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wnauw - RT GIFS (RTGIFS) December 10, 2014Couple creates heartbreaking video talking about their hopes to have a baby An Israeli gay couple have taken to the internet in their final hope to start a family. Liran Altman Kadury, 36, and Yuval Kadury Altman, 33, a couple from Tel Aviv, have already spent thousands of dollars trying to start a family by surrogacy. But when they tried, one surrogate miscarried twins in the ninth week. The second didn’t take at all. The would-be fathers are so desperate for a baby they are borrowing money from family, downsizing their lifestyle, and depleting their life savings. They have now launched a Mimoona campaign, similar to Kickstarter, to raise 250,000 Israeli New Sheqels ($67,075, â‚¬51,327) to try surrogacy again. In the video, which has reached over 80,000 hits in a couple of weeks, the couple says because it hurts to speak about their struggles, they decided to write down their plea on pieces of paper. ‘Every human being has the right to start a family,’ one slide reads. Check out the heartbreaking video below, and their donation site here:What an idea sirji!!! OgilvyOne Athens (@OgilvyOneAthens) hats off to you for this campaign. To promote the awareness about breast cancer what a normal NGO or any other organization can do? It can create a campaign of print ads, video ads, billboards, and social media or at the most make the video viral on YouTube and social sites, right? But here you will see the way Nestle Fitness is promoting it in a very unique way in which we would have never thought possible. Let’s check it out. A first-of-its-kind bra which will remind tweeple about a breast self-test which females should never forget. So whenever a female unhooks her bra automatically with the help of Bluetooth device a signal is sent to a mobile to post a tweet @tweetingbra about it. This campaign was launched in Greece as a part of October’s global breast cancer awareness month. Maria Bacodimou (@mariabacodimou), one of the most popular TV presenters in Greece is the chosen medium to conduct this campaign. She has willingly signed up with Nestle, and will be wearing a tweeting bra for two weeks. Every time she unhooks it, well, all her followers will be reminded to run a self-check for breast cancer. This is also a great way to use a key influencer. Along with this it is also giving suggestion how a female should do self-breast test with all easy steps which is very helpful. But again I see things from organization point of view. As I can remember my healthy discussions in CSR class room with my faculty Dr. Madhumita Chatterji, everything used to revolve around one question, “CSR at whose cost?” So the doubt I get here is that maybe Nestle Fitness, which is a cereal brand, just want to sell their product in market by increasing the involvement with females in Greece. The question remains to you now but the idea of campaign is really awesome to create awareness about breast cancer test and how easy and essential it is to detect the symptoms early. Author: Choudhary Harish AdvertisementsBENGALURU, India — Launch vehicle development and production activities are the dominant feature of an Indian Space Research Organisation budget allocation of 73.9 billion rupees ($1.2 billion) for the 2015-2016 fiscal year, which begins April 1. The total, presented to the parliament Feb. 28, is roughly level with the 2014-15 budget presented last year. However, ISRO typically spends significantly less money than is allocated in any given budget year — for 2014-15 it spent just 58 billion rupees of the 72 billion rupee allocation — so it seems likely that spending in the coming year will fall short of 73.9 billion rupees. ISRO spokesman Deviprasad Karnik acknowledged the possibility that ISRO’s budget will be reduced before the end of the year. That said, the total allocation for launch vehicle technology is 26 billion rupees, a sum that includes 3.15 billion rupees for continued development and operationalization of the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark -3, which will be capable of lifting 4 metric tons to geostationary transfer orbit and flew a suborbital test mission in December. The budget also includes 3.12 billion rupees for production of ISRO’s workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. Other allocations within the launch vehicle technology budget include 1.5 billion rupees for a kerosene-fueled main engine and 214 million rupees for human spaceflight-related efforts, according to budget documents. ISRO also is looking to increase its satellite launching capacity. The allocation includes 1.2 billion rupees for a second vehicle assembly building at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre launch facility in Sriharikota, part of an 8.64 billion rupee allocation for launch range infrastructure. ISRO’s 11.1 billion rupee satellite technology budget includes 1.2 billion rupees for the Indian Regional Satellite Navigation System, a constellation of seven satellites, three of which are already on orbit. Other notable satellite technology allocations include 800 million rupees for a geostationary satellite imaging program; 310 million rupees for the Gsat-11 effort to develop a 4-ton-class geostationary-orbiting communications satellite; and 500 million rupees for a Cartosat-3 satellite capable of taking images with 0.25-meter resolution. The satellite budget also includes 500 million rupees for the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite being developed with the U.S. space agency under a bilateral agreement signed this past September. That satellite is tentatively scheduled for launch in 2020 or 2021. ISRO’s 3 billion rupee allocation for space science includes 400 million rupees for the Chandrayaan-2 lunar rover and orbiter mission. For the operational Insat program of communications and weather satellites, the budget allocation is 13.2 billion rupees, a sum that includes development, launch and operations. Also included in the total is 100 million rupees for leasing capacity from foreign satellites to augment the Insat system, but ISRO set aside 478 million rupees for that purpose in 2014-15 and according to budget documents none of that money was spent.A shirtless man who was waving a sword outside a Bainbridge Island business told police he was “hunting werewolves and C.H.U.D.s” because he was concerned about his safety. Werewolves and C.H.U.D.s, he allegedly told them, in many cases took the form of humans. Concerned about their safety, police took the man to Harrison Memorial Hospital for evaluation. The incident started Tuesday about 1:45 p.m. when an off-duty Bainbridge Island officer advised dispatchers of a man armed with a sword in the parking lot of Pro Build, a business for contractors and builders. Officers found the 35-year-old man standing at the front door of the business with a large sword in his hands, Lt. Sue Shultz said. He had multiple scrapes and cuts on his body. The man disarmed himself without incident, but officers also allegedly found several throwing knifes and other sharp weapons. “Following the incident at Pro Build, several individuals contacted police and advised that the subject had been seen in the area of Ace Hardware,” Shultz said in a statement. “They reported the male had been approaching customers and staff displaying and demonstrating his sword and throwing and knifes.” He remained at the hospital late Tuesday afternoon.The bed manufacturer reckons that finding someway to keep your cash safe is becoming increasingly problematic. So it has come up with a new divan bed that conceals a safe. The company admitted it was a 'tongue-in-cheek product' but added that it was a serious proposition. A small safe with a sturdy lock the compact box is big enough to store a stack of notes, securities or valuable belonging like jewellery. Covered with a valance or chunky throw the safe will remain hidden from prying eyes, the company said. Robbie Feather, managing director of Feather & Black said: “Confidence in banks has hit an all-time low and fears of a recession crime wave have been raised by the Home Secretary. As a result people genuinely seem concerned about the safety of their money. Our new Safe bed began as a slightly tongue-in-cheek idea but we are now confident that it will appeal to home owners who want to store their money or valuable belongings in a safe place." The bed, which costs £949 for a double divan is alos available in King-size and single-size.If you’re a slow or nervous driver, then Colorado may be the state for you. A recent nationwide survey indicates you’ll find some of the most courteous and patient drivers in the country here. Colorado drivers are the most polite in the U.S., according to Kars4Kids, a New Jersey-based nonprofit that’s funded by vehicle donations. The group’s study revealed Colorado drivers are more likely than most in the nation to let another car merge in heavy traffic and to practice patience when someone is tailgating. MOST POLITE Idaho New Mexico Oregon Montana Alaska Hawaii Colorado Washington Vermont New Hampshire However, Colorado drivers might steal your parking spot. Kars4Kids awarded each state a letter grade for various driving habits, and granted Coloradans a “B” for parking spot swiping. California, Oregon and other western states had an “A” average in that category. Colorado drivers ranked seventh for extending courtesy, the report said, trailing front runner Idaho and far surpassing last-place New York. The rankings were based on responses from 50 drivers in each state to a series of roadway scenarios. For example: “There’s a line of cars waiting at a red light. You’re continuing straight past the light. The right-turning lane is empty. Do you use that lane to go around them?” Most Colorado drivers who completed the survey said no. But Ben Baron, the owner of Denver’s DriveSafe driving schools, said the real answer is more likely to depend on circumstance. “In Colorado, we have very different conditions if you’re driving in a rural area versus downtown Denver,” Baron said. “If you’re driving on Colorado Boulevard on a busy time of day, I suspect we would lose that seventh ranking very quickly.” Colorado State Trooper Josh Lewis echoed this sentiment, noting that, “Driving close to Denver metro area is different from the Eastern Plains — they’ll have different types of etiquette.” Common road courtesies vary by state, Baron said. When merging onto an interstate, for example, drivers in some states consider it rude to speed ahead in the merger lane before cutting into the flow of traffic. But in other states, like New York, this is standard operating procedure. “Sometimes being courteous is not necessarily being the most efficient, but it is being nice,” Baron said. “Different areas of the country have different norms in terms of how to handle traffic.” LEAST POLITE Iowa Pennsylvania Oklahoma Georgia Maine Wisconsin Louisiana Arkansas South Carolina New York The West ranked by far the most courteous region, politely outpacing the similarly ranked Northeast, Midwest and South. The study also tracked politeness by gender and age. Women were far more courteous than men, while drivers age 24 or younger proved to be the least polite. Ari Finkelstein, a spokesman for Kars4Kids, said the nonprofit launched the survey to promote courteous driving. “Once you step into the car you don’t see the other car as a person behind the wheel,” he said. “There’s that anonymous feeling that you’re not dealing with other people.” Finkelstein said the worse their state was ranked, the more residents seemed to agree with the study. “Most people just think that everyone driving around them is rude and impolite, which verifies the need for this campaign,” he said. Courteous driving often means safer driving, said Sam Cole, a spokesman for the Colorado Department of Transportation. “It’s great news for traffic safety in Colorado if we truly have some of the safest drivers in the country,” Cole said. “With Colorado growing as fast as it is, there’s more congestion. So I think that the fact that people are remaining calm and patient…speaks volumes of the people that live here.”Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump walks on stage to introduce his wife Melania on the first day of the Republican National Convention on July 18, 2016 at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) — Donald Trump’s entrance during the Republican National Convention Monday night is taking social media by storm. COMPLETE CAMPAIGN 2016 COVERAGE The presumptive GOP nominee came out to Queen’s “We Are The Champions” while being silhouetted in the background before introducing his wife, Melania Trump. Many on social media claim Trump took a page out of the WWE for his entrance. On the left is Trump's entrance. On the right is WWE wrestler the Undertaker's entrance. pic.twitter.com/WxniQUurLq — Gideon Resnick (@GideonResnick) July 19, 2016 This is amazing. An @IAmJericho type entrance: Trump makes his big entrance https://t.co/2cZpzO5oxo — Brian Monzo (@BMonzoWFAN) July 19, 2016 Wow amazing entrance by Trump at the Republican National Convention 😍😍😍😍😍 https://t.co/vC3v7uUmzv — Michael Lee Morris (@MichaelLeeM) July 19, 2016 Wow, Donald Trump’s entrance tonight sure was weird. pic.twitter.com/qxVtcridu3 — Dan McQuade (@dhm) July 19, 2016 That Trump entrance was something pic.twitter.com/Mt438Wvf2w — Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) July 19, 2016 Trump's got some balls copying the Undertaker's entrance. pic.twitter.com/98RHqvEPk6 — Jimmy Traina (@JimmyTraina) July 19, 2016 Amazing entrance by Trump pic.twitter.com/xEiJEVqzo1 — Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) July 19, 2016 Trump with the WWE entrance — John Bresnahan (@BresPolitico) July 19, 2016 AHAHAAHAH TRUMP IS GETTING A WWE ENTRANCE — Dice Master Flash (@deanleyland) July 19, 2016 Lmaaao Trump's entrance is so WWE — Bill Buchanan (@BigActionBill) July 19, 2016 Donald Trump is in the celebrity wing of the WWE Hall of Fame. PHOTOS: 2016 Republican National Convention: Night 1Man With a Plan Hank Henshaw Bits and Pieces: 8.3/10 Written by: Bryan Q. MillerArt by: Agustin PadillaCover Price: $0.99Release Date: August 8, 2014Last week in Smallville: Chaos, Lex Luthor channeled his inner Dan Didio and suggested a reboot of the Smallville Universe. To say I was anticipating this issue all week is an understatement. Smallville is my favorite comic and while I've enjoyed the Chaos mini, it seems to be losing a little steam instead of building to an epic conclusion. I blame the way these issues are eventually packaged more than the issues themselves. There is a certain ebb and flow that goes along with it. However, Lex's proposal was a great ending to last issue and a jump start to the final three starting this week.Bryan Q. Miller is bringing everything together for the stretch run. The Eclipso story continues with some awesome guest stars. Superboy, Supergirl andare on the case. It's got action and a good dose of humor. It also has a bit of progression which is something that hasn't happened much throughout this book. Cyborg Superman gets a peek at the history of Eclipso and then comes up with a plan. It may be crazy enough to work.Meanwhile, Superman and Lois Lane are still hitching a ride with the Monitors. Lex has every one's attention and even gets a nice jab at Superman. The guy knows how to sell a deal! The Monitor's seem intrigued, but decide to deal first with the matter at hand...Superman. As is the order of the day, He has a plan as well. His is just crazy enough...to get someone killed.Like I said, these issues have an ebb and flow and this one is the start of the final three chapters that will be packaged together.Because of that, it is more setup than say, the last issue. I don't care, I like what Miller gives us. The Eclipso story is really starting to get interesting, not because of Eclipso, but who Miller brought in to fight it. I loved the brief bit with Lex and the Superman cliffhanger was great. I can't wait to see his plan and then see how he gets himself out of it.Agustin Padilla's art was okay. I am a big fan, but he was a little off this week. The action was well done, but his characters just had an unfinished look. I did love Cat Staggs cover as usual. it's epic.Smallville: Chaos #10 is a good start to the final stretch of the Chaos story. Bran Q. Miller gives us some really good Eclipso setup and the issue ends with Superman calling for desperate measure. Agustin Padilla's art was unusually off this week, but overall this was a nice setup issue that promises a great final two issues. Recommended.Want to help your students, co-workers, friends, activists, and family members have better conversations about unions and workers’ rights? Well, then this resource that we at the TESA Collective designed is just for you. Don’t let your argument get drowned out by anti-union rhetoric, come prepared. Our exercise lets you role-play with different scenarios and settings, so you’re ready for any counter-argument, whether from your uncle around the holiday dinner table, on campus, while being interviewed, at a #Fightfor15 rally, and so on. This interactive role-play will help participants: Speak out about the importance of unions and workers’ rights. Expand knowledge on unions and workers. Understand the arguments of people on the other side of the issue, and be better prepared to respond to them. Time Needed: 1.5 – 2.5 Hours (or two 45 minute sessions) Space Needed: A room and chairs Materials Needed: Would be preferable to have an easel sheet and markers, or a blackboard and chalk, or a computer and a projector. More ResourcesIt certainly got off to a rousing start Thursday when Drouin scored his first NHL game-winning goal, generated a Lightning-high four shots, and played 15:41 in a 4-2 win against the New Jersey Devils at Prudential Center. It was his first NHL game since Dec. 30. NEWARK, N.J. -- Tampa Bay Lightning coach Jon Cooper would prefer if this new chapter in the career of Jonathan Drouin turns out to be his finest piece of work. "This is a good story; this is the way you want it to go (for Drouin)," Cooper said. The Lightning will no doubt look to the 21-year-old for offensive support. He had nine goals and 10 points in his last 10 games with Syracuse of the American Hockey League before being recalled Wednesday afternoon by Lightning general manager Steve Yzerman. Yzerman considered recalling Drouin last week after he learned forward Steven Stamkos would be sidelined 1-3 months with a blood clot near his right collarbone, but a lower-body injury kept Drouin out of an AHL game on April 3. Tampa Bay entered Thursday with two goals or fewer in four of the past six games, and a power play that ranked 26th in the NHL (16.1 percent). The Lightning are also missing defensemen Anton Stralman (broken leg) and Victor Hedman (upper body), and forward Ryan Callahan (upper body). Drouin's tumultuous season included being dropped to the fourth line with Tampa Bay (Dec. 30), reassigned to Syracuse (Jan. 2), a trade request revealed (Jan. 3) that went unfulfilled (Feb. 29), walking out on his Syracuse teammates and a suspension without pay (Jan. 20), a phone call to Lightning general manager Steve Yzerman that resulted in his return (March 7), and a one-game scratch for missing a meeting (March 23). For one night, at least, the negative vibe that hovered over Drouin dissipated into thin air. "It's been a weird season, but it feels great to be back here playing hockey; that's the thing I wanted to do and something I realized sitting at home," Drouin said. "I'm trying to play the same game I was playing in Syracuse. I need to shoot more and get more chances to the net. I shot the puck to the net more [on Thursday] just like I did in Syracuse." After a tentative start, Drouin began to find his groove in the second period with center Vladislav Namestnikov and left wing Alex Killorn. "I've always liked playing with Jonathan; he's so dynamic out there," Killorn said. "I think he was confident. He told me he was trying to go high glove but went five-hole (on his goal). It's one of those things where I think he's got a hot hand right now and it's great that he can come in and help the team out with a game-winning goal." Drouin, the No. 3 pick in the 2013 NHL Draft, drew a roughing penalty on Joseph Blandisi with some feistiness at 3:58, and generated his first good scoring opportunity with a wrist shot at 8:35 of the second. He gave the Lightning a 3-1 lead after controlling a drop pass from Namestnikov in the right circle before taking a wrist shot that beat goaltender Keith Kinkaid between the pads 3:50 into the third. It was Drouin's third NHL goal of the season, first since Dec. 2. "The NHL speed is completely different than AHL speed," Drouin said. "Guys are flying right beside you and you don't have that much time. The first was more of an adjustment, but as the game went on I thought our line played well, moving the puck and getting chances. That's when I started feeling my old self a little bit." Drouin, who has averaged 15:14 of ice time in 20 NHL games this season, said he's gradually gaining an understanding for what it takes to succeed. "I just need to be more consistent," he said. "You can't take a shift or a game off in the NHL. Something is going to happen on the ice if you're not ready or not on your game. The biggest thing I realized was you have to be consistent and work hard every game." That's music to the ears of Cooper. "It's hard to compare his performance on Thursday with when he last played with us in December because our team dynamic has changed, but I did like how he wanted the puck, he commanded the puck, and was shooting the puck," Cooper said. "Those are things he needs to do to be successful and he was doing them [Thursday]. If he's going to keep doing that, things are going to work out for him." Lightning defenseman Matt Carle was asked if a motivated Drouin might alleviate some of the offensive pressure on the other forwards. "It can, but a guy like [Stamkos] is not replaceable," Carle said. "[Drouin] adds another dimension to our group and we'll see as he gets comfortable here if he can help the power play and try to fill the skates of Stamkos as much as possible. He can't bring that big heavy shot on the power play that Stamkos has, but he's a guy who can make plays out there."The BlackBerry KeyOne will soon get a pal. BlackBerry phone manufacturer TCL will release a companion to the KeyOne in October, with at least one major difference -- it won't have a keyboard. "Two months from now, we will have a touchscreen solution to show," François Mahieu, head of global sales for TCL, said in a briefing at the IFA tech conference in Berlin on Tuesday. It's no surprise that we're getting more BlackBerry phones this year. Back in February TCL promised as many as three devices would be coming in 2017. But this is the first we've heard from the Chinese manufacturer of an October launch date of its next device, as well as confirmation that it's working on an all-touchscreen phone. TCL, which also makes televisions and Alcatel phones, has been trying to breathe fresh life into the BlackBerry brand since launching the KeyOne at Mobile World Congress in February. Two major criticisms BlackBerry weathered in its former life were its inability to react fast enough to changes in the the market and to keep pace with rivals in releasing new phones. TCL hopes to avoid those mistakes with a second high-end phone, as well as reinforce the message that the BlackBerry family is here to stay. The touchscreen BlackBerry will be roughly the same price as the KeyOne, according to Mahieu. The idea behind this is to ensure that business customers being offered a BlackBerry at work will have a choice of devices. Some people will simply prefer to have a touchscreen phone. "We should not be blind to the demand that's out there," said Mahieu. Indeed, a phone with a keyboard is a rarity in today's era of all-touchscreen phones. Like its predecessors, the BlackBerry KeyOne has struggled to be seen amid a sea of high-end phones like the Samsung Galaxy S8 and iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. Not helping matters: The KeyOne didn't land with US carriers until several months after its unveiling. The coming months will be tougher, with the just unveiled Galaxy Note 8, soon-to-be-unveiled iPhones, the LG V30 and a new Google Pixel phone in the mix. Still, there are some BlackBerry diehards. And if you're a fan of the KeyOne's keyboard, don't panic. A full touchscreen phone is not a U-turn away from physical keys for TCL, just a deviation. "It will continue to be true in the future that keyboards are definitely a big element of [BlackBerry's] DNA," said Mahieu. The new phone will likely be a more sophisticated follow-up to the TCL-made DTEK 50 and DTEK60, which feature full touchscreens and which predated TCL's takeover as the official manufacturer of BlackBerry devices. "The message here is very clearly: Don't write us off as a vendor who has good success with KeyOne so far, but has nothing more to talk about," said Mahieu. "We're here to stay and we're going to roll out more BlackBerry products in the coming years, starting this year." The Smartest Stuff: Innovators are thinking up new ways to make you, and the things around you, smarter. Logging Out: Welcome to the crossroads of online life and the afterlife.He’s been through a breakdown, a Prozac addiction and hours of therapy, but David Brent hasn’t changed a bit. The world, however, has. It’s a harder, meaner place, with less time to indulge an amiable idiot. That’s the premise of Life on the Road, Ricky Gervais’s uneven, but not entirely unsuccessful spin-off of The Office. Written, directed and starring Gervais, it’s a rehash that neither develops the character nor betrays him. It simply assumes that we still share his weaknesses and therefore care about the fool. And we do – just. Brent was always, at heart, a dreamer. A man who means well and acts stupidly. Life on the Road works largely as a reminder of Gervais’s skill with this character’s tics – the whinnying laugh, the lip bit too late, that drowning stare to camera as he realises what he’s just said. At its best it carries the tradition of the little man struggling against his own confines. At its worst – some weak gags about fat people, a couple of moments where Brent’s too stupid for his back story – it’s small, shabby and outdated. It’s a few years after the filming of The Office and the world has turned on Brent. He now works as a sales rep for Lavichem, a cleaning products supplier that sells scourers, dish cloths and tampons (“One size fits all... No... it doesn’t actually”). At his former workplace Wernham Hogg, Brent was largely tolerated as a harmless nuisance, but this new office is full of Finchys: aggressive salespeople who openly bully him. There’s a pseudo-Gareth (Tom Bennett) and a sort-of Dawn (Mandeep Dhillon), but the majority of the Lavichem workforce is hostile; less tolerant of outcasts and misfits. There’s less room for Brent in a workplace where individuality is counterproductive. While he was boss he could afford to dick about. At Lavichem his “spark” – as one sympathetic character calls it – can’t just be ignored, it needs to be snuffed out. Facebook Twitter Pinterest New office, same fool … Ricky Gervais and Mandeep Dhillon. Photograph: BBC Films/Planet Photos In Brent’s mind, escape lies down the open road and a series of gigs with his band, Foregone Conclusion. The reality is, of course, crushingly different. The band are hired hands who hate him. The gigs are sparsely attended disasters. The open road is the M25, a near-complete loop. And he’s paying for the whole thing – the tour bus, the hotel rooms, the new Sergio Georgini jacket and the backstage bowls of licorice all-sorts – out of his own pocket. Why can't Ricky Gervais leave David Brent alone? Read more The scenario makes sense, but there’s something tired in the execution. As he’s done often before, Gervais uses the tour and – to some extent – the film (and the promotion around it) to channel his own dormant rock star ambitions. So there’s very long performances of Forgone Conclusion songs (Equality Street, Lady Gypsy, Native American) which, while funny, do hammer on. The music (“New romantic, but modern. A bit Bublé, a bit David Essex”) is horrible. The lyrics are almost exclusively about calling for compassion: for black people, indigenous people, gays and the disabled (“Help the awkward through the door”). It’s in terribly bad taste, but that’s Brent. By appealing for understanding, he’s really appealing for people to understand him. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mockumentary … Ricky Gervais, left, in The Office in 2001 – with the Wernham Hogg crowd including Martin Freeman, Mackenzie Crook and Lucy Davis. Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar It’s clear from early on that this is a Ricky Gervais solo outing. The moderating influence of his Office co-creator Stephen Merchant (not involved - something about “schedules”) is missing, leaving a patchy comedy that lacks discipline. The mockumentary format, used so brilliantly in the original show, goes for a wander once the action gets going. We’re never sure when the fictional camera crew is in attendance. There’s a heavy reliance on talking heads to sway us in Brent’s favour, particularly from rapper Doc Brown, who reprises his Comic Relief turn as Dom, an aspiring MC who’s been sucked into Brent’s orbit. Dom, a decent guy who can see the desperation behind Brent’s bluster, is the film’s Tim. A nice bloke who basically wants the best for Brent, even if he’s often the butt of his assumptions about race. In one difficult, but pointed scene, a very drunk Brent insists Dom call him “my nigger”. Dom, appalled, acquiesces because the cameras are rolling. Again – all Brent wants is validation. To Brent – as adrift in his friendship with a black man as he is delighted by it – this is the ultimate acceptance. All of this relies on the audience liking, or even loving, David Brent as much as they once did, on giving him as many chances as Gervais has. It’s a problem that’s acknowledged twice: once via a scene in which a local DJ doesn’t know who Brent is, but says he was on a show “like The Call Centre” (a genuine workplace documentary that aired years after The Office); the next in a scene where Foregone Conclusion are booked to play a student union’s Shite Night (“the shittest bits of culture of the last 20 years”). The threat of a younger audience not getting David Brent is real, as is the danger that those of us who were there the first time might tire of him. Brent’s no Partridge and Gervais isn’t Coogan. At the same time, you can’t just throw a situation at him as you could with, say, Edina and Patsy. Gervais and Merchant built this character too well. There were braver things that Gervais could have done with the character. The bravest being leaving him where he was. The Office - two series, two Christmas specials - was finished near-perfectly. It’s a shame to see the joke reheated. Still, the world isn’t getting any cleverer. All of us – from the boss who signs off an email about redundancies with details of his holiday plans to the Hollywood star who says he has no problem playing gay because he’ll “stand with his arm around his best mate in a pub. Not a problem” – have our Brent moments. The character endures, however hard or mean the world gets.Britain's Government Communications Headquarters, a UK government security and intelligence agency, has code-named a sweeping surveillance program "Karma Police", after the Radiohead song, The Intercept reports. It was launched seven years ago "without any public debate or scrutiny," according to the Intercept, and built with the intent of secretly collecting information on the public's internet use. The program's existence was revealed in documents obtained by the Intercept through former U.S. National Security Agency subcontractor Edward Snowden, whose whistleblowing sparked a large debate about the role of governmental surveillance. The Intercept says the program's code name wasn't discussed in the documents, but that its goals were explicitly stated: to provide GCHQ with "either (a) a web browsing profile for every visible user on the Internet, or (b) a user profile for every visible website on the Internet." The metadata information was collected in bulk, and analyzed afterwards for signs of conspiracy—such as trying to track down the listeners of an internet radio station that frequently broadcasted recitations from the Quran. According to the Intercept, the program was begun between 2007 and 2008. More than 1.1 trillion records were collected between August 2007 and March 2009, with 50 billion records accumulating per day by 2012. Pitchfork has reached out to Radiohead's representatives for comment.Going around the psychiatry blogosphere recently: this segment by John Oliver about doctors who take pharmaceutical company money: I will resist the urge to geek out about its minor medical errors1 in favor of clarifying something more important. The impression you’re supposed to get from this piece is a shady looking man handing you a briefcase full of cash and whispering “Hey, here’s $10,000 for you if you prescribe unnecessary medication.” The implication is the doctors who do this are awful and if you were in medicine you would have no trouble resisting this temptation. In reality, pharma companies have figured out that some people have ethical qualms – “evil cannot possibly understand good” only works in movies – and adjusted their strategies accordingly. We’ll start with a simple one. Imagine you’re a doctor, and your staff are complaining because the staff at every other doctor’s office has been getting these incredible free lunches every day – the video says drug companies aren’t supposed to give, like, Zagat-rated steakhouse lunches, but there’s still a lot of room between “Zagat-rated” and “Way better than the peanut butter and jelly sandwich you bring from home”. The nurses are grumbling and threatening to revolt and asking if you really appreciate them. A drug company representative offers to provide your office with free lunches a couple of times a week. You say “It would be really annoying to actually use the phrase ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch’ here, so I will just ask what the catch is.” They say “No catch. We don’t require you to ever prescribe any of our drugs. We don’t require you to listen to our presentation. We don’t even require you to read our promotional literature. Just accept our offer.” You say “Why are you doing this?” They say “Because every time you eat one of our lunches, you’ll associate the ice cold taste of Coca-Cola and the sweet warm chewy chocolate chip cookies with our company, and you’ll get positive feelings about it, and maybe those positive feelings will influence your prescription habits.” You say “I think I’m a good enough doctor not to prescribe a drug solely because I get lunch from their company.” They say “Look. We all know that most antidepressants are about equally effective. Sure, we split hairs and talk about how one has more anticholinergic side effects so it’s bad for patients with cholinergic sensitivity, and another has more chance of weird visual disturbances, but how often does someone come into your office and announce ‘Hey, I’m depressed, and also I have cholinergic sensitivity, but I LOVE weird visual disturbances!’? Although there are a few cases where one drug’s clearly a better choice than another, most of the time you’re about equally balanced between two or three options, and you just pick one at random. So maybe instead of picking one at random, you’ll pick the one you associate with delicious food. And if you do, so what? Nobody’s harmed. You would have just flipped a coin anyway.” You say “I’d rather flip a coin than feel like I’m being pressured by what I had for lunch.” They say “Look, you secretly worry anyway that you sometimes prescribe Effexor because the name makes it sound effective, or Paxil because the name makes it sound peaceful.” You say “Wait, you can read my thoughts?” They say “We’re a pharmaceutical company. Of course we can read your thoughts. Look. You already know
enthusiasm and determination to do your best to make a really good first contribution. You’ll try to find all the documentation for the project you’re working on, and read through it, only to realize it’s completely outdated and incomplete. You’ll ping mentors and ask questions, but you may not be able to reach the right person to answer your question. So you do the best you can with the resources you find, cross your fingers, and submit your first contribution. It’s common for newcomers to blame themselves when they make mistakes in their first contributions. You’ll cringe, wring your hands, smack your forehead, or maybe even put your head in your hands. Then you’ll sigh and try again. No matter how good the documentation for contributing to the project is, how meticulous you are, you will slip up at some point. And that’s fine, because you are going through a process of learning something new, and expanding your skills. The most productive contributors see each mistake they make as a growth opportunity, instead of a personal failure. The Maintainer’s Perspective As a long-standing open source contributor, you may get contributions from newcomers all the time. You’ll see several of them make the same mistakes over and over again, and if you have enough time, you’ll update your project documentation to help people avoid those mistakes. Often you don’t have time, and the documentation doesn’t get updated. Or you’ll think that something is so blindingly obvious that everyone should understand it, without realizing how much specialized experience you need to have that knowledge. At some point in as a maintainer, you will be completely overloaded with contributions from both newcomers and familiar, trusted contributors. It’s easy to review those contributions from long-standing contributors, because they know your expectations and the rules around contributing. You trust them to write solid code containing very few bugs. So you review the contributions from trusted contributors, and put off reviewing contributions from newcomers until you have a large block of time to thoroughly review the newcomer’s contribution. It’s tempting to just go through the newcomer’s contribution from start to finish, commenting on every single thing they missed. The maintainer’s mindset is, “Ok, I have time, I should share my knowledge with this person who is obviously missing some tribal knowledge they need to contribute to my project.” From the newcomer’s perspective, what they experience is their contribution being ignored for days or even weeks, followed by a very long email full of nit-picky comments on coding style, criticism of their code structure, and even comments about their spelling and grammar. Even if the review is fair and neutrally worded with a focus on their technical mistakes, it still feels very harsh. We Can Do Better How can we make this process better on both sides? How can we make the first patch review less harsh, and still respect the maintainer’s valuable time? Can we make turn around time on first patch review even shorter? When I was the xHCI driver maintainer, I started experimenting with a different way of reviewing contributions from newcomers that I think might help address all three of these issues. The Three-Phase Contribution Review Instead of putting off reviewing first-time contributions and thoroughly reviewing everything in the contribution at once, I propose a three-phase review process for maintainers: Is the idea behind the contribution sound? Is the contribution architected correctly? Is the contribution polished? You can compare these contribution review phases to the phases of building a new house or taking on a remodeling project. The first phase is a simple yes or no on the architectural diagram, the big idea of the contribution. The second phase is getting all the structural issues correct and making sure the plumbing and electrical all connect properly. The third phase is making everything polished, sanding off the rough corners, and slapping on a coat of paint to match whatever color the bike shed is currently painted. Phase One: Good or Bad Idea? The first phase of the contribution review should only require a simple yes or no answer from the maintainer: “Is this contribution a good idea?” If the contribution isn’t useful or it’s a bad idea, it isn’t worth reviewing further. The best action in this case is to refocus the newcomer on a better idea or a completely different area they could work on. Or open a discussion with the newcomer and other contributors as to what should be done to address the issue in a different way. If the contribution is worthwhile, but you don’t have time to go onto the second phase of patch review, do NOT say nothing. Instead, drop the contributor an email that says, “Thanks for this contribution! I like the concept of this patch, but I don’t have time to thoroughly review it right now. Ping me if I haven’t reviewed it in a week.” This builds the newcomer up by expressing appreciation for the time and effort they put into creating this contribution, and lets them know they’re on the right path. It also gives you incentive to actually move onto phase two, because the contributor will bug you again if you haven’t reviewed the contribution. Phase Two: Is this Architecturally Sound? In phase two, you review the contribution to see whether the code (and only the code) is architecturally correct. Focus on whether the code is sound at an architectural level. Is the code behavior correct? Are they modifying the right functions, or does the code need to be moved around? Have they structured their build files correctly? Do they need to refactor any code? Do they need to get buy-in on the code structure from other maintainers? Are there potential hazards or tricky parts of the code that the everyone needs to review carefully? You will need to squash the nit-picky, perfectionist part of yourself that wants to comment on every single grammar mistake or code style issue. Instead, only include a sentence or two with a pointer to coding style documentation, or any tools they will need to run their contribution through. If their patch needs to be updated against a newer version of your project, or a different maintainer’s upstream repository, point that out. Avoid nit-picking every instance where they violate your project’s contribution style rules. Your eyeballs may be bleeding from the number of camel case variable names or variables names that use variable type encoding, but take a deep breath and ignore that. Let them explore the tools, documentation, and fix (most) of their mistakes on their own. Double check and make sure the documentation and tools actually document the mistakes you see in the code, and if they don’t, update them. Your documentation and tools should clearly spell out the format of a valid contribution, and if they don’t, you need to address that technical documentation debt. If you don’t have time to address that technical documentation debt, tell the contributor what needs to be fixed, and see if they have the time to address it. Don’t be silent just because you don’t have time to fix it. Phase Three: Is the Contribution Polished? From a newcomer’s perspective, after phase two is complete, they’re hooked on getting their contribution in. You’ve worked with them on an architectural level, and they know you want to accept their contribution. They’re emotionally invested in getting their contribution into your project, and they’ve learned a lot by going through a couple contribution revisions. Thank the contributor for being patient this far and remind them that you’re willing to accept the contribution, but they need to clean up a few small things first. Now is the time for phase three: the polishing phase. In this phase, you finally get to comment on the meta (non-code) parts of the contribution. Correct any spelling or grammar mistakes, suggest clearer wording for comments, and ask for any updated documentation for the code. It doesn’t make sense to create documentation for the code until the code is structurally sound, which is why the documentation phase comes last. You may also need to encourage them to write a better commit message, mark the patch to be back ported to stable versions of your software, or Cc the right maintainers. As a newcomer, this third and final phase can be more painful than the architectural critiques in the second phase. Many young programmers lean towards science, math, and technology because they feel like they don’t excel in writing or people skills. Contributors may also be writing in a language that is not their native tongue. That’s why this nit-picky phase comes last, so that the contributors get over their embarrassment after they’re emotionally invested in getting their patches into your project. Be gentle, patient, and compassionate. As a maintainer, you may suggest comments or patch descriptions that you hope the contributor simply copy-pastes into their patch. You may have to just edit the patch description yourself. How Does This Benefit Maintainers? I’ve found that this three-phase contribution review process saves me (as a maintainer) a lot of mental stress. The first phase is a simple yes or no question (“Is this a good or bad idea?”), which means I don’t procrastinate on reviewing first time contributions. Being up front with contributors about not having time to review their contribution can initially feel like shirking duties, but I feel a mental load lifting when I get over that and simply say something like, “Hey, this patch looks like a good idea, but I don’t have time to review it right now. I’m heading to a conference next week, and need to work on my slides. Can you ping me in two weeks if I haven’t reviewed your code?” If you’re honest with contributors about your time commitments, they know their contribution is wanted, and they can pass your time commitments onto their boss or program manager. Also, if you find yourself delaying contribution review often, it may be a sign you need a co-maintainer or you need to ask other contributors to do more code review. The absolute worst thing you can do during phase one is be completely silent. The newcomer doesn’t know whether their contribution is a good or bad idea, and any discussion that needs to happen with other maintainers to modify the fundamental concept never happens. That’s why phase one is a simple yes or no answer, in order to get the code review ball rolling. I’ve also heard some maintainers state that they want to dump all their review into phase two. They have precious little time, and they fear they will forget specific feedback if they break code review into several phases. I will often notice nit-picky coding style issues during my architectural review, and I will make a note to myself to nip that pattern in the bud in phase three. Keeping a dated text file per patchset or even replying to the patch but only adding your own email address in the To field will help you keep track of the issues that need to get addressed in phase three. Often by the time you get past the architectural discussion in phase two, you’ll find many of your initial nit-picky criticisms were addressed. A conscientious contributor will look at the documentation and tools you point out in phase two, and will address most of them in their next revisions. What will be left for the third (polishing) phase is mistakes made because of undocumented tribal knowledge, or rules that are undocumented because they differ from maintainer to maintainer within the project. Try It Out! The following three-phase contribution review process should help both maintainers and newcomers: Is the idea behind the contribution sound? Is the contribution architected correctly? Is the contribution polished? Maintainers will be able to respond more quickly to contribution review if they focus on just answering one question during the first phase of review: “Is this a good or bad idea?” Newcomers will be encouraged by a timely email that states whether the basic concept of their patch is sound. Both the maintainer and the contributor benefit from splitting the actual code review into an architectural discussion, followed by a polishing phase. Maintainers will save themselves time if they simply point out documentation and tools contributors should use to ensure their contribution is up to community standards, and the nit-picky polishing phase is saved for after the newcomer is emotionally invested in getting their contribution into your project. I think this process should both save maintainers time, and decrease the bounce rate for newcomers, so I encourage you to try it out!The Tor Project has launched what some say is the easiest-to-use encrypted chat tool for the truely paranoid. The beta version of Tor Messenger, which routes conversations through the global Tor network, is the culmination of about two years work and follows the launch of an Alpha version last February. Tor Messenger is different from rival TorChat in that it works with Jabber and Adium IM protocols used by the likes Facebook, Google, and Yahoo! but hides the Off-the-Record protocol and Tor routing complexity behind a simple GUI that won't boil the blood of regular net users. Logging is switched off by default, which will frustrate law enforcement who often find a trove of evidence in digital chat trails. "Tor Messenger builds on the networks you are familiar with, so that you can continue communicating in a way your contacts are willing and able to do," developer Sukhbir Sing proudly blogs. "This has traditionally been in a client-server model, meaning that your metadata (specifically the relationships between contacts) can be logged by the server, however, your route to the server will be hidden because you are communicating over Tor. "Our current focus is security, robustness and user experience - we will be fixing bugs and releasing updates as appropriate, and in the future, we plan on pairing releases with Mozilla's Extended Support Release cycle." The software is in Beta mode still requires comprehensive auditing. On the cards for future work is automatic updating, encrypted file transfer, and Off-the-Record support for Twitter direct messaging. The client is available Windows, 32-and-64-bit Linux and Mac OS X. Privacy wonks are urged to get in touch with the non-profit group with suggestions and any bug finds. One has already emerged and inflicted pain when your correspondent tried the tool under Windows 10. ®United States Senator Tom Cotton joined me today to discuss the exploding scandal surrounding the “pay-to-play” Clinton State Department, where the price of possible access to the Secretary –not guaranteed– were hefty contributions or services to the Clinton Foundation: Audio: 08-23hhs-cotton Transcript: HH: Right now, I’m joined by United States Senator Tom Cotton from the great state of Arkansas. Senator Cotton, a good August to you. I hope you’re having a good summer break from Washington, D.C. TC: Good morning, Hugh. It’s great to be on with you from Arkansas, where no one is surprised to learn about more shady dealings by the Clintons. HH: Well, let me run down what we learned yesterday. S. Daniel Abraham, a major donor, wanted a meeting. He went to the Clinton Foundation to ask for it from Secretary Clinton. Bono wanted to use a satellite link to get to the Space Station. He went to the Clinton Foundation to ask the Secretary. We learned that two weeks ago, Gilbert Chagoury, a very shady character, wanted a meeting with the Secretary. He went to Doug Band at the Foundation. The Crown Prince of Bahrain, who’d given $32 million dollars to the Foundation, wanted a meeting. He went to Doug Band at the Foundation to get to the Secretary. Casey Wasserman, a philanthropist who’s given $10 million dollars, $5-10 million dollars to the Foundation, wanted a visa for a crook. He asked Doug Band, who asked Huma Abedin. To be clear, they did not give him the visa, but that’s, what does this pattern show you, Tom Cotton? TC: Hugh, it shows what Arkansans have known for 40 years, that when the Clintons are involved, there’s almost always some kind of pay to play scandal going on. And as I understand it, all of these requests you just described came through in a mere 750 pages of emails, not even 750 emails. So just imagine what is contained in the 15,000 pages of emails that the FBI discovered, that Hillary Clinton said, that when she said that she had turned over all work-related emails, the FBI said that is not right. And hopefully, all those emails will be released before the election, so the American people can see just how deeply intertwined the Clinton Foundation was with the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. HH: Now to me, the most important reveal thus far is that Gilbert Chagoury made an ask of Doug Band, who relayed it to Huma Abedin. We don’t know what was discussed. We’ve had antiseptic versions of that told to us by the cover up artists at the Clinton Foundation. But Gilbert Chagoury is a business partner with the late Marc Rich. Ought that not to have been a red flag for everyone? TC: Hugh, one would think that Marc Rich’s involvement in anything would be a red flag. Let’s just remind all your listeners that Marc Rich is the international tax fugitive that Bill Clinton inexplicably pardoned in the final days of his presidency along with some of the Puerto Rican terrorists he pardoned to help Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign in 2000. If Hillary Clinton wins this election, we can expect these kind of dealings to continue in the future. They’ve been part of the Clinton M.O. for 40 years. They’re not going to change their stripes over the next four. HH: Now I had on the Wall Street Journal’s lead reporter on the Clinton Foundation, and you know, he’s an interesting guy, and he’s a little defensive over the fact that I’ve been critical of the mainstream media. But my question is, his name is James Grimaldi, and I’ve posted the audio and transcript of our interview. But my question to you is, is the media paying enough attention to Chagoury-Rich? I haven’t seen one story in a major newspaper about the fact that Gilbert Chagoury and Marc Rich were business partners. TC: I haven’t seen that story either, Hugh. And it is very suspect. And I would like to see more reporting on the fact that again, you have these very shady foreign oligarchs involved with the Clinton Foundation, and involved intimately with the State Department under Secretary of State Clinton. That’s why I’ve said that Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton should immediately suspend all donations to the Clinton Foundation from foreign governments and from corporations. They said they will if she wins. But that’s really just an alarm bell for all those people to send in their money right now if they want to buy access in a future Clinton White House. HH: Yeah, it’s the starting gun. We just watched the Olympics. The starting gun just went off, and if you want to have access to the White House, you can’t count on the Lincoln bedroom being for rent again. You’ve got to get your money in early. TC: Yeah, I mean, they’re having a fire sale at the Clinton Foundation for White House access. So all of those oligarchs all around the world are worried about fulfilling their life’s work of eradicating disease and poverty need to get their money in now. HH: Now James Carville just argued on Morning Joe, and he’ll be on with me later, that we’re picking on a foundation that’s eradicating malaria and driving down the cost of HIV drugs, and this is the best thing Bill Clinton’s ever done, and why do we hate charity. What’s your response? TC: So if Lebanese Nigerian billionaires who cavort with dictators and other kinds of shady international operators really wanted to eradicate disease and poverty, Hugh, there’s plenty of more legitimate foundations and organizations who could lead that work. The Clinton Foundation’s finances are notoriously opaque. They largely subsidize the Clinton family’s lifestyle. There’s one reason and one reason only that you would pursue this work through the Clinton Foundation. It’s because since the Foundation was set up, Hillary Clinton has been in office or been expecting to return to office, and these people are trying to curry favor with powerful politicians in America. HH: But Carville argued that they’ve given, they get no money from the Foundation. They in fact gave a million dollars to the Foundation. TC: Which again subsidizes their lifestyle in private jets and resorts, and all their retainers like Doug Band and the other hangers on the Clintons have had around them for 40 years. That’s the way these things work in the real world, Hugh, not in James Carville’s idealized world. HH: 30 seconds left, Senator Cotton, will we get these documents in time to understand the depth of the corruption? TC: I certainly hope so. A federal judge has ordered the State Department to release them as quickly as possible. The American people need to understand just how untrustworthy and dishonest Hillary Clinton was as Secretary of State in her dealings with the Clinton Foundation. HH: Tom Cotton, Senator from Arkansas, always a pleasure. Thank you, Senator. End of interview.Yakuza Dead Souls (YDS) is an action RPG that has a ton of zombies, minigames, substories and cutscenes. You could easily sink more than 100 hours into this game before finally beating it, so you will definitely get your money's worth. YDS is not a part of the main Yakuza series. You can play and enjoy this game just fine without having played the other games in the series before, but you might not understand several of the in-game references and inside jokes. Most of the inside jokes and references seem to come from Yakuza 4. YDS is divided into five chapters. The first four chapters focus on one particular character (Akiyama, Majima, Goda and Kiryu). The final chapter involves Kiryu with Goda fighting as a sidekick. If you fail to complete all the substories for a particular character during his chapter, you have to beat the game and then switch characters during the Premium Adventure mode. During each chapter, you will encounter several characters who are willing to fight alongside you. These characters can be trained at "Gary's Boot Camp," where they can learn special abilities and augments. The main reason why this game is different from other Yakuza titles is the combat. Almost all combat in this game involves shooting zombies, blowing up zombies, burning zombies, impaling zombies, or blasting zombies with water. I literally killed more than 30,000 zombies in my first playthrough (on hard mode). Zombies are everywhere and often overwhelm your characters. It's fun finding new ways to kill them, but after killing the first 5000 zombies, it doesn't seem as much fun as beating up waves of actual Yakuza thugs like in Yakuza 3 and 4. But it's still fun. You'll be able to use a ton of weapons in this game, including Gatling guns, sniper rifles, sub-machine guns, assault rifles, shotguns, pistols, small handguns and grenade launchers. Kamiyama, the stuttering equipment modder, is back. Unlike in earlier Yakuza games, you'll really want to take advantage of his upgrades here. You need all the firepower you can get in YDS. Part of the fun is switching weapons to take out zombies at long range and switching again to mow down large groups of zombies in close combat. YDS also has the hostess substories. Once you successfully romance a hostess, you can fight with her. Be advised that you need to download add-on packs from the PlayStation Store (it's free) in order for them to have access to the best weapons. Each main character also has about 15 substories to complete--some of which are quite hilarious. Again, this game is a lot of fun to play. But you need to consider these downsides: 1. There can be considerable slowdown if too many zombies get on the screen at once. 2. Some of the stories are repetitious. Several, for example, involve rescuing people and leading them out of the zombie area. 3. The zombies and mutants appear in the same places almost every time, thus making the game too predictable. 4. It can be a little too difficult to use the snipe gauge because the timer expires so quickly. 5. The subterranea manholes are very long and repetitious. Kiryu's mission has 30 floors, for example. 6. It can be very difficult training your partners at Gary's Boot Camp because the AI is a little too good. 7. The storyline is okay, but it's a bit of a letdown from Yakuza 3 and 4. 8. You will often find yourself dropping items to pick up fallen loot because your inventory fills up too fast. 9. The hostess missions can get a bit aggravating, especially since you have to do A LOT of hiking to get to one of the two clubs. 10. Several of your sidekicks will not pull their own weight, thus making it harder to develop them. 11. Loading times are a bit more conspicuous in this game, particularly when entering and exiting areas in the quarantine/zombie area. 12. The chase sequences can be quite difficult. Also, the controls do not seem as responsive during these sequences. This game has enough alcohol, cigarettes, guns, ammo, blood, and violence to satisfy anyone's need for a hack-and-slack thriller. It's a lot of fun and will definitely keep you occupied. It's quite different from other Yakuza games, but it is still a lot of fun. And at about $15, you will definitely get your money's worth. Just remember, this is NOT a game for children.UPDATE: 5 p.m. July 15 – A representative of the campus’s Study Abroad program is flying to Nice today to help support the students participating in a local summer entrepreneurship program, many of whom were traumatized by Thursday’s terrorist attack that left three of their classmates injured and one missing. The missing student, Nicolas Leslie, 20, is the subject of an extensive search by university staff, local officials and family. Two of the injured students were released after medical treatment and have returned to their summer dormitories in Nice. They are Vladyslav Kostiuk, 23, a senior computer science major in the College of Letters and Science, who sustained a broken leg; and Diane Huang, 20, a senior majoring in environmental economics and policy in the College of Natural Resources, who suffered a broken foot. Daryus Medora, 21, whose leg was broken, remains in the hospital. He is an undeclared sophomore in the College of Letters and Science. Of the 85 students enrolled in the program, four elected to leave immediately for the U.S., while three others will be leaving over the weekend. The Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Europe class is made up mostly of UC Berkeley students, though students from other UC campuses and local colleges were also enrolled through the university’s study abroad program. Berkeley – 10: 45 a.m. – Three UC Berkeley students studying abroad in Nice, France, are known to have been injured in the terrorist attack yesterday after a truck struck hundreds of people during a fireworks display celebrating Bastille Day. A fourth student, Nicolas Leslie, 20, one of 85 students attending a nearby entrepreneurship program through UC Berkeley’s study abroad program, is still unaccounted for. Campus study abroad, risk services office and student affairs staff are working with fellow students in France, the program director on the ground, local officials, U.S. consular officials and the family to locate him. Leslie is a junior in the College of Natural Resources. Of the three students injured, two sustained broken legs and were being treated in the hospital, while the third had a broken foot. All of the students were attending a month-long program called Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Europe, part of the international European Innovation Academy. The program has been suspended temporarily to commemorate a national three days of mourning in France, but will continue through its planned end date of July 24. The campus has offered to bring home any students who wish to leave the program before its end date, and so far, three students have chosen to do so and return home to the U.S. In a message to the campus, Vice Provost Cathy Koshland and Dean of Students Joseph Defraine Greenwell expressed their deepest sympathy to all the students, families and the French community who have been affected by this “tragic event” and “senseless violence.” The attack, which killed at least 84 people and injured more than 200, comes on the heels of terrorist attacks in other countries that have impacted the UC Berkeley campus community. Sophomore Tarishi Jain was among 20 hostages killed by Islamic militants in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on July 1.(CNN) The armed occupiers of a wildlife refuge in Oregon say they will turn themselves in on Thursday morning, hours after Cliven Bundy -- the father of protest leader Ammon Bundy -- was arrested by federal agents. "It's time," the post said. "Cliven Bundy is headed to the Harney County Resource Center in Burns Oregon." After landing in Portland, Oregon, Bundy was taken into federal custody, the FBI said. It's not clear what he's been charged with. The FBI said authorities would make charging information available on Thursday morning. Bundy's son, Ammon, was one of the leaders of the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. He was arrested last month. The refuge's current occupiers said -- during a purported live stream of a conference call between protesters, activists and conservative Nevada lawmaker Michele Fiore -- they were prepared to leave Thursday morning. The audio was live streamed on YouTube. Fiore told those on the call that Mike Arnold -- Ammon Bundy's lawyer, who Fiore says was in the car with her -- spoke with the FBI. She said the agency promised it would stand down Wednesday night and allow her to be at the FBI checkpoint on Thursday morning when the occupiers turn themselves in. CNN affiliates based in Portland are reporting that Fiore is on her way to the refuge. When asked about the deal, Beth Anne Steele with the FBI told CNN that she was not able to comment. Surrounded The live stream started after the FBI surrounded those occupying the refuge. According to the agency, one of the remaining occupiers rode outside barricades at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. When agents tried to approach him, he sped off back to the refuge. After that, the FBI said agents "moved to contain the remaining occupiers by placing agents at barricades both immediately ahead of and behind the area where the occupiers are camping." The FBI said no shots were fired and it is continuing to negotiate with those inside the refuge. "The FBI has negotiated with patience and restraint in an effort to resolve the situation peacefully," said Greg Bretzing, special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon. "However, we reached a point where it became necessary to take action in a way that best ensured the safety of those on the refuge, the law enforcement officers who are on scene, and the people of Harney County who live and work in this area." Four people are believed to be still occupying the refuge. 'God has put us on this path' Earlier on the call, the occupiers sounded concerned that the FBI planned to move in Wednesday night and that it would lead to their deaths. At times, they seemed to embrace that outcome as fatalistic. When one woman -- presumed to be Fiore -- asked David and Sandy about their families, a man responded, "God has put us on this path. Our families are already taken care of; they weren't in our lives much before all this because God made sure we didn't have that to weigh us down so that we could do this," one man said. The people on the phone could be heard debating conditions for which they'd be willing to leave the refuge. At one point late Wednesday night, more than 66,000 people were listening. Wednesday marks day 40 of the occupation. Ammon Bundy and others started out demonstrating against the sentencing of Dwight Hammond and his son Steven, ranchers who were convicted of arson on federal lands in Oregon. But a January 2 march supporting the Hammonds led to the armed occupation of the refuge, with protesters decrying what they call government overreach when it comes to federal lands. Bundy and other members of his group were arrested during an incident along a highway last month.I wrote this list because as a writer and an artist there is nothing better than cranking the music and watching the creation that comes about. I noticed I tend to like the longer songs, or epics (as well as just listening to the entire album), as they let me get into groove that I just can’t get from a three minute production of nowadays music. Maintaining a song for a length over ten minutes is a challenge that requires dedication, creativity, and a rediscovery within the song itself so that it is unique every time it is listened to. Optimally, Jazz would be the best genre to find ten minute ventures, but the few that exist in rock music are harder to come across and have an atmosphere all their own. Hopefully, it should take you approximately two and a half hours to make it through this list (of course comments with suggestions are welcome). In no particular order, here are the ten best examples of rock songs exceeding ten minutes done right. 10 2112 Rush, 20:33 2112 is the title track from Canadian progressive rock band Rush’s album of the same name, released in 1976. The overture and the first section, Temples of Syrinx, were released as a single and are still popular among Rush’s setlists today. The song tells of one man discovering the magic of music through a guitar (as evidenced in the song by him tuning the guitar). In this world, or rather galaxy, everything is under control by the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx. 9 Machine Gun Jimi Hendrix, 12:36 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NTh07MYqMA Written as a 1970 protest of the Vietnam War and released on his live album: Band of Gypsys, Jimi’s frenetic outbursts in this song echo the very sentiment he was trying to get across. The atmosphere created by the guitar arrangement is nothing short of spectacular, with drums and quick picking creating bursts of machine gun fire throughout the song. 8 Octavarium Dream Theater, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BPm1wc7FQY Octavarium is a song from progressive metal band Dream Theater. The song revolves around a central theme of everything ends where it begins. For those that know music, this is echoed in the title as an octave is the interval between one musical pitch and another with half or double its frequency. The song is divided into five parts. Each part has its own allusions and references to various other artists such as Pink Floyd (one part begins and ends with a reference to Pink Floyd). The song goes on to emphasize cyclical nature of all things, as well as the album, as it begins where it ends, using the same melody as the end to the first track. 7 Marquee Moon Television, 10:40 Somewhere the line was inscribed in asphalt between punk and jam bands, and Television crossed it valiantly. At the forefront of this is their title track Marquee Moon from the album of the same name. With the twin attack of Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd on guitar comes a rhythmical assault of punk but this all gets turned on its head at the epic climax of this song. In concert, the band has sometimes extended the song to as long as fifteen minutes. 6 Starless King Crimson, 12:16 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SPIZGmn5lM&feature=related Taking an incentive from the band’s previous album, Starless borrows some of its lines from their fifth album, “Starless and Bible Black,” to make its chorus. The latter half of the song becomes a jam session that likens itself to other songs by King Crimson. The saxophone solo is similar to that of 21st Century Schizoid Man, the band’s biggest hit, which was also included on Guitar Hero 5. 5 Child in Time Deep Purple, 10:18 Written by the band in 1969, it is said by the band members themselves to have been inspired by a riff featured in a song by the Psychedelic band It’s a Beautiful Day, called “Bombay Calling.” As Ian Gillan put it, Jon Lord at practice just said ‘Oh, Have you heard that new album by It’s A Beautiful Day?’ He just started to play the lick much slower. The song was said to have been written in 10 minutes. Child in Time is a very straightforward composition. Divided into two sections, each section section builds up until the next section or the end of the song. Singer Ian Gillian utilizes his full vocal range and goes from your quiet sing-a-long to a loud, high-pitched, banshee-esque screaming. 4 Maggot Brain Funkadelic, 10:20 It’s purely a coincidence that this song is two seconds longer than the previous entry on this list, but this song, quite frankly, is an amazing display of guitar-playing recorded in one take. With an opening monologue that sets the tone in this funk psychedelia, Eddie Hazel, supposedly told by George Clinton, who, under the influence of LSD, told Hazel to play the song like his mother had just died and to play the second half as if he had found out she was alive. 3 Echoes Pink Floyd, 23:31 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLJ_QVfT_wM Though this song is featured on Top Ten Pink Floyd Songs, I feel it has rightly earned its place here (coming in at our second longest song). Echoes, the end track on Pink Floyd’s “Meddle,” their last album before the vaunted success of Dark Side of the Moon, is a composition of lengthy instrumental passages, sound effects, and musical improvisation. Written by all four members of the group, the extent at which to produce all of the content heard is insurmountable to any other song up here. 2 Achilles Last Stand Led Zeppelin, 10:25 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFRFtnTd620 Achilles Last Stand is famous for John Bonham’s powerful drumming, John Paul Jones’s galloping bass line, which is played on a custom built Alembic eight string bass, and Jimmy Page’s overdubbed orchestral guitar arrangement. Written in 1975 about Plant’s experience in Morocco and an injury he sustained from a car accident, thus giving the song its name (and also working title, The Wheelchair Song).Plant’s lyrics were also inspired by some of the poetry he was reading at the time, which includes William Blake (a bonus for me since I’m a poet and possess some of his work). On a side note, Jimmy Page has been quoted stating that “Achilles Last Stand” is his favorite song. 1 Voodoo Chile Jimi Hendrix, 14:59 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXqxXrjoOf0 And now for the obligatory salute to the luminary that was Jimi Hendrix. Voodoo Chile stands as his (almost) fifteen minute venture into the unable-to-be-tamed beast that is psychedelic rock. The song, basically a 15-minute blues jam, evolved into the final product over the course of an hour. After many of the late night Electric Ladyland recording sessions, Hendrix and the band went to one of the New York
ans of a second fossilized Archaeopteryx, known as the Berlin counterpart, also show that the trace-metal inventory supported the same plumage pigmentation pattern." Understanding the plumage patterns could provide insights into courtship rituals, as well as the health and eating habits of these ancient creatures. Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter and Google+. Follow LiveScience @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com. Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. ]]>Party Gardens released a 6 track EP Dance Flora, created to get you grooving. These tunes are blooming with catchy hooks, pop vocal harmonies, and warm reverb, written with tales of partying, escape, and being arrested. The first track Eat Sunlight is an airy, melodic summer anthem celebrating fools in the summertime, drinking, road trips, and misbehaving. In Circular Someone P.J. Waxman performs vocals (most are by Sean Brennan) in this uptempo song that offers unexpectedly dark lyrics “I want to stand between the gun and your hand.” Highwaves is a whimsical song with sufficient beach party vibes to to ensue a drunken conga line. Children, also sung by Waxman “We’re running through the middle of the city with the rhythm of the city of streets, we are just children…” sums up this track well. Gods in the Mud was previously released as part of a Flying Blanket compilation. Although this track articulates the Party Gardens sound, it is definitely a transition song from the previous material and the new direction. Whores for the Weekend, the chillest track on the album, maintains the festive humor “We can get away from the weekend, be whores for the weekend.” You can download and stream the album on the bands website here Artwork by Christian Alonzo Produced by Party Gardens, Chris Kasych, Bob Hoag Engineered by Chris Kasych & Bob Hoag All songs written by Party GardensThis is a hard story to summarize because there are so many elements to it and the way it has grown and grown — and continues to grow — is pretty unique. You may just want to skip to Rany Jazayerli’s blog post from Sunday. He wrote about it beautifully. The gist is this: A man living in Seoul, South Korea declares himself a Royals fan 20 years ago because he likes underdogs and thinks Kauffman Stadium looks beautiful and wants to use Major League Baseball broadcasts to improve his English skills. That man begins frequenting Royals blogs and the Kansas City Star website in the early-to-mid 2000s to read more about the team. In 2011, he creates a Twitter account and begins interacting with other people who follow the Royals. Many of those people take a liking to the man’s optimism about an organization that hasn’t warranted much optimism and appreciate the novelty of someone rooting for the small-market Royals from more than 6,000 miles across the globe. Those fans encourage that man to come to Kansas City — that he will be taken care of, that “you’ll love it here.” Those people are good people, and that man eventually takes them up on the offer, and because those people are good people he winds up having the time of his life. Rany Jazayerli explains the incredible #SungWooToKC adventure … Chris Kamler, who the world knows as @TheFakeNed, interviewed Sung Woo for his website in 2012, and you get the full sense of his personality and devotion there. Kamler ended the interview by once again needling Sung Woo about when he was going to finally fly to Kansas City to see the Royals play. This summer, Sung Woo finally decided to take the plunge. Taking advantage of a job change, he was able to carve out ten days from his schedule to come to Kansas City, watch the Royals play, and maybe do a little sight-seeing and barbecue-eating while he was in town. He emailed Kamler and fellow Royals fan Dave Darby that he was buying his plane ticket and reserving his hotel room; they told him not to worry about transportation, that they’d pick him up and drive him to the ballpark and introduce him to Arthur Bryant’s and maybe the Negro League Museum while he was in town. If the story had ended there, that would have been enough: three people who have never met, and can barely communicate with each other, bonding together like long-lost friends over a shared mutual interest in a crappy baseball team. A couple of guys were going to take a day or two off of work to show a complete stranger around town. Movies have been made with flimsier plots. But then Kamler decided to have a little fun, and use his influence – and I use the term “influence” loosely for a guy who impersonates Ned Yost on Twitter and spends most of his time there making fart jokes – to publicize the fact that Sung Woo Lee was finally coming to Kansas City, and it would be great if other Royals fans would welcome him and make him feel at home. He had no idea what he was getting himself into. None of us did. I tweeted Kamler on August 1st that since I wasn’t in town to see Sung Woo myself, I’d be happy to drop him a line and talk to him on the phone for a few minutes. I’m not trying to pat myself on the back here – talking about the Royals with someone isn’t exactly a sacrifice for me. I’m just pointing out that nine days ago, the story of Sung Woo Lee was still something that only the Royals Twitterati knew about, and the only ambition any of us had at the time was simply for Sung Woo to have a good time while he was in town. And then things got a little crazy. Kamler started pushing the hashtag #SungWooToKC on Twitter to get the word out. Kamler can run a hashtag into the ground – if something like, say, #CareerEndingTwitterTypos was trending, he’ll tweet out 37 career-ending Twitter typos in quick succession. Kamler is a social media pro, and has enough big names in the KC media world following him to get the word out a fair bit. But still: how many people, aside from us hard-core Royals fan types who even use Twitter in the first place, were going to care about some guy from South Korea who was flying to Kansas City to watch a few baseball games? This is the point where we have to tip our cap to the Royals themselves. Shortly after Kamler launched #SungWooToKC, the Royals reached out to Lee directly and offered him to throw out the first pitch at Monday’s game. Coming from an organization that has made missteps with the way it communicates to its fan base at times, this was an incredibly gracious and classy move. When trying to piece together how this story went viral, it’s – almost by definition – impossible to tell what the tipping point was that made Sung Woo Lee a phenomenon. But being offered to throw out the first pitch had to have made a difference. As a media story, “hey, there’s this Royals fan coming all the way from Korea to watch his first game at Kauffman Stadium” is nice, but “hey, there’s this Royals fan coming all the way from Korea to watch his first game at Kauffman Stadium, and the Royals are letting him throw out the first pitch on Monday!” has a much bigger hook. The media, the fans, the entire damn city took the hook. Kamler wrote about Sung Woo’s approaching trip, including his itinerary while he was in town, for Pine Tar Press last weekend. At that point, I just hoped that his trip might warrant a brief mention in the Kansas City Star or something. By the time he landed in Kansas City Tuesday afternoon, he had four local TV crews waiting at the gate for his arrival. The city has laid out the red carpet for him ever since, and the story just continues to grow. For posterity’s sake, I’m going to do my best to summarize what has happened since, though to save time I won’t be able to link to everything. To get the full flavor, check out Sung Woo’s Twitter feed, or Kamler’s. – Greeted by camera crews Tuesday afternoon, was on four local TV broadcasts that night. – Was featured in the Star Wednesday morning. – Took a tour of the Negro League Museum later that morning, featuring tour guide Bob Kendrick and an entourage of two dozen people. – Gets featured at Deadspin and USA Today. – Has lunch at Arthur Bryant’s. – Is interviewed on 610 Sports that afternoon. – Trolls the Best Fans In Baseball. – Tours Boulevard Brewing Company that evening. – With the Royals still playing in Arizona, he gets a shoutout from Danny Duffy – who, behind the scenes, also had a lot to do with Sung Woo’s story becoming as big as it has – on the Royals pre-game show. – Got an email from Mike Sweeney. – This is all still Wednesday, by the way. – Appeared on 96.5 The Buzz Thursday morning. Was given a helmet signed by Billy Butler and a hat signed by Bruce Chen from the station. – Is featured in the English-language Korea Times. – Received a personal tour of Kauffman Stadium from the Royals, led by Jennifer Splittorff, who presented him with a SPLITT patch and one of her dad’s bobbleheads afterwards. Goes out on the field, touches the grass, picks up a bullpen phone, basically does everything short of hitting a double in the gap. – Gets a personalized “SungWoo Lee” #23 Royals jersey, presented by Curt Nelson, the Director of the Royals’ Hall of Fame. – Walks across the Truman Sports Complex to tailgate before the Chiefs’ preseason opener. – Is presented with his own personalized #1 jersey by the Chiefs, gets tickets near the 50-yard line. Meets former players and current team president Mark Donovan. – Friday was a pre-scheduled trip to see the Double-A Northwest Arkansas Naturals, so much of it was spent in the car. However, once there he managed to: – Watch batting practice from next to the cage; – Get invited into the clubhouse by manager Vance Wilson, who had heard about his story; – Shake hands with every player one by one, and give Mitch Maier – back mentoring the baby Royals – a bear hug. – Rode the Naturals’ pickup onto the field with their mascots. – Got on the field as a human bowling ball during a mid-inning promotion. He managed to knock over six pins. – Got Maier’s autographed jersey after the game. Saturday, he was back in Kansas City for his first chance to watch the Royals play live. – Prior to the game he was the star of a massive tailgate party in the parking lot, where he met his adoring masses. – Appeared on the Jumbotron in the middle of the fifth inning. – Was a story on Sportscenter – SPORTSCENTER – after the game Saturday night. – Appeared in studio with Joel Goldberg and Jeff Montgomery on today’s pre-game show. Montgomery gave him an autographed glove as a gift. – Took part in the dance-off competition against Jimmy Faseler – whosespot as Everyone’s Favorite Royals Fan he usurped. Sung Woo won, of course. (Sorry, Jimmy.) – Was featured at MLB.com. Somewhere along the way he appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered. He’s gotten tweets sent to him from Jeremy Guthrie, Eric Hosmer, and Billy Butler (at least – there may be more.)When I was growing up during the ’70s in Buffalo, my siblings and I were met after school by Papa, my grandfather who lived with us and cared for us while our mother was at her factory job. If Papa was not around, there were any number of “aunties” and other mothers from the neighborhood available to feed us and taxi us to and fro. Most of these women were also employed, but they did shift work in hospitals or had jobs in retail with varied schedules. No matter. As a black mom on the block, everyone’s kid was your kid. Mommy wars? “That doesn’t make a lick of sense,” Mama, who’s now 80, would say. Mama lived to sit at the kitchen table — our light blue princess phone nestled in the crook of her neck as she took long drags on her cigarette — gossiping about her girlfriends. But there was a mutual sense of love and respect among the moms of her generation. They were always tired, just like moms now. But never too tired to offer encouragement — words like, “Girl, all you can do is the best you can.” There was none of the scorn I see today, and that the media so loves to perpetuate, among many white moms judging one another’s “choice” to work or stay home, or to breast- or formula-feed. The parenting industry exacerbates this divide. When women are persuaded to ignore their maternal instincts and common sense in favor of contradictory and competing instruction manuals, it’s no wonder they turn on one another. Of course, it’s not like this multibillion-dollar parenting industry was built with me in mind. When pundits talk about timeouts and parenting by negotiation — Dr. Phil suggests no fewer than five critical steps — and behavior contracts that you can download off the Internet, I know good and well they are not talking to a black woman. Or at least not any black woman I know. When it comes to discipline, we are far more authoritarian. Last week, in a viral clip of the Baltimore uprising, we saw Toya Graham, a black mother, snatch her son from the crowd. Yes, it has led to plenty of debate about corporal punishment. Did she need to smack him upside his head? I don’t know. But she was doing what she felt she had to. “I didn’t want to see him become another Freddie Gray,” she said. Dating back to slavery, black moms have had to hold a strong grip on their children’s behavior. Only a foolish mother would risk boosting her child’s self-esteem to the point where he might be perceived as uppity by whites. Tough love is what it’s called today. Back then, it was the only love that could keep a black kid safe.E.I. Du Pont De Nemours and Company is currently facing thousands of lawsuits from persons alleging personal injuries as a result of drinking water contaminated by Dupont’s proprietary chemical C8. While most of us have heard of and/or are familiar with Teflon and its non-stick properties in numerous house hold products – virtually nobody outside of Dupont is familiar with how it was made – or more specifically, what chemicals are used to create it. That is until the approximately 80,000 residents that surround Dupont’s Washington Works facility, located in Parkersburg, West Virginia, learned that their drinking water had been contaminated with the secret ingredient behind Teflon – C8 – for more than fifty years. Perhaps most startling is that not only was Dupont aware that they had contaminated the drinking water supply for tens of thousands of people, but they were sitting on studies indicating that their proprietary chemical was capable of causing permanent serious injuries – including birth defects and cancer. Yet Dupont chose not to inform the residents, regulators or health authorities of neither the presence of the contamination nor its toxic effects. The only reason anyone outside of Dupont knows anything about C8 is because of a lawsuit brought by a local farmer whose herd of cattle happened to be downstream from the Dupont facility – and happened to dying off – one by one. It was only as a result of that litigation that the very existence of C8 was made known to the outside world – the United States Environmental Protection Agency included. Once the existence of this chemical was known, it wasn’t long before Dupont was forced to disclose to the surrounding communities that their chemical was in everyone’s drinking water – and likely in their blood. A second lawsuit, this time brought on behalf of all 80,000 citizens whose drinking water had been contaminated, sought compensation for the harm caused by exposure to this chemical. It was through this lawsuit that the extent of the conspiracy to hide the existence and harm of this contamination was revealed. A full and detailed account of the factual history of this appalling story is provided below. This language is pulled from a lawsuit filed by Ned McWilliams, a partner at the law firm of Levin Papantonio, based in Pensacola Florida. Concerns about the potential toxicity of C-8 had been raised internally within DuPont by at least 1954, leading DuPont’s own researchers to conclude by at least 1961 that C-8 was toxic and, according to DuPont’s own Toxicology Section Chief, should be “handled with extreme care.” By 1976, DuPont was aware that researchers had reported to have found organic fluorine in samples of human blood from blood banks in the United States, which such researchers believed to be a potential result of C-8 exposure. By 1978, DuPont’s Medical Director was informed by DuPont’s C-8 supplier at the time (the 3M Company) that 3M had collected blood samples from its workers exposed to C-8 and that such workers had organic fluorine in their blood. In 1978, DuPont’s Medical Director authorized a plan to review and monitor the health conditions of DuPont workers potentially exposed to C-8 to assess whether any negative health effects were attributable to that exposure, including obtaining blood samples from those workers and analyzing the blood for organic fluorine content. In sworn deposition testimony in 2004, DuPont’s former Medical Director acknowledged that DuPont’s duty to report potential health hazards from materials it uses at its Plant (as previously described in his Article) extends to the communities in which DuPont’s plants are located. By March 1979, DuPont had data suggesting that its workers exposed to C-8 had a significantly higher incidence of various adverse health problems than those workers not so exposed, and that the number of workers exposed to C-8 with abnormal liver function tests was notably higher than in the workers not so exposed. In 1979, DuPont did not report to any government agency or community near any of its manufacturing facilities handling C-8 the results of its testing of workers exposed to C-8 or the results of its analysis of their health status in comparison with those not so-exposed. By 1980, DuPont had confirmed internally that C-8 “is toxic,” “people accumulate C-8”, and “continued exposure is not tolerable.” In response to the eye defect findings, DuPont prepared and implemented an internal study in 1981 of its own female employees exposed to C-8 at the Plant to see if any similar eye or facial defects had occurred among babies born to those C-8-exposed employees (the “1981 Plant Pregnancy Study”), noting specifically in its own protocol for the study that the precise purpose of the 1981 Plant Pregnancy Study was to determine if “[p]regnancy outcome among female Washington Works employees is causally related to their occupational exposure to C-8.” In its 1981 Pregnancy Study, DuPont specifically noted that finding “2 malformations in 10 exposed live births is a significantly higher rate than a national rate … [and] is also significantly higher than a plant rate,” and would be considered by DuPont to be a “statistically significant excess” of such birth defects. Following its internal 1981 Pregnancy Study protocol, DuPont collected information, including blood results from female Plant employees and their babies (including umbilical cord blood) and interviews of such employees by the Plant doctor, which indicated that two of seven human babies born to female Plant employees exposed to C-8 through manufacturing operations at the Plant had been born, not only with defects in the area of their eyes and/or face, but with significantly elevated levels of C-8 in their blood, indicating to DuPont that C-8 could cross the placenta from C-8-exposed mother to child during pregnancy. After collecting information indicating that two out of the seven human babies whose mothers had been exposed to C-8 at the Plant had been born with facial defects, and thus there was a “statistically significant excess” of such defects according to DuPont’s own 1981 Pregnancy Study Protocol designed specifically to assess causality between C-8 exposure and such harm, DuPont intentionally and purposefully chose not to finalize, publish, and/or otherwise release and/or disclose the results of that study outside DuPont. In 1984, several male workers at the Plant exposed to C-8 in the work place for a few years complained that their wives were having difficulty conceiving children but DuPont did nothing to investigate the claim. By 1984, DuPont began a program of secretly collecting samples of tap water reported to be from public drinking water supplies located near the Plant by having Plant employees collect tap samples from local businesses and/or their own homes, and arranged for internal analysis of the samples at DuPont for the purpose of assessing C-8 content. By at least 1988, DuPont was aware that at least one toxicity study in laboratory rats had found that C-8 exposure was related to increased rates of cancer, including testicular cancer. Beginning later in 1991, water samples analyzed by and/or on behalf of DuPont at its own Experimental Station Laboratory from public water supplies in the vicinity of the Plant indicated levels of C-8 well-above 1 ppb, with the highest levels (as high as 3.9 ppb) being found in water from the new LPSD well field, now located several miles further away from the Plant. After finding levels of C-8 in public water supplies near the Plant that were more than double or three times the CEG developed by DuPont as an internal community exposure safety guideline, DuPont prepared information to disclose such facts to the residents drinking such contaminated water but then purposefully and intentionally chose not to release and/or otherwise disclose that information outside the company. Rather than alert the community to the C-8 contaminated water, DuPont decided to try to generate data that would reflect lower C-8 sample results by switching in November 1991 to a new outside laboratory to analyze the water for C-8 content, which laboratory claimed to be able to detect C-8 in water as low as 0.1 ppb (100 ppt) (the “”New Water Method”). At the time DuPont decided to begin using the new outside laboratory for C-8 water analyses using the New Water Method, that laboratory had told DuPont that the New Water Method had surrogate recovery rates that resulted in the reported C-8 results being only approximately 60% of the C-8 actually in the water, so the reported C-8 sample results derived using the New Water Method would need to be corrected to account for the low surrogate recovery rates, otherwise those persons reading the results would be misled into believing that the level of C-8 in the water was significantly lower than it actually was. Despite being warned that data generated by the new C-8 water analysis methodology would suggest C-8 levels that were significantly lower than the level of C-8 likely present in the water and that such data would have to be clarified and/or corrected to avoid being misleadingly inaccurate, DuPont knowingly, intentionally, maliciously, willfully, wantonly, purposefully, recklessly, and/or negligently failed to make such corrections and/or clarifications when it eventually revealed such data to third parties, including public water suppliers, their customers, and/or governmental entities. In November 2000, one of DuPont’s in-house counsel responsible for C-8 issues wrote the following to his co-counsel at DuPont: “I think we need to make more of an effort to get the business to look into what we can do to get the [impacted West Virginia] community a clean source of water to filter the C-8 out of the water. … We are going to spend millions to defend these lawsuits and have the additional threat of punitive damages hanging over our head. Getting out in front and acting responsibly can undercut and reduce the potential for punitives. … Our story is not a good one, we continued to increase our emissions into the river in spite of internal commitments to reduce or eliminate the release of this chemical into the community and the environment because of our concern about the biopersistence of this chemical.” One of DuPont’s other in-house counsel responsible for C-8 issues (and DuPont’s defense of the Tennant Case) also wrote: “The sh[..] is about to hit the fan in WV, the lawyer for the farmer finally realizes the surfactant [C-8] issue …. F[..]k him. Finally the plant realizes it must get public first, something I have been urging for over a year.” On April 8, 2001, DuPont’s in-house on C-8 issues described DuPont’s C-8 as a material that “we poop to the river and into drinking water along the Ohio River.” On June 14, 2001, DuPont’s in-house counsel on C-8 issues wrote that “the environmental agencies very concerned about what to say when asked if the stuff we are putting into drinking water is ‘safe.’ We say it is, but are viewed as an interested party (rightly).” On September 1, 2001, soon after the Tennant Case had settled and a new class action lawsuit had been filed in West Virginia state court against DuPont arising from C-8 contamination of drinking water supplies near the Plant, styled Leach, et al. v E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co., Civil Action No. 01-C-608 (Wood Cty. W. Va. Cir. Ct.) (the “Leach Case”), DuPont’s in-house counsel on C-8 issues wrote: “I can’t blame people if they don’t want to drink our chemicals. The compound … is very persistent in the environment, and on top of that, loves to travel in water and if ingested or breathed wants to stay in the blood, the body thinks it is food, so pulls it from the intestine, the liver then dumps it back to the stomach because it can’t break it down, then the intestines puts it right back into the blood.” On October 12, 2001, DuPont’s in-house counsel on C-8 issues wrote in connection with C-8 drinking water contamination: “A debacle at best, the business did not want to deal with this issue in the 1990s, and now it is in their face, and some still are clueless. Very poor leadership, the worst I have seen in the face of a serious issue since I have been with DuPont.” On October 13, 2001, DuPont’s in-house counsel on C-8 issues wrote with respect to C-8 contamination near the Plant: “[W]e are exceeding the levels we set as our own guideline, mostly because no one bothered to do the air modeling until now, and our water test has [been] completely inadequate. …I have been telling the business to get out all the bad news, it is nice to see that we are now consulting with lawyers … that … are advising the same strategy. Too bad the business wants to hunker down as though everything will not come out in the litigation, god knows how they could be so clueless, don’t they read the paper or go to the movies?” On October 20, 2001, after analysis of certain water samples from the LPSD indicated C-8 levels less than 1 ppb, DuPont’s in-house counsel on C-8 issues wrote: “Now if the clients will only listen to us on doing free testing and giving away bottled water we might avoid punitive damages.” On January 12, 2002, after test results indicated levels of C-8 as high as 7 ppb in water from the LHWA in Ohio, DuPont’s in-house counsel on C-8 issues wrote that “in addition to all the agencies we have had on our butts, we now have Ohio and another EPA Region, not to mention the 20,000 people who drink the water supplied by Little Hocking with our surfactant in it, likely it has been there for at least the last decade.” On February 9, 2002, DuPont’s in-house counsel on C-8 issues wrote with respect to C-8 contamination: “We should have checked this out long ago, but now our only choice is to share whatever we learn and trying to fix things, best current theory is air deposition from our stacks.” Between late 2001 and 2003, DuPont orchestrated, coordinated, and participated in creative, misleading efforts designed and intended by DuPont to generate a new federal- and/or state-“approved” “screening level” for C-8 in drinking water supplies through creation of a “C-8 Assessment of Toxicity Team” (a/k/a “CAT Team”), which “screening level” would be significantly higher than DuPont’s own 1 ppb CEG and would be held out by DuPont to the public, including Plaintiff, as proving the lack of any health risk or safety concerns with respect to the level of C-8 in drinking water supplies near the Plant. This is just a small sample of some of the more egregious conduct by Dupont in its efforts to cover up the harm they have caused to tens of thousands of people. As the current litigation progresses, the paper trail of Dupont’s actions and inactions will only grow – and will be reported here as they are learned.A wireless device developed by researchers at Duke University that converts microwaves into electricity could eventually harvest Wi-Fi or satellite signals for power, according to its creators. It could also one day be built into cell phones to let them charge while not in use, they say. Its energy-harvesting capabilities come courtesy of a metamaterial, a synthetic material engineered with characteristics not found in nature, like the ability to bend light the wrong way or shrink when you stretch it. In this case, the microwave-harvesting metamaterial that acts kind of like a solar panel, converting microwaves into up to 7.3 volts of electricity, enough to charge small electronics. It can scavenge stray signals, like from appliances or satellites, to improve efficiency and make lost energy usable. “It’s possible to use this design for a lot of different frequencies and types of energy, including vibration and sound energy harvesting,” according to Duke graduate student Alexander Katko, one of the inventors.“Until now, a lot of work with metamaterials has been theoretical." The device is described in the journal Applied Physics Letters._ _FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) – A Tarrant County judge sentenced a convicted felon to multiple life sentences on Friday for sexually abusing his teenage stepdaughter and raping and shooting his next door neighbor, who miraculously survived. In July Anthony Devern Session plead guilty to sexual assault of a child, aggravated kidnapping, unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon, theft of a vehicle and aggravated sexual assault. He elected to have state district Judge Mollee Westfall assess his punishment after the completion of a pre-sentence investigation. On Friday, after reviewing the results of that investigation and hearing arguments, Westfall sentenced Session to the maximum on every charge. She gave him three life sentences –- one for each of the sexual assault cases and one for the kidnapping case. Westfall also sentenced him to the maximum 20 years in prison for being a felon in possession of a firearm and two years in a state jail facility for theft of a vehicle. The Judge also assessed the maximum $10,000 fine on each of the five cases. By law, the sentences must run concurrently. Session must serve 30 years before he is eligible for parole. Prosecutors Tim Bednarz and Kelly Loftus prosecuted the case, which revealed that Session had been sexually abusing his teenage step-daughter; sometimes filming and photographing the assaults. On October 17, 2012, the girl’s mother discovered the images on Session’s cell phone. She notified police and left Session’s home with her daughter. Later that day while Session was alone at his home, he lured his 30 year old next door neighbor over and held her at gunpoint for 24 hours, during which he sexually assaulted her multiple times and threatened to kill her. The next evening, on October 18, 2012, Session shot the woman in the neck when she tried to escape. He then fled the scene in her vehicle. A short time later, police stopped Session, who was still in possession of the gun, and arrested him. The victim, meanwhile, underwent surgery to repair the jugular vein in her neck. Session has previously served time in prison for kidnapping a woman in Abilene. He also has prior convictions for assaults. (©2013 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.) Latest News: Top Trending:(CNN) -- Meghan McCain, a contributor to TheDailyBeast.com, is the daughter of Sen. John McCain and Cindy McCain. But it's her recent verbal sparring with conservative Republicans that's put her in the spotlight. Meghan McCain tells Larry King on Monday night: "I'm not going to be bullied around about my weight." In a wide-ranging interview on Monday on CNN's "Larry King Live," McCain discussed her thoughts on President Obama, her recent heated exchange with radio host Laura Ingraham, her tattoos and more. The following transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity: Larry King: [President Obama] is taking some criticism for smiling and laughing [during his "60 Minutes" interview.] Are you one of those critics? Meghan McCain: You know, I actually am not. I think anyone that would possibly think that the president is not taking the economy seriously -- I just think it's ridiculous.... King: [Is President Obama getting overexposed]? McCain: I think he is on the verge of it. I do think you have to be careful. But it is a different generation. [My] generation... we like our celebrities. And I think that he realizes that because he is very much a Generation Y president. However, he is on the risk of alienating his older followers. King: Does Obama seem like the same guy who ran against your dad? How do you view him? McCain: He's our president and when the election was over and when President Obama won, all negative feelings were gone. I support the president. King: How does your dad feel about that? McCain: I think the same way. You know, my family is really good at letting go of things and moving on. And he just holds no grudges. King: Do you think most of the people in your party agree with [Rush] Limbaugh? Do they want him to fail? McCain: I don't know, because there are many different personalities within the party.... I would never want my president to fail, no matter which party is in power. King: You interviewed the [Louisiana] governor's wife? McCain: I interviewed [Supyira] Jindal, the first lady of Louisiana. And she's a fascinating woman. She totally impressed me because she was very warm and friendly. I went down and interviewed her and the piece came out today on TheDailyBeast.com. King: Do you like him [Gov. Bobby Jindal]? McCain: I do. You know, we do veer off on some things politically, but any leader that I'm going to have I'm going to veer off politically. King: Do you consider yourself a moderate? Are you moderate liberal? McCain: I consider myself a progressive Republican. I am liberal on social issues. And I think that the party is at a place where social issues shouldn't be the issues that define the party. And I have taken heat, but in fairness to me, I am a different generation than the people that are giving me heat. I'm 24 years old. I'm not in my 40s, I'm not in my 50s and older. King: Therefore, you must, based on what you said, disagree with your father?... Do you discuss it? McCain: We have a very big generation gap between me and my father. Yes, we discuss them. He's very open-minded. I was raised in an open-minded home. I was raised a Christian, but I was raised open-minded Christian -- one to accept people, love people, not pass judgment.... I believe in gay marriage.... I personally am pro-life, but I'm not going to judge someone that's pro-choice. It is not my place to judge other people and what they do with their body. King: We have an e-mail question from Veronica, Huntington Park, California: "Do you share most of your father's political views?" McCain: When it comes to war and the economy, and many fiscal conservative values, I agree with him. I mean I fell in love with the Republican Party because of my father. King: Earlier this month, [you] wrote a DailyBeast column criticizing right-wing pundit Ann Coulter. Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham fired back at you, including making a comment about your weight. You then gave a straight talk response in an appearance on "The View." What led to that? McCain: You know, it's so funny. I was in the airport today and this guy goes, "Hey, Meghan, kiss my fat ass." And I was like oh my gosh. That's where this has gone to. As far as I'm concerned with what's going on with Laura Ingraham, on my end, it's over. There are nine million women in this country suffering from eating disorders. And I'm not going to be bullied around about my weight and what kind of standards I'm not fitting.... King: Were you surprised that Laura, who's had breast cancer, got into something that personal? McCain: I had never heard of her before until this happened. King: You didn't know her? McCain: No. I'm not familiar with her work. But I hope she doesn't do it again. King: What about Ann Coulter? McCain: She didn't respond, which is fine with me.... All I wanted to do is show women that you don't have to be Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham to have a place in the Republican Party.... Supriya Jindal is a good role model, but a lot of people hadn't heard of her. And I just want to show that you don't have to think one way and fit into this one box in order to be a member of the Republican Party. King: Were [your parents] angry at Laura Ingraham? McCain: My mother was. She's a very protective mama bear. King: Are you a tattooer? McCain: I have one. My brothers have a lot of tattoos. I love tattoos. I do. I know, you never would have thought me, right? But I do. King: No. You don
seen from independent tests as well as our own, which indicate that uTP does not degrade download speeds and may indeed be faster,” Broughton adds, without going into detail on the speed issues that have been reported by many users in the forums. One of the reasons uTP has been developed is to make traffic shaping and BitTorrent throttling by ISPs obsolete. Unfortunately there has not been any feedback from major ISPs on these issues, so the magnitude of uTP’s effect on their networks remain unknown. “We have not received any formal feedback from ISPs. Informally, several technical insiders have confirmed a noticeable shift in traffic from TCP to uTP, and they seem generally positive about the deployment thus far. Universally, they commend the spirit of cooperation in helping manage congestion on the network,” Broughton told us. Although it’s widely appreciated that uTP is now Open Source, developers of other clients are not all that eager to implement it yet. Vuze, one of uTorrent’s major competitors, told TorrentFreak that they will keep an eye on how it evolves before they make any decisions. Others have pointed out that uTP still has a long way to go before it becomes mainstream. That said, there are bound to be issues when one is trying to innovate. There are still a lot of issues to be addressed with uTP, the most important being good speeds for everyone by default. The future will tell whether uTP is really the improvement BitTorrent Inc. claims it to be.ISLAMABAD: Amid a policy decision on Friday to allow rupee depreciation, Pakistan and an International Monetary Fund (IMF) delegation concluded the first round of discussions on the country’s economy. Now members of the IMF delegation and Pakistan team are taking a two-day break to prepare for the policy-level wrap-up by Dec 13-14. A senior official told Dawn that the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) would now let the currency exchange rate to adjust to market conditions after many months, rather years, of resisting expectations. The timing of the move was planned for Friday to ensure materialisation of $2.5 billion worth of receipts from two international bonds launched last month. This calculated move allowed the currency rate to touch Rs110 to a dollar on Friday before settling down at around Rs107 and did not go beyond official estimates. The two weekend holidays would give a breathing space instead of over-steaming the exchange rate. Examine: Devaluation of rupee is not the answer if the root cause persists The sources said that the IMF had concerns over the health of Pakistan’s external sector, but the government authorities had different opinions. As the two sides concluded technical talks, the IMF team will prepare a report of its assessment over the weekend and share with Pakistan officials on Monday for the feedback and discussions. While the government team, led by secretary of finance Shahid Mehmood will review the assessment, the IMF mission to Pakistan, led by Harald Finger, will visit Lahore next week for talks with provincial authorities including Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and independent observers and researchers from the business community and representatives of a private-sector university. The authorities believed the currency adjustment would help shift foreign currency holdings from commercial banks currently standing at a higher level of around $6 billion back to official reserves and help divert remittances to official channels with declining gap among the official, banking and open market rates. For the first time after many months, the central bank is reported to have noticed exporters to offload their positions. In the long run, the recent imposition or increase in the import duties and regulatory duties would make unnecessary imports expensive. An official said that projections for CPEC-related repayments were within the range already discussed by the two sides in connection with debt sustainability analysis as $23 billion worth of projects were currently under various stages of implementation, including $17 billion in the energy sector by the private sector. About $6 billion worth of projects are in the road sector. While a clean certificate of economic health from the IMF is useful for international financial institutions and investment sentiment, the two sides are reported to have noted that recent bond results were very positive for the fact that this was the first fund raising from international capital market without the IMF programme after many years and attracted favourable response and rates despite high twin deficits, showing confidence of international investors and good reflection of fundamentals. The IMF director of Middle East and Central Asian Department (MCD), Jihad Azour, the former finance minister from Lebanon, will also join the final round of talks next week. While the Pakistani side will continue to be led by Mr Mehmood, a meeting of the IMF mission could also be arranged with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi who holds the portfolio of the finance minister, depending on the gaps in policy positions, a source said. Pakistan would continue to remain under the IMF’s post-programme monitoring (PPM) until about 2023 for borrowing significantly higher than its quota. The threshold for Pakistan to move out of the PPM is estimated at 1.4 billion special drawing rights (SDRs) of the IMF that now stand around 4.3 SDRs. Secretary Finance Shahid Mahmood, when contacted, said that the two sides held various rounds of technical discussions over the last week and covered a host of areas including macroeconomic situation, developments in energy, financial, monetary and social sectors. He said that he shared with the IMF delegation an overview of the economy which was on track and key economic indicators were moving in the positive direction. He said that significant growth had been achieved in revenue generation in the current fiscal year. He said that Pakistan had achieved fiscal consolidation without compromising on expenditures on development and social protection and the government had set its eyes on achieving 6pc GDP growth which was inclusive, pro-poor and sustainable. Mr Mahmood said that the recent successful launch of Sukuk and Euro Bond were also discussed briefly. Published in Dawn, December 9th, 2017Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email CCTV images of a man found dead at a remote beauty spot near Oldham have been released by police in a bid to identify him. The body of the unknown male was discovered on the Chew track leading from Dovestone Reservoir boating lake to Indian’s Head – an outcrop near the top of the reservoir – on Saturday, December 12. When searched, officers found no identification on him – just money and three train tickets. The CCTV stills have been taken from cameras at London’s Ealing Broadway tube station which is where one of the tickets were bought. Detective Sergeant John Coleman of Greater Manchester Police said: “The area where the man was found is extremely remote and is used by walkers, engineers and rangers for the park. READ MORE: READ MORE: “What we know is he was last seen at around 4.30pm on Friday, December 11, on the track near to where he was found and would appeal to anyone with information to contact us. “He remains unidentified at this time. We have had several phone calls from people who have contacted us with possible identifications for the deceased male from missing people around the country, which we are very grateful for, and most have been confirmed as not being one and the same person. More pictures of the man: “We are trying to find out who he is so we can tell his family but unfortunately he did not hold any ID. “When he was searched, the man had money and three train tickets. One was from Ealing train station to Euston which was bought at 9.10am on Friday, December 11, and the other tickets were return from Euston to Piccadilly bought at 9.50am the same day. “Having examined the CCTV from Ealing Broadway station we can now confirm that the deceased man, who had no other identification on him, bought the ticket to Euston from the ticket office at 9.04am on Friday, December 11, and that the pictures provided are of him at that tube station. “At this moment in time, we do not know whether the man is local or is visiting the area. I would appeal to owners of hotels or guest houses to call us if they believe personal belongings have been left in their room and no one has come back to claim them.” According to police, the man is white, of slim build, and clean shaven with a large nose which may have been previously broken. Anyone with information should phone police on 0161 856 8972 or the independent charity Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111. READ MORE:342 Shares Email Not long after Corporal Jeffrey Robinson brought attention to possible problems in VAC payments for prescribed medications, his pension was suspended. Jeffrey Robinson served Canadians as a Corporal in the Primary Infantry Reserves from 1988 to 1994. He was then placed in the Supplementary Ready Reserve until he retired from the Canadian Forces in 1997. During his time in service, he was injured three times. He suffered severe whiplash in parachute training, re-injured his neck in a second training incident, and had a displaced fracture in his left elbow. He receives what is called a 5% pension worth $136.67 per month – which is the absolute minimum monthly pension someone can reserve. While it’s not much, every extra cent counts, as Robinson has been living off of his savings for the last two and a half years as he takes care of his mother. The small amount of his pension is because Veterans Affairs only provides financial support for the long-term impact of his elbow injury, not the impact of his severe whiplash and further neck injury. Additionally, it took five years for the Department of National Defence to inform Robinson that he needed to contact Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) directly to apply for a monthly disability pension and long-term treatment for the injuries he suffered. Robinson says this should have been done by commissioned officers in his regiment right away after his injuries, but it was not. VAC fought against giving pension benefits As Robinson tried to get increased pension benefits for the other injuries, Veterans Affairs fought him every step of the way. Robinson says the Bureau of Pension Advocates were ordered by Veterans Affairs to stop supporting his claim – despite doctors attesting to his injuries (Degenerative Disk Disease, and Myofascial Pain). Robinson says Veterans Affairs wouldn’t even let a doctor speak on his behalf, and records were destroyed. Despite the evidence of his injuries, Veterans Affairs outright denies that he has long-term impacts of those injuries, and as a result, he just gets the $136.67 pension. And yet, it gets even worse. Pointing out potential problems with VAC paying for prescribed medications For some time, Robinson – who lives in B.C. – began noticing a serious problem. While visiting a pharmacist to get medicine covered by the B.C. Workers Compensation Board, he noticed that pharmacists were getting Veterans Affairs to cover prescribed medications – even though the WCB should have been paying for it. Robinson says he started to see that this is a widespread problem, meaning resources at Veterans Affairs could be used up to cover things that provinces are supposed to pay for – taking away from other support for Veterans. He reported the prescription issue all the way back in 2002, then in 2011. He filed a complaint with the VAC Ombudsman in 2012, but there was no resolution. In 2016, he sent a letter to Kent Hehr (copied to Justin Trudeau), again with no resolution. He reported three pharmacies taking part in that practice, and points out that his current pharmacy doesn’t have the same problem. VAC seems to know about the problem, as Robinson says a VAC Team Leader told him on a phone call that “sometimes we pay for stuff we shouldn’t be paying for.” However, when he brought up his concerns to the Veterans Affairs Ombudsmen, Robinson says their “investigation” was whitewashed, and withheld from him. After written and verbal requests to obtain copies of the investigation, the government ended up saying that it is just an “issue of communication between the veteran and his pharmacist.” And then, in what is either a case of suspicious timing or punishment for speaking out, Robinson was told by Veterans Affairs that his Annual Declaration of Disability Benefit Form was “never received.” This form is something that disabled Veterans must fill out every year to continue to be eligible for benefits. If it’s not received, benefits get cut off. Robinson is clear that he sent the forms, and says Veterans Affairs claims that they sent phone calls and a letter about it not being received are false, since he received no letter or calls from them. As a result, his $136.67 VAC pension was suspended in June. While VAC claims it will be re-instated, it’s very disturbing that it was taken in the first place, and there’s good reason to doubt any promises made by VAC until it actually happens. Disturbing timing While it can’t be known for certain whether Robinson’s pension benefits were taken because he brought attention to possible misspending by VAC on pharmaceutical drugs, the timing is certainly disturbing, and it fits with a disturbing pattern of Canadian Veterans being systematically mistreated by the institution that is supposed to be supporting them. This has happened under many governments, including Harper and Trudeau – despite their promises to improve things. This must change. When our country asks people to serve our nation, they must know that they will be treated with the respect they have earned, and will be given support when they are injured in service to Canada. For far too long that support hasn’t been there, and VAC has been focused on pinching pennies instead of supporting Canada’s Veterans. Until that changes, it remains a disgraceful stain upon our country. Jeffrey Robinson, and all Canadian Veterans deserve far better. Spencer FernandoBad boys, bad boys, whatchya gonna do? Whatchya gonna do when they transform into an approximation of a wolf and come for you? That’s the premise of Wolfcop, in which a cop stumbles upon a ritual in progress and is transformed into a werewolf. I saw Wolfcop drinking a silver bullet at Trader Vic’s. His hair was perfect. Here’s the official synopsis (via Twitch). It’s not unusual for alcoholic cop Lou Garou to black out and wake up in unfamiliar surroundings, but lately things have taken a strange turn. Crime scenes seem oddly familiar. Lou’s senses are heightened, and when the full moon is out, he’s a rage-fueled werewolf. WOLFCOP is one cop’s quest to become a better man… One transformation at a time. Below you’ll find the concept trailer for this magnificence as well as some image macros and posters. Tagline: “Dirty Harry, Only Hairier.” Now we’re feeling lucky. Lowell Dean and crew are funding Wolfcop via CineCoup. Thanks to all the votes they received on CineCoup, they’re also guaranteed a Canadian release when they finish the film. “Canadian release” is not a euphemism and it certainly doesn’t involve wearing a moose costume in a Tim Hortons.ASN Contributing Editor Brian Sciaretta sat down with John Brooks in Glasgow and talked about the German-American's decision to side with the U.S., and his dream of playing in the World Cup. BY Brian Sciaretta Posted November 15, 2013 10:17 AM SHARE THIS STORY —Twenty-year-old defender John Brooks is one of the most interesting prospects in the United States player pool. The tall, imposing Hertha Bertha player is the youngest player on the U.S. squad now in Glasgow and also one of the most promising young prospects for American soccer. Brooks has been with Hertha Berlin since 2007 and last year was a stalwart in central defense for the club in a 2.Bundesliga campaign where it easily clinched promotion to Germany's top flight. Over the course of the 34-game season, Hertha's back line allowed just 28 goals—best in the league. In 40 league games as a professional, Brooks has yet to accumulate a single yellow card. This season, Brooks' first in the Bundesliga, was always going to present a challenge to the Berlin native. An elbow injury sidelined him and stunted his progress, but he is now at 100% percent and should be able to compete for his starting role at Hertha Berlin once he returns from the international break. In recent years, Hertha Berlin has bounced in and out of the Bundesliga but its fan support is strong and the club is ambitious. Despite being newly promoted, Hertha Berlin now sits in seventh in the Bundesliga and Books believes the adjustment to perhaps the strongest league in the world has gone well. "The coach made it very good for me," Brooks told American Soccer Now. "It's a little bit faster and there are good players. I think we don't feel pressure. We just play for every game." Now in Scotland, Brooks will be looking to earn his second cap for the United States after making his debut in August during a 4-3 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina. Brooks admits to being both surprised and bit nervous in that first appearance for the Yanks, but he is now in his third U.S. camp, and feels like he is settling in. "They made it really easy for me," Brooks said of the U.S. team. "[Jugen Klinsmann] explained everything. From the first word to the last word was positive. All the people are nice and everyone talks to each other. Aron [Johannsson] is from Iceland and I'm from Germany. It's no problem." Klinsmann believes that the decision Brooks is indicative of an approach he has regarding dual nationals to make them comfortable in his set up and give them a reason to eagerly choose to play for the United States without any pressure. "For us, it's exciting to see young players go through European systems and different academies and then breaking through," Klinsmann said. "With dual-citizenship issues you always have a topic floating around of what country will they choose at the end of the day. We have an approach that it's totally up to the player and you got to make them as comfortable as possible. Hopefully they choose the United States one day." "With [John] Brooks, there is a player we've followed for two-and-a-half years now very closely,"Klinsmann added. "We communicated with him all the time, and his family. We brought him in when we thought he was ready. But it's always in connection in talking with his coach, his family, and his club. Players now with that option realize that we're kind of improving in the United States. We're more ambitious. That attracts the interest of those players and in many cases they chose the United States over their other option." One of the growing themes of the U.S. national team over the past four years has been the influx of German-American players who have spent little or no time in the United States growing up. Since 2010, Jermaine Jones, Timothy Chandler, Fabian Johnson, Danny Williams, David Yelldell, Terrence Boyd, and now Brooks have been capped by the Stars and Stripes. Though German by birth, Brooks' American nationality has always been a significant part of his background. His father is from Illinois and was stationed in Germany when he served in the U.S. Army. Brooks is close with his father (who now lives in Switzerland) and traveled back to the United States to visit family during his youth. Growing up in Berlin, Brooks was enrolled in the John F. Kennedy school for American children living in Germany. Until the sixth grade, he only spoke English in school and most of his childhood friends were American. As Brooks grew older, he excelled at soccer and in 2007 he joined the Hertha Berlin setup and was a standout for its youth teams. He held both American and German passports and always felt attached to both countries, but deciding which country to represent was not an issue since neither federation reached out to him. The turning point came in August 2010 when U.S. U-20 head coach Thomas Rongen reached out to Brooks and invited him to a tournament in Peru. The fact that the United States showed interest first influenced Brooks heavily, and Brooks credits Rongen for his decision to choose to play with the U.S. "Yes it was important," Brooks said. "I always said the nation who called me up first is the nation who really wants me. Thomas Rongen talked a lot to me. We wrote emails. It was nice. I then talked to my mother and she said, 'Whatever you want. Do what's best for you. It's your choice.' I asked my dad and he said the same." While Brooks enjoyed playing for the United States youth teams, his participation was spotty. He was not released by Hertha to play for the United States in its unsuccessful U-20 World Cup qualifying tournament in 2011. He played for the United States briefly in late 2011 but again was not released by Hertha for camps. When Brooks did not play for the United States at the 2013 U-20 World Cup, it led to speculation that he was holding out for an opportunity to play with Germany, but Brooks calls that "nonsense." He said was tired after his first full professional season and he needed to rest for his first Bundesliga campaign. In late 2012 and throughout early 2013 Brooks was called up several times by Germany's U-20 team, which conveniently played friendlies on FIFA international dates. For him, it was part of making an informed decision. In the end he enjoyed his times with U.S. more. "I wanted to see the German version too because I'm half-German," he said. "It was OK because I know a lot of the German players in my age group. It was better with the U.S." "It was warmer." When Brooks elected to play for the United States for the friendly against Bosnia, it was a unique situation because at the time Germany's U-21 team was also interested in him. For all the German-Americans on the U.S team, Brooks was the only one to have chosen to play for the U.S. with German interest on the table at the same time. "For Hertha it would be better if I played with the German team, for traveling and status," Brooks said. But that "didn't weigh on my decision. It's my choice. I'm just focused on the United States." The games against Scotland and Austria could go a long way toward showing Brooks' chances at making the United States 2014 World Cup team. Following these games, there will only be one more U.S. friendly on a FIFA international date before World Cup camp opens in May. The American central defense depth chart is a bit crowded, with Omar Gonzalez, Matt Besler, Clarence Goodson, Geoff Cameron, and Michael Orozco all having more international experience. That said, Brooks is the only American routinely playing central defense in an elite league. He knows it will be a difficult but achievable task to make the trip to Brazil. "It'll be a challenge," Brooks said. "I'm young. I'm 20. It would be a dream if I could make it for the World Cup. I want to play every game now and it's up to the coach." Would you like to see John Brooks make the 23-man World Cup roster? Think he has a chance? Share your thoughts in the Comments section below.Fusako Sano (佐野房子, Sano Fusako, also known by the pseudonym Sachiko Yamada) (born 1981) is a Japanese woman who was kidnapped at age nine by Nobuyuki Satō (佐藤宣行, Satō Nobuyuki),[1] and held in captivity for nine years and two months from November 13, 1990 to January 28, 2000. In Japan, the case is also known as the "Niigata girl confinement incident" (新潟少女監禁事件, Niigata shōjo kankin jiken). Abduction [ edit ] Fusako Sano, then a fourth grade elementary school girl, disappeared on November 13, 1990 at age nine[2] after watching a school baseball game in her home town of Sanjō, Niigata Prefecture, Japan. A huge police search failed to find the missing girl. Police even considered the possibility that she had been kidnapped by North Korean intelligence operatives. She had been kidnapped by Nobuyuki Satō (born 1963), then a 28-year-old mentally disturbed unemployed Japanese man, who forced her into his car, and subsequently held her in the upstairs floor of his apartment in a residential area of Kashiwazaki, Niigata Prefecture for 9 years and two months. The house is only 200 meters from a kōban (police substation), and 55 kilometers from the location where she was kidnapped. The missing years [ edit ] While Sano was initially scared, according to her own statements, she eventually just gave up and accepted her fate. Allegedly, the kidnapper kept her tied up for several months and used a stun gun for punishments if she did not videotape the horse races on television. Sano was also threatened with a knife and beatings. Her kidnapper shared his men's clothes with her and gave her food three times per day, either instant food or meals cooked by his mother, who lived downstairs in the house. He also cut Sano's hair. Since there was no bath or toilet upstairs where Sano was confined, she was only able to take a bath infrequently, when permitted by her captor. She spent most of her time in captivity listening to the radio, and reportedly was allowed to watch TV only in the last year of her ordeal. While the door was never locked, Sano did not take a step outside for nine years. She later told the police: "I was too scared to escape and eventually lost the energy to escape." Satō's mother lived downstairs and apparently had no contact with her son's captive since he became very violent whenever she tried to go upstairs. However, police believe the mother must have had some knowledge of Sano's presence; for example, it was alleged that she purchased feminine hygiene products for the victim. Discovery [ edit ] The mother of Nobuyuki Satō, then 73 years old, consulted the Kashiwazaki public health center in January 1996, because her son had been acting strangely and was violent to her. She called again on January 12, 2000, and again on January 19, requesting a visit to her home. Officials finally visited the home on Friday, January 28, 2000. Subsequently, Satō caused a disturbance that resulted in police being called to the scene. On this occasion, Sano, by then 19 years old, approached the officers and identified herself. She reportedly said: I was abducted near the school by a man who forced me into a car. [...] For nine years, I did not take a step out of the house. Today, I went out for the first time. Upon her rescue Sano was found to be healthy, although extremely thin and weak due to lack of exercise: she could barely walk. She was also dehydrated. Due to the lack of exposure to sunlight, she also had a very light skin tone and suffered from jaundice. While her body was that of a 19-year-old woman, mentally she acted like a child. She also suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder. Soon after her release, Sano was reunited with her family. Her mother did not initially recognize her, since she had last seen her at age 9. The local newspaper Echigo Times (越後タイムス) compared the incident to the Yotsuya ghost story, based on the address of Satō. Aftermath [ edit ] The victim [ edit ] In the years following her release, Sano's physical health improved, and she now helps out in her family's rice paddy. As a result of her lack of normal social interactions during her captivity, she still has difficulties adjusting to normal life, has very few friends, and likes to take walks alone. She enjoys digital photography, especially of flowers, and obtained a driver's license. Neighbors comment that she is a fan of the local J. League Football (soccer) team Albirex Niigata, and goes to some of their games. The Sano family refuses to comment on her ordeal. In 2007, her father drowned in a pond, in her presence, where the two went for fun.[3] Prosecution [ edit ] Nobuyuki Satō, then 37 years old, was hospitalized immediately on January 28, 2000, as mentally unstable. On February 10, 2000, his legal status was changed from suspect to criminal, and he was arrested on February 11, 2000. The Niigata court opened his trial on May 23, 2000. In the proceedings, the prosecutors acted very carefully to avoid further damage to Sano's mental health. The prosecution's case included even minor charges against Satō (for example, shoplifting of women's underwear) with the goal of putting him in jail for as long as possible. Following a defense claim of criminal insanity, on September 6, 2001, psychiatrists found Satō to be mentally fit to face the charges, and he subsequently admitted the main charges. In the first instance, on January 22, 2002, the Niigata District court sentenced him to 14 years out of a maximum of 15 years. The defense appealed on January 24, 2002, and the trial moved to the Tokyo High Court. On October 12, 2002, the Tokyo High Court judge Toshio Yamada (山田利夫, Yamada Toshio) sentenced Satō to 11 years, reducing the initial sentence. Both the prosecution and the defense appealed on December 24, 2002, and the case moved to the Supreme Court of Japan on December 10, 2002. On July 10, 2003, the Supreme Court judge Takehisa Fukazawa (深沢武久, Fukazawa Takehisa) accepted the prosecution's arguments, with the result that Satō is currently serving a 14-year prison sentence.[4] Criticism of the police [ edit ] After the discovery and rescue of Sano, the police in Japan were heavily criticized. Satō was already known to police for inflicting violence against another girl on June 13, 1989, for which he was convicted on September 19, 1989. However, his name somehow disappeared from the list of criminals, and he was not considered a suspect in the abduction of Sano in 1990. At the time of Sano's rescue, Niigata Prefectural Police chief, Koji Kobayashi, did not show up to the police station to supervise the situation, but spent his evening playing mah-jong with the head of the Regional Police Bureaus. Due to this, and subsequent errors by the police, Kobayashi resigned on February 26, 2000, and the head of the Regional Police Bureaus resigned on February 29, 2000. See also [ edit ] References [ edit ]The talk show will be shown on the state-owned TV channel RT from Thursday. Alex Salmond: Programme inspired by Fringe show. Alex Salmond is to host his own political talk show on Russian state-owned broadcaster RT. The former First Minister announced he will present the programme on the controversial channel on Thursday. Airing on Thursdays, The Alex Salmond Show will include guests from business, political and entertainment backgrounds. Former SNP MP Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, a close confidant and business partner to Mr Salmond, is set to co-produce the show. The Russian embassy in London was among the first to share the news on Thursday night. He said: "This programme will give people with something to say a platform to say it and we intend to find out something about the personalities behind the public figures. "In this show I'm going to give you the opportunity to get to know our guests just that bit better. "I'm not interested in catching people out on statistics or laying them low with past quotations. I want to hear from people to of ideas and answers, with something positive to contribute." The idea for the programme was inspired by his Edinburgh Fringe Festival show, Alex Salmond Unleashed. 'Whether it's in Strichen or Moscow, I'm sure he will continue to attack the UK's free press, and criticise the media as a propaganda tool.' Conservative MP Colin Clark It will be divided into two parts, one giving someone a platform to air their ideas followed by questioning from the 62-year-old, while the second will be a more personal interview. Conservative MP Colin Clark, who unseated Mr Salmond at this year's election, said: "I am only too happy to have helped Alex make the move into journalism. "Many people would say that it is long overdue, and will suit his politics more than Westminster or Holyrood. "Whether it's in Strichen or Moscow, I'm sure he will continue to attack the UK's free press, and criticise the media as a propaganda tool." He added: "He and Tasmina make a great team." Want to receive the latest headlines straight to your inbox? Subscribe to our 'Morning Briefing' newsletter. Subscribe This field is required. That doesn't look like a valid e-mail format, please check. That e-mail's already in our system. Please try again. Please tick the box below to confirm your subscription Thanks for subscribing to our 'Morning Briefing' newsletter. Subscribed Want to receive the latest headlines straight to your inbox? Subscribe to our 'Morning Briefing' newsletter. Thanks for subscribing to our 'Morning Briefing' newsletter. Subscribe Download: The STV News app is Scotland's favourite and is available for iPhone from the App store and for Android from Google Play. Download it today and continue to enjoy STV News wherever you are.Suitcase containing underwear causes 10-hour security scare in Mildura Updated A suspicious package that triggered a security alert in Victoria's north-west was two pairs of underpants in a suitcase, police say. Police said a member of the public reported a black suitcase placed outside a shopping centre carpark in Mildura about 7:30pm (AEDT) on Sunday. The shopping centre and the immediate area were evacuated and the bomb squad was called in from Melbourne, more than 500 kilometres away. Inspector Simon Clemence said the threat was cleared after the suitcase turned out to contain underwear. We didn't even need to detonate the underwear so that's excellent. Inspector Simon Clemence, Victoria Police "It turned out to be two pairs of underpants and we would very much like to find the person that fits those underpants," Inspector Clemence said. "We didn't even need to detonate the underwear so that's excellent. "I'm sure it was just accidental but if we do see someone running around without any underwear on we'll have a chat with them." The area was in lockdown for about 10 hours before the threat was cleared. Inspector Clemence said the bomb squad had to drive about six hours from Melbourne to Mildura. "Unfortunately because we're so far away it was about four o'clock in the morning before the bomb squad could arrive from Melbourne," he said. "They have a massive amount of equipment with them and it took that long before we could actually clear the area and let people go back in." He said it was fortunate that there were not many people in the city at the time. "But it tied up all our police resources for most of the night," he said. Police are yet to find the owner of the underpants. Topics: emergency-incidents, community-and-society, police, mildura-3500, mildura-centre-plaza-3501 First postedWhen he was 15, Shlomo Zippel got his first job programming. And that was pretty much the end of his academic career. "I had an arrangement with the principal — as long as I showed up for tests and did well in them, he wouldn't tell my parents that I wasn't at school," recalls Zippel. "Instead of getting on the school bus every morning I got on a normal bus that took me to the office I worked at." Zippel, who lived in Israel at the time, was developing software used by all major banks in the country plus Reuters Israel. At 17, the hourly rate Zippel was making for coding was higher than his parents'. "My dad is a surgeon," Zippel says. "This might say more about how little doctors are paid in Israel though." The tech world is filled with famous dropouts. David Karp, for instance, ditched high school at 15 and never graduated. Instead, he created Tumblr, which he later sold to Yahoo for $1 billion. Mark Zuckerberg left Harvard University in his sophomore year, mirroring another famous Harvard dropout, Bill Gates. Tech billionaire Peter Thiel has also been a vocal critic of college, famously offering selected students $100,000 to drop out of college and instead focus on developing their ideas. Michael Solomon, founder of 10X Management, which represents about 80 coders, notes that many of them don't have degrees or didn't major in computer science. "One of the biggest issues with post-secondary education in the technology industry is it's ability to keep a curriculum current and at the cusp of technology," says Erik Zuuring, a 10X programmer who dropped out of college. "Just in the web-sphere, trends and technology change on a monthly basis." "You can get a computer science degree and after four years you're $100,000 in debt and you still don't know everything you need to code," says Jordyn Lee, a rep for SkilledUp, a self-styled curator of online and alternative education sources. Zippel says he's also run across comp sci graduates who couldn't code. "When I was 17 there was a new employee in the company, fresh out of a CS degree. I was shocked when he didn't really know how to program. I remember that's when I decided I probably wouldn't go to school. What is the point?" The four-year computer science degree has its defenders, too, of course. Don Burks, head instructor of Lighthouse Labs, a Vancouver-based programming boot camp, says the people who create the next version of Windows or OSX or the next Android phone likely studied computer science. "It's fantastic if you're going to become a computer scientist," he says, referring to a comp sci degree. "But for someone who wants to build websites, SaaS products or work on startups, what they need at that point is a practical understanding." Beyond that, though, a deep understanding of computer science can help you become a better programmer, says Yuri Niyazov, a Ruby on Rails expert. "I happen to think that this new movement of 'techies don't need education' is really dangerous," he says. "Sure, in my professional experience,
intrinsically valueless commodity. Using these words makes it clear that there is no imaginary constraint at which the fiat strains in search of "easing," instead, human beings make choices and perform actions to create it. The fact that the average American has no idea what fiat is, is no excuse for those who do understand it failing to employ the phrase often in writing and speaking. If it is used enough, even Americans can learn a new word. So use it, please. Next is the term, "austerity," which is used, in government-budget discussions, to describe spending cutbacks necessary to balance tax inflows to spending outflows. The first-listed synonyms for this term are "harshness," "strictness" and "ascetisim," all of which have a strong negative emotional valence. Absent from these synonyms are any positive results that might come from actions described as austere; the entirety of the word's meaning is unrelieved by any awareness that austerity might have a benefit. So again, let's be clear. The most accurate description for the set of measures described as "austerity" is expressed by the phrase "living within our means." This expression aligns with the average person's understanding that he or she must personally balance revenue inflows and outflows - even people who don't do this are usually painfully aware that they should. "Living within our means" then, has a positive valence that is hard to over-state - immediately, intuitively, it just makes sense. Reframing the choices before us from a battle between "quantitative easing" and "austerity" to one between "fiat creation" and "living within our means" is a necessary first step to making the right choices as a culture. If we can't even properly state the problem, we'll never arrive at a solution. Thank you, Brad, for a concise analysis of the Federal Reserves' "newspeak" propaganda. Note: I was out of town all last week and have yet to catch up on correspondence. Your patience and forebearance are much appreciated. If you would like to post a comment, please go to DailyJava.net. Order Survival+: Structuring Prosperity for Yourself and the Nation or Survival+ The Primer from your local bookseller or in ebook and Kindle formats. Of Two Minds is also available via Kindle: Of Two Minds blog-Kindle "This guy is THE leading visionary on reality. He routinely discusses things which no one else has talked about, yet, turn out to be quite relevant months later." --Walt Howard, commenting about CHS on another blog. Thank you, Damien D. ($100), for your staggeringly generous contribution to this site-- I am greatly honored by your support and readership. Thank you, Gantantar N. ($25), for your most excellently generous contribution to this site-- I am greatly honored by your support and readership. Subscribers ($5/mo) and contributors of $50 or more this year will receive a weekly email of exclusive (though not necessarily coherent) musings and amusings, and an offer of a small token of my appreciation: a signed copy of a novel or Survival+ (either work admirably as doorstops). At readers' request, there is also a $10/month option. The "unsubscribe" link is for when you find the usual drivel here insufferable.BLOG Kennesaw, GA (January 2017) – We’re craving warming weather after hearing Vibe has announced their Spring 2017 product launches! Along with tweaking the 2017 Sea Ghost 130, Vibe is also introducing two brand new vessels; the Vibe Sea Ghost 110, the newest addition to Vibe’s Sea Ghost series, and the Maverick 120 SUP. Although you can’t visually see most of the updates on the 2017 Vibe Sea Ghost 130, you will feel them. “With such a great response to the 2016 Vibe Sea Ghost 130, we really just wanted to focus on polishing the details. Our goal was to listen to the feedback from customers and deliver them the product they desire,” explained Josh Thomas, co-owner and designer for Vibe Kayaks. That feedback led to the 2017 Sea Ghost 130 getting more structure added to the foot brace sidewalls, thicker rudder cords to prevent cleat stripping, raising the floor beneath the seat for a dryer ride, adjusting the pitch of the seat for a more level ride, tweaking the angle of the flush mount rod holders for better rod placement, and adding pitch to the rear tank well for better draining. These small changes add up to big improvements on the 2017 Sea Ghost 130. Much like its predecessor, the Vibe Sea Ghost 110 is packed with features that kayak anglers demand; including the adjustable Hero Seat for all-day comfort, integrated gear tracks for easy customization and a toe-controlled rudder system that saves paddler’s energy on long paddles and rough currents. “We wanted to deliver a kayak with all the same features that anglers are looking for, along with superior stability and maneuverability. The Sea Ghost 110 was really designed for the anglers that love the rivers, lakes and tight quarters,” explained Josh Thomas. The Vibe Sea Ghost 110 angler kayak package, retailing for $829 (including Vibe Journey Paddle) will be rolling out at Vibe dealers in Spring 2017. Last, but certainly not least, the Vibe Maverick 120 SUP is Vibe’s grand entrance into the growing popularity of SUP angling. Utilizing a pressure-injected foam hull with a rotomolded polyethene shell, the Vibe Maverick 120 SUP offers a sink-proof, no-flex deck! This technology results in a lightweight board with a solid, non-flexing deck that weighs in at 56 lbs with a superior weight capacity of 475 lbs. Always with the angler in mind, the Maverick 120 includes 5 integrated gear tracks, front and rear bungee systems, an 8” sealed hatch and multiple paddle parks. “We really wanted to improve on the current rotomolded boards out on the market. Utilizing the technology of a foam-injected hull gives users an SUP with no flex, bowing, or drooping of the board. Our heart and passion is in kayak fishing, but including an SUP in our product lineup gives the Vibe brand the versatility to reach those customers that are just looking to get out on the water and enjoy the outdoors,” said Josh Thomas. The Vibe Maverick 120 SUP package, retailing for $879 (including Vibe Roamer SUP Paddle) will be rolling out at Vibe dealers in Spring 2017. About the Company: Vibe is a kayak company founded by avid fishermen and kayakers from Atlanta, GA, who love the water, its inhabitants and everything associated with being in the outdoors. We’re committed to serving our community of fellow outdoor and watersports enthusiasts by providing them with the best kayaks and accessories. Our kayaks are designed to give paddlers of any skill level the opportunity to experience freedom, the outdoors and fishing in a whole new way. Get outside and experience the good vibes mother nature has waiting for you! www.vibekayaks.com Contact: Lauren Lester (678) 938-8234 [email protected] moved painfully slow as a barely perceptible, light blue streak of crystals struck her sister's head, immediately knocking her out. Her limp body fell to the frozen floor of the expansive ballroom, hitting the ice shoulder first, followed by the thump of her head slamming against the surface. Elsa exhaled sharply, then scrambled off a patch of ice and ran to her sister's side to substitute the rough and cold floor with her soft lap as a place to rest Anna's head. Letting out a short, weak and apologetic "Anna," as she hurriedly examined her sister in hopes she's going to be okay. While certainly not an expert in how people worked, she thought Anna looked fine, except... The room darkened. "MAMA! PAPA!", Elsa cried out. Overwhelmed by a barrage of emotions, she deferred to holding her sister close and sobbing quietly. She could feel the blizzard spilling out into the room, but she barely registered that. All she could think about was Anna. Moments later, banging accompanied by muffled voices ripped Elsa out of her sorrowed state. She looked up to the doors that gave into the attempts at being opened, allowing her father into the room, with mother by his side. "Elsa! What have you done!?", were the first words to escape him as he sprung towards the sisters across the frozen surface of the immense hall entirely covered in frost. "This is getting out of hand!", his voice coarser and harsher than before. She could hear the disappointment and anger. Mother picked her younger daughter up from Elsa's lap. As she quietly examined her along with her husband, Elsa lifted herself up from the floor and looked up at her parents. She observed their faces, looking for even the slightest hints that Anna is going to be okay, but they never came. Time stood still. She could swear it. Her parents completely still over the cold, unmoving Anna. A loud shriek tore the air as mother's expression turned to that of fright. "She's-," she tried to speak, but her voice elected that a sob must occur at that exact time, cutting the sentence short. "She's not breathing," she managed and with those words their faces turned to absolute horror. The room darkened substantially, and Elsa felt dread and guilt seep into her heart as mother and father treated her with a stare; a stare filled with fear and anger. She stood before them; she tried to speak, to apologize, say it was an accident or just scream in panic, but she could produce no sound. "You killed your sister," came from her father. "You're a monster," from her mother. The voices of crushing hatred. Deep and raw. The room darkened for the last time. With a racing heart, quick and shallow breath, and teary eyes, Elsa scrambled backwards, slamming her back against a solid surface. She curled her legs to her chest, gripped nearby fabric and wrapped herself with it in a desperate attempt at protection. Only from that position, holding the material tightly, she finally dared to look at her surroundings again. It was her bedroom. She was sitting on her mattress, wrapped in the covers she slept under and with her back to the wooden decorative head of the bed. Even with that knowledge, it took Elsa a long time to calm down and think even remotely straight. ~Dream,~ she thought with her first clarity. ~A very, very bad dream. Anna is okay...~ "Anna is okay," she muttered, looking blankly at the spot where her feet would be if they weren't under the covers. She absent-mindedly wiggled her toes just to see the fabric move. ~Is she?~ Elsa looked to the opposite side of the room where stood Anna's bed. While structurally identical to her own, it differed in color and other decorative marks. Where Elsa's was a very dark brown to the point of near blackness, her sister's was cream white. Where hers had blue, Anna's had pink. She tried to make out the outline of the younger girl, but to no avail. She couldn't let it go. She had to see if Anna was okay. Once Elsa started to unwrap the protective layers of the covers, she quickly discovered that in her panicked moments she managed to frost some of the fabric around the palms of her hands. She froze. This is the first time she used her powers by accident. Brushing the frost away with her fingers at the pace of nearly picking every snowflake off individually, she thought if that's something to be worried about. ~What if I lose control? What if I hurt someone?~ With that thought, Anna was back on the top of her mind. Newfound determination to make it to her sister's bed pushed her past the new self-doubt over the control of her powers. Elsa jumped off the bed and stood on the wooden floor. She still couldn't see Anna. The other side of the room couldn't be more than a dozen meters away, but to Elsa it seemed like a journey of hours in length. Each step spawning a new horrible thought that her sister is somehow not okay; not okay at all. Yet, there she was. As peaceful and sweet as ever, sleeping on her side, with face illuminated by moonlight shining through a tall triangular window. ~She's okay.~ For the first time this night, Elsa was calm. She figured that the carpet she stood on was an excellent place to sit down and observe her sister's well-being. ~She's okay. She's really okay.~ It would be very easy to watch her sister sleep for the rest of the night, if not for the guilt that again invaded her mind when she allowed herself the peacefulness of the moment, doubt in her rule over the things she can do and fear how she could hurt the ones she loves once more. With these thoughts, Elsa got up from this soft and forgiving carpet, walked over to the one triangular window that lit their bedroom and climbed onto its edge. Resting her head on the glass, she sat with the back to an angled frame, looking out to sea. In the bright of the moon and auroral strings of light, she could see a calm body of water stretching out to the horizon, reflecting the colors above. She could, but did not. Instead, she saw a reflection of a girl. She saw her eyes; ones that could not forgive themselves. She thought to the events of earlier this night and although not sure how long ago it was; it felt strangely distant and absurd, yet so recent, gripping and real. She thought to her dream that managed to capture her fears and embolden them. Even as mostly accurate account of what happened, it still pushed reality a step further, making the result of her actions Anna's... Elsa shook the thoughts away and noticed tears coming to her eyes. "I'm sorry, Anna," she whispered, wiping the tears away with the sleeves of her delicate teal night gown. She looked past her reflection to the sparkling green and purple waters. The glow reminded her of what followed the ballroom. Her parents took two of the quickest horses from the stables, and rushed her and Anna through the woods. The journey was a blur to Elsa, but her mind cleared once she saw the creatures her father brought them to see. They looked like living rock, covered in moss and other vegetation. While enclosed in a circle of these stone people, none of which taller than even Anna, one particularly aged individual approached their family. "Your Majesty," the elder troll opened, giving a slight bow, "born with the powers, or cursed?" He questioned the king, while taking Elsa's hand. "Born, and they're getting stronger," he replied without attempting to conceal his concern. Elsa hadn't noticed until then. Her powers were getting stronger, but how powerful could they get? This most wizened looking of the rock people let go of Elsa's hand and turned his attention to Anna, whispering a quiet "here, here," as he gestured to mother to bring her to his level. Shortly after she complied, the troll rested his stone palm on Anna's forehead and paused for a mere moment. "You are lucky it wasn't her heart." He said with a look of relief as he slid his palm off the younger girl's head. "The heart is not so easily changed." Elsa could feel a needle striking her heart, prompting it to beat faster. ~What if I...~ "But... The head can be persuaded." He continued with a somewhat amused expression. "Do what you must." Her father spoke. Was it desperation she could hear? With his face turning to determination, the elder placed his hand on Anna's head again. "I recommend we remove all magic. Even memories of magic." "Wait." Father reached forward with the palm of his hand. "Removing memories of magic? We would have to keep Elsa's powers a secret from Anna." "It's for the best." The moss covered troll replied in a calm and soothing voice. "No. We'll protect her. She can learn to control it, I'm sure. We'll lock the gates. We'll reduce the staff. We will limit her contact with people and keep her powers hidden," his voice shook as it changed from a tone of fearfully to lovingly resolute, "but we can't do that to Anna. The two of them are too close." "As you wish, your Majesty," with a look of concern, he again gave the king a slight bow. He closed his eyes for another moment, still resting the rocky palm on Anna's forehead. When he reopened them, he said, "She will be okay." ~She will be okay,~ Elsa thought, still looking into the colorful reflections on the nearly flat surface of the sea. As reassuring as Anna's health and well-being were to Elsa, she couldn't shake the guilt and doubt that stuck to her through this night. As all right as her sister looked, she couldn't stop obsessing over what could happen in the future; what could happen if she didn't learn to control her powers. What if Anna felt the same way? What if Anna won't forgive her like she can't forgive herself? ~What if she doesn't want to be my sister anymore?~ It wasn't until the scenery outside changed, that Elsa snapped out of the gloom as she saw the night had already turned to the break of dawn, covering all she could see in a blanket of solid orange. This new light managed to keep her away from the thoughts of regret for a time; time Elsa desperately needed and all the time required for... "Elsa..." Familiar voice spoke from across the room. Voice that if she were to believe herself at various points of the night, she might never hear again. Yet, she heard it. Anna called her name. Elsa turned away from the window to look to her sister's bed. Unlike the weak girl she expected, Anna was sitting upright, eyes closed and stretching the sleepiness away; an innocent and satisfied smile drawn on her face. The older girl slid off the window frame, turned towards Anna and with every fiber of her being, she pushed herself to make a few steps forward despite the conflict in her heart. She wanted to be close to Anna, but all the thoughts that built up through the night were getting in the way of making that a reality. Elsa spoke the first words on her mind, "Are you o-okay?" She managed to walk a few steps away from the window. "Of cour-," Anna cut the reply. Her sister's mind wandered and expression dimmed. Elsa looked down at her hands, playing with them nervously. She knew that she just remembered what happened last night. "Of course I am." Anna continued with a loving and reassuring voice. Elsa looked up, meeting the eyes of the younger girl for the first time and at that moment, she was sure her own face was painted with the emotional variety of a rainbow, reflecting the state of her heart. "I'm so sorry, Anna," she dared speak again. Her sister turned herself towards Elsa. "It's okay. I'm okay." She stood up on the bed and began to jump on it excitedly as if trying to wake everyone in the castle up with her giggling. "See?" Elsa managed a smile. ~She's okay. We're okay.~ She made a small gesture to calm Anna down, but the enthusiastic redhead would have none of it, at least not for another while. This Anna was the best sight she could imagine; something that threw all the dread of the night away. She wasn't sure if the pit it fell into was so deep she couldn't hear the sound of all the awful things hitting the bottom, or Anna's delightful laughter muffled it in its entirety. Encouraged, she took a few more steps, now standing by the foot of the bed. As she approached, Anna took notice and finally plopped down at the lower end of the bed, near her. There was a pause, but without tension. The sisters just looked at each other, smiles on their faces. Silence was broken by another one of Anna's giggles when she sprung to her knees and reached forward to Elsa, offering to help bring her up on the bed. "Come on!" Was that the frozen grip on Elsa's heart melting away? Elsa reached for Anna, connecting the palms of their hands. She felt a gentle tug as Anna began pulling her up, but it was already gone. What she saw next made the chilling hold on her heart stronger than ever. Anna sat back on her heels, pressing the hand Elsa touched to her chest, wrapped in the other palm; as if rubbing warmth into it. Eyes wide open, the expression unmistakably that of raw fright. Elsa instantly pulled back a few steps, exhaling a quiet "No," but she was moving in the wrong direction. She didn't want to go deeper into the room, she wanted out. Elsa turned to the door and ran, catching a glimpse of a terribly confused Anna, and as she went out of their bedroom, she thought... ~We're not okay.~ Anna remained still for a solid minute, staring the door down, hoping that Elsa would come back. She didn't. When Anna realized she was still clutching her hand, she looked down on it. It looked the same as ever. It didn't hurt. Did Elsa even do anything to it? ~She didn't.~ Anna realized that, at worst, Elsa's hand felt just a hint colder than usual. Yet, her reaction was one of an impulse, she instinctively pulled her hand back without thinking about it. ~Why am I afraid?~The Kremlin has accused the United States of trying to set the Russian business elite against President Vladimir Putin ahead of a March 2018 election that is expected to hand him a new six-year term. Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, used what he said was a series of written questions from an international news agency as a platform to make the accusation on November 30. He said that one of the questions was, "Do you agree with the opinion that the U.S. authorities are using sanctions [against Russia] in order to set wealthy supporters of the Russian president against him?" Peskov said he had answered, "I am sure that this is the exactly the case." Another alleged question cited by Peskov was, "Do you think that such U.S. efforts are linked to the presidential election?" "We are convinced of this," Peskov said he had answered. The United States has imposed sanctions on Russia in response to its seizure of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, its role in the war that has killed more than 10,000 people in eastern Ukraine, and its alleged interference in the U.S. presidential election in 2016. Putin, who has been in power as president or prime minister since 1999, is widely expected to announce in December that he will seek reelection in the March 18 vote. His popularity and control over the levers of power in Russia, where critics say the Kremlin has manipulated the media and stifled dissent, make his victory a foregone conclusion. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, meanwhile, told journalists on November 30 that if Putin decides to take part in the election, the ruling United Russia party will support him. Medvedev, who is chairman of United Russia, spoke in an annual interview with major Russian TV networks. It is obvious that United Russia will support Putin if he seeks reelection, but Medvedev's remark may have been meant as a gesture of support and a further signal that Putin will do so. There is speculation that Putin could dismiss Medvedev -- whom he steered into the presidency in 2008 and made prime minister when he started his third term in 2012 -- before or after the election. In the televised interview, Medvedev said that Western sanctions and the plunge in world oil prices, which also occurred in 2014, had presented "the harshest and most unusual challenge" to his government. He asserted that the government had managed to face the challenge and enabled the economy -- which emerged this year from a recession that began in 2014 -- to recover "faster than expected." With reporting by Interfax, TASS, and ReutersBarbers in Toronto who refused to cut a woman’s hair have become the target of a human rights complaint, in a case that pits religious freedom against gender equality. When Faith McGregor went into the Terminal Barber Shop requesting a short haircut, she was told the shop only grooms men. The reason, co-owner Omar Mahrouk said, was that as a Muslim he could not cut the hair of a woman who was not related to him. But for McGregor, the rejection of her patronage amounted to sexism. “Fundamentally, my hair is the same as their male clients, so why would they have a problem with that,” she told CTV News. “I felt like a second class citizen, like it was hard to hear that they refused and there was no discussion." So the 35-year-old filed a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. Under the law, business owners aren’t supposed to discriminate based on gender, but Mahrouk felt he had religious rights. A lawyer for the owners also says in their defence they've only ever trained to cut men's hair and that they'd bought a barbershop on the expectation they would only have to serve male clientele. The Terminal bills itself as “the oldest standing barber shop in Toronto,” offering haircuts, massages and hot lather shaves “in a classic barber shop setting,” since 1925. Its client list includes former prime minister Paul Martin and actor Woody Harrelson, who can be seen posing with the owners in a photograph on the shop’s website. Some are standing behind the barbershop’s owners, pointing out that there are women-only spas and gyms. “If I wanted to have a specialized business geared just towards men that wanted hot razor shaves and cuts, why not,” said Sean Gibson of the Ontario Barber Association. But McGregor disagrees and is hoping to force the shop to service women too. Her case goes to mediation in the new year.In an unprecedented legal case, a group of Chinese lawyers have charged the governments of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei with failing to protect their citizens from air pollution, which is linked to a third of all deaths in the country 'We had to sue': the five lawyers taking on China's authorities over smog 'We had to sue': the five lawyers taking on China's authorities over smog Who is responsible for China’s chronic and deadly air pollution? That depends on who you ask. Officials blame the weather or outdoor barbecues, activists blame steel companies and coal-fired power plants. But Yu Wensheng blames only one actor: the government. The 50-year-old lawyer recently launched an unprecedented suit against the authorities in three regions in China, claiming they have failed in their responsibilities. For a government with the motto “Serve the People”, Yu feels the officials are serving other interests by allowing nearly half a billion people to choke on toxic smog. “Our bodies are being harmed because of the ineffectiveness of our government; because of their inaction and carelessness, we suffer,” Yu told the Guardian. “The pollution has affected my family, my son is coughing, I’m also coughing, and I feel the smog caused this. I am suing as a victim.” Northern China is frequently blanketed with thick clouds of deadly smog that is linked to almost a third of all deaths in the country – and caused by steel plants, a heavy reliance on coal for heat and power generation, plus millions of cars. While the authorities have “declared war on pollution”, many feel progress has been slow and the region is still hit with a yearly bout of “airpocalypse”. We have laws, regulations and systems to combat pollution, but they’re not being enforced Cheng Hai Yu and four other lawyers have filed cases against the governments of the capital Beijing, the neighbouring port city of Tianjin, and Hebei province, home to some of the country’s most polluted cities. “If the authorities don’t accept the case or use some other method to dismiss it, it can only show the government has a bad attitude in the face of pressure from the citizens,” Yu says. “That would clearly show they don’t serve the citizens at all.” Several in the group have been pressured by local branches of the justice ministry to withdraw the cases and another lawyer has already dropped out after he was visited by police in his hometown. But Yu is undeterred, having previously spent stints in detention, where he says he was tortured. President Xi Jinping has made building “rule of law” a hallmark of his tenure, but critics say the ruling Communist party remains above the law and ordinary citizens still struggle for justice. The country’s top judge rejected the idea of judicial independence in a speech last month, dismissing it as a “western” notion. In the wake of the lawyers announcing their lawsuit, China’s powerful censorship authorities issued a blanket ban on any discussion of the case – a rare edict for an environmental issue. In recent years the government has allowed some space for citizens to vent their anger over the country’s chronically toxic air. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lawyer Yu Wensheng was locked up over a previous protest, and says he was tortured. Photograph: Fred Dufour/AFP/Getty Even government media frequently publishes articles lamenting pollution. In the midst of a week-long bout of bad air in the beginning of January, the state-run China Daily published an editorial lambasting the government for not doing enough to tackle the problem. “No matter how much importance the government says it has attached to pollution control, no matter how many efforts may have actually been made in this regard, the heaviest smog that has extended for the longest time and covered the largest number of cities in years flies in the face of the country’s fight against environmental pollution,” the paper wrote. Environmental suits have been successful in the past, particularly civil cases suing for monetary compensation. A Chinese court ordered US oil giant ConocoPhillips to pay damages to 21 fisherman who claimed their livelihoods suffered after a spill at an oil rig operated by the company. China allowed nongovernmental organisations to sue companies in 2015, with the goal of civil society taking a greater role in holding polluters accountable. NGOs with government affiliation and backing have been much more likely to have a case accepted by courts than independent groups. But one of Yu’s colleagues sees little point in targeting companies. “We have to sue the government,” says Cheng Hai, another lawyer involved in the case. “A business can only control the emissions from its factories, but the government can reduce emissions across all the polluting industries. We have laws, regulations and systems to combat pollution, but they’re not being enforced.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest China launched a ‘war on pollution’ in 2014 but still experiences dangerous levels of smog. Photograph: Wang Zhao/AFP/Getty Images Their initial attempt at filing the case was rebuffed by a Beijing court, with court officials saying a case against each government needed to be filed separately in each location. “There’s no point in just suing one government, such as Beijing,” Cheng says. “This is a regional problem and all three governments need to be held accountable for there to be any effect. If we don’t sue, the air will just get worse.” The lawyers have since refiled their cases and are waiting for a response. But even if the court agrees to hear the cases, the chance of a landmark victory is almost nonexistent. “This lawsuit on this topic at this moment in history is going to be an uphill battle,” says Rachel Stern, author of Environmental Litigation in China: A Study in Political Ambivalence. “I would be surprised if this lawsuit is successful, and if I were betting, I don’t even think it will get accepted by the court.” Welcome to Baoding, China's most polluted city Read more For the first 15 years of his law career, Yu shunned political cases, instead practising corporate and civil law. But in 2014 he staged a one-man protest, standing outside a Beijing detention centre for hours after he was barred from visiting a client held there. Two days later, police took him away. He would not emerge for more than three months, while interrogators accused him of supporting pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, which were at the time clogging the city’s financial centre with hundreds of thousands of people. “I really had nothing to do with the Hong Kong protests, but those 99 days changed my entire life,” Yu says. Once he was released, Yu put aside many commercial cases to focus on defending human rights, and was detained again in 2015 as part of a nationwide crackdown on human rights lawyers and activists. “When I became a lawyer, I thought could contribute to society,” he says. “But after practising law, I found that it was not like that at all – because China is not a rule of law society, but a rule by law society.” Guardian Cities is dedicating a week to investigating one of the worst preventable causes of death around the world: air pollution. Explore our coverage in The Air We Breathe and follow Guardian Cities on Twitter and Facebook to join the discussionBALTIMORE (WJZ) — For the first time in years, the mayor’s Youthworks program was able to employ all of the teens who signed up for summer jobs. As Mike Schuh reports, the mayor spent part of her morning meeting some of those who got on the job training. It’s a big deal when the mayor comes to visit your business; a big deal, when, as a high schooler, you get your picture taken with the mayor; and a big deal, when, as a 17-year-old, you can get a chuckle out of the mayor. Tiree McCall is finishing up his summer Youthworks job. He’s one of the 8,000 city kids who got summer jobs because businesses like Union Memorial found them something to do. “This hospital has been around in Baltimore for 160 years, and we didn’t have our success without those types of partnerships,” Brandley Chambers, of Union Memorial, said. Union Memorial didn’t pay their five weeks of salary — Youthworks did. The money was donated. A lot more money came in this year after unrest caused people to want to help in some way. “There were about almost 3,000 young people who would not have been placed but for the fundraising efforts post-unrest,” Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said. “So that was certainly a tragic incident with a good upside for our young people.” For many, like Shaquille, this is their first real job — an experience that should translate into more jobs later. “Yes, showing up on time, but the little things — how to interact with people, how to communicate with people, how to work on a team. It’s those basic skills that are actually more important that we’re teaching,” Chambers added. Tiree has college plans to be an engineer, knowing it’s a big deal to be building a work history first. “I want more people to know about the Tiree’s of our city, who want better for themselves and are willing to work really hard for it,” Rawlings-Blake said. All of the money that has to pay for those jobs, $1,500 per student, was donated to the city.Video may have killed the radio star sometime in the 1980s, but the podcast Serial seems to have resurrected him. A milestone in podcasting came in October 2014, almost 10 years after the birth of the first podcast, on the Tonight Show. This American Life host Ira Glass sat on Jimmy Fallon’s couch in October 2014 and, with the help of his elderly neighbor, explained how to download a podcast. Glass’ visit and kitschy video were prompted by the unprecedented success of Serial, the slickly-produced podcast that, over the course of 12 episodes, reported on and continued the investigation into the murder of a high school student in 1999 and her popular ex-boyfriend, who is in jail for the crime. See also: 11 diverse podcasts to give you a fresh perspective on life Serial was both a cultural touchstone and, many I spoke to for this story agreed, a pivotal moment for podcasts. “I think it was probably Serial that put podcasting on the map for a new order of magnitude for audience reach than any other podcast had before,” said Chris Paul VP Media and Acquisition for Squarespace, which sponsors virtually every podcast (they say it’s around 150-to-200 properties, depending on the month, right now). According to Edison Research, podcast listenership has grown steadily every year except 2013 (right before Serial). And Apple told me that there have been over 1.6 billion subscriptions and 20 billion downloads since Apple added podcasts to iTunes. Image: Illustration by Bob Al-Greene “Podcasts have always been a successful category for us,” Apple told me, and added that, as far as mainstream recognition for the medium, “if there was a starting point, Serial is it.” It has been a breakout year for podcasts, the overnight success that's been a decade in the making. The subscription and RSS-fed audio platform not only enjoyed unprecedented visibility thanks to Serial (a product of Chicago Public Media radio and This American Life), but was in the spotlight again in June when President Barack Obama joined comedian Marc Maron on his popular podcast WTF. “President Obama is hugely important for the medium,” said Adam Sachs, CEO of Midroll a podcast advertising network that also has a stable of owned and operated shows (including Comedy Bang Bang, How Did This Get Made, and The Black List Table Reads). “You heard his interview, people heard a President Obama they never heard before,” said Sachs, who also noted that Obama said “the ‘n’ word” on the podcast. “What other medium would he have said that word? There is none.” 'I made up a bullshit sentence' British technology journalist Ben Hammersley will go down in history books as the guy who cooked up the name “podcast," but he's casual about their birth, which was inauspicious even down to the creation of the name. “Basically...I was late on a deadline, was short about 30 words, needed to add in a couple of sentences. [I] made up a bullshit sentence, ‘What do we call this?’” The technocratic name reflected the abiding geekiness of early podcasts, which replaced the lost bulletin board systems (BBS) of the 80s and 90s and served as places for geeks and nerds to chew the technofat. “At the beginning of podcasting, it was the amateur stuff, two white dudes sat around taking about stuff for 2 hours,” Hammersley said, “They were very flabby and not well done.” I labored in that kind of obscurity myself. I worked on one of those podcasts, PCMag Radio, though, in my defense, we only recorded for an hour. (I’m now part of what I like to call the second wave of techcasts and record with
