% Sutter $289,000 $280,300 $267,410 3.1% 8.1% 38.6% 18.3% Tehama $225,000 $206,750 $202,000 8.8% 11.4% 28.1% -19.6% Tuolumne $292,000 $292,500 $266,450 -0.2% 9.6% 47.8% 18.6% Yolo $445,000 $426,750 $410,480 4.3% 8.4% 17.6% -9.4% Yuba $265,000 $266,890 $249,900 -0.7% 6.0% -3.6% -16.5%
r = revised
NA = not available
August 2017 Unsold Inventory and Time on Market
(Regional and condo sales data not seasonally adjusted)
August-17 Unsold Inventory Index Median Time on Market State/Region/County Aug-17 Jul-17 Aug-16 Aug-17 Jul-17 Aug-16 CA SFH (SAAR) 2.9 3.2 3.4 18.0 16.0 r 28.0 r CA Condo/Townhomes 2.2 2.4 2.7 r 14.0 14.0 r 29.0 r Los Angeles Metro Area 3.1 3.6 3.7 22.0 20.0 r 44.0 r Inland Empire 3.3 3.7 4.1 25.0 23.5 r 45.0 r S.F. Bay Area 1.9 2.1 2.5 R 15.0 14.0 r 20.0 r r S.F. Bay Area Alameda 1.6 1.8 2.1 13.0 13.0 r 14.0 r Contra Costa 1.9 2.2 2.4 13.0 12.0 r 13.0 r Marin 3.0 2.3 3.6 39.0 31.0 r 39.0 r Napa 4.6 4.7 4.8 49.5 45.0 r 41.0 r San Francisco 1.7 1.4 2.2 15.0 15.0 r 25.0 r San Mateo 1.7 1.7 2.0 r 11.0 11.0 r 14.0 r Santa Clara 1.5 1.5 2.4 r 9.5 10.0 r 15.0 r Solano 2.2 2.7 2.8 34.0 31.5 r 38.0 r Sonoma 2.6 3.3 2.9 37.0 38.0 r 48.0 r Southern California Los Angeles 2.8 3.3 R 3.3 18.0 17.0 r 40.0 r Orange 3.1 3.4 3.7 22.0 17.0 r 53.0 r Riverside 3.2 3.5 4.1 26.0 24.0 r 48.5 r San Bernardino 3.4 4.0 4.0 r 24.0 23.0 r 38.0 r San Diego 2.6 2.9 3.3 14.0 13.0 r 17.0 r Ventura 4.4 5.0 R 4.5 r 46.0 43.5 r 52.0 r Central Coast Monterey 4.2 5.0 4.9 r 26.0 21.0 r 18.0 r San Luis Obispo 3.9 4.6 4.4 23.0 16.0 r 31.5 r Santa Barbara 3.7 4.7 4.6 26.0 25.0 r 32.0 r Santa Cruz 3.3 4.2 3.0 r 20.0 14.0 r 21.0 r Central Valley r Fresno 2.9 3.2 3.5 16.0 13.0 r 20.0 r Glenn 4.2 3.5 6.9 47.5 17.0 r 22.5 r Kern 3.3 3.4 3.8 19.0 18.0 r 23.0 r Kings 2.4 2.9 3.2 21.0 28.0 r 19.5 r Madera 4.9 3.8 4.1 33.0 30.0 r 51.0 r Merced 2.6 3.2 2.8 15.0 13.0 r 34.0 r Placer 2.5 2.9 3.0 14.0 11.0 r 17.0 r Sacramento 2.4 2.3 2.5 11.0 9.0 r 12.0 r San Benito 2.6 3.5 4.2 r 28.0 23.5 r 21.5 r San Joaquin 2.5 2.9 3.1 14.0 13.0 r 15.0 r Stanislaus 2.4 2.8 3.1 14.0 12.0 r 15.0 r Tulare 3.7 3.8 3.5 23.0 24.0 r 25.0 r Other Counties in California Amador 6.0 5.2 5.8 39.0 32.0 r 47.0 r Butte 2.5 2.7 3. |
I feel like my whole being is going to explode from so much anxiety, something almost unimaginable happens: a release.
The panic begins to fade, moving away from me like the tide slowly going back out to sea. I’m left a little tired, a little drained, but also relieved.
It’s important to know that a panic attack won’t last.
Nothing lasts forever—not pleasant things, not unpleasant things, not panic attacks.
It’s not necessary to lie on the floor.
Sometimes I find myself in certain social situations where being stretched out on the floor would look just plain nutty. This technique works just as well sitting in my truck, behind a desk, or hiding in a bathroom stall. We do what we must.
2. Breathing
A lot of people say to take deep breaths when you’re having a panic attack. I think this is sound advice, but I like to put a slightly different spin on it.
Take a walk.
That’s right. Go walking.
Walking is awesome because it gets the blood flowing, the heart pumping, and if it’s a brisk walk, it forces you to breathe more deeply.
Sometimes I feel like my anxieties and fears are chasing me, but I’m walking away from them. Other times, I just feeling like I’m burning off some built-up energy that has nowhere to go.
Running would probably also be helpful, but I will only run in the event of The Zombie Apocalypse.
3. Naming
Another really effective technique that I practice is to name the feelings and thoughts as I’m having a panic attack. I learned this technique from listening to Tara Brach’s podcasts on iTunes. It’s super effective and very simple to learn. (*Note: Tara Brach’s podcasts are free on iTunes.)
In the midst of the panic attack, I focus on any feelings or thoughts that are arising and name them either out loud or silently to myself. I sometimes even grab a notebook and write them. For instance:
I feel tightness in my chest
I feel my racing heartbeat.
My mouth is dry, my head aches, and I’m a little dizzy.
I feel like I’m going to fall off of a cliff.
I’m feeling bad about feeling bad because this anxiety destroys relationships.
I feel like no one is ever going to love me again.
My jaw is clenching.
There’s a knot in my stomach.
I feel like a loser.
I feel like I don’t belong here.
I feel like I suck.
I’m afraid I’m going to fail.
I hear a pounding in my ears.
I feel unqualified, unworthy, unnecessary.
Once again, it’s helpful to remind myself that this is a panic attack, that it will pass, but it needs to be allowed to.
I remind myself that this awful time in my life will pass like all the others. How do I know this? If I look back over the course of my life, I can see it.
I’ve had some great times. They’ve passed. I’ve had some awful times. They’ve passed, too. I can see that everything before this has passed.
This also will pass. It has to.
These simple techniques can work, but you have to put them into practice.
It’s like learning to play a musical instrument or a sport; the more you practice, the better you get at it. If one of the techniques isn’t working, I switch to another one.
I believe that, in the moment, we always pick the right one.
Photo by Fovea Centralis
About James Gummer James Gummer has no idea what's going on and is learning to be okay with that. He writes in Baltimore, Maryland where he also teaches drumming, qigong, and meditation. His collection of essays will be available soon. Visit him at james-writes.com.ArmaLite Inc.
https://www.armalite.com/
If something ain’t broke there is a strong argument to not fix it. Fortunately for.50 Caliber match shooters though, the team at ArmaLite must have played hooky the day they learned that in 2nd grade. Even though their ArmaLite AR-50 has already been a strong competitor in national matches, they decided that it had to be improved for the most elite competition shooter.
Guns in general have to be built with tolerances that reflect differences in manufacturing tolerances for ammunition. Things like case head thickness, width at the bottom, width at the shoulder, shoulder angle, and even brass thickness can fluctuate sometimes several thousandths of an inch. There are specifications for cartridges put out be the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute (SAAMI), but some play is assumed when you cut a chamber for a rifle in a standard caliber.
To competition shooters these tolerances can be a headache because if you use “match” ammunition, it is all one size, and if the chamber of your rifle has a lot of sloppy “tolerance” room, the cartridge can be canted in the gun to one side or the other of that several thousandths of tolerance without you being able to control it. The same is true if you full length re-size a round in your.50 caliber reloading press. The resulting cartridges will be perfect SAAMI specs.
National Match rifles don’t have this tolerance built in. The downside is that you can’t just order a case of surplus ammo on the internet for them and expect them to always fit your gun. But the upside is that you have a perfectly reamed chamber that will exactly match your match ammo, or your full length re-sized reloads. So if you miss, or your score isn’t what you want it be, you can assume it was your fault and not the fault of the gun.
Now, you may be wondering, if this is true, how is it that people have been winning matches with these standard chambers in AR-50 rifles. There is a caveat to this explanation. Many competition shooters hand load their own cases. Your chamber, if it is not a National Match chamber, is unique, and once you fire a round of ammo in it, the pressure will shape that brass casing to exactly match your chamber. If you then full-length re-size that case, it will no longer match your gun, but if you only use a neck sizer to expand the mouth of the case to hold your bullet, the rest of the case will stay the size of your chamber, and have zero tolerance. It will be as if the chamber is reamed exactly to the ammo you are using.
The AR-50 National Match gives you the option to use pre-made factory “match” ammunition that will fit just as perfect, or theoretically just as perfect. It also gives the hand loader the ability to full length re-size fired cases, which can have its benefits (outside the scope of this article). Again, don’t forget, a National Match chamber may not fit some surplus ammo that you may find for sale, so don’t buy one of these guns thinking that it is the “extreme accuracy” version of the gun suitable for all shooters. It actually is the extreme accuracy version, but specifically for competitive shooters in a controlled environment with standardized ammo. If you are buying a.50 just because you can, and you hope to shoot it for fun and keep it “just in case,” you are better off with a standard AR-50 chamber that will still yield better accuracy than 99%+ of shooters can shoot.
This new ArmaLite comes with some other non-standard features as well. ArmaLite has built a new skid plate system for bench rest shooters to allow the gun to sit flat easily and naturally slide with recoil. This slide plate system will also be available to retro-fit existing guns. It has a match trigger group, and the barrel on the National Match is three inches longer than the standard 30″ The MSRP is $4,230.Barring a complete meltdown in the remaining six weeks of the season, the Orioles look certain to make a return to the playoffs for the first time since 2012 and will hope to do so by winning the American League East title for the first time since 1997.
With just 38 games now remaining in the regular season, the O’s hold an 8 1/2 game division lead and look forward to a favorable schedule over the next few weeks, which includes the completion of the current series against the White Sox, a three-game series against the Cubs starting Friday and a four-game series against the Twins starting Aug. 29. In the middle of that, there is a four-game series against the Rays, who despite showing signs of improvement in recent weeks, still have a lineup the Orioles should beat.
Assuming all goes to plan and the Orioles do reach the postseason, there are two major issues which still need to be resolved if the Orioles want it to be a postseason to remember.
* Consolidate the starting rotation
While the starting rotation has been much better in 2014 than it has been in recent years, a decision still needs to be made as to what the make-up will look like during September and the postseason. The biggest headache is what will be done with the struggling Ubaldo Jimenez. Now that he has been moved to the bullpen, will he stay there for the remainder of the season?
The numbers alone don’t suggest Jimenez’s season has been an absolute disaster, But when his $50 million price tag and the high expectations that come with it are factored into consideration, it isn’t far off. Having now appeared in 20 games, Jimenez owns a 4-9 record with a 4.83 ERA, which comfortably sees him placed at the bottom of the rotation in terms of performance.
His fellow rotation members this season, who each earn far less income for their efforts, have been consistent and each work to ERAs under 4.00:
* Chris Tillman - 10-5, 3.55 ERA
* Bud Norris - 11-7, 3.69 ERA
* Kevin Gausman - 7-4, 3.70 ERA
* Wei-Yin Chen - 12-4, 3.76 ERA
* Miguel Gonzalez - 6-6, 3.80 ERA
After Jimenez’s disastrous outing against his former team last Saturday night, I ran a poll on Twitter to see who Orioles fans thought was more deserving of a role in the starting rotation - Gonzalez or Jimenez. Here’s the result.
An overwhelming 97 percent of respondents believed that Gonzalez deserves the fifth-starter role ahead of Jimenez and since that poll was conducted, that situation has now become a reality.
If the decision was up to me, the Orioles need to write this year off as a loss for Jimenez and have him work out of the bullpen in long relief for the rest of the season, ensuring the five deserving starters keep their spots in the rotation.
* Settle the lineup
Nick Markakis (RF), Manny Machado (3B), Adam Jones (CF), Nelson Cruz (LF), Delmon Young (DH), J.J. Hardy (SS), Caleb Joseph (C), Chris Davis (1B) and Jonathan Schoop (2B).
Go ahead and call me biased, however I genuinely feel that the lineup above is still one of the best in the major leagues.
Assuming the Orioles get Machado back from injury sometime and all players remain healthy from here, the nine listed - in that order - is the best option for the Orioles heading into the postseason. The two key things to note are the addition of Young into the No. 5 spot and dropping Davis down to the No. 8 spot.
Despite being used sparingly, Young has proven this season that he is a reliable contact hitter who strikes out far less frequently than Davis - 20.9 percent for Young (39 in 186 at bats) and 39.5 percent for Davis (149 in 377 at bats).
Having the trio of Jones, Cruz and Davis bunched together in the lineup has hurt the Orioles far too often in recent weeks, with consecutive strikeouts occurring while runners have been in scoring position with less than two outs. The trio needs to be broken up and Young provides Buck Showalter with that option. It also allows Davis to shift down to the eighth spot, where he has batted.292 (131-for-449) throughout his career - the highest average of any spot in the lineup.
What are your thoughts on the two solutions posed? Should Jimenez remain in the bullpen for the rest of the season? Should Davis hit in the No. 8 hole?
Daniel Clark blogs about the Orioles at The Big Leagues Daily from Melbourne, Australia. Follow him on Twitter: @DC_TBLDaily. His thoughts on the O’s appear here as part of MASNsports.com’s continuing commitment to welcome guest bloggers to our little corner of cyberspace. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.FOUR activists from Ukrainian feminist group Femen have stripped off in St Peter's Square in a protest for gay rights just as Pope Benedict XVI was reciting his traditional weekly Angelus prayer.
The four topless women had "Shut Up!" scrawled on their fronts and "In Gay We Trust" on their backs.
"Homophobe shut up!" the activists shouted as the Pope was speaking on Sunday.
Several Italian and Vatican police officers quickly descended on the scene and detained the activists.
They staged their brief protest by the giant Christmas tree in the centre of the square to the dismay and curiosity of a crowd of pilgrims who had come out to see the Pope on a rainy winter day.
Tens of thousands were set to march in France later on Sunday to denounce government plans to legalise gay marriage and adoption, which have angered many Catholics and Muslims, France's two main faiths.
A small protest against the plans was also due to be held in Rome outside the French embassy.
The Femen women's power group has been making headlines since 2010 for topless feminist, pro-democracy and anti-corruption protests in Russia, Ukraine and Britain.
In September, they set up their first ever "training centre" in Paris.Say you’re a Bangladeshi taxi driver struggling to survive on your daily wage in Dhaka. A couple of nongovernmental organizations have offered you help, but you can pick only one form of assistance: access to microcredit, or a chance to work in the United States. What’s the better deal? According to a recent analysis by the Center for Global Development, microcredit loans might net you an extra $700 over the course of a lifetime. Working stateside, you’re likely to make the same amount in a month.
Nothing rich countries can send the global poor—not loans, not textbooks, not fair-wage campaign materials—will boost the income of the average worker nearly so much as letting him walk among the wealthy. Transported from Haiti or Nigeria to the United States or Canada, a low-skilled worker will watch the value of his labor jump more than 700 percent—instantly. Wage gaps of that magnitude have some economists, notably Harvard’s Lant Pritchett, supporting a small but potentially revolutionary shift in the nature of economic cooperation: a global guest-worker program, run by rich countries in the interest of the poor. Every wealthy country would hand out enough work visas to increase its labor force by 3 percent, and the visas would be temporary, allowing the benefits to be broadly shared among successive waves of foreign workers.Seven minutes of pure, quivering passion, “Layla” was Eric Clapton’s magnificent scream of unrequited love for Patti Boyd, wife of his best friend—George Harrison.
“He grabbed one of my chicks,” said Clapton of Harrison, “and so I thought I’d get even with him one day, on a petty level, and it grew from that.
She was trying to attract his attention and so she used me, and I fell madly in love with her. [Just] listen to the words of ‘Layla’: ‘I tried to give you consolation/When your old man had let you down/Like a fool, I fell in love with you/You turned my whole world upside down.”
Clapton poured all of himself into the intense, majestic “Layla,” which he named after the classical Persian love poem, “The Story of Layla and the Majnun.” The song began as a ballad, but quickly became a rocker, with Duane Allman reportedly coming up with the opening riff which would alter the tune. With Allman’s majestic slide guitar prodding him on, Clapton unleashed some of his most focused, emotive playing.
“The song and the whole album is definitely equal parts Eric and Duane,” says producer Tom Dowd, who introduced the two guitar titans, then sat back and watched them soar together.
“There had to be some sort of telepathy going on because I’ve never seen spontaneous inspiration happen at that rate and level. One of them would play something, and the other reacted instantaneously. Never once did either of them have to say, ‘Could you play that again, please?’ It was like two hands in a glove. And they got tremendously off on playing with each other.”
Nowhere was the interplay between Clapton and Allman more sublime than on “Layla,” which, says Dowd, features six tracks of overlapping guitar: “There’s an Eric rhythm part; three tracks of Eric playing harmony with himself on the main riff; one of Duane playing that beautiful bottleneck; and one of Duane and Eric locked up, playing countermelodies.”
The tension of the main song finds release in a surging, majestic coda, which was recorded three weeks after the first part and masterfully spliced together by Dowd. The section begins with drummer Jim Gordon’s piano part, echoed at various times by Clapton on the acoustic.
Allman takes over with a celestial slide solo, beneath which Clapton plays a subtle countermelody. As the song fades out after a blissful climax, Allman has the last word, playing his signature “bird call” lick.
Next: 13) "Texas Flood"Live in Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, or Youngstown? Kudos to you, brave soul, because statistics show those cities are more dangerous than towns on the U.S. Mexican border, locations fraught with — we're guessing here — gangs, smuggling, drugs, and tequila-induced streaks of violence.
That startling fact emerged after U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-El Paso took Ohio's own John Boehner to task after the Speaker said securing our border should be priority numero uno and an important step in stopping violence in America. Silvestre responded in a press release that Boehner "should focus on controlling the level of violence in his own state before tarnishing the image of border communities that remain among the safest places to live in America.... The fact remains that the six largest cities in Ohio all have higher rates of violence and crime than every major city along the U.S.-Mexico border."
PolitiFact checked the numbers on Silvestre's seemingly outrageous claim.
Whoa. Do the Buckeye State’s largest cities have more violence and crime? Looks like it. As backup, Reyes cited research compiled by CQ Press, which said in a November 2010 press release that its latest compilation of city-by-city crime information reflects data for cities of at least 75,000 residents that reported crime data to the FBI for its Uniform Crime Reporting Program as of September 2010. In 2009, over all, Ohio’s six most populous cities—Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, Akron and Dayton—had higher crime rates than six border cities: San Diego, El Paso, Laredo, Brownsville, McAllen and Yuma, Arizona. The best-rated Ohio city, Columbus, was 49th, the worst-rated border city, Laredo, was 144th, according to CQ Press. According to CQ Press’s report, the six Ohio cities had higher rates of murder, rape, robbery and burglary than the six border cities.
Ohio: All the danger of Mexico without the benefit of authentic Mexican food.DAILYKENN.com -- For the first time in history there are over 3-million Muslims in the United Kingdom. That number has doubled from about 1.5-million in the past decade.
DailyMail.co.uk reports about half of Britain's Muslims were born outside the nation. In some parts of the country about half of the population is Muslim.
The largest Islamic demographic is comprised of children; more Muslims are under ten years old than any other age group.
Although 1 in 20 people in Britain are Muslims, there is no indication that the Islamic population is assimilating.
The character of the nation is changing forever. That's not surprising. Gypsies have retained their cultural identity throughout Europe for hundreds of years as have many traditional Jews. Ethnic groups frequently do not assimilate with native populations. When Europeans arrived in the Americas, they did not adopt Indian culture but flourished as Europeans. Muslims are doing the same in Britain.
The rapid growth of the Muslim population of England and Wales is revealed in unprecedented depth by the new ONS figures.
In 1991 it stood at just under one million – 950,000 – representing only 1.9 per cent of the total. At the time of the next Census a decade later, there were 1,546,626 Muslims in the country – three per cent of the total.
But by 2011, the Muslim population of England and Wales was 2,706,066 – representing 4.8 per cent of the overall number. As the ONS noted, this represented a 75 per cent jump in the space of a decade.
New figures published for the first time this month show that the rise has continued, with a record 3,046,607 Muslims across England and Wales in 2014 – representing 5.4 per cent of the population.
Across Great Britain, the total rises to 3,114,992, and of those slightly more than half (1,554,022) were born overseas.
The vast majority – 1,484,060 – came from outside the European Union. A detailed breakdown obtained by this newspaper shows that Muslims are much younger than the general population. One in four Muslims in England and Wales – 746,000 – is aged under ten. In the whole country, the proportion is about one in seven.
The ONS has also identified eight areas around the country where Muslims make up a significant number of local residents.
In the East London borough of Tower Hamlets the proportion stood at 45.6 per cent in 2014, while in neighbouring Newham it is 40.8.
Muslims account for 29 per cent of the population in Blackburn; 26 per cent in Slough; 25.7 per cent in Luton; 23 per cent in Birmingham; 20 per cent in Leicester; and 18 per cent in Manchester.
The Muslim population will rise further as a result of the unprecedented surge in refugees from Middle Eastern and North African countries trying to reach Western Europe in the past year.
A record 5,095 asylum applications were made to the UK in October 2015, latest figures show, with one in ten made by Syrians.
Ministers are under pressure to accept thousands of lone children into the country from the squalid camps in France, but are instead only offering to take those still near the areas ravaged by civil war and Islamic State.
As of April, police will be required to make detailed records of Islamophobic attacks amid concerns that the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes is on the rise in the wake of terrorist attacks by Islamic State.
A spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain said: ‘This statistic highlights the diversity in modern Britain, and the need that this is reflected in all spheres of life, from top management opportunities to political representation.’
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According to the statement, the alleged abduction and illegal arbitrary detention of Azerbaijani nationals, including human rights defenders, residing in Georgia followed by their arrest and prosecution in Azerbaijan, demands a swift, thorough and transparent investigation.
"We welcome the launch of such an investigation in Georgia as announced by its leadership”, the statement says.
Statement on reported abduction & illegal detention of #Azerbaijan nationals residing in #Georgiahttps://t.co/HTwAw5TnEt — Maja KocijanÄiÄ (@MajaEUspox) June 4, 2017
It adds that a review by Azerbaijan of any and all cases of incarceration related to the exercise of fundamental rights, including the freedom of expression, and immediate release all of those concerned is urgent, in line with Azerbaijan's international commitments.
"We expect that the due process of law is respected, as well as the civil and political rights of citizens and those residing legally in states other than their own”, the statement says.