when his former communications director sued him for sexual harassment. The city council president suggested that employees be given “alternative workspace”away from Filner’s office “to ensure a safe work environment and maintain productivity.” Filner also apologized and promised to change his ways. We had assumed Filner was surely a goner any day now. But then, just as a third woman came forward Wednesday with more allegations against him, we got a “You’re Invited! Save the Date” e-mail from him asking us to join him Sept. 28 at the “Grand Opening Ceremony” of the new San Diego Central Library. We tentatively penciled in the event.In the movie of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, right after the nuclear explosion (or whatever it was) Viggo Mortenson runs to the bath tub and fills it up. He knows that the public water system will be down soon and an extra bathtub full of water is incredibly important. That’s a great idea and something I plan on doing in any emergency situation with enough prior warning. The WaterBOB is a great way to do just that, but more sanitary. The WaterBOB The WaterBOB is simple enough. It is a heavy duty plastic water storage container that you place in your bathtub and fill up. The bathtub itself supports the bag. The bag has a tube that you place over the faucet for filling. Holds up to 100 Gallons FDA Food Grade 10 mil plastic bag Siphon Pump for Dispensing. Advantages Some people might think this is a waste of money when you could just fill your bathtub up with water without the bladder. That’s a good point, and what I would do if I had to, but there are a couple of things you might want to consider about the WaterBOB 1. Cleanliness – sure you clean your bathtub, but you still bathe your dirty self in it everyday. I’d rather have my drinking water in a food grade container. 2. Longevity – Hopefully this 100 of so gallons of water will be enough to last you for a few weeks at least (depending on the number of people). Water left standing in your bathtub for several weeks, possibly without having had a chance to clean the tub before hand, is going to get dirty and moldy pretty quick. 3. Every Drop – Even if your tub is cleaner than a surgeons table it still has a drain. Even if you have a heavy duty drain you are going to lose some, and that is unacceptable in a survival situation. The WaterBOB isn’t going to lose a drop. 4. The End – What happens when you get to the very end of the supply? I would rather have my last gallon or two in a plastic container I can pickup, move, or drain instead of a 1/2 inch of three week old water in the bottom of my bathtub. 5. Cheaper – You’re first reaction may be that $40 is too much for a WaterBOB, but if you look at that price of 55 gallon barrels that are food grade, you will likely pay $50+ for those, plus buy lids, and still only get roughly half the storage capacity. Update: CheaperThanDirt.com has the WaterBob for only $20. Video It sounds like an infomercial, but you get to see the thing work better than pictures. What Do You Think? I really can’t think of an easier way to quickly gather and store 100 gallons of clean water in an emergency. Would you use this system or stick with more traditional methods? More on Water Containers: SuperTanker Water Storage (250 days of water) 7 Great Uses for A Backpacking Bucket The Platypus Collapsible Water Bottle Save Save Visit Sponsors of SurvivalCache.com SaveFrance’s defense minister has said that the U.N. Security Council will pass a resolution before Christmas that will authorize a multinational African force to “stabilize” Mali. The resolution calls for an intervention force of 3,300 troops lead by ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States). An anonymous source spoke of another plan that involves sending 5,500 troops to help upgrade Mali’s military. The announcement comes a little more than a week after the Ivorian president said that a military intervention was likely in early 2013 and Chad’s president expressed “total confusion” over intervention. In a separate operation, the E.U. is planning to send hundreds of European troops under French command to Mali to help “rebuild” Mali’s army. French drones have already been over the skies of the North African country, where Al Qaeda-linked militants have taken hold of the north and the south is under the control of an unstable and ineffective government. The fear is that Mali could become a new base for Al Qaeda if militants are not displaced or defeated. The U.S. seems to share these fears. Almost two weeks ago, officials from the State and Defense departments told senators that they were working with ECOWAS and considering offering the force that enters Mali equipment, training, and advisers. Quite what a successful intervention in Mali looks like is unclear. It is unrealistic to think that African troops, even with French and American support, will be able to effectively dislodge Al Qaeda-linked militants from a politically unstable country that is slightly larger than Italy, France, and the U.K. combined. Even were the militants defeated, they could move to one of Mali’s neighbors. In addition, what influence foreign troops would have in an already politically unstable country is not obvious or predictable. What is too often forgotten in many of the discussion regarding Mali is that it was foreign intervention in Libya that contributed to northern Mali falling into the hands of Tuareg fighters, who were then displaced by Al Qaeda-linked militants. No one has yet been able to give a convincing argument for why an intervention in Mali will be any less predictable.FREMONT — Investigators increasingly have relied on residents’ private security cameras to find and arrest burglars, lowering the city’s burglary rate last year by nearly 30 percent. Fremont police now want to install their own surveillance camera systems, including license plate readers, in about a dozen intersections. The cameras would be placed near city borderlines because most of Fremont’s burglaries are done by out-of-towners, and ï»¿police want to catch criminals as they drive near the freeway, police spokeswoman Geneva Bosques said. “Having cameras and license plate readers at city exit points gives us the ability to track vehicles used to transport suspects in and out of the city,” she said. The City Council on June 17 will consider police’s request to spend $300,000 on the video surveillance systems. If council members approve them, the city then would put the job up for bid, Fremont police Chief Richard Lucero said. It’s the second time in seven months that police have asked for city funds for surveillance cameras. Last October, council members balked at spending $161,375 in Community Development Block Grant funds because they deemed it inappropriate to spend money intended for low-income housing on surveillance cameras. In recent years, police have encouraged Fremont homeowners to share private security video with investigators, and that growing informal partnership has helped catch criminals and lower crime, police said. In 2013, the city’s rate for home and commercial burglaries decreased by 27 percent from the previous year, authorities said. In a six-month period from late 2012 to early 2013, just seven of 46 people convicted of committing burglaries in Fremont lived in the city, police said. Video recordings will be stored for about a month on a secure server at the Fremont Police Department then purged after 30 days, unless they are used as evidence in a crime, police said. License plate data will be stored for a year, then thrown away, unless it’s being used in a specific criminal investigation. However, a Fremont resident has concerns that the camera systems reflect a creeping invasion of privacy and might open the door to abuses of power. “You can find out a lot about someone just by checking their license plate records,” said Eric Tsai. “It seems like it’s ripe for abuse.” Meantime, police leaders say they would make it a priority to address privacy concerns. “It’s a minimal intrusion on privacy, but it offers a significant public safety gain,” Lucero said. “I think that’s an appropriate balance. Anytime we can prevent additional crimes, then it’s a good step for us to initiate.” Contact Chris De Benedetti at 510-353-7011. Follow him at Twitter.com/cdebenedetti.Spec Ops: The Line (360/PS3/PC) Developer: Yager Publisher: 2K Games Release date: June 26, 2012 Price: $59.99 ✭✭✭✭✭✭✭✭✩✩ Score: 8/10 There's been some discussion this year about "dumb" games, including the notion that coating a "dumb" game in a smart story doesn't make the game itself any less dumb. From the first time I played Spec Ops: The Line, it was clear that this game has an extremely smart story, something that was underlined in my earlier conversation with the game's lead writer, Walt Williams. But what about the game itself? Spec Ops: The Line is undoubtedly a third-person shooter, and a fairly standard one, at that. Despite a mostly stellar script, whatever thoughtfulness is expressed by its characters in between firefights and during cut scenes sort of goes out the window when they're literally making people's heads explode with boots and bullets. But make no mistake: unlike in most games, Spec Ops' protagonist, Captain Walker, and his two squadmates are certainly affected by the carnage. They're not Uncharted's Nathan Drake. They don't walk away from these encounters unscathed, either physically or mentally. But it's the mere fact that by themselves, these three individuals are able to defeat swarms of armed and presumably equally-skilled enemies that makes the entire experience somewhat dissonant. It's one thing for Batman to take on crowds of thugs in Arkham City, but just once I'd like to play a shooter in which the main character doesn't feel like a superhero, regardless of whether he or she actually is one. POST CONTINUES BELOW Perhaps purposely, perhaps not, the game itself once quite forthrightly explained the concept of "cognitive dissonance" on a loading screen like a super-relevant, sentient dictionary. It read, basically, "cognitive dissonance: the state of simultaneously holding two conflicting beliefs". The concept has plenty of bearing on the plot, for reasons I won't give away, but it also described my mental state while playing. But I'm getting ahead of myself. How about some basic set-up? Spec Ops: The Line is set in the present-day, in a world in which a sandstorm of Biblical proportions has turned Dubai into a playground for the crazy and violent. Captain Walker and his two lackeys, Lugo and Adams (collectively Delta Squad), are sent to Dubai six months after the catastrophe to rescue one Colonel Konrad (a nod to Heart of Darkness author Joseph Conrad). Konrad and his missing battalion, the Damned 33rd, were reportedly stranded there during an earlier evacuation attempt, though Walker and co. aren't really expecting to find any survivors. POST CONTINUES BELOW To their surprise, though, they do find survivors, and they're engaged in a large-scale guerilla war. The natives, armed by the CIA, and the 33rd, now clearly very much a rogue entity, are battling for control of civilian survivors and resources (most importantly water). And for some reason, everyone, including Konrad and a darkly humored radio DJ, is out to put Delta Squad's heads up on spikes. It's a little bit Lord of the Flies, and even more so, Apocalypse Now (and, of course, the aforementioned Heart of Darkness, on which Apocalypse was based). Dubai itself takes center stage, and the effects it has on its inhabitants are matched only by the effects its inhabitants have had on it. What was clearly once a thoroughly modern metropolis has become a scene of martial law and mass graves, though its beauty still shines through as you crouch on the edge of teetering skyscrapers and peer down into a world of sand and sin. The set design is phenomenal, and all that sand even comes into play; fairly often, a menacing group of opponents can be buried under an avalanche of sand with a few well-placed bullets. The cracks that appear in the windows of half buried buildings aren't just for aesthetic purposes. POST CONTINUES BELOW One of the game's most touted narrative features leading up to its release has been the tension and dissension that arises between Walker, Lugo and Adams, and how the chaos of the kicked anthill of Dubai causes them to lose faith in one another. There are points at which you're asked to make choices, though it's literally never clear which is good and which is bad. There's no prompt to press "A" for this or "B" for that. These crossroads consistently add to the friction among Walker and his underlings. But even more prevalent is the question of who's really in control. Who's pulling the strings? Is it the Radio Man? Konrad? The CIA? What about Walker himself? Delta Squad is, over and over, forced to do things that no righteous person should or would ever do. The atrocities of war, and all that. But where Modern Warfare 2's controversial "No Russian" (Google it if you have to) seemed like a poorly conceived publicity stunt, many of the dark events in Spec Ops are almost too plausible. POST CONTINUES BELOW As Walker's sanity erodes like a handful of sand caught in a breeze, his squad trusts him less and less. Likewise, you as the player will start to lose faith in him as well. He's no hero. And toward the end, as Delta's anger toward the city and its inhabitants boils over, the seemingly endless waves of aggressors start to seem less cognitively dissonant, and more like an intentional plot device; who's really defending against who? Who are the aggressors here? They're questions I asked myself more as the game progressed, and the characters themselves even questioned their own actions. If I'm going to give the writing any credit, I'd call it an intentional attempt to marry an intelligent story to a game in which three dudes kill hundreds, if not thousands, of trained soldiers and armed civilians in the space of not-very-long. Admittedly, Spec Ops: The Line manages to avoid many of the pitfalls of other action games. Enemies don't taunt you as you're sending their teammates to the grave. They scream out tactical information to their allies, and, eventually, even start to express fear. "They're everywhere!" is a hackneyed phrase in gaming, but it's usually coming from the good guys, not the bad guys. Then again, the line between the two in Spec Ops is about as clear as your vision in a sandstorm. POST CONTINUES BELOW But it's a damn shame that Spec Ops is coming out now, little more than a month after the release of another, extremely similar third-person shooter: Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. I can't help but compare the two, though each looks worse in the other's shadow. Future Soldier has probably ruined me for third-person shooters for a while, at least as far as mechanics are concerned. Playing Spec Ops, I pined with alarming frequency for some of the more convenient advances that Future Soldier made. Things like an intuitive, fluid cover system, or the ability to mark multiple targets and have your allies take them all out at once. Spec Ops stumbles over these aspects of gameplay with sometimes clumsy mechanics that feel dated by at least a couple years. Often I fumbled when trying to snap into or hurdle over cover, and Lugo and Adams seemed to take my marking targets for them as more of a suggestion than an order. This is particularly frustrating during the occasional stealth segment. Even the simple ability to go prone on the ground, strangely lacking from Spec Ops, was sorely missed in both single and multiplayer. POST CONTINUES BELOW Future Soldier, on the other hand (which I also reviewed), had the most atrocious story I've seen in a triple-A shooter in some time. But its shallow narrative was eclipsed by some joyfully futuristic gameplay. Likewise, I believe Spec Ops' stellar narrative more than makes up for its mechanical mediocrities, even if most gameplay sequences are simply an interlude between story bits. Spec Ops is even slightly meta at points. A snarky radio DJ asks Walker whether he's played too many video games, and when the story catches up to the flash-forward opening sequence, Walker remarks that he's done this before, to the confusion of his squadmates. And as Walker's sanity became ever more questionable, the events of at least one scene even changed from one death to the next. Walker is phyiscally mutilated by the end—a minor detail, except that most game protagonists don't even sweat. And without giving away any spoilers, the final scenes are no bombastic boss battle or balls-out action set piece. They're conversations between people, of all things. POST CONTINUES BELOW Oh, and the colors. Never before have I seen such exquisite use of color in a video game. From the luminous blues and oranges of the skyline to the deep, hellish red of later sequences, Spec Ops possesses a visual flair rarely seen in this genre of washed-out and undersaturated lookalikes. The soundtrack is equally competent, with the Radio Man spinning classic rock tunes with a Full Metal Jacket sense of timing. At other times, ambient tracks always fit the mood and enhance the experience. Where Spec Ops likely won't hold up is in its multiplayer, which I admittedly only got to play for an hour or so. It's got all the tropes of a modern competitive shooter: multiple classes, custom load-outs, weapon and perk unlocks, challenges, and so on. And despite my complaints, if the gunplay is solid enough to carry the entire campaign (and it is), it can surely hold up in multiplayer. There's even a two-player co-op mode that's coming soon in the form of free DLC. It's just that Ghost Recon: Future Soldier does it so much better. But for gamers looking for a thoughtful yet action-packed single player experience, Spec Ops is undoubtedly the 2012 summer blockbuster of gaming. Despite early similarities to Apocalypse Now et al., the narrative follows its own, unpredictable path. Much like Dubai under all that sand, Delta Squad and especially Walker are forced to their breaking points by the weight of all their deeds, both intentional and unintentional. It's dark and gritty, and none of the whopping six endings I experienced could be described as happy. But as Colonel John Konrad puts it, there's a line that men like him and Walker have to cross. No one said it would be pretty.Actors Steve Buscemi and Vince Vaughn and screenwriter Scott Rosenberg were involved in a bar brawl last Thursday that resulted in four arrests and nearly killed Fargo star Buscemi. The Hollywood trio are currently filming the aptly named Domestic Disturbance in Wilmington, North Carolina. Two local men allegedly picked a fight with the filmmakers when one of their girlfriends began talking to Swingers star Vaughn. A scuffle outside the bar is reported to have taken place at 2am. Police on patrol broke up the fracas, but not before Buscemi had been stabbed above the eye and in the jaw, throat, and arm. He was taken to hospital. Vaughn was maced, according to reports. Timothy Fogerty, 21, was arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon for the Buscemi knifing. Another local man, 20-year-old Kenneth Purgason, was also arrested. According to local police, the brawlers had "refused to disperse, so they all got pepper spray. In all, there were about ten involved when we got there, but the four kept fighting. Normally, we don't have any problems there". Buscemi has since returned to New York to recuperate and is consulting plastic surgeons for his wounds. "The situation could have been life-threatening," a source told America's Entertainment Weekly.Sharon Alford receives the best Christmas present in the history of Christmas presents, a boss portable hi-fi with fold-out speakers. A sophomore at Hialeah High near Miami, she can now listen to her new Beatles records endlessly. Lying in bed in February 1964, she studies the photo of beautiful Paul on the back of her new album, Meet the Beatles. As the cutest Beatle, Paul can have his pick of any girl. Sharon is a pretty blond, but she has a practical streak. Can she really hope to win Paul's heart? Probably not. John is too brainy and unfortunately married. George isn't bad looking despite the caterpillar eyebrows but seems so darned earnest — he might prefer a serious, tea-drinking girl. Sharon gazes at Ringo's picture and thinks strategically. She might have a better chance with the goofy drummer, a short fellow with a prominent nose. As far as Sharon is concerned, the most important thing in the history of the world is about to happen. The Beatles are headed her way. She got her first good look at the band on the Ed Sullivan Show, live from New York, last Sunday. Now a second Sullivan show, starring the Beatles, is scheduled at the Deauville hotel in Miami Beach in a few days. The jet from New York is going to take off soon. Kids all over South Florida, feverish with Beatles Flu, leave obediently for school at 8 a.m. but instead bolt toward Miami International. Sharon arrives with a friend at the airport early and sprints to the National Airlines Terminal. Marching outside, she stakes out a position on the observation deck and waits. Hours drag by. Other kids show up. Soon there are thousands. And she has to pee. For a sight of the Beatles, and the possibility of making eye contact with Ringo, she defies her bladder. At 3:50 p.m. the jet taxis to a stop directly in front of her. Kids stampede past hapless security guards in the terminal and mob the observation deck. Some even manage to escape security to reach the tarmac. It's exciting and scary. Screaming erupts. Not normal screaming, mind you, "but high-pitched, hurt-your-ears screaming,'' Sharon later tells friends. Ringo is the first Beatle to emerge, followed by the others. Ringo doesn't throw Sharon a kiss. The others don't make eye contact either. In fact, they appear shell-shocked. They wave and vanish into their limos. It all happened half a century ago this month. Yet if you are a certain age — Sharon, a retired journalist, is 66 — memories are still vivid. Your hair may be gray, but it could be yesterday. You're a kid again. Your parents are alive and rolling their eyes about the racket emanating from your room. I Want to Hold Your Hand still sounds fresh while performed on the air guitar in front of the closet mirror. You listen continuously to Rick Shaw, the celebrity WQAM DJ who talks faster than a tobacco auctioneer. He has been spinning Beatles records since they were released in America in late December. If you're a girl you write notes explaining your love of a favorite Beatle, fold the paper until it's an impossibly small triangle, and flick it across the classroom to your best friend. Best friend flicks note about her favorite Beatle back at you. If you're a young teen boy, you pretend to throw up when Mom suggests a trip to the barber. If you're older, you trade your ducktail for Beatle bangs and commence saving your bag-boy money for a cheap Silvertone guitar from Sears. Roger Epstein, an eighth-grader at Nautilus Junior High in Miami Beach, wishes he could be one of the Beatles. What would it be like to play guitar? What if he met them? Perhaps their charm might rub off and he'd win himself a full-figured girlfriend. "Come on!'' he chastises the gawky kid staring back at him in the mirror. "Don't be a dope.'' He picks up a favorite Spider-Man comic and starts reading. At the Deauville, the screaming and weeping begin the instant the limos roll into view. The guy in charge of security is Sgt. Buddy Dresner of the Miami Beach Police Department. He has guarded Sinatra and Elvis. He supervised the guard detail when President John F. Kennedy visited the beach only a few days before his assassination in Dallas. Sgt. Buddy knows what he's doing. The first limo is a dummy. The second limo, carrying the Beatles, speeds past the bewildered girls to the back of the building. That's how the Beatles escape the screeching, clutching throng. They slip into back elevators and are escorted to rooms where they must wonder if they are trapped in this tropical paradise. If this were to happen today, they might be trapped. They might be ordering from room service during their stay. They might be texting their stockbrokers, playing video games with their posse, or maybe drag-racing under the influence like a certain pop star known for his own mop top. But in February 1964 it's different. Miami is not New York or Paris. It still has some small-town virtues. And this is important: Sgt. Buddy likes the Fab Four. They're not spoiled rich kids. They're polite and funny. Mostly they are young. Of course they want to escape the hotel. Of course they want to meet some real people. Billy Pollak lives a few miles from the Deauville. He is 13, attends Nautilus Junior High, likes the Beatles — who doesn't? He works on his James Bond cool. His dad, Paul, builds hotels. His mom, Jerri, is a former nightclub singer who knows the people who know the important people. The phone rings after dinner. It's a comedian friend, Myron Cohen, who had met the Beatles. They may need a getaway place, Cohen says, somewhere they can escape the hubbub. "Tell the boys to come over to my house,'' Jerri says. The limo arrives the next morning. Led by Sgt. Buddy, the Beatles walk in, eat cold cuts, go for a swim and pose for a famous Life magazine photograph in the pool. They're nice to Billy, which is cool, but he's not supposed to tell anyone about the visit. That kills him. Next morning Billy heads for the beach with his cousin Jeffrey Stern and Roger Epstein. Billy never mentions the Beatles. They horse around until noon. Billy suggests they walk over to his house for leftover cold cuts. As far as Billy is concerned, it's all about lunch and maybe some basketball. So he's just as surprised as his companions when the sliding door opens and the Beatles crash their game of hoops. "We're the Liverpool Globetrotters,'' one says, stealing a pass. For 10 minutes it's the Beatles against the junior high boys from the beach. Going for a rebound, Jeffrey elbows Paul in the eye, ending the action. Everybody leaps into the pool. Roger suddenly feels self-conscious being in the presence of deities. He abandons the pool to sit alone with his beloved Spider-Man comics. Ringo, the last to join the Beatles and sometimes the butt of jokes, climbs out of the pool and joins the quiet, awestruck boy. They're from different worlds, of course, but Ringo sometimes feels like an outsider, too. Together they read comics. Roger sells real estate today. Billy is a lawyer. In the photograph Billy took of Roger and Ringo reading comics, they both look like boys. The Beatles keep Sgt. Buddy busy. He's trying to protect them but also trying to entertain. He takes them fishing and unhooks a grunt from John's line. He rents sports cars for all of them. He escorts them to the 5th Street Gym, where they meet the colorful boxer Cassius Clay, who is going to fight Sonny Liston at the end of the month. Sgt. Buddy feels a little guilty. He misses his family. He forgot Valentine's Day until George reminded him. George sends flowers in Buddy's name to his wife. Buddy also thinks about his 12-year-old daughter, Jeri, who is in love with the Beatles, especially Paul. She's a brainy, serious child who likes to see A's on her Oak Grove Elementary School report card. Jeri would love to meet the Beatles. But she doesn't even know her dad is guarding them. A couple of days go by. Sgt. Buddy calls home. "Sorry I've been so secretive,'' he tells his wife, Dorothy. "Let's have a big dinner tonight.'' That afternoon Jeri and her mom arrange tables in the living room. Jeri assumes that her favorite Uncle Harold from California and some cousins must be coming for supper. Uncle Harold is so funny and nice. A limo pulls up. The Beatles trot into the house. You are Jeri Dresner, age 12. The Beatles are in your living room. You love Paul. You tell yourself: "Don't say anything dumb.'' You look at Paul, cuter in person than in his photographs, by the way. Paul says hello. Asks about your life. So do the other Beatles. They're down to earth, funny, unspoiled. Normal! Supper. Jeri's job is serving the potatoes that accompany mom's roast beef. Her stomach churns with anxiety. George looms ahead. Fumbling with the spoon, she drops a hot potato on George's lap. Oh, my God. But George doesn't act like it's the end of the world. He laughs! Meanwhile, Ringo quietly leans over to cut 6-year-old Barry's roast beef. Ringo even removes his storied rings and lets the boy play with them. Eat and run? The Beatles stay and chat politely. They tell Jeri's mom how much they appreciate the home-cooked meal, including the strawberry shortcake. Then comes the knock on the door. It's the neighbors, lots of them, and their kids. They have seen the limo. They know what Sgt. Buddy sometimes does. They have put two and two together. Sgt. Buddy, law-and-order guy, allows the neighbors in. But listen, he tells them. Walk single file around the table in an orderly manner. Shaking hands is okay. No screaming, please. As Jeri's best friend floats dreamlike into the room, Paul leans over and blesses Jeri with a big fat kiss. The kiss, thanks to the friend who witnessed it, will be the topic of discussion at school for a long time. Jeri is 61 now. She's a lawyer. Her parents are gone. John Lennon was murdered. George died from smoking too many cigarettes. She remembers the Beatles. She still listens to the Beatles. Once in a while she tells her story about her dad, and her mom's roast beef, and the day she met John, Paul, George and Ringo. She has never dropped a hot potato on another lap.Precisely one year after the first Edward Snowden leaks revealed the U.S. government’s bulk surveillance of the Internet, a coalition of websites and Snowden himself are urging everyone on the Web to “Reset the Net,” by arming themselves against future invasions of privacy. The campaign against government spies and complicit tech companies is led by nonprofit Internet rights advocacy group Fight for the Future, and gives Internet users a “Privacy Pack” to install rudimentary protection against bulk data collection and snooping, as revealed by the Snowden leaks. In a successful effort to bring the big tech firms who collaborated with the National Security Agency on board, Google has joined Reset the Net, promising to make end-to-end encryption available for Web-based email through a new Chrome extension. A coalition of other companies and orgnaizations, from Reddit and Dropbox to Greenpeace and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have also signed on to spread the Reset the Net message. “It’s been one year since Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the U.S. government’s abusive spying programs. In that time Congress and the Obama Administration have failed to protect our rights,” said Tiffiniy Cheng, cofounder and codirector of Fight for the Future. “Now, they’ve got a rebellion on their hands as tech companies and Internet users work together to directly intervene in mass surveillance and block the NSA and its kind from the Web.” In support of Reset the Net, Snowden released a statement via his attorneys in Russia, hailing June 5 as “the moment when we turn political expression into practical action,” and urging users, “don’t ask for your privacy. Take it back.” Snowden continued: “Today, we can begin the work of effectively shutting down the collection of our online communications, even if the US Congress fails to do the same. That’s why I’m asking you to join me on June 5th for Reset the Net, when people and companies all over the world will come together to implement the technological solutions that can put an end to the mass surveillance programs of any government. This is the beginning of a moment where we the people begin to protect our universal human rights with the laws of nature rather than the laws of nations.” As well as running a “splash screen” to promote the campaign, many sites are tightening up their own security to prevent government collection of visitors’ data by installing the more secure browser technology. Fight for the Future knows that the Privacy Pack software for computers and mobile devices will make spying harder, but not impossible. Unlike its successful 2012 campaign to halt the U.S. government’s ill-conceived Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Reset the Net is more concerned with changing the actions of individuals, since it doesn’t expect governments to stop snooping any time soon. “Folks like the NSA depend on collecting insecure data from tapped fibre,” says the campaign video. “They depend on our mistakes—mistakes we can fix.” Photo by mk_is_here/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)==CHAPTER ONE== DJ still remembered the evening of Michelle's birthday vividly. It was a surprise party for dear Michelle who was about to turn four, and a party thrown by her beloved Uncle Jesse himself at Michelle's favorite restaurant 'Mickey's shack'. Uncle Jesse had made the evening especially special for her by showering her with the most amazing assortment of gifts an eight year old can ever ask for. He had also invited all her friends from school and, to top things, had signed off the evening by singing a special song for Michelle that he had written exclusively for the birthday girl! Uncle Jesse was so talented… DJ also remembered the other night when Uncle Jesse and his band had their rock and roll concert at the Frisco Coliseum. It was a memorable night since DJ had taken her new boyfriend Mike there too, and it was their 'first concert' together. But DJ was so taken by the on-stage antics of his dear uncle that she nearly ignored her new boyfriend. Mike didn't take it too well, as was evident from the very short and impersonal kiss that they shared at the end of the night before retiring to their respective homes. Uncle Jesse offered to give DJ a ride since Mike was yet underage to drive around a car. That night while returning home was the first time DJ looked at her Uncle Jesse like a girl looks at a man. He had dreamy eyes, the sort you can literally swim into and drown; his head full of jet black hair was perfect, quite unlike her Dad's 'boring crop' and Uncle Joey's 'funny blond stuff'. But what attracted DJ particularly that night were Uncle Jesse's lips, those pouty old things you could chew on and have the time of your life! DJ almost lost it that very night in the car. After all, she was just 14, raging with hormones and a developing body with petite little boobs, an emergent ass and a seemingly unquenchable desire for a little touch in her blooming crotch. She was starting to feel a hunger, one she had never felt before and she liked the feeling of being hungry as well. But it seemed, as the days passed, that she had eyes and desire only for the touches of her Uncle Jesse. After all, Mike was her boyfriend, but the more Mike tried to get close to her, arouse her with his well-executed touches, DJ responded, but with an insatiable urge to compare the feeling she had when Mike touched her, with the feeling she would have when her Uncle Jesse would. It had gone on to become her wildest dream! A dream she cannot fulfill… she SHOULD not fulfill… she reminded herself for the umpteenth time as she pondered the seriousness of her next move. After all, Uncle Jesse was married, newly married to Aunt Becky, and wasn't Aunt Becky absolutely adorable? How would she react if she learnt that her dear DJ had tried courting her husband? Besides, Uncle Jesse was her REAL uncle, her mother's own brother. How could she possibly seduce a blood relative? It would be an act as vile as seducing someone's own mother! DJ weighed the options restlessly. She was pacing around the kitchen, while the faint sound of Uncle Jesse's voice came up from the basement. He was busy practicing alone in his basement-cum-jamming-studio, like he always did every morning. It was still more than an hour to go before Dad and Aunt Becky would return from hosting their morning show 'Wake up, San Francisco', Joey had left to host his own network kiddie comedy show while Michelle had gone to school. Stephanie was in the house, though, a stray fever keeping her from school; and living up to her reputation for being the most annoying factor in poor DJ's life, she barged into the kitchen while DJ was burning in the throes of an agonizing dilemma. "Wo!" Stephanie cried out in her usual high-pitched voice. She was 11, and was turning out to be a naughty little bitch indeed. "What in god's name are you wearing?" Stephanie's query was quite valid. After all, dear sister DJ rarely dressed like these. DJ had her blonde hair flowing over a blue t-shirt. But it was quite evident that DJ had long outgrown this blue t-shirt of hers. Her perky boobs were sticking out like a pair of honkers on a monster truck and the small shirt was exposing most of her stunning belly and that beautiful belly-button. She was also wearing the skimpiest skirt that she had in her wardrobe, which belonged to her when she was 13, and two inches shorter. And even back then, Danny, their dad had expressly ordered her not to put on that 'unladylike' skirt under any circumstances. Now, one year and two inches later, it barely covered her crotch properly, leaving her slender white legs exposed to the blessed eyes of those who beheld them! "What?" DJ feigned innocence, "What's wrong
-oppositional organizations of the left. And not with the relatively abstract political goal of building systems of Socialism or Communism, but with the here and now, practical goal of organizing their own life-activity with other rebels directly and without giving up their initiative and autonomy to representatives and bureaucrats. This refusal of representation and bureaucracy, along with the emphasis on autonomous desire, play and festivity obviously has much more in common with the historical theory and practice of anarchists than with most Marxists. In fact, Marxists of the old left and the new will often be the first to point this out--and criticize it. But there still remains a surprisingly large area of crossover and cross-pollination between the multitude of creative, grass-roots movements, rebellions and uprisings within the broad libertarian milieu and some of the more libertarian-leanings of the minority traditions within Marxism. Of the latter, it was the council communists in particular, whose politics were largely adopted by the SI. And this is where the deep ambiguity of the SI is based. All of Marxism--including its dissenting minorities, and all of its myriad splinters, both mainstream and marginal--is fundamentally based upon the unavoidable sociological perspectives of species, society and class. All Marxism begins and ends with these abstractions. This is counter to the broad libertarian tradition, where actual people--with all their messy lives and struggles, hopes and dreams--are necessarily the center of theory and practice. This is the real "unbridgeable gap"--as the sectarians so love to put it. But it is between the ideologically constructed, abstract subjectivity of reified concepts (like society and the proletariat) and the actual, phenomenal, lived subjectivity of people in revolt together. The SI was never able to overcome this divide. Nor was Vaneigem's Treatise. But Vaneigem did make it farther than anyone else at the time in his text. If it hasn't yet ever been made clear enough, then now is the time to finally put to rest the necessarily ideological nature of any and every reified collective subject, whether religious, liberal, Marxist, fascist or nationalist, reactionary or revolutionary. And this isn't a question of adopting a methodological individualism over a methodological holism. One or the other may or may not be an appropriate choice for any particular specific investigation or analysis, depending upon one's goals. But beginning with a reality defined in terms of an abstracted species, society or class makes no more sense than beginning with a reality defined in terms of abstract individuals. The only reason sociological investigations, analyses and theories can tell us anything beyond the most obvious banalities is the extent to which they reflect the dominant forms of enslavement in a society of modern slavery. "Scientific," "objective" descriptions incorporating sociological explanations for mass human behavior depend upon predictable patterns of human action based upon broad social dictates of conduct, codified and enforced by institutions of domination. They are sociologies of mechanical human behavior. No significant, non-trivial sociology of autonomous self-activity is possible, since there is no possibility of predicting genuinely free, autonomous activity. This means that while Marxism may attempt to investigate, analyze and interpret human activity under the institutions of modern slavery--using scientific, dialectical or any other semi-logical means--it can tell us very little of any detailed significance about what the abolition of capital and state might actually look like. And to the extent that Marxist ideologies demand any particular forms, stages or means of struggle they will always necessarily make the wrong demands. Because the only right forms, stages and means of struggle are those chosen by people in revolt constructing their own methods. Council communism, as a form of Marxism, is not essentially different from the other ideologies of social democracy on this score. Nor, for that matter, are all the various ideological variations of anarchism struggling for an increased share in the ever-shrinking leftist-militant market. Vaneigem himself understands to a great degree what is at stake here. This is one major reason Vaneigem's text still inspires anarchists around the world. And the reason we decided to serialize the original translation of his Treatise in Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed back in the '80s. As he explains in his introduction: "From now on the struggle between subjectivity and what degrades it will extend the scope of the old class struggle. It revitalizes it and makes it more bitter. The desire to live is a political decision. We do not want a world in which the guarantee that we will not die of starvation is bought by accepting the risk of dying of boredom." And, in the first chapter of his Treatise: "The concept of class struggle constituted the first concrete, tactical marshaling of the shocks and injuries which men live individually; it was born in the whirlpool of suffering which the reduction of human relations to mechanisms of exploitation created everywhere in industrial societies. It issued from a will to transform the world and change life." Class struggle is not a metaphysical given. It is the cumulative result of actual flesh-and-blood personal decisions to fight enslavement or submit to it. Those who wish to reduce these personal decisions to effects of social laws, metaphysical principles, psychological drives or ideological dictates are all our enemies to the extent that we refuse to submit. And we do refuse. Raoul Vaneigem's Treatise on Etiquette for the Younger Generations is now available from LBC Books--the publishing arm of Little Black Cart Distribution--at: http://lbcbooks.com/ 310 pages, Digest format. $12 The Treatise on Etiquette for the Younger Generations is the title of the new LBC Books edition of Raoul Vaneigem's Traite de savoir-vivre a l'usage des jeunes generations, for which this essay was originally written as an introduction. La Societe du Spectacle was first translated into English as The Society of the Spectacle by Fredy Perlman and Jon Supak (Black & Red, 1970; rev. ed. 1977), then by Donald Nicholson-Smith (Zone, 1994), and finally by Ken Knabb (Rebel Press, 2004). Traité de savoir-vivre a l'usage des jeunes generations was first translated into English by Paul Sieveking and John Fullerton as The Revolution of Everyday Life (Practical Paradise Publications, 1979), then by Donald Nicholson-Smith (Rebel Press/Left Bank Books, 1994) and (Rebel Press, 2001). Dogan, Maffei. "How Civil War Was Avoided in France." International Political Science Review/Revue internationale de science politique, vol. 5, #3: 245-277. In his 1955 essay, "Introduction to a critique of urban geography" (originally appearing in Les Levres Nues #6), Guy Debord suggests that: "Psychogeography could set for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals. The adjective sychogeographical, retaining a rather pleasing vagueness, can thus be applied to the findings arrived at by this type of investigation, to their influence on human feelings, and even more generally to any situation or conduct that seems to reflect the same spirit of discovery." (Ken Knabb, editor and translator, Situationist International Anthology, 1989, p. 5.) Unitary urbanism consists in an experimental "critique of urbanism" that "merges objectively with the interests of a comprehensive subversion." "It is the foundation for a civilization of leisure and play." (unattributed, "Unitary Urbanism at the end of the 1950s," Internationale Situationiste, #3, December 1959.) By the time the SI disbanded in 1972 Guy Debord and Gianfranco Sanguinetti (relatively new to the organization) were the only remaining members. Rene Vienet is the listed author of Enragés and Situationists in the Occupation Movement: Paris, May, 1968, essentially the SI's account of its activities during the May Days, written in collaboration with others in the group. Rene Riesel was one of the Enragés at Nanterre who went on to join the SI. Gianfranco Sanguinetti is notorious for his post-Situationist activities, most importantly, his scandalous authorship--under the pseudonym Censor--of The Real Report on the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy, which was mailed to 520 of the most powerful industrialists, academics, politicians and journalists in Italy, purporting (as an assumed pillar of Italian industrialism) to support the practice of state security forces using terrorism under cover in order to discredit radical opposition. When Sanguinetti revealed his authorship he was expelled from Italy. This episode led to a split in the Lettrists and the later founding of the more radical Lettrist International, which itself was one of the founding groups of the Situationist International. Debord was a member of the Lettrist International. Unfortunately, it's reported that a quick-thinking organist drowned out most of the Notre-Dame intervention. The full title is On the Poverty of Student Life considered in Its Economic, Political, Psychological, Sexual, and Especially Intellectual Aspects, with a Modest Proposal for Doing Away With It. Mustapha Khayati was the main, but not the sole, author. "Pro-situationist" or "pro-situ" was the (sometimes derisive) label given by Situationists to those who (often uncritically, or less than fully critically) supported and promoted Situationist ideas and practices as they (often incompletely) understood them, rather than constructing their own autonomous theoretical and practical activities. This includes most of the Situationist-inspired activities in the SF Bay area in the 1970s wake of the SI's own dissolution. There was a proliferation of tiny pro-situ groups like the Council for the Eruption of the Marvelous, Negation, Contradiction, 1044, the Bureau of Public Secrets, Point Blank!, The Re-invention of Everyday Life and For Ourselves. Most Situationist-influenced anarchists at the time (for example, Black & Red in Detroit, and a bit later John & Paula Zerzan's Upshot, the Fifth Estate group, Bob Black's Last International, the group around Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, and others) stood apart from these interesting attempts to carry on the Situationist project in a very different North American social, political, economic and cultural situation, if for no other reason than basic disagreements with the SI's Marxism, councilism, fetishization of technology, ideological rationalism, inadequate ecological critique and seemingly complete ignorance of indigenous resistance. (Which is not to say that Situationist-influenced anarchists didn't have their own, often equally-debilitating problems.) See Ken Knabb's translator's introduction to the third chapter of Raoul Vaneigem's From Wildcat Strike to Total Self-Management, included in Knabb's Bureau of Public Secrets web site at: http://wwwbopsecrets.org/CF/ selfmanagement.htm "Vaneigemism is an extreme form of the modern anti-puritanism that has to pretend to enjoy what is supposed to be enjoyable....Vaneigemist ideological egoism holds up as the radical essence of humanity that most alienated condition of humanity for which the bourgeoisie was reproached, which 'left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest'...."--page 256 of Ken Knabb, "The Society of Situationism" published in Public Secrets (Bureau of Public Secrets, 1997). Debord borrowed heavily from the Socialisme ou Barbarie group's flirtation with council communism, or councilist social democracy. He was a member of S. ou B. for a time. Vaneigem's is so far the best update of Max Stirner's original nineteenth century phenomenology of modern slavery and autonomous insurrection, Der Einzige and Sein Eigenthum, mistranslated into English as The Ego and Its Own. (A more accurate translation would be The Unique and Its Property.) Although Vaneigem mentions Stirner in his text, it is unclear how well he understands Stirner's intent, and how much he has been influenced by Stirner.Bomb Robots: What Makes Killing In Dallas Different And What Happens Next? Enlarge this image toggle caption Laura Buckman/AFP/Getty Images Laura Buckman/AFP/Getty Images After sniper fire struck 12 police officers at a rally in downtown Dallas, killing five, police cornered a single suspect in a parking garage. After a prolonged exchange of gunfire and a five-hour-long standoff, police made what experts say was an unprecedented decision: to send in a police robot, jury-rigged with a bomb. "We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was," Dallas Police Chief David Brown told a news conference Friday. "Other options would have exposed our officers to grave danger. The suspect is deceased as a result of detonating the bomb." At a Friday evening press conference, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings revealed that police used a common plastic explosive known as C4. "The same automated robot equipment used to defuse bombs was used to place C4 in place and to detonate that," Rawlings said. "This was a man that we gave plenty of options to to give himself up peacefully and we spent a lot of time talking. He had a choice to come out and we would not harm, or stay in and we would. He picked the latter." Robots have been part of police tactical equipment for years — used to surveil crime scenes, aide in hostage negotiations or defuse bombs — but this was a "unique use of equipment," according to Chuck Canterbury, national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, the largest U.S. law enforcement union. "I think it's the first time that's been utilized," Canterbury told NPR. "I know that SWAT teams around the country have been training for that scenario, especially with terroristic-type threats, where you know that the offenders do not plan to live through them." This, in fact, wasn't the first time a police robot was rigged to do something it wasn't originally designed to do — say, instead of defusing a bomb, to deliver a flash or smoke grenade to incapacitate a suspect, experts say. But it was apparently the first purposeful killing of a suspect using such a rig. "Given how many police [departments] have robots and given how versatile they are and the various uses to which they've been put, including in hostage situations, I think we'll find that there have been other examples of this," says Ryan Calo, a professor at the University of Washington School of Law who studies robotics and cyberlaw. "As far as I know, this is a first time that they've used a robot to intentionally kill someone." Peter Singer, author of Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century, has studied technology and war since the mid-2000s. He says U.S. soldiers in Iraq have used similar robots to deliver explosives, arming them by duct-taping bombs to the device. "This would be, to my awareness, the first time that we've seen police use a robotic system in this way," Singer told NPR. The decision to use the robot has drawn attention for its inventiveness in the face of a challenging and violent situation with few good options. But the incident has also led to calls for the drafting of clearer law enforcement policy about lethal or potentially lethal uses of robots. Lots of robots As with much law enforcement technology, robots joined the ranks of police and SWAT teams after a stint in the military. Bomb robots — known formally as explosive ordnance disposal, or EOD, robots — made their debut in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. They didn't become widely used by the U.S. until the 1990s, with two of the first models designed by iRobot, the same company that created the Roomba, a robot vacuum cleaner. Bomb robots became widely used by U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq to deal with improvised explosive devices. As of 2015, 201 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies had bought at least one explosive ordnance disposal robot through the military's 1033 program, according to data from the Pentagon's Defense Logistics Agency. That program distributes excess military equipment to police departments and other agencies across the country. Courtesy of Center for the Study of the Drone Last year, the San Jose Police Department used one such robot — a Northrop Grumman Remotec Andros F6A — to deliver a phone and a pizza to an armed man on a freeway overpass, eventually talking him out of committing suicide. Other EOD robots have been employed to open doors, provide audio and video feeds from inside standoff situations, set off tear gas or pepper spray and communicate with hostile suspects. Exactly how many bomb detonation robots are being used by police around the country is unclear. The Pentagon's 1033 program, which supplies military weapons and vehicles to law enforcement agencies across the country, distributed 479 EOD robots between 2006 and 2014, according to an NPR analysis. According to a 2015 study by Bard College's Center for the Study of the Drone, the Dallas County Sheriff's Department bought one EOD robot in 2014 for $10,000. The FBI Dallas Division that year purchased scores of robots at the same per-unit cost, according to the study. There may be other robots not accounted for by the 1033 program. Northrop Grumman confirmed to Vice last year that more than 1,100 of its Remotec robots are distributed across the country, used in more than 90 percent of police bomb squads. It's unclear what kind of bomb robot was used in Dallas this week, though photographs suggest similarities to a Northrop Grumman product. The company declined to comment. When is it time to worry? As robots have become an integral part of emergency situation response — think mine collapses, oil spills, natural disaster relief — Calo, the researcher, says he wasn't surprised to hear of a tactical robot featuring in the Dallas incident. And he raises an interesting question: Would the police response have garnered as much attention if they had used a more traditional means of killing a violent suspect? Calo says the time to get nervous about police use of robots isn't in extreme, anomalous situations with few good options like Dallas, but if their use should become routine. "I think we get worried when robots start to get used in traffic stops, or stops on the street, when we start to put nonlethal weapons on drones so that the officer doesn't even need to approach the individual," Calo says. "Before that, I just think we should have a policy so that officers know what they can and can't do." The effort to develop clear policies may result in a patchwork of local regulations similar to those for drones and body cameras, says Elizabeth Joh, law professor at the University of California, Davis. Plus, she says, it raises new questions about when lethal force is justified or deemed excessive in the world of remote-controlled robots. ACLU senior policy analyst Jay Stanley says as a legal matter, "the choice of weapon in a decision to use lethal force does not change the constitutional calculus," though robots make it easier to apply deadly force, raising concerns of overuse. "This was a makeshift response to an ongoing emergency," says Joh, "but we shouldn't be surprised if police departments that are watching this situation decide they want to be proactive and have such a robot at hand should a similar crisis arise," she says. "The question going forward is, 'Should this be used again, and when?' "Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is urging key senators to support expanded background checks for gun purchases in a new television ad that is to begin airing Tuesday in Arizona and Iowa. Americans for Responsible Solutions, the gun control group started by Giffords and husband Mark Kelly, said it is spending six figures on the ads in two states with strong gun traditions. The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to take up tougher firearm regulations Thursday. "There are solutions we can agree on, even gun owners like us," Giffords says in the commercial over a closeup of her and Kelly looking directly into the camera. "Take it from me, Congress must act. Let's get this done." The ad opens with black-and-white images from vigils after high-profile mass shootings at a Colorado movie theater, a Wisconsin temple, a Connecticut elementary school and the attempt on Giffords' own life outside an Arizona grocery store, which also left 12 others wounded and six dead. "We have a problem," she says, "where we shop, where we pray, where our children go to school." The ad says the overwhelming majority of people in the respective states — eight of 10 in Arizona and nearly nine of 10 in Iowa — support universal background checks and urges viewers to contact their senators to ask them to support the measure as well. It targets two Republicans on the Judiciary Committee who have an A rating with the National Rifle Association — the top Republican, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona — along with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who has indicated he'll probably support background checks. It also mentions Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin, who supports expanded background checks. Giffords also plans a news conference Wednesday in her hometown of Tucson, Ariz., with others who survived the shooting rampage two years ago at one of her constituent meetings. ——— Follow Nedra Pickler on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nedrapicklerRegardless of whether Mitch Trubisky quarterbacks the Bears through the fast lane to a Super Bowl or whether his career sputters down Cade McNown Avenue, last Sunday will go down as the day the Bears deviated from the course they had mapped out for him. General manager Ryan Pace traded up to draft Trubisky second overall because he was enamored with Trubisky's athleticism and personality, his throwing accuracy and football intelligence. But Pace also decided months ago that the relatively inexperienced Trubisky needed time to practice and learn to be positioned for NFL success. But after only four games, and eight Mike Glennon turnovers, coach John Fox's patience expired. The initial timeline has been discarded into the best-intentions file. Trubisky will start Monday night against the Vikings and take his first step toward making or breaking the Bears' rebuilding project. His ultimate success, like that of every other highly-drafted quarterback, will be the product of an interconnected set of factors, the complexity of which makes it impossible to pinpoint an exact formula for a winning outcome. Given the importance of quarterback play to team success and the ambiguity in achieving it, the debate whether to sit or start a rookie quarterback rages on with enough examples to support just about any viewpoint. To crystallize the context of Trubisky's debut, particularly its timing, here is a sample of what current and former NFL quarterbacks, coaches and executives believe when it comes to sitting or starting a rookie QB. Photos of quarterback Mitch Trubisky, whom the Bears selected with the No. 2 overall pick in the 2017 NFL draft. The perfect storm Bill Polian: Panthers general manager in 1995 when they drafted Kerry Collins fifth overall; Colts general manager and team president in 1998 when they drafted Peyton Manning first overall; current ESPN analyst. "It depends on the individual situation: A, on the player's experience and readiness; B, the team he has around him; and C, the damage that could be done to him in terms of his confidence if he doesn't succeed. "Let me use Peyton as an example. Peyton had played four years of college football and had graduated (from Tennessee). He had played in a pro-style offense. He had incredible coaching from (coach) Phillip Fulmer and (offensive coordinator) David Cutcliffe. So he had gotten absolutely as much as he could have gotten in the way of preparation out of his college career. "Secondly, he grew up in the game (father Archie was a longtime NFL quarterback) and (was) a very mature individual. Pro football was not new for him. That was a rather unique situation. Third, he had a good team around him. (Tight end) Ken Dilger was there, (running back) Marshall Faulk, (wide receiver) Marvin Harrison. We had a good offensive line; it got better, but Tarik Glenn was there at left tackle. So he had people around him who could in many ways contribute to his growth. And we had (current Cardinals coach) Bruce Arians as the quarterbacks coach and Tom Moore as the offensive coordinator, who were convinced they could put him in there. And while there were going to be rough spots — and there were plenty of them the first year — he had the strength, the character to fight through it. "And, finally, he was in a marketplace where he was welcomed. It wasn't as though people were saying, 'Well, who's this guy?' or 'He has to succeed; maybe he's a bust.' The media said that, but the fans didn't feel that way at all. And so everything was good and everything turned out good. Now keep in mind he holds the record for interceptions by a rookie quarterback. It wasn't instant success by any means, (but) that was the perfect storm the right way. It worked out correctly." Peyton Manning: NFL quarterback 1998-2015; went 3-13 as rookie starter; Super Bowl champion with Colts and Broncos, as told to the Denver Post in December 2012. "All I know is had I not thrown the ball as much as I did that (rookie) year, I wouldn't have learned what I did, I wouldn't have learned what you couldn't get away with playing against good corners, like a Ty Law. And there's no way I could have made the jump that I did in that second, third year without playing that much that year. The only way to find out is go out there and push it a little bit." The waiting game Phil Savage: Ravens director of college scouting when they won Super Bowl in 2001 and director of player personnel when they drafted Kyle Boller 19th overall in 2003; Browns senior vice president/general manager when they drafted Brady Quinn 22nd overall in 2007; current executive director of the Senior Bowl. "Peyton goes through the 28 interceptions his first year. Can you imagine a guy throwing 28 interceptions now? Everybody would bury the poor guy. I think for Peyton … his dad was basically with him all the way through his life. The ultimate punching bag in the NFL — nobody had it tougher than Archie. (Peyton) had somebody in his corner that could really help him out. Most people don't have a corner man outside of their coaches to help them through this. He's even a little different than your typical QB trying to come into the league. "It really is dependent on two variables: No. 1, the individual quarterback himself, and then No. 2, what timeline is your team on? "Boller was selected as a developmental prospect because we were under the impression that, OK, he has a lot of ability, but he's really just scratching the surface as a bona fide quarterback. "And so by the time we got to training camp and looked at the other options, obviously you turn the roster over to the coaching staff, and Brian Billick was like, 'Why are we even going to play someone else? We need to just go ahead and play him. We can protect him. We can usher him into the NFL.' "Well, the first series of his first game, it's a pick in Pittsburgh. We were 5-4 before Kyle got hurt. But, realistically, he was sort of hanging on for dear life. He flashed some plays, but he could have used some incubation time, in my estimation, because he didn't have a ton of experience. He just needed a chance for things to slow down." Brady Quinn: NFL quarterback 2007-14; did not start until 25th game; current analyst for SiriusXM Radio. "In a perfect scenario, you do what the Chiefs are doing (with rookie Patrick Mahomes). You find the guy you love. You trade up to get him or you take him. And then you sit him behind a veteran who he can learn from. He can learn how to game-plan. He can learn how to be a professional player, and it allows him to absorb the offense, absorb what defenses show him and get to know his personnel around him. And you put him in the next season and really allow him to flourish." Aaron Rodgers: Packers quarterback drafted 24th overall in 2005; backed up future Hall-of-Famer Brett Favre and did not start until his fourth season; Super Bowl champion; two-time NFL MVP. "There's a lot of growth that can happen sitting on the bench. You can really gain in confidence every single day of practice. You can come along at your own speed. You're obviously not dealing with the pressure every week of having to perform, which is a real thing. You come along and learn the league, learn how to be a professional and learn how to take care of your body." Carson Palmer: Cardinals quarterback drafted first overall by Bengals in 2003; did not start until Week 1 of his second season. "You have a chance to watch how you prepare as a starter, how you go about your business as a starter — especially if you're coming from a very non-pro-style (college) offense — seeing how offenses prepare, seeing the different pressures you're going to see and the different defenses you're going to see." Ben Roethlisberger: Steelers quarterback drafted 11th overall in 2004; went 14-1 as a rookie starter after veteran Tommy Maddox was injured; two-time Super Bowl champion. "You want to get out there, but you also understand that this is a different ballgame than college. Of course, you want to play, but you don't want to just get thrown in not ready to go. You're OK being patient trying to learn the offense because you don't want to look bad or let your teammates down. So you kind of want to say, all right, I want to learn this offense to the best of my ability. I want to know exactly what I'm doing on this look, this play, this check so that when I am called, I am as prepared as I can be and I don't let guys down. "I had an amazing defense, which helps a lot because it helps you to not worry so much about your mistakes. You make a mistake, you have a pretty good chance you might get the ball back or the defense is going to hold them. And then your mistake won't be magnified. But we had a great run game, and we had some receivers. We had Hines (Ward) and Plaxico (Burress) and Antwaan Randle El, so it's not like we weren't throwing the ball, too. It was just one of those things where you just believed that even if you made a mistake the defense was going to bail you out because they were that good." Mark Sanchez: Bears quarterback drafted fifth overall by Jets in 2009; went 11-8 as a rookie starter, including loss in AFC championship. "You're just in that rookie bubble, really. And ignorance is bliss. You don't know what you don't know. And that's perfect. By your second, third, fourth year, you learn a lot more about the league, about organizations, about professional football. It's the business side. It's the playing side. All of that. "If you're playing as a rookie, staying in that bubble is OK. There's nothing wrong with that. Hopefully you have — like Ben had, like I had — a veteran team to help you through it, to maybe keep the blinders on for a little bit. Because like most things in many occupations, if you try to take it all on at once, if you try to do too much, you're really hurting yourself immediately and in the long run. You can potentially ruin your confidence. That's real. It is. It's a delicate position. So it's a blur." A look at the Bears' quarterbacks through the years, from 1934 to present day. Not pictured: Steve Bradley (1 game; 1987), Greg Landry (1 game; 1984), John Huarte (2 games; 1972), Kent Nix (9 games; 1970-71), Tommy O’Connell (12 games; 1953), Tom Farris (20 games; 1946-47), Johnny Long (12 games; 1944-45), Bill Glenn (2 games; 1944), Charlie O’Rourke (11 games; 1942), Young Bussey (10 games; 1941), Solly Sherman (14 games; 1939-40) and Bernie Masterson (72 games; 1934-40). \| source: pro-football-reference.com Confidence and positivity Tim Couch: NFL quarterback 1999-07 drafted first overall by Browns; started Week 2 as a rookie and went 2-12; as told to ESPN.com in 2014. "The most frustrating thing for a young quarterback who doesn't have the right pieces around him is dealing with some early failures and how you handle that. Can you keep your confidence high and not get gun-shy in the pocket? "I questioned myself. It probably happened toward the end of the season. (I) started looking at (myself), saying, 'Man, I don't know if I can play at this level. Is it me or what's going on?' All those things go through your mind. Me being the No. 1 overall draft pick, I felt extra pressure. It was the wrong thing to do, of course, but I was going out there with every throw trying to prove I was the No. 1 pick." Trent Dilfer: NFL quarterback 1994-07 drafted sixth overall by Buccaneers; started seventh game and went 0-2 as rookie starter; Super Bowl champion with Ravens; as told to ESPN.com in 2014. "You're trying to avoid what happened to me and many others. You have so many failures early on that you lose your confidence. You start playing with that evil demon on your shoulders saying, 'Don't, don't, don't, don't.'" Polian: "Nothing teaches you like game action. There's absolutely no question about that. Practice is one thing. Game is another. But confidence comes from repetition and success. The old story: nothing succeeds like success. So if you're going to put a guy in a situation like in Cleveland, for example, where (rookie starter DeShone Kizer) has little or no chance of success because he's not prepared — no fault of the Cleveland coaches; he's simply not prepared to come into pro football at this point in time, as Brian Kelly, his (Notre Dame) coach, clearly pointed out — and he doesn't have very much around him in the way of receiving talent, then the results are not going to be positive. And negative results eat away at your confidence. It's not a question of mental toughness. It's a question of negative results constantly reinforcing themselves. That's a very important part of the equation. NFL vs. college Savage: "Most of the quarterbacks that you would talk to would say, 'I think I can learn more by being out there on the field.' I think it's ownership and, honestly, the general manager's role to try to protect that asset as much as possible. And while it seems so enticing to go ahead and just roll the dice and put him out there, I think there's probably more failures than actually coming out of the other side of it and being better off. "I think that waiting time is good because you get in the rhythm of seeing, OK, what are Tuesdays going to be like when everybody else is off and I'm working and getting ready? What are Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays like? What's the rhythm of the week? "To me, pro ball is so much different than college. In college, the practices are more physical. You have school going on and everything else. In pro ball, it's more of a mental game. It's really more detailed when it comes to sub situations and third downs and short-yardage and goal-line and the different nuances of being a professional quarterback." Dirk Koetter: Buccaneers coach; offensive coordinator in 2015 when they drafted Jameis Winston first overall; Jaguars offensive coordinator in 2011 when they drafted Blaine Gabbert 10th overall "The pro game is different. It's faster. And the defenses are much better at disguising coverage. That's partly because of the hash marks and partly because of the caliber of players and the coaches that they're going against. "It's the different looks and disguises. In college football, with the hash marks like they are, you just don't see — and now everybody is in the spread — so you just don't see the variety of coverages. Well, with the hash marks close together, these teams are so good at holding their disguise with their safeties. Is it a single-high look? Is it a two-high look? Is it a pressure look? Just the different combinations of pressures and coverages that you see. "But like any business, I say all the time that experience is the best teacher. And you look at who most people consider the top quarterbacks in our league. And many of those guys are older than 30. So for any young quarterback coming into the league, I think they just need to play." Savage: "You can go out there in practices in the NFL and hit passes all day long. But when that game starts, it's 50 times faster. So I think you get some fool's gold when you're a young quarterback, and you're going through these shorts-and-helmet practices. The pro game is all about getting to Sunday at full speed. And, yeah, they try to simulate it and make it realistic, but it's nowhere near what it really is on game day. "The idea of just getting to stand on that sideline and say, 'Whoa, these guys are fast.' And the other thing — in college ball, these guys are taught so well to protect the ball, don't put it in harm's way, you have other options. And what is covered in college football is actually open in the NFL. "So you're talking about transitioning your vision to your mind to your throwing arm. Pictures where you would never let the ball go in college, now you're having to adjust and say, 'I have to pull the trigger and let that ball fly.' To me, that's the biggest jump for all these guys. "You can learn that by just getting more exposure before you're actually driving the car. It's like a ride-along program. You're not driving the race car. You're getting a sensation of what it's really going to be
“after three days illness2 and Agnes Strickland quotes from a contemporary ballad which states that her labour lasted thirty hours: The queen in travail, pained sore Full thirty woeful hours and more; And no ways could relieved be, As all her ladies wished to see; Wherefore the king made greater moan Than ever yet his grace had done.3 The Register of the Most Noble Order of the Garter records that “Queen Jane was freed from her very hard Labour, which she had bore with exceeding Pain for about two whole days.”4 Edward VI was born at 2am on 12th October 1537 so it appears that Jane went into labour on 9th or 10th October. We know from Charles Wriothesley’s chronicle that there was a solemn procession in London to pray for Jane on 11th October.5 Did Jane Seymour have a c-section? No! Click here to read a full article answering this question. Why did Jane Seymour die? Jane Seymour died on 24th October 1537, twelve days after giving birth to her son. It is thought that she died of puerperal fever, also known as childbed fever. Click here to read about her illness and death. Notes and Sources “On Sunday next the Queen will take her chamber.” Letter from Sir William Fitzwilliam to Thomas Cromwell on Wednesday 12th September 1537, Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 12 Part 2, 680. transl. Hume, Martin A. Sharp, The Chronicle of King Henry VIII of England (The Spanish Chronicle), p.73. Strickland, Agnes (1850) Lives of the Queens of England: From the Norman Conquest; with Anecdotes of their Courts, Volume IV, Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, p226. The Register of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, From its Cover in Black Velvet, usually called The Black Book; with Notes… In Two Volumes (1724), London, printed by John Barber, p. 410. Wriothesley, Charles (1875) A chronicle of England during the reigns of the Tudors, from A.D. 1485 to 1559, Volume 1, Camden Society, p. 65-66. Categories: Edward VI, Six WivesThree sources with knowledge of the situation say top White House aide Jared Kushner was the "very senior" official who spoke with former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn on Dec. 22 about the pending U.N. Security Council debate vote on Israeli settlements, CBS News' Major Garrett reports. Three sources with knowledge of the situation tell CBS News that K.T. McFarland was the "senior official" on the Presidential Transition Team (PTT) Flynn spoke to in Mar-a-Lago on Dec. 29 about Russia sanctions and potential Russian reaction. These contacts are potentially meaningful if they can be linked to behavior that is criminal or conspiratorial. But no evidence has yet surfaced to indicate either – criminality or conspiracy. White House reacts to Michael Flynn's guilty plea Flynn pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the FBI on Friday, and CBS News has confirmed U.S. law enforcement officials have long suspected Flynn did not engage the Russian ambassador without being directed to do so. The court documents from prosecutors revealed Friday also indicate multiple officials of the Trump presidential transition team were aware of Flynn's communication with the Russian ambassador, as well as the topics discussed. Flynn made the guilty plea in federal court in Washington, D.C. on Friday, admitting to lying to the FBI as it investigated Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Flynn turned himself into the FBI early Friday morning, and was processed and charged. Flynn's misleading of the FBI took place while Donald Trump was president-elect. A document filed with the court by the special counsel says that Flynn "did willfully and knowingly make materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statements and representations" to the FBI regarding his interaction with then-Russian Envoy Sergey Kislyak. In early December, after the election, he Kushner met with Kislyak at Trump Tower. On Dec. 29, Flynn called Kislyak five times, and the two spoke about sanctions against Russia that had just been imposed by President Obama over Russia's meddling in the U.S. 2016 elections. According to court documents released Friday, a "very senior member" of the Trump transition team in December 2016 directed Flynn to contact Russia and officials from other foreign governments to determine where they stood on an Israeli settlement U.N. resolution, influence those governments and delay the vote or defeat the resolution. "On or about December 22, 2016, a very senior member of the Presidential Transition Team directed FLYNN to contact officials from foreign governments, including Russia, to learn where each government stood on the resolution and to influence those governments to delay the vote or defeat the resolution," the statement of offense against Flynn reads. Kushner directing Flynn to talk to the Russians about a Security Council matter is not necessarily criminal or conspiratorial based on what has been divulged by the Special Counsel office. It was a matter of interest to the Obama Administration and the in-coming administration and dealt with Israel, a long-standing US ally. Similarly, a conversation between McFarland and Flynn about possible Russian reaction to new sanctions is not – by itself – criminal or conspiratorial. It is a question any incoming administration would want to pursue and any incoming administration might want to inquire about a sanctions matter escalating very soon after assuming office. Ty Cobb, White House counsel, distanced the White House from Flynn in a statement. "Today, Michael Flynn, a former national security advisor at the White House for 25 days during the Trump administration, and a former Obama administration official, entered a guilty plea to a single count of making a false statement to the FBI," Cobb said in a statement. "The false statements involved mirror the false statements to White House officials which resulted in his resignation in February of this year. Nothing about the guilty plea or the charge implicates anyone other than Mr. Flynn. The conclusion of this phase of the Special Counsel's work demonstrates again that the Special Counsel is moving with all deliberate speed and clears the way for a prompt and reasonable conclusion."Associated Press - EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP) - An Evansville man sentenced last week to home detention after pleading guilty in a fatal crash is back in jail after failing a drug test. The Vanderburgh County prosecutor's office says 29-year-old Connor Dant failed an initial drug screening in his electronic monitoring for home detention. The Evansville Courier & Press reports Dant was sentenced last Thursday to two years of home detention after pleading guilty to striking and killing a pedestrian while driving drunk. A judge allowed Dant to plead guilty to a lower level felony than he'd been originally charged in the February death of 58-year-old Darrell Asbridge. But the judge warned Dant that he would have to serve his sentence in prison if he failed to completely follow the terms of his home detention.0 SHARES Share Tweet The Indian supreme court has passed a ruling to increase the country’s emission standards. Starting April 1st, vehicles compliant with the Bharat Stage (BS)-III emission norm will no longer be legal to sell or register in India. The decision comes from the court ruling that commercial interests need to take a back seat to the “health of millions”. The decision could strike an almost SGD 2.5-billion blow to the Indian auto industry as nearly 820,000 vehicles (most of which are mopeds and motorcycles) will remain unsold as a result. “The number of such vehicles may be small compared to the overall number of vehicles in the country but the health of the people is far, far more important than the commercial interests of the manufacturers,” a bench of justice Madan B Lokur and justice Deepak Gupta said, while rejecting a plea from auto manufacturers for time to dispose of the BS-III vehicles. The court, which has previously issued several orders to check pollution, said that the manufacturers were aware of the impending shift, but failed to take steps to prepare for it. India will transition to the more stringent BS-IV standard, which is already in place in some parts of the country, including Dehli. The ruling is the result of a plea by the Indian environment pollution control authority (Epca), which petitioned that only BS-IV vehicles should be sold. Epca stated that new, cleaner fuel technology will never be achieved so long as older, and dirtier technology continues to flood the market. Most auto manufacturers in the country, with the notable exception of Bajaj, opposed the ruling. The largest difference between the two emission types is the amount of carbon monoxide released. BS-III allowed for 2.3g of carbon monoxide to be emitted into the atmosphere per kg of fuel, whereas the new standard only allows a maximum of 1g per kg of fuel. In addition, the new BS-IV standard will see a significant cut in particulate emissions. New trucks, for example, can be expected to see an 80% drop in such emissions, while cars will boast an also impressive 50%. Similarly, hydrocarbon and nitrogen oxide emissions, a big concern for two-wheeled motorists, may drop between 40-80%. India isn’t stopping at BS-IV however; the courts have declared a deadline of 2020 for switching to the even more stringent standard BS-VI. source: Hindustan TimesZero-Overhead Forth Interrupt Service on 65C02 A number of good articles have been published on providing Forth interrupt response. Without invalidating the work of others, I wanted to meet the challenge of accomplishing high-level Forth interrupt response in a much simpler way that would still work in most typical indirect-threaded systems not using preemptive multitasking. I was told by several people that it couldn't be done, which of course only fueled my fire. The result I've been using for thirteen years now is described here. I wanted it in 1990 for the production automated test equipment (ATE) I designed and programmed, which you can see here. The RS-232 input from the PC for software development was handled at 9600 bps through a 65C51 ACIA entirely by interrupts in high-level Forth on a 2MHz 65C02. One man told me that he always does interrupts in assembly for speed, so he wasn't very interested in high-level Forth interrupt service. The nice thing here is that when you eliminate the overhead, you get some of the speed back. It is not the purpose of this short article to provide all the details, but rather the concept and what makes it possible. The zero-overhead interrupt support is very simple, adds only about 100 bytes to your overall code, and can be nested-- ie, you can allow a higher-priority interrupt to interrupt the servicing of a lower-priority one-- as many interrupt levels deep as you wish. No additional stacks are required. It's another natural for Forth. As usual for interrupts, some assembly is required, but very little. I call it "zero-overhead" interrupt response because when an interrupt occurs, the Forth system moves right into the interrupt-service routine (ISR) just as if it were part of the normal code. Here's the summary: it is as if a new word was suddenly inserted into the executing code-- a word whose stack effect is ( -- ). To illustrate, suppose we had an interrupt service routine (word) which, for the sake of simplicity, only consisted of: : ISR ( -- ) 1 COUNTER +! SYSRTI ; and Forth was executing the 2 in the line, PRINTER 2 SPACES BOLD_ON when an interrupt was requested. Although slightly faster-- yes, faster!-- the effect would otherwise be the same as if there were no interrupts and the line had said, PRINTER 2 INC_COUNTER SPACES BOLD_ON where INC_COUNTER had been defined as : INC_COUNTER ( -- ) 1 COUNTER +! ; like ISR above. As you can see, the main program and the interrupt can both execute without interfering with each other, even though they both use the same stacks and other basic resources. So how is it done? The coordination that avoids the overhead requirement is done in NEXT, indirect-threaded Forth's inner loop. It is not necessary to save anything before executing the ISR or restore anything afterward. The only exception is that the SYSRTI above is like an ordinary unnest (or EXIT, SEMIS, ;S, etc., whatever it is called in your system) except that it also restores the ability to accept interrupts if appropriate. You may even decide to omit the SYSRTI. If you do use the SYSRTI, the semicolon after it has no effect at run time. Since servicing the interrupt does not require saving things, the interrupt service routine does not need any more stack space than other Forth words. Assuming we already had enough stack space to run Forth normally (we actually have plenty on the 6502), we shouldn't need to worry about running out just because of the interrupts. The possible disadvantage with this method is that a primitive (i.e., code definition) cannot be interrupted. Whatever is requesting service must wait until the current primitive is finished. This would only be a problem if you have primitives that take a long time to execute, and if those primitives are used at the times interrupt service is requested, and if the interrupt can't wait that long. Otherwise, consider that it will typically take many primitives to service the interrupt, and it would be an insignificant delay to wait for one primitive in the main program to finish executing. It typically takes far less time to finish the currently executing primitive than to do all the register-saving and other setups required by other methods of high-level-language interrupt service. The only return-from-interrupt overhead that is almost necessary with this method is that of re-enabling interrupts. If you don't need this done on a return from interrupt, the interrupt service routine can be a normal colon definition (or secondary), ending with the standard unnest compiled by ; (semicolon), and there will be absolutely zero overhead for return from interrupt too. Here comes the assembly. We have to make some small changes in NEXT, indirect-threaded Forth's inner loop, that basically amount to polling. These changes slow down the Forth execution by about one-thirtieth; however the absence of a big overhead penalty means that you'll get far more than this one-thirtieth back if interrupts come often. In the Forth-83 system where I have implemented this on a 65C02, a couple of machine-language instructions added to NEXT load a byte from memory while simultaneously examining it to see whether it is zero or not. A branch is taken if appropriate. The choices are either to continue on as usual in NEXT, or to load the word pointer W with the interrupt vector instead of with the contents of the address pointed to by the instruction pointer IP. Some of the time taken by the extra pair of machine-language instructions is saved by the fact that we only allow two values for the byte which is fetched to see if interrupt service is necessary. These are values we would have to load into the processor's Y register anyway, even if we could somehow execute the right part of NEXT without testing. If there is an interrupt to service, the new part of NEXT also turns off the bit in memory which records that there is interrupt service due. This takes less time than incrementing the instruction pointer; and loading the interrupt vector into the word pointer W requires no indirect addressing. This means that the nest (or DOCOL, etc.) instruction in the interrupt handler actually gets executed sooner than the next instruction in the main code would have been executed had there been no interrupt! My original version of NEXT (before interrupt service implementation) was right out of the public-domain FIG-Forth 6502 assembly source, like Listing One-A. Listing One-A: Original version of NEXT (no interrupt support) NEXT: LDY #1 ; Load Y for indirect indexing. Next, load accumulator LDA (IP),Y ; with hi byte of cell pointed to by instruction pointer. STA W+1 ; Store it in hi byte of word pointer. DEY ; Decrement Y to 0. Some primitives expect Y to contain 0. LDA (IP),Y ; Load accum with lo byte of cell pointed to by instruction STA W ; pointer, and store that in lo byte of word pointer. CLC ; Now advance the IP. Start addition with carry flag clear. LDA IP ; Load accumulator with instruction pointer lo byte, ADC #2 ; add two to it, and STA IP ; store it back where you got it. BCC next1 ; If the addition above didn't cause a carry, branch around INC IP+1 ; the incrementing of the hi byte. Otherwise, increment. next1: JMP W-1 ; Jump to where it says JMP (W), so we get a doubly indirect ;---------------- ; jump. Listing One-B: NEXT modified for interrupt support NEXT: LDY irqnot ; Load Y with 0 if interrupt requested, otherwise 1. BEQ runISR ; Branch if interrupt requested, else continue here. ; Y=1 now for indirect indexing. Load accumulator LDA (IP),Y ; with hi byte of cell pointed to by instruction pointer. STA W+1 ; Store it in the hi byte of the word pointer. DEY ; Decrement Y to 0. Some primitives will need Y to be 0. LDA (IP),Y ; Load accum with lo byte of cell pointed to by instruction STA W ; pointer, and store that in lo byte of word pointer. CLC ; Now advance the IP. Start addition with carry flag clear. LDA IP ; Load accumulator with instruction pointer lo byte, ADC #2 ; add two to it, STA IP ; and store it back where you got it. BCS inc_hi ; If the above addition caused a carry, branch to increment JMP W-1 ; hi byte of instruction pointer. Else you're done. Do it ; with two JMP's because a branch not taken saves a cycle. inc_hi: INC IP+1 ; Increment hi byte of instruction pointer. JMP W-1 ; You're done. ;----------------- ; If interrupt was requested, run this part instead. runISR: INC irqnot ; Set irqnot=1, meaning no further Forth interrupt ; service requested after this yet. LDA FIRQVEC+1 ; Load the word pointer with the address pointed to STA W+1 ; by FIRQVEC, a new Forth user variable. LDA FIRQVEC ; Load hi byte first, then lo byte. FIRQVEC is a RAM STA W ; address which holds the Forth interrupt request ; vector CFA. JMP W-1 ; Jump to where it says JMP (W), so we get a ;----------------- ; doubly indirect jump. After the modification, NEXT looks like the code in Listing One-B. Notice how much shorter the code is for responding to an interrupt than for continuing on with the next instruction in the main Forth code! This makes the relative interrupt response time very short. We no longer have to increment the instruction pointer when going to the interrupt-handling word. If we did, the latter would be replacing the next Forth instruction in the main code instead of delaying it. You will need a piece of machine code at the address pointed to by the machine-recognized interrupt vector location. If interrupts are enabled, this piece of code will be executed like any other short machine-language ISR as soon as the hardware interrupt-request line goes true and the currently executing machine-language instruction finishes. This code only needs to put a byte in memory which can later be tested by NEXT, and disable the machine interrupt response so that the same code doesn't get executed over and over. Mine looks like Listing Two. Listing Two: This registers the interrupt request for NEXT. irqrouting: ; Machine-recognized interrupt vector at FFFE points here. JMP (MIRQVEC) ; Jump to address pointed to by the machine-language ; interrupt vector MIRQVEC, which is initially setirq. setirq: ; Use to record IRQ for NEXT. Put this address in MIRQVEC. STZ irqnot ; Record that interrupt was req'ed by storing 0 in irqnot. STA tempA ; Temporarily save accumulator in tempA to restore below. PLA ; Pull saved processor status byte off the μP stack, ORA #4 ; set the bit corresponding to the interrupt disable, PHA ; and push the revised status byte back on the stack. LDA tempA ; Restore the accumulator content. RTI ; Return from interrupt. μP status gets restored modified. Next, you will need Forth primitives that enable and disable interrupting. I call them IRQOK and NOIRQ. Another primitive, IRQOK?, returns my interrupt-disable flag. See Listing Three. Listing Three: Interrupt-disable flag support words CODE IRQOK ( -- ) ; Compile header for IRQOK. Since it's CLI ; a primitive, the CFA points here to CLI JMP NEXT ; instruction. All done now so jump out. CODE NOIRQ ( -- ) ; Compile the header for NOIRQ. The SEI ; only instruction is SEI, then you go JMP NEXT : back to NEXT for the next Forth word. CODE IRQOK? ( -- f ) ; f=0 means interrupts are disabled. PHP ; Bring processor status register PLA ; contents into accumulator. AND #4 ; Look at only the I bit. BEQ 1$ ; If clear, branch to put true flag JMP PUSH-FALSE ; on the data stack. Else false. 1$: JMP PUSH-TRUE ; These branch to NEXT when done. A byte in RAM called irqok? (lower case) is used as a flag to record whether or not Forth interrupts are being allowed. irqok? is checked by SYSRTI, my Forth return-from-interrupt word. When a peripheral requests an interrupt, setirq (in Listing Two) disables further interrupting but leaves irqok? alone so the interrupt permission status will be correctly restored at the end of the ISR. You will usually leave interrupts disabled while the Forth interrupt service word is executing, and re-enable them when the interrupt service word finishes. SYSRTI is nothing more than unnest preceded by a few machine-language instructions to examine the content of irqok? and set or clear the processor's interrupt-disable bit accordingly. If you don't ever need to change the value of that bit immediately upon return, you can omit SYSRTI, and the service word can be like any other colon definition. (If you do use SYSRTI, remember to follow it with the semicolon if you haven't made SYSRTI do all the compile-time jobs that ; does.) My SYSRTI looks like the code in Listing Four. Listing Four: Forth return-from-interrupt CODE SYSRTI ( -- ) ; Lay header and code field down. SEI ; Start with interrupting disabled. LDA irqok? ; Load & test byte at addr IRQOK? to see if IRQs are ok. BEQ unnest+2 ; If not ok, don't execute next CLI instruction. CLI ; Else clear interrupt disable flag. BRA unnest+2 ; Branch to body of unnest (1st addr after code field). To allow multiple-nested interrupts, an interrupt service word must re-enable interrupts (by invoking IRQOK ). If you chose to do this, you might also want to push or otherwise save the content of irqok? and change it. This is so each return from interrupt leaves the interrupt-disable flag in the appropriate state. Of course if the flag is put back to the way it was just before the interrupt, it will always allow interrupts again. This is what SYSRTI will give you unless there was something in the ISR that turned off irqok?. The purpose of irqok? is to tell SYSRTI whether or not to re-enable interrupts. With indirect-threaded code, the average Forth primitive takes about 80 clocks to execute on the 65C02, including time spent in NEXT, the inner loop. Since, on the average, an interrupt will hit in the middle of an executing primitive (paired with NEXT ), and since NEXT is quicker at starting interrupt service than it is at normal code, the average interrupt latency will be about 90 clocks, or 6.4μs at 14MHz. All the 65C02's WDC is selling today are guaranteed to be able to run at least this fast. The 6.4μs includes the time taken by the short machine-language routine pointed to by the machine interrupt-request vector MIRQVEC. Some other 8-bit processors cannot even achieve this kind of interrupt latency in machine language; so to do it in Forth with the 65C02 is excellent! 14MHz makes for about 175,000 Forth primitives per second, but the 14MHz speed rating currently available turns out to be a conservative rating, and actual capability is generally much higher. Again, this is for an indirect-threaded Forth implementation, which is probably the slowest of four or five methods but yields the most compact code, allows this simple interrupt method, and has some other advantages in interactive code development. A Forth interrupt service routine that only looks at a 65C51 ACIA might look like this: : SYSIRQ POLL_ACIA DROP SYSRTI ; ( -- ) Since here we only have one possible source of interrupts, we can DROP the flag telling whether or not it was the ACIA that requested service. If we had several possible interrupt sources, our SYSIRQ might look like the code in Listing Five-A. The highest-priority interrupt sources are polled first. Once the source of the interrupt is found and serviced, the following polls in the ISR are skipped. Again, each polling word called here leaves a flag on the data stack telling whether it was able to take care of the interrupt. Listing Five-A: Interrupt handler that polls potential interrupt sources. : SYSIRQ ( -- ) POLL_TIMER NOT IF POLL_ACIA NOT IF POLL_KEYBOARD NOT IF POLL_PRINTER DROP THEN THEN THEN SYSRTI ; Listing Five-B is an alternative that uses a support word.?EXIT is just my word to factor out occurrences of IF EXIT THEN. Any prioritized polling of interrupt sources can be put or called between SYSIRQ and SYSRTI above. Listing Five-B: Alternative with a support word : POLL ( -- ) POLL_TIMER?EXIT POLL_ACIA?EXIT POLL_KEYBOARD?EXIT POLL_PRINTER DROP ; : SYSIRQ POLL SYSRTI ; ( -- ) To go a step further, the?EXIT could be made part of each polling word. Notice that the SYSRTI ends the two SYSIRQ examples of Listing-Five A and B, so the called polling words ( POLL_TIMER, POLL_ACIA, etc.) themselves should just end with the normal semicolon like any other colon definition. Table One gives a summary of the changes and additions used to accomplish zero-overhead high-level Forth interrupt response. A list of requirements is first, followed by a list of enhancements. Table One: Summary of new code Necessary: NEXT (Modified, not new.) Inner loop for indirect-threaded model irqnot RAM byte to record whether or not an interrupt is pending. Used by NEXT. NOIRQ Primitive to set μP interrupt disable bit ( -- ) Just does SEI. IRQOK Primitive to clear μP interrupt disable bit ( -- ) Just does CLI. setirq Machine-language interrupt routine that puts 0 in irqnot to tell NEXT that an interrupt was requested. SYSIRQ Colon definition for actual high-level interrupt service. No special rules except that it usually will have SYSRTI just before the semicolon. ( -- ) RESET (Modified, not new.) Before the first execution of NEXT, put 1 in irqnot. COLD (Modified, not new.) Initialize all interrupt vectors. Initialization of hardware is done before invoking IRQOK. Optional: IRQOK? Primitive to read μP interrupt disable bit ( -- f ) Flag=0 means interrupts are disabled. irqok? RAM byte to record whether or not to restore interrupt capability upon return from interrupt. SYSRTI Primitive ( unnest version for return from interrupt). Examines irqok? byte ( -- ) MIRQVEC Variable containing an address used by the machine ISR for a jump indirect. This allows installing higher-priority machine-language ISRs ahead of the Forth interrupt operations. (More below.) FIRQVEC Variable containing the Forth interrupt vector (actually a CFA). If you have more than one high- level interrupt service word, put the CFA of one of them here. NEXT uses it to load the word pointer W from in order to service the interrupt. So far we have assumed we are servicing interrupts requested on the IRQ line. If you want to service an interrupt on the NMI line, or transfer the idea to another processor with more interrupt inputs, each associated vector would put the appropriate interrupt handler address in the FIRQVEC variable. If you have hardware that prioritizes interrupts and gives the processor a byte to read to determine the source of an interrupt without polling, it may be appropriate to have a look-up table to convert the byte into a CFA of an interrupt handler. As mentioned in Table One, you can still install a machine-language ISR that will get priority over the Forth ISRs. If you want to add something to the machine-language IRQ routine, your routine must meet these requirements: At the end, your routine must leave A, X, and Y the way it found them. (That's normal for ISRs.) ,, and the way it found them. (That's normal for ISRs.) The address of your routine must be stored in MIRQVEC. Don't forget to restore MIRQVEC if you de-activate your routine. . Don't forget to restore if you de-activate your routine. If your routine determines that the interrupt source it is responsible for was not the one that caused the interrupt, it must jump to setirq, whose address was in MIRQVEC when you booted up. , whose address was in when you booted up. If your routine did indeed take care of an interrupt, it must not jump to setirq, but rather end with RTI. Also: Disable interrupts temporarily to make sure an interrupt can't hit between the time you store the low byte of MIRQVEC and when you store the high byte. This would result in an invalid address being read, and you'd get a crash. and when you store the high byte. This would result in an invalid address being read, and you'd get a crash. If you remove your machine-language ISR, don't set the μP interrupt-disable flag if there's anything in the Forth ISR list that needs interrupts enabled. Your new ISR will get run before the IRQ ISR that was resident from boot-up. The new one takes priority. The high-level Forth interrupt system I am using in my 65C02 Forth now allows up to 8 simultaneously "armed" ISRs, and has Forth words to install, prioritize, list, and delete ISRs on the fly. This does add a little overhead so it's no longer "zero overhead," but still has no new stacks or separate sets of any variables etc.. The running through the list of installed ISRs can still be preceded by a single zero-overhead Forth ISR if desired, with this single zero-overhead Forth ISR's installation being similar to that shown above for machine-language ISRs. My 65816 Forth additionally affords a list of up to 8 machine-language ISRs that can be manipulated on the fly similarly to how the Forth ISRs are in the description above. (I did not do this part on the 65C02 Forth because it is not as practical since entire 16-bit addresses cannot be handled all at once with the 6502's 8-bit registers, so little would be gained.) The '816 Forth ISR system does allow for situations where if a problem is found by a machine-language ISR, you can transfer execution to a Forth ISR in order to use the Forth words for displaying, etc. to report the problem or access other system capabilities. Something I did in the '816 Forth to speed up NEXT was to integrate W and IP as actual operands of instructions in NEXT. This eliminates a level of indirection and shortens the code. It does however mean that NEXT must reside in the direct page (which I am keeping as zero page). This means that if the bulk of the Forth kernel is in ROM, NEXT must be copied to RAM before running. NEXT is only five instructions for IRQ however and seven for non-IRQ, so it takes up very little of my zero page. There is a way to get the non-IRQ portion down to a total of four instructions. However since the cycle count is not reduced and other small complications are incurred, I don't think it's worth it. Unlike in 6502 Forth, my '816 NEXT does leave the carry flag alone, which I suppose means you could use it to streamline multiple-precision arithmetic operations. Since these extras in the Forth ISR system are not specifically related to the 6502 (or even 65816), they will not be explained here. It is also not my purpose here to show all the variations that can be implemented on the '02 and '816, but to convey the basic idea in a functional way. Once that is understood, programmer ingenuity along with the prerequisite familiarity with Forth will go a long way. If you want to discuss it however, you can E-mail me at the address above. I do plan to post my very complete 65816 Forth source here on 6502.org and later possibly my 65C02 Forth as well, and these will have very detailed explanation of all the innards. These are definitely not wimpy minimalist models. They include things like trig, log, square root, clock, calendar, and alarm functions, hundreds of primitives (code definitions) for good performance, extended-precision arithmetic words, an assembler, extra string functions, and extra compiling, debugging, and developing tools. It's modular, so you can select to include only the files you want. In the '816 Forth, NEXT does not poll to see if interrupt service has been requested like the '02 Forth NEXT does with the BEQ after the LDY. The common code definitions end with JMP (NEXTadr) instead of JMP NEXT, and NEXTadr contains the address of the right part of NEXT to run, either for beginning interrupt service or for continuing on with the code it was already executing. I have not looked at whether this interrupt method would be practical with true multitasking. For the type of work I do, the pseudo-multitasking I can get with interrupts has been adequate. True multitasking is not that difficult in Forth on a 6502, but I expect that because of the stack space afforded by the 6502, both data and return stacks, running more than three or four tasks at once would require a lot of care. I expect the zero-overhead interrupt method would work fine on multitasking systems as long as tasks are not switched during an ISR. There shouldn't be any danger of that with round-robin cooperative multitasking. Hopefully it won't take too much head-scratching or meditation for all this to make sense. It really is quite simple as high-level interrupt service methods go; and if multiple nesting doesn't make it irresistible, the elimination of separate stacks and other overhead certainly should.Where's George?: The Trail Of $1 Bills Across The U.S. Enlarge this image toggle caption Prince Roy/Flickr Prince Roy/Flickr When you hear the words "social network" you probably think of Facebook or Twitter. But years before either of those websites — when most of us weren't using the Internet at all — a smaller, stranger community was emerging around something called WheresGeorge.com, a 15-year-old subculture that's dedicated to the $1 bill. At Kabooz's Bar and Grill at New York's Penn Station, Jennifer Fishinger is covering her table in stacks of ones. There are 500 $1 bills laid out. At the next table over, David Henry has his stacks of cash in plastic bags. They're paper-clipped $1 bills in groups of 10. Enlarge this image toggle caption Stan Alcorn for NPR Stan Alcorn for NPR 'A Quirky Idea' For this group, it's all about the George Washingtons. Their dollars are stamped with messages like "currency tracking project" and "Track me at WheresGeorge.com." The website is the brainchild of Hank Eskin, a former tech consultant. "I started the website in '98 as just a quirky idea. I didn't expect anything to happen," Eskin says. "I had no idea it would turn into a hobby or create this whole sensation." It's called Georging. And typical Georgers log in religiously to enter their dollars' serial numbers and ZIP codes before they stamp and spend them. If one gets entered a second time, the Georger gets an email. That's called a "hit." Robert Rothenberg was sitting at the table in Kabooz's when he got a hit in New Jersey. He gets a lot of hits, since he's entered nearly 100,000 bills into the website's database. "I have a hit streak going since July of 2010, every day since then. I'm trying to get to 1,000 days, which will be the end of the month," Rothenberg says. 'Sexy' Statistics Part of the attraction for a segment of users, Eskin says, is the math and data. "Getting a lot of bills out there, getting them into different states and counties, seeing where they hit and analyzing all the statistics and the distance and time and the ZIP codes — real-like gearheads," he says. But it's not just gearhead Georgers who love the statistics. YouTube "As a data set, it is very sexy," says Dirk Brockmann, a theoretical physicist at Northwestern University. He was studying human mobility when a cabinetmaker in Vermont told him about the website. "I was like, 'Oh wow, this is amazing because it's data that goes down to the ZIP code scale in the U.S.,'" Brockmann says. By analyzing the Where's George? data, he's tested theories about networks, modeled infectious diseases and mapped the flow of currency in the U.S. "It turns out that what started as a — in quotes —'silly game' did some massive science, it was like the first measurement of human mobility on this scale," he says. Traveling Dollar Bills And human mobility interests the individual Georgers, too. The gathering at Kabooz's is to send off a group going on a cross-country train trip from New York City to Los Angeles. Howard Weissman isn't traveling on this journey, but he has envelopes full of stamped bills to trade with the Geogers who are. "I don't travel much nowadays," Weissman says. "This is one way for me to get my bills across the country. The bills do a lot more traveling than I do." This is the wistful side of Georging and maybe of capitalism, too — your money always travels a little bit farther than you do.BRIDGEWATER -- A family was
Republicans' agenda to harm the poor and middle class.Lightning strikes twice — the mother and baby fighting brain cancer Updated For any parent of very small children, the news your brain cancer had returned after eight years and is terminal would be almost impossible to comprehend. But that was the grim diagnosis given to Melbourne mother-of-two Sara Chivers in March this year. She had three tumours, they were inoperable and they were incurable. "It's just devastation and a lot of grief," Sara told 7.30. "But also wanting to make the most of the time that we have." But four weeks ago, Sara's life took another extraordinary and heartbreaking twist. Sara and her husband, Leigh, discovered their 18-month-old son, Alfie, also had brain cancer — a completely different type, but also malignant, aggressive and terminal. "He hasn't even started his life yet," Sara said. "He hasn't been able to do all of the things that I've been able to do, you know, in my 34 years to date." "So it's just horrible, absolutely horrible. And heartbreaking." "You just don't expect the worst scenario to keep happening over and over again," Leigh said. "But it has for us. A couple of times." 'Exceptionally, exceptionally rare' Alfie's tumour is what is known as an atypical teratoid rhabdoid. According to his neurosurgeon, Chris Xenos, its incidence is one in 3 million. Sara has what is known as glioma. Her neurosurgeon, Bhadu Kavar, has never seen another parent and child with these two conditions at the same time. "I think that's exceptionally, exceptionally, rare," Mr Kavar said, comparing it to a case of lightning striking twice. Brain cancer kills more children than any other disease. Despite the mortality rates for all other rates of cancer improving by 20 per cent over the past 30 years, brain cancer mortality rates have only improved by 1 per cent. The Federal Government announced this week it would match $50 million in funding from the Cure Brain Cancer Foundation and Twiggy Forrest's Minderoo Foundation to fund brain cancer research. But the Cure Brain Cancer Foundation still needs to raise $20 million of that money through fundraising, so Sara desperately wants to draw attention to the need for research. "It just provides hope to families like mine that have been devastated by the impacts of brain cancer," a tearful Sara told 7.30. "Probably not in my lifetime, but definitely in Alfie's lifetime, I'm hoping that they'll find a cure." An operation to buy some time Mr Kavar said brain cancer was "a common, devastating tumour". "We need to understand it better," he said. "And the only way we can understand it better is by working harder at its research." Sara seemed healthy and was training for a half marathon in 2008 when she had a seizure and was diagnosed. She had surgery and remained cancer-free until March this year, when a scan showed three aggressive new growths in her brain. "My neurosurgeon said that we couldn't operate because of the position of the growths," she said. "It really gave us an opportunity to assess our priorities and really put a value on the things that are most important and also celebrate those special milestones." A month ago, a further scan showed two of Sara's tumours had shrunk from treatments she'd been receiving, but the third had grown exponentially. This paralysed Sara's right arm and leg. But it also made surgery possible. In late October, she had an operation to shrink the large tumour in the hope it would give her more mobility and more time. 'This wasn't even on the scale of my worst fears' At the same time, Alfie developed symptoms, which at first were put down to teething or an infection. But after he was rushed to emergency and high-grade antibiotics did nothing, Leigh noticed a disturbing development in the middle of the night — Alfie, too, was losing mobility on one side. "He was awake during what I now know was seizures," Leigh said. "And he was just crying like a baby, but had a little shake in his left arm." A scan revealed the unthinkable news: Alfie had a tumour the size of a pear in his brain. Leigh called Sara who was with her mother. "I just said that they found a mass on Alfie's brain," he said. "I just heard screaming." "We just all started crying together," Sara said. "It just haunts me because I knew that that was the start of our lives never going to be the same again. This wasn't even on the scale of my worst fears. "To think that he has to go through this journey, at 18 months old. "It's been so, so hard to see him go through that." 'I won't let him be a statistic' Alfie has since had three operations to remove as much of the tumour as possible and to reduce the fluid in his brain. Sara's operation on October 25 was high-risk but went successfully. She's currently in rehab, and has some increased mobility. She's hoping it buys her more time to help Alfie with his fight. "Because the mortality rates for children aren't great," Sara said. "And I won't let him be a statistic." Donate to the Cure Brain Cancer Foundation Topics: cancer, brain-tumor, children, death, family-and-children, melbourne-3000 First postedWelcome to Cool Comics in My Collection Episode 30, where we take a nostalgic look at seven comic books I currently own. This week is a special tribute to characters from my youth, Harvey Comics. And while I wasn’t a reader of the comics, I knew most of the heroes of these pages from their cartoons. Maybe you remember them, too. For each of the comic books below, I list the current secondary market value. This is according to the listings at the website www.comicbookrealm.com. They list out the near mint prices, which are on the comic book grading scale of 9.4. If you go to the website to look up any in your collection, you can click on the price and see the value at different grades. Not all of my comics are 9.4. Some are probably better, and some are worse. But to simplify it, that’s the grading price I use here. And remember, a comic book is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Have you considered being a guest host for Cool Comics? You can do a theme or just pick any of your comics for inclusion (this blog is for all ages, so please keep that in mind), as long as there are seven comics in your episode (you can still own all seven, or do it like me and include one you no longer own). Send your completed blog to [email protected]. If you have any questions or comments, please scroll to the bottom of the page to where it says, “Leave a reply.” I hope you enjoy seeing these as much as I do writing about them. And now, Episode 30… Cool comics in my collection #190: Richie Rich #80, April 1969. Harvey Comics weren’t a part of my childhood, but I was aware of them via cartoons and other neighborhood kids who would be the occasional issue. I did get a few Richie Rich digests when I was a little older, around 14 or so, and I talk about that a bit in CCMC #196 below. Why now? Why not! As regular readers know, I’m trying to mix it up a bit in my comic book reading and collecting, and doing a week of Harvey Comics proved to be fun. Obviously they are more juvenile than the typical superhero stories, not to mention westerns and war comics. But sometimes it’s fun to find your inner child and just enjoy these comics for kids. And who didn’t want to be Richie Rich when they were young? Or even today, for that matter! One of the interesting things about the Harvey Comics is that each one starts off with a one-page short, before delving into slightly longer stories. Often there are guests too, which makes it fun. In this issue of Richie Rich there are two stories featuring Little Dot, and one with Little Lotta, which was my favorite. But perhaps the coolest page of all was an ad to join the Kellog’s Banana Splits Club. All it cost was a cereal box top and 25 cents, and you’d get all sorts of goodies like a membership card, a 16-page booklet, an official pennant, an autographed club picture, and more! My wife was a card-carrying member of this prestigious club. I bought this comic earlier this year at Kenmore Komics for $2.50. The cover price of Richie Rich #80 is 12 cents, while the current value is $25. Cool comics in my collection #191: Baby Huey and Papa #15, January 1965. I don’t know how the giant baby phase started, or even why it proved to be popular, but maybe just because it’s fun and something different than the norm. Baby Huey can be a walking disaster, but at the same time make you laugh at his antics. This comic proved to be fun reading and the ten-year-old hiding inside me got a kick out of Baby Huey’s simple attitude during his adventures. Other guest stories in this issue include Buzzy the Funny Crow, and Herman and Katnip. I wasn’t at all familiar with these characters, and if they appeared in any cartoons I saw, those memories must have been deleted from my brain. Their stories were just okay, especially compared to the Baby Huey tales, which were lots of fun.. I bought this comic earlier this year at Kenmore Komics for $2. The cover price of Baby Huey and Papa #15 is 12 cents, while the current value is $28. Cool comics in my collection #192: Casper, The Friendly Ghost #25, September 1960. Casper has been around since 1939 and is a pretty familiar character. He’s been in books, comic books, cartoons, and even the silver screen. I have memories of watching Casper cartoons as a kid, and many of you probably do also. I like reflecting back on those Saturday morning cartoons, which were such a huge part of my childhood in the sixties and seventies. The comic contained several shorts and a guest story that featured “The Tuff Little Ghost Spooky.” I can’t say I remember Spooky if he ever appeared on the cartoons. His story was so-so, but Casper’s were actually pretty entertaining. I bought this comic earlier this year at Kenmore Komics for $3.50. The cover price of Casper #25 is 10 cents, while the current value is $70. Cool comics in my collection #193: Devil Kids Starring Hot Stuff #15, November 1964. First a ghost and now a devil? What was Harvey trying to do to us kids?! Fortunately, the heroes of these comics and cartoons were pretty peaceful, and Hot Stuff tried to be a good little devil. This issue features a few Hot Stuff stories, along with a couple that star another character I wasn’t familiar with (or at least couldn’t remember if he was ever on Saturday morning cartoons), Stumbo the Giant. Back when I was a kid, I don’t remember seeing anyone in my neighborhood with any Hot Stuff comics. I remember one girl who read Richie Rich, but I don’t recall seeing her with any of the other Harvey Comic characters. I recently bought this issue at Kenmore Komics for $3.50. The cover price of Devil Kids Starring Hot Stuff #15 is 12 cents, while the current value is $35. Cool comics in my collection #194: Little Audrey and Melvin #42, October 1969. Little Audrey appeared in the Harvey cartoons, from what I read, but I don’t recall seeing them. This comic has several adventures with both Little Audrey and Melvin, and unlike the previous Harvey Comics this week, there are no guest appearances, just the title characters. The stories were entertaining, and probably would have been more fun back when I was ten years old. According to Wikipedia, by 1960 she was the most popular female Harvey character, but later faded behind the likes of Little Dot, Wendy, and Little Lotta. You can find some full featured Little Audrey cartoons on YouTube. I bought this issue a few weeks back at Kenmore Komics for $1.50. The cover price of Little Audrey and Melvin #42 is 15 cents, while the current value is $20. Cool comics in my collection #195: Wendy The Good Little Witch #67, June 1971. Wendy is a very familiar character to most people, regardless of age. She’s been around since 1954, most often teamed up with Casper. Remember the 1998 movie Casper Meets Wendy? It featured Hilary Duff as the good little witch. Much like Casper, who lives with ghosts who try to scare people, Wendy lives with witches who are bad, but she is good. The Tuff Little Ghost Spooky has 2 solo stories in this issue, as does Casper. Wendy may be on the cover, but she doesn’t fill much of the interior. I don’t know if this is the case in most of her comics or not. Also, her costume looks sort of like a Forever Lazy, and she has no problem going around in public casting her spells in it. I bought this issue at Kenmore Komics early in 2016 for $6. The cover price of Wendy The Good Little Witch is 15 cents, while the current value is $20. Cool comics in my collection #196: Richie Rich Digest Stories #1, October 1977. When I was young, I didn’t buy any of the Harvey Comics, but in my early teen years, I did pick up a few digest issues. They were easy to hold when reading in bed, and I liked the way they stacked so easily on my bookshelf. Another advantage is the longer page count. So I bought this issue when I was fourteen, and now I know why my eyes have progressively gotten worse over the years, because the print is so small I can barely read it today! This digest issue also has stories featuring Little Dot and Little Lotta. All of these Harvey Comics have complete stories in them. Granted, they aren’t long and complex like many super hero comics, but you can buy any of these issues (at least from my experience) and read complete, entertaining stories. I bought this comic in my hometown of Martins Ferry, Ohio, off the rack. The cover price of Richie Rich Digest Stories #1 is 75 cents, while the current value is $12. [gravityform id=”3″ title=”false” description=”false”]Chicago’s The Walters come at life with a pretty laid-back sense of humor. Their bio claims that in addition to being a five-piece with “Beach Boys harmonies,” they’re also a minor league baseball team with impressive workout regimes. And while a lot of that is likely just playful copy, the bit about their smooth vocals is anything but. The band released their debut EP, Songs for Dads, back in November, and it caught the ear of The Orwells’ Mario Cuomo. In a piece for NME, Cuomo said the EP “has some of the most solid songwriting I’ve heard in years, matched with harmonies that would make The Beach Boys Nervous.” If there are two people making the Beach Boys comparison, then there’s got to be something to it. Now, the undeniable hunks of The Walters put those pipes on display once more with their new single “Hunk Beach”. The breezy three-minute number rides with all the easygoing vibes the band projects almost naturally. Beachy guitars rumble along over a steady and understated drum beat while Luke Olson takes lead vocals to sing about the girl across the room. Though he handles things mostly alone for the track, the backgrounds on the chorus make those previously made parallels apparent as Olson sings slowly, “I’m in the back room with this girl/ She’s not like you/ If you stick around with me I’ll show you/ that everything’s fine/ We’ll be okay.” Take a listen: “Hunk Beach” is available now from Canvasback.The Not Always So Obvious Benefits of a Toronto Limo Service Toronto is truly one of the most interesting cities in Canada to visit. While many have an image of Canada that reflects the great Pacific Northwest, Toronto is a city that presents the metropolitan face of the nation. And Toronto is certainly a metropolitan area. At one time, films supposedly set in New York were actually shot in Toronto. For those who visit the city of Toronto, there will definitely not ever be a shortage of things to do. Just be sure you take the time out to rent a limo service to help you get from one amazing location in Toronto to another. You always want to get to where you want to go and do so on time. Trying to flag a taxi to do this can be really costly and time consuming. There are an enormous number of attractions in Toronto. The top travel websites point out there are upwards of 300 major attractions to visit. No one who is staying in Toronto for a week or two can visit all the top attractions. This can be a positive point because the door is now opened to come back. Toronto Island Park can be a lot of fun to visit during the day. The beach and amusement attractions definitely can provide a tremendous amount of enjoyment for the entire family. Equally enjoyable would be taking in an evening with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. The Art Gallery of Ontario, the Hockey Hall of Fame, and Toronto Zoo would also be among the top places to visit. Obviously, there are two very different venues to visit. Someone who spends the day at Island Park must change clothes, shower, and dress up to attend the symphony. The travel time from the park to a hotel to the location of the orchestra can take up a bit of the day. An experienced limo driver can definitely help you get to and from all three of these points with very little time wasted. A limo service makes traveling to and through Toronto a lot easier and less stressful. The service can also make the trip to Toronto a lot more fun. Vacationing becomes a lot more enjoyable when you can travel around without any hassles. With that in mind, it becomes clear contacting a limo service as part of your trip preparation would be a wise idea.Its bread and butter PC sales aren't doing bad, either. Even with the "Superfish" security PR disaster, Lenovo increased its PC share to 21.6 percent, though the overall PC market declined 10.9 percent. That was helped in large part by sales in its home country of China, where Lenovo dominates with a 40 percent chunk of the market. Despite the profits, PC and mobile sales dropped dramatically this year for Lenovo, as they did with every other company, including Apple. The Chinese company managed to make money by running a tight ship and is on track to cut $1.5 billion in costs for the year. Its other saving grace is the server business, which it expects will reap $5 billion this year. In any event, the company's string of 24 consecutive profitable periods was broken last quarter, so it's no doubt glad to be back in the black.Getty Images Cowboys center Travis Frederick raised $170,000 for his foundation this week and he’s been recognized as this week’s NFLPA Community MVP as a result of his efforts. Frederick held a fundraiser for his Blocking Out Hunger Foundation on Monday and then went to Trinity Basin Preparatory School in Fort Worth to launch Travis’ Pantry at the school. The program will provide nutritious meals and fresh produce to students in need of food to bring home after school. The program is expected to donate 10,000 meals by the time the school year is out. “It was awesome to get the opportunity to come in here and see all these kids,” Frederick said. “Hopefully we can use some of the generosity of the people of Dallas and Fort Worth to fix this fundamental problem of kids not getting enough food to be able to focus in school so that they can become tomorrow’s leaders.” The NFLPA will donate $10,000 to Frederick’s foundation or another charity of his choice. He’ll also be eligible for the Byron “Whizzer” White award along with the other weekly Community MVPs this season, who include Eagles defensive end Chris Long, Texans defensive end J.J. Watt and Packers safety Ha Ha Clinton-Dix.Last year, I released an ambitious infrastructure plan that would leverage public and private investment to repair our crumbling bridges and roads, build world-class airports, and connect all American households to the internet. But that’s just a down payment. We have to do even more. As a share of the economy, federal infrastructure investment is roughly half of what it was 35 years ago. That underinvestment is hurting our economy — and our future. In my first 100 days as president, I will send a plan to Congress making the biggest, most forward-looking investment in American infrastructure since the construction of the Interstate Highway System. We’ll set a national goal of connecting every household to broadband by 2020 and put WiFi in more schools, hospitals, and transit systems so Americans can get online anywhere. We’ll build a cleaner, more resilient power grid with enough renewable energy to get half our electricity from clean sources by 2030. And we’ll work to make sure there are safe, high-tech public schools in every ZIP code.Let’s Encrypt will enter Public Beta on December 3, 2015. Once we’ve entered Public Beta our systems will be open to anyone who would like to request a certificate. There will no longer be a requirement to sign up and wait for an invitation. Our Limited Beta started on September 12, 2015. We’ve issued over 11,000 certificates since then, and this operational experience has given us confidence that our systems are ready for an open Public Beta. It’s time for the Web to take a big step forward in terms of security and privacy. We want to see HTTPS become the default. Let’s Encrypt was built to enable that by making it as easy as possible to get and manage certificates. We have more work to do before we’re comfortable dropping the beta label entirely, particularly on the client experience. Automation is a cornerstone of our strategy, and we need to make sure that the client works smoothly and reliably on a wide range of platforms. We’ll be monitoring feedback from users closely, and making improvements as quickly as possible. Let’s Encrypt depends on support from a wide variety of individuals and organizations. Please consider getting involved, and if your company or organization would like to sponsor Let’s Encrypt please email us at [email protected] Best Free Masters Programs in Biomedical Sciences & Bio-Engineering in English \| MSc Biomedical Programs with No Tuition Fees Posted on By The biomedical field has been generating a lot of interest among the Indian students. No surprise, several candidates are now looking at to do Masters (and Ph.D.) in the field of biomedical science and biomedical engineering from foreign universities. As we all know, pursuing higher studies abroad does cost a significant amount of money. But, at the same time, there are also various generous scholarship schemes that international students can apply to. Besides, you can always apply for an education loan as well. But, how about studying for free as an international student? Sounds crazy, right? Yes, there are quite a few programs that do not charge any tuition fees; thanks to a few European countries. More importantly, unlike the generic concept, this free education doesn’t come at the cost of compromising the quality of education. Although there are several free programs that require the knowledge of the local language. But, there are few programs that are taught entirely in English as well. In this post, we will look into the Top Master’s Programs in Biomedical Sciences & Bio-Engineering that do not charge any tuition fees. Best Free Masters Programs in Biomedical Sciences & Bio-Engineering that are Taught in English MSc Biomedical Engineering – RWTH Aachen University This is an excellent program for getting exposed to advanced information, skills, and methods in the field of Biomedical Engineering. This is a highly interdisciplinary field, and students will be taught by the Faculty of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Natural Sciences, the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, and the Faculty of Medicine. During the first semester, the students will go cover medicine, engineering, and natural sciences. The following two semesters will focus on Tissue Engineering, Medical Imaging/Guided Therapy, and Artificial Organs/Devices. The final (4th) semester is reserved for the Master’s thesis. After finishing the program, graduates can get into research, development, production, product consulting, distribution and service of medical products to planning, project management, quality management, certification, and instruction of implementation of medical technology and biomaterials to observation and assessment of medical institutions, processes, and equipment. Intake: Sep/Oct Program Link MSc Molecular Bioengineering – TU Dresden This is an interdisciplinary and research-oriented training program. The course focuses on the scientific basis and potential applications of molecular bioengineering in medicine and technology. You will cover nanotechnology, biotechnology, bioinformatics, genetic engineering, genomics, cell biology, biochemistry, biophysics, and protein interactions. There is also an opportunity for a Fast Track (6 students after one year of study) or Early Admission (6 students after 3 semesters) to PhD program at TU Dresden. In case of Fast-Track, admitted candidates will enter the PhD program without completing the Master’s degree. Under the Early Admission rule, admitted students may either directly enter the PhD program without completing the Master’s degree or first complete the MSc, and then join the PhD. Intake: Sep/Oct Program Link MSc Biomedical Sciences – University of Bergen The two- year master’s programme in Biomedical Sciences offers teaching from world-class scientists. The program covers human physiology, molecular & cellular biology, biochemistry, neuroscience, tumor biology, and medical imaging. Students will have the opportunity to choose from a variety of elective courses that focus on understanding the cellular and biological mechanisms, providing the knowledge required for understanding human disease mechanisms and for future development of methods, diagnostics, and therapies. Intake: Aug/Sep Program Link MSc Biomedicine – UiT Arctic University of Norway The Master’s program covers topics such as cancer, heart function and failure, inflammatory disorders, immunity, bacterial colonization and antimicrobial resistance etc. You will be qualified for work in research and development within the biomedical sciences, and clinical laboratory sciences. You will have career options related to the translation of knowledge and methods of medical subjects and bio-prospecting. The masters’ degree will also make you qualified for PhD programs. Intake: Aug/Sep Program Link MSc Immunobiology – University of Bonn Within this Master program, students will be offered a profound education in both immunology and systems biology. The aim of the program is to mediate an in-depth understanding of the molecular and structural processes of the immune system combined with substantial knowledge and hands-on training in systems biology. The Master program is research-oriented and offered completely in English. Apart from an in-depth education of scientific knowledge in the mentioned areas, they are characterized by a high proportion of individual research projects, in which students are integrated at an early stage into the highly competitive and interdisciplinary research groups of the institute. Alternatively, all students have the possibility to perform during their master studies such research projects in other universities or abroad. Additionally, during their education, students are trained in a large variety of methods and techniques applied in life sciences and gain first contact with representatives of life science industries. Finally, a mentoring system helps the students to study efficiently, to plan their career in a more focused manner, and to become independent. Intake: Sep/Oct Program Link MSc Molecular Medicine – Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nurnberg This degree programme has a strong focus on research and is suitable for students with a strong background in biomedicine and molecular biology. During their studies, students may focus on a variety of different research areas, among them neuroscience, immunology, genetics (or genomics) and physiology. Up to six months of research abroad can be integrated into the programme. The program aims at attracting students interested in experimental research at the interface of medicine, biology, and chemistry. Prerequisites for admission are a first degree in Natural or Life Sciences – especially Molecular Medicine or Biomedical Science – and good medical and molecular knowledge. The curriculum is composed of compulsory modules which cover theoretical aspects in immunology, neurosciences, oncology, development, structural biochemistry, imaging, genetics, and systems medicine, as well as key skills in laboratory animal science, biological safety, research design and writing. Intake: Sep/Oct Program Link Related Course: MSc Molecular Science at FAU Master in Molecular and Developmental Stem Cell Biology – Ruhr University Bochum The course comprises four semesters, including a six-month master’s thesis. All courses in the program will be taught in English. The total number of credit points awarded is 120. With the successful completion of the course, the participant will be awarded a Master Double-Degree from both partner-universities Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine – two of the most innovative research fields providing new opportunities to treat conditions ranging from cancer to blindness, from cardiovascular to degenerative diseases, from organ failure to HIV. The Ruhr-University Bochum and Jinan University in Guangzhou, China, offer the opportunity to participate in these cutting-edge fields of biomedical research through the Double Degree Master program Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (M.Sc. DD-SCBRM). Intake: October Program Link Masters in Molecular and Computational Biology – University of Wuerzburg The program covers the molecular aspects of Bioinformatics and Computational Systems Biology, Neuroscience, Infection and Immunity, Integrative Biology, and Biomedicine. Special attention is given to the eucaryotic cell and both the fundamental principles of molecular cell biology and the huge structural and functional diversity of molecules, organelles, and cells. Molecular aspects are addressed using tools of bioinformatics and computational systems biology-based approaches. These include functional genomics, dynamic analysis of the transcriptome, metabolic and regulatory networks. Intake: Mar/Apr & Sep/Oct Program Link MSc Molecular Medicine – University of Gottingen The eighteen-month Master’s program in Molecular Medicine is aimed at highly motivated students who are interested in the subject. The prerequisite is a Bachelor’s degree with a focus on either natural sciences or molecular medicine. The degree programme will provide deeper knowledge of topics relating to molecular medicine and clinical theory such as immunology, oncology, genetics, pharmacology, and cell biology. In addition, there are also three laboratory internships, each lasting eight weeks. A Master’s thesis will be written within six months. Intake: October Program Link MSc Medical Engineering – Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nurnberg The programme is a technical, interdisciplinary and research-driven Master’s degree programme with a specialized focus on medical needs. Students will get to develop excellent knowledge and practical skills in medical imaging, data processing, computer science, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. Intake: April & October Program Link MSc Biomedical Engineering – Luebeck University of Applied Sciences The Master’s programme in Biomedical Engineering in Lübeck is designed for students who wish to pursue careers in research and development, academia, or industry. The goal of the programme is to educate students in the interdisciplinary fields of engineering and medicine. Students with degrees in electronics, information technology, mechanical engineering, physics, process engineering, materials technology, or mechatronics will be enrolled in introductory courses in medicine and medical technology in order to gain the necessary knowledge in these fields. Students with degrees in medical technology will be enrolled in technical courses as the main focus in order to increase their knowledge in these areas. Free intensive German courses of different levels are provided each semester. During the second semester, students can enroll in a variety of specialized courses. The common basics developed in the first semester will be expanded to include practical applications. This coursework will focus mainly on project-oriented teamwork. Third-semester students will complete a research internship of four months. The results are presented at the Lübeck Students Conference. Finally, students prepare and start writing a Master’s thesis over the course of six months within their fourth semester. An internship of four months or two internships of eight weeks each is to be completed after the second semester. Programme advisers will assist students in finding an appropriate internship in Germany or abroad. Intake: Sep/Oct Program Link Want to apply to these universities? Since these universities are offering free education, the competition will be very stiff. Apart from excellent grades in Bachelors, you need to present an effective Statement of Purpose (SOP) or Personal Statement and strong Letters of Recommendation (LOR). So, how to create that effective SoP? What do the admission officers look for in the SOP? How can you obtain a strong LOR from your Professors and/or Employer? Don’t worry… watch this video: MSc Molecular Medicine – Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) The program provides a molecular understanding of how normal cellular processes change, fail or are destroyed by disease. Students will develop knowledge and skills in cellular and molecular biology, and can apply to both basic research and clinical work. Intake: Aug/Sep Program Link MSc Molecular Medicine – University of Ulm The Master in Molecular Medicine at the University of Ulm is the ideal postgraduate programme for students who have obtained a bachelor degree in a life science subject, such as biochemistry, biomedical science, human biology, molecular biology, molecular biotechnology, molecular life science, or molecular medicine. Students will develop an understanding of the molecular pathways that lead to the proliferation, differentiation, and death of cells, knowledge of the physiology of cells and organs, insights into the pathophysiology of diseases, practical laboratory skills. Intake: Sep/Oct Program Link MSc Molecular Medicine – Friedrich Schiller University The Master of Science in Molecular Medicine primarily focuses on biomedical issues and examines those using methods and experimental approaches from the fields of molecular biology, biochemistry, cell biology, and physiology. The skills acquired in this programme can be used in biomedical research and medical biotechnology. This degree programme meets the quickly growing need in the field of molecular and biomedical research for scholars with basic knowledge of medicine and natural science. The first year of the Master’s programme is divided into five mandatory modules: Molecular Pathology, Molecular Pharmacology, Human Genetics, Clinical Chemistry/Molecular Diagnostics and Medical Biometry. In addition, students may select two of the fifteen compulsory elective modules dealing with clinical research topics (Molecular Intensive Care, Gynaecology and Obstetrics, Cardiology, Molecular Genetics, Molecular Oncology, Neuroscience, Rheumatology, Transgenic Animals, Medical Microbiology, Medical Immunology, Gene-environment Interaction in the Developing and Ageing Brain and Associated Disorders, Experimental Surgery, Experimental Nephrology, Bioinformatics, Molecular-Biological Approaches in Medical Research and Diagnostics) consisting of lectures, seminars and a block of practical training. The second year is devoted to in-depth instruction on special problems in molecular pathology and pharmacology. For most of the second year, intensive experimental work on a research project in one of the participating institutes will provide further practical skills and form the basis for the completion of the Master’s thesis. Intake: Sep/Oct Program Link MSc Biomedical Engineering – Hamburg University of Applied Sciences This is an ideal program for the folks looking at to build a career in the R&D within the industry and/or academia. Students will be prepared to develop cutting-edge biomedical devices and conduct independent scientific research; hence, a perfect bridge to a PhD degree. The course focuses on biomedical signal processing (linear and imaging) and understanding physiological as well as designing technical control loops. Subjects include advanced mathematics and advanced biosignal processing, medical image processing, advanced control system methods as well as biological rhythms and homeostatic control, advanced medical real-time system topics, and regulatory affairs. Intake: Mar/Apr & Sep/Oct Program Link MSc Biomedical Engineering – University of Heidelberg The M.Sc. programme in Biomedical Engineering is an interdisciplinary programme open to graduates in subjects providing them with a substantial background in physics, computing, and mathematics. At least 6 ECTS credits in physics is a prerequisite for admission to the programme. The M.Sc. course focuses on biomedical research and has a strong bias towards computational science. This reflects the ever-increasing demand for IT competence in this field, in conjunction with knowledge of biomedical devices and their usage. Graduates from this programme are well-equipped for posts in hospitals, academia, and industry. Intake: Sep/Oct Program Link Related Course: MSc Translational Medical Research at Heidelberg Please note, the University is now charging a tuition fee of EUR 1, 500 (INR 1.15 Lacs) per semester. So, it’s still not too expensive as few other foreign universities. MSc Biology – LMU Munich Although the program title sounds very basic in nature, the Master’s in Biology allows you to deepen your knowledge through a variety of specialized modules in biomedical sciences. The goal of the Master’s program is to allow as much freedom as possible in the choice of subjects and the organization of the study. Modules are offered in the following fields of study: Anthropology, Cell Biology, Genetics, Human Biology, Microbiology, Plant Sciences, Systematic Biology, and Zoology.About The Story Escape From Jesus Island is a creator-owned and published comic book series about an attempt to clone Jesus that goes a little off the rails. ReGen Corp. eventually succeeds in its quest, but only after creating scores of horrific near-Jesus freaks and a monstrous twin brother, Yeshua (aka Damien). The dying pope hears of Christ's return and sends an elite Vatican Black Ops team to the remote Malsum Island Research Facility to steal the one man who can heal him, just as Yeshua is about to launch a mutant insurrection. Horror and hilarity ensue. Created by illustrator Mortimer Glum, writer/filmmaker Shawn French and editor/letterer Shawn M. Greenleaf, Escape From Jesus Island is a twisted retelling of the prophecies from the Book of Revelation. It's a story loaded with monsters, mythology and carnage, as science and religion slam into each other at full speed. Want to see the actual post (just in case you think we are making it up), then just click HERE! We won't take it personally, we were just as shocked as you are now. It's not every day you get an "atta' boy" from a personal hero. So, we must be doing something right. Right? Don't answer that. Why A Trade, Indeed? There are a few big reasons for doing a trade paperback: 1) It will be awesome. (No seriously, it will be!) 2) It gives us
the technical ability to help break down teams with his passing and movement in the attacking third,” said Sounders FC Sporting Director Chris Henderson. “We’ve followed Andreas for a while now, and he’s a smart player who has played in top leagues all over Europe.” Known for his abilities as a set-piece specialist, Ivanschitz has 69 career caps for the Austrian National Team, where he has worn the number-10 shirt and recorded 12 international goals. He captained Austria for the first time when he was only 19 years old. No stranger to major competitions, he was capped three times in the 2008 European Championship for Austria in addition to earning 14 appearances in UEFA Champions League play with Rapid Vienna and Panathinaikos. “Andreas is a player who is creative in the attack and dangerous on set-pieces, and I’m looking forward to seeing what he can contribute to the group,” said Sounders FC Head Coach Sigi Schmid. “As we head into the final months of our season and begin CONCACAF Champions League play, we welcome Andreas’ experience and poise at this critical time of year.” MEDIA NOTE: Lagerwey, Schmid and Henderson are being made available to members of the media during today’s press access window at Starfire Sports in Tukwila, beginning between 11:15 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. PT. Interested members of the media should contact a representative of Sounders FC Communications for further details. Following Saturday's home loss to Whitecaps FC, Sounders FC (10-11-2, 32 points) continues its busy month of August with a pair of matches this week, beginning with Wednesday’s 2015-2016 Scotiabank CONCACAF Champions League match at Vancouver’s BC Place (7:00 p.m. PT / FOX Sports 1). Seattle then returns to MLS action with its second match of 2015 against the LA Galaxy on Sunday, August 9 at the StubHub Center in front of a nationally televised audience (1:00 p.m. PT / ESPN, KIRO Radio 97.3 FM, El Rey 1360 AM). Transaction: Seattle Sounders FC signs midfielder Andreas Ivanschitz on August 4, 2015. Name: Andreas Ivanschitz Pronunciation: ee-van-SHETZ Position: Midfielder Height: 6-0 Weight: 180 Born: October 15, 1983 Hometown: Eisenstadt, Austria Citizenship: Austria Acquired: Signed on August 4, 2015 as a Discovery PlayerA crewless ship to be christened the Yara Birkeland is expected to start sailing in 2018, initially delivering fertilizer along a 37-mile route in southern Norway. The electric-powered ship will be miniscule by modern standards, with the capacity for 100 to 150 shipping containers. But its arrival could be a huge turning point for the global shipping industry. The ship, according to the Wall Street Journal, will cost $25 million, about three times as much as a conventional ship of similar size, but will save up to 90% in annual operating costs by eliminating both fuel and crew. Though it is projected to launch next year, it will transition to fully autonomous operation only in stages. It will first be operated by an onboard crew, then remotely, before becoming fully self-guided by 2020. That is around the time rules governing autonomous ships are expected to be in place. The Yara Birkeland is being developed by the agricultural firm Yara International and guidance-system maker Kongsberg. Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter. A Yara executive told the Journal that once regulations catch up, the company plans is to build bigger ships that could work longer routes. If similar cost savings could be achieved, it could be a lifeline for the global shipping industry, which has spent years struggling with overcapacity and falling rates, leading to cratering profits and even bankruptcy for major firms. The impact of autonomous ships may be milder than that of self-driving freight trucks, though, when it comes to jobs. While driverless trucks could put hundreds of thousands of human drivers out of work in the U.S. alone, the relative crew needs of shipping have already been declining for decades. Many container ships, including those carrying more than 10,000 containers, already use 30 crewmembers or less.Software Testability Software development project comes along with the specified deadlines, and with the considerable amount of time being spent on the development part, testing phase is left with no sufficient amount of time. As such, estimating the time and efforts required in the testing before starting with it may proves to be helpful in planning and organizing different testing activities so as to meet the given deadlines. Our article; software testability is all about this pre-testing process. What is Software Testability? It is the state of software artifact, which decides the difficulty level for carrying out testing activities on that artifact. These software artifacts may include software modules, UML models, requirements & design documents and software application itself. It helps in determining the efforts that will be needed to execute test activities on a particular software artifact based on its testability. Efforts may be considered in terms of inputs required in testing such as coverage of testing scenarios, the number of test cases, time duration, test resources, etc. It is, basically the fundamental attribute associated with each and every software artifact that enables to compute amount of effort required in performing testing. Lesser the testability, larger will be the efforts whereas greater testability ensures minimal efforts. How to measure Software's Testability? Below given are some of the heuristics through which software testability can be determined Controllability: It defines the control over software and hardware behaviour and comp. Testers should be able to control each module or layers of the software, independently. The better our control, the more effective will be testing. It defines the control over software and hardware behaviour and comp. Testers should be able to control each module or layers of the software, independently. The better our control, the more effective will be testing. Observability: You can't test unless & until you perceive something. You can only test, what is visible to you. It is related to observation of states and factors affecting the output of the software. You can't test unless & until you perceive something. You can only test, what is visible to you. It is related to observation of states and factors affecting the output of the software. Availability: It defines the availability of the objects or entities, to carry out the testing. This may include software product evolution at various stages of development, bugs in the software, access to the source code, etc. It defines the availability of the objects or entities, to carry out the testing. This may include software product evolution at various stages of development, bugs in the software, access to the source code, etc. Simplicity : The simplicity makes everything easier to use. Lesser efforts are required in testing the simple software product. The simplicity of software may depend upon its functional, structural and code simplicity. The simplicity makes everything easier to use. Lesser efforts are required in testing the simple software product. The simplicity of software may depend upon its functional, structural and code simplicity. Stability: Lesser the changes, better will be the testing. The software product should be stable enough and does not require frequent modification in it. It also examines that changes (if any needed), should be controlled and communicated. Key Benefits of Software Testability Provides ease to test engineers, to estimate the difficulty, in exploring the defects in the software product. Decides the scope of automated testing on the software product, based on its controllability. on the software product, based on its controllability. Increased in testability ensures the easy and early detection of bugs, thereby saves both time and cost. Calculates, minimizes and control the efforts needed by the testers, to perform testing.Eric Blair Activist Post Okay. It’s time somebody says it. Something seems very strange about the GOP primary pre-polling and vote thus far. As a Ron Paul fan, I didn’t want to seem like a sore loser after the odd Iowa result where the failed no-name Senator, Rick Santorum, was catapulted to victory with very little tangible support. But, now, how on earth could Newt Gingrich win the South Carolina primary when the day before the vote he had to cancel a major campaign stop because of lack of attendance? The Associated Press reported: Newt Gingrich has cancelled a campaign appearance in South Carolina because of poor attendance. The Republican presidential candidate was scheduled to speak to the Southern Republican Leadership on Friday. But a campaign spokesman told reporters that he would no longer be appearing due to poor attendance. There were just a few dozen people in the audience at the College of Charleston’s arena, where the event was taking place. Meanwhile, on the same day Ron Paul boasted over 1000 attendees at his campaign event in Charleston: 2012 Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul attracted more than 1,000 supporters in Charleston today, demonstrating his strong support among younger voters and his overall popularity. The crowd gathered expressly for the 12-term Congressman from Texas as he participated in “The Bully Pulpit Series” at 11:00 a.m. EST at the College of Charleston, located at 7 College Way, Charleston. The candidate had been in Washington the day prior for a key House vote against President Obama raising the debt ceiling, but upon his return there was apparently no loss of enthusiasm. Ron Paul speaking to enthusiastic crowd in Charleston, S.C. Primary elections are traditionally driven by enthusiasm. In other words, the average voter does not turn out for primaries unless they are motivated by a certain candidate. So, could someone please explain to me how Newt Gingrich, who has virtually no ground game, no money, and no fervent supporters, just won the South Carolina primary? Could the conspiracy to keep Ron Paul out of the Oval Office be this coordinated, this pervasive?WASHINGTON — Is feeling alone the greatest health problem Americans face? While the obesity epidemic has long been front-and-center in major cities across the U.S., new research finds that loneliness and social isolation is an even greater public health threat than being overweight. Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a professor of psychology at Brigham Young University conducted two meta-analyses of previous studies to determine how social isolation, loneliness, and living alone plays a role in a person’s risk of dying. In an analysis of 148 studies that included more than 300,000 people total, her research team found that “a greater social connection” cuts a person’s risk of early death by 50 percent. “Being connected to others socially is widely considered a fundamental human need — crucial to both well-being and survival. Extreme examples show infants in custodial care who lack human contact fail to thrive and often die, and indeed, social isolation or solitary confinement has been used as a form of punishment,” says Holt-Lunstad in an American Psychological Association press release. “Yet an increasing portion of the U.S. population now experiences isolation regularly.” In her second analysis, she looked at the role that loneliness, social isolation, and living alone played in a person’s lifespan. Using 70 studies that included more than 3.4 million participants (mostly from North America, but some studies did look at people in Europe, Asia, and Australia), the research team concluded that all three were as much of — and in some cases more — a threat to a person’s health as obesity and other risk factors. All three conditions were found to be equally hazardous and significantly raised the risk of premature death. “There is robust evidence that social isolation and loneliness significantly increase risk for premature mortality, and the magnitude of the risk exceeds that of many leading health indicators,” says Holt-Lunstad. According to AARP’s Loneliness Study conducted in 2010, 35 percent of Americans age 45 and older are suffering from chronic loneliness — which equates to about 43 million people. Similarly, half the country’s adult population is unmarried and more than a quarter live alone, according to U.S. census data. LIKE STUDIES? FOLLOW STUDYFINDS.ORG ON FACEBOOK! “These trends suggest that Americans are becoming less socially connected and experiencing more loneliness,” adds Holt-Lunstad, who presented the findings today at the 125th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in Washington. Moving forward, Holt-Lunstad hopes that health officials nationwide spend significant resources to help tackle the issues of loneliness and isolation. She suggests primary care physicians screen for such conditions during routine examinations and that Americans consider ways to ensure they enjoy a socially-connected retirement in similar ways they plan financially for retiring. Otherwise, she sees the issue growing far worse in the near future. “With an increasing aging population, the effect on public health is only anticipated to increase. Indeed, many nations around the world now suggest we are facing a ‘loneliness epidemic.’ The challenge we face now is what can be done about it,” she says. LATEST TRENDING STUDIES ON STUDYFINDS.ORGThere's a controversy brewing over a dish at a Toronto restaurant, and the debate is reaching fever pitch. The culprit is seal tartare, served at KĹŤ-kĹm Kitchen as part of the restaurant's approach to honouring traditional Indigenous fare. Animal rights activists have started a petition to have the item removed from the menu, while the restaurant defends its decision to serve the controversial dish. In Canada, there are no stipulations against serving seal meat. Demand that #KukumKitchen in Toronto Ontario take seal meat off their menu https://t.co/Lr9nJdpFoh #sealhunt â Paige Nelson â (@DolphinPaige) October 8, 2017 The restaurant and its supporters have said that the criticism unfairly targets the Indigenous tradition of consuming seal meat, brought forth by "mis-education and a little bit of ignorance about stereotypes" regarding the practise. KĹŤ-kĹm has since been the subject of an array of negative feedback on Facebook with some giving the restaurant low ratings in response to the dish. Oh yes. @DolphinPaige wrote this on Ku-Kum Kitchenâs FB page along w/ a 1âď¸ rating. Actively trying to dismantle an Indigenous biz - RACIST! pic.twitter.com/PZNQZcaSUy â Aylan Couchie (@AylanX) October 9, 2017 A counter-petition has been created to challenge the initial petition, and numerous others have come out in support of the restaurant on social media. The original petition was ignorant & (at best, unintentionally) racist, hurting Inuit communities. I hope to eat at Ku-kum Kitchen one day. https://t.co/LPqMpHJVUs â đhris Rider (@ThatMcRider) October 11, 2017 KĹŤ-kĹm's owner and chef Joseph Shawana spoke to the CBC about the importance Indigenous chefs attach to reclaiming their heritage through culinary endeavours. He also just posted a defence of serving seal which has been shared on Twitter. Sharing this response from Joseph Shawana of #KukumKitchen for the valuable information heâs shared about the sourcing of seal meat used. pic.twitter.com/7RgBEwI4yW â Aylan Couchie (@AylanX) October 8, 2017 SeaDNA, KĹŤ-kĹm's meat supplier, issued a statement in support of the restaurant's decision to include the item. As the proud supplier of Chef Joseph we are glad to stand behind him, our industry and our products. We are dedicated to responsible and full-usage of this great Canadian resource. We encourage anyone with questions to head to seadna.ca to learn more. â SeaDNA (@seadnacanada) October 9, 2017 At present, seal tartare is still on the menu at KĹŤ-kĹm."Sheep pig" redirects here. For the novel by Dick King-Smith, see The Sheep-Pig Mangalica Other names Mangalitza Mangalitsa Country of origin Hungary Traits Weight at 13–14 months: 180–200 kg after fattening: 200–300 kg maximum: over 500 kg [1] Hair Blonde Mangalica - blonde Swallow-bellied Mangalica - black and blonde Red Mangalica - reddish-brown[2] Pig Sus scrofa domesticus A swallow-bellied Mangalica in the gardens of the Franciscan monastery at Kadaň, Czech Republic Piglets of Mangalica pig (about one month old) in Münsterland, Germany The curly blonde coat of a Mangalica pig at Budapest Zoo, Hungary The Mangalica (also Mangalitsa or Mangalitza) is a Hungarian breed of domestic pig. It was developed in the mid-19th century by crossbreeding Hungarian breeds from Szalonta and Bakony with the European wild boar and the Serbian Šumadija breed.[3] The Mangalica pig grows a thick, woolly coat similar to that of a sheep. The only other pig breed noted for having a long coat is the extinct Lincolnshire Curly-coated pig of England. History [ edit ] The blonde Mangalica variety was developed from older, hardy types of Hungarian pig (Bakonyi and Szalontai) crossed with the European wild boar and a Serbian breed (and later others like Alföldi[4]) in Austro-Hungary (1833).[1] That year, Prince of Serbia Miloš Obrenović sent 12 pigs of the autochthonous Serbian Šumadinka breed, ten of the pigs were sows while two were boars, to the Archduke Joseph, Palatine of Hungary for the new breed to be created. Pigs originally grown at the Prince's Topčider farm near Belgrade were used to create the Syrmian black lasa breed, also known as the black mangalica.[5] The development took place in Austro-Hungary (present-day Arad County in Romania) in the early 19th century.[1] The new, quick-growing, "fat-type" hog did not require any special care, which caused it to become very popular in Hungary. In 1927, the National Society of Fat-Type Hog Breeders (Mangalicatenyésztők Országos Egyesülete) was established, with the objective of improving the breed.[1] Mangalica was the most prominent swine breed in the region until 1950 (30,000 of them were in Hungary in 1943).[1] Since then, the popularity as well as the population of Mangalica has been decreasing, with the rising availability of food from farther away and refrigeration.[6] In 1991, there were less than 200 remaining Mangalica in Hungary. Monte Nevado, a Spanish company began the breeding and recovery of Mangalica, and they were awarded with the Middle Cross of Hungary in 2016.[7] Nowadays, the keeping of Mangalica has become a popular hobby.[1] Slightly over 7,000 Mangalica sows in Hungary are producing around 60,000 piglets a year.[8] Apart from Hungary, the Mangalica is present in Austria, Canada [9] [10] the Czech Republic, Germany, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Switzerland and the United States.[11][12] In Serbia, the breed (which is called mangulica in Serbian) almost completely died out in the 1980s. In 1998, Mangalica were introduced into Zasavica. They are left to roam free in a reservation, becoming partially feral, with cases of breeding with wild boars known. Came the early 2010s, their number grew to 1,000 in Zasavica and in populations kept in the individual farms in the Syrmia and Mačva regions. As both autochthonous Serbian breeds of domestic pig, Šiška and Mangalica's predecessor Šumadinka died out. Mangalica are considered the only surviving autochthonous breed in Serbia.[13] In March 2006, seventeen of the pigs were exported from Austria to the United Kingdom, where they are registered with the British Pig Association.[14] In 2007, some were exported to the United States.[15][16][17][18] Husbandry [ edit ] Mangalica meat Mangalica, well prepared for winter The Mangalica produces too little lean meat, so it has been gradually replaced by modern domestic breeds. It is usually fed with a mix of wild pasture, supplemented with potatoes and pumpkins produced on the farm.[1] The primary product made from this pig is sausage, usually packed in the pig's duodenum. The minced meat is seasoned with salt, pepper, sweet paprika, and other spices. It is then eaten in slices with pickled vegetables. The pork is also served braised with sauerkraut, potatoes, and stuffed peppers as a side dish. Farmers also produce smoked hams.[19] The fresh meat tastes strong and juicy; the suckling pigs are much preferred for their good fresh meat qualities.[20] In Hungary, most Mangalica pigs are raised purely or semi-intensively.[citation needed] Slaughter weight (for meat production) is generally achieved beyond 12 months of age.[21] Meat from the Mangalica can be easily found in Hungary, as Hungarian farmers produce about 60,000 animals each year.[22] Varieties [ edit ] There are currently three existing varieties of Mangalica, differing only by color. These differences are too small for them to be considered individual breeds. The three Mangalica varieties are: “blonde”, “swallow-bellied”, and “red”. The “blonde” Mangalica is blonde, the “swallow-bellied” (originally produced by crossing the Blonde Mangalica with the extinct Black Mangalica)[1] has a blonde lower-portion of its body while the upper-portion of its body is black, and the “red” (produced by crossing the Blonde Mangalica with the Szalonta breed)[1] is ginger-colored. Other varieties (including “black”, “wolf”, and “baris”) have became extinct as pure-bred forms, though their reconstruction from selective breeding of mixed varieties is being debated in Hungary.[1]The population is indeed aging fast, but the methods of treating illness in old age are also changing quickly. Today, more patients can be cared for in subacute settings rather than in hospitals. And new technologies are turning the treatment of many medical conditions into less resource-intensive endeavors, requiring fewer doctors to manage each episode of illness. Innovations, such as sensors that enable remote monitoring of disease and more timely interventions, can help pre-empt the need for inpatient treatment. Drugs and devices can also obviate the need for more costly treatments. Minimally invasive procedures, like laparoscopic surgeries, can be done more quickly with faster recovery times and fewer physicians. An average patient stay in the hospital is about two days or less following a stent but about seven days following a coronary bypass operation. Research on radiation treatments for breast cancer suggests that 15 treatments can be just as effective as the traditional 30 treatments. Likewise, one larger dose of radiation can be as good at relieving pain from bone metastases as five to 10 separate, smaller treatments. There’s every reason to expect the pace of these timesaving medical innovations to continue. Other medical personnel can also expand the reach of physicians to care for a larger population. Nurse practitioners, health aides, pharmacists, dietitians, psychologists and others already care for patients in numerous ways, and their roles should expand in the future. The rise of nonphysician providers will enable more team care. Skilled health aides will monitor patients at home and alert a doctor if certain medical parameters decline. Nurses will provide wound care to diabetic patients, adjust medications like blood thinners and provide the initial management of chemotherapy side effects for cancer patients. Pharmacists will provide more counseling and urgent care. Physicians will remain essential to the proper diagnosis and treatment of disease, but will be backed up by teams who will help manage the more routine features of chronic illness. The opportunity exists to deliver more services and care with fewer physicians, but it’s not a foregone conclusion. Policy changes will be necessary to reach the full potential of team care. That means expanding the scope of practice laws for nurse practitioners and pharmacists to allow them to provide comprehensive primary care; changing laws inhibiting telemedicine across state lines; and reforming medical malpractice laws that force providers to stick with inefficient practices simply to reduce liability risk. New payment models must reward investments in technologies that can save money in the long run. Most important, we need to change medical school curriculum to provide training in team care to take full advantage of the capabilities of nonphysicians in caring for patients.Dried plums, more commonly referred to as prunes, have a reputation for being a good remedy for constipation. This is, in part, due to their high fibre content – but is there actually any proof for their efficacy? And if so, are there additional chemical reasons? This graphic takes a look at the facts, and also finds an unusual connection between prunes and chewing gum. Plums are in season in the UK at the moment, which is what prompts the topic for today’s graphic. There’s plenty of interesting chemistry pertaining to them before we even move to discuss prunes. As with many fruits, a huge range of volatile compounds are contained in plums, and a number of these have been shown to contribute to their aroma. Benzaldehyde, gamma-decalactone, linalool, and methyl cinnamate are just a small number of the compounds that contribute. Individually, these compounds can have a variety of aromas – it’s the particular combination of them that produces the fruity plum scent. If you’ve been out picking plums, or even just buying them in the shops, you’ll have notice their skin is often covered by a light, dusty white coating. Around 20% of this coating is made up of long chain alkanes, whilst approximately 48% is made up of long chain alcohols. In both cases, the compounds in question are mainly those containing 29 carbons. This coating serves two purposes for the fruit: it helps to protect it from fungal infection, and also helps prevent it from losing water. Additionally, it can help trap compounds, such as nonanal, which contribute to the flavour of plums. Other compounds of interest in plums are those contained within their pits. Many stone fruits are cyanogenic – that is, their seeds contain compounds called cyanogenic glycosides, such as amygdalin, that themselves contain cyanide, and can release it when ingested. Apples are another common fruit with amygdalin-containing seeds. Though we don’t commonly eat the seeds of these fruits, it might initially seem concerning to think that they contain poison-releasing compounds. However, it’s another classic case of the ‘dose makes the poison’ mantra that we often bring up. The amounts of cyanide released by a single seed in your stomach are many times below the lethal dose, and don’t cause any harm. Moving back to the topic at hand, and prunes are very well-known for being a cure for constipation – so much so, in fact, that apparently they’re now often referred to as ‘dried plums’ on packaging instead, by manufacturers who don’t want their products becoming the butt of jokes. A number of studies have been carried out to determine whether prunes are actually an effective cure for constipation; a 2011 study found that they were more effective than psyllium (a seed-based form of fibre), whilst another study in 2008 found that prune intake in subjects suffering from severe constipation was associated with an increase in frequency of bowel movements. So, their reputation as a remedy for constipation certainly seems to hold up – but why do they help? Part of the reason is down to the high fibre content of prunes: they contain around 6 grams of fibre per 100 grams. However, there’s also a particular compound present in prunes that lends a significant hand to their laxative effect. That compound is sorbitol, and prunes contain almost 15 grams per 100 grams. Sorbitol has a known laxative effect, and you may also have heard of it in its capacity as a sweetener. In fact, it’s often used in sugar-free chewing gum. If you’ve examined a pack of chewing gum closely, you’ll have noticed the warning that ‘excessive consumption can cause a laxative effect. This is often due to sorbitol; chewing gum formulations contain around 30g per 100 grams, or around a gram per chewing gum stick. Other sugar alcohols sometimes used as sweeteners, such as xylitol, can also induce this effect. There are other compounds found in prunes that are also thought to contribute to the laxative effect of prunes. These include neochlorogenic acids and chlorogenic acids. If you’ve ever noticed a similar effect on your bowel movements after your morning cup of coffee, there could be a connection there too! Both of these classes of compounds are also found in coffee, as Reactions discussed in their recent video on the subject. Learn more about the chemistry of food and drink with the upcoming Compound Interest book, “Why does asparagus make your wee smell?”, coming in October 2015 and available to pre-order now. Enjoyed this post & graphic? Consider supporting Compound Interest on Patreon, and get previews of upcoming posts & more! The graphic in this article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. See the site’s content usage guidelines. References & Further Reading Share this: Facebook Twitter Reddit LinkedIn TumblrBy Allison McCabe On March 29, 2009, Robert Stewart, 45, stormed into the Pinelake Health and Rehab nursing home in Carthage, North Carolina and opened fire, killing eight people and wounding two. Stewart’s apparent target was his estranged wife, who worked as a nurse in the home. She hid in a bathroom and was unharmed. Stewart was charged with eight counts of first-degree murder; if convicted, he could face the death penalty. Even though there was evidence that Stewart’s actions were premeditated (he allegedly had a target), Stewart’s defense team successfully argued that since he was under the influence of Ambien, a sleep aid, at the time of the shooting, he was not in control of his actions. Instead of the charges sought by the prosecutors, Stewart was convicted on eight counts of second-degree murder. He received 142 – 179 years in prison. Ambien, a member of the class of medications known as hypnotics, was approved by the FDA in 1992. It was designed for short term use to combat insomnia and was a welcome change from the prevailing sleep aid at the time, Halcion, which had been implicated in psychosis, suicide, and addiction and had been banned in half a dozen countries. Ambien works by activating the neurotransmitter GABA and binding it to the GABA receptors in the same location as the benzodiazepines such as Xanax and Valium. The extra GABA activity triggered by the drug inhibits the neuron activity that is associated with insomnia. In other words, it slows down the brain. Ambien is extremely effective at initiating sleep, usually working within 20 minutes. It does not, however, have an effect on sustaining sleep unless it is taken in the controlled release form. After its approval, Ambien quickly rose to dominance in the sleep aid market. Travelers swore by it to combat jet lag, and women, who suffer more insomnia than men, bought it in droves. Sanofi, Ambien’s French manufacturer, made $2 billion in sales at its peak. In 2007 the generic version of Ambien was released, Zolpidem, and at less than $2 per pill, it still remains one of the most prescribed drugs in America, outselling popular painkillers like Percocet and prescription strength ibuprofen. Although the Ambien prescribing information warned, in small print, that medications in the hypnotic class had occasional side effects including sleep walking, “abnormal thinking,” and “strange behavior,” these behaviors were listed as extremely rare, and any anecdotal evidence of “sleep driving,” “sleep eating,” or “sleep shopping”—all behaviors now associated with Ambien blackouts—were characterized as unusual quirks, or attributed to mixing the medication with alcohol. It wasn’t until Patrick Kennedy’s 2006 middle-of-the-night car accident and subsequent explanation to arriving officers that he was running late for a vote that the bizarre side effects of Ambien began to receive national attention. Kennedy claimed that he had taken the sleep aid and had no recollection of the events that night. Shortly after the Kennedy incident, Ambien users sued Sanofi because of bizarre sleep-eating behaviors while on the drugs. According to Susan Chana Lask, attorney for the class action suit, people were eating things like buttered cigarettes and eggs, complete with the shells, while under the influence of Ambien. Lask called people in this state “Ambien zombies.” As a result of the lawsuit, and of increasing reports coming in about “sleep driving,” the FDA ordered all hypnotics to issue stronger warnings on their labels. In addition to giving consumers extra information so they could take the medication more carefully, the warning labels also gave legitimacy to the Ambien (or Zombie) defense. In March of 2011, Lindsey Schweigert took one Ambien before getting into bed at 6pm. Hours later, she woke up in custody with no idea how she’d gotten there. In the following weeks, Schweigert pieced together the events of that night. She’d gotten out of bed, drawn a bath, and left the house with her dog. She started driving to a local restaurant but crashed into another car soon after leaving her house. Police described her as swaying and glassy-eyed. She failed a sobriety test and was charged with DWI and running a stoplight. Schweigert had a job that required a security clearance. She had never been in trouble with the law before and was terrified of losing her job and having a criminal record. Prosecutors initially wanted to impose a six month jail sentence in addition to other punishments, but Schweigert’s lawyer argued that Lindsey’s bizarre behavior on the night in question was a result of a medication which warned right on the label that “After taking AMBIEN, you may get up out of bed while not being fully awake and do an activity that you do not know you are doing. The next morning, you may not remember that you did anything during the night…Reported activities include: driving a car (“sleep-driving”), making and eating food, talking on the phone, having sex, sleep-walking.” In fact, the lawyer argued, Schweigert should have been taken to a hospital, not to jail. Prosecutors dropped the charges and allowed Lindsey to plead to the lesser charge of careless driving, which meant that she could keep her security clearance. Her license was suspended for a year, however, and she had to pay upwards of $9,000 in legal fees. As a result of the Schweigert verdict, an attorney successfully used the Ambien defense to overturn a 2006 DWI conviction for a New Jersey woman by arguing that the drug's labeling had changed six months after his client’s arrest. The court agreed, saying that it would be an "injustice to hold her responsible for the undisclosed side effects of a popular and readily available medication that she was lawfully prescribed and properly administered." The Ambien defense was also used in the case of Julie Ann Bronson, a 45-year-old flight attendant from Texas. In April of 2009, Bronson took a couple of Ambien to help her sleep. She had been drinking wine earlier in the day, and went to bed early. She awoke the following morning in jail, still in her pajamas, barefoot and terrified. When she was told that she had run over three people, including an 18-month-old girl who suffered severe brain damage as a result of the wreck, she was horrified. “It was surreal. It was like a bad dream.” In May of 2012, Bronson pleaded guilty to the felonies of intoxication assault and failure to stop and render aid. “I did the crime but I never intended to do it,” she testified. “I wouldn’t hurt a flea. And if I would have hit somebody, I would have stopped and helped. We’re trained in CPR.” Bronson faced ten years, but because of the Ambien defense, she will serve six months in prison and have ten years of probation. Not all prosecutors will consider the Ambien defense, and its position within established criminal rules is tenuous. It doesn’t really fall under “voluntary intoxication,” in which someone is responsible for his own intoxication and any events that occur as a result of that intoxication. The Ambien defendants knowingly took the drug, but they were not aware that they were drugging themselves in a way that could produce anything other than sleep. Nor does the Ambien defense fit under “involuntary intoxication,” which is when someone commits a crime after being drugged without his knowledge, or has an unpredictable reaction to a prescribed medication. The defendants knowingly took the medication, and the reactions, although surprising, were not unpredictable because they are listed as potential side effects in the prescribing information. Finally, there is the “unconsciousness/sleepwalking” defense, in which the person is not responsible for the crime if he did not intentionally cause the sleepwalking or unconsciousness. The whole motivation for taking Ambien in the first place is presumably to cause unconsciousness so this defense doesn't really apply either. Ironically, you are more likely to be successful using the Ambien defense if you injure or kill someone than if you just crash into a parked car or a tree. DWI laws usually just require the prosecution to prove that the defendant was loaded and got into a car to drive. There’s no requirement to show intention. When someone is harmed, however, it is up to the prosecutor to prove that the defendant was aware enough to be guilty of the crime. If people on Ambien are acting in an automatic, or unconscious state, it’s hard to claim that they have knowledge of their actions. That’s why people like Lindsey Schweigert get suspended licenses while Donna Neely, who was sleep-driving on Ambien and killed a mother of 11, was acquitted of vehicular manslaughter. Not everyone who engages in bizarre behavior as a result of taking Ambien ends up in legal trouble. And some people enjoy the high they
after Pyongyang launched an intercontinental ballistic missile late last month. While Tillerson voiced support for opening diplomatic dialogue between the two states, Trump said he would not take part in any talks with Pyongyang unless the isolated state agreed to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Despite a series of sanctions imposed against North Korea for its weapons program, the country has continued to pursue its nuclear and missile programs. The United Nations Security Council on Friday unanimously voted to slap harsher sanctions on North Korea in response to its latest intercontinental ballistic missile test.There has been an uproar over Target's decision to allow people to use the bathroom of their affirmed gender. In a time when "bathroom bills" are popping up all over the United States we're hearing the same concern raised over and over again. The concern being that bathroom bills put the safety of women and girls at risk of cisgender men putting on a dress and coming into the bathroom to assault them. But this isn't really about the safety of women and girls. If we were really worried about the safety of women and girls in bathrooms then we'd be introducing legislation to keep convicted sex offenders out of public bathrooms. We'd stop victim shaming women for getting assaulted and raped. We'd stop making women pay for rape kits in the hospital. We'd take women seriously when they say they've been assaulted. We'd start hearing our young girls when they share stories of assault and objectification. We'd never let a Tennessee State Representative, whom the attorney general found to be a threat to women, keep his job and just move him to a different building. The biggest story of the night wouldn't be Target's bathroom policy, it would be that the longest standing Republican Speaker of the House molested boys, according to federal prosecutors. This is NOT NOT NOT about the safety of women and girls. It is about lawmakers and others being uncomfortable around transgender individuals. Where do they think transgender individuals have been using the bathroom all these years? We've been sharing bathrooms with trans folks for forever. Criminals are not waiting for the opportunity to put on a dress to go assault someone. They don't need to wait for that opportunity. They know that women are unlikely to share the assault because they won't be believed, they'll be made to feel like they brought it on by what they wore or how they acted or how much alcohol they consumed, or they'll be humiliated in front of others by having to repeat their story over and over as if they were the criminal.Peripheral company Gamevice is launching a line of controllers for mobile devices that look a lot like the Nintendo Switch's Joycons. The iPad Air and iPad Pro versions are launching today, while the variants for iPad Mini and iPhone (7, 7+, 6, and 6+) are due on 31st January. All retail for $99.95 in the US with UK pricing to be determined. According to Amazon UK the older versions of these go for £78.99 on iPhone and £73.70 for iPad Mini. These 2017 versions are niftier in a few ways though. For one, the iPhone version is powered by the actual phone, so you needn't carry around a separate charger. The company boasted that this draws no more power than plugging in a pair of headphones. It also has a Lightning port rather than a USB one, meaning you can charge both the Gamevice and your iPhone at the same time. The controls too have also been tweaked in this latest model, with the thumbsticks more ergonomic, offering greater precision. This latest version also features support for the iPhone 7 and 7+, which the older models do not. Over 900 titles are compatible with Gamevice, which can be found through the Gamevice Live app. Notable entries include The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, Minecraft: Pocket Edition, Bully: Anniversary Edition, Final Fantasy IX, and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.The cable industry is losing customers thanks to the “cord-cutting” movement. For the first time, pay-TV subscriptions were down year-over year last year. Dish and DirecTV actually grew, but the big losers were the giant cable providers like Time Warner and Comcast, which lost 2 million subscribers. Rather than attempt to win customers back by building a better mousetrap, however, the cable providers are double-dipping and are starting to force content providers like Netflix for access to their networks — and degrading services until they pay up. So says Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who came out swinging yesterday against the big cable providers that have dragged his company kicking and screaming to the negotiating table. His comments come as the FCC is preparing to address the overturn of its 2010 Open Internet order, which was struck down in court last month. They are no doubt timed to coincide with Friday’s deadline for filing comments in the FCC’s open internet docket. Hastings accuses the ISPs of allocating insufficient bandwidth to Netflix products, “subjecting consumers who pay a lot of money for high-speed Internet to high buffering rates, long wait times and poor video quality.” Once Netflix agrees to pay connection fees, however, he says “sufficient capacity is made available and high quality service for consumers is restored.” According to Netflix own figures, Verizon slowed down the company’s prime time speeds by 14% in January over their FIOS network, just as Netflix was rolling out the latest season of their hit series House of Cards. Netflix subsequently signed a traffic pact with Comcast, who no doubt were motivated by a desire to prove to the FCC that they can “play nice” as they attempt to gain approval to buy Time-Warner. At the moment Netflix has no choice but to pay up, Hastings laments. “In the near term we will in cases pay the toll to the powerful ISPs to protect our consumer experience,” he says, but he argues that allowing ISPs to determine who gets access to customers puts them in a dangerous gatekeeper role. Netflix is a huge data hog, to be sure. A recent report indicates that during peak hours, Netflix is responsible for 33% of all internet traffic. The company has seen remarkable growth over the past two years, when its share of network traffic was estimated to be at 20%. But, argues Hastings, consumers are already paying steep fees for access to cable networks — and the Netflix product. “When an ISP sells a consumer a 10 or 50 megabits-per-second Internet package, the consumer should get that rate, no matter where the data is coming from,” he says. Photo by jdlasica under Creative Commons licenseIn a year when ISIS and their brutality is at the forefront of America’s mind, it is an unfortunately common latent effect to hear of those that hold a negative generalization towards all Muslim people. Western Islamophobia and its like seems to rise synchronously with news stories and videos of Islamist extremism, and sadly so. It is always important to remain conscious of the distinction between a peaceful and moderate Islam, and the version of brutality and slaughter that we so often see in the news. Certainly, in a religion of 1.5 billion people, the second largest religion of the world, a near fourth of all humans living, it is intellectual laziness to brush a negative generalization of so many for the actions of so few. However, it is also important to remain able to recognize bad ideas and ways of thinking that are observably damage producing. In a reaction to this rise of Islamophobia, there has been a strong and convincing liberal push to eliminate any dialogue of criticism of Islam (or any religion) as a hope to protect the moderates that are often stereotyped. While these moderates do deserve protection, and it is necessary to remain vigilant of the difference between moderate and vicious Islam, it is not effectual to ignore the link between doctrine and behavior. True reform can only come through informative discussion and clear understanding. Though there are many peaceful Muslims around the world that can and do condemn ISIS and their actions, there remain many core beliefs and ideologies in even modest Islam that are troubling. Here is some recent polling done by Pew Research Center of Muslim opinions in a wide list of countries. It is necessary to note that this survey could not include Iran or Saudi Arabia because, “political sensitivities or security concerns prevented opinion research among Muslims”. The data speaks for itself. With every Muslim country polled reporting strong anti-gay and anti-women sentiments, 86% of Malaysian Muslims in favor of adopting Sharia Law, and among those for Sharia Law, nearly half of Indonesian Muslims stand in support of stoning adulterers, one can begin to observe a clear connection between doctrine and behavior. This exact topic was recently discussed on Bill Maher’s show Real Time, and though unfortunately little productive dialogue was achieved, it is still worth the watch. Try focusing on Sam Harris’ thoughts; though he gets a little over-talked in the debate I believe his input is beneficial. With the rise of extreme Islamist brutality we are again reminded of the large ideological room for improvement that we have in this world. Though there are many peaceful and moderate Muslims that would be deplored by the actions of ISIS and those like them, it is important to remain aware of the links between religious doctrine and violent action that often gets neglected in a search for acceptance. Destructive thoughts are destructive thoughts and should be recognized as such. Peaceful reform will not come through being intellectually dishonest about the reality of the consequences of the belief systems of those around the world, but rather through expanding sincere knowledge, true understanding, and accurate discourse of the problems we face. AdvertisementsAlgeria's ruling party tightened its grip on power in an election that bucked the regional trend of Islamists gaining strength since the Arab Spring, according to results Friday that drew accusations of fraud. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's National Liberation Front (FLN) won 220 out of 462 seats up for grabs in Thursday's election, improving on its share in the outgoing national assembly. The seven Islamist parties contesting the polls could only manage a combined 59 seats, a major setback after predicting victory during the campaign, according to a copy of the official results obtained by AFP. The National Rally for Democracy (RND) of Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia, a nationalist party close to the military and loyal to Bouteflika, was second with 68 seats, compared to 62 in the outgoing house. While the results largely maintain the status quo, one notable change was the number of elected women, which rose to 145 from seven in the outgoing assembly following the introduction of quotas. Algeria's governing coalition so far included the FLN, the RND and the largest of the legal Islamist parties, the Movement of Society for Peace. Friday's provisional results, which have yet to be confirmed by the constitutional council, mean the FLN and the RND could form a majority without the Islamists. Green Algeria, a three-party Islamist alliance, garnered a paltry 48 seats and charged widespread fraud. "There has been large-scale manipulation of the real results announced in the regions, an irrational exaggeration of these results to favour the administration parties," it said in a statement. The Movement of Society for Peace (MSP) -- the main party in the alliance -- marvelled that it did not obtain a single seat in the constituency of Blida, an Islamist bastion where the party was created. "It exposes the people to dangers for which we do not want to take responsibility... We will take the necessary measures and will put the blame squarely on the the president of the republic," Green Algeria said. In the wake of the popular revolts that became known as the Arab Spring, moderate Islamist parties recorded electoral victories in Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco. Turnout had been expected to be low after a campaign that produced no new faces and failed to draw crowds. But Interior Minister Daho Ould Kablia announced a "remarkable" rate of 42.36 percent which he said confirmed Algeria's democratic credentials. Pro-government newspapers said voters had expressed confidence in the political system by taking part in the election, which comes after a reform package initiated in the wake of the Arab Spring. "If there's a winner on this Algerian spring day, it's undoubtedly the people," El Moudjahid wrote in a front-page editorial. The governing coalition and many Algerians argue that the country has already experienced the consequences of Islamism during the deadly 1991-2002 civil war and that the dynamics of the Arab Spring cannot apply in Algeria. Ouyahia also argued that the Arab Spring was hardly an attractive scenario, calling it a "plague" that had resulted in "the colonisation of Iraq, the destruction of Libya, the partition of Sudan and the weakening of Egypt." Many Algerians and observers had predicted that ever deeper mistrust, especially among the country's majority of young people, could lead to an even worse turnout than the historical low of 35 percent recorded in 2007. The opposition Rally for Culture and Democracy, which chose to boycott this election, claimed the announced turnout was fraudulent. "The turnout as recorded by the local commissions, infiltrated by the administration though they may be, did not exceed 18 percent," the party's chairman said at a press conference. Some 500 foreign observers brought in by Bouteflika to monitor the vote reported only minor hiccups but they were denied access to the national electoral roll, which grew by four million voters since 2007. Former colonial power France said it was pleased polling operations were smooth. Bouteflika was a minister in Algeria's first independent government in 1962 and, at 75, he is keen to burnish his legacy with large-scale projects such as the world's third largest mosque. Analysts say the legislative election was acting as a kind of primary for the 2014 presidential poll, which Bouteflika is not expected to contest. Short link:It's shaping up to be a massive day in Tottenham Hotspur transfer land, ladies and gentlemen. Just a couple of hours after AS Roma announced that they have an agreement to sell Erik Lamela to Spurs, it appears that the potential capture of Ajax star Christian Eriksen is a very real thing. Pete O'Rourke of Sky Sports is reporting that Spurs have been given permission to open contract talks with the Danish playmaker. #Spurs given permission to open talks with Christian Eriksen by Ajax. #thfc — Pete O'Rourke (@SkySportsPeteO) August 28, 2013 I'm definitely surprised at the speed with which this has gone from vague rumor to a legitimate outlet saying Spurs have permission to talk contract with Eriksen, but I'll take it. Previous reports have Eriksen valued at anywhere between £10-15 million by Ajax. While Eriksen isn't my first choice for another attacking midfield signing, he's extremely accomplished and only 21. I wouldn't be horrified to see Daniel Levy and Franco Baldini agree to shell out a fee on the higher end of that scale to get this deal done quickly.Adult Swim came under fire this year after it was revealed that they have no projects in the works by women, and now, one of the network’s stars has taken a stand by refusing to work with them going forward. On Twitter, Brett Gelman revealed that he’s “severed ties” with Adult Swim, particularly after EVP/creative director Mike Lazzo took to Reddit to explain that the lack of female creators was because “women don’t tend to like conflict” in the writer’s room: Adult Swim’s Mike Lazzo Takes to Reddit to Defend Lack of Female Creators https://t.co/fjxE8FYx7z THIS IS THE REASON I HAVE SEVERED TIES — Brett Gelman (@brettgelman) November 14, 2016 @brettgelman no more dinner withs then? — Dorks Walmart (@vice_reversa) November 14, 2016 Not with them https://t.co/9ctHXTWSjz — Brett Gelman (@brettgelman) November 14, 2016 Another reason Gelman cited for his decision is Adult Swim’s support and promotion of Million Dollar Extreme, a show that was ordered to series earlier this year and has made less headlines for its content and more headlines for its hateful, largely alt-right fanbase who attacked a Buzzfeed writer with vicious anti-Semitic insults and photos after he covered the show’s white supremacist supporters and underlying politics more closely. I know this and I have stopped working with them. Not to mention the misogyny of their policies https://t.co/fJ3Pm4lUGT — Brett Gelman (@brettgelman) November 10, 2016 Gelman’s last Adult Swim special Dinner in America aired back in July. In our interview with him about the special, here’s what he told us this about how white liberals approach racism in the US; it’s applicable to any marginalized group and provides some more context for his decision: It’s a big thing that’s present in the white liberal community. That, “I’m talking about it so I’m doing something.” No, you’re just talking about it. And you’re talking about it usually to other white liberals. You’re not really doing anything here. Talking is not action. Don’t just look at what you say. Look at how you socialize. What is your work environment? What do you actually do to help legislation along to protect people who are in a more compromised position than you are? I would assume that intelligent white people will see this special and go, “Well… yeah. Yeah, I do that.” There’s the whole ‘white idiot makes racist comments without realizing it’ joke and as they try to dig themselves out of the hole, dig an even deeper hole. We wanted to show that archetypal comedy character, but then show what actual darkness lies behind that. Last month, Paste reported that Adult Swim has been taking meetings with women in response to the news, so to see Gelman sever ties with them over their lack of action – especially considering he’s an Adult Swim regular who is much more aware of how it’s run behind-the-scenes than we are – is the only productive update to come out of this story since we first covered it in June. With a Donald Trump presidency upon us where the US president will be advised by a white nationalist, make moves to overturn Roe v. Wade, intimidate those who speak out against him, and limit the rights of the free press, now is the time for comedians to do their part to fight against hate, bigotry, and prejudice within their workplaces and communities. Props to Gelman for following his own advice and getting the ball rolling on the Adult Swim front – hopefully his decision will inspire others to do the same. UPDATE: Tim Heidecker tweeted out some words of support for Gelman and explained that his production company Abso Lutely will “continue to push for and develop shows made by women”: Read our interview with Gelman about his decision to leave the network here.Recently on the misc@ mailing list, a user asked about ways to popularize OpenBSD with PHB types in business. Is there any way I could convince these people to make the move to OpenBSD? Suggestions, tips and tricks along with real life examples would be much appreciated. I've been trying (rather unsuccessfully) to convince various clients and employers to adopt OpenBSD. Most people, I find, are resistent to change and would not use anything they are not familiar with... A friendly reply came from "Matt", giving his own list of tips for convincing management to pursue OpenBSD solutions. Read on for his entertaining and useful experiences. Many others have given great pro-OpenBSD examples. I can only give you the "tricks" I have succesfully used in the past. These are based on selling solutions - not on convincing people how great OpenBSD is. There is a big difference from my perspective, but our goals are the same. Meetings work far better than writing to get your points across. They allow you to change your direction on the fly if needed, while writing just gets /dev/nulled. TRICK 1: Expensive beats free First of all - forget it is free. Forget the whole licensing, forget anything open source software related. That sounds weird and perhaps unethical towards those that fight for this but it helps getting what you want. OpenBSD will eventually benefit - so we're in the clear here. Management does not trust anything free. Free implicates 'no guarantees'. Whenever you say 'free' management pictures a photograph of you and Richard Stallman, holding hands under a rainbow while a unicorn flies by. If, and only if, the price question pops up you say "implementation will probably cost us around <some figure that will be acceptable and will give OpenBSD a nice donation>." If the guy is wearing a suit worth more than your monthly salary multiply the amount by 10. TRICK 2: Fear beats complacency Talk about the changing internet/network. How it is increasingly becoming more and more hostile. They will be aware of this. through both the press and those Nigerian relatives that keep mailing them. Tell them about the recent creditcard thefts, about the impact these things have on a company. This can be on a moderate level or on a oh my god the plane is crashing and we are all going to die! level. Depends on your party and your ethics. Mention the amount of attacks on a webserver can go down by 40% just because the bad guys see it is running OpenBSD, or that common cracking techniques that work on other systems simply are impossible on OpenBSD because of it's design. Show nice little graphs of security exploits on all the systems they know and place OpenBSDs track record next to it. Do this only for basic issues and you'll have pretty dramatic stats. If you can (without loosing your job or crossing your co-workers), present a list of unpatched/unsolved issues with the current servers. Don't talk tech. Talk solutions. We have a problem here and I am offering you the solution. World leaders have gotten (and are getting) away with incredible stuff, solely by addressing people's fear. It is by far the most powerful emotion. And before you judge me on this - you do have insurance, don't you? Exactly. TRICK 3: Trustworthy beats unknown Tell them who else is using it; which big companies (they know) already have put their trust in it. Knowing some company they respect is using OpenBSD proves to them it's a reliable choice. These companies have understood the need for solutions for the problems presented earlier in trick 2. Choose companies that deal with important stuff. Hospitals and banks are great examples. Yes, it might just be a single router among the ninety Windows boxes but who cares? If they mention seeing Windows in their hospital tell them this is why you and your family never go to that hospital. TRICK 4: Being cool beats missing the boat Present OpenBSD as "up and coming", give them the idea they are jumping in right on time. That it is a fresh, new and hip approach to operating systems. OpenBSD is lean, mean - it's sexy. "Actually, you are a pretty lame bunch considering you're not running it yet." That approach, no matter how stupid, might work better in some cases than actual arguments. Especially if most of the people in the room are carrying an iPhone. TRICK 5: Action beats promise Emphasize on the low costs of running OpenBSD. The low maintenance, the fact it performs great without cutting-edge hardware. Do not say it runs great on "old" hardware. Old is bad, old will break. Low system requirements, now that sounds like we can save some cash. Convince them of the low learning curve in maintaining, upgrading and installing systems. Anybody can do it. Propose to teach Janet, the hot secretary from upstairs, to upgrade a system within a day - just to prove your point. This is a proposition I have yet to see be declined. The idea of Janet being stuck with you in the server room for a full day is usually hilarious enough to give it a try. TRICK 6: Having toys beats "not interesting" Give them toys. Management loves toys. So give them plenty. And give them toys to talk and brag about. Show them how many spammers/attackers THEY have blocked by presenting them some nice graphic GUI tool. Preferably on a webpage behind a login- something where they can mess about a bit, click some stuff to see dumbed down data. Not Cacti or the like, that is way too intimidating and complicated. We want to show understandable stuff along with pretty colored charts. If it moves it's even better. Fake it with animated gifs, I don't care. But make it shine. Hey Jim, how are things? Yeah? Good. Listen, we just dropped 500 packets on our firewall - how many did you drop today? Aha.. you sucker! You should run what we run, open-whatever... open- eehhmm.. Hey Janet, what was that thing you can upgrade called again?Jakarta's defeated governor Ahok honoured with floral tributes Updated Indonesia's newest tourist attraction is part celebration, part wake: thousands of elaborate floral tributes to Jakarta's defeated governor "Ahok" line the crowded streets around City Hall. Jakarta has never seen anything like it. At last count there's about 3,000 "bunga papan" — or flower boards — carrying dedications of praise, grief and anger. Scores more arrive by the hour. "Go To Hell Munafikun (hypocrites)," is directed at the political opponents who contributed to his overwhelming election defeat last week. The "Ahokers" in Perth, Western Australia, declare "You are precious to us". The signs are littered with references to popular culture. And "Just Keep Swimming" refers to Ahok's comments during his own blasphemy trial last week, when he said that he was "a small fish, like Nemo, in the middle of Jakarta". Some of the tributes might be of concern to Mrs Ahok, Veronica Tan — like "Governor is Job, Hero is A Title" from the "Prettiest Mom" at a local school, and another from Anita Subarno, Ahok's "Die Hard Lover". There are tributes from Switzerland, California, and Leonardo DiCaprio — well, that's what it says on the board, anyway, along with a Titanic quote: "You jump, I jump". Every morning this week hundreds of Ahok supporters arrive at City Hall before 7:00am to catch a glimpse of their hero. Ina, from Cipinang, said she was there to thank Ahok for the education subsidies for her grandchildren. "I want to say thank you, also that I got the benefit from the healthcare program for my eye operation," she said. "I want to thank him, though I [didn't] bring flowers, I really want to give him my bible. I hope he's willing to accept it." Ahok is seen as an effective, if brash, leader of a broken city. The Chinese Christian politician had soaring approval ratings and would have won re-election before he was attacked by religious conservatives and political opponents for allegedly insulting Islam. Muslim woman Mazaya was in the crowd to greet Ahok. She is a commuter who says the governor's projects made her life easier. "I feel sad. He's built and planned a better Jakarta. He [built] many parks for the children, he's built better public transport, and new roads. It does not matter that he is not a Muslim," Mazaya said. Another fan, Restu Saraswati, brought some stuffed Nemo toys. "We are here because we love the personality of Ahok. He might not win in the election but he has certainly won our heart. "I bring the Nemos with the hopes there will be more Nemos like Ahok, born in this city, in this country." Ahok's has six months left as governor. A verdict in his blasphemy trial is due on May 9. Topics: world-politics, courts-and-trials, religion-and-beliefs, indonesia First postedWhen you say no to meat, you say yes to so much more. Today, we’re going to talk a little more about veganism and other animal product-free eating plans. If you follow WTAF religiously (which you should!), you’ve probably seen more vegan and vegetarian recipes creeping up on the site. Although I wouldn’t say my blog is a strictly vegan blog, I DO like incorporating vegan, vegetarian, and other healthy recipes into this site as a way to facilitate conversation and show my readers there are MANY ways to eat right. Ultimately it depends on your body type, lifestyle habits, and simply what makes you feel your best! But let’s go back to that original statement I just made. This isn’t to say that everyone should instantly stop eating meat, dairy, and other animal products right this second. I just think when you abstain from eating meat, you potentially open the door to so many other possibilities and benefits for your health, for the economy, and especially for the planet. When You Say No to Meat, You Say Yes To: Organic farming Sustainable farming Local farming Decreased chance of contracting dangerous bacteria and food-born illnesses like E-coli O157:H7 Fewer pesticides, herbicides, and other chemicals used to grow animal feed Less dependence on Monsanto and other GMO corn and soy products Humane treatment of animals Human treatment of factory workers and farmers Improved heart health Decreased risk of cancer Increased antioxidant consumption Less exposure to toxic chemicals that could harm your health More money in your pocket Changes in policies that make the food industry ACCOUNTABLE for its actions and behavior And more! In some ways, saying no to meat is saying YES to the little guy! Like one of my favorite food bloggers says, your dollar is your vote. And when you choose to buy organic apples and broccoli instead of pesticide, GMO-ridden beef, you’re using your money to as a tool to tell these oversized food companies what kinds of products you want. Your Dollar DOES Matter This is old news, but I’m sure many of you have heard about Walmart and its efforts to remove hormones from its dairy products. Mind you, Walmart isn’t doing this because they suddenly felt some moral or humanitarian need to change their products—they did so because enough people complained and made their voices heard! This is why it’s so important to understand that EVERY penny counts. I had a conversation with a really good friend the other day who basically thought my efforts to change food policy and give people healthy recipe alternatives were a waste of time. Sure, part of me was hurt that she didn’t support my company and held pretty archaic views on food policy in this country, arguing that it all comes down to “personal responsibility.” (I didn’t even get into how that’s the classic excuse food companies use to dodge responsibility.) The thing is, when food companies are manipulating foods with chemicals, additives, and other unnatural methods so they taste amazing and make you crave more and more, is that really a fair fight? Can you blame the elementary school child who reaches for the bag of chips instead of the banana? I can’t. In my eyes, that kid doesn’t know he or she is being manipulated. And even if he or she did, chances are his mom might not have a ton of money to spend on unprocessed foods like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. With the way the food industry is organized, fast/processed food is designed and subsidized to be cheap and affordable, not healthy. Ultimately, Americans deserve to know where their food is coming from and what is being done to it. In my opinion, the meat and dairy industries have done the best job at hiding their inhumane and disgusting practices and the best job at keeping information from their consumers. Today’s recipe is a vegan, raw, and high-fiber salad that’s perfect for spring and summer! If you ARE a vegetarian or vegan, feel free to eat it on its own or over a bed of leafy greens. Personally, my family loved this dish with grilled salmon and steamed veggies. Do what works for you!Even more disturbing is a technical loophole in the Canada Elections Act. The law allows foreign entities to make contributions to Canadian candidates. This means that players such as Iran or Saudi Arabia will be able to further their agendas through a particular politician, as long as they pump him with funds for six months and a day prior to his official bid for office. In April, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that ISIS supporters have the right to defend their freedom, and was reported to have referred to Evangelical Christians as the "worst part of Canadian society." These remarks came despite Canada's imams regularly calling for the annihilation of Jews. A journalist was taken to task recently for calling Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau an inelegant name during a press conference. In response, Josh Sigurdson justified his behavior in a YouTube video: "The state-run media got to ask [Trudeau] questions -- pre-screened ones, at that... How is it journalism to ask pre-selected questions of a politician? Restricting opposition, restricting free speech... pretending to stand for women while sending money to governments and dictatorships who stone women to death for driving and kill gays... that is the definition of scumbag." Although many might not have used that exact word to describe Trudeau, one might sympathize with the sentiment behind it. As a Canadian citizen who was born in Iran and watched my country come under the Islamist regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini, it is not hard to spot a tyrant. It is not hard for Trudeau, either, apparently. Three years ago, as head of the opposition, he told a group of women in Toronto: "There is a level of admiration that I actually have for China, because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime..." More recently, last November, Trudeau issued a statement about the death of Fidel Castro; he called the former Cuban dictator "remarkable" and a "larger than life leader who served his people." Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said three years go: "There is a level of admiration that I actually have for China, because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime." In November, he called Fidel Castro "remarkable" and a "larger than life leader who served his people." (Image source: U.S. Air Force) After taking over the leadership of the country, Trudeau not only withdrew Canada's participation from the U.S.-led bombing of ISIS strongholds in Iraq and Syria, but months later -- a day after the March 22, 2016 Brussels suicide bombings that left 32 innocent people dead -- he announced that Canada was "not at war with ISIS." This April, Trudeau said that ISIS supporters have the right to defend their freedom, and was reported to have referred to Evangelical Christians as the "worst part of Canadian society." These remarks came despite the country's imams regularly call for the annihilation of Jews. Trudeau, in March, slammed a video posted to YouTube that offered a $1,000 reward for recordings of Muslim students at schools in a district of Ontario that were "spewing hate speech" during Friday prayer. "Canadians have understood that our differences are a source of strength, not a source of weakness," Trudeau said at a press conference, after the release of the video. Prime Minister Trudeau has been supportive of Muslim prayers in the secular school board, where prayers and students preaching and will be unsupervised. Prime Minister Trudeau has also been trying to change the rules of the Commons to fit his schedule and strip the opposition of its power to hold him accountable, interim leader Rona Ambrose charged. Apparently he has been trying to limit the ability of the opposition to debate him in Parliament prior to the passage of proposed bills. Even more disturbing is a technical loophole in the Canada Elections Act, now being brought to the fore by Trudeau's camp. The law allows foreign entities to make contributions to Canadian candidates. This means that players such as Iran or Saudi Arabia will be able to further their agendas through a particular politician, as long as they pump him with funds for six months and a day prior to his official bid for office. With the entrance into the country of thousands of illegal immigrants and asylum-seekers with criminal records -- thanks to the increasingly dictatorial policies of Trudeau and his Liberal Party strongmen -- this legal loophole leaves Canada wide open to extreme political change, and not for the better.After the election of Donald Trump, many of us in the climate and energy fields were rightfully fearful. What would happen to international agreements to cut greenhouse gases? What would happen to funding for climate research? What would happen to the green energy revolution? In most instances, Trump is worse than we could have imagined. But in one special area, Trump may not matter. That is in the growth of corporate purchasing of renewable energy. It turns out there are factors that even Trump cannot stop that make choosing renewable energy an easy decision for many companies. New evidence about the unstoppable renewable energy wave recently came out in a report that was released by Apex Clean Energy and the GreenBiz Group. These groups surveyed corporations to determine their future plans on renewable energy installation and adoption. They wanted to know whether these plans had changed in the past few years and what motivated their decisions to implement renewable energy strategies. The outcome of this survey is available here for people who want to read the entire document. The groups surveyed 153 major corporations (both public and private), whose combined revenue was in excess of $250 million. Among these companies, 84% are “actively pursuing or considering purchasing renewable energy over the next 5-10 years.” Surprisingly, they found that 43% of the corporations intend to be more aggressive in their pursuit of renewable energy in the next two years. 87% of those actively pursuing renewable energy purchases stated that the election of Trump had no impact on their decision. In fact, 11% were more inclined to purchase renewable energy. Most surprising to me was that of the 128 companies that are actively pursuing or considering purchase of renewable energy over the next two years, all but 1 responded that they were “positive about either continuing forward or becoming more aggressive in their attempts to pursue renewables.” A really important part of the survey addressed what motivated the companies as they made decisions to pursue renewables. Also, the report identified the factors that make companies successful in their pursuit. In terms of motivation to actually purchase renewables, 65% of the corporations report that energy price was the leading criteria. So sure, companies want to do the right thing, they want to create a healthier planet to hand off to future generations; they want to improve their public image. But, the decision to implement clean energy has to be made when the economics are right. It turns out, these companies want a diversified energy portfolio (energy sources and geography). Bringing clean energy, especially wind and solar into their energy supply can be a hedge against rising and variable costs of fossil fuels. The majority of these companies (57%) have renewable energy targets, and having such targets and champions within the corporation makes it much easier to follow through on renewable energy purchases. The main motivations for creating these targets in the first place were to address climate and emission goals and to demonstrate corporate leadership in their industry. What this tells me is that while a majority of companies have aspirations to engage with clean energy, and while those aspirations are driven by corporate responsibility
waiting for a console or game to come out? Number 2 Season 10 – Episode 8: Make Love, Not Warcraft – “How do you kill that which has no life?” Turns out, with lots of free time and bengay. The boys wage war on an incredible powerful player of World of Warcraft. In my opinion, there is a difference between a passion and obsession for gaming. This “master WOW player” guy had the obsession and it didn’t work out well because he sacrificed his life. Social life, that is. Number 1 Season 9 – Episode 4: Best Friends Forever – Kenny gets a PSP, but dies…again. As it turns out however, the PSP was a device that God intended to use to find the right person to help strategize a defeat of Satan’s armies is straight out of “The Last Starfighter” and awesome because of it. Now we can all pull out our PSP’s and start playing strategy games with a purpose. God may pick us to be his chosen army strategist.A child holds a sign of Sandra Bland, who died in police custody, during a rally against police violence in New York July 22, 2015. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton Sandra Bland, the black woman found hanging dead in a Texas jail days after a traffic stop, smoked or possibly swallowed a large amount of marijuana while in custody, according to her family’s attorney. Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis made the disclosure in a text message to attorney Cannon Lambert, who has called the state’s autopsy on the Chicago-area woman defective, Lambert said. “Looking at the autopsy results and toxicology, it appears she swallowed a large quantity of marijuana or smoked it in the jail,” Mathis said in a text message to Lambert that the attorney disclosed to Reuters. Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity of the text. Repeated calls to Mathis’ office were not returned. “This will of course be very relevant in any future criminal or civil litigation,” the text message from Mathis to Lambert said. According to Lambert, Mathis said the state needs to conduct a second autopsy on Bland, whose body was returned to the Chicago area on Wednesday in preparation for a funeral on Saturday. “The family’s confidence is shaken by the continued discrepancies that are surfacing,” Lambert said in an email to Reuters. Waller County Sheriff Glenn Smith, whose office operates the jail where Bland died, could not be reached immediately for comment Thursday on the report of marijuana in her system. Bland was pulled over on July 10 near Prairie View, Texas, northwest of Houston, for failing to signal a lane change. After the incident escalated into an altercation between her and the trooper, Bland was taken into custody and charged with assaulting an officer. She was found hanging in her jail cell on July 13 with a plastic trash bag around her neck. Her death was originally ruled a suicide, although officials have said they are handling it as a murder probe.CARACAS (Reuters) - When he received a call saying he had won a mobile phone, Gilberto Sojo, a low-income bank messenger and opposition activist, rushed off happily to collect it. Elky Arellano, wearing a t-shirt depicting her husband Marcelo Crovato, poses for a photo during an interview with Reuters in Caracas, Venezuela November 17, 2016. REUTERS/Marco Bello The call was a ruse. Minutes after reaching the shop, three men turned up and bundled Sojo, then 49, and his wife into a waiting car where he was handcuffed and driven to the headquarters of Venezuela’s intelligence service, according to his family and supporters. “They placed explosive materials on his motorbike - and accused him of terrorism,” his wife Carolina Gonzalez, 43, said at a community center in a poor neighborhood of Caracas, over a hill from the prison where her husband has been held since November 2014. Sojo, whose case has still not gone to trial, is one of the least-known of a hundred or so opponents of President Nicolas Maduro detained on accusations or formal charges of plotting to overthrow his socialist government. Their fate is high on the agenda of Vatican-brokered talks between the government and opposition, intended to halt unrest and prevent further bloodshed in a deeply divided country in the midst of a crippling recession. Though the month-long talks have been faltering, several of the detainees - whom the opposition call political prisoners but Maduro says are coup-plotters and criminals - were released as early goodwill gestures around Pope Francis’ initiative. But the opposition is demanding freedom for all, raising families’ hopes. “None of them should be there in the first place. They use the prisoners as hostages, bargaining chips,” said Adriana Pichardo, a legislator and rights spokeswoman for the hardline Popular Will party whose members have taken the brunt of arrests. “It was never this bad under Chavez.” The charismatic Hugo Chavez ruled Venezuela between 1999 and 2013 with a firm hand, driving some opponents into exile and jailing others. But Maduro, 53, a weaker leader facing a more popular opposition, has far surpassed him. THOUSANDS DETAINED SINCE 2014 Local rights group Penal Forum lists 108 political prisoners currently, up from 11 when Maduro was elected president following Chavez’s death from cancer in 2013. The opposition coalition puts the current number higher, at 135. In the last two years, there have been 6,811 politically-motivated detentions, though most of those were short-term and spiked during a wave of anti-Maduro protests in 2014, according to Penal Forum which tracks cases and offers free legal assistance. The accusations range from stashing arms and explosives, to inciting violence and hate via Twitter and political ads. Sojo, his wife said, was accused of planning to set off a bomb at a Caracas court to free Popular Will leader Leopoldo Lopez, Venezuela’s best-known prisoner, during his trial. “It’s lies. His real crime was supporting the opposition. The ‘Chavistas’ never forgave him,” she added, saying Sojo backed Chavez for several years before becoming disillusioned. He began helping the opposition organize community activities in his San Agustin neighborhood and eventually joined the Popular Will party, meeting Lopez on several occasions. In jail, Sojo has been beaten, insulted and even hung “Christ-like” from chains, his wife said, though treatment improved when he was named a substitute legislator after a vote last year gave the opposition control of the National Assembly. Some radical Maduro opponents do operate a self-styled “Resistance” movement and advocate violent methods as the only way to free Venezuela from what they say is a dictatorship. And some current opposition leaders backed a short 2002 coup against Chavez. Officials frequently take to TV and Twitter to display weapons, explosives and inflammatory communications, to show a cadre of hotheads are perpetrating crimes that would land them in jail anywhere. “There is not one prisoner of conscience here,” said Jorge Valero, the government envoy to the United Nations in Geneva who frequently defends Venezuela’s rights record there. LAWYER’S NIGHTMARE Tear gas was still wafting through the narrow streets around his apartment in Caracas’ Chacao district, an epicenter of anti-Maduro protests and clashes, when middle-class lawyer Marcelo Crovato’s phone went off at 4 a.m. on April 22, 2014. It was a neighbor, the local laundry owner, with police at his door beginning a search. Crovato, who has Argentine as well as Venezuelan nationality, had been defending protesters in court for a couple of months and sprung out to help his neighbor, his family says. But as he accompanied his client to the police station, he was also detained, accused of instigating crimes during the protests that year that left 43 dead and thousands injured. “We presume it is retaliation against the lawyers who defended the youths,” said his wife Elky Arellano, 49, as Crovato sat in the background, forbidden from speaking to reporters under the terms of his house arrest. Crovato, 50, spent 10 months at a prison where, ironically, he had once served as director. That made him a potential target for inmates, but he won protection by giving free legal advice. Now back home, he whiles away the time playing with his two young sons and sewing bags to sell. He cannot continue his legal defense work because he is unable to attend tribunals. “This is his prison now,” Arellano said, gesturing at their view of a wall through the living-room window. Slideshow (4 Images) Crovato, like Sojo and scores of others, is hoping opposition and international pressure will lead to his freedom one day soon. But rights campaigners are skeptical. Of 53 new detainees in 2016 on Penal Forum’s list of political prisoners, 49 were taken after former government leaders from Spain, Panama and the Dominican Republic began promoting talks in May, the rights group said. “They free some, but they’ve already taken more, so where is the gain?” Penal Forum director Alfredo Romero said. “That’s their game.”Sydney FC To Live Stream FFA Cup Clash Sydney FC and Melbourne City will broadcast the first ever live stream of a competitive football match between two Hyundai A-League clubs when the two sides clash in the Westfield FFA Cup tomorrow night (kick off 7.30pm). Both clubs will stream the game live on their club websites sydneyfc.com and melbournecityfc.com.au from 7.30pm when the game kicks off at Morshead Park in Ballarat. The stream will be a first for Hyundai A-League clubs. “We are delighted to be able to ensure our Members and fans will be able to see our inaugural Westfield FFA Cup game against Melbourne City FC in Ballarat,” said Sydney FC CEO Tony Pignata. “Our first ever game in the FFA Cup is a great occasion for Sydney FC and we hope to be involved in a highly entertaining match.” Melbourne City FC CEO Scott Munn said: “The first two rounds of the FFA Cup have illustrated an appetite and desire for the magic of this competition, from grassroots to elite level. “We hope the event will be enjoyed by those travelling to Morshead Park for the match, local fans in Ballarat and those who are unable to make the journey for what should be a fascinating encounter.” Both clubs have worked in collaboration with partners Football Federation Australia (FFA), Fox Sports and Ballarat City Council to ensure Australian football fans will get the chance to see both club’s inaugural Westfield FFA Cup match. GET YOUR MEMBERSHIP NOW! – Get in quick and make sure you don’t miss a moment of Sky Blues action this 2014/15 Hyundai A-League season by purchasing your Sydney FC Membership now. Enjoy a seat at every home match and free public transport to the games. Sign up to our Newsletter now to keep up to date with all the clubs happenings. Purchase your Membership hereUnemployment benefits have masked social hardship unto now but these are starting to expire with cliff-edge effects.The jobless army in Spain will be reduced to €100 a week; in Estonia to €15. Whoever wins today's elections in Germany will face the reckoning so deftly dodged before. Kurzarbeit, that subsidises firms not to fire workers, is running out. The cash-for-clunkers scheme ended this month. It certainly "worked". Car sales were up 28pc in August, but only by stealing from the future. The Center for Automotive Research says sales will fall by a million next year: "It will be the largest downturn ever suffered by the German car industry." Fiat's Sergio Marchionne warns of "disaster" for Italy unless Rome renews its car scrappage subsidies. Chrysler too will see some "harsh reality" following the expiry of America's scheme this month. Some expect US car sales to slump 40pc in September. Weaker US data is starting to trickle in. Shipments of capital goods fell by 1.9pc in August. New house sales are stuck near 430,000 – down 70pc from their peak – despite an $8,000 tax credit for first-time buyers. It expires in November. We are moving into a phase when most OECD states must retrench to head off debt-compound traps. Britain faces the broad sword; Spain has told ministries to slash 8pc of discretionary spending; the IMF says Japan risks a funding crisis. If you look at the sheer scale of global stimulus this year, what shocks is how little has been achieved. China's exports were down 23pc in August; Japan's were down 36pc; industrial production has dropped by 23pc in Japan, 18pc in Italy, 17pc in Germany, 13pc in France and Russia and 11pc in the US. Call this a "V-shaped" recovery if you want. Markets are pricing in economic growth that is not occurring. The overwhelming fact is that private spending has slumped in the deficit countries of the Anglosphere, Club Med, and East Europe but has not risen enough in the surplus countries (East Asia and Germany) to compensate. Excess capacity remains near post-war highs across the world. Yet hawks are already stamping feet at key central banks. Are they about to repeat the errors made in early 2007, and then again in the summer of 2008, when they tightened – or made hawkish noises – even as the underlying credit system fell apart? Fed chairman Ben Bernanke spoke in April 2008 of "a return to growth in the second half of this year", and again in July 2008 that growth would "pick up gradually over the next two years". He could only have thought such a thing if he was ignoring the money data. Key aggregates had been in free-fall for months. I cited monetarists in July 2008 warning that the lifeblood of the Western credit was "draining away". For whatever reason (the lockhold of New Keynesian ideology?) the Fed missed the signal. So did the European Central Bank when it raised rates weeks before the Lehman collapse, blathering about a "1970s inflation spiral." Yes, the money entrails can mislead. The gurus squabble like Trotskyists. But you ignore the data at your peril. Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research says that US bank loans have been falling at an annual pace of almost 14pc since early Summer: "There has been nothing like this in the USA since the 1930s." M3 money has been falling at a 5pc rate; M2 fell by 12pc in August; the Commercial Paper market has shrunk from $1.6 trillion to $1.2 trillion since late May; the Monetary Multiplier at the St Louis Fed is below zero (0.925). In Europe, M3 money has been contracting at a 1pc rate since April. Private loans have fallen by €111bn since January. Whether you see a credit crunch in Euroland depends where you sit. It is already garrotting Spain. Germany's Mittelstand says it is "a reality", even if not for big companies that issue bonds. The Economy Ministry is drawing up plans for €250bn in state credit, knowing firms will be unable to roll over debts. Bundesbank chief Axel Weber sees no crunch now, yet fears a second pulse of the crisis this winter. "We are threatened by stress from our domestic credit industry through the rise in the insolvency of firms and households," he says. Draw your own conclusion. Western central banks will have to "monetize" deficits on a huge scale to stave off debt deflation. The longer they think otherwise, the worse it will be.Rep. Corrine Brown Corrine BrownFormer Florida rep sentenced to five years in prison for fraud, tax evasion Genuine veteran charities face a challenge beating the fakes Former Florida rep found guilty of tax evasion, fraud MORE (D-Fla.) is projected to lose her Democratic primary, making her the fifth House incumbent this cycle to be defeated in a primary. ADVERTISEMENT Brown, who was indicted last month and whose district was redrawn after court-ordered redistricting, was defeated by former state Sen. Al Lawson in a primary for the Jacksonville-area seat. With 98 percent of the votes counted Tuesday night, Lawson had 48 percent to Brown's 39 percent, according to The Associated Press. In early July, Brown and Chief of Staff Elias “Ronnie” Simmons were charged with 24 counts of fraud in connection with a fake charity. The charges include mail and wire fraud, conspiracy and tax fraud, according to the Department of Justice. Lawson will likely represent the district next year in Congress, given that the seat is seen as safe for Democrats. Brown now joins the ranks of Reps. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.), Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.), Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) and Randy Forbes James (Randy) Randy ForbesToo much ‘can do,’ not enough candor Trump makes little headway filling out Pentagon jobs Why there's only one choice for Trump's Navy secretary MORE (R-Va.) as incumbents who have lost primaries this year.Despite the success of E.L. James' bestselling erotic novel "Fifty Shades of Grey," British author Jilly Cooper says that sex in fiction has generally lost its appeal for women. The reason? “Women don’t want to have sex anymore,” Cooper said at the Cartier Queen’s Cup Final at the U.K.'s Guards Polo Club, the Telegraph reported. Cooper, who has written a number of romance novels, also said that women’s busy schedules are to blame for their dwindled interest in sex, the paper reported: Doctors’ waiting rooms are absolutely brimming these days with women suffering from low libidos. Ours is now a terribly under-sexed society. I have talked to a lot of young women about this and they just don’t seem to do it any more. Honestly. I suppose it’s because we all have so many other demands on our time now. Cooper also told the Telegraph that “Fifty Shades” is helping to bring sexy novels back into fashion: “Porn was terribly out of fashion before that book came out,” Cooper says. “While I have heard that it is quite poorly written, I am delighted that it’s giving a new lease of life to the genre.” However, the fact that all three books in the “Fifty Shades” trilogy currently top the New York Times’ bestseller list, could be part of a larger trend -- one that says more about the readership than the books themselves. In May 2009, Harlequin Enterprises Ltd., a publisher that specializes in romantic fiction for women, reported 32 percent growth in sales over the course of a year, and overall romance novel sales were up about 2.4 percent. All of which suggests that women may not have lost interest in sex -- in fiction or in life. A recent MissTravel survey found that 40 percent of women in their 20s had engaged in a one-night sexual encounter during a vacation -- 10 percent having had five or more sexual partners over the course of one week. And Match.com’s 6,000-person survey of American singles discovered that women are actually more likely than men to consider bad sex a relationship deal-breaker.Mitch Marner was raised an unabashed Maple Leafs fan. He knows Max Domi has a million stories about growing up in the Toronto dressing room, but doesn’t really bug his London linemate about it. "We don’t talk about it too much," Marner, the OHL’s scoring leader said. That doesn’t stop Domi, the Knights captain and world junior hero, from teasing Marner incessantly about his predictions for this summer’s NHL draft. "He always jokes around with me about getting drafted by the Leafs," Marner said this week. "He likes to have a lot of fun with that. We joke about the draft (a lot)." Domi, the Arizona first rounder, is a savvy pro hockey observer. He follows the big-league standings and knows how the lottery system works. Toronto stinks this season but its chances of landing Erie wunderkind Connor McDavid with the No. 1 overall pick is still a bit of a stretch. In reality, the Leafs, at this point, are closer to "Falling in a Ditch For Mitch" than bottoming out at the "Dishonour For Connor" stage. And that’s just fine with the Knights star. "That would be a dream come true for me," Marner, the 17-year-old from Thornhill, said. "Growing up in Toronto, everyone always dreams of playing and winning a Stanley Cup in their hometown, for them. With the struggle the Leafs have been through the past couple of years and the playoff slumps they’ve had, you want to be the guy who goes in there and helps them get to the post-season and takes them as far as you can. "You want to be the guy that puts a ‘C’ on their sweater and wins a Cup in Toronto. It would be a great accomplishment and then, you will forever be a hero in that town." Most draft experts have Marner in the first 10 picks, but not in the top five. Still, it would be eyebrow-raising to see the Leafs, if he’s available whenever their turn comes up, passing on his talent. Former Knights GM Mark Hunter, Toronto’s new director of player personnel, looked like a genius for taking Marner in the first round of the OHL draft two years ago. Nearly everyone else passed on him and most of those teams have been kicking themselves. Dave Morrison, a Londoner, is the Leafs director of amateur scouting. He knows Marner’s game and abilities inside out. Here’s one more positive — the kid roots so hard for the Leafs, he’s in denial. "They’re just in a little rough patch here right now," Marner said. "It’s not a big deal. Whenever my family is all together, we love watching the Leafs play." Marner’s favourite all-time Leaf is Doug Gilmour even though the only game he could possibly remember the old No. 93 playing in blue-and-white was his last, in 2003, when he was injured colliding with ex-Knight Dave Lowry. The Kingston GM watched Marner play for Don Mills in midget and thought his game resembled his own. "I loved how (Gilmour) used his speed," Marner said. "He also wasn’t one of the bigger guys but he would sacrifice his body every shift." The biggest knock on the young Knight, who has grown to the 5-foot-11 range, is his weight. He is light and he may never have the leg power of Sidney Crosby or Domi, but has a marathoner’s lungs and second-to-none vision. "I think I got faster this year," Marner said. "I worked on my speed in the summer off-ice and I think it’s showing on-ice with my speed and leg strength this year." Put tools aside for a moment and consider this: at the rate he has scored in his first two years, Marner will surpass Corey Perry as the Knights’ all-time career points leader if he plays four seasons. Still, he needs a strong finishing kick to win the league race this year. When Domi and Co. don’t bug him about the Leafs, they’re needling him about how much ground the astonishing McDavid has gained "They tell me every day," said Marner, a dozen up on McDavid (who has 11 games to go), "so I know." The NHL draft, of course, remains a mystery. He would love to be a Leaf, but he won’t be crushed if it isn’t to be. "It would be awesome to play (for the Coyotes), too," Marner said. "They have (Knights linemates Christian Dvorak and Domi in the fold). To go to their camp and already know guys like that would be great. Here in junior, our line already has the chemistry fully developed. But the draft’s a while away and there’s still a lot of hockey left to be played here. "I’m still thinking about winning a playoff round and winning a Memorial Cup with these guys." He’s planning one parade at a time. [email protected] Twitter.com/RyanatLFPress THREE’S COMPANY (Heading into London’s Friday night home game against Guelph, here’s a look at the top scoring trios in the OHL this season. Not including Thursday’s games) 105 goals, 298 points — Marner, Dvorak, Domi (London) 109 goals, 281 points — Blandisi, Labanc, Mangiapane (Barrie) 110 goals, 279 points — Strome, McDavid, DeBrincat (Erie)RUSH: I like to take things that are intricately, deeply woven webs of deceit and untangle it all and try to make as much of it understandable as possible. And I think I can do that here today with the summary of what is dominating the news today. Here is a summary of what is dominating the news today. The secretary of state’s chief of staff — that would be Hillary Clinton at her old job, the chief of staff is Cheryl Mills — was interviewing applicants for the Clinton Crime Family Foundation while she was at State. Not supposed to do that. What’s going on at any public officeholder’s foundation, you’re not supposed to mingle what’s going on — because you’re selling influence. You’re not supposed to do it. Secretary of state cannot influence or otherwise, interview candidates, accept donations or this kind of thing using the power of the office that that candidate holds. It’s not against the law, it’s an ethical breach, and it was going on big time. Cheryl Mills, the chief of staff to Hillary Clinton at the Department of State was interviewing applicants and donors and other interested parties at the Clinton Foundation while she was chief of staff to the secretary of state. The secretary of state’s chief aide — that would be Huma Danger Weiner — connected Clinton Foundation donors to the Department of State. That’s not supposed to happen. That, again, is a huge ethical breach and violation. There are lines of separation or demarcation there that are not to be crossed. And in both instances Hillary Clinton employees, chief aide, chief of staff, while she was secretary of state, were commingling people and funds and influence, who knows what else, while Hillary was secretary of state. While all of this was going on, the secretary of state, one Hillary Rodham Clinton, directed her internet technology chief to build an illegal, private, hidden server in order to connect the Department of State with the Clinton Crime Family Foundation. And that private server has been long ago discovered. And when it was discovered, the Department of State said, “Wait, you can’t do that.” Well, the Department of State didn’t say that. Everybody else did. And the FBI said, “Hey, you can’t do that, and we want the emails from that server.” And Mrs. Clinton said (imitating Clinton), “Okay, I’ll look at ’em and try to determine which ones you might want to look at, which ones will be boring to you.” There were a total of 60,000 emails on the private server that she should not have had and she said that 33,000 of them had to do with yoga and her daughter’s wedding and promptly deleted them. The other 30,000 she sent to the FBI and that’s why we got a press conference with the director of the FBI listing all of the crimes that she committed while telling us that it wouldn’t probably be worth the time to prosecute her, but there were clear violations of law. Every bit of this, all three of these essential summaries of what’s in the news today are highly unethical and probably criminal. But the big news of the day is that Donald Trump really stepped in it trying to be sarcastic. That’s the big news of the day. You know, Trump, I know exactly what Trump’s doing before he does it. I know what he’s doing when he does it. I know how he’s trying to do it. This whole business of Trump for the past two days insisting that Obama was the founder of ISIS. And you may have heard that he appeared on a radio talk show hosted by the estimable Hugh Hewitt in which the estimable Hugh Hewitt gave Trump three or four different outs to agree, “Yeah, that’s what I really meant. I meant that Obama got out of Iraq and left the place vulnerable and ISIS moved in, ISIS founded itself and created,” but Trump refused to take the offer and continued to say nope, he founded it, he founded it. Then, when the proverbial excrement hit the fan, now Trump is saying, “Wait a minute, I was just being sarcastic and everybody knows it,” and that’s what the big story is today. That’s generally how it works each and every day. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Remember, if you disagree, if you have a question, if you have a comment, if you think you don’t know what you should know and you want to learn, if you want to tell me something you think I should know that you don’t think I know. Have at it. That’s what Open Line Friday is. Okay here you go, from the Daily Caller, an exclusive. “Multiple FBI investigations are underway involving potential corruption charges against the Clinton Foundation, according to a former senior law enforcement official. The investigation centers on New York City where the Clinton Foundation has its main offices, according to the former official who has direct knowledge of the activities.” Man, this has been a seesaw. A couple of days ago we believed, a month ago we believed that there was an official FBI investigation of the Clinton Foundation, and even when the FBI Director Comey ultimately read the riot act, listed all the crimes and all the lies Hillary Clinton had committed with that private email server, when he said, “But, sorry, nothing a reasonable prosecutor here would pursue,” we all understood. I mean, there’s no reason to list every violation of law and every lie that she’d told. Do you realize that never happens? The FBI collects its data, sends it on to the DOJ, the DOJ decides, yeah, we got a case here, and then proceeds. We never hear the FBI recommendation. We never see it. Well, Comey knew this was never gonna go anywhere. I think Comey knew even if he recommended prosecution, there wasn’t gonna be a prosecution. I mean, after all, it’s the Obama Regime. It’s Loretta Lynch, and it’s Obama, and they’re not gonna take out the Democrat Party’s nominee. They’re just not gonna do it. I think Comey decided, “I’m not gonna do it. I’m not gonna be known in history as the guy that tried to take out the duly nominated Democrat nominee. Not gonna do it.” So that’s why he scheduled the press conference, and that’s why he listed the lies and listed the potential and likely crimes so that it would get it on the record. And there was a bit of a letdown and some surprise when we learned that he was not gonna recommend prosecution and when he then further said don’t expect one because no reasonable prosecutor would bring this case. Everybody said, “Well, that’s okay, because they’re still looking at the Clinton Foundation, yeah, still looking at that.” And then we found out yesterday, no, they’re not. That the FBI wanted to, but the public integrity division of the Department of Justice told the FBI to go pound sand. So all this time we thought there was an FBI investigation of the foundation. There hasn’t been. And we know the FBI can investigate if they want, but if they know the DOJ’s not gonna do anything with it, they’re not gonna waste their time. So at the close of business yesterday we assumed that all lines of inquiry into the scandal-plagued Bill, Chelsea, and Hillary Clinton foundation are over, until we found out: “Multiple FBI investigations are underway involving potential corruption charges against the Clinton Foundation.” Now, what this is, this supposed investigation is taking place under the auspices of the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, which is Manhattan, whose name is Preet Bharara, and Preet Bharara has a reputation of going after, regardless of party — some people think that he’s lenient on Democrats, ’cause he’s a Chuck Schumer buddy, but he has a track record of going after powerful people in office and nailing them. So some people think there could be something to this. Remember, this is an exclusive from The Daily Caller. The FBI has been given a green light by the Southern District of New York, office United States attorney. “Prosecutorial support will come from various US Attorneys Offices — a major departure from other centralized FBI investigations. The New York-based probe is being led by Preet Bharara, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York. Bharara’s prosecutorial aggressiveness has resulted in a large number of convictions of banks, hedge funds and Wall Street insiders.” Bharara’s spokesman said he would decline comment. FBI spokeswoman said, “We do not have a comment on investigative activity.” So the Daily Caller says one’s going on. Some people are skeptical that this is actually taking place. And if it is taking place, why is it such a mystery? But then again, many of these investigations that take place in matters like, we never know about it. That’s the whole point. We never know about it, and so when an investigation is shown to prove nothing or give no indication of success, it’s dropped and we never know about it. So only time will tell whether there’s an actual investigation or whether somebody has fooled the Daily Caller into believing that there is. But they’ve made no bones about it.Actress Anne Hathaway arrives at the 14th annual Critics' Choice Awards in Santa Monica, California on January 8, 2009. (UPI photo/Jim Ruymen) \| License Photo HOLLYWOOD, Jan. 9 (UPI) -- The Hollywood Foreign Press Association says a Golden Globe nominee was accidentally marked as a winner on its Web site days before the Globes presentation. "In the process of preparing for Sunday's Golden Globe Awards, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Web team inadvertently marked a nominee as a winner," the HFPA said in a statement on its Web site Thursday. "The mistake was immediately corrected." The organizers of the Globes did not specify who the posting mentioned, but media reports said Anne Hathaway was indicated as the winner in the lead actress in a drama film category for her work in "Rachel Getting Married." Hathaway shared the Critics' Choice award for lead actress in a film Thursday night with "Doubt" star Meryl Streep. The winners of the 66th annual Golden Globe Awards are to be announced Sunday at The Beverly Hilton with a live telecast airing on NBC.The extent of the illegal online trade in endangered wildlife has been revealed in a report showing that more than 33,000 animals or their parts were up for sale over just six weeks. Live cheetahs, baboons, chimpanzees, poison dart frogs and hummingbirds were found on offer to the highest bidder by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). Investigators also found the market for animal parts was flourishing, including ivory ornaments, polar bear rugs, rhino horns, tiger claws and snow leopard teeth. Join Independent Minds For exclusive articles, events and an advertising-free read for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month Get the best of The Independent With an Independent Minds subscription for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month Get the best of The Independent Without the ads – for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month Researchers found 33,006 live wild animals and parts available on 280 sites in 16 different countries over a 42-day period earlier this year. The most endangered animals, given protection from trade under the Cites international convention, were found in almost 9,500 adverts worth at least $11 million (£7 million). On the websites examined in countries including Bahrain, Canada, France, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Poland, Russia, Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates, more than half of adverts were for live animals. Ivory, reptiles and birds were the most widely traded items, with ivory featuring in almost one third of all advertisements and reptiles accounting for a quarter. In the UK alone, 1,087 items were found on sale valued at more than £300,000 in total. More than two-thirds were wildlife parts and products rather than live animals, mostly on eBay. The majority of sales were of ivory, including antiques that can be legally sold, but almost 200 turtles and tortoises were also on offer alongside owls, exotic birds, monkeys, lizards and leopard skin clothes and rugs. The IFAW found some ivory traders attempting to evade law enforcement and bans by sites like eBay by using code words to describe their items. China had the most adverts for live animals and parts, followed by Germany, France, the UK, Ukraine and Russia. Shape Created with Sketch. Critically endangered species Show all 10 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. Critically endangered species 1/10 Yangtze Finless Porpoise There are as few as 1,000 of this highly intelligent dolphin from the Chinese river of Yangtze. Wikmedia 2/10 Cross River Gorilla There are around 200-300 left in the wild. Wikmedia 3/10 The Amur Leopard There are only around 30 left, exclusively in the Russian Far East. Wikmedia 4/10 Black Rhino Improving numbers, but with fewer than 5,000 left in central Africa, it is critically endangered. Wikmedia 5/10 Hawskbill Sea Turtle Mostly threatened by wildlife trade; their shells highly valued. Wikmedia 6/10 Javan Rhino The most threatened rhino species - there are as few as 35 in Ujung Kulon National Park in Java, Indonesia. Wikmedia 7/10 Leatherback Turtle Having lost many of its habitable beaches, and impacted by fishing operations, this seaturtle is considered by WWF to be 'critically endangered'. Wikmedia 8/10 South China Tiger It is believed to be 'functionally extinct', with none of the species left in the wild. Wikmedia 9/10 Sumatran Elephant There are between 2,400 - 2,800 of this elephant native to Borneo and Sumatra. Wikmedia 10/10 Sumatran Orangutan There are an est. 7,300 but the gradual deforestation of their Sumatran habitat may threaten further. Wikmedia 1/10 Yangtze Finless Porpoise There are as few as 1,000 of this highly intelligent dolphin from the Chinese river of Yangtze. Wikmedia 2/10 Cross River Gorilla There
University of Florida before turning pro, King lost in the doubles semifinals to two Florida State graduates, good for another $180. Jung skipped Plantation to train back home in California, but had arrived a few days before the Sunrise event to practice with King. I met them at the courts on Monday. It was the penultimate day of the qualifying tournament, and King and Jung were ranked high enough to gain direct entry into the main draw. Just two years separated them, but they were at markedly different stages of their tennis careers. Thanks to the vagaries of the tennis ranking system, where points are determined by the past year’s successes and failures, the next few months for King could only prove beneficial. At this time last year, he was entering his final semester at Michigan, so he didn’t have any points to defend. He had some money saved, a small sponsorship deal with upstart apparel company Athletic DNA, and supportive parents in Chicago, where his father, a former advertising executive, now teaches tennis and his mother works for the public school system. King has a girlfriend back on campus, a senior on the women’s tennis team, “but I’ve kind of accepted that my social life ended in Michigan,” he tells me. His goal for this year is to make the qualifying tournament at the U.S. Open. “That means I’ll have to get my ranking up a few hundred points or so,” he says. Within three years, he told The Michigan Daily, he hopes to be in the top 75. Jung wasn’t as decorated a recruit as King, who received a scholarship to the USTA’s development center in Boca Raton, Florida, for his last two years of high school. As a senior at Michigan, Jung lost his no. 1 spot on the roster to King, a sophomore. By graduation, Jung had given up the dream of professional tennis and taken a job with an oil company back home in Torrance, California. But then, at a friend’s suggestion, he entered a money tournament in Seattle. “This was in August, and I hadn’t touched a racket since I graduated in May,” Jung says. He won the tournament. “And the scores weren’t that close.” So he decided to commit himself to the pro tour, where his meager winnings have been supplemented by contributions from his family, several encouraging Michigan alumni, and older members of his hometown tennis club. Jung is ranked more than 200 spots ahead of King, and King freely admits Jung has become the better pro. (The record bears this out: Jung has won both of their professional meetings.) But while King remains highly optimistic about his career prospects, Jung sees 2014 as the year he either makes it to the next level or retires his racquets. “For the better part of the last two years, I’ve been a Futures player,” Jung says. “You’re grinding away for a few points, and you pretty much need to win the tournaments to cover your expenses. This coming year is going to be a big one for me, because I’m trying to get out of the Futures tour and play more Challengers and ATP events.” To do that, he’ll need to break into the top 200. “If I have to play another full year of Futures, I’ll probably stop,” he says. Jung is only 24 years old, probably still a few years from his athletic peak. But it doesn’t make much sense to stick around the Futures tour too long. “If you you’re still playing at 27, 28 and you haven’t graduated out, it’s a hard life and you’re never going to make any money,” says Brad Gilbert, a former top-five player who has coached Andre Agassi, Andy Roddick, and Andy Murray. In recent years, Gilbert says, the competition in tennis’s lower levels has improved dramatically, making it more difficult to advance. “It’s 10 times harder now than when I was getting started,” Gilbert says. “When I was coming out, there weren’t as many full-time players. I played one satellite [as Futures-level tournaments were once known] and then started playing ATP tour events. It took me five months, and I was top 50. Now, it takes you a couple of years to be top 200 if you’re good.” Meanwhile, the money hasn’t gotten any better. “The tournament you’re going to pays out $10,000, right?” Gilbert asks. “And when I was starting out, what did a satellite pay out? $10,000.” ♦♦♦ The American Futures tour consists of three types of players. The largest contingent, which includes King and Jung, is current or former college players. Off the court, they all display their loyalties: Ohio State sweatshirts, University of Southern California hats. (College gear is prohibited during match play.) University of Illinois coach Brad Dancer has brought a few of his top players to the Sunrise tournament to gain experience before the collegiate season. It’s true that not one of the top 10 players in the world attended college, but college remains a viable path to a good professional career. “It’s hard to go to college and become a no. 1 or no. 2 player in the world — that won’t happen,” Gilbert tells me. “But you can certainly become a top-20 player.” In fact, the United States’ top-ranked player, John Isner, played for the University of Georgia. And one of Dancer’s former Illinois players, South Africa’s Kevin Anderson, is seeded 19th at the Australian Open. Then there are the foreigners. At Sunrise, I meet a handful of Swedes traveling with a coach from their national federation. There’s 19-year-old Kyle Edmund of Great Britain, seeded fourth in the main draw, who is hoping to join his compatriots a few weeks later in San Diego to take on the United States in a Davis Cup tie. There are more South Americans than I can count. And there’s 18-year-old Yoshihito Nishioka from Japan, who is coached by Pat Harrison, father of Ryan Harrison, the 21-year-old American who has been ranked as high as 43rd in the world. Like his compatriot Kei Nishikori, ranked 17th in the world, Nishioka has trained at the IMG Bollettieri Academy thanks to the beneficence of former Sony CEO Masaaki Morita. “[Morita] sponsors fully three Japanese players each year until they turn 18,” Pat Harrison tells me. But now that Nishioka is 18, he’s paying Harrison out of his own pocket. Given the sorry state of American men’s tennis, the most intriguing category is the young Americans. Seventeen-year-old Noah Rubin, no. 55 in the International Tennis Federation’s world junior rankings, trains at the John McEnroe Tennis Academy in Manhattan and is considering skipping college for the pros. And then there’s Tiafoe, whom Gilbert recommended I watch out for, saying, “That kid’s got the talent to be a real player.” If Tiafoe becomes the next American star, he’ll have an unparalleled rags-to-riches story to boot. His father, Constant, is an immigrant from Sierra Leone and a maintenance worker at a Maryland tennis center. Francis and his brother Franklin lived with their father in a room at the center for more than a decade, and the sons had free access to its intensive junior program. (All the top junior prospects I met in Sunrise told me they attend school online.) On Monday, Tiafoe is playing a qualifying match against Devin McCarthy, a 23-year-old Ohio State graduate ranked around 800th in the world. I watch the match alongside King, who tells me, “Devin won’t let on, but I’m sure he’s heard the hype about Francis and won’t want to lose to a 15-year-old.” But McCarthy is losing. He’s a quintessential American player — big serve, big forehand — and these weapons are slowed down by the surface, Har-Tru, commonly known as “green clay.” And McCarthy’s strengths are nullified even further by Tiafoe. Tiafoe already stands 6-foot-1, thin but muscular, and he moves around the court effortlessly, absorbing McCarthy’s pace and redirecting balls to the deep corners. On a few points, Tiafoe flattens out his forehand, and it’s a missile, revealing power and potential that belie his age. Quickly, McCarthy goes down a break. He’s pressing and missing. And it’s getting testy. A few weeks earlier, Tiafoe told the New York Times, “there’s nothing that bothers me more than cockiness.” But today he shows no deference to his opponent. After one argument over a line call — in the qualifying rounds of the tournament, players call their own lines but can ask roving officials to inspect marks — Tiafoe glares at his opponent and asks, rhetorically, “Why are you trying to be funny?” For some reason, tournament officials have placed only a single bench beside each court, which players share during changeovers. This only adds to the tension. After McCarthy surrenders the first set, 6-2, he curses himself. “Pathetic, absolutely pathetic,” he mutters. I turn to King: “Francis has too much game.” But King knows better. He’s been on the losing side to Ohio State too many times. “Devin’s a fighter,” he says. In the early stages of the second set, the match is Tiafoe’s for the taking. “I had break points, and then I made a couple of loose errors and it was me who was down a break,” he tells me afterward. The errors keep coming. Tiafoe’s coach, Mikhail Kouznetsov, says Tiafoe is winded from the last round of the quallies, a four-hour slog against an Ecuadorian clay-court specialist. “It’s still hard to get Francis to put in the gym time,” Kouznetsov says. McCarthy takes the second set 6-4. Quickly, Tiafoe goes down another break in the third and deciding set. With Tiafoe facing another break point at 0-2, McCarthy hits a shot that looks out to my eyes, but Tiafoe plays it, and his reply also looks to be a quarter-inch past the baseline. McCarthy doesn’t hesitate to extend his index finger toward the sky, the universal symbol for “out.” Tiafoe summons an official seated off-court, who appears to be as focused on her lunch as she is on the match unfolding before her eyes. She inspects the mark and upholds McCarthy’s call. Tiafoe protests, petulantly and to no avail. It’s now 3-0. And when Tiafoe loses the next game, he tosses his baseball hat over the fence in a fit of pique. But then, as so often happens in tennis, McCarthy tenses. Tiafoe isn’t playing any better, but McCarthy starts missing balls. After taking a commanding 5-1 lead, McCarthy loses two straight games, the last with a double fault, and a Tiafoe fan says loudly, “He’s tightening up.” But McCarthy’s cushion is sufficient, and he breaks back to take the final set 6-3. McCarthy will lose in the final qualifying round to former Florida State player Jean-Yves Aubone. Meanwhile, Tiafoe, who’s charming and playful off the court, puts his loss in perspective. “No one here cares about me winning the Orange Bowl,” he says. “I’m the 15-year-old and guys are going to go after me.” After this Florida swing of Futures tournaments, he’ll concentrate on the junior Slams, saying it made sense to skip the Australian Open juniors because of the expenses involved. The loss to an older, more mature player hasn’t dented his confidence. “There are a few areas I want to improve, be able to win a few more points on my serve, for instance, but I’m not feeling any pressure to move up too fast,” he says. “I still want to finish high school.” ♦♦♦ Thanks to rain showers, most of the first-round singles matches are pushed back to Wednesday. At nine in the morning, King takes the court against his first-round opponent, Kyle Edmund, the Brit. King’s big, lefty serve and his ability to come to net and put away points are neutralized by the surface. The rain has further slowed the claylike courts, and winners are hard to come by. King, like most Americans, prefers hard courts. But he starts crisply, while Edmund is struggling to find the range on his ground strokes. King breaks Edmund for a 3-1 lead. The difference between elite college tennis and the Futures tour isn’t too significant, King told me before his match. “In the pros, no one has a glaring weakness and they make fewer loose errors, but the pace [of the shots] is about the same,” he says. The biggest adjustment is the atmosphere surrounding the court. “In college, tennis isn’t a revenue sport, but still a couple of hundred people would come to our matches,” he says. Fans were “either completely on your side or completely against you.” In the Futures, King continues, “you’ll play a match and you’ll have five people watching. There’s no atmosphere. In a college match, you have your teammates and your coaches to pump you up. Now, it’s more like junior tennis — you’re playing for yourself. I had trouble with that in the beginning.” Edmund breaks back to tie the first set at 3-all. Rain begins to fall, and the players are pulled from the courts. King returns to the clubhouse, mingling with the players he knows, while Edmund stands by himself under a tent beside the courts. I ask him if it’s lonely at American tournaments for foreigners. “I’ve gotten to know a few of the Americans,” he says. “But it’s not like we’re playing out here to make friends.” After 20 minutes, the sky clears and play resumes. Edmund and King hold serve to 6-all; a tiebreak will decide the first set. The players’ styles have been well established: King hits a loopier ball and tries to find Edmund’s backhand, while Edmund likes to dictate play with his inside-out forehand, a flat drive. They’re on serve in the tiebreak until 3-all, when King hits a backhand into the net. After a couple more loose errors, he finds himself facing two set points at 4-6. King unleashes a big first serve and follows it to net, only to see Edmund nail a cross-court backhand past him. In the second set, King tries to step into the court and attack more frequently, but the errors continue. Edmund finds his groove and controls most of the points with his forehand. Edmund wins 6-2, and King has lost in the first round for the second consecutive tournament. Meanwhile, Jung, seeded fifth, is struggling in his first-round match against Pedro Sakamoto from Brazil. Jung stands 5-foot-10 and is an aggressive baseliner in the Agassi mold, but he’s a little rusty and missing shots, while Sakamoto is a typical South American dirtballer, who stands well behind the baseline and is content to hit safe, heavy-topspin balls. After dropping the first set, Jung breaks Sakamoto early and begins to push him around the court, crowding the baseline and firing lasers from both sides. It’s a close match, but Jung prevails in three sets, not entirely satisfied with his performance. If he wants to rise to the Challenger tour, he’ll have to start steamrolling opponents like Sakamoto. I watch the final stages of the match with Pat Harrison, who’s scouting — Jung will face Harrison’s pupil, Nishioka, in the next round. “The thing about these Futures tournaments is that in a draw of 32, there are 27 guys who could win the tournament depending on who gets hot,” Harrison says. Even that might be understating the level of parity. Last week’s tournament in Plantation was won by a qualifier, Bangoura, the ex–University of Florida player. But here Bangoura falls in the first round to McEnroe’s protégé, Noah Rubin, who himself made it through the qualifying rounds. Strolling the grounds, I had yet to see a truly astonishing weapon — an Isner serve or Nadal forehand. But nearly everyone struck the ball hard and consistently. “The difference between these guys and the top players on tour isn’t so much the pace,” says Harrison, who played in college and on the low levels of the pro tour. “A Futures guy can hit five to six world-class shots before breaking down, and someone on the Challenger level can hit eight to 10. The top ATP pros are even more solid.” ♦♦♦ Earlier in the week, I take King and Jung out for dinner. They’ve been eating frugally, making trips to a local grocery store or, in King’s case, dining out at Denny’s and Popeyes. At Jung’s suggestion we decide to eat at Carrabba’s Italian Grill, a chain that’s perhaps a small step up from Olive Garden. Though South Beach is less than an hour’s drive, from what I can tell all the players are living as ascetics. King has lost in singles, so he allows himself a single beer. And since he’s out, I suggest that on Thursday, when Jung plays his second-round singles match, we hit. In 1996, David Foster Wallace wrote a profile of tennis player Michael Joyce for Esquire. At the time, Joyce was the 79th-best player in the world, though he’s better known now for being Maria Sharapova’s former coach. After watching Joyce play at a Montreal tournament, Wallace observed: “The idea of me playing Joyce — or even hitting around with him, which was one of the ideas I was entertaining on the flight to Montreal — is now revealed to me to be in a certain way obscene.” Like Wallace, I played Division III tennis, but unlike him I kept playing semi-competitively after college. I didn’t have any illusions about beating a player of King’s caliber, but the idea of sharing a court didn’t feel obscene. On Thursday afternoon, King was waiting for me. He had chosen, rather cruelly, one of the venue’s two show courts, beside the tented area where most spectators congregate. I would have preferred obscurity. We warmed up, played a 10-point baseline game (no serves), and then a tiebreaker (first to 10 points, with serves). “Oh, you’ll win a point, don’t worry about that,” Pat Harrison had assured me earlier in the day. And I did. Two points in each of the games. I would like to say these were aces or screaming forehand winners, but they weren’t. King simply missed a few balls. I wasn’t overwhelmed by the pace of King’s shots, but I quickly came to appreciate Harrison’s breakdown of professional players. If King can hit five or six world-class shots in a row, I (maybe?) can produce one. Once a point began, King was in complete control, pushing me around the court until I made an error or he had me sufficiently out of position — typically within a couple shots — to hit a winner. When Jung arrived, I ended our session so they could warm up in earnest. I confess to feeling slightly miffed when I saw King change his sneakers — apparently, he had been wearing his casual running shoes while we hit, not remotely worried that I’d make him scramble and risk turning an ankle. Jung had lost his singles match earlier that day in straight sets. He had a few chances, breaks of serve he failed to consolidate, but Nishioka was the steadier player. As we watched the match, Pat Harrison told me Jung was making a tactical error. He was directing most of his shots to Nishioka’s backhand. “But that’s his stronger side,” Harrison said. “Maybe Yoshi can hit a little harder with his forehand, but he makes a lot more mistakes, especially when he’s stretched wide.” Later, Jung came to a similar conclusion. “His backhand was hurting me,” he said. “I couldn’t break it down.” Jung told me his inability to afford a coach to travel with him was the biggest obstacle to professional success. “In college tennis, there are coaches,” he said. “And I miss that tactical help, someone who can watch your match and scout your opponents and give you some input. Most of the guys playing the Challengers have that.” The fact that they’re still alive in doubles is small consolation for the Michigan duo. Only one player at the tournament, 27-year-old Florida State graduate Vahid Mirzadeh, is pursuing a doubles career. Last year, Mirzadeh reached his highest-ever doubles ranking of 169. “It may be easier to move up the ranks at first,” King says, “but there’s a lot less money in doubles. In singles, you can be about 150 in the world and make a decent living. In doubles you’d have to be at least in the top 50.” And even though King has had doubles success, he says he plays not for rankings points but for extra pocket money. On Thursday afternoon, in the semifinals, King and Jung eke out a close win against Mirzadeh and Jean-Yves Aubone. Aubone, who has a beautiful one-handed backhand, lost in the second round of singles to Edmund, even after winning the first set 6-0. Of all the players I met, Aubone was perhaps the most introspective about life on professional tennis’s bottom rung. He had a stellar collegiate career at Florida and also won two Futures tournaments while a student. But when he graduated in 2010 he was burned out and took a job at a small financial firm before joining Morgan Stanley in Miami. Then he felt the itch to play again, to make a committed run in the pros. Aubone fully recognizes the financial absurdity of this choice. “When I left Morgan Stanley, I was making a lot of money,” he says. “And then last week, Vahid and I won the doubles in Plantation and I got $170.” “Look, no one here is doing this for the money,” he says. Still, he recognizes that he can’t live like this indefinitely. “I’m 26,” he says. “That’s not old if you’re a top player. The average age of players in the top 100 is 28, and many are playing into their thirties. But if you’re not up in the rankings, if you’re not making a living, at some point it doesn’t make sense to keep fighting in the Futures. For me, this probably is a make-or-break year.” ♦♦♦ Left to right: Tiafoe, Blumberg, King, and Jung. Back in the doubles final, where Tiafoe and William Blumberg trail 3-0 in the first set, it’s a good thing for the teenagers that King and Jung aren’t the Bryan brothers. Blumberg’s service game reaches deuce, which means, in the quicker doubles format, the next point will decide the game and the receivers choose who will return serve. King returns, and there’s a long cross-court baseline rally before King hits a forehand long to give his opponents their first game. Both teams hold serve, and King and Jung remain up a break at 5-2. They reach deuce, set point, and Blumberg hits a forehand winner up the line. Still, it’s 5-3, and King can serve out the first set. Instead, Jung misses a couple volleys, Blumberg hits a winner down the middle, and it’s 0-40. The Michigan alumni fight back to deuce, but King misses a volley to give up the break. They have more chances, but when Jung returns a second serve into the net, all of a sudden the set is deadlocked, 6-all, and Tiafoe has found his game. In the tiebreak, he serves one ace and closes out the first set with two big serves. King and Jung recover to start the second set. They break Blumberg’s serve; two games later, they break Tiafoe. They’re up 4-0. At one point in the match, I learn later, King turns to Jung and says, “I’m bored.” “How can you tell me that during the match?” Jung says afterward, chuckling. “Dude, it was only for one point, and then I was back on track,” King says. “Yeah, but what about me? When you say you’re bored, then all of a sudden I start thinking about what you’re thinking.” Another commanding lead wilts away. After fighting off two break points on Blumberg’s serve, the teenagers win their first game and trail 1-4. After the teams trade off breaking each other’s serve, King and Jung find themselves up 5-2. Tiafoe holds his serve, and King loses his. Finally, it’s 5-4, deuce, on Jung’s serve with Tiafoe receiving. “I told Will that I was going to hit a big return,” he tells me after the match. Instead, Jung fires an ace down the middle. “That was a huge point,” Tiafoe says later. In lieu of a third set, a tiebreak — first to 10, win by two — will decide the match. This time, the youngsters claim an early 3-1 lead after a Blumberg forehand splits King and Jung at the net. But with the match on the line, King and Jung regain their focus and execute their shots perfectly. They make their first serves and smother the net, putting the pressure on their opponents to go for more than they should. Instead of playing the percentages, hitting dipping shots at their opponents’ feet to solicit an error or weak volley, Tiafoe and Blumberg are trying for outright winners. They’re aiming for the court’s outer lines and missing. Down 6-9, triple-match point, Tiafoe serves and Jung replies with a bullet backhand that clears the net by an inch and lands for a clean winner. No one falls to his knees. King and Jung don’t bump chests. The handful of spectators applauds almost sheepishly as the players exchange pleasantries at the net. A tournament official brings a fold-up table onto the court and lays out the small, glass trophies for the winners and runners-up. Blumberg’s mother, a blonde who had taken off her boots and rolled up her jeans for the sun, walks barefoot onto the court to snap pictures. I say good-bye to the players, and then head to the airport. Edmund, who beat King in the first round, won the singles trophy. In a few days, it would all start again in Weston, Florida. Another Har-Tru tournament and another bad draw for King. He faced the top seed, Romania’s Victor Crivoi, a 31-year-old who’s trying to make a comeback after being ranked 75th in the world in 2009. King took the first set 6-0 but lost the next two, while his opponent, just like the previous week, went on to win the tournament. Jung fell in the second round again, this time to a former University of Kentucky player. In doubles, the Michigan graduates had another successful week, losing in the finals in a hard-fought tiebreaker. King says he doesn’t find the three consecutive first-round losses dispiriting. “I got bad draws, but then that’s going to happen,” he tells me over the phone. “What’s more important is that each week I improved. In the first week, I played terrible. I played better my second week, and the best match, even though I lost, came last. I got better and figured some things out about my game that hopefully will carry over through the rest of the season.” He was calling from Gainesville, where he was training with the University of Florida team and staying with a friend he met in the juniors. He’s glad to be back on the hard courts and will fly to Dallas in February to enter the qualifiers of a Challenger tournament. Jung will be there, too. For now, he’s home in California. At Sunrise, he did better than King in the singles, but he feels more disappointed in his play. “I didn’t play my best tennis, that’s for sure,” he says. It wasn’t so much the results, but that he found his thoughts straying on the court. “I was getting frustrated in my matches more than usual,” he says. “I try not to think about these things, but I was thinking about money, thinking about the grind,” he says. “For me, it’s a little different than Evan,” Jung says. These were the last $10,000 Future tournaments he’ll play. In Dallas, he’ll also play the quallies. (In Dallas, both ex-Michigan players advanced to the main draw, and King beat Jung 6-2, 7-6 to advance to the quarterfinals.) After Dallas, Jason says he’ll seek out far-flung Challengers where his ranking can get him into the main draw. With a few good results, he may be on a path to a financially sustainable career in tennis. Otherwise, over our dinner, Jung made a passing reference to law school. Jung keeps a blog, and I’m struck by a passage in a recent post in which he reflects on his professional journey: I’m happy to have chosen this path of tennis for the past two years because it has helped me grow and mature (well not completely, but slowly). Each tennis match brings uncertainty. But you prepare and put your effort in before and during the match to give yourself the best chance. Sometimes you come out on top and sometimes not. Tennis has taught me to enjoy everything that is thrown at us. Whether good or bad. The statement, at first glance, betrays little emotion. But beneath the surface, I think, is real feeling — an undercurrent of cautious optimism and also a small measure of sadness. Paul Wachter has written for The New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, Harper’s, The Nation, The Atlantic, Grantland, and other publications. Illustration by John Tomac.SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) – Gov. Bruce Rauner has signed legislation to try to curb gun violence in Chicago by punishing people convicted of firearm trafficking with long prison sentences. The bill the Republican governor signed Tuesday in Chicago will impose a sentence of up to 20 years for a first offense. A subsequent conviction for trafficking guns into Illinois from other states will be punishable by up to 30 years. A 2014 report from the Chicago mayor’s office concluded that nearly 60 percent of the guns used in Chicago are traced to neighboring states where it’s easier to buy guns. Illinois requires permits to screen for criminal records and other disqualifiers. The report found that about 20 percent of illegal guns come from Indiana where no permit is required.Having dense breasts can be the biggest risk factor of breast cancer in women – more so than all other known risk factors like obesity and family history, a recent University of California study reveals. According to researchers, women’s whose breasts have more glandular tissue rather than fat are twice as likely to develop the cancer. (The University of Leeds defines glandular tissue as a mix of two types of glands: endocrine and exocrine. Endocrine glands are ductless that secrete hormones into the blood. Exocrine glands have ducts and secrete hormones onto surfaces.) Researchers assessed risk factors in over 200,000 women between the ages of 40 and 74 who were enrolled in the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium, a research initiative designed to monitor the quality of breast cancer screening. READ MORE: Here’s the ‘trick’ that led one woman to finding her breast cancer Of the 200,000 plus women, over 18,400 had breast cancer in various stages, while about 184,000 did not. Breast density was recorded for each woman according to the four categories outlined by the American College of Radiology’s Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS). Category A are breast made up mostly of fat; category B are breasts with scattered dense tissue but mostly fat; category C are breasts with moderately dense tissues and category D, which are breasts that are made up of at least 75 per cent dense tissue. The results showed that breast density is the most prevalent risk factor for both pre-menopausal and post-menopausal women. They also found that over 39 per cent of breast cancers in pre-menopausal women and over 26 per cent in post-menopausal women could have potentially been prevented if all women with higher breast density were shifted to lower-density BI-RADS category B. But what surprised co-author Dr. Karla Kerlikowske the most was something the majority of women had in common. “[I was surprised that] 90 per cent of women diagnosed with breast cancer have at least one of the risk factor we studied, which means if we use risk models with these factors, we should be able to predict who will get breast cancer,” she says. According to researchers, the risk is due to the high cellular content of dense tissue and interaction between cells that line the mammary ducts and surrounding tissue. And because both tissue and cancer show up as white on mammograms, it’s hard for radiologists to identify malignancy in dense tissue than in fat (which appears dark). Risk factors that are commonly known to be linked to breast cancer, like first full-term pregnancy over 30 years of age, only account for less than 10 per cent of the cases in the population, the study found. Having high BMI Women with high BMI typically have lower breast density, researchers note. However, age is a strong element of breast density as well. “There is a high proportion of glandular and stroma tissue in pre-menopausal women and as women age it is replaced by fatty tissue,” Kerlikowske says. “However, the degree to which this occurs varies such that older women do have dense breasts.” Researchers, however, are not saying that carrying extra weight (for the purpose of having fattier breasts) can protect you from the risk since obesity is a risk factor linked to the disease as well. In fact, researchers found that almost 23 per cent of women with breast cancers in this group could have been avoided if obese and overweight women maintained a body mass index of less than 25 (that translates to 155 lbs. for a woman who stands at 5’6” tall). Family history When it comes to those with a history of undergoing benign breast biopsies, only about seven per cent to nine per cent of both pre-menopausal and post-menopausal women with breast cancer accounted for cases of breast cancer diagnoses. Women with family history of breast cancer only accounted for about eight per cent of cases, and women who gave birth after 30 years of age made up between five and eight per cent of cases. READ MORE: Overnight shift work and heavy lifting impact women’s fertility, study says “Family history is a strong risk factor but not as prevalent as dense tissue to family history,” Kerlikowske says. “Breast density is both a prevalent and strong risk factor which is why it contributes to the development of highest proportion of breast cancers in pre- and post-menopausal women.” For Kerlikowske, it’s important that individualized prevention measures are in place, and knowing this new information can help doctors and their patients do just that. Breast cancer in Canada According to the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, the disease will affect at least one in nine Canadian women. The Canadian Cancer Society estimates that an average of 70 Canadian women is diagnosed with breast cancer every day; an average of 13 dies every day. Breast cancer is the most common cancer among Canadian women and is the second leading cause of death from cancer in Canadian women.Stumbling on perhaps the sole belief she shares in common with many readers of Salon, Ann Coulter writes in her latest column that people who vote for libertarian candidates are "idiots." But because this is Ann Coulter we're talking about, she can't help but take it a step further and threaten to drown these voters if they don't do what she wants. And what Coulter wants, quite simply, is for the Republican Party to win control of the U.S. Senate in this year's midterm elections. "For the next six weeks, nothing matters more to the country than Republicans taking a majority in the Senate," Coulter writes. "All that matters is winning." Advertisement: To that end, Coulter demands that GOP Sen. Pat Roberts campaign ceaselessly in his home state, so as to expose independent candidate Greg Orman as the scurrilous one-time Democrat he truly is. She also demands that "[e]veryone reading this column... donate to Scott Brown immediately," because he is, apparently, "a very strong candidate." Coulter thinks this is due to Brown's willingness to demagogue about "amnesty," which proves he's "one of the few candidates smart enough to make immigration an issue." (In that regard, he joins a rare club, one that only includes every other serious candidate for Congress.) The right-wing pundit's most important demand, however, is not for GOP voters or politicians. It's for conservatives who may vote for a libertarian instead of a Republican. These folks, Coulter writes, are "idiots" who care more about their "integrity" than their fellow Americans. "If you are considering voting for the libertarian candidate in any Senate election," Coulter signs off, "please send me your name and address so I can track you down and drown you."The new Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross is exactly what the automaker needs and what many customers want, with a splash of unique styling and high tech goodies to round out the package. Summing it up is easy: The Eclipse Cross is another compact crossover for Mitsubishi, but one that’s more focused on style, handling, and technology than the more family-friendly Outlander and value-packed but smaller Outlander Sport (called the RVR in Canada). Mitsubishi is offering another crossover because that’s all people want to buy right now. The brand wants to be a destination for crossover-crazed consumers and the new Eclipse Cross is part of the plan. What Is It? Funky looking and high tech, the Eclipse Cross is kind of like a smaller Outlander. The Outlander can accommodate seven passengers in some configurations, however, while the Eclipse Cross can handle only five people. Despite the unique proportions, the car feels very spacious, and rear seat space isn’t limited. You’ll find more than 33 inches of headroom in the back and more than 35 inches of leg room. The cargo area is
313/.380/.410 over his last 70 games (and oh, by the way, over the last calendar year Nori is hitting.318/.384/.403 in 539 plate appearances, Rios is hitting.220/.248/.302 in 310 plate appearances). If Rios is hurt, he needs to go on the disabled list and get healthy. If he is healthy, he needs to start hitting. If he doesn't, the Royals should cut their ties before too long and go with an option that can either hit or play defense, because Rios right now is doing neither. That was on June 15th. Rios was hitting.214/.247/.300 that day in 18 games. It's July 16th. Rios is hitting.238/.266/.288 in 43 games. Sometimes you make a bad decision and you have to cut your losses. Depending on the decision, you can wait quite a while. One month ago, when Max wrote that article about Rios, the time had not come yet. That time, though, is now. The core part of why Rios needs to go is simple: Rios has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad player, especially offensively. I looked at Fangraphs to compare Rios to his fellow outfielders in Major League Baseball. The results were catastrophic and almost broke my computer. Out of 114 outfielders with at least 150 plate appearances this season, Rios ranks: 114th in wRC+ at 52 96th in AVG at.238 114th in OBP at.266 111th in SLG at.288 111th in ISO at.050 114th in BB% at 1.8% 104th in RBI at 13 101st in WAR at -0.3 101st in hard-hit balls at 20% Yikes. Just...yikes. Among those with comparable playing time or more, Rios is the worst outfielder in baseball in wRC+, OBP, and BB%. He is one of the ten worst in SLG, ISO, and RBI. The more in-depth offensive stats suggest Rios has terrible plate discipline and does not make solid contact. If you prefer traditional stats, Rios is a guy who doesn't hit for average or power and doesn't get RBI on a talented, first-place squad. Either way you cut it, Rios just fails offensively. The worst part is that Rios has been dealing with injuries the last two years and may not ever recover, let alone this year. Rios broke his hand this year, missing a month, and suffered through a thumb injury last year. These can be especially nagging. Defensively, Rios' stats do not tell as clear of a picture. Ultimate Zone Rating like Rios and gives him an UZR/150 of 4.0; he has a positive UZR/150 three of the past four years. Defensive Runs Saved is far less kind, and says that he has cost the team -4 runs. DRS has ranked Rios negatively for three consecutive years. Supplementing defensive stats is the eye test and, compared with all the defensive wizards on this team, Rios sticks out like a sore thumb. Unlike fellow outfielders Lorenzo Cain, Paulo Orlando, Alex Gordon, and Jarrod Dyson, Rios often takes circuitous, indirect routes to fly balls. His arm and throwing decisions have also been suspect. Rios also shows a continuous lackadaisy and rarely seems to run at speed or make those stressful, full-effort catches with which we have been spoiled. Rios is no Jose Guillen--he's clearly a capable athlete and has enough range to adequately perform the standard outfield functions. Still, he's an average defender, and average defense does not save league-worst offense. Omar Infante, for all his offensive malaise, has been technically clean and extremely dependable in his defensive performance. For a player who does not hit or field, and whose value to the club is negative, and whose club has World Series aspirations, and who is only under contract for one season, and who has no trade value, is useless to his team. Cutting Rios would mean that the Royals would be paying about $5.5 million for the rest of the year to make Rios not play baseball for them. As Tyler Wornell puts it, Alex Rios is a lost cause. The Royals may very well be the Patron Saint of Lost Causes, but it's 2015. The team must be improved. Who replaces Rios? That's another question for another day, but the simple answer is basically that almost anyone will do. It isn't difficult to replace a guy on pace for -0.6 WAR for the year. With the trade deadline coming up, the Royals can and should explore the market. Even before Gordon's injury, I suggested the Royals trade for Ben Zobrist, and his name is even better now. What do the Royals do until they get someone? They've got plenty of internal short-term options. A combination of Dyson, Orlando, Whit Merrifield (.316/.361/.439 AAA line from 2014-2015), and/or Brett Eibner and Lane Adams would be fine for two weeks. Heck, Kansas City could even kick the tires on Bubba Starling for two weeks (who has had a blistering July in AA with trademark elite defense and baserunning). Alex Rios has been one of the worst outfielders in baseball this season. Cutting him would yield no long-term consequences. Thank you for your contributions, Mr. Rios. But baseball is a business, and it's time to let someone else have their shot.After decades of silence, a tough Marine has come forward with his clean little secret: He's the voice of Bambi. San Antonio native Donnie Dunagan, now of San Angelo, was 6 when Walt Disney hired him to be the model and voice of the fawn in the 1942 animated classic, which debuted on DVD last week. During his entire military career, Dunagan never confided to colleagues about being in Bambi. "I was blessed to be in a leadership role for 25 years, either in counterintelligence or training troops," Dunagan said, "and if these animals I was leading had ever found out about Bambi — as much affection as I had for it — they'd have ridden me out on a rail." Since he's come forward, though, he's taking renewed pride in his role. "I go down the street now, and when some old Marine who knew me before yells, 'Hey, Major Bambi!' I love it to death," Dunagan said. Dunagan made eight movies as a child after being discovered at a Memphis, Tenn., talent show. They included 1939's Son of Frankenstein with Boris Karloff and Tower of London with Basil Rathbone. But his career ended when his family fractured. He wound up in boarding homes, then joined the military as a teen. "I adopted the Marines, and the Marines adopted me," Dunagan said. Dunagan distinguished himself in the service. The curly-haired lad with the Southern drawl whom Karloff had hoisted on a monster's shoulder became the youngest Marine drill instructor ever. A boxer and devoted Harley rider, Dunagan served three tours in Vietnam and was wounded several times. After leaving the Marines in 1977, he worked in business and kept mum about his childhood stardom, even as fans scoured phone books for him. But Dunagan was nailed last June. A casual comment at a San Angelo banquet tipped off a local TV crew that they had a star in their midst. Dunagan, 70, and Dana, his wife of 13 years, had moved to the town two years before so his stepson could attend college there. Only after his story came out "did we open the old boxes I'd sealed for 50 years, with newspaper clippings about my time in Bambi." Disney contacted him soon after about participating in a DVD of Bambi. Dunagan appears in a featurette about the cast, then and now. He was always fond of the film and showed videocassettes of it to children whenever he could. Now he's getting DVD copies from Disney to give to orphanages. Having come to terms with it, the Marine who was Bambi finally is speaking up. This year Dunagan will make his first appearances at film fan conventions, to meet admirers and sign autographs. "His autograph hasn't been out there since he was 4 or 5," said Donna Lucas, publisher — with husband Tim Lucas — of Video Watchdog, which ran a cover story on Dunagan in October. Fans are ecstatic that he's finally come forward, she said. "This is one of the last living people who worked with Karloff, and he's got an incredible memory." Read Full ArticleUS regulations restrict the export of certain technologies to countries such as Iran, Cuba, Sudan and Syria [GALLO/GETTY] Try to download Google Earth or Java from Syria and you'll be greeted with an approximation of the following message: "In compliance with US export laws, this product is not available for download in your country." A combination of regulations, from the US Treasury and Commerce Departments, place restrictions on the export of certain technologies to a number of countries, including Iran, Cuba, Sudan and Syria. But while the rules guiding exports to some of the countries have been fine-tuned in recent years to allow their use and download by civilians of communications technologies, Syria remains under a set of strict Commerce Department regulations. These regulations, in practice, prevent ordinary citizens from accessing a range of tools and services, including certain communication tools and web hosting. Syrian citizens cannot purchase Skype credits, for example, to call family members abroad. They cannot legally access Google Earth, a tool that Tunisian activists have claimed to be instrumental in their activism. Furthermore, they are prevented from participating in programs that could encourage innovation within the country, such as Google's Summer of Code. The onus is placed on companies to apply for export licences, and as such, many choose to avoid the process, instead often enacting overbroad rules to guide internal decisions, for fear of violating the rules and being slapped with heavy fines. Nevertheless, the fault lies primarily with the administration of these export regimes which - when applied to online technology - are short-sighted and do more harm to citizens of a country than to its regime. Though Syrian activists and bloggers have time and again raised their voices to protest the unjust application of export control laws on communications technology, they've been met with little success; however, recent developments involving the export of surveillance equipment by American (as well as Canadian and European) companies to the Syrian regime show the inconsistencies in enforcement of export rules, as well as their utter ineffectiveness. A regime unaffected While Syrian citizens are prevented from accessing basic tools, the Syrian regime has had little difficulty in circumventing export controls to gain access to powerful American-built tools to build up their surveillance of citizens. Last month, California company Blue Coat acknowledged that 13 of its appliances ended up in Syria where they are actively being used. While the Department of Commerce announced Friday that it was investigating whether Blue Coat had prior knowledge of the export, the company is just one of a handful that have made news lately for sales to Syria. Italian company Area SpA - which partnered directly with the Syrian regime to build a system that would enable the regime to monitor Internet traffic - reportedly bought products from US companies Hewlett-Packard and NetApp from Italian resellers for use in the system. One Bloomberg report suggests NetApp employees may have been aware of the company's role in Syria. If the companies were unaware of the sale of their products to Syria, they may not be liable under export regulations. Perhaps they shouldn't be when their products are sold through resellers, but the fact of the sale alone is enough to suggest that export regulations as they currently exist are ineffective at best, and directly contribute to power inequities at worst. Impossible to enforce In addition to the numerous examples of physical exports, the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab released a report this past week detailing evidence that Syrian television station Addounia TV, as well as Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV, have websites hosted on US and Canadian servers. Both television stations are sanctioned by both Canada and the US, which suggests that the webhosts providing services may also be in violation of export regulations. Given the frequency with which products are sold through foreign resellers, export rules applied to physical products may simply prove impossible to enforce. Similarly, though Syrians reach a blockpage when trying to download restricted tools like Google Chrome, with the use of proxies, even that restriction is easy to circumvent. Ultimately, the ruthless Syrian regime has the power and connections to purchase whatever tools it desires in spite of export regulations while ordinary citizens, constrained by the regime's crackdown, as well as low internet penetration, slowed bandwidth and broader sanctions, are inhibited by the same. While Western companies must be held to a higher standard in respect to human rights, the export regulations as they currently exist only deepen the existing power divide in Syria, while doing little to stop the sale of technologies that can be used for human rights violations to countries such as Bahrain. The responsibility falls on corporations to know their customers, and on governments to ensure that their own regulations contribute to - rather than weaken - human rights. Jillian C. York is director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. She writes a regular column for Al Jazeera focusing on free expression and Internet freedom. She also writes for and is on the Board of Directors of Global Voices Online. Follow her on Twitter: @jilliancyork The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.When Major League Soccer officially implements Video Review on Aug. 5, it’ll mark the beginning of a new era in MLS history – and it’ll shut the door on a three-plus year process that brought the groundbreaking system to the league. Video Review hasn't officially been written into the Laws of the Game just yet – The International Football Association Board (IFAB), the world body which oversees the rules of the sport, is expected to make a final decision in 2018 or 2019 – but as one of the few leagues around the world that will formally integrate it during live competition this year, MLS is eager to see it in action. Since the start of 2014, MLS officials have been collecting data and working diligently behind the scenes to test the feasibility of bringing a replay system to the league. It was a move partially prompted by the league’s owners, who had long desired some form of replay in live matches. Three teams – Philadelphia Union, Real Salt Lake and Vancouver Whitecaps – volunteered their stadiums as Video Review laboratories for the 2014 and 2015 campaigns. To hear MLS Vice President of Competition Jeff Agoos tell it, the early experiments were pretty rudimentary. The Union, RSL and Whitecaps set up an official, usually a referee assessor, in a booth at all of their home matches. The official would have the match broadcast piped into the booth on a couple of monitors, and would record both the length of time between decisions for key plays (goals, red cards, penalties, etc.) and restarts and how many replays of the play in question were shown in that time period, as well as other information. “Essentially, we were doing as much work as we could to understand all of the issues and problems and trying to get a sense of whether there is enough time to get match-changing information to a referee without affecting the flow of the match,” said Agoos. By the end of the 2015 season, after 102 regular season contests in the three test cities, MLS was comfortable enough with the research gathered to move forward. They found that on average it took about 60 seconds for a match to restart following a red card, and 90 for it to resume after a goal. Plenty of time, according to Agoos, for a Video Assistant Referee to review those calls using replay and relay their recommendation to the head referee. Video Review is born While they were collecting data, the league and the Professional Referee Organization (PRO), the body which oversees professional referees in the USA and Canada, were regularly meeting with IFAB and developing a recommendation for what the board’s Video Review protocol should look like. A group of league officials and club leadership finalized the recommended guidelines in late 2015. According to Agoos and Portland Timbers owner Merritt Paulson, who helped design the protocol as a member of the MLS Product Committee, the league’s recommendation actually featured a slightly smaller set of reviewable plays than the four that IFAB settled on: Goals, penalties, red cards and mistaken identity. While IFAB deliberated on what to include in their final protocol, MLS attempted to move forward with testing. The league and ownership were ready to go, and wanted to try their system with academy team matches during the 2016 Generation adidas Cup. The only problem? IFAB wasn’t yet ready to roll anything out. And it’s IFAB, not MLS, which controls the Laws of the Game. The board, composed of the English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish FAs and FIFA, didn’t release their protocol until March 2016, and asked MLS to hold off on testing replay in competition until after the guidelines went public. While the league couldn’t test anything out at the 2016 Generation adidas Cup (for youth academies), their interest in Video Review was duly noted. “We were very involved and [IFAB] were certainly aware of the fact that our hand was up to be one of the first implementers,” said Paulson. “They embraced that.” IFAB rewarded MLS’s interest a couple of months after they released their protocol, selecting the league in June 2016 as one of six around the world that got the nod to test Video Review over the subsequent “two to three years.” At that point, MLS and USL had already entered into discussions about the lower-division league potentially testing Video Review later that summer. IFAB approved that plan in early August 2016, with New York Red Bulls II and Orlando City B becoming the first teams in the world to play a match featuring Video Review on Aug. 12, 2016 (see below). After testing the system in several more USL matches at Red Bull Arena last fall and hosting a number of Video Assistant Referee workshops for officials from around the world in the US, MLS Commissioner Don Garber announced in December 2016 that the league would seek to begin offline VAR tests at the start of the 2017 season and aim to fully implement Video Review after the 2017 All-Star Game. It was welcome news for Paulson and his fellow owners, who had been hoping for a replay system years before MLS began their Video Review research in 2014. “I think it speaks to the fact that we’re willing to be an innovator,” Paulson said. “We’re a younger league in terms of [world soccer]. We’re 20 years old, we’re not a baby, but relative to other leagues around the world we’re very young. And I think we’ve got more of an entrepreneurial mindset because of that and more of an innovation mindset. We want this [league] to be the best it can be, on and off the pitch. Part of getting it right on the pitch is not just improving the quality of play, but giving officials all the help they can possibly get to get all the big calls right.” MLS is ready The massive task of retrofitting all 22 MLS stadiums with the infrastructure for Video Review technology and conducting the necessary offline tests kicked off shortly after the 2017 New Year. Paulson and the Timbers implemented Video Review at their annual preseason tournament at Providence Park in February and other tests occurred at preseason matches in Arizona, Florida and South Carolina. There were, inevitably, some early hiccups. The Timbers owner recalled one preseason match in which the referee gave Portland midfielder Diego Chara a red card for violent conduct after a lengthy Video Review, which ultimately resulted in the correct outcome. But no PA announcement followed the ejection, creating some serious confusion for the 10,000 fans at Providence Park (watch video below beginning at 1:00 mark). The league is confident those in-stadium issues will be ironed out come Aug. 5. Referees might take a little more time to adjust to the new initiative, but they’ve been thoroughly trained this year. Their onboarding is being led by longtime English Premier League and international referee Howard Webb, who was hired by PRO in February to manage Video Review operations. Under his watch, every PRO official has refereed at least one match featuring Video Review – some online, others offline – in regular season, preseason, USL or Generation adidas Cup play. With the amount of practice they’ve gotten, he’s confident that the official rollout will go smoothly. “We’re seeing those guys become much more adept,” Webb said. “We’ve seen the benefits of not rushing this process. In fact, IFAB, that’s what they wanted, they stipulated that they wanted between three and six months of training for countries who are coming on board with this. They don’t want it to be July and it’s live the following weekend. You have to go through this process, and we have done that. I think we’ll be as prepared as any country in the world when we do go live.” Agoos and Paulson share Webb’s confidence, though both said they expected some speed bumps in the early days of the new system. There might be a few seconds or minutes added to certain matches to start, but the league, teams and referees see those as minor inconveniences compared to the frustration of having a match determined by an incorrect call. “If you’re a fan of a team, there’s nothing worse than losing a game because of a clear and obvious officiating mistake – it’s a cruel enough sport anyway,” Paulson said. “We’re not going to eliminate all of those, but we’re certainly going to give the officials some extra help in getting the biggest calls right. How can that be a bad thing?” Video Review TimelineWhen the Unicorns of Love first qualified for the EU LCS back in Spring 2015, it was an unexpected outcome. The team had gone a combined 0-4 in two regular season Challenger splits, finishing in third place in the Challenger playoffs. But a surprise run through the promotion tournament culminated in a 3-2 victory over Millenium to secure qualification. What happened next surprised everyone. UOL went 9-9 in its first EU LCS split, making the playoffs and ride another miracle run to the final, which they dropped 3-2 to Fnatic. UOL has made the playoffs in every split since, but it took until last split to make it back to the final — this time a 3-1 loss to G2. Only two players remain from that first team -- Vizicsacsi and Hylissang, who remain the hearts of this team on opposite sides of the map. They are bolstered by a trio of talented prospects -- 20-year-old mid laner Exileh, who came into his own last split, bot laner Samux, who was one of the top performers in EU, and 17-year-old jungler Xerxe, who won EU’s Rookie of the Split award. Unicorns of Love Spring 2017: 11-2, EU LCS runners-up Additions: None Departures: None Coach: Fabian “Sheepy” Mallant Lineup: Top: Kiss “Vizicsacsi” Tamás Jungle: Andrei “Xerxe” Dragomir Mid: Fabian “Exileh” Schubert Bot: Samuel “Samux” Fernández Fort Support: Zdravets “Hylissang” Iliev Galabov Subs: Audrey Coënt (support), Aleksandar “Uby” Iliev Galabov (support) Xerxe wasn’t the only Unicorn to bring home a big trophy last split — Vizicsacsi won the region’s MVP award. That’s the big advantage UOL has over G2 in the fight to be EU’s top team. Vizicsacsi has been considerably ahead of Expect in level of play over the past year, and when you put together the entirety of the season, there’s a reasonable argument to be made that Xerxe and Exileh performed better than their G2 counterparts as well. Where UOL gets into trouble against G2 is the same as most teams: the bottom lane. G2 still has the best bottom lane in the west, and as good as Samux and Hylissang were last split, it’s just hard to compete with Zven and Mithy. Luckily for UOL, G2 isn’t a team they really have to worry too much about until finals, as they are once again in opposite groups. Group B is looking a bit trickier this split, however: H2K’s roster has now spent another split together, Vitality and Splyce have made changes they have reason to feel good about, and the Mysterious Monkeys will almost certainly be more competitive than Origen. For UOL, there’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to repeat as Group B champions. But when G2 stands waiting in the playoffs, will they have enough to bring home their first title?LONDON (Reuters) - Despite a stagnating economy, an austerity drive, and a squeeze on living standards, more of the British public trust Prime Minister David Cameron to make the right economic decisions than his opposition rivals, a poll showed on Tuesday. Prime Minister David Cameron delivers a speech on immigration at the University Campus Suffolk, in Ipswich March 25, 2013. REUTERS/Chris Radburn/POOL Public perceptions about the economy and how it is being managed are closely tied to Cameron’s political fortunes as the Conservative party is banking on a slow but steady economic revival to help it win the next election in 2015. However Chancellor George Osborne said earlier this month that the economy would grow by just 0.6 percent this year, half the rate previously expected, and that it was taking “longer than anyone hoped” for it to recover. Support for Cameron and Osborne to make the right decisions on the economy is low, at 29 percent, the poll by ComRes for The Independent newspaper found. But it is just 1 percent lower than a month earlier, before Osborne delivered a grim annual budget statement. The proportion of people who did not trust them fell, by 4 percent, to 58 per cent. The Labour party - which has long enjoyed an overall lead of about 10 percent in polls - does not appear to be winning the economic argument, the new survey suggested. The party, which wants a slower pace of cuts, was in power at the time of the 2008 financial crisis and presided over a sharp increase in the national debt. The poll found only 22 percent of voters trusted Ed Miliband, its leader, and Ed Balls, shadow chancellor, to make the right decisions on the economy, 2 percent lower than two previous ComRes polls in January and October last year. With the economy in such a poor state two-and-a-half years after a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition took power, few signs of growth, and an almost daily slew of negative headlines about living standards, analysts believe Labour should be starting to win back voter trust. The poll was based on phone interviews with 1,003 adults and was conducted between March 22 and 24.When I graduated from Angelo State University many decades ago, I had a chance to go Italy with many of my fellow art majors. Having excelled in the study of the Italian Renaissance, such a trip greatly appealed to me. Alas, I was poor. At night I worked at a bakery while going to school full time. I had rent and bills to pay and I didn’t have any savings for such a vacation. The head of the fine art department, Dr. Otis Lumpkin, offered me some financial aid. He was a great professor, but I had a new job awaiting me at the local newspaper. It was a chance to work at a desk while doing something I enjoyed — graphic arts — and I didn’t want to put that off. I figured I could always go to Europe later on my own time and dime. It never happened for various reasons. Now I’m not sure I would like what I see if I do finally make the trip. Will Europe be recognizable if Islam continues to gain power there? “No go” zones continue to expand while those who complain are arrested for “hate speech.” The complainers are labeled ‘Islamophobic,’ ‘xenophobic’ or ‘populists.’ Oh no! Populism and nationalism are supposed to be terrible things according to the left. We’re supposed to love everyone and have open borders. We’re all the same, right? Wrong. People and cultures are different. Too much diversity inevitably leads to conflict. Ostensibly, the “immigrants” were brought into Europe to boost the economy and do the work that the citizens wouldn’t do. (Sound familiar?). Instead, they were put on the dole. They got free stuff while outbreeding the locals. They brought their aggressive religion with them. Far too many refuse to assimilate. Why should they? Islam tells them that they are superior. Today, Mohammed is one of the top names for newborn boys. Sharia courts are springing up unopposed. Western civilization is treated with disdain. Women are raped and the police look the other way due to political correctness. Why are we seeing this self-immolation by the west? Because lefty loons and George Soros want it. They want to tear down western civilization to easily usher in globalism to Europe and America. We are beginning to see some push back. The Brexit vote and the election of Trump signaled that citizens have had enough, but there is much more to be done. Soros needs to be arrested. Merkel needs to be thrown out of office. Mass immigration needs to end. I want the countries in Europe to keep their identities, languages and cultures. I don’t want to visit Turkey in Germany, Somalia in Italy or Syria in France. If I wanted to go to Saudi Arabia, I would. I don’t want to see their oppression when I go to Europe. If we want to help the populace of the third world, fine. But keep them in their own countries while doing it. We don’t need to import them and their problems to the west.Every so often, you meet somebody who exudes gratitude from every pore. And as Mariska Hargitay walks out of her home to greet me in a white bathrobe, with wet hair, a wide smile, and an enviable natural beauty, I immediately feel like I am in the presence of a girlfriend. Everything about Mariska makes you feel comfortable, interesting, appreciated, and, well, grateful to be here. Mariska simply radiates infectious gratitude. She has just jumped out of the pool, she explains, and being in the water with her 3-year-old son is her favorite place to be. She and her husband of five years, actor Peter Hermann, are tucking their family into their new house on New York's Long Island, busy renovating the details and making it feel like theirs, inside and out. Soothing ocean and beach hues fill the house. There are shells and books and family photos, including some of Mariska's famous actress mother, Jayne Mansfield, and her father, Mickey Hargitay, a former Mr. Universe. Framed in the powder room is evidence of Mariska's great genetics: her mother's bikini and a magazine cover of her famously fit father. After an unusually intense spring, Mariska is already feeling healed by this time off with family. She's finally recovered from a severe injury she sustained last fall on the Law & Order: SVU set, one that sent her on a scary, months-long roller-coaster ride. Last October, while shooting an episode, doing her own stunts as usual, Mariska jumped and landed in such a way that a microscopic bleed began in her lung tissue. In January of this year, she was admitted to the hospital. Her lung had collapsed, and it would eventually require multiple surgeries to repair. The experience shook her to the core and cracked open a fissure into old wounds. The origin of those wounds for Mariska was the death of her 34-year-old mother in a car accident. Mariska, only 3 at the time, was asleep in the backseat. She doesn't remember the accident, but trauma from that experience has forged her current outlook on life. "Losing my mother at such an early age is the scar of my soul," she tells me. "But I feel like it ultimately made me into the person I am today. I understand the journey of life. I had to go through what I did to be here." The birth of her son, August, in 2006 brought her to a new level of appreciation of her journey. She now lives in what she describes as "an interesting reality between loss and gratitude." But she's quick to note that it's the gratitude side of the equation that is winning these days. "Becoming a parent erased many of my negative childhood feelings and filled them in with something new," she explains. Her husband has been a big part of that healing too. "I wish I'd met him 10 years ago," she confides, as if all the years to come won't be enough time to contain their plans. "But everything in my life prepared me for meeting Peter. I am so grateful." Looking at Mariska now, 45 and at peace in her place of calm, you see only a woman comfortable in her own skin. "I would spend a year here if I could, reflecting, being with my son and husband," she says. "This is the spot I'd retire to." But far from retiring, Mariska is hitting her stride, taking center stage in the life she has created. Her role as Detective Olivia Benson on SVU led her to create the Joyful Heart Foundation, which helps victims of sexual abuse, domestic violence, and child abuse reclaim their lives. Both projects — along with her family — sustain her on a deep level. And where she is today is a place she could not have envisioned reaching early in her career, when, she laughingly recounts, she was fired as Dulcea, friend of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, on a movie set in Australia. "I was lucky enough to have a father who said, 'Don't quit.' So I just kept going." It's this buoyancy, this ability not to give up, that has allowed Mariska to take tragedy and loss and turn the telescope around to feel like, in her own words, "the luckiest person in the world." See Mariska's Most Treasured Family Photos Do you remember exactly how your injury last fall happened? On October 16, I was doing a stunt chasing a bad guy. I'd always insisted on doing the stunts my own way, although I don't feel so strongly about that anymore. I jumped and landed on pads, but on the second take something happened — I just landed wrong. I got up and felt that something inside was not quite right. At first I thought I had the wind knocked out of me. I was angry with myself. Later, I thought maybe I'd pulled a muscle, but I didn't focus on the injury and kept expecting it to get better. What happened next? I didn't know for three months that something was really wrong. At first I seemed to get better. But then two weeks later I had chest pains and shortness of breath. My grandfather died of a heart attack at 34, and my mom died at the same age. At first I worried it was a heart attack. Then someone pointed out that my heart was on the other side! On New Year's Day, we were walking on the beach out here near the house, and I felt this sharp pain, sort of like someone had stabbed me. I went down on one knee and just couldn't catch my breath. They took an X-ray and found that my right lung was 50 percent collapsed. I began to panic. I was so scared. I had a procedure hoping to stave off more serious surgery, but it didn't work, and I ended up in surgery about two weeks later. After I got the clearance to go back to work, everything was normal. They told me the injured lung was now stronger than the healthy one and that there was a greater chance of the healthy lung collapsing than the right one going down again. Then, on March 5, it happened again. I was one out of 1,000, statistically. What went through your mind then? I just thought, Please make me better, please make me better. I got really scared that maybe something else was wrong. All those old fears about my mom and my grandfather [both of whom died relatively young] came shooting up. Having a child changes everything. All of a sudden you have so much to lose, so much to live for. Sometimes things in life happen that allow us to understand our priorities very clearly. Ultimately you can see those as gifts. How did it feel to be that one in 1,000? Did you wonder, Why me? I honestly didn't feel that way. I get to be the one in 1,000 in so many positive ways, it balances out. I have so many blessings, and I've learned from all of my experiences and my losses. I think you learn to feel grateful when you are exposed at such a young age to the fact that bad things can happen. I look at all the things life has allowed me to do and I feel like the luckiest person in the world. See Mariska's Most Treasured Family Photos Antoine Verglas What is the most useful lesson the loss of your mother taught you? Surviving and thriving in the wake of my mother's loss, I learned to believe in God. He has a plan, if you pay attention to the signs. I am inspired by the absolute proof of miracles. After all of your successes, do you ever find yourself fearing failure? All the time. It's why being a mother is so loaded. A friend said to me recently, "You're a really great mother," and I said "What?" I feel like I've been preparing all my life, but I want to do all of it right. What has touched you most working with sexual violence and abuse survivors through your foundation? I am constantly moved by the incredible courage it takes to heal [from these kinds of abuses]. And it's even harder when there is shame attached to the trauma. All of our Joyful Heart programs [including art, talk, and human/dolphin therapy, in which survivors swim with wild dolphins] are about getting the soul to open up again. I have seen that light rekindled in so many survivors — those are simply miraculous moments, and they're what keep me going in this work. What, in your experience, is the most effective way to help people heal from their traumas? The way into trauma is largely, if not completely, nonintellectual. Survivors have said that one of