It adds that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights clearly states that "no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile".
The European External Action Service says that the EU will continue to follow these cases closely.
Freelance investigative journalist Afgan Mukhtarli was reported missing by his wife in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi on the evening of May 29. The next morning local media reported Mukhtarli had ended up in the custody of the Investigative Unit of the State Border Service of Azerbaijan.
Mukhtarli’s lawyer said today that Tbilisi is providing protection for the man’s wife and daughter in the course of the investigation. He added that protection for witnesses is also being considered.Journalists were today briefed on a raft of new law changes that will be implemented from next season and a few of them could really have a big impact on the game.
Journalists were today briefed on a raft of new law changes that will be implemented from next season and a few of them could really have a big impact on the game.
A new law has just been introduced to football that could really punish some penalty takers
Many of the law changes being brought in by FIFA's International Football Association Board were announced a few weeks ago, such as players receiving a yellow card rather than a red when they foul an attacker as the last man in a goal-scoring opportunity - provided they attempted to play the ball.
Another law that had been previously announced was the referee's ability to send players off for pre-match violent conduct in the tunnel. That player would then need to be replaced by a substitute so the team would still start with eleven.
One big change that was brought in today was the punishment for feinting when taking a penalty kick. Feinting at the end of a run up has been outlawed since 2010, although if a player does do it, they were previously ordered to re-take the kick.
Messi, Ronaldo etc who feint when taking penalty now punished with yellow card & indirect freekick. No retake. Stuttering runs still allowed — Henry Winter (@henrywinter) May 9, 2016
Now if a player dummy's after completing their run up, they will be booked and an indirect free kick will be rewarded to the opposing team.
That is a pretty big punishment and since stuttering run ups are still allowed provided the dummy comes before the player has completed his run up, referees will have to make some tough judgements regarding whether a run up has been completed.
Other laws that will be in effect from next season include water breaks during excessively hot conditions and players being allowed have up to 20 seconds of on-pitch treatment and staying on after.
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Online EditorsMARK LEVIN: We need to take back the agenda, I don't just mean the liberal agenda, we need to take back the agenda. We need to put things in context of liberty, of limited constitutional government, we need to make that case. We need to make it over and over again. Otherwise it is never going to be made, I'll give you an example.
You see what's happening to the stock market, many of you have mutual funds, pension funds, so forth. You are going to have to ride it out like everybody else. And all you are hearing is it is China's fault.
China, we're too tied to China, China China China.
China is a basket case, China is a disaster. That's not why this is happening to America. Not because of China or Mexico. Not because we don't have tarrifs in place, Herbert Hoover tried that, the Smoot-Hawley tarrifs, you know what that led to? The Great Depression. Other countries don't stand by when you put tarrifs on things. That is not what happened.
That is not what is happening. Of course what happens in China can affect us, but what is happening in our country is Barack Obama. Barack Obama is the problem. We haven't had robust growth in this country since Bush left office. The only thing that has been growing, with fake dollars, thanks to the Federal Reserve, is the stock market.
Nothing else has been growing. Jobs aren't growing, housing isn't growing, nothing is growing. And now the stock market is in trouble. Not because of China, because the Federal Reserve is out of control, because the president is out of control, because the bureaocracy is out of control. Becuase Congress is out of control. They won't put the breaks on this profligate, immoral spending. They won't get out of the way of the private economy. China is nothing, Russia is nothing, when it comes to economics. Yes, it can affect us, but not like this.
We're destroying ourselves from within. We have to identify the true problem... We want our liberty. China isn't stealing it, Obama is, the Democrats are. And the Republicans are rolling over.
We want our private economy back. We want our opportunity back. We want these people to know that wealth we create belongs to us, not to them.The woman is wearing crimson lipstick under the wide-brimmed shelter of an Audrey Hepburn hat. The reflection of a similarly chiselled companion can be seen in her dark, oversize sunglasses, and his easy confidence telegraphs a coveted quality in contemporary China: rarefied urban cool. The young, striking pair are sipping cups of Starbucks coffee—but, had the image merely been part of an advertising campaign, it wouldn’t, in all likelihood, have conquered social media to become China’s top trending item.
In a country where wedding photography is a ritualized preamble to middle-class matrimony—as well as the last refuge of adult fantasy—a little ridiculousness is practically mandatory. Wedding photos often require a cornucopia of performative props. When this millennial couple are not drinking overpriced coffee, they drape themselves across the interior of a helicopter (rented), ride in a Lamborghini (borrowed), and strut about, chins raised, in pinstripe suits (holding something so risibly quaint that it has come back in vogue: hardcover books). In one pastoral take, the pair sport spectacularly colorful robes against the backdrop of the Jokhang Temple. It takes a moment for the casual viewer to realize that this is not simply another imaginative costume change but a display of cultural and ethnic heritage. The newlyweds are beautiful and urbane; they are also Tibetan.
Gerong Phuntsok and Dawa Drolma, the most visible couple on the Chinese Internet this month, live in Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan, which shares a border with Tibet. Drolma, the twenty-seven-year-old bride-to-be, posted their stylish snaps on April 11th. In less than four hours, the album had been shared more than a hundred thousand times. By the third day, the photos were being circulated by eighty per cent of users on China’s most popular messaging app, WeChat. When Xinhua, the state news agency, picked up on the sensational spread, it pronounced Phuntsok and Drolma the “most blessed bride and groom in the entire country”—with mouse clicks and thumb taps, evidently, constituting a form of modern benediction.
The couple’s comeliness is incontestably part of their viral appeal. But, as thousands of online commenters, news outlets, and the couple themselves acknowledge, the interest in their album is due in large part to the novelty of the idea that Tibetans can comfortably inhabit such disparate worlds. Indeed, interspersed among the Hollywood glamour shots are images of Phuntsok and Drolma prostrating themselves in front of the Budala Palace, wearing beads and braids and shearling jackets. With implements that their grandparents would once have used, they fetch water, serve each other butter tea, pray, and feed livestock. When asked by reporters to comment on why their photos have become such a phenomenon, Phuntsok mused that he and Drolma may represent the thousands of young people from ethnic minorities who have left their hometowns to pursue a “cosmopolitan life.” “Some chose to return to tradition after feeling a void in the heart,” he said. “As we fight for our dreams, some of us get lost. So we wanted to say with the photos: stick to your beliefs.”
But what should those beliefs be in a world rife with contradictions: between rooted traditions and economic necessity, individual desire and community imperative, the world where you grew up and the world where you might hope to grow old? Since the mid-nineties, ambitious Tibetan youths from the hinterlands have been migrating to boomtown hubs within China such as Chengdu, Beijing, and Shanghai. And few Tibetans—no matter where they live—remain immune to the economic pressures and political dictates that impinge on their marginalized way of life. Fewer still escape the cultural encroachment of ethnic Han entrepreneurs and the market economy. The regional capital of Lhasa, a holy city, has been transformed into a consumerist mecca. Tens of thousands of visitors arrive annually, not for pilgrimages but for escapist vacations.
The perception among many urban Chinese, bolstered by government propaganda, has been that Tibetans are a primitive people in need of rescue. Ever since the Communists ostensibly liberated Tibet from Western imperialists and repurposed the region as another Chinese province, Tibet has been regarded as an impoverished backwater enfeebled by feudal bondage. During the most-watched program on Chinese television, the annual lunar-festival variety show, Tibetan performers were often perfunctorily trotted out in their traditional garb in a token celebration of ethnic harmony. Their appearance had the reverse effect, of breeding estrangement and falsity, the idea that they were truly “the other.”
Phuntsok and Drolma’s album—comprised of eighty-eight photos taken in Lhasa, Chengdu, and Thailand—seems to abolish this idea of “the other.” Tibetans, the photos suggest, are just like us! Yet, like paparazzi snaps, very few of the pictures allude to the actual, lived experience of thriving, or merely surviving, in an alienating city. None were shot near the couple’s actual home, or, as it were, tell their story. Phuntsok is a thirty-one-year-old college graduate with a respectable position in advertising; he is solidly part of the rising white-collar class. While his profession might go some way toward explain his ability to create a glossy spread, his salary hardly accommodates shopping sprees at Ferragamo. His wife, Dolma, is the daughter of a family in the mountainous county of Maerkang. After studying singing in her home town and meeting Phuntsok, she moved to Chengdu, where she found a job at a shopping Web site selling handmade ornaments, a position that presumably does not require pinstripe suits on a daily basis. Rather than being on a luxury honeymoon, Phuntsok was on a trip for his company when the Thailand photos—which show the couple in azure waters, inches from a speedboat—were taken. Likewise, the romantic scenes of their traditional Tibetan life were cinematic and elaborately staged productions. Of course, we don’t live that way anymore, Phuntsok has admitted.
Wedding albums are an inherently airbrushed genre, not documentaries. But Phuntsok’s adeptness at the craft speaks to the way in which he and Drolma have, perhaps, become more assimilated than they think, flawlessly adopting the signature affect of city slickers: conspicuous consumption. It is an affect ritualized into performance, like the performances enacted every day in Chinese TV commercials and Internet promotions, and on highway billboards, where affluence is equated with influence and artifice earns cultural currency. The most troubling part of the viral success of the photos is the way in which they inadvertently peddle the idea of an easy sympathy between cosmopolitan opulence and the complicated business of preserving a distinct ethnic identity. Drolma posted her pictures on the same day a forty-seven-year-old Tibetan nun burned herself to death, the hundred and thirty-eighth to do so in the past five years, and a fact that noticeably didn’t gain much traction on social media.
Phuntsok and Drolma did not elect to be the symbolic vision of young, promising Tibetans everywhere, but the speed with which they became spokespeople says something about a China where optics supersede sustained scrutiny. Indeed, even the overwhelmingly positive online reaction to their exhibition reveals ignorance and deeply ingrained bigotry. “The girl is pretty, but the Tibetan dark skin detracts from her beauty,” a college student from Xian wrote, while an account executive in Changsha proclaimed that “a few rich Tibetans hardly means the whole lot is sophisticated.”
A photo taken against the iconic backdrop of the Potala Palace received the refrain repeated most often: the hashtag #TibetIstheNewestWeddingHotspot!, followed by some version of the questions “Who is their photographer and how much does he charge?” As it turns out, the young man who took the photos did so for free. He is a childhood friend of Phuntsok, and his name is He Di; he, too, left for the big city at an early age. “If we didn’t leave our home town to pursue our dreams, what would our life be?” |
Kids for Ron Paul
We wrote earlier this week about the fading youth enthusiasm for Obama -- among the under-16 set, that is. And new poll of pre-teen New Hampshire students offers some unscientific support for the anecdotes we've been hearing.
Also, the kids' new apparent favorite? Ron Paul.
The Texas congressman took first place in the Kids Primary, a poll of fifth- and sixth-graders at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire. The poll included about 250 students from around the state who visited St. Anselm to learn about the importance of the New Hampshire primary. (It is, just perhaps, possible that that Paulites are as zealous about insisting their kids participate in such things as they are in other, equally relevant straw polls.)
Romney, the current New Hampshire frontrunner, came in fourth behind Bachmann and Cain on the GOP side. And though students had the option of voting Democratic, only 39 out of the 250 chose to cast their vote for Obama.
We'll be keeping an eye on the kid vote as the campaign progresses.Montenegro v Ukraine
While England could take encouragement from their draw in Brazil on Sunday, reality will intervene if Montenegro beat Ukraine and move five points above them at the top of Group H, thereby increasing the chances that Roy Hodgson's side will have to go through the play-offs to reach the finals. Montenegro will be confident that they will have enough against a Ukraine side that drew 0-0 in a friendly against Cameroon on Sunday, although it is not necessarily the case that a victory for the visitors would suit England. It would leave them a point behind England, whom they host in Kiev in September. A draw would be handy.
Belgium v Serbia
Caution is often advisable when talk of golden generations arises but it is understandable that there is considerable excitement about a Belgium squad that contains Vincent Kompany, Marouane Fellaini and Eden Hazard. The potential is vast and they are closing in on a first appearance at a major tournament since the 2002 World Cup, although they will do well to hold off the challenge of their closest rivals in Group A, Croatia, whom they lead on goal difference. The two sides do not meet until October and both have winnable home matches on Friday night. While Croatia are likely to beat Scotland, Belgium need to be at their best against Serbia and their manager, Marc Wilmots, has a big decision to make in attack. He started Romelu Lukaku instead of Christian Benteke in the friendly against USA last week, only for Benteke to come off the bench and score twice in a 4-2 win. Benteke or Lukaku? It is one of the more enviable selection dilemmas a manager could face. Perhaps the answer is to play both.
Albania v Norway
It might not contain the most formidable collection of sides but Group E does offer a certain intrigue. Switzerland are top but they are being chased hard by Albania and Iceland, who are both two points behind the group leaders. Neither Albania nor Iceland have qualified for a tournament finals before but, with nine points from five games, both are in with a chance of making the play-offs at least. While Iceland are at home to Slovenia, who are bottom of the group, Albania host Norway, whom they beat 1-0 in March. If they can win again against Norway, who are only two points behind the pair, the dream could be on.
Austria v Sweden
Zlatan Ibrahimovic was in good form after Sweden's friendly win over Macedonia on Monday, shrugging off questions about fans who invaded the pitch after the final whistle. "It's OK," Sweden's captain said. "They just wanted a hug." Perhaps they were just delighted to have seen a goal. Sweden had come into the match having drawn 0-0 with the Republic of Ireland and Slovakia but a fine performance from Alex Kacaniklic, who scored the only goal, means they will face Austria with their spirits high. Predictably Germany have run away with Group C, meaning that Austria, Sweden and Republic of Ireland (who host Faroe Islands) have been left to scrap over second place; the three sides are level on points, although Sweden have a game in hand on the other two. It could be a defining evening.
Portugal v Russia
As usual, Portugal have been busy making a mess of qualifying and Paulo Bento's side find themselves in third place in Group F, behind both Russia and Israel. Although they are only a point behind Russia and trail Israel on goal difference, they have played two games more than the group leaders and their hopes of automatic qualification will surely be over if they fail to beat Fabio Capello's side in Lisbon. They have already been beaten once by Russia, losing 1-0 in Moscow in October, and a similar result would put them in a precarious position. What is it with Portugal? There is so much talent, which was demonstrated by their excellent performances at Euro 2012, and yet they remain so frustrating.
Bolivia v Venezuela
Venezuela might have made it to the semi-finals of the Copa América in 2011, losing on penalties to Paraguay, but they have never appeared at a World Cup finals. Now, though, their time could finally be approaching. César Farías's side are in fifth place in their qualifying group, which would be enough for them to enter an inter-continental play-off, but they are behind Chile only on goal difference.
Latvia v Bosnia
For Bosnia-Herzegovina, it must be starting to feel real. They are only five matches away from reaching their first international finals. Having beaten Greece 3-1 in March, they lead Fernando Santos's side by three points at the top of Group G and they do not have to play them again. However, they do have to play away three times, starting with their trip to Latvia. How they fare in Riga will tell us whether they are able to handle the pressure caused by raised expectations.
Czech Republic v Italy
One of the Czech Republic's most famous victories came when they beat Italy 2-1 at Euro 96, a win that set them on their way to the final, which they lost 2-1 to Germany after Oliver Bierhoff's golden goal. Their current side is nowhere near as talented as the one that was so admired by neutrals from 1996 to 2004 but now they need to emulate Pavel Nedved, Patrik Berger and Karel Poborsky if they are to keep their qualification hopes alive. This is their game in hand on second-placed Bulgaria, who they trail by two points, and it is one that they desperately need to win given that they still have to visit both Bulgaria and Italy, the group leaders.
Sudan v Ghana
The format for qualifying in Africa means that reputations matter only so much. With only the group winners progressing to the third and final phase, several big sides are in danger of missing out and in Group D, it is a battle between Zambia, who won the Africa Cup of Nations in 2012, and Ghana, who made history by reaching the last eight of the 2010 World Cup. Zambia beat Ghana 1-0 last June and lead the Black Stars by a point. They do not meet again until the final group match in September and neither side can afford too many slip-ups between now and then.
Argentina v Colombia
It is first against third and Lionel Messi (if he is fit) against Radamel Falcao in Buenos Aires on Saturday. There should be goals. Argentina should be able to relax, secure in the knowledge that nothing should stop them winning the South American group, while Colombia have a game in hand over their nearest challengers, Chile and Venezuela, whom they lead by four points. For a side that have been tipped as dark horses for next summer's tournament, this is a test that should indicate whether or not Colombia's challenge should be taken seriously.Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Fouad Twal leads Christmas day mass in the Church of Nativity, traditionally believed by Christians to be the birthplace of Jesus Christ, in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)
Jerusalem Patriarch Fouad Twal has offered some words of peace and reconciliation in the wake of Israel's redoubled offensive in Gaza.
Speaking with the Catholic News Service in Washington, Twal said that though he condemned Hamas' actions, Israel should amend its strategy in Gaza and consider the longterm repercussions of the continued unrest.
"We cannot punish all the population because you do not agree with Hamas," Twal said. "We have hundreds and hundreds of killed people, innocent people, 80 percent innocent."
Twal intimated that the scale of the attacks on both sides was not comparable, arguing that many Israelis have access to better safety measures than their Palestinian counterparts.
"Remember [Hamas'] rockets: They make noise, they make fear, they never killed one person... In Gaza, when [Israelis] strike, there is no shelter. The Israeli people are happy to have bomb shelters, and they can go escape when they want. Meanwhile, in Gaza, we have nothing. No shelters, and they are in the street."
Twal's patriarchate, which CNS notes is similar to an archdiocese, includes Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan and Cyprus. He urged leaders to find a solution that involved dialogue, saying that it is "better to find another way to look for peace" than through military action.
"It is better to be good neighbors forever than to be enemies forever," Twal told CNS. "Peace is for all."
Twal also offered words of advice for those concerned about the situation in Gaza. He recommended "the three P's," which stand for prayer, pilgrimage and projects. Chief among these, he said, was prayer. "We ask you to pray for us, to pray for this peace."
With his message of peace Twal added his voice to a faint but growing contingent of faith leaders reaching across religious lines to call for dialogue and reconciliation. Jerusalem papal representative Archbishop Giuseppe Lazzarotto said the deaths in Gaza were "not acceptable" and that “stakeholders must be helped and should be brought to the negotiating table.”
On Tuesday July 15 interfaith leaders used the hashtag #HungryForPeace to launch a daylong fast for peace in the Middle East, which coincided with the Jewish fast day, the 17th of Tammuz, and the onset of three week's mourning for the destruction of the two Jerusalem Temples.
Several members of the U.K.-based National Council of Imams and Rabbis also released a statement urging leaders from all sides to cooperate in finding a peaceful solution.Thanks to the efforts of NASA and various other space agencies from around the world, we’ve learned more about Mars in the past decade or so than scientists ever could have dreamed. We know a lot about what it’s made of, what’s there now and what may have been there in the distant past, but some pretty head-scratching questions still remain. Now, what scientists once thought was evidence of water having once flowed over the surface of the planet is once again being questioned, as it might not be so easily explained.
Dark, wavy lines on the slopes of several martian craters had once been written off as the result of subsurface water running down at an angle thanks to gravity. New research published in the journal Nature Geoscience throws that all into question, and suggests that water might not have been involved at all. As it turns out, the patterns might actually simply be a byproduct of flowing sand.
Mars is a dusty, sandy place, and sand has a habit of acting like a fluid when it’s at its most dry. The darkened streaks in the martian craters, called “recurrent slope lineae,” could have been created by water, but new research conducted using high resolution images captured by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reveals that the interior slopes of the craters are steep enough to have produce the flows with dry sand as well.
Evidence, including the fact that the odd flows aren’t present on shallower slopes, seems to support the study’s primary theory, as does the fact that the planet is so incredibly dry today. There’s also the possibility that water and seasonal moisture is indeed somehow involved in the process, but not in the way that was originally theorized. Whatever the case, the researchers hedge their bets by suggesting that whatever process formed the flows is likely unique to Mars itself, rather than something that we’d see replicated here on present day Earth.A A
SEATTLE (AP) - King County prosecutors have accused the former interim police chief of Algona of stealing more than $7,000 from a youth program.
The 43-year-old Lee Gaskill, of Bonney Lake, was charged on Tuesday with first-degree theft and abuse of office. He was arrested in March and released from custody without being charged.
Charging documents says Gaskill used money from the South Valley Explorers Program for groceries, a microwave and other items not intended for the youth program. Prosecutors allege he opened a secret bank account in which he deposited donations. They also accuse him of interfering with the investigation, including shredding documents.
Gaskill's attorneys, Jim David and Alan Harvey, say the investigation was seriously flawed and tainted. They also said in a statement that Gaskill "will move forward with the hope of fairness in the system."
Gaskill served as interim police chief of the city of 3,000 near Auburn before being removed in February.Landon Cassill self-engineering a way to NASCAR success Feb 23, 2017; Daytona Beach, FL, USA; NASCAR Cup Series driver Landon Cassill (34) before the Can-Am Duel at Daytona 1 at Daytona International Speedway. Mandatory Credit: Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports
Chapter 1:
As the sun rose in a cloudless sky on Port Orange, Fla., the serene silence of a February morning was broken by the flap of legs hitting the surface of the water at the Port Orange YMCA. Cedar Rapids native and Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series driver Landon Cassill was getting in an early-morning workout alongside his dad, Roger Cassill — a world champion triathlete — and Tim Phillips — a Team USA swimmer who competed in the last U.S. Olympic trials. Cassill finished the third of three 400m warmups and held the wall of the pool, looking at his fitness watch to check his pace. Phillips, a lane over, finished a lap at the same time. He popped up and looked over at Cassill and joked, “Man, swimming sucks.” Cassill laughed and responded, “Right?” before kicking off for the next part of his workout. There wasn’t really time for too much banter — both because the workout demanded a short rest, but also because of a new idea Cassill has that’s much broader. What if there was a way to cut out wasted time? What if there was a way for a person to engineer the last component to a racecar that hadn’t yet been over-engineered — the driver themselves? What if there was a way to reconfigure a weeklong schedule to fit in testing that others aren’t doing? What if there was a way to write race reports that would transform the feedback a team gets and from which a driver can learn? That’s the 2017 Cassill has planned — answering those questions — and the roots run deep to a place some might have shrank from. “I can confidently say the inspiration from a lot of these things is the fear of being irrelevant,” Cassill said. “Three years ago when I decided to become a real athlete instead of just calling myself one, the inspiration there was, ‘I’m tired of blaming my car for everything.’ We were starting and parking, running used tires. It was no secret. What good would I be doing by telling people, ‘We suck because my car is no good,’ you know? We knew that. So that’s when I knew I needed to get to work. “That’s the inspiration for me — the taste of irrelevance.”