socialists and trade unionists the anti-fascist movement grew, supported also by Liberals and some anti-fascist Tories. However, those who interrupted fascist meetings found themselves dealing with unprecedented violence from Blackshirt thugs. The notorious Olympia meeting of 7 June 1934 came to symbolise Blackshirt thuggery. After the Daily Worker posted the location of the West London meeting, a number of anti-fascists attended, intending to disrupt the meeting. Hecklers were beaten by gangs of Blackshirts armed with knuckledusters and other weapons and thrown into the street. The BUF was roundly condemned by the mainstream and the violence of the meeting effectively ended Mosley’s pretence of respectability. Albert Booth, Communist Party organiser, describes the violence at Olympia Your browser does not support the audio element. Scapegoating With its reputation in tatters following Olympia and increasingly under the influence of Hitler, BUF leaders sought to exploit the reservoir of antisemitism in the East End in order to save the party. By 1936 the BUF was pouring most of its resources into holding meetings in the East End and distributing crude antisemitica. Mob orators such as Mick Clarke and Owen Burke sought to whip up violence on street corners night after night. As this approach gradually gained support in poor neighbouring areas such as Bethnal Green, Mosley announced he would celebrate the fourth birthday of the BUF by staging a provocative march through Stepney, the heart of the Jewish East End, on 4 October, 1936. Organising against Mosley Chapter 4. Initial organising The announcement that Mosley planned to march his uniformed Blackshirts through the East End of London on Sunday 4 October 1936 sent shockwaves through the Jewish community. But this community was no stranger to adversity. In response to the perceived inaction of Jewish authorities such as the Board of Deputies (BoD), Stepney locals took it upon themselves to organise against the BUF. Many were already organised in the newly formed National Union of Tailor and Garment Workers (NUTGW) and the Worker’s Circle. In July 1936 a conference was held by 86 different organisations in order to work out a practical plan for combating Mosley. From this conference the Jewish People’s Council against Fascism and antisemitism (JPC) was born, and was to lead opposition to the march. Banning the march In the run up to 4 October there were numerous incursions into Stepney. Feelings ran high as five East London mayors met with the Home Office on 1st October to warn of the likely consequences if the march proceeded. The following day the JPC delivered a 100,000 strong petition urging the Home Secretary to ban the march. However the Government refused to ban the march and it was left to local people to defend their community from the fascists. Bar the Roads to Fascism! As the Jewish and non-Jewish establishment called for people to stay off the streets, the JPC, the trade unions, the Independent Labour Party and the Labour League of Youth began to mobilise. On 3 October the Daily Worker printed a map of the proposed fascist march and called for Jew and Gentile alike to unite en masse in Leman Street, Cable Street, Gardiner’s Corner and St George’s Street to halt Mosley. The most vocally anti-fascist political party – the Communist Party – initially found itself caught in a dilemma, having already planned an anti-fascist “Aid Spain” rally in Trafalgar Square that day. However, under much pressure from East End members, the national CP overprinted their leaflets with the words “Alteration: Rally to Aldgate 2pm”. The Battle of Cable Street Chapter 5. The Fascists are coming As the Young Communist League began to occupy Victoria Park, where the fascist intended to hold a rally, the event that came to be known as “The Battle” kicked off with the Jewish Ex-Serviceman’s Association marching along Whitechapel Road, proudly displaying their medals, in order to advertise the counter-demonstration. They soon found their route blocked by mounted police and were ordered to disperse. Upon refusing they were beaten severely. This set the tone for the rest of the day. As the news spread, antifascists assembled at Gardiner’s Corner at Aldgate, blocking the gateway to the East End. Whichever route Mosley took, they had to pass through here to go down his planned route of Whitechapel Road or Commercial Road. Estimates of the eventual crowd vary between 100,000 and half a million. The crowd roared “They Shall Not Pass!” and “Down with Fascism!” Six thousand police, including London’s entire mounted police division, tried to clear the area. Four anti-fascist tram drivers intentionally abandoned their vehicles, forming barricades which were used by the crowd as they were attacked by police on horseback. Nevertheless the police struck out with extreme brutality. Cafés were turned into first aid units by the Communist Party to treat the wounded. While Mosley waited impatiently with a few thousand Blackshirt troops, the police decided that with Gardiner’s Corner in the hands of an unmovable anti-fascist crowd, they would clear an alternative route to the south through Cable Street. Barricades in Cable Street Cable Street had been ready since early morning. Three sets of barricades, one containing an overturned lorry, were erected across the narrow street using material from a builder’s yard and from local Jewish people’s homes and shops nearby. Remembering the support of the Jewish community in the dock strikes of 1912, Irish dockers stood in solidarity with Jews against the fascists, ripping up paving stones with pickaxe handles to add to the barricades. The street was strewn with broken glass and marbles as a defence against mounted police charges. Anti-fascists chanted slogans and gave clenched fist salutes from behind the barricades in defiance. As the police attempted to clear the barricades, locals rained down all manner of items. Albert Booth, Cable Street organiser, describing the events of the day Your browser does not support the audio element. Victory! For no route left for the fascists Sir Philip Game, the Commissioner of Police, told Mosley to march his troops west from Tower Hill and out of the area. Meanwhile anti-fascists marched to Victoria Park heralding a victory for the Jewish community, the people of the East End, and anti-fascists everywhere. They Did Not Pass Aftermath Chapter 6. For Anti-Fascists While 4 October 1936 was a great success for the anti-fascists, there was still a lot of work left to do. For a start legal aid had to be organised for some 79 anti-fascist men and women who were arrested that day, many of them severely beaten by police. In contrast just five fascists were arrested. Whilst the Jewish People’s Council arranged free legal support, the sentencing was punitive with heavy fines and custodial sentences including hard labour being meted out. Albert Booth, Cable Street organiser, details his arrest, beating and prison sentence Your browser does not support the audio element. Support for the BUF The adage that “there is no such thing as bad publicity” seemed to apply to the BUF. Mosley immediately sought to present his party as victims of Jewish-Communist violence and BUF membership temporarily increased in the weeks following their humiliation at Cable Street. Whilst the BUF greatly exaggerated this influx of support, reports from the Metropolitan Police estimate 2,000 new recruits joined soon after Cable Street. Mile End Pogrom One week after the Battle, while antifascists were holding a victory rally, the BUF retaliated in Stepney. Approximately 200 antisemitic youths ran down Mile End Road smashing Jewish shop windows, looting and burning cars. They attacked anyone thought to be Jewish and reportedly threw a hairdresser and a four year old girl through a plate glass window. The day came to be known as the “Mile End Pogrom” and remains one of the most notorious antisemitic events of 20th century Britain. Public Order Act The 4 October provocation led directly to Parliament debating the 1936 Public Order Act, which passed into law on 1 January 1937. The POA controlled public processions and banned the wearing of political uniforms in public. This undercut sections of Mosley’s support, as many poor, unemployed and ex-servicemen found Mosley’s quasi-military uniforms attractive. Under the provisions of the act an order prohibiting marches in East London was renewed every three months until the disbanding of the British Union of Fascists in 1940. Ubby Cowan discusses the impact of the Public Order Act Your browser does not support the audio element. Legacy of Cable Street Chapter 7. Stepney Tenants Defence League Cable Street helped set in motion a more sophisticated and ultimately more successful brand of anti-fascist politics. The surge in support for Mosley immediately after Cable Street helped convince many, including Communist Party organiser Phil Piratin, that to defeat the BUF they had to tackle the genuine socio-economic grievances exploited by Mosley within the East End rather than simply meet it with physical force. Working with a network of tenants committees before forming the Stepney Tenants Defence League (STDL), Piratin and colleagues tackled the high rents charged by slum landlords for substandard accommodation. The STDL orchestrated rent strikes aimed at bringing landlords to the negotiating table, winning vital concessions and rent reductions for beleaguered tenants. Although the STDL was organised by Communists – many of whom were Jewish – they also saved fascist tenants from eviction. The STDL soon extended its work into the heart of the “fascist” East End, particularly areas such as Duckett Street, Stepney. The BUF had done nothing for them. As a result BUF cards were torn up in disgust. By helping local people overcome their problems and helping them to understand that these were not caused by “Jews” or “immigrants” the STDL proved that it is unity, rather than division, which enables communities to overcome its social deprivation. The lessons are there to be relearned. Quinn Square Tenants Rent Strike Victory Failure of BUF After Cable Street Mussolini was so appalled with Mosley’s failure to gain “mastery of the streets” that he decided to end his financial subsidy, a vast sum of money that effectively underwrote the operating costs of the BUF. Mosley attempted to prove his worth to Il Duce at the March 1936 elections, and although the BUF polled a respectable 19% in some areas of Bethnal Green, not one single councillor was elected. Mussolini cancelled his subsidy and without it the BUF began to collapse as an organisation. The final nail in the coffin for the British Union of Fascists was WWII. Mosley’s links to Hitler saw the organisation under increasing state scrutiny and becoming deeply unpopular with the public. Mosley’s calls for an alliance with Hitler eventually led to his imprisonment in 1940, along with Britain’s other prominent fascists. The organisation was officially dissolved in 1940. ¡No Pasarán! Chapter 8. Ubby Cowan on the Spanish Civil War Your browser does not support the audio element. The International Brigade The struggle against fascism in the East End was set against the backdrop of the rise of international fascism. With Hitler and Mussolini already in power in Europe, fascist units of the Spanish army rebelled against the left-wing government in July 1936. On the night of the fascist uprising the Communist deputy Dolores Ibarruri – La Pasionaria – declared on national radio that the people should fight against the fascist takeover. She ended with the words “It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees! No Pasarán!” This call was heard all over the world and over 2,000 men and women from Britain went to Spain to fight on the Republican side. A quarter gave their lives. The cause was keenly felt in the East End and many Jews went to fight, forming roughly ten percent of the Britons in what was to become the International Brigades. The first Britons to arrive in Spain were two Jewish tailors from Stepney, Nat Cohen and Sam Masters, who together organised the Tom Mann Centuria in honour of a founding father of the trade union movement. Cohen was wounded and returned home in April 1937. Masters, who joined the British Battalion, was killed at Brunete in July 1937. Aid Spain in the East End For every person who went to fight in Spain there were many more who contributed to the Republican cause through the numerous “Aid Spain” committees that sprang up across Britain. These committees helped bring much needed humanitarian relief to the country. The committees, some independent, some attached to the labour or Communist Parities, raised money to equip the Republicans with ambulances, medical supplies and other necessities. Enormous amounts of money were raised, including in the poverty stricken East End. This was a campaign which united Jews, Communists, Labourites, Quakers, Liberals, Catholics and those of no political or religious attachment. However for East End Jews already experiencing a taste of fascism at home, the Aid Spain campaign was particularly intense. The connection between the struggle at home and abroad is reflected in the adoption of a Spanish slogan – They Shall Not Pass, ¡No Pasarán! – by those struggling against Mosley. Antifascism since Cable Street Chapter 9. After the War After WWII, Mosley and his supporters attempted to return to business as usual under the name “The Union Movement”. However it faced considerable opposition from a nation exhausted by war and many of its meetings were shut down by determined anti-fascist organisations. The most well known of these organisations was the 43 Group, mainly comprised of Jewish ex-servicemen and women. The group, many of whom were directly involved in Cable Street, drew inspiration from 4 October 1936 to strengthen their resolve against fascism. The actions of the 43 Group ensured the attempted fascist revival was short-lived. By the 1950s Mosley was exhausted and was quiet for most of the decade. Len Sherman on the 43 Group Your browser does not support the audio element. The Anti-Fascist and Anti-Racist Alliance By the late 1950s the old forces of race hate began targeting recent immigrants from the Caribbean. Racist attacks, whipped up by the White Defence League and Mosley’s Union Movement, culminated in the Notting Hill race riots in August 1958. In response alliances were forged between the new and old anti-fascists in order to defend the local community. The most well-known of these was the 62 Group, a coalition of left, Jewish and independent antifascists, including members of the 43 Group and informed by Cable Street organisers. It was during this period that the anti-fascist organisation Searchlight emerged, and by the mid 1970s it was producing a monthly magazine. New Threats The National Front (NF), gaining support in the 1970s, posed the most significant fascist threat since the BUF. The fascists again tried to exploit antipathy in the East End, this time directed against more recent immigrant communities, primarily Bangladeshi and Bengalis. Rock Against Racism was formed in response in 1976, attracting 30,000 people to its first major concert. This was followed up by a huge series of local and national events. In 1977 Lewisham’s community, black and white together, formed the Anti-Nazi League, which was to becpme a major political force, running a big campaign to expose the NF in the run up to the 1979 general election. Antifascist committees continued to exist throughout the 1980s, and in 1985 much of the anti-fascist movement became united by the formation of a national group, Anti-Fascist Action (AFA), which was especially successful in street confrontations. New approaches Facing tough opposition on the street, fascism turned to the ballot box, and in 1993 a BNP candidate was elected on the Isle of Dogs in London’s East End. Whilst his seat was held only for a short time, it was a foretaste of what was to come in the following decade. As the forces of fascism evolved, so too did antifascist organisations. Community Security Trust (CST) was formed in 1994 by former members of the 43 and 62 group, many of whom were present at Cable Street. Today they work with the police to provide protection and representation for British Jews on issues of racism and extremism. HOPE not hate HOPE not hate was launched in 2004 to combat an unprecedented electoral fascist threat in the form of the British National Party (BNP). As the BNP gained councillors in many part of Britain, HNH worked with local activists in election after election, producing millions of pieces of literature to address the local issues that the BNP sought to exploit. The BNP, who have many links to Mosley and the BUF, reached their electoral peak in June 2009 when they gained two MEPs and several councillors. However it was downhill from there. In 2010 they lost councillor after councillor, including all 12 in Barking and Dagenham, where HNH had been campaigning intensively. 80 years on from Cable Street, it remains the modus operandi of right wing groups to target areas of tension and scapegoat vulnerable communities. Today HOPE not hate draws from the anti-fascist lineage of Cable Street and seeks to unite all those opposed to the politics of hate.A Longitudinal Study of Domestic Canine Behavior and the Ontogeny of Canine Social Systems Semyonova, A, 2003, The social organization of the domestic dog; a longitudinal study of domestic canine behavior and the ontogeny of domestic canine social systems, The Carriage House Foundation, The Hague, www.nonlineardogs.com, version 2006. Abstract The theory that a hierarchy based on dominance relationships is the organizing principle in social groups of the sort canis lupus is a human projection that needs replacing. Furthermore, the model has unjustifiably been transferred from its original place in the discussion of the behavior of wolves to the discussion of the behavior of domestic dogs (canis familiaris). This paper presents a new, more adequate model of how familiaris organizes itself when in groups. This paper is based on a longitudinal study of a permanent group of five randomly acquired dogs living in their natural habitat, as they interact with each other within the group, with newcomers of various species who joined the group, and with fleetingly met individuals of various species in their outside environment. This study shows that the existence of the phenomenon “dominance” is questionable, but that in any case “dominance” does not operate as a principle in the social organization of domestic dogs. Dominance hierarchies do not exist and are in fact impossible to construct without entering the realm of human projection and fantasy. The hypotheses were tested by repeatedly starting systems at chaos and observing whether the model predicted the evolution of each new system. The study shows that domestic canine social groups must be viewed as complex autopoietic systems, whose primary systemic behavior is to gravitate as quickly as possible to a stable division of the fitness landscape so that each animal present is sitting on a fitness hill unchallenged by other group members. Aggression is not used in the division of the fitness landscape. It is not possible for an observer to measure the height of respective hills. There is no hierarchy between or among the animals. The organization of the system is based on binary relationships, which are converted by the agents as quickly as possible from competitive to complementary or cooperative binaries, through the creation of domains of consensus. The production processes by which this is done are twofold. The first is an elegant and clear, but learned, system of communicative gestures which enables the animals to orient themselves adequately to each other and emit appropriate responses in order to maintain or restore the stability of their fitness hills and the larger social landscape. The second is learning. It is the learning history of each animal, which determines how adequately the animal can operate within the system and what the components of its individual fitness hill will be, and which, in the end, is more crucial to the animal’s survival than even presumed genetic factors or some human-constructed “dominance” position. Introduction The theory of a linear hierarchy based on dominance relations, originally developed from observations of ants, was one of the first models used in ethology to describe or account for the behavior and the social structure of wolves and the groups they live in (Mech 1995, 2000; Sax 1997). The dominance hierarchy model was adopted by others to explain the behavior of canis familiaris, and is still broadly in use today among both scientists and laymen who deal with domestic canine behavior. This model as applied to wolves was from the beginning, based on dubious evidence (Mech 2000). Furthermore, it has been shown that throughout history humans have modeled the animal kingdom in ways analogous to the societies humans themselves were living in (Dahles 1993; Darnton 1985; Evans 1994), and that perceptions of scientists are influenced by their belief systems and the need to protect various kinds of investment (Kuhn 1962; Pernick 1985; Phillips 1993; Rollin 1989). The dominance hierarchy model was developed in a period in which many human societies were struggling with authoritarian forms of government and the culture and ideologies that form of government propagated (Deichmann 1996; Sax 1997). Its spread continued in a post-war world in which a competitive market economy and its ideologies, based on a selective and flawed interpretation of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, shaped a new generation of humans’ perceptions of natural reality. A final factor is that the model was developed in a period in which there were very few women involved in scientific research. This means that a limited group of existential repertoires and paradigms was used as background in the search for explanations of observed animal behavior. For example, it is now widely known that human males and females differ from a very early age, with males displaying largely competitive behavior in groups even before they develop verbal skills, while females tend at the same age to show cooperative and appeasing strategies in dealing with group membership. This raises the question of whether observations were not biased in advance toward perceiving mostly the competitive elements of any observed social system. It is also a widely investigated psychological fact that the first thing human males do when two or more of them have to share a physical space is investigate and order their relative power relations within the (fleeting) group. The conclusion that dogs are equally preoccupied with establishing “dominance” in their social interactions is most likely a failure of imagination. Unable to conceive of any other way of organizing a group, scientists seem to have projected their own existential paradigm onto the animals they were observing. Secondly, most of the legal and illegal violence in human societies is committed by males. This raises the question of a third observer bias, namely the possible tendency to give more weight than is really justified to seemingly violent encounters between observed animals, and thus the model’s focus on what it calls aggression. Finally, it has also been shown that women make the scientific effort in a different way from men, less career oriented, more interested in fundamentally sound and thorough research (Kollantaj 1982; Holton 1998; Sonnert 1998a, b). This, combined with the proven tendency of humans, including scientists, to impose their own existential paradigms in modeling the world around them, suggests that the model contains, besides a cultural bias, a gender bias in its perceptions and models of the behavior of other species as well as the methods by which models are developed. The use of statistical analysis to prove the existence of and unravel dominance hierarchies does not provide a solution to any of the above mentioned biases. These analyses begin based on definitions derived from the dominance hierarchy model, counting only behaviors that already fit the model, and are therefore unable to do anything but recirculate and affirm the model on which they are based. A reanalysis of data often shows no hierarchy, or a different hierarchy emerging when group members are isolated and then reassembled in the same group; shifting patterns over time remain unpredictable (Dickey 2002; Dickey et al 2002a; Mesterton-Gibbons 1999). Patterns found also shift when delineations of behavior to be counted are changed (e.g. resource holding rather than “wins” in exclusively aggressive agonistic conflicts). The definitions themselves have been sloppy. What is a “win”? What is a resource? How are resources designated as such, and by whom? This point has been missed, and this hiatus seems to have led to a search for other, presumably better, statistical approaches. However, the measure of a “better” statistical approach again derives from the model itself, since a “good” technique is one that turns out to predict dominance relations as perceived and defined by researchers (e.g., Dickey, et al 2002b). Where no stable hierarchy is found, the statistical method and not the model itself is presumed to have failed. In addition to this closed loop problem, superstition seems to play a role in the use of statistical analysis. Experimenters use statistics to assert that results obtained and conclusions drawn from observing a group of ten to forty animals have the same validity as a wide population study would. Even where the groups observed are larger, the animals are treated as static beings living in some permanent observable state. The statistical approach seems intended to sidestep instead of facing the complex problem of the individual learning histories of the organisms studied in order to draw broad conclusions from small group studies. However, the ability to learn is such a critical part of the manifestation of life in vertebrates that any study which tries to exclude the effects of this ability invalidates itself a priori as relevant to understanding the life of these organisms. A second superstition is that pulling data through a statistical program will, all by itself, solve the problem that the observer is inevitably interpreting what s/he sees (see below: The super-observer). But it was, in the first place, not correct to apply a model developed watching wolves to the behavior of domestic dogs. Though it has become clear that domestic dogs share a common ancestor with the wolf, the genetic similarity is a weak basis for assuming that models derived from the studies of wolves are applicable to the behavior of domestic dogs or adequate to understand, explain or predict the behavior of the latter. It is clear that wolves and domestic dogs have occupied strongly differing natural habitats at least since the human agricultural revolution and probably long before that. Therefore, factors relevant to the survival of both individuals and the species themselves will strongly differ. In light of this, it seems reasonable to propose that the behavior of wolves and domestic dogs may differ as much as the behavior of chimpanzees and humans do. Furthermore, the relationship between genotype and phenotype is not well understood, let alone the role the genotype plays in determining discrete behaviors of an organism during the course of its life. Finally, selection operates on phenotypes, not on genotypes. Thus, we must at least for the moment assume that the observation of phenotypes and their behavioral ontology in the course of their lives in the particular environment they inhabit is critical in understanding any species. The dominance hierarchy model and many conclusions about wolf behavior have nevertheless been transferred to domestic dogs. At the same time, domestic dogs, like wolves, have rarely been studied in their natural habitat. In fact, the domestic dog’s natural habitat is near or among humans and all the species humans live with, yet most studies take place in laboratories or in animal shelters, and none encompass the entire life-span of multiple animals in their natural habitat. The transfer of the dominance hierarchy model as it has been derived from observations of wolves to domestic dogs, and attempts to preserve the model in the face of all contradictory evidence, have led to the model becoming an inelegant chaos in its new application, one full of contorted appendages and internal contradictions. To name a few: Dogs are, like other domestic animals, described as neotenic. The fact that wolf pups do not organize themselves around a leader is then difficult to reconcile with the assertion that domestic dogs do. It has, for example, been shown that domestic dogs exhibit different play behavior when interacting with humans as opposed to conspecifics (Rooney 2000), yet the assumption is still made throughout the literature that a domestic dog sees its human owner as some sort of dog which it will try to “dominate”. This ignores the fact that domestic dogs are able to organize their social groups to include other species despite vast differences between the species involved, and does not address the question of how they do that. The fact that most social conflict does not involve the presumably dominant animal, and that in fact a presumably dominant domestic dog often will defer to a presumably subordinate domestic dog in a conflict, has led to the hypothesis that “dominance” (also referred to as a “high rank” in the “dominance hierarchy”) brings some sort of zen tolerance with it. This ignores the dominance hierarchy model’s own designation of the “dominant” animal as, by definition, the animal that can most use aggression with impunity and/or the animal that “wins” the most aggressive encounters. In an effort to solve this problem without abandoning the model, some researchers have shifted the definition of dominance to mean the animal most successful in resource holding. What is meant by “success” has never been satisfactorily defined, partly because what is meant by “resources” has been too narrowly limited and too observer dependent. Wolves spend most of their lives in stable family groups which normally do not incorporate outsiders (Mech 1995, 2000). Domestic dogs form loose, temporary groups (Beck 1973, 1975; Rubin 1982; Scott 1973) and/or interact fleetingly with each other during outings with a human caretaker. It seems ridiculous to talk about a linear dominance hierarchy in such a group of dogs, the composition of which may change from minute to minute as the dogs interact on a city field, since rank, which is a statistical construct, can only have meaning within in a group that stays together long enough for a statistical pattern to emerge. This construct has been reified. It assumed that when two dogs meet and execute the ritual greeting and “bluffing” ceremony, they are establishing “rank” with respect to one another. It is furthermore assumed that the animals themselves have some sort of consciousness of their respective ranks as such (Askew 1996; Overall 1997, 2002; Voith 1982; Voith & Borchelt 1982; Borchelt & Voith 1996; Fisher 1998, 1991; Neville 1993; Trumler 1972; Lorenz 1995), despite the fact that there is still much dispute regarding the possibility of cognitive content in animal consciousness. This assumption is probably another attempt to salvage the model, which, as it is applied to domestic dogs, can only be maintained if various assumptions are made about consciousness in the species and the contents of that consciousness. The treatment of domestic dogs with presumably dominant aggression problems is always based on the principles of respondent and operant conditioning (Askew 1996; Overall 1997, 2002; Voith 1982; Voith & Borchelt 1982; Borchelt & Voith 1996) and often includes the use of anxiolytic medication (Overall 1997, 2002; Borchelt & Voith 1996). Yet the causes of this aggression are still sought in presumably instinctive behavior as dictated by the dominance hierarchy model and the owner’s failure to establish “dominance” over the dog (Askew 1996; Overall 1997, 2002; Voith 1982; Voith & Borchelt 1982; Borchelt & Voith 1996). The contradiction arises that high status is presumed to create the self-assurance and tolerant calm needed to explain the lack of aggression in a “high ranking” animal, yet a dog whose aggressive behavior requires the use anxiolytics is also diagnosed as “dominant aggressive”, i.e., that the animal perceives its “rank” as high with respect to humans. The dominance hierarchy model violates the rules of parsimony. No broad, comparative study has been done, for example, comparing the incidence of “dominant” aggression between domestic dogs raised and trained using positive reinforcement and those raised and trained using negative reinforcement and punishment techniques designed to elicit avoidance behavior. This should have been done before behavior was attributed to an internal, inherited need to operate within a “dominance hierarchy”, presuming the animal is thinking about “rank” in its interactions with humans, etc. Statistical analysis has shown that food guarding behavior in domestic dogs correlates with the development of “dominant” behavior toward humans (Overall 1997). Thus, it is assumed that food guarding is an early sign of a “dominant personality” in a dog (Overall 1997). In fact, this correlation is a result of operant conditioning. In guarding food, aggression may be reinforced by the other (human) animal’s withdrawing to a greater distance. The reinforced behavior emancipates itself and, reinforced in other situations, becomes a generalized behavior. This is an example of the way in which statistical analysis can produce trivial information and serve to mask rather than reveal the mechanisms which are, in fact, operating. It is also an example of how a model, once adopted as a persistent belief, can act as a filter distorting perceptions to the point that observations lose all value and enter the realm of fantasy. These are just a few examples of the problems that arise when an attempt is made to understand domestic canine behavior and social structure by applying the dominance hierarchy model to domestic dogs. In short, the model creates more conceptual and practical problems than it solves, forces its users into the realm of fantasy and projection, and has required the addition of inelegant appendages and various contortions of thought – yet the problems and contradictions remain. I assert that the only thing we can do with this model is discard it. Dogs are neither wolves nor male humans. If you want to know about dogs, you must observe dogs, not wolves. Not only that, but you must also study the animals in their natural habitat (near or among humans and all the species humans live with), and your study must encompass at least one entire life-span of multiple animals in their natural habitat. This paper is the result of exactly such a study. In this paper I present a model based on non-linear dynamics and work on self-organizing autopoietic systems as these theories have been developed to deal with systems in which competition takes place. L. David Mech has already presented a model in which he describes wolves as role-oriented rather than dominance- or status-oriented (Mech 2000). I will contend that this model is also relevant to canis familiaris. Mech’s model describes, however, only one of several mechanisms for part production in a larger, autopoietic system, since domestic dogs, unlike wolves, live in two essentially different types of group during their lives: family groups and stranger groups. This autopoietic system and its parts gravitate toward stability and predictability, choosing at any given moment between multiple optima in the fitness landscape. The learning history of each animal is essential to the emergence and successful operation of the social system. This model is adequate to explain all observed interactions of canis familiaris, with conspecifics and with other species. I will also describe the mechanism by which discrete events on the ground generate a social structure and by which they lead to predictability in the social behavior and interactions of individual dogs within their social environment. Theoretical framework Complex self organizing systems and autopoiesis In order to deal with the complex interaction of multiple variables at many levels or organization simultaneously, I refer to theories about complex self-organizing systems (Beckerman 1999; Lucas 2002 a&b), and to H.R. Maturana and V. Varela’s work on autopoietic systems (Maturana 1975; Maturana & Varela 1980; Varela 1981). A brief review follows here. Those who are not familiar with these scientific paradigms can click on the title of this section to get to a page in which extensive explanation is given. When we look at a dog, what we are really observing is a creature that is a discrete and complex living system in itself, composed of many smaller systems (e.g., cells and their cellular organs, tissues, organs such as brain and heart). All of these smaller systems have an effect on the behavior of the whole that we are observing under the name “dog”. A dog’s perceptions and reactions will vary according to what we call its inner state, depending on all kinds of ever changing factors within its own internal system. The balance is always shifting, and a dog will be juggling many internal variables as it tries to maintain some kind of equilibrium inside itself as a system. At the same time, this system we call “dog” is situated in an external environment. Events in the external world can trigger changes inside the dog as a system. The dog will try to restore some kind of internal equilibrium, but as it does this it will have to take the outside world into account. External factors may limit the choices a dog has. Interaction with the external world is not a one way street: the dog’s behavior will, in many cases, trigger a change in the outside world: output returns to the dog as input. As a dog seeks internal balance, it will often simultaneously have to control how its output affects the external world and find ways not to disturb an equilibrium in parts of that external world. Thus, behavior is not a result of static traits, but of a complex interaction of internal and external variables and processes, and of several levels of organization changing and having to be managed all at the same time. In other words, in studying the organism called “dog”, we are focusing on only one level of organization in a multi-level system, while the dog deals with all those levels at once. All these levels of organization affect and are constantly being affected by all other levels (cellular<-> organic <-> dog <-> social system <-> habitat). While changes at one level neither cause nor specify the changes at another level, they constitute perturbation on other levels; the system may, at any level, seek a new attractor to accommodate the change. A description of any one level of a system (e.g., the dog) must try to find and include at least the relevant perturbations that originate at other levels (e.g., a social system) as the organism attempts to juggle optimization on various levels simultaneously. In order to understand how this works, we must first clarify a number of theoretical terms as they are used in reference to complex self-organizing systems. In this context, “fitness” has a different meaning than in the theory of evolution. “Fitness” refers only to criteria contained inside the system we are talking about. A fitness landscape is a distribution of optima the system can choose from: we call these optima “fitness hills”. These are positions in the system’s state space that result in best meeting criteria internal to the system (in this case, the dog), given the options available at a particular moment. Moving between
Edward S. Miller, the only FBI officials convicted of COINTELPRO crimes. His congressional allies publicly honored these criminals and praised their work. The President continually revived the tired old Red Scare, adding a new "terrorist" bogeyman, while Attorney General Meese campaigned to narrow the scope of the Bill of Rights and limit judicial review of the constitutionality of government action. [1999] WAR AT HOME by Brian Glick "Black bag jobs" are burglaries performed in order to obtain the written materials, mailing lists, position papers, and internal documents of an organization or an individual. At least 10,000 American homes have been subjected to illegal breaking and entering by the FBI, without judicial warrants. COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story By Paul Wolf If I suspect someone is an undercover FBI agent, I just casually interject the fag thing into the conversation, then watch the reaction. For example, I attended an anti-Iraq War rally last September 24, 2005, and there were a bunch of guys screaming these terrible things about the United States Government in front of the White House. Basically, I agreed with a lot of what they were saying, but they spewed it with such venom, it was off-putting. So I decided to test one of them. I walked right up to this young guy and casually said, "You know, J. Edgar Hoover was faggot." He immediately avoided eye-contact. As he looked away, he timidly replied, "I had heard he was a cross-dresser, but I never knew he was homosexual." That was quite a passive response from someone who had just been shouting anti-government rhetoric. I thought to myself, "Bingo." John Lennon's murder - Discussion with Salvador Astucia The flyer contained several bullet points like that. For example, one line read: "If you see someone with a bullhorn condemning the war and saying lots of sensible things, then tells you to join his group of Communists or Nazis, he's probably on the FBI's payroll." Another good one was "If you see someone making a speech or handing out flyers containing extremely divisive issues that have nothing to do with the Iraq war, like gay marriage for example, he's probably on the FBI's payroll." The flyer was really pretty funny, I thought. But obviously the FBI people didn't agree. John Lennon's murder - Discussion with Salvador Astucia Then on March 8, 1971, a group calling itself the Citizen's Commission to Investigate the FBI, broke into an FBI office in a small town called Media, Pennsylvania. They subjected the FBI to what the FBI has been habitually subjecting political dissidents to throughout the course of its history. That is, in Bureau parlance, a black bag job. The information they obtained was widely distributed through left and peace movement channels, and summarized the following week in the Washington Post. An analysis of the documents in this FBI office revealed that 1 percent were devoted to organized crime, mostly gambling; 30 percent were "manuals, routine forms, and similar procedural matter"; 40 percent were devoted to political surveillance and the like, including two cases involving right-wing groups, ten concerning immigrants, and over 200 on left or liberal groups. Another 14 percent of the documents concerned draft resistance and "leaving the military without government permission." The remainder - only 15% - concerned bank robberies, murder, rape, and interstate theft. COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story By Paul Wolf According to FBI memoranda of the 1960s, "Key black activists" were repeatedly arrested "on any excuse" until "they could no longer make bail." The FBI made use of informants, often quite violent and emotionally disturbed individuals, to present false testimony to the courts, to frame COINTELPRO targets for crimes they knew they did not commit. In some cases the charges were quite serious, including murder. COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story By Paul Wolf Many counterintelligence techniques involve the use of paid informants. Informants become agents provocateurs by raising controversial issues at meetings to take advantage of ideological divisions, by promoting emnity with other groups, or by inciting the group to violent acts, even to the point of providing them with weapons. Over the years, FBI provocateurs have repeatedly urged and initiated violent acts, including forceful disruptions of meetings and demonstrations, attacks on police, bombings, and so on, following an old strategy of Tsarist police director TC Zubatov: "We shall provoke you to acts of terror and then crush you." COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story By Paul Wolf A concise description of political warfare is given in a passage from a CIA paper entitled "Nerve War Against Individuals," referring to the overthrowing of the government of Guatemala in 1954: The strength of an enemy consists largely of the individuals who occupy key positions in the enemy organization, as leaders, speakers, writers, organizers, cabinet members, senior government officials, army commanders and staff officers, and so forth. Any effort to defeat the enemy must therefore concentrate to a great extent upon these key enemy individuals. If such an effort is made by means short of physical violence, we call it "psychological warfare." If it is focussed less upon convincing those individuals by logical reasoning, but primarily upon moving them in the desired direction by means of harassment, by frightening, confusing and misleading them, we speak of a "nerve war". The COINTELPROs clearly met the above definition of "nerve wars," and, in the case of the American Indian Movement in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, the FBI conducted a full-fledged counterinsurgency war, complete with death squads, disappearances and assassinations, recalling Guatemala in more recent years. The full story of COINTELPRO may never be told. The Bureau's files were never seized by Congress or the courts or sent to the National Archives. Some have been destroyed. Many counterintelligence operations were never committed to writing as such, or involve open investigations, and ex-operatives are legally prohibited from talking about them. Most operations remain secret until long after the damage has been done COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story By Paul Wolf Between 1968-1971, FBI-initiated terror and disruption resulted in the murder of Black Panthers Arthur Morris, Bobby Hutton, Steven Bartholomew, Robert Lawrence, Tommy Lewis, Welton Armstead, Frank Diggs, Alprentice Carter, John Huggins, Alex Rackley, John Savage, Sylvester Bell, Larry Roberson, Nathaniel Clark, Walter Touré Pope, Spurgeon Winters, Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, Sterling Jones, Eugene Anderson, Babatunde X Omarwali, Carl Hampton, Jonathan Jackson, Fred Bennett, Sandra Lane Pratt, Robert Webb, Samuel Napier, Harold Russell, and George Jackson. COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story By Paul Wolf The Chicago Special Agent in Charge, Marlin Johnson, who also oversaw the assassinations of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, makes it quite obvious that he views the murder of Malcolm X as something of a model for "successful" counterintelligence operations. COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story By Paul Wolf During the 1960's, the FBI's role was not to protect civil rights workers, but rather, through the use of informants, the Bureau actively assisted the Ku Klux Klan in their campaign of racist murder and terror. Church Committee hearings and internal FBI documents revealed that more than one quarter of all active Klan members during the period were FBI agents or informants. However, Bureau intelligence "assets" were neither neutral observers nor objective investigators, but active participants in beatings, bombings and murders that claimed the lives of some 50 civil rights activists by 1964. Bureau spies were elected to top leadership posts in at least half of all Klan units. Needless to say, the informants gained positions of organizational trust on the basis of promoting the Klan's fascist agenda. Incitement to violence and participation in terrorist acts would only confirm the infiltrator's loyalty and commitment. Unlike slick Hollywood popularizations of the period, such as Alan Parker's film, "Mississippi Burning," the FBI was instrumental in building the Ku Klux Klan in the South COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story By Paul Wolf Virtually every known AIM leader in the United States has been incarcerated in either state or federal prisons since (or even before) the organization's formal emergence in 1968, some repeatedly. After the 1973 siege of Wounded Knee the FBI caused 542 separate charges to be filed against those it identified as "key AIM leaders." This resulted in 15 convictions, all on such petty or contrived offenses as "interfering with a federal officer in the performance of his duty." Russell Means was faced with 37 felony and three misdemeanor charges, none of which held up in court. Organization members often languished in jail for months as the cumulative bail required to free them outstripped resource capabilities of AIM and supporting groups. COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story By Paul Wolf Most people, when they think of the FBI, have an image from movies like Mississippi Burning and characters like Clarice Sterling from Silence of the Lambs. The media image of the CIA and NSA is much more sinister, but most people think of the FBI purely as a crime fighting organization. The FBI has been very successful at disrupting and destroying perfectly legitimate organizations involved in dissent - They would like to project the image of crime fighters, but it is not really their principal role. ......What they have been very successful at is disrupting and destroying perfectly legitimate organizations involved in dissent: civil right organizations, women's organizations, generally organizations on the left. So while they would like to project the image of crime fighters, it is not really the principal role of the FBI. [Interview] Jim Vander Wall In many ways, the stark unwillingness of the federal government to accord Leonard Peltier even a modicum of elementary justice is symbolic of the entire AIM experience during the 1970s and, more broadly posed, of the U.S. relationship to American Indians since the first moment of the republic. The message embedded, not only in Peltier's imprisonment, but in the scores of murders, hundreds of shootings and beatings, endless show trials and all the rest of the systematic terrorization marking the FBI's anti-AIM campaign on Pine Ridge, was that the Bureau could and would make it cost-prohibitive for Indians to seriously challenge the lot assigned them by policy-makers and economic planners in Washington, D.C. The internal colonization of Native America is intended to be absolute and unequivocal. .......In 1953, just prior to the passage of PL-280, Felix Cohen, one of the foremost scholars of Indian law compared the role of the Indians in America to that of the Jews in modem Germany. He noted that, "Like the miner's canary, the Indian marks the shift from fresh air to poison air in our political atmosphere... our treatment of Indians, even more than our treatment of other minorities, reflects the rise and fall of our democratic faith." 213 Given that all that happened on and around Pine Ridge occurred long after COINTELPRO allegedly became no more than a "regrettable historical anomaly," 214 Cohen's insight holds particular significance for all Americans. In essence, if we may ascertain that COINTELPRO remained alive and well years after it was supposed to have died, we may assume it lives on today. And that, to be sure, is a danger to the lives and liberties of everyone. [1990] The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret War Against Domestic Dissent by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall. COINTELPRO was an acronym that the FBI had for its counter intelligence programs. Now normal counter intelligence is something carried out by most intelligence organizations and it basically means looking for spies in your own organization or looking for spies in the populace as a whole. So counter intelligence in its normal parlance would mean activities designed to detect and combat espionage. Within the FBI, it was actually a code word for their programs to infiltrate and disrupt legitimate legal organizations engaged in activities that the government found objectionable. It can range simply from sowing dissent within the organization to, at the other extreme, assassination of the leadership of the organization or the framing of key personnel in the organization on bogus criminal charges and supporting those with fabricated evidence to obtain convictions. [Interview] Jim Vander Wall Officially, it ended in 1973, but what apparently ended was the use of the term COINTELPRO, because the same sort of activities were conducted against the American Indian movement by the same personnel in the period from 1973 to 1977, for example. [Interview] Jim Vander Wall So that if you're talking about first oil in Oklahoma, and then low-sulfur coal and uranium in the West, those mineral deposits lay principally on the lands of indigenous people. This led to an outright war on the Pine Ridge Reservation with a group called the Goons, being sponsored by the FBI and the U.S. government and the American Indian movement and local organizations like the Independent Oglala Nation supporting native sovereignty and traditional ways of life. During the period from 1973 to 1975, at least 60 people were killed by the Goon squads on the Pine Ridge Reservation, and I say at least because these are reported homicides. It is probably much larger than that because the agency to which you would report a homicide was the FBI, who were of course sponsoring the people committing the homicides. So a lot of assaults and murders went unreported. On June 25, 1975, the FBI went on to a property called the Jumping Bull Compound on Pine Ridge supposedly looking for Jimmy Eagle, who was a young Native American man, on charges of having stolen a pair of cowboy boots. The real reason for them being there was that there was an AIM encampment there and when they encountered people from the encampment, a firefight ensued and the two FBI agents who went in - Ron Williams and Jack Coler were killed in the firefight, as well as AIM member, Joseph Stuntz. Leonard Peltier wound up being framed for those murders and when I say framed, I mean that the FBI coerced witnesses and fabricated evidence in order to obtain a conviction. .....Peltier has now been down in federal prisons since 1976 on bogus charges and fabricated evidence. [Interview] Jim Vander Wall One of the other operations the FBI was into was people working for social justice in Central America in the 80s. I was working with a group who was helping mainly Salvadoran and Nicaraguan refugees find jobs in the Bay Area and I remember our offices being broken into with nothing being taken… Later, I found that seemed to be happening across the country with similar groups. Basically what we had going on was the U.S. supporting a massive terrorist campaign against the people of El Salvador. And I mean terrorism in the very specific narrowly defined sense of the word. We're talking about tens of thousands of political murders, torture and so on. Rather than investigate the supporters of this terrorism in the U.S., the FBI of course investigated those people who opposed this terrorism and then tried to help the victims of it. They did this by infiltrating the organizations, attempting to indict people on immigration charges simply for helping political refugees from terror that was being sponsored by the United States. [Interview] Jim Vander Wall The FBI and its allies waged all-out war on AIM and the Native people. From 1973-76, they killed 69 residents of the tiny Pine Ridge reservation, a rate of political murder comparable to the first years of the Pinochet regime in Chile. To justify such a reign of terror and undercut public protest against it, the Bureau launched a complementary program of psychological warfare. [1999] WAR AT HOME by Brian Glick Within months of taking office, Reagan pardoned W. Mark Felt and Edward S. Miller, the only FBI officials convicted of COINTELPRO crimes. His congressional allies publicly honored these criminals and praised their work. The President continually revived the tired old Red Scare, adding a new "terrorist" bogeyman, while Attorney General Meese campaigned to narrow the scope of the Bill of Rights and limit judicial review of the constitutionality of government action. [1999] WAR AT HOME by Brian Glick Harassment, intimidation and violence: Eviction, job loss, break-ins, vandalism, grand jury subpoenas, false arrests, frame- ups, and physical violence were threatened, instigated or directly employed, in an effort to frighten activists and disrupt their movements. Government agents either concealed their involvement or fabricated a legal pretext. In the case of the Black and Native American movements, these assaults--including outright political assassinations--were so extensive and vicious that they amounted to terrorism on the part of the government. COINTELPRO Revisited - Spying & Disruption By Brian GlickAfter my “Building A Castle In Minecraft With Python” article I wanted to create a Minecraft game that was a bit more interactive. The “find a diamond” type game had already been done so I decided to do a slightly different version with a time limit. “Operation Counterstrike” was born. The script randomly places a number of TNT blocks around the map and the player has to find and destroy them all before the timers run out. As in my castle script you can dive in and start adjusting the Python code to change the game play or implement your own ideas. Initial Setup In order to make use of this script you will need have Minecraft installed on your Pi with the Python API ready to use. Follow these tutorials if in doubt : Download Script The game script needs to be placed into the directory created when setting up the API. In the API setup tutorial linked above I use /home/pi/mcpi-api. You can download the script directly to your Pi using using : cd ~/mcpi-api wget https://bitbucket.org/MattHawkinsUK/rpispy-misc/raw/master/minecraft/counterstrike.py Alternatively here is a link to the Python game script. Running The Game Launch Minecraft on the Pi and create a new world. To free the mouse cursor you can press the TAB key. To run the game you will need to launch the script either from an LXTerminal window on the Pi or a command line on a remote machine that is connected to the Pi (i.e. using Putty). Navigate to the API folder that you copied the script into and execute it. cd ~/mcpi-api python counterstrike.py Adding a number after the script will set the number of devices to generate. For example : python counterstrike.py 7 will generate 7. If you do not specify a number the default is 3. Playing The Game Once the script is running you should see messages appear in your Minecraft window. You will be told how many devices are out there as well as status messages. The devices are placed in random positions around the map. Devices on land will be buried under the surface whereas devices in water will rest on the sea-bed. Each device has a randomly generated timer ranging from 80 to 180 seconds. The status updates will report the distance (R) to the nearest device and the lowest timer count (T). The nearest device may not always have the lowest count so you may have less time than you think to find the device that is about to explode! When you destroy a device you will get bonus time added to all the remaining devices. Find and destroy all the bombs before you run out of time! PiFace Control & Display One of my reasons for creating this script was to test my new PiFace Control & Display add-on. This allows you to easily add a 16×2 LCD screen to the Pi with switches. Within the script you will find 5 lines that relate to configuring the PiFace and outputting messages to it. If you want to use one then remove the # symbol from the front of the following 5 lines : #import pifacecad as pf... #cad.lcd.clear()... #cad.lcd.write(msg)... #cad = pf.PiFaceCAD() #cad.lcd.backlight_on() Have fun and happy hunting! Possible Future UpdatesGet the biggest Liverpool FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email Joel Matip believes his centre-back partnership with Dejan Lovren will flourish after his commanding Liverpool debut in the 5-0 EFL Cup rout of Burton. The Cameroon international defender shone on his competitive bow for the Reds at the Pirelli Stadium and is expected to keep his place for Saturday’s Premier League trip to Tottenham. “I enjoyed playing alongside Dejan,” Matip told the ECHO. “He’s a very good player. I hope we can have a good partnership together. “I think there’s a good understanding there already. At times he covered me, at other times I covered him. “We played together at the start of the pre-season so I think it will be good.” Matip ended his 16-year association with Schalke when he signed for Liverpool on a free transfer this summer. The 25-year-old endured a difficult start as pain in his right foot - linked to having some screws removed back in May - kept him out for three weeks in pre-season. Watch: James Pearce on Burton 0 Liverpool 5 Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now He wasn’t able to play any part in the matches on the tour of America and fellow new boy Ragnar Klavan was picked ahead of him for the opening two Premier League matches. However, Matip is now fit and firing and relished helping Jurgen Klopp’s side book their passage into the third round of the EFL Cup. “It was great to play after the time I spent out with the injury,” he said. “I needed that time in pre-season so it was frustrating for me. I hope that topic with my foot is finished now. It’s much better. “I played 90 minutes with no problems and that’s a good sign for me. I need some time to get to 100% but I am getting there.” Matip believes Liverpool’s dominant display against the Championship outfit was the perfect response to last weekend’s poor league defeat to Burnley. It was the first time the Reds had kept a clean sheet on their travels since the Europa League tie away to Augsburg in February. “We still have to improve some things but it was important to win after what happened at Burnley,” Matip said. “There’s a lot of attacking quality in this squad and it’s nice to see this with Divock (Origi), Daniel (Sturridge) and Roberto (Firmino) all scoring. “Defenders never like conceding goals and the clean sheet was pleasing. But we still need to improve our defensive qualitiies. “Now we need to build on this result. Tottenham are a great team but we also have many qualities. It will be a great game.”Former House speaker John Boehner has been careful to not publicly comment on the GOP presidential race or really much of anything since leaving office. But boy, did he open up in a talk at Stanford University, according to a story in the student-run Stanford Daily. Among the highlights from his Wednesday evening chat at the Palo Alto, Calif., university: • Boehner's description of Ted Cruz, who Boehner worked with in Congress? “Lucifer in the flesh,” Boehner said, according to the Daily. “I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.” • Ohio Gov. John Kasich is high-maintenance. “[Kasich] requires more effort on my behalf than all my other friends … but he’s still my friend, and I love him,” Boehner said, according to the report. Boehner voted for Kasich in the Ohio Republican presidential primary last month. • As for front-runner Donald Trump? The two are "texting buddies," Boehner said, adding that he considered Trump the presumptive nominee and would vote for him this fall. Boehner even joked about his name, pronounced Bay-ner. “You can call me boner, beaner, jackass, happy to answer to almost anything." Copyright 2016 USA TODAYOf the nine teams that submitted their qualifications for redeveloping the western 17 acres of the Balboa Reservoir site, which is currently a 1,000-space parking lot under the jurisdiction of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, the following three have been selected as the finalists and will be allowed to respond to the City’s formal Request for Proposals: The six teams which were eliminated: AGI Avant Equity Residential with David Baker Architects Gilbane Development Company and Tidewater Capital The Integral Group Raintree Partners Signature Development Group The Balboa Park Reservoir, which represents one of the largest underdeveloped sites in the city, was built in the 1950’s, has never held a drop of water, and is one of San Francisco’s Public Lands for Housing sites identified for priority redevelopment (back in 2014). Currently designated for “Public” use with a height limit of 40 feet, the site will need to be re-zoned. And based on years of community input and planning, the rough parameters and expectations for the site call for building heights of 25 to 65 feet, with at least 50% of all proposed housing to be designated as permanently affordable to households with incomes of 55 to 150 percent of the Area Median and 4 acres of new parks and open space. The proposals from the finalists are due on June 2, 2017, with public presentations to follow.A kite surfer's journey across the Red Sea turned into "Jaws" meets "Cast Away" on Friday. Polish kite surfer Jan Lisewski was reportedly stuck in the water for two days, surviving on energy bars and fending off 18-foot-long Red Sea sharks with a knife. Polish media said the 42-year-old's attempt to cross the Red Sea from El Gouna to Duba went horribly astray when ocean winds halted his journey and left him stranded. Lisewski said he sent out an SOS signal right away, but it took the Saudi Arabian Coast Guard nearly 40 hours to find him. His first night was difficult- he ran out of water and turned his kite into a raft he could sleep in. He spotted a fisherman's ship and managed to fire a safety rocket, but wasn't picked up. "They must’ve not seen it," Lisewski told Polish media. Rock Stars: Then and Now The second night Lisewski said he drifted to a reef and was attacked by sharks. He said he thought they were attracted to him by the color of his kite. He counted 11 sharks in all, in a fight he said lasted the entire night. "I was stabbing them in the eyes, the nose and gills," Lisewski told the Polish state news agency PAP. Lisewski said he usually doesn't carry a knife, but his brother Piotr, told him to carry one. Weird News Photos: Man Shoves Snake in Pants "Maybe he had some kind of premonition," he said. A world champion and kite surfing instructor, Lisewski became the first person to surf the Baltic Sea last year. Aside from exhaustion and dehydration, Lisewski suffered no injuries.Vancouver — Living in a Downtown Eastside homeless shelter, sharing a room with up to 30 strangers and separated from his wife and four daughters by an hour-plus transit ride — when he could afford a ticket — José Guerra found a silver lining. “It was really hard,” the 53-year-old said. “I love my wife and children so much, I love to be with them. … For some families, they have a movie night once a week. Our family, we did something together every night.” A native of Peru who’d moved to Canada in 2000, Guerra and his family fell on hard times when he was laid off by an oil company in his native country in 2015 after the price of a barrel of oil tanked the year before. Ineligible for benefits when the family returned to Canada, where Guerra had lived until he took the Peru job in 2012, the family was forced to split up, his wife Silvia and their daughters moving into a women’s shelter in Surrey. “I wound up in a room with people I don’t know, sometimes 30 people in one room,” Guerra said. “People have addictions, people have mental-health issues. But me, I’m a hard snorer, I don’t know how my wife puts up with it. And people would climb up on my bed and tell me to stop snoring. It was scary sometimes. “But in the end, it was a nice experience. I’d never been in a shelter in my life and I saw some hard stuff. It could have been worse, I could have been sleeping in the street. “In Peru, if you have no job, no one helps you at all. That’s why I say that after all, it was nice.” Guerra’s key out of DTES was an ad he saw for an SFU continuing education program aimed at low-income, unemployed or underemployed residents of the Downtown Eastside. In conjunction with CodeCore and the provincial Ministry of Advanced Education, the program offers people a chance to escape poverty through tech training, in this case a computer-coding boot camp, an intensive five-week course that took up 11 hours a day. More than half the population of the Downtown Eastside is low-income, according to Statistics Canada. Coding, meanwhile, is one of the most in-demand job skills and, by 2019, B.C. will need to fill jobs for 3,000 software engineers, web designers and web developers, according to SFU. Furthermore, the tech sector accounts for $26 billion in revenue within the province, $15 billion in GDP, 92,700 employees and $8 billion in wages, according to figures provided by SFU. So Guerra worked hard to join a sector that has grown by 14.4 per cent in three years, taking advantage of every minute of those 11 hours a day. He finished the boot camp on top, earning him a scholarship for more education, which led to a full-time job as a senior technical support analyst at a local private school. It also meant he and his family could afford a home in Surrey and be reunited. “I’d written computer programming from 1986 to 1990, but it’s a totally different thing today,” Guerra said. “The way it’s done now. … I had to relearn how to code. “The thing is, for some people maybe coding is harder to learn than for others, but if you’re willing anyone can learn. I’m a firm believer that if you want something and put in the time, anyone can learn anything.” The SFU continuing education course aimed at the DTES is free, but limited to 20 people at a time. When Guerra first applied, he was put on a waiting list of 60, so he did odd jobs here and there, riding the whims of the economy and the job opportunities available. His wife Silvia also found part-time work, helping provide for the girls, who today are aged 12 to 24. So Guerra couldn’t have been happier when he heard he’d gained entry into SFU’s program. “It was a chance to learn something new, a new skill, allowed me to get a new job. “And it brought me back with my family.” [email protected] twitter.com/gordmcintyreby Olivier Roy Jihadism as Nihilist Revolt The destruction of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq will change nothing about the uninterrupted radicalization of the French youth since the 1990s. Whether these youth were already Muslim or recent converts, this radicalism has exploded their familial environment. Apart from cultural or third-worldist explanations, it is time for French society to grasp this phenomenon in its entirety. France is at war! Perhaps. But at war with whom or against what? Daesh (ISIS)[1] does not send Syrians to commit attacks in France in order to dissuade the French government from making air strikes. Daesh draws from a reservoir of young radicalized French youth who, whether or not they come from the Middle East, are already dissident and looking for a cause, a label, a master narrative to which they can add the bloody signature of their personal rebellion. The destruction of Daesh will not change anything about this rebellion. The youth’s attraction to Daesh is opportunist: yesterday they were with Al-Qaeda, before that (1995), they formed the substrates of the Algerian GIA or practiced, from Bosnia to Afghanistan by way of Chechnya, their petty nomadism of individual jihad (like the Roubaix Gang).[2] And tomorrow they will fight under another banner, unless death in action, age, or disillusion do not weaken their ranks as was the case with the extreme left in the 1970s. There are no third, fourth, or umpteenth generations of jihadists. Since 1996, we have been confronted with a very stable phenomenon. The radicalization of two categories of the French youth, namely “second-generation” Muslims and converts who are “homegrown” French. The essential problem for France is thus not the “caliphate” of the Syrian Desert, which will evaporate sooner or later like an old mirage turned nightmare. The problem is the revolt of the youth. And the true question is understanding what these youths represent, whether they are the avant-garde of a war to come or, on the contrary, the noise of history’s engine backfiring. Today two interpretations dominate the scene and structure the televised debates and opinions of journals. Put simply, these are the culturalist and third-worldist explanations. The first puts forward the recurrent and painful war of civilizations: the revolt of the Muslim youth shows the limits of Muslim integration, at least as long as a theological reform has not removed the call to jihad from the Quran. The second constantly evokes postcolonial suffering, the identification of the youth with the Palestinian cause, their rejection of western interventions into the Middle East, and their exclusion from a racist and islamophobic French society. In short, this is the old refrain: so long as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not resolved, revolt will continue. But these two explanations run into the same problem: if the causes of radicalization were structural, then why do they only affect a small and circumscribed fringe of those who consider themselves Muslims in France—some thousands out of millions? After all, these young radicals have been identified! All of the terrorists who have taken to action have earned their famous “S” designation.[3] I do not address here the question of prevention. I simply note that this information is accessible. Let’s then examine who they are and try to draw some conclusions. Islamization of Radicalism Nearly all of the French jihadists fall into two very precise categories: they are either of the “second generation,” born or immigrated to France as infants, or converts (a group whose number increases over time, but who at the end of the 1990s already constituted 25% of radicals). This means that, among radicals, there are hardly any from a “first generation” (even of recent immigrés), but above all none of a “third generation.” Yet, this last category exists and is growing: Moroccans who immigrated in the 1970s are grandparents, and one does not find their grandchildren among the terrorists. And why would converts who have never suffered from racism want to brusquely avenge humiliation suffered by Muslims? Especially because many converts come from the French countryside, such as Maxime Hauchard, and have few reasons to identify with a Muslim community that only virtually exists for them. In short, it is not the “revolt of Islam” or that of “Muslims,” but a precise problem concerning two categories of the youth, mostly those coming from immigrant backgrounds, but also “homegrown” French. It is not a matter of the radicalization of Islam, but of the Islamification of radicalism. What do the “second generation” and the converts hold in common? There is first of all a generational revolt: both rebel against their parents, or more precisely with what their parents represent in terms of culture and religion. The “second generation” never adheres to the Islam of their parents, they never represent a tradition that revolts against westernization. They are westernized, they speak better French than their parents. All have imbibed the “youth” culture of their generation, they have drunk alcohol, smoked some shit, hit on girls at the night club. A large part among them has spent time in prison. And then one fine morning, they have (re)converted, choosing Salafist Islam, which is to say an Islam that rejects the concept of culture, an Islam that allows them to completely refashion themselves. For they want nothing to do with either the culture of their parents or “western” culture, which have become symbols of their self-hatred. The key to the revolt is from the beginning the absence of the transmission of a culturally-integrated religion. It is a problem that concerns neither the “first generation,” bearers of the cultural Islam of their countries of origin, but which has not managed to be passed on, nor the “third generation,” which speaks French with their parents and thanks to their parents have a familiarity with the modes of Muslim expression within French society: even if this may be conflictual, it is “speakable.” If one finds far fewer Turks than North Africans in radical movements, it is without a doubt because, for the Turks, the transition had been assured, because the Turkish state—which had seen its society modernize—took control of the transmission by sending primary school teachers and imams to France (who pose other problems, but allow one to avoid adhesion to Salafism and violence). As far as they are concerned, the youth converts by definition adhere to the “pure” religion. Cultural compromise does not interest them. They have nothing to do with previous generations who converted to Sufism. They find here the second generation in the adhesion to an “Islam of rupture”—generational, cultural, and finally political rupture. In short, there is nothing to be gained from offering them a “moderate Islam.” It is by definition the radicalism that attracts them. Salafism is not only a question of preaching financed by Saudi Arabia, it is the product that suits troubled youths. As a result, and this is the biggest difference with the case of young Palestinians who commit to the diverse forms of intifada. The Muslim parents of French radicals do not understand the revolt of their progeny. More and more, as with the parents of converts, the parents try to prevent the radicalization of their children. They call the police, they go to Turkey to try to put their children back on track, they fear, with good reason, that the older radicals lead the younger ones astray. In short, far from being the symbol of a radical
this post — almost certainly the highest of any singular artist. This piece starts the trend of impressiveness. A Well-Balanced Blog Photography is something that rarely finds its way into infographics, which makes its inclusion that much more effective. This infographic from Column Five shows how a basic concept can be elevated dramatically with photos. Birds of North America Another compendium worth including, the Birds of North America is pleasant not just because it's comprehensive, but also because North America's birds offer such an enjoyable diversity of colors. Bloomberg Billionaires Although there might not be anything especially amazing about the data presented here, Bloomberg stands out with a few things — execution and freshness. Sadly, though, it's not very optimized for SEO, as there's no reason it shouldn't surface for lots of queries around the world's richest people. Caffeine in Popular Products A great infographic can create change. This is one of those. If you find your drink or food at the top of this list, it might make you rethink consumption — or otherwise, push you towards a secondary option that's available. Can I Make Stuff Up? This brilliant piece shows us how okay it is for different positions to make up what they do, from a journalist to a fantasy writer. It's nothing crazy, but the idea is absolutely original and is represented well in the visualization. Cheetah: Nature's Speed Machine This was the first animated infographic I had ever seen, and it still stands as one of the best. The repetition of the cheetah is just awe-inspiring, and in combination with the other elements of the piece, makes this a best-in-class animation. Suggested by AJ Ghergich of infographic design company Ghergich & Co. Common MythConceptions Tell me I'm wrong and have the credibility to convince me. That single sentence is the biggest reason this interactive went viral, as it combined dozens of common misconceptions into one piece. The interactivity is nice, but a similar, static version was created and also had similar effect, showing that sometimes, idea (and execution) is everything. Creative Routines of Successful People Another take on the creative routines concept found a few times on the list, this static version also went viral — showing that we really do want a shortcut to a better life. InfoWeTrust was one of the first to debut the trend (and do it well), so they are definitely worthy of being on this list. Daily Routines of Famous Creative People You've probably seen a few "rountines of famous people" posts out there, but Podio is the only one who managed to execute in interactive format. It worked like a charm, generating 656 linking root domains. Emotions That Can't Be Expressed in English The English language is known for its weird idiosyncrasies and idioms that make it difficult for non-native speakers to pick it up. But did you know that there are also some emoitons the language completely misses? Using almost impossible to replicate research, this piece shows us the gaps in our less-than-perfect language. Every Active Satellite Orbiting Earth A scrolling interactive piece that fits perfectly with a representation of the Earth's atmosphere. Another element of a great infographic — it uses its format because that's what best for it, not just because it's the design or development trend of the moment. Evolution of Video Game Controllers Compendiums are a file format we found took up 15-20 results in this list — that we then had to dial back. There's a reason for that — they blow you away. This interesting and nostalgic video controller piece from Pop Chart Lab is no different. Famous Writers' Sleep Habits Everyone likes a shortcut, and many believe that learning the habits of successful people means they may become successful if they do the same. Whether or not that's true, this infographic visualziing the wakeup times of famous writers, is interesting and well laid out. Suggested by Courtney Seiter. Fantastical Fictive Beers Nostalgia, fun illustrations, and a quasi-compendium. We must be pretty close to an equation for success there — and that's how Pop Chart Lab can sell this, and other pieces like it, as prints. Fastest Ship in the Universe This infographic does several things well we've mentioned in this post: grabs unique data, starts a conversation, and generates nostalgia. Science fiction also allows the artist to capture the ships with solid illustrations, and the result is a piece that went viral and was covered 245 times. Flight Videos Deconstructed A common occurrence in great animated infographics is repetition. In order for the graphics to not be jerky/suddenly start over, they have to return to the beginning. The wing paths is an example of how that, when done well, can blow you away. Flights in the Sky No infographic on this list, besides this one from The Guardian, can claim to have live data. Doesn't get much more impressive than that — unless you actually interact with the infographic, and realize this is also a piece that recaps 100 years of aviation. Food and Wine Pairings The pairing concept of lines from one thing to another is something an infographic is very apt to support. Wine Folly shows us a best-in-class example with this food and wine pairing chart. Gay Rights in the U.S. — State by State Combine a sensitive subject with an interactive, radial layout that is well thought-out, and you have a piece that captures coverage from 125 unique outlets. It's hard to come up with a concept that properly uses the radial format that doesn't impress. Geography of Hate Discrimination is not a good thing. This map might also have the effect of getting you to stereotype certain regions of the United States, so I'm not sure that's good either, but regardless, the ability of this piece to start a conversation — and trigger an emotion — made it go viral. How a Car Engine Works Another amazing animation from Animagraffs, how a car engine works shows the power of the medium through effective communication of engine motion using color. Suggested by Neil Patel, founder of content marketing company Quicksprout. How a Handgun Works Transparency is part of the reason this animation, as well as "how a car engine works" from Animgraffs, communicates their ideas so well. The detail combined with that effect demonstrates a level of quality few other pieces do. Suggested by Jon Cooper, founder of Point Blank SEO. How Common Is Your Birthday? This data visualization took off like a viral firecracker when it was first released. Appealing to the vanity of the reader, we all — or almost all of us — wanted to know just how common our birthday was. While not the prettiest graphic ever, it was easy to interpret, and using such interesting data, that was all it took to create a widely spread piece. How Family Income Affects College Chances Who knew drawing could be so effective in telling a really important story? The New York Times did, and that's why they created an interactive much unlike any other piece of content on the web. Suggested by Rand Fishkin, founder of inbound software company Moz. How Far is it to Mars? TL;DR — it's pretty far. This interactive does a brilliant job of communicating the distance, while also making the experience of reaching the destination a lot of fun, too. How Fast is the Fire Department? We commonly refer to the power of emotion in creating marketable ideas -- and this piece takes the concept to a whole new level. If you live in LA, it almost certainly pisses you off -- which means this definitely belongs on every best of list that's ever created. How Fast is Usain Bolt? Simulating the difference between past and present is a pretty cool use of infographics. Using a short video to explain the infographic? Cooler still. This piece from the NYTimes is the only one that utilizes video on this list. How Many People Do Drones Kill? The emotion generated by this stunning interactive made it it a no-brainer inclusion on the list, showing just how ineffective drone strikes are in Pakistan while also doing so in a way that's undoubtedly unique. How Much Do Music Artists Earn Online? Musicians simply aren't paid enough. We already knew record companies were picking their pocket, and with this visualization, we know just how much. Showing that artists need 4,053,110 plays per month to earn minimum wage from Spotify was enough to spark a vibrant conversation and take this piece to 1,000+ LRDs generated. How Often Do The French Kiss? For the uninitiatied American (me), this fun infographic communicated something I hadn't known — and did it really, really quickly. I'm now nervous about people kissing me if I visit France. How Search Works Not just a scrolling interactive, this piece reveals itself upon you settling into the next section. Not a big surprise coming from the talented, deep team of engineers and designers that reside in Mountain View. How Solar Panels Work A great infographic isn't something you look at for five seconds and then forget forever. This animation not only solves a problem, but helps educate the audience, leaving them with information they can use for the long-term. How Steve Jobs Started Sometimes a visualization does't need to be complicated or fancy, it just has to communicate a great idea in a simple, effective way. This is that chart, showing us how Steve Jobs made his mark. For aspiring business people, this resonated, pushing the piece to 75 LRDs. How to Be Productive While this infographic doesn't look bad by any means, it also shows the power of a well-executed idea. We learn how to be productive in a distilled, actionable format, giving us a direct path to improving productivity most other posts won't offer. How to Build a Dog This design has a unique format in the "how much of 100%" layout it utilizes. It's possible this could port to other concepts, as well — and it'll be visually interesting just the same. How to Build a Human The infinity effect of this animation is really cleverly executed. As can be seen from her other animations, Eleanor Lutz has a unique touch for detail that also manages to somehow combine with stunning design. How to Eat Sushi Solving problems we all have, but don't talk about is often an angle that creates a whirlwind of shares online. This infographic on sushi etiquette appeals to a similar idea — while also applying a fun, comic-like look that makes it a pleasure to read. How to Make the Perfect Cocktail This ratio infographic is one we frequently reference as a potential use-case for other pieces we do. There's a reason for that — it's elegantly executed and a pleasure to read through and use. That's why it warrants purchase for many. Kitchen Cheat Sheet Utility is often something missing from most infographics. The best ones are things you bookmark and reference and re-reference time and time again. This infographic is a perfect exemplar of that type of visual. How-Many Guide to Kitchen Conversions A genius visual representation, this piece is one of those that stuns you given it's highly unlikely to be inspired by other pieces and therefore, is very original as a standalone. Hungry Tech Giants: 15 Years of Acquisitions What's the acquisition history of major tech companies? How do the acquisition sizes compare? These two questions — and figuring out a way to nicely display the answers, led to a highly successful piece by Simply Business that generated 150+ LRDs. In Caffeine We Trust An infographic that helps you explain your coffee usage with actual coffee. That's awesome. Although not traditionally "interactive", you might argue this is the most interactive of the entire list, if you buy the print. Is Life Good? Simple but oh so powerful. Amongst my favorite infographics on this list because it punches you in the gut if you are currently doing something you hate, I use this not just in work, but in personal life, passing to any friend that complains about something they're capable of changing. Is Your Startup Idea Already Taken Everybody in tech has heard it — "Uber for X". But BuzzFeed was the only one smart enough to represent it visually, using a grid layout just how many mini-startups poured out of Uber, Tinder, Birchbox and AirBnB. Simple, effective, and highly shared. Is Your State's Highest Paid Employee a Coach? This might be the worst-designed infographic on this list, but it's worth an inclusion because it, like many state infographics like it, began a trend that you've likely seen many times. That trend is creating content with local, targeted significance, which generates an amplified marketing effect for Deadspin and others like them. Ketchup + 17 Clean Ingredients Random and simple is sometimes genius. This piece is nothing striking from a design perspective, but the unique idea grabs you, and if you're like us, makes you laugh. Ingenunity like this makes for highly shared pieces. Kitchen 101 : Fruits, Vegetables & Herbs This infographic isn't easy to understand on the surface, but once you acclimate, it's a powerful and useful representation of the seasonality of produce. Sometimes, effective visualizations are such because they can compact more complicated information in a smaller space — while still retaining comprehension. Kitchen 101 : Pasta Some of the best infographics come from unique, out there ideas that make for visually interesting and also aesthetically pleasing portions. This encyclopedia of pasta is one example of just that — an immensely comprehensive take on every carb-heavy option, presented in a way that's enjoyable to read through. Late Bloomers — Late In Life Success We all want to be inspired. You can see this in how popular quotes are all around the web. This infographic capitalizes on that trend, inspiring people who maybe haven't quite made it yet — but definitely still have a chance. Literal Meaning of the States Language is a common occurrence in our top 100 list — possibly because communication is one emotional trigger, and also because there are so many missing, imperfect elements to it. This representation capitalizes it, revealing the definitional elements of the U.S. most of didn't know previously. Million Lines of Code Sometimes a simple bar graph representation of a new idea is enough to have something big. That's what InformationIsBeautiful.net got from this data visualization showing how many lines of code many different things have — including a mouse. Morning Rituals of Inspirational Entrepreneurs Another in the trend of "what famous people do", this infographic uses that clever idea and applies it to successful entrepeneurs. The result was a highly shared piece that received almost 100 LRDs. Most Common Use of Time Most of the infographics on this list should bring you something unique, or present things in a way you haven't otherwise seen. This is one example of originality in action, using a unique format to visualize the differing uses of time amongst different ages. Suggested by Rand Fishkin, founder of inbound software company Moz. NFL Players Mentioned Most on Sportscenter There's nothing crazy about the data used in this piece — many others have utilized data just like it, but it's the visualization that blows you away. They could have taken five seconds and went with a bar chart — but that doesn't make best ever lists, now does it? Omnibus of Superpowers A compendium of a different flavor, what makes this piece especially effective is how it communicates its subject in the context of the subject — a comic book aesthetic. Oscar Dresses Worn by Winners The only infographic on this list that connected to an event, we had to list this piece because it went very, very viral when it was first released, and may have been the original trigger point for "what happened in the past" trend that frequently followed after it. Planet Earth Control Deck One of the most impressive parts of Lutz' animations is the scientific attention to detail. They're stunning visually, but beyond that they take the subject matter to a level most would never — and that's why her work is what it is. Snake Oil Supplements Using the same code as their data breaches interactive, InformationIsBeautiful realized similar success with this piece based on the somewhat-inconsistent data on the success rate of supplements. Interactives don't need to start from scratch to go viral. Soup Recipes Easy recipes deserve an easy to understand infographic. Displayed with real photographs (that could have easily been stock), Shape magazine takes a concept that could have boring and injects it with life. The 10 Commandments of UI Design One commandment you should stick to for your next infographic? Utility. This visual isn't breaking any design records, but it's damn useful — a bookmark (or background) that many UI designers reference during their day to day. The Biggest Dragons In Fantasy The overlap effect utilized here is one I had never seen. Also, there's definitely a big market for sci-fi related visuals, which makes it no surprise that this was a very successful piece for Daily Dot. The Billion Dollar Gram InformationIsBeautiful went "outside the box" to compare billion dollar spends in this visualization. You'll notice that most visualizations with data like this go with bar graphs — because that's easy. But sometimes — often even — there are better formats available. The success of this piece shows that a bar graph likely would not have had the same success. The Charted Cheese Wheel Cheese, please. Another clever vehicle that is effective time and time again is explaining something within the design context of that apparatus. In this case, we get 65 cheeses within one glamorous cheese wheel. The Empire State Building Light Show Decoder We did our best to remove infographics you can't relate to on this list. You may have never visited the Empire State Building, but we thought this representation was worth including because it's so unique, and so well done — something that may inform your next creative piece. The Essential Herb & Food Pairing Guide A pairing guide in a unique format, this infographic provides helpful tips for matching herbs with foods, but without boring you on the uptick. Rich colors and great illustrations will make this a joy to read the next time you cook a meal. The Evolution Of The Batman Logo Nostalgia pairs well with infographics, because we can trigger memories with design that words have a more difficult time capturing. These evolution pieces have caught fire for that reason, and this one on the Batman logo is one of the best out there. The Evolution of the Web If your interactive feels a little like a rollercoaster, you've probably done something right. The Evolution of the Web isn't quite that, but its ability to grab you early with a rollercoaster effect and then keep you with an interesting storyline that details the advancements of each web browser is worth checking out. The Facebook Offering: How it Compares A simple but effective interactive, this visualization hits because it tells a great story, and a story that resonates with unexpected information. Interestingly, this chart seems to try and communicate that Facebook might have been overvalued, yet at the time of this writing, it's worth 254% more than its IPO price. The Fastest Growing Companies In America Because of their interactivity, some content like this may have difficulty telling a story — because it's hard to paint a narrative for something we control the path of. ColumnFive flips that on its head, giving us an interesting narrative while also retaining the ability to interact. The Gross, Deadly History Of Color Style doesn't always carry itself into most infographics. Brand guidelines or otherwise, a simple lack of creativity put borders on truely interesting pieces. This representation of historical colors shows it can be done, representing each in an entertaining, unique format. The Growth of Walmart & Sam's Club Walmart feels like a virus in this visualization which maps their growth — along with Sam's Club — across the United States. Is it really a surprise that the piece received coverage in 728 different publications? The Largest Vocabulary in Hip-Hop This infographic takes data viz to another level, documenting the number of words used by famous rappers to show who really has the best command on the English language. Pieces like these, that gather data from previously-not-considered places, are some of the most successful you will see. Suggested by Michael King, founder of inbound marketing company iPullRank. The Pace of Social Change A pattern emerges in some of the most effective interactives here — they take you on a controlled story that triggers your emotional heartstrings. It'd be easy to just display the story immediately, but that ability to keep you hanging amplifies the effect. Suggested by Rand Fishkin, founder of inbound software company Moz. The Racial Dot Map Next to utility, the abiility to start a conversation is an infographic's next-best attribute. This interactive on the racial breakdown in different parts of America does just that. The Refugee Flow Towards Europe A great interactive holds you — it doesn't just mean you click somewhere. This resource does exactly that, ticking up over time to show you the flow of refugeses into the European continent while you interact with it. It makes it an easy inclusion on this list. Suggested by Danny Ashton, founder of infographic design agency NeoMam Studios. The World as 100 People As mentioned in the description, this isn't a new concept. But the representation is, and that's what made it go viral, generating 112 LRDs and more importantly, starting several conversations around race, religion, poverty and more. The World's Cost Of Living Good data visualization makes comparison easy. The ability to compare the world's cost of living — and do it by continent — made this a highly successful piece that was, to no surprise, spread around the world. Suggested by Aleyda Solis, founder of international SEO company Orainti. The World's Most Spoken Languages Representing things we expect to see one way in another way is another tried-and-true infographic technique that is almost sure to resonate. This piece, which connects language to the world map, executes the concept with extreme efficiency. Timeline of History There are several amazing things about this peice. From its introduction, to what it tells us about how much of history is documented, to its ability to subsegment by categories — it does several things with effectiveness. Transit Time NYC Infographics don't have to be visual noise — they can be useful, too. This interactive is exactly that, showing you the estimated transit time to get to different areas of NYC — and not in a linear fashion, all in one space. Really well done. We're Getting Good at Going to Mars How many missions to Mars haven't panned out? As it turns out, plenty. We feel like spacemen approaching Mars in this uniquely represented piece, which shows each "mission" and where in orbit it either succeeded or failed. Houston, we dig this. What Do Brand Colors Say About Your Business? Hopefully you, as a marketer, know what your brand's colors signify about your business. But many, surely, don't. ColumnFive clears it up with this infographic which tells you what that bright orange is really signifying. What Does the LA Underground Taste Like? It might strike you as somewhat strange to imagine the London Underground combined with a taste pallete, but this infographic really isn't strange at all. Creator James Wannerton tastes words when he reads or hears them due to a neurological condition called synaesthesia — so when he took the Underground, he experienced new taste sensations at every stop. The result is a really cool infographic. What's the Top Data Dog? InformationIsBeautiful created their own quantitative value of each dog breed and plotted it against public popularity, giving us a chart highlighting the most underrated breeds out there. My next dog will be an affenpinscher. What's Warming the World Interactive — check. Tells emotional, well-constructed story — check. Is communicated by an authority in the industry — check. Goes viral based on aforementioned factors — check. No doubt about it, this is a must-view piece. Suggested by Danny Ashton, founder of infographic design agency NeoMam Studios. When is the Best Time to Buy Everything Mint, for a time, was best-in-class as it came to infographics. This piece is one such example of their excellence, highlighting some valuable insights as to when we should be buying common products based on expected dips in price. Which Marvel Characters Murder Most? Often simply identifying a random stat about something people geek out about, and then compiling all the data, is all you need to create something that resonates. MorphCostumes knew that and compiled data on how much each popular Marvel character had murdered another character — put it together in a nicely designed infographic, and ended with something powerful. Why Sitting is Killing You This might have been the most viral infographic I've encountered. It started a movement around standing desks, and if you're like most, you can probably look to your left or right (or just keep standing) and see the impacts of the conversation it started. Why Your Brain Craves Infographics The elegance of this interactive grabs you once you start scrolling. I've seen many of these interactive scroll infographics that jerk or come off as less than polished, but Neomam manages to create an effect that actually does the opposite — making it extremely enjoyable to scroll down the page. Suggested by Brian Dean, blogger at respected SEO blog Backlinko. Wind Map There are 100 infographics on this list, and honestly, this is my all-time favorite. It's not captured by the still above, so make sure you click through — but it's hard not to be extremely impressed and at the same time, soothed by the directional currents of the wind this interactive visualizes. World's Biggest Data Breaches & Hacks This interactive is another piece that could have easily been done with a bar graph. But since Information Is Beautiful rarely settles on the basics, they went with an interactive representation which allows you to filter by industry and type. Where And How Often Letters Appear I can't even begin to grasp how someone comes up with this idea. But someone did. And it's a pretty awesome one, despite not doing anything spectacular visually. Just goes to show how good data, and a good idea, can go a long way. The Deadliest Animals Behind Bill Gates, this piece was destined to go viral. And it did, showing that maybe Sharks just aren't that dangerous after all — and we really should be worrying about the smaller insects around us.Police said the farmer was legally entitled to protect his flock from the dogs. Dogs: Six sheep had to be put down. (file pic) A farmer has shot two dogs which escaped from a yard and attacked his flock of sheep. The incident took place in Kennet village in Clackmannanshire on Monday night. Police Scotland said six sheep were attacked by the dogs. All six were left severely injured and had to be put down. The force said the farmer was legally allowed to shoot the dogs to protect his sheep, saying he had to act quickly to try and save them. Officers reminded dog owners it was their responsibility to ensure their animals were kept under control and not allowed to roam near livestock. A 54-year-old man was the subject of a report to the procurator fiscal over the incident.Improving Risk Equalization with Constrained Regression NBER Working Paper No. 21570 Issued in September 2015, Revised in September 2015 NBER Program(s):Health Care, Health Economics Several countries rely on regulated health plan competition to combine affordability of health plans with incentives for cost containment and quality improvement. Typically, these policies include premium regulation supplemented with risk equalization to compensate health plans for predictable variation in medical spending. An extensive empirical literature shows, however, that even the state-of-the-art risk equalization models undercompensate some risk groups and overcompensate others, leaving systematic incentives for risk selection. A natural approach to reducing under or overcompensation for a group is to include membership in that group as an indicator in the risk equalization model. For several types of indicators, however, inclusion can be problematic or infeasible. This paper introduces and illustrates an alternative approach to reducing over or undercompensation in such cases: constraining the estimated coefficients of the risk equalization model so as to limit over or undercompensation. Our empirical illustration is based on administrative data on medical spending and risk characteristics of nearly all individuals with basic health insurance in the Netherlands. We evaluate empirically the benefits of constraints in terms of reduced under or overcompensation on indicators omitted from the Dutch risk equalization model and their costs in terms of increased under or overcompensation on indicators included in the model. Our findings imply that the benefits of introducing constraints can be worth the costs. Constrained regression adds a tool for developing risk equalization models that can improve the overall economic performance of health plan payment schemes. The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this. You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email. Acknowledgments Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w21570 Published: van Kleef, R.C., McGuire, T.G., van Vliet, R.C.J.A. et al. Eur J Health Econ (2017) 18: 1137. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10198-016-0859-1 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10198-016-0859-1 Users who downloaded this paper also downloaded* these:"A language is a dialect with an army and navy" is a quip[1][2] or humorous adage[3] about the arbitrariness[4] of the distinction between a dialect and a language. It points out the influence that social[5] and political conditions can have over a community's perception of the status of a language or dialect. The adage was popularized by the sociolinguist and Yiddish scholar Max Weinreich, who heard it from a member of the audience at one of his lectures. Weinreich [ edit ] This statement is usually attributed to Max Weinreich, a specialist in Yiddish linguistics, who expressed it in Yiddish: אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמיי און פֿלאָט a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot The earliest known published source is Weinreich's article Der YIVO un di problemen fun undzer tsayt (דער ייִוואָ און די פּראָבלעמען פֿון אונדזער צײַט‎ "The YIVO Faces the Post-War World"; literally "The YIVO and the problems of our time"), originally presented as a speech on 5 January 1945 at the annual YIVO conference. Weinreich did not give an English version.[6] In the article, Weinreich presents this statement as a remark of an auditor at a lecture series given between 13 December 1943 and 12 June 1944:[7] A teacher at a Bronx high school once appeared among the auditors. He had come to America as a child and the entire time had never heard that Yiddish had a history and could also serve for higher matters.... Once after a lecture he approached me and asked, 'What is the difference between a dialect and language?' I thought that the maskilic contempt had affected him, and tried to lead him to the right path, but he interrupted me: 'I know that, but I will give you a better definition. A language is a dialect with an army and navy.' From that very time I made sure to remember that I must convey this wonderful formulation of the social plight of Yiddish to a large audience. Weinreich observed that the phrase is a "wonderful expression of the social plight of Yiddish". In his lecture, he discusses not just linguistic, but also broader notions of "yidishkeyt" (ייִדישקייט – lit. Jewishness). The sociolinguist and Yiddish scholar Joshua Fishman suggested that he might have been the auditor at the Weinreich lecture, and has subsequently been cited as the originator of the army-navy statement in several references.[citation needed] However, Fishman was assuming that the exchange took place at a conference in 1967, more than twenty years later than the YIVO lecture (1945) and in any case does not fit Weinreich's description.[8][original research?] Other mentions [ edit ] Some scholars believe that Antoine Meillet had earlier said that a language is a dialect with an army, but there is no contemporary documentation of this.[9] Jean Laponce suggested in 2004 that Hubert Lyautey (1854–1934) may have originated the phrase at a meeting of the Académie française, and proposed to call it the "Loi de Lyautey" 'Lyautey's law'.[10] But again there is no good evidence for this.[citation needed] Randolph Quirk adapted the definition to "A language is a dialect with an army and a flag" (adding a defense policy and a national airline).[11] See also [ edit ] References [ edit ] Further reading [ edit ] John Edwards (2009). Language and identity: an introduction. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-69602-9. John Earl Joseph (2004). Language and identity: national, ethnic, religious. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-333-99752-9. Robert McColl Millar (2005). Language, nation and power: an introduction. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4039-3971-5. Alexander Maxwell (2018). When Theory is a Joke: The Weinreich Witticism in Linguistics (pp 263-292). Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft. Vol 28, No 2.Rebekah Graham continues her series on the results of her PhD research on food insecurity. Here she addresses the ridiculous and useless advice forced on poor New Zealand families. Read part one – No, poor New Zealand families can’t just ‘grow their own vegetables’ and part two – No, poor NZ families don’t just need to make ‘better choices’. Let’s face it – the run-up to the election was a pretty terrible time for hurtful and horrible commentary about low income families in New Zealand. Last month, a story on a beneficiary who has $22 or less a week for food each week had a lot of attention. With that attention came many, many ill-advised and ignorant comments. “Don’t read the comments” is an internet mantra, but the moral judgements on display in the comments section reflect what many New Zealanders think. And we can’t shy away from that. Having very little left over for food and any other expenses each week is a fairly typical scenario for people on low-incomes. MSD’s 2016 report on the material wellbeing of New Zealand households acknowledges that “Low-income households especially can be left with insufficient income to meet other basic needs such as food, clothing, basic household operations, transport, medical care and education for household members.” [PDF] Despite this, New Zealanders seem to have a special brand of hate for beneficiaries. This surfaces in comment sections, deriding and demeaning those beneficiaries brave enough to speak out about the grim reality of their situation. In the snapshot of comments below there is an assumption that work will somehow magically fix poverty. In reality, New Zealand has a low-wage economy. Low-wage work does little to improve a person’s financial situation. In addition, it’s not uncommon for commenters to want to dig around in the details of a beneficiary’s life to determine if they’re “really” poor, or to try and find evidence of “poor decisions” that show that people such as Lynlie are “deserving” of their poverty. It’s a way to blame individuals for their hardship, and is based on incorrect assumptions about why poverty exists in New Zealand. Related No, poor NZ families don’t just need to make ‘better choices’ No, poor New Zealand families can’t just ‘grow their own vegetables’ Of course no comments section would be complete without the pearler “why is there no garden?” I’ve addressed that common misconception here. Suffice to say, backyard gardens are no panacea for food insecurity and insufficient incomes. The “just move somewhere else” argument assumes that there is sufficient safe and affordable housing throughout the country. In reality, there is an absence of suitable housing throughout New Zealand, with places such as Rotorua, Hamilton and Southland all struggling with the high cost of private rentals, inadequate social housing stock, and homelessness. It’s not just Stuff commenters. The TradeMe parenting message board “I really don’t care what people eat” runs red hot with vicious condemnation of people such as Lea, who we first met here. There’s a reason why researchers like me fiercely protect the identities of our participants. Having strangers trawling through every detail of your life is invasive, humiliating, and demeaning. Even more so when the sole purpose of such a practice is to pronounce judgement and tell people in hardship that if they just did [insert terrible advice here], then they wouldn’t be poor. Below, commenters use the provided example of walking to a community meal for food as a tool to berate Lea with for not trying harder to get paid work: Well, Mr If She Had A Catalogue Run She Wouldn’t Be Poor, have I got news for you. In contrast to your assumptions, Lea has tried very hard to create additional funds for herself. Despite having no computer or printer, she still managed to find a way to print off flyers advertising her cleaning services. There was little interest. It was a bit of a bust by all accounts. Undeterred, Lea attempted to sell Avon. Her family and friends aren’t wealthy. Perhaps not as grim as her situation, but there’s little left to spare for buying items from the Avon catalogue. Consequently, Lea walked down to a local retail centre and office block in an attempt to sell items to people with a higher income than herself. Reader, they called security. Nobody wanted to buy Avon from Lea. She was escorted from the premises, and left feeling humiliated and embarrassed. Lea was told not to come back again, and her attempts to legitimately gain additional income instead resulted in an increased sense of shame and isolation. Berating people such as Lea and Leslie for not trying harder, or for not making better choices, or for not having a catalogue run conveniently ignores and overlooks the wider structural issues driving poverty in this country. These include the eroding of social supports, insufficient safe and affordable housing, low wages, punitive welfare, inadequate mental health services, and systemic racism. Together with the increasing cost of living, too many New Zealanders are being left without sufficient incomes to live on. Lea and Lynlie’s choices are scathingly judged simply because they are poor. In a country that refuses to adequately provide for all its citizens, heaping sanctimonious judgments upon people such as Lea and Lynlie is cruel, shameful and ultimately
. The next announcement day will be sometime in September. Which leads to: Kaladesh Announced: The fall set will be called Kaladesh. The paper version will launching in September. The online version will go on sale October 10th. Online prereleases start October 7th. What details there are so far are The fall set will be called Kaladesh. The paper version will launching in September. The online version will go on sale October 10. Online prereleases start October 7. What details there are so far are here Planeswalker Decks: Wizards has announced that, starting with Kaladesh, these will replace the Intro Packs as a gateway product. The Planeswalker decks will include a unique Planeswalkers, plus some cards specific to that Planeswalker. Each Planeswalker deck will include 10 cards available only in these packs, but those cards will be Standard legal. The unique cards will be more “flavorful” than tournament ready, but we will see. The announcement is : Wizards has announced that, starting with Kaladesh, these will replace the Intro Packs as a gateway product. The Planeswalker decks will include a unique Planeswalkers, plus some cards specific to that Planeswalker. Each Planeswalker deck will include 10 cards available only in these packs, but those cards will be Standard legal. The unique cards will be more “flavorful” than tournament ready, but we will see. The announcement is here Commander 2016: This year’s Commander sets will feature four-color legends. There will be five decks. The paper release date is November, 11, 2016. And that’s about all we know. Announcement This year’s Commander sets will feature four-color legends. There will be five decks. The paper release date is November, 11, 2016. And that’s about all we know. Announcement here Niels Noorlander wins Magic Online Championship: The MOCS Championship was last weekend. Niels Noorlander took it down. Coverage is The MOCS Championship was last weekend. Niels Noorlander took it down. Coverage is here. Decklists are at the bottom of that page. For those of you with SCG Premium, Mike Sigrist wrote a tournament report with lots of deck analysis here Three Players Decided to Skip the MTGO Championship: Wizards hosted what should have been a 16 player Magic Online Championship, but three players failed to appear. Apparently an all-expense paid trip to play in an event with a minimum prize payout of $4,000 as not sufficiently enticing – or maybe they had travel issues. Sometimes getting a passport, visas and permission to enter the US can be difficult on short notice. Customer Rewards Promos Announced: The May promos are an alt art Sylvan Scrying for the event promo and an alt art Goblin Dark Dwellers for the store promo. While I do like the new art on Dark Dwellers, Worth has promised to use the promo program to get cards that are really needed for eternal formats into circulation. This does not do that in any way. Aaron Forsythe Cast Cone of Flame in Standard – Twitter Erupted: Aaron tweeted that he had cast Twitter exploded, since many players did not know/remember that it is Standard legal. It is in the Welcome Decks 2016. This led to a debate about whether it is appropriate to have Standard legal cards that are not in any Standard legal booster packs. Aaron tweeted that he had cast Cone of Flame off Googles, and that it was good.Twitter exploded, since many players did not know/remember that itStandard legal. It is in the Welcome Decks 2016.This led to a debate about whether it is appropriate to have Standard legal cards that are not in any Standard legal booster packs. Rosewater on Magic: Mark Rosewater gave a speech entitled Magic the Gathering: Twenty Years, Twenty Lessons at GDC 16. If you like knowing more about how Magic is made, check it out Mark Rosewater gave a speech entitled Magic the Gathering: Twenty Years, Twenty Lessons at GDC 16. If you like knowing more about how Magic is made, check it out here Community Super League Plays Legacy Tribal Wars: The CSL built tribal wars decklists last week. The results showed off all the best and worst of the tribal format. Some of the decks were really cool, but they also got killed by combo builds almost instantly (e.g. The CSL built tribal wars decklists last week. The results showed off all the best and worst of the tribal format. Some of the decks were really cool, but they also got killed by combo builds almost instantly (e.g. Horrors vs. Nightmares and Scarecrows vs. Werewolves. Lots of turn two kills.) Some of the builds were a totally unbalanced (e.g. Gaby Spartz stomping LR Marshall’s Elks ), or at least balanced at different levels. Since Tribal Wars has no sideboards, game twos in many of these matches were still totally hopeless. This round of the CSL was very much a case of competitive builds stomping casual decks. The Timeline: This is a list of things we have been promised, or we just want to see coming back. Another good source for dates and times is the MTGO calendar and the weekly blog, while the best source for known bugs is the Known Issues List. For quick reference, here are some major upcoming events. In addition, there are either one or two online PTQs each weekend, with qualifiers running the three days prior to the PTQ. Item: date and notes · Power Nine Challenge: Last Saturday of the month, at 11am Pacific. Next one May 28th. · Legacy Challenge: Second Saturday of the month, at 11am Pacific. Next one May 14th. · No Downtime on: June 8 and June 22 · League End Dates: all current leagues end July 27, 2016 · Legacy Gauntlet: June 8 through 16 · Eternal Masters: June 16 through July 6. Details : June 16 through July 6. Details here · Legacy Championship Qualifiers: July 6 through July 20 · Legacy Championship: July 24 · Eldritch Moon Prerelease: July 29-August 1. Details : July 29-August 1. Details here · Kaladesh Prerelease: October 7-10, on sale October 10th. Product code KLD. · From the Vault Lore: releases online October 10, 2016. · Aether Revolt: January 2017 release Flashback Schedule: Flashback drafts are 10Tix / 100 Play Points / 2 Tix plus product, not Phantom, single elim and pay out in play points: 200 for first, 100 for second, 50 for third and fourth. · Time Spiral, Planar Chaos, and Future Sight: May 18, 2016 to May 25, 2016 · Triple Tenth Edition: May 25, 2016 to June 1, 2016 · Triple Lorwyn: likely June 1 to June 8 · 2 Lorwyn, Morningtide: likely June 8 to June 15 · Triple Shadowmoor: likely June 15 to June 22 · 2 Shadowmoor, Eventide: likely June 22 to June 29 Flashback This Week: Flashback drafts are back. We have Time Spiral / Planar Chaos / Future Sight until next downtime, followed by Tenth Edition. Tenth Edition has two money cards – Crucible of Worlds and Hurkyl’s Recall. Neither are any good in 10E limited, but they are still worth grabbing. Beyond that, the pain lands are worth a few TIX each. Opinion Section: Answers to Bulk Commons Last week, I talked about the problem of bulk cards – the mix of extra lands, commons and other cards that have no real present or future value. These are the cards that even hard-core Pauper players ignore. For me, it includes the 270 odd Pacifisms in my collections. For a dealer like MTGOTraders.com, it is roughly 54,000 of the 55,000+ copies of Pacifism they own. (Yes, really – I asked Heath. They own over 55k Pacifisms.) Bulk cards are not much of a problem for newer players. Over time, however, they accumulate and really slow you down. My old laptop could not handle my collection of 85,000 cards – it froze roughly half the time I launched the collection tab, and deckbuilding took literally hours per deck. Moreover, you cannot make more than 50,000 cards tradeable, so if your collection is larger than that, you cannot let the BuyBots loose on the whole thing. I use my original account as a storage account, and it had almost 100k cards in it. It is almost entirely bulk. I have been trying to sell these cards for years. To even offer them to the Buybots, I have had to make five separate binders. One holds 50k creatures. One holds 35k sorceries, and so forth. I have to open a trade, let the bot buy what it wants, then change active binders and do it again. It’s a pain. Note: I could sell everything in the account to MTGOTraders.com. They would buy it, and probably give me a decent price. However, that would mean that someone at MTGOTraders.com would have to trade the cards to another account, 400 at a time. Or maybe they have a BOT for that. The point is that they don’t want those cards. No one wants 210 copies of Canyon Minotaur. Or the 262 copies of Pacifism in that account. If the bulk junk just sat there, I would not have an issue. However, I design decks in Excel or on paper, then type them into Notepad and load them into the deckbuilder. The program then grabs from the bulk. If I am building Bant Company, I want to use the Unhinged Forests, not three random SOI Forests I got 15th pick in recent drafts. If I am going to run Duress, I want to use my old frame Saga versions. That’s why I own them. However, the deck editor will throw some other (more recent) version into my deck whenever it can. The answer to that is to trade off all the bulk junk as fast as you get it, so that the deck builder cannot stick the wrong card in there. The problem is that if you spend a morning drafting that can be a lot of trades. Worse, in my experience, adding cards to trade binders is laggy and clunky. As a result, I have occasionally ended up trading away cards I actually wanted to keep without realizing it. After selling one of my original Bob Maher art Dark Confidants, then buying it back at a significant loss, I got so sick of this mess that I bought another account which I only use for constructed. I have moved almost 5k cards from my general, not limited only account, to the constructed account. And even then I have problems with bulk junk, because I keep getting event promos and so forth in the account. Yes, first world problems, but it is worse now that we have Play Points. With two accounts, I have one account with lots of spare Play Points, and another where I have to keep spending TIX to enter events. I would merge them if not for the pain of dealing with bulk junk. I still like to draft, and have been playing in sealed leagues, so I get lots of it. So how should this work? Well, here’s what happens when I draft in paper. After the draft, I break down my deck. I sort it into three or four piles. I give the basic land back to the shop. I give the bulk commons and uncommons I don’t need, and the occasional chaff rare, to some kid just getting into the game. I generally wind up with 0-10 cards I actually intend to keep and use in constructed. Those are the only cards I take home and add to my actual collections. MTGO, on the other hand, takes all those cards and dumps them into my collection. It does sort them alphabetically, but those unwanted cards are still in my collection. That might be nice for new players, but Wizards has often said that Duels of the Planeswalker is their entry-level digital offering. MTGO is for advanced players, and we really don’t get any pleasure out of having bulk junk in our collections. So how should this work? Here’s how I would build this – and this is inherently obvious. Moreover, I explicitly release all rights to the idea and concepts. In other words, Wizards, you can do this. Please. First, instead of one huge collection for everything, I would separate them. First, I would give everyone a collection for constructed cards. If you build a deck, the cards come from this pool. Second, all players have a bulk storage bin – or possibly a couple bulk bins. If you import a decklist into the deckbuilder and you don’t have a card in your constructed collection, one of the options would be “add a copy from your bulk bin” in addition to “update with version in your collection.” And here’s the important part: whenever you get new cards, the program would pop up a window showing the product. You could click or drag individual cards into your constructed collection, but the default would be to put them into the bulk bin. So, after the draft, I could save the couple cards I wanted for constructed and the rest would be safely out of the way. My deckbuilder would run faster, I would get to use the cards I paid for and life would be better. But that sort of thing will have to wait for version 5. MTGO does not have this sort of thing, and this version never will. Combining the collection screen and deck builder in V4 was a mistake, but one we just have to live with. It would be great if Wizards could rebuild this, but I am not going to hold my breath. What resources they have are stretched pretty thin just trying to get sets online and fixing bugs. So let’s look at fixes we can implement now. The existing solution is the one I took: have separate accounts for constructed and limited. Just don’t expect to qualify for the MOCS very often, since you will be splitting points. As for the bulk commons that accumulate in your draft account, when the pile gets too deep, spend $10 on a new account, play through the new player points in that account and transfer out anything of value. After that, trade the 50k bulk cards over to the new account and then forget all about it. That will probably only take 8-10 hours. It’s almost like a shredder, but Wizards makes some money, so it is all good – right? In case it isn’t obvious – I hate this system. It is one of the main reasons I don’t play more on MTGO. I would totally play more limited if dealing with chaff online wasn’t much, much more time consuming than it is in paper. And that is stupid. So here are a couple ideas that seem not unreasonable, along with the pros and cons: A Shredder: This is the equivalent of throwing away your draft leftovers, the shredder would simply erase the cards. I think the concern is that someone would accidentally shred good stuff, or someone would get access to an account and shred money cards in spite or as a “joke.” It should be easy enough to work around this – just limit what can be shredded. If the shredder could only erase commons and basic lands from in print sets, it would be pretty hard for anyone to do too much damage either deliberately or by accident. I don’t like a shredder on principle, but this would help empty collections. Donate to Charity: In theory, this is great. Everyone can take all their spare cards and pool them, then someone could give new players cards to play with. In practice, we already have this. MTGOTraders.com, and other vendors, have free card bots that “sell” cards for nothing. You can trade some number of cards per week. It would be better if Wizards were to do this – to collect cards from players and donate them to new players, but Wizards is already making money with the deckbuilder’s tool kit. It would be great, but I don’t see it happening. Redeem for Value: In the real world, I can always sell my bulk dealers for $2-3 per thousand cards. It’s not much, but it is something to do with the cards. Ideally, I would love to have Wizards give us a special binder that we could fill. During downtimes, Wizards would remove the cards form that binder and give us something: 1 Play Point per thousand cards, 1 TIX per 10k cards, whatever. The concept is great, but the problem is that there is so much bulk out there. MTGOTraders.com has over THREE MILLION basic lands, and many million more commons and uncommons. 55k Pacifisms, remember. The potential downside would be a flood of TIX, but that could be ameliorated if Wizards limited the redemption to once per month per account. Trading cards for TIX would also give big dealers like MTGO a windfall, but maybe they deserve it. They have enabled constructed events for a long time, and they have also been wrestling with all this bulk for a long time. Sell Us Storage Boxes: In the paper word, I can buy a big box and fill it with cards. Then I can stick it in a closet, or up in the attic. A digital equivalent might be a special binder that can close to become an object in the non-card tab, while removing any cards in that binder from my collection. The programming is probably not trivial, but I would be willing to pay for this. If enough others were also, then this might even be profitable for Wizards. Redeem to Archive: This is a simpler version of storage boxes. Wizards creates a binder called “archive.” Each downtime, it takes all the cards in that binder are “compacts” them into a thing in the non-card tab. You can click on that item to unpack it, just like you open a booster pack. Conceptually, this seems simple, but I suspect that it isn’t, really. The system would have to remember all the digital IDs of each card in each archive box. Storage boxes probably have the same problem. A Bulk Cards Tab: I keep coming around to this. The only cheap things that Wizards could do are a shredder or pulling cards during downtimes, like they do for redemption. Maybe they can give us a third tab on the deckbuilding//collection tab. Now we would have “collection”, “noncard” and “bulk card storage.” To keep it from being confusing to new players, the default would be to put all cards into the collection tab. In settings, however, you could choose where to put all new product from limited events, and have another toggle for where new cards from trades go. I’m sure there are other options, but I really wish we could do something. What we have now is a mess. BTW, I did note the irony of discussing the problem of a shortage of money cards in the same article where I complain about having too many cards. Paper has the same problem, but at least in paper I can take a junk common and a Sharpie and make a playtest Avacyn. Or use then for bookmarks, of course. For those of you whose books are still paper, that is. Judge Question of the Week: I have been training new judges for many years, and part of that training involves setting out scenarios and problems that teach various parts of the rules. They start simple – i.e. a creature with trample is blocked by a creature with protection – and get harder as they go. The goal is to determine what areas of the rules I need to teach, and what my candidate already knows. And to have some fun. Here we go. You are about to die. You have seven dead cards in hand, and if your opponent untaps, she will kill you. On the plus side, she is at one life. You have one draw step to rip a burn spell, but during your upkeep she casts Silence, preventing you from casting spells this turn. Then, just to rub it in, you draw Fiery Temper. Question: is this the worst bad beats ever? As always, there are no relevant cards not mentioned. As for why you cannot win once your opponent untaps – she has a grip full of counterspells, but is tapped out on your turn. Cutting Edge Tech: Standard: The biggest MTGO event last weekend was the Magic Online Championship. The winner’s deck is featured. All thirteen Standard decklists can be found : The biggest MTGO event last weekend was the Magic Online Championship. The winner’s deck is featured. All thirteen Standard decklists can be found here Modern: Modern was one of the formats for the Magic Online Championship. The winner’s deck is here. All thirteen Modern decklists can be found Modern was one of the formats for the Magic Online Championship. The winner’s deck is here. All thirteen Modern decklists can be found here Legacy: Legacy was one of the formats for the Magic Online Championship. The winner’s deck is here. All thirteen Legacy decklists can be found Legacy was one of the formats for the Magic Online Championship. The winner’s deck is here. All thirteen Legacy decklists can be found here Vintage: The VSL qualifying event has wrapped up. The VSL decklists are : The VSL qualifying event has wrapped up. The VSL decklists are here. Paul Rietzl went undefeated to win a spot in the VSL – playing White Weenie. Card Prices: Note: all my prices come from the fine folks at MTGOTraders.com. These are retail prices, and generally the price of the lowest priced, actively traded version. (Prices for some rare promo versions are not updated when not in stock, so I skip those.) You can get these cards at MTGOTraders.com web store, or from their bots: MTGOTradersBot(#) (they have bots 1-10), CardCaddy and CardWareHouse, or sell cards to MTGOTradersBuyBot(#) (they have buybots 1-4). I have bought cards from MTGOTraders for over a decade now, and have never been overcharged or disappointed. Standard staples: Standard was going nuts this week. We had some really wild swings this time around. Last week I asked if CoCo could pass Jace? Answer is no, but Kalitas and Nahiri may be making runs. Modern staples: Modern is a bit more reasonable this week. A couple solid cards that took hits are coming back. Horizon Canopy was up again – guess we are not doing enough flashback drafts. Legacy and Vintage: Legacy and Vintage are mixed this week, with no overall direction I can see. Misdirection dropped again. Looks like people can see Eternal Masters fast approaching. Set Redemption: You can redeem complete sets on MTGO. You need to purchase a redemption voucher from the store for $25. During the next downtime, Wizards removes a complete set from your account and sends you the same set in paper. Complete Set Price Last Week Change % Change Battle for Zendikar $76.48 $72.78 $3.70 5% Dragons of Tarkir $131.55 $141.10 ($9.55) -7% Magic Origins $135.18 $122.17 $13.01 11% Oath of the Gatewatch $121.76 $114.42 $7.34 6% Shadows over Innistrad $100.07 $96.85 $3.22 3% The Good Stuff: The following is a list of all the non-promo, non-foil cards on MTGO that retail for more than $25 per card. These are the big ticket items in the world of MTGO. Worth promised to use the promo program to up the supply of some needed cards. These may qualify. (Gaea’s Cradle made it!) The list is down below 50 cards this week. I’m guessing people are selling now, expecting to rebuy at lower prices when Eternal Masters gets here. Name Set Rarity Price Rishadan Port MM Rare $ 163.69 Black Lotus VMA Bonus $ 136.45 Liliana of the Veil ISD Mythic Rare $ 94.60 Misdirection MM Rare $ 93.00 Mox Sapphire VMA Bonus $ 61.31 Tangle Wire NE Rare $ 52.94 Tarmogoyf FUT Rare $ 52.05 Wasteland TPR Rare $ 51.79 Tarmogoyf MM2 Mythic Rare $ 51.75 Tarmogoyf MMA Mythic Rare $ 49.57 Ancestral Recall VMA Bonus $ 48.78 Wasteland TE Uncommon $ 46.64 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy ORI Mythic Rare $ 43.93 City of Traitors EX Rare $ 43.32 Mox Jet VMA Bonus $ 41.80 Celestial Colonnade WWK Rare $ 39.91 Grove of the Burnwillows FUT Rare $ 39.73 Gaea's Cradle UZ Rare $ 39.61 City of Traitors TPR Rare $ 39.02 Scalding Tarn ZEN Rare $ 38.38 Horizon Canopy FUT Rare $ 37.25 Scapeshift MOR Rare $ 36.79 Time Walk VMA Bonus $ 36.35 Food Chain MM Rare $ 36.17 Underground Sea ME2 Rare $ 35.59 Voice of Resurgence DGM Mythic Rare $ 34.70 Infernal Tutor DIS Rare $ 34.46 Mox Emerald VMA Bonus $ 34.16 Mox Ruby VMA Bonus $ 34.05 Lion's Eye Diamond MI Rare $ 33.19 Batterskull NPH Mythic Rare $ 32.61 Exploration UZ Rare $ 32.56 Show and Tell UZ Rare $ 32.51 Mox Pearl VMA Bonus $ 31.68 Cavern of Souls AVR Rare $ 31.57 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet OGW Mythic Rare $ 31.55 Mox Opal SOM Mythic Rare $ 31.41 Ensnaring Bridge ST Rare $ 31.33 Containment Priest C14 Rare $ 30.74 Griselbrand AVR Mythic Rare $ 29.51 Containment Priest PZ1 Rare $ 29.39 Mox Opal MM2 Mythic Rare $ 28.97 Ensnaring Bridge 8ED Rare $ 28.59 Underground Sea ME4 Rare $ 28.44 Ensnaring Bridge 7E Rare $ 28.34 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar BFZ Mythic Rare $ 27.12 Blood Moon MMA Rare $ 26.40 Crucible of Worlds 5DN Rare $ 25.73 Crucible of Worlds 10E Rare $ 25.56 Volcanic Island ME4 Rare $ 25.52 Volcanic Island VMA Rare $ 25.12 Unmask MM Rare $ 25.01 The big number is the retail price of a playset (4 copies) of every card available on MTGO. Assuming you bought the least expensive versions available, the cost of owning a playset of every card on MTGO is $ 26,840. That’s up about $600 from last week’s number. Weekly Highlights: I am going to be headed for GP Minneapolis the weekend after next. No idea what I will play, or even if I will play in the main event. I don’t really like any of my Standard decks, and paying $60 to play two days with a Standard deck I don’t love seems bad. It’s better if you money, but I don’t get anywhere near enough practice to think that will happen. That means that even if I make day two, I will likely go home with nothing. Or I could play in side events. PRJ “One Million Words” and “3MWords” on MTGO This series is an ongoing tribute to Erik “Hamtastic” Friborg. HammyBot Super Sale: HammyBot was set up to sell off Erik Friborg’s collection, with all proceeds going to his wife and son. So far, HammyBot has raised over $8,000, but there are a lot of cards left in the collection. Those cards are being sold at MTGOTrader’s Buy Price. Answer to the Judge Question of the Week: You are about to die. You have seven dead cards in hand, and if your opponent untaps, she will kill you. On the plus side, she is at one life. You have one draw step to rip a burn spell, but during your upkeep she casts Silence, preventing you from casting spells this turn. Then, just to rub it in, you draw Fiery Temper. Worst bad beats ever? Worst beats ever? Not really. You can just win. During the cleanup step, "this turn" effects end. If you keep eight cards in hand, you will need to discard during clean-up. If you discard the Fiery Temper, Madness will trigger. Because an ability triggers, the game creates a stack for that trigger. The Silence effect has already ended, so put the madness trigger on the stack, then fire the Temper at her face. Fiery Temper FTW.Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email BABY Amie Reid saved her twin brother Jake when he stopped breathing in his sleep. The three-month-old tot cried out and parents Hannah and Chris rushed to the cot. Fortunately Chris, 30, had been trained to rescuscitate a baby. The twins were 15 weeks early and he had to learn before they could come home from hospital. He said: “Jake’s lips were blue and he was all floppy. Luckily, after one breath and one push on his chest, he came back. “It’s scary to think that we only woke up because his sister was crying. “If she hadn’t been crying, it would have been too late.” Jake was rushed to Dr Gray’s Hospital in Elgin, where he stopped breathing again. He was put on a ventilator and rushed to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, where medics found his lung had collapsed and he was fighting three infections. Hannah, 24, who is also mum to Dylan, six, Sophie, three, and Ethan, one, said: “It was so scary.We really thought we were going to lose our little boy. “If Amie hadn’t cried at that moment, he would have been beyond saving.” It wasn’t the first medical drama for the twins. It took doctors 12 minutes and seven attempts to revive 1lb 11oz Amie when Hannah went into labour just 25 weeks into her pregnancy. Jake arrived an hour later, weighing 1lb 13oz. Hannah, of Buckie, Banffshire, said: “When I first saw them, they were so tiny. “Their skin was like cling film and you could see everything inside. I just thought, ‘Are they going to survive?’ “They were so premature you couldn’t speak to them or touch them because it could put them into shock. “One of the hardest things was that I couldn’t cuddle them.” (Image: Michael Traill) Their hands were the size of a 20p piece and Hannah’s wedding ring could fit round an arm. Amie and Jake had blood transfusions, lumbar punctures and were on oxygen during their three-month fight for life in hospital in Edinburgh and it was a huge relief for the family to get the twins home. Amie, who was still on oxygen, arrived back a week after Jake. Hannah said: “As soon as they were together they were holding each other’s hands.” And nine months after Amie became a tiny lifesaver, the twins are happy, healthy babies. Amie came off oxygen two weeks ago and while they are still only the average size of a three-month-old, doctors are happy with their progress. The family are looking ahead to the twins’ first birthdays this summer. Hannah said: “When I look back, I think, ‘How did we cope?’ But we just did. “I feel so blessed to have my family all together. Amie and Jake really are little miracles.” Try your hand at our daily news quiz:Fox’s big reality gamble Utopia got off to a modest pre-season start Sunday night. The two-hour premiere had 4.6 million viewers and a 1.9 rating among adults 18-49 Sunday night. That was lower than the latest episode of CBS’ Big Brother (7.1 million, 2.3), which likewise started at 8 p.m. The pricy social experience strands 15 people in a remote area to build a perfect community. The debut was up against the massive time-period premiere of NBC’s Sunday Night Football (an estimated 21.2 million, 8.0), yet also had a strong NFL lead-in of its own that largely didn’t stick around. (If you’re a football fan, switching from Fox over to SNF is probably more tempting.) Fox is betting heavily on Utopia, which basically replaces The X Factor as the network’s multi-night reality show this fall. Utopia is considered risky within the industry partly because broadcast reality series typically have some kind of competitive element to lend a sense of high stakes and urgency (Survivor, American Idol, The Bachelor—all are contests to some degree), yet Utopia is purely a soap. So far, there has been a fair amount of on-set drama, which could hook viewers (EW‘s premiere recap here), and last night’s performance is still considered a workable number. The audience could grow from this, especially as the fall season gets underway.An elderly Britain First protester was booted to the ground with a well-aimed flying kick during a clash with East London Muslims this past weekend. The incident happened outside the East London Mosque following a “provocative” demonstration by the nationalist group. Video footage shot by Britian First activists show a heated exchange between the nationalist activists and Muslim worshippers, as the protesters blocked the entrance to the mosque. As the two groups hurled insults, one Muslim pinned a female police officer up against the doorway and had to be dragged off by fellow officers. The Britain First protesters, waving British flags, banners and large Christian crosses were then asked to leave by the police. As they were escorted away from the building and across the road, some of the Muslims launched physical attacks, including the flying kick that sent an older activist sprawling to the ground. Two men were arrested at the scene, but they were both Britain First members; one suspected of attending the protest equipped to cause criminal damage, and the other of assault. Both were later released without charge. Commenting on the arrests on Facebook, Britain First said: “Both released without charge. No Muslims arrested yet! “London police officers were assaulted by Muslims too, no arrests. East London is sharia state!” A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: “Police were called following reports of a protest outside the East London Mosque on Whitechapel Road. “Officers attended and spoke with the group. A short time later, a counter-protest commenced. Two men were subsequently arrested.” Video footage of the clash, posted to the Britain First Facebook page, has provoked fierce debate with many people questioning the provocative tactic of campaigning outside mosques. One Facebook called the group “bullies”, asking: “Why would u protest outside a mosque?” She added: “There would be more than flying kicks if muslims protested outside church while people are worshipping us british would go into meltdown. Ur bullys!” Another commented: “If you’re going to stand outside a different religious church and wave your own religion in their face, really you deserve it. Those people aren’t extremists. You’re provoking individual people with other beliefs. Everything about Britain First is disgusting.” However, others have said that a peaceful protest can never be an excuse for violence, and have asked why no arrests were made for the violent assaults. One Facebook user named James commented: “While Britain First was being escorted away by the police, one of their members was assaulted in a cowardly manner ie flying kick in the back. The assault was witnessed by members of the public, members of the police, and was recorded, yet the assailant was not arrested. Why? No amount of provocation can excuse an attack like this.” Another noted: “how dare British people have a peaceful demonstration in our own country?” And a number of people expressed shock that it could be controversial to fly the British flag anywhere in Britain, saying they should be flying atop mosques anyway. Britain First, which has been described as “Britain’s most vile right-wing group,” according to the Daily Mail, has a history of holding protests in Muslim areas and has held similar demonstrations outside the East London Mosque a number of times. However it has denied reports in the Mail and the Sun that its members have “swigged lager outside” the mosque as a ‘two fingers up’ at local Muslims, whose religion bans the consumption of alcohol.The head of the Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND), Bruno Kahl, said Turkey could not convince them that Muslim scholar Fethullah Gülen was behind a failed coup attempt on July 15 despite accusations against the Gülen movement. In an interview with Der Spiegel magazine that was published on Saturday, Kahl said that despite Turkey’s efforts at different levels to convince Germany that Gülen was the mastermind of the coup, they were not persuaded. Kahl, however, also ruled out arguments that the government staged the coup. “The coup was not initiated by the state. There was an ongoing purge even before July 15. As a result, some within the military thought that they should intervene before the purge reaches them. However, it was too late, and they were purged during this process, too,” Germany’s chief spy told Der Spiegel. According to Kahl, the failed coup attempt served as a pretext to accelerate the purge. BND head said that what is being witnessed in the post-coup era was going to happen anyway, though maybe not with the same depth and same radical steps, in reference to an unprecedented crackdown of critics in Turkey. In response to a question on the Gülen movement, which has been designated as a terrorist organization by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the head of German intelligence defined the movement as a civilian association that provides religious and secular education through a number of educational institutions. Kahl also said the Gülen movement and Erdoğan circles worked together for years with an emphasis on education. Earlier in January, a report prepared by the EU Intelligence Analysis Centre (IntCen) revealed that although President Erdoğan and the