Landon Cassill (01) walks to his trailer arrives from Pocono during the second practice for the NASCAR Nationwide Series 6th Annual US Cellular 250 at Iowa Speedway in Newton on Friday, August 1, 2014. Cassill is competing in both the Nationwide race in Newton on Saturday and the Sprint Cup race on Sunday at Pocono Raceway in Pennsylvania. (Cliff Jette/The Gazette-KCRG TV9)
Chapter 2: Engineering himself
Being an endurance athlete no longer is enough. There’s been a tangible benefit to being in good enough shape to swim 1.2 miles, ride a bike 56 miles and then run 13.1 miles (a half-marathon) in a single Ironman 70.3 race. It’s helped Cassill — as it has seven-time Cup champion Jimmie Johnson, and others — physically withstand the rigors of driving a racecar. It’s also helped his public image; gaining him national media attention and sponsors. Particularly Johnson’s effect on endurance training has made the practice trickle to many more drivers, but there are still plenty, as Cassill put it, “who wake up Monday morning and go golfing.” Now, though, there are steps to be taken to make sure the endurance training isn’t just vanity. Cassill wants to tap into what affects reaction time and mental fatigue in the racecar. Sitting in a simulator for four or eight hours, running lap after lap, Cassill said he knows better what losing focus or getting tired does in a controlled environment. His mental and physical fatigue leads to the specificity and clarity of feedback to crew chief Donnie Wingo. It’s all a domino effect. Cassill is trying to control when the dominoes fall. “Instead of just writing a race report, I’ve restructured the way I write race reports to quantify my feelings about the changes or about how the car felt in a way that the team can trace the trends of what I felt,” Cassill said. “I’ve discovered a lot of things, I feel like, in the simulator over the past two years — as the simulators we use develop and become more relevant — I’ve noticed a lot of things in the simulator that I feel like are variables; that the driver is a variable of. “I’ve seen the effects of that and how it relates to my ability to give feedback on my lap times and my ability to feel what’s going on and my focus. You kind of have to snap yourself back into it and things like that. That’s a little bit of a part of this evolution.” Being able to focus so intensely on a new approach to race preparation required a total re-evaluation of how Cassill spent the time between the end of one race and the beginning of another. Adding more things to a schedule that already is pretty darn full can be taxing on a young family. He and his wife, Kaitlin, had “kind of a team meeting,” where they said, “‘This is how we accomplish these goals and still have family time.’” Things aren’t scheduled after 5 p.m. during the week. The impromptu dinners and trips to see buddies at Late Model shops nearby have been almost completely cut out. Cassill said he filled a 4x6-foot white board in his office with everything “I need to do, think I should do; have done to be a better racecar driver.” That includes everything from endurance training to things like the driver’s meeting on Sundays. When he got that white board full, he started erasing things that weren’t absolutely necessary. Efficiency is king in most sports, and that’s what Cassill was after. “I started looking at the gaps in my schedule, and I said, ‘OK, here’s where I have room left to revisit this list of things I can do to be a better racecar driver,’” Cassill said. “I kind of found a group of a handful of things that I felt like I could fit into my weekly routine that I felt like are of the highest priority that would have the highest impact to make me a better racecar driver.” Roger Cassill leans on a theory in his triathlon training that if he can be mentally tougher than his fellow athletes, that’s where he has the biggest edge. His son believes that wholeheartedly, and it’s on the list of the many things they discuss when they speak daily. Cassill didn’t share the entirety of his new approach because he can’t give away what he feels like is an advantage he might find over the other drivers in the Cup garage. Still, a lot of it is information that’s out there — albeit information many aren’t using. It’s tapping into the gray areas that are left where Cassill believes he’ll make the gains he wants. “There’s a lot of science that proves that the brain limits the body of its last 10 percent of potential performance. You can improve your performance potential as an athlete by a couple percent without actually improving your fitness — just by raising the ceiling of your neurological limitations,” Cassill said. “Whether you’re an endurance athlete and you’re helping push harder for longer or, in my opinion, as a racecar driver, allowing your reaction times to stay at an elite level for longer. It’s all very unproven, though, especially when it comes to racecar drivers. This is a journey nobody has gone down. It’s why I feel like I keep some of it close to the chest, to a degree.”
Cedar Rapids native Landon Cassill talks with his dad, Roger, during Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice at Daytona International Speedway on Friday, Feb, 24, 2017. (Jeremiah Davis/The Gazette)
Chapter 3: Gains to be made
There’s a scientific side to all this, and a psychological side. The threshold of a person’s brain to either limit or allow a high level of performance varies from person to person. What fatigues someone mentally also varies. Dan McGehee, director of the Human Factors and Vehicle Safety Research Division of the UI Public Policy Center, leads research with the National Advanced Driving Simulator (NADS) in Iowa City. While the primary focus for NADS is day-to-day traffic safety, McGehee and his fellow researchers deal with what distracts and fatigues drivers on the road, and that translates — albeit on a much more concentrated level — to what Cassill deals with in the racecar. McGehee highlighted the fact that Cassill is like many elite athletes who use repetitive practice to become an expert. He said simulator testing can be extremely beneficial, but “one of the things that’s a limitation of any simulator — and I don’t know if theirs (in North Carolina) is set up more as an interactive or more of a game — but one thing is you have to drive the same track and the randomness may not be there.” "He’s making it work for him. Having all the advantages might even work against you sometimes. You have all the advantages and get complacent. This guy is hungry. He wants to get there." - Steve DeVries Sports psychologist All the training in the world is going to fall short of experiencing the actual effects of being in the racecar. “The environmental conditions are obviously different in a simulator compared to in a racing condition, especially in places like Daytona or places where the ambient temperature brings a lot of heat. It’s extremely intense,” McGehee said. “The noise, the vibration; the adrenaline that is moving in a driver is enormous. It’s one of the most physically and mentally taxing sports out there in terms of sustained attention demand required to operate this huge machine at 200 mph for literally hours.” Steve DeVries, a professor of Kinesiology and sports psychologist at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, said Cassill’s approach is a solid one. While he wasn’t as firm in the science behind Cassill’s 10 percent theory, DeVries said it doesn’t really matter if the science behind that is accurate or not. If Cassill believes that there’s 10 percent to be gained, he’ll do everything he can to gain it. DeVries said belief in that kind of thing “helps you understand it’s all about process,” and that while “I don’t know of any neurological or physiological research to explain something like that, I think we use those devices as a natural thing to help keep ourselves on track to buy into the idea that you can always get better or always improve.” Every bit of what Cassill is doing to achieve the desired improvements matters, DeVries said. Routine has to be consistent. Getting rid of or adapting superstitions can even be a factor. Using imagery — distraction imagery, where you imagine yourself on a beach, or mastery imagery, where you imagine yourself powerful and successful — is a factor. Self-talk; convincing yourself of success is a factor. It all builds to strengthening the mind. “Mental toughness has been studied a lot, and it seems like the thing that’s mentioned the most by elite athletes is the thing that helps them with mental toughness is belief in their own ability,” DeVries said. “If they believe that and believe they’re operating at 90 percent, they’re going to work their tails off to get the extra 10 percent. I think someone like him; he doesn’t win every race he participates in, so he’s got to be resilient. He’s got to be able to bounce back with increased determination the next time out and not let any kind of adversity affect him and get in the way next time he competes. “He’s making it work for him. Having all the advantages might even work against you sometimes. You have all the advantages and get complacent. This guy is hungry. He wants to get there.”
Feb 18, 2017; Daytona Beach, FL, USA; NASCAR Cup Series driver Landon Cassill (34) during practice for the Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway. Mandatory Credit: Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports
Chapter 4: Dare to be relevantShare Your Team's Schedule Baylor Twitter Facebook Iowa State Twitter Facebook Kansas Twitter Facebook Kansas State Twitter Facebook Oklahoma Twitter Facebook Oklahoma State Twitter Facebook TCU Twitter Facebook Texas Twitter Facebook Texas Tech Twitter Facebook West Virginia Twitter Facebook
For the first time in conference history, nearly every Big 12 conference game will be televised nationally, with all 90 league contests slated for national or regional broadcast in 2014-15.
Currently, a total of 87 conference matchups (96.7 percent) will be televised on a national platform - an ESPN network, CBS Sports or the Longhorn Network. In addition, the remaining three contests are slated for FOX Regional telecasts. The schedule will also feature the first Friday night conference game in Big 12 history when Texas Tech travels to Baylor to conclude regular season play for those two squads on March 6.
The Big 12 is the only one of its peer conferences to play a full double round-robin schedule in basketball in order to determine one true champion. The league sent a nation's-best seven teams to the NCAA Tournament a year ago and was rated as the No. 1 conference in the country in the RPI during the regular season. The Big 12 also had more top 25 teams last season than any other conference, with seven rated in the various early national top 25 polls that have already been released for the 2014-15 campaign.
The televised conference games are being carried as part of a multi-year agreement with ESPN that runs through the 2024-25 season. No fewer than 100 games overall (conference and non-conference) will air annually. In men's basketball, the Big 12 was the first conference to be guaranteed three weekly telecast windows on ESPN or ESPN2, which each reach approximately 100 million homes, respectively.
Two Big 12 conference games have been selected for broadcast on CBS. Kansas at Texas will be part of the network’s schedule on January 24, followed by Baylor at KU on February 14. The Jayhawks and Longhorns will be making regular-season appearances on CBS for the 20th and 13th consecutive seasons, respectively. It is the second time in the last three campaigns that Baylor has had a regular-season contest on CBS.
This season, a number of Big 12 contests will also be carried on ESPNEWS - which will be showing more college basketball than ever before in 2014-15. Both ESPNEWS and ESPNU are available in more than 74 million households nationwide.
Eight of the 10 league squads will tip off the conference schedule on Saturday, January 3. The Big 12 will also continue its spot in ESPN's traditional "Big Monday" lineup, beginning on January 5 when Oklahoma travels to Texas.
The Big 12 had 70 percent of its teams in the NCAA field last season - just the fifth time in NCAA history that a conference has sent at least 70 percent of its teams. It marked just the second time that a league has had 70 percent and all were single-digit seeds.
2014-15 Men's Basketball Composite Schedule
Dates, times and television listings subject to change
All times are Central.UPDATE on Thursday, November 9: The Los Angeles Police Department says it is not investigating the claims made by Corey Feldman because the statute of limitations has expired.
"The alleged accordance is out of statue and Robbery/Homicide have no avenues to pursue the case," an LAPD spokesperson told E! News.
________________________
The LAPD has confirmed to E! News that it is looking into recent sexual abuse claims made by actor Corey Feldman, who vowed last week on the Today show to name every single one of his alleged predators in his Truth Campaign film.
On Tuesday, LAPD Media Relations told E! News that Corey came in and filed a report and that the LAPD will be looking into the incident.
On Monday, the actor, who has been on a mission to "expose the truth," tweeted, "I JUST COMPLETED A FORMAL SIT DOWN INTERVIEW W @LAPDHQ SPECIAL DIVISION, & GAVE THEM ALL THE INFO I KNOW!"
"OFFICIALLY THE 1ST FORMAL REPORT EVER TAKEN ON ANY OF MY CASES, AS SBPD NEVER FOLLOWED UP BACK IN 1993, & HAS NO RECORD OF MY COMPLAINTS," wrote the actor.
The 46-year-old former child star added, "THE LAPD WILL BEGIN AN OFFICIAL INVESTIGATION NOW! THINGS R HEATING UP, IM PRAYING 4 SAFETY! PLEASE HELP."The NFL Insiders crew talks about how LB Danny Trevathan's familiarity with Bears coach John Fox led him to sign with Chicago, as well as how he immediately improves their defense. (1:14)
CHICAGO -- The Bears made their first big move in free agency, agreeing to a four-year contract with Denver Broncos inside linebacker Danny Trevathan.
Trevathan's deal is worth $24.5 million with $12 million guaranteed, a source told ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter.
Entering his fifth NFL season, Trevathan provides a much-needed upgrade to anchor the middle of the Bears' defense. He played three years in Denver under Bears coach John Fox and has a built-in comfort level with Chicago's 3-4 defensive scheme.
The Bears struggled to establish consistency at inside linebacker last year, relying on a rotating cast of characters that included former first-round pick Shea McClellin and Christian Jones.
General manager Ryan Pace said at the NFL scouting combine that the club has some interest in re-signing McClellin, who is also an unrestricted free agent after the team declined his fifth-year option.
Trevathan had a bounce-back season in 2015 after he spent much of the 2014 season out of the lineup with three separate injuries to his left leg. After the third injury, Trevathan went on injured reserve.
He led the team in tackles in two of the past three seasons, topping 100 tackles in those two years.
But he started all but one game in the regular season in 2015 and all three of the team's postseason games.
Trevathan is a three-down linebacker who has experience in the 3-4 scheme the Broncos played this past season as well as the 4-3 scheme Fox and then-defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio used in his first three seasons with the team.
Danny Trevathan, who signed a four-year deal with the Bears, has shown he can play in multiple defensive fronts,which will be a major improvement to Chicago's front line. Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images
As Trevathan has put it: "I feel like I can play anywhere anybody needs me to play."
Trevathan, who turns 26 on March 24, was the Broncos' sixth-round pick in 2012.
Cornerback Tracy Porter, who signed a one-year contract with the Bears last summer, will stay in Chicago after coming to a three-year agreement with the team. Porter's deal is worth $16.5 million, according to ESPN and media reports.
Limited to three games in an injury-plagued one-year stint in Washington in 2014, Porter, 29, recovered to become arguably Chicago's most effective cornerback last season. He led the team with 22 pass breakups.
Porter's crowning achievement happened in Chicago's upset victory at Green Bay when he became the only player to record four pass breakups against Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers in one game.
Chicago continued its free-agent influx by plucking right tackle Bobby Massie from the Arizona Cardinals on a three-year deal.
Massie, 26, started 14 games for the Cardinals last season after being suspended for the first two for violating the NFL's personal conduct policy, stemming from a DUI arrest in January 2015.
With 2015 first-round pick D.J. Humphries waiting in the wings for the Cardinals, Massie was credited with giving up 39 quarterback hurries, seven sacks and six hits last season.
ESPN Bears reporter Jeff Dickerson, Broncos reporter Jeff Legwold, Cardinals reporter Josh Weinfuss and Josina Anderson contributed to this report.If you want all of Halo 4's UK pre-order extras, you'll need to buy the game from eight separate shops.
Game shop chains GAME and HMV got the best loot.
Putting down money at GAME will get you a downloadable Blue Circuit Armour Skin, an Arctic Weapon Skin and 6 specialisations for use in Halo 4's Infinity Multiplayer mode.
A pre-order at HMV will unlock a downloadable Locus Helmet, Purple Spartan Warrior Armour and Xbox Live Unicom Avatar Armour, but only if ordered in-store.
Supermaket behemoth Tesco is offering a Halo 4 t-shirt (no word on whether its for your avatar body or your actual body) and a downloadable Black Raptor Armour Skin.
Amazon is providing a downloadable Gold Web Armour Skin, Bulletproof Emblem and Spartan Emblem.
Blockbuster gets you a downloadable Xbox Live Spartan Warrior Avatar.
Play.com will give you a downloadable Deadeye Helmet.
ShopTo has a downloadable Assassin Emblem.
Still reading? Grainger Games has a downloadable Red Pulse Armour Skin.
Halo 4 parks in the UK on 6th November. There will be a Limited Edition Halo 4 Xbox 360 console that makes noises, too.Snapshot updated with finals: New series premieres: CBS’ 9JKL (1.6 Live+same day rating in 18-49, 8.2 million viewers), Fox’s The Gifted (1.5, 4.9 million); Week 2 of new series: ABC’s The Good Doctor (2.2, even; 10.9 million), NBC’s The Brave (1.1, down -15%, 5.2 million), CBS’ Me, Myself & I (1.0, -41%; 5.2 million); Returning series premieres: Fox’s Lucifer (1.1, 3.9 million)
ABC
UPDATED: Following a strong Live+Same day premiere and big Live+3 gains, ABC’s medical drama The Good Doctor (2.2 in 18-49, 10.9 million after a downward adjustment from a 2.4 in the fast nationals) delivered an impressive 100% Week 2 hold to make a solid case for an early full-season pickup. (UPDATE 2 PM: ABC has given the medical drama a full-season order.) The Good Doctor, starring Freddie Highmore, matched the fast national and final for its series premiere last Monday. (Both times, ABC’s early numbers were inflated by local NFL preemptions.) The mediocal drama once again built impressively onto its Dancing With the Stars lead-in (1.4, even with last Monday, 9.1 million), rising by +50% in the demo.
CBS
After a flying start with a big return for The Big Bang Theory and big launch for spinoff Young Sheldon, CBS’ comedy block suffered major Week 2 slump. Big Bang (3.2 after a +0.2 upward adjustment in the finals, 14.0 million) set the tone, down -22% from its eventful Season 11 premiere. It was followed by the debut of new multi-camera comedy series 9JKL (1.6, 8.2 million viewers), which marked the lowest-rated CBS comedy premiere behind Big Bang. Because Big Bang was lower than it has been when launching other shows, lead-in retention is a more accurate barometer. 9JKL, starring Mark Feuerstein, held onto 50% of the Big Bang demo lead-in vs. 72% for Kevin Can Wait and 59% for The Great Indoors, the two new multi-camera comedies to premiere behind the sitcom juggernaut last season.
With 9JKL vs. the Young Sheldon preview last week at 8:30 PM, the wheels fell off for the 9-10 PM portion of CBS’ comedy block. The rebooted Kevin Can Wait with new female lead Leah Remini (1.3 after a downward adjustment, 6.7 million) was down -43% in the demo from its season premiere last week. In Week 2, Me, Myself & I (1.0, 5.2 million) was down -41% from its demo debut. Drama Scorpion (0.8 after downward adjustment, 5.3) fared a little better in the week-to-week retention department, down -20% in the demo from its season opener last week but that was another Live+same day series low for the action drama, which logged solid DVR bumps in Live+3.
After winning Premiere Monday in both adults 18-49 and total viewers last week, CBS slipped to third place in both categories, with NBC and ABC splitting the honors — NBC topping the demo and ABC the viewership races, respectively.
After a slow start to the season last Monday, NBC’s The Voice (2.6 after upward adjustment, 11.0 million) showed resilience, with its second Monday episode even in the demo from the premiere and the viewership ticking up. At 10 PM, new military drama The Brave (1.1, 5.2 million) was down a modest -0.2, -15% from its premiere demo rating last week but still was not able to take full advantage of its strong lead-in against ABC’s potent The Good Doctor |
his Hezb-e-Islami faction, currently fighting against international and Afghan security forces, has been accused of committing some of the worst human-rights abuses that occurred during Afghanistan's 1990s civil war.
Koran
Ashraf Ghani, a former finance minister and World Bank official, chose the Koran as his symbol.
It is unclear why, exactly, he chose the Koran. But the Western-educated technocrat could be looking to show voters his religious side. Afghanistan is one of the world's most deeply religious and conservative countries and some Afghans could be wary of a candidate with ties to the West.
Ultimately, however, Ghani could have to make another choice. In the past, symbols of cultural, religious, or historical importance have been ruled out on the basis that they could give candidates an unfair advantage.
Afghan Flag
Abdul Rasul Sayyaf is an Egyptian-trained cleric who is credited with bringing leading Al-Qaeda figures -- including former leader Osama bin Laden -- to Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.
He picked the Afghan flag as his symbol, perhaps in an attempt to showcase his patriotism and overcome the perception among voters that he has strong connections with foreigners.
But his choice, too, could be overruled, seeing as the flag is an official symbol of the Afghan state.
Pencil
Qayum Karzai, the older brother of outgoing President Hamid Karzai, has smartly adopted the pencil as his logo.
Qayum is a prominent technocrat who was educated in the United States. He has stressed the important role education can play in developing the country and putting it on the road to prosperity.
Book and Pen
Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister, has also adopted a symbol of education.
Abdullah is a qualified eye surgeon and the 2009 election runner-up has often spoken about the importance of education.
Wheat
Hedayat Amin Arsala, a former finance minister, has gone with wheat, a symbol of abundance and prosperity. Arsala, who was educated in the United States, is an economist by trade. His choice may be designed to show off his economic credentials.Australia: Thousands turn out in support of WikiLeaks, Assange and Manning
By James Cogan
18 March 2011
Close to 2,000 people attended a public meeting at the Sydney Town Hall on Wednesday in support of WikiLeaks’ editor and Australian citizen Julian Assange and alleged American whistleblower, Private Bradley Manning. The meeting was sponsored by Amnesty International and other civil liberties organisations, with the assistance of the Sydney City Council. The large attendance demonstrated the outrage felt by a broad cross-section of the Australian population over the collaboration of the Labor government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard with the US-led persecution of Assange and WikiLeaks.
A section of the audience at Sydney Town Hall
The meeting was proposed and addressed by well-known independent journalist John Pilger. He also invited independent federal MP Andrew Wilkie and civil liberties’ lawyer Julian Burnside to speak.
Pilger has played an important role in Assange’s defence. Last December, he was among a group of prominent figures offering their own resources to meet the onerous £240,000 bail demanded from Assange by a British judge in order to release him from prison. This was under conditions where a legal defence was being prepared against attempts to extradite Assange to Sweden on spurious sex crime charges.
John Pilger
Assange’s defence counsel has argued that such an extradition would be an interim step to his extradition to the United States, where a secret grand jury has reportedly been empanelled to prosecute him on espionage charges.
Pilger began his remarks by citing leaked documents from the British Defence Ministry and the Pentagon, in which WikiLeaks was described as a threat due to its exposure of the secret dealings of government.
The Pentagon document, dated March 2008, called for a campaign to “destroy WikiLeaks’ centre of gravity, its public trust” through “threats of exposure and criminal prosecution.”
Pilger told the audience: “The real threat is not WikiLeaks or Julian Assange, but you. The real threat is you finding out the truth about those who pretend to be democratic, and to act in your interests, and to promote a peaceful world. The real threat is you being able to call your government to account.”
Pilger proceeded to call for the broadest political action in defence of Assange and WikiLeaks. “Unless we make our voices heard now,” he said, “Julian Assange is likely to end up in a Kafkaesque judicial system in the US, which is now so corrupted that not a single detainee since 9/11 has been accorded any redress in America’s courts, including innocent people detained for years and tortured.”
Pilger announced the presence in the front row of the audience of former Guantánamo Bay detainee David Hicks, provoking lengthy, thunderous applause.
David Hicks, who was seized in Afghanistan during the 2001 US invasion, was imprisoned as an “enemy combatant” for six years. He suffered severe abuse and torture, with the full support of the former Howard conservative government in Australia. He only secured his release by pleading guilty to the fabricated terrorism charges levelled against him by a US military court, in exchange for transfer to an Australian prison and a short sentence.
“Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have broken no law and are charged with no crime, and yet it’s clear the Gillard government is trying to do to Assange what Howard did to David Hicks,” Pilger stated. As WikiLeaks began publishing leaked US diplomatic cables, Gillard publicly denounced Assange’s actions as “illegal”, while Attorney-General Robert McClelland declared that the Labor government would cooperate with efforts to prosecute him in the US.
Pilger noted the recent revelations that the Gillard government had gone so far as to secretly investigate whether Assange could be charged with treason under Australian law.
On Monday night, Assange personally confronted Gillard over her support for the WikiLeaks’ witch-hunt, during the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) weekly “Q and A” program. In a live-to-air question via video link, Assange informed Gillard he had evidence her government had supplied information to “foreign powers” about Australians working for or affiliated with WikiLeaks. He asked the prime minister when she “would come clean”. If she did not, Assange asked, “should perhaps the Australian people considering charging you with treason?”
The public challenge to Gillard by Assange provoked a furious reaction from the Murdoch media, which has been at the forefront of attempts to demonise and discredit WikiLeaks in Australia, the US and globally. On Tuesday, Australian columnist Dennis Shanahan denounced Assange as someone “accused of crimes in Sweden and sought for political havoc in the US” and accused the ABC of “television terrorism”.
Pilger informed the audience he had information that Attorney-General McClelland had been briefed that the Swedish charges “stink”. A parliamentary briefing in Canberra was told last week that the behaviour of the leading Swedish figures involved was “highly improper and reprehensible” and “preclude[d] a fair trial”. Pilger said: “The implications for Assange in Sweden are dire.”
Concluding his remarks, Pilger highlighted the immense service that WikiLeaks and Assange had played in bringing to the light of day the secret diplomacy of the US and other governments around the world.
“We have a right to know about these machinations”, he said. “We have a right to know these things, just as the people of Egypt and Tunisia had the right to know about the corruption of their regimes. They acted on that information. Certainly we can be inspired by what others have done fearlessly.”
Andrew Wilkie
Following Pilger’s speech, Andrew Wilkie addressed the meeting. In March 2003, on the eve of the Iraq war, Wilkie resigned his position as an Australian intelligence officer and publicly denounced as lies the claim that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction”. Last year, he was elected as an independent member of the federal parliament. Along with two other independents and a Greens member, he sided with Gillard, enabling Labor to form a minority government. He has nevertheless made occasional criticisms of government actions, including its prejudicial denunciations of Julian Assange.
Wilkie observed that he received support and encouragement from around the country when he denounced Gillard last December for “showing contempt for the rule of law, contempt for presumption of innocence and contempt for freedom of the press.”
He told the audience that one of the factors behind the support for WikiLeaks was concern over censorship. “What we are seeing here with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks,” he said, “is another attempt to censor the internet, which will be to deny it its great strength.”
Wilkie also noted the popular anger over “the way a succession of Australian governments have been prepared to treat Australian citizens.” He pointed out that the compensation recently granted to the other Australian Guantánamo Bay detainee, Mamdouh Habib, was “all the proof we need that that man was treated wrongly and that Australian governments were party to that mistreatment”. David Hicks, Wilkie said, had been “fed into a grinder that has no similarity to any decent justice system.”
Wilkie denounced the Labor government for having shown “no interest” since it won office from the Howard-led conservative parties in “conducting a full and proper inquiry, not into David Hicks, but into the system that treated him the way it did and into the government that allowed it to happen.”
Julian Burnside
The final speaker, lawyer Julian Burnside, declared that Assange and WikiLeaks had “done nothing wrong” in publishing leaked documents. The Gillard government, he said, had “betrayed one of our own citizens.”
Burnside dealt sharply with the political character of the sexual offences Assange is alleged to have committed in Sweden. The extradition efforts had been brought forward alongside agitation in the United States for action against WikiLeaks. “Anyone who thinks the extradition is actually about alleged sexual crimes,” Burnside said, “has been living in sad isolation for too long.”
The speakers were followed by a short question period before Pilger concluded the meeting with an appeal for a continuing campaign in support of Assange and WikiLeaks. His proposed campaign, however, consisted only of exhorting those present to pressure the thoroughly compliant and corporate-controlled media establishment to apply greater oversight and scrutiny of government. As they left Sydney Town Hall, audience members did so without being presented with any political perspective to conduct the type of struggle required to defend democratic rights. Such a struggle must be based on the political independence of the working class from all the parties and organisations of the political establishment, including Labor, the Greens and the trade unions, and grounded on a revolutionary socialist and international program.
One of those in attendance was Natalie, a student from the United States studying Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney.
She told the WSWS that the WikiLeaks exposures had been “a validation of what a lot of people have suspected in the back of their minds, which is that our politicians tend to say one thing in public and in front of the press, and do quite a different thing behind closed doors, when they think no-one’s looking or watching.
“What they’re trying to protect are not the interests of the common people. No matter who is there we have to hold them to a certain level of scrutiny. When we blindly feel that if we just choose the other guy then he will do everything that he said, we see that it’s not true. We elected Obama on ‘hope’ and ‘change’ and we can see right now with Guantánamo Bay and a lot of other issues that not much has changed. I think we are learning these hard lessons today.”Loading... Loading...
The facade is crumbling on all sides. From mainstream media’s illusion of objectivity to the dissolving lie of the mythical “moderate rebel,” what was once a forgone conclusion, is now exceedingly uncertain. As that may sound unsettling, it is indeed a good thing. Truth may be uncomfortable at times, but to avoid it for a comfortable hole in the sand will most certainly lead to a life of control and mitigation. Many would no doubt prefer the “ignorance is bliss” option, and opt to remain under the unseen controlling hand of the deep state. Yet if we maintain this course, that will no longer be an option.
The idea that the US was funding and training ISIS, at one point, was right up there with flat earth theory to the average individual. In the past few years, if one chose to address the obvious contradictions in the “moderate rebel” narrative or point out the clear connections between the US and those they were meant to be fighting, they would be met with the customary denial, insults and anger. Then something changed; shifted. Whether it was a factor beyond our control or the ineptitude of the bumbling corporate media that ultimately pulled down the veil, within the last year primarily, Americans began to wake up; they began to ask questions; they began to see through the lies for the first time in a very long time.
One of the most profound and damning revelations to come of this mass awakening is the fact that the US has been directly funding and training ISIS.
The simple construct that ‘the US is the good guys fighting the bad guys, and the bad guys are ISIS‘ is the foundation on which the entirety of this country’s invasive foreign policy is currently built. It is under the guise of this falsely moral premises that entire countries have been left in ruin for the success and profit of an elite few. All of the countries that have been “saved” and forcefully given that very special brand of American “democracy,” end with complete destabilization and repopulation with terrorist organizations; and were done so on that flimsy construct.
We now know that the entire story is all a massive manipulation. It is possible that when the operation first began that it was driven by good intentions and was working with genuine moderate rebels(whatever that now means) however unlikely and uncharacteristic that may be. If that is the case, at a certain point the US made the conscious decision to continue funding what had become the very thing they were claiming to fight. It is also important to remember that while the US was funding this terrorist organization, there were many attacks on both US soil and abroad, that were either claimed by ISIS, or blamed on ISIS. Either way, that makes the US, at the very least, complicit in the attack of innocent citizens. But sadly, that would be far from the first time. This should make everyone question just about every “fact” that both the mainstream media and the US government hand down as gospel.
Help Us Be The Change We Wish To See In The World.This article is about the video game series. For other uses, see Uncharted (disambiguation)
Uncharted is an action-adventure third-person shooter platform video game series developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for PlayStation consoles. The series follows protagonist Nathan "Nate" Drake (portrayed by Nolan North through voice and motion capture), a charismatic yet obsessive treasure hunter who journeys across the world to uncover various historical mysteries.
The main series began with Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, released on the PlayStation 3 in 2007, followed by its sequels Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (2009), Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (2011), with the final installment, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, released on the PlayStation 4 in 2016. A prequel, Uncharted: Golden Abyss, was released for Sony's PlayStation Vita handheld system in 2011, followed by the card game spin-off Uncharted: Fight for Fortune in 2012. A standalone expansion to the series, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, was released in 2017, with Chloe Frazer as the game's playable protagonist.
All four games in the main series have been widely credited by critics and video game publications for raising the standards of single-player video games, particularly with the series' second installment, Among Thieves, which is considered to be one of the greatest video games of all time. Reviewers have praised the games for their high production values, quality in storytelling, character design and animation, voice acting, realistic graphics, technical innovation, music score, gameplay mechanics, and delivering an enjoyably cinematic gaming experience to players. Critics have likened the series to Hollywood-produced action adventure films, particularly with the Indiana Jones films, and Tomb Raider, which helped pioneer the action-adventure genre in video gaming.
After the release of Uncharted 4, the series had sold over 41 million units, with the fourth installment becoming the highest-selling in the series with over 8.7 million copies sold. The critical and commercial success of the Uncharted games have been pivotal to the success of PlayStation during the seventh and eighth generation of video game consoles, and has helped elevate Naughty Dog's reputation to a highly respected video game developer in the industry.
Setting [ edit ]
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune sees Drake travel to the Amazon and an uncharted island off the coast of South America. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves explores the snow-capped mountain landscapes of the Tibetan Plateau in southernmost China, a museum in Istanbul, the jungles of Borneo and the urban landscapes of Nepal. Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception sees Drake through a number of locations, including the streets of London and Colombia, a château in France, a castle in Syria, a city in Yemen and the sprawling deserts of the Rub' al Khali. Uncharted 4: A Thief's End sees Nate journey to the Rossi estate in Italy, a cathedral in Scotland, several locations in King's Bay, Madagascar and several uncharted islands in the Indian Ocean not too far off from Madagascar.
Gameplay [ edit ]
During combat, the player as Nate (left) can use corners and walls as cover, and then use blind or aimed fire from cover against his opponents.
Gameplay in the Uncharted series is a combination of action-adventure elements and 3D platforming with a third-person perspective. Platforming elements allow Nate to jump, swim, grab and move along ledges, climb and swing from ropes, and perform other acrobatic actions that allow players to make their way through the many challenges that Nate will have to face.[1] Although a wide variety of weapons are present in the game, the player can only carry a sidearm (pistols and the like), a primary weapon such as a rifle or shotgun, and a handful of grenades. These weapons are obtained by picking up weapons dropped by a downed foe or from those scattered around the various maps.
Multiplayer gameplay, both competitive and co-operative, was introduced in the sequel, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. The co-op multiplayer allows up to three players to take the roles of Drake and two other "hero" companions and features missions involving gunfights, platforming, and teamwork-based objectives.[2] Players can also assist their comrades if they become critically injured or if they are grabbed by an enemy.[2] The competitive multiplayer allows a maximum of ten players to play against each other in two teams of five. Six competitive modes are featured: Deathmatch, Plunder, Team Objective, Three Team Deathmatch, Hardcore and Free For All.[3] Deathmatch features two teams of five, with one team acting as heroes and the other as villains. Players can choose their own appropriate character models (such as Drake, Elena, Sully and new characters Tenzin and Chloe for the heroes team). As players accrue points and rank up, they can purchase more skins for both heroes and villains.[3]
Games [ edit ]
Main series [ edit ]
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune [ edit ]
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, the first in the series, combines action-adventure and platform elements with a third-person perspective to chart the journey of protagonist Nathan Drake, supposed descendant of the explorer Sir Francis Drake, as he seeks the lost treasure of El Dorado in South America with the help of journalist Elena Fisher and mentor Victor "Sully" Sullivan. They are pursued relentlessly by pirates led by Eddy Raja and later on by a group of mercenaries led by Gabriel Roman and Atoq Navarro.[4]
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves [ edit ]
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves takes Drake on a journey across Nepal and the Himalayas in a search for the lost city of Shambhala. It reunites most of the cast from the first game, such as Elena Fisher and Victor Sullivan, and introduces the stealth mechanic and new characters: Chloe Frazer, a new love interest who has history with Drake; Harry Flynn, a shifty former partner of Drake; and Zoran Lazarević, a Serbian war criminal and the game's primary antagonist. The second game introduces a multiplayer mode to the series.
Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception [ edit ]
Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception was released in November 2011. The story focuses on Nate's relationship with his mentor and father figure, Victor "Sully" Sullivan, and has him searching for a legendary lost city that will ultimately take him to the Arabian Peninsula and the vast wasteland of the Rub' al Khali Desert, in search of "Iram of the Pillars", also known as the "Atlantis of the Sands". Elena Fisher and Chloe Frazer feature again but with smaller roles, and the game introduces new characters such as Charlie Cutter and Salim, Nate's newest allies, and Katherine Marlowe, Talbot and Rameses who serve as the game's main antagonists.
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End [ edit ]
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End is the fourth installment of the series and the first Uncharted game exclusively developed for the PlayStation 4. It was released on May 10, 2016. After spending several years retired from fortune hunting along with his wife Elena, Nathan gets forced back in the world of thieves when his long-lost—and believed to be dead—older brother, Sam, appears and asks Drake for help. With the help of Victor Sullivan, the two embark on a globe-trotting journey to find and recover the long-lost treasure of notorious pirate Henry Avery. They must compete against their former associate Rafe Adler, who employs the help of Nadine Ross and her private military company Shoreline. Naughty Dog has stated that A Thief's End would be Nathan Drake's final appearance in the series, although Nolan North expressed interest in appearing in future releases, should Sony decide to do so.[5]
Re-releases and spinoffs [ edit ]
Uncharted: Golden Abyss [ edit ]
Uncharted: Golden Abyss is a title for Sony's PlayStation Vita. It was developed by Bend Studio, with development being overseen by Naughty Dog. It was released first in Japan on December 17, 2011. The release date in North America and Europe was February 23, 2012. The game's events take place sometime before those of Drake's Fortune, though developers have stated that it is not a prequel to Drake's Fortune, but rather a separate, original story.[6]
Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection [ edit ]
Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection is a remastered collection of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. It included a voucher for Uncharted 4: A Thief's End's multiplayer beta.[7] It was ported by Bluepoint Games and was released for the PlayStation 4 in October 2015. A PlayStation 4 bundle with the game was also available. Reviews for the set were very positive, with most praising the technical improvements and enhancements across all three games.[8]
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy [ edit ]
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy was released as a standalone expansion to Uncharted 4, and is the first game not to feature protagonist Nathan Drake. Players instead control Chloe Frazer, who seeks the Tusk of Ganesh in the mountains of India in the midst of a civil war, with the help of mercenary Nadine Ross, who previously appeared in Uncharted 4.[9] Frazer and Ross are forced to compete against insurgent leader Asav, the game's antagonist, who is determined to acquire the artifact to ignite a nationwide revolution. They are later joined by Sam Drake, who assists them in foiling Asav. It was released in August 2017 for the PlayStation 4.[10]
Other titles [ edit ]
Uncharted: Fight for Fortune [ edit ]
In November 2012, the Australian Classification Board database showed the rating for a game titled Uncharted: Fight for Fortune, developed by One Loop Games.[11][12] Later that month, it was confirmed that Sony's Bend Studio was developing the game and that it would be an "action-adventure turn-based card game". It was released on December 4, 2012 through PlayStation Network for the Vita.[13]
Uncharted: Fortune Hunter [ edit ]
On May 5, 2016, Sony released a free-to-play game for iOS and Android tie in with the release of the fourth main game.[14][15]
Other media [ edit ]
Uncharted: Drake's Trail [ edit ]
Drake's Trail is a now-defunct 2007 online game. The game was a browser-based game with alternative reality elements. Consisting of ten chapters, the story, serving as a prequel to Drake's Fortune, recounts journalist Elena Fisher hiring a private detective to track down famous treasure hunter Nathan Drake believing he is onto something big. The game was played using a Google Maps plugin to locate game areas within the real world, in conjunction with a Flash Player to explore those fictional locations (such as Drake's apartment) for clues to the next location.
Uncharted: Eye of Indra (motion comic) [ edit ]
On October 23, 2009, Sony Computer Entertainment America released the first of a four-part series adventure called Uncharted: Eye of Indra.[16] It is a prequel to Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. The second part was released on November 25, 2009, while the third and fourth parts released simultaneously on December 7, 2009.[17]
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (motion comic) [ edit ]
A motion comic adaptation of the prologue of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, starting with the discovery of Francis Drake's coffin and up to the first encounter with Gabriel Roman. Uses the same voice clips from the video game.[citation needed]
Uncharted: Drake's Journal – Inside the Making of Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception [ edit ]
Uncharted: Drake's Journal – Inside the Making of Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception is a behind-the-scenes book featuring the motion capture and artwork for Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, written by Nathan Drake voice and mo-cap actor, Nolan North. It features bios of the game's cast and crew at Naughty Dog, as well as QR codes for exclusive video clips of the game.
Uncharted: The Fourth Labyrinth [ edit ]
A novel released in October 2011. The novel is written by Christopher Golden and published by Del Rey Books, and follows the search for Daedalus's Labyrinth, a maze used to hold the Minotaur, a monster from Greek mythology.[18]
Comic book [ edit ]
On July 19, 2011, Sony announced that an Uncharted comic book would be released by DC Comics around the time Uncharted 3 came out. Written by Joshua Williamson, with art by Sergio Sandoval and covers by Adam Hughes, it was released on November 30, 2011, as part of a 6 issue mini series.[19][20] On the story, a quest for the legendary "Amber Room" launches Nathan Drake on a journey to the center of the Earth.[21]
Uncharted: The Board Game [ edit ]
Uncharted: The Board Game is a board game published by Bandai in 2012. It was designed by Hayato Kisaragi and allows between two and four players to compete for treasure and fight enemies.[22]
Film adaptation [ edit ]
In 2008, film producer Avi Arad stated that he was working with a division of Sony to develop the film adaptation of Uncharted.[23] In response to a question posed to Richard Lemarchand, lead game designer of Naughty Dog, on whether he would like to see a film adaptation of Uncharted, he replied "no comment".[24] Since then, Columbia Pictures has confirmed that an Uncharted film is being developed.
The film was at first to be written by Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer and produced by Avi Arad, Charles Roven, and Alex Gartner.[25][26] As of June 30, 2009, it was confirmed that the Uncharted film had been in development for the last year-and-a-half.[27] Nathan Fillion expressed an interest in playing Nathan Drake, and started a campaign on Twitter to encourage fans to support him in the endeavor.[28] In a 2011 interview, Naughty Dog told PlayStation University how close they really were with the development of the movie and that they had trust with all who were working on it.[29]
On October 8, 2010, it was announced by Doug Belgrad and Matt Tolmach, co-presidents of Columbia Pictures, that David O. Russell had been set to write and direct the film, an action-adventure based upon the first game in the series. The film would be produced by Avi Arad, Charles Roven, and Alex Gartner.[30] Following a screening of David O. Russell's film, The Fighter, he was approached by a fan of the Uncharted series who asked whether he had considered Nathan Fillion for the role of Nathan Drake for the upcoming film due to the high number of requests for him to fulfill the role. Russell was unaware of the interest in Fillion and who he was and seemed to quickly dismiss the idea.[31]
On November 24, 2010, an interview with Mark Wahlberg was published by MTV with the actor discussing his involvement in the film adaptation of the popular franchise. He stated that David O. Russell was currently writing the script and was excited for what he had in store, hoping to shoot in the middle of 2011: "I'm obviously in whatever David wants to do but the idea of it is so off the charts: De Niro being my father, Pesci being my uncle. It's not going to be the watered-down version, that's for sure."[32]
On May 26, 2011, it was reported that David O. Russell had dropped out from directing the video game film, with a new screenwriter being sought by Columbia Pictures.[33] On July 6, Variety reported that Neil Burger was stepping in for David O. Russell.
Burger landed the offer after the studio and producers Avi Arad, Charles Roven and Alex Gartner sparked to his new take on the film. Burger spoke out about the film in July, saying the following:[34]
We're re-writing the script from scratch, and I'm just jumping into that literally right now, about to close the deal and leap off. Until the screenplay is written you never know who's going to be acting in it or not. But there are a lot of good actors out there who even look like Nathan Drake and who could do it. I love the project, I think it's a great adventure and it's a wild insane ride... the game is and the movie will be. I mean it has pretty great character at its core, Nathan is a bit of a con man, a hustler... knows his stuff, ballsy..it's great. Absolutely. And then you know you have to do what a movie does best, as well... build on what's cool about the game and then make it into a movie. Yeah there will be (balance) in this one, this one is a very great adventure, and it's just a matter of pulling out the the [sic] very cool intense stuff that works for the film story, and making sure the story supports those elements and also makes us really connected to the character.
On August 23, 2012, Burger dropped out to work on another film and the studio hired the husband and wife team of Marianne and Cormac Wibberley to rewrite the film.[35]
In an interview with IGN, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg said they were asked to write the film multiple times, but declined all of them.[36] On February 4, 2014, Deadline reported that Seth Gordon would direct the film with the latest script being written by David Guggenheim.[37] Production was set to begin in early 2015.[38] The film was originally scheduled for release on June 10, 2016.[39] On November 12, 2014, the studio hired Mark Boal to write the film.[40] After Wahlberg, Chris Pratt was in talks to portray Nathan Drake, but he reportedly declined the offer.[41] On June 24, 2015 Seth Gordon left the project over creative differences.[42]
In April 2015, the script written by David Guggenheim was leaked, having been obtained in the Sony Pictures hack.[43] On August 5, 2015, Sony Pictures Entertainment pushed the film's release date back to June 30, 2017.[44] In an interview with Game News Official, Nathan Drake's voice actor Nolan North stated that he believed that fans did not want a movie.[45][46] Charles Roven did reveal to Collider that what they were working on was pretty exciting, there was a director that they did not have at the moment, and they were not ready to cast that vote until they were actually ready to cast.[47] In April 2016, Neil Druckmann, who had worked on previous Uncharted games, said that the most important aspect of the film is the character relationships.[48][49]
On July 29, 2016, Variety reported that Joe Carnahan will write the draft of the film's script.[50] On September 1, 2016, the film was removed from Sony's release calendar due to not having a director or cast, but Sony was still moving forward with the film.[51][52] Director Shawn Levy on October 25, 2016 was announced to be directing the Uncharted movie.[53] Carnahan said to Collider that he and Levy are knowledgeable about the game, and had been hard at work getting the characters right.[54] The filming was set to begin in early 2017.[55] Wahlberg told We Got This Covered in an interview that he was no longer attached to the film.[56] In early January 2017, Carnahan posted a photo on his Instagram to show that the script of the film had been completed.[57][58][59] Tom Holland will star as young Nathan Drake and the movie is a prequel to the games.[60] TV writer Rafe Judkins was brought on to rework the script.[61] On December 19, 2018, it was announced that Levy had stepped down from directing the movie.[62] On January 14, 2019, Variety reported that Dan Trachtenberg had signed on to direct the film.[63]
Fan film [ edit ]
Main article: Uncharted Live Action Fan Film
In July 2018, director Allan Ungar posted a fan-made 15-minute short film, starring Nathan Fillion as Nathan Drake, who for years had been campaigning for the role. It was very well received, with particular praise given to Fillion's performance as Drake, and to an action sequence shot from an over-the-shoulder angle, similar to the shooting sequences in the video games. The short also features Stephen Lang as Victor Sullivan and Mircea Monroe as Elena Fisher, with appearances from Ernie Reyes Jr. and Geno Segers.[64][65] The reception towards the fan film has resulted in some speculation as to whether it is expected to influence and alter the plans of the official film. Druckmann, vice president of Naughty Dog, tweeted a heart emoji towards the fan film, with Shawn Levy also praising it,[66] while Ungar expressed his support towards the official film.[67]
Characters [ edit ]
Main series [ edit ]
Other titles [ edit ]
Other media, including a comic, have contributed to the Uncharted series. A spin-off handheld game and a standalone expansion have been released. A film adaptation is also in production, the cast of which is not yet known though three actors were in talks about playing certain characters.[32]
Reception [ edit ]
The Uncharted series has been met with critical acclaim. GamesRadar ranked it the second best franchise of the generation, saying "Every level is a memorable set-piece, covering terrain that ranges from lush jungles to bombed-out cities to Tibetan mountains, and almost every puzzle is unique."[77] Much of the praise for the series has gone towards the graphics Naughty Dog have produced and attained, as well as the writing and voice acting.[78][79] The Uncharted series as well as The Last of Us has also brought up Naughty Dog's reputation and has them regarded as one of the best developers in the industry.[80] As the protagonist of the series, Drake is seen as a PlayStation mascot.