paid operatives like Dr. Orne and the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF) to conceal the crimes of the Agency. Orne’s forays into hypno-programming were financed in the 1960s by the Human Ecology Fund, a CIA cover at Cornell University and the underwriter of many of the formative mind control experiments conducted in the U.S. and abroad, including the gruesome brainwashing and remote mind control experiments of Dr. Ewen Cameron at Montreal’s Allen Memorial Institute. Research specialties of the CIA’s black psychiatrists included electroshock lobotomies, drugging agents, incapacitants, hypnosis, sleep deprivation and radio control of the brain, among hundreds of sub-projects. The secondary source of funding for Dr. Orne’s work in hypnotic suggestion and dissolution of memory is eerie in the cult child abuse context. The voluminous files of John Marks in Washington, D.C. (139 boxes obtained under FOIA, to be exact, two-fifths of which document CIA interest in the occult) include an Agency report itemizing a $30,000 grant to Orne from Human Ecology, and another $30,000 from Boston’s Scientific Engineering Institute (SEI) – another CIA funding cover, founded by Edwin Land of the Polaroid Corporation (and supervision of the U-2 spy plane escapades). This was the year that the CIA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) geared up a study of parapsychology and the occult. The investigation, dubbed Project OFTEN-CHICKWIT, gave rise to the establishment of a social “laboratory” by SEI scientists at the University of South Carolina – a college class in black witchcraft, demonology and voodoo. Dr. Orne, with SEI funding, marked out his own mind control corner at the University of Pennsylvania in the early 1960s. He does not publicize his role as CIA psychiatrist. He denies it, very plausibly. In a letter to Dr. Orne, Marks once reminded him that he’d disavowed knowledge of his participation in one mind-wrecking experimental sub-project. Orne later recanted, admitting that he’d been aware of the true source of funding all along. Among psychiatrists in the CIA’s mind control fraternity, Orne ranks among the most venerable. He once boasted to Marks that he was routinely briefed on all significant CIA behavior modification experiments: “Why would they come to him,” Martin Cannon muses in The Controllers, which links UFO abductions to secret military research veiled by screen memories of “alien” abduction, “unless Orne had a high security clearance and worked extensively with the intelligence services?” To supplement his CIA income, the influential Dr. Orne has been the donee of grants from the Office of Naval Research and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. “I should like to hear,” Cannon says, “what innocent explanation, if any, the Air Force has to offer to explain their interest in post-hypnotic amnesia.” According to Army records, Orne’s stomping grounds, Penn U., was a bee-hive of secret experiments in the Vietnam War period. The Pentagon and CIA – under the auspices of ORD’s Steve Aldrich, a doyen of occult and parapsychological studies – conferred the Agency’s most lucrative research award upon the University of Pennsylvania to study the effects of 16 newly-concocted biochemical warfare agents on humans, including choking, blistering and vomiting agents, toxins, poison gas and incapacitating chemicals. The tests were abruptly halted in 1972 when the prison’s medical lab burned to the ground. Testimony before the 1977 Church Committee’s probe of the CIA hinted that, as of 1963, the scientific squalor of the CIA’s mind control regimen, code-named MKULTRA, had abandoned military and academic laboratories, fearing exposure, and mushroomed in cities across the country. Confirmation arrived in 1980 when Joseph Holsinger, an aide to late Congressman Leo Ryan (who was murdered by a death squad at Jonestown) exposed the formation of eccentric religious cults by the CIA. Holsinger made the allegation at a colloquium of psychologists in San Francisco on “Psychosocial Implications of the Jonestown Phenomenon.” Holsinger maintained that a CIA rear-support base had been in collusion with Jones to perform medical and mind control experiments at People’s Temple. The former Congressional aide cited an essay he’d received in the mail, “The Penal Colony,” written by a Berkeley psychologist. The author had emphasized: Rather than terminating MKULTRA, the CIA shifted its programs from public institutions to private cult groups, including the People’s Temple. Jonestown had its grey eminence in Dr. Lawrence Laird Layton of the University of California at Berkeley, formerly a chemist for the Manhattan Project and head of the Army’s chemical warfare research division in the early 1950s. (Larry Layton, his son, led the death squad that murdered Congressman Leo Ryan, who’d arrived at Guyana to investigate the cult.) Michael Meiers, author of Was Jonestown a CIA Medical Experiment?, scavenged for information on the People’s Temple for six years, concluding: “The Jonestown experiment was conceived by Dr. Layton, staffed by Dr. Layton and financed by Dr. Layton. It was as much his project as it was Jim Jones” “Though it was essential for him to remain in the background for security reasons, Dr. Layton maintained contact with and even control of the experiment through his wife and children.” The African-American cult had at its core a Caucasian inner-council, composed of Dr. Layton’s family and in-laws. The press was blind to obvious CIA connections, but survivors of the carnage in Guyana followed the leads and maintained that Jim Jones was “an employee, servant, agent or operative of the Central Intelligence Agency” from 1963 – the year the Agency turned to cult cut-outs to conceal MKULTRA mind control activities – until 1978. In October 1981 the survivors of Jonestown filed a $63 million lawsuit against Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Stansfield Turner, former director of the CIA, currently a teacher at the University of Maryland and a director of the Monsanto Corporation. The suit, filed in U.S. district court in San Francisco, accused Turner of conspiring with Agency operatives to “enhance the economic and political powers of James Warren Jones,” and of conducting “mind control and drug experimentation” on the Temple flock. The suit was dismissed four months later for “failure to prosecute timely.” All requests for an appeal were denied. Ligatures of the CIA clung to the cults. Much of the violence that has since exploded across the front pages was incited by CIA academics at leading universities. Small wonder, then, that Ted Goertzel, director of the Forum for Policy Research at Rutgers, which maintains a symbiosis with the CIA despite media exposure, should write that the most susceptible victims of “cryptomnesia” (a synonym for false memories) believe “in conspiracies, including the JFK assassination, AIDS conspiracies, as well as the UFO cover-up.” The problem, Goertzel says, “may have its origins in early childhood,” and is accompanied by “feelings of anomie and anxiety that make the individual more likely to construct false memories out of information stored in the unconscious mind.” This side of gilded rationalizations, the CIA’s links to the cults are no manifestation of “cryptomnesia.” Like Jonestown, the Symbionese Liberation Army was a mind control creation unleashed by the Agency. The late political researcher Mae Brussell, whose study of The Firm commenced in 1963 after the assassination of John Kennedy, wrote in 1974 that the rabid guerrilla band “consisted predominantly of CIA agents and police informers.” This unsavory group was, Brussell insisted, “an extension of psychological experimentation projects, connected to Stanford Research Institute, Menlo Park.” (She went on to lament that “many of the current rash of ‘senseless killings,’ ‘massacres,’ and ‘zombie-type murders’ are committed by individuals who have been in Army hospitals, mental hospitals or prison hospitals, where their heads have been literally taken over surgically to create terror in the community.”) Evidence that the CIA conceived and directed the SLA was obvious. The SLA leadership was trained by Colston Westbrook, a Pennsylvania native. Westbrook was a veteran of the CIA’s murderous PHOENIX Program in South Vietnam, where he trained terrorist cadres and death squads. In 1969 he took a job as an administrator of Pacific Architects and Engineers, a CIA proprietary in Southern California. Three of Westbrook’s foot soldiers, Emily and William Harris and Angela Atwood (a former police intelligence informer), had been students of the College of Foreign Affairs, a CIA cover at the University of Indiana. Even the SLA symbol, a seven-headed cobra, had been adopted by the OSS (America’s wartime intelligence agency) and CIA to designate precepts of brainwashing. When the smoke cleared at SLA headquarters in L.A., Dr. Martin Orne was called upon to examine Patricia Hearst in preparation for trial. The government charged that she had participated voluntarily in the SLA’s gun-toting crime spree. Orne’s was a foregone conclusion – he sided with the government. His opinion was shared by two other psychiatrists called to appraise Ms. Hearst’s state of mind, Robert Jay Lifton and Louis Jolyon West. Dr. Lifton was a co-founder of the aforementioned Human Ecology Fund. The CIA contractor that showered Orne with research grants in the 1960s. Dr. West is one of the CIA’s most notorious mind control specialists, currently director of UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. It was West who brought a score of mind control psychiatrists of the ultra-right political stripe to the UCLA campus. Drs. Orne, Lifton and West unanimously agreed that Patty Hearst had been “persuasively coerced” to join the SLA. She had been put through a grueling thought reform regimen. She’d been isolated and sensory deprived, raped, humiliated, badgered, politically indoctrinated with a surrealistic mutation of Third World Marxism. Ms. Hearst was only allowed human companionship when she exhibited signs of submission. Orne and his colleagues assured that attention was narrowed to their psychologizing, conveniently rendering evidence of CIA collusion extraneous to consideration by the jury. Another psychiatrist called to testify at the trial of “Tania” surfaced with Dr. Orne in 1991 on the board of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation. (The FMSF board is almost exclusively composed of former CIA and military doctors currently employed by major universities. None have backgrounds in ritual abuse – their common interest is behavior modification. Dr. Margaret Singer, a retired Berkeley Ph.D., studied repatriated prisoners-of-war returning from the Korean War at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Maryland (1952-58). Singer turned up in 1982 on the book jacket of Raven – the CIA’s code-name for Jim Jones – by San Francisco Examiner reporters Tim Reiterman and John Jacobs, a thoroughly-researched account of the People’s Temple that completely side-steps CIA involvement. Co-author John Jacobs was supposedly one of the country’s leading authorities on CIA mind control, a subject he studied at length for a series published by the Washington Post. Reiterman had been the Examiner reporter on the Patricia Hearst beat. Yet both writers managed to avoid obvious intelligence connections. Dr. Singer commended the book as “the definitive psychohistory of Jim Jones.” Raven, she opined, conveyed “the essence of psychological and social processes that Jim Jones, the ultimate manipulator, set in motion.” The true “manipulators,” of course, were operatives of the CIA, and the public disinformation gambit lauded by Dr. Singer was, according to Meiers, in tune with “a concerted attempt to suppress information, stifle investigations, censor writers and manipulate public information.” The CIA and Pentagon have quietly organized and influenced a long line of mind control cults, among them: The Riverside Lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis Also known as The Solar Lodge of the OTO, which followed the teachings of cult messiah Aleister Crowley, whose fixed gaze on the astral equinox resulted in instructions from his deities to form a religious order. Crowley, high priest of the OTO and a British intelligence agent, gave Winifred T. Smith a charter to open an OTO lodge in Pasadena. The high priest of the lodge was Jack Parsons, a rocket expert and founder of the California Institute of Technology. Parsons, who took the oath of the anti-Christ in 1949, contributed to the design of the Pentagon under subsequent CIA director John J. McCloy. He was killed in a still unexplained laboratory explosion. There is a crater on the moon named after him. The OTO’s Solar Lodge in San Bernardino was presided over by Georgina “Jean” Brayton, the daughter of a ranking Air Force officer in the 1960s. The cult subscribed to a grim, apocalyptic view of the world, and like Charles Manson believed that race wars would precipitate the Big Cataclysm. In the Faustian Los Angeles underworld, the lodge was known for its indulgence in sadomasochism, drug dealing, blood drinking, child molestation and murder. Candace Reos, a former member of the lodge, was deposed by Riverside police in 1969. Reos said that Brayton controlled the thinking of all cult members. One poor soul, she said, was ordered to curb his sexual urges by cutting his wrists every time he was aroused. Mrs. Reos told police, according to the report, that when she became pregnant, Georgina was angry and told her that she would have to condition herself to hate her child. Reos told police that children of the cult’s 43 adult members were secluded from their parents and received “training” that took on “very severe tones.” “There was a lot of spanking involved,” she said, “a lot of heavy criticism. There was a lot of enclosed in dark rooms.” The teachers, she added. “left welts.” If so ordered, adult cultists would beat their children. According to a Riverside County Sheriff’s report, a six year-old child burned the group’s school house to the ground. The boy was punished by solitary confinement in a locked shipping crate left in the desert, where the average temperature was 110 degrees, for two months. The boy was chained to a metal plate. When police freed him, they were nauseated by the suffocating stench of excrement. The child was smothered in flies swarming from a tin-can toilet. The Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh Movement In 1985 the Portland Oregonian published a 36-part, book-length series linking the cult to opium trafficking, prostitution, money laundering, arson, slave labor, mass poisonings, illegal wiretaps and the stockpiling of guns and biochemical warfare weapons. The year-long Oregonian investigation revealed cult ties to CIA-trained mercenaries in El Salvador and the Far East. Domestically, Rajneesh’s secret police force worked with Agency operatives. The Finders On February 7, 1987 Customs agents raided a child-porn ring in Tallahasee, Florida. Eight suspects and six children were taken into custody. The children, according to a Customs Department memo, behaved “like animals in a public park,” and “were not aware of the function and purpose of telephones, televisions and toilets.” The children told police that they were forced to live outdoors and were given food only as a reward. A check on the backgrounds of the adults turned up a police report, “specific in describing ‘bloody rituals’ and sex orgies involving children, and an as-yet unsolved murder.” Customs agents searched a cult safe house and discovered a computer room and documents recording “high-tech” bank transfers, explosives, and a set of instructions advising cult members on moving children through jurisdictions around the country. One photographic album found in the house featured the execution and disembowelment of goats, and snapshots, according to a Customs report, of “adults and children dressed in white sheets participating in a bloody ritual.” An American passport was found. The investigating agents contacted the State Department and were advised to “terminate further investigation.” They investigated anyway, reporting that “the CIA made contact and admitted to owning the Finders … as a front for a domestic training organization, but that it had ‘gone bad.’” The late wife of Marion David Pettie, the cult’s leader, had worked for the Agency, and his son had been an employee of Air America, the heroin-riddled CIA proprietary. Yet Pettie denied to a reporter for U.S. News & World Report any connection to the Firm. Police in Washington refused to comment. Officials of the CIA dismissed as “hogwash” allegations of any connection to the Finders cult. O.T.A. The Order of the Temple of Astarte (OTA) in Pasadena, California is a “hermetic” occult organization that practices “Magick in the Western Tradition.” The cult is led by Fraters Khenemel, a police officer, and Aleyin, a veteran Green Beret. The cult’s everyday language is unusual for a mystical order – one group schedule is laden with words like “operation,” “sixteen-thirty hours,” and “travel orders.” Demonology is among the OTA’s primary occult interests. The police connection recalls the statement of Louis Tackwood, the former LAPD provocateur whose revelations of secret police subterfuge set off a political tempest in Los Angeles in 1973. “You don’t know,” he told journalist Donald Freed, “but there’s a devil worship cult in Pasadena. Actually in Altadena.” Tackwood alleged that the cultists were “on the LAPD payroll.” The CIA and Pentagon cooperate in the creation of cults. The Association of National Security Alumni, a public interest veterans group opposed to covert operations, considers it a “primary issue of concern” that the Department of Defense has a “perceived role in satanic cult activities, which qualify in and of themselves as very damaging exercises in mind control and behavioral modification.” It is beginning to dawn on the psychiatric community at large that the CIA’s mind control clique is a menace reminiscent of Nazi medical experimentation. In 1993, Dr. Corydon Hammond, a professor at the University of Utah’s School of Medicine, conducted a seminar on federally-funded mind control experiments. Topics covered by Hammond included brainwashing, post-hypnotic programming and the induction of multiple personalities by the CIA. Hammond contended that the cult underground has roots in Nazi Germany, and that the CIA’s cult mind control techniques were based upon those of Nazi scientists recruited by the CIA for Cold Warfare. (Researcher Lenny Lapon estimates in Mass Murderers in White Coats that 5,000 Nazis resettled in the U.S. after WW II.) Hammond was forced to drop this line of inquiry by professional ridicule, especially from the CIA’s False Memory Syndrome Foundation, and a barrage of death threats. At a recent regional conference on ritual child abuse, he regretted that he could no longer speak on the theme of government mind control. The psychological community is waking to the threat in its ranks, to judge by APA surveys and personal communications with ranking members of the mental health field, but the world at large remains in the dark. The “mass hysteria” and “false memory” bromides disseminated by the establishment press obscure federal and academic connections to the mind control cults, which are defended largely by organized pedophiles, cultists and hired guns of psychiatry. An ambitious disinformation gambit has led the world at large to side with cultists operating under federal protection. As at Jonestown and Chiery, Switzerland, the denouement of cult activity often ends in the destruction of all witnesses. This cycle of abuse and murder can only be ended by full public awareness of the federal mind control initiative. The CIA, The False Memory Syndrome Foundation, and the Politics of Ritual Abuse The conference session bears a passing resemblance to a 12-Step meeting. Assembled in a Portland religious retreat, members of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, all accused of child abuse, are encouraged to unload their anguish. Only women take the stage (they leave reporters with a sympathetic impression – men stigmatized by child abuse do not). Pamela Freyd, a Foundation founder, assures these victims of pernicious therapies they are not alone. The Foundation’s office in Philadelphia, she says, takes 60 calls on a typical day from distraught adults hounded by their own confused children, rogue therapists and sensation-seeking pack journalists. The number of dues-paying members (each contributes $100 a year) varies according to the source. The group reported in January 1993 that 1,200 families had made contact in its first year of operation. The same month, the San Jose Mercury News declared flatly that “nearly 3,000 families” from across the country had been recruited. The FMSF now claims 5,000 families. Time magazine raised the figure to “7,000 individuals and families who have sought assistance.” The Foundation’s distinctive handling of statistics is incessant. In April of this year the FMSF claimed 12,000 families have been strained by false child abuse allegations. A month later, the figure dropped to “9,500 U.S. families.” Yet the Foundation prides itself on accuracy. One FMSF newsletter advises members to insist the media “report accurate information. The rumors and misinformation surrounding the false accusations based on recovery of repressed memories are shocking.” The same author regrets that “65% of accusations of abuse are now unsubstantiated, a whopping jump from 35% in 1976.” This figure, once gleefully disseminated by such pedophile defense groups as NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association) and VOCAL (Victims of Child Abuse Laws) was debunked years ago. It was fabricated by Douglas Besherov of the American Enterprise Institute, a hard right-wing propaganda factory fueled by the Olin Foundation, a CIA funding cover. (Christian conservatives are often accused of propagating ritual abuse “hysteria,” yet in the 1992 presidential election the para-conservative wing of the Republican Party slipped into its platform a strategy to put an end to investigations of child abuse.) The FMSF selectively ignores child abuse data that disagrees with their own. Judith Herman, author of Trauma and Recovery, reported in the Harvard Mental Health Letter that false abuse allegations by children “are rare, in the range of 2-8% of reported cases. False retractions of true complaints are far more common, especially when the victim is not sufficiently protected after disclosure and therefore succumbs to intimidation by the perpetrator or other family members who feel that they must preserve secrecy.” Other statistics shunned by the False Memory Syndrome Foundation include a survey presented at a 1992 psychiatric conference that found that a full 88% of all therapists in a large sampling consider ritual child abuse to be a very real social problem with devastating emotional effects. Another: In 1990 the State University of New York at Buffalo polled a national sampling of clinical psychologists on ritual abuse. About 800 psychologists – a third of the poll – were aware of treating at least one case. Only 5% of all child abuse cases ever enter the courtroom – half of these end with the child in the custody of the abusive parent. The recovered memory debate was discussed at a 1993 conference on multiple personality disorder. Richard Lowenstein, a psychiatrist from the University of Maryland Medical School, argued that the Foundation is “media-directed, dedicated to putting out disinformation.” Other conference participants contemplated funding sources and “possible CIA connections.” The Devil Denuded The CIA, in fact, has several designates on the FMSF advisory board. They have in common backgrounds in mind control experimentation. Their very presence on the board, and their peculiar backgrounds, reveal some heavily obscured facts about ritual child abuse. Martin T. Orne, a senior CIA researcher, is an original board member of the Foundation, and a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Experimental Psychiatry Lab in Philadelphia. In 1962 his forays into hypno-programming (the elicitation of “anti-social” behavior, dissolving memory and other mind-subduing techniques) were financed by a CIA front at Cornell University. He was also funded by Boston’s Scientific Engineering Institute, another front, and a clearinghouse for the Agency’s investigation of the occult. The CIA and Pentagon have formed a partnership in the creation of cults. To be sure, the Association of National Security Alumni, a public interest veterans group opposed to clandestine ops, considers it a “primary issue of concern” that the Department of Defense has a “perceived role in satanic cult activities, which qualify in and of themselves as very damaging exercises in mind control.” The smoothing over of the national security state’s cult connections is handled by academic “experts.” A forerunner of the Foundation is based in Buffalo, New York, the Committee for Scientific Examination of Religion, best known for the publication of Satanism in America: How the Devil Got More Than His Due, widely considered to be a legitimate study. The authors turn up their noses to ritual abuse, dismissing the hundreds of reports around the country as mass “hysteria.” Cult researcher Carl Raschke reported in a March, 1991 article that he coincidentally met Hudson Frew, a Satanism in America co-author, at a Berkeley bookstore. “Frew was wearing a five-pointed star, or pentagram, the symbol of witchcraft and earth magic,” Raschke says. Shawn Carlson, a contributor to the book, is identified by the media as a “physicist.” Yet he runs the Gaia Press in El Cerrito, California, a New Age publishing house with an emphasis on witchcraft and occultic lore. Carlson is also a “scientific and technical consultant to the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal” (a promoter of the “false memory” theory of ritual abuse and UFO abductions), publisher of the Skeptical Inquirer. The FMS Foundation is no less eccentric. Within two years of its founding, it was clear that the Foundation leadership was far from disinterested on the workings of childhood memory, and concealed a secret sexual and political agenda. FMSF founder Ralph Underwager, director of the Institute of Psychological Therapies in Minnesota, was forced to resign in 1993. Underwager (a former Lutheran pastor) and his wife Hollida Wakefield publish a journal, Issues in Child Abuse Allegations, written by and for child abuse “skeptics.” His departure from the False Memory Syndrome Foundation was hastened by a remark in an interview, appearing in an Amsterdam journal for pedophiles, that it was “God’s Will” adults engage in sex with children. (His wife Hollida remained on the Foundation’s board after he left.) As it happens, holy dispensation for pedophiles is the exact credo of the Children of God cult. It was fitting, then, when Underwager filed an affidavit on behalf of cult members tried in France in 1992, insisting that the accused were positively “not guilty of abuse upon children.” In the interview, he prevailed upon pedophiles everywhere to shed stigmatization as “wicked and reprehensible” users of children. In keeping with the Foundation’s creative use of statistics, Dr. Underwager told a group of British reporters in 1994 that “scientific evidence” proved 60% of all women molested as children believed the experience was “good for them.” Dr. Underwager invariably sides with the defense. His grandiloquent orations have graced courtrooms around the world, often by satellite. Defense lawyers for Woody Allen turned to him, he boasts, when Mia Farrow accused her estranged husband of molesting their seven year-old daughter. Underwager is a virtual icon to the Irish Catholic lobby in Dublin, which raised its hoary hackles against a child abuse prevention program in the Irish Republic. He was, until his advocacy of pedophila tarnished an otherwise glittering reputation, widely quoted in the press, dismissing ritual child abuse as a hysterical aberration. He is the world’s foremost authority on false memory, but in the courtroom he is repeatedly exposed as a charlatan. In 1988, a trial court decision in New York State held that Dr. Underwager was “not qualified to render any opinion as to whether or not (the victim) was sexually molested.” In 1990 his testimony on memory was ruled improper “in the absence of any evidence that the results of Underwager’s work had been accepted in the scientific community.” And In Minnesota a judge ruled that Underwager’s theories on “learned memory” were the same as “having an expert tell the jury that (the victim) was not telling the truth.” Peter and Pamela Freyd, executive directors of the Foundation, joined forces with Underwager in 1991, and their story is equally wretched. Jennifer Freyd, their daughter, a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, openly leveled accusations of abuse against her parents at an August 1993 mental health conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “My family of origin was troubled in many observable ways,” she said. “I refer to the things that were never ‘forgotten’ and ‘recovered,’ but to things that we all knew about.” She gave her father’s alcoholism as an example. “During my childhood, my father sometimes discussed his own experiences of being sexually abused as an 11 year-old boy, and called himself a ‘kept boy’.” Peter Freyd graduated to male prostitution as an adolescent. At the age of 13, Jennifer Freyd composed a poem about her father’s nocturnal visits: I am caught in a web, A web of deep, deep terror. she wrote. The diaries of her youth chronicle the “reactions and feelings (guilt, shame and terror) of a troubled girl and young woman. My parents oscillated between denying these symptoms and feelings … to using knowledge of these same symptoms and feelings to discredit me.” “My father,” she says, “told various people that I was brain damaged.” The accusation was unlikely. At the time, Jennifer Freyd was a graduate student on a National Science Foundation fellowship. She has taught at Cornell and received numerous research awards. The “brain damage” apologia did not wash. Her mother suggested that Jennifer’s memories were “confabulations,” and faulted therapeutic intervention. Pamela Freyd turned to her own psychiatrist, Dr. Harold Lief, currently an advisory board member of the Foundation, to diagnose Jennifer. “He explained to me that he did not believe I was abused,” Jennifer recalls. Dr. Lief’s diagnosis was based on his belief that Peter Freyd’s fantasies were strictly “homoerotic.” Of course, his daughter furrows a brow at the assumption that homoerotic fantasies or a heterosexual marriage exclude the possibility of child molestation. Lief’s skewed logic is a trademark of the Foundation. He is a close colleague of the CIA’s Martin Orne. Dr. Lief, a former major in the Army medical corps, joined the University of Pennsylvania faculty in 1968, the peak of federally-funded behavioral modification experiments at Holmesburg Prison. Dr. Orne consulted with him on several studies in hypnotic programming. His academic writing reveals a peculiar range of professional interests, including “Orgasm in the Postoperative Transsexual” for Archives of Sexual Behavior, and an exploration of the possibility of life after death for a journal on mental diseases edited by Foundation fellow Paul McHugh. Lief is a director of the Center for Sexuality and Religion, past president of the Sex Information and Education Council. And an original board member of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation. Two others, Jon Baron from Penn U. and Ray Hyman (an executive editor of the aforementioned Skeptical Inquirer), a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, resigned from the board after Jennifer Freyd went public with her account of childhood abuse, and the facetious attempts of her parents and their therapist to discredit her. They were replaced by David Dinges, co-director – with the ubiquitous Martin Orne – of the Unit for Experimental Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. “At times I am flabbergasted that my memory is considered ‘false’,” Jennifer says, “and my alcoholic father’s memory is considered rational and sane.” She does not, after all, remember impossible abuses: “I remember incest in my father’s house… My first memories came when I was at home a few hours after my second session with my therapist, a licensed clinical psychologist working within an established group in a large and respected medical clinic. “During that second visit to my therapist’s office, I expressed great anxiety about the upcoming holiday visit from my parents. My therapist asked about half way into the session, whether I had ever been sexually abused. I was immediately thrown into a strange state. No one had ever asked me such a question. I responded, ‘no, but…’ I went home and within a few hours I was shaking uncontrollably, overwhelmed with intense and terrible flashbacks.” Jennifer asks herself why her parents are believed. “In the end, is it precisely because I was abused that I am to be discredited despite my personal and professional success?” Pamela Freyd published an open letter defending her husband in Ralph Underwager’s Issues in Child Abuse Accusations in 1991. It was reprinted in Confabulations, a book published a year later. Laced with lubricious sentiment, the book bemoans the “destruction of families” brought on by false child abuse accusations, and maligns “cult-like” support groups and feminists, or “lesbian cults.” Executive director Freyd often refers to the feminist groups that have taken up the cause of child abuse survivors as “lesbians,” after the bizarre Dr. Underwager, who claims, “these women may be jealous that males are able to love each other, be comrades, friends, be close, intimate.” Pamela Freyd’s account of the family history, Jennifer insists, is patently false. In an electronic message from her father, he openly acknowledged that in his version of the story “fictional elements were deliberately inserted.” “‘Fictional’ is rather an astounding choice of words,” Jennifer observed at the Ann Arbor conference. The article written by her parents contends that Jennifer was denied tenure at another university due to a lack of published research. “In fact,” Jennifer counters, “I moved to the University of Oregon in 1987, just four years after receiving my Ph.D. to accept a tenured position as associate professor in the psychology department, one of the world’s best psychology departments… My mother sent the Jane Doe article to my colleagues during my promotion year – that is, the year my case for promotion to full professor was being considered. I was absolutely mortified to learn of this violation of my privacy and this violation of truth.” Manipulative tactics are another Foundation imprimatur. Lana Alexander, editor of a newsletter for survivors of child sexual abuse, observes that “many people view the false memory syndrome theory as a calculated defense strategy developed by perpetrators and the lawyers and expert witnesses who defend them.” A legitimizing barrage of stories in the press has shaped public opinion and warmed the clime for defense attorneys. The concept of false memory serves the same purpose as Holocaust denial. It shapes opinion. Unconscionable crimes are obstructed, the accused is endowed with the status of martyr, the victim reviled. The emphasis on image is obvious in “How Do We Know We are Not Representing Pedophiles,” an article written for the February 29, 1992 FMS Foundation Newsletter by Pamela Freyd. In it, she derides the suggestion that many members of the group could be molesters because “we are a good-looking bunch of people, greying hair, well dressed, healthy, smiling; just about every person who has attended is someone you would surely find interesting and want to count as a friend.” Friendly Fire “People forget things. Horrible things. Here at the Foundation someone had a repressed memory, or what would be called a false memory, that she had been sexually abused.” — Pamela Freyd, FMS Foundation Founder. The debate’s bloodiest stage is the courtroom. The hired guns of Martin Orne’s circle of psychiatrists are constantly called upon to blow smoke at the jury’s gallery to conceal CIA mind control operations. This branch of the psychiatric community is steeped in the programming of serial killers, political assassins and experiments on involuntary subjects. Agency psychiatrists on the witness stand direct the press away from the CIA, and the prosecution to a predetermined end. Martin Orne’s high-toned psychologizing in the Hillside Strangler case, for example, is a strategy adopted by the FMS foundation to stifle the cries of mind control survivors. Orne’s influence contributed to the outcome of a high-profile abuse case, the $8 million lawsuit filed by Gary Ramona of Napa, California against child therapist Marche Isabella and psychiatrist Richard Rose. Ramona charged that his daughter Holly’s therapists elicited from her flashbacks of sexual molestation that never occurred, decimating his marriage and career as a vice president at Robert Mondavi wineries. His wife and employer, note, immediately believed Holly’s accusations. In May of 1994 Ramona received a $500,000 jury award. He hailed the decision as a “tremendous victory.” Nevertheless, Holly Ramona still maintains that she was sexually abused by her father, though no criminal charges have been filed. Holly first confronted her father with the allegations on March 15, 1990, with her mother and Isabella present. She filed a civil action against him in Los Angeles County, but before it went to trial her father’s suit got underway in Napa. The suit turned on the use of sodium amytal to resurrect buried memories. Holly Ramona exhibited telltale symptoms of abuse – fear of gynecological examinations, a phobia of pointy teeth, like her father’s – and asked to be treated with sodium amytal. Dr. Rose wrote in his notes that under the influence of the drug, Holly “remembered specific details of sexual molestation.” But Orne, who has pioneered in the use of sodium amytal in hypnosis research, cautioned in a court brief that the drug is “not useful in ascertaining ‘truth.’ The patient becomes receptive to suggestions due to the context and to the comments of the interviewers.” Yet the jury foreman stated for the record that Isabella and Rose did not implant false memories of abuse, as Holly’s father had complained, but were negligent in reinforcing the memories as Holly described them under the influence of the barbiturate. The court considered it irrelevant whether Holly actually suffered abuse, narrowing the legal focus instead to the chemical evocation of Holly’s recollections and her therapist’s leading questions. Left hanging was the question of Ramona’s guilt or innocence, not exactly an irrelevant issue. Orne offered no opinion. The “tremendous victory” in Napa, given these facts, begins to look like a
one that’s been marketed for years as our low-key living room hub, as Siri on the couch and more recently as the silent orchestrator of our smart home. Fittingly, chatter of that kind is indeed coming to a head again, yet before you rub your eyes and wonder how you could have missed the news of a 5th generation Apple TV, this time the similar sounding rumors swirl around a brand new device, the alleged Siri speaker. My cheap attempt at having you mix up the two devices for a brief moment there admittedly wasn’t a real zinger, however it does typify a potentially sticky situation for Apple: at least on grounds of what we presume to know, we – the customers – would be forgiven for mistaking the two on the fly. If we indulge in a sketchy juxtaposition of each devices’ (purported) capabilities, it quickly begs the question of what we have been overlooking so far. It is declaredly fishy to make inferences about a device that is all but fictitious to this date, nevertheless there are pieces of information we can glean from competitors’ devices like Amazon’s Alexa, as well as telling interview snippets straight from the horse’s mouth. Does that make a comparison of the Siri speaker and Apple TV less premature or ill-founded? Probably not, but jotting down what we (think to) know does become insightful when we try to ascertain the spaces the two products are likely going to occupy in the customers’ minds and households. What’s the insight? Well, they could have a hell of a lot in common. Always provided we don’t fail to understand the alleged Siri speaker correctly, the large overlap in features is on all accounts eye-catching. Both devices fundamentally vie for a central spot in your home, both offer to AirPlay (most of) your media, both boast Siri and HomeKit integration. The putative fork in the road is that unlike Apple TV’s focus on visual media, Siri speaker’s backbone will reportedly be advanced Siri capabilities and the simple fact that it will serve as a standalone speaker with formidable acoustic performance. All these things considered though, is this going to be a unique enough selling proposition? It is clear that no product in Apple’s line-up sits as brazenly in the spot of the new arrival as Apple TV does. If this was a game of musical chairs, and the music stopped playing on June 5, Apple TV would be defiantly hogging the one spot designated for the shiny new speaker. Naturally, this opens the door for product cannibalization in either direction, and that’s where things get juicy. The implications for both products and their strategies mid to long term are plentiful. In my book, there’s three possible outcomes to speak of: the two product lines (keep) selling like hot cakes, them selling like damp and cold cakes, or the two lines merging into one. The determinant? The speaker’s x-factor, or lack thereof. Which cake are you going to sell, Apple? Option 1 The most lucrative (and arguably still most probable) outcome in this tale of two devices is for Apple to quietly have a Siri speaker killer feature up their sleeve. It goes without saying that we’re dealing with hypotheticals and it could plainly be the case that we don’t know jack. In order to establish and sustain strong sales for both Apple TV and the new assistant, the latter would have to come up with some seriously innovative ideas; ideas that make the device indispensable to your household, without raining on your Apple TV’s parade. What could that look like? In one of our previous podcast episodes of Let’s Talk iOS, we have speculated about built-in security features, but realistically your guess is as good as ours. Two distinct devices with two distinct purposes would entail little overlap, and in turn minimal cannibalization. Option 2 The cold cake theory is that analysts have indeed pretty much figured out the device prior to release and there is no blind spot on our radar. In other words, the overlap is real. Such being the case, potential customers would in all likelihood wind up pitting the two devices against each other and ultimately picking the one that comes closest to fitting their needs. This route would most definitely spell product cannibalization, since only the hardcore would entertain both devices at home, plus the mere existence of Apple TV could already hamper the launch success of the Siri speaker. By the same token, current Apple TV owners could be swayed towards a more mobile AirPlay station and the existing customer base would effectively be split in halves. Before they know it, both devices could be relegated back to the company’s ominous ‘hobby’ status. Option 3 Lastly, the new Siri speaker could (organically or forcibly) usurp the role of Apple TV at some point down the line. Once launched, the people will vote with their wallets and it is not a stretch to imagine a smarter, more capable home hub by Apple outsell and eventually dwarf Apple TV. If a chunk of Apple TV owners in addition migrated to the Siri speaker, the product line itself would barely be feasible for much longer. As a result, Apple could easily equip the more potent Siri speaker with streaming functionalities as soon as the tide has turned in the device’s favor. Customers would no longer have to weigh up two similar-but-different products, but rather purchase the same one and thereafter decide the role it will play in their household. Coffee table device or television box, whatever they see fit. What’s your take? One way or another, the reported new arrival is going to make massive waves at and after WWDC 17. Are we witnessing the quiet axing of Apple TV or not? What’s Apple’s secret ingredient for the Siri speaker going to look like? Not much longer until we will know, so place your bet in the comments now!The Master of Science in Raptor Biology is designed for students, holding or expecting a bachelor degree in one of the disciplines of the biological sciences, to enhance their knowledge and understanding of raptor biology and ecology. The Snake River Birds of Prey Natural Area, with the largest concentration of nesting raptors in North America, is a unique resource for the study of raptor biology and ecology. Furthermore, the Intermountain Bird Observatory, a trapping and banding station, offers opportunities to study raptor migration. Raptor biologists working for state, federal, and private organizations located in Boise offer additional expertise and research opportunities. The Raptor Research Center at Boise State supports the graduate program and research on raptors. The M.S. in Raptor Biology is a research-based degree. The M.S. candidate will complete a thesis based on original research carried out by the student. Ideally, the thesis should make a significant contribution to the body of scientific knowledge and be of sufficient quality to warrant publication in a peer-reviewed journal. M.S. students are expected to produce a written thesis proposal and give an oral presentation of that proposal during their first year and, following completion of the thesis, give an oral defense of the thesis, and an exit seminar to present the results to the public. Completion of a degree program requires an average grade of B or better for all courses applied to the 30 credits required. All requirements for the degree and graduation must be completed within a period of seven years. Master of Science in Raptor Biology Course Number and Title Credits BIOL 601 Biometry BIOL 605 Applied Raptor Biology BIOL 606 Raptor Ecology 4 2 3 BIOL 598 Graduate Seminar OR BIOL 561-567 “Advanced Topics in” courses 2 BIOL 593 Thesis 6 Electives from course offerings that follow:Electives may include a maximum of six credits of Directed Research, must be approved by the student’s thesis committee, and may not include workshop, pass/fail, or practicum/internship credits. 13 TOTAL 30 How to Apply The Biology graduate programs processes online applications through Hobson’s ApplyYourself. Please read the application instructions carefully. The Hobson’s ApplyYourself Program is available year-round for receiving application materials. Applicants are encouraged to submit their online application well in advance of the deadline to ensure that the application is complete by the deadline. Application Materials The following items are required for the MA Biology, MS Biology, and MS Raptor Biology application. GRE Scores – please request that official scores for the GRE general test are sent to Boise State (School Code 4018). The subject GRE is not required. Transcripts – please request official copies of all undergraduate and graduate transcripts be sent to Boise State. Cover Letter – discussing your professional goals, research interests, and reasons for wishing to study biology at Boise State University. Letters of Recommendation – Three letters of recommendation are required. Applicants should notify their recommenders using the “Recommendation” link in ApplyYourself. Pay the application fee – $65 Domestic or $95 International. TOEFL or IELTS scores – required for international applicants only. Admission Requirements All individuals admitted to REGULAR STATUS as a graduate students in biology must have: An Undergraduate GPA of at least 3.00 on a 4 point system Results that average in the 50th or higher percentile in the verbal, quantitative, and analytical portions of the general GRE exam An undergraduate degree in biology or a closely related field PROVISIONAL STATUS may be granted to those otherwise promising applicants who do not meet GPA or GRE requirements or who have undergraduate coursework deficiencies. Applicants are encouraged to correspond with faculty concerning openings and potential research opportunities in their laboratories for graduate students. Application and Materials Deadlines Fall Semester: January 15th Spring Semester: October 1 Enrollment in all masters programs is competitive, and achievement of minimum admission requirements does not guarantee admission into the program. Financial Aid Teaching Assistantships that include a stipend, tuition and fee waiver, and student health insurance may be available to M.S. students on a competitive basis. Additional support for master’s research projects may be available from faculty members in the form of research assistantships. Other forms of financial aid, such as loans or the College Work-Study Program, are available to graduate students. Prospective students should contact the Financial Aid Office and consult the Boise State University catalog. For more information please email: [email protected] or phone: (208) 426-4621 Sign up to receive information about the Biology Department Graduate Programs.by Benjamin T. Moore, Jr. THE PROBLEM WITH ATHEISM Emperor Constantine invented Christianity to control his empire. Indeed to understand the Catholic Church, one need simply realize the Roman Empire never went away. It merely became the Catholic Church. Adolf Hitler was raised a devout Catholic. He later discovered the writings of Martin Luther and used Luther’s hatred of the Jews as an organizing point for Germans to rally around. Thus he used a religious belief system to motivate and mobilize Germany into creating a war machine that threatened the world. Small matter that it cost 6 million Jews and untold other millions of people their lives. Joseph Stalin was raised Georgian Orthodox. He later became an Atheist and did much to stamp out all religion in Russia. However, with the advent of WWII, he relented and began to support the Russian Orthodox Church calling it “a patriotic institution.” Why? Because it was useful in controlling and organizing the Russian people for their war efforts. The Popes are the head of what may well be the largest and wealthiest corporation on this planet. They are the new versions of the Roman Emperors. Without the need for fielding an army, they control billions of people all around the planet with the carrot and the stick of heaven and hell. People willingly pay tribute/taxes to them in the form of offerings and donations. The Catholic Church influences all the politics around the globe. Karl Rove is an Anglican-Episcopalian. He wears his religion rather loosely and in practice is more of an Agnostic… unless playing the religion card for political gain. His extensive use of “wedge issues” in politics was a stroke of diabolical genius. Abortion, Gay rights etc. He successfully duped Christians into focusing on those issues while ignoring the other equally – more important – issues they should have been focused on. Poverty, caring for the poor, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and caring for the sick. How exactly can one be against abortion yet support capital punishment and war? Pat Robertson is a Southern Baptist minister who makes his living doing a rather poor imitation of Johnny Carson’s “The Tonight Show.” There is not much difference between his “Word Of Knowledge” shtick and Carson’s Carnack The Magnificent. Nevertheless, he has been successful in not only gaining a following, but exerting political influences on our elections. What do all these people have in common? They exploit those who subscribe to a Christian belief system for personal and political gain. If a stranger walked up to you on the street and told you that you needed to take $500 dollars across town immediately, what would you do? If you’re like me, you would put some distance between yourself and whomever this person was and – in my case – make certain your gun hand was free and unencumbered. Why? Because you don’t know them. The very nature of their statement would cause suspicion and red flags to begin to wave. However, if that same person claimed they were delivering a message from your mother or some other loved one, suddenly they would have slipped past the first layer of your mental defenses. You would probably ask, “what’s wrong with my mother?” Perhaps, “what is she doing in town?” Notice you’re no longer questioning the authenticity of the message, you’re beyond that. Your mind is now processing what the problem might be and how to solve it. Religious belief works in the same way. If a preacher tells a Christian that God wants them to pledge $500 or give $500 or vote Republican, your average Christian does not question the message or the messenger, they focus on how or if they can do what is requested. Let’s go back to the message from your mom example. Suppose your mother had passed several years ago and someone came with the same message? Now you would know they were lying and up to no good. Your system of belief and feelings for your mother cannot be exploited. This is the problem those in power have with Atheist. Atheist are “free thinkers.” You cannot manipulate them using the levers of a belief system. Your appeal must pass the test of logic. An Atheist is going to apply logic to your message or request. They’re going to actually think about what is being said and come to their own conclusions. Tell a Christian that God will supply all their needs, and you’ll get an “Amen!” Turn around and pass an offering plate telling a Christian that their money is needed to support and further God’s work and they’ll pull out their wallets without ever stopping to ask, “if God can supply all my needs, why can’t he supply the financial needs of his own ministry?” See the problem?Chuck Woolery, game show host turned podcaster, brandished his conservative bona fides on Sunday by opposing an increase in the minimum wage and reminiscing about the 1950s-era blackballing of actors for political dissent. During a promotional appearance for his new podcast, Blunt Force Truth, Woolery blasted actor Matt Damon for taking a swipe at presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and condemning a banking system that "steals people's money" while delivering his commencement address for MIT's class of 2016. "In the '50s in Hollywood if you spoke for communism, you were blackballed," Woolery recalled. "In the '90s and 2000s in Hollywood if you speak for communism, you're rewarded for it. But if you speak against communism, you're blackballed." According to the former Wheel of Fortune host, liberal policies like increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour would have dire consequences on the U.S. economy. "Most people don't realize that it's not a good thing, it's a bad thing," he opined. "I think it's the liberals' job to take the simple and make it as complex as possible. I think it's the conservatives' job -- and we don't do a very good job of it -- to take the complex and make it as simple as possible." "The things that sound really good -- this knee-jerk reaction to 15 bucks an hour -- my son is 20 years old, he would love to make $15 an hour," Woolery continued, arguing that McDonald's would replace workers with robots instead of paying a higher minimum wage. "You've got to earn your way in this world, and if it costs them $15 a hour and you're a small business and it ruins the business, what good does it do?" Woolery added: "These are people who are starting off. They're not people who have families by and large." A Center of Economic and Policy Research analysis found in 2014 that the average age for a minimum wage worker had risen to 35 years old, and that 88 percent of employees who earned the minimum wage were older than 20 years of age.'The Marshall Mathers LP 2' has the second-biggest opening in 2013, behind Justin Timberlake's 'The 20/20 Experience.' Eminem's 'The Marshall Mathers LP2' enters 'Billboard' at No. 1. (Photo11: Jenny Risher) Story Highlights 'The Marshall Mathers LP 2' opens at No. 1 It's the second-biggest sales week of the year The album's first-week sales are exceeded in 2013 only by Justin Timberlake's 'The 20/20 Experience' Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP 2 sold 792,000 copies its first week, enough to land at No. 1 in Billboard and score the second-biggest sales week of the year, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The number was nowhere near the 1.76 million copies The Marshall Mathers LP opened with in 2000, before piracy clobbered the industry. But MMLP2's take exceeds the bows of 2009's Relapse (608,000) and 2010's Recovery (741,000). The album was streamed 10 million times in its debut week, according to Spotify. "Unlike most people in the record industry, he's consistently able to sell hundreds of thousands of records in one week," says Keith Caulfield, Billboard's associate director of charts/retail. "We're talking about an artist repeatedly doing this since his second album. It's normal for him. And he can sell tracks. And he can sell out stadiums. How can you bottle what he does? It's amazing." The album ranks sixth among the biggest sales weeks of the past five years, according to Billboard. The larger tallies since November 2008 were debuts by Taylor Swift's Red in 2012 (1.2 million), Lady Gaga's Born This Way in 2011 (1.1 million), Swift's Speak Now in 2010 (1 million), Justin Timberlake's The 20/20 Experience in March (968,000) and Lil Wayne's Tha Carter IV in 2011 (964,000). In first-week sales this year, Eminem is second only to Timberlake. "Both are considered album artists," Caulfield says. "Eminem is admired as a storyteller, and you need the whole album to get the full experience. "And both come from the late 1990s/early 2000s era, when the album format was king, before YouTube and digital downloads," he says. "If you wanted music, you had to buy the album. A lot of their fans fondly remember buying 'N Sync albums or The Slim Shady LP, and they still want to buy albums in 2013. It's harder for young artists who don't have that history with fans." Drake's Nothing Was the Same, which premiered with 658,000 copies in October, falls to third place in the year's lineup. No other releases this year are expected to eclipse Timberlake or Eminem. One Direction's Midnight Memories, out Nov. 25, is forecast to sell 500,000 its first week, a figure that could shift in coming days. Lady Gaga's Artpop, out this week, is predicted to sell roughly 300,000. And Britney Spears' Britney Jean, out Dec. 3, "won't do anything close to these numbers," Caulfield says. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1hEpmiiArs has just one question for PhD student Arvind Narayanan and his advisor Vitaly Shmatikov: why must you continually shatter our illusions? Despite the all-seeing, all-knowing panopticon that is the Internet, some of us like to dream our simple dreams of anonymity and privacy; we choose to believe that our Netflix movie recommendations do not identify us; and we hold on to the belief that we can remain comfortably anonymous behind the veil of our Pumpalumpkin Twitter account. But like the yapping Toto at the end of the Wizard of Oz, Narayanan and Shmatikov take delight in ripping back the curtain, exposing the great and terrible Oz as nothing more than a scrawny academic. Their newest paper, "De-anonymizing social networks," is yet another attack on the idea that data can be easily anonymized by stripping out a few bits of personally identifiable information (PII). Much of their work over the last few years is built on the premise that PII extends far beyond names and addresses; in many datasets, the very structure of the data provides all sorts of clues that can be deciphered with only a few bits of information. Who needs names when we have topology? In "De-anonymizing social networks," Narayanan and Shmatikov take an anonymous graph of the social relationships established through Twitter and find that they can actually identify many Twitter accounts based on an entirely different data source—in this case, Flickr. One-third of users with accounts on both services could be identified on Twitter based on their Flickr connections, even when the Twitter social graph being used was completely anonymous. The point, say the authors, is that "anonymity is not sufficient for privacy when dealing with social networks," since their scheme relies only on a social network's topology to make the identification. The issue is of more than academic interest, as social networks now routinely release such anonymous social graphs to advertisers and third-party apps, and government and academic researchers ask for such data to conduct research. But the data isn't nearly as "anonymous" as those releasing it appear to think it is, and it can easily be cross-referenced to other data sets to expose user identities. It's not just about Twitter, either. Twitter was a proof of concept, but the idea extends to any sort of social network: phone call records, healthcare records, academic sociological datasets, etc. As for who might care, the authors sketch out a few scenarios: The strongest adversary is a government-level agency interested in global surveillance. Its objective is large-scale collection of detailed information about as many individuals as possible. Another attack scenario involves abusive marketing. If an unethical company were able to de-anonymize the graph using publicly available data, it could engage in abusive marketing aimed at specific individuals. Phishing and spamming also gain from social-network de-anonymization. Using detailed information about the victim gleaned from his or her de-anonymized social-network profile, a phisher or a spammer will be able to craft a highly individualized, believable message. Yet another category of attacks involves targeted de-anonymization of specific individuals by stalkers, investigators, nosy colleagues, employers, and neighbors. This isn't the first time that Narayanan and Shmatikov have sounded the alarm, either; it's the main subject of their research. The pair made waves back in 2007 with a similar paper showing that Netflix's release of 100 million bits of anonymous movie recommendation data could expose any user's entire recommendation history with just eight known movie rankings and dates within a 14-day error margin. In other words, knowing that a friend rated eight movies in a particular way at a particular point in time suddenly enables one to extract from the dataset all the movies rated by the person between 1999 and 2005. And you don't even need to go to the trouble of asking someone; in the paper, the researchers used public recommendation data that people had entered in the Internet Movie Database (where many people also use their real names) to expose those people's entire recommendation set from Netflix. That might not sound like a big deal until one considers an example: First, we can immediately?nd his political orientation based on his strong opinions about Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times and Fahrenheit 9/11. Strong guesses about his religious views can be made based on his ratings on Jesus of Nazareth and The Gospel of John. He did not like Super Size Me at all; perhaps this implies something about his physical size? Both items that we found with predominantly gay themes, Bent and Queer as folk were rated one star out of?ve. He is a cultish follower of Mystery Science Theater 3000. This is far from all we found about this one person, but having made our point, we will spare the reader further lurid details. A lesson that keeps being relearned AOL famously learned this lesson the hard way in 2006, when it released a huge dataset of anonymized search terms. Journalists quickly found out that the data itself might well be "anonymous," but individual users could still be tracked down after looking through their set of search terms. The fact is that we're not as anonymous as many of us would like to think. Back in 2000, a Carnegie Mellon researcher took a look at 1990 US census data and concluded that 87 percent of all Americans could be uniquely identified based on only three items: ZIP code, gender, and date of birth. For most people at most times, anonymity isn't crucial; knowing that you could be unmasked isn't a major deterrent to Internet postings. Many people using social networks like Twitter, for instance, do so as a way of connecting to others and gaining followers using their real names. Narayanan himself has a Twitter account with his name on it. But for those doing anything "sensitive"—watching movies that you don't want the world to know you're watching, searching for things that you don't want the world to know you're searching for, it's useful to remember just how far your data trail extends behind you on the Internet... and just how well determined researchers can follow the digital bread crumbs.The Washington Redskins are parting with two veterans. The team announced Wednesday that it has cut cornerback Tracy Porter and guard Chris Chester. Porter signed a two-year $6 million deal in Washington last season, but appeared in just three games while battling shoulder and hamstring injuries. His release saves the Redskins $2.2 million, per The Washington Post. The injury-prone corner has played in 16 games just once in his career -- a mediocre 2013 season with the Oakland Raiders. He is best remembered for his interception of Peyton Manning in Super Bowl XLIV that sealed the New Orleans Saints' victory. The 29-year-old has been a liability in coverage, but, if healthy, could latch on with a team as a veteran presence after injuries begin to take their toll on rosters. Chester, on the other hand, started 16 games each season for the past four years for the Redskins after five seasons with the Baltimore Ravens. His release saves Washington $4 million on the cap. The guard was an ill fit for Jay Gruden's power-blocking scheme and he struggled in 2014. Spencer Long will move into the starting group and the team spent a fourth-round pick on former Alabama guard Arie Kouandjio. The latest Around The NFL Podcast discusses the latest news including Ray McDonald's release and the Adrian Peterson drama with the Vikings. Find more Around The NFL content on NFL NOW.Posted on May 21, 2009 in Articles The Article: The Path to Human Development: Capitalism or Socialism? by Michael A. Lebowitz in the Monthly Review. The Text: Preface If we believe in people, if we believe that the goal of a human society must be that of “ensuring overall human development,” our choice is clear: socialism or barbarism. These concluding lines from “The Path to Human Development” appear on the back cover of one Venezuelan edition—a pocket-sized edition much like the widely circulated “Socialism Does Not Drop from the Sky” (chapter 5 of Build It Now). The other edition, together with an extended edition of that latter essay (including my “New Wings for Socialism” from the April 2006 Monthly Review), is being published as The Logic of Capital versus the Logic of Human Development for the communal council libraries in Venezuela. Both editions depart from the traditional format for books (and Monthly Review) because of the numbering of sections and paragraphs. There is a reason for this. While the analysis of capitalism and the presentation of a socialist alternative are there for individual readers (for whom the numbers are unnecessary), collective readers are the real target for this work. In other words, “The Path” has been prepared to support educational and political discussions in Venezuela (in, for example, trade unions, communal councils, and socialist formations). Numbering sections and paragraphs facilitates this kind of discussion. In short, this work is not at all intended as an end product to be consumed by an individual passive reader; rather, its purpose is to be a means to encourage collective struggle against capitalism and for socialism. As the line which precedes those quoted above indicates, “we know we have to be prepared to fight.” Obviously, it is not only in Venezuela that we have to be prepared to fight for a society which permits the full development of human beings. As an example of the important work it does, Monthly Review’s policy of placing its articles online will make it possible for organizations to make whatever use of “The Path” they think may help the struggle. I think that this is one of the many contributions that the people at Monthly Review regularly make through the Press and now MRzine. In my talk about the booklet at the Venezuelan Book Fair last November, I quoted Bertolt Brecht, “reach for the book: it is a weapon,” and noted that “The Path” was written to be a weapon. In the struggle against barbarism everywhere, we need many weapons. What do we want? 1. What do we all want? We want to be all that we can be. And we want this not only for ourselves. We want our families and our loved ones to be able to develop all of their potential—that we all get what we need for our development. To each according to her need for development. What do we need for our development? 2. There are two points, though, that we need to stress. First, if we are going to talk about the possibility of human development, we have to recognize that a precondition for that development is sufficient food, good health, education, and the opportunity to make decisions for ourselves. How can we possibly develop all our potential if we are hungry, in bad health, poorly educated, or dominated by others? Secondly, since we are not identical, what we need for our own self-development obviously differs for everyone. A society that stresses the opportunity to develop our potential 3. The idea of a society that would allow for the full development of human potential has always been the goal of socialists. In his early draft of the Communist Manifesto, Friedrich Engels asked, “What is the aim of the Communists?” He answered, “To organize society in such a way that every member of it can develop and use all his capabilities and powers in complete freedom and without thereby infringing the basic conditions of this society.” Marx summed it all up in the final version of the Manifesto by saying that the goal is “an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” Our goal, in short, cannot be a society in which some people are able to develop their capabilities and others are not; we are interdependent, we are all members of a human family. The full development of all human potential is our goal. Where does human development come from? 4. Human development, though, doesn’t drop from the sky. It doesn’t come as the result of a gift from above. It occurs through the activity of people themselves—through what Marx called revolutionary practice—“the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change.” We change ourselves through our activity—through our struggles and through everything we do. The way we produce (in the workplace, in the community, and in the home), the way we relate to others in our activity, the way we govern ourselves (or are governed by others)—all these make us the people that we are. We are, in short, the product of all our activities. The common sense of the Bolivarian Revolution 5. Every Venezuelan should recognize these ideas—they are at the center of the Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela. In its explicit recognition (in Article 299) that the goal of a human society must be that of “ensuring overall human development,” in the declaration of Article 20 that “everyone has the right to the free development of his or her own personality,” and in the focus of Article 102 upon “developing the creative potential of every human being and the full exercise of his or her personality in a democratic society”—the theme of human development pervades the Constitution. 6. Further, the Constitution also focuses upon the question of how people develop their capacities and capabilities—i.e., how overall human development occurs. Article 62 of the Constitution declares that participation by people in “forming, carrying out and controlling the management of public affairs is the necessary way of achieving the involvement to ensure their complete development, both individual and collective.” The necessary way—practice, protagonism. 7. And, the same emphasis upon a democratic, participatory, and protagonistic society is present in the economic sphere, which is why Article 70 stresses “self-management, co-management, cooperatives in all forms” and why the goal of Article 102, “developing the creative potential of every human being,” emphasizes “active, conscious and joint participation.” The 1999 Constitution as a snapshot of the balance of forces at the time 8. But that Constitution was not exclusively devoted to the goal of human development. It retained the support for capitalist institutions of earlier constitutions—with its guarantee for private ownership of the means of production (Article 115), its identification of a role for private initiative in generating growth and employment (299), and its call upon the state to promote private initiative (112). 9. Further, that constitution included that special condition desired by finance capital’s policy of neoliberalism—the independence of the Central Bank, which imperialism wants in the constitution of every country because it proclaims that it is not elected governments that should make critical decisions about an economy but bankers and those under their influence. Very simply, the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution was a snapshot of the balance of forces at that time: it contained a capitalist element and an element oriented to the full development of human potential. 10. But, were these elements compatible? Can you have that overall human development with capitalism? Can capitalism be a path to human development? The logic of capital 11. Think about capitalism. In capitalism, the logic of capital dominates; and that logic goes counter to the needs of human beings for their own development. In capitalism, the goals of production are the goals of capital for profits. For capital, human beings and nature are just means to that goal. Capitalists and workers 12. Consider the nature of capitalist relations of production. There are two central aspects—the side of capitalists and the side of workers. On the one hand, there are capitalists—the owners of wealth, the owners of material means of production. And their orientation is toward the growth of their wealth. Capitalists purchase commodities with the goal of gaining more money, additional value, surplus value. And that’s the point, profits. As capitalists, all that matters for them is the growth of their capital. 13. On the other hand, we have workers—people who do not own the material means of producing the things they need for themselves. Without those means of production, they can’t produce commodities to sell in the market to exchange. So, how do they get the things they need? By selling the only thing they do have available to sell, their ability to work. They can sell it to whomever they choose, but they cannot choose whether or not to sell their power to perform labor if they are to survive. Capitalism requires people who must sell their power to produce in order to get the money to buy the things they need. The sale of labor-power 14. But the separation of the means of production from producers is not enough for labor-power to be sold. If workers are separated from the means of production, there remain two possibilities: (1) workers sell their labor-power to the owners of means of production or (2) workers rent means of production from those owners. As we will see below, only the first case creates the conditions for capitalist production. 15. Who decides? Who decides which of the two possibilities it will be? The owners of the means of production, the capitalists decide. Owning the means of production ensures that you have the power to decide. The capitalists can decide how to use their property to achieve their goal. If they choose to take possession of production themselves, then the only way that workers can survive is by selling their capacity. 16. But, why does the capitalist decide to buy labor-power? The capitalist buys the right to dispose of the worker’s capacity to perform labor precisely because it is a means to achieve his goal, profits. Only the growth of his capital interests him as a capitalist. Once the capitalist has purchased the worker’s capacity, he is in the position to compel the worker to produce profits. The market exchange between capital and workers 17. We now have the basis for an exchange between two parties in the market, the owner of money, and the owner of labor power. The worker needs money, and the capitalist needs the worker’s power. Each of them wants what the other has; it looks like each will get something out of that exchange. It looks like a free transaction. Many people look at the transactions that take place in the market and declare, “we see freedom.” After all, no one forces you to engage in a particular exchange; you could freely choose to starve instead. 18. What makes this market transaction differentfrom the sale of any commodity? True, the worker has no alternative but to sell what she has, but that is often true of a peasant or craftsman too. What is different is what happens next; something very interesting happens to each of the two parties to that transaction. Marx commented, “He who was previously the money-owner now strides out in front as a capitalist; the possessor of labor-power follows as his worker.” And where are they going? They are entering the workplace; they are entering the place where the capitalist now has the opportunity to use that property right which he has purchased. The logic of capital in the sphere of production—workers controlled by capital 19.
broke a fetchland for a basic land, and played a [card]Tarmogoyf[/card]. At this point: Me – 17 life, 2 lands, Kird Ape, 1-power Tarmogoyf in play. Him – 18 life, 3 cards in hand, 1 land. I passed the turn and he played a [card]Blinkmoth Nexus[/card], which he used to cast a [card]Hellspark Elemental[/card]. At this point, my ‘Goyf only had 2 toughness, so blocking was a bad idea. I took the damage and he passed the turn back. I drew [card]Molten Rain[/card], and my eyes grew wide. At this point, my opponent had 2 mana in play and 2 cards in hand. I had a Jotun Grunt in hand that I needed white mana for anyway, so it seemed like breaking a fetchland immediately would be optimal. I would be cutting my opponent’s resources in half, while growing my Tarmogoyf in the process. I cast Molten Rain on his Blinkmoth and attacked in. At this point: Me – 11 life, 3 lands, Kird Ape, and a 3-power ‘Goyf in play. Him – 11 life, 1 land, 2 cards in hand, Hellspark Elemental in graveyard. On his turn he played a Mountain and unearthed the Elemental, dropping me to 8 life, with 2 cards in hand and 2 mana. I attacked and played [card]Jotun Grunt[/card], with [card]Lightning Bolt[/card] available. At this point: Me – 8 life, lethal damage in play. Him – 7 life, 2 cards in hand, 2 lands in play. Even if he killed a creature of mine, the Bolt gave me lethal the following turn. My opponent untapped and a sudden rush of silence and disgust hit me as I watched his face begin to glow. Then, within a split second, it was over. He slammed down a [card]Great Furnace[/card], tapped it and the [card]Teetering Peaks[/card] to [card]Shrapnel Blast[/card] me for 5, sacrificing the artifact land. He then immediately tapped his final Mountain to throw a [card]Lightning Bolt[/card] at me, ending the match in his favor. I obviously sat there, shocked for a minute. Had my theory been incorrect? Did I just play bad? Did my opponent get lucky? In reality, it was a combination of those 3 things. Nonetheless, as I fell into a bracket where I would play against All-In-Red 3 rounds in a row, losing to a turn 1 [card]Blood Moon[/card] in many of those games, I had to look back and think that I had my chance but blew it. The Shocking Conclusion Obviously anecdotal evidence is more for entertainment than for statistics, but I think that story does demonstrate a fundamental requirement when it comes to playing with shocklands. You need to accept that there are costs associated with them and figure out how those costs best fit into the strategy you are playing. While I only did 6 damage to myself in the above scenario, had I managed to hold back on even a single fetchland, I walk away a winner and potentially have another Top 8 under my belt. Mono-Red versus Zoo might seem like a cop-out, as it is the most prominent time that shocklands need to be played differently, but the fact that it is an extreme and so many decks are somewhere in the middle is just further reason to actually test with these lands as opposed to theory crafting around them. You can never know for certain where along the spectrum you should lie, but having a better idea doesn’t seem like it can hurt much. Thanks for reading! Conley WoodsBut I’m struck, most of all, by one key difference between the migrants of then and now, which highlights how patterns of migration within Asia have changed over the last 100 years. Whereas almost all the Chinese and Indian immigrants to Malaysia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries settled in their adopted country, eventually establishing large communities that still thrive today, not one of the 16 Nepali workers who share Shyam’s cramped dormitory intends to put down roots in Malaysia, or even return to the country for another three-year contract once their present one runs out. The reduction of the migrant experience to pure economics over the last two decades has irrevocably changed the nature of human movement in Asia. It also highlights the growing gulf in wealth between middle-class countries such as Malaysia and Singapore on one hand, and Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Cambodia on the other. Moving across borders is no longer an act of hope, but one solely of necessity. Money has turned migration into something ephemeral, a passage to be endured rather than the permanently transformative experience it once was. Shyam’s dilemma is common to most migrant workers I’ve spoken to in Malaysia: They are paid just enough for them to want to remain employed, but are trapped in an endless cycle of 12-hour shifts that makes it impossible for them to interact in any meaningful way with local life. They have no chance, or incentive, to become an integrated part of Malaysian society. Malaysia has been a rich melting pot since the 1500s, because of its favorable location on trading routes between India and China, as well as its colonial history of successive occupation by the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British. But its new migrants are treated merely as a resource, rather than as potential citizens who could contribute to and enrich Malaysian culture. Malaysia’s impressive economic growth over the last 25 years — at an average annual rate of about 6 percent — has been sustained by a constant influx of workers from poorer neighboring countries. Recent estimates suggest that there are now about 2.5 million foreign workers, a vast majority of whom are in low-skilled or unskilled jobs.New York State DMV Admits to Cheating Cyclists, But Doesn’t Say It Will Stop The New York State DMV admits that it is incorrectly overcharging cyclists for traffic violations and wrongly adding points to their drivers licenses, but the agency hasn’t agreed to stop doing it. In his most recent Streetsblog column, attorney Steve Vaccaro pointed out that the DMV’s online payment system does not distinguish between bikes and motor vehicles. As a result, cyclists who plead guilty and pay traffic tickets online are stuck with an $88 surcharge that doesn’t apply to bike violations, and are getting points on their licenses that don’t legally apply. Vaccaro got a letter from the DMV today acknowledging that, under state law, “there are no points assigned for violations committed by bicyclists,” and that the law “exempts bicycle violations from the mandatory surcharge.” The DMV agreed to refund the surcharge for two of Vaccaro’s clients, but the letter did not indicate that the agency would fix its web site, or give other cyclists their money back and remove license points they shouldn’t have. In a letter back to DMV, Vaccaro wrote, “Going forward, it appears that remedying this problem will require more than a reminder to the DMV clerical staff.” In addition to modifying its online payment system, Vaccaro says the traffic ticket form used by NYPD should be changed to “make clear” that the surcharge is not “’mandatory’ for cyclists.” “They haven’t in any way addressed the web site,” Vaccaro told Streetsblog, “and they are still sitting on $88/per cyclist moving violations for the last ‘x’ number of years.” We’ll continue to follow this story as it develops. In the meantime, if you believe you were overcharged or wrongly given license points by DMV within the last two years, you can contact Vaccaro’s office.Many readers are understandably concerned about recent moves by the U.S. Congress that would roll back privacy rules barring broadband Internet service providers (ISPs) from sharing or selling customer browsing history, among other personal data. Some are concerned enough by this development that they’re looking at obfuscating all of their online browsing by paying for a subscription to a virtual private networking (VPN) service. This piece is intended to serve as a guidepost for those contemplating such a move. On Tuesday, the House approved a Senate resolution to roll back data privacy regulations enacted late last year at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that would block ISPs from selling to advertisers information about where you go and what you do online. President Trump has signaled his intent to sign the bill (S.J. Res. 34) into law soon. As shocking as this sounds, virtually nothing has changed about the privacy of the average American’s connection to the Internet as a result of this action by Congress, except perhaps a greater awareness that ISP customers don’t really have many privacy protections by default. The FCC rules hadn’t yet gone into effect, and traditional broadband providers successfully made the case to lawmakers that the new rules put them at a competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis purely Web-based rivals such as Facebook and Google. Nevertheless, this hasn’t stopped news outlets from breathlessly urging concerned citizens to reclaim their privacy by turning to VPN providers. And VPN providers have certainly capitalized on the news. One quite large (and savvy) VPN provider even took out a full-page ad in the New York Times listing the names of the Republican senators who voted to repeal the still-dormant regulations. I’m happy if this issue raises the general level of public awareness about privacy and the need for Internet users everywhere to take a more active role in preserving it. And VPNs can be a useful tool for protecting one’s privacy online. However, it’s important to understand the limitations of this technology, and to take the time to research providers before entrusting them with virtually all your browsing data — and possibly even compounding your privacy woes in the process. In case any readers are unclear on the technology, in a nutshell VPNs rely on specialized software that you download and install on your computer. Some VPN providers will supply customers with their own custom brand of VPN software, while others may simply assign customers a set user credentials and allow users to connect to the service via open-source VPN software like OpenVPN. Either way, the software creates an encrypted tunnel between your computer and the VPN provider, effectively blocking your ISP or anyone else on the network (aside from you and the VPN provider) from being able to tell which sites you are visiting or viewing the contents of your communications. A VPN service allows a customer in, say, New York City, to tunnel his traffic through one of several servers around the world, making it appear to any Web sites that his connection is coming from those servers, not from his ISP in New York. If you just want a VPN provider that will keep your ISP from snooping on your everyday browsing, virtually any provider can do that for you. But if you care about choosing from among VPN providers with integrity and those that provide reliable, comprehensive, trustworthy and affordable offerings, you’re going to want to do your homework before making a selection. And there are plenty of factors to consider. For better or worse, there are hundreds of VPN providers out there today. Simply searching the Web for “VPN” and “review” is hardly the best vetting approach, as a great many VPN companies offer “affiliate” programs that pay people a commission for each new customer they help sign up. I say this not to categorically discount VPN providers that offer affiliate programs, but more as a warning that such programs can skew search engine results in favor of larger providers. That’s because affiliate programs often create a perverse incentive for unscrupulous marketers to do things like manufacture phony VPN reviews by the virtual truckload, reviews that are aimed at steering as many people as possible to signing up with the service and earning them commissions. In my admittedly limited experience, this seems to have the effect of funneling search results toward VPN providers which spend a lot of money marketing their offerings and paying for affiliate programs. Also, good luck figuring out who owns and operates many of these companies. Again, from the admittedly few instances in which I’ve attempted to determine exactly who or what is at the helm of a specific VPN provider, I can say that this has not been a particularly fruitful endeavor. My bar for choosing a VPN provider has more to do with selecting one that makes an effort to ensure its customers understand how to use the service securely and safely, and to manage their customers’ expectations about the limitations of using the service. Those include VPN companies that take the time to explain seemingly esoteric but important concepts, such as DNS and IPv6 leaks, and whether they keep any logs of customer activity. I also tend to put more stock in VPN providers that offer payment mechanisms which go beyond easily-traceable methods such as credit cards or PayPal, to offering more privacy-friendly payment options like Bitcoin (or even cash). Many VPN providers claim they keep zero records of customer activity. However, this is almost always untrue if you take the time to read the fine print. Also, some VPN services can’t truthfully make this claim because they merely resell network services offered by third-parties. Providers that are honest and up-front about what information they collect and keep and for how long carry more weight in my book. Most VPN providers will keep basic information about their customers, including any information supplied at the creation of the account, as well as the true Internet address of the customer and the times that customers connect and disconnect from the service. I’ve found that VPN providers which collect the minimum amount of information about their customers also tend to offer little or no customer support. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially if you know what you’re doing and don’t need or want a lot of hand-holding. For my part, I would avoid any VPN provider which asks for personal information that isn’t required by the form of payment I choose. Then there are more practical, day-to-day considerations that may have little to do with privacy and anonymity. For example, some VPN providers pay a great deal of attention to privacy and security, but may not offer a huge number of servers and locations to chose from. This can present issues for people who frequently watch streaming video services that are restricted for use in specific countries. Other VPN providers may offer an impressive range of countries and/or states to chose from, but do not provide fast enough speeds to reliably satisfy data-intensive applications, such as streaming video. These are only some of the many factors that are important to weigh when selecting a VPN provider. I asked my favorite source for online privacy — the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) — if they had any recommendations for VPN providers. Alas, their press folks told me the EFF has not yet sought to vet the claims made by various VPN companies. Instead, their media folks referred me to this site, which covers many of the concerns raised in this post in greater detail, and includes what appear to be fairly straightforward reviews and side-by-side comparisons of many popular VPN services. For personal privacy reasons, I’m not interested in sharing the name of the VPN service that I’ve paid for and trusted for years. But I can say with some gratification that they are one of the highest rated (greens almost across the board) providers listed here. A quick note about “free VPN” services. Just as with “free” services like Facebook and Gmail, it’s important to know that with free VPN services you probably aren’t so much the customer as the product. Operating a business like a VPN service takes considerable effort and cost, and it’s very likely that anyone operating a free VPN service is also somehow monetizing your use of their service in some way — probably in an way that may be at odds with your reason for using the service in the first place. Alternatively, if you’re looking for a free option, consider using Tor instead. Short for “The Onion Router,” Tor takes your communications and bounces them through a series of layers or “relays” around the globe, encrypting your data at every hop. The practical and privacy limitations of Tor are explained rather succinctly in this story at How-to Geek, but many of the traditional concerns about Tor are mitigated by the technical limitations that ship with the current Tor Browser Bundle. For most users, the principal drawback of Tor versus paid VPN services is that Tor is likely to be far slower than your average VPN (although, to be fair Tor has gotten quite a bit faster in recent years). Finally, from the read-my-mind department, I fell asleep last night ruminating over what a grass-roots effort to lawfully and publicly resist this move by Congress might look like, and briefly considered that someone could even set up a site that would offer to purchase the Internet browsing records of the top lawmakers who voted for repealing the FCC rules (should those records ever go on sale by the major broadband providers). Incredibly, I awoke this morning to an email from a reader about exactly such an experiment — searchinternethistory.com — which has raised more than $170,000 so far toward a $1 million goal via GoFundMe. As cathartic as this effort may be, I can’t recommend supporting it financially. However, if you’re in a generous mood I would wholeheartedly recommend supporting groups like the EFF, which orchestrates efforts to educate lawmakers on important technology policy issues and — failing that — to derail and sometimes overturn bone-headed policy moves in Washington, D.C. that endanger our security and privacy. KrebsOnSecurity supports the EFF with four-figure donations each year, and I would encourage anyone with the means and interest to likewise support the work of this important organization. Author’s note: On any given week, I probably remove a dozen or so comments from people who appear to be shilling for various VPN providers. Any comments to that effect on this post will be similarly deleted without hesitation or explanation. Tags: DNS leak, eff, Electronic Frontier Foundation, IPv6 leak, President Trump, searchinternethistory.com, Tor, virtual private network, vpnJust last month, physicists made the best case yet for why time crystals - hypothetical structures that have movement without energy - could technically exist as physical objects. And now, four years after they were first proposed, scientists have managed to add a fourth dimension - the movement of time - to a crystal for the first time, giving it the ability to act as a kind of perpetual 'time-keeper'. First proposed by Nobel-Prize winning theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek back in 2012, time crystals are hypothetical structures that appear to have movement even at their lowest energy state, known as a ground state. What’s been puzzling physicists for decades is that strange things happen when certain objects such as crystals and magnets enter their ground state - they appear to violate a fundamental law in physics called time-translation symmetry, and end up with what’s referred to as asymmetrical ground states. Consider a magnet - each one has a north and a south end. It’s unclear how a magnet 'decides' which end will be north and which will be south, but the fact that it has a north and a south end means it won’t look the same on both ends - its naturally asymmetrical. Another example of a physical object with an asymmetrical ground state is a crystal. Crystals are known for their repeating structural patterns, but somehow they appear to be the same when viewed from certain directions, but not others. So like magnets, depending on where you observe a crystal in space, it will look different. For something to have an asymmetrical ground state, it has to achieve this asymmetry while standing still - no energy involved. With this in mind, Wilczek proposed that it might be possible to create an object that achieves an asymmetrical ground state not across space like ordinary crystals or magnets - but across time. As we explained last month, in very basic terms, Wilczek envisioned an object that could achieve everlasting movement while in its ground - or zero-energy - state by periodically switching between states over and over again. He said it could be possible to construct such an object by putting ordinary crystals in a low temperature superconductor, because crystals naturally align themselves at low temperatures. "[I]t seemed reasonable to assume that the atoms in such a crystal could conceivably move or rotate and then return to their natural state continually, as crystals are wont to do as they seek a lowest energy state," Bob Yirka explained for Phys.org. Now a team from the University of Maryland have tried out such an experiment, and it looks like it actually works. As MIT Technology Review reports, in theory, the process is fairly simple - you just need to create a quantum system, where you 'hold onto' a bunch of ions in the shape of a ring, and then cool them to their lowest energy state. Then you could see if the system breaks symmetry - the laws of physics predict that the ring will stay perfectly stationary with no energy for movement, but if time symmetry were broken at this ground state, then the ring could vary, or rotate, periodically in time. "Of course, it would never be possible to extract energy from this motion - that would violate the conservation of energy," says Tech Review. "But the temporal symmetry-breaking would manifest itself in this repeating motion in time, just as spatial symmetry-breaking manifests itself as repeating patterns in space." If things were as simple as we just described, Wilczek would have built such a system back in 2012. But there’s just one problem - because quantum particles tend to blink in and out of positions in space, they aren’t influenced by time-dependent variables, meaning they don’t evolve over time. The first step was for the University of Maryland to find a quantum system that was. They did this by chaining together a line of ytterbium ions with spins that interact with each other, and holding them in an out-of-equilibrium state. This forced the quantum ions to become 'localised' in a specific space, and therefore influenced by time. Using a laser, the team could then start changing the spin of specific ytterbium ions, and by flipping the spin of one ion, it caused the next one to flip, and so on down the chain, until every ion was oscillating. Once the laser had been used to set the first one off, the oscillation was perpetual, and over time, the researchers noticed something strange. As Tech Review explains: "These guys discovered that after allowing the system to evolve, the interactions occurred at a rate that was twice the original period. Since there is no driving force with that period, the only explanation is that the time symmetry must have been broken, thereby allowing these longer periods. In other words, [they] had created a time crystal." To be clear, we’re not talking about perpetual motion machines here, because by definition, there is no energy in these systems. But it does demonstrate that time crystals can occur in a real, physical system, and the team says that they could help us solve the problem of quantum memory - that is, how to retain information in the future generation of quantum computers. The researchers have submitted their results to the pre-print website arXiv.org, to be picked over by their physicist peers, so we'll have to wait and see if their experiment can be independently replicated. But if it can, we're only just beginning to realise the potential of the incredibly strange time crystal.Novelist Marilynne Robinson warns Stanford audience against utilitarian trends in higher education In the 2015 Presidential Lecture in the Arts and Humanities, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson argued that if the American higher education system continues to shift priorities towards training instead of educating, students will be ill-equipped to participate as citizens of a democratic society. Marilynne Robinson is best known for her award-winning fiction. But her expertise is by no means limited to the fictional realm, as became clear when she addressed a Stanford audience last week. Steve Castillo Marilynne Robinson, left, responds to a question from the audience after delivering the 2015 annual Presidential Lecture in the Arts and Humanities. Humanities Center director Caroline Winterer moderated the conversation. All four of her novels have won major literary awards. Her second novel, Gilead, won a Pulitzer in 2005. Her stories are known for their luminous prose and poignant portrayals of ordinary experiences. But she has also published numerous essays that offer a forcefully argued ethical vision for modern society. From insights on religion in America, environmentalism, and gun control, Robinson harnesses her exceptional command of the written word to challenge conventional wisdom. In the 2015 annual Presidential Lecture in the Arts and Humanities, which Robinson delivered at Stanford on Oct. 29, she turned her attention to the evolving culture of higher education. Robinson, who has taught at a number of colleges and universities, including her current position at the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, identified a troubling trend in higher education today. The original rationale behind an American liberal arts education – to play a vital role in democratizing privilege – "is under attack, or is being forgotten," Robinson said. Now, universities by and large do not attempt to "prepare people for citizenship and democracy." Instead, they educate them to be members of a "docile, most skilled, working class." As Robinson put it, "We have persuaded ourselves that the role of the middle ranks of our population is to be of use to the economy, more precisely to the future economy – of which we know nothing for certain." Administered by the Stanford Humanities Center, the Presidential Lecture series is sponsored by the Office of the President to "bring the most distinguished scholars, artists and critics of our time to the Stanford University campus." In opening remarks, Caroline Winterer, the director of the Stanford Humanities Center, introduced Robinson as "one of the most powerful moral voices in the modern literary pantheon." Winterer noted that Robinson's emphasis on education dovetails with Stanford's own Year of Learning initiative, which is fostering a wide-ranging exploration of the future of teaching and learning. During her visit to Stanford, Robinson was interviewed for an episode of the radio program, "Entitled Opinions." Stanford professor of French and Italian Robert Harrison hosts the literary talk show. The episode with Robinson will air on KZSU at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 4. To listen live, tune in to 90.1 FM. The show will also be available for streaming on the KZSU website or as a podcast on iTunes. Education as self-discovery The title of Robinson's talk, "The American Scholar Now," took inspiration from "The American Scholar," the title of an oration delivered by Ralph Waldo Emerson that urged Americans to free themselves from European models of learning. Offering a "variety of fields of study and great freedom to choose among them," Robinson said, American education "has served as a mighty paradigm for the kind of self-discovery Americans have historically valued." Our vast educational culture is "unlike anything else in the world" and "emerged from the glorious sense of the possible, and explored and enhanced the possible through the spread of learning. If it seems to be failing now, this is true because we have forgotten what it is for," she said. With so much emphasis on a utilitarian education today, Robinson said, "Emerson might be surprised to find us in such a state after generations of great freedom." Robinson attributes the current lack of support for seemingly non-utilitarian education to broad changes in political and economic ideals, a shift best characterized by the replacement of "the citizen" with "the taxpayer." "While the citizen can entertain aspirations for the society as a whole and take pride in its achievements, the taxpayer, as presently imagined, simply does not want to pay taxes," Robinson said, noting that this conflict of interest has left many great public universities "like beached vessels of unknown origin … ripe for looting insofar as what they hold would find a market." But, Robinson added, "a human community with a history and with a habit of aspirations toward democracy, requiring a capacity in its public for meaningful decisions about its life and direction, exists apart from these [economic] forces and is at odds with them." Humanities as social good Enlarging upon Robinson's support for a liberal arts education, Winterer asked her what she would do if she were the president of a university. Robinson replied, "The first thing I would do is try to make the university conscious of what it is." What universities do is a "great and continuous gift to the culture" and "there's nothing elitist or non-utilitarian about what they are and what they do." What universities need, she said, "is morale, a sense of confidence" about the fact that they "have faculty that teach people to love and be fascinated by what the teachers themselves love and are fascinated by" and that this "very humane and very ancient impulse" is "what civilization is about." One audience member asked Robinson if she were calling for a new faith that could counter the pervasive "money is the sacred" credo. Robinson replied with a decidedly humanist message, saying that the basis of everything that matters to her is the fact that "people are extraordinary." To "water the desert a little bit and then see what they become," Robinson said, is the "whole project of American education." A student asked Robinson what the humanities can do for social good. "Everything," she replied. The humanities, Robinson continued, "make people think about humankind and learn compassion for one another and learn awe relative to what human beings are." For more information about Robinson's work and career, visit the Stanford University Libraries Presidential Lecture site, which includes excerpts from her writings.The Senate Intelligence Committee wants more information on a meeting President Trump held with top Russian officials last week amid allegations that he shared classified intelligence. "The Senate Intelligence Committee has reached out to the White House to request additional information on recent reports about alleged dissemination of intelligence information," said Rebecca Glover Watkins, a spokeswoman for the panel's chairman, Sen. Richard Burr Richard Mauze BurrFive things to watch as Michael Cohen testifies Cohen grilled by Senate Intelligence panel Hillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid \| Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration \| New malicious cyber tool found \| Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators MORE (R-N.C.). The Washington Post reported Monday night that Trump had shared "code-word information" — one of the highest levels of classification — with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during an Oval Office meeting last week. ADVERTISEMENT Trump appeared to defend sharing information with Russian officials on Twitter Tuesday morning, saying he had an "absolute right" to discuss facts. The allegations are sparking concern from a growing number of GOP senators. Sen. Susan Collins Susan Margaret CollinsWhite House pleads with Senate GOP on emergency declaration Cohen grilled by Senate Intelligence panel Pence meets with Senate GOP for 'robust' discussion on Trump declaration MORE (R-Maine), a member of the Intelligence Committee, requested that the administration brief the panel's members on the report. "Although the President has the legal authority to disclose classified information, it would be very troubling if he did share such sensitive reporting with the Russians. The Senate Intelligence Committee should be briefed on this important issue immediately," Collins said in a statement Tuesday. The Senate Intelligence Committee is currently investigating Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election, including any potential ties between Moscow and the Trump campaign.These three policies were among the most highly supported by the Cubans interviewed in the survey, done by the independent research group NORC at the University of Chicago. Eight of 10 Cubans interviewed felt tourism to the country should be increased, and 95 percent said having a high level of economic growth was an extremely or very important goal. And yet Cubans seemed to have little faith in their government’s capacity to deliver on those goals. Only three in 10 felt the economy would improve in the next three years. And just 13 percent said the current economy was good or excellent. Three-quarters of Cubans believed they must be careful in saying what they think, at least sometimes. Over half of those Cubans interviewed said they would like to leave the country if given a chance, and 70 percent of those individuals said they would move to the United States if they could. The interviews were conducted in person in October and November, before the inauguration of President Trump, who has threatened to rescind President Obama’s 2014 decision to restore diplomatic ties between the nations. While Mr. Trump has remained relatively quiet about Cuba since taking office, his administration announced it is conducting a full review of the policy and could decide to cut off ties again.It doesn't have to be hard to make a video game.It doesn't have to take years of labor, months of overtime and a team of hundreds to make a dot on a screen move and jump towards a goal. But stacked against games like Rockstar's expansive Grand Theft Auto V and new technologies like virtual reality, that's what it usually takes to remain cutting edge, and to make something that'll keep your publishers and players happy. I've been around video games my whole life, but professionally for about seven years. That's sometimes involved being ushered intoAC-chilled rooms with only a waft of heat from rows of PCs pumping life into early demos of what would, hopefully, become the next big selling titles. From the press side, I've seen what it looks like when a developer is nervous about a demo, hoping I don't try to open that one door that crashes the whole thing, because early demos are exactly that: early. Or when a public relationsrepresentative scurries over during my interview to tell me that they're "nottalking about that right now," because video game messaging has become such adelicate balancing act. They don't want a rickety early demo marring the entireimage of their game. But these have only been brief glimpses into the trials behind working in game development. Everyone is vaguely aware of those trials. People nod their heads along in apparent understanding of how "difficult" making a game is, usually tacked onto a criticizing comment of a game as if to say, "Yes, this was hard to make, but I expected more." Occasionally those expectations are reasonable. But how much do any of us who don't work in that field truly know what developers "could" have done or "should" have changed? The structure in place that limits how developers talk about their game certainly inhibits that understanding. In order to get behind that facade, I ditched the rose-tinted glasses handed to me through the years I've previewed and reviewed video games and asked developers across varying roles what it's actually like to make video games, and why it's so hard. Building Blind "The challenge of making a game is sometimes like trying to build a house blindfolded," said Ryan Benno, environment artist at Insomniac Games—whose artwork you've also seen in Telltale's Walking Dead and Wolf Among Us series, as well as Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare—to me over email. "You can plan out where the walls will be, what the rooms will be like, how to make it stable and functional, but until you are actually in the space you don't actually know." After speaking with eight different developers, this analogy seems the simplest way to describe what a years-long project involving multiple departments working on separate pieces over a particular period of time with a particular budget and constrained by particular tools, looks like. There might be one team working on one house, but everyone hastheir individual priorities. Someone's working on the overall foundation while someone else is designing the shape of specific rooms. As the rooms change, the foundation has to adapt to maintain the weight of them. Artists come in and decorate, features like electricity are added and tweaked, and someone's designing the music that plays in every room. Creatives come in and work diligently on their disciplines while a producer makes sure everything still fits together, everyone's hitting their deadlines, and no one is slowing down.That's a best-case scenario, but the process of building that house—the process of making a game—does not always go according to plan. If you're trying to do something new that means you're inherently unable to estimate it accurately. - Samantha Kalman In the pre-production phase, developers have to figure out what ideas work best at the lowest risk to the overall project. A lot of this pre-production work often ends up being guesswork. "There are things that you just don't know until you get it done," Bruce Straley, co-director at Naughty Dog, told me over the phone. Straley, an artist and designer known for his work on Uncharted 2, The Last of Us, and Uncharted 4, was telling me about the importance of developing with a mind toward the vision, or core experience of the game. "There are these lessons that we learn in production. Even in demos that we've done. It's all playable but there are certain mechanics that wehaven't fully fleshed out. I don't know how this is going to work in the grand scheme of things. The equations might not add up as far as what's fun or what's not or what's engaging. I do my best." The evolution of the jeep sequence in Uncharted 4. Video courtesy of Naughty Dog. Samantha Kalman, indie developer and founder ofTimbre Interactive, told me something similar. "There are always known unknowns and unknown unknowns. You can really only estimate with 100% confidence yourability to do a thing you've already done," Kalman said. "If you're trying to do something new that means you're inherently unable to estimate it accurately." Development starts with a pitch—an internal presentation drafted on PowerPoint, let's say. But ideas and execution are vastly different things, and the process of prototyping those ideas out can reveal better directions or ideas for developers to pursue. "You can't tell how your game is playing until you've built a lot of it out," Alex Chrisman, director of production at Certain Affinity—known for their multiplayer work on several popular first-person shooters like Halo—told me."Pre-visualization is very hard. You have lots of important parts, and very often you'll find that that doesn't come together until the very end of the project." His co-worker, producer Ryan Treadwell, describes this process as "trying to understand the vision of your own game." Developers need to do this blue-sky thinkingwhile dealing with very material problems. Some features might break; others might take too much time to get right and have to be de-prioritized for the sake of the project. The basics are also figured out in pre-production when the technology and engine that developers are working with gets tested, and its workable range is established. This is where developers get an idea of what they can push—polygon count, textures, animation loads, etc. This phase, where developers can create scrapable prototypes is the appropriate time to getexperimental, Antoine Thisdale, game designer at Eidos Montreal told me. A "grey box" level from the development of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Screenshot courtesy of Eidos Montreal. But developers are creative people, and sometimes the process of experimentation can lead the game in the wrong direction. "It's very easy for people to lose track of the experience, of what your game is supposed to convey," Thisdale told me over the phone. "People tend to forget very quickly what needs to be nailed first. My job as a game designer is to nail the experience. I need my three Cs. I
the case that they’re doping, they’ve got the perfect response. ‘Okay, if we’re doping, where are the positive tests?’ “And there are no tests because the IRB, the governing body aren’t interested in this, the same way cycling wasn’t interested and that’s why (Benezech) makes a very interesting parallel between rugby being now in the position that cycling was before the ‘Festina Affair’.” In the hour that I spent with Paul, the Benezech story kept cropping up throughout. The implications of it are huge for rugby but it’s the immediate reaction to Paul’s piece in the Sunday Independent that he feels shows the true mentality surrounding the sport. As of the following Tuesday evening, he had yet to be contacted by anyone in the world of rugby about his piece or Benezech’s book. He mentions an argument he had with a friend the night before we met and how it left him wondering about his own attitude to drugs in sport. “I went to bed last night and I thought, ‘what is wrong with me? Why can’t I just ignore this and move on?’” he says. “But I can’t. It just… it winds me up. It’s the parallels between when I wrote about cycling in the 80s to the response to that then and the response to that now. I mean it’s absolutely the same. ‘Ah yeah, it’s not Kelly and Roche, it’s these foreigners that are doing it, not our lads.’ Same thing.” But it must leave him disillusioned when people would rather ignore the problem? “I got disillusioned with it last night,” says Paul and for a brief moment he almost despairs. “But it’s a fleeting disillusionment because I find myself getting up the next day saying, ‘Right. Where are we going? We’ll go for it again.’ I just won’t back down.” “So it’s almost like I’m constantly going around,” he explains as he leans to ground to pull something out of the air. “It’s like I’m going around constantly getting fella’s heads and pulling them out of the fucking ground and saying, ‘Look right now. Look! This is what is in front of you. Look at it now. And then putting my hand back down again, putting their heads back in the sand. “I don’t give a fuck what you make of what you see but I want you to fucking see it and acknowledge that it’s there. After that I don’t care.” And what about other sports journalists? Who has picked up on the Benezech story since Paul’s article was published? “There’s a lot of guys that I would have said were very good, young journalist coming through the ranks now at the moment here. And they’re in radio shows and they’ve got TV shows and you would have thought, ‘well these guys will be on it straight away’. “Have I had one call from any of these people [regarding Benezech’s book]? Not one. Have I had one call from any of the rugby correspndents? Not one. “We want to be fucking cheerleaders. That’s the default position of the sports writer. He wants to be a cheerleader. And there are very, very few who won’t do that. And that’s kind of depressing isn’t it?” So what’s the point? Sportsmen have their heads in the sand and sports writers are cheering them on. Why continue with the story? “You see as much as I’ve highlighted the silence that’s appeared, that’s actually the bit that’s interested me,” he says. “That’s actually the bit that’s driving me to work at it again. “That silence tells me, ‘he’s right, this is the truth we’re getting here folks’ and the silence for me is the adrenaline to go again.” What does he think is going on in the minds of the top officials in rugby here in Ireland who have seen his feature on Benezech? “I think that anybody involved in the sport at that level would have opened that paper, read that piece, closed it and said, ‘Oh fuck’. “This is coming. Definitely.”The Mongoliad is a fictional narrative set in the Foreworld Saga, a secret history transmedia franchise developed by the Subutai Corporation.[1] The Mongoliad was originally released in a serialized format online, and via a series of iOS and Android apps, but was restructured and re-edited for a definitive edition released via the Amazon Publishing imprint 47North, both in print and in Kindle format. Fan-submitted Foreworld stories were published via Amazon's Kindle Worlds imprint. Collaborators and format [ edit ] The serialized edition was intended to be distributed primarily as a series of applications ("apps") for smartphones, which the Subutai Corporation viewed as a new model for publishing storytelling.[2] At the project's core is a narrative of adventure fiction following the exploits of a small group of fighters and mystics in medieval Europe around the time of the Mongol conquests. As well as speculative fiction authors Neal Stephenson (chairman of Subutai), Greg Bear, Nicole Galland, Mark Teppo and others, collaborators include filmmakers, computer programmers, graphic artists, martial artists and combat choreographers, video game designers, and a professional editor.[3] In a departure from conventional fiction, much of the content of The Mongoliad was in forms other than text, not bound to any single medium and not in the service of the central narrative. Once the project developed momentum, the Subutai Corporation envisioned fans of the work contributing, expanding and enriching the narrative, and the fictional universe in which it takes place.[2] According to Jeremy Bornstein, president of the Subutai Corporation, the genesis of the project was in Stephenson's dissatisfaction with the authenticity of the early modern swordfighting scenes he had written into his series The Baroque Cycle.[1] Stephenson gathered a group of martial arts enthusiasts interested in studying historical European swordfighting, and this eventually resulted in some of the members of this group collaborating on a set of stories that would make use of accurate representations of these martial arts.[4][5] The collaborators decided that the project need not limit itself to the traditional novel form and began developing ideas on how to produce it in different media while retaining the caliber that would be expected of a new work by authors such as Stephenson or Bear.[1] An "alpha version" was demonstrated at the periodic application showcase SF App Show in San Francisco, California on May 25, 2010.[1][2] The serialized project ran from September 1, 2010 until January 25, 2012. New chapters, as well as supplemental materials, were released on a semi-regular schedule. The iOS apps were available in the Apple App Store, and the Android app was available in the Android Store.[2] The print edition was published on April 24, 2012. The mongoliad.com website was subsequently closed.[6] Subject of the published Mongoliad books [ edit ] The serial novels and their related, shorter "SideQuests" are set in the authors' "Foreworld" universe, which they describe as "almost like the world we live in," during the mid-thirteenth century Mongol invasion of Europe, under leadership of Genghis Khan and his successor Ögedei Khan. The story includes descriptions of Ögedei Khan's court (notably, his rolling "ordo" tent); the geography, flora and fauna of the great Eurasian Steppe; and especially medieval European and Asian martial arts. A parallel plot line takes place in Rome, and includes highly detailed depictions of a papal conclave. Historical events and persons depicted in the Mongoliad series [ edit ] The novels incorporate historical events in Poland, Rome, Russia and central Asia that ran concurrently with the last major events of the Mongol invasion. The authors construct a fictional narrative that connects all these events of the year 1241, describing some earlier historical events and adding other entirely fictional events and characters. Some medieval mythology is also included in the later books, especially the Holy Grail and elements of Norse mythology. Mongol events and persons described in the books include Ögedei's recollection of the 1201 battle of Khalakhaljid Sands, which cemented Ghengis' leadership of the clans, and the 1229 death of his brother Tolui, described in The Secret History of the Mongols as a heroic sacrifice to save Ögedei's life. Later, the 1241 death of Ögedei Khan (cause unknown) and the resulting recall of all the Khans to select a new "Khan of Khans" is woven into the fictional narrative. The Siege of Kiev (1240) and other events in the Mongol invasion of Rus and Europe are described in 1241 by a survivor, as a group of the novel's fictional characters pass through the ruined city. The Battle of Mohi (Hungary) and the Battle of Legnica (Poland) are also described by fictional "survivors". Several religious orders of knights formed during the Crusades (and their leaders), including the Teutonic Order, Knights Hospitaller and Livonian Brothers of the Sword are involved in the narrative. Historical events and persons in 1241 Rome include the papal conclave that selected Cardinal Castiglione to become Pope Celestine IV. Cardinal Fieschi (later Pope Innocent IV), and other future Popes are also members of the conclave. Senator Matteo Rosso Orsini and Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II also appear as fictionalized characters. Alexander Nevsky's 1242 campaign against German and Estonian invaders is a major subject of Book 4, including the climactic Battle on the Ice. The mythical Baba Yaga helps the protagonists defend Kievan Rus'. In Book 5, the action shifts to the Albigensian Crusade against Catharism, and the 1244 siege of Château de Montségur. Commercially published Foreworld Saga novels and short stories [ edit ] The Mongoliad Cycle [ edit ] The series is identified interchangeably by the publisher as The Foreworld Saga and Mongoliad Cycle. The Mongoliad, Book One, by Neal Stephenson, Erik Bear, Greg Bear, Joseph Brassey, Nicole Galland (aka E.D. deBirmingham [7] ), Cooper Moo and Mark Teppo; April, 2012. by Neal Stephenson, Erik Bear, Greg Bear, Joseph Brassey, Nicole Galland (aka E.D. deBirmingham ), Cooper Moo and Mark Teppo; April, 2012. The Mongoliad, Book Two, by Neal Stephenson, Erik Bear, Greg Bear, Joseph Brassey, Nicole Galland (aka E.D. deBirmingham), Cooper Moo and Mark Teppo; September, 2012. by Neal Stephenson, Erik Bear, Greg Bear, Joseph Brassey, Nicole Galland (aka E.D. deBirmingham), Cooper Moo and Mark Teppo; September, 2012. The Mongoliad, Book Three, by Neal Stephenson, Erik Bear, Greg Bear, Joseph Brassey, Nicole Galland (aka E.D. deBirmingham), Cooper Moo and Mark Teppo; February, 2013. by Neal Stephenson, Erik Bear, Greg Bear, Joseph Brassey, Nicole Galland (aka E.D. deBirmingham), Cooper Moo and Mark Teppo; February, 2013. Katabasis, The Foreworld Saga, Book Four, by Joseph Brassey, Cooper Moo, Mark Teppo and Angus Trim, October, 2013. (The first Foreworld novel not co-authored by Neal Stephenson.) , by Joseph Brassey, Cooper Moo, Mark Teppo and Angus Trim, October, 2013. (The first novel not co-authored by Neal Stephenson.) Siege Perilous, The Mongoliad Cycle, Book Five, by Nicole Galland (writing as E.D. deBirmingham); January, 2014 Foreworld SideQuests [ edit ] The approximate page-count of each story places their literary format somewhere between a long short story and a short novella, with the exception of the "Foreworld SideQuest Comics" which are in comics format. All were initially published in e-book and/or audio formats only. Sinner, by Mark Teppo; August, 2012. , by Mark Teppo; August, 2012. Dreamer, by Mark Teppo; September, 2012. , by Mark Teppo; September, 2012. The Lion in Chains, by Mark Teppo; October, 2012. , by Mark Teppo; October, 2012. The Shield Maiden, by Michael Tinker Pearce and Linda Pearce; November, 2012. , by Michael Tinker Pearce and Linda Pearce; November, 2012. The Beast of Calatrava, by Mark Teppo; January, 2013. , by Mark Teppo; January, 2013. Seer, by Mark Teppo; February, 2013. , by Mark Teppo; February, 2013. The Book of Seven Hands, by Barth Anderson; March, 2013. , by Barth Anderson; March, 2013. The Assassination of Orange, by Joseph Brassey; April, 2013. , by Joseph Brassey; April, 2013. Hearts of Iron, by Scott James Magner; May, 2013. [8] , by Scott James Magner; May, 2013. Symposium #1 (comic format), by Christian Cameron (author) and Dmitry Bondarenko (illustrator); July, 2013. (comic format), by Christian Cameron (author) and Dmitry Bondarenko (illustrator); July, 2013. Tyr's Hammer by Michael Tinker Pearce and Linda Pearce; October, 2013. by Michael Tinker Pearce and Linda Pearce; October, 2013. Symposium #1 (comic format), by Christian Cameron (author) and Dmitry Bondarenko (illustrator); October, 2013. (comic format), by Christian Cameron (author) and Dmitry Bondarenko (illustrator); October, 2013. Marshal versus the Assassins, by M. Harold Page; November, 2013. , by M. Harold Page; November, 2013. Blood and Ashes, by Scott James Magner; February, 2014 [9] , by Scott James Magner; February, 2014 Suffrajitsu: Mrs. Pankhurst's Amazons (comic format), by Tony Wolf (author) and João Vieira (illustrator); January, 2015. Kindle World fan fiction stories [ edit ] In keeping with Subutai's original intent to augment the Foreworld Saga with fan or community content, fan fiction publisher Kindle Worlds published ten new stories "inspired by" the Foreworld Saga in June, 2013. Foreworld Saga co-author and showrunner Mark Teppo explains, "As you can see from the Kindle Worlds storefront, there is a distinction between Canon and Kindle Worlds material. We’d like to see some of the Kindle Worlds material elevate itself up to Canon by its quality."[10] The Outcast, by Robert Kroese; June, 2013. Taking place during the Viking invasions. , by Robert Kroese; June, 2013. Taking place during the Viking invasions. The Qian, by Aric Davis; June, 2013. Taking place during the Mongol war. by Aric Davis; June, 2013. Taking place during the Mongol war. Kingdom of Glass, by Roberto Calas; June, 2013. Taking place toward the end of the Hundred Years War. by Roberto Calas; June, 2013. Taking place toward the end of the Hundred Years War. Sword of the Scholar, by Mel Odom; June, 2013. Taking place during the Ming Dynasty China. , by Mel Odom; June, 2013. Taking place during the Ming Dynasty China. Bloodaxe, by Charles Sasser; June, 2013. Taking place during the Viking invasions. by Charles Sasser; June, 2013. Taking place during the Viking invasions. The Brutus Coin, by Leigh Knight; June, 2013. Taking place after the assassination of Julius Caesar. , by Leigh Knight; June, 2013. Taking place after the assassination of Julius Caesar. Envoy, by Anselm Audley; June, 2013. Taking place during the wars of Attila the Hun. by Anselm Audley; June, 2013. Taking place during the wars of Attila the Hun. Belly Full of Hell, by Aric Davis; June, 2013. Pit fighting while taking place during the Mongol war. , by Aric Davis; June, 2013. Pit fighting while taking place during the Mongol war. The Mountain of Mist and Shadow, by S.M. Ruttan; June, 2013. Taking place during Julius Caesar's wars. by S.M. Ruttan; June, 2013. Taking place during Julius Caesar's wars. The Adventures of Dysingli Soon, by Joanna D. Jakubcin; June, 2013. Taking place in Medieval Rome. by Joanna D. Jakubcin; June, 2013. Taking place in Medieval Rome. Lanes of the Victorious, by Jon Mickus; January, 2014. Taking place during the First Mithridatic War of the Roman Republic. by Jon Mickus; January, 2014. Taking place during the First Mithridatic War of the Roman Republic. Sword of Mongetai, by Richard Stiller; March, 2014. Taking place right after the Mongol invasions of Kievan Rus'. by Richard Stiller; March, 2014. Taking place right after the Mongol invasions of Kievan Rus'. Out of the East, by Jerry Goodwyn; March, 2014. Taking place after the death of Pope Clement IV. by Jerry Goodwyn; March, 2014. Taking place after the death of Pope Clement IV. Infernal Castles, by Jon Mickus; July, 2014. The sequel to Lanes of the Victorious. by Jon Mickus; July, 2014. The sequel to. Shield of Mongetai, by Richard Stiller; August, 2014. The sequel to Sword of Mongetai. by Richard Stiller; August, 2014. The sequel to. The Veil of God, by R. Randolph Irwin; December, 2014. See also [ edit ]IN 1847, on the slopes where 1m visitors will descend to watch the 2002 Winter Olympics, 148 pioneers arrived by wagon to build the city of God. They created something extraordinary. Tolstoy called Mormonism “the American religion”. Harold Bloom, a professor at Yale, argues that “the Mormons, like the Jews before them, are a religion that became a people.” Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks. Corbis In Utah, the Church of the Latter-Day Saints (as Mormons call themselves) is by far the most important public institution, with all-encompassing claims on the loyalty of its members far outstripping those of the state or nation, even though Mormons are among the most patriotic of Americans. Mormons account for 70% of Utah's 2.2m inhabitants. Yet all of the state's representatives in Congress, all of its Supreme Court, 90% of its legislature and 80% of its state and federal judges belong to the church. Not surprisingly, critics fear the Mormons are creating a theocracy. Outside Utah, the number of Mormons has trebled in America over the past 30 years. The total for the whole country is now more than 5m (making them almost as numerous as the Jews). Outside America, where membership has increased even faster, there are now as many Mormons as in the United States, bringing the total to above 11m. Back in 1980, Rodney Stark, a professor at the University of Washington, predicted, to much derision, that there would be 10m Mormons in 2000. He now estimates 50m by 2040. If current growth rates continue, the Latter-Day Saints will be numbered in the hundreds of millions by 2080 and Mormonism will be, you might say, the first new world religion since Islam. The hordes of sports fans gathering in Salt Lake City this week may be forgiven for ignoring this ferment. In the interest of good neighbourliness, the church has taken care not to preen itself. Yet the visitors will influence the church's future indirectly. “The Olympics”, says Ted Wilson, a former mayor of the city, “means the refuge is over.” In other words, Mormon Utah can no longer command the privacy it used to enjoy. To their critics, the Mormons' phenomenal growth is a danger. They argue that the church's political power threatens the wall between church and state; that Mormons' cultural conservatism limits the rights of non-Mormons (look at the state's anti-alcohol and anti-gambling laws); and that the inward-looking quality of the church (most Mormons mix with others of their faith) is divisive and menacing. These charges are exaggerated. The alcohol laws are annoying rather than oppressive. The Mormons' undoubted conformity has not stopped the non-Mormon population of Salt Lake City becoming as diverse and lively as that of any other big city. But the charges raise a more interesting issue: the church's contradictory attitude towards its recent achievements. It is this that causes many of the difficulties the church now faces. If you go to the Mormons' visitor centre at the heart of Salt Lake City, the smiling hosts will describe a mainstream American Christian church—faster-growing and more conservative than most, but otherwise nothing out of the ordinary. Its doctrines seem unexceptional. It lays great stress on the nuclear family. Its views on abortion, same-sex marriage and lifestyle are culturally conservative; Mormons do not drink alcohol, coffee or tea, and do not smoke or gamble. They also have an uninhibited attitude to capitalism, running plenty of for-profit firms. Despite accusations of a “quasi-theocracy”, the church is in some ways ostentatiously apolitical. Its leaders, unlike those of many other churches, refuse to endorse candidates for office. It takes public positions only on moral matters, such as abortion. It insists on obeying the laws of even the dictatorial countries where its missionaries roam. One senior Mormon, Dallin Oaks, quotes scriptural authority for his view that “Latter-Day Saints obey the law, participate in the affairs of government at all levels and serve in the armed forces of their respective nations.” In short, Mormons appear to be a mainstream evangelical church, upholding private property, traditional family values and the separation of church and state. Yet, when they were founded in the early 19th century, the Mormons mounted radical challenges to each of these things. Early Mormons practised polygamy, which conflicts with the traditional nuclear family. Between 20,000 and 60,000 people still practise polygamy clandestinely, but the church long ago abandoned it and excommunicates its practitioners. In the early years, the church was almost communist in its attitude to private property. It required Mormons to hand over their goods to the church, which then handed them back but gave the former owners only “stewardship” over them. This meant that the church's leaders could make discretionary demands on the faithful for the greater good. Like polygamy, this system was abandoned long ago, as the church's embrace of corporate capitalism shows. Yet vestiges remain. The church is extraordinarily demanding of members' time and money. Mormons are supposed to “tithe”—that is, give 10% of their income to the church. Nearly two-thirds do so, accounting for most of the church's estimated income of $6 billion a year. They also voluntarily give anything up to 40 hours a week to church-run activities, an extraordinary commitment of time that helps to sustain one of the world's most impressive welfare services. At the local level, argues Dean May, a historian at the University of Utah, Mormons are far more “communal” in their attitudes than is normal in individualistic America. Cannon to the right of him More controversially, early Mormon doctrine contained such startling departures from Christian orthodoxy that some conservative churches even now question whether Mormons are Christians at all. The orthodox view of the afterlife is that good Christians spend eternity in the presence of God. Mormons believe in something different: “eternal progression” towards God. Their notion is that the soul exists throughout all time (before this earthly life as well as after it), with Latter-Day Saints advancing slowly to spiritual completion. The idea has something in common with eastern faiths; the lama in Rudyard Kipling's “Kim”, with a reservation or two, would have nodded gently. The logical conclusion of eternal progression is to muddy the difference—fundamental to other Christians—between God and man. The Mormons' founder, Joseph Smith, went so far as to say that “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man.” And if men have the capacity to be like God, that implies there could be a “plurality of Gods” (the Mormon phrase). To critics, this is mere polytheism. Some Mormons want to play down parts of this doctrine, but eternal progression influences several beliefs that others find curious. As members of a relatively new church, for example, Mormons face the problem of how to treat people born before their prophet was, in 1805. They solve it by a doctrine of posthumous baptism: America's Founding Fathers and Shakespeare are among the millions accepted as Mormons. More important, the notion influences the Mormon view of government. In the early years, church leaders were theocrats, not democrats, and saw no distinction between church and state. Joseph Smith was running for president when he was murdered by a mob in Illinois. Brigham Young was governor of the Utah territory and president of the church. Utah is no theocracy now but, unlike most churches, Mormonism retains a distinctive view of the state which derives from theology. Chris Cannon, a Mormon congressman, explains it as follows. Earthly life, Mormons think, is the time when the soul is tested. For the test to mean anything, people have to be free agents; if they are not, the test will be meaningless. So, says Mr Cannon, “for Mormons, the question of what the government does is one of the most important we face.” The government's role, he concludes, must be minimal, to leave people free to make their choices. As a good Mormon, who believes in proselytising, Mr Cannon is not just talking in the abstract: he wants this conception of the state to influence governmental reforms in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. Mr Cannon is also a conservative Republican, which may explain his “leave-us-alone” view of the state. Mormon Democrats (there are a few of them) reply that very poor people, and drug addicts, are hardly free agents; so these Mormons want a more active government. In each of these matters, the church has made huge adjustments in the past decade or two. But in all of them, except polygamy, the basic ideas that set Mormons apart are still there. That reflects both the church's flexibility and its strength. But, as its membership continues to rise, the adjustment raises two big questions for the church and for the outsiders who are increasingly affected by what it does. How much further can it move away from what were once its fundamental beliefs before it loses its identity? And, if it cannot move away, or compromise, how will this affect its relations with non-Mormons? The trouble with being so big The central challenge for the church is to keep alive its sense of being, as Mormons put it, “a peculiar people”—the chosen ones, rather like the Jews. For Mormons in Utah, this sense of being apart is bred in the bone—by the history of their great trek into the wilderness and, especially, by their history of persecution. It is hard for Mormons to forget that their founder was killed by a lynch mob and that the federal government once sent an army to exterminate them. How do you maintain this sense of peculiarity when Utah's Mormons represent only 14% of the church's worldwide membership? The church's leaders try to answer that question by maintaining that there is a universal Mormon identity (something that all religions have had difficulty achieving, even when they have pursued it). How far the leadership can continue doing this as congregations abroad get ever huger is open to doubt. The relationship between Mormons and other believers is no less tricky. For the moment, the fact that the Mormon church is such a hierarchical organisation (with power exercised by small groups of men who meet in secret) works in its favour. The leadership has been assiduous in trying to open up the church, admonishing Mormons against the dangers of clannishness. The real trouble comes from the bottom of the church, not the top: the conservatism of most church members and the inward-looking quality of Mormonism almost inevitably separate Mormons from others. Last year the Salt Lake Tribune, the city's main non-Mormon daily, commissioned an opinion poll which found that two-thirds of those living in Utah recognised a cultural fault between Mormons and non-Mormons. Of course, the sheer size of the church in Utah contributes to the conflict: it is the 800-pound gorilla which doesn't have to do anything to seem threatening. But, as Mormonism spreads, that problem may spread too. Throughout its history, outsiders have criticised the Mormon church as isolated, marginal and rigid. It has begun to slough off those qualities. But it is still unclear whether it can rid itself of the other feeling it elicits, however unfairly: hostility towards what is different.Conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck warned viewers of his Internet channel Thursday night that a set of public education standards encouraging math and language development is actually a massive global conspiracy designed to help the Chinese and, somehow, Muslims, take over the United States. “I believe that you are… then going to be co-ruled by a thugocracy of this part of the world, and I think it’s going to be, at least in our case, I think it’s going to be China,” Beck said as he randomly placed colored dots on a chalkboard with a drawing of a world map. “China will be the balance of our power. They will use Muslam– Islam, as the real enforcers that they will then help us, and whoever is in power will be ruled by an American. But uh, it will be a technocrat that will answer to China, and they will stomp things out and use Islam as much as they have to to get rid of anybody who’s, uh, standing up, I think.” It’s all going to happen, Beck said, thanks to a devious indoctrination program operating in America today, by which he means the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCS). “We are, unfortunately, in the end, going to be a third-world state,” Beck insisted. “And that’s why I think Common Core is here. Because it will train us to be a serf state. It will train us and it will keep us in order, to answer to the Chinese or whoever it is.” The CCS is a set of math and language standards for public school students, designed to put students on the best possible trajectory for acceptance to college and a good paying job in today’s most valuable industries, particularly technology. The standards were fashioned by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. And according to Beck, those two organizations have conspired with multinational corporations to sell America out to China and Islam. Progressive blog Right Wing Watch attempted to dissect Beck’s theory even further on Thursday, explaining that he believes CCS is part of a data-intensive project designed to help American businesses pinpoint bright young people and enable their success, which is somehow bad. He’s even roped the National Security Agency’s big Utah database into his theory as well, saying the plan is to use their high tech center to monitor all students at all times, a la “1984,” and determine their whole professional futures by the time they turn 7 years old. “So when you start hearing others on the Right and GOP members of Congress warning about the dangers posed by Common Core, this is what they are talking about,” blogger Kyle Mantyla wrote. “And you can thank Glenn Beck.” This video is from “The Blaze TV,” published Thursday, March 28, 2013. —— Photo: Screenshot, The Blaze TV.Finance Minister has acknowledged that the government may be bracing for a "political battle" on the in but is confident that the will get "through". The legislations on coal and minerals, he said, will be carried through "relatively easy" because they are "logical and rational". With the government having problem with numbers in the Rajya Sabha, he feels that there is an "obvious obstacle" when it comes to reforms measures that require legislative approval. "While there are not many serious obstacles, one obvious obstacle is that those steps which require legislative approval... Some of them will have to go through a procedure while some of the bills will be carried relatively easily because they are rational and logical bills," he said addressing students and faculty at Columbia University here. He was replying to a question on what obstacles he sees in implementing economic reforms and measures. On the land bill, Jaitley said, "certainly land becomes a slogan. Opposition will.....Even though in the previous government when it was passed there were voices of protest. "I think they may want to use it for a political battle Therefore, you will have to go through the whole Parliamentary process." The government has introduced a bill to replace an ordinance promulgated last year making changes to the passed during the UPA regime in 2013 ahead of the last year's general elections.Soon to be unemployed David Cameron is said to be shocked and disappointed at the benefits to which he is entitled after voluntarily leaving Downing Street. “David is devastated,” said a close associate. “He’s worked bloody hard for nearly thirty years for this country, and to find out that he’s literally not eligible for any sort of benefit when he becomes unemployed is a real blow.” It is understood that Mr Cameron is livid that by resigning his office it means that his Universal credit could be sanctioned by up to 26 weeks. “David can’t believe that the Government could be so callous and uncaring to someone like him who didn’t want to have to resign, but was forced into it by circumstance,” continued Mr Cameron’s associate. “Like the majority of Tory party supporters, he understands and believes in the Government’s principles of austerity, and of clamping down on benefit fraud. “But not when it has a detrimental effect on him personally.” It is understood that unless Mr Cameron is able to convince Jobs and Benefits Office that his was a case of constructive dismissal, he and his family will have to scrape by on their millions of pounds in savings, investments, and properties until he can start his lucrative career on the after-dinner speaking circuit.There were many factors that contributed to our recent financial bubble: deregulation, cheap money from the Fed, failure to enforce remaining regulations, crony capitalism, hubris, speculation, leverage, and fraud among other problems. While fraud wasn't the only issue, it was and is a significant contributor to the credit bubble. Restraining fraud is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a sound financial system. Congressional investigations in recent years have put ample evidence of fraud in the public domain. To illustrate just one type of malicious mischief, Senator Carl Levin (D. Mich.), Chairman of a senate investigative panel, issued a memo stating that Goldman "magnified the impact of toxic mortgages." The Wall Street Journal reviewed data showing that a $38 million subprime-mortgage bond created in June 2006 was referenced in more than 30 debt pool causing around$280 million in losses to investors by 2008. In other words, Goldman kept repackaging, reselling or protecting (buying credit default protection on) losers. It took the wrong kind of nerve for Goldman's CEO to say he was doing "God's work." Arianna Huffington pointed out that the financial system is rigged and that offenders get off lightly: Until the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Goldman Sachs for fraud in April of 2010, it was easy to forget that we have a regulatory agency designed to protect the public from the pillaging of corporate America. Six months earlier, the SEC has arranged a settlement with JPMorgan that showed how rigged the system is. The banking giant agreed to pay a $25 million penalty and cancel $647 million in fees owed by Alabama's Jefferson County as the result of a complicated derivatives deal that blew up in the county's face. As part of the settlement, JPMorgan neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing--despite overwhelming evidence that it had engaged in plenty of wrongdoing. Third World America P. 153 On Friday, September 2, 2011, The U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the regulator for taxpayer-subsidized mortgage lending guarantors Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, filed lawsuits against 17 of the world's largest banks over suspect mortgage loans which helped exacerbate the U.S. housing crisis. Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were placed in conservatorship in September 2008 after they nearly collapsed. The FHFA claims banks misrepresented the value of the mortgage loans and mortgage securities they underwrote, arranged, and sold. So far the banks being sued include Bank of America Corp along with its Countrywide Financial Corporation and Merrill Lynch & Company divisions, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JP Morgan & Chase & Co, Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG, Barclays PLC, Nomura Holdings Inc., Morgan Stanley, Ally Financial Inc., Credit Suisse Group Inc., First Horizon National Corp, General Electric Co, the HSBC North America Holdings unit of HSBC Holdings, The Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC and Société Générale SA. The FHFA is just getting started. Critics of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and their previous regulator, OFHEO, say that they were sophisticated investors, and they should have known better. William K. Black is a former bank regulator who played a role in hundreds of successful prosecutions after the Savings and Loan Crisis. He told the Wall Street Journal: "It's a great myth that you can't defraud sophisticated financial parties." Particularly when loans are fraudulent and material information was not disclosed. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission published evidence from the testimony of officials of Clayton Holdings(among others), a due diligence firm, that underwriters and rating agencies ignored evidence of suspect loans and did not disclose this information to investors. The FHFA's complaint involves tens of billions of dollars in potential recoveries that will benefit taxpayers. Yet, as Arianna Huffington points out, banks continue to find ways to get Americans to subsidize problems that the banks themselves were chiefly responsible for creating. Consumers struggle to keep up with payments as the unemployment rate rises along with prices for food, energy
Static case it could be used to fail the compilation if user tries to get some unknown value from map, and also fail if user does not pass some required argument. Also it could be used to annotate map-constructors in compile-time. And the last one: it will be VERY useful for IDEs.We wondered aloud on Sunday night's "Around The League Podcast" if the Green Bay Packers would rush Aaron Rodgers back this week to stem the tide of their three-game losing streak in his absence. Coach Mike McCarthy nipped that idea in the bud Monday. "Scott Tolzien will start this week," McCarthy told reporters. "Was that as quick as last week?" As for Rodgers' return, McCarthy reiterated that the decision is in the hands of his medical staff. "We all know he wants to play, wants to play as soon as he can," McCarthy said. "But those are big decisions." With a winnable game against the reeling Minnesota Vikings in Week 12, the pressure is on the Packers' offense to score more than the 13 points it has averaged the past two weeks. The good news is that Tolzien's play was a bright spot in Sunday's loss to the New York Giants -- despite a trio of interceptions. Tolzien isn't playing it safe, a fact that has not escaped McCarthy's attention. In his second career start, Tolzien connected on all five passes of 25-plus yards through the air. McCarthy emphasized that he's never seen a quarterback hit every big shot he took down the field. The Packers can't be happy with their win-loss record since Rodgers went down, but the injury has provided McCarthy with a long-term insurance policy at the position. He can rest assured that he has one of the league's finer young backups if Tolzien can pull his team out of its skid against the NFL's most generous scoring defense in Week 12. We recapped every Week 11 game on the latest "Around The League Podcast."A Canadian man has been charged in the United States with conspiring to send equipment used to test missile systems to Iran. Court documents show Ghobad Ghasempour, who was born in Iran, was arrested last week in Washington State following a federal investigation that spanned several years. A long-range S-200 missile is fired in a military drill in the port city of Bushehr, Iran. A Canadian man has been charged in the United States with conspiring to send equipment used to test missile systems to Iran. ( Amir Kholousi / The Associated Press ) A charging document filed with the court alleges Ghasempour was the mastermind behind a scheme to help his father’s friends in Iran launder money and illegally import goods into the country. The document, which includes an affidavit from a U.S. Homeland Security special agent, alleges Ghasempour worked with two other men to route restricted items through China and into Iran. Read more: U.S. imposes new sanctions on Iran over ballistic missile test Article Continued Below It says the scheme culminated with plans to ship a table used to calibrate military-grade navigation devices, including missile technology, which would contravene American laws. It’s alleged the setup began in 2011 and involved another man in China as well as one in Iran. The two other men have not been charged at this point and the document does not say whether any steps to do so are underway. The special agent alleged in the document that Ghasempour created front companies to shuffle money and products between countries and left their day-to-day operations to the Chinese man. The man in Iran is alleged to have arranged deliveries and money laundering for an Iranian government engineering company and other government agencies, according to the document. It allegedly began after Ghasempour contacted his Chinese partner in 2012 saying they could make money helping his father’s friend, who ran a paper factory in Iran and was having trouble importing paper from Brazil due to trade sanctions, the document says. The arrangement allegedly involved using Iranian oil money to pay for paper supplies in order to circumvent restrictions related to moving money out of Iran. Eventually, Ghasempour started co-ordinating other purchases, the document says. Article Continued Below “Ghasempour initiated, planned and directed the scheme, in addition to registering websites and email accounts for some of the front companies he established,” according to the affidavit, which did not have a hometown for Ghasempour. U.S. Homeland Security was alerted after a shipment of a thin-film measuring system was seized by authorities in the Netherlands, prompting the agency to investigate one of the companies created by Ghasempour, the document says. American sanctions on Iran were eased last year after the Iranian government agreed to curtail its nuclear program, but the Trump administration imposed new sanctions on the country recently after it held a ballistic missile test. Read more about:Developmental theories of the biological basis of sexual orientation suggest that sexually differentiated psychological and behavioural traits should be linked with sexual orientation. Subgroups of gay men delineated by anal sex roles differ according to at least one such trait: gender expression. The present study assessed the hypothesis that handedness, a biologically determined sexually differentiated trait, corresponds to differences in subgroups of gay men based on anal sex role. Furthermore, it assessed whether handedness mediates the association between gender nonconformity and male sexual orientation. Straight and gay men (N = 333) completed the Edinburgh Inventory of Handedness and the Recalled Childhood Gender Nonconformity Scale. Gay men also completed measures of anal sex role preference. As in previous studies, gay men showed greater non-right-handedness and gender nonconformity than straight men. Also, among gay men, bottoms/versatiles (i.e., gay men who take a receptive anal sex role, or who take on both a receptive and insertive anal sex role) were more gender-nonconforming than tops (i.e., gay men who take an insertive anal sex role). In support of the hypothesis, bottoms/versatiles were more non-right-handed than tops and handedness mediated the male sexual orientation and anal sex role differences in Recalled Childhood Gender Nonconformity. Together, these findings suggest that developmental processes linked to handedness underpin variation among men in sexual orientation and gender nonconformity as well as variation among subgroups of gay men that are delineated by anal sex roles. Funding: The research reported in this article was supported by a doctoral Canadian graduate scholarship National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC; http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca ) grant to ASG, and NSERC Discovery Grants to DAM (RGPIN-2016-06302) and DPV (RGPIN-2016-06446). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The present study examined the hypothesis that handedness—a trait that is putatively tied to prenatal brain development, including brain sexual differentiation—is associated with variation in gender nonconformity both between and within male sexual orientation groups. One prediction tested was that, across straight and gay men, a curvilinear association exists between handedness and gender (non)conformity such that non-right-handedness is associated with greater gender conformity among straight men and greater gender nonconformity among gay men. In addition, based on research indicating a relationship between bottom anal sex role with greater female-typicality, and top anal sex role with greater male-typicality, it was predicted that these groups should also differ in handedness, with those who report bottom anal sex role being more non-right-handed. Lastly, it was examined whether handedness mediates sexual orientation as well as anal sex role-related differences in gender nonconformity. Handedness has yet to be examined in relation to the variation in gender nonconformity that exists both between and within sexual orientation groups. Whereas a number of studies have shown sexual orientation differences in gender nonconformity, only more recently has quantitative research begun to identify behavioral correlates of variation in gender expression among subgroups of same-sex attracted individuals. Among gay men, variation in gender nonconformity appears to correspond with variation in anal sex role behavior. Specifically, gay men with an insertive anal sex role (i.e., tops) scored higher on masculine personality traits compared to males with a receptive (i.e., bottom) anal sex role preference (i.e., bottoms; [ 19 ]). Conversely, bottoms scored higher on feminine personality traits compared to tops. Consistent with these reports, Moskowitz and Hart [ 20 ] found that self-identified tops rated themselves as more masculine compared to bottoms, and Zheng, Hart, and Zheng [ 21 ] found that tops were more likely to score higher on male-typical cognitive styles while bottoms were higher on female-typical cognitive styles. Of note, non-right-handedness appears to be a masculine trait in that it is more common among straight men than straight women, and among lesbian women than straight women. However, non-right-handedness is also more common among gay men—who are more feminine on average—than straight men. One possible explanation for this apparent paradox is that non-right-handedness has a non-linear association with sexual differentiation among males. Specifically, among straight men non-right-handedness might be associated with greater male-typical gender expression whereas among gay men it might be associated with greater female-typical gender expression. As such, across straight and gay men, one would predict a curvilinear association between handedness and gender (non)conformity. In both sexes, non-right-handedness has been associated with elevated gender nonconformity. Left-handed women are more male-typical on a gender conformity scale (i.e., Bem Sex Role Inventory: [ 8, 9 ]) and highly gender-nonconforming natal male children are more non-right-handed [ 10 ]. A higher prevalence of non-right-handedness has also been reported in male-to-female and female-to-male transsexuals, regardless of sexual orientation, compared to male and female controls [ 11 – 14 ]. Furthermore, gay men and lesbian women, who show elevated gender nonconformity [ 15 ], also show higher rates of non-right-handedness compared to straight men and women [ 16 – 18 ]. Given this prenatal, biological, basis of handedness, the higher prevalence of non-right-handedness among men compared to women suggests that it also marks prenatal developmental processes influencing brain sexual differentiation (for review, see [ 7 ]). As such, handedness has been examined in relation to within-sex variation in psychological and behavioral domains that show large sexual dimorphism to provide insight into whether mechanisms underpinning handedness also influence these domains. Namely, these domains include gender expression and sexual partner preference. Handedness, or predominantly using the left or right hand for various tasks, is a marker of cerebral lateralization (for review, see [ 1 ]). Extensive research suggests that handedness is influenced by genetic factors and is also linked to sexually dimorphic endocrine and immunological mechanisms [ 2 – 5 ]. Although the factors affecting handedness are still under investigation, there is consensus that it is determined prenatally by biological factors (for review, see [ 6 ]). Following Baron and Kenny [ 25 ], we evaluated whether handedness mediated the relationship between gender nonconformity and sexual orientation—unstandardized coefficients (B) are reported. Next, we evaluated whether handedness mediated the relationship between gender nonconformity and anal sex role behavior. Lastly, we observed a curvilinear relationship between handedness and gender nonconformity (described below), such that the relationship ran in opposite directions for gay and straight men, and therefore we performed moderated mediation for handedness on the relationship between gender nonconformity among gay and straight men (i.e., Handedness X Sexual Orientation—details below). Sobel’s tests were conducted for all mediation analyses and one-tailed p-values were used given that the direction of the effect being tested was predicted a priori and known based on the results of the mediation analysis. Fisher’s Least Significant Difference (LSD) tests were used to examine pair-wise group differences in cases where the omnibus ANOVA indicated a significant overall effect. Significance was set to α =.05. Gay and straight men were compared on age, Recalled Childhood Gender Nonconformity and Handedness using independent sample t-tests. One-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were used for the following group comparisons on Age, Handedness and Recalled Childhood Gender Nonconformity scale: (1) straight men and gay men categorized by anal sex role preference, and (2) straight men and gay men categorized by anal sex role behavior. As reported below, anal sex role preference groups did not differ on handedness, whereas anal sex role behavior group differences on handedness were found. Thus, further analyses compared anal sex role behavior groups, rather than preference groups. Furthermore, bottom and versatile anal sex role behavior groups were collapsed for analyses because these two groups were homogenous with respect to the focal variables of Handedness and Recalled Childhood Gender Nonconformity (Cohen’s d for handedness = 0.05 and for gender nonconformity = 0.04). Gender nonconformity in the present study was assessed using the Recalled Childhood Gender Nonconformity Scale [ 24 ]. This 23-item questionnaire is scored such that high scores are male-typical and, therefore, low scores are gender-nonconforming. We present the data for a subset of the scale (18 items belonging to Factor 1 as described in [ 24 ]). This scale included questions such as “As a child, my best or closest friend was 1-always a boy, to 5-always a girl”, and “In fantasy or pretend play, I took the role 1-only of boys or men, to 5-only of girls or women” Handedness was assessed using the 10-item Edinburgh inventory (writing, throwing, toothbrush, spoon, drawing, scissors, knife [without fork], striking a match, opening a box [lid], broom [upper hand]). Answers were provided on a 5-point likert scale: 1-always right to 5-always left. Scores for each of the 10 items were summed, which resulted in scores ranging from 10 (i.e., always use the right hand) to 50 (i.e., always use the left hand). Anal sex role preference and anal sex role behavior were self-labeled by participants. Specifically, individuals who identified as gay men were asked whether they engage in and/or fantasize about anal sex. If the participant answered “yes,” they were asked (1) which role they prefer to take when engaging in and/or fantasizing about anal sex (i.e., preference), and (2) which role they usually take when engaging in anal sex (i.e., behavior). For both questions, their response options included “top,” “versatile,” or “bottom.” For the second question (regarding which role they usually take), they were also given the option to select “Not sufficient experience with anal sex to answer.” Sexual orientation was defined by both self-identification (i.e., straight, gay, bisexual or other) and sexual attraction to the opposite- (i.e., straight) or same-sex (i.e., gay) in the last year. Specifically, participants were asked the gender(s) of individuals they were sexually attracted to in the last twelve months (similar to [ 22 ]). Responses were limited to a 5-point scale: 1) only females, never to males, to 5) only males, never females. An option was also available for those who identified as asexual–“I have never engaged in sexual behaviour.” Examples of sexual experience were given in parentheses “(e.g., petting, kissing, oral sex, intercourse).” Men who identified as straight and indicated an attraction to females only and never to males in the last year were categorized as straight. Men who identified as gay and indicated they were only attracted to males, never to females, in the last year were categorized as gay. All others who were not concordant for sexual attraction in the last year and their self-identified sexual orientation were excluded from analyses. In total, 39 participants were excluded: 14 were straight men (all of whom stated “more often [attracted] to females but at least once to a male”) and 25 were gay men (all of whom stated “more often [attracted] to males but at least once to a female”). These predominantly gay or straight men were excluded because of recent evidence suggesting that mostly heterosexual individuals differ from exclusively heterosexual individuals on correlates of sexual orientation (for review, see [ 23 ]), and gay participants were defined similarly to be consistent across categories. The final participant numbers were as follows for all analyses excluding the anal sex role behavior analyses: straight men: n = 91; all gay men: n = 242; bottoms: n = 91; versatiles: n = 115; tops: n = 36. For the analyses on anal sex role behavior, the total number of participants were as follows: straight men: n = 91; all gay men: n = 222; bottoms: n = 96; versatiles: n = 69; tops: n = 57. The mean (SD) age for straight men was 32.26 (15.23) years and 33.61 (13.47) years for gay men. The mean (SD) ages for anal sex role preference groups were as follows: bottoms were 33.27 (13.28), versatiles were 33.83 (13.65), and tops were 33.80 (13.77). The mean (SD) ages for anal sex role behavior groups were as follows: bottoms were 32.21 (13.35), versatiles were 34.03 (13.84), and tops were 35.47 (13.21). Racial self-identification was as follows: 301 participants classified themselves as White, 1 Black, 2 Chinese, 1 Filipino, 2 Aboriginal, 3 Latin American, 3 Southeast Asian, 1 West Asian, 2 Korean, 1 Japanese, 15 indicated “other,” and 1 participant declined to answer. Participants were recruited at the 2015 Toronto Pride Festival and on Facebook. At the Toronto Pride Festival, experimenters explained to festival attendees that they were researchers from the University of Toronto conducting a study on developmental theories of sexual orientation. Experimenters offered a business card with the survey’s website, and/or recorded their email addresses as a means to send the website address for our online survey. Facebook advertisements targeted men who indicated that they were interested in men or men who indicated that they were interested in women. Only those 18 years of age and older were targeted, and the advertisements were presented only to those who spoke English. The locations selected included countries in which English is a first language (i.e., Canada, United States, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Australia). We emailed details regarding how to complete our online questionnaire to 459 people from the Toronto Pride festival, and our Facebook advertisements reached 56,155 people. A total of 598 participants (56 from Toronto Pride and 542 from Facebook) completed > 90% of the items on our questionnaire. Participants were excluded from the present study if they did not report their age, sexual orientation or, in the case of gay men, their anal sex role preference. Of the 598 participants who completed > 90% of the questionnaire, 159 did not identify their sexual orientation and 208 did not report their age. Of the remaining participants, 242 gay men indicated their preferred anal sex role, and 222 also reported their anal sex role behavior. The questionnaire was hosted on Qualtrics using their survey software. The study was approved and conducted in accordance with the guidelines from the Human Research Protections Program at the University of Toronto. The letter of information and informed consent forms were presented to participants via Qualtrics prior to the questionnaire. Participants had to click a box indicating that they read the ethics statement and agreed to participate. Consent and questionnaire data were encrypted on a computer and password protected. In step 1 of the moderated mediation model, the regressions of Handedness onto anal sex role behavior groups were significant: straight men, B = -32.658, t(310) = -28.772, p <.001 and tops, B = -3.426, t(310) = -2.565, p =.011. For the second step, the regressions of Gender Nonconformity onto anal sex role behavior groups were significant: straight men, B = 9.993, t(310) = 8.216, p <.001, and tops, B = 3.097, t(310) = 2.157, p =.032. For the final regressions, with Handedness included in the model, straight men, B = 4.637, t(309) = 2.011, p =.045, and tops, B = 2.526, t(309) = 1.764, p =.079, were less significantly different on Recalled Childhood Gender Nonconformity compared to bottoms/versatiles, suggesting partial moderated mediation. Handedness significantly predicted Recalled Childhood Gender Nonconformity in this last step, B = -.164, t(309) = -2.722, p =.007. The Sobel’s test was significant for straight men, Sobel’s z = 2.721, one-tailed p =.003, and tops, Sobel’s z = 1.87, one-tailed p =.035. These findings again suggest a moderated mediation effect of Handedness on Sexual Orientation differences in Recalled Childhood Gender Nonconformity, and also Recalled Childhood Gender Nonconformity differences among subgroups of gay men delineated by anal sex role behavior. Handedness was evaluated as a moderated mediator for Recalled Childhood Gender Nonconformity differences among anal sex role behavior groups. We used anal sex role behavior rather than anal sex role preference for these analyses because (as reported above) group differences in Handedness reached the critical alpha of <.05 when compared between anal sex role behavior, but not preference, groups. Again, straight males’ Handedness scores were multiplied by -1, but this time bottoms/versatiles were the reference group because they differed from tops and straight men on Handedness whereas these latter groups showed no such difference (See Fig 3 ). In step 1 of the mediation model, the regression of the Handedness interaction term onto Sexual Orientation was significant, B = 32.158, t(331) = 29.041, p <.001. For the second step, the regression of Recalled Childhood Gender Nonconformity onto Sexual Orientation was also significant, B = -9.351, t(331) = -8.115, p <.001. For the final regression, the regression of Recalled Childhood Gender Nonconformity onto Sexual Orientation was no longer significant when the Handedness interaction term was also included in the model, B = -3.437, t(330) = -1.606, p =.109. Handedness significantly predicted Recalled Childhood Gender Nonconformity in this last step, B = -.184, t(330) = -3.262, p =.001. A Sobel’s test indicated a significant moderated mediation effect of Handedness on the male Sexual Orientation difference in Recalled Childhood Gender Nonconformity, Sobel’s z = -3.265, one-tailed p <.001. The correlations between Recalled Childhood Gender Nonconformity and Handedness scores indicated that the association between these variables runs in opposite directions for gay vs. straight men. As such, straight men’s Handedness scores were multiplied by -1 to create an appropriate interaction term to test for the moderated mediation effect of Handedness on the Sexual Orientation difference in Recalled Childhood Gender Nonconformity. The straight males were the reference group (see Fig 2 ). A significant curvilinear relationship was found between Handedness and Recalled Childhood Gender Nonconformity such that participants with low and high handedness scores were more gender-conforming compared to participants with mixed handedness/intermediate handedness scores. Anal sex role preference groups are plotted as follows: circles represent top gay men, squares are versatile gay men, diamonds are bottom gay men and ‘x’ represent straight men. The solid line depicts the curvilinear relationship, whereas the dotted line represents the linear association for straight men, and the dash line represents the linear association for gay men. Among gay men, a significant negative correlation was found between Handedness and Recalled Childhood Gender Nonconformity scores, r(242) = -.175, p =.006, indicating that increased non-right-handedness is associated with more gender nonconformity. Among straight men, these variables showed a marginally significant positive correlation that was nevertheless similar in magnitude (although notably opposite in direction) to the correlation found for gay men, r(91) =.19, p =.072. Although the correlation for straight men did not reach significance, the effect size suggests that this effect is of the same magnitude as that among gay men; thus, with a larger sample size, it is likely that this correlation would emerge as significant [for a review discussing the importance of considering both statistical significant and effect size, see 26 ]. Coupled with the findings reported above regarding male sexual orientation differences for these variables, these results suggest that there is a nonlinear relationship between gender nonconformity and handedness across the entire sample. Indeed, a significant curvilinear relationship was found, R 2 (331) =.028, p =.009, such that participants with low and high handedness scores were more gender conforming compared to participants with mixed handedness/intermediate handedness scores (see Fig 1 ). This quadratic model accounted for more variance than the linear model, R 2 (332) =.024, p =.003. Furthermore, the sample size composition from the present study is comprised of a majority of gay men (70.6%), thus it would be predicted that the magnitude of difference between quadratic and linear models would increase as the sample approached a sample comprised of 50% gay and 50% straight men. A significant effect was found between straight men and anal sex behavior groups on the Handedness scale, F(3, 313) = 4.575, p =.011. Posthoc analyses indicated that gay men who reported bottom/versatile anal sex as their typical sexual behavior were less right-handed compared to straight men and top gay men, p =.022 and p =.011, respectively. Top gay men did not differ from straight gay men, p =.581. Conclusions Consistent with previous research, male sexual orientation and anal sex role were associated with Recalled Childhood Gender Nonconformity scale scores in our sample. Gay men were more gender-nonconforming compared to straight men and gay men with a bottom/versatile anal sex role were more gender-nonconforming compared to both gay men with a top anal sex role and straight men. We also replicated the finding that gay men are more non-right-handed compared to straight men. We evaluated handedness among gay men grouped by their anal sex roles, and found that bottoms/versatiles were more non-right-handed compared to tops and straight men. Of particular importance, the present study suggests that differences in gender nonconformity between straight and gay men and among anal sex role subgroups of gay men are influenced by prenatal mechanisms linked to handedness. Across both gay and straight men, a curvilinear relationship was found between handedness and gender (non)conformity. High (left) and low (right) handedness scores were associated with more recalled childhood gender conformity relative to participants with mixed/intermediate handedness scores; this pattern appeared to occur because the association between gender conformity and non-right-handedness is positive among straight men and negative among gay men (see Fig 1). Furthermore, moderated mediation analyses indicated that handedness mediated the overall male sexual orientation difference as well as anal sex role subgroup differences in gender (non)conformity (see Figs 2 and 3). To our knowledge, these are the first results to suggest that developmental processes related to handedness explain variation in gender expression both between straight and gay men as well as within these groups. The biological mechanisms underlying handedness are not entirely clear. One prominent hypothesis has been that the sex difference is related to sex differences in prenatal testosterone [2]. If this hypothesis holds true, it would correspond well with the neurohormonal theory [27, 28] of sexual orientation development, which postulates that the prenatal surge in testosterone promotes male-typical brain development, giving rise to male-typical behaviors, including male-typical gender patterns and sexual partner preference (i.e., a preference for women). In males, female-typical gender expression and same-sex attraction are thought to result from a relative lack of prenatal testosterone exposure, resulting in female-typical brain development and, thus, female-typical behavior and sexual partner preference (i.e., a preference for men). Evidence suggests that higher levels of prenatal testosterone are associated with more male-typical play patterns in early childhood in boys and girls [29, 30]. In addition, a putative marker of prenatal testosterone exposure (i.e., second-to-fourth digit ratio; for review, see [31]) was found to be more female-typical in males with a female gender identity, again suggesting a relationship between low testosterone and female-typical gender development [32]. The evidence-base is further strengthened by studies examining samples of individuals affected by disorders of sex development for which there is relative certainty regarding the prenatal sex hormone milieu. For example, female-typical development and gender identity is common among XY-individuals with androgen insensitivity syndrome, a condition that limits the action of androgens [33]. Likewise, females with conditions associated with elevated prenatal androgens such as congenital adrenal hyperplasia display more male-typical gender patterns than females not affected by the condition [34]. Findings relating prenatal testosterone to male sexual orientation or to handedness have been more mixed. For male sexual orientation, bio-correlates of prenatal testosterone have been found to be more female-typical (e.g., size of the third interstitial nucleus of the anterior hypothalamus: [35]), more male-typical (e.g., penis size: [36]) or not different from straight men (e.g., second-to-fourth digit ratio: [37]). Similarly, non-right-handedness has been linked to high prenatal testosterone (e.g., [38–40]) and low prenatal testosterone [41–43], while others did not find a relationship between testosterone and handedness [44, 45]. Interestingly, a recent study found evidence for a curvilinear relationship between handedness and markers of androgens, and between markers of androgens and androphilic attraction; quadratic effects are not frequently evaluated, which may account for the inconsistencies in this literature [46]. Specifically, Ellis, Skorska, and Bogaert [46] found: (a) a curvilinear relationship between handedness and markers of androgen in women, and a linear relationship between these variables in men (although the authors suggest that the relationship appears curvilinear for men as well, but the linear model, not the quadratic, was significant), and (b) for both men and women a quadratic relationship between androphilic attraction and markers of androgen. Variation in androgen sensitivity is another possible explanation for these inconsistent findings (e.g., [47]). The X-chromosome linked androgen receptor gene (AR) has been associated with handedness [47]. Handedness has been associated with the polymorphic number of polyglutamine (CAG) repeats on the AR gene. Individual differences in CAG repeat lengths have been associated with the efficiency of the receptor such that AR variants with longer CAG repeat tracts are thought to function less efficiently (e.g., [48]). Medland et al., [49] found that longer repeats were associated with left-handedness in females, and that shorter repeats were associated with left-handedness in males. This latter finding suggests that left-handedness is associated with more efficient AR in males and, thus, dovetails with the present data on straight men. Among straight men, a tendency toward non-right-handedness was associated with greater male-typical childhood behavior, possibly due to greater prenatal action of testosterone on brain masculinization. Conversely, mixed handedness (i.e., the use of right hand for some tasks and left for others) was associated with longer CAG repeats in males in the study by Hampson and Sankar [43]. Arning et al., [47] found similar results: longer CAG-repeats were associated with mixed handedness in both men and women. These findings suggest that mixed handedness is associated with less efficient AR and, thus, dovetails with the present data on gay men, particularly those with a bottom or versatile anal sex role. It may be that this subset of men is particularly likely to have less efficient AR, leading to both non-right-handedness and more female-typical gender expression and sexual partner preference. In sum, AR appears to be associated with handedness such that relative sensitivity of AR to testosterone might account for variation in handedness. If such is the case, then it is possible that subgroups of gay men delineated by handedness may differ from each other and from straight men in terms of their sensitivity to androgens. Interestingly, sexual orientation has been associated with other X-chromosome loci such as Xq28 (for review, see [50, 51]), although no link has yet been reported with regard to male sexual orientation and AR CAG repeat length [52]. Further research is needed to understand the individual and additive or interactive contributions of endocrine and genetic mechanisms underlying handedness, and this research may indicate these mechanisms as also underlying sexual orientation development. These mechanisms may also be relevant to heterogeneity among gay men with respect to sexual behavior. Here, handedness significantly differed among anal sex role behavior groups (i.e., tops were more likely to be right-handed), and notably not among anal sex role preference groups. These patterns suggest that handedness is somehow associated with one or more behavioral mechanisms that influence whether a gay man is likely to perform a bottom/versatile vs. top anal sex role. Given that the handedness differences among anal sex role subgroups of gay men corresponded with parallel differences in recalled childhood gender (non)conformity (i.e., tops reported greater gender conformity), gender expression may be one such behavioral mechanism. Indeed, masculinity and stereotypes surrounding masculinity appear to influence decisions around anal sex role identity and sexual positioning practices among men who have sex with men [53]. As such, mechanisms linked with handedness may have an indirect influence on sexual behaviors such as anal sex role via their effects on gender expression, which is putatively important for influencing decisions about sexual positioning. Although the precise contributions of genetic and hormonal processes to handedness and their relation to sexual orientation remain unclear, it should be noted that it is unlikely that these processes interact with mechanisms related to the fraternal birth order effect (i.e., the well-replicated finding that each additional older brother increases the odds of same-sex sexual attraction among males; [54]). This effect interacts with handedness such that only right-handed gay men exhibit it, whereas mixed- or left-handed gay men do not [16, 55– 58]. Bogaert [56] suggested that extremely right-handed gay men also do not show the fraternal birth order effect—only moderately right-handed gay men showed the effect. Furthermore, two additional studies did not find an association between the fraternal birth order effect and gender nonconformity [59, 60], whereas handedness mediated variation in gender nonconformity in the present study. Thus, it appears that mechanisms linking male sexual orientation to handedness differ from those linking it to the fraternal birth order effect (for review, see [61]). In addition to the genetic and hormonal theories for the development of handedness, others have proposed that handedness and sexual orientation may be related to developmental instability [17]. Traits related to developmental instability such as minor physical anomalies and fluctuating asymmetry are more prominent in left-handers and extreme right-handers [62], and sexual orientation is associated with left-handedness and extreme right-handedness [17, 55, 56, 57, 58]. Although two studies [63, 64] did not find support for increased fluctuating asymmetry in gay men, both Miller, Hoffmann, and Mustanski [65] and Hall and Schaeff [66] did find increased fluctuating asymmetries, such as asymmetries in the ear, elbow, knee, ankle and finger length, among gay men compared to straight men. It is possible that developmental instability affects sexual differentiation of the brain and behavior and, thus, might also account for subgroups of gay men who differ in terms of gender nonconformity and/or anal sex role. This hypothesis could be tested by evaluating traits associated with developmental instability (e.g., minor physical anomalies, fluctuating asymmetry) in relation to sexual orientation, gender expression, and anal sex role. If this hypothesis is accurate, one would predict—based on patterns found in the present study—that gay men who are more non-right-handed, gender nonconforming, and bottom/versatiles would show increased traits of developmental instability. Limitations and future directions The present study found that handedness mediates the relationship between male sexual orientation and childhood gender nonconformity. Thus, sexual differentiation mechanisms or mechanisms related to developmental instability that influence handedness may also regulate same-sex sexual orientation and gender nonconformity. It would be of interest, therefore, to evaluate the relationship between the prenatal endocrine environment and the AR gene (CAG repeats/sensitivity of the receptor) in relation to handedness, sexual orientation, anal sex role, and gender nonconformity. Although similar studies have been conducted on some of these variables individually or in pairs (e.g., handedness and AR [47], sexual orientation and handedness [16], anal sex role and gender nonconformity [19]), the present study suggests that this line of questioning merits a more comprehensive evaluation of these variables together, and that nonlinear relationships should be considered. It would also be of interest to investigate whether these relationships hold true for females and female same-sex sexual orientation. Extreme right-handedness has been related to both male sexual orientation [16, 56] and increased gender nonconformity among gay men [58]. The sample size of the present study was insufficient to evaluate extreme right-handedness in relation to anal sex role groups and gender nonconformity. However, given that bottoms/versatiles were more non-right-handed than tops in the present study, it would be interesting to test whether bottoms/versatiles and tops similarly show differences in extreme right-handedness. These lines of investigation will help shed light on the mechanisms underlying sexual orientation, sexual behaviors such as anal sex role, and gender-related traits, as well as the developmental associations among these sexually differentiated