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune was well-received by critics and seen as a key title for the PlayStation 3, being praised for its technical achievements, voice acting, characters, story, and high production values similar to summer blockbuster films.[81]
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is considered one of the greatest games of all time. It received over fifty Game of the Year awards,[82][83] more than thirty perfect review scores,[84] and was the highest rated game of 2009. Critics heralded it as significantly improving upon every aspect of Drake's Fortune.[85][86]
While Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception also received acclaim from reviewers, it was not considered a breakthrough title as its predecessor was.[87]
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End was seen as a notable improvement over Drake's Deception and, along with Uncharted 2, is ranked as one of the best in the series.[81][85][86]
Sales [ edit ]
Uncharted 2 was the top selling game in the month of its release,[88] and as of December 2011, has sold over 6 million copies.[89] Before the release of the third game, the series sold 8 million copies by December 8, 2010,[90] and 13 million half a year after the release of the third game.[91] Naughty Dog's product marketing manager Asad Quizilbash stated that Uncharted 3's week one sales were double that of Uncharted 2, which was "far exceeding" their expectations.[92] By April 2012, the Uncharted series sold 17 million copies worldwide.[93] Uncharted 4 is the best selling installment of the series to date, with over 8 million copies sold.[94]
By June 2015, the Uncharted series has sold over 21 million copies worldwide.[95] Before the release of the fourth game, the series reached 28 million units.[96] In December 2017 during a panel in celebration of the 10 year anniversary of the series at the PlayStation Experience event it was announced that the series has sold 41.7 million units globally.[97][98]
See also [ edit ]
uncharted.wikia.com/wiki/Uncharted_Wiki https://www.play |
in the comment box belowA shopkeeper from Bethlehem who was branded a terrorist in Sacha Baron Cohen's film Bruno is seeking $110m (£67.5m) in damages.
Ayman Abu Aita is suing Baron Cohen, US talk show host David Letterman and others for libel and slander according to a lawsuit filed in the District of Columbia federal court last week.
The actor and comic Baron Cohen plays a gay Austrian fashion journalist in the film, which was released in the UK in July. Keen to become what he calls "the most famous Austrian since Hitler," Bruno travels to the middle east, and in a short interview with Abu Aita, asks to be kidnapped in an attempt to become famous.
A caption labels Abu Aita as a member of the militant al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, the armed wing of the Fatah movement. He is a member of the board of the Holy Land trust, a non-profit organisation that works on Palestinian community-building.
Cohen was interviewed on David Letterman's talkshow in the US, and said finding a "terrorist" to interview for the movie took several months and some help from a CIA contact.
He said he had feared for his safety during the interview with Abu Aita, which he claimed took place at a secret location.
According to the lawsuit, however, the interview with Abu Aita took place at a hotel chosen by Cohen in a part of the West Bank that was under Israeli military control. The film's distributor, NBC Universal, and the director, Larry Charles, are also named in the proceedings.
Abu Aita case is that before the film he "enjoyed a good reputation for honesty and a peaceable nature" in his community. His lawyers write that any accusations or insinuations that Abu Aita is or ever was associated with the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, or any other terrorist activity, is "utterly false and untrue."
His US lawyer, Joseph Peter Drennan, said Abu Aita was never offered a release to sign to appear in the film. "This is an important lawsuit because it is about the dignity of a specific person. It is about his reputation, about his standing in the community." Drennan said he expects a hearing in late January.
Hatem Abu Ahmad, Abu Aita's Arab-Israeli lawyer, said Baron Cohen made millions "on the back of my client."
His 2006 film Borat also attracted lawsuits, including one for $30m from two residents of the Romanian hamlet where Borat's "home town" scenes were filmed. Most of the cases were thrown out.Is being a Jew a matter of bloodline or religious practice? The UK's new Supreme Court is debating the subject this week, in a case that could have a wider impact on faith schools, says Tim Whewell. In a draughty school hall in Liverpool, they're holding an "admissions evening". Parents listen anxiously as the headteacher explains what "evidence" they'll require to ensure that their son or daughter can apply for a place. Is Jewishness about nature or nurture? The scene at King David primary is repeated up and down the country, particularly at this time of year as the deadline for applications approaches. And for those trying to get into a faith school like King David, there's a particular headache: do parents have to "prove" an adequate level of religious observance? This week that question will be debated by some of The UK's top legal brains at the highest court in the land, the new UK Supreme Court. The outcome will directly affect only Jewish schools such as King David. But the government is warning that it may have "wide ramifications" for other faith schools too. And at the heart of the case is the simple question: how do you define faith? Is religion a matter of who you are? What you believe? Or what you do? The King David primary and secondary schools, both highly successful and oversubscribed, are the pride of Liverpool's diminishing but vibrant Jewish community. FIND OUT MORE... Being Jewish: Blood or Belief? is on Radio 4 on Monday 26 October at 2000 GMT and Tim Whewell's film will be on Newsnight on Monday at 2230 GMT on BBC Two Or listen again via the BBC iPlayer In the religious studies class this month, children were making models - some thatched with sweets - of the flimsy huts that Jews traditionally build as part of the festival of Sukkot. It commemorates the years the Children of Israel spent wandering in the desert, without permanent homes, after the Exodus from Egypt. Some of the children come from observant homes, but some do not. Until now, that didn't matter because, in common with other schools under the religious authority of the Chief Rabbi, they've taken Jewish children as defined by Orthodox Jewish law - the children of Jewish mothers. No test of observance or belief was set. "Judaism differs fundamentally from all other faiths," says Yitzchak Schochet, rabbi of an Orthodox congregration in London. "Regardless of one's observance level, if one is born a Jew it doesn't matter if they keep absolutely nothing. How dare they question our beliefs and our Jewishness?
David Lightman "Having a ham sandwich on the afternoon of Yom Kippur, the fast day, doesn't de facto make you non-Jewish. The Jewish definition is that as far as God is concerned, when you are born of a Jewish mother then you contain a unique Jewish soul, which de facto makes you a Jew. And the only other way of embracing the Jewish faith is by way of conversion." But that definition can't now be used to gain a place at a Jewish school. The Court of Appeal ruled in July that because Jews are also defined as an ethnic group under the Race Relations Act, denying a child admission solely on the basis that their mother isn't Jewish would count as unlawful racial discrimination. It was a victory for the parents who brought the case, whose child was originally denied admission to a Jewish comprehensive in London, the JFS or Jewish free school, because the Chief Rabbi's office questioned his mother's Jewish status. 'God is not racist' And another parent in a similar position, David Lightman, also feels vindicated. He says: "My wife keeps a kosher Jewish home, we go to synagogue as a family, my daughter teaches in the Hebrew classes. How dare they question our beliefs and our Jewishness?" But now JFS is appealing to the Supreme Court to have that judgment overturned. Rabbi Schochet says: "The law is essentially suggesting from a Jewish perspective that God is a racist, and that doesn't wash." Some Catholic schools insist on baptism Some would dispute whether the ruling really libels God. And even within the Jewish community, there are those who say religion can't just be a matter of parentage. At the liberal synagogue in Elstree, north London, Rabbi Pete Tobias says: "I would say the idea that it's God that decrees the status of a child simply on the basis of a child's mother is somehow missing the point of what religion is supposed to be about. To me Judaism is a faith, a series of ideas, a philosophy that is absorbed culturally and educationally." But Jews aren't the only faith group in Britain who can be difficult to define legally. And that's why the government says in its submissions to the Supreme Court that the current ruling, if upheld "potentially affects a significant number of schools". "At least in certain areas," it says, "it is likely that membership of other religions is 'closely related' to particular ethnic origins." 'A better Catholic' Then there's the question of what constitutes "membership" of a religion. For Catholics, for example, baptism is usually the mark of membership and in some Catholic dioceses baptism, regardless of observance, is the main criterion for admission to Catholic schools. Some Jews say their religion is not simply about parentage John Waszek, headmaster of St Edward's College, a leading Catholic state secondary in Liverpool, says: "For some parents involvement in church is difficult - a single mum will find it harder to be involved in their church rather than a two parent family with two jobs. "Someone who runs a football club - taking those children off the streets - who's to say they are not being a better Catholic that someone who goes to church every day of the week?" But some lawyers say baptism, usually performed when a child is just a few weeks old, isn't proof of the parents' current faith and therefore may be too broad a definition to be legal as a schools admissions criterion. For now, Catholic leaders reject that possibility. The government, after all, says that it's for the faith provider - in this case the Church - to decide the religious rules for admission to its own schools, even if they're state-funded. But the Court of Appeal has now shown that faith providers can only act within certain limits, and it's possible that if the Supreme Court upholds the ruling, other challenges to admissions criteria could follow. Faiths are free to define themselves. They're not free to decide who gets into schools. Below is a selection of your comments. In the Bible it says repeatedly that regularly going to church is an important part of being a Christian. There are exceptions both ways though - you can be a Christian, but living in an area where meeting together in a large group could bring persecution, and going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car. Your faith is something determined between yourself and God, but going to Church is an important demonstration of faith
Nathan Harper, Portsmouth, UK I'm always confused by how any child can be a member of a religion. Their parents having them dunked in some water when they were a few weeks old, or their mother being allegedly descended from some guy thousands of years ago seem strange criteria for anyone to use. Surely no child can be a member of a religion, in the same way as they can't join a political party or have a credit card, until they're old enough to be able to assess all the options and make a decision for themselves?
James Rigby, Wickford, Essex Under British law Jews and Sikhs are considered a race and are covered by racial discrimination law, unlike Christians, Muslims etc. As far as the Law Lords are concerned being Jewish is a matter of birth not faith. Its worth highlighting that Hitler considered Jews a race too and even if your family hadn't been near a synagogue in generations you would still be exterminated.
Peter, Notts God most certainly is not a racist. God does not discriminate for against any particular group of people. To claim that one race or another are God's chosen people is intellectually, spiritually morally bankrupt.
David Preston, Bournemouth Isn't it about time we had a serious look at 'faith schools' and their place in our society? The separation of children based on what their parents believe leads to nothing but ignorant, segregated kids harbouring their differences rather than celebrating their similarities. Shouldn't children be free to grow up and make their own mind up about issues to do with faith?
Lucy Clark, Glasgow Some of us (me included) would say that a child has no religion. There is no such thing as a Christian or Jewish or Muslim child, only a child of Christian or Jewish or Muslim parents. Where would this leave faith schools? Nowhere, I'd be happy to see them all turned over to state control and absorbed into the rest of the school structure tomorrow, their doors open to all children no matter what faith their parents were.
Ponder, London Employers are quite rightly not able to discriminate on the basis of religious belief. Why should a school be able to do so: especially one that takes state funding?
Rhodri Richards, London, UK The fact that faith-based schools (especially Church of England schools) are oversubscribed is itself interesting: even non-practising parents see benefit in a faith-based organisation. Why? Because a basis of faith - whatever faith - entails a value set, a discipline and a high standard that is otherwise lacking in our society. And there is always the hope that a child attending such a school might make up his or her own mind to become a practising member of that faith - and that would make the world a better place.
Jane Evans, Los Angeles, USA (British expatriate)
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionEarlier this month, Stephen Colbert and his team stamped the Ed Sullivan Theater with their own insignia, replacing David Letterman's old marquee with the updated Late Show with Stephen Colbert one. Colbert himself popped into a Reddit thread last week to thank fans and praise the design: "Thank you! I love this shot at night. That's what it's built for....but the sign still isn't done." It seemed mysterious at the time, but now we know he was referring to the giant COLBERT lettering that has gone up today, and is now rising above Broadway like a comically raised eyebrow.
Sign guys at Ed Sullivan Theater currently affixing giant neon COLBERT letters to the building pic.twitter.com/0MuOqn2rVl — Amy Langfield (@AmyLangfield) August 20, 2015
If you read the wonderful GQ profile of Colbert from earlier this week (which we can't recommend enough), you'd know that Colbert has been intensely involved with every aspect of redesigning the studio in his image. Take this excerpt for example:
The micro level at which he is involved in every aspect of preparations is bewildering. He moved so quickly throughout the theater, followed by a small phalanx of architects and designers and contractors. He climbed small hidden ladders in the wings to stand on exposed beams and demonstrate how he needed sneak doors to swing. He headed down below stage level, into what will be either a writers' room or a greenroom, to propose how an air-conditioning duct be rerouted. In every moment of every conversation, his focus on the person in front of him and the logistical conundrum at hand was complete. He never showed frustration, never seemed overwhelmed by the sheer volume of stuff coming at him. If you didn't know he was the talent and came upon that scene with a van full of HVAC parts, you'd definitely be like, Oh, that's the guy I need to ask where to install these.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert premieres on CBS on September 8th (although there are some sold-out test showings next week). Until then, sate your Colbert lust with some power Jagger moves.Stocks could be in for a choppy session Thursday as investors try to make sense of the latest signals from the Federal Reserve about its bond-buying program.
U.S. stock futures were moving up by roughly 0.2% ahead of the opening bell after trading narrowly weaker earlier.
U.S. stocks finished lower Wednesday after minutes from the latest Federal Reserve meeting revealed that Fed officials may start winding down their stimulus program for reasons other than an improving job market. Previously, officials had reassured the market that they would continue with their stimulus until the jobs picture improved.
"Markets skidded a little yesterday as the late U.S. session proved that the taper does matter," wrote Deutsche Bank analyst Jim Reid, in a market report. "The only debate for markets is really how much it matters."
But having said that, markets are still trading at stratospheric levels, with the Dow ending within 100 points of the 16,000 level.
Investors are waiting for the Senate Banking Committee to vote on Janet Yellen's confirmation at 10 a.m. ET Thursday. Yellen has been nominated to head the Federal Reserve starting in early 2014.
Related: Fear & Greed Index, still greedy
The U.S. government will release its weekly report on initial jobless claims at 8:30 a.m. ET.
Target (TGT) shares took a dive in premarket trading after the retailer reported a double-digit percentage plunge in quarterly net income.
Shares for Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) also dropped, after the retailer reported a quarterly loss and Chief Executive Mike Jeffries said he expects weakness inrevenue to continue into the fourth quarter.
Sears Holdings (SHLD) shares were flat after the retailer reported a deepening quarterly loss on weak sales.
Shares of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR) gained following quarterly earnings that beat market expectations.
Related: America's'manly' jobs aren't coming back
European markets were lower at midday. The CAC 40 in Paris slipped 0.5% after new data showed a contraction in French private sector output in November.
Chinese manufacturing stumbled for the first time in four months, according to HSBC's "flash" measure, which helped send Hong Kong and Shanghai's indexes lower.
But Japan's Nikkei surged almost 2% as the Bank of Japan expressed optimism about the country's recovery and said it would make no changes to its stimulus program.When new women arrive to work at Sheri’s Ranch, a legal brothel about 65 miles west of Las Vegas, they have to be taught a lot of new techniques. Social media is one of the most important of them.
During this week’s sprawling International CES gadget show, which ends tomorrow and draws more than 150,000 people each year to the Las Vegas Convention Center, the sharing-savvy brothel sees some of its busiest nights. Sheri’s Ranch calls itself “the unofficial brothel of CES” — and says that business is up about 70 percent this week.
Brothel matron Dena, who uses humorously bawdy social media to attract CES attendees, also trains the ranch’s rotating roster of 75 to 100 on-site sex workers to create online personas and unique voices, which Dena says makes the women feel more empowered, and helps skirt the legal ban against advertising their services.
https://twitter.com/RanchMamaDena/status/552893975938351105
While the other tech bloggers were getting glassy-eyed visiting selfie-stick booths on the convention floor, I headed out to Pahrump for a visit. The ranch’s on-staff private driver picked me up at the convention center, offered me a mini bottle of Courvoisier and pointed out the sun setting over Pahrump Peak as we drove for an hour through the desert. Not a building in sight.
When I arrived at the ranch, which is set on 310 acres, I went in through the bar, where about 10 sex workers were laughing and smoking cigarettes. Some clients were there, eating dinner (burgers, onion rings). Dena, whom the brothel denizens call Den Mama, greeted me in a leopard-print silk top and loose black pants.
“We started tweeting hardcore about two years ago,” she said. “And it’s kind of addictive once you get into it. Marketing-wise, we can’t do traditional advertising.”
While it’s legal for the women to work at Sheri’s, it’s illegal to advertise.
“We have to market ourselves through social media,” Dena said. “And the girls actually really enjoy it.”
Many area brothels have been resistant to social media, which involves letting go of some brand control as the sex workers cultivate personal voices independent of the house.
“Unfortunately, a lot of the brothels haven’t kept up with the trend, so a lot of the littler brothels are no longer with us,” Dena said, estimating that the brothel community has dropped from 30 to 20 houses in the last five years. “You can’t control what the girls will say. We look at it as, ‘Go out and use your voice. Build an audience.’ It gets them thinking outside the box, and the potential for what they can do is huge.”
This language was similar to much of what I heard people saying on the convention center floor.
Dena said the brothel leads up to 30 tours a day — often it’s just curious grandparents passing through, or people looking to get out of Vegas for a bit. The first week of January is always a particularly busy week, though.
“We always go up for CES. Always. There’s just so many people. And it’s kind of a traditional thing for CES,” she said. “They’re all looking for either a strip club or a brothel.”
The CES-related clientele is more “rah-rah” and excitable compared to the ranch’s usual clients, who tend to be Vegas regulars, Dena said. But she said that CES-ers as a demographic didn’t have any particular sexual preferences.
https://twitter.com/SherisBrothel/status/553253540269801472
She led me through some theme rooms (pirates, Egyptians, etc.) and into a pornscape fantasy house, which includes a variety of scenarios, such as a naughty-secretary setup. One partner, “the secretary,” sits at a desk outfitted with pencils and a defunct old-school telephone. In another room, “the boss” has a spy cam under the secretary’s desk that streams to an old PC. (Sheri’s Ranch management is interested in the new GetMyFox camera that debuted at CES this week.)
There’s also a locker-room scenario space with actual lockers, and a classroom with ambiguously inspirational phrases written on the walls. And then there’s the GFE room — the “girlfriend experience” — which just looks like a living room, with an overstuffed sofa, a TV and a tray of KitKat bars. A lot of customers are widowed, divorced or disabled, and they just want to hang out, Dena explained. The most popular activity in this room is playing naked Wii.
“Guys like to do a lot of things here they can’t do at home, I guess,” Dena said.
There was a surfer-themed room decorated by Budweiser, she claimed (see room below). “We’re the only brothel sponsored by Budweiser,” she said.
We went back to the bar, where “the girls,” as they called themselves, were still hanging out. Shania Twain’s empowering song “That Don’t Impress Me Much” played on the TV.
Dena got herself a Diet Coke, and one of the girls came and joined us at a bar table. Soft-spoken and petite, Erin O’Hara started tweeting in April. She said she gets pleasure from it, and has gotten a client on Twitter recently, but wonders whether to use Twitter to build a cohesive, sexy brand, or to use it as a forum for personal expression.
“I love Twitter, but it’s confusing, because I want to be sexy, but I also want to post nerdy things sometimes. If it’s a personal brand, it’s supposed to showcase your personality, but how much?” she said. “For my first one, I typed it in 10 times, and then would type it in again before I could press the [tweet] button. Dena said just be yourself.”
“Just be yourself,” Dena repeated.
“And some of the girls have thousands of followers, so I get jealous,” Erin said.
“It just takes time,” Dena said.
https://twitter.com/RanchMamaDena/status/552600076351049728
Amber Lynn, who had a big smile and sorry-but-I-just-can’t-not-mention-it cleavage, came and joined us. She started on Twitter about a year ago.
“It’s fun. It’s something to do when we’re out here,” she said. “And I’m a total computer geek. I’m a graphic designer by trade.”
Amber’s favorite Twitter moment was when the famous porn star, and her namesake, the “real” Amber Lynn, retweeted one of her posts.
The girls communicate frequently with their clients. One time, they wanted to have a water-gun fight, and posted their desire to Twitter. Someone mailed them plastic water pistols. Erin needed a new Nintendo 64 controller. She posted to Twitter and, lo and behold, it arrived.
When the conversation turned to videogames, specifically Halo, I realized I was way out of my element.
Social media also solves a very practical issue for the women of Sheri’s Ranch: The brothels usually control their email addresses and, therefore, their relationships with clients, whereas social media accounts stay with the women, providing an avenue to maintain a relationship even as you go from brothel to brothel, as many of the women do through their careers.
A young woman named Destini joined us to explain: “I’ve worked at all the major brothels — all the ones calling themselves ‘world famous.’ The other brothels, they answer your email and your social media for you,” she said. “That’s what kept me here — I’ve been here four years because they let you keep your voice. We can’t advertise, so social media has been really important.”
Emotionally, maintaining real relationships is enjoyable, she added. “I’ve gotten clients through Twitter. But above and beyond money, Twitter’s given me a way to connect with my customers. It makes it more real for me.”
Destini, like the other girls, preferred Twitter to other social media outlets.
“Facebook was a way to get in touch with clients, but now I’m slacking off,” she said. “I like Twitter because it’s more instant. And you reach beyond your friends. I feel like I’m connecting with people who might not even think about going to a brothel.”
“Facebook has to be more PG-13. Twitter’s very, very big for us,” Ranch Mama Dena said.
The women said that not many people are brave enough to follow them on Twitter — a lot of clients just read their tweets.
“We call them ‘lurkers,’” Dena said.
Not all social media platforms have been open to the women. They’re not allowed to have LinkedIn accounts, a point about which they were quite upset, even though the decision came down more than a year ago.
“It was the verbiage,” Dena said. “How they did it was very offensive to us.”
Destini added: “If they don’t want to promote any illegal profession, that’s fine, but what we’re doing is legal. It’s backwards. I pay my taxes. This is my career.”
But Dena encouraged her girls to be at peace with it.
“They own their own website, and have the right to dictate what’s on it,” Dena said.
It was getting late, and I had to get back to CES and the gadgets.
“We have gadgets,” Destini said, winking.Pimpri-Chinchwad’s dream of becoming a slum-free city received a body blow with the central government directing the civic body to wind up the project by March 31. This would mean the dreams of 11,000 slum-dwellers’ families, who were promised a 270 sq ft flat each for Rs 50,000, will be shattered.
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“The central government asked us to wind up the plan by March 31 as it is planning another scheme of houses for all,” said PCMC joint city engineer Rajan Patil. Civic officials said the BSUP plan supposed to be completed by 2010 has been delayed as the Bombay High Court has stayed construction of over 11,000 flats due to issues of violation of laid down norms. “Since the issue has been before the court for quite some time, the project work continues to remain stalled. And now the Centre has told us to complete all the work by March 31. Since we will not be able to complete the work by the deadline, we have decided to wind up the project,” said Patil.
[related-post]
Under the Central Government’s Basic Services to Urban Poor (BSUP), PCMC launched a plan to rehabilitate 18,000 slum-dwellers’ families in 2007 and make Pimpri Chinchwad free of slums. It was a Rs 369-crore project of which the Centre’s share was to be 50 per cent, the state government’s 30 per cent and PCMC’s 20 per cent. The scheme was to be completed in 2010, but was caught in court litigations.
Of the 18,000-flat scheme, PCMC constructed around 5,000 flats in Milindnagar, Vetalnagar, Ajanthanagar and Vithalnagar and distributed them to slum-dwellers. Officials said another 2,000 flats are ready for distribution.
Officials said the flat plan remained embroiled in controversy for long. The flats were to be constructed in Sector 22 of the Pradhikaran area.
Corporator Seema Savle and BJP leader Sarang Kamtekar moved court against alleged violations by the PCMC including carrying out constructions in the Red Zone, for the 11,000-flat scheme. Savle and Kamtekar brought it to the notice of the court that proper permissions were not taken by PCMC from relevant authorities before going ahead with construction. Of the 11,000 flats, PCMC constructed 3,000 flats.
Both Savle and Kamtekar, who earned the reputation of taking up the cause of slum-dwellers say they are happy the project has been wound up. “When a project is a threat to national security and steeped in corruption, it has to stop. Southern Command had written to PCMC pointing out that the 11,000 flat project in Sector 22 was a threat to national security as it was coming up within the prohibited area of Dehu Road ordinance depot,” said Savle.
Besides, Kamtekar said the project cost initially estimated at Rs 369 crore crossed Rs 600 crore. He alleged corruption. They handed over one of the project works to a builder without inviting tenders. “That is the reason we approached the court as PCMC refused to mend its ways,” says Kamtekar.
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“However, we are hopeful the scheme will be revived by the Centre, which has declared its plan for houses for all,” officials said.Buried in a packed townhouse on a quiet street in south Brooklyn is a manufacturing operation that produces some of the most renowned headphones in the business. Despite Yelp reviews for the business, Grado Labs doesn't sell directly from its location to consumers, though it does take the occasional walk-up request for repairs. For the most part, its long-time employees, including owner John Grado and his son Jonathan, tinker away through four crowded floors on audio gear that hasn't appeared in advertising since the 1960's.
In the building, the company assembles and ships models that range from the flagship PS1000, priced at $1,700, to the $79 SR60s. As of early June, Grado has evolved the drivers for the second time in 23 years, from the I-series to the E-series.
The average New York City apartment building is narrow to begin with, but Grado's space is like a house eternally in the middle of moving day. You get around by edging your way around boxes, through the halls, on the stairs, and in the rooms. During the holiday season, Jonathan says, the boxes are stacked high enough to effectively move the walls in.
The company does all the injection molding of the plastic parts for its headphones in the basement with two machines, one old and one modern. The machines also still churn out parts for turntable cartridges, of which Grado shipped half a million per year in vinyl's heyday. In the early '90s, those shipments dropped to around 12,000, but hipsters have surged cartridge sales back up to 60,000 units in recent years.
Throughout the house, women are putting the headphone components through stages of assembly: stamping logos and dates of origin, carefully gluing thin mesh screens onto the drivers, or snapping the pieces together into a finished product. One woman, Lorina, has worked at Grado for 25 years, since the company started making headphones.
The first stereo headphones were tiny speakers surrounded by couch cushion foam, created in 1958 by John C. Koss, a jazz musician who lived in Milwaukee. After Koss came Philips, Onkyo, and Sennheiser with their own models, and then Sony brought headphones out of the home with the Walkman in 1979.
Grado didn't start developing headphones until 1989, shortly before John Grado bought out the company from his uncle. True to the headphones' origins, though, their sound is particularly suited to jazz music. According to reviews, they tend to lack a bit on the low end and have a "bright" sound that can be too much for some ears. This contrasts Grado's foil, Beats Audio, a company that makes headphones infamous for their emphasis on bass. Audio reviewers also know Grado headphones as products that expend as much quality as cost allows on the audio itself, often at the expense of style on the lower-end models. Beats is the other way around.
Lorina walks me through assembling my own pair of SR60s using injection-molded pieces, a driver, and two different kinds of glue. The various parts for each type of headphones are stashed all around the room and building in stacks of mostly unlabeled cardboard boxes. Lorina and the women who work putting together the headphones can distinguish which pieces belong to which models on sight, and they instinctively know which boxes the right pieces are scattered in. She culls parts from a series of boxes in different parts of the room and puts my incompetent self to work.
Lorina's hands are so fast and sure at putting the headphones together her movements startle me. She shows me how to apply two different kinds of glue and how to solder the wires from the driver. In about five minutes, the headphones come together into one piece, and she lets me test them the way Grado tests every headphone: with an 80Hz tone that feels like Inception. Since my shoddy craftsmanship came after most of the important assembly steps (namely, the driver got there before I could mess it up), they actually work.
The only part of the headphones that are built off-site, according to the Grado family, is the driver. These are manufactured by one man on Long Island who doesn't work exclusively for Grado, but he has the space to put drivers together that Grado does not in its packed and rickety townhouse. The driver design was built and refined in-house, John says; it's just the handiwork that happens in Long Island.
All of the testing of the headphones takes place in the listening room on the top floor of the Grado building, which is filled with leather furniture and two shelving units of turntables and receivers. The shelves are bookended by a set of peculiar speakers, which aren't so much speakers as two stacks of headphone drivers encased in wood. The speakers are an experimental design that Grado decided never to ship, but the models stand waiting if the company ever decides to expand. Playing to the headphones' strengths (or, more likely, the Grado family preferences), the company tests and develops new drivers by listening to artists like Ella Fitzgerald or Eric Clapton in the listening room.
Here I try out two prototype models of Grado's professional variety of headphones, the GS1000e and PS1000e, while listening to The Fairfield Four. I can hardly tell the difference between them, but in each pair, I can hear each individual reverberation of the baritone singer's vocal chords.
And what if a big company, say, Apple, came knocking wanting to expand into a new hardware area? "It's not for sale," John said. He likes the hands-on process of taking headphones from pieces to product and being involved in the minutiae of the business. Selling, or even expanding the space enough that he would become more removed, isn't in his interest.
After Jonathan graduated college and completed a stint at Sonos, he returned to the family business this year, ready to get into more of the profile-raising his father never really cared for. In the coming months, he'll ship off to conferences to represent Grado to fellow audiophiles, interested retailers, and competitors. But while Grado is slowly adapting to social media, it has no intent to bring back advertising or celebrity endorsements. For the foreseeable future, it's just the Grados in their narrow townhouse making the little-known, well-loved line of headphones.
Listing image by Jennifer HahnThrough our advocacy, the City’s zoning code allows for a developer to swap out 30% of the required car spaces for bike parking – spaces that are covered, close to an entrance, or attractive for a person using a bike. That can save hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single development. Maybe we can increase the percentage of that swap?
That’s how BikePGH has been working on this issue of reducing parking demand that is now part of the p4 Performance Measures. As for p4 specifically, the Connect metrics only apply to developers who want public subsidy or to take over land currently owned by the City or URA. We don’t have something that says all developments must provide the things in the p4 Measures, like for example, a modicum of affordable housing. But the bike parking swap is now in the zoning code and applies to all new development, regardless of whether or not there is subsidy. I should note that we haven’t yet approached the zoning code about mandatory minimum car parking spaces.
Downstream: What is “mandatory minimum car parking?”
Bricker: Currently our zoning code requires that a minimum number of parking spaces are provided, based on the type of development. An apartment building, for example, requires one space per unit. Other cities have done maximum car parking as a way to limit the amount of parking a development can have, as a way of encouraging the use of other forms of transportation. In other words, instead of saying you have to provide this minimum number of spaces, it says you can build no more than this many spaces. In Pittsburgh, could we offer greater incentives for bike parking, instead of imposing maximum car parking as these other cities have done?
Downstream: When are these car and bike parking requirements triggered?
Bricker: For new construction or when there is a change in use. A new building has to provide bike parking. The same is true for a building that changes from, say, light industrial to residential. We’re finding that developers are really excited about this because it has the potential to increase their profit margins, but there’s a knowledge gap between developers and financiers. A lot of banks think that car parking equates to successful development, so there needs to be some education there.
There are some creative things out there. Uber was behind an idea where they worked with a developer to provide one-hundred dollar transportation vouchers to their residents each month, in lieu of providing car parking. In that example, half of the voucher had to be used on Uber, but the rest could be spent on public transit, bike share or car share. It would be cool to have the government do that instead of Uber. A developer could forego building enormously expensive parking if you provide transportation dollars to their residents.
Downstream: How do anticipate BikePGH being included into future development projects? Does the City direct developers to you?
Bricker: Developers come to us all the time but not by way of the City. I don’t think |
." And, you know, they're trying to find every dirty little secret. Oh, you know: "You guys, what kind of alcohol do you drink? We know you all drink." And, you know, "What about drugs?" And they ask you, "Is Obama gay and sleeps with men?" you know? And then they ask you about how good of cameras do the drones have—they ask you anything. Thankfully the guy who did speak English and was asking me information—like military information—he knew everything, and he wasn't interested in what I had to say because he didn't trust me. And so he never really asked me anything that was, one, that I could answer. Like one time he asked me how many bombs could fit on a bomber. And I had no idea because I'm not an Air Force pilot.
Sarah Koenig This hodgepodge of perfectly reasonable questions: "How did the drones work?" And then a kind of crazy talk: "Is it true all American women are prostitutes, that they sleep with animals?" It makes you wonder whether they're just trying to rile Bowe up or whether their understanding of our world is as paltry as our understanding of theirs.
Bowe Bergdahl Something that I learned really quickly is that if you show hesitation in telling them something, then they think they're on to something. But if they ask you a question and you just start talking to them, like you're talking to a normal person—
Mark Boal Yeah.
Bowe Bergdahl —then they get extremely suspicious because they think, well, if he has no problem telling me this, then there's something wrong with that information.
Sarah Koenig So either way, they pretty much assume you're lying, which is maybe why they didn't really press him too hard on any of this stuff. A high ranking Taliban told us, through reporter Sami Yousafzai, that yeah, Bowe didn't give them any useful intelligence or cooperation. Besides, Bowe said the Taliban get most of their information, information they consider more trustworthy, from Afghan interpreters who work with U.S. forces. So Bowe's value wasn't in what he knew. It was in the sheer fact of him—a U.S. soldier that belonged to them.
Bowe Bergdahl So getting information from me wasn't like their main priority. Getting videos out of me was what they wanted to do.
Sarah Koenig You might have seen some of these videos on the internet. Bowe said they made probably a dozen of them that were never released, but a small handful were. Bowe said the Taliban spent a lot of time making them. They're morale-boosting. Plus, he says, the Taliban love to embarrass the United States any way they can. But you can't make too many videos or release too many, because every time you do, you're exposing yourself. Details about the staging, or someone's accent, or the production values, or the decor might give your location away. Bowe says they'd sometimes make a number of videos during the same shoot, changing the backdrop or his clothes or his hair or his beard to pretend the videos had been taken at different times in different locations. The guy who made Bowe's videos spoke English, seemed Western educated—he had a slight British accent. He'd come into Bowe's room always with the same irritating greeting.
Bowe Bergdahl He'd say, "Hey, Bowe, what's up?" You know, that was for some strange reason, the guys who could speak fairly good English, that was always their thing: "Hey, what's up?" You know, they'd say, like, "What's up, Bowe?" And he would say, you know, "I'm gonna take a video of you, and you need to think about what you're going to say to President Obama." And then he would say, you know, "You need to talk about how terrible the army is and how badly that you were treated or how corrupt the politicians are," and, you know, stuff like that.
Mark Boal And so did you have to work on your answers?
Bowe Bergdahl Well [CHUCKLES], like, the first time he talked to me, I gave him answers, and he was all satisfied with that. But the moment he turned the camera on, I completely forgot what I was supposed to say.
Mark Boal [CHUCKLES]
Sarah Koenig After that, they wrote everything down.
Bowe Bergdahl One would expect that they would justly treat me as my country's army has treated their Muslim prisoners in Bagram, in Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and many other secret prisons that are hidden around the world. Tonight, bear witness. I was continuously treated as a human being with dignity.
Sarah Koenig In this video, Bowe's wearing a camouflage jacket, a helmet, and sunglasses. He looks really weird. He said the sunglasses were so you couldn't see his eyes reading the paper. And also, maybe because the Taliban think sunglasses look cool—which, agreed.
Bowe Bergdahl I had nobody deprive me of my clothes and take pictures of me naked. I had no dogs barking at me and biting me as my country has done to the Muslim prisoners in the jails that I mentioned.
Sarah Koenig When he made that video, Bowe says the bed he was chained to, spread eagle, was just off to his left. The videos hit this theme a lot: how well he's being treated compared to how the U.S. treats Taliban prisoners.
Taliban How are Mujahideen treating you?
Sarah Koenig He says, "How are Mujahideen treating you?"
Bowe Bergdahl They're treating me better than I've been treated in just as a guest in a regular household in America.
Sarah Koenig The videos also hit other common Taliban talking points, one of which is that the U.S. government is lying to the American public about how many American soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan.
Taliban You make the statement, it's only a few hundreds dead so far. Well, is this true or was it more higher?
Bowe Bergdahl I believe the death toll of Americans in Afghanistan is higher than what the government allows the world to know.
Sarah Koenig The army has moral guidelines for how a soldier is supposed to behave if he or she is captured by the enemy. It's called the code of conduct. It says, among other things, "If I am captured, I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape. I will give no information or take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades." And, when questioned, besides name, rank, and serial number, quote, "I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause," unquote. Soldiers I talked to from Bowe's battalion told me the fact that Bowe appears in these videos at all, that he's answering their questions, repeating their talking points, that right there is an obvious violation of the code of conduct. They said even if someone has a gun to your head—and, by the way, Bowe says there were guys with guns on these video shoots—you don't participate in the enemy's propaganda campaign. Well, that's actually an interpretation of the code that military officials do not agree with. That is not the standard the army is asking soldiers to live up to. You are not expected to die refusing to make a video. In the first and second Gulf wars, American POWs showed up in propaganda videos too, and the military didn't blame them for it. They understand that as a prisoner, you're gonna be compelled to do things you don't want to do. And also, while the U.S. military isn't gonna encourage you to be in a video if you're captured, there is an upside to being filmed: your government has proof you're alive. At a military hearing on Bowe's case, Terence Russell, the guy who debriefed Bowe, said in these videos, Bowe did what he had to do. And that as the videos go on, you can see him getting better at resisting, at minimizing the propaganda value. In the very first video the Taliban released, mid-July of 2009, about three weeks after Bowe disappeared, Bowe is sitting in front of a table with some green liquid in a big mug. Mark asked Bowe what it was.
Bowe Bergdahl Mountain Dew. They love Mountain Dew. Like, if you want to piss those people off in that country, all you do is cut off their sugar supply.
Sarah Koenig It's in this video that Bowe explains how he was captured.
Taliban OK, where were you arrested, captured?
Bowe Bergdahl I was captured outside of Mest [INAUDIBLE].
Taliban What were you doing?
Bowe Bergdahl I was behind a patrol. I was lagging behind a patrol when I was captured.
Sarah Koenig This was widely reported back in the U.S., that Bowe said he was caught while lagging behind on a patrol. And, again, a bunch of the soldiers I talked to mention this—that when they heard it, it made them mad. Because it's such obvious nonsense. U.S. soldiers do not lag behind on patrols in Afghanistan and then just disappear without anyone noticing. It's not a thing. So when they heard it was in the video, some of them saw it as evidence that Bowe was lying about what happened. Bowe was lying. He says, of course he was lying. He says he knew that Americans listening would know it was baloney. That was the point.
Bowe Bergdahl That was one way in the video of basically telling people, hey, what I'm saying in this video is you know, is a lie. It's pre-staged. It's pre-rehearsed. It has nothing to do with, you know, reality, in, you know...
Mark Boal Was it all rehearsed or staged?
Bowe Bergdahl Yeah. It was—
Mark Boal So none of that was you, the real you. I mean, would you—
Bowe Bergdahl No, it was a desperate me trying to figure out how to stay on the edge of not cooperating with them and yet cooperating with them to the point that they don't shoot me.
Sarah Koenig The guys guarding Bowe don't speak English, which makes sense. Why would they? But also that same high ranking Taliban told us they don't necessarily want someone like Bowe near anyone who speaks English because they might say something just inadvertently, and it could help him with an escape. But even if they couldn't really talk to him, Bowe says they interacted with him. They messed with him. They'd throw things at him or point an AK-47 at him: "Just kidding!" Once they tried to make him smoke a cigarette with a little firecracker in it. When he handed it back, he yelled bang at one of the guards. After that, the guy gave him less food. Bowe learned not to sleep in the daytime, because it left him open to these guys. They might take any opportunity. Picture being shaved by the Taliban with a straight razor. He's handcuffed. Even then, when he couldn't be more vulnerable, they'd have a laugh at his expense.
Bowe Bergdahl And what they really find hilarious is a guy who has a beard but he doesn't have a mustache.
Mark Boal [CHUCKLES] OK.
Bowe Bergdahl So what happened was the jokes came in the sense that they'd shave my face in a way that would most amuse them.
Mark Boal I see.
Bowe Bergdahl And they'd take videos or take pictures. You have to laugh at yourself in order to keep things from getting worse. But basically, the reality of the situation was the butt of the joke was me, and it just was something I had to accept.
Sarah Koenig Sami Yousafzai, the Afghan reporter, interviewed some people who had dealings with Bowe while he was in captivity—a big shot who came by and talked to Bowe on his cell, a guy who cooked for him, a friend of one of the guards, someone from Mullah Sangeen's entourage. What Sami took away from these interviews was that keeping Bergdahl was, number one, stressful.
Sami Yousafzai You have to keep him away from everybody, not only from drones. You have to keep him away from al-Qaeda, Arabs, and bandits, because if something happened, you know, then you are responsible. Then you would be beaten, even arrested. So that's why.
Sarah Koenig These guards are watching the only U.S. soldier who's ever been taken prisoner in this war. Other groups might want to steal him from them. Sami said the guards had heard talk that some Arabs in masks had almost made it to the house where they were holding Bowe and that Mullah Sangeen had captured and executed some people he thought were being paid by the U.S. for information on Bowe.
Sarah Koenig So even though it's a prestigious job, it still sucks.
Sami Yousafzai Yeah.
Sarah Koenig I see—
Sami Yousafzai It's still like mentally a lot of pressure and—
Sarah Koenig And boring, it sounds like.
Sami Yousafzai Anything could happen. And boring.
Sarah Koenig That's the other thing Sami heard in these interviews, how tedious it was for them, which is probably where the stupid and sometimes sadistic jokes come in. These guys are mostly young men. They're stuck inside a compound or some other prison location while their pals are maybe out and about enjoying themselves.
Sami Yousafzai You know, having fun, dancing a ton or something, but here, you are bored. Nobody is allowed to come to visit. Because of this guy, we are in trouble. We cannot go around. We cannot go to the city. We cannot make a phone call because there was nothing. So even for the guards, you know, they were not really happy.
Sarah Koenig Right.
Sami Yousafzai But still since there were the orders, then I'm sure Mullah Sangeen was promising them a lot of thing... a lot of things.
Sarah Koenig Yeah, yeah.
Sami Yousafzai This is big chicken and you will have more money and everything.
Sarah Koenig Sami talked to a friend of one of the guards who told him that to amuse themselves they'd think up things to do to Bowe or how to get rid of Bowe. They had a long hypothetical discussion about circumcising him. They talked about selling him or maybe calling in a phony tip to the Americans that they had Osama bin Laden so there'd be a raid and they could be done with it. In other words, they're young guys shooting the shit, following orders. Bowe's keepers would make him watch execution videos of beheadings or suicide bombers. Bowe said the very first day they got him they showed him a video of Mujahideen executing prisoners. He talks to Mark a lot about these videos in part because he's still affected by them. Certain details lodged in his head. In one, a man is about to be beheaded. He looks terrified. He's silent, and a rooster is crowing. For Bowe, the videos were obviously disturbing on their face, but they were also a grisly warning that this could happen to him at any time.
Bowe Bergdahl Every group I went to, they all had their own videos to show me.
Mark Boal And were they showing you like, this is shit that we've done or just stuff that other people we know have done?
Bowe Bergdahl The majority of them was this is what other people have done. A few of them have been, this is what our people have done. And there is one guy who was, I would say, literally basically out of his mind, in fact to the point where the other Taliban called them crazy Talib.
Mark Boal What was—
Bowe Bergdahl He was... what's that?
Mark Boal What word did they use for that?
Bowe Bergdahl They use "crazy Talib."
Mark Boal Oh, OK.
Bowe Bergdahl They used... because he had been in Bagram. So they call him crazy Talib. And he would tell me he's killed, like one time on one of his shifts, he told me he killed... he decapitated two guys. And then a few months later, he came back and he told me that he had done another.
Mark Boal Oh, while he was in the interim, while he hadn't seen you?
Bowe Bergdahl Yeah, while he hadn't seen me. And the people he was killing, he called them [INAUDIBLE]. And those are the guys who are basically... they're Afghans who betrayed their brothers for America.
Sarah Koenig During all this time, Bowe is scheming and plotting, gathering information that he hopes will get him out and that he can deliver back to the U.S., which, by the way, he does. Terrence Russell at the military hearing said he and other debriefers, intelligence debriefers, SERE psychologists, FBI agents all found Bowe eager to download whatever intel he could and, quote, "remarked on the quality of information Sergeant Bergdahl was providing," unquote. Also, they praised his recall. Bowe said he was trying all the time to store in his memory mental pictures of every detail he could. For this mission, he pretty much starts from zero when he's chained down and blindfolded. When he can't see, he listens, tries to discern the daily patterns of the people who kept him, when they slept, when they ate, how their families work, who's related to whom. He didn't know if it would be useful to him or to someone else back home, but in case. As he gets moved around from house to house and is allowed marginally more freedom to see and to stand, he sponges up new bits of information. He ends up staying a while at a house owned by a guy he thinks was named Day. By this time, Bowe was so filthy. He smelled so bad. He said the young women and little boys resented having to deal with him. They might spill his food on purpose. Once a boy beat him over the head with his own chain. As best as Bowe could tell, it was because he'd been humming. Bowe started to suss out information.