dalle quasi 5mila del 2007 (4.897) si scende a meno di 4.500 nel 2013 (4.488), fino ad arrivare alle 4mila tonde nel 2015. Altri delitti che possono essere presi come campione sono poi i sequestri di persona. Dai 1.867 del 2007 si è scesi fino ai 1.166 del 2015, con una forte accelerazione nella diminuzione a partire dal 2012 (1.474). Infine si può osservare il dato sui reati di associazione mafiosa. Non si tratta di un reato che di per sé richieda necessariamente la commissione di violenze, ma nella prassi spesso le fomenta. Dai 140 casi del 2007 si è scesi fino ai 68 del 2012, risalendo poi nel 2015 a 85. Gentiloni ha dunque ragione quando sostiene che gli indici registrino un calo, anche se non assoluto, degli episodi di violenza. Se poi la domanda di sicurezza dei cittadini a cui fa riferimento il premier nasce dalla questione del terrorismo, c’è un ultimo dato che può essere utile citare. Quello relativo agli “omicidi volontari consumati a scopo terroristico” in Italia nel periodo di riferimento (2007-2015): zero.After fleeing North Korea, some defectors want to go back to life under Kim Jong-un Updated Kwon Chol Nam fled North Korea for China by wading across a river border at night and crawling under a barbed wire fence. He made a long, perilous journey across China, and trekked through the jungles of Laos to get to Thailand, where he was allowed to fly to South Korea to start a new life. That was three years ago. But after so much danger, risk and upheaval he now wants to go back. South Korea is not what he expected and he desperately misses his family. "North Korea is my home. It's where my son lives and my parents died," he said. "There's no hope living here. I've experienced so much harassment and I'm treated like a second-class citizen." Over the last couple of decades thousands of North Koreans have risked life and limb and fled the repression of their homeland to seek refuge in South Korea. But now in an unexpected turnaround, a growing number want to return home, saying South Korea is not the land of freedom and prosperity that was promised. Mr Kwon lives in poverty and isolation in a small room in an outer suburb of Seoul, relying on charity to pay the rent. He is unemployed and claims when he did work as a labourer he was paid much less than fellow workers, or not at all. He said he suffers from the stigma of coming from the North, saying most South Koreans see him as backward or stupid. "I am lonely and most of the defectors think like this," he said. "South Korean people don't want to socialise with us, they don't treat us like human beings. "Even though North Korea is poorer, I felt more free there. Neighbours and people help each other and depend on each other. "Life is simpler there and here they are just slaves to money." Defectors struggle in the South Mr Kwon has tried to go back illegally via China, but just as he was about to leave South Korean authorities arrested him and he spent several months in jail. Defectors immediately become South Koreans, and as citizens it is against the law to have any contact or visit the North. But he is now leading a campaign to get the South Korean Government to change laws to allow defectors to go home. It is believed there are about 80 defectors who are actively seeking to return. Mr Kwon has spent the last several months protesting and lobbying the United Nations and the South Korean parliament. "I have declared myself as a citizen of North Korea," he said. "Even though my body is here my mind is living in my home." North Korean defectors were once celebrated in the South and given a new home and a generous living allowance, but not anymore. There are about 25,000 living in South Korea and they struggle to fit into the fast-paced, hyper-competitive capitalist South. Studies estimate more than half suffer discrimination and depression and unemployment among them is six times higher than the South Korean average. It is estimated 25 per cent of all defectors have seriously considered returning home. Even defectors like Kim Hyung Doek — who have been in South Korea for 20 years and have forged a successful career, made money and raised a family — want to go back. "I have strong feelings that I really want to go back and live with my family because that's where I was born and grew up," he said. "It's difficult to adapt in the South but I did. I suffered so much discrimination. "There's a gap of about 40 years between the North and the South." A few years ago Mr Kim travelled to the North Korean embassy in China and requested a visitor's visa, but it was firmly rejected. He just hopes that relations between the North and South will improve so one day he can return to see his family. Sorry, this video has expired Video: Kwon wants to return to the country he risked his life to escape (ABC News) Hundreds of defectors unaccounted for It is a hard road back for North Korean defectors. They live in limbo, ostracised in the South but also not welcome back in their homeland, where they are used as propaganda and punished. It is impossible to know how many defectors have returned to the North. The South Korea Unification Ministry says 13, but other evidence suggests the figure is much higher. Eight hundred defectors known to have arrived in South Korea are unaccounted for. They are signs the regime in the North has mounted a campaign under Kim Jong-un to woo them back, reportedly with offers of cash, a job and a home. Once there, they are put on North Korean state media claiming they were "abducted" and that South Korea is "a living hell". Regardless, Mr Kwon says his desire to go home is stronger than ever. "Of course I'll get punished but I am prepared to swallow it," he said. "In the DPRK [North Korea] it's one man and one rule and our great leader has said he will forgive people who have defected." Topics: world-politics, unrest-conflict-and-war, korea-democratic-peoples-republic-of, korea-republic-of First postedUPDATED July 6, 2017 Virtual reality is made for meditation. Immersed in a cloistered world of your own, you can step away from the stresses of reality to a gentle, calming environment. While there are new connected devices aimed at reducing your stress, VR apps, in particular, are perfectly suited for this task. Why? Meditation itself requires little to no interactivity—after all the goal is to be still. So virtual reality apps require very simple imagery, and often little action, so those designed to encourage quiet reflection work well with lower-end, mobile-based headsets. In other words, you don't need an Oculus Rift to bring upon your inner zen. Relax VR lets you customize sounds, light and the voice of your meditation instructor. Relax VR In need of an island getaway? Relax VR can take you there without the cost of a plane ticket. For just $1.99, you can steep yourself in a forest, beach and even cloud-embanked space, finding your inner peace as you're taken through a meditation exercise. You can customize the light around you, the sound and even the voice of your instructor. That's a zen made just for you. Meditation app Zen Zone brings the lights down low so you can focus and relax. Zen Zone Zen Zone, an Android-only app, begins with a soothing female voice that take you through your meditative experience, which includes watching butterflies flit around a small pond. Do keep in mind the environment is computer generated. When the first part of the guided meditation is over, everything goes dark around you. Then the voice returns, taking you through the remainder, which includes a full-body relaxation exercise. The app is just 99 cents and made just for Android devices. Meditate at the beach with the Relaxation VR app. Relaxation VR: Rest & Meditate Relaxation VR offers users a choice of male and female voices, and several peaceful beach and ocean environments filmed in high-resolution 360-degree video. From Dream Beach in Portugal to The Rock Pools of South NSW in Australia, the locations actually show moving waves—and you can hear them crashing as well. Select your location simply by looking at them, as a controller is not required. The $1.99 Android and iOS app currently works with Cardboard VR viewers, although the company is developing the app for the leading headsets including Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Rift and also Google Daydream VR. That's you in a bikini chilling with the Perfect Beach VR app. Perfect Beach VR This guided meditation app offers a selection of computer-generated beach environments. You can look down to see your body—or a VR version of it, at least—and you even change your gender and skin color. Want even more control? The app allows you to upload your own music or a guided meditation track. Perfect Beach VR is just 99 cents for Android devices, or $2.99 for Gear VR. Who wouldn't enjoy a VR meditation moment with Monarch butterflies? MonarchVR: Meditate in VR MonarchVR is pretty close to what the name suggests: an app that weaves calming music with a randomly-generated virtual environment filled with Monarch butterflies. There are also birds that chips, wooded areas and sunlight—but sadly no guided meditation track. You'll have to bring your own zen to this VR space. Reviewers also note that moving your head around can blur the imagery, so stillness is encouraged. Proceeds from the 99-cent Android-only app go to support the non-profit Pollinator Partnership, which is dedicated to protecting bees and butterflies. $0.99 for Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.e... Unlike Perfect Beach, you don't get a virtual body in this app—you're just floating in the air. Image courtesy of Guided Meditation VR Guided Meditation VR This free app for the Gear VR offers a choice of meditation locations, including a forest path, a Japanese garden, a mountain peak, and a beach, with both photo-realistic and computer-generated environments. Five others are listed as coming soon. Other than the location, you can also choose the type of guided meditation you want and the music. Plus, the app measures your heart rate so you can track exactly how much relaxation you're getting. You can also check out the video first on YouTube. VR Relax serves six different settings for your meditation. VR Relax - Meditation & Sleep VR Relax offers users a choice of six computer-generated environment, including a cartoonish space environment, a Middle Eastern setting, and morning, night, ocean, and rain landscapes. Select an environment by looking at your choice, and then pressing the controller button or touching the screen. If you don't have a controller or button, you can tilt your smartphone to make your choice and touch the screen before inserting the device into your headset. The app's images are fairly rudimentary, but then again VR Relax is free for Android smartphones, and having a choice of settings is a plus. Meditation in a VR zen garden is almost effortless as you'll find with this Google Cardboard VR app. Zen Garden VR Cardboard A zen garden could be an ideal setting for a meditative moment—and that's what Zen Garden VR delivers. The free app is simple, with a computer-generated garden environment,and includes a quiet pool, arched bridge, trees, flowers and a setting sun. You'll also hear nature sounds amid soothing music while immersed in this free Android-only app. Be.Vision will guide you to better focus with this VR meditation app. YouTube Finally, YouTube has dozens of 360-degree and VR meditation videos. How do you view these with your VR headset? You just load up the video you want on your smartphone, click on the Cardboard icon at the bottom right of the screen, then put your smartphone into your Cardboard-compatible VR headset. Unfortunately, there is no YouTube app yet for the Gear VR, but you can surf to the YouTube website using the Samsung Internet app. Be.Vision, for example, has a guided meditation for building focus and overcoming procrastination, and another video for relaxation. Of course, these are all free. —Additional reporting by VR reviewer Charline Jao.NASA's Space Launch System megarocket will fly for the first time in 2018, carrying 13 small research satellites with it into deep space. NASA has unveiled the lineup of 13 small satellites that will hitchhike on the first deep-space test flight of its new megarocket, a list that includes satellites destined to probe the moon, investigate deep space radiation and even fly out to examine an asteroid. While the microsatellites, called cubesats, have been deployed into orbits close to Earth before, and launched from the International Space Station, the low-cost research units have never before ventured this far away to do research, NASA officials said from the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. The agency's huge rocket under development, the Space Launch System (SLS), will carry the microsatellites the extra distance in its first full test launch in 2018. "This is unprecedented: to take a cubesat-class payload thousands of miles away from the Earth, out into deep space, and to actually conduct science," Chris Crumbly, manager of the Space Launch System spacecraft and Payload Integration/Evolution Office at Marshall, said in a news conference today (Feb. 2). [NASA's Space Launch System Mega-Rocket in Pictures] The SLS rocket is designed to ultimately carry humans into deep space aboard an Orion spacecraft. NASA has been steadily testing parts of the system; all seven of the engine tests were completed in 2015, and progress has been made on solid rocket booster tests and the huge Vertical Assembly Center. When complete, the rocket will be 323 feet (98.5 meters) tall, and although it's slightly shorter than the Saturn V rocket that propelled humans to the moon, it will have 23 percent more thrust, Crumbly said. The first test flight won't carry humans aboard, but there will be other passengers: the 5-foot-wide (1.5 m), 18-foot-diameter (5.5 m) hoop that connects the rocket to the Orion spacecraft will have room for 13 little cubesats attached to its inner wall. NASA officials had revealed at least three of the cubesats to ride on the Space Launch System before, but Tuesday's announcement confirmed the total number and added several to the list. The Lunar Flashlight mission will fly in 2018 on NASA's Space Launch System rocket and will make several passes around the moon to search for ice deposits. (Image: © NASA TV) Four of the cubesats will examine various aspects of the moon up close, investigating the surface and hunting for ice deposits and good locations to extract resources. A "space weather station" will measure particles and magnetic fields in space for a potential space-weather-monitoring network, and another cubesat will measure deep-space radiation's impact on yeast over the course of 18 months, to understand organisms' reaction to the deep-space environment over time — one of the biggest challenges to long-duration spaceflight, NASA officials said. Another cubesat will travel out to the small asteroid 1991VG under the power of a solar sail. The 86-square-meter (926 square feet) sail will be the thickness of a human hair. It will be pushed by the pressure of sunlight reflecting off of it, driving the craft forward and ultimately past the asteroid, slowly enough to image most of its surface as it rotates. The Near-Earth Asteroid Scout mission will explore the asteroid 1991VG after it's lifted to space aboard NASA's Space Launch System in 2018. To reach the asteroid, it will be propelled by a large solar sail. (Image: © NASA TV) The sail, plus solar panels, a processor, a camera and other observing tools, will all begin the journey folded into a volume the size of a shoebox and weighing no more than 30 lbs. (14 kilograms) — "the most complicated game of Tetris you've ever played," said Leslie McNutt, project manager for the cubesat, called the Near-Earth Asteroid Scout. Similar craft could inexpensively survey asteroids to prepare for human visits. Three more of the cubesat slots will be filled by winners of NASA's Cube Quest Challenge, a contest that is open to any nongovernment team and that will conclude in 2017. The three cubesats selected will actually continue to compete in space, winning shares of the prize if they end up in orbit, and competing in a "Deep Space Derby" or "Lunar Derby" to complete additional research tasks. The final three cubesats will be chosen from among international partners and will be announced later, NASA officials said — but like the other cubesats, their research will complement NASA's ultimate goals of human exploration, the officials added. A NASA infographic describes how the Space Launch System will deploy 13 cubesats into deep space on its first test flight, called Exploration Mission-1. (Image: © NASA) All 13 cubesats will be released into space after SLS launches the Orion craft into a stable orbit past the moon and Orion reaches a safe distance from the rocket's upper stage. The science will be an added bonus to the test flight's main achievement: proving SLS and Orion's capability to support human missions into deep space, and eventually to Mars, the researchers said. "SLS and the Orion spacecraft are going to take people further than we've ever taken people in human history," Dava Newman, NASA's deputy administrator, said during the news conference. "Further than we've ever been in over four decades, out into deep space and onward to Mars. These technology missions in deep space are really something to pause, reflect on — we're not just talking about it, we're doing it. And it's starting right here." Email Sarah Lewin at [email protected] or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.Mazinger (マジンガー, Majingā) is a long-running series of manga and anime featuring giant robots or mecha. Series [ edit ] The series in order: God Mazinger is related by name only and Mazinkaiser is an OVA retelling of earlier Mazinger stories, based partly on designs created by Nagai for the Super Robot Wars series of video games and also on Nagai's original Mazinger manga stories. Mazinger-Z also featured in a video game for the Genesis/Mega Drive. It went by several names like MazinWars and MazinSaga. Common Elements [ edit ] Throughout the storylines, common characters and traits tie the series together. Body Structure & Colouring Scheme [ edit ] Except God Mazinger, the other mazingers share a very distinctive physiognomy, though the proportions and overall presence is modified in each one. Mazinger Z usually looks shorter and wider compared to Great Mazinger, who has a more slender physique. This is mainly due to the "helmets", which is how one really can tell these two apart. The helmet of Great Mazinger is pointed while the top of Mazinger Z is "flat-topped". MazinKaiser looks more heavily built than either of them, and sports the typical over-detailed (more ornate) style of more modern mechas (consider there's a 30-year gap between the first two and him). MazinKaiser is also the bigger/taller of the three. The main colours are always black (torso, hips, shoulders, sometimes limbs), white ("steel colored") (waist and limbs, with slight variations towards light shades of yellow and blue tones depending on the version), very dark blue or almost black, depending on the depiction (face, limbs) and red (chest plate and flying devices). The head is usually steel/grey, with a cavity for the ship that controls the mecha. This cavity becomes increasingly complex in each incarnation. Mazingers have characteristic horns at each side of the head where the ears would go on a human head, always coloured yellow, the eyes are yellow with the exception of Mazinkaiser SKL which has blue eyes. The face is completed with a mouthplate with several narrow apertures on it. Even though Grendizer strays a bit from these guidelines, the resemblance to the other Mazingers is obvious. Weaponry [ edit ] Each Mazinger builds on the previous one by enhancing the power of an attack that already existed, plus adding some new ones. Weapons like Rust Hurricane (or "Booster Hurricane"), Rocket Punch, and Breast Fire are shared by Mazinger Z, Great Mazinger and MazinKaiser; Mazinkaiser comprises the weapons of the two previous Mazingers and adds a factor of uncontrollable energy associated to them (for example, sometimes it's hard for Koji to keep the mecha stable when using the two attacks previously mentioned). All Mazingers, except God Mazinger, have "Rocket Punch" attacks, in which they launch their arms as projectiles, which return after being shot towards the enemy. Grendizer has few similar weapons, but it even expands its arsenal with several large ships that give him different capabilities, such as the Spaizer, Double Spaizer, Drill Spaizer, Marine Spaizer and other related machines. (These are also called "Spacer") Hover Pilder [ edit ] Traditionally, Mazingers are controlled thanks to a flying vehicle that docks on the mecha's head and activates it. The first one, built for Mazinger Z, was the Hover Pilder, a small hovercraft, later replaced by the Jet Pilder. In Great Mazinger, this device takes the form of Brain Condor, and in Mazinkaiser it's called the Kaiser Pilder, which resembles Brain Condor more closely due to its sharp shape (in contrast to Mazinger Z's Pilder, that had a more bulbous shape) and the way it rests on Kaiser's head, leaving one of its fins standing vertically like the crest of a rooster. These aircraft are always red, except in the Mazinkaiser OVA version of Mazinger Z, where the Hover Pilder is white. Grendizer doesn't have a small aircraft, instead the robot itself is fitted inside a larger ship called the spazer for aerial attacks and the robot can launch from it when ever there is a need for a ground battle. Some times Grendizer can stand on top of the spaizer and use it to fly so it can have more freedom in aerial battles. Jet Scrander / Jet Scrambler [ edit ] Mazinger Z wasn't conceived as a flying robot, and hence he is later equipped with Jet Scrander (or "Jet Scrambler"), a detachable device that allows him to face aerial monsters. This machine also had razor-sharp wings that could be used to cut enemies while in flight. Great Mazinger has an incorporated Scramble Dash, that can retract itself when not needed. However, he is also given Great Booster, a very powerful device that attached itself to Great's body pretty much the same way Jet Scrander did to Z's and allowed him to fly at higher speeds. Mazinkaiser has Kaiser Scrander (or "Kaiser Scrambler"), which is very similar to Jet Scrander in its colour scheme (red and yellow) and the fact that it's not part of the mecha but connects to it when required. Notably, since Kaiser can't use his chest plate as boomerang (a Great Mazinger gimmick) he uses Kaiser Scrander in a similar fashion, due to its sharp wings. The Shin Mazinger incarnation presents the God Scrander ("God Scrambler"), which appears on the first chapters and in the latter part of the series. It also allows Mazinger to use a new attack, the Big Bang Punch, which consists in Shin combining with the God Scrander and transforming into a gigantic hand, and later making a fist that immediately turns golden-coloured, and is used as a scaled-up Rocket Punch. During the transformation, the God Scrander would compose three of the "fingers", and Mazinger uses his arms as the other two. Female mecha [ edit ] Mazinger pioneered the concept of female mechas that, while not nearly as powerful as the main robot (with the probable exception of Minerva X), play a significant role in the battle against the enemy. Their most noticeable characteristic is their main weapon, the Oppai Missiles, missiles posing as breast placed on the mecha's chest. Again, Minerva doesn't follow this canon completely since her breast fire is identical to the male Mazingers, and she wasn't controlled by a human being (until her appearance in the Mazinger Angels series). No female mechas were included in Grendizer, but characters like Hikaru and Maria prove to be helpful and brave in battle. They are (in order of appearance): Aphrodite A, Minerva X, Diana A, and Venus A. Notably, in Mazinger Angels, Minerva has a special berserker mode, the "Sirene Mode", in which she takes a form similar to that of Silene, a character from Nagai's Devilman. Shared characters [ edit ] Many characters appear in different points of each plot. Kouji Kabuto: The original Mazinger Z pilot reappears towards the ending of the Great Mazinger Series, again piloting Mazinger Z. He then appears in Grendizer, but this time he does not pilot a mecha but a spaceship, and later the Double Spaizer. Koji becomes the pilot of MazinKaiser in the most recent incarnation of the series. Sayaka Yumi also appears in the three main Mazinger sagas. Dr. Hell: Mazinger Z's nemesis, this evil scientist dies at the end of that storyline, but is brought back to life as the Great Marshall of Hell in Great Mazinger. He reappears in Mazinkaiser and Shin Mazinger Z-Hen. Shiro Kabuto: Koji's little brother, appears in Mazinger Z and Great Mazinger, where he learns that Kenzo Kabuto is his father, thought to be dead in the previous series. Archduke Gorgon: In Mazinger Z he plays a treacherous role as Hell's collaborator, when in reality he is a messenger from the Mikene Empire, who are using Hell to their own profit. Only in Great Mazinger his true hierarchy among the Mikenese armies is revealed. Hikaru Makiba and Maria Fleed: two female characters from Grendizer, pilots of Marine Spaizer and Drill Spaizer respectively, appear as pilots in Mazinger Angels, Hikaru piloting Diana and Maria piloting Minerva. Villains [ edit ] Mazinger villains tend to be bizarre, having a dual nature or bodies that are made of disparate parts: Baron Ashura's body is half male and half female, he/she resulted from a bizarre experiment of Dr. Hell who stitched together incomplete parts of two ancient mummies and then revived the resulting body 'à-la-Frankenstein'. Count Blocken was a German Waffen-SS officer who, gravely wounded, was given to the unearthly cares of Dr. Hell, in World War II a Nazi collaborator. He managed to save his life by keeping alive his severed head, which can float on its own and never rests on his shoulders. Viscount Pigman has the body of a large tribal warrior and where the head should be there's a mannequin-like upper body of a pygmy shaman. Archduke Gorgon's trunk is placed on the back of a sabretooth tiger Marquis Janus can twist her neck 180 degrees, shifting from the face of a beautiful woman to that of a haggard witch The Seven Generals of Mikene are composed of different parts of animals grouped together, like mammals, birds, humanoids, etc. General Gandal, of the Vegan empire, shares the same body with Lady Gandal; at first his face would split to show a feminine figure from the inside; later her face alternatively replaces Gandal's, often taking control of the body. This is a similar masculine-feminine duality to the one seen in Baron Ashura. Evil Mecha Armies [ edit ] One of the main attributes of the Mazinger series is the existence of a large amount of evil mechas, which are incredibly varied in shape and weapons and serve as Monsters of the week. Dr. Hell's Mechanical Beasts, the Mikene Empire Warrior Beasts and the Vegan Empire Spacial Monsters usually have nightmarish appearances, and though they are never as powerful as the hero robot, they are quite capable of putting him against the ropes.I just finished reading Abnormal Returns, Winning Strategies from the Frontlines of the Investment Blogosphere by Tadas Viskanta. Tadas is best known for his twice daily list of finance links from around the web, which he publishes via abnormalreturns.com. I find his links very useful in filtering through the noise and helping me zero in on what’s important to read, so I was excited to see what else I could learn from him. He did not disappoint. Unlike most books on investing which claim to offer the “secret to investing success”, Tadas lets us know upfront that there is no secret. What he offers instead is a “framework for success” that investors ranging from those who work with a financial advisor to manage their investments, to those who want to make a living from investing, can all use. The path he outlines is in line with how we think about the markets here at Learn Bonds as well. Where most investors focus the majority of their attention on returns, successful investors focus the majority of their attention on risk. Tadas therefore puts the concept of risk front and center with the whole first chapter of the book devoted to that subject. He then goes on to talk about returns, which lays the foundation for the rest of the book which covers all the asset classes from a risk/return standpoint, and how to combine those assets into a portfolio which matches your unique investment goals. If you are looking for the latest investment fad or get rich quick scam, then this book is not for you. If you are seeking to build a solid foundation in the investment concepts and philosophies that lead to success, then this is a great place to start. To see a list of high yielding CDs go here Here are 10 things I personally learned from the book: 1. On the importance of dividends: “From 1900 to 2010 the US Stock market with dividends reinvested returned 9.4% per year, without dividends reinvested it returned 5%.” 2. A good reason to consider indexing: “25% of stocks were responsible for all of the russell 3000’s gains.” 3. A surprising fact about stock market risk: “Low risk stocks have outperformed riskier stocks.” 4. Interesting fact about bond market risk: “Within the realm of investment grade bonds, taking some additional credit risk seems to pay off over time. What does not pay off over time is stretching into high yield or junk bonds”. 5. On the importance of asset allocation and risk management: “The performance of a domestic portfolio 50% invested in bonds and 50% invested in stocks from 1926 to 2009 showed almost no difference in real returns between US economic expansions and recessions”. 6. Another example of how most investors think of things in the reverse order that they should: “A true asset allocation plan starts first with a scheme to deliberately invest in certain asset classes. Then and only then does the investor begin selecting vehicles to fill out these asset class targets”. 7. On the importance of having realistic return expectations: “From 1965 to 2010 Buffett was able to compound the per share book value of berkshire at a 20.2% rate….in so doing Buffett has become one of the wealthiest men in the world”. 8. On the growing importance of international investing: “For decades the United states was by far and away the largest equity market in the world, with upwards of 90% of the world’s market capitalization…..Recently the United States was estimated to have 40% of the global market capitalization.” 9. Why you might not need to add the hard assets themselves to a portfolio: “An investor in the S&P 500 already has a nearly 16% exposure to energy and materials companies”. 10. One reason gold has been on a tear lately: “When real interest rates are low the price of gold tends to increase and that as real interest rates rise the price of gold tends to fall.” If you haven’t already done so I highly recommend checking out the book which you can purchase below: (Visited 211 times, 1 visits today)AnonPaste's press release on AnonPaste Anonymous and the Peoples Liberation Front have launched AnonPaste.tk as a replacement for its use of Pastebin. AnonPaste uses the ZeroBin software published earlier this week which offers an encrypted version of a Pastebin-like service. The difference with ZeroBin is that all the entries are encrypted with keys that the server never sees but which can be included in the URL for any entry. The ".tk" domain is a service which offers free domain names for the top level domain for Tokelau, a New Zealand territory in the South Pacific. The hacktivist collective has used the Pastebin service in the past to publish calls to action and also the results of its hacking, much to the chagrin of its owner. The press release, itself published on AnonPaste, called the new service "a totally secure and safe alternative to the now infamous PasteBin service" and complained that PasteBin had been "willing to give up IP addresses to the authorities". Anonymous says that "there will be no need for us to police this service" as the "responsibility for the legality or appropriateness of any paste is the sole responsibility of the person posting". (djwm)Yesterday I celebrated what is definitely a really fantastic game. A game that deserves celebration, a surprise treat from a series that never promised anything this involved, mad, and genre-busting. It is, overall, a very positive experience. And as I said yesterday, such experiences come at a price – when stuff is wrong, it looks very, very wrong. But in the case of Far Cry 3, this isn’t about picking up on issues that would pass in a more mediocre game – this is about really wantonly stupid mistakes, issues that defy the belief that any human being can have played the game before it was released, further evidencing the theory that this was indeed a game coded by tigers. So as I’ve said, while the whole of this article is negative, this isn’t a statement that it’s a negative game. Why am I hammering this point home? Because I’m up at 7am to get an hour of Far Cry 3 in before I start work, despite having played it all last night and every spare moment of the weekend before it. Because I care enough about how good it is to want to highlight its shortcomings, partly in the hope that at least some of them can be patched out to stop marring this glorious thing. What’s Wrong With Far Cry 3 The Static Characters Yesterday I talked about the protagonist, and how while there were clearly problems, in the end I found myself liking this spoiled kid’s descent into cruel, terrified brutality. I also attempted to dismiss away the situation he was in. That’s not really fair. Because Far Cry 3, well, it’s a bit racist, isn’t it? I said, rather flippantly, that the people of this island are the race they are, because it’s the island they’re native to. It is what it is, essentially. And that’s the case – that’s really not the issue here. It had to be set somewhere. The issue is the horribly worn tropes it so lazily kicks around when it gets there. As it is, you have the simple-folk-natives, and the immigrant white men with their mixture of South African and Australian accents. And one black guy. White people ask you to get involved in enormously elaborate machinations, ancient mysteries, and local politics. Locals ask you to help them kill endangered species, find their missing daughters, and point out when their husbands are gay. Essentially, the locals behave as if they’re helpless without you, but when you wield their tattoo-based magical powers then true greatness appears. And it’s here that the problems really kick in. There’s a term for it. It’s “Noble Savage“. And it also falls under the remit of the “Magical Negro“. The trope is that the non-white character possesses mystical insight, magical abilities, or simply a wisdom derived from such a ‘simple life’, that can enlighten the white man. And it’s pretty icky. The premise relies on the belief that the individual’s race is in some way debilitating, something their noble/mystical abilities are able to ‘overcome’. The further you get, the more revered your character becomes. The antagonists call you Snow White, a derisory name but one that pretty much points out that you’re the pure white American man in this land of colourful folks. And the locals begin to hear word of not only your helpful ways (which would seem fair – you’re being very helpful) but also your abilities with their customs, your wielding of their powers. You are the outsider who has come in and outdone them, shown them the true majesty of their savage abilities. They can’t fight against the pirates for themselves, but you can save them. Now, I’ve not finished the game – I am, by the map, halfway through. This might be discussed, it might be addressed, but it’s certainly already there. So I’ve argued why I think the story of the spoilt rich white kids having their worlds fall apart is not a bad thing. But I do wonder what would have stopped the story being about a local of the island rising up against the pirate oppressors. And then at least the problematic mystical bullshit would have at least been a part of his or her culture, even if it would still have remained entirely unnecessary. Or maybe just have the island be inhabited by an indigenous race that isn’t generally pathetic. And then there’s the rapey bit. (Oddly, this paragraph is also a spoiler.) General rule: unless your game is about rape, or willing to truly deal with the subject, maybe steer clear of rape. It’s way too big of a subject to nonchalantly include, and it’s pretty abhorrent to use it as a mere plot beat. The rape in FC3 is threatened and implied, rather than witnessed, but it’s so thrown away, used to say, “This
up to half a dozen." The news comes as the number of Queenslanders tested for swine flu has risen to 14, although no cases have yet been confirmed. New biosecurity procedures for the screening of airline passengers travelling to Australia from the Americas came into effect at midnight. Authorities have confirmed swine flu cases in the United States, Britain, Canada and Spain as the World Health Organisation (WHO) today upgraded its pandemic alert level from three to four. Loading The decision to upgrade the alert level signalled a "significant increase in risk of a pandemic'', WHO said. with AAPMorgan Hill Sierra was last seen heading to school the morning of March 16. The next day, investigators found the high school cheerleader’s cellphone a few blocks away from her school. A day later, her pink Juicy-brand bag was found with a T-shirt and pants neatly folded inside. Petaluma More than two months after Bay Area teenagerdisappeared on her way to school, investigators said they have “a lot of physical evidence” linking her to a man arrested on suspicion of murder and kidnapping.Antolin Garcia-Torres, 21, was taken into custody Monday at a Safeway in, Santa Clara Sheriff Laurie Smith told reporters.“We believe we have probable cause that he committed the kidnapping and murder of Sierra LaMar,” Smith said.Garcia-Torres owns the red Volkswagen Jetta previously sought by authorities in connection to the case, the San Joes Murcury news reported. The car was found May 8.Smith said Garcia-Torres had been under surveillance but did not elaborate. More information about the case is expected to be revealed at a Tuesday morning news conference.The case drew significant attention as volunteers combed the area near Sierra’s home and school. Marc Klaas, whose 12-year-old daughter was kidnapped from theirhome in 1993, helped organize some of those searches.He told the Mercury News that until Sierra’s body was found, his volunteers would continue looking this week "in hopes of still finding Sierra alive."Today NBC/Universal announced the imminent demise of Television Without Pity (or TWOP, for short), and Daily Candy, two web 1.0 properties bought by the conglomerate in 2007 and 2008. While Daily Candy may have invented the e-newsletter that tells discerning women what’s hip and good and classy (GOOP, for example, is very much in their shadow), TWOP was crucial to establishing the voice of the internet, since they basically invented the snarky internet recap voice, way back in their original days as Dawson’s Wrap back in 1998, by, according to TWOP cofounded Sarah D. Bunting, “cataloguing [Dawson’s Creek‘s] many offenses against quality entertainment, including sexism, excessive self-regard, inattentive styling of the female leads, estrangement from realistic dialogue (and Cape geography), and … Dawson himself. ” TWOP angered Aaron Sorkin enough to write a West Wing episode about internet commenters, played a big role in inventing lots of fanfiction-friendly terms about shipping, from the Squee! to shipper name portmanteaus to “Homoeroticism,” and many, many excellent writers came up through its ranks, including but not limited to: Pamela “pamie” Ribon, Wendy McClure, Go Fug Yourself‘s Fug Girls, and NPR Monkey See’s Linda Holmes. I am barely scratching the surface here. Anybody who has to write recaps, or the multitude of entertainment sites based on television recaps owes that, and much of the voice and style around it, to TWOP. Even a post I wrote last week on “ten toxic teen relationships” owes a lot to what I learned reading Dawson’s Creek recaps, as let’s be honest: Dawson was the creepiest. We will miss you, TWOP. You basically invented the Internet, or a certain segment of it. And it’s too bad that NBC is also, on top of it, taking all the content on TWOP, 10+ years of writing and recaps, off the internet and unavailable to the public, which is insulting. Perhaps it’s time to hold an Irish wake for TWOP. [Via Recode]If you’re looking for information about the latest build, click here! There were a couple of really bad bugs still lingering around in the last build, so I decided to produce a new build that fixes those issues – and I fixed some other, minor issues, too. Scroll down past this creepy-yet-beautiful illustration by Eisjon to see a list of everything that I fixed in this build! Bug Fixes A student who is in the middle of their love confession protocol (leaving a love letter, finding a love letter, waiting under the cherry tree) can no longer be distracted by a giggle from Yandere-chan. Tweaked the code for the students’ pathfinding in an attempt to prevent the framerate from dropping so much when speeding up time. (At this point in time, I am not yet finished solving this problem.) Fixed bug that would cause Yandere-chan to become stuck when trying to exit the third floor hiding spot if there was a student standing near that spot. Fixed bug that was causing the 4th school uniform option (the brown blazer) to appear differently on Yandere-chan than on every other student. Adjusted Kokona’s “insert love letter into locker” animation and added a love letter into her hands when she performs the animation. It is no longer possible for corpses to fall through the ground if they have been dragged onto the sidewalk outside of the school. Fixed bug that was causing students to become invincible while running out of school, as long as they were past the school gate. Fixed bug that was causing the game to become unresponsive after fulfilling Musume’s request for a box of cigarettes. Fixed bug that was causing mind-broken slaves to enter the “reacting to murder” state…while committing murder. Made the Pink Panties buff functional (it applies a boost when Matchmaking). The Rival Introduction Video is still on the way. Once again, I apologize that it is taking so long! Thank you for your patience!Buy Photo Lee Kirk speaks to Council Tuesday at the special meeting. (Photo: Jesselyn Bickley / Desert Valley Times)Buy Photo After being re-invited to give a presentation in Mesquite, Bureau of Land Management representatives received threats from Ryan Bundy, son of Cliven Bundy, who said the BLM needs to “stay gone and the people won’t allow them to come back.” BLM representatives came to discuss how to give comments on the Resource Management Plan Draft but were instead drilled with public comments mostly about the Gold Butte area. The public mostly discussed their dislike of BLM having the ability coming in and taking over “their land” when the BLM didn’t have “constitutional rights” to the land. “BLM does not have authority of these lands,” Ryan said. “The people will not allow roads to be closed. We’ve had a peaceful year without you running around out there, so stay gone.” Ryan’s brother, Dave, spoke and said the BLM doesn’t have any title to the land. Boda Cavalier, an attendee, said he would not recognize the people trying to push the plan. “If the BLM wants to got to the field to play ball, then me and my crew will come play ball too,” he said. The Mesquite City Council’s main concern was the March 9 deadline for comments on the RMP draft. Nearly every council member asked for an extension, but the BLM representatives present, Lee Kirk and Gayle Marrs-Smith, said it’s not a matter for them to decide. Marrs-Smith said she would carry on the message to her superiors. The RMP is the BLM’s “master plan” for long-term issues. The plan draft covers Gold Butte along with several other areas, including an area where the proposed airport would go in Mesquite as part of the Congress bill, or Public Lands Act. Marrs-Smith, AFM with renewable resources for the BLM, said the comment period is set to close March 9 after 150 days of being open. Councilwoman Cindi Delaney asked why the BLM hadn’t held any public meetings in Mesquite when there have been meetings in other locations. Delaney said no one in the area really knew about the plan. Resident Dan Lakeman spoke during public comment and said it isn’t’ the BLM’s fault the city and residents were unaware of the plan. “The BLM has had this listed on the federal registry,” he said. “Which they are required to do. If you didn’t read the federal registry, that’s not on them – that’s on you.” In the end, council directed staff to submit a recommendation on behalf of council in case the deadline extension was not approved. The plan is tedious read with a combination of more than 6,000 possible plans to go in place. Kirk said the public is free to call with any questions about the plan and he will help direct them to certain areas of the 2,000-page plan. Kirk can be reached at 702-515-5026 or by email at [email protected]. If you would like to read the RMP draft and make comments before the March 9 deadline, visit http://tinyurl.com/qzvaht7. Comments may be submitted electronically to [email protected], faxed to 702-515-5023; or mailed to 4701 N. Torrey Pines Drive, Las Vegas, Nevada 89130. Address mail to BLM Southern Nevada District Office, Las Vegas/ Pahrump Field Offices Draft RMP/Draft EIS. In his presentation, Kirk said an effective comment would include: questions, with reasonable basis, on the accuracy of information in the RMP draft and on the adequacy of, methodology for, or assumptions used for the environmental analysis; presentation of new relevant information; and presentation of other reasonable alternatives. Lakeman also said during public comment that comments submitted stating the BLM doesn’t have constitutional rights or “it’s our lands” would probably be filed into the “round bin.” He encouraged residents to submit constructive, thought-out comments. Follow Jesselyn on Twitter, @JbickleyDVT and on Facebook, www.facebook.com/JbickleyDVT. Read or Share this story: http://www.thespectrum.com/story/news/local/mesquite/2015/03/05/blm-told-stay-away/24474937/Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Christopher Coons Christopher (Chris) Andrew CoonsTrump got in Dem’s face over abortion at private meeting: report Live coverage: Trump delivers State of the Union Actor Chris Evans meets with Democratic senators before State of the Union MORE (D-Del.) emailed the U.S. statute outlining punishments for lying or withholding information from Congress on Thursday just hours after Donald Trump Jr. testified before the committee. "Below is a statue to keep in mind in regards to Donald Trump Jr.'s testimony today," Coons wrote in the email before sharing the rules of the statute. "It is important to remember that anyone who testifies in front of a Senate committee is under the restrictions of the False Statements statute that says material false statements to Congress are criminal and punishable with fines or imprisonment or both," Coons said in a statement attached to the forwarded memo. In a closed-door five-hour session with the committee, President Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE's son answered questions on his June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer who promised information on Trump's Democratic opponent 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. ADVERTISEMENT Trump Jr. said in the session, which was not held under oath, that he was looking to assess Clinton's "fitness" for office. The testimony was part of the committee's ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the election. The statute prohibits the falsifying or covering up of any material fact to Congress, and pertains to "procurement of property or services." Trump Jr. has become a key figure in the various Russia probes since the meeting was first reported. He has denied that he received any damaging information about Clinton after taking the meeting.But the US and its allies believe country is testing deadly ballistic missiles North Korea said launches there are part of 'peaceful satellite programme' Experts have created a true-to-life 3D map of a North Korean base which is expected to launch ballistic missiles - which could be capable of carrying nuclear warheads - in the next few weeks. The computer simulation allows users to view the 'launch centre' at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station from all angles, and even zoom in on specific sections. Previous animations - created through painstaking analysis of existing footage and pictures of the base - showed a rocket sitting on the launch pad itself. It is feared the reclusive state will use the controversial facility to test missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Scroll down for video Base of operations: A newly released interactive graphic shows the launch centre (pictured) itself Immersive: A previous 3D image of the Sohae Satellite Launching Station showed a rocket sitting on the launch pad Interactive: The CGI simulation allows users to view the Launching Station from all angles Dangerous: It is feared that North Korea (leader Kim Jong-Un pictured) will use the facility to test missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads Observers fear the next launch will coincide with the 70th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Workers' Party on October 10, but the latest estimate is that it will has been delayed by a few days. Dictator Kim Jong-un has reportedly ordered the country’s largest-ever military parade to mark the important occasion, according to South Korea’s Yonhap News. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency announced last month that the regime was preparing to send a number of satellites'soaring into the sky' as part of its 'development of space science,' according to news agencies. While Pyongyang claims the anticipated launch is part of a peaceful space program, South Korea and U.S. consider it a pretext to hone long-range missile technology that could one day potentially deliver nuclear weapons across continents. North Korea has denied the allegations and claims any launch will be part of a 'peaceful satellite programme'. Simulation expert Nathan Hunt, who created the immersive map of the base, told MailOnline that it will help monitor North Korea's nuclear capability. The ground-breaking map was launched by the 38 North website, which is linked to John Hopkins University and closely monitors actions inside the secretive Asian country. The 3D rendering is the latest part of an ongoing project to comprehensively map the test site, located on North Korea's north-west coast. The newest image covers its satellite control centre, and follows another simulation from July which showed the launch pad where rockets could be fired from. Reality: The 3D images were created by analysing real footage (pictured, from 2012) and images of the Sohae Satellite Launching Station True to life: The same footage from 2012 (pictured) shows the launch centre which has recently been mapped out by simulation expert Nathan Hunt Mapping the danger: Simulation expert Nathan Hunt, who created the panorama through painstaking analysis of existing photos and footage (pictured) Development: Pictures of the secretive nation's alleged missile launch site show how the country has been building it up for another controversial rocket launch North Korea's ambassador to the UK, Hyon Hak-Bong, warned his country would not be bullied into halting the launch by the threat of international sanctions. Speaking at the Chatham House think-tank last Wednesday, he said: 'We have nothing to be afraid of. 'We will go ahead, definitely, surely. We are prepared to launch at any time or any place.' North Korea, which is believed to have around a dozen nuclear bombs at least, claimed to have perfected the process of miniaturising a nuclear warhead for placement on a missile earlier this year. Mr Hunt hopes his visualisation of the potential launch site will help analysts keep a close eye on the country's efforts to develop ballistic missiles. He told MailOnline: 'Having an accurate reconstruction can aid in comparing imagery from different angles to determine what has changed and how that change has affected the reconstruction. 'Monitoring how things are being moved around a site can help to gauge the level of activity over time.' Mr Hunt believes the ability to chart the smallest changes at the site represents a significant advance in monitoring the secretive regime's activities. He said: 'It is one thing to say something has changed at a site in a report or talk about a building. 'But if you have the ability to visually show the before and after of what has changed in such a way that is readily available, this serves as a valuable tool for informing the public.' Expert analysis of satellite imagery indicates North Korea has made extensive upgrades at the site in recent months for a possible launch. Prophetic: Kim Jong-Un has ordered the country's biggest ever parade on October 10 to mark the 70th anniversary of the ruling Workers Party - the same date many believe he will fire the ballistic missiles (file photo of North Korean soldiers in 2000) However, South Korea's Unification Ministry has remained cautious and claims there are no signs of an imminent launch. North Korea's state-run Central News Agency claimed the regime was preparing to send a number of satellites'soaring into the sky' as part of its 'development of space science'. While Pyongyang claims the anticipated launch is part of a space program, South Korea and the US fear it is a precursor for honing long-range missile technology that could one day fire nuclear weapons across the world. Sohae was the site of two long-range rocket launches in 2012 - the second of which successfully put a satellite into space. The United Nations placed strict sanctions on the country following the launch, which it regarded as a pretext to test ballistic missile technology. Pyongyang responded to the censure with its third nuclear weapons test in February 2013 and is thought to be preparing its fourth nuclear test.Yes. previously we explained the model of Colourful GTX 1080 Ti, the graphic card had LED Display and other features too, but today we are bringing some more hot news. On 26th, July 2017, Shezhen China, Colorful Technology Company Limited, manufactured their iGame GTX 1080 TI Kudan Graphics card, the card is available in China, apart from its manufacturing, the card takes the most advanced technology into performances, using the original “Jiu Duan” as a name. The Card itself features 3 unique technologies, here are the names One Key overclocking iGame Pure Power Silver Plating Technology Specifications: GPU : GP102-350 Base Clock : 1657 MHz (+12.0%) Cores : 3584 Boost Clock : 1784 MHz (+12.8%) TMUs : 224 Memory Clock : 11008 MHz ROPs : 88 Memory : 11 GB GDDR5X 352b The Card runs at 3584 Cuda Cores, and runs at base clock frequency of 1657 Mhz, the GPU Boost can go up to 1784Mhz, the card is packed with GDDR5X Memory module, running at 11 Gbps Mainly the Waterspout Cooler 2, is a new cooler created by iGame GTX 1080 Ti Kudan, still, the card equips iGame-Status monitor, from which you can actually see the temperatures, fan speeds, and usage of memory, its similar to MSI afterburner. The card is having Hybrid Cooling mode, so you don’t have to worry about temperatures, automatically closed pipe junction makes this card easy to change modes between Air Cooling and Hybrid Cooling Mode. The Card has dismountable Water Cooling-kit, that has a water block, and a radiator along with pump, the radiator has special customized high airflow fans, that puts air pressure fans to make it more powerful, the radiator has a customized pump, which is quite smaller, there fore customers won’t worry about the actual size of it. SourceE ste jueves 23 de marzo nuestra corresponsal en la capital del estado de Chihuahua, Miroslava Breach Velducea, fue arteramente asesinada por un hombre armado. El criminal le disparó ocho balas calibre 9 milímetros cuando la periodista salía de su casa. Miroslava tenía más de 20 años de trabajar en La Jornada. Antes había colaborado en el Diario de Chihuahua y en el Norte de Ciudad Juárez. A lo largo de todo este tiempo, sus notas y reportajes documentaron fehacientemente la violación a los derechos humanos y la imparable influencia del narcotráfico en la entidad. En los pasados comicios locales, Miroslava informó sobre la imposición de ediles por parte del crimen organizado en las listas del Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) y del Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), en municipios serranos y en corredores de trasiego de drogas. En agosto de 2016 desmenuzó la bestialidad con la que el narco desterró a centenares de familias en la sierra de Chihuahua. El homicida dejó una cartulina en el lugar de los hechos donde se decía que la habían ultimado por lengua larga. Inmediatamente después de su escrito sobre las expulsiones en la sierra recibió una amenaza anónima, a la que las autoridades no prestaron la debida importancia. El asesinato de nuestra corresponsal se efectuó en el contexto de dos hechos relevantes. La violenta escalada criminal en Chihuahua, en la que fue asesinado el dirigente rarámuri Isidro Baldenegro López, incansable defensor de los bosques y el territorio de su pueblo. Y la incesante agresión en contra de los periodistas en casi todo el país, que tiene como saldo trágico tres profesionales asesinados en menos de un mes: Ricardo Monluí Cabrera, en Veracruz, Cecilio Pineda, en Guerrero, y Miroslava Breach, en Chihuahua.Diaries from death row: Australia's most notorious drug smuggler tells how he survived drug-crazed assassins, ran a smuggling operation from his cell and converted to Islam during 21 years in some of the world's toughest prisons Martin Garnett was put on death row in Thailand in 1993 for drug smuggling While behind bars he was targeted by 'Samurai' death squads After being pardoned in 2011, he was immediately extradited to the U.S. for exporting drugs to an Indiana prison - from his Bangkok cell Returned to Sydney last year after his mother raised $20,000 for a prison swap Has shared his story in a series of exclusive letters from jail Credits his turnaround to a month-long hunger strike - and Islam One of Australia's most notorious drug smugglers, who has spent more than 20 years behind bars in some of the world's toughest prisons, has given a detailed and brutal account of his incarceration in a series of letters written from his jail cells. Martin Garnett, now 47, a former luxury car dealer from Sydney who has been imprisoned in three different countries, was first arrested in 1993, aged 26, in Bangkok as he tried to smuggle 4.7kg of heroin out of the country. He was put on death row and forced to survive horrific conditions - including attempts on his life by drug-crazed Samurai death squads. Nabbed: The moment Martin Garnett's life changed forever, arrested at a Bangkok airport in 1993 with 4.7kg of heroin strapped to his body But even those experiences, which led to him attempting suicide numerous times, failed to completely break him and he began exporting drugs, with the help of corrupt guards, to a jail in Indiana, in the U.S., an operation which earned him yet more time behind bars. Thanks to his handwritten letters, MailOnline can reveal the true horror of his past 20 years, a terrifying narrative which ends with Garnett claiming he has finally seen the error of his ways - and even converted to Islam. Garnett, who is currently in Sydney's Silverwater jail after his mother raised enough money to secure a prison exchange with US authorities, first detailed the moment he was arrested in Bangkok with packets of heroin strapped to his body. ‘(It was) an out of body experience,' he wrote. 'I viewed it from up near the ceiling. I was already gone. ‘As soon as the heroin was placed on scales in front of me I began eating the corner of a block of pure heroin. I ate, I’d guess, 10 grams. More than enough to kill me. A LIFE BEHIND BARS 1993 - Garnett is arrested at Bangkok airport when officials find 4.7kg of heroin strapped to his body. He is sentenced to death 1994 - Sentence commuted to 40 years 2001 - Indicted by the United States for mailing drugs to an Indiana prison 2011 - Pardoned by Thai authorities and transferred to America to serve out a 57 month sentence 2012 - Transferred to Sydney's Silverwater prison after his mother Lyn raises $20,000 to secure a prison swap ‘I vomited all over a cop as he opened the mini-bus door…I ate the heroin to die. I knew I’d be in for life or get a death sentence anyway – so – why wait?’ Garnett, whose death sentence was'reduced' to 40 years before he was eventually pardoned by Thailand's king in 2011, soon learned that money was power - and meant the difference between living or rotting in a cramped, stinking hell hole until disease or another inmate finished him off. He said the death squads would kill instantly for coffee or drugs - and their method of choice was bashing a victim’s head in with barbells. 'The HIV rate among needle users is about 90 per cent,' he wrote. 'They inject heroin by sucking it up off the spoon with the ink tube of a ballpoint pen, with a needle attached to the end. 'Then they stick it in their friend's vein, suck up some blood and blow the heroin into their friend's arm or neck.' ‘For years I could not go near free weights. The sound of a skull crushing stays with you. THE SAMURAI ASSASINS - Martin Garnett on the prison death squads 'The "Samurais" are prisoners, usually tattooed from head to foot, always drug addicts, who will happily kill for a few grams of heroin. 'The HIV rate among needle users is about 90 per cent. They inject heroin by sucking it up off the spoon with the ink tube of a ballpoint pen, with a needle attached to the end. 'Then they stick it in their friend's vein, suck up some blood and blow the heroin into their friend's arm or neck. 'Various Samurai have killed other prisoners and are quite happy to do so again. 'When you kill a prisoner in Thai prison, it's only a five year sentence. If you have AIDS and a 100 year life sentence, what does another five years on your sentence mean? 'From 2001 until 2004 they did all they could to have me killed or have me kill myself. 'Four or five men will converge on the victim, who usually will be asleep in a deck chair in the yard. 'Each killer comes from a different direction. One carries a home made cement dumbbell, the other four have knives. 'The man with the weight crushes the man's skull. The other four stab him many times each. Death is not quick like in the movies.' Hell on earth: The filthy corner that Garnett had to use as a toilet (left) and the tiny cell he shared with up to 35 other prisoners (right) 'When you kill a prisoner in Thai prison, it's only a five year sentence. If you have AIDS and a 100 year life sentence, what does another five years on your sentence mean?' He eventually stopped becoming a target and began using the tricks he had learned on the streets of Sydney as a gun-toting drug dealer. He got his hands on a mobile phone to access a dial-up internet connection in 1997 and started importing goods to sell at a profit to his fellow inmates. Happier times: Martin Garnett with his sister Holly, who committed suicide in 1998 ‘Generally in Thai prison, prisoners are not referred to as human…But when you are a good earner – “Good morning big brother, how are you today? Have you eaten?” With the help of crooked guards he then began exporting drugs from Thailand to a prison in the United States, 14,000km away. American authorities found out what he was doing and added a further 57 months to his sentence - but only after he had served his time in Thailand. ‘I was indicted (by U.S. authorities) in 2001,’ he writes. SHARING DINNER WITH 'PUSS PUSS' 'Very crowded, you sleep shoulder to shoulder. The lights stay on 24 hours a day. Almost everyone smokes. It's hot. It smells.' 'On the first day in the remand centre, after the strip search in the rain with the woolen glove and having the heavy chains and ankle loop closed with the hammer and anvil, the guard asked "do you want some dinner?" 'On the table was a bowl of fish heads in grey water and red rice. A cat was enjoying a fish head - really enjoying it. The guard pointed to that table. 'The cat hissed at me. In a few minutes the guard said "why you no eat?" 'I realised Puss Puss had been eating my dinner. I would never be that hungry - I thought.' ‘By 2004 I’d had enough. America could have extradited me at any time, but it was better value for them to simply leave me in the Thai prison.’ As he came to terms with the possibility he would never taste freedom, he went on hunger strike for 31 days. ‘I woke up on that last morning and I could not see,’ he recalls. ‘Starving to death is actually really interesting. I was not hungry after a week. Above all the mental clarity is staggering. ‘You feel no pain, you don’t notice the heat, you feel no discomfort. I reviewed my entire life. While oblivious to everyone else, I was finally able to see that every bad thing that had ever happened to me was caused by me. ‘The zenith of my 36 years of life was to be starving to death in a Thai prison cell…It was a pathetic realisation. The clarity was stunning.’ For the first time in his life, Garnett found himself wanting to live rather than die. He had to achieve extradition to America, even if it meant surviving until his Thai sentence was completed in 2026. He began reading the only book in his putrid cell – a Quran – and eventually converted to Islam, taking the name Amin Mubarak. Locked up: Garnett, who converted to Islam in Thai prison, has spent 21 birthdays behind bars. He would later take the Muslim name Amin Mubarak He stopped dealing drugs and started behaving himself, praying five times daily. His turnaround earned him a pardon from the Thai government in 2011. He was immediately transferred to an Indiana prison, which he says was surprisingly worse than his Silverwater home. While banged up in America, his mother Lyn launched an online appeal and raised the $20,000 needed for her son and two guards to travel by plane to Sydney. She now enjoys daily phone calls from him. Pure joy: Earlier this year, Garnett was granted leave to visit his 93-year-old grandmother Marie Madden. He is pictured here in his Silverwater prison greens Recently, MailOnline spoke with Garnett in the Silverwater Prison meeting room. He was clad in the obligatory all-green tracksuit and wore glasses. Asked how he would spend his first day as a free man - he is due for release next May - he said he planned to travel to Bondi Beach and stare out at nothing but blue. In his letters, he revealed how relieved he was to be back in his home country. He also visits his 93 year old grandmother Marie while out on day release and works in Silverwater's coffee shop. ‘I have a beautiful grey ghost gum tree outside my cell,’ he wrote. ‘Australian sky above and all our amazing birds. Here the rainbow lorikeet welcomed me home by eating the jam packet from my hand. ‘I’m so glad to be here. I thank God five times a day that I’m still alive and every day is valuable.’ His life behind bars has also taken its toll on his family. His sister Holly, a former pop star in the chart-topping Australian band Euphoria, committed suicide in 1998, aged 29, due to her brother’s plight. Before her death she recorded a song with Jodhi Meares, the future Mrs James Packer. ON STAYING ALIVE WHEN EVERYONE WANTS YOU DEAD 'Having me killed proved harder than they thought. I got on well with the Thai prisoners and was well liked. 'When the guards would offer them drugs to attack me, the Samurai would tell me. 'How did I avoid being killed? - You enter a "siege mentality". 'Never sit unless against a wall, never fall asleep in the yard, watch constantly. Never relax. When a threat appears deal with it immediately and decisively. 'It is very taxing. Living like this for years did break me. 'In Buddhist culture, the feet are the most dirty part of the body. In Thai prison, if you step over the legs it is a grave insult. 'Of course, you do not know this when you arrive. 'I stepped over the feet of several prisoners as I tried to get to the squat toilet. In chains, sick and exhausted, I'd have lost that fight but they let me off. 'Having had no luck killing me in Bangkok, the Thai guards sent me to Klong Pai. It's where they send the worst of the worst. The prisoners who've made too much trouble in Bangkok. 'In the 366 days I was there I saw five murders in just one cell block. 'It's not easy to live with. You get tired. You become more extreme in order to deal with the constant threat. 'I negotiated, manipulated, persuaded and evaded - just as I had in life before prison. 'I was a mess, mentally and emotionally by the time I got back to Bangkok.' Changed: Garnett performed an about face after a 31 day hunger strike gave him an epiphany Reason to laugh: The 47-year-old will likely be granted parole in a little over a yearWhat’s the Best Vintage Car Under $7,500? After years of touting how great it is to own and drive a classic car, you’ve finally convinced your friend, nephew, neighbor, or other unsuspecting soul to make the plunge and buy their first vintage automobile. What would you recommend they get for under $7500? Here’s how Afshin Behnia, Petrolicious founder/CEO and incurable Alfista, answers the question: “I’d recommend a 1970 – 1975 Alfa Romeo Spider. These 2-liter ‘Series 2’ Spiders are very fun to drive and easy to work on and surprisingly reliable. And because Alfa Romeo’s twin-cam engine design remained mostly unchanged from the 1300cc engines used in Giuliettas from the ‘50s, once you learn how to work on the Spider, you’ll be able to work on most other Alfas (and believe me, you’ll end up with more Alfas!)” In case Afshin’s got you interested, check out the Spiders he recommends here on eBay. – – – Now we’d like to hear from you: What’s the best vintage car under $7500 for a first-time buyer? Join the ConversationWe may be dealing with exhaustion through over consumption of coffee, wine and sugar. Credit:Stocksy "I also find it's women in their 40s and 50s who are particularly prone to fatigue. Seasonal changes aside, it's a time when they're either premenopausal or perimenopausal, and hormonal changes are likely to leave them feeling fatigued and/or anxious, with occasional night sweats and delayed, irregular or heavy periods." Dr Talib says 40-something women are worn out for other reasons, too. "I call them the 'fatigued 40s'. Women of this age are likely to be pretty successful in their careers, maybe running a business or holding down a senior role. They may have built up some sleep debt from the child-rearing years and now they're fretting over their teenager's universities, their marriage or ageing parents." And they may be dealing with all of the above with coffee, wine and sugar, says Dr Talib. "It's a cultural thing, but women in their 40s tend to drink a lot of wine. This compounds their tiredness, because fermented sugar depletes energy levels." Sleep expert Dr Neil Stanley says, "We have become so used to going through life feeling a bit tired and a bit rubbish all the time, we think it's perfectly normal but it isn't" "When I lecture and ask the audience how tired they are on a scale of one to 10, with one being so tired you could fall asleep on the spot and 10 being not tired at all, the highest answer I've ever had is a seven. Most people say four, which is a sorry indication of our nation's exhaustion." Dr Stanley says women tend to fare worse than men when it comes to tiredness, for many reasons. "First, studies show that women need more sleep than men, but they also experience more hormonal fluctuations than men that can disrupt sleep. On top of this, women tend to be the ones sacrificing their sleep for the good of the household – they are more likely to lie awake worrying about a family issue, or to get up to comfort an upset child." A new study by Australian sleep researchers has found women suffer almost twice as much from the negative effects of sleep disorders than men, feeling more daytime sleepiness (plus memory problems and lack of concentration) as a result. So what
the following night. Those prices are as repellent as Leonardo DiCaprio’s baronial frat house shenanigans in the coming attractions for Martin Scorsese’s new tale of Gilded Age excess, The Wolf of Wall Street. Among the most revolting sports favored by the super-rich is the devaluation of any reasonable sense of value. At Christie’s and Sotheby’s some of the wealthiest members of society, the people who can’t believe in anything until it’s been monetized, are trashing one of our last hopes for transcendence. They don’t know the difference between avidity and avarice. Why drink an excellent $30 or $50 bottle of wine when you can pour a $500 or $1000 bottle down your throat? Why buy a magnificent $20,000 or $1 million painting when you can spend $50 or $100 million and really impress friends and enemies alike? These questions will not go away. And it is a little too easy to blame it all on the super-rich and the various counselors and courtiers who cheer them on at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Of course there’s nothing we can do about what Steven A. Cohen and Peter Brant choose to sell at the auctions or what Roman Abramovich and Sheikha al Mayassa Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani choose to buy. But the total lack of embarrassment with which everybody involved conducts themselves must at least in part be blamed on an educated public that has become embarrassed about discussing—much less advocating for—anything that suggests a principle or standard of taste. While the professional people who worry about every $10,000 in their 401(k) may shake their heads at the stratospheric auction prices, they get a kick out of them, too—too much of a kick, I tend to think. The art world has become a fantasy object for the professional classes—and that’s a troubling turn of events, because art must be experienced concretely, immediately. Since the democratization of culture began in the nineteenth century, a rising middle class has seen in the arts a dazzling enrichment and complication of its own ideas and ideals—of its belief in fairness, seriousness, standards, transcendence. And now, with the middle class in disarray, art is no longer embraced as anything close to an ideal. Art is just another hope to be abandoned, along with the hope that your children might do better than you’ve done. In place of art as an ideal we have art as an idol. (Or art as an educational tool, by way of the numbingly utilitarian logic that if you learn to play Bach you will improve your math skills.) No wonder everybody is following not the art but the sky-high prices at the auction houses—and the parties at Art Basel Miami Beach, where the same dealers and collectors are gathering this week to play more or less the same games. The super-rich are never embarrassed. What causes embarrassment in the art world today is the assertion of any value other than the almighty dollar. To argue that an artist whose work sells for a few hundred or a few thousand dollars is superior to an artist whose work sells for millions is to invite condescension if not outright ridicule. The relationship between culture and commerce is frozen, with commerce invariably the winner. It is a sign of the times that John Elderfield, the Museum of Modern Art’s chief curator emeritus of painting and sculpture, has been consulting for the Gagosian Gallery. Whatever happened to the firewall that separated the long-term cultural thinking of the museums from the short-term commercial gains of the galleries? Isn’t anybody troubled by Elderfield’s organizing “Willem de Kooning: Ten Paintings, 1983-1985,” the show currently at Gagosian, not long after he organized a de Kooning retrospective at MoMA? Isn’t anybody embarrassed by Elderfield’s fulsome (and economically convenient) praise of the late works of an artist who many of the finest minds of his own generation believed had been in a steep artistic decline since 1960, if not a few years earlier? On the question of quality thoughtful people can surely disagree. I would have imagined, however, that the same thoughtful people would be deeply troubled by Elderfield’s willingness to turn MoMA’s prestige into Larry Gagosian’s financial advantage. The sad fact is that Gagosian’s de Kooning catalogue—with its full-cloth binding, tipped-in plates, over-the-top text, and lavish supporting illustrations of work by Rubens, Matisse, Picasso, and Mondrian—is engineered to brook no disagreement. The super-rich have no problem with John Elderfield, you can be sure about that. They also have no problem with Adam Weinberg, the director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, who next summer is dedicating nearly the museum’s entire Madison Avenue building to a Jeff Koons retrospective.Brian Doyle, the Lake Oswego author whose prodigious literary output earned him numerous honors including the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature ("puzzling him to this day," say several of his author biographies), died Saturday from complications related to a brain tumor. He was 60 years old. Doyle learned in November that he had what he described to The Oregonian/OregonLive as a "big honkin' brain tumor." That month he had surgery to reduce the tumor; in February he began radiation and chemotherapy treatments, according to a GoFundMe page that a family friend set up to help defray his medical expenses. By spring, he was in hospice care. "Cancer is to be endured, that's all," he wrote in an eerily prescient 2009 commentary piece for The Oregonian/OregonLive. He wrote "Mink River," the Oregon Coast novel beloved by book clubs nationwide; "Martin Marten," the Oregon Book Award-winning novel about a boy and a pine marten growing up side by side on Mount Hood; and books about pinot noir, Catholicism, and the heart, to name just a few more. He spun sometimes puckish, sometimes heartfelt short stories about life's follies and oddities ("Bin Laden's Bald Spot"), humorous yet poignant essays ("Children and Other Wild Animals"), and prayers that were less about a particular faith than about universal compassion and gratitude ("Prayer for Cashiers and Checkout-Counter Folks"). He edited Portland Magazine, the University of Portland publication that under his leadership punched well above its weight class, eschewing alumni fluff pieces in favor of serious contributions from nationally known writers. He received an honorary doctorate from the university during this year's graduation ceremonies in early May. "Brian exemplified God's grace by how he lived his life," University of Portland President the Rev. Mark L. Poorman said Saturday in a news release. "He was a man filled with a sense of humanity and wonder, who was interested in everyone's story and who saw everyone's potential. His warmth, humor and passion for life will be deeply missed." Doyle was a friend to numerous members of Oregon's literary community and felt like a friend to countless others who prized his works. Admirers included the writer and humorist Ian Frazier, who in a 2016 Christmas poem in The New Yorker devoted two lines to "The Brian Doyle, the Portland sage;/His writing's really all the rage." News of Doyle's diagnosis in November was greeted with disbelief and sorrow by his fans. Many contributed to a GoFundMe account to help defray his medical expenses; donations had reached nearly $165,000 by the time of his death. The family friend who set up the account, Catherine Green, wrote on the crowdfunding site in January that Doyle had told her his greatest fear was not being able to provide for his family and that the money brought him peace of mind. A group of Doyle's fellow authors, including Kim Stafford, David James Duncan, Hob Osterlund, Melissa Madenski and Tom Booth, set up a separate GoFundMe account this spring with the goal of retiring the mortgage on the family home. It was unsurprising to those who knew Doyle to any degree that his illness would inspire such a response. "He's really made an impact on so many people," said Laurie C. Kelley, who came to know Doyle during her tenure as the University of Portland's chief marketing officer and later its vice president for university relations. Brian James Patrick Doyle was born in 1956 in New York to Ethel Clancey Doyle, a teacher, and James Doyle, a journalist who was executive director of the Catholic Press Association for 30 years. He attended the University of Notre Dame, where he majored in English, graduating in 1978. His day jobs were at magazines: U.S. Catholic, Boston College Magazine and finally Portland Magazine, where he became editor in 1991, a position he held until his death. But it was his fervor for storytelling and his unqualified joy in writing that made his name nationally, with his fans searching out not only his books but also his writings for The Sun magazine, the Daily Guideposts website and other publications. He credited his father with nurturing his literary passion, telling one interviewer, "He taught me more than anyone or anything that stories swim by the millions and most of being a writer is listening and seeing and then madly scribbling." Oregon, the adopted home he credited in a 2015 interview with giving him "the people I love best, wonderful friends, good work, clean water by the ton from the sky," was the source of some of the stories he treasured most, such as "Mink River." "That book had Oregonness," he said in a 2016 interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive. "That pleases me enormously as a way to say thank you to Oregon." Doyle's most recent story, published in March, was the novel "The Adventures of John Carson in Several Quarters of the World: A Novel of Robert Louis Stevenson," a masterful ode to storytelling and storytellers. Inspired by Doyle's lifelong love of Stevenson's works, the novel reads much like the Scottish author's writing: "I should begin by showing you the man, insofar as I am able, as he was then, at the prime of life and the peak of his powers. Taller than not, and burly rather than thick; as he said himself, while we saw eye to eye as regards our height, he was twice the man I was in volume." But there is no question that "The Adventures of John Carson" is a Doyle book with passages such as this: "There is a story in every thing, and every being, and every moment, were we alert to catch it, were we ready with our tender nets; indeed there are a hundred, a thousand stories, uncountable stories, could they only be lured out and appreciated; and more and more now I realize that what I thought was a skill only for authors and pastors and doctors and dream-diviners is the greatest of all human skills, the one that allows us into the heart and soul and deepest layers of our companions on the brief sunlit road between great dark wildernesses." It is one of numerous passages in which Doyle celebrates stories. "To catch and share stories, what could be holier and cooler than that?" he told The Oregonian/OregonLive. "Stories change lives; stories save lives.... They crack open hearts, they open minds." And that particular passage includes the word "tender," a word Doyle made a point of using in interviews after he learned of his brain tumor. "Be tender," he said to those who might want to help him. "Be tender and laugh." Doyle's survivors include his wife, Mary Miller Doyle; sons, Liam and Joseph; and daughter, Lily. Funeral arrangements will be announced at a later date, the university news release said. -- Amy Wang [email protected] operator Transdev has warned of "serious long-term consequences" for all involved in the disruptive tram dispute - as eight more strikes are planned for next month. Luas operator Transdev has warned of "serious long-term consequences" for all involved in the disruptive tram dispute - as eight more strikes are planned for next month. As the troubled tram company considers laying off drivers, it apologised to customers for the latest halting of services yesterday. The next strike will take place on Friday week, while up to eight further strikes in June may be announced before the week is out. Yesterday's strike was the 10th since the bitter row over pay rises and better conditions began. It brought transport chaos, with little room on buses and traffic crawling along the quays. The National Transport Authority said: "This is a dispute between Transdev and its employees, and on the days that services are not provided we are not paying. We would encourage the parties to resolve the dispute." Passengers Dublin Bus said it will not have figures on passenger numbers for a few days, but said its services were "extremely busy". The bus service, which usually carries 400,000 passengers a day, was running at maximum capacity with all 950 buses deployed on all routes. "Our full fleet was deployed and will be deployed in the evening peak," said a spokeswoman. "We continue to advise customers to leave extra time for their journey, especially if they are travelling at peak times." An Irish Rail spokeswoman said passengers transferring from Connolly to Heuston Station suffered "hardship" but that the buses "picked up a lot of the slack". One disgruntled commuter said it took 20 minutes to get from Busáras to the quays, while the journey from Heuston Station to the city centre was taking more than 25 minutes in gridlocked traffic. In a message to passengers on its website, Transdev said the dispute is proving difficult to resolve as the pay demands before it are "excessive". It said the current Siptu demand for a 23pc pay rise between now and 2019 would bring a driver's €42,247 pay, including a bonus, to €55,467. "Transdev is financially unable to meet this demand," it said. It also said the figures do not take into account "extras" including average working hours of 35 hours a week, overtime rates, a 5pc pension contribution, a partner pension in the event of death, income protection, free parking, Laya employee assistance, free Luas travel, a nurse on site and wedding leave. "The company remains anxious to resolve this dispute, as a further continuation of [it] will have serious long-term consequences for all involved," it said. Irish IndependentWASHINGTON — President Trump’s condolence call to the widow of a slain soldier exploded into a vicious row that swamped the White House on Wednesday, with the soldier’s grieving mother accusing the president of disrespecting her family and a defiant Mr. Trump complaining that his words had been cynically twisted for political purposes. The back-and-forth made a furious spectacle of what is, at the best of times, one of the most emotionally wrenching contacts between the commander in chief and a bereaved citizen. It overshadowed any talk of Mr. Trump’s legislative priorities and instead recalled his history of feuding with military families or even, as in the case of Senator John McCain, a war hero. Twelve days after four Americans were killed in an Oct. 4 ambush in Niger, the president called the widow of Sgt. La David T. Johnson, who was among the slain, and said that her husband “knew what he signed up for,” referring to the soldier only as “your guy,” according to Sergeant Johnson’s mother and a Democratic congresswoman, who both listened to the call. Mr. Trump angrily disputed that account, insisting that he “had a very nice conversation with the woman, with the wife, who sounded like a lovely woman.” The White House accused the congresswoman, Frederica S. Wilson of Florida, of politicizing a sacred ritual after Mr. Trump initially said she “fabricated” it.Share +1 69 Shares Two things seem certain on Tuesday morning: Hurricane Harvey is not letting up and President Trump’s threat to shut down the government if Congress doesn’t allocate money for his border wall with Mexico is careening towards fulfillment. During his news conference with the Finnish president at the White House on Monday, Trump promised Texas disaster funding would not be impacted by a shutdown—ignoring the fact that salaries for first responders and the military, and benefit funding for Medicaid and Medicare recipients would all be dramatically effected. The LGBT community is trying to help victims of Hurricane Harvey, with a new fund set up by the LGBT Montrose Center in Houston, Lou Chibbaro Jr reports for the Washington Blade. The Resurrection Metropolitan Community Church was flooded on Monday. Meanwhile, Vice President Mike Pence went on several radio shows Monday to discuss the federal governments efforts. Interestingly, Pence seemed to limit his interviews to right-wing radio, based on transcripts posted on the White House. “I think it is important that all of your listens (sic) know that this is still a very dangerous storm. Particularly people in the affected areas, in Texas and Louisiana, need to approach this with great caution. Listen to local emergency management officials. Heed their warnings and their direction,” Pence told Rush Limbaugh. “And people within the sound of my voice who are in the affected areas or have families should know that they can go to DisasterAssistance.gov and they can already begin — we have some 22,000 that have already registered for disaster assistance, and there’s a broad range of financial support that is available to support housing, to support businesses that are affected by storms of this magnitude. And we think there might be as many as a half-a-million people ultimately eligible, given the enormity of this storm.” Limbaugh’s audience is not exactly racially diverse so those within the sound of Pence’s voice are presumably straight, white and politically conservative. Additionally, as Media Matters points out, Limbaugh has a history of using natural disasters as conspiratorial political weapons against Democrats. “During Hurricane Matthew in October 2016, Limbaugh stated that ‘it’s in the interest of the left to have destructive hurricanes because then they can blame it on climate change’ and that the National Hurricane Center is ‘playing games’ to convince people of climate change,” Media Matters reports. He alsoaccused Katrina victims of “waving guns at helicopters,” “shooting cops,” and “raping people on the street.” As if to underscore Pence’s particular penchant for right-wing-skewed outreach, the vice president also went on Michael Berry’s KTRH show to deliver essentially the same talking points. “Berry has been known for making sexist, homophobic, anti-Muslim, and anti-African-American comments on his radio show,” says Media Matters. “Berry has posted several racist videos to his show’s YouTube channel that criticize African-Americans and has referred to African-Americans as ‘jungle animals,’ ‘pack animals,’ and used blackface comedian ‘Shirley Q. Liquor’ on his show to tell jokes based on racial and religious stereotypes.” After 14-year-old Tyjuan Poindexter was the “unintended and blameless victim of a September 2015 drive-by shooting,” the Chicago Tribune reported, Berry chortled: “He won’t have to live with that name anymore.” “At least they’re not indiscriminately firing at black people,” Berry added. “At least they’re saying, ‘Are those the black people, because we want to make sure we get the right ones?’ even if they didn’t.” “Here’s a guy who plays bingo with his audience about the murders in Chicago,” Angelo Carusone, president of progressive watchdog Media Matters, told TheWrap. “The idea that the vice president would dignify that kind of program with his office should be alarming.” Berry has regularly booked gay white “comedian” Chuck Knipp on his show. Knipp used to be nationally infamous for his blackface character “Shirley Q. Liquor,” who called herself “Mammy Welfare Queen.” In 2007, pressure from the Black press and members of the LGBT community—shocked that some gays would find blackface funny—shut down Knipps’ appearances in Los Angeles. That started a cascading backlash that continues in some quarters around the country. “It’s the same blackface stuff you would have seen 100 years ago that has disappeared from our society for a long time and he resurrected it,” Carusone said. “Berry even put up a billboard promoting his radio program with Shirley B. Liquor on it. That’s how much that character was a part of the show.” The White House’s selection of radio programs to which Pence has granted interviews is a stark indication of who the administration is trying to reach and prioritize for help—and they don’t appear to be people of color.CLOSE A mother added a sandbox to her late son's grave so that her other son could "still play with her brother." VPC JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- After Ashley Hammac's 5-day-old son, Ryan Michael Jolly, died last October, she wanted his big brother to be able to continue playing with him so she added a sandbox to the newborn's grave site. Now, Tucker can keep his promise to share his trucks with the little brother he was so excited to welcome to their family. "Just so that Tucker could have a place to come out and still play with his brother," Hammac said of Ryan's embellished grave site at the Falling Creek Cemetery just outside Lake City. " 'Cause he was excited the whole time I was pregnant, about getting to be able to play with his brother and said he was going to share his trucks with him. So when this happened, we wanted a spot where he could be included, too." "I am your big brother, me," Tucker said as he leaned his head against his brother's grave. Hammac said Tucker likes the graveside addition so much that he sometimes asks to go without his mom asking him. "It is like another park for him," Hammac said. Ryan died from Hypoxic-Ischemic Encephlepathy, known as HIE, a result of not enough oxygen getting to the brain. Hammac shared photos of Tucker at the grave site on Facebook and it was shared more than 220,000 times. People magazine published a story in their latest edition. "I wasn't even expecting to share it with the world, like I said I shared it with my family," Hammac said. "And then it blew up, I was amazed. But I am happy that it did because now I can get the word out to our charity which is Pages to Memories," Hammac said she hopes her story about the unique grave site will help her raise money for HIE research. She also hopes to donate books to University of Florida Health hospital in Gainesville to support other parents who might have to endure the loss of a child. Facebook Twitter Google+ LinkedIn Photos: Boy visits younger brother's sandbox grave Fullscreen Post to Facebook Posted! A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. Interested in this topic? You may also want to view these photo galleries: Replay Autoplay Show Thumbnails Show Captions Last SlideNext Slide Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1gJNJ80A world with 6.7 billion people, a third of whom cook on dung or firewood and the rest depending on fossil fuels, needs far more energy options than it currently has, almost everyone agrees. But consensus dissolves when it comes to the question of how best to identify, develop and spur the diffusion of new energy choices that don’t come with climate or security risks. The main focus for years has been on a climate bill or climate treaty that would cap emissions and cut the cost with trading of pollution credits so the cuts could be made by companies or countries that could do the job most cheaply. The cap would encourage conservation, drive innovation, and raise some money for basic research. A significant chorus of economists and technology experts has insisted, however, that with or without a binding restriction on emissions, an epic energy quest is needed — and not being pursued. I have a piece in the Week in Review section on what these experts say is a gaping technology gap that cannot be filled by raising the price of polluting. They fear the focus on passing legislation or trying to negotiate a new climate treaty to cut emissions is distracting from the need to pursue an aggressive, sustained, variegated portfolio of energy research, mainly financed by government. Their critics say their stance, however well intentioned, will produce the real delays, given how much can be done now simply by cutting energy waste with tools already on the shelf — ranging from strengthening efficiency standards to eliminating billions of dollars in persistent fossil-fuel subsidies that continue to make coal and oil much cheaper than they really are when all their hidden costs are revealed. My impression is that the tugging between the two camps masks a lot of agreement on the need, really, to pursue all of the above. It’s just that the people involved in the discourse are most familiar with, or comfortable with, particular philosophies (regulatory, exploratory, top down, bottom up). [INSERTED 4/6, 12:45 p.m.] There clearly is a vast array of low-hanging fruit ready to be harvested — much at a profit — by cutting the energy used in buildings, transportation, appliances and the like, as the McKinsey Global Institute has repeatedly pointed out. I’m going to post comments that came in from a variety of experts and advocates involved in the energy and climate challenges but did not fit in my story or my earlier blog post on this question. I’d be happy to see yours, too, of course. Here’s one to prime the pump, from Paul Hawken:As a scholar of queer South Asian nightlife and performance, I am regularly asked, “But Kareem, why hasn’t there been a South Asian queen on Drag Race?” Not that RuPaul’s Drag Race has to be the measure of all things drag, but over nine seasons it has helped us take the temperature of a diversity of drag styles across cultures and communities. We’ve witnessed the show shift in trans inclusivity while remaining complicated in its representation of Asian Americans. So why hasn’t there been a South Asian queen? Some reasons include: our cultural references and fashion inspirations aren’t always legible to mainstream audiences (except as “Oh, so exotic!”), some of us don’t have permanent U.S. residency to audition, some of us worry about “log kya kahenge?,” some of us perform at house parties or community events and not necessarily in bars, some of us are not willing to compromise our commitment to local activism for the fame of a TV show, etc. Reasons abound. In the absence of visible South Asians in the recent mainstreaming of drag and trans performance, it’s necessary that we take a second to ask where our queens are, especially when more visible queens constantly appropriate South Asian femme aesthetics: bindis, henna, nose rings, Namaste hands, and multiple arms. There are SO MANY South Asian queens across the world who expand not only our understanding of who a queen is, but what South Asian genders look like. They are punk and Bollywood, burlesque and Broadway, aunties and animé, carnival and club kids. Here’s a sampling! Kumar This Tamil-Singaporean comedian’s sharp wit has even my bio-family forwarding me his clips on Whatsapp! In addition to being a TV host and stand-up act, he is also one of the very few openly gay celebrities in Singapore. Gigi Giubilee A post shared by Gigi Giubilee (@gigi.giubilee) on May 1, 2016 at 11:57pm PDT Gigi is a Hong-Kong-based advertising creative mixing corporate culture with couture, contour, and choreography to serve up animé advertising exec. Shout-out to her on-point backup dancers and her boy-mug highlight. Masala Sapphire Masala is the host of Trikone-Chicago’s quarterly queer Bollywood party Jai Ho! She sews her own outfits, builds her own wigs, and can serve you everything from Aishwarya Rai to Ariana Grande. Don’t miss her Priyanka Chopra Met Ball look! Manghoe Lassi Toronto’s Manghoe Lassi is just like her namesake drink: thick, tasty, and served best with a side of samosa. This bearded queen, a vet-tech by day, is padded with hips resembling the subcontinent, and she has developed a signature eye look: heavy black liner, a cut crease all the way in the middle of the forehead, and a dramatic glitter filling. Poppea Victoria This biracial Indo-Trinidadian queen in Toronto always serves a vibrant pop of color in her makeup, but don’t let her pop art looks distract you from her smarts. She’s an academic queen researching race, gender, and music, and also posts her musings on culture and diaspora on her Two Brown Boys blog which she shares with her boo, Manghoe Lassi. Faluda Islam Paahty time dahling A post shared by Faluda Islam فالودہ اسلام (@faluda_islam) on Jan 14, 2017 at 12:34am PST This fine arts Pakistani queen living in the Bay Area is famous not only for her politically savvy drag, but also her stunning visual and fabric art. Inspired by the cloyingly sweet and queerly textured dessert-drink she is named after, Faluda’s signature look is a Pepto-pink burqa and an ornate unibrow. She uses her drag not only to discuss the histories of nationalism, fundamentalism, and islamophobia, but also to make space for other Muslim queer and trans artists. Zeeshan Ali Also an art school queen, Zeeshan’s fantasy looks are devastatingly beautiful and are unlike any other queen I follow. Zeeshan draws inspiration from and sources materials by shopping in the streets of Bangalore. A former medical student, he enjoys the inspiration and support of his lovely mom in his pursuit of makeup magic. Alok Vaid-Menon watching you / watch me @themarlborough A post shared by ALOK (@alokvmenon) on Jun 28, 2017 at 11:38am PDT Alok is widely known for their poetry, fashion, and multimedia performance. More recently, Alok has taken to incorporating the costume changes and punny pleasures we associate with drag artists into their shows. Don’t miss their jumpsuit printed withthemself! Maya, The Drag Queen Maya is a distinctly Malayali queen, reminding us that gender manifests differently in regions across the subcontinent. Beginning as Mayamma, a small-town queen in a signature Kerala look (white sari, jasmines in her hair, barefoot) but who could also belt out Broadway show tunes, she has now become a high funda Bangalore beauty in expensive ghagras giving TED Talks. Abhijeet From Mumbai’s Marine Drive to Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive, this artsy queen serves impersonations, glamouuuuuur, and legs for days. Their performance tricks will leave you gagging: Arya Stark face peels, dresses and heels made of real glass, and outfits that change color while they dance. Building off the success of their Bad Betis photo series, they also hosted a night of Asian American drag at Berlin Nightclub in Chicago. The Salamander This Chicago-based transfemme artist draws on a variety of femmespirations, divine and profane alike. Their inspirations include high-fashion runway couture, Bollywood film, and their mother’s saris, which they use in their performances to celebrate brown queer trans power. Also, that booty! Lal Batti Lal Batti lives up to her name, “red light district,” serving all kinds of desi filth, hip thrusts, and bare midriffs. This sensational Bollywood dancer hosts the Yuva queer South Asian parties in New York City, as well as monthly Bingo at Le Poisson Rouge. She’s unmistakable with her signature three dots on the chin. Tara Ryst Tara Ryst, get it? TaraRystTarraryst. LOLZ. Not only does her name give the finger to racists who think all brown folks are terrorists, her salacious hip action will leave even the most xenophobic white boy hungry for some mutton biryani. When Tara gets out of her sexy Pakistani mujra drag, she is a muscle beefcake who can dance with swords. drools Asifa Lahore A post shared by Asifa Lahore (@asifalahore) on Mar 17, 2016 at 2:58am PDT This trans queen from the U.K. has been working hard to dispel assumptions about Muslims in the queer community and misconceptions of queerness in the Muslim community. She, like many UK nightclub performers, sings live and has several smart song parodies online that take on racism, interracial desire, and internalized homophobia. Seema Butt Seemaa Buttsee ma butthilarious! This big girl from Birmingham is serving you big fat Bollywood wedding every time she steps out onto the streets: paisleys, pearls, and pageantry! She has been an important mentor to many young Muslim queers and queens in the U.K. and is an outspoken advocate for trans equality. Sundari Indian Goddess An Indo-Caribbean queen hailing from Guyana, Sundari is heavily involved in the New York-based Caribbean Equality Project. A trained classical and folk dancer, she serves impeccable footwork in boy, girl, and half-masc/half-femme drag at religious festivals, cultural shows, pride parades, and carnival festivities. Zeenat Parveen Her name is drawn from the Bollywood bombshells of the 1970s and 80s, Zeenat Aman and Parveen Babi. Like her namesakes, this Sydney-based queen is a sensuous Bollywood dancer, who also played the role of Sunderella, in a queer desi adaptation of Cinderella produced by Trikone-Australia. Shiva Raichandani Apparently, Cinderella is popular with the desi queens! Hailing from Jakarta, Indonesia, Shiva (as part of the London School of Bollywood) took Britain’s Got Talent by surprise with a Bollywood rendition of the fairy tale. The judges weren’t just impressed by the fierce twirls, sequin costumes, and cute lipstick, but also by the bold reimagination of genres and the role model Shiva could be for gaybies everywhere. Nicki Mahal This thick brown femme is what happens when Nicki Minaj and Mindy Kaling make a baby! One of the few queens on this list who actually performs on a weekly basis, in bars in Philadelphia and Albany, NY, Nicki is always serving big hair and a Trinity-tight tuck. ZakTheBarber Oh it’s her again #tbt A post shared by زکریا (@zakaria_is_my_name) on Apr 27, 2017 at 9:12pm PDT This Seattle hair stylist will have you thirsty AF in their THOT boy drags (which mostly consists of thongs, chains, and tattoos), but their femme looks are ovah with more textures, braids, contacts, and piercings than a body can handle. This Pakistani-Irish multigendered artist is taaaalented, not only as a stylist to most of Seattle’s drag queens, but also as a gogo dancing pup and a burlesque artist. Laila Gulabi This queen embodies the multicultural confluences of New York as a non-binary, genderfluid, mixed-race, Guyanese, Muslim queen. She paints a sickening bushy Pakistani eyebrow, and can lip-synch in Punjabi, Hindi, Spanish, and English! Tranie Tronic Tranie Tronic drew on punk and 80s synthspirations to produce her debut album Transmission and several music videos in 2009. Wearing as little clothing as possible, she takes on politics, intimacy, and desire, and her music videos will have you longing for a collaboration between Anastacia and M.I.A. And of course… LaWhore Vagistan Born in Gibraltar, raised in Ghana, living in Boston, trying to make it to Bollywood, and always putting the aunty back in cunty. Don’t I look great in this sari? _____ Kareem Khubchandani is Mellon Bridge Assistant Professor of Drama & Dance, and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Tufts University. He is working on a monograph about gay Indian nightlife, and co-editing a volume about queer nightlife. He has published essays on transgender theater, diva worship, diasporic film, and queer activism. Find him on Twitter and Instagram: @kareempuffThe massive industrial conglomerate Halliburton has reportedly offered to pay $250 million to settle charges against its former chief executive, ex-Vice President Dick Cheney, in a multi-million dollar bribery case. Nigeria filed charges against Cheney last week in an investigation of alleged bribery estimated at $180 million. Prosecutors named both Halliburton and KBR in the charges, as well as three European oil and engineering companies — Technip SA, EniSpa, and Saipem Construction. Eleven Halliburton officials were arrested last month and freed on bail Nov. 29. The charges allege that engineering contractor KBR, until 2007 a subsidiary of Halliburton, was among companies that paid bribes to secure a $6 billion contract for a natural gas plant. KBR pleaded guilty to the same bribes in a US court in 2009, and agreed to pay a $382 million fine. The Nigerian charges appear to stem from the US case — though, in that trial, Cheney was never directly charged. The $250 million figure would include a direct $130 million fine by the company and an agreement to repatriate another $120 million from Switzerland. Representatives for Cheney and Halliburton met with Nigerian officials in London over the weekend. In the United States, KBR has already admitted bribing Nigerian officials. In February 2009, the company agreed to pay a $402 million fine. Halliburton itself paid $177 million to settle allegations paid to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), but didn’t admit wrongdoing. Still, despite the settlements, Halliburton’s spokeswoman said “there is no legal basis for the charges” in a statement Dec. 8. Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission spokesman Femi Babafemi told Reuters the company had offered to pay up to $250 million. “They have made offers of fines to be paid in penalties. They offered to pay $120 million in addition to the repatriation of $130 million trapped in Switzerland,” Babafemi said. “It will need to be ratified by the government and we expect a decision by the end of the week,” he added. Earlier this month, Halliburton said they hadn’t seen the new charges, but still denied their involvement. “Halliburton’s oil-field services operations in Nigeria have never in any way been part of the LNG project and none of the Halliburton employees have ever had any connection to or participation in that project,” Tara Mullee Agard, a spokeswoman for the Houston-based company, said in an e-mailed response to Bloomberg. Cheney led
with sky-high taxes that hinder business and leave Americans with little disposal cash. But what economists and historians will say one day soon is -- Own it. They'll decide that Obama did a fraction of what he could have done and failed to rise to the occasion, failed to broker deals with Congress in the best interest of Americans. Obama, though, vows to do more without Congress. "Whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, I will. I've got a pen and a phone - a pen to take executive action, and a phone to rally citizens and business leaders who are eager to create new jobs and new opportunities." He said he's already started. "In Wisconsin, I ordered an across-the-board reform of our training programs to train folks with the skills employers need, and match them to good jobs that need to be filled right now." Yes, looks like three more years of small ball. Weirdly, America's Fourth Estate sees no connection between Obama's policies and the U.S. economic doldrums. Few political pundits point a finger at the president, but blame Congress as the culprit (often while glossing over the fact that Democrats control the Senate). Now, a new talking point is emerging: The Great Recession was so bad that America won't recover for a full decade. The Associated Press on Sunday turned to Harvard University economist Carmen Reinhart, for the new perspective. "She does offer a smidgen of optimism: History suggests that economies that seem doomed can sometimes enjoy sudden turnarounds and unexpected bursts of energy. American consumers were walloped by high gasoline prices and low growth in the 1970s. Yet the feared downward spiral never happened as the economy roared through the 1980s.... "Financial crises do not last forever," she said. "A decade is a long time. But a long time is not the same as forever." Hmm. So the United States will emerge from the darkness in 2018 -- less that a year into the next president's first term. Just like the economy did in the 1980s, during Ronald Reagan's presidency, after the dismal 1970s and Jimmy Carter's tenure. What will most interesting to see will be if that 2018 successor is a Republican. But we already know now; Whenever the recovery starts, the press will decide it's all due to Obama. Even if he's on the beach in Hawaii at the time."Congratulations, you're a 2012 Olympian, representing Spain at the London Games! Now try not to vomit as we make you wear this …" Every Olympiad, there's some nation whose kit gets universally mocked or debated for its fashion sense. The Czech Republic sparked an "eyesore or awesome?" controversy at the Vancouver Winter Games for its migraine-inducing multicolored camouflage. Scroll to continue with content Ad But it's rarely the athletes representing those nations that take part in the mockery … unless you're Spain, whoseLuchador-meets-McDonald's employee look has received shock and awe from its Olympians. [ Related: Big error in Olympic tattoo ] On the left is Saul Craviotto, a gold medal-winning canoeist, who tweeted this image of him in Spain's Olympic garb and offering a "no comment" about their look: "I leave it up to you." (OK, if it was up to us, we'd say he was being attacked by a school of radioactive jellyfish.) Retired tennis player Carlos Moya said, via Twitter: "Looking forward to seeing [tennis player] Feliciano López wearing the official Olympic uniform. He'll never have worn anything so ugly in his life." Field hockey player Alex Fabregas tweeted the photo in the right, with a request to his fans: "Spare the adjectives..." Our first inclination was that these outfits were designed by a hyperactive child with a kaleidoscope; actually, they're the work of Russian firm Bosco, the designer for Russia and Ukraine's teams that donated these clothes to the Spanish Olympic Committee without compensation. So yes, you can actually give these away for free. Bosco said in a statement: "We've studied Spanish folklore in detail and we are confident that both athletes and citizens will agree that this is a nice design, authentic and round and, above all, very Spanish." From the Guardian: Story continues "The outfits are what we have, we cannot change them now, and were decided upon more than a year and a half ago," [Spanish Olympic Committee] president, Alejandro Blanco, told sports daily AS on Wednesday. "When Rafael Nadal [the flag bearer] and all the others appear in their uniforms the whole world will applaud and Spain as well." In a separate interview with ABC Punto Radio, Blanco said, "When you measure the difference between paying one and a half million of public money and free clothes, there is no discussion." That's a great point: At least Spain still has sports hero Rafael Nadal leading the oh, nuts, he pulled out due to injury. Or maybe he saw the Olympic kits. One of the two. See related Olympic video: Related Olympics content on Yahoo! • Speculation aplenty as to who will light Olympic flame • Malaysia's first female shooter will compete eight months pregnant • U.S. powerlifter Holley Mangold adapting to life in the limelightNote: You are viewing this blog post without the intended style information, which may result in formatting issues. By the time I had a look into Craig Wright's blog post that seemed to imply that he is Satoshi, others had already pointed out that the signature was copied from a 2009 transaction. The contents of the "Sartre" file, however, were still a mystery. Dan Kaminsky had a blog post up analyzing the commands from CW's post, but hadn't been able to figure that bit out, so he asked me to have a look. Following a screenshot of the output of sha256sum Sartre, there's a screenshot purportedly the file being displayed through a program called more, but only the first 14% can be seen, making it impossible to verify. How convenient. It's also important to note that what CW signs is the raw sha256 of "Sartre" rather than the file itself. OpenSSL will sha256 that data it's signing or verifying anyway, so this would normally be unnecessary step. More on that in a bit. Given that the signature is valid, there are really very few possible explanations of what's going on. CW has a computationally feasible preimage attack on sha256 CW is Satoshi and has a been sitting on computationally feasible collision attack on sha256 since 2009 has a been sitting on computationally feasible collision attack on sha256 since 2009 CW is some sort of actual wizard who enjoys trolling cryptocurrency geeks. CW has pulled some sort of digital slight-of-hand So, about that last one. Obviously, the signature presented was valid for that Bitcoin transaction, but where did the value 479f9dff0155c045da78402177855fdb4f0f396dc0d2c24f7376dd56e2e68b05 come from? Finding out requires digging a bit into the innards of Bitcoin. I was not feeling quite masochist enough to slog through a bunch of C++ code this morning, so I pulled up Vitalik Buterin's pybitcointools. We need to know exactly what is being passed into ECDSA to verify a transaction. The function verify_tx_input contains: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 def verify_tx_input ( tx, i, script, sig, pub ): if re. match ( '^[0-9a-fA-F]$', tx ): tx = binascii. unhexlify ( tx ) if re. match ( '^[0-9a-fA-F]$', script ): script = binascii. unhexlify ( script ) if not re. match ( '^[0-9a-fA-F]$', sig ): sig = safe_hexlify ( sig ) hashcode = decode ( sig [ - 2 :], 16 ) modtx = signature_form ( tx, int ( i ), script, hashcode ) return ecdsa_tx_verify ( modtx, sig, pub, hashcode ) ...the second to last line in this function being the critical one. What does signature_form do? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 def signature_form ( tx, i, script, hashcode = SIGHASH_ALL ): i, hashcode = int ( i ), int ( hashcode ) if isinstance ( tx, string_or_bytes_types ): return serialize ( signature_form ( deserialize ( tx ), i, script, hashcode )) newtx = copy. deepcopy ( tx ) for inp in newtx [ "ins" ]: inp [ "script" ] = "" newtx [ "ins" ][ i ][ "script" ] = script if hashcode == SIGHASH_NONE : newtx [ "outs" ] = [] elif hashcode == SIGHASH_SINGLE : newtx [ "outs" ] = newtx [ "outs" ][: len ( newtx [ "ins" ])] for out in newtx [ "outs" ][: len ( newtx [ "ins" ]) - 1 ]: out [ 'value' ] = 2 * 64 - 1 out ['script' ] = "" elif hashcode == SIGHASH_ANYONECANPAY : newtx [ "ins" ] = [ newtx [ "ins" ][ i ]] else : pass return newtx It turns out that the actual data signed does not exactly match the transaction that is recorded in the blockchain. There are three reasons for this. The first is that it is not, in general, possible for a signature to contain itself. The second has to do with these "SIGHASH" flags. The details of how those work can be found in the documentation for OP_CHECKSIG, but it's not important to understand them for the relevant transaction. The third is that since the signature is spending a previous transaction's output, it needs to include information about it. That's what the parameters i (identifies the input number for this transaction) and script (the "scriptPubKey" from the transaction output being spent) are for. Feeding the to the signature_form function: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 # pybitcointools https://github.com/vbuterin/pybitcointools from bitcoin import * # output of # `bitcoin-cli getrawtransaction 828ef3b079f9c23829c56fe86e85b4a69d9e06e5b54ea597eef5fb3ffef509fe` tx = '0100000001ba91c1d5e55a9e2fab4e41f55b862a73b24719aad13a527d169c1fad3b63' + \ 'b5120100000049483045022100c12a7d54972f26d14cb311339b5122f8c187417dde1e' + \ '8efb6841f55c34220ae0022066632c5cd4161efa3a2837764eee9eb84975dd54c2de28' + \ '65e9752585c53e7cce01ffffffff0200ca9a3b00000000434104bed827d37474beffb3' + \ '7efe533701ac1f7c600957a4487be8b371346f016826ee6f57ba30d88a472a0e4ecd2f' + \ '07599a795f1f01de78d791b382e65ee1c58b4508ac00d2496b0000000043410411db93' + \ 'e1dcdb8a016b49840f8c53bc1eb68a382e97b1482ecad7b148a6909a5cb2e0eaddfb84' + \ 'ccf9744464f82e160bfa9b8b64f9d4c03f999b8643f656b412a3ac00000000' # from # `bitcoin-cli getrawtransaction 12b5633bad1f9c167d523ad1aa1947b2732a865bf5414eab2f9e5ae5d5c191ba 1` spk = '410411db93e1dcdb8a016b49840f8c53bc1eb68a382e97b1482ecad7b148a6909a5c' + \ 'b2e0eaddfb84ccf9744464f82e160bfa9b8b64f9d4c03f999b8643f656b412a3ac' # create signature verification'modified transaction' modtx = signature_form ( tx, 0, spk, SIGHASH_ALL ) # append the hashcode - in this case SIGHASH_ALL which is just 1 as a little-endian uint32 # see the txhash function modtx += hexlify ( encode ( SIGHASH_ALL, 256, 4 )[:: - 1 ]) print modtx # 0100000001ba91c1d5e55a9e2fab4e41f55b862a73b24719aad13a527d169c1fad3b63b5120100 # 000043410411db93e1dcdb8a016b49840f8c53bc1eb68a382e97b1482ecad7b148a6909a5cb2e0 # eaddfb84ccf9744464f82e160bfa9b8b64f9d4c03f999b8643f656b412a3acffffffff0200ca9a # 3b00000000434104bed827d37474beffb37efe533701ac1f7c600957a4487be8b371346f016826 # ee6f57ba30d88a472a0e4ecd2f07599a795f1f01de78d791b382e65ee1c58b4508ac00d2496b00 # 00000043410411db93e1dcdb8a016b49840f8c53bc1eb68a382e97b1482ecad7b148a6909a5cb2 # e0eaddfb84ccf9744464f82e160bfa9b8b64f9d4c03f999b8643f656b412a3ac00000000010000 # 00 # un-hex bin_modtx = changebase ( modtx, 16, 256 ) print sha256 ( bin_modtx ) # 479f9dff0155c045da78402177855fdb4f0f396dc0d2c24f7376dd56e2e68b05 with open ( 'Sartre', 'w' ) as f : f. write ( bin_modtx ) The "Sartre" file is, of course, available for download. I also posted a gist with the decoded transaction data from this file. I mentioned that normally, when using ECDSA to sign or verify a file, it is unnecessary to hash it manually. This is where CW's slight-of-hand lies. ECDSA computes the signature operation on a 256 bit integer referred to as z. Normally this is computed as sha256(message), but Bitcoin does sha256(sha256(modtx)). CW showed the signature verification using OpenSSL's ECDSA on sha256(modtx). OpenSSL does another sha256 on the data, which makes the z value match.(Reuters) - A federal judge on Thursday sentenced Larry Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics team doctor accused of sexually assaulting gymnasts, to 60 years in prison on federal child pornography charges that grew out of a sex abuse investigation. U.S. District Judge Janet Neff in Grand Rapids, Michigan handed down the sentence sought by prosecutors, who said there was a link between Nassar’s child pornography and his “prolific molestation of children,” according to court documents. “He has demonstrated that he should never again have access to children,” Neff said according to the Lansing State Journal. Nassar’s attorney, Matt Newburg, said he was “devastated” and remorseful, according to a State Journal video. Nassar, 54, pleaded guilty in July to possessing thousands of images and videos of child pornography depicting children as young as infants between 2003 and 2016. Nassar is also set to be sentenced in January in two Michigan courts after pleading guilty to additional counts of criminal sexual conduct related to allegations he assaulted girls under the guise of medical treatment. At that hearing, all of the more than 120 victims or their parents will be allowed to give impact statements. Nassar is likely to spend the remainder of his life in prison. Nassar was the team physician for the Michigan State University gymnastics and women’s crew teams, as well as an associate professor at MSU’s College of Osteopathic Medicine. He served as the USA Gymnastics physician through four Olympic Games. “He abused my trust, he abused my body and he left scars on my psyche that may never go away,” Olympic gold medalist McKayla Maroney said in a victim statement submitted to Neff. Nassar’s attorneys had asked the federal judge for leniency, arguing Nassar had helped fellow inmates and taken Bible classes since his arrest nearly a year ago, the State Journal said. At a news conference Thursday, Rachael Denhollander, one of Nassar’s victims and among those suing USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University, said the organizations failed to protect them from the abuse. Between 1997 and 2015, at least seven women or girls say they raised concerns about Nassar’s actions to coaches, trainers, police or MSU officials, the State Journal reported. FILE PHOTO: Former USA Gymnastics' team physician Larry Nassar poses in this handout photo received November 10, 2017. Department of Attorney General/Handout via REUTERS “Today the justice feels very incomplete,” Denhollander said during a news conference broadcast by WZZM. USA Gymnastics and Michigan State could not be immediately reached for comment. Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette this week urged Michigan State to release an internal investigation into the university’s handling of the allegations.Drama-documentary telling the story of Geoffrey Wellum who, at the age of just 18, was one of the youngest Spitfire pilots to go into combat in the Battle of Britain. Thrown into the crucible of the most violent air war ever seen, a boy barely out of school is determined to fight for survival. However, the price of victory will be more than he can bear. Seventy years later, that same boy is still yearning to be free. At the age of just 18, Geoffrey Wellum was one of the youngest Spitfire pilots to go into combat in the Battle of Britain. Desperately fighting to survive from moment to moment, Geoffrey's rites of passage are unimaginable to most - but his experience is a direct parallel with the intensity of back-to-back conflicts faced by so many young men and women serving in our armed forces today. The universality of his story is as relevant today as it was in 1940.George Lucas' live-action Star Wars TV series is still moving forward in Australia, and little clues are slowly popping up here and there as to which characters will turn up, and which Star Wars film will it most emulate. Author Karen Traviss announced a while back that she is no longer writing her long-awaited Boba Fett novel. The author explained that contract issues were getting in the way of her story line, and it seems like what she was planning for Boba Fett, and what Lucas was planning on his new TV series, conflicted. Yes, the Boba Fett novel was canceled by the publisher because of potential canon clashes with the upcoming TV series, as you have already heard from other sources. No, I really don't have a clue what those clashes might be. Sorry. Advertisement We can only assume that Traviss was planning to base her portrayal of Boba Fett on the canon already established in the six movies — and the TV series is planning to make some major change, or addition, to that canon. Still, this means more Boba on the screen, which is always a good thing. So where is this new series set? According to Wookiepedia and The Celebrity Cafe, it takes place in the "dark times" between the last prequel and A New Hope. And if you remember, that's when most of the Jedi and anti-emperor politicians were hunted down and killed. It's being toted as a gritty and dark series, which will star many minor characters as we now know Boba Fett, but also C-3PO, and Emperor Palpatine (nothing has been officially confirmed yet). As far as past Star Wars characters like Han, Luke and Leia, Mark Hamill says he doesn't think there would be a role for him as in this time period Luke would be even younger than he was in A New Hope. But the actor did praise the decision to return to focusing on the story, instead of the sizzle of CG FX and tedious lightsaber fights. Advertisement In an interview with Total Film Magazine Lucas explained that it would be more like the original than the prequels, " It's [a] lot more talky. It's more of what I would call a soap opera with a bunch of personal dramas in it. It's not really based on action-adventure films from the '30s - it's actually more based on film noir movies from the '40s!" And, of course, they won't have Star Wars-type funds to make everything CG, so hopefully this will reinforce the "story comes first" motto. Advertisement [via The Celebrity Cafe]No, really? The partial transcripts, published in the Irish Independent newspaper, appeared to show the bank’s then head of capital markets, John Bowe, admitting that Anglo had deliberately hoodwinked the government over the size of the bailout required. Speaking to Peter Fitzgerald, Anglo’s former head of retail banking, Mr Bowe appears to describe how the bank cynically lured the government into a €7bn rescue in full knowledge that the sum would be nowhere near enough to save the lender. The thinking, he suggested, was that once Dublin had been “pulled in”, it would have no choice but to keep picking up the tab. Ah, the old “in for a penny” trick — first we get you “invested” in the fraud, then we tell you that unless you back the entire thing and swallow that you’re going to find your money was lost. Oh, and the amount? More than four times the amount originally claimed. There’s a difference between being wrong and being intentionally deceptive so as to screw people — in this case, screw all the people of a given nation by effectively scamming the government. The problem we, along with Ireland and the rest of the world have, in that this sort of behavior is supposed to lead to indictments and prosecution, not bonuses and stock options. But it doesn’t; the banks have gone from lending capital provided by investors and shareholders to being able to force taxpayers to fund anything they wish when their bets turn out badly, keeping the profits and shoving the losses up the butt of the common citizen. This is not just fascism at its worst as it also destroys the tax base and ultimately your economy’s ability to grow. As the people’s purchasing power is trashed via this sort of tactic they lose the ability to get ahead and all that remains is borrowing tomorrow’s earnings for today’s wants and needs. Eventually that collapses as well amid the demands for lower and lower “capital” (really credit) cost to maintain the ponzi scheme. It is this end-point we are now facing on a global basis, with Europe in unremitting recession and the United States right behind it, unable to post up positive economic growth. The reason for this is simple — innovation has been destroyed, leaving ever-larger percentages of the population able only to go on the dole in some form or fashion as the return of savings and investment is reduced to zero. Now let’s step back a bit — given this history do you believe that the banks are solvent now and that their derivative positions, along with the rest of their book, is properly valued? Neither do I. View with responses ~An interview with CEO Aaron McDonald about one of the most exciting blockchain studios in the world — and a major SingularDTV partner. The development of SingularDTV over the past year has served as a magnet for exciting projects and individuals from all over the world. Names like Blockhaus and Gramatik are familiar for anyone watching the progress of the SingularDTV ecosystem, but New Zealand-based blockchain venture studio Centrality has also played a key role in bringing the SingularDTV vision to reality. A team of 50 developers led by CEO Aaron McDonald at Centrality’s headquarters in Auckland is leading development on three SingularDTV modules: payment solution Paycheck, accounting widget Blockkeeper, and the decentralized exchange platform SingularX. In addition, Centrality is producing their own ecosystem of remarkable projects and recently completed a $15 million dollar pre-sale of their Centrality token. We spoke with Centrality CEO Aaron McDonald about the company’s relationship with SingularDTV, Blockhaus, and their own growing ecosystem of dApps… Centrality been referred to as ‘Consensys Down Under.’ Is that an apt description? The comparison to Consensys is not a bad one, although a little humbling as these guys are really pushing the industry forward. They have a venture studio model themselves, across a number of projects at different layers. I think the main distinguishing factor is that we’re focused on mass market consumer adoption. We’re building a set of use cases around everyday things that a person does in their life. Many of the blockchain use cases are around financial tech and payment solutions, but we’re trying to make everyday processes decentralized — booking a restaurant, taking public transport, booking a ticket for a flight. Often, these applications are so well-written that the consumer doesn’t even need to know that the blockchain exists. Can you elaborate on some of the projects Centrality is working on? We have twelve applications in development at the moment, across ten areas of life. In the workplace, we have a rewards, recognition, and communications platform called Belong, which is helping employers provide non-salary incentives in the workplace. We have a travel-and-tourism project called Skoot that smooths out the international fiat conversion process when traveling, as well as bringing a more diverse set of experience providers into the tourism market — peer-to-peer for experiences. AI.MY is a health-and-fitness application we are building with Performance Labs ( www.arda.ai ) that provides you with a virtual coach we are working on a zero-knowledge-proof to train an AI which coaches you so your personal data isn’t stored in the cloud. All of our applications can talk to each other and work together. Any one of those applications, once they onboard a consumer, can then direct that consumer to other products or services on the Centrality platform. Centrality has been working closely with Blockhaus, building out the tech for their standardization of the Token Generation process… The thing about Blockhaus that interested me the most is: I think the decentralization movement is one of the biggest opportunities for the average person to right the economic equation in our world, and get back to a more sustainable state. But, that can’t happen if it gets shut down too early. If we don’t do things responsibly, this movement will get killed before it has a chance to be successful and deliver the outcomes we want. As a true believer in a decentralized economy, we have to lift the game of the community if we want this to be a long and sustainable path. Blockhaus is leading the way in developing the standards of what this should look like. What in particular has Centrality built for Blockhaus? We have been involved with the technology set up from the outset, Centrality is the “CTO” for Blockhaus. One application we built is the Token Sales Application that allows us to ensure that when contributors are onboarded, they are properly vetted, so we don’t risk any kind of money laundering or fraud activity — to make sure that investors are participating with a clear knowledge about the state of the investment, the risks, and what people can expect from the providers of that token in terms of output. It also deals with KYC — so you know who is participating in the sale and exclude certain contributors based on the legality of their region. The system is designed so that only approved investors can actually buy the token. We have a customized decentralized exchange that does the transfers, so we never hold the Ether, but we make sure that only approved buyers can participate. After designing much of Blockhaus’ tech, Centrality is partnered with Blockhaus for its own Token Generation Event… It’s an interesting relationship — we interact with Blockhaus as a platform, customer, and provider. I think you should always drink your own champagne. We wanted to prove that our tools worked and that we believed in them and could trust them to do the job. We volunteered to be the first customer to use them. The Centrality Token pre-sale raised over $15 million dollars, so it sounds like the partnership is working! It went really well. We learned a lot. We’re working out the timing now for the main sale event, but are expecting to get that kicked off in the next month or two, once we make a few big partnership announcements and tweaks to the system. We now have some other exciting Token Sales coming up which will be using the platform too. Real business with real technology and real customers just like Centrality and SDTV along with some great humanitarian use cases as well. How does the Centrality Token work? Our token is used as a connector between all Centrality applications. Say from Belong, connect to uShare, our ride-sharing application, to take a user somewhere — it all uses the Centrality Token to facilitate that process. The token is also used to obtain value-added purchases in the Centrality Network, things that you need to run your application and make it work. It’s also a reward mechanism for users. As the Token moves around the Network, it connects senders and receivers to the network — We like to think of it as a postage stamp. It’s clear that the next generation of blockchain utility goes far beyond just currency… We really have to push beyond currency to make this thing work. Like I keep saying, the power of decentralization in terms of its impact on society, is so big, that we can’t just leave it at currency. Like what SingularDTV is doing, you need to take the decentralization movement beyond FinTech, beyond those currency use cases. They’re a good foundation, but in a decentralized future, a tokenized economy, the value equation changes completely, and currency-for-currency’s sake may find itself having less utility. Like SingularDTV, we’re trying to tokenize industries outside of currency to create different kinds of value models that can exist in a decentralized world. Centrality has also been working on some major SingularDTV modules — SingularX, Blockkeeper, Paycheck. Which ones excite you the most? I think SingularX is going to be very cool. Providing the ability for artists to make themselves tradeable and fungible is one of the core tenets of the SingularDTV proposition. We’re hoping with the way that we’re building it out is that it will also appeal to non-blockchainers. Blockkeeper is going to be really interesting as well. As governments get closer and closer to forming their regulation on crypto, if you want to be sustainable and long-term, you’ve got to be able to comply with regulation, and tax is going to come first. Providing the economy in the blockchain space with the ability to stay compliant is a big thing for the industry. It’s been really good working with the team at SingularDTV. They’re doing it right — taking the time to build a sustainable economy and not just pushing tech out there for the sake of tech. I want to see more of that and we’re trying to take that approach ourselves. With so much going on, how does your team keep it together? If it wasn’t hard, anyone could do it! I have a team of around 50 engineers now. The reason why we can do so many things at once is because of the way that we’ve built the platform up. We have modules that can be re-used on different applications. Each application is made up of modules we already have, and new modules we develop. The new modules are then applied to future projects, so we have this library of lego bricks we can use to construct applications that we publish, rather than having to build from scratch every time. Centrality is a mathematical term used to find the areas around which to coalesce on a graph. While the Centrality name might seem a little odd compared with the notion of decentralization, but what we’re trying to do is create functional vertices around which we can coalesce in a decentralized world. Find out more info at Centrality.io SingularDTV: Twitter // Facebook // LinkedIn // Slack // RedditPresident Trump speaks to Navy and shipyard personnel aboard the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford at Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport News, Va., on March 2. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) President Trump set his sights on the Navy in a new interview, calling the service’s new electromagnetic catapult to launch planes off aircraft carriers “no good” and saying that the Navy needs to go back to “goddamned steam,” the method used for decades. The comments, published Thursday by Time magazine, came during an interview Monday evening at the White House. Trump recounted a conversation he had March 2 while visiting the yet-to-be-commissioned aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford in Newport News, Va., and said he was told that the catapult on it does not have enough power. Aboard the Gerald R. Ford in Newport News, Va., President Trump spoke about defense spending and the military, March. 2. Here is the full speech. (The Washington Post) “It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out,” Trump said, according to Time. [Trump promises ‘great rebuilding of the Armed Forces’ while signing order at the Pentagon] “And I said — and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers,” the president continued. “I said what system are you going to be — ‘Sir, we’re staying with digital.’ I said, ‘No you’re not. [You’re] going to goddamned steam,’ the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it’s no good.” The new catapult to which Trump referred is called the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS). It takes up significantly less space on a ship than steam systems and works by tapping into a redesigned turbine system that generates more power than those on old carriers. The new electromagnetic system also is expected to be able to launch unmanned aircraft and require less maintenance, according to the Navy. The Navy said Thursday that it was developing a response. A Pentagon official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of speaking about the president, said that Trump’s comments caught defense officials off-guard and are inaccurate. “You can see elements of reality in what he said, but I think he may have spoken without having all of the information in front of him,” the official said. “I think he either has time-late information, or the information he has is not correct.” The crew of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford launched weighted sleighs into the sea off the coast of Virginia to test the new Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), which is designed to replace the current steam-driven launchers. (U.S. Navy) Pentagon officials are convinced that once they present the latest details about the EMALS to the president, “a lot of the concerns that were raised in the article will be answered,” the official added. The White House did not respond Thursday to a request for more information about the president’s frustrations. The EMALS was adopted as the Navy designed a new Ford class of “super carrier” that are larger than older ones. The Ford is expected to be commissioned and delivered to the Navy within a month and will be followed by similar carriers named the John F. Kennedy and the Enterprise. Jerry Hendrix, a retired Navy captain and defense analyst with the Center for a New American Security, said Thursday that Trump’s criticism “has merit” but that many of the issues that initially were raised about the catapult already have been resolved. Now would not be a good time to go back and install steam systems on the new carriers, he said: The Ford is all but finished, and construction of the Kennedy is already underway. “To go back to steam would be a major redesign,” Hendrix said. “And that design change would run throughout the entire ship because of the power required for the new system.” But it’s reasonable for Trump to be frustrated with the cost of the new carriers, and he isn’t wrong that shifting back to steam on future aircraft carriers would be cheaper, Hendrix said. The cost of the Ford is expected to be $12.9 billion, and the price of the Kennedy is estimated at $11.8 billion, according to an assessment by the Congressional Research Service. Previous carriers without the new catapult cost $8.5 billion. According to both Hendrix and the CRS report, the larger issue on the new carriers at this point is not the catapult, but the new advanced arresting gear system that catches planes as they land. The new system has struggled in testing and could again boost the cost of the ships, but the Navy decided to stay with the new system on not only the Ford, but also the Kennedy carrier that is now under construction. The Pentagon official who discussed Trump’s comments Thursday acknowledged that the system is still a work in progress.(Newser) – Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam has signed into law a groundbreaking bill that makes it a crime to use a friend's login, even with permission, to listen to songs or watch movies from services such as Netflix or Rhaps
central problem in GUI programming, it absorbs a relevant part of the programming effort.makes this programming very easy, far more easy than traditional solutions based on MVC (Model View Controller). 23-Feb-2016: released AVC 0.11.0. New support for python 3. Now AVC can work with both python 2 and 3 with the widget tookits that support python 2 and 3: GTK3, Qt4, Tk. Python 3 support for Swing and Wx toolkits is not yet available at least as debian package. Thanks to Stephan P. Helma for his code contribution for python 3 support.Wow– you talk about worlds colliding. Our favorite partially-cloaked Penguins fan, Taylor, who we featured before Game 1 along with her signs and bear costumes, not only kept her word and showed up with elementary-level signs, but she also brought along the bears to scare Ilya Bryzgalov. Here’s a photo of Taylor posing with fake Hulk Hogan, who somehow manages to afford tickets behind the Flyers’ bench: Unfortunately for Taylor (and the Hulkster), their team would blow a three-goal in this game Later, Taylor and her animal friends popped up on the Pens’ broadcast: Problem for our attention-loving friend and her hairy cohorts: Bryz wasn’t frightened by the creatures seated behind the glass. And, after the game, Jaromir Jagr had some fun with our favorite Russian, yelling beeeeaaarrs while Bryz was talking to the media. Jagr had some more thoughts on the situation: "Must have been 70 of them. Who get them a ticket? I was scared, too." This has to be a Yinzer low-point– they not only watched their team lose, but now they also have to listen to their former star make fun of their lame attempts to scare his Russian goaltender? Sads. Watch after the jump as Jagr pokes fun at Bryz.Alex Tagliani will drive the No. 22 Discount Tire Ford Mustang for Team Penske in the Nationwide Children’s Hospital 200 at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course on August 15. “It is an honor to be back in the 22 Discount Tire Ford Mustang,” said Tagliani. “It's always unique to be part of Team Penske, even for one weekend. Looking at the Owners’ Championship ring, it reminds you how important and how hard everyone behind the scene is working to contribute at the success of the 22 car. This year my goal is the same as last year, help Team Penske. It's a real honor to be part of all this group.” A native of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Tagliani competed in two XFINITY Series races for Team Penske in 2014, winning one pole at Road America and posting two top-five finishes. He has made six XFINITY Series starts over the course of his racing career. He has also competed in one NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race and has memorable performances in the Verizon IndyCar Series, sports car competition and the Australian V8 Supercar Series. “We are looking forward to having Alex back in the No.22 Ford,” said Team Penske president Tim Cindric. “He was a big part of our championship last year as he put the team’s goals in front of his own. His performance at Mid-Ohio was a great example of that and, hopefully, we can put him in Victory Lane this time.” Tagliani is also a former Indianapolis 500 pole winner, capturing the top spot for the “Greatest Spectacle In Racing” in 2011. He is a former winner in the Verizon IndyCar Series, taking the checkered flag at Road America in 2004.The conviction of Mr. Bemba — who was far from the battleground while his militia committed its crimes — was noteworthy in a second respect: It was the first time the court had applied the principle of command or superior responsibility. The judges found that Mr. Bemba was culpable for having “failed to prevent” the crimes committed by his subordinates, and for doing nothing to punish the offenses. The judges on the panel were all women. The presiding judge, Sylvia Steiner of Brazil, read a summary of the verdict, noting crimes like the gang rape of women and girls as young as 10. Some were assaulted in the presence of family members and other children, she said. Mr. Bemba’s case was taken up by the International Criminal Court at the request of the government of the Central African Republic, where the justice system lacks the ability to prosecute him. The country does not have a witness protection program that could shield rape victims and help ensure their cooperation. Advocacy groups applauded the conviction for its focus on large-scale rape, among them Physicians for Human Rights. “The stigma and shame of this crime is moving where it belongs: to the perpetrator rather than the victim,” the group said in a statement. Géraldine Mattioli-Zeltner, international justice advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, said the verdict offered “a stark reminder to commanders — military and civilian — that they are responsible for preventing and halting any attacks by their forces on civilians and for punishing violators.”If you plan to chow down tonight at a big chain restaurant, there's a better than nine-in-10 chance that your entree will fail to meet federal nutrition recommendations for both adults and kids, according to a provocative new study. A whopping 96% of main entrees sold at top U.S. chain eateries exceed daily limits for calories, sodium, fat and saturated fat recommended by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, reports the 18-month study conducted by the Rand Corp. and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "If you're eating out tonight, your chances of finding an entree that's truly healthy are painfully low," says Helen Wu, assistant policy analyst at Rand who oversaw the study. It examined the nutritional content of 30,923 menu items from 245 restaurant brands across the USA. "The restaurant industry needs to make big changes to be part of the solution," she says. The restaurant industry is "employing a wide range" of healthier-living strategies, says Joan McGlockton, vice president of food policy at the National Restaurant Association. Among them: putting nutritional information on menus, adding more healthful items and launching a 2011 program at nearly 100 brands in more than 25,000 locations that offers children's meals in line with 2010 dietary guidelines. How much is too much? These USDA recommended limits were used to measure against main entrees: No more than... 667 calories 35% of calories from fat 10% of calories from saturated fat 767 mg sodium Source: USDA Even then, the restaurant industry-supported "Healthy Dining" seal of approval is too generous on sodium, Wu says. It allows up to 2,000 milligrams of sodium for one main entree, while the USDA's daily recommended limit for most adults is 2,300 milligrams, she says. Other highlights of the study, which is posted on Public Health Nutrition: •Appetizers can be calorie bombs. Appetizers — while often shared — averaged 813 calories, compared with main entrees, which averaged 674 calories per serving, Wu says. •Family restaurants fared worse than fast-food. Entrees at family-style restaurants on average have more calories, fat and sodium than fast-food restaurants. Entrees at family-style eateries posted 271 more calories, 435 more milligrams of sodium and 16 more grams of fat than fast-food restaurants, Wu says. •Kid "specialty" drinks often aren't healthy. Many drinks offered on kids' menus have more fat and saturated fat on average than regular drinks. While regular menu drinks had a median of 360 calories, the median number of calories in kid specialty drinks, such as shakes and floats, was 430. The message to parents, Wu says: "It's the little extras you order that add up."In order to make the best of poor soil, water conservation, and mountainous terrain, terraced farming was introduced by various cultures around the world. Extremely labor intensive to build, terracing allowed the land to support civilization’s increased need for crops, livestock and poultry. Erosion was avoided, rain and runoff water was preserved, and otherwise unused hillside became arable due to terraced agriculture. Not only do these terraced fields provide essential goods for the local people but they also feature some of the most spectacular landscapes in the world. 11. Sa Pa Terraces Sa Pa is a town in northwest Vietnam not far from the Chinese border. The rice terrace fields, among the most popular tourist attractions in Vietnam, can be found in the Muong Hoa valley between Sa Pa town and the Fansipan Mountain, on a backdrop of thick bamboo woodlands. Local mountain people, the Hmong, Giay, Dao, Tay, and Giay, grow rice and corn on these paddy terraces, along with vegetables. Because of the climate, only one rice crop a year can be produced, resulting in abundant malnutrition. 10. Inca Pisac The still intact terrace fields of Pisac, constructed by the Incas, are still being used today. These mountainous terraces consist of 16 different cultivation sections. Pisac, a word of Quechua origins, means “partridge”. Inca tradition dictated building cities in the shape of birds and animals, and as such, Pisac is partridge shaped. The Pisac terraces included a military citadel, religious temples, and individual dwellings, and overlooks the Sacred Valley, between the Salkantay Mountains. These terraces even boated two suspension bridges, the bases of which can still be seen. 9. Douro Valley The home of port wine, the Douro Valley is located in northern Portugal, some distance from the city of Porto. The hills of the valley are covered with terrace fields of vines falling steeply down to the river banks. The scenery of the valley is spectacular with the colors of the land changing throughout the year as the vines mature. In autumn the vines take a reddish and golden color, while in February-March the almond blossom gives an added white pinkish tone to the region. As well as port wine, regular red and white wines are also produced in the valley. 8. Bali Rice Terraces The archetypical Bali rice terraces are ubiquitous, and Balinese culture has depended on this method of agriculture for almost 2000 years. The Balinese stepped rice paddies were carved by hand, with rudimentary tools, and maintained by succeeding generations. In central Bali, north of the village of Tegallalang in the Ubud district, lies a series of thriving stepped rice paddies, a favorite with travelers and photographers. Other verdant terraced rice paddies can be found in Sayan, Jatiluwih, Pupuan and Tabanan. In Bali, the terraced rice paddies are worked according to a well organized social order, called a subak. The subak manages the irrigation water sources, on a strict schedule, fairly distributing the water. 7. Choquequirao Another Peruvian stepped agricultural site is Choquequirao, meaning Cradle of Gold. Seated on the border of Cuzco and Apurimac, this impressive terraced site, is located 3085 meter (10,120 feet) above sea level. Choquequirao contains a staircase configuration, made up of 180 terraces. Built in a completely different style than Machu Picchu, Choquequirao is much larger in area. One can only travel to Choquequirao by foot or horseback, and as such, is visited much less often than Machu Picchu. Without benefit of wheels, the trek to Choquequirao from Cachora can take up to four days! 6. Salinas de Maras The Salineras de Maras, or Inca salt pans have been used for centuries. Salt miners direct natural spring water, containing high concentrations of salt, into the man made terraced flats, numbering around 3,000. This spring water becomes saline by leeching salt from the mountain itself. When the water is evaporated by the sun, thick salt deposits remain. The salt is then cut into huge slabs and transported to the markets. As in some of the Asian rice paddies, these salt pans are passed from generation to generation, and have been in use for centuries. If you plan on visiting, visit in the late afternoon, when the reflected sunset causes the salt pans to appear as if made of gold. 5. Ollantaytambo During the Inca Empire, Ollantaytambo was the royal estate of Emperor Pachacuti who conquered the region, built the town and a ceremonial center. At the time of the Spanish conquest of Peru it served as a stronghold for the Inca resistance. The valleys along Ollantaytambo are covered by an extensive set of agricultural terraces which start at the bottom of the valleys and climb up the surrounding hills. The terraces permitted farming on otherwise unusable terrain. Nowadays Ollantaytambo is an important tourist attraction and one of the most common starting points for hike known as the Inca Trail. 4. Longji Terraces The Longji or Dragon’s Backbone rice terraces were built over 500 years ago during the Ming Dynasty. The terrace fields are found in Longsheng about a two hours drive from Guilin. From a distance, during the growing season, these winding terraces appear as if they were green woven cables laid out over the hillsides, starting at the riverbank and ending near the mountaintop. One can meander through the paddies and villages, greeting and being greeted by horses, pigs, chickens and hard working locals. These rice terraces are Longsheng’s answer to limited arable land and a scant water supply. 3. Hani Terraces The Hani rice paddy steppes are located below the villages on the side of the Ailao Mountains in Yuanyang, and have been cultivated for over 1,000 years. Also carved by hand by the Hani people, these rice terraces have turned a barren hillside into a lush sub-tropical paradise. These terrace fields support enough rice and fish cultivation for hundreds of thousands of people. Water is saved in the hilltop forests, and channeled down to the terraces for irrigation. The rice terraces are flooded from December to March, presenting a spectacular view to travelers. 2. Banaue Rice Terraces Situated in the heartlands of the Cordilleras mountains of the Philippines and rising to an altitude of 1525 meters (5000 ft) are the Banaue Rice Terraces. The terraced fields were carved out by hand without modern tools by the Ifugao tribes and have been producing rice for almost 2,000 years. These terraces are so numerous, steep, and compact, that if stretched out end to end, they would wrap halfway around the globe. Lately, these under maintained rice terraces have been showing their age, as more and more Ifugao tribes people are emigrating to the cities. 1. Machu Picchu One of the most beautiful and impressive ancient sites in the world, Machu Picchu was rediscovered in 1911 by Hawaiian historian Hiram Bingham after it lay hidden for centuries above the Urubamba Valley in Peru. The “Lost City of the Incas” is invisible from below and completely self-contained, surrounded by agricultural terraces and watered by natural springs. Machu Picchu’s narrow terraces were constructed from stone blocks, with thousands of pathways and steps, connecting buildings, plazas and the cemetery. Water was channeled in via aqueducts that had been chiseled into the mountainside, for livestock and to irrigate crops of potatoes and corn. There are no growing crops today on Machu Picchu’s terraces, but a spectacular site none the less.7 years ago (CNN) – President Barack Obama isn't just playing politics - he may be committing fraud on the taxpayer's dime, the Republican National Committee charged on Wednesday. In a letter to the Government Accountability Office from RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, the committee requested an investigation into Obama's recent travel - including trips this week to Iowa and North Carolina - alleging those trips were more political than official. - Follow the Ticker on Twitter: @PoliticalTicker The White House and Obama For America, the president's reelection campaign, go to great lengths to distinguish between official and campaign activities, as do elected officials and their reelection efforts at various levels of government. But Obama's recent speeches, the RNC said in the letter, were "events widely reported to be equivalent to campaign rallies." The committee's case sees supporting evidence in a list of the states Obama has visited this month, including the general election battlegrounds of Florida, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina and Ohio. It's a blurry line, to some extent. "This speech was high on class warfare, slogans, and divisive campaign-style rhetoric," the letter said of a recent official event earlier this month in Florida. When candidates travel by government means - such as a president traveling by Air Force One to a campaign event - Federal Election Commission regulations require the campaign to reimburse the government at a market rate. Typically, this means campaigns pay the cost of first-class airfare for the candidate and any campaign staffers. Travel by Air Force One - which costs over $180,000 per hour - is much more expensive than the price tag for commercial seats. Such scheduling allows "his reelection campaign to save on fuel for Air Force One," the letter said. The government picks up an even greater share of the total tab for a trip combining both campaign and official events. Responding to the letter, White House Spokesman Eric Schultz maintained the president's travel was part of his "official responsibility" to leave Washington and hear from citizens about major issues. “This week’s travel has been part of the President’s official responsibility to get outside of Washington, DC, hear from students, and discuss stopping interest rates on their loans from doubling in July – just like Friday’s trip to Fort Stewart in Hinesville, Georgia to meet with troops, veterans, and military families is likewise part of the President’s official responsibilities. When there is political travel, we follow all rules and regulations that all other Administrations have followed," Schultz said in the statement. Also weighing in, the Obama campaign manager told reporters Wednesday that the campaign would follow campaign finance rules. "As in other administrations, we'll follow all of the rules and regulations to ensure that the committee pays for whatever is required for the president and the first lady to travel to political events," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina told reporters Wednesday. "These are very specific rules that are similar to what Bush and Clinton and other presidents have had to do, and they're very clear and we will abide by all of those in our usual way." While Democrats may see the RNC's letter as spin - this president is far from the first to take his official agenda on the road - and Air Force One as an advantage for the president, Republicans may see the opposite spin in the pushback from another Obama reelection official. "There's no doubt that Governor (Mitt) Romney has an advantage," campaign senior adviser David Axelrod told reporters, referencing the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. "He hasn't had a job in six years, and he famously jokes that he's unemployed, but he's been running for president for six solid years. And he's got every day, 24 hours a day to run for president. Now we don't have that. We don't have that advantage." - CNN White House Correspondent Dan Lothian contributed to this report.FC Edmonton striker Tomi Ameobi awoke Friday to his phone "going crazy" as news filtered out that Britain had voted to leave the European Union. "Family, friends back home," the 27-year-old said. "There's a couple of guys on the team talking about it. It's a hot topic." Ameobi is from Newcastle in northeast England, close to the Scottish border. Team captain Albert Watson hails from Northern Ireland, while other teammates originate from continental Europe, South America, the United States, Canada,, Africa and the United Kingdom. The FC Edmonton player roster and coaching staff has members spanning five continents. Given the team diversity, it's understandable that post-practice field chatter took on a different tone Friday. "I'm quite surprised they're talking politics," said head coach Colin Miller, noting players usually chat about football, women or cars. Miller, a Scottish national, was taken aback by results showing a majority of Britons voted to leave the EU. "I thought the U.K. would stay as a member of the EU, but I was pleased to see that Scotland wanted to stay. That's the Scotsman in me," quipped Miller. For a topic that proved so divisive in Britain, Ameobi said he and his teammates were united in their position, wanting to remain in Europe. "For the most part, to my knowledge, all of them wanted to stay in the EU. Obviously we couldn't vote. Our votes might have been able to tip the scale," Ameobi said with a chuckle. While not knowing what the immediate impact will be, he and other players think it could affect them in future. Soccer players from Britain now enjoy free passage between EU member countries but they could face restrictions once a new system is in place. 'Sometimes we have to take second best' While head coach Colin Miller lamented Britain's departure from the EU, he also wondered how it will affect how his team is run. Because FC Edmonton pays players in Canadian dollars, Miller worries a further devaluation will make it even more difficult to attract players to Edmonton. Collin MIller is the head coach of FC Edmonton. (Tony Lewis/TLSport.ca) "Sometimes we have to take second best," said Miller. Just this season, the team lost out on acquiring a player from Portugal because of the low value of the Canadian dollar, he said. ATB financial chief economist Todd Hirsch says uncertainty about the future is fueling overall nervousness in the business community, impacting everything from the price of oil to the value of the dollar. "So if you're an exporter or importer doing business with Great Britain and you're heavily exposed to that, there are going to be a lot of questions and nervousness because there's a lot of unknowns of what's going to happen next with the United Kingdom." But Hirsch expects the skittishness in the markets to be short term, as the new reality in Europe and the UK is sorted out over the next two years. Governor General David Johnston reluctantly commented on the vote while on a tour of Fort McMurray. Johnston said while in London last week to mark the Queen's 90th birthday it was evident the vote would be close. "Now the people of the United Kingdom will have to get on with their new future and we in Canada will adjust accordingly," he said.The Veterans Affairs Department knew there were 4,000 World War II veterans who had been exposed to mustard gas during chemical experiments, the existence of which wasn’t declassified until the 1990s. But the agency’s effort to track them down and compensate any who suffered injuries went almost nowhere, according to exclusive findings by NPR’s investigative unit in a report broadcast Tuesday. “In more than 20 years, the VA attempted to reach just 610 of the men, with a single letter sent in the mail,” NPR reporters said. “Brad Flohr, a VA senior adviser for benefits, says the agency couldn't find the rest, because military records of the experiments were incomplete. There was no identifying information, he says. No Social Security numbers, no addresses, no... way of identifying them." But an NPR research librarian, working just two months using VA’s own list to scour public records, found more than 1,200 of the subjects. The radio journalists interviewed more than 40 living test subjects and family members. The volunteer troops had been unwittingly subjected to mustard gas to test the effectiveness of masks inside a gas chamber –at a time when U.S. intelligence feared use of such gas by the Germans and Japanese. The veterans contacted by NPR “describe an unending cycle of appeals and denials as they struggled to get government benefits for mustard gas exposure,” the news report said. “Some gave up out of frustration.” The VA stated that it has been processing the claims according to requirements for proof in statute and regulation.Even critics of President Trump seem to agree: The leakers have gone too far. Many in Washington are expressing alarm that the transcripts of Trump’s phone calls with foreign leaders were leaked to The Washington Post, warning that the action could undermine the U.S. government and imperil national security. “This is beyond the pale and will have a chilling effect going forward on the ability of the commander in chief to have candid discussions with his counterparts,” Ned Price, a former National Security Council official under President Barack Obama Barack Hussein ObamaWith low birth rate, America needs future migrants 4 ways Hillary looms over the 2020 race Obama goes viral after sporting black bomber jacket with '44' on sleeve at basketball game MORE, told The Hill. “Granted, the White House contributed to this atmosphere by welcoming the free-for-all environment, where anonymous leaks are commonplace. But we must draw the line somewhere.” ADVERTISEMENT I would've lost my mind if transcripts of Obama's calls to foreign leaders leaked. He wouldn't have sounded so dumb, but it's still absurd. — Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) August 3, 2017 The Post on Thursday printed the entire transcripts of Trump’s private phone calls with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.Many in the media and on the left have celebrated the torrent of leaks — some involving classified information — that have bedeviled the Trump administration since taking office.But Thursday’s revelation went too for some Democrats, who warned that the release of the president’s private conversations with foreign leaders is a bridge too far.“Leaks of sensitive or classified information damages our national security,” Michael McFaul, who served as Russian ambassador under Obama, told The Hill.That sentiment was echoed by Obama’s former National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor, who took a dig at Trump over Twitter but nonetheless said he’d have been mortified to see such a leak happen to his former boss. Perhaps the most vehement criticism of the transcripts leaking came from David Frum, the former George W. Bush speechwriter who is now the senior editor at The Atlantic. Frum has railed against Trump and warned that the president represents a threat to the republic. But Frum on Thursday warned that leaking Trump’s private phone calls with foreign leaders is a reckless way to oppose him. In a piece called “Why Leaking Transcripts of Trump’s Calls Is So Dangerous,” Frum argued that it’s “vitally important” that the president and foreign leaders be able to speak without fear that their conversations will be leaked to the press. “No leader will again speak candidly on the phone to Washington, D.C. — at least for the duration of this presidency, and perhaps for longer,” Frum wrote. “If these calls can be leaked, any call can be leaked — and no leader dare say anything to the president of the United States that he or she would not wish to read in the news at home.” “If no high national-security secret has been betrayed in these transcripts, the workings of the U.S. government have been gravely compromised, and in ways that will be very difficult to repair even after Trump leaves office,” he continued. Can anybody remember any previous leak of a literal WH transcript of a call to a foreign leader? — David Frum (@davidfrum) August 3, 2017 Anybody w access to this transcript also has access to many other secrets. Trusted people are breaking career-long habits to thwart Trump — David Frum (@davidfrum) August 3, 2017 Even before the release of the transcripts, Attorney General Jeff Sessions Jefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsTrump says he hasn't spoken to Barr about Mueller report Ex-Trump aide: Can’t imagine Mueller not giving House a ‘roadmap’ to impeachment Rosenstein: My time at DOJ is 'coming to an end' MORE and his top lieutenants had scheduled a press conference for Friday to address their efforts to staunch the flow of leaks from what Trump’s allies refer to as the “deep state.” Trump is pushing his attorney general to be more aggressive in prosecuting illegal leaks, and Thursday’s revelations could send those efforts into overdrive. Speculation is running rampant over the origins of the transcripts, with some blaming national security adviser H.R. McMaster, who has become a target on the right for purging the National Security Council of some officials who were viewed as Trump loyalists. "The only option President Trump has is to clean house at the National Security Council, starting at the top with General McMaster,” Americans for Limited Government president Rick Manning said in a statement. “The threat posed to the country by the National Security Council leaking requires immediate and swift action." Still, the origins of the leak are unlikely to be clear-cut, and finding the culprits could prove difficult. While only a handful of people were present for the actual phone calls, the final transcripts of the calls can run through many different agencies. The notes were likely taken by a National Security Council official, who then put the conversations into a memorandum of conversation which is then sent through an editing and approval process by senior officials on the NSC. The memorandum is then logged and registered as the official U.S. record of the meeting and kept on file either at the NSC or State Department. It can be distributed, sometimes as a hard copy, to relevant officials at the Department of State, Department of Defense, CIA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and other agencies within the intelligence community. Those with appropriate clearances can also view the memorandums at the repositories where they’re kept. Along the way, there are scores of opportunities for the classified documents to “jump the gap.”A company that says it’s the world’s largest privately owned parking firm is again under fire from drivers who complain they were slapped with unjustified $110 fines. “If they are doing this over and over — they are probably making quite the profit,” Jade Messiah, 20, who was hit with the fine from Diamond Parking in September. “I think maybe it’s just a money scam.” Diamond patrols 1,000 private parking lots in B.C., Alberta and several U.S. states. Diamond Parking says it manages 1,000 parking lots in B.C., Alberta and several states. (CBC) Go Public has received several complaints from people who believe the company fined them unfairly, over the last two years. Messiah’s complaint stands out, because she has hard evidence showing she was nowhere near the Diamond-patrolled parking lot, when it claimed she was parked there. “I was like, there’s no way I am paying this. I know I wasn’t in the city,” she said. Proof she wasn't there Messiah is a student who lives in White Rock, B.C., but spends much of her time in the city of Richmond. The morning she got the parking ticket, she said she left home after 10:30 a.m. and stopped for gas. Diamond Parking ticketed Jade Messiah's car for being parked a time when she was nowhere near the parking lot. (CBC) Messiah then drove to Richmond, a 35 to 40 minute drive away. She parked in a Diamond-patrolled lot, which has two hour parking for mall customers. “I knew there was a two hour parking time limit so I made sure to get out before two hours,” said Messiah, who said she was back at her car around 12:30 p.m. Submit your story ideas: Go Public is an investigative news segment on CBC TV, radio and the web. We tell your stories and hold the powers that be accountable. We want to hear from people across the country with stories they want to make public. Submit your story ideas to Kathy Tomlinson at Go Public Follow @CBCGoPublic on Twitter She said she was shocked to find a $63 ticket on her windshield, suggesting her car was there almost an hour before she’d arrived. “There’s no way it was possible at all,” she said. Diamond attendants place chalk marks on vehicle tires then write tickets if they find the vehicle still parked there beyond the lot’s posted time limit. Messiah’s ticket said her car was ‘chalked’ at 10:27 a.m. She has bank records to prove she was actually buying gas, at a Husky station at 10:38 a.m. The station is in White Rock, near her home. The ticket left on Messiah's car by a Diamond attendant is time stamped 10:27 a.m., almost an hour before she said she parked in the lot. (CBC) “I really do think they need to be brought to justice about this and I would like to see it stopped,” said Messiah. Fine jumps, told to pay She later got a past due notice in the mail from Diamond, which stated that her fine had jumped to $110. “I did call [Diamond] and I explained my situation. All the supervisor said to me was, ‘No I’m sorry we can’t listen to you. Our patrol officer says he was there, therefore you were there. You have to pay the ticket.’” Kevin Roman of Maple Ridge, B.C., is another driver who was upset when a $110 fine from Diamond arrived inexplicably in the mail. Messiah's bank records show she bought gas at 10:38 a.m., a 40-minute drive from the lot where her car was ticketed. (CBC) “He got a past due notice. And he was like — ‘wait a minute, from what?’ He didn’t even know what it was about,” said Roman’s brother-in-law John Leonard, who then complained to Diamond on his behalf. Roman didn’t park in the local mall’s parking area. Instead, he pulled up curbside for a few minutes, in a no-stopping area, where he said he’d seen couriers stop many times. “I was in my half-ton with a trailer and we were going camping,” said Roman. “Because of my over-length vehicle, I pulled over there.” He stayed in the vehicle, while his wife ran in to use the nearby bank machine. Roman said a security guard tapped on his window and told him he couldn’t park there, because it was a fire lane, so he left immediately and parked on the public street. A Diamond parking attendant took this picture of Kevin Roman's vehicle in front of the bank. Roman said he had stopped briefly and moved his vehicle when he was told to. (Diamond Parking) “And I didn’t get any parking ticket,” he said. What Roman didn’t know was, a Diamond attendant patrolling the lot also snapped a picture of his licence plate. Diamond then mailed him the fine for a parking violation. Diamond attendants record vehicle licence plates, then B.C.’s provincial licensing agency gives the company the address of the registered owner. The Insurance Corporation of B.C. has said this is perfectly legal. It is how Diamond knows where to mail its violation notices. Fines cancelled after complaints The company acknowledges what happened in these cases and told Go Public it has cancelled the fines for both Messiah and Roman. In the second case though, Diamond maintains the fine was justified. John Leonard is a bylaw enforcement officer who went to bat for his brother-in-law to fight a violation notice sent out by Diamond. (CBC) “We are under contract with the mall property manager to enforce this exact form of infraction for the safety of the general public,” said Diamond’s Vancouver manager Michael Murray. “This area is clearly marked as a fire lane.” Roman’s brother-in-law, who is a bylaw enforcement officer, questions how Diamond can issue tickets and fines when there is no law explicitly giving it authority to do so. “I don’t see anywhere in legislation that says a private parking company can even write those tickets in the first place,” said Leonard, who said the company said if his brother-in-law paid $40, the fine would be cancelled immediately. “He’s being told we’ll give you a deal if you just pay.… As a bylaw officer, when I write a ticket, I have to prove that in court.” Diamond says it has sought legal opinions on its practices and it points out, in most cases, it is working for private clients on private property. “We can designate any area as, 'no parking' for any reason and enforce it accordingly,” said Murray. It also says it cancels many of the fines when people complain. “Inevitably, a small percentage of consumers that are issued notices are going to feel that they have been wrongfully ticketed and will contact us,” said Murray. “I can tell you that we void a significant percentage of the notices we issue as a courtesy to those that receive them, or on behalf of our client that we have been contracted to serve.” Others still pay Messiah and Leonard suspect many more people simply pay, because they’re intimidated by the official looking fines and they fear the bill will be sent to collections, which Diamond does regularly. “People are afraid. They don’t want the hassle. They go, ‘what is this? Oh I’m just going to pay this because I don’t want my credit ruined’,” said Leonard. “It’s just bonus money in [Diamond’s] pocket.” “It’s rare that people will go to this extent to get something taken care of,” said Messiah. Hamilton lawyer David Thompson tried unsuccessfully to mount a class action against Impark — another large private parking company — for issuing similar parking fines in Ontario. He is calling on provincial governments to bring in consumer protection laws to govern the practices of these private parking companies. "Consumers have no bargaining power to negotiate or alter the terms of [private parking] agreements. Consumers typically do not realize that they will be charged significant fines if they overstay at a lot," said Thompson. "They might enter a lot with a maximum daily parking rate of $5.... If the consumer overstays, even let’s say by half an hour, they could face a violation fee of close to $70... [which is] 14 times the maximum daily rate." Consumer Protection B.C. said it has had 55 inquiries about Diamond Parking in the last five years. In Washington state, regulatory authorities have adjudicated 64 complaints against the company since 2009. A handful of claims have been filed in B.C. small claims court, but it appears all were settled before trial. The common theme among all complaints is that when the driver pushes back, Diamond cancels the fine. Submit your story ideas to Kathy Tomlinson at Go Public Follow @CBCGoPublic on TwitterThe historic 162-year-old Scottish Rite Temple downtown sold to a local developer for $3.25 million last month, ending the Freemason's 110 years of ownership. The Greek revival style building one block from Lafayette Square at 619 Carondelet St. was built in 1853 as a First United Methodist Church. The New Orleans Scottish Rite group bought the property in 1905 and has owned it ever since. The sale was completed Dec. 26 and recorded in Orleans Parish records this week. The New Orleans Scottish R