Bowe Bergdahl There was one little kid who came in, and he was just really enthusiastic, just showing me this hat that he had, and it was given to him by his brother. It was actually a blue baseball cap.
Mark Boal Oh, OK.
Bowe Bergdahl And he showed it to me, and on the baseball cap it said the name of the school. And in the corners it said the name of the town, and in the other side it said North Waziristan.
Mark Boal Oh, all English?
Bowe Bergdahl Yeah, all of it English.
Mark Boal Oh, so like somebody had given it to them, like NGO or somebody.
Bowe Bergdahl Yeah. Well, that was their school uniform.
Sarah Koenig So maybe that was the name of the place he was in, North Waziristan. Now he'd just have to figure out exactly where North Waziristan was. Everywhere he was held he said except for one place in the mountains he was pretty sure he wasn't too far from what he assumed was an American base. He could hear artillery. He could see helicopters losing altitude to land. He could hear the scream of plane engines. In fact, what he was hearing was almost certainly a Pakistani base, but Bowe couldn't know that. The best he could figure he was still in Afghanistan, very near the border. Bowe had no special training in how to survive any of this, how to deal with abuse, how to gather intel, how to resist while making it look like you're cooperating. As an army private, he'd had what's called A-level SERE training, the most basic level of survival, evasion, resistance, and escape training. And what it consisted of at the time of Bowe's deployment, according to Bowe's senior debriefer was, quote, "here's the code of conduct," unquote. So he's just puzzling it out as he goes, trying things and then trying them again. Day's house is a sort of mud hut. Bowe attempts to dig himself out something like five times. To get rid of the dirt he loosed from the wall, he'd mix it with his own urine or feces and then smear it back on the wall. The pebbles and rocks were harder to dispose of. At the same house, there was a dog, a pretty aggressive dog, that the little boys and men especially were scared of. Bowe said the women sometimes gave it leftovers, so it was nicer to them. Bowe knew if he tried to escape, he couldn't have the dog freaking out and barking. So he started sneaking a bit of food out to it when he was led to the latrine, which was right near where the dog slept. In that way, Bowe made peace with the dog who eventually began sleeping in the room where Bowe was, which his captors thought was totally weird. Incidentally, someone who analyzed intel in Bowe's case told me one of the rumors they heard along the way was that Bowe had a puppy—possibly a German Shepherd puppy—which the analyst took to be silliness. But maybe this sometimes vicious guard dog was the so-called puppy. Over the months, Bowe managed to gather small items which he turned into tools. And by the end of that first year, taken together, they'd become his escape kit. He had a length of PVC tube, maybe eight inches long, he'd been able to keep with him since the very first house. In one of the rooms, he shoved it into the wall and peed down it so his urine wouldn't just be in the room. The pipe will reappear later as part of a crossbar. He found a nail in a mud wall. He could make holes with it, scrape away dirt with it, clean his fingernails with it. And when the time came, he'd spend weeks rubbing the head of it on a rock until it was just the right shape to get the old timey shackles off his wrists. He stored the nail in the sole of his shoe. But probably the biggest score was the key. The men and boys had come into his room. One of the boys was holding a bunch of keys on a string, and he dropped them. And when he did, one of the keys got away. It fell right near the mat where Bowe slept. So Bowe slid it underneath. He said nobody seemed to notice it was missing. It wasn't the key to the padlocks he needed to open, but Bowe says the locks were these cheaply made Chinese locks and that by wiggling the key just so, he could hit the sweet spot and pop them open.
Bowe Bergdahl And with that one key and using that technique, it allowed me to open, I think, the three padlocks that they were using to hold the chains around my feet and the chains that were chained to the door or wherever it was they were chained in. So over the year, over the months, I was able to keep this key.
Sarah Koenig Bowe had tried many, many escapes. He'd gotten as far as a courtyard, up to a wall. But they were forays, really. His biggest, best chance came when he was at a remote place in the mountains. This was the farthest he ever was from a populated area. It's basically a Taliban prison. Bowe calls it the mountain fortress.
Bowe Bergdahl Because it was really... it literally, like, it looked like a fortress, because it had like this really tall battlement type thing that looked like a lookout tower or something. And I know it was old because the wood that was used to make like the rafters, and the pillars, and the stairs, and everything was just this really old wood. And, like, it was actually, um, hand-chiseled. You could see the chisel marks.
Sarah Koenig In the mountain fortress, Bowe was kept in a second story room which was padlocked. But there was a window without bars on it, this place was so old. And he seemed so pathetic by that point he says his guards weren't taking extra precautions. Bowe had the nail, the key, the PVC pipe, plus a wooden stake that was in the room. He had an empty liter bottle of Mountain Dew, a hat, a blanket, his sandals. He went for it.
Bowe Bergdahl And so in the middle of the night, I basically... I put everything together. I practiced all the nights before, counting the hours down to the point where everything was silent, so I knew everyone was asleep, for the most part. And I practiced the nights before, putting like... with no sight, just all feeling, putting everything together, putting the... tying my bedding together, getting the padlocks off, getting my handcuffs off, tying up the water bottle that I had so then finally... And once I had all that done, I threw the makeshift rope out the window.
Sarah Koenig The rope was made from the two chains he'd now liberated, each about six feet long, he says, plus his bedding. It ended up being quite a bit longer than he needed. The drop to the ground was only about 15 feet, but Bowe didn't know that.
Bowe Bergdahl I used the PVC bar and PVC pipe and the stake and the cross bar to brace in the window. And that allowed me to climb out.
Sarah Koenig There's a reason maybe you haven't heard other American POW escape stories. It's because there hasn't been a successful one since the Vietnam War. Again, the code of conduct says you're supposed to attempt it, but the Army understands, especially since Vietnam, that the odds are usually and overwhelmingly against you. If you're a POW, and you assess the situation, and you decide it's highly unlikely I can make it out that window without being shot, it's highly unlikely that even if I do make it out I'll be able to blend in with the local population, and it's highly likely that if the enemy finds me they will torture or kill me, so no, I'm not going to try to go out that window. That is right and fine. No one will fault you for it. To me, more than anything, this moment in the mountain fortress puts all the talk about Bowe being a sympathizer to rest. Bowe did not sympathize with the Taliban. He loathed the Taliban, so much so that even when he's sick, when he doesn't have any food, when he's already been punished for escaping the first time—he knows what that's like—and still, he goes out the window. At the bottom, he makes a bag out of his blanket, puts his water bottle in it, slings it over his shoulder, and starts walking. Bowe says apart from being rescued, it was maybe the best moment of his five years.
Bowe Bergdahl It was like a huge weight was just lifted off of my back.
Mark Boal Yeah.
Bowe Bergdahl And it got—suddenly my sickness, suddenly all the pain, just didn't matter anymore. And I was just walking.
Sarah Koenig It's high desert terrain—cold at night, hot in the day, rocky. There are bushes and trees that Bowe said looked like Joshua trees, and something piney, not a lot of cover. But his immediate objective is not to hide, though he'll have to do a lot of hiding, obviously. But right now, he's trying to get as far away as he can from the fortress. He wants to spread the search party as thinly as possible. He heads what he hopes is southeast, intending to go into Pakistan. He figures he's got a better shot at encountering someone non-hostile to him in Pakistan. But the terrain is so difficult. He's in these short, steep mazey mountains. You get over one, there's immediately another one. And they're all about the same height, so it's not like you can reach a peak and get your bearings, see the twinkle of a friendly FOB in the distance. He climbs and descends, sometimes scooting on his butt. All the while he's listening for water to replenish his water bottle. He reaches a valley, and it's populated. He keeps having to veer this way or that, skirt a fence, or a house, or a sheep herder's tent.
Bowe Bergdahl So stupidly trying to put a distance between me and the tent, I wasn't taking my time and taking it slow and easy, and I step off a cliff. I don't know how long... I don't know how big of drop it was, but it was a big enough drop for me to think on the way down it was like that initial drop was like, "Oh, good grief." But then I kept falling to the point where I got over the surprise that I was falling, and I started thinking you've got to be kidding me. It cannot be this far down.
Sarah Koenig Bowe lands on a dry riverbed on his left side. He said the word "oof" actually came out of his mouth, just like in a cartoon, loud enough so that some dogs started barking their heads off.
Bowe Bergdahl Maybe about 30, 40 feet away from where I had fallen, there was a creek. So I wanted to fill up my water bottle, because that's what I was looking for. So I drank as much water... And like when I pulled the water bottle out, that was when I realized that I couldn't actually move my fingers of my left hand. So I couldn't get that top off. So that was my first inkling that what I did to my left side was a lot worse than what I was feeling at the time.
Mark Boal Your adrenaline must've just been pumping so hard this whole time.
Bowe Bergdahl Yeah. Yeah, it was. And I think that's the reason why I didn't feel what I ended up feeling about maybe 15 minutes later.
Sarah Koenig He's done something terrible to his left leg and his left arm. And the pain of that starts to wash over him, and then just stay. It's getting later. It's going to be light soon. So Bowe uses the small length of bar that had been used to hold his feet together, and he uses it to claw at the earth at the base of a tree to make a hole. It's mulchy and then just rocks underneath, but it's good enough. He piles the dirt around the hole to make a berm and then sticks branches into the berm so it blends into the landscape better. And then he gets into the hole and pulls his blanket over himself.
Bowe Bergdahl And then I take a bunch of the pine needles from the tree and I sprinkle them all over the blanket. And I sit there and wait. And by that time, the sun was already starting to come up over the horizon.
Sarah Koenig So that was his first night of freedom. In all, Bowe says this escape lasted about nine days. In interviews with Sami and in other media reports, the Taliban admit this escape happened, though their versions vary in terms of how it happened and how long it lasted. Generally they say two to three days. Bowe's debriefers settled on 8.5 days. Once morning hits, Bowe has to stay put in the hole. He can't move around in the day. And where he is, it's populated, and it's rural, so people walk everywhere. There are footpaths crisscrossing all over the place. Over the coming week while he's hiding in holes or trenches during the day, Bowe says there were so many close calls—sheep that came close and spooked, women out gathering something or other from the bushes, men—he could tell they were men with guns, he could hear the clack of the metal. There was a scare with a flashlight, a time when he heard the familiar beeping of those Motorola type walkie talkies the Taliban use, a time when little girls wandered off the road and up the hill where he was hiding.
Bowe Bergdahl These little girls, they had to have been maybe maybe three or four? They were tiny little things. They come walking along, and apparently they're looking for flowers or something.
Mark Boal Yeah.
Bowe Bergdahl Suddenly they veer off the road. They come like almost directly towards me.
Sarah Koenig They pass right by his feet, keep going. They're talking to each other, immersed in whatever they're doing. And then they come back down the hill, and Bowe says they pass right by his head, tiny oblivious girls. Bowe can't walk properly because his left side is hurting so badly, so he's crawling along on a combination of elbows and knees or on his butt. It's not going well. On top of everything, he really has no idea where he's going. He's completely lost. He'd learned celestial navigation as a kid, but now he can't recall how the Big Dipper relates to the North Star. The water he's drinking is fetid, like it's seen too many sheep. He's eating grass.
Bowe Bergdahl Stupid thing was, there wasn't enough grass in that country to make a difference. It was like [CLEARS THROAT] I could maybe every now and again I'd be able to take like 20 or 30 little strands of grass and eat that.
Sarah Koenig It's as if Bowe is shrinking, getting smaller and more helpless, more primitive. His shit is completely green. He's stuck in a hole all day. He's down to nothing, no resources. And right above him, some of the highest tech equipment in the world for seeing and finding, drones, American drones, guided by American eyes. And Bowe and these drone pilots, they can't reach each other. Bowe says he remembers one night being on top of a mountain.
Bowe Bergdahl Looking up at the sky, I remember, and I was seeing like six drones moving across the sky. And it's just really... it's not a nice feeling. You're so close and yet things are so stacked against you that it's just, it's impossible, but you can't do anything but just keep going.
Sarah Koenig Sometimes he'd think about what he'd do if a friendly convoy or a patrol came by, how he'd safely get their attention. If he ran at them in his Afghan clothes, they might think he was a suicide bomber. So he figured he'd take all his clothes off. Because a tall, skinny, naked white guy coming at you, something to pause over perhaps. If anyone had come across Bowe, they'd probably have taken in the following: He's in pain on his left side. He's in gastric distress. He's starving. He's scared. And he's lost.
Mark Boal Did you ever think that during the course of the escape that maybe you made a mistake, that being out, that escaping, was maybe more treacherous than just staying put?
Bowe Bergdahl You know, before I escaped, I knew there was going to be more immediate risk.
Mark Boal Yeah.
Bowe Bergdahl In order to get myself out the window, I had to basically come to terms with the fact that this was very much like a suicide mission. You know, it was like one way out, and I looking for a needle in a haystack as far as being saved, as far as finding some safe point. But it was like, OK, if I'm going to die either from exposure out there or being shot while I escape, it's better than having my head cut off because I saw enough of those movies or videos—I saw enough of those—to know what that would be like.
Sarah Koenig Toward the end, Bowe was too debilitated to cover much ground. His hunger pangs were gone, but he was blacking out when he stood up, getting tunnel vision. He didn't exactly stop caring about getting caught, more like he stopped having the energy to be afraid. He remembers one of the last nights, watching the sun go down, and his only thought was that it was beautiful. On the last day, Bowe says he had passed out on top of a mountain, and when he came to, he started trying to make some sort of brace out of sticks for his left knee. And he heard voices and rustling bushes. And below him, he saw the search party coming up the mountain. He was caught. Because of the drones, the men wanted to get him off the mountain as quickly as they could. They took him back to the prison. One of the older guys—Bowe thinks he might have been a relative of Mullah Sangeen—attacked him, tried to rip his hair out, his beard out, which Bowe says he mostly succeeded in doing. But Bowe says he was so out of it he didn't really feel it. He wasn't beaten more than that, he says, maybe because they knew, looking at him, he might not survive a beating. They threw Bowe in a room, let him sleep. The next morning, they cleaned him up and they took him to a meeting with Mullah Sangeen, whose principal message to Bowe was, if you try to escape again, we'll just kill you.
Mark Boal I mean, did you apologize to them?
Bowe Bergdahl No. No, I never apologized.
Mark Boal For trying to escape?
Bowe Bergdahl Yeah.
Mark Boal I probably would've.
Bowe Bergdahl Yeah. And I think that escape was the last time I saw stars until the night Special Forces picked me up. That was a long time.
Sarah Koenig About four years, in fact. And while he's waiting, so many people would be trying to get Bowe away from Sangeen—all these huge military and diplomatic forces about to kick in, just as the United States is realizing, we need to get out of this war. And then things get really interesting. We'll get into all of that when we |
shown no signs of backing down. The US Department of Homeland Security has said that it would continue to enforce the order but comply with the court's order. (with inputs from Agencies)The ratio of sales to listings — used by the industry as a harbinger of prices — is also at a two-year low.
This time last year, Vancouver, B.C., was one of the world’s hottest housing markets as buyers turned up throughout the winter for bidding wars and sales reached an all-time high.
On Thursday, the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver reported residential property sales in Metro Vancouver plunged 40 percent in January over a year earlier as both buyers and sellers hover on the sidelines. That’s the seventh straight month of declines, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The ratio of sales to listings — used by the industry as a harbinger of prices — is also at a two-year low, according to the board.
In September, Vancouver topped a list by UBS Group of global cities most at-risk of a housing bubble. Since then, predictions of a downturn in Canada’s priciest real estate market appear to be materializing after a 15 percent tax on foreign buyers in August and tighter mortgage rules from the federal government in October. Home prices in the Greater Vancouver region are headed for an 8.5 percent drop this year, Royal LePage forecast last month.
The slowdown is hitting the market for prized single-family detached homes first. Prices last year had been rising in double digits at this time. In the past six months, they’ve fallen 6.6 percent to C$1.47 million ($1.13 million), according to board figures.
“It’s a lukewarm start to the year,” Dan Morrison, the board’s president, said in the statement. “Homebuyers and sellers are more reluctant to engage so far in 2017.”WARNING: Video contains graphic footage.
Bethlehem, occupied West Bank - The Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem on Thursday released video which it said showed an Israeli soldier "assassinating" an injured Palestinian as he lay in the road after an alleged stabbing attempt in the West Bank city of Hebron.
The shooting on Thursday morning of the injured man followed an attack by two Palestinians on an Israeli soldier. The Israeli was injured in the shoulder, and both Palestinians were shot, one of whom died.
The video shows the injured Palestinian, named as Abed al-Fatah a-Sharif, lying on the ground for nearly two minutes as medics attend to the injured soldier.
Then an Israeli soldier, surrounded by dozens of others, lifts his gun and shoots the 21-year-old Sharif in the head.
The soldier can clearly be heard cocking his weapon before the shot is heard off camera.
Dozens of other Israeli soldiers, medics and settlers do not seem to respond to the execution.
“The incident happens in the plain view of many other soldiers and officers, who do not not seem to take any notice,” B’Tselem said in a statement.
The video was taken by Emad abu-Shamsiyah, a B’Tselem member.
A witness told local Palestinian news agency Maan that the two Palestinians were left dead and covered in black plastic for more than half an hour before being taken to an “unknown" location.
An Israeli army spokesman told MEE that the soldier who shot the injured Palestinian had been detained by military police.
“We see it as a grave breach of the [Israeli army] conduct and standard military operations,” the spokesman said, adding that the investigation began “prior to the surfacing of the video”.
The Israeli soldier cocks his gun before shooting the injured Palestinian
Issa Amro, a resident of Hebron and leader of the Youth Against Settlements activist group, told MEE that the incident amounted to "a war crime and an extrajudicial execution".
“I was not surprised when I saw the video... it’s not the first time, it’s just the first time that it was caught clearly on video. We know this happens often,” Amro said.
In October, at the start of the current wave of upheaval sweeping through the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel, Amnesty International called on Israel to end its “pattern of unlawful killings”.
'I was not surprised when I saw the video... it’s not the first time, it’s just the first time that it was caught clearly on video. We know this happens often' - Issa Amro, leader of the Youth Against Settlements
The group accused Israeli forces of committing “extrajudicial killings” against Palestinians.
“There is mounting evidence that as tensions have risen dramatically, in some cases Israeli forces appear to have ripped up the rulebook and resorted to extreme and unlawful measures,” said Philip Luther, director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Amnesty International.
“They seem increasingly prone to using lethal force against anyone they perceive as posing a threat, without ensuring that the threat is real,” he added.
The Israeli defence minister, Moshe Yaalon, said his country would treat the shooting with "utmost severity".At at the release of ‘Half Lion — How P.V. Narasimha Rao Transformed India’ penned by Vinay Sitapati, Mani Shankar Aiyar kicked a controversy by accusing PV Narasimha Rao as the sole cause of the Babri Masjid demolition.
Former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao’s “pro-Hindu mindset” encouraged the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992, senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar said on Monday.
“Rao was completely convinced that by talking to the sadhus and saints he could solve the problem (Ayodhya’s Ram temple issue),” Mani Shankar Aiyar said.
Mani Shankar Aiyar recalled that on November 14, 1992, his “Ram-Rahim yatra” for peace and communal harmony was stalled at Faizabad and he was arrested by Uttar Pradesh Police.
“I was summoned by Rao, he told me he had no problem with my yatra but he did not agree with my definition of secularism as India is a Hindu-majority country. I told Rao that’s exactly how the BJP argues,” Mani Shankar Aiyar said while countering contentions from the book author.
Congressman Natwar Singh who also worked closely with Rao, described the Babri Masjid demolition on December 6, 1992, as “the biggest failure” of the then Prime Minister Rao, who otherwise, according to them, took bold and timely decisions on economic reforms.
Author Sitapati, a product of National Law School at Bengaluru and Harvard University, maintained that Narasimha Rao had actually only “erred” in judging the situation and that “it was only the Congress creation that Rao conspired for the mosque’s demolition”.
Senior journalist Shekhar Gupta said the ploy to “demonise” Rao on the Babri issue was a Congress attempt only to win over the Muslims by saying that “look, Rao is responsible for the Babri demolition and not the party”.
“The Muslims of UP are not fools; they knew pretty well who opened the locked gates of the disputed structure,” Gupta said in reference to a decision of the then Rajiv Gandhi government.
Mani Shankar Aiyar, however, maintained that even after the mosque’s demolition, Rao told a Congress Parliamentary Party meeting in Delhi that “even kings in ancient India used to consult sages and sadhus and so did I”.
“Was this a mindset of a 20th century Prime Minister or 12th century? This mindset actually encouraged the destruction of Babri Masjid,” Mani Shankar Aiyar said.
The Congress leader maintained that Rao could have dismissed the then Kalyan Singh government and imposed President’s Rule in Uttar Pradesh.
“In fact, there was a precedent of such President’s Rule. In apprehension that things can go out of control in Tamil Nadu, the then DMK government was dismissed and central rule imposed earlier without recommendation from the state Governor.”
However, former bureaucrat and ex-Cabinet Secretary Naresh Chandra strongly defended Rao’s decision not to impose President’s Rule in Uttar Pradesh as that would have been an act with constitutional flaw.
“The then UP Governor did not recommend President’s Rule but in the case of Tamil Nadu, as argued by Mani Shankar Aiyar, the Governor (Surjeet Singh Barnala) had only said he is unable to make up his mind whether to impose President’s Rule or not,” Chandra said.
Speaking on the occasion, Natwar Singh described the demolition of the Babri mosque as “the biggest failure” of Rao’s tenure.
He said that after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, Shankar Dayal Sharma was the first choice of Sonia Gandhi for prime ministership.
“On the advice of P.N. Haksar, Sonia Gandhi sent me and Aruna Asif Ali to meet Shankar Dayal Sharma, but he declined the proposal,” Natwar Singh.
Natwar Singh also threw light on and shared anecdotes about tension in relations between Congress leader Arjun Singh and Narasimha Rao and also between Sonia Gandhi and Rao, especially in the context of probe into Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination.
“Rao completely denied the charge and said he had sent others, including P. Chidambaram, to Sonia Gandhi with the information on the probe,” Singh said.
Quotes sourced from News X
Watch what Mani Shankar Aiyar said:
Congress’ mistreatment of PV Narasimha Rao and his achievements
In a speech to mark the 125th anniversary of the Congress, the party president Sonia Gandhi, praised contributions of all Congress prime ministers except PV Narasimha Rao.
All his contributions were either accredited to Rajiv Gandhi or Manmohan Singh.