left, defeated Yahya Jammeh, right, by a small margin The stalemate is already taking a huge toll on the economy of the small West African country, which is popular with tourists, with the Chamber of Commerce saying businesses have been badly affected, our reporter says. The Supreme Court says it will hear a case brought by Mr Jammeh's party to cancel the result on 10 January. President Jammeh, 51, seized power in 1994 and has been accused of human rights abuses, although he has held regular elections. The Gambia has not had a smooth transfer of power since independence from Britain in 1965. According to the electoral commission's final count: Mr Barrow won 222,708 votes (43.3%) President Jammeh took 208,487 (39.6%) A third-party candidate, Mama Kandeh, won 89,768 (17.1%) Results were revised by the electoral commission on 5 December, when it emerged that the ballots for one area had been added incorrectly. Read more:- Become a fan on Board Game Geek - Like us on Facebook - Check out the Games Designer's Blog Hello and welcome to Dungeon Saga as it heads into its last week on Kickstarter! Thank you for stopping by and supporting Dungeon Saga - your help will allow us to create an awesome dungeon adventure board game and help bring it to clubs and stores next year! To help you out with a pledge, we've put together this handy little guide: To get all of the great game experience, including everything you need to play plus a great selection of stretch goals, bonus extras and goodies, we recommend a pledge of Dungeon Master! In return for pledging your support and helping to make this a reality, we are offering one great-value-for-money pledge level. With further funding, we hope to unlock many more FREE extras in your pledge level too. Dungeon Saga: The Dwarf King’s Quest is the dungeon adventure board game for 1-5 players, ages 13 and up, written by Jake Thornton and produced by Mantic Games. Dungeon Saga: The Dwarf King's Quest Prototype Set in the Dwarfen Hold of Dolgarth, one player will take on the role of Mortibris and command the Undead in a battle against mighty heroes. These adventurers can be split between up to 4 players, or led by just one. You’ll use the simple rules to play through the game’s exciting scenarios, before eventually facing off against the Necromancer in a final showdown! Once you've played through the story, pick up and play with the Adventurer's Companion - a tome of Advanced Rules that introduces elements of classic roleplaying to your adventures! The game is designed for both beginners, who are exploring their first dungeon, all the way up to veteran adventurers with many quests completed. All figures supplied unpainted, painted examples for reference only. No assembly required. Watch how to play the Dungeon Saga: Alpha Core Rules Gameplay Features: - 1-5 Players: Battle against an opponent or band together with your family or local club members and fight the forces of darkness together! - Solo play and Fully Co-op: Play against the game or team up with the kids to take on an A.I. controlled dungeon - or assume the role of the Necromancer and crush the heroes! - Ready-to-play right out of the box: Coloured plastic miniatures like you would find in Mars Attacks - The Miniatures Game or the Gears of War Board Game come ready-built so that you can get gaming straight away. All of the stats and rules you need to play are immediately available on simple character mats and the deck of equipment cards. The Heroes of Dolgarth: Orlaf the Human Barbarian \| Madriga the Elf Ranger \| Rordin the Dwarf Fighter \| Danor the Human Wizard The Undead: Mortibris \| Skeleton Warriors \| Skeleton Archer \| Zombies - Modular Dungeon: Quest through Dolgarth in awesome detail using the full colour, gridded dungeon tiles. There is also dungeon furniture such as chests where you can acquire magical potions, scrolls and more. Follow our simple maps or create your own! - Innovative Dice-Driven Fun: Fight through swathes of Zombies or control the necromatic powers of Mortibris and empower your minions to victory, combat and magic is based on a very simple system that uses six-sided dice. Enhance your game and wield magical items, cast powerful spells and perform incredible heroic feats as you combat the magic of the Necromancer and their deadly Dungeon Master deck. - Narrative Driven Scenarios: From the first few missions where you'll learn the basic mechanics to the game, to sprawling dungeons overrun with regenerating Undead, the game's narrative-heavy scenarios gradually get harder as you progress, introducing new rules and powerful enemies, increasing the challenge and the fun for veterans of the genre or players new to gaming! - The Adventure Grows!: Want to take your game further? Use the Advanced Rules to build your own epic Dungeon Saga! No quest need ever be the same. Just some of the different examples of the tiles you will get. Each modular dungeon tile is made of durable thick card to withstand the rigors of gaming and the fury of battle. Add-ons are extras you can pledge for in addition to a pledge level to really sweeten the deal! Pledging and selecting Optional Add-ons To get an Optional Add-on, click “Manage my Pledge” in the top right corner of the Kickstarter page and input the total value of everything you want. For example, if you’re at Dungeon Master ($100) and want the Infernal Crypts expansion set, you would enter $125 as your total pledge. When the campaign has finished, we will send you access to a shiny automated PledgeManager. On here you will input your choices and let us know what you would like for your pledge. Expansions Dungeon Scenery Game Upgrades Board Game Figures Collector's Edition Legendary Figures Kings of War Figure Packs Dwarf King's Hold Classic Figure Packs Game Accessories Standard shipping to UK and US backers is free over $25. Please add $5 for shipping if you are spending under $25. If you would like to back this project and are based in the EU, please add $10 to your pledge total. If you would like to back this project and are based in Canada, please add $15 to your pledge total. If you would like to back this project and are based in the rest of the world, including Australia, please add $25 to your pledge total. All backers have the option of tracked courier shipping. This costs $15 on top of any shipping costs above. Therefore, to have their shipment sent by tracked courier, a US backer would pay $15, and a Spanish backer would pay a total of $25. Courier shipping is mandatory for all backers from Africa or South America, so you must add a total of $40 for shipping if you live in one of these continents.If 2010 and 2011 are to be remembered in a future full of professional gamers and wide-audience viewership of “e-sports,” they will certainly be recalled as years in which the phenomenon of watching other people play videogames skyrocketed from an obscure nerdy niche to a regular nerdy niche. Sure, South Korea has lived and breathed this way of life for over a decade with Starcraft, but with the release of Starcraft 2, spectator fever has taken over PC gaming in a big way. Tournaments are regularly bankrolling the most well known players, and streaming commentary is so popular that now professional commentators are becoming commonplace. And it’s spreading outside of Starcraft’s universe: with over 35,000 players tuning in to Justin.tv and similar sites to watch Super Street Fighter 4, Marvel vs Capcom 3 and Mortal Kombat tournaments take place, it appears fighting games are gaining crowd momentum, too. With all this excitement, money, and public interest pouring in, it seems like society is on the precipice of mainstream acceptance of e-sports as an acceptable voyeuristic past-time, much like regular sports. But there’s one tiny problem. Wait, why should I explain it to you? You’re not even a fucking blogger. What the hell does that have to do with anything? Exactly. It doesn’t. But if you’ve spent any time trying to learn a competitive game, you’ve probably encountered comments like this all the time. “Man, Ryu is really hard to beat.” “What the fuck are you, 4800 BP rank C garbage? Step up your game before you complain” or “Geez, wouldn’t it be cool if Queens were massive units to counter Forcefields?” “Wouldn’t it be cool if you shut the fuck up, Bronze League moron?” No, I’m not rank C or in Bronze league, nor do I spend a lot of time complaining about balance or posting balance suggestions in forums. But spend a few days on GameFAQs, TeamLiquid, Steam Powered User Forums, or anywhere with a budding competitive gaming community, and you’ll quickly learn that players who aren’t in the top 2% of the skill curve aren’t welcome at the discussion table. Look, I get it. I know that someone who doesn’t make SCVs past the 5 minute mark is terrible. I understand that a player who doesn’t even know MK9 has a block button probably isn’t too well educated about meter management. I understand why these players’ opinions aren’t strategically sound. But for fuck’s sake, maybe we could all be a little nicer about it? When low-tier players jump into forums or onto streams and talk about the game, sure they’re misinformed. But if proponents of e-sports and competitive gaming want their hobby to become slightly more publicly acceptable than pissing in grandma’s garden in broad daylight, they’re going to have to play nice with the newbies. Think about the rest of the world for a minute. Ever go to a sports bar on Super Bowl Sunday, or sit around talking football with your cousins at a barbeque? Ten dollars says conversations like this don’t pop up very fucking often: “Did you see that pass? Manning is amazing! I can’t believe that play isn’t more popular at the 40.” “Dude, shut the fuck up. Have you ever played football competitively? Even in the minor leagues? I bet you didn’t even play on the high school team.” “What does that have to do with anyth-“ “Yeah I didn’t think so, you fuckin scrub.” There are a few reasons nobody talks like this. First of all, unlike e-sports, it’s not very easy to become a professional or even serious hobbyist football player without ridiculous luck. But more importantly, these conversations don’t happen because they are bat shit insane and would make you look like an asshole. Yet drop by Team Liquid and post your thoughts on a recent Starcraft 2 match, and do a shot every time someone asks you how big your dick is what league you’re in. Or do a shot whenever your opinion is treated with contempt before it’s treated with an earnest willingness to educate. I guarantee you’ll be dead of alcohol poisoning before a 7 Roach Rush could be knocking at your door. Simply put, e-sports will never become mainstream unless the competitive gaming community can get over itself and open a dialog with lower level players, hobbyists, and unskilled spectators. The average baseball fan can’t throw a curveball. The average NASCAR fan would shit himself if he drove over 140 mph. Hell, half the world’s soccer fans can’t afford three meals a day, nevermind spare the energy to insult one another over what constitutes perfect goalkeeping. Yet despite the fanbases of these sports being almost universally non-competitive (or even non participating) audience members, sports are incredibly popular, if you haven’t realized. Maybe part of that is that they’ve been around longer, but I’d bet part of it is that the average viewer is allowed to share his or her opinion without getting publicly humiliated by everyone in hearing distance. So before you flame, rage, or insult the next poster who asks why kill streaks aren’t in Battlefield, take a deep breath and think about the impact on the future of competitive gaming.Signed git commits allow a user to verify the source was signed by one of the contributors. In order for this to work, however, several steps have to be taken: The user must have git and GPG installed. While git will typically be installed already if the user wants to use github, GPG may not be. Make sure to install it from your distribution's packages, or from its source, and verify signatures and/or hashes. Downloading a trojan GPG is not a great way to start. The user must then import the public keys that will be trusted. Most of those public keys are in the Monero git tree (in the utils/gpg_keys directory). Simplest is to import them all, though some of the contributors are not active any more: gpg --import utils/gpg_keys/*.asc GPG now knows those keys, and will use them when verifying a signature. To verify a commit, or a tag, git will automatically use GPG if told to: For a commit (here, the last one): git show --show-signature For a tag (here, the tag for version 0.9.4): git tag -v v0.9.4 When you download the tree, or update it, you'll want the first command. It will check the signature for the latest commit. It is implicit that, if you trust the person which signed that last commit, you trust that person to have built upon a tree that was also signed by someone they trusted, so you do not have to check every single commit - there'd be thousands. If a commit is not signed, it will not say anything about GPG signatures, since there is nothing to check. If a commit is not signed, alarm bells should ring. Most of the Monero maintainers sign their commits, and, for those who don't, fluffypony signs the merge, so you should always see a signed commit by fluffypony as the latest commit. This may change in the future, but the latest commit should always be signed. If a commit is signed, you will see a couple lines about the GPG signature. One line tells you a signature is present, and tells you the key id that made the signature. You also get an email address, but this is easy to forge, and meant just as an aid. You will want to double check the key which made the signature is indeed one you want to trust: one of the ones you imported in the step above. For instance, fluffypony's current signature id is 1CCD4FCD. Always good practice to verify several sources: when importing signatures, you should see that same key id. If not, then ask questions. The second line tells you whether the signature was good. A good signature is one that corresponds to the commit being signed. A bad signature is one that doesn't (i.e., either the signature, or the commit being signed, was altered after the fact. Or both). If you do not get a "Good signature", then something is wrong. Last, you might get a warning that the signature was not made by a trusted signature. This can be ignored, as you did not tell GPG to ultimately trust those signatures. You could do so if you wished, but that goes into editing key properties, so I will leave it at that. Suffice to say that the trust you should afford is whether they signature signing a commit is one of the ones from the Monero contributors, based on matching key ids (note that key ids are a bit short, so it's theoretically possible that a key is forged to get the same key id. I'm not sure how practically feasible this is at this time). So now you hopefully have it all checked out and your Monero tree shows as being properly signed by the right key. :) It is important to realize that if those signatures are checked, it is irrelevant to consider where the tree was obtained from. As long as the signature checks out, you can be sure that wherever it was, nobody could have tampered with it, or the signature would not check out. This makes it safe to pull a tree from a seedy place (save any exploits trying to pwn git or GPG themselves by crafted trees, etc, but this is becoming way more unlikely). This takes care of the second question. With this knowledge, we can now answer the first: Relying on GitHub's "Verified" label is better than not relying on anything, but worse than checking signatures yourself. Why? Because you are trusting a third party to check things for you and not lie to you, as well as opening yourself to MITM attacks, or GitHub being compromised. After all, what would prevent GitHub or someone compromising GitHub from placing a "Verified" label on the page? Nothing, but checking signatures yourself will uncover the treachery. Last point: if you're going to pull and build often, there is a script that helps with this, posted by moneromooo, a Monero contributor: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg15315904#msg15315904 This points to a signature, which you can check with the instructions supplied. Since it's signed with moneromooo's signature, which is in the Monero tree, it also can come from any random site, as long as you check the signature to be from that same key. It's a good exercise :) This script is meant to replace running make. It checks signatures, then runs make if they check out (and complains loudly without running make if the signatures do not check out). This ensures that, if you use this script to build, you can't forget to check signatures and unwittingly run source that was tampered with. Why is this not in the Monero tree? See that post for details. So the morale of the story is, always verify signatures!Never doubt Adrian Peterson's ability to bounce back quicker than normal humans. The Minnesota Vikings running back told Dash Radio on Friday that he intends to play this week against the Indianapolis Colts. "Being out there confirmed I'm ready to roll," Peterson said, via the Star Tribune. "I've had my head in the playbook." The Vikings would need to make a corresponding move to activate Peterson to the 53-man roster. All Day has been out since Sept. 18 with a torn meniscus. He returned to practice this week. The Vikings could certainly use a boost on the ground. Behind a porous offensive line, Minnesota ranks last in the NFL with just 73.4 rushing yards per game. Prior to the injury in Week 2, Peterson was averaging just 1.6 yards per carry. Peterson's return had been targeted for Week 16 versus the Green Bay Packers. It's not the first time Peterson has returned earlier than expected. Clearly, the quick-healing colossus is from a different planet than the rest of us. UPDATE: The Viking announced they've activated Peterson from injured reserve on Saturday.DENVER—When Isaiah McKenzie was fielding punts, the ball seemed to hang so high and become difficult to judge. Jordan Taylor treats punts like a can of corn. The ease in which Taylor catches a punt has brought a peaceful calm to what had been a far-too-adventurous Broncos’ special teams unit this year. Besides his sure hands, Taylor can do something with the punt. He had five punt returns Sunday in a 23-0 win against the New York Jets, including one for 24 yards. “Oh man, aside from D.T. I think Jordan Taylor is the MVP of the game,’’ said quarterback Trevor Siemian. “That was good field position all game. … You can’t say enough about what that does for an offense when you get to start around the 50.’’ Simmons injures ankle while celebrating Broncos starting safety Justin Simmons injured his left ankle while celebrating the strip sack of Jets quarterback Josh McCown and fumble recovery by defensive end Adam Gotsis. It was after the third defensive snap of the game. Simmons twisted his ankle while jump-body-bumping Brandon Marshall, who caused the fumble. Simmons left ankle landed awkwardly and didn’t return. He left the stadium in a walking boot. Simmons said after the game X-rays didn’t show a break but he would undergo an MRI on Monday morning to determine other damage. With the Broncos playing Thursday on the artificial surface at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Simmons may miss his first game of the season. Game balls Demaryius Thomas and the Denver defense were awarded game balls following the Broncos’ 23-0 win against the Jets. Thomas passed Shannon Sharpe for second place on the Broncos’ all-time receiving list for touchdowns (56) and yards (8,475). The defense held the Jets to 100 yards in total offense and posted its first shutout since a 2005 game against the Jets. Copyright 2017 KUSAOn June 15, 2014, President Obama told Congress he was ordering “up to approximately 275 U.S. Armed Forces personnel” to Iraq to fight ISIS. They would “remain in Iraq until the security situation becomes such that it is no longer needed,” he added. Unless you have a loved one in the U.S. military, you probably haven’t been aware of the slow-but-steady increase in American troops on the ground inside Iraq since then. On Monday, Pentagon officials said the total U.S. troop presence in Iraq would grow by more than 200 troops—to a deployed force of 4,087—as Baghdad and Washington prepare to take Mosul back from ISIS. Troops on temporary assignment in Iraq, those guarding diplomatic outposts—or those rotating in to replace troops who haven’t left yet—aren’t included under that 4,087 ceiling. When they are, Pentagon officials say, the total U.S. troops presence in Iraq is creeping toward 5,000. While the offensive to retake Iraq’s second-largest city isn’t yet underway in a formal sense, the U.S. is sending more trainers, as well as eight AH-64 helicopter gunships and rocket systems to Iraq to get ready for the showdown. U.S. forces are being assigned to smaller units “closer to the action,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Monday in Baghdad. Iraqi fighters, trained by U.S. troops, are slowly tightening a noose around Mosul and have begun to “shape the battlefield” for the key fight for Iraq, defense officials say, although they doubt Iraqi forces will be ready to storm ISIS’s key Iraq outpost until next year. “My expectation is that by the end of the year, we will have created the conditions whereby Mosul will eventually fall,” Obama told CBS on Monday. Pentagon officials say the U.S. troops being sent to Iraq possess unique skills—in intelligence, aviation and logistics, for example—that the Iraqi forces lack. The Iraqi government has been leery of allowing too many U.S. troops back on its soil. “It’s directly attributable to developing the plan for Mosul,” Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last month when asked about rumbles of a future U.S. troop boost to help Baghdad’s soldiers as well as the Kurds’ Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq. The U.S. troop increase, he added, would be to give the Iraqis the capabilities that “would best enable the Iraqi security forces and the Peshmerga to be successful in operations in Mosul.” Even if 5,000 U.S. troops end up inside Iraq, that’s less than 3% of 170,000 U.S. peak in 2007. After an eight-year occupation that killed 4,491 American troops and cost an estimated $2 trillion, Obama has no desire to re-enter that quagmire. He has steadfastly ruled out ground combat for U.S. troops, although their training and defense assignments are bringing them closer to the front lines. Last month, ISIS rocket fire hit a small base in northern Iraq, killing U.S. Marine Staff Sgt. Louis Cardin. The U.S. military has gone to great lengths to declare that U.S. forces in Iraq are not engaged in combat. “What they’re there to do is simply shoot back if somebody shoots at them,” Baghdad-based Army Col. Steve Warren told reporters recently, when asked if U.S. troops in Iraq are in combat. “They won’t kind of go off and conduct any type of mission on their own.” The incremental U.S. troop growth is more of a White House strategy to wage war on the cheap—especially in a conflict that Obama hailed when all U.S. troops finally came home at the end of 2011. Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who chairs the armed services committee, called the latest deployment “the kind of grudging incrementalism that rarely wins wars, but could certainly lose one.” It has led to a fingers-crossed kind of fight, with the U.S. seeming to dispatch only sufficient force to handle an immediate need, until it’s no longer adequate—and then sending more. This tendency has generated ire among some U.S. military commanders, but the top brass has gone along with Obama’s desire to keep the U.S. military footprint in Iraq as small as possible. “Back in Vietnam days, we called this ‘gradual escalation’—a euphemism for trying harder when you don’t know exactly what you’re trying to achieve,” says Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel and author of the just-released America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History. “The approach failed then, but Obama appears determined to revive it.” Contact us at [email protected] Bronx teenager who fell off the roof of a six-story apartment building on Thursday while fleeing police officers died of his injuries on Saturday at St. Barnabas Hospital, the police said. Authorities said Hakeem Kuta, 17, was with a group of other teenagers who were smoking marijuana Thursday evening in the lobby of the apartment building at 2685 Valentine Avenue in the Bronx. A man who exited the building complained to four uniformed officers, who then entered the lobby. When Mr. Kuta and several others ran to the roof, two officers chased them. All but Mr. Kuta and a 14-year-old were able to elude the police. With officers shouting, “please don’t move,” Mr. Kuta tried to step over a short wall at the edge of the building but stumbled, officials said. The 14-year-old grabbed for Mr. Kuta’s vest as he fell, officials said, but he was not able to hang on. The Police Department said that the officers appeared to have acted appropriately. After Mr. Kuta fell, officers raced from the roof to give first aid, officials said. Officer Maria Imburgia applied chest compressions until paramedics arrived.GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) -- The Latest on the shooting of a student at a South Carolina high school (all times local): 3 p.m. Authorities say two students are facing charges in connection with a shooting at a South Carolina high school, including a teen who was shot when a gun fired accidentally. Greenville County Sheriff's Lt. James Beaver says a 17-year-old student at Southside High School has been charged as an adult with unlawful carrying of a pistol, disturbing schools and carrying weapons on school property. County School District Superintendent W. Burke Royster says the student was in possession of the gun but did not fire it on Friday morning in the school's cafeteria. Officials do not know if he brought the gun to school. Beaver says another student who was shot when the gun went off will face the same charges as a juvenile when he's released from the hospital after treatment for injuries that were not life-threatening. Authorities say the shooting was accidental and happened just before 8:30 a.m. Friday. The school was placed on lockdown but students were allowed to come back in after deputies determined they were not looking for an at-large shooter. ------ 11:35 a.m. Deputies say a student brought a gun to a South Carolina high school and suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Greenville County Sheriff's Office spokesman Drew Pinciaro said in a news release that investigators are still trying to figure out what happened Friday morning in the cafeteria at Southside High School. No other students were injured. School district officials were starting to dismiss students to buses, drive home or be picked up by their parents. Details about the student and how the gun got into the school have not been released. ------ 11 a.m. School district officials say students are being allowed back into a Greenville, South Carolina, high school where one student was wounded in a shooting. Greenville County School District spokeswoman Beth Brotherton says each student is being search before being allowed to re-enter Southside High School Friday morning. Authorities say they received a 911 call just after 8:30 a.m. that someone had been shot in the school cafeteria. Brotherton says the student was conscious and talking and was taken to a local hospital. Greenville County Sheriff's Department spokesman Drew Pinciaro told local media outlets the situation at Southside High School was under control and that authorities were not searching for a shooter. Brotherton would not answer questions about if the shot was self-inflicted or how the gun got into the school. Brotherton says parents will soon be allowed to pick up children if they want to. ------ 10 a.m. Authorities say they are investigating the shooting of a student at a high school in Greenville, South Carolina, but are not actively seeking a shooter. Greenville County Sheriff's Dept. spokesman Drew Pinciaro told local media outlets the situation at Southside High School was under control and that authorities were not searching for a shooter. Pinciaro said no arrests had been made. School district spokeswoman Beth Brotherton says a student was shot Friday morning in the school cafeteria. She says the student was conscious and talking and was taken to a local hospital. Southside and several other schools in the area were put on lockdown. ------ 9:40 a.m. Officials say a student wounded in a shooting at a high school in Greenville, South Carolina, has been taken to the hospital. District officials say in a statement the student is still conscious and talking. Officials say the shooting happened Friday morning in the cafeteria at Southside High School. Several schools in the area have been placed on lockdown, and district officials say they've set up a perimeter around the school. They say they'll tell parents shortly when they can pick up students. Deputies did not immediately return a message seeking information on a possible shooter. Dispatchers have told local media outlets the shooting appears to be isolated. ------ 9:20 a.m. Officials say a student has been wounded in a shooting at a high school in Greenville, South Carolina. Greenville County School District spokeswoman Beth Brotherton said in a statement Friday that a student at Southside High School had been shot. Brotherton says the student is conscious and is with the principal and school nurse. Local news outlet reported dispatchers as saying the shooting happened on campus and appeared to be an isolated incident. Southside and a nearby elementary school were put on lockdown and emergency and school district officials were on their way to the scene. Deputies did not immediately return a message seeking information on a possible shooter.I was surprised, and deeply hurt. Despite my shame, I cried openly in the cafe. You see, I was actually angry at him for being sick in the first place, for creating so much disruption in our lives and now this – what felt like a rejection of my love and my strength in holding everything together while he went through treatment. In the following days, I moved like a sleepwalker. The conversation kept replaying in my mind and it would surprise me at odd moments – putting the washing on the line, riding the train into work. I'd find myself feeling ashamed, weeping and cursing my husband for proposing this absurd path. I thought about leaving him. I wondered how I could explain it to the children. Despairing, I confronted him again and said: "Whoever she is, go and f--- her and come back to talk to me afterwards." He denied there was another woman. I suggested a trial separation. He said he didn't want that. Instead, he waited and was loving. He hugged me whenever he saw me. He asked how I was feeling. He did more housework and offered to cook dinner more often. I asked him about the emotional risks of this proposal. What if one of us falls in love with someone else? It will be OK, he said, because we'll still love each other. We'll keep each other safe. I want the connection with others, he argued. It's not just about the sex. I want the feelings, he said. Feelings? I was terrified of feeling. In becoming strong to deal with his cancer, I had locked my feelings away to keep my job, the family and household operational. He wanted to unleash feelings on the world? I had visions of a tsunami of tears sweeping through my life and creating devastation in its wake. Weeks passed. I began to wonder. I was still angry at him but I began to remember my freedom before we settled down. It was a pretty audacious idea. What if? What might this open relationship look like? There comes a time when you look back at the life before kids – before serious life – and you mourn the loss of the young woman you were. Once upon a time, I danced on tables and wore daring clothes. I took risks and kissed a lot of boys. Could I get in touch with that wild woman I once was? So I read Dan Savage. I looked in the mirror at my body that had produced and nourished three kids and wondered if it could inspire desire in others. Despite being monogamous for 17 years, I considered what sex might feel like with someone else. I went to see a psychologist. I told her I was terrified of grief, of loss and being vulnerable. She gently suggested that there could be great strength in vulnerability too. I have never stopped loving my husband. Like most couples, many tiny conflicts of domesticity come between us and perpetual intimate bliss. But we'd been through so much together, I wasn't ready to give up. I was ready to try something new. I wanted to feel again, even though it terrified me. I was willing to allow myself to feel vulnerable again. After reading everything I could find, I found a sex advice column in a newspaper about a couple opening their relationship and the therapist recommended a workshop-sex play party called Curiosity. I didn't realise it then, but I had discovered what would ultimately be our salvation. Three months after our first difficult conversation, we attended our first session which gave us a safe place to explore, and it introduced us to an extraordinary group of people. The key theme was the concept of communication, consent and feedback. It's such a simple formula and yet has such a powerful implication on relationships. For the first time, I began to wonder if I could ask for what I wanted, and be open enough to receive it. I felt empowered. And curious about where this might lead. We didn't suddenly jump into the deep end at this party. We watched, talked to people and explored the connection with each other first. We went back the next month and then the month after that. We made friends with other people. We began with some flirtations and a couple of months in, we eventually began seeing other people and building connections with them. The first sex I had with someone new was both wonderful and awkward. His arousal and response to me was flattering. When he called out my name, I felt like a different person, as though the new voice speaking it had changed me. And then I had to deal with condoms again! He didn't know what I liked, I had to tell him. These were discussions I hadn't had with my husband for years. I had to re-learn how to communicate what I wanted. Dating others was intoxicating. For a little while, there were so many opportunities, I found my ego and vanity appeased. We set up profiles on OK Cupid and linked them. We found a polyamorous meetups group and attended regular gatherings. We met people like us who were new at open relationships, and some who had been "poly" for years. I was surprised that I got more attention than my husband. Married, poly women in their forties are still desirable, it would seem. At one point, I had to turn the message notifications off on my phone because it would ping throughout the evening, making my husband sigh and roll his eyes. We made agreements with each other about dating and family commitments and what was acceptable in terms of nights out and who cooked dinner and took the kids to basketball training. Jealousy rarely appeared. I don't know why. It seems like it ought to have. But I was so pleased that I was desired by interesting and lovely people, that I felt that my husband's pleasure seemed fair and balanced against my own. Also, I genuinely liked the women he dated. My husband and I still made love. We talked often about why we liked certain people, and what we needed from each other. Occasionally, we brought new tricks and skills into our shared bed together that we learnt from others. So today, nine months in, after a lot of dating, things have calmed a little, the new dates have slowed, and we have made sincere connections with other people. Some lovers we have shared together in threesomes and foursomes. Some lovers have become good friends and we've introduced them to our kids. Both my husband and I have "favourites". Our lovers sometimes stay the night. They have dinner with us, and bring cake and wine. My husband's lover brought me flowers when I had a bad day. My lover brought games to teach to the kids. Having a conversation with our kids about our new open relationship was our last taboo. My husband wanted to get it out of the way so he could openly show affection to his lovers but I was worried at how they would cope. In the end, one of our kids noticed I wasn't in our bed when she woke in the night – and simply asked a question the next morning. She hadn't witnessed anything but I felt it was appropriate to explain a few things that we were doing differently from other people. I explained we loved each other the most, but that we loved other people too. She looked a little doubtful but then told me she didn't mind so long as we still loved each other and loved her and the rest of the family. I realise this is only the beginning of many conversations with my kids, and that there will be more, some with higher levels of difficulty. Oddly, this doesn't scare me nearly as much as that first difficult conversation that my husband and I had nearly a year ago. I reflect on how our lives have changed in the past year. I still love my husband, more than ever. The intensity is made stronger by the delirious energy of new loves. Remember the heady rush of a new relationship – yearning to see a lover's face, feel their touch, and hear their voice? Breathing in my lover's scent after time apart, I find my desire
don’t rival whatever they were inside the past. New desktop PCs are often sold to be a niche item to high-end PC gamers, which load up with multiple screens and killer graphics cards. The lower-end niche barely registers anymore, as casual PC users often don’t replace their desktop inside event it dies, instead opting to depend on their smartphone to remain connected. The PC are at desperate need of a killer app that only it may offer. Enter the Oculus Rift, your entire 3D virtual reality system that’s attracting somebody’s vision of game designers worldwide. The Oculus Rift VR provides best hope inside generation utilizing the truly immersive gaming and video virtual reality experience that continues to get tantalizingly approximately your budget. The Rift uses character viewport tracking technology to provide the highest quality first-person gaming experience around. Adoption by developers is proceeding swiftly. Gamers is able to see an officially supported version of Half-Life 2 now regarding the Oculus Rift VR. Unreal Engine 4 has grown to be being rebuilt to generate simple support for developing with all the Rift. Team Fortress, the free multiplayer game from Steam, is rebuilt to compliment VR mode, too. Since a fantastic deal modern gaming already uses the 1st-person viewport because the default perspective with all the player, deploying games for ones Rift doesn’t need a radical redesign of gaming engines. Oculus will also be working hard to push the Rift weight-loss than just a gaming platform. A Rift-compatible version of Google Maps is undoubtedly in production. The company is implementing 3D movie watching while with all the Oculus Rift. A strong quantity of fans is forming child the Rift retreats into full production. The SDK has shipped to developers. The Rift lies for being among the killer gifts to the holiday buying season in 2013. The question available for you is if the Rift will assist conserve the PC industry tasked with powering it? Are there enough high-end gamers, whose rigs develop the graphics cards instructed to power the Rift, to ignite a whole new round of PC buying operate the Rift? Oculus already provides the interest of Valve, whose Steam system powers the trusted DRM and distribution system in several of PC gaming. Getting VR mode games through the masses won’t be an issue. The real real question is whether or not the knowledge is going being compelling enough to push hardware sales. Some technologies only have a second seek to succeed. 3D movie technology was tried over multiple generations. It took a considerable technological advance to produce 3D movies an everyday feature each with each theater from the world. The same may hold true for virtual reality. The Oculus Rift generally is a far cry from Nintendo’s old Virtual Boy, the 1st mass marketed VR headset. The Rift is a large advance, on par with modern 3D films. Time will inform whether it may fuel the exact same revival in PC sales.RUGBY league great Andrew Johns has angrily denied suggestions he introduced a dangerous culture of gambling and partying to the Manly NRL club. Johns, who worked with the Sea Eagles as an assistant coach from 2012 until the end of last year, is a close friend of renowned punter and former brothel owner Eddie Hayson, but the rugby league Immortal says suggestions he brought the controversial figure to the club are “ludicrous”. “I didn’t even go to games socially because I was working at the football for Channel 9,” Johns told News Corp Australia. “I knew Eddie from my time at Newcastle but I didn’t attend any games with him or involve him in the Manly club.” Johns’ insistence comes four days after it was revealed Manly’s round 16 loss to South Sydney and round 24 loss to Parramatta last season were reportedly under the microscope of the NSW organised crime squad. Hayson, who is reportedly socially involved with Brett Stewart and former Manly players Glenn Stewart, Kieran Foran and Anthony Watmough, has been linked with placing large bets on at least the Rabbitohs clash. Hayson has denied those claims, and there is no suggestion any of those players are involved in any match-fixing allegations. Johns and Hayson once owned six racing horses together and were embroiled in a betting scandal when the latter reportedly won $1 million after betting against Newcastle, in a match where the Knights halfback was ruled out injured late in the week. The NRL investigated the matter, but both were cleared of any wrongdoing. Johns’ denials came after Manly official Peter Peters said on Sunday the club had long been worried about some of the figures former off-field staff had brought to the club. “We’re concerned at some of the elements that are around our club, that are seemingly welcomed to the club by a certain section of our club — who are, I might say, no longer with us,” Peters told Sky Sports Radio. “We had a situation where we felt like we should go to the NRL. The concern was about just the types that were gathering.”A Bitcoin address, or simply address, is an identifier of 26-35 alphanumeric characters, beginning with the number 1 or 3, that represents a possible destination for a bitcoin payment. Addresses can be generated at no cost by any user of Bitcoin. For example, using Bitcoin Core, one can click "New Address" and be assigned an address. It is also possible to get a Bitcoin address using an account at an exchange or online wallet service. There are currently three address formats in use: P2PKH which begin with the number 1, eg: 1BvBMSEYstWetqTFn5Au4m4GFg7xJaNVN2. P2SH type starting with the number 3, eg: 3J98t1WpEZ73CNmQviecrnyiWrnqRhWNLy. Bech32 type starting with bc1, eg: bc1qar0srrr7xfkvy5l643lydnw9re59gtzzwf5mdq. A Bitcoin address is a single-use token Like e-mail addresses, you can send bitcoins to a person by sending bitcoins to one of their addresses. However, unlike e-mail addresses, people have many different Bitcoin addresses and a unique address should be used for each transaction. Most Bitcoin software and websites will help with this by generating a brand new address each time you create an invoice or payment request. Addresses can be created offline Creating addresses can be done without an Internet connection and does not require any contact or registration with the Bitcoin network. It is possible to create large batches of addresses offline using freely available software tools. Generating batches of addresses is useful in several scenarios, such as e-commerce websites where a unique pre-generated address is dispensed to each customer who chooses a "pay with Bitcoin" option. Newer "HD wallets" can generate a "seed" token which can be used to allow untrusted systems (such as webservers) to generate an unlimited number of addresses without the ability to spend the bitcoins received. Addresses are often case sensitive and exact Old-style Bitcoin addresses are case-sensitive. Bitcoin addresses should be copied and pasted using the computer's clipboard wherever possible. If you hand-key a Bitcoin address, and each character is not transcribed exactly - including capitalization - the incorrect address will most likely be rejected by the Bitcoin software. You will have to check your entry and try again. The probability that a mistyped address is accepted as being valid is 1 in 232, that is, approximately 1 in 4.29 billion. New-style bech32 addresses are case insensitive. Proving you receive with an address Most Bitcoin wallets have a function to "sign" a message, proving the entity receiving funds with an address has agreed to the message. This can be used to, for example, finalise a contract in a cryptographically provable way prior to making payment for it. Some services will also piggy-back on this capability by dedicating a specific address for authentication only, in which case the address should never be used for actual Bitcoin transactions. When you login to or use their service, you will provide a signature proving you are the same person with the pre-negotiated address. It is important to note that these signatures only prove one receives with an address. Since Bitcoin transactions do not have a "from" address, you cannot prove you are the sender of funds. Current standards for message signatures are only compatible with "version zero" bitcoin addresses (that begin with the number 1). Address validation If you would like to validate a Bitcoin address in an application, it is advisable to use a method from this thread rather than to just check for string length, allowed characters, or that the address starts with a 1 or 3. Validation may also be done using open source code available in various languages or with an online validating tool. Addresses can be created that require a combination of multiple private keys. Since these take advantage of newer features, they begin with the newer prefix of 3 instead of the older 1. These can be thought of as the equivalent of writing a check to two parties - "pay to the order of somebody AND somebody else" - where both parties must endorse the check in order to receive the funds. The actual requirement (number of private keys needed, their corresponding public keys, etc.) that must be satisfied to spend the funds is decided in advance by the person generating this type of address, and once an address is created, the requirement cannot be changed without generating a new address. What's in an address Most Bitcoin addresses are 34 characters. They consist of random digits and uppercase and lowercase letters, with the exception that the uppercase letter "O", uppercase letter "I", lowercase letter "l", and the number "0" are never used to prevent visual ambiguity. Some Bitcoin addresses can be shorter than 34 characters (as few as 26) and still be valid. A significant percentage of Bitcoin addresses are only 33 characters, and some addresses may be even shorter. Every Bitcoin address stands for a number. These shorter addresses are valid simply because they stand for numbers that happen to start with zeroes, and when the zeroes are omitted, the encoded address gets shorter. Several of the characters inside a Bitcoin address are used as a checksum so that typographical errors can be automatically found and rejected. The checksum also allows Bitcoin software to confirm that a 33-character (or shorter) address is in fact valid and isn't simply an address with a missing character. Testnet Addresses on the Bitcoin Testnet are generated with a different address version, which results in a different prefix. See List of address prefixes and Testnet for more details. Misconceptions Address reuse Addresses are not intended to be used more than once, and doing so has numerous problems associated. See the dedicated article on address reuse for more details. Address balances Addresses are not wallets nor accounts, and do not carry balances. They only receive funds, and you do not send "from" an address at any time. Various confusing services and software display bitcoins received with an address, minus bitcoins sent in random unrelated transactions as an "address balance", but this number is not meaningful: it does not imply the recipient of the bitcoins sent to the address has spent them, nor that they still have the bitcoins received. An example of bitcoin loss resulting from this misunderstanding is when people believed their address contained 3btc. They spent 0.5btc and believed the address now contained 2.5btc when actually it contained zero. The remaining 2.5btc was transferred to a change address which was not backed up and therefore lost. This has happened on a few occasions to users of Paper wallets. "From" addresses Bitcoin transactions do not have any kind of origin-, source- or "from" address. See the dedicated article on "from address" for more details. Address map See AlsoADVERTISEMENT When I was 13 years old, I watched Do the Right Thing. I was a white kid in a Toronto suburb, and I was energized, angered and curious when When I was 13 years old, I watchedDo the Right Thing. I was a white kid in a Toronto suburb, and I was energized, angered and curious when Spike Lee's character tossed that garbage can through that window at Sal's Pizzeria. I sat for hours thinking about it, and watched the movie a half dozen times, often rewinding that scene several times to try and figure out the emotion, the purpose of that broken window. Public Enemy became my conduit between a 13-year-old white kid and the meaning behind those shards of glass. " Public Enemy became my conduit between a 13-year-old white kid and the meaning behind those shards of glass. " Fight the Power " was the first piece of political music I absorbed as a youngster. It provided the context I was seeking. The buildup and frustration of that Brooklyn neighbourhood reached a crescendo and Mookie punctuated the rage of the people, providing a tipping point for the film and my inaugural lesson in race relations. Hip-hop artists Chuck D (L) and Flavor Flav of Public Enemy perform at The Greek Theatre on July 7, 2013 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo: David Livingston/Getty Images) As I got older, some schoolmates would label me a "wigger," a byproduct of wearing Travel Fox and dragging my radio around blasting golden era hip hop at high volume. I can see why some saw my actions as a youngster an example of cultural appropriation. I sort of acted like hip-hop was my culture, too, but as I matured I realized I was a just a guest in hip-hop, one who should not put his feet up on the furniture while visiting. Nevertheless, the gravitation towards black music, art, and culture came quite naturally. Appropriation turned into admiration, and I didn't apologize for embracing any of it. I'm 40 years old now. I have two children and write about politics and social issues. Recently, I wrote I'm 40 years old now. I have two children and write about politics and social issues. Recently, I wrote a blog calling for the resignation of the co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto, Yusra Khogali, citing her pattern of vitriol as an obstacle to BLM's stated goals. I knew the piece would be a little controversial, but I did not predict such a firestorm of hate, punctuated by thousands of people labelling me a white supremacist or a racist. And then that childhood hero, Chuck D, And then that childhood hero, Chuck D, tweeted the following, and my heart sank. The kid wearing that Fear of a Black Planet T-shirt is long gone, morphed into a 40-year-old getting slammed on Twitter from the artist depicted on that shirt. Chuck D called me out in front of 580,000 followers, a stinging rebuke and a bookend to what was three decades of unquestioned admiration. But to be honest, I understood Chuck D's point. He lives in a country where the government has altered the destiny of black people, rerouting their fate through heinous and evil chapters like slavery, Jim Crowe, mass incarceration, police brutality and countless other state sponsored atrocities. I took a step back and tried adjusting my lens and realized something: the juxtaposition of a white person pontificating about the credibility and good standing of a black activist leader seems so stark to some people, good people, that even if they agreed with the underlying point they could not bring themselves to support it. And I get that. It is an honest, human response to an issue that embodies so many powerful emotions and opinions, and while I do not regret what I said, I am fine with being criticized for saying it in the first place. “ I still feel she is a liability, and counterintuitive towards the ultimate goal of BLM if that goal is racial equality. But does a rebuke from a childhood hero and countless others mean I want to absolve Yusra Khogali for calling white people a genetic defect? No. I would be lying if I said her comments met the threshold of rationalism. I believe that power is responsible for the crimes of humanity, not genetics. And while other writers have backed up her hyperbole, especially her statements about Justin Trudeau, I still feel she is a liability, and counterintuitive towards the ultimate goal of BLM if that goal is racial equality. This ever-widening definition of white supremacy would entrap any newly elected prime minister, and incidentally also implies that Barack Obama was a de facto white supremacist himself, which, despite some questionable policies, seems like an obvious overreach and a departure from reality. A counterargument claims that because Trudeau is the head of a state with a history of oppression, he automatically becomes the leader of a white supremacist state. This ever-widening definition of white supremacy would entrap any newly elected prime minister, and incidentally also implies that Barack Obama was a de facto white supremacist himself, which, despite some questionable policies, seems like an obvious overreach and a departure from reality. Other BLM allies, black and white, constantly use words like "white tears," "whitesplaining," "white fragility," "white guilt," "concern trolling," "tone policing" and a slew of other buzzwords meant to box in critics, a tactic by the regressive left when condescension replaces civil discussion. I read so many phrases relating to my skin tone that I found myself wondering why any moderate Caucasian would ever want to align themselves with the supposed gatekeepers of racial justice. Yusra Khogali, second from right, is a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto. (Photo: Lucas Oleniuk/Toronto Star via Getty Images) They seem to be looking for outright obedience and submissiveness, not to mention a requirement to suspend independent thought. Of course, all of their lecturing was shrouded inside a cloak of infallibility, presenting themselves as truth-tellers who were merely trying to educate someone they perceived as being uninformed. This fundamentalist approach snuffs out any chance to build bridges or enhance dialogue. In fact, it has the opposite effect. Criticizing the fundamentalism of the left can result in support from unwanted places, such as white nationalists and fundamentalist right-wingers who are pleased to see anything negative written about BLM. Interestingly, some right-wingers labeled me a "cuck" because I balanced my critique with an unabashed support for racial justice. Of course, activists conveniently referred to this as "concern trolling," a popular, arbitrary label for those who do not follow a hardline, unwavering position. “ I had white people lecturing me, black people praising me, and vice versa. But the eclectic set of responses from readers revealed an interesting sociological split between activists and regular people. I had white people lecturing me, black people praising me, and vice versa. The reactions proved that ethnicities are not monolithic, despite their statements that implied they were speaking on behalf of their respective races and movements. A common skin tone doesn't mean we share the same opinions, But the eclectic set of responses from readers revealed an interesting sociological split between activists and regular people. I had white people lecturing me, black people praising me, and vice versa. The reactions proved that ethnicities are not monolithic, despite their statements that implied they were speaking on behalf of their respective races and movements. A common skin tone doesn't mean we share the same opinions, and even after receiving a death wish and hundreds of messages soaked in angry criticism, I was pleased overall to see a myriad of positions from people of various backgrounds. I was also satisfied that the fringe on both the right and the left hated my stance, verifying my status as a non-ideological thinker in the blood sport of identity politics. Granted, I'm both outspoken and stubborn, but I do not subscribe to the widely held belief that being white precludes me from contributing to the marketplace of ideas. The climate within identity politics is heavily reliant on groupthink, otherwise you are met with rebuttals like "you just don't get it," implying a monopoly on orthodoxy embedded inside racial activism. Are white people supposed to ignore black people who agree with them, and gravitate solely towards black people and their white allies with whom they vehemently disagree? Is the lecturing class the most righteous sect of activist communities? Because as someone who is familiar with the inner workings of politics and public relations, Because as someone who is familiar with the inner workings of politics and public relations, I know bad optics when I see it. The BLM leader had become a detriment to her own movement by using speech that would prevent her from sitting face-to-face with the very people she needed to engage with in order to facilitate the change she sought. And rightfully so. A substantial amount of people believe that criticizing a black leader automatically makes a white person "problematic" or a racist. This is not a sustainable position. I approach racial issues from a starting point that makes some people uncomfortable, but self-respect prevents me from submitting to a doctrine that mimics the dehumanization that propelled systemic racism in the first place. For better or worse, I'd rather be perceived as an imperfect supporter in the realm of racial justice than a submissive pretender looking for validation. Also on HuffPost: X l ike Ad will start in 5 Skip ad 00:00 70% Fullscreen Fullscreen is not supported on your browserAfter 41 days, an armed occupation at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge came to a conclusion on Feb. 11, 2016, after four remaining militants at the refuge surrendered to federal authorities. David Fry implored law enforcement to shout “hallelujah” as he turned himself in to FBI agents the morning of Feb. 11. Audio of the final moments before Fry went into FBI custody shows agents fulfilling his request, letting out what sound like relieved “hallelujahs”. Fry’s surrender effectively ended the 41-day armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon and weeks of uncertainty for the citizens of Harney County. OPB was there throughout, getting to know the residents of Harney County and the militants at the refuge. Now, OPB looks back at the nearly six-week occupation in an hour-long special. What started as a community protest in support of a pair of local ranchers, father and son Dwight and Steven Hammond, ended with an Internet live stream of a 27-year-old Ohioan contemplating suicide, and finally surrendering. One man died, and 25 other people are charged with crimes related to the occupation. And after some of the most dramatic and contentious six weeks in Harney County history, the community now looks toward healing. Timeline: The Armed Occupation Of The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge John Sepulvado / Juan Ramirez / Bryan M. Vance/OPB Listen to the full OPB News documentary special here at the top of the page. To revisit all of OPB’s coverage of the refuge occupation, visit our series page. Music for the OPB News documentary is courtesy of Melissa Ferrick.In many developed nations, the average number of children that a woman has in her lifetime is now less than two, falling short of the approximate fertility necessary for a generation to “replace” itself. While there are many factors driving what some deem a ‘Baby Bust’ in Europe and—to a lesser extent—the U.S., a lack of desire for children is not among them. Fully 87% of women in 27 European Union (EU) member states reported that the ideal family size for them personally is two or more children, according to a 2011 Eurobarometer survey. Some 57% said that two is the ideal, and an additional 30% said three or more is ideal. These numbers are based on the 92% of respondents who provided a numerical ideal; the rest said that “there is no number, it depends” or said “don’t know.” Some 87% of EU men who had a preference also reported that their own ideal family would include two or more children. But when it comes to fertility, reality often doesn’t comport with the ideal. Among EU women ages 40 to 54, one-third reported that the number of children they actually have is lower than their personal ideal. This gap in ideal versus actual fertility varies markedly by country. In Denmark, fully 45% of women ages 40 to 54 reported that their actual fertility is lower than their ideal fertility, while at the other end of the spectrum, in Bulgaria just 18% of women near the end of their childbearing years reported that the number of children that they have is lower than their ideal. Fully six-in-ten EU women near the end of their childbearing years reported that they have the number of children that they consider ideal, and less than one-in-ten reported that the number of children they have is higher than their ideal. (Comparing the actual and ideal fertility of women ages 40 to 54 is closer to an ‘apples to apples’ comparison than comparing actual and ideal fertility among all women would be. This is because women near the end of their childbearing years are likely to have already completed their lifetime fertility, while many younger women will go on to have more kids.) While the U.S. has been somewhat immune to the low fertility rates that have raised concerns in Europe, actual U.S. fertility also tends to fall below the ideal. Some 52% of American women (who gave numerical responses) said their ideal is two children, and an additional 44% said that three or more children is their ideal. (While 86% of women gave numerical responses to this question, 14% reported that the ideal family size was “as many as [someone] wants.”) But 40% of U.S. women nearing the end of their childbearing years have fewer children than their ideal. These U.S. results are based upon 2006-2008 data from the General Social Survey, which asks a more general question than that posed in the EU: “What do you think is the ideal number of children for a family to have?” Analyses suggest that this “general ideal” question elicits results similar to the “personal ideal” question asked in the EU, but nonetheless, caution should be used when comparing the U.S. and EU on these slightly different measures of ideal fertility. So what’s driving this gap between ideal and actual family size? Among others things, delays in childbearing, which may be caused by increases in educational attainment, or by the lack of a suitable partner, may play a role. Starting childbearing at a later age means that there are fewer years for a woman to meet her fertility ideals, plus it increases the risk of age-related infertility. Then there are direct economic factors, which are enough to give any potential parent pause. While many European countries offer more financial assistance via parental leave and other subsidies for parents than in the U.S., it’s still the case that raising kids is expensive. In both places, birth rates appear linked to economic well-being, with higher fertility in economic good times, and lower fertility in recessions. It’s also important to note that “actual fertility” as defined by the Eurobarometer does not include adopted or step-children, and a small share of women near the end of their childbearing years may still have another child. Topics: Birth Rate and FertilityAs Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas struggles to maintain his grip on power, his party has become increasingly aggressive about pursuing Palestinians who openly oppose their government. YouTube Ahmad al-Deek said he was tortured in prison. RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian accounting student Ahmad al-Deek, 22, had been beaten on and off for five days and could barely walk. But the only men who would help him out of his jail cell were those who had carried out the beatings — intelligence officers for the Palestinian Authority. “There were five [interrogators]. They took turns beating me,” al-Deek said. “At first, I thought one of them was a good guy. He said he knew my brother, and that he wanted to help me. He turned out to be the worst.” Al-Deek’s torture did not come at the hands of Israel, whose ongoing military occupation of the West Bank includes the arrest of hundreds of Palestinians each year, or at the hands of Hamas, the Islamic militant movement that rules the Gaza Strip with an iron fist. Al-Deek is one of hundreds of Palestinians arrested and allegedly tortured each year by the Palestinian Authority (PA), a government held up as moderate, whose Western-backed leadership is tasked with operating in the Palestinian-controlled territories of the West Bank. While many cases of torture go unreported, al-Deek has filed a lawsuit against the PA and is seeking $1 million in damages. His case, the first to be brought before the PA on such charges, is bringing unprecedented attention to the brutality Palestinians are facing at the hands of their own government. In al-Deek’s case, it was a Facebook post cursing the Palestinian Authority government — Ahmed had written “Fuck the Municipality” — which first drew the attention of Palestinian intelligence officers. On July 3 this year, al-Deek wrote a profane message criticising the PA on his Facebook wall. Three days later, his brother, an intelligence officer, was contacted by one of his superiors in the Palestinian intelligence services requesting that al-Deek be brought to a local police station to discuss the post. Al-Deek was assured by his brother that the visit would be brief and painless. He was told that security officers would issue him a maximum fine of roughly $30, give him a stern talking-to, and send him home. YouTube Instead, al-Deek was detained for five days in the northern West Bank village of Salfit, and handed between local police, who questioned him over his critical Facebook post, and the Palestinian intelligence services, who accused him of an arson attack on a local politician's car. Allegations and complaints of torture and mistreatment of people like al-Deek at the hands of Palestinian security forces have circulated for as long as local and international human rights organizations have operated in the West Bank and Gaza to document them. Following the establishment of the PA in 1994, its security forces were organized and trained in Jordan with the oversight of United States military personnel, led by now retired Lt. General Keith Dayton. In early 2011, Al Jazeera obtained a cache of leaked documents that shed light on a decade of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. The documents also revealed that PA security forces, under the oversight of U.S. military, engaged in the torture and mistreatment of members of Palestine’s political opposition. The most frequently documented methods include beatings, sleep deprivation, and forced-stress positions, all of which al-Deek said he was subjected to. Palestinian detainees also describe being held in solitary confinement at frigid temperatures for long hours or having temperature-controlled cells splashed with water, which, overtime has an effect similar to forms of water torture. "When [the stick] broke, they took the curtain rail and hit me with it." Al-Deek estimates that the day before his release, Palestinian intelligence interrogated him for about eight hours till dawn. Having already been beaten, deprived of sleep, and forced to hold stress positions, al-Deek, whose head was covered with a black canvas bag, overheard an interrogator asking another for a stick “wrapped in wire.” “They moved me to a room with two chairs in it,” Ahmad said. “They made me sit with my arms cuffed behind one chair. They told me to elevate my legs on the other chair. One of the interrogators — he was so fat — sat on my lap and started singing a traditional Egyptian love song. The others took turns hitting me with the stick. When it broke, they took the curtain rail and hit me with it.” Al-Deek said the song that his interrogator sang to him as he was beaten has been stuck in his head — to a point where he admits he often wants to listen to it now. The beatings were such that when al-Deek was released five days later, he was unable to walk without help of the intelligence personnel who had carried out the torture. According to Majed Arouri of al-Deek’s legal counsel, the medical report al-Deek was issued by a hospital in Nablus after his release concluded that his injuries were the result of torture. “The medical test, x-rays, and other needed tests showed that the patient had several bruises on his feet, abdomen and back, but no broken bones or serious wounds,” the report said. Throughout his five-day detention and interrogation, while al-Deek denied the charges of arson, he says he repeatedly told security personnel, “If you’re so sure it was me, why don’t you charge me, and try me in a court, with evidence.” The remark, says Ahmad, was responded to with continued beatings. Abbas Momani / AFP / Getty Images Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has struggled to maintain his grip on power. As Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has struggled to maintain his grip on power, his party has become increasingly aggressive about pursuing Palestinians who openly oppose their government. In 2014 alone, Palestine’s Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR) received 1,274 detainee complaints of “alleged violations of the right to physical safety.” This included 287 complaints in the West Bank and 996 complaints in the Gaza Strip — ICHR’s 20th annual report described the figures from Gaza as a “remarkable increase in allegations.” Hamas has struggled to maintain its authoritative grip there. According to a damning Amnesty International report, during last summer’s war between Islamist militants and Israel — dubbed Operation Protective Edge by Israel — Hamas executed at least 23 Palestinians, who it accused of being members of rival group Fatah or Israeli collaborators. The report accuses Hamas of “abducting and torturing” many others. In the West Bank, Abbas has promised to address torture allegations, signing the Convention Against Torture (CAT) on April 2, 2014, as part of Palestine’s becoming an Observer State at the United Nations. Despite that commitment, al-Haq’s team of field workers, who operate throughout the West Bank, have gathered at least 70 complaints of torture and mistreatment in the 16 months since the convention was signed. “The fact that patterns of violations are so consistent, means that current oversight and accountability of PA security forces is ineffective. Were there effective accountability, we would notice a significant decrease in reported cases, or a change in patterns of alleged abuse,” Anan Quzmar of ICHR told BuzzFeed News. Bill Van Esveld of Human Rights Watch says ensuring accountability and oversight of Palestine’s security personnel is a crucial step to ending torture and mistreatment of detainees in the West Bank and Gaza. “It’s important, both for victims and to deter abuses, to see torturers fairly tried and put behind bars,” Van Esveld told BuzzFeed News in an email. “Palestine, which has signed a raft of human rights treaties and joined the ICC, needs to clearly criminalize torture and prosecute it,” he added. Jonathan Brown Palestinian security forces at the Muqata in Ramallah.It is always tempting to take "the process gambit" as a way of avoiding an issue of substance. Stephen Harper makes that even easier because of the appalling way he manages Parliament and attempts to manufacture consent in the country. Paul Calandra's tears notwithstanding, the smearing of the opposition has become standard fare, as has Mr. Harper's refusal to be clear with Canadians on what he plans to do in Iraq and Syria, why he plans to do it, when he plans to do it, and how he plans to do it. But Mr. Harper's stealth will come to an end at some point, and then the opposition parties will have to decide what to do with the resolution he puts to Parliament. Obviously their decision will partly depend on the wording of the resolution, which is not yet public. Story continues below advertisement But the broad issues of policy and decision are clear enough. It is now apparent that the forces of radical violence have metastasized, and that Islamic State represents a clear and present danger to the people over whom it rules, to any minorities around the area, to the region and potentially to the world. There are some who quite mistakenly compare any decision to engage militarily against IS with the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. This is hardly the same issue. The government of Iraq has asked for military assistance. The regional government of Iraqi Kurdistan has done the same. The Kurdish, Christian, and other minorities in northern Iraq and Syria are under siege. To equate this with the invasion of Iraq over a decade ago is wrong. Some also say that what is happening in the Middle East is essentially a battle within Islam itself, and that those opposing violent extremists should simply be encouraged to band together. This is a little too easy, since the threat to security doesn't fall within such simple boundaries. This is not a holy war, nor is it a crusade. It is about providing tangible help to people and governments who need it. Will it happen elsewhere? Almost assuredly, yes, because this kind of violence is always testing the resilience of democracy. This is not about "peace" versus "war". This is about something different – the collective capacity of governments and international institutions to deal effectively with perpetrators of violence. In some distant future, the rules of engagement and enforcement may be clearer, the capacities of international police forces may be stronger. In the meantime, we have to deal with the worst examples, and the greatest threats. The rule of law requires nothing less. Ideally of course, local governments would have to ability to deal with these threats, and stronger regional actors, like Turkey, would take a more decisive role. We don't live in such a world. Canada's role should be more than just military, and its diplomacy and its dollars need to match its rhetoric. This is not about positioning or posturing. This is about understanding the long term, enduring interest of our country in peace, order, and good government, for ourselves and for the world as well.Why growing up in a loving home boosts children's brains and makes them more intelligent Children in care have less grey and white matter than those brought up in a typical home environment Research could explain why children in care are more likely to develop mental health problems Study led by researchers from Harvard University and Boston Children's Hospital Development: A loving family helps a child's brain to grow and makes them more intelligent, research suggests A loving family helps a child's brain to grow and increases their intelligence and mental abilities, a study suggests. Researchers found that children in care have less grey and white matter - the two components of the central nervous system - than those brought up in a typical home environment. Children in foster families have normal levels of white matter, which relays messages in the brain, but less of the grey matter which contains nerve cells and controls muscles, memory, emotions and speech. Scientists believe the findings could explain why children who spend time in care are statistically more likely to develop issues such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and mental health problems. People who have been in care also have, on average, lower IQ and language skills than those who grew up in loving homes. The differences in levels of grey and white matter is most likely to be due to varying levels of stimulation required for normal brain development, researchers said. Many children in care have been exposed to deprivation and neglect, which could be linked to their lower levels of grey and white matter. The improvement among those who were moved to foster families,
U.S. Western Corn Belt are comparable to deforestation rates in Brazil, Malaysia, and Indonesia.” Not only can farmers benefit from acknowledging, studying, and responding to climate change, they can also reduce the negative impacts of agriculture on broader social and natural systems. For instance, converting a percentage of Midwestern corn production for ethanol into grass-based pasture systems could be a first step in carbon-emissions reduction. As Rebecca Solnit points out, addressing climate change involves not only reworking the way we do things but also changing our understandings—our stories—about the weather, the soil and water, and our food, as well as our responsibilities to each other, future generations, and the earth’s ecology. Responding to a failing system involves remaking existing relationships and formulating new narratives. By ignoring the reality of climate change and simply reacting, farmers are denying their own contribution to the problem. They are also ignoring the key role they have to play in solving it. is an associate professor of management at the University of Maine. is an associate professor in the Honors College at the University of Maine and a member of its Sustainable Food Systems Research Collaborative. is an extension professor of soil and water quality at the University of Maine. David Abel, “In Maine, Scientists See Signs of Climate Change,” Boston Globe, Sept. 21, 2014 (bostonglobe.com); Michael Jahi Chappell and Liliana A. LaValle, “Food Security and Biodiversity: Can We Have Both?” Agriculture and Human Values, 2011; Climate Institute (climate.org); Abigail Curtis, “USDA farming census: Maine has more young farmers, more land in farms 2014,” Bangor Daily News, Feb. 23, 2014 (bangordailynews.com); P.C. Frumhoff, et al., Confronting Climate Change in the U.S. Northeast: Science, Impacts, and Solutions, Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment (NECIA), Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), 2007; Connie J. G. Gersick, “Revolutionary change theories: A multilevel exploration of the punctuated equilibrium paradigm,” Academy of Management Review, 1991; T. Griffin, et al., eds., Maine’s Climate Future: An Initial Assessment, University of Maine, 2009 (climatechange.umaine.edu); Rajendra K. Pachauri, et al., eds., Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2014 Synthesis Report: Summary for Policy Makers; Jerry M. Melillo, et al., eds., Highlights of Climate Change Impacts in the United States: The Third National Climate Assessment, U.S. Global Change Research Program, 2014; National Weather Service, July 2013 Climate Summary Caribou, Maine: Northern and Eastern Maine Monthly Climate Narrative (weather.gov); New England Farmers’ Union, 2015 (newenglandfarmersunion.org); Rebecca Solnit, “Are We Missing the Big Picture on Climate Change?” New York Times Magazine, Dec. 2, 2014 (nytimes.com); USDA—NASS (2012), 2012 Census of Agriculture (agcensus.usda.gov); Christopher K. Wright and Michael C. Wimberley, “Recent Land Use Change in the Western Corn Belt Threatens Grasslands and Wetlands,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013. Did you find this article useful? Please consider supporting our work by donating or subscribing.Protesters chant slogans outside the burnt governor's office in Zawiyah [Reuters] Forces loyal to the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi have surrounded the city of Zawiyah, where anti-government protesters are bracing for an attack. Men opposed to Gaddafi were patrolling the streets of the city 50km from the capital on Sunday, saying they had seized weapons and even tanks which they would use to defend themselves. Ezeldina, a Zawiyah resident, told Al Jazeera that people in the city had raided some military camps. LIVE BLOG "We are expecting an attack at any moment," he said. "We are forming rotating watch groups, guarding the neighbourhood." Protesters said about 2,000 troops loyal to Gaddafi had surrounded the city. "If we are fighting for freedom, we are ready to die for it," said a former police major who had switched sides and joined the uprising which started about 10 days ago. Speaking anonymously, he said more than 2,000 police had defected and were ready to defend Zawiyah. There were also army defectors, he said, but it was unclear how many. Pro-Gaddafi rally Government forces manned several checkpoints between the capital and Zawiyah, and supporters of the Libyan leader demonstrated in the Harsha district, 5km from the centre of Zawiyah. Police stations and government offices inside the city have been torched and anti-Gaddafi graffiti painted of walls. Hundreds of protesters in the city centre chanted "Gaddafi Out". Some stood on top of a captured tank, while others crowded around an anti-aircraft gun. Women stood on top of buildings cheering on the men in the crowd below. An effigy of Gaddafi hung from a light pole in the main square. A group of foreign journalists were driven to Zawiyah by Libyan authorities on Sunday to show that forces loyal to Gaddafi still held the town. But once there, it was evident that the protesters were in control. A doctor at a makeshift clinic in the town mosque said 24 people had been killed in fighting with government loyalists over the past three days, and a small park next to the main square had been turned into a burial ground. Residents gave accounts of fierce fighting for control of the town against pro-Gaddafi paramilitaries who were armed with heavy weapons. Some said they were using rocket-propelled grenades. Bullet holes pock-marked charred buildings in the city, while burned-out vehicles lay abandoned.Story highlights Former owner Ted Turner says he's "deeply saddened" by the Bounty's loss A deckhand's body has been found and the captain is missing The Coast Guard says 14 rescued crew members are "in good health" The Bounty was en route to St. Petersburg, Florida, when it sank in heavy seas Three people washed off their crippled ship and engulfed by Atlantic waters roiled by Hurricane Sandy scrambled for help on Monday, the U.S. Coast Guard said, but only one of them made it to safety. When the HMS Bounty's crew members realized their lives were in danger off the North Carolina coast in the dark morning hours, they made a short journey they hoped they'd never have to take -- to two waiting life rafts. But only 13 of the 16 people aboard got off the ship safely, initially, and only one of the three washed overboard made it into a raft, Coast Guard Vice Adm. Robert Parker told CNN. That left rescuers scrambling to find them in the frenzied ocean, Parker said. One of them -- the Bounty's longtime captain, Robin Walbridge -- remained missing as night approached Monday, said Lt. Mike Patterson, a Coast Guard spokesman. The body of the second, deckhand Claudene Christian, was found Monday evening, the Coast Guard announced. The 180-foot, three-masted ship, a replica of the famous British vessel, foundered about 90 miles off North Carolina as Sandy's fury churned the Atlantic into 18-foot seas, its owner, Bob Hansen, told CNN affilliate KUSA Photos: Sandy sinks 'Bounty' Photos: Sandy sinks 'Bounty' Bounty replica sinks – A replica of the HMS Bounty sank in the Atlantic Ocean in waters roiled by Hurricane Sandy on Monday, October 30, 2012. Of the 16 people onboard, three were washed overboard. One is confirmed dead, one was recovered safely and Robin Walbridge, the replica's longtime captain, was still missing. The other 13 people onboard were recovered safely. Hide Caption 1 of 4 Photos: Sandy sinks 'Bounty' Bounty replica sinks – The 180-foot sailboat is seen submerged in the Atlantic Ocean. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Tim Kuklewski. Hide Caption 2 of 4 Photos: Sandy sinks 'Bounty' Bounty replica sinks – The 180-foot sailboat is seen submerged in the Atlantic Ocean. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Tim Kuklewski. Hide Caption 3 of 4 Photos: Sandy sinks 'Bounty' Bounty replica sinks – The ship was built for the 1962 film version of "Mutiny on the Bounty," starring Marlon Brando, and appeared in the 2006 blockbuster "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest." It was once owned by America's Cup winner and CNN founder Ted Turner, who acquired it in 1986 along with the rights to the MGM film library. Hide Caption 4 of 4 JUST WATCHED High-drama rescue on the high seas Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH High-drama rescue on the high seas 02:52 JUST WATCHED Parents of Bounty survivor wait Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Parents of Bounty survivor wait 01:12 Hansen said Walbridge was attempting to head east, away from the hurricane, when the ship began taking on water. "At that time it wasn't considered an emergency, even though they had several feet of water inside the boat," Hansen said. "She's a very large ship, and that little bit of water really does not do anything to her. But somehow we lost power in our generator and in our main engines, and as a result, we could not pump any water out of the boat." As the waves continued to batter the ship, "it just got to the point where she couldn't stay afloat anymore." CNN meteorologists say the water temperature varies greatly in that part of the ocean because of the gulf stream. So the water could be anywhere from 50 to 64 degrees Fahrenheit. All of the crew members were wearing orange survival suits with strobe lights designed to keep them afloat, warm and easy to find. "But in these conditions, it's very problematic," Parker said, adding that a timely deployment of search-and-rescue aircraft and ships gives the missing a chance. A C-130 aircraft and a helicopter have been monitoring the area around the shipwreck. Two Coast Guard cutters were en route to the scene to help with search-and-rescue, with one expected to arrive later on Monday and the other expected on Tuesday, Parker said. "The first guy we pulled up, he was really happy to see us. That's for sure," said Aviation Survival Technician 2 Randy Haba, a Coast Guard rescue swimmer. "We got him up there, and he was all excited and saying, 'That's a good job,' and everything was great. He was just a little cold, but he was good to go." The life boats were designed to hold 25 people and had canopies for shelter against pelting rain and winds. All of those rescued arrived at the Coast Guard air station in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and were in good health, Parker said. Initial reports said 17 crew members were aboard, but the Coast Guard later corrected that number. The Coast Guard said it has "diminished search-and-rescue capabilities" as Category 1 Hurricane Sandy batters the U.S. East Coast. More sea rescues prompted by Sandy were reported in Delaware Bay. The ship was built for the 1962 film version of "Mutiny on the Bounty," starring Marlon Brando, and appeared in the 2006 blockbuster "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest." It was once owned by America's Cup winner and CNN founder Ted Turner, who acquired it in 1986 along with the rights to the MGM film library. "Among the many troubling reports on the devastating impact of Hurricane Sandy, I am deeply saddened to hear that the HMS Bounty was overtaken by the storm," Turner said in a statement Monday night. "As a sailor and former owner of the Bounty, my heart goes out to the families of the missing crew members, and I am truly hopeful for their safe recovery." The ship departed New London, Connecticut, for St. Petersburg, Florida, on October 25, according to the ship's Facebook page. Facebook postings bearing that date say things such as "I'm sure that Hurricane Sandy will be a major consideration when Bounty leaves for St. Petersburg later today," and "Bounty will be sailing East out to sea before heading South to avoid the brunt of Hurricane Sandy." The ship was scheduled to arrive at the Pier in St. Petersburg as early as November 7 for a public display on November 10 and 11, the Pier's general manager, Carol Everson, said Monday. The St. Petersburg/Clearwater Area Convention and Vistors Bureau is promoting "The HMS Bounty Returns To The Pier" on its website. Everson said it's hard to believe the Bounty, which has docked in St. Petersburg for long stretches since the 1970s, is buried under the ocean. "It had such a history, not only because of 'Mutiny on the Bounty,' but it's been a great part of St. Petersburg for so many years. It's going to be missed," Everson said. "It had a majestic look with its tall masts. It had an aura about it." While following the ship's Facebook timeline, you can read a mixture of trepidation and attempts at soothing fears. JUST WATCHED NYC hospital forced to evacuate Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH NYC hospital forced to evacuate 00:58 JUST WATCHED Building facade collapses in New York Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Building facade collapses in New York 00:47 On Saturday, this post appeared: "Bounty's current voyage is a calculated decision... NOT AT ALL... irresponsible or with a lack of foresight as some have suggested. The fact of the matter is... A SHIP IS SAFER AT SEA THAN IN PORT!" No one responded to the contact e-mail or phone number listed on the ship's website and Facebook account. Sandy is evoking memories of the "nor'easter" that struck off New England in 1991 and inspired the best-selling book and movie "The Perfect Storm." Ray Leonard, who survived that storm on his sailboat before the Coast Guard rescued him, said being besieged by high winds and waves can be exhausting, but sometimes sailors just have to deal with that physical discomfort. "You don't really have time to think about much outside, because there's always about six jobs that need doing," Leonard said Monday. Leonard said he never felt terribly vulnerable in '91. However, he said, Hurricane Sandy's immensity poses more of a quandary for sailors. "The one I was in was different, because you could do something. In Sandy, you can't do much," Leonard said.GENEVA (Reuters) - The food situation for 60,000 civilians trapped in the besieged Iraqi city of Falluja is extremely worrying and likely to deteriorate unless aid gets into the city, the U.N. World Food Programme said on Monday. The Iraqi army, police and Iranian-backed Shi’ite Muslim militias - backed by air strikes from a U.S.-led coalition - have maintained a near total siege on the Islamic State-held city, which is located 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad, since late last year “As the siege continued in Falluja for the third consecutive month, no sign of improvement was recorded in March; food prices remain extremely high, and stocks in shops and households are depleting. In March, the price of wheat was six times more expensive than in December,” the report said. “For the third consecutive month, respondents from Hay Alwahda sub-district reported that shops and markets had exhausted all food supplies including wheat, sugar, rice, vegetable oil and lentils,” the report said. The report was based on a mobile phone survey conducted in March. But it said reaching respondents had become increasingly difficult and very limited information was available, especially as armed opposition groups had shut down transmitter towers to stop people using mobile phones. “Aid has not reached Falluja since the government recaptured nearby Ramadi in December 2015, with supply routes cut off by Iraqi forces and the armed groups preventing civilians from leaving,” the report said. There were reports that people wanting to leave the city and seek safety were unable to do so, it said. Last week a report from New York-based Human Rights Watch said desperate residents were making soup from grass and using ground date seeds to make flour for bread.The past 12 months have been 0.22C warmer than any other equivalent period prior to 2013, says Climate Council Australia is on track for its warmest ever year, says study Australia is "on track" for its warmest ever calendar year, temperatures in October 1.43C above the long-term average and more than 100 heat-related records broken in the past 12 months, according to a new report. The Climate Council study, called Off the Charts, says that the country has just had its warmest ever 12-month period, from 1 November 2012 to 31 October 2013. This is the third month in a row that this 12-month temperature record has been broken. The report, drawn from Bureau of Meteorology data, states that the past 12 months have been, on average, 0.22C warmer than any other equivalent period prior to 2013, making it likely that 2013 will be Australia's warmest ever calendar year. October saw a continuation of this trend, being 1.43C warmer than the average set between 1961 and 1990. The month was notable for widespread bushfires in NSW, which triggered a fierce debate over whether climate change made such blazes more likely, with Tony Abbott finding himself at odds with the United Nation's climate chief. The Climate Council, which was abolished as a public body by the Coalition government in September before being resurrected through public donations, said the heat in October was felt across the country. The month was Sydney's second warmest October on record, at 3.6C above the long-term average. Brisbane experienced a maximum average temperature of 28.8C, it's highest ever, while Alice Springs airport hit a record October high of 42.6°C and Western Australia had its second warmest October on record. The Climate Council said a number of temperature records have been set so far in 2013, including – • Australia's warmest summer on record (December 2012 to February 2013). • Australia's warmest January and September on record. • Australia's warmest 12-month period on record (now broken three times, for the periods ending August, September, and October). • There have been 15 months in a row of above-average temperatures. The climate information body, which is headed by Tim Flannery and comprises a selection of economists, ecologists and climate scientists, said it was "essential" to rapidly reduce carbon emissions in response to the escalating temperatures. "We've got to put the last 12 months into the context of the last half century," Prof. Will Steffen of the Climate Council told Guardian Australia. "The number of hot days has more than doubled since the 1950s and 1960s and the number of cold days have gone down. "This longterm warming trend is skewing the temperatures we are seeing. September and October this year are consistent with the fact that while we still have variability, the dice is now loaded towards warmer weather. "Lots of people sense that our climate is fundamentally shifting. You talk to fishermen who see fish they have not seen in the waters before, you look at the migration patterns of birds and bats we've not seen before, and so on. People ask 'what's going on?' and that's when we look at the data and see what's happened in the past half century." The Climate Council's report has been timed for the start of United Nations climate talks in Warsaw, which won't have an Australian ministerial presence for the first time since the Kyoto accord was struck in 1997. Steffen said that while the Climate Council does not comment on policy, he has been disheartened by the "infantile" debate in Australia over the veracity of climate science. "Wherever you sit in politics, denying the science isn't an intelligent way to go forward," he said. "The data is out there, the peer reviewed science is out there, the scientific reality is out there. It's infantile to say you don't believe in it – it's not about belief. "The statements that have come out of this government haven't been consistent. Certainly the [environment] minister has said several times the science is accepted, but by others it isn't. "We need clarity, like in Europe and China, that the science is real and it's an issue. We haven't got to that point in Australia and, in fact, I think we've regressed."TORONTO — A Toronto police officer has been taken to hospital after allegedly being struck by a cab driver while on a bicycle during Wednesday’s mass Uber protests. Police said a community response officer from 53 Division was on a bike and attempted to stop a cab driver Wednesday morning at Yonge Street and Manor Road, when the driver struck the officer with his car. READ MORE: Taxi drivers stage major anti-Uber protest in downtown Toronto “One of the things that has to be our top concern is obviously public safety,” said Toronto Mayor John Tory, speaking to reporters about the protest Wednesday. “There is no excuse for putting the public safety at risk … for police officers being knocked to the ground off their bicycles in the course of this kind of event for any kind of physical violence to be taking place in our city.” The officer then fell to the ground and police said they managed to stop the driver as he attempted to drive away. The officer was taken to hospital with shoulder injuries. “The cabbie was breaking the law and the officer in his lawful duty tried to pull him over and as a result, I’m not sure exactly what happened but at the end of the day my officer’s in the hospital,” said Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders, adding that there seemed to be a “new narrative” in the city of people not complying with police demands. “Officers are going to respond according to the law and there are certain moments when we make demands and if those demands aren’t met then it will turn into an arrest … there was non-compliance and it led to the charges that were laid, including criminal charges.” WATCH: ‘Uber is going to be like ISIS’ says Toronto cab driver Police said the driver, 73-year-old Angel Heras, was arrested at the scene and charged with dangerous driving, dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing bodily harm, failing to remain at the scene of an accident, obstructing a peace officer and distracted driving. Police said he was released at the scene with an undisclosed future court date and the investigation is ongoing. With files from Gabby Rodrigues and Steve MoralesWinning a provincial title, ending a dynasty, playing a World Cup soccer team on your own home turf — the North Shore Girls Soccer Club is in the middle of a pretty incredible three-week run. The biggest buzz likely comes from the recent announcement that a team made up of many of the club’s best players will host the Cameroonian national team for a pair of exhibition matches May 17 and May 24 at Windsor secondary, with 4 p.m. kickoffs scheduled for both days. article continues below Cameroon will arrive in Vancouver this week and the two matches against the NSGSC all-star squad will be tune-up matches for the African team in advance of the FIFA Women’s World Cup set for June 6-July 5 at stadiums around Canada. “We’re excited,” said NSGSC technical director Jesse Symons. “To bring one of the Women’s World Cup teams to North Vancouver to see what will be going on at B.C. Place in June, hopefully it will create a lot of early excitement two or three weeks before the start of the World Cup.... I’m just hoping it will be a celebration.” Cameroon is Africa’s third-ranked team, 53rd overall in the world, and will play two of their three World Cup opening round games at Vancouver’s B.C. Place. On the other side of the ball, the North Shore Girls squad will be a made up of a mix of players who currently suit up for the club’s top women’s teams along with other young players who have spent the past season playing on Canadian and university teams. Some of the players expected to suit up include striker Sessen Stevens, a member of Canada’s U20 national team who currently plays for the University of Memphis; midfielder Chelsea Harkins of Washington State University; goalkeeper Rebecca Defer, a St. Thomas Aquinas grad who currently plays for the University of Tulsa; and defender Meagan Pasternak, a Seycove grad who plays for the University of British Columbia. “It’s a great opportunity for them to match up against a team they don’t obviously get to see,” said Symons, adding that most of the players who will be suiting up for the NSGSC team have ambitions of their own to play for Canada’s national team and see action in a World Cup one day. “It’s an opportunity for them to sort of live a moment for a couple of weekends against a country like Cameroon.” Symons, who will act as coach for the NSGSC squad, said his team will do its best to give the Cameroonians a real test. “It’ll be a friendly, but they’re prepping, they want a good match,” he said. “We’ll do our best to help them prepare as much as possible.... We’re going to push forward with everything (we’ve got) to give them a good match.” The games will be open to the public with admission by donation. Most of the proceeds will go to helping the Cameroonian team with their travel expenses. The games will provide a great opportunity for local soccer fans see great players up close, said Symons. “It’s an opportunity to stand right beside some of the top local talent in our province and then obviously the (Cameroonian) national team,” he said. “You’ll be as close to the field as you could possibly get at Windsor. I hope it excites everybody. (The World Cup) is a great event that we have coming up in June, and what an opportunity to start that celebration three weeks before the first match.” A few of the local players will come into the Cameroon matches on a great high after winning the Women’s A Cup provincial championship with the NSGSC Renegades last weekend to earn the right to represent B.C. at the national club championships in Calgary in October. The Renegades brought a dynasty to an end Saturday in Langley, knocking off Surrey United who were going for an incredible 12th straight provincial title. The Renegades battled all day to bring down the longtime champs, winning in penalty kicks following a 0-0 tie. The team was led by longtime coach Tony Seddon, with goalkeeper Ariel Anderson earning MVP honours as the final line of an impenetrable NSGSC defence. “They just defended like they weren’t going to allow a goal in the game — it seemed like Surrey wasn’t going to score if they played for 24 hours,” said Symons. “They weren’t allowing any space. Full credit to them — the whole group performed to a very good standard. Tony came in with a very good game plan and in the end they pulled it off, which is fantastic. It’s probably not the easiest way to do it in PKs, but they were the team that probably deserved it with the performance on the day.” Symons said the win was a long time coming for the Renegades. “I’ve known those girls for a very long time, coached a few of them when they were 12 and 13 years old. They’ve always been the bridesmaids,” he said. “(But) you could see the confidence within the group that this was their year. They pushed through — it’s a credit to them. It’s sort of a monkey off their backs a bit with having lost a lot of those finals. I guess enough was enough.” The Cameroon games will cap off an amazing run for the club and for Symons, a North Vancouver native who has only been at the job for about a month. He previously worked with the Vancouver Whitecaps. “Yeah, not bad,” Symons said with a chuckle when asked about his eventful first month of action with the North Shore Girls, adding that he hopes it all adds up to more exposure for the club and interest in soccer on the North Shore. “We’re really trying to create a culture on the North Shore for soccer,” he said. “North Shore Girls is hopefully going to be a club that is on the forefront of developing these young female soccer players for years to come in Canada. I think to be able to see it live will be huge for these kids. Hopefully they’ll be inspired to go out and kick the ball around a little bit more.”Famed Hollywood writer Elmore Leonard died on Tuesday after suffering a stroke on July 29. He was 87. Best known for “Get Shorty,” “Out of Sight” and most-recently the FX series “Justified,” Leonard was surrounded by his family at the time of his death, his researcher, Gregg Sutter, told FOX411. "The post I dreaded to write, and you dreaded to read. Elmore passed away at 7:15 this morning from complications from his stroke. He was at home surrounded by his loving family. More to follow," Sutter posted on Facebook. Leonard, winner of an honorary National Book Award in 2012, first rose to fame with the release of his Western-themed novels. His works The “Tall T” and “3:10 to Yuma” were adapted into films. Among Leonard's best-known books turned into movies are “Hombre” and "Rum Punch," which was filmed as "Jackie Brown." His short stories were also turned into several films. His millions of fans, from bellhops to Saul Bellow, made all his books since "Glitz" (1985) best-sellers. His more than 40 novels were populated by pathetic schemers, clever conmen and casual killers. Each was characterized by moral ambivalence about crime, black humor and wickedly acute depictions of human nature: the greedy dreams of Armand Degas in "Killshot," the wisecracking cool of Chili Palmer in "Get Shorty," Jack Belmont's lust for notoriety in "The Hot Kid." One remarkable thing about Leonard's talent is how long it took the world to notice. He didn't have a best-seller until his 60th year, and few critics took him seriously before the 1990s. After his initial success in the 1950s and '60s in writing Western stories, he turned to writing scripts for educational and industrial films while trying his hand at another genre: crime novels. The first, "The Big Bounce," was rejected 84 times before it was published as a paperback in 1969. Hollywood came calling again, paying $50,000 for the rights and turning it into a movie starring Ryan O'Neal, that even Leonard called "terrible." He followed up with several more well-written, fast-paced crime novels, including "Swag" (1976). Leonard was already following the advice he would later give to young writers: "Try to leave out the parts that people skip." In 1978, he was commissioned to write an article about the Detroit Police Department. He shadowed the cops for nearly three months. Starting with "City Primeval" in 1980, his crime novels gained a new authenticity, with quirky but believable characters and crisp, slangy dialogue. But sales remained light. Donald I. Fine, an editor at Arbor House, thought they deserved better and promised to put the muscle of his publicity department behind them. He delivered; and in 1985, "Glitz," a stylish novel of vengeance set in Atlantic City, became Leonard's first best-seller. After that, he was rediscovered by Hollywood's greats, and he saw success like he never had before. He continued to write well into his 80s. Leonard was born in New Orleans on Oct. 11, 1925, the son of General Motors executive Elmore John Leonard and his wife, Flora. The family settled near Detroit when young Elmore was 10. The tough, undersized young man played quarterback in high school and earned the nickname "Dutch," after Emil "Dutch" Leonard, a knuckleball pitcher of the day. The ballplayer's card sat for years in the writer's study on one of the shelves lined with copies of his books. After serving in the Navy during World War II, he majored in English at the University of Detroit. He started writing copy for an advertising agency before his graduation in 1950. He married three times: to the late Beverly Cline in 1949, the late Joan Shepard in 1979 and, at the age of 68, to Christine Kent in 1993. Leonard had five children-- all from his first marriage-- 12 grandchildren and five great grandchildren. The Associated Press contributed to this report.Two things about this “Kuchelavrittam” were, for me, revelatory: musicality and mime. Other Kathakali performances I’ve seen have neither featured interesting music nor shown a detailed response to their scores. Here, however, everything was timed and phrased beautifully; and the musicians (standing, not sitting at the side of the stage as in other Indian classical dance forms) were a very close part of the action — sometimes (as often happens in the great sections of flamenco solos) advancing close to the performers for the more intimate scenes. When Kuchela, after calmly wandering in poverty for a long time, returned to his friend Krishna (advancing through the audience to the stage, where Krishna had been conversing with his wife Rukmini), the percussion built up to an overwhelmingly emotional crescendo. But most of the scenes proceeded in long, firm metric structures (I often identified a slow 3/8 tempo, with many fast internal details), which held the audience in its own spell. I noticed that many observers found themselves marking the enchanting beat with feet or hands. This is the spell that the hexameters of Homer or Virgil can cast, or the alexandrines of Racine. The music was primarily percussive — the player of the maddalam was especially fine — but two players, at times, also sang. Tiny expressive effects highlighted specific moments; and every movement showed precisely how it belonged on the beat and within the music’s larger span. Again and again, the arrival of a gesture or step in time with a beat proved a central part of this performance’s beauty. One of the many arguments among Indian dancers concerns which forms truly merit the label “classical” (up to eight are often hailed as such); the musicality of this Changampuzha Park performance made a mesmerizing and exemplary case for the classicism of Kathakali. As for mime, the sustained, intense use of gestures — rhythmically exact but suspenseful, often small-scale but formal — by these three performers was astonishing, even (or especially) to one well acquainted with the great mime scenes of ballet. One mime conversation, between Krishna and Kuchela, lasted at least half an hour. Though I did not understand most of its individual gestures (the famous mudras of Indian culture play a significant role in Kathakali), I could deduce which movements indicated “tears” and “bliss,” and could follow the rich changes of tone; so much was going on. A moving element was Kuchela’s sense of awe beside Krishna: He always showed he knew he was in the presence of a god even amid the fluency of their colloquy. Last week, I was able to observe only a little more than an hour of the Kathakali performance that opened the festival at the Ayyappa Temple, Mulagunnathukavu (a suburb of Thrissur); but that afternoon, I had also been allowed to watch the performers putting on their makeup and being made up — a process lasting well over two hours and that builds up an excitement tantamount to pure theater. And what I saw of the performance was rich and action-packed. They enacted “Balivadhom (Killing of Bali),” a tale from the Ramayana. Most of the scenes I watched featured two monkey-chieftains, Bali and Sugriva. There were at least nine performers here (though I observed only five onstage) and eight musicians.Nutritional guidelines and recommendations are constantly changing in the light of new research. It can be difficult to keep up with which foods are healthy and which aren’t. Here we look at five foods that have gone through the cycle of being the villains of nutritional science but are now, based on some old and some new science, apparently okay to eat again. Eggs For a long time, eggs were thought to be bad for your heart. A large egg contains a hefty 185mg of cholesterol. Dietary cholesterol was believed to contribute to high blood cholesterol levels. But for the last 20 years, nutrition and medical research has shown repeatedly that at normal intakes dietary cholesterol has very little influence on a person’s blood cholesterol levels. Although it’s taken a while, nutrition experts are now correcting the record for eggs and other foods that contain cholesterol (such as chicken liver and shellfish) by removing it as a nutrient of concern from dietary guidelines. Eggs are an excellent source of protein, healthy fats, and several vitamins and minerals. Fat spreads The story of fat spreads, such as margarine and butter, is probably one of the most confusing stories in nutrition. The origin of margarine, which is made from vegetable fat, dates back to the mid-1800s. Since that time, margarine has replaced butter as the fat spread of choice in most developed countries. This switch was driven by the lower price of margarine compared with butter as well as recommendations from health professionals to eat less saturated fat in order to prevent coronary heart disease (CHD). While this switch away from saturated fats began to show reduced CHD incidence in the population, researchers also identified an independent link between trans fat (a fat produced when partially hydrogenating vegetable fats to make margarines) intake and CHD. Since this link between trans fat and CHD was confirmed by multiple studies regulatory agencies around the world have sought to eliminate trans fats from the diet. The food industry was quick to respond and has been producing trans fat-free margarine for years now. However, there is still confusion among consumers as to whether vegetable, fat-based spreads are safe to eat. The short answer is yes, as long as the food label doesn’t list “partially hydrogenated vegetable oil” as an ingredient. Modern vegetable oil-based fat spreads are a way to replace dietary saturated fat while increasing polyunsaturated fat – a dietary change that has been shown to reduce CHD in large cohort studies
U.S.], or 35% of the Company disclosed [net asset value] of C$35 [$27.27 U.S.] per share." The firm added that it had taken its concerns to the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Ontario Securities Commission. Hudson's Bay quickly hit back. In a press release Thursday, the retailer called the allegations "inaccurate public statements" from Land & Buildings. "The company has not sold a controlling interest to Rhone," Hudson's Bay said in the release. "Initially, the Company expects that Rhône will hold a 21.8% voting and equity interest in the company on a partially diluted basis (and an approximately 30.0% voting and equity interest if the preferred shares are held to their eight year maturity)," the retailer said. Other terms regarding the investment are "customary for transactions of this nature, and were, contrary to Land & Buildings' assertion, negotiated at arm's length," Hudson's Bay added. While the retailer and the activist debate the finer points of Rhône's investment, the broader conflict is over the future of Hudson's Bay. Land & Buildings has threatened to wage a war over the company's board — potentially trying to orchestrate the removal of some members. After the departure of Storch in October, the investment fund had some strong words about Richard Baker, the executive chairman and now interim CEO of Hudson's Bay while the board searches for a replacement for Storch. Land & Buildings said at the time, "[I]t is typical for undervalued and struggling companies such as Hudson's Bay to try to position the exit of top executives as a reason for investors to give them more time to right the ship." "Jerry Storch is only the most recent casualty at the company, joining several other senior executive departures," the firm added. "In reality, Executive Chairman Richard Baker, who will be taking on the role of interim CEO, continues to call the shots. This is even more problematic given how Baker has been stonewalling Land & Buildings and the investment community regarding a plan to unlock the value of the real estate embedded in the Company." Top on Litt and his firm's wish list is for Hudson's Bay to cash in on its owned real estate, including its iconic Saks store property in Manhattan, worth, according to Litt, $5 billion Canadian dollars (or around $4 billion U.S.). Property sales, which can be turned into cash for investors, are a common objective for Wall Street activists buying stakes in department store chains. Macy's this year, for example, fended off an activist hedge fund that wanted it to sell off its properties and Dillard's is under similar pressure. It's an investment strategy that ignores why retailers buy property in the first place: to establish financial and operational stability over the long-term.There was rather worrying news from the regional conferences this weekend in which several parliamentarians, including Chief Whip Tom Brake, implied that the party would not vote against an Act of Parliament triggering Article 50 and/or repealing the European Communities Act 1972. I and many other members are increasingly concerned about this turn of events. Less than two months ago, we passed a policy at Conference that committed the party to remain inside the European Union. Our reputation for many years has been that of a Europhile party, and nearly all of our votes are aware of this fact. So too are the thousands of new members who joined after the referendum. To not vote against would not only be betraying party members, it would be betraying our voters too. After a bruising period in coalition in which we lost the trust of many of our members, I fear that retreating from our pro-European principles poses an existential threat to the party. Make no mistake, the expressed will of the party is to clearly oppose the triggering of Article 50. The government have a mandate to trigger Article 50, but we are evidently not bound to vote for such a motion, just like we are not bound to vote for other government pledges that we stand resolutely opposed to, such as the Snooper’s Charter or the repeal of the Human Rights Act. We must escape from this idea that the referendum result means the democratic process has ended. We have the right and the responsibility to scrutinise and oppose the Conservative Brexit plans, and we have the right and responsibility to not only believe that Brexit remains against the national interest, but to promote that idea and campaign upon it. Just because you lose a battle doesn’t mean you stop fighting for what’s right; just ask Labour how it worked out for them. We cannot afford to triangulate ourselves into bland centrism. We must stand up for our principles now more than ever. Already, there are dozens of party members who are so concerned that they have signed a request for a Special Conference to ask if our MPs to stick to the crystal clear policy we passed in Brighton: no to Article 50, no to Brexit. I’m calling upon the Parliamentary Parties to make their position on Article 50 clear so we can avoid this potentially expensive but necessary action. * Sarah Noble is an activist in Calderdale. Alongside her role on the LGBT+ Liberal Democrats executive, she shares a keen interest in devolution and transport policy.Tucker on Anthem Protests: 'Shared Belief in USA is the Only Glue That Binds Us' Tomi Lahren's Final Thoughts: A Free Speech Lesson for NFL Anthem Kneelers As President Donald Trump prepared to fly to Indiana for his big tax reform speech, he took questions from reporters on a range of topics, including the national anthem protests that have swept the NFL. He was asked why he defended white supremacists' right to protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, but now says NFL players shouldn't protest during the national anthem. "You cannot have people disrespecting our national anthem, our flag, our country," Trump said. "And that's what they're doing." He said the NFL is in a "really bad box," because the fans agree with him and the league's ratings are down. "In my opinion, the NFL has to change. Or you know what's going to happen? Their business is going to go to hell," Trump said. ...NFL attendance and ratings are WAY DOWN. Boring games yes, but many stay away because they love our country. League should back U.S. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 24, 2017 Great solidarity for our National Anthem and for our Country. Standing with locked arms is good, kneeling is not acceptable. Bad ratings! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 24, 2017 Ratings for NFL football are way down except before game starts, when people tune in to see whether or not our country will be disrespected! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 26, 2017 "We have to show total respect for our national anthem, for our flag, for our country," Trump said. "When they're protesting during a football game, I think they can find better places. But they cannot do it during the national anthem." Watch more above. Gutfeld: The NFL Is 'Crippled By Identity Politics' 'Nice Try, Roger Goodell': Hannity Blasts League 'Hypocrisy' on Demonstrations Steve Bannon to NFL: 'Take A Knee - At Night to Thank God Donald Trump is POTUS' Clinton: Female Trump Supporters 'Publicly Disrespecting Themselves'Gender discrimination occurs in the courts, but few people talk about the unfair treatment men face in the process Photo by Kelsey Mo \| The State Press Photo illustration of gender disparity in the criminal justice system. By Kelsey Mo \| 10/16/16 10:48pm Equal pay! Abortion rights! The glass ceiling! All of these ideas are commonly associated with people who champion the ideals of feminism and fight for “gender equity” and “fair treatment of the sexes.” I admit freely as a feminist that I discuss these topics among my friends. Many of the topics feminists talk about, such as the ones listed above, are issues in which women typically benefit. However, very few feminists even mention gender disparities in regards to the amount of time men and women serve in the criminal justice system. According to a study conducted by Professor Sonja Starr from the University of Michigan Law School, even with the same for criminal history, arrest offenses and other pertinent aspects, “men receive 63 percent longer sentences on average than women do.” The gender disparity in the criminal justice system can stem from multiple places. Professor Cassia Spohn, the foundation professor and director at the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at ASU, said, “even when you have two people committing very similar or even the very same crime, judges may come to a conclusion based on stereotypes that may or may not be true: That women are simply less culpable, less dangerous, less threatening. As a result, they may impose harsher punishment on men. “If we look at women’s criminal histories, we often find that they don’t bring the same baggage that men do,” Spohn said. The fact that women generally have a less serious criminal history may also influence the sentencing decision. However, it is not solely the judge that affects the gender disparity; prosecutors, who decide the charges, also play a large role. “Prosecutors might look at two individuals who’ve committed a very similar kind of crime and charge them differently so that the woman might be charged with a less serious version of the crime," Spohn said. In an attempt to try and close the gender disparity gap, some jurisdictions have created sentencing guidelines. “Sentencing guidelines help because in a system without guidelines, judges can basically impose whatever sentence they want," Spohn said. "And in a system where there is that much discretion it opens the door to discrimination." Unfortunately these efforts have not been wholly successful. "Even research in jurisdictions that have sentencing guidelines has not shown that the gender disparity is eliminated. It’s reduced, but it’s not eliminated," Spohn said. Because this issue pertains to gender equity, feminists should talk about it more often. Yet we don’t. Adam Hollingsworth, a men’s rights activist, said in an interview with the Good Men Project, “A lot of times these issues will get drowned out because of highly public fighting between Men’s Rights Activists and feminists, which winds up overshadowing the legitimate concerns that many MRA’s have.” Collectively, feminists need to bring more attention to this problem. If we are truly going to be socioeconomically and politically equal to men and establish gender equity, then it includes addressing situations that may not be “beneficial” to us. Whether judges sentence women more harshly to match punishments meted out for men, or vice versa, there is no clear cut answer to a philosophical question Spohn said. “Judges can come at that from different perspectives and see crime through different lenses.” To ignore this glaring subject would be doing a disservice to the idea of actual gender equality. This is not to say that women do not face discrimination. Nevertheless, giving women a more lenient sentence for the same crime is discriminating against men and must be addressed to achieve “equality.” Reach the columnist at [email protected] or follow @kmo75947 on Twitter. Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors. Want to join the conversation? Send an email to [email protected]. Keep letters under 300 words and be sure to include your university affiliation. Anonymity will not be granted. Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on Twitter. Related StoriesSAGINAW, MI -- It might seem there is no rhyme or reason to where tornadoes occur in Saginaw County and the surrounding region. Three twisters have hit three different areas in just the past 16 months. Related: Recovery drags for Saginaw, Tucsola county residents hit by June tornado In June 2014, a tornado touched down near St. Charles. This June, a tornado hit just east of Birch Run and traveled east toward Millington. And in August, a tornado tore a path through western Huron County, near Owendale. But looking at 65 years of data, it appears there are favored paths for tornadoes in the Saginaw and Bay City areas, the Thumb and even northeast Lower Michigan. In those areas, tornadoes are more likely to form. Here are all the tornadoes in the Saginaw County area since 1950. The majority of the tornadoes have occurred in the southern half of Saginaw County. Saginaw area "tornado alley" There is a pronounced favored track of tornadoes through Saginaw County. It's the southern half of the county. It seems as though severe storms become tornadic often around St. Charles, Birch Run, Frankenmuth and Millington. Most of the tornadoes in Saginaw County since 1950 have occurred in these areas. Why? I've observed this trend since moving here and forecasting the weather here since 1995. I think the main reason is a lake breeze that usually stretches across southern Saginaw County during these tornado outbreaks. A great example is the St. Charles tornado from June 2014. The lake breeze had moved southwest off Saginaw Bay. Behind the lake breeze, winds were northeast. Once the storm hit this lake breeze and the big change in wind direction, the storm started to rotate and produced a tornado. There may be something to the lay of the land in southern Saginaw County, but most of the tornadoes I've observed had a storm interacting with a lake breeze. Here are all the tornadoes in the Bay County area since 1950. There seems to be a "tornado alley" from the east side of Bay City northeast into the Thumb. Bay County and Thumb tornadoes There also seems to be a favored area for tornadoes in Bay County and into the Thumb. That path is from east and south of Bay City northeast into the western part of Tuscola and Huron counties. Again, like Saginaw County, I think Lake Huron and Saginaw Bay play a big part in this "tornado alley." I've seen the lake breeze move south off the southern part of Saginaw Bay, and make it to Munger. Then a storm comes along and hits the lake breeze. The tornadoes seem to form at that point. Here are all the tornadoes in northeast Lower Michigan since 1950. There is a very pronounced concentration of tornadoes in northeast Lower Michigan. Northeast Lower Michigan is interesting One of the most pronounced "tornado alleys" is located in northeast Lower Michigan. Look at the map. Since 1950 there have been at least 15 tornadoes in northeast Lower Michigan. There is an area from West Branch northeast to Lupton, Hale and Glennie where most of the tornadoes have occurred in that region. This is especially incredible since the number of tornadoes should decrease as you move north and east in Michigan. The latest tornado, on Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2015, touched down in this same area of northeast Lower Michigan. Here's an interactive map of all the tornadoes since 1950. You can zoom in to your area. A word of caution Even though there appears to be "tornado alleys" in mid-Michigan and northeast Lower Michigan, any spot could be hit by a tornado. So don't think just because your town has never been hit by a tornado, it can't be struck. If you have any questions or comments, please post below. MLive Chief Meteorologist Mark Torregrossa has been forecasting Michigan weather for more than 25 years. He's been chief meteorologist at three television news stations in Michigan, and he's an avid gardener and hunter. Email him at [email protected] and find him on Facebook at facebook.com/mark.torregrossa and Twitter @weathermanmarkNew police task force seizes more than 18K, drugs and guns from Flint streets in two-week period The Flint Police Department's new Crime Area Target Team seized 14 guns, a variety of drugs and more than $18,000 in a two-week period, said Chief Tim Johnson during a news conference Tuesday morning, April 26. FLINT, MI - More than a dozen Flint-area federal inmates convicted of gun crimes could be released from prison early following two recent Supreme Court decisions that changed laws calling for increased sentences for career criminals. At least 16 people have filed motions in Flint U.S. District Court since the beginning of the year asking for their federal prison sentences to be reduced following the Supreme Court cases that impacted the Armed Career Criminal Act. The law allowed federal prosecutors to seek lengthy prison sentences for felons who commit gun crimes if they had previous convictions for violent felonies or serious drug crimes. In Flint, the act helped give teeth to a zero-tolerance policy enacted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for felons who possess firearms. In 2011, the agency announced it would begin charging felon in possession of firearm cases in the federal system, rather than the state system, due to the stiffer penalties. U.S. Attorney's Office zero tolerance gun initiative with felon in possession charges off to quick start GENESEE COUNTY, Michigan — A new initiative to crack down on illegal guns in Flint netted 32 charges and took 44 weapons off the streets in its first month. The announcement came as the city was ravaged by gun violence and hovered at the top of annual lists of the nation's most-violent cities. Since the announcement, court records show roughly 300 cases have been initiated by federal prosecutors against felons who allegedly illegally possessed firearms in Flint and the surrounding areas. The act requires a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years for defendants who commit crimes with a firearm after three or more previous convictions for drug trafficking offenses or violent felonies. Federal sentencing guidelines also allowed for sentencing increases for felons if they had prior serious drug or violent felonies, but did not yet reach the three crime threshold. But the recent court decisions, the 2015 Johnson v. United States case and subsequent 2016 Welch v. United State ruling, now limit what courts can consider violent felonies when deciding if the Armed Career Criminal Act and its heftier sentences can be applied. "The impact of the Johnson opinion is that some prisoners will be resentenced and ultimately released early," U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade's office said in a statement to Mlive-The Flint Journal. "The exact number is not yet known, as the Supreme Court and various Courts of Appeals wade through a myriad of legal issues associated with applying Johnson to already-incarcerated defendants." It's also not yet known how many more inmates will seek relief from their sentences due to the changes. Riots, guns and drugs Fire alarms rang out April 30, 2003, at the Wolverine Secure Treatment Center. Wolverine, located in Buena Vista, serves as a secure residential treatment program for males ages 12-21. Louis John Coker trotted out of his cell with his fists balled up. Court records show he told the corrections officers he was going to "beat some ass," and he encouraged other residents at the facility to join him. Other residents agreed and a riot ensued. Court records show facility staff were assaulted and property was destroyed. Ultimately, Coker was convicted of attempting to incite a riot and given five years of probation for his role in the incident. Nearly five years later, Coker was out of custody when a man, who turned out to be a Flint police officer, called him to say he had $20 and was looking for drugs, court records show. The pair met and the officer purchased.09 grams of heroin from Coker. The officer left the area and told his back-up that the deal had been made. His team moved in and tried to arrest Coker, but he fled. Officers pursued and ultimately tackled Coker. During their search, they discovered a.22-caliber handgun in his waistband. Federal prosecutors filed charges, and Coker was sentenced to 10 years in prison for distributing heroin and being a felon in possession of a firearm. Federal sentencing guidelines called for less than three years in prison, but the judge determined he was a career criminal and more than tripled his sentence. Coker, 30, is serving his sentence at the Lewisburg federal high-security prison in Lewisburg, Penn. He is scheduled to be released in November 2019. Now, public defenders are asking a judge to reduce his sentence and free him from prison. They argue the judge erred in claiming Coker was a career criminal in light of the new Supreme Court decisions. "Based on these decision, Mr. Coker is being unconstitutionally held, in violation of the Constitution," public defender Joan Morgan wrote in an April 26 motion seeking Coker's release. Morgan could not be reached for comment. What's a violent crime? The Supreme Court's Johnson decision limited what could be considered a violent crime in order to obtain increased sentencing under the Armed Career Criminal Act. Under the act, a violent crime was defined as a crime punishable by more than a year in prison and contained the use, attempted use or threatened use of physical force against a person. It also identified specific crimes that included burglary of a dwelling, arson, extortion or the use of explosives that fit the definition. However, the Johnson case challenged a third portion of the law, known as the residual clause, that also defined a violent crime as an act that involved conduct that presented a serious potential risk of physical injury to others. The residual clause acted as catch-all, allowing judges to make their own inferences on if the prior convictions should be considered a violent crime. For Coker, prosecutors argued that his riot conviction should be considered a violent crime, and they asked U.S. District Judge Sean F. Cox to rule him a career offender. "Encouraging inmates to assault correctional officers during a fire alarm is conduct which carries a significant risk of injury," the U.S. Attorney's Office argued prior to Coker's sentencing. "Defendant's admitted offense conduct was purposeful, violent and aggressive and should be considered a crime of violence." Cox, relying on the residual clause, ruled the conviction was a crime of violence and made Coker susceptible to increased sentencing. But, the Supreme Court, in particular the late Justice Antonin Scalia, took issue with this type of judicial decision making. "This line of cases, of sentencing, was something Scalia was really ardent about," said Western Michigan University Cooley Law School professor Tonya Krause-Phelan. Krause-Phelan said Scalia regularly spoke in opposition to factors that could increase a defendant's sentence that were never determined beyond a reasonable doubt by jurors. Ultimately, it was Scalia who wrote the Johnson decision that eliminated the residual clause as vague. "It just leaves too much for speculation on the part of the judge," Krause-Phelan said. Future for Flint While the Johnson decision helped shift the definition of violent crime, this year's Welch decision allowed this new definition to be applied retroactively to cases that have already been sentenced. This opened the door for those already convicted in Flint to challenge their sentences. But, Krause-Phelan said it's still too early to know what exactly the impact of these decision will be locally. While resentencing motions pour in from inmates, there is no guarantee all of them will see a change in their sentences. "In some cases, our office will oppose motions to reduce sentences and in some cases our office will stipulate to resentencing of defendants," McQuade's office said. "This is true of federal prosecutors' offices around the country. Our decision to either stipulate or oppose the motions to reduce sentence will depend on the nature of a particular defendant's prior conviction or convictions." Flint-area inmates have argued a multitude of convictions should no longer be considered violent crimes, including armed robbery, negligent homicide, felonious assault and a plethora of attempted infractions. So far, only one Flint-area motion for a reduction has been ruled on. Andrew Tramble was sentenced in 2004 to more than 17 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm. He was sentenced under the Armed Career Criminal Act for prior convictions of jail escape and attempted larceny in a building. However, U.S. District Judge Linda V. Parker on May 3 agreed to reduce his sentence to 10 years and ordered his immediate release from prison after determining he no longer met the criteria created by the Johnson decision. Despite the changes, McQuade's office said it will still continue to press ahead with its zero-tolerance policy, and will work with those offenders who are released to try and prevent them from re-offending. "Many may be concerned that the early release of some prisoners as a result of the Johnson decision will threaten public safety," McQuade's office said. "Our office is committed to assisting offenders who reenter society seeking to avoid criminal activity and take advantage of various reentry programs available to them. Our office is equally committed to prosecuting offenders who return to criminal activity and don't take advantage of reentry programs. "In large measure, the choice is up to each returning citizen." Gary Ridley is a staff writer with Mlive-The Flint Journal. He can be reached at 810-280-9516. You can also follow him on Twitter @GaryRidley or on Facebook.(CNN) -- British Prime Minister David Cameron called Gaza a "prison camp" on Tuesday, a blunt description from a major Western leader about the besieged Palestinian territory. Cameron made the remarks in the Turkish capital of Ankara, which he was visiting to forge a new relationship with Turkey and show his support for Turkish membership in the European Union. "Let me also be clear that the situation in Gaza has to change. Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp," Cameron said, according to a transcript of the speech provided by his office. Residents of Gaza say they have suffered greatly under an Israeli goods blockade implemented since Hamas took control of the territory after elections in 2006. But Israel says its tough measures are necessary to stop weapons from reaching Hamas militants intent on destroying Israel. Ron Prosor, Israel's ambassador to Britain, reacted quickly to the prime minister's remark, saying that Hamas is responsible for the misery in Gaza. "The people of Gaza are the prisoners of the terrorist organization Hamas," Prosor said in a statement. "The situation in Gaza is the direct result of Hamas' rule and priorities." The ambassador also raised the issue of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier taken hostage four years ago who is being held in Gaza. "We know that the prime minister would also share our grave concerns about our own prisoner in the Gaza Strip, Gilad Shalit, who has been held hostage there for over four years, without receiving a single Red Cross visit," Prosor said. Cameron's comments came in a country that once had close relations with Israel, but ties between the two nations have been strained recently over the Jewish state's policies toward the Palestinian territory. Turkey was incensed at the May 31 Israeli commando raid against an aid flotilla in the Mediterranean Sea. Violence broke out on one of the ships in the flotilla, the Turkish Mavi Marmara, leaving nine activists -- eight Turks and a Turkish-American dual national -- dead. Cameron -- who touted Turkey's unique ability to make peace between Israel and the Arab world -- stressed that the Israeli action was "completely unacceptable." He said he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Britain expects Israel's inquiry into the raid to be "swift, transparent and rigorous." He was also optimistic that the recently frayed alliance can continue to be friendly. "Just as Turkey is playing a pivotal role in Afghanistan, it can also do so in the Middle East. Turkey's relationships in the region, both with Israel and the Arab world, are of incalculable value. No other country has the same potential to build understanding between Israel and the Arab world. I know that Gaza has led to real strains in Turkey's relationship with Israel, but Turkey is a friend of Israel, and I urge Turkey, and Israel, not to give up on that friendship," Cameron said. He also believes Turkey can also help bring together Palestinians and Israelis as they work to meet in direct negotations. "But as, hopefully, we move in the coming weeks to direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians, so it is Turkey that can make the case for peace and Turkey that can help press the parties to come together and point the way to a just and viable solution," the prime minister said.Hey, Isn't That... People Are Doing Double-Takes, And Taking Action, As Web Snapshots Are Nabbed for Commercial Uses By Monica Hesse Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, January 9, 2008 The pug in the corner of the Saints-Eagles football telecast on Fox looked familiar to Tracey Gaughran-Perez. Not in the slobber-smile way that all pugs look familiar, but in the who else but me would dress their pug up in a bleeping Santa suit kind of familiar. Gaughran-Perez logged on to http://www.sweetney.com, the personal blog where she'd uploaded a snapshot of her dog, then waited for the Fox pug -- a sort of "Merry Christmas" icon -- to appear again on TV. Argh. The pug was definitely Truman; the photo was definitely one she'd marked as "all rights reserved." "It's not like the picture was some golden chalice of Internet wonder. It's a picture of a stupid dog," says the Baltimore mom. "But it's my dog and it's my photo!" Supreme irony: "Every commercial break there would be a warning from Fox saying, 'This telecast may not be reproduced,' " she says. "I guess copyright pertains only to them." Under the banner of "intellectual property," record labels warn you not to bootleg their songs. Hollywood studios warn you not to download their movies. Intellectual property has lately seemed the concern of corporations trying to protect the artist from the grabby public. But in an increasingly user-generated world where the public is the artist, sometimes it's the big boys who get grabby. And the questions that arise are about ownership, but they are also about fairness, and changing culture, and ultimately, the search for authenticity. * * * The (literal) poster child for corporate photonapping: Dallas 15-year-old Alison Chang, who paused in the middle of a church-sponsored carwash last summer to flash a goofy grin and a peace sign to her friend Justin Ho-Wee Wong. Click! Wong posted his pictures from the event on the photo-sharing Web site Flickr. A couple months later, the one of Alison resurfaced -- as part of a national ad campaign for Virgin Mobile in Australia. "Dump Your Pen Friend," the billboards read. "Free text virgin to virgin." Alison was the chump to dump. The Chang family lawyered up. While Wong had agreed to make his snapshots available through Creative Commons, a nonprofit that licenses photos for Flickr, he didn't anticipate commercial use, says Ryan Zehl, the attorney and spokesman for both the Chang family and Wong. Additionally, Zehl says, the license had required Wong to be attributed by name, which he was not. He and Alison, now 16, learned what had happened only when another Flickr user forwarded Wong a picture of the ad. They're all suing Virgin Mobile Australia -- the Changs claiming Alison's violation of privacy and Wong claiming the company's failure to credit him properly. Understanding cases such as the Changs' requires a crash course in copyright law: Photographers (even amateur ones) automatically own the rights to their own work (even online). That means others can't use a photo without permission. But sometimes, through "fair use," it actually is okay to use a photo without permission. Fair use can include scholarship or parody, and is determined by a number of criteria. Further: sometimes, individuals such as Wong can decide to give away just part of their control. For example, permitting use of a photograph as long as the source is credited. It's all doubly muddled online, where images can be thoughtlessly taken with one mouse click, such as when thousands of boys made screensavers out of high school track star Allison Stokke's photo and never once asked, "Legal?" Clearly, the only way to really make sure your photos on the Internet don't get splashed around is not to put them up there to begin with. In some ways the more interesting question for this corporate breed of photonapping isn't "Is it legal?" but rather, "Why does it sting so badly?" For Niall Kennedy, the issue was hypocrisy -- the casual smugness with which corporations seemed to say, Copyright? What copyright? Kennedy had snapped photographs at a technology convention in late 2005 only to see one suddenly appear, without proper crediting, on a Microsoft-run blog. "I've had audits where Microsoft has sent people to verify that I have copyrights for the software running on each employer's computer," says Kennedy, who once worked for Microsoft and now runs a Web technology firm. "This is a company that goes after copyright violators with the assumption of guilty until proven innocent." The original blogger later posted an online mea culpa: "I forgot to include an attribution, which I had fully intended to do, but for which I apologise [sic] to him." Microsoft did not return calls seeking further comment. Says Lawrence Lessig, the Stanford legal scholar who created Creative Commons, when asked about the issue of corporations borrowing photos: "There's really no excuse for [these companies] except that they think it's not important to protect the rights of the amateur." Brandon Stone, a Web designer in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was as flattered as he was peeved when he saw his photographs of a dirty alley appear as background in a "Real Time With Bill Maher" skit on HBO. Still, the amateur photographer didn't want to undersell himself, and solicited advice online. While still debating a course of action, he received a call from an apologetic show producer who had been forwarded Stone's advice request. They negotiated a price of $500 for the images used, "plus a little more for pain and suffering," Stone says. "They know the business. They have to be held to a higher standard. The average Joe doesn't have a team of lawyers telling him what's legal and what's not." The producer's explanation? An intern, a lowly intern who didn't know any better, had grabbed the screen shots for the last-minute sketch. Low-level employees were also the forces cited when stay-at-home dad Jim Griffioen's daughter appeared on Babble, an online parenting magazine. The story, about lead paint, featured a photo from Flickr of Juniper playing in front of a paint-peeling wall. "It implied that I expose my daughter to all kinds of evils," says Griffioen, who hadn't agreed to licensing. "I'm just glad it wasn't an article about smoking pot [in front of] your kids," the subject of another Babble story. Griffioen, as it happens, was once an intellectual property lawyer. When he unleashed his legalese, he says, staffers removed the photo. Griffioen accepted their untrained-employee explanation -- until, he says, he started hearing from other bloggers who said they'd been wronged by the site. One woman said a photo of hers was improperly used for the magazine's inaugural issue. When she complained, the editor blamed... an intern. "That is one very active intern," says Griffioen. Babble, for its part, immediately admits wrongdoing, but says that the cases were not nearly as widespread as Griffioen implies. "There was a period of a few weeks where it happened as a pattern," says Rufus Griscom, Babble publisher. He says that one photo assistant did not understand permissible use, but that when the problem came to light, the offending photos were immediately removed and replaced with stock photography or with images from Flickr that Babble had permission to use. The photo assistant was fired, and the magazine reviewed all of its published images to make sure it had the photo rights. What's noteworthy in each of these cases, Lessig says, "is that bloggers, a community typically associated with piracy, are rallying in support of copyright." He says average individuals are increasingly thinking of themselves as artists, whose work has value -- or at least deserves respect. Lessig predicts that as the average Joes have their own material appropriated, it will eventually result in better behavior from both individuals and corporations. Or, in total anarchy? * * * When news broke of the Alison Chang story earlier this fall, Virgin Mobile Australia released a statement (and has subsequently declined all interview requests, including one requested for this article). In part: the campaign "was part of an approach designed to reject cliched 'advertising' imagery in favour of more genuine and spontaneous shots." Griscom, of Babble, similarly explained the magazine's decision to use Flickr, calling the images found there "more original, less generic." It's easy to get so caught up debating the fairness of photonapping that we miss the other question: Why would big name corporations even want our point-and-click photographs? The answer seems to be less "Because we can" and more "Because we need to." "Authenticity is the new consumer sensibility," says Joe Pine, a business consultant and co-author of "Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want." It is the criterion "by which people decide what to buy and who to buy it from." It's a byproduct of the user-generated world: the trustworthiness of YouTube, the realness of Facebook. Above all else, we believe ourselves. "People don't want to buy the fake from the phony anymore," Pine says. "They want to buy the real from the genuine." Most of Flickr looks genuine. Type in "nerdy teen" and the current first hit is not some stylized nerd with braces and suspenders and mismatched socks. What you get instead is an image more subtle -- an old yearbook photograph of a smiling brunette, glasses not quite right, hair not quite right. The image is more "right" than the Steve Urkel an ad firm would have concocted. And the ad firms get that. So we get videos like Burger King's "Freakout" campaign in which real people are told the Whopper has been discontinued. They do their best to replicate real. Viewers can spot a professional pug model from across the living room. It all gets very meta. And none of it is comforting to the people who have had their images grabbed online. So while these issues of authenticity and fairness and legality are all being sorted out, amateur photographers who find themselves more famous than they would like may consider taking advice from Niall Kennedy. When his initial e-mails to the Microsoft blog asking it to remove links to his photo didn't immediately work, Kennedy replaced the image with one of a man engaging in an activity best described as "extreme mooning." Visitors to the Microsoft blog who clicked on the innocent-looking link were guided to the new photo. Says Kennedy, "They pulled down the link within 15 minutes."