When he died, there were no arrangements made to receive the body and place it atop a platform for public darshan. No flowers were provided by the congress government. There was no shamiana, there were no carpets. There was no one to control the mourning crowds. The congress president came for a couple of minutes and vanished.
And thus died, PV Narasimha Rao, the most underrated prime minister of India, a genius politician, a true statesman and the architect of modern India.
PV Narasimha Rao was the first and only right winger prime minister from the Congress clan. A nationalist to the core, he was born in the Hyderabad state of British India. Not many know that this astute politician and economist par excellence was also a trained Guerrilla fighter. He had ambushed the Nizam’s army along with his accomplices, many-a-times. His political prowess and planning genius was identified and nurtured under the guidance of Indira Gandhi. PV Narasimha Rao was fluent in 13 languages, was well versed with subjects related to economics, law, history, politics and arts. In the political circles, Rao was fondly addressed as the scholar amongst the politicians.
In late 1980s, Soviet Union began to crack and by 1991 it was split into 15 nations. Also the Iraq and Kuwait were busy fighting the Big Daddy, US. As a result of which oil prices skyrocketed. India’s primary buyer was down and out, and heavy money spent on costly oil imports drained the Indian economy. Hence India was on its knees. India at the same time was also suffering from a leadership slump. Rajiv Gandhi was out on charges of corruption. Incompetent politicians were playing the game of musical chairs with the top seat of the nation.
PV Narasimha Rao entered the prime minister office amongst the turmoil. He started working on a plan which was to be known as the liberalisation of the Indian economy later on. The reforms progressed furthest in the areas of opening up to foreign investment, reforming capital markets, deregulating domestic business, and reforming the trade regime. Public sector was privatized. And more money was pumped into infrastructure. India was opened to foreign trade thereby stabilizing the dwindling economy. After I.G. Patel (ex-governor of Reserve Bank of India) declined Rao’s offer of occupying the finance minister chair, Rao chose Manmohan Singh, a champion economist and a reformer at heart as the Finance minister of India. PV Narasimha Rao had an eye for talent and his disciple met all the expectation of his preceptor.
His reforms can be briefly summarized in the following bullet points:
-Abolishing the Controller of Capital Issues which decided the prices and number of shares that firms could issue.
-Introducing the SEBI Act of 1992 and the Security Laws (Amendment) which gave SEBI the legal authority to register and regulate all security market intermediaries.
-Opening up in 1992 of India’s equity markets to investment by foreign institutional investors and permitting Indian firms to raise capital on international markets by issuing Global Depository Receipts (GDRs).
-Starting in 1994 of the National Stock Exchange as a computer-based trading system which served as an instrument to leverage reforms of India’s other stock exchanges. The NSE emerged as India’s largest exchange by 1996.
– Reducing tariffs from an average of 85 percent to 25 percent, and rolling back quantitative controls. (The rupee was made convertible on trade account.)
– Encouraging foreign direct investment by increasing the maximum limit on share of foreign capital in joint ventures from 40 to 51% with 100% foreign equity permitted in priority sectors.
-Streamlining procedures for FDI approvals, and in at least 35 industries, automatically approving projects within the limits for foreign participation.
(Source: pvnarasimharao.in)
The impact of these reforms can be judged from the fact that total foreign investment in India grew from an infinitesimal US $132 million in 1991–92 to $5.3 billion in 1995–96.
PV Narasimha Rao was not just an economist par excellence but was someone who had a great respect for the armed forces of the nation as well. He was the first Congress Prime Minister to increase military spending. It was during his term that militancy in Punjab was finally crushed. PV Narasimha Rao energised the national nuclear security and ballistic missiles program, which paved the path for the successful 1998 Pokhran nuclear tests. PV Narasimha Rao was a tough negotiator and was known to be absolutely unyielding. He directed negotiations to secure the release of Doraiswamy, an Indian Oil executive, from Kashmiri terrorists. He also directed the negotiations for the release Liviu Radu, a Romanian diplomat, who was kidnapped by Sikh insurgents. Rao successfully oversaw the release of the Hazratbal Shrine in Kashmir without causing a single scar on the holy shrine. And he was the first person in Indian Polity to shake hands with Israel and openly call it, an ally.
It is a shame that the current generation (or at least the most of it) doesn’t really know PV Narasimha Rao and/or identify his contributions to this great nation of ours. The congress top brass has made every possible effort to make sure that this man goes down in History as a nobody.
After all PV Narasimha Rao changed the name of the Congress Party from Congress (Indira) to Bhartiya Rashtriya Congress (Indian National Congress) and rejected the candidature of Sonia Gandhi as the Congress President with this golden quote of his “Congress Party should be treated like a train where the compartments have to be attached to an engine belonging to the Nehru-Gandhi family or were there other alternatives?”
But the nation of 1.25 billion will never forget its saviour, a genius, a legend and arguably the best prime minister of India.You asked, and we listened! Over the past few weeks, we’ve added support for 14 more programming languages to the CodeSignal platform.
The new languages on CodeSignal are:
C
Clojure
CoffeeScript
Common Lisp
D
Elixir
Erlang
Julia
Kotlin
Lua
Nim
Objective-C
OCaml
Rust
With these additions, we now support 32 coding languages that you can use to solve CodeSignal tasks! Being able to select your language of choice means that you can master your primary coding language, practice a language that you’re in the process of learning, or just try one on for size.
See the postscript to this blog post for the entire list of languages that you can use on the platform. Keep in mind that you can’t use some languages to solve some tasks, so if that’s the case you may need to choose a backup language. (For instance, you can’t use Lua to solve a database task, so you’ll need to switch to MySQL.)
We hope that you’ve found a few languages that you’re excited about using! If your preferred language isn’t on our list, you can start a post on the CodeSignal Forum to request it. We try to add new supported languages a few times a year based on user requests and language popularity.
Programming Languages Supported on CodeSignal
The languages that our platform currently supports are:
Bash, Clojure, CoffeeScript, Common Lisp, C, C++, C#, D, Elixir, Erlang, F#, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript (ES6), Julia, Kotlin, Lua, MySQL, Nim, Objective-C, OCaml, Perl, PHP, Python2, Python3, R, Ruby, Rust, Scala, Swift3, and Visual Basic.What is there to say? Mount and Blade and Warband are very symbols of the chaotic and wonderful awesome nature of PC gaming.It's the opposite of For Honor. Where For Honor is smaller battles, more streamlined with fewer players, Mount and Blade is taking your horse up ladders and being fucking metal in metal armor throwing yourself into metal dudes on metal horses, while listening to metal.If you guys are not already, Wishlist and check out Bannerlord steam page. Activity on the page sort of lets the dev know that people are anticipating it.Medieval sword fighting is stronger than it was (in huge part due to Mount and Blade). We got For Honor, and Chivalry had a nice stint for a while.Another game people need to check out is Mordhau. It also looks promising, but will be more of a mix between Chivalry and Jedi Knight. It won't have all the RPG elements of MnB.But Kingdom Come: Deliverance will have those RPG elements. But that game is still very early. It has a very long way to go.The genre still have a lot of room to grow. I'd like to see the full force of a studio like Dice making a Battlefield game over the 100 year war. Paradox shut down War of the Roses a long time ago.Frankly, the genre is not where it needs to be. For Honor speaks mostly to fighting game fans, and even though Bannerlord looks awesome, it's still very much going to be an indie title. I think it's a shame because this genre- of online competitive swords'n sandals warfare has a lot of potential.I'm reminded of what a disappointment Lord of the Rings Conquest was. Wasted potential. It's just much much harder to make melee fighting work online. Due to latency issues, it can really ruin the experience.CHIEF executive Gillon McLachlan his hit back at allegations the AFL is "incompetent" at dealing with racism, saying recent responses have made it "a leader in the country".
Former Collingwood star Heritier Lumumba painted a frank picture of his old club in a recently-released documentary, saying he was nicknamed "chimp".
Lumumba also opened up about the aftermath of Magpies president Eddie McGuire's racial vilification of Adam Goodes in 2013.
Lumumba has since told Guardian Australia he raised "concerns with various levels of administration and management about racism within the club and how I was affected" but the "AFL is incompetent in dealing with and addressing" the issue.
Former Collingwood players Leon Davis and Andrew Krakouer have thrown their support behind Lumumba in recent days.
McLachlan, who is yet to speak with Lumumba about the recent revelations, says the AFL has been "very strong" on the issue of racism.
"Our industry has been a leader in the country on racism," McLachlan told reporters in Sydney.
"It doesn't mean we get everything right. We're a work in progress. We listen and learn.
"I've got (Torres Strait Islander and social activist) Tanya Hosch on my management team, who I take a lot of advice from.
"We're all on a journey to do the best we can, but I think our history is pretty strong.
When asked if he would reach out to Lumumba, McLachlan replied "Tanya has already met with Heritier."
AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan with NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian on Tuesday. Picture: AFL Photos
Hosch, the league's general manager of inclusion and social policy, briefly talked with Lumumba last week on the set of the Marngrook Footy Show.
"Despite media reports, which state that I recently met with the AFL regarding these issues, I have not had any meaningful contact with the AFL, including their general manager of inclusion and social policy," Lumumba wrote on his Facebook page.
"I've spoken to myriad players and staff who understand just how systemic and far-reaching racism is within the AFL."
The AFL was widely criticised for its response to the Goodes incident in 2013, but also the ensuing widespread booing of the indigenous icon during games.
More recently it has denounced crowd vilification of Paddy Ryder and Eddie Betts, who had a banana thrown at him during a game in 2016.
"There is a history of not competently dealing with systemic racism – not just at a club level, but the AFL," Lumumba told the Guardian.
"This issue should have been eradicated from the game.
"But even when we had the situation with Adam Goodes, the AFL didn't know how to address it effectively.
"Their response to my concerns further speaks to a culture of incompetence."A Canadian psychiatrist accused of human rights abuses in apartheid South Africa for subjecting gay soldiers and conscientious objectors to electric shock "cures", will stand trial in Calgary on Wednesday for allegedly sexually abusing male patients.
Aubrey Levin, known in South Africa as "Dr Shock" for his use of electroshock therapy, is charged with sexual assaults on 10 patients, mostly prisoners assigned by the Canadian justice system for treatment. On Tuesday, a jury ruled he was fit to stand trial after the defence claimed Levin, 72, was suffering from the early stages of dementia.
Levin was arrested only after a male patient secretly filmed him making sexual advances. Earlier complaints by others were ignored by the authorities or not believed. His licence to practice has been suspended and the Alberta justice department has reviewed scores of criminal convictions in which the psychiatrist was a prosecution witness.
One of Levin's patients told CTV two years ago he endured abuse because he was afraid to protest.
"I didn't want him to write anything negative about me. So I pretty much kept quiet through the whole ordeal and the next time I came forward I was going to bring a tape recorder and record everything he was going to say, just to protect myself," the man said.
After his arrest, about 30 other patients came forward to accuse Levin of sexual abuse.
Levin's arrest raised questions in Canada as to how he was allowed to become a citizen and permitted to practice at the University of Calgary's Medical School even after he was named by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) for "gross human rights abuses" during the apartheid era.
Levin was a colonel in the South African military and chief psychiatrist at 1 Military hospital in Pretoria in the 1970s and 80s, where he was in charge of a unit where electric shocks were administered to "cure" gay white conscripts. Levin also oversaw the use of electroshocks and powerful drugs against conscientious objectors refusing to fight for the apartheid army in Angola or suppress dissent in the black townships, who were held against their will and classified as "disturbed".
Levin, a member of the ruling National party during apartheid, had a long history of claiming to be able to cure gay people. In the 1960s, he wrote to a parliamentary committee considering the abolition of laws criminalising homosexuality saying they should be left in place because he could turn them into heterosexuals with electric shocks, known as aversion therapy. From 1969, he subjected an undetermined number of men to the treatment at the infamous ward 22 of the military hospital near Pretoria that catered for service personnel with psychological problems.
Levin encouraged commanding officers and chaplains to refer "deviants" for electroconvulsive aversion therapy, which consisted of homosexual soldiers being shown pictures of naked men and encouraged to fantasise as they were subject to increasingly powerful electric shocks until they begged for the pain to stop.
Some of the abuses were documented by the Aversion Project in South Africa (pdf). Its report quotes Trudie Grobler, an intern psychologist in the psychiatric unit at 1 Military hospital, who was forced to give electric shocks under Levin's supervision.
"I know that [the psychiatrist] did aversion therapy with the homosexual men. I don't know of a single case where it was successful … You know he would show the boys men, and then shock them, and then show them girls," she said.
According to the Aversion Project report, Grobler also saw a lesbian subjected to such severe electric shocks that her shoes flew off. "I can only think that it was the same method and intensity that the woman had been given. And it was terrible. … I couldn't believe that her body could survive it all," she said.
According to the Aversion Project, some soldiers were subjected to hundreds of electric shock sessions. It said Levin "coerced conscripts into admitting that they were homosexual to their parents, and further coerced them to undergo aversion therapy".
Among them was Michael Smith, then an 18-year-old conscript. Levin forced him to tell his parents he was gay. "It was the first time they realised I was homosexual and they were horrified. Dr Levin told them he had a therapy that would'reorientate' me, so I agreed to the treatment," he told the Guardian in 2000.
Smith was subject to numerous electric shock sessions.
"When you kind of reached the maximum point and then you'd say 'No, no, no, I couldn't stand it any more', then he would say: 'Now you must think about your girlfriend', and all that sort of off-the-wall statements."
Other conscripts with learning difficulties or suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from fighting in Angola were also given powerful drugs and subjected to electric shocks. One of them was a soldier who subsequently wrote a book, a Branch of Wisdom, under the pen name Christopher.
"Within 2 days of meeting with Dr Levin, I commenced a series 6 ECTs (Electro Convulsive Therapy) against my will," he wrote.
The TRC heard testimony from a gay soldier who was chemically castrated. It was told that at least one patient had been driven to suicide by his treatment at Levin's hands. The psychiatrist refused to testify before the commission.
Levin also targeted drug users, principally soldiers who smoked marijuana, and conscientious objectors who would not serve in the apartheid military on moral grounds. Some were subjected to narco-analysis or a "truth drug", involving the injection of a barbiturate before the questioning began.
Speaking in 2000, Levin said the drug was used to help soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress. He said electric shock therapy was a standard "treatment" for gay people at the time and those subjected to it did so voluntarily.
"Nobody was held against his or her will. We did not keep human guinea pigs, like Russian communists; we only had patients who wanted to be cured and were there voluntarily," he said.
While the details of Levin's abuses at 1 Military hospital were widely aired in South Africa, he managed to suppress publication of details about his past in Canada by threatening legal action against news organisations.
Canada admitted other South African medical practitioners accused of human rights abuses, including two who worked with Wouter Basson, known as "Dr Death" for his oversight of chemical and biological warfare experiments that included the murder of captured Namibian guerrillas.AP Photo/Jim Mone Thousands filled the Minnesota State Capitol as they waited for word that the Senate had passed the gay marriage bill yesterday.
Last month, Rhode Island came over into the marriage equality column. Last week, it was Delaware. Yesterday, it was Minnesota. There’s progress expected in New Jersey, Illinois, and at the Supreme Court. Pick your favorite cliché or metaphor about winning—being on a hot streak, passing the tipping point, bending the arc of history—and feel free to apply.
And yet few Americans are aware that in 29 states, you can still be fired for putting a same-sex partner’s picture on your desk, or rejected for a job because the hiring manager doesn’t like homos. That’s right—it’s perfectly legal in most of the country to fire, refuse to hire, demote, or otherwise discriminate against someone for being gay.
The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would make it illegal to fire people on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, has been introduced in every session of Congress since 1994. Even before that, New York state representatives Bella Abzug and Ed Koch (who would go on to become the mayor of New York City) introduced a version of ENDA in 1974, then called the Equality Act. In 1996, under Bill Clinton, ENDA failed by just a single vote—the very same day that the House passed the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage for federal purposes as being between one man and one woman, and which is currently up for evaluation at the Supreme Court. The congressional debate about “defending” marriage was hateful, replete with references to discredited “scientific” studies about how many hundreds of sex partners an average gay man had and statements about AIDS being God’s punishment for immorality or about gay marriage leading to legal marriage to your German shepherd (some of us, at the time, wondered what was up with these legislators and their German shepherds). ENDA was tossed in as a way to prove that all that hate wasn’t really hate, just reverence for the institution of marriage.
This hoary old bill was once again put on Congress’s floor at the end of April, buried during a busy news week. Not that anyone would have paid attention even if it had been slow. Perpetual loser bill reintroduced once again—there’s a memorable headline. The difference is that the LGBT advocacy community is nearly united in agreeing that passing ENDA is this year’s overriding goal.
Had ENDA passed in 1996—well, that’s a counterfactual that boggles the mind. There's a reason that we’ve won civil unions or marriage only in states that have first passed statewide nondiscrimination laws. We only win relationship recognition when people know gay people. But too many people are afraid to come out on the job if they might lose that job for being gay. That’s a double whammy: Not only do you have to lie, implicitly, at work, leaving your daily life fraught with anxiety and your income a bit at risk; you also lose your ability to wear down others’ anti-gay prejudice. People change their minds about whether we deserve recognition for our relationships only when they realize that they like us and our partners. Once they realize that the gays they ostensibly hate include Mary Beth in accounting and Jamal in HR, that hatred starts to soften. And once Mary Beth and Jamal know they can keep feeding their families once they’re out, they are more likely to feel comfortable introducing you to their partners at the grocery store or at church, and explaining how much a statewide DOMA would hurt their kids. Had nationwide job protections been in place since 1996, it’s possible to imagine we’d be even farther along with marriage in still more states, as more people realized they cared about their gay colleagues.
If ENDA is so important, why has marriage gotten so far while protection on the job has stalled? Many advocates find this quite paradoxical. Except for a few sensitive jobs—teaching, for instance, or military service—the freedom to work while gay has been relatively uncontroversial since the 1980s. Even anti-gay Americans have long believed that if you do a good job, what you do in your personal life shouldn’t matter. As of the last poll, three-fourths of the country says that LGBT folks should be protected from discrimination on the job.
Here's the truth: Marriage hasn’t gotten as far as it seems. All our wins have been statewide—just like our wins on anti-discrimination laws. The national organizing efforts on marriage and the military have been efforts to undo something bad. ”Don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT) banned us from open service in the military, the nation’s biggest employer. DOMA bans the federal government from recognizing marriages we’ve made in the states. If SCOTUS knocks down DOMA Section 3, that won’t be the same as federal support for same-sex marriage; it just returns the federal government to neutral, which is precisely where the feds are right now on employment: indifferent.
ENDA, on the other hand, would be a bigger deal than eliminating DADT or DOMA §3. Passing ENDA would be—at last—a positive win at the federal level at last: active protection from our federal government, for the first time on record.
And passing ENDA will mean most to the least powerful among us. Urban, professional-class employees—lawyers, journalists, software engineers, the folks who have been especially vocal and most active donors on LGBT rights—usually feel free, these days, to be out as lesbian or gay on the job. That’s less true for a rural worker in a blue- or pink-collar job whose ability to put a picture of a same-sex partner on her desk or in his locker without being harassed, demoted, or fired is going to depend on the whims of coworkers and managers. If you're either just urban or just professional—not both—you too may be at the mercy of your coworkers and managers. ENDA will mean a lot to the community college professor in rural Arkansas, or big-box retail clerk in, say, Columbus, Ohio who will finally feel free to stop playing pronoun shuffleboard (“Yes, I did go out with someone recently, but they weren’t very interesting … ”).
But of course there's still another reason that marriage activism feels as if it has so much oomph behind it while nondiscrimination law seems so dutiful and dry: The symbolism behind marriage speaks to the defining feature of gay identity (same-sex love) in a way that workplace discrimination does not. By contrast, for blacks and for women getting a law guaranteeing the right to work was central to achieving dignity. Until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, they were flatly denied equality on the job; their discrimination centered around the idea of them as people who couldn’t think or do well enough to stand side by side with white men.
The key difference is that while it’s difficult to hide either your sex or your race, it’s comparatively easy for most lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men to hide our sexual orientation. Gay men have been able to get jobs and lesbians have moved ahead on the job in stride with women at large—albeit at the cost of revealing that that they had full emotional lives. In other words, on the job LGB folks have been there all along; we just haven’t always been able to be open about it. For us, the far more central denial of our dignity has been our exclusion from the social symbolism and law that have shaped our siblings’ romantic and family aspirations. Being denied recognition for our passions and our families has been at the heart—a metaphor I use intentionally—of our civil and social exclusion, and therefore our movement. Employment rights have been emotionally secondary to the LGB movement (although far more important in the T column, where people lose their jobs regularly for transitioning) in the way that the right to marry across races was secondary to the African American civil-rights movement. Being denied that freedom to marry across races lines was an insult, but not the central plank of oppression. But being treated as if none of my loves deserved recognition was absolutely at the core of my exclusion, at least as a lesbian, from full participation in my community.
The inability to care for the ones you love in extremis—when they need you most, in hospital rooms and funeral arrangements and childrearing—is a terrifying and helpless feeling. But that can’t be fixed, of course, if folks can’t feel safe coming out at work. That’s where ENDA will help: It will be a critical step toward allowing folks to advocate, locally, for themselves and their families.
Where ENDA will have the chance to make the biggest change is on gender presentation and identity. I believe the LGBT coalition is winning on sexual orientation. The resistance to our freedom to marry is crumbling as more and more people say: Who cares who you love, as long as she wipes her feet before she comes in the house? But as I write here regularly, this country remains more than a little nutty about gender. Boys are supposed to be boys, not girls, and vice versa. Here I’m talking in part about transgender identities—whether it’s acceptable for someone born female to live as male or vice versa, and if so, where to go to the bathroom. But I also mean that it’s still not okay for a boy to deviate from the strictest version of masculinity. A harsh patrol descends if a boy or man dares to express an interest in something fluffy or sparkly, walks with insufficient swagger, fails to cheer raucously enough for a sports team, or otherwise expresses strays from the preapproved masculinity box. Like a ball that wavers out of the strike zone, the rules vary from one observer to another, but many people are happy to call out any offense against a man’s manhood when they see it. Passing ENDA might help insist that, culturally, we can show up to work as who we are—even if who we are doesn’t fit someone else’s vision of manhood or womanhood.
Tico Almeida, the president of Freedom to Work, told me recently that he disagrees with that little theory of mine. He believes, rather, that ENDA is needed especially to protect workers on sexual-orientation grounds. There’s a growing body of case law, he said, that says that gender deviation is protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which says that our freedom of employment will not be abridged based on sex. Courts, he says, have been expanding on the Hopkins v. Price Waterhouse precedent—which slapped the accounting firm for refusing to make Ann Hopkins partner because she wasn’t feminine enough—to say that any deviant gender expression is protected on the job. If a manager repeatedly catcalls someone as a “sissy” or “girlyboy,” he’ll have a sex-harassment case. (Not sexual harassment, sex harassment, a slightly different creature.) Not so if you fire him flat-out for being a faggot.
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