to spend Passover this year. Morocco Mazagan Beach and Golf Resort Passover in a country with no diplomatic relations with Israel? It’s possible. Morocco has a small Jewish community and a thriving etrog industry. It’s become a Passover destination for Jews who want a Middle Eastern Passover outside of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv (or Egypt, for that matter). This offering provides a mix of Western luxe and Middle Eastern history and culture. Located an hour south of Casablanca, the resort has golf (obviously), massages, go-karts, all-terrain vehicles, biking and tennis. But for those who want to immerse themselves in the country, the program also offers day trips to Rabat, Marrakesh and Casablanca that showcase Morocco’s tourist highlights as well as Jewish historical sites — from Rabat’s Mellah, or Jewish quarter, to the grave of Joseph Caro, a 16th-century Jewish legal sage. “The country of Morocco, for Jews, is very open relative to [other] Arab countries, and we want to take the opportunity to improve relations,” said Raphael Torjman, who manages the program and whose family hails from Morocco. “There are people who want to see this history.” Also on offer: a Mimouna, a traditional Sephardic meal held after Passover incorporating round challah, eggs, dairy and fish. Australia Marriott Resorts & Spa on the Gold Coast Passover Down Under! For those willing to brave a seriously long flight, there’s an Aussie Pesach at the Surfers Paradise Marriott Resort & Spa on Australia’s “Gold Coast.” Along with relaxation and, should you so desire, Torah classes, the resort is near top Australian surfing destinations. There are theme parks nearby, too, and guests can also take a day trip to the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest. And if you think a nine-day package isn’t sufficient, the program offers “especially designed packages … in both Melbourne and Sydney to cater for our International guests who wish to arrive early.” South Africa Arabella Hotel and Spa Go to the seder, then go on safari. That’s the pitch for this hotel outside of Cape Town, which can boast being the only Passover resort in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to golf, tennis and a swimming pool, the Arabella offers adventurous activities like shark diving, a crocodile farm and a zip line. Wild animals, however, are the real draw here. Safari trips offer guests guided tours into the bush where lions, hyenas and elephants await. But what makes this safari different than all other safaris? A kosher-for-Passover picnic basket packed along for the ride. Guests are attracted to “the idea of Africa being luxury in the bush,” said Yechiel Asseraf, who runs the program with his wife, Pammy, a safari guide. “It gives you an opportunity to see wildlife in its authentic form.” Monaco Riviera Marriott Hotel If you don’t fancy a stay in a large country like Australia, why not spend it in the world’s second-smallest nation, Monaco? Passover hotels dot southern Europe — from Spain to the Greek islands — but a stay in Monaco puts guests inside the playground of the rich and famous. Those who don’t drive a car during the holiday will have no problem traversing the entire country on foot — it’s smaller than a square mile — and take in everything from the Monte Carlo Casino to the Grimaldi Palace to the yachts. And during Passover’s intermediate days, when Jewish law permits spending money, those with bursting wallets can enjoy the country’s high-end shopping. Brazil Club Med Lake Paradise If you want to travel far but avoid the jet lag, your best bet may be Club Med Lake Paradise, outside Sao Paulo. Guests here can climb, swim and kayak, but the resort’s 15-year-old Passover program, according to founder Salomão Berô, is different from others because it largely serves Latin American guests from places like Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Panama. Bero, a chef, prides himself on the program’s cuisine, which includes kosher-for-Passover takes on Brazilian delicacies like pao de queijo, or cheese bread.Another woman has come forward to accuse Donald Trump of inappropriate conduct, claiming that he offered her $10,000 and access to his jet to come to his penthouse hotel room at a golf event in 2006. Jessica Drake, an adult film performer for Wicked Pictures, appeared on Saturday with attorney Gloria Allred. She said that she met Trump ten years ago at a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, Calif. She said Trump invited her to his suite after the tournament, and she went with some women friends. When they arrived, she said, he grabbed each of them tightly and kissed them. After they left him, one of his representatives called to invite her to his room alone, but she said she declined. Then Trump himself called and asked, “What do you want? How much?” After she declined his invite, he eventually offered her $10,000, she said. Drake is the 11th woman to accuse Trump of inappropriate conduct. Allred represents two others. At a rally in Gettysburg, Pa., earlier on Saturday, Trump threatened to sue his accusers, saying “all of these liars will be sued” and alleging that they came forward “to hurt my campaign.” Related People Editor-in-Chief Says Writer’s Account of Trump Assault is True, ‘Good for the Public’ to Read Allred said that Trump’s threat was “a new low,” and said that if he were to sue, they will “welcome the opportunity to depose you.” Drake said that she came forward aware that “I may be called a liar or opportunist” because of her background. She said she wanted to also support other women who have gone public. “I may be but a tiny grain of sand. But clearly this is an enormous beach,” she said. Drake also showed a picture of she and Trump taken at the golf event. Update: Trump’s campaign released this statement: “This story is totally false and ridiculous. The picture is one of thousands taken out of respect for people asking to have their picture taken with Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump does not know this person, does not remember this person and would have no interest in ever knowing her. This is just another attempt by the Clinton campaign to defame a candidate who just today is number one in three different polls. Anyone who would pay thugs to incite violence at a rally against American citizens, as was released on video, will stop at nothing. Just another example of the Clinton campaign trying to rig the election.”TV's real sale of the century: Fancy Keeley's coat, Konnie's sofa or even Kryten's head? The BBC's put them all up for grabs The Corporation is selling more than 1,200 lots They all have a strong connection with Television Centre Iconic West London building was the BBC’s home until earlier this year Sets from Blue Peter and costumes from Ashes To Ashes up for grabs Incredible props from Doctor Who and Red Dwarf also among prized items The BBC is to auction off the props, costumes and furniture from some of its best-loved programmes. Entire sets from the flagship children’s show Blue Peter, costumes from hit crime drama Ashes To Ashes and incredible props from Doctor Who and Red Dwarf are among the prized items up for grabs from tomorrow. The Corporation is selling more than 1,200 lots which have a strong connection with Television Centre – the iconic West London building which was the BBC’s home until earlier this year. Up for grabs: The BBC is to auction off the props, costumes and furniture from some of its best-loved programmes. It includes two fake fur coats worn by DI Alex Drake, played by Keeley Hawes, pictured, in Ashes To Ashes With no reserves set, auctioneers expect a huge demand from viewers eager to secure their own slice of television history. BBC bosses hope that by offering fans such an eclectic mix of items –including photographs, programme awards, sound recordings and paintings – they will be able to cater for every pocket. Proceeds from the sales will go into Corporation funds. Get ahead: Sci-fi fans are well catered for with one of the heads worn by Kryten, the robotic manservant from Red Dwarf, up for grabs Some items are expected to attract fierce bidding. For example, what man could resist the overcoat worn by maverick cop DCI Gene Hunt, played by Philip Glenister in retro-crime drama Ashes To Ashes? But a huge ‘Totaliser’ from the 2010 Blue Peter Christmas appeal might look a little out of place in most living rooms, especially as it comes as a job lot with the kennels that were once home to Blue Peter dogs Petra, Patch and Shep. Sci-fi fans are well catered for and props include the head of one of the deadly Sycorax monsters from Doctor Who, a replica of Star Wars droid R2-D2 and one of the heads worn by Kryten, the robotic manservant from Red Dwarf. Doctor Who devotees can also bid for a cut-out Dalek used to publicise the hit show. Other costumes from Ashes To Ashes include two fake fur coats worn by DI Alex Drake, played by Keeley Hawes, and a leather jacket sported by DS Ray Carling (Dean Andrews). Several of the costumes, including a blood-stained top and jacket worn by officer Sharon ‘Shaz’ Granger (Montserrat Lombard) and the bullet-riddled tunic of ill-fated DC Chris Skelton (Marshall Lancaster), are linked to key plotlines in the show which ran from 2008 until 2010. Blue Peter fans of all ages will spot familiar props spanning generations of the show first screened in 1958 and now broadcast from the BBC’s Salford base. They include the sail-shaped backdrops that became a distinctive part of the set in 2004 and the bright orange, blue and purple sofas used by presenters including Gethin Jones and Konnie Huq in 2007. Popular: The overcoat worn by maverick cop DCI Gene Hunt, played by Philip Glenister in retro-crime drama Ashes To Ashes will also be for sale Sale: The Corporation is selling more than 1,200 lots which have a strong connection with Television Centre - the iconic West London building which was the BBC's home until earlier this year Kids' play: Blue Peter fans of all ages will spot familiar props spanning generations.They include the bright orange, blue and purple sofas used by presenters including Konnie Huq, pictured, in 2007 Other items from children’s shows include the trademark purple van from CBBC programme Prank Patrol and a set used by CBeebies presenters when anchoring the channel’s programmes. The sale also includes a demonic bloodstained head from a 1990 French and Saunders sketch which parodied The Exorcist, and a man-nequin used by Catherine Tate when she transformed herself into her foul-mouthed ‘Nan’ character. There are huge cardboard publicity cut-outs of some of the BBC’s best-known personalities including Strictly Come Dancing’s Bruce Forsyth and Tess Daly. Also under the hammer are hundreds of vinyl singles of sound effects, such as hyenas, battle tanks, sea lions, thunder and even ‘traffic in a French city’. Elizabeth Sewell, of auctioneer Peaker Pattinson which is running the sale, described it as ‘a chance for the public to buy a little bit of TV history’. ‘I’m sure the cardboard cut-outs of Brucie and Tess and the Blue Peter sets will get people bidding,’ she said. ‘We’re expecting interest from all over the world. It’s impossible to put a value on most of the props because they are one-offs.’Iron Fist star Finn Jones is well aware of the early critical mauling that the new Netflix series has received – and thinks it has something to do with President Donald Trump. Advertisement The actor admitted to RadioTimes.com that he understood why some early viewers might have struggled to warm to the hero with the titular ‘iron fist’ because of the character’s privileged background. “I think the world has changed a lot since we were filming that television show,” he said. “I’m playing a white American billionaire superhero, at a time when the white American billionaire archetype is public enemy number one, especially in the US. “We filmed the show way before Trump’s election, and I think it’s very interesting to see how that perception, now that Trump’s in power, how it makes it very difficult to root for someone coming from white privilege, when that archetype is public enemy number one.” He insisted that while reviewers have only seen the first six episodes, it will take the whole series and the Marvel follow-up The Defenders to truly understand Danny. “Danny is a fish out of water, and you don’t really understand where he’s coming from,” Jones said. “But I think there’s also a level of intrigue. People need to see the full series – Iron Fist doesn’t end until the last episode of Defenders. He really goes on a journey of self-discovery, and grows into the role. It’s paced out; it’s a long journey.” This is the fourth series Marvel has made with Netflix following Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, and has received by far the worst reaction from critics. RadioTimes.com’s review points out that the drama shows “a privileged white guy [Danny Rand] mansplaining martial arts to a female Asian sensei (Jessica Henwick’s Colleen Wing), and it’s hard to believe that no-one found the optics of that troubling.” However, Jones hit back at the critical response: “I think it’s very clear and very simple; these shows are made for the fans, not for critics. I think the fans of the source material and the fans of the Netflix and Marvel shows will love what we’ve created. I think it’s that simple.” Advertisement Marvel’s Iron Fist is available to watch on Netflix UK nowJust before senators packed their bags and headed out for a seven-week vacation, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren called on Senate Republicans to vote to confirm more than a dozen federal district judge nominees — some of whom have been waiting since last year. “It would take no time to confirm these judges,” Warren said Thursday before the Senate. “Fourteen states will be left without vital judges because of the Republican blockade.” The 16 judicial appointees have passed through the Judiciary Committee and received bipartisan support, Warren said. Still, no vote was held. “At a certain point, reasonable people have to ask: Why are Republicans actually doing this?” Warren said. “Is it so that if Donald Trump is elected president he will be able to nominate more judges?” Advertisement Warren, who has feuded with the presumptive Republican presidential nominee for the past few months, accused Trump of attacking “the integrity of federal judges” for refusing “to bend the law to suit Trump’s personal financial interests.” The senator warned of the dangers of allowing Trump to usher in a new set of nominees if he were to win the presidential election. She also reprimanded Republicans for their refusal to hold a vote, claiming that their attitude set a precedent for Trump’s disrespectful treatment of judges. “He got it from you,” she said. “From the Republicans in the senate and their decision to turn scores of highly qualified, non-partisan judicial appointees into political footballs.” Warren ended her speech with a piece of advice for Republicans who say they want to stand up to Trump. “Confirm these highly qualified, noncontroversial judges,” she said. “Do it now, before shutting off the lights and leaving town.” Watch Warren’s speech before the Senate here:Big animals alive today have a lot in common. They are heavy. They have few predators. And they tend to move slowly. But have big animals always behaved this way? Scientists continue to disagree about the speed--fast or slow?--of one very big extinct animal, Tyrannosaurus rex. Tyrannosaurus rex Craig Chesek/AMNH The most famous of the upright, largely meat-eating dinosaurs called theropods, T. rex would have weighed between 5,000 and 7,000 kilograms (11,000 to 15,500 pounds) with skin and flesh on its huge bones. That's about as much as the largest African elephant. Some claim T. rex could run at speeds up to 72 kilometers (45 miles) per hour. But biomechanics researchers argue that the animal moved much more slowly, perhaps only about 16 kilometers (10 miles) per hour--about as fast as an average human runner. These experts say size slowed T. rex down. But why is it so hard to be big and fast? Bones, muscles and posture all play a part. Fast Facts: T. rex Pronunciation: "Tie-RAN-uh-sore-us rex" "Tie-RAN-uh-sore-us rex" LENGTH: 12 meters (40 feet) 12 meters (40 feet) HEIGHT: 3.6 meters (12 feet) 3.6 meters (12 feet) WEIGHT: 5,000-7,000 kg (about 11,000-15,500 pounds) 5,000-7,000 kg (about 11,000-15,500 pounds) Food: Other animals Other animals Lifespan: About 28 years About 28 years When it lived: 67-65.5 million years ago 67-65.5 million years ago Fun fact: At the hip, an adult T. rex is three times the height of an average seven-year old--but more than 260 times the weight of that child! T. rex: Built for Speed? Scientist John Hutchinson with ostriches. From AMNH video © 2005 Apart from size, T. rex shares some features with fast animals alive today. Like the speedy ostrich, T. rex had long legs for its body size, especially the portion of the leg below the knee. Because it looks fast, T. rex is often shown in the somewhat crouching stance of a human sprinter at the starting line. But judging speed from appearance is like assuming a car is fast without looking under the hood. Experts in biomechanics study the muscles and body design of living large animals--and the stress on the body caused by running. Applying this research to extinct animals, they conclude that T. rex was a slow runner, if it could run at all. More usually, it kept to a dignified walk. Looks Can Deceive Bones can't tell us everything about how an animal walks or runs. For example, the giraffe looks as if it might be a fast runner. It has very long legs, and skeletal details suggest the presence of large and powerful muscles. But with a top speed of perhaps 55 kilometers (35 miles) per hour, the giraffe turns out to be not much faster than the stubby-legged rhino. In contrast, a cheetah looks like a skinny relative of the leopard, at least from its bones. You'd never know from just the body structure that this super athlete can sprint at speeds up to 110 kilometers (70 miles) per hour. So bones can mislead--but a skeleton is all we have for most dinosaurs. That makes it tough to learn all about movement. Photodisc Ostrich A Misleading Family Resemblance Ostrich and T. rex skeletons look quite similar. This isn't surprising, though, because both T. rex and all birds arose from a common ancestor. But are they alike in other ways? Ostriches run at up to 75 kilometers (45 miles) per hour, but the biggest ostrich weighs only about 160 kilograms (350 pounds). Compare that with T. rex's 6,000 kilograms or more (over 13,000 pounds). Today, the fastest animals tend to weigh 100 kilograms (220 pounds) or less. An extinct animal 50 times that size was probably not as fast as an ostrich. Changing Gears About a century ago, T. rex's discoverers wrote of its "destructive power and speed." Within decades, though, scientists had decided all large dinosaurs, including T. rex, were sluggish giants. Later, opinions changed again. As theories about warm-blooded dinosaurs caught the public imagination, T. rex regained its reputation as a fast, fierce carnivore. These days, T. rex may be slowing down once more. Recent biomechanical analysis suggests that while T. rex was a powerful--even "destructive"--animal, it wasn't very fast.Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler participates in a panel discussion in this file photo in Washington, DC, on February 6, 2014. Kristoffer Tripplaar/ Sipa USA (Sipa via AP Images) This post originally appeared at The Nation. When Barack Obama was running for president in 2007, he earned a great deal of credibility with tech-savvy voters by expressing support for Net neutrality that was rooted in an understanding that this issue raises essential questions about the future of open, free and democratic communications in America. Obama “got” that Net neutrality represented an Internet-age equivalent of the First Amendment — a guarantee of equal treatment for all content, as opposed to special rights to speed and quality of service for the powerful business and political elites that can buy an advantage. Asked whether he thought the Federal Communications Commission and Congress needed to preserve the Internet as we know it, the senator from Illinois said, “The answer is ‘yes.’ I am a strong supporter of Net neutrality.” “What you’ve been seeing is some lobbying that says that the servers and the various portals through which you’re getting information over the Internet should be able to be gatekeepers and to charge different rates to different Web sites,” explained Obama, who warned that with such a change in standards “you could get much better quality from the Fox News site and you’d be getting rotten service from the mom and pop sites.” Obama’s bottom line: “That I think destroys one of the best things about the Internet —which is that there is this incredible equality there.” Candidate Obama was exactly right. So was President Obama when, in 2010, the White House declared that “President Obama is strongly committed to Net neutrality in order to keep an open Internet that fosters investment, innovation, consumer choice and free speech.” And President Obama certainly sounded right in January 2014, when he said, “I have been a strong supporter of Net neutrality. The new commissioner of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, whom I appointed, I know is a strong supporter of Net neutrality.” The president expressed that confidence in Wheeler, even as concerns were raised about an appointee who had previously worked as a cable and wireless industry lobbyist. The president expressed that confidence in Wheeler, even as concerns were raised about an appointee who had previously worked as a cable and wireless industry lobbyist. Now, barely three months after the president identified him as “a strong supporter of Net neutrality,” Wheeler has rolled out a proposal that our most digitally engaged newspaper, The Guardian, delicately suggests would “axe-murder Net neutrality.” According to Los Angeles Times tech writer Jim Puzzanghera, the plan “would allow Internet service providers to charge companies for faster delivery of their content.” Gabe Rottman, an American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel and policy advisor who focuses on First Amendment issues, correctly explains, “If the FCC embraces this reported reversal in its stance toward Net neutrality, barriers to innovation will rise, the marketplace of ideas on the Internet will be constrained and consumers will ultimately pay the price.” Wheeler tried to soften the blow by claiming that criticisms from public-interest groups, based on initial reports about his plan, were “flat-out wrong.” “There is no ‘turnaround in policy,’” Wheeler announced. “The same rules will apply to all Internet content. As with the original Open Internet rules and consistent with the court’s decision, behavior that harms consumers or competition will not be permitted.” But, after reviewing “the outlines of the proposal released by [Wheeler’s] office on Wednesday,” Puzzanghera’s “Tech Now” report explained that: Although the plan would reinstate the agency’s prohibition against Internet providers from blocking any legal content, it would allow phone and cable companies to charge Netflix and other companies to put their content in a super-fast lane on the information superhighway. The plan appears to violate a basic principle of Net neutrality that all similar content should be treated equally. Tim Karr, of the media reform group Free Press, says: “All evidence suggests that Wheeler’s proposal is a betrayal of Obama and of the millions of people who have called on the FCC to put in place strong and enforceable Net neutrality protections.” The Future of Music Coalition’s Casey Rae argues that any FCC initiative that establishes a model for speeding up delivery of content for paying customers is “not ‘Net neutrality.’” The risk, says Rae is that, “the Internet in America will now be carved into a fast lane for well-heeled corporations and a dirt road for everyone else.” The risk, says The Future of Music Coalition’s Casey Rae, is that “the Internet in America will now be carved into a fast lane for well-heeled corporations and a dirt road for everyone else.” “These proposed rules not only don’t go far enough to safeguard consumers, they actively marginalize smaller and independent voices,” explains Rae, who says, “Artists, developers, culture workers, media-makers, nonprofit organizations, community, civic and church groups must tell the FCC that this isn’t good enough. We need real rules of the road for ISPs to guarantee that creative expression and entrepreneurship can thrive in the online ecosystem. FMC and our allies look forward to making this case in the upcoming rulemaking after May 15.” Rae’s point is an important one. The process is just beginning. It can be influenced by content creators, consumers and citizen activists who understand that in this age of digital communications a broken Internet will lead to a broken democracy. It can even be influenced by the president and members of Congress, who ought to speak up, loudly, in favor of the right approach to Net neutrality. There are two simple steps to take: 1. Recognize that there is a right response to court rulings that have rejected the complex and ill-thought approaches that the FCC has up to now taken with regard to Net neutrality. The right response is to reclassify broadband Internet access as a telecommunications service that can be regulated in the public interest. When the FCC’s clumsy previous attempt at establishing Net neutrality protections was rejected in January by the US District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the court did not say that the commission lacked regulatory authority — simply that it needed a better approach. As David Sohn, general legal counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology, notes, the court opinion laid out “exactly how the FCC essentially tied its own hands in the case and makes it clear that the FCC has the power to fix the problem.” “The Court upheld the FCC’s general authority to issue rules aimed at spurring broadband deployment, and accepted the basic policy rationale for Internet neutrality as articulated by the FCC,” explains Sohn. “The arguments in favor of Internet neutrality are as strong as ever, but prior FCC decisions on how to treat broadband have painted the agency into a corner. Those decisions are not set in stone, however, and the ball is now back in the FCC’s court. The FCC should reconsider its classification of broadband Internet access and reestablish its authority to enact necessary safeguards for Internet openness.” The approach that Wheeler is now proposing continues down the wrong course and actually veers into even more dangerous territory with its outline for a pay-to-play “fast lane” on the Internet. But this proposal can be altered or rejected by the full commission. In other words, the reclassification option can still be pursued. 2. Recognize that this is the time to send a clear signal of support for genuine Net neutrality. The FCC has listened in the past when a public outcry has been raised, on media ownership issues, diversity issues and Internet access issues. Wheeler is a new chairman. It’s vital to communicate to him and to the other members of the commission that President Obama was right when he said that establishing “fast lanes” on the Internet “destroys one of the best things about the Internet — which is that there is this incredible equality there.” Dozens of public interest groups are already up and at it with a petition urging Wheeler and the FCC to “scrap” approaches that won’t work and “restore the principle of online nondiscrimination by reclassifying broadband as a telecommunications service.” Dozens of public interest groups, ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to the Government Accountability Project to the PEN American Center to Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting and the National Hispanic Media Coalition have urged the FCC to do the right thing. The “Save the Internet” coalition has a track record of rapidly mobilizing Americans to thwart wrongheaded moves by the FCC. They’re already up and at it, with a petition urging Wheeler and the FCC to “scrap” approaches that won’t work and “restore the principle of online nondiscrimination by reclassifying broadband as a telecommunications service.” Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders says, “Our free and open Internet has made invaluable contributions to democracy both here in the United States and around the world. Whether you are rich, poor, young or old, the Internet allows all people to seek out information and communicate globally. We must not turn over our democracy to the highest bidder.” Sanders is right about that — especially when he recognizes the vital link between technology and democracy. A free and open Internet is essential to modern democracy. But that freedom and openness will be maintained only if Americans use their great democratic voice to demand it. There is a way to save Net neutrality. And if ever there was a time for citizens to urge the FCC to go the right way, this is it.The entire process of designing and developing a set, plus the time it spends going through editing and the Future Future League (FFL), is about two years. In that time, the design team creates thousands of individual cards, very few of which actually make their way into the file, and even fewer get to print. It is a very rare incident indeed when a card made up in a meeting goes from design all the way to print without some pretty big changes. On today's Latest Developments, I'm going to discuss what kind of road it takes for a card to make it all the way from inception to print, why so few cards actually make it, and what actually takes them out. Creating Cards Cards get made in two major ways in R&D. The first is in meetings (usually these are cards that are there to fill a void or trying to prove a concept), and the second is homework, where people on a team are asked to brainstorm more complex ideas, top-downs, or the like, and we will go through these cards in a meeting and figure out which ones to try out. Overall, we make a lot of cards while designing sets. Mark Rosewater estimates the percentage of cards that get created that get to print well below one percent, which is probably accurate, but a bit misleading. Way more than one percent of cards that actually get tested see print, but we make a ton of cards in meetings and through homework that don't ever get tested. Many of those are just 2G 3/2s with the set's keyword or R "deal 2 damage" upgraded with the set's theme. Most of the cards that quickly flux or die are commons, which move around a lot due to the needs of the Limited environment. Most of these are not super exciting designs and can be submitted by multiple people at the same time during meetings. Frequently, certain keywords or mechanics just lend themselves to natural designs as the right place to start. When we started testing renown, the one-mana 1/1 and the two-mana 2/2 with renown 1 were the most obvious places to start—it was just a matter of figuring out which keywords to put on them. When we are working with higher-rarity cards, most specifically either build-around uncommons or interesting rares, we try to keep them in long enough that we can try them out a few times in Limited. Even if one feels wrong after one play-through, it may take a few tries to get a deck where the card is appropriate—then we can decide if that is too hard and isn't going to work or how we can change the card to make it the appropriate power level for the set. There is a lot of value in unique and cool designs that don't fit into a set. We want some number of cards in the Supreme Verdict/Cryptic Command vein that could realistically go anywhere. Neither has anything to do with the mechanics in their set; they are just cool and powerful designs that someone who doesn't care about guild strategies or tribal can buy into and still find cards in a set that they want. These cards are also more likely to get cut because they can go anywhere. We want a few of these in each set, but ultimately we also really need to make sure that we print what we can with set-specific themes and mechanics since the rotational period on those is much longer. That allows us to keep finding new Magic cards for a longer period of time. If we didn't have strong themes in our sets, we would have a much harder time keeping Magic interesting year after year. Why Cards Get Cut Now that I've talked a bit about how cards get made, let's talk about how they get cut. When a set comes over from design to development, we use the file as more of a blueprint than a set-in-stone list of what will appear in the final set. While we do allow for certain "design favorites" that we try to keep in the set, very few other cards are locked in. Almost everything else in the set is malleable and exists solely to ensure the experience is as fun as possible. Things that can lead to cards getting cut in a set: Removing a mechanic from the set Adding a mechanic and needing space Rebalancing Limited The card does bad things for Constructed Creating metagame cards for Constructed The card is too similar to another card in a not-yet-printed set The card is too similar to another card development wants to add to the set for FFL The card breaks something in Standard The card doesn't work within the rules The card doesn't work in digital At times, it feels pretty amazing that we manage to keep any cards at all. Development does its best to preserve what we can and keep the vision of what design wants in the set in the set. Wherever possible, we try and retain what design really enjoyed about the set and maintain the basic shapes for as many cards as possible. Ultimately, a card getting cut from a set is not a judgment on the card's merits but an acknowledgement that no individual card is more important than the set as a whole and that we need to change a lot as a set moves through development. A huge part of the design and development process is about an exploration of what could be fun, what is fun when you first play it, and what is fun on the 30th time you play it. Plenty of cut cards have done a lot to teach us about what the final versions of cards should look like. Why Cards Change The ship of Theseus is a thought experiment that ponders if you replaced a ship board by board with use, would that still be the same ship after everything had been replaced? At what point does it stop being the original ship? Magic sets have similar questions about how much a card can change and still be the original card. For example, imagine you have the following card: Builder Bob 1WBG Legendary Creature—Human Warrior When CARDNAME enters the battlefield, gain 4 life. 4/4 If it moves from a 1WBG 4/4 to a WBG 3/3, is it the same card? What if it just moved to a 2GG 4/4? What if the ability changed to "gain life equal to the highest toughness among creatures you control"? What if we made up something totally new, but kept the idea of a wedge-color legend? These kinds of questions vary designer by designer and even card by card regarding what the card is trying to accomplish. A planeswalker might change all their individual abilities, but that they care about spells might be enough to consider it the same card. Reasons like this are why we don't really track who made what card or assign credits to individual cards—there is just too much movement and too many gray areas to make anyone happy with that kind of credit. When working on Theros, design handed off the following card: Hercules 2GG Legendary Creature—Human Warrior CARDNAME can't attack or block unless you control twelve or more permanents. 12/12 The point of this card was to be a top-down Hercules, and the number twelve is a reference to the number of labors he was said to have completed. So, at what point does this card change too much to be considered the same card? Changing the number muddies the clear design intent, as does changing the creature type away from Human (It became a Hydra, which kind of killed the story of the card, before eventually changing to Mistcutter Hydra for FFL reasons). These are the kinds of complex questions that we get into for preserving design intent and trying to make sure everyone is happy with cards. Because so much of the set changes, it can often feel like very little of your individual work as a designer or developer remains in its final form—but usually a lot of that work doesn't go to waste: it inspires and is the basis for the cards that end up in the final set. How Cards Change: Case Study One of the things I do whenever I lead a set is print out a copy of the set as it existed at the design handoff, a copy of each card near the end of development, and then the final version of each card. This is to help me remember how things changed over the process of a set, and it doubles as a good example to newer members of R&D about what kinds of changes they can expect to see. It's a good reminder to me of what I was thinking about during the whole process. As you will see, a lot of the first columns are blank—these are cards that don't have a direct descendant from the original design handoff. I will show you a few pages of my Magic Origins binder to give you all an idea of what a set looks like at different points of its lifecycle. Gideon's Fortitude started off as a sort of "signature spell" for the Planeswalker that got better if you had spell mastery. A good enough idea, but it ended up changing for very basic reasons: the upgrade wasn't meaningful enough, and it wasn't playing enough into the go-wide renown deck that red-white was trying to encourage. The final version of the card (Kytheon's Tactics) helped to better tie in to Kytheon's story of who he was as the leader of a small gang and to call back to Desperate Stand from Journey into Nyx. Jace's Path to Sphinx's Tutelage is a very common example of how a card can change pretty
realized there was a problem. And at that moment, barely minutes after the fight he’d been scoring from ringside was over, so too was the career of the 85-year-old boxing judge. Scaife had scored fights on occasion for more than 30 years, first for amateur boxers and then with the pros. He worked in Washington, D.C., which rarely got boxing matches of national significance, which meant his name was known locally but otherwise wasn’t recognizable even to those who follow the sport closely. That all changed on March 5, 2016, at the D.C. Armory, an arena just a short drive from his home in Northeast Washington. For the final bout of that night, a bout that aired on HBO in front of an average of 740,000 viewers, he turned in a scorecard that raised eyebrows and brought allegations of bias and corruption. The city’s athletic commission conducted an investigation and said earlier this month that it was neither. Instead, the commission described Scaife’s scoring for the heavyweight bout between Luis Ortiz and Tony Thompson as the result of “human error.” To some, that phrasing may imply incompetence. Yet Scaife’s retirement from judging has come because of what he and a longtime friend believe is the real reason for what happened. “I’m thinking I might be feeling a little senility or something coming on,” Scaife said last week in an exclusive interview with this writer. He sat in his basement, near a wall that exhibited a variety of boxing memories. There was a plaque from then-Mayor Marion Barry for the first annual Mayor’s Cup Invitational Amateur Boxing Tournament in 1985. There was an award received from the commission in 2012, recognizing 25 years of service. There were numerous framed certificates received for completing regular training as an official. And there were several credentials granting him access to ringside, including the one he wore the evening of Ortiz-Thompson. He’d gotten ready for that assignment the same way he always did — by getting into his uniform at home. Except this time it was different. And like the scores he turned in during the main event, he didn’t realize something had gone awry until being informed of it afterward. “I have a lady who lives with me. I told her what happened [during Ortiz-Thompson], and she told me it took me almost an hour to tie my tie before,” Scaife said. “Hey, I’ve been tying my tie since I was 15, 16 years old and never had no problem.” Scaife also was assigned the first two fights of the show: light heavyweight prospect Todd Unthank-May’s six-round unanimous decision over Alexander Johnson and lightweight prospect Damon Allen’s unanimous decision over Daniel Perales. His score for Allen vs. Perales was the same as his two official counterparts at ringside: a 60-54 shutout for Allen. His score for Unthank-May vs. Johnson was 58-55, while the other judges had it 59-55 and 59-53. There was only one round in which he was in the minority, as the only judge to give Johnson the sixth. Scoring is subjective, based on four criteria but otherwise dependent on what a judge sees — or thinks he sees — from his seat and what that judge thinks about, well, what he thinks he saw. This writer arrived to the venue too late to see Unthank-May vs. Johnson and cannot opine on Scaife’s scoring for that round. However, it was notable in hindsight to see that Scaife had scored Round 3, in which Unthank-May knocked Johnson down for the second time in the bout, as a 10-9 round for Unthank-May instead of the 10-8 round that judge Wayne Smith had, docking Johnson one point for losing the round and another point for the knockdown. Then again, even that 10-9 from Scaife isn’t as strange on the surface as the even 10-10 score turned it by judge Manuel Vincens. This scoring otherwise went unnoticed. That wouldn’t be the case after Ortiz-Thompson. The main event ended in the sixth round with a knockout for Ortiz. The scores didn’t matter. But as copies of the commission’s combined score sheet were passed around press row, writers took notice of a few things. The two other judges had Ortiz ahead 50-43 after five rounds. Scaife had Ortiz barely in the lead at 48-47. And it wasn’t just that the judge had found two rounds to give to Thompson. In the first round, a round in which Ortiz knocked Thompson down, Scaife had it a 10-9 round for Ortiz while the other two judges had it the customary 10-8. That wasn’t as bad as the third, in which Ortiz knocked Thompson down as the round was coming to a close. The other two judges had it 10-8 for Ortiz. Scaife had it 10-9 — for Thompson. He also was the lone judge to give Thompson the fifth round. “I would be very confident that in this instance it’s nothing less than corruption,” wrote a commenter on one boxing website. “If you fight a DC fighter in his hometown, you will get screwed by a corrupt judge like Scaife, a corrupt ref, or both,” wrote a commenter on another boxing website. It’s understandable why boxing fans and observers would come to that conclusion, or at least have that suspicion. A pile of papers in Scaife’s basement included four articles a friend had printed out for him, all mentioning his name and the controversy over his scoring. “People are going to think whatever they want to think,” Scaife said. “I was a good judge. I was a bum judge.” He knows his scores were wrong. He didn’t remember giving Thompson a round, though, until the chief judge pulled him aside afterward. “She asked me about it, and wow, I didn’t know what to say,” Scaife said. “I don’t know what happened. I know what happened. I know I did it. I know my writing. I know that he [Thompson] did not win a round, but yet I had him winning a round. I was surprised when she showed it to me.” He soon learned that he’d made other mistakes on the scoring slips, which are provided to the judges ahead of time for them to fill out during the bouts. These were different than the ones he’d worked with in the past, which allowed the judge to write in the color of the corner and the score for that corresponding fighter in empty boxes. These new slips had “Red Corner” and “Blue Corner” printed ahead of time in boxes, and at one point earlier in the night he’d written the scores atop that text instead of in their proper empty box, he said. He wonders why no one caught that error early on. He wonders why the referee for Ortiz-Thompson didn’t question him after collecting the scorecards for the rounds in question. He wonders why no one from the commission straightened him out. He thinks back to the third round, in which Thompson was doing decently until the knockdown. “I was going to give him the round until the end,” he said. “I must’ve had that on my mind real strong.” He also knows that he is the one at fault, even if it wasn’t at all his intention. While the commission’s investigation was underway, Scaife was already drafting a resignation letter. “I messed up the whole thing,” he said to this writer at one point. “I got out of it so it would never happen again,” he said later. “If I did it one time, I would do it again, because when I was doing it I didn’t think I was wrong. I couldn’t blame nobody for that. I’m the one who did the whole thing. … I didn’t mean to do it, but I did it.” Scaife acknowledged that he’d had memory issues before, though there were no incidents that he could recall along the lines of what happened with the scorecards and his tie that day. He’d visited a doctor five or six years ago, he said, and was told he remembered as much as other people do. Still, he’d hoped his forgetfulness wouldn’t affect his judging. It did. It’s difficult to review Scaife’s entire judging career. BoxRec.com, an online database of boxing matches, lists 88 bouts that Scaife scored from ringside. That list is incomplete. The bouts it does list don’t always include the judges’ scores, both in fights that went the distance and those that ended early. That’s a level of minutiae impossible to attain so many years after the fact and with so many bouts going on worldwide. And there’s no website currently compiling round-by-round scoring breakdowns, though various score sheets have been posted online for notable fights in recent years. But even those who closely follow boxing in Washington, D.C., hadn’t noticed anything to give them cause to speak of Scaife in the way that some writers and fans describe other, more famous judges. “He was usually very consistent as a judge, this one situation notwithstanding,” said Gary “Digital” Williams, the writer for Fightnews.com who chronicles fights in D.C., Maryland and Virginia on his “Boxing Along the Beltway” blog. “That’s why it was kind of surprising having the score he did on March 5.” Scaife has been friends for about 25 years with Henry “Discombobulating” Jones, a fixture as a ring announcer in the D.C. area. Jones recalled one other instance in which Scaife had a highly questionable scorecard, though even then there were extenuating circumstances. “He had scored it incorrectly, and I asked him about it later, and it seemed like he might’ve gotten the participants confused,” Jones said. “Now I did point out to him that they both were wearing the same color trunks, which is a major problem, they were the same ethnicity and their body size was similar. He wasn’t really able to differentiate between the two. “That was the only time I had seen that prior to now,” Jones said. “We’re talking about four years ago. Other than that he’s been quite competent. … I know good and well that he’s not what’d be called a ‘homer’. Over the years he’s scored against hometown fighters, and justifiably so. He’s been above board on everything.” He had noticed Scaife’s faculties slipping, though. “I’ve been playing chess with him for 25 years. For the first 18 years or so I couldn’t touch him. I couldn’t beat him at all,” Jones said. “The last few years I’ve been kind of dominating. I’ve seen the decline. He’s not as mentally acute as he used to be. I continue to play with him because it still motivates him mentally.” Scaife still loves the sweet science. He was an amateur heavyweight boxer when he was a teenager in Bakersfield, California, prior to his time serving in the Air Force in Korea in the 1950s. Work wasn’t going well in California and so he came to D.C., where he had relatives. He’s been in the same house since 1962 and points to the improvements he made over the years. He owned a moving company for more than three decades and retired from that in 1996. He continued to judge over the past 20 years. “I truly loved what I was doing,” he said. “I’ve been crazy about boxing. My love for boxing grew more and more as I got into it.” Televisions played sports channels simultaneously on two floors of the home. He still looks for the fights. Boxing has come back to D.C. since the night of Ortiz-Thompson. He opted against going to the April 1 show featuring Adrien Broner against Ashley Theophane. “I don’t like him [Broner] as a boxer, and I didn’t — my coworkers, I didn’t want to be around them,” he said. “They know I wouldn’t do anything like that [score a fight in a certain way due to bias or corruption], but I did not feel right.” He’s certain he’ll return. But he has other things to think about: his life as it is going to be now, his girlfriend, and the ongoing challenge of how to make ends meet between his bills and his limited income from Social Security. Despite all that, Scaife wasn’t hesitant in discussing the night that ended his career as a boxing judge. He wanted people to know the truth, even if it’s still something he’s trying to understand. “He’s come to grips with it,” Jones said. “He’s taken ownership of it. He voluntarily stepped down. That tells a lot about his character. He didn’t want people to have the wrong impression that there was something clandestine going on. He didn’t want to impact negatively on the sport he loved.” “Fighting Words” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide. Send questions/comments via email at [email protected]Aust guilty of'sex slavery, eating child labour chocolate' Updated An international anti-slavery expert says the problem of human trafficking and slavery in Australia is much worse than official figures suggest. A recent parliamentary inquiry estimated there are between 300 and 1,000 female sex slaves in Australia. At a forum in Brisbane today, University of San Francisco spokesman Dr David Batstone said most Australians do not realise the extent of the problem. He says at another forum on the issue, he heard a report of a restaurant that kept slaves in its basement. "An audience member said 'I know another restaurant that's doing that right now. What do I do about it?'," he said. "So it gives me - this is anecdotal evidence, or case evidence - that suggests that it's much broader than the maybe 1,000 or 2,000 that are projected that are probably in Australia." 'Blood on our teeth' Meanwhile, World Vision says Australians are eating cheap chocolate produced by child labour. The charity has launched a national campaign against slavery and human trafficking. World Vision Australia chief executive Reverend Tim Costello says on a recent visit to the Ivory Coast and Ghana he saw the chocolate industry using child labour. Speaking in Brisbane today he said the industry had been resisting pressure to clean up its work practices. "We have silly little guilts. We say 'oh, I sinned, I ate some chocolate'," he said. "Well there is a real sin. It's not putting a pound on, it's actually child labour giving us cheap chocolate. "That's the real sin, that's the blood on our teeth, that's [what] we have started there." The chief executive of Confectionery Manufacturers of Australasia, Trish Hyde, agrees with World Vision that child labour is a serious issue that needs addressing. But she has countered Mr Costello's claim that the chocolate industry is resisting improvement. "Far from resisting pressure to clean up its work practices, there is significant work being undertaken by the industry," she said in a statement. "On the ground programs that are raising awareness and changing communities are underway now. Industry is supporting education for cocoa farmers on safe, responsible labour practices to reduce children's exposure to potentially hazardous situations. "This education through farmer field schools also helps farmers get better crop yields, which means farming families are better off." Topics: law-crime-and-justice, community-and-society, child-abuse, crime, australia, brisbane-4000 First postedfoo.txt foo_m1.txt foo_m3.txt ["","1","1","","2","","3"] "1" foo_m1.txt > import System.FilePath(takeExtension, dropExtension, (<.>), (</>)) > import System.Directory(getDirectoryContents) > import Data.Char(isSpace) > import Control.Monad takeExtension "foo.txt" = ".txt" dropExtension "foo.txt" = "foo" "foo" <.> "txt" = "foo.txt" "bar" </> "foo.txt" = "bar/foo.txt" getDirectoryContents "C:\Windows" = running "dir C:\Windows" at the command prompt isSpace'' = True main > main :: IO () > main = do > files > forM_ files $ \file -> when (takeExtension file == ".txt") $ do > src file > forM_ (zip [1..] (splitFile src)) $ \(i,x) -> > writeFile ("res" </> dropExtension file ++ "_m" ++ show i <.> "txt") x main = set files to be the list of files in the directory "data" for each file in files which has the extension ".txt" { set src to be the result of reading the file for each numbered result of splitFile { write out the value from splitFile to the location "res/file_m#.txt" where # is the 1-based index into the list of results } } splitFile > splitFile :: String -> [String] > splitFile xs = map (tabify. unlines) [s1,s2,s3] > where > xs2 = dropWhile null $ map (dropWhile isSpace) $ lines xs > (s1,_:rest) = break null xs2 > (s2,_:s3) = break null $ dropWhile null rest split the text in to lines for each line drop all the leading spaces from it drop all the leading blank lines break on the first empty line, the bits before are chunk 1 drop all leading blank lines for the rest break on the first empty line in the rest, before is chunk 2, after is chunk 3 for each of the chunks, put the lines back together, then tabify them > tabify (' ':xs) = '\t' : tabify (dropWhile (=='') xs) > tabify (x:xs) = x : tabify xs > tabify [] = [] if you encouter a space, drop it and all successive spaces, and write out a tab otherwise just continue onwards Normally I give blog posts detailing the fun, interesting or advanced stuff I do with Haskell. But that isn't a real representation of my programming life! Most of the time I am doing small scripts that do little tasks, so I thought I'd describe one of those. This post is written as Literate Haskell, which means you can save the whole contents as a.lhs file and run it in GHCi or Hugs.The task I had to complete was to take a directory of files, and for each filegenerate the filesto, where each one file is a block of lines from the original delimited by a blank line. i.e. given the file with the lines, the numberswould go inetc.This blog post isn't how I actually wrote the original script - I didn't use literate Haskell (since I find it ugly), I didn't give explicit import lists (since they are needlessly verbose), I didn't give type signatures (but I should have) and I didn't split the IO and non-IO as well (but again, I should have). It is intended as a guide to the simple things you can easily do with Haskell. Now on to the code...First, let's import some useful modules. To find more about a particular function just use Hoogle and search for it, but a quick summary:Every Haskell program starts with afunction, which is an IO action. For this program, we are going to keep all the IO in main, and only use other pure functions. With most file processing applications its best to read files from one directory, and write them to another. That way, if anything goes wrong, its usually easy to recover. In this case we read from "data" and write to "res".Or in some kind of pseudo-code:We can now move on to the pure bits left over. We want a functionthat takes a file, and splits it in to three chunks for each of the blocks in the file. When processing text, often there will be stray blank lines, and the term "blank lines" will also apply to lines consisting only of spaces. The code is below:And now presented more as a list of steps:The tabify requirement was added after. The person decided that all continuous runs of spaces should be converted to tabs, so the file could better be loaded in to a spread sheet. Easy enough to add, just a simple bit of recursive programming:And again in English:Haskell is a great language for writing short scripts, and as the libraries improve it just keeps getting better.Sony Pictures Entertainment headquarters in Culver City, Calif. (Photo11: Nick Ut, AP) CULVER CITY, Calif. — Sony staffers received a new email from hackers Friday, this time threatening their families, from the group that calls itself the Guardians of Peace or the "GOP." At the same time, someone purporting to be the GOP released another, massive, file dump on Friday, posting them on a sharing site called Pastebin. "It's over 100 gigabytes," said Daniel Tentler, with the security firm Carbon Dynamics. He is dissecting the file. The posting was titled "Gift of GOP for 3rd day: Financial data of Sony Pictures." The file was compressed and it wasn't immediately clear what it contained. However, whoever posted it claimed it included "many pieces of confidential data" in the accompanying message. The message also read, "Anyone who loves peace can be our member. Please tell your mind at the email address below if you share our intention." The email directed readers to a site that gives users anonymous, disposable email addresses. In a final line,which could mean that Sony will have its private data dripped slowly out into public arena, the message read, "The data to be released next week will excite you more." These two secondary assaults come after Sony has spent all week shifting email to new servers, instructing staffers to change passwords, and turning back the clock to old-school time-punch cards in order to process employees' payment. All of these efforts were made by Sony to thwart another attack by the GOP (easily confused with the political party). But an email – somewhat garbled in style – that landed in many staffers inboxes on Friday proved Sony's scramble is so far insufficient. The email included a warning to all Sony employees who did not assist the GOP that their families could land in harm's way, according to a person unauthorized to speak publicly about the situation. Sony employees have been instructed to turn off mobile and tablet devices. "We understand that some of our employees have received an email claiming to be from GOP," Robert Lawson, a spokesperson for Sony, told USA TODAY. "We are aware of the situation and are working with law enforcement." The FBI said they were also aware of the GOP's latest threat."The FBI is aware of threatening emails that have been received by some employees at Sony Pictures Entertainment," said FBI press officer Joshua Campbell in a statement. "We continue to investigate this matter in order to identify the person or group responsible for the recent attack on the Sony Pictures network." Sony has had computer security teams working round the clock to rescue what they can from the company's crippled servers since the initial attack was discovered on Nov. 24. At the time, company officials had all staffers stay off of email and avoid the company's internal WiFi network, to maintain security while they tried to rebuild. Some have suggested that the attack is in retaliation for a forthcoming comedy produced by Sony called The Interview. North Korea has denied any involvement. A new round of emails threatening staff could signal that the attackers didn't simply commit one of the largest hit-and-run cyber attacks on a U.S. company, but intend to continue toying with the firm as it struggles to get back on its feet. Read the email in full, per Variety(emphasis added). I am the head of GOP who made you worry. Removing Sony Pictures on earth is a very tiny work for our group which is a worldwide organization. And what we have done so far is only a small part of our further plan.It's your false if you if you think this crisis will be over after some time. All hope will leave you and Sony Pictures will collapse. This situation is only due to Sony Pictures. Sony Pictures is responsible for whatever the result is. Sony Pictues clings to what is good to nobody from the beginning. It's silly to expect in Sony Pictures to take off us. Sony Pictures makes only useless efforts. One beside you can be our member. Many things beyond imagination will happen at many places of the world. Our agents find themselves act in necessary places. Please sign your name to object the false of the company at the email address below if you don't want to suffer damage. If you don't, not only you but your family will be in danger. Nobody can prevent us, but the only way is to follow our demand. If you want to prevent us, make your company behave wisely. Contributing: Kevin Johnson Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1A21SZgNATO has been carrying out air strikes on Libya since Gaddafi used force to put down public revolt [AFP] The head of the NATO military alliance says military and political pressure have weakened Muammar Gaddafi's hold on power in Libya and will eventually topple him. "We have significantly degraded Gaddafi's war machine. And now we see results, the opposition has gained ground," NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen told a news conference in the Slovak capital, Bratislava, on Thursday. "I am confident that combination of strong military pressure and increased political pressure and support for the opposition will eventually lead to the collapse of the regime." Rasmussen’s comments were echoed by US president Barack Obama. "Time is working against Gaddafi. He does not have control over his country. The opposition has organised a legitimate and credible interim council," Obama said in Washington. "When Gaddafi inevitably leaves or is forced from power, decades of provocation will come to an end and the transition to a democratic Libya can proceed," he said, defending his decision to take military action against the Libyan leader's government. But Libyan government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim criticised the US president's remarks, saying "Obama is still delusional". "He believes the lies that his own government and media spread around the world... It's not Obama who decides whether Muammar Gaddafi leaves Libya or not. It's the Libyan people." Latest attacks NATO aircraft sank eight warships belonging to Gaddafi's forces in overnight attacks, the alliance said on Friday. The ships were sunk in co-ordinated attacks on the ports of Tripoli, Al Khums and Sirte, an alliance statement said. "Given the escalating use of naval assets, NATO had no choice but to take decisive action to protect the civilian population of Libya and NATO forces at sea," Rear-Admiral Russell Harding, deputy commander of the NATO mission in Libya, said in the statement. NATO, acting under a UN mandate, has been carrying out air strikes on the oil producer since Gaddafi used force to put down a revolt inspired by uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world. In some of the latest strikes, NATO hit Gaddafi's forces around 15 km (9 miles) east of the rebel-held town of Zintan in the Western Mountains region. The town and the port city of Misrata have seen some of the heaviest fighting in recent weeks. A Reuters reporter in Zintan said NATO strikes on a government weapons depot outside the city sent plumes of smoke into the sky. Government shelling of rebel positions near the town killed at least one rebel and wounded three, a medical official in the town said. NATO bombs struck Tripoli, Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte and Zlitan east of the capital, state TV said late on Thursday. Officials later took journalists to Tripoli port where a small ship which they said had been hit by NATO spewed smoke and flames. Defections denied Meanwhile, Libya's government denied persistent rumours that Gaddafi's wife, daughter and a top oil official had left the country. Libyan officials have produced no evidence of the whereabouts of the three, raising questions about Gaddafi's ability to hold together his entourage in the face of a widespread rebellion and NATO bombing. On Wednesday, a Tunisian security source and a Libyan opposition source with links to the ruling circle said Gaddafi's wife Safia and daughter Aisha were staying on the Tunisian island of Djerba, near the border with Libya. Libyan rebel officials, as well as official sources in Tunisia, have also told Reuters that Shokri Ghanem, a former prime minister who runs Libya's oil industry, had left Libya via Tunisia, though it was unclear where he had gone. Khaled Kaim, Libya's deputy foreign minister and one of the main government spokesmen, told Reuters in Tripoli: "Shokri Ghanem is in his position, at work. If he's out of the country, he'll be coming back. "As for the family of the leader, they're still here in Libya. Where else would they be?" Meanwhile, Libyan state TV showed footage of Gaddafi meeting a Libyan politician in Tripoli, who government spokesman Ibrahim said had been part of a delegation that met Russian officials in Moscow this week to explore possibilities for a ceasefire. The footage zoomed in on a TV screen in the room that showed Thursday's date displayed in the corner. The leader wore a brown robe with a hat and sunglasses. Clear military objectives Rasmussen said he had no information that Gaddafi's wife, daughter and oil chief had fled. Gaddafi has survived previous high-level defections, but analysts say there are signs of a gradual bleeding of support, especially as NATO's intensifies its air strikes and shortages make life harder even for officials. "There are three clear military objectives for our operation," NATO's Rasmussen told reporters. "Firstly, a complete end to all attacks against civilians. Secondly, withdrawal of Gaddafi's military forces and paramilitary forces to their bases. And thirdly, immediate and unhindered humanitarian access to people in need in Libya. "We will continue our operation until these objectives are fulfilled," he vowed. Rasmussen stressed the NATO mission was restricted to enforcing the UN-mandated no-fly zone and that there were no plans for alliance troops to set foot on Libyan soil. Libyan officials, however, have described the NATO intervention as an act of colonial aggression aimed at grabbing Libya's oil. On the ground, opposition rebels control eastern Libya and pockets in the West, but the conflict has reached stalemate in military terms, with rebel attempts to advance on Tripoli, Gaddafi's stronghold, stalled. That has left Western governments - under pressure from sceptical publics to deliver a decisive outcome - counting on Gaddafi's administration collapsing from within. The last few days have also seen a flurry of diplomatic activity focusing on a possible ceasefire deal, with pro-Gaddafi officials travelling to Moscow for talks and UN envoys trying to broker an agreement.The issue of gender equality might soon become a bit of a headache for political parties, but it’s hard to tell if it is even on the agenda in Kilkenny for next May’s local elections. The issue of gender equality might soon become a bit of a headache for political parties, but it’s hard to tell if it is even on the agenda in Kilkenny for next May’s local elections. Of our current 26 county councillors, seven are women. However, already three of them have confirmed they will not be seeking re-election in May, and a fourth has not been selected. Catherine Connery, Jane Galway and Anne-Maria Irish – all sitting Fine Gael councillors – say they will not stand again. Reasons vary from family committments to professional ones. Add to this the resignation of Cllr Betty Manning (Fine Gael) from the borough and county councils last year. In both councils, she was replaced by men. While Cllr Manning was a member of Kilkenny County Council, we had the highest proportion of female to male councillors on any county council in both Ireland and the United Kingdom. Eight representatives – nearly one third – were women. The dramatic turnaround will likely be a headache for Minister Phil Hogan, in his own Party, in his home county. He has called for more gender equality in politics. Under new legislation published by Minister Hogan, political parties will be required to have at least 30% female candidates in the next general election – or lose out on funding. But the minister has ruled out applying the same rules for the 2014 local elections. That must come as a welcome relief for the string-pullers here, with the first of our local Fine Gael selection conventions next week. The gender quota directive has, however, been voluntarily applied by the Party in some cases recently. At the Tralee Electoral Area convention, Fine Gael councillor and Mayor of Tralee Pat Hussey, a 35-year political veteran, withdrew his name as a candidate in protest at implementing it. It guaranteed the nomination of at least one woman in three candidates chosen. Does the change in Fine Gael’s gender ratio perhaps open a niche for the other parties or candidates? Let’s see how they are doing: At the Fianna Fail selection convention on Friday, sitting councillor Cora Long was not selected to run again by her Party. Four men, three of whom are not councillors currently, were nominated ahead of her. In the two city electoral areas, Fianna Fail has not put forward any female candidates, with three men running on the west, and three (potentially four) on the east. Other election candidates confirmed so far – including several Independents, two from the Green Party, and two from the new Anti-Austerity Alliance group – are all men. As things stand, it is possible Kathleen Funchion (Sinn Fein) and Marie Fitzpatrick (Labour) would be the only two women seeking a seat in the two city electoral areas, which cover an expansive area from Callan down as far as Inistioge. It’s worth remembering that in most of the cases above, the women in question have chosen not to put themselves forward. The problem is that the gender quota does not solve that; it is an artificial and superficial construct. It does nothing to address why five capable women who were all councillors 18 months ago now can’t/won’t run for election next year. And that’s before the public has even had a vote.Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker and GOP leaders have launched a push to ram several years' worth of conservative agenda items through the Legislature this spring before recall elections threaten to end the party's control of state government. Republicans, in a rapid sequence of votes over the next eight weeks, plan to legalize concealed weapons, deregulate the telephone industry, require voters to show photo identification at the polls, expand school vouchers and undo an early release for prisoners. Lawmakers may also act again on Walker's controversial plan stripping public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights. An earlier version, which led to massive protest demonstrations at the Capitol, has been left in limbo by legal challenges. "Everything's been accelerated," said Republican Rep. Gary Tauchen, who is working on the photo ID bill. "We've got a lot of big bills we're trying to get done." The Wisconsin recall elections are tentatively scheduled for July 12. Faced with the potential of losing the ability to pass far-right legislation after that date, Wisconsin Republicans are looking to pass a conservative legislative wish list as quickly as they can. Story Later in the same article, Governor Scott Walker argues that there isn't actually any acceleration of his agenda, and this torrid pace is simply continuing his pattern of aggression: Walker said his plan to move his agenda is unchanged. "From our standpoint, it's really been about being aggressive from the beginning," he said in an interview. Walker might actually have a point here, as the new Republican trifecta in Wisconsin has never seemed interested in caution, public debate, or compromise. Thus, the causality proposed by the article could be backward. Maybe this isn't about Republicans speeding up their extreme agenda because of the recall, but rather that the speed with which they are continuing to pursue their extreme agenda is yet another example of why the recall elections are taking place. No matter whether the recalls are the chicken or the egg in this latest round of legislative intensity, it's clear that the only way to stop the current government of Wisconsin is to defeat it at the ballot box. The Republican trifecta has been unmoved by low polling numbers, unprecented protests, and even the largest recall drive in the history of the state. There is simply no grassroots pressure which is causing them to change course. As such, having voters remove them from office on July 12 is the only remaining option.A Saudi cleric has become the topic of discussion on Twitter after he rejected the scientific fact that the Earth revolves around the Sun, claiming the exact opposite and added that the Earth is stationary. A video posted on YouTube shows Sheikh Bandar al-Khaibari answering students' questions and rejecting the centuries-old discovery that the Sun stays still, while Earth and other planets rotate around it. When a student asked the cleric whether the Earth was stationary or moving, he replied "stationary and [it] does not move". Then he went on to explain his theory while holding on to a sealed water cup and said: "First of all, where are we now? We go to Sharjah airport to travel to China by plane." The cleric then asked the students to focus and continued, "This is Earth, if you say it rotates, if we leave Sharjah airport on international flight to China, the Earth is rotating right? So if the plane stands still in the air, wouldn't China be coming towards it? "If the Earth rotates on the other direction, the plane will not be able to reach China. Because China is also rotating as the plane rotates." The irony of his comment is that it came on the birthday of great astronomer Galileo Galilei. The Italian astronomer was born on 15 February 1564, and has supported the Copernican theory that says the Earth and planets revolved around the Sun. The cleric's answer triggered some hilarious responses with the hashtag #cleric_rejects_rotation_of_Earth on Twitter. #cleric_rejects_rotation_of_Earth kindly read physics when u be sober after the tequila shots — Moeed Ali Khan Naroo (@khanmoeed) February 17, 2015 Next theory:There is no such thing as gravity.The earth does not pull, its the sky that pushes us down!! #cleric_rejects_rotation_of_Earth — Inapproprate Tweep (@BrownWhovian) February 17, 2015 #cleric_rejects_rotation_of_Earth, the cleric is the one rotating around his own stupidity, go home cleric you're drunk — Mrs Quickly (@VictoriaQuickly) February 17, 2015 #cleric_rejects_rotation_of_Earth!! Galileo is this weekend Birt.,) — YaLcinSungar (@YaLcinSungar) February
asked you guys not to Pomegranate: Plus he's on opfor Pomegranate: If he wanted to play alone, he should've went on indie Pomegranate: I assumed that he wanted to play with teammembers because he was on opfor TheC1aw: he asked me to ban you, so you're banned Pomegranate: And I didn't break any rules TheC1aw: you broke my rule, which is stream stalking when someone asks you not to Pomegranate: He didn't type in chat anything to me Pomegranate: He just killed me and then you came on and banned me TheC1aw: of course he doesnt type in chat TheC1aw: he asked you guys not to Pomegranate: Well I didn't hear that on the stream TheC1aw: stop arguing bro Pomegranate: I opened up the stream, saw he was on a server, and joined him TheC1aw: why TheC1aw: why cant you just watch TheC1aw: and be entertained Pomegranate: Because it's more fun to play TheC1aw: you make streamers' lives more stressful Pomegranate: Also, I'm banned from 20 different servers now because a streamer apparently didn't want to play with teammates even though he was on opfor? Pomegranate: Then why doesn't he just play indie? TheC1aw: because your now on the community ban list Pomegranate: Because a streamer was in a bad mood? TheC1aw: maybe you should listen to what the streamer is telling you Pomegranate: Except he didn't tell me anything. Pomegranate: I follow him, he shoots me, you come on and ban me. Pomegranate: Permamentally. TheC1aw: when he says "why do you guys always have to join", dont join Pomegranate: From 20 different servers. Pomegranate: I never heard him say that. Pomegranate: Plus he was on OPFOR TheC1aw: go watch the vod bro Pomegranate: That means he was on a team Pomegranate: I couldn't find the vid, I'd be glad to see it again Pomegranate: And why couldn't you just kick me or ban me for a day Pomegranate: instead of permabanning me from a bunch of servers for following some guy around? TheC1aw: because i hate streak stalkers TheC1aw: and so does lirik Pomegranate: Then how about he just types it to me in game? Pomegranate: "hey can you please leave" Pomegranate: Nope. Pomegranate: He just shoots me. Pomegranate: I don't come back, and you ban me. Pomegranate: And once again, he's on OPFOR. Pomegranate: Opfor is supposed to play with teammates. TheC1aw: you only knew he was on opfor by watching the stream and stream stalking him TheC1aw: which he asked you guys not to Pomegranate: I never heard him say that. TheC1aw: now, are you going to stop crying or do i have to block you Pomegranate: And still, he's on opfor TheC1aw: go watch the vod Pomegranate: Give me the link Pomegranate: Opfor is for team playing TheC1aw: go find it yourself Pomegranate: He would never have to deal with stream stalkers if he played on indie Pomegranate: I couldn't find it Pomegranate: It's not there TheC1aw: you can talk to them TheC1aw: talk to him TheC1aw: i mean TheC1aw: but im done talking to you Pomegranate: He's not an admin on the server TheC1aw: no, but i am Pomegranate: So you're going to ban for bullshit reasons and then just block? TheC1aw: its not bullshit TheC1aw: he asked me to ban you Pomegranate: It is bullshit. TheC1aw: stop stream stalking Pomegranate: Oh, so you do it because he's an internet celebrity? TheC1aw: you ruin the live stream Pomegranate: It's not stream stalking, he wanted to play on a team. TheC1aw: no, hes a friend TheC1aw: no, he wanted to play and broadcast for you gys Pomegranate: Then why can't he simply go on indie? TheC1aw: not have 40 retards trying to go up to him and salute him Pomegranate: Once again, why not just go indie? Pomegranate: And kill anyone who tries to follow you? TheC1aw: wasnt your name crossfire Pomegranate: No, it was Pomegranate TheC1aw is now Online. TheC1aw: http://www.twitch.tv/lirik/b/419661156 58 minute mark Pomegranate: There I am Pomegranate: So where was my warning? TheC1aw: you dont get one Pomegranate: Why not? Pomegranate: It's not against the rules to follow people. TheC1aw: you should now better Pomegranate: And he never told me to stop. TheC1aw: it is in my server Pomegranate: Know better? He's on opfor. Pomegranate: That's a team. Pomegranate: He wants to play with other players. TheC1aw: case is closed Pomegranate: What do you mean? Pomegranate: I walk up to him in town, salute, get killed, and get banned Pomegranate: I don't see what rule I broke. Pomegranate: Also, it may be your server, but you banned me from the community banlist, as well. Pomegranate: You can look at chat and see how other people think this is ridiculous as well. Pomegranate: "BAN FOR WHAT"The FBI and Justice Department have turned down or ignored every request since March from the House Intelligence Committee seeking information about the controversial anti-Trump dossier, according to a review of congressional records by Fox News. Records show the committee has made eight such requests, including subpoenas, in that time period. Congressional investigators have met "a lot of resistance," committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told Fox News. But the GOP lawmaker seemed to indicate public scrutiny and congressional pressure may spur movement on the issue. "These are crucial questions related to Congress’ oversight responsibilities.... We hope we’ll soon be on the path to getting the information we need,” he said. Asked for comment, the Justice Department’s principal deputy director of public affairs, Ian D. Prior, said: “The materials requested involve extremely sensitive law enforcement information. We have been working with the committee and have had a productive dialogue with an aim towards ensuring it gets what it needs while addressing our concerns.” The FBI and Justice Department are led by Trump appointees Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, respectively. But officials at the departments have refused to provide information about the dossier's sources, who paid for it and whether the FBI used the unverified dossier to obtain surveillance warrants. The document, along with its salacious allegations, emerged earlier this year in the press and was roundly rejected by President Trump and his allies. Investigators on Capitol Hill have been trying to unlock the document’s origins ever since. Sources close to the matter say that Gregory Brower, a former U.S. attorney, is now the gatekeeper to such information as head of the FBI's Office of Congressional Affairs. Brower is said to be close to former director James Comey, who named him to the job in March, two months before Comey was fired and during a tense period in Comey's relationship with Trump. Sources told Fox News that Brower has turned down requests, citing the special counsel investigation led by former FBI director Robert Mueller. While Nunes has stepped aside from the broader investigation into Russian interference during the 2016 presidential campaign, he remains chairman of the intelligence committee and has pressed for information on the dossier as well as the “unmasking” of Trump associates by the Obama administration. The powerful Senate Intelligence Committee leadership told reporters last week that their investigators also had run into roadblocks on the dossier, which was compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele at the direction of Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm based in Washington, D.C. "As it relates to the Steele dossier, unfortunately the committee has hit a wall," Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., explained. "We have on several occasions made attempts to contact Mr. Steele, to meet with Mr. Steele, to include personally the vice chairman and myself as two individuals making that connection. Those offers have gone unaccepted. The committee cannot really decide the credibility of the dossier without understanding things like who paid for it? Who are your sources and sub-sources?" The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley, wrote to the FBI last week stating there are "material inconsistencies" in the bureau's responses about the dossier and how it was used. Grassley highlighted that the dossier was shared by Steele with the U.K. government, according to court records in a defamation suit. "Mr. Steele’s dossier allegations might appear to be 'confirmed' by foreign intelligence, rather than just an echo of the same'research' that Fusion bought from Steele and that the FBI reportedly also attempted to buy from Steele," Grassley wrote. To date, Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson has not revealed sources and payments for the dossier to congressional investigators, even refusing to answer questions from Senate Judiciary Committee staff during a closed-door session. Fusion GPS Lawyer Joshua Levy did not respond to Fox News’ request for comment.Xi Jinping offered no concessions on civil liberties during his visit to Hong Kong China tears up promises to UK and shows the world who is in charge Xi Jinping’s tough talk in Hong Kong reflects growing self-confidence in China’s ability to shape world events and browbeat or ignore less powerful countries such as Britain. Beijing warns Hong Kong marchers not to challenge mainland rule Read more The Chinese president could have thrown a bone to the pro-democracy movement. He could have offered a sop on civil liberties and political rights to western opinion. Instead, he told Hong Kong who’s boss. Xi the hard man laid down the law according to Beijing. His message: fall into line, or else. His message to Britain was blunt, too, bordering on disdainful. China would not brook outside “interference” in the former colony. Forget about those guarantees of a free, open society painstakingly negotiated before the 1997 handover. “Any attempt to endanger China’s sovereignty and challenge the power of the central government is absolutely impermissible,” Xi said. Under Xi’s bastardised version of the Basic Law, any criticism is henceforth forbidden, on pain of serious consequences. Boris Johnson received a stinging lesson in the new balance of power earlier in the week. “As we look to the future, Britain hopes that Hong Kong will make more progress toward a fully democratic and accountable system of government,” the foreign secretary intoned with uncharacteristic meekness. Johnson’s statement was shamefully deferential. He could, and should, have been more forceful about Beijing’s responsibilities and its own egregious, sometimes illegal meddling. But China took umbrage all the same. Liu Xiaoming, China’s ambassador in London, set Johnson straight: Hong Kong issues must henceforth be “handled properly” or overall ties would suffer. Worse was to follow. On Friday, China’s foreign ministry formally renounced the 1984 Sino-British joint declaration, the basis on which Britain agreed to relinquish control of the colony. The two sides had agreed the treaty would remain in force for 50 years. “The Sino-British joint declaration, as a historical document, no longer has any practical significance, and it is not at all binding for the central government’s management over Hong Kong,” the spokesman Lu Kang declared. The Foreign Office swiftly rejected the demarche. But in his present bullish mood, Xi is not listening. China’s hardening stance is deeply threatening to Hong Kong and bilateral relations. It suggests China’s official word cannot be trusted, whether the issue is Hong Kong’s (and Taiwan’s) continued freedoms, illegal regional military expansion, or investment in Britain’s nuclear industry, retailers and real estate. China’s evident sense of impunity is humiliating for Britain, too. It dramatises Britain’s diminished standing in the world and an alarming shortage of reliable friends and allies. Will Donald Trump help? Will an alienated European Union? Unlikely. Theresa May’s government faces a choice between upholding legal principle and democratic values, and its chronic post-Brexit need for Chinese trade and business at any price. No prizes, or yellow umbrellas, for predicting which way May and Johnson will jump.Bank of America worker Christine McMullen Lindgren has been fired after posting a vile racist rant on Facebook A Bank of America worker has been fired after posting a vile racist rant on Facebook. Christine McMullen Lindgren, who works at a branch in Atlanta, Georgia, said 'f*ing n*s' should 'go back to Africa' in her offensive online tirade. 'I hate Facebook for this reason you fing n*rs. And yes, if [you] can call each that well I can too. 'Fing n*r go back to Africa. Get over your pity party. You created this hatred and your own kind that brought your great-great-parents [sic] over here and sold them. 'Do something with your lives and your children's lives. I'm sure you don't work, collect welfare and teach hatred. 'Your poor children. All five of them you can't afford because I pay for them.' It is not clear who Lindgren, 57, was specifically aiming the sickening abuse at. Another Facebook user noticed that the woman worked for Bank of America and contacted her employers. Thousands more took to the bank's Facebook page and phone lines to inform them of their worker's racist message. Just hours later, the bank fired her. Video courtesy of WXIA 'We are aware of an unacceptable post on Facebook,' Bank of America wrote on its Facebook page. 'The comments are reprehensible. We have completed our investigation and have terminated the employment of the individual who posted the comments.' Lindgren, who works at a branch in Atlanta, Georgia, said 'fing n****s' should 'go back to Africa' in her offensive online tirade Bank of America fired Lindgren for the post after thousands of people complained online and on the phone Lindgren has since deleted the post, as well as her entire Facebook profile. Andy Aldridge, a senior vice president at Bank of America, told that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Lindgren's comments were'reprehensible and unacceptable'. 'We have investigated the matter and terminated her. She no longer works for Bank of America,' he said. Mr Aldridge added that the bank would be in touch with the thousands of people who contacted them about the employee. Lindgren was unavailable for comment.Americans will spend a whopping $7.4 billion on Halloween products in 2014, according to the National Retail Federation. $2.8 billion will be spent on costumes, of which the animal, Batman character and witch are going to be the most popular. Americans are also planning on splashing out a whopping $350 million on costumes for their pets. Most pets you see walking the streets on Halloween night will be dressed as pumpkins, hot dogs and devils!78 percent of people in the United States plan on dressing up this year, with 20 percent making costumes by themselves. In 2013, 158 million people celebrated Halloween in the US and this will rise to 162 million in 2014. Average expenditure will come to $87 for young adults compared to $77.52 in total. Nearly 47 percent are going to decorate their home or yard while 33.4 percent will throw or attend a party. 77.1 percent of Americans plan to hand out candy to trick or treaters.Petition now online proposing Government consider the addition in their planning A petition urging the Government to consider an adjacent cycle track to the proposed HS2 railway project is now live on the e-petition's page. Created by a Todd Curtis, cycle tourism and health are singled out as the key benefits. The submission reads: "This petition needs to be signed by anyone who would like our Government to discuss the benefits of a cycle track running adjacent to the new HS2 rail link currently being proposed. There is a unique opportunity to add a cycle track that not only promotes a healthy lifestyle but would bring millions of pounds into local communities due to the added tourism." It is suggested that the first phase of the project will near completion toward 2026, initially linking London and Birmingham, before a 'Y-shaped extension' adds links to Manchester and Leeds. To sign the petition, click here.The baking soda solution no-poo The baking soda disaster Have I been looking at my hair through pink glasses for so long while vigorously advocating for no-pooing with baking soda? The pH and why it is important for your hair Source: Anatomy & Physiology, Connexions Web site via Wikipedia The natural acidity of the hair and scalp prevents fungi and bacteria, and keeps the cuticle closed and healthy. The no-poo case of baking soda and vinegar Forcing your hair to go up to pH 9.5 (with baking soda) and then forcing it back down to pH 4.5 - 5.0 (with ACV) in a short period of time makes it extremely vulnerable. Yes, it is true that baking soda helps regulate pH — keeping a substance neither too acidic nor too alkaline. When baking soda comes in contact with either an acidic or an alkaline substance, its effect is to neutralize that pH. However, as any cosmetic chemist can tell you, this effect occurs when baking soda is in solution with other chemicals. When baking soda is in water alone, guess what the pH of the solution is? You guessed it: A very basic 9, much more alkaline than plain ol' water. pH balanced treatment = healthy hair Now what? Update: I cannot believe I'm writing this but I think that baking soda destroyed my hair.It all started around 3 years ago when I learned about the devastating toxic ingredients in commercial shampoos and conditioners. To say that I felt betrayed by the industry would be an understatement. I was disgusted by the reported effects of chemical additives such as Sodium Lauryl Sulphate, Sodium Laureth Sulphate, Fragrance, Cocamide... all of which are inevitably present in every commercial shampoo, even those advertised as natural.I started using baking soda as ashampoo and apple cider vinegar as a conditioning rinse. I have been washing my hair with that combo for almost three years. I felt my hair clean and I thought it was healthy until a few days ago when I saw it on this photo.Wait, this wasn't my healthy hair. It looked brittle and weak.Lately I have noticed that I shed too many hairs but I somehow ignored that.I thought that the split ends came as a result of the summer, the seaside and the sun and so I had a refreshing haircut a month ago but then, when I looked at my ends the other day, they were split again.My hairs are so easy to break, I cannot believe my eyes.I realized that I have dandruff but every time my husband noticed it I explained that it had just appeared because I hadn't washed my hair for too long...I started collecting information about using baking soda as a shampoo alternative from a chemical point of view. The more I researched the more often I read about how important the pH of the washing product is.pH (potential of Hydrogen) is a measure of the acidity or alkalinity of a substance. pH is judged on a scale between 0 and 14. Anything with a pH less than 7 is acidic, 7 is neutral, and anything with a pH greater than 7 is alkaline.Hair and skin are covered by a very thin fluid layer comprised of oil, salt and water, called the mantle, which is slightly acidic and has a pH balance of betweenAn inadequate hair product can disrupt the natural pH of the hair. If your haircare routine is too alkali your hair cuticles will stay open and your hair will be dry and brittle. But if you use pH balanced products, i.e. ones that are close to the natural pH of the hair (4.5 - 5.0) your hair cuticles will close properly which will result in healthy shiny hair.Hair has a pH of 4.5 to 5.0 - it is slightly acidic.Baking soda has a pH of 9.5, which is extremely alkali.Apple cider vinegar has a pH of 3.0 - 4.0 if diluted, a bit more acidic than hair.For a healthy and nourished hair, you need to use hair products with balanced pH, i.e. close to the pH of your hair, so we're looking into hair products with a pH of 4.5 to 5.0.You dilute a tablespoon of baking soda (pH 9.5) in a cup of water (pH 7).Now, here is the shock to all baking-soda advocates (me included). This is also a shout-out to those who claim that the key to proper no-pooing with baking soda is in the amount of water and we should dilute, dilute, dilute.To make things easier to grasp, here are the photos I took while experimenting with my litmus papers.Let me explain:1 tbsp. baking soda diluted in 1 cup of water (300 ml = 0.60 pt) has a pH of 9.5. This is extremely high to use on hair and scalp, having in mind that their natural pH ranges between pH 4.5 and 5.0 - 5.5.Based on all I've been reading by people who wash their hair with baking soda in the past 3 years, if I dilute 1 tbsp. in 2 cups of water, the pH should go down. BUT IT DOESN'T. The pH remains 9.5 until I dilute 1 tbsp. baking soda in 10 cups of water and then again, it is way to alkali to use on the hair.Again, there is no difference between 10 and 20 cups of water, the pH of the mixture is 9.0Only when I dilute 1 tsp. of the mixture (consisting of 1 tbsp. baking soda and 20 cups of water) in 1 cup of water, the pH gets down to pH 7.0 -- again, extremely alkali for use on hair, even if it is followed by ACV rinse.I am devastated by the results. But most of all I am disappointed by myself for believing people who knew close to nothing regarding the chemical side of this "experiment".You can clearly see that the color of the litmus papers practically doesn't change regardless of the dilution. Even diluted in 20 cups of water, a tablespoon of baking soda is too alkali to be acleaning agent for hair. To get a neutral mixture of baking soda and water (pH 7) you need to dilute 1 tbsp. baking soda in 20 cups of water, then take 1 tsp. of the mixture and dilute it in 1 cup of water.By washing my hair with baking soda twice a week for the past 3 years I have pretty much put it through the chemical process of dyeing. Twice a week.Here is how the process goes:The extremely alkali baking soda opens up the hair cuticle, if it is not closed by using an acidic substance,. That is why, we, baking soda aficionados use something acidic, like apple cider vinegar, which neutralizes the effect of the alkali baking soda and closes the hair cuticle.And we think that is enough. We open and then we close.BUT as one reader of Thank Your Body put it quite correctlyThis is a very damaging process which is not healthy for the hair and scalp.Extremely alkaline solutions like baking soda cause the disulfide bonds between keratin protein molecules to break down and can eventually dissolve the protein completely resulting in a very damaged hair. Highly alkaline solutions such as baking soda make your hair soft and manageable BUT that is really the disulfide bonds in your internal hair structure being weakened by the alkaline solution.According to Future Derm What you need to do if you want healthy and strong hair is to use hair products with balanced pH close to the natural pH of our hair and scalp, i.e. pH 4.5 - 5.0.Putting your hair through roller-coaster extremes like those of baking soda and vinegar is more damaging than you realize. Until it is too late.Don't wait for years like me. Because now my hair is in deep trouble.Baking soda, which I used twice a week for almost 3 years is too abrasive and alkali and although it made my hair look soft and clean, it stripped my hair cuticles of the necessary oils and made it thin and brittle.I am starting a quest to find the best no-poo alternatives to baking soda. I want my healthy hair back without the help of chemicals disguised as shampoos. I will continue using apple cider vinegar as a rinse to keep my hair cuticles closed and healthy but, armed with my litmus papers I am off experimenting with natural shampoos and keeping you updated on what I find.If you want me to test a natural shampoo recipe you know, post the link to it in the comments.Here is a growing collection of links to the results of testing some baking soda alternatives (bookmark this page or follow me on Google Plus to be updated when new recipes are tested out): Homemade rye flour shampoo (works much better than baking soda)! Coconut milk + aloe vera shampoo (for dry hair)My post triggered a very interesting discussion on(find it here ) and one user shared her chemical calculations confirming my findings, regarding the pH of 1 tbsp baking soda diluted in 1 cup of water. Even if you're not a chemistry genius, you might want to take a look and read her conclusions here This post is shared here: Motivation MondayEurope's largest Palestine convention is to go ahead in the UK after surviving attempts by pro-Israel lobbyists to have it cancelled. The Palestine Expo, organised by the non-profit Friends of al-Aqsa (FOA) group, is expected to draw about 10,000 people to the Queen Elizabeth Centre in London, on 8 and 9 July. But doubts emerged as to whether the event would go ahead after the UK's local government minister, Sajid Javid, whose department controls the QEII Centre, had warned he was "minded" to cancel the event. Since the decision to go ahead was announced, momentum has grown and thousands of tickets have been sold - Ismail Patel, founder and chairman of FOA Javid's intervention came amid claims by various Jewish and pro-Israel groups that FOA had previously praised Hamas and Hezbollah, two groups proscribed in the UK. Lawyers representing the Jewish Human Rights Watch (JHRW), an Israeli lobby group based in Britain, accused the pro-Palestine campaign group and its co-organiser, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, of supporting "Jew hate". In a letter to the DCLG written by JHRW's lawyers, it said: "Our client is certain that this event is a front for Jew hate and that the main groups (Friends of al-Aqsa and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign) are organisations promoting Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) in relation to Israel, a known anti-Semitic movement." However, the claims were dismissed after a government departmental investigation, and the event was told it could go forward. Ismail Patel, the founder and chairman of FOA, described the pro-Israeli group's claims as "baseless". "Since the decision to go ahead was announced, momentum has grown and thousands of tickets have now been sold," Patel told MEE. "It now means people in the UK can come and celebrate all things Palestinian at one of the most prestigious buildings in the country." 'A democratic right' Speaking about the government's decision to not ban the event, Patel said described it as "not a victory as this is us simply exercising our democratic right". "The pressure came early from pro-Israeli groups that deliberately conflated our work and past statements as anti-semitic and supporting terrorism," he said. The PSC also denied accusations that it supported "Jew hate" and was anti-Semitic, saying that it would take legal action over what it described as "defamation". Javid had written a letter to FOA on 14 June saying he had concerns about the group's "public support for a proscribed organisation, namely Hamas, and that you have supported events at which Hamas and Hezbollah - also proscribed - have been praised." After investigations, the Department for Communities and Local Government said it was "content" that the event could be staged. It said: "We have worked with the QEII Centre to carry out checks following concerns raised about the Palestine Expo 2017. "Following these checks, we have agreed the event can take place as planned." The event, which costs £20 to attend, is expected to include political discussions, concerts, comedy acts, workshops and a food court. Earlier this year, MEE revealed how British universities had cancelled events hosted by pro-Palestine societies across the country in a bid to "manage" Palestine activism on UK campuses as part of the Prevent strategy.In the United States today, we are all being constantly bombarded by chemicals, poisons and toxins. Virtually everything that we eat or drink makes us less healthy. The vast majority of Americans gladly consume aspartame, fluoride, BPA, genetically-modified food, pesticides, high fructose corn syrup, pharmaceutical drugs and toxic vaccines without any concern that those substances may ruin their health. But the truth is that we are getting sicker and sicker and sicker as a nation. According to one recent report, the United States has dropped to 49th place in the world in overall life expectancy. Diseases such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes are absolutely exploding. So how in the world are we supposed to have a healthy and vibrant economy when virtually everything that we eat and drink is constantly making us sick? Recently, my wife (who has always been extremely healthy) developed some alarming breathing problems. She did not appear to suffer from any known medical condition, so we were completely puzzled. Finally, we started examining what we were eating and drinking. It turns out that she was putting some cream in her coffee that contained something known as “Polysorbate 80”. Polysorbate 80 is found in a vast array of dairy products and is even used in many vaccines. According to Drugs.com, “difficulty breathing” is indeed one of the known side effects of Polysorbate 80. Once my wife cut the Polysorbate 80 out of her diet, the breathing difficulties subsided. The following is how she describes what she went through…. Prior to my recent problems, I had never been in a situation were I felt as though there was very limited air available. When the breathing problems would flare up, I would take in deep breath after deep breath but I just couldn’t get any oxygen. My body tried to cope by constantly yawning which forced air into my lungs. Some days it wouldn’t be so bad, but on other days it was really frightening. My breathing was extremely labored at times. I constantly had to yawn throughout the day in order to catch a satisfying breath. One day my breathing was really labored – I was constantly gasping for deep breaths, but I wasn’t getting enough oxygen. I was about to cry. I felt as though I had dived to the bottom of a deep pool and I was almost out of air. My body was in a constant state of panic. I felt so tired and I was worried that I may collapse at any time. We got into the car, and I was almost ready to pass out. We had the windows rolled down to give me the feeling of lots of oxygen, but I felt like I couldn’t take any in. Fortunately that episode eventually subsided, but there were many days when I was in agony. You cannot imagine how horrible it is to gasp for breath and never seem to get enough. Several incidents really scared me. What was even more frightening was that I had no idea at the time what was causing all this. Thankfully my wife is doing much better now, but there are thousands and thousands of others across the United States that are experiencing similar breathing problems and nobody has any answers for them. So what are some of the other side effects of Polysorbate 80? Well, Drugs.com says that the following are “common” side effects…. Constipation; cough; diarrhea; dizziness; headache; muscle, joint, back, or stomach pain; nausea or vomiting; pain, swelling, irritation, redness, or bruising at the injection site; unusual tiredness or weakness. In addition, Drugs.com says that the following are severe side effects of Polysorbate 80 that an individual should seek immediate medical attention for…. Severe allergic reactions (rash; hives; itching; difficulty breathing; tightness in the chest; swelling of the mouth, face, lips, or tongue); blurred vision or vision changes; chest pain; confusion; fainting; fast or irregular heartbeat; flu-like symptoms (fever, chills, sore throat); one-sided weakness; pale skin color; redness, tenderness, or swelling of the calf; seizures; severe diarrhea, dizziness, headache, stomach pain, or vomiting; severe or persistent tiredness or weakness; slurred speech; sudden pain or numbness of an arm or leg; sudden shortness of breath; sudden trouble walking or loss of balance; swelling of the arms or legs; vision or speech problems; weight gain. Remember, this is in countless dairy products all across the United States. Most Americans are absolutely clueless that they are pouring Polysorbate 80 into their coffee or that it is in the ice cream that they are eating. Another major threat to our health is something called bisphenol-A (BPA). BPA is one of the most widely used chemicals in the entire world. If you eat canned food or you drink bottled water you most likely have BPA in your home and you don’t even know it. According to Natural News, BPA is not only in virtually every American home, but it has also been linked to some very serious health problems…. It is used to harden plastic in everything from infant and water bottles to mobile phone and computer casings, and also to make linings for cans of food, beverages and infant formula. Yet a growing body of research has implicated the chemical as an endocrine (hormone) disruptor that can lead to cancer, birth defects, behavioral problems and other diseases. Shouldn’t someone be doing something about this? Of course. But the truth is that the big corporations that are pushing these chemicals are much more powerful than those who are trying to watch out for our health. In fact, authorities all over the United States are putting one very toxic chemical into our water on purpose. It is called fluoride, and it is being put into our water supposedly because it is good for our teeth. What Americans are not being told is that fluoride is actually a highly toxic sedative and is causing a whole host of very serious health problems. So exactly how dangerous is fluoride? Well, the Fluoride Dangers blog puts it this way…. Even small amounts of fluoride consumed from tap water can damage your bones, teeth, brain, disrupt your thyroid function, lower IQ and/or cause cancer, according to evidence revealed in a groundbreaking 2006 National Research Council (NRC) fluoride report produced by a panel of experts who reviewed hundreds of published fluoride studies. The Natural Health and Longevity Resource Center has published a list of ten of the most significant health dangers that the scientific research has shown that fluoride causes….. 1. Fluoride exposure disrupts the synthesis of collagen and leads to the breakdown of collagen in bone, tendon, muscle, skin, cartilage, lungs, kidney and trachea. 2. Fluoride stimulates granule formation and oxygen consumption in white blood cells, but inhibits these processes when the white blood cell is challenged by a foreign agent in the blood. 3. Fluoride depletes the energy reserves and the ability of white blood cells to properly destroy foreign agents by the process of phagocytosis. As little as 0.2 ppm fluoride stimulates superoxide production in resting white blood cells, virtually abolishing phagocytosis. Even micro-molar amounts of fluoride, below 1 ppm, may seriously depress the ability of white blood cells to destroy pathogenic agents. 4. Fluoride confuses the immune system and causes it to attack the body’s own tissues, and increases the tumor growth rate in cancer prone individuals. 5. Fluoride inhibits antibody formation in the blood. 6. Fluoride depresses thyroid activity. 7. Fluorides have a disruptive effect on various tissues in the body. 8. Fluoride promotes development of bone cancer. 9. Fluorides cause premature aging of the human body. 10. Fluoride ingestion from mouth rinses and dentifrices in children is extremely hazardous to biological development, life span and general health. But perhaps even more dangerous is the sweetener known as aspartame. Today, aspartame is an ingredient in literally thousands of different food and drink products. In fact, it is often marketed in “health products” such as diet sodas. According to an article on Mercola.com, aspartame is one of the most toxic substances being added to our foods…. Aspartame accounts for over 75 percent of the adverse reactions to food additives reported to the FDA. Many of these reactions are very serious including seizures and death. A few of the 90 different documented symptoms listed in the report as being caused by aspartame include: Headaches/migraines, dizziness, seizures, nausea, numbness, muscle spasms, weight gain, rashes, depression, fatigue, irritability, tachycardia, insomnia, vision problems, hearing loss, heart palpitations, breathing difficulties, anxiety attacks, slurred speech, loss of taste, tinnitus, vertigo, memory loss, and joint pain. According to researchers and physicians studying the adverse effects of aspartame, the following chronic illnesses can be triggered or worsened by ingesting of aspartame: Brain tumors, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, chronic fatigue syndrome, parkinson’s disease, alzheimer’s,
the iface pointer in the memory allocator. quartz: Make transform filter return hresult from running/pausing. quartz: Use correct media type in transformfilter's QueryAccept. quartz: Pass InputPin as parameter to transform filter. quartz: Fix end of file handling when first request is already end of file. quartz: Fix support for files with multiple odml indexes. winealsa.drv: Add ability to recover from underruns to directsound driver. winealsa.drv: Fix compiler warnings and remove deprecated calls. dsound: Remove int24_struct from conversion routines. winmm: Test opening the same device twice. winealsa.drv: Tune some parameters to make pulseaudio work. dsound: Tune some parameters to make pulseaudio work. Michael Karcher (6): winex11: Fix GetDIBits with monochrome pixmaps. kernel32: Fix profile sharing mode. msvcrt/file: stdio should clamp characters to 8 bits. kernel32/tests: Fix profile crash on NT and up. ntdll: Add sub-second resolution to NtQueryInformationFile. kernel32: Fix profile cache logic and don't cache new files. Michael Stefaniuc (4): msxml3: Remove redundant NULL checks before HeapFree and fix a memleak (Smatch). advapi/tests: CreateFile returns INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE on error (Smatch). riched20: Remove redundant NULL check before HeapFree (Smatch). d3dxof: Remove unreachable break after return (Smatch). Mikołaj Zalewski (1): shell32: autocomplete: There is no need for separate IAutoComplete and IAutoComplete2 vtbls. Muneyuki Noguchi (3): regedit: Update Japanese translation. notepad: Update Japanese translation. winecfg: Update Japanese translation. Nikolay Sivov (30): gdiplus: Added testfile for customlinecap + constr./destr. tests. gdiplus: Implemented GdipGetCustomLineCapStrokeJoin with basic test. gdiplus: Implemented GdipSetCustomLineCapStrokeJoin + tests. gdiplus: Implemented GdipGetCustomLineCapBaseInset + test. gdiplus: Implemented GdipGetCustomLineCapWidthScale with some tests. gdiplus: Add a test that shows GdipCreateFontFromLogfontW problem with empty FaceName. gdiplus: GdipGetStringFormatDigitSubstitution implemented. gdiplus: GdipSetStringFormatDigitSubstitution implemented. gdiplus: GdipStringFormatGetGenericTypographic implemented. gdiplus: GdipGetStringFormatTabStopCount implementation with tests. gdiplus: Implemented Gdip[Get/Set]StringFormatTabStops with tests. gdiplus: Use LANG_NEUTRAL instead of 0. gdiplus: Implemented GdipStringFormatGetGenericDefault with tests. gdiplus: Implemented Gdip[Get/Set]PenMode. gdiplus: Implemented GdipGetPenCustom[Start/End]Cap. gdiplus: Implemented GdipFillPolygon2/GdipFillPolygon2I. gdiplus: Move some Beziers helpers to gdiplus.c to use them for graphicspath. gdiplus: Implemented GdipAddPathCurve2 with tests. gdiplus: Implemented GdipAddPathCurve2I using GdipAddPathCurve2. gdiplus: Implemented GdipAddPathCurve/GdipAddPathCurveI. gdiplus: Implemented GdipAddPathClosedCurve2 with tests. gdiplus: Implemented GdipAddPathClosedCurve2I using GdipAddPathClosedCurve2. gdiplus: Implemented GdipAddPathClosedCurve/GdipAddPathClosedCurveI. gdiplus: Implemented GdipReversePath with tests. gdiplus: Implemented GdipAddPathPie/GdipAddPathPieI with test. gdiplus: Implemented GdipPathIterIsValid with tests. gdiplus: Implemented GdipPathIterNextSubpathPath with tests. gdiplus: Implemented GdipResetWorldTransform. gdiplus: Implemented GdipPathIterNextMarkerPath with tests. gdiplus: Implemented GdipFillClosedCurve2[I]. Owen Rudge (5): winefile: Fix absolute pidl conversion for non-filesystem shell objects. shell32: Fix descriptions being applied to wrong entries in control panel. shell32: Ensure status bar in control panel is reset when menu closed. Also reset to blank when item deselected. appwiz.cpl: Gather extra information for Support Info dialog. uninstaller: Remove GUI portion of Wine uninstaller. Paul Vriens (20): comctl32/tests: Run tests again on Win95. crypt32/tests: Don't crash on some win9x boxes. gdi32/tests: Don't test unimplemented functions. mshtml/tests: Don't fail on unimplemented function. crypt32/tests: Use CryptAcquireContextA instead of CryptAcquireContextW. kernel32/tests: Skip tests when codepage is not available. mlang/tests: Skip tests for unsupported code page identifiers. crypt32/tests: Don't crash on some win9x boxes. iphlpapi/tests: Skip some tests for unsupported functions. kernel32/tests: Fix a test failure on Win9x. quartz/tests: Skip some tests on NT4. kernel32/tests: Show the setting of the debugger registry value. include/wine/svcctl.idl: Remove duplicate define. ole32/tests: Fix a test on win98 and W2K. advapi32/tests: Add helper function to get function pointers. advapi32/tests: Add tests for QueryServiceStatus. advapi32/tests: Add tests for QueryServiceStatusEx. advapi32/tests: Add tests for EnumServicesStatusA. advapi32: Prevent a crash when passing an allowed NULL parameter. advapi32/tests: Add tests for EnumServicesStatusExA. Piotr Caban (33): msxml3: Generalize bsc_t implementation. msxml3: Added ISAXXMLReader_parseURL implementation. msxml3/tests: Added test for ISAXXMLReader_parseURL. msxml3: Added stub implementation of ISAXAttributes. msxml3: Initialize ISAXAttribute structure. msxml3: Add ISAXAttribute_getLength implementation. msxml3: Added ISAXAttributes_getLocalName implementation. msxml3: Added ISAXAttributes_getValue implementation. msxml3: Reorganize parse_buffer function (make use of libxml2 parserInternals.h). msxml3: Added ISAXAttributes_getQName implementation. msxml3: Prepare functions for IVBSAX... interfaces implementation. msxml3: Added IVBSAXAttributes implementation. msxml3: Prepare libxml2 callbacks for IVBSAX... interfaces implementation. msxml3: Add IVBSAXLocator implementation. msxml3: Integrate implementation of IVBSAXXMLReader and ISAXXMLReader interfaces. msxml3: Return QNames properly. msxml3: Add NULL pointers check in getLocalName, getQName and getValue. msxml3: Add implementation of ISAXAttributes_getURI. msxml3: Add ISAXContentHandler_startPrefixMapping event. msxml3: Add namespaces to attributes. msxml3: Add ISAXContentHandler_endPrefix event. msxml3: Fix checking if ContentHandler was set. msxml3: Add ISAXAttributes_getName implementation. msxml3: Add ISAXAttributes_getIndexFromName implementation. msxml3: Add ISAXAttributes_getIndexFromQName implementation. msxml3: Add ISAXAttributes_getValueFromName implementation. msxml3: Add ISAXAttributes_getValueFromQName implementation. msxml3: Add error handling when reading from IStream. msxml3: Fix IVBErrorHandler related bugs. msxml3: Use LoadTypeLibEx to register typelib. msxml3: Code clean up. msxml3: Added queryresult's IDispatchEx implementation. msxml3: Added IDispatchEx QueryInterface test. Reece Dunn (6): crypt32: Check Vista error codes for the msg tests. secur32: Fix the ntlm tests crashing on Vista. secur32: Fix the schannel tests crashing on Vista. shell32: Fix shlexec crashing on Vista. crypt32: Removed the failing base64 test in Vista. shlwapi: Fixed the string tests on Vista. Rico Schüller (1): inetmib1: Fix wrong arguments. Rob Shearman (50): oleaut32: Use the typelib debug channel for debug messages output during loading of SLTG typelibs. oleaut32: Move the debug logging of the variable type in SLTG_DoVars. oleaut32: Dump the loaded module in SLTG_ProcessModule. oleaut32: Handle strings with a length of 0xffff in SLTG_DoVars. oleaut32: Fix the loading of the parameter name for SLTG propget functions. rpcrt4: Validate the uuid portion of the string passed to RpcStringBindingParseA/W. rpcrt4: Factorise conformant array NDR functions and use them to fix the wire-representation of complex structures with conformant arrays. rpcrt4: Add tests for a complex struct with conformant array. rpcrt4: Factorise conformant varying array functions into array_* functions. rpcrt4: Factorise conformant string functions into array_* functions. rpcrt4: Re-implement part of the conformant varying structure processing routines using array_* functions. rpcrt4: Fix a typo in the ncalrpc protseq in the epm_endpoints structure. rpcrt4: Fix crash calculation of tower size in rpcrt4_ncalrpc_get_top_of_tower. rpcrt4: Fix crash in rpcrt4_ncalrpc_parse_top_of_tower due to unconditionally dereferencing networkaddr and endpoint variables. rpcrt4: Fix the protid used in ncalrpc tower functions. rpcss: Warn in ept_insert if TowerExplode fails. rpcss: Register the endpoint for the ncalrpc protseq for the endpoint mapper. rpcrt4: Check that strings in SMB, NB and pipe floors are nul-terminated before copying the data. include: Fix the WINELIB_NAME_AW macro for RpcBindingToStringBinding. rpcrt4: Add test for RpcBindingToStringBindingA. rpcrt4: Fix RpcBindingToStringBinding to not generate a UUID string if the object UUID is nil. rpcrt4: Print a warning if connecting to a named pipe failed in rpcrt4_conn_open_pipe in the!wait case. rpcrt4: Fix RpcStringBindingComposeA/W and RpcStringBindingParseA/W to escape and unescape delimiters in the string binding. oleaut32: Avoid unnecessary allocations in TLB_MultiByteToBSTR and SLTG_ReadString. oleaut32: Fix invalid free of import library entry name with SLTG typelibs. cryptnet: Fix mismatch between sizeof and countof quantities in CRYPT_GetUrlFromCertificateCRLDistPoint. appwiz.cpl: Fix leak of thread and process handles in UninstallProgram. d3d9: Fix variable type in IDirect3DDevice9Impl_GetSoftwareVertexProcessing. d3d9: Remove unneeded local variable in IDirect3DDevice9Impl_SetFVF. include: Remove superfluous semi-colons from wine/wined3d_gl.h. hhctl.ocx: Fix reference count leak in InPlace_OnPosRectChange. comctl32: Fix use of arithmetic operator on Boolean type in TREEVIEW_ComputeItemInternalMetrics. msrle32: Fix uses of arithmetic operators on Boolean types in MSRLE32_CompressRLE4Line and MSRLE32_CompressRLE8Line. msi: Fix handle leak in ITERATE_SelfRegModules. ole32: Fix testing of HRESULT types with not operator instead of comparing against S_OK. oleaut32: Fix testing of HRESULT types with not operator instead of comparing against S_OK. quartz: Fix testing of HRESULT types with not operator instead of comparing against S_OK. shlwapi: Fix testing of HRESULT types with not operator instead of comparing against S_OK. urlmon: Fix testing of HRESULT types with not operator instead of comparing against S_OK. shell32: Don't assign a result from a function that returns a BOOL to an HRESULT in shellex_get_dataobj. oleaut32: Fix buffer length passed to VARIANT_DI_tostringW in VarBstrFromCy. hhctrl.ocx: Nul-terminate url_indicator constant in NavigateToUrl. quartz: Use memcmp instead of strncmp in MPEGSplitter_pre_connect. rpcrt4: Remove unreachable code in EmbeddedComplexSize. ole32: Remove dead code in StorageImpl_LoadFileHeader. kernel32: Fix a typo in the leadin check in WaitNamedPipeW. rpcrt4: Test the endpoint mapper for the ncalrpc protseq as well as the ncacn_np protseq. rpcrt4: Check for previous association being NULL in RPCRT4_ResolveBinding. rpcrt4: Don't get or create an association for bindings with incomplete endpoints. rpcrt4: Implement RpcBindingReset. Roderick Colenbrander (2): wined3d: Fix BltOverride regression. wined3d: Fix window rewrite regression. Roy Shea (24): mstask: Implemented DllRegisterServer. mstask: Implemented DllUnregisterServer. mstask/test: NewWorkItem conformance test. mstask: Task stub with AddRef, QueryInterface, and Release. mstask: Implemented NewWorkItem. mstask: Activate conformance test. mstask: Stub implementation of Activate. include: Add task scheduler specific error codes. include: Added defines used by TASK_TRIGGER members. mstask/test: Conformance test for (Set\|Get)ApplicationName. mstask/test: Conformance test for CreateTrigger. mstask/tests: Conformance test for (Set\|Get)Parameters. mstask/tests: Conformance test for (Set\|Get)Comment. mstask/tests: Conformance test for (Set\|Get)MaxRunTime. mstask/tests: Basic conformance test for (Set\|Get)AccountInformation. mstask: TaskTrigger stub with AddRef, QueryInterface, and Release. mstask/tests: Conformance test for (Set\|Get)Trigger. mstask: Implemented (Set\|Get)ApplicationName. expand: Extended expand program to accept /r argument. mstask: Task PersistFile AddRef, QueryInterface, and Release. mstask: Implement (Set\|Get)Parameters. mstask: Implemented (Set\|Get)Comment. mstask: Implemented (Set\|Get)MaxRunTime. mstask: Implemented partial stub for (Set\|Get)AccountInformation. Stefan Dösinger (50): wined3d: Do not enable GL_TEXTURE_SHADER_NV unconditionally. wined3d: Add fog and tex types to the ffp fragment description. wined3d: Use C bitfields to compact the ffp description. wined3d: Use a hashmap to store the ffp shaders. wined3d: GL_ARB_fragment_program ffp implementation. wined3d: Initialize the texture op function properly. wined3d: Clamp results in the arbfp pipeline replacement. wined3d: Beware of the frontbuffer coordinate system difference. ddraw: Set ddraw caps in wined3d. wined3d: Only set D3D caps when GL was loaded successfully. wined3d: Report the pitch alignment to ddraw. wined3d: Always load glFinish and glFlush from opengl32.dll. d3d9: Skip gracefully if A16R16G16B16 is not supported. wined3d: Call glFlush outside the GL lock. wined3d: Remove a glFlush. wined3d: Move the pshader fog update to the vertex pipeline. wined3d: Implement overlay position tracking. wined3d: Basic overlay emulation with opengl. wined3d: Implement overlay flipping. wined3d: Update the surface locations in Present. wined3d: Track overlay surfaces in the overlayed surface. wined3d: Move some swapchain code into a base class. wined3d: Remove unused enum entry. wined3d: Use a swapchain for GDI surfaces. wined3d: Support redirecting the primary context. d3d: Remove IWineD3DDevice::SetHwnd. wined3d: Remove the device-global fullscreen flag. wined3d: Remove the ddraw_window device member. wined3d: Add a swapchain method to set the dest override. ddraw: Send the ddraw output to the clipper window, if any. ddraw: Implement IDirectDraw7::GetFourCCCodes. wined3d: Support YUV formats with GL_APPLE_ycbcr_422. wined3d: Start a framework for color conversion shaders in blits. wined3d: Test formats for surface support. wined3d: Ask the ffp/shader/blit implementation about format support. wined3d: Implement YUV emulation with GL_ARB_fragment_program. ddraw: Do not set the rendertarget flag just because of the backbuffer flag. wined3d: Keep track of the last used device. ddraw: Set the bitdepth on YUV formats. wined3d: Fix the unused arg marker. wined3d: Update the overlay when the destination was drawn to. d3d9: Test for fixed function value clamping. winex11: Do not cap the cursor size. wined3d: Prefer aux buffer matches over alpha matches. wined3d: Don't enable texture dimensions with shaders. wined3d: Don't skip applying texdims with shaders. wined3d: Set the texture wrap default with the NP2 emulation properly. d3d9: Make the bumpmap test less picky. wined3d: De-pickify the texbem test. wined3d: Filter out more spam. Stefan Leichter (3): rasapi32: Fix building the tests with MSVC (based on a patch by Reece Dunn). rasapi32: Skip RasEnumDevicesA tests on configuration problems. rasapi: Fix test failure on platforms vista, w2k8. Tobias Jakobi (2): ddraw: Fix typo in copy_mipmap_chain. wined3d: Remove arb_tex_npot for NV FX series in fixup_extensions. Tony Wasserka (1): d3dx9: Add stubs for the ID3DXSprite functions. Vijay Kiran Kamuju (1): d3drm: Add minimal d3drmobj.h. Vincent Povirk (2): wininet: Default to keep-alive when the server is HTTP/1.1, not when it isn't. user32: Implement TPM_ALIGN flags. Vitaliy Margolen (3): dinput: Implement saturation property for evdev joystick driver. dinput: Zero the out buffer. dinput: Add mouse warp override config option. Vladimir Pankratov (14): taskmgr: Update Russian translation. shell32: Update Russian translation. taskmgr: Remove unused code. taskmgr: Update Russian translation. netapi32: Add stub for NetWkstaUserEnum. netapi32: Add stub for NetGroupEnum. taskmgr: Converted some functions to Unicode. winecfg: Update Russian translation. shell32: Update Russian translation. taskmgr: Converted some functions and variables to Unicode. taskmgr: Converted some functions and variables to Unicode. taskmgr: Converted some functions and variables to Unicode. taskmgr: Converted some functions and variables to Unicode. taskmgr: Converted some functions and variables to Unicode. Will Tipton (1): comctl32: Added input validation to TOOLTIPS_GetTextW() in order to handle gracefully the case where it is called with an empty tooltip. Zac Brown (10): include/winhttp.h: Add WINHTTP_TIME_FORMAT_BUFSIZE. winhttp: Add stub implementation for WinHttpWriteData. winhttp/tests: Add test for sending request. winhttp: Add stub implementation for WinHttpTimeFromSystemTime. winhttp: Add test for WinHttpTimeFromSystemTime. winhttp: Add stub implementation for WinHttpTimeToSystemTime. winhttp: Add test for WinHttpTimeToSystemTime. winhttp: Add stub implementation for WinHttpQueryHeaders. winhttp: Add stub implementation for WinHttpAddRequestHeaders. winhttp: Add test for adding/querying headers. -- Alexandre Julliard [email protected], there are more than 100 FBS teams with rosters that often broach around 100 players. In simplified math, the game has seen more than 500,000 players take the field over the past 50 years. Oklahoma State's Barry Sanders set 25 NCAA records and rushed for over 300 yards four times during the 1988 season. Malcolm Emmons/US Presswire Barry Sanders' 1988 season was better than every single one of them. Nobody's really even that close. Future NFL Hall of Famer Thurman Thomas left the program to a little-known junior who had rushed for just over 600 yards as a sophomore in 1987. Over the next year, Sanders wrote his legacy every single week with the single greatest season of college football ever played. His 2,850 yards are more than even some of the best running backs log in a career. That NCAA record still stands, and it's one of 34 he set that season. Winning the Heisman Trophy that season is laughably far down the list of remarkable accomplishments for Sanders in a season to remember in Stillwater. He scored 39 touchdowns, 44 if you count his five in the Holiday Bowl. The NCAA didn't begin counting bowl stats in the official record books until 2002. He rushed for 300 yards in four games during the season, and his lowest total of the entire season came against Missouri, with a paltry 154 yards and two touchdowns on 25 carries. He scored at least two touchdowns in every game, and set the tone for the entire season by returning the opening kick against Miami (OH) 100 yards for a touchdown. He scored at least four touchdowns in seven games that season, helping Oklahoma State go 10-2, which tied what was then the best record in school history. Sanders' hips swiveled like no one else's, and he embarrassed defenders on what seemed like every run. He was quicker than everyone, shiftier than everyone, and when he reached the open field, proved he was faster than everyone. Sanders saved his best for last. He was awarded the Heisman before the final game against Texas Tech in Tokyo and proceeded to carry his team to a 45-42 win over the Red Raiders with a career-high 332 yards on a career-high 44 carries. His coach, Pat Jones, loved to call the Kansas native "The Wichita Comet." When the dust settled on a blowout win over Wyoming in the Holiday Bowl, Sanders had averaged 7.6 yards per carry on 373 carries and stood alone atop the list of the greatest seasons in college football history. He averaged just under 240 yards per game. In 2011, nine teams in college football averaged more rushing yards per game than Sanders did in 1988. Sanders' season forecasted one of the greatest NFL careers ever, though Sanders abruptly ended it in 1999, within striking distance of Walter Payton, who held the NFL career rushing record. Sanders was a quiet personality who kept to himself and never liked to talk about his exploits, even declining to dispute his father's contention that he wasn't the greatest running back in the history of the game. That didn't stop others from acknowledging the greatness he showcased every week of the 1988 season at Oklahoma State. After his record-breaking season, he left Stillwater for the NFL, where he spent 10 more record-breaking seasons with the Detroit Lions.An ITV News London investigation has found black boys in the capital are nearly three times more likely to be permanently excluded from school than the London average. According to figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, 250 black boys were permanently expelled from Greater London schools in 2014/15. The Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott and MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington described the data as'very troubling'. Gilroy Northover, a former student at a pupil referral unit, told us that the issue stems from parenting: The Department for Education say that all decisions to exclude can be reviewed by the schools’ governing body to ensure that they are “lawful, reasonable and fair”. Parents who believe that their child has been discriminated against can also take their claim to the county court.CLEVELAND, Ohio - At age 63, Sterle's County House needed a little work. Nothing major. Just a small facelift for one of Cleveland's most beloved ethnic restaurants. "It was time, " says owner Rick Semersky, seated in the newly repainted bar of the sprawling Alpine chateau-like space that has been luring diners to East 55th Street for authentic Eastern European food since 1954. "I have owned it for five years now, and we decided it was time to spruce it up a bit." The updates are nothing wild: fresh paint, more windows to allow more natural light to the dark space, moving the stage to the center of the back wall of the restaurant, doing a major cleaning, and adding brighter LED lights to the cavernous space. The updates to Sterle's menu are more obvious, though - there no longer is a menu. In a return to its roots in the days of founder Frank Sterle, everything here will be served family-style, according to what the chef is making that day. After a month of planning and renovations, Sterle's will reopen again for business Friday, Feb. 10. "We're moving forward by looking back to the way Sterle's used to be," says Semersky. "This is how food was served at Sterle's when it opened." Sterle's is also moving forward with a new chef, Natasha Pogrebinsky, a Parma native who most recently was the chef-owner of Bear restaurant in Long Island City, New York. Described as a "modern Russian" restaurant, the lauded Bear went a long way to putting Slavic cuisine on the map of New York foodies. Pogrebinsky closed it when she decided to move back to Cleveland to be closer to her family. Fortuitously, not long after she moved home, she heard Sterle's was looking for a chef. Intrigued by the idea of being able to share her love of classic Eastern European cuisine at a classic restaurant she had dined at as child, she called them. Soon, Pogrebinsky, who learned to cook at the shoulders of her mother, father and grandmother -- then later the International Culinary Center in New York -- was at the helm at Sterle's. She loved the idea of no menus, of being able to craft weekly meals featuring the dishes of the Slavic cuisines she is so familiar with. "This is traditional Old World, has-to-cook-all-day kind of food and sauces," says the chef as she stirs a giant pot of barley pilaf in Sterle's newly scrubbed kitchen. Nearby, kielbasa simmers in beer from Semersky's Goldhorn brewery next door, while handmade pierogi cook and a mushroom gravy simmers for the Wiener Schnitzel. The smell of baking pretzels wafts through the air. "You can't fake this, or make this in a hurry," says Pogrebinsky. "This is made with love and tradition and care. "Eastern European foods are becoming popular again; this is our moment. I think one reason is because we have stayed with tradition -- you can't change or modernize these foods. They are rooted in culture and tradition." Pogrebinsky's opening-weekend menu will include the barley pilaf, pierogi, Weiner Schnitzel in mushroom gravy, kielbasa and borscht. Usually, the menu will change weekly, but these options will be around Feb. 16-18, too. Menus will be added to the website each week. The goal is to feature some very popular traditional favorites each week, like the pierogi and kielbasa and schnitzels, but also dig deeper into less well-known but traditional dishes like the barley pilaf topped with horseradish, or borscht. Other items Pogrebinsky says she'd like to serve soon include stuffed cabbage, potatoes stuffed with cabbage and dill salad. "We want to open up people's perceptions of Eastern European foods," she says. That includes many cold salads, and seafood and lighter options in the summer. "People think all Eastern European cuisine is heavy, but that's not true," says the young chef. All meals will begin with bowls of freshly baked pretzels and pickles on the table. Desserts will be made by Rudy's Strudel of Parma and Translyvania Bakery on East 65th Street. Dinner will be served at Sterle's Thursdays to Saturdays, beginning at 4:30 daily. The price is $24 per person; kids' menus will be available. A buffet-style lunch will be served Tuesday to Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. $13. Sunday brunch will be held weekly. The buffet-style meal will include many of the dinner items, plus frittatas, kielbasa hash, blintzes, French toast, pancakes and more. Endless mimosas will be available, and Sterle's Bloody Mary cart will be making the rounds. On evenings, there will also be an after-dinner drinks cart with everything from Tia Maria to slivovitz being pushed from table to table. Sterle's will reopen for business on Friday, Feb. 10, 1401 East 55th St. Call 216-881-4181.(BOOK) 힙합하다: RAP MONSTER (Part 3) If you ask what hip hop means to me, now I can say it. Something I like, one of the things I like, "one of them" and "my favorite." It's no more and no less than that. in regards to this, if you say that I have no knowledge of or respect for the culture, I can't do anything about that; this is the best that I can do. There are many things that I like. music is first, and after that is clothing, travel, and books. There are these four things that I like, and ahead of all of those is hip hop. I really like clothing. If I go broke in the future I think it'll be because of clothes. (laugh) I buy a lot. and for some reason the genre that I like is a mania genre called 'dark wear' so the clothes are incredibly expensive. I'm the type who invests a lot into clothing because I'll wear them for a long time and because I think they're a simple method of self-expression. I can't go shopping often, which I regret. I can't travel far away, so I mainly travel by myself to nearby places, I go to Nami Island or Jungdongjin, or to Chuncheon. I go by myself to gather my thoughts and receive inspiration. This could be arrogant, or a delusion, but I try to talk to the fans about music that I like or rappers that I like. It isn't that I'm asking for understanding; rather, it's because there are a number of people who have said that they started listening to hip hop because of me. It's not because I made an effort, but just that the fans naturally became interested in hip hop or rappers and so they end up going to other artists' concerts. I think of this as one way that I can contribute to this culture or method. I'm cautious to say this, but at any rate there are many fans who listen to hip hop, who listen to rap because of me… clearly, there are people who are becoming interested in this culture, whether in directly or in a more roundabout way. Even if they think about that part once, I'm thankful for it. I really like Korean hip hop. Garion, Verbal Jint, P-Type, Soul Company, Supreme Team… I came up by watching all these cool hyungs, and I receive limitless influence from them. These days I've been thinking about various things on my own, and I think that I've come to better understand other people, the thoughts of other people and their anxieties. Since that's on my mind, I think a lot and I want to talk a lot. It's really ironic. Hip hop isn't that kind of thing. Actually, when I did this interview I hesitated on whether I had to do it. It's true that I started just because I liked hip hop. But if you ask whether 'hip hop' and 'idol' can co-exist, a long debate always ensues. I like hip hop, I love hip hop, but I feel that contained in the thesis "I am hip hop, I do hip hop" are countless histories and things unseen. It's still difficult. I think that instead, I can just say, "I like music, I love hip hop, and I do rap." I tried imagining myself 5 or 10 years from now, but 5 years ago I was a trainee, and 10 years ago I was just beginning to listen to hip hop. It's a big starting point, and the me I imagined then has almost nothing in common with the me of now. So after I tried to continue my image making for some time, I finally realized that there's no real meaning to it. I have a vague schema, but I don't want to be tied to that and would rather live while focusing on the present. I hope now that I can have a little more conviction towards myself, and that I can become a person who can give a slightly more positive influence. As time passes I feel more and more like I'm losing my self-conviction, so I hope that in the future I can have more conviction toward myself. As my field of vision widens, I suffer from a kind of identity crisis about the me I thought I knew. So 5 years from now, or 10 years from now, I hope that I can become a person whose confidence in myself is clear and unwavering. Recently I read "The Stranger," and one of the things Albert Camus said is, "the best art is art that speaks little. Leave a space and let people fill the space themselves; that is good art." I really agreed with these words. Rap is something that has a feeling of telling one's own story in a very detailed way, but after being involved in this for a long time, I've also come to have a different perspective. It isn't "I'm going to change the world! through my story I'm going to convey hope and dreams to people!" but rather, it's enough if people hear a song and it leaves some kind of impression on them. If I'm able to leave a mark on someone's life, even if for a moment, then hasn't that in itself already fulfilled the function of music? Even if the culture and emotion are respectively different, there's nonetheless something that can pierce the time period. I think that the people who live in any one generation have emotions that they can share. So if we talk about these things, then in one way or another people will embrace it. If I talk about my deficiencies and hopes, then others will accept it in their own way. I don't feel that there's a need to create a boundary of necessarily needing to convey a certain message. What I liked about Camus' words was the idea that there are many stories contained within those connotative figures of speech and metaphors. I have things to think about in the future, so it seems like rather than trying to pack in all my stories to convey them, on the contrary I want to work to remove my stories instead. In the future, I'm going to try say things without prolixity, but rather concisely. I thought when I wrote lyrics that I would write 16 words and then choose more, but rather than that, if I have this much, then I'm reducing it little by little. I have a lot of things I want to do. So these days I'm even singing. (laugh) It's not a joke, but I even sometimes regret that my name is Rap Monster. If I'd read Camus' book a little earlier, I might not have even ended up as Rap Monster. (laugh) So these days I'm writing it mostly as 'Rap Mon' or 'RM.' Really, in the future I might end up changing my name to this. (laugh) If the time comes to change it, you can think of it as me having followed through on the resolution I'm making now. (laugh) It would be nice if 5 or 10 years from now, people could see me and think, "he really did want to do many things, and he did well in his own way." Although it's all mixed together, it's not pig slop but rather delicious budae jjigae. I have a lot of greed,** so I'm not the type who can clearly say that I'm going to do just this one thing. But I don't know. That could become a curse or could become any number of things, but among those it seems like I'll have to find my own method of achieving equilibrium. I'm practicing to find that method. I want to polish it and refine it and show you only the substance of a diamond. date 2016.3.18 location Seoul Nonhyeon-dong Big Hit Entertainment office * 'army stew,' traditionally made by mixing noodles, spicy sauce, and whatever leftovers could be found from US army bases in Korea. ** greed is not a bad thing, just a lot of desire towards a certain goal or subject.Police are investigating a homicide in Pittsburgh’s Allentown neighborhood.According to assistant Public Information Officer Emily Schaffer, police responded to a call at 7 a.m. for the report of a man lying face down in the street in the 300 block of Allen Street.The medical examiner's office identified the man as 33-year-old James Johnson of Avalon.Schaffer said the man was found dead of a gunshot wound. The medical examiner confirmed he was found at the intersection of Asteroid and Loyal Ways.Johnson was pronounced dead at 7:28 a.m.The investigation is ongoing.Detectives are asking anyone with information to call 911 or contact the homicide office at
down the pitch. At his best, Rahane's batting is like a high-value chronometer, working parts moving in smooth synchronisation, looking good and delivering efficiency. Yet he fits smoothly into this age of GPS, with the ability to switch gears, up the strike rate and do so with strokeplay that belongs to a category called the contemporary conventional. A batting position is a reflection of authority and adaptability over one's game and the regularity of their turnover of runs at that spot. By those counts, Ajinkya Rahane has done enough to rise up the order. Sharda Ugra is senior editor at ESPNcricinfo © ESPN Sports Media Ltd.Yes, this is a piece about toilets, and yes, Galway has some bloody cool ones. Despite spending a good chunk of our lives in-and-out of them, the beloved bathroom can be an overlooked room, devoid of any creative inspiration. But not these ones, these creative crappers have been given a life of their own. Tuco’s Taqueria The burrito boom has been in full effect in Ireland for some time. There are Mexican fast food joints popping-up everywhere, but Tuco’s have set themselves apart with this beautifully painted piece by Ximena Vargas. Spanning three walls and exploding from left-to-right, the colorful content blasts you as you open the toilet door. The Chili Shack Sticking to the fast food theme and The Chili Shack’s relief station lets you express yourself. Upstairs there’s a box with some colorful markers for you to choose from. The white walls are your chili-fried canvas, where you can write or draw what you like. Last time I was in, I went for some shameless self-promotion. If no one is gonna promote you, you gotta promote yourself! @Migeycan #Snapchat pic.twitter.com/eshkYvS6JM — Ross Cannon (@Migeycan) September 22, 2016 The Universal There’s nothing worse than being wined-and-dined in a beautiful restaurant, only to find the toilets look like a World War I trench. Fortunately for me-and-you, The Universal, located in the heart of Galway’s Westend, have put some careful thought and consideration into their beautifully crafted toilets. On arrival you are greeted with these unorthodox but wickedly framed photos. On the inside, the toilets have a minimalist plush feel. Well, at least the men’s do. It’s safe to assume the women’s toilets are equally as decadent, but I didn’t want to go in there taking photographs, for fear I’d be labelled a pervert and be ran out of town. The white tiles on the walls give you a streamlined feel, while on the ground, more white tiles with perfect mandala-esque styled designs finish off the room perfectly. The consideration and thought given to the front of house carries it’s way all the way to the outhouse. There you have it! I hope you enjoyed these craftily created crappers. If you know of any I should check-out, hit me up on Twitter.Wall Street Analyst Charles Ortel believes that the US authorities have to investigate the alleged use of mega-data gathered by social media corporations for business profit. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The US government needs to launch a serious inquiry into how the social media giant corporations led by Facebook and Google use the mega-data they gather on hundreds of millions of people for business gain, financial analyst Charles Ortel said in an interview on Wednesday. "Google and Facebook in the main what they are doing is convincing people around the world to give away very valuable information and then they're monetizing this for their investors," Ortel told RT on Wednesday. "There should be some serious inquiry into that." Ortel was commenting on the close cooperation between the major US media outlets led by the New York Times and the social media giant corporations in distorting search results and boosting stories overwhelmingly hostile to President Donald Trump. "What we’ve seen so far is shocking, he said. "Over 90 percent of the news was negative (on Trump). "I think that kind of stuff happens all the time." The Google search engine suppressed conservatives financial analysts and others who were critical of the left-wing and progressive beliefs of most of the billionaires who ran Silicon Valley, Ortel said. "On the question of Google I have noticed what I believe to be suppression of Google search results… When someone is identified as being conservative economically they go into the question file… These people in Silicon Valley they all lean to the left," he said. Trump has publicly accused the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS of presenting fake news. Ortel told RT that Trump had been correct in his criticisms as major US media outlets, especially The New York Times, openly and repeatedly slanted the news according to their preferred bias. "The New York Times certainly has had an anti-conservative bent for a long, long time… The New York Times has a decided bias and it needs to reform itself or it will indeed fail as Donald Trump in fact suggests it is [already failing]," he said. Ortel also said the New York Times during the 2016 presidential election campaign had refused to report the fact that the Clinton Foundation charity was under investigation. "In August 2016 the New York Times knew the Clinton Foundation was under investigation. That is incredibly relevant information that they spiked," he said. Charles Ortel, a former executive at the financial firms Chart Group and Dillon, Read & Company, exposed financial fraud at General Electric back in 2007 and is proceeding with his private investigation into the alleged fraud of the Clinton Foundation. Ortel discussed the issue of media bias at RT after Project Veritas released hidden camera footage of conversations with New York Times editor Nick Dudich. The video showed Dudich admitting to using connections at YouTube to get New York times videos on the front page of the platform.As if The Book of Unwritten Tales (which is a game that I've been interested in playing since the day I saw it on Steam) wasn't exciting enough already, I received the second part of my gift in the mail just earlier tonight! My Santa decided to bundle my Steam game with two fantastic books: World War Z and Ready Player One. World War Z has been a book that I've always been interested in. Having read most of The Zombie Survival Guide, and enjoying the author's writing, I knew that I had to get my hands on this one. Suffice it to say, my Santa came through for me on that one. :) Ready Player One was something that I definitely wasn't expecting though. I have never heard of this one, but being into video games and the culture in general, the title instantly caught my eye. And after reading the plot summary, well, I think I'm already hooked. I can't believe I never heard of it until tonight, it sounds like such a great read! Now I'm just torn on which one to start first... Thank you, Santa, for the fantastic gifts!Texas Rep. Mike Conaway, a member of the Armed Services Committee, said the appearance was canceled by President-elect Donald Trump's transition team. Mattis' testimony was scheduled the same day as his confirmation hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee. "Mattis was willing and able to come and visit with us, but the transition team didn’t want that to happen and so it’s not going to happen,” said Conaway, a Republican from Midland. “He would’ve done well. He might’ve helped us get more Democrats on board for the vote, but nonetheless, we’ll pass it.” The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment by deadline. The long-serving general, nominated by Trump last month, does not need to appear before the House committee for Congress to vote on the legal exemption, or waiver. But before he can be confirmed by the Senate, the House must grant the exemption, giving that chamber a rare opportunity to weigh in on Cabinet appointments. The 1947 National Security Act is designed to buttress civilian oversight of the military. Some Democrats, including Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, slammed Mattis' cancellation on Wednesday. "General Mattis should not get a waiver if he refuses to testify before the House of Representatives," Castro, a former member of the Armed Services Committee, said in a tweet.PESHAWAR: At least 15 people were killed and several injured Friday in a suicide attack on a seminary and mosque in Peshawar, officials said. Superintendent of Police Rural Shafiullah Khan said the suicide bomber detonated his explosives in the mosque when worshipers were offering Friday prayers. "One of the attackers wearing a suicide vest entered the mosque and blew himself up in front of the worshipers,” said Khan. He said three attackers tried to enter the Hussaini madressa in Chamkini area but faced resistance by the security personnel posted at the entrance. He said two attackers were prevented from entering the complex while one managed to enter the Imambargah after the guards were gunned down. Bomb Disposal Squad official Abdul Haq told Dawn.com that six to seven kilograms of high intensity explosives and four kilograms of pellets were used in the blast. A loud blast was heard while the Friday sermon was underway at the Imambargah, which was preceded by gun firing, according to eyewitness accounts. Eye witness Khadim Hussain told that he was inside the mosque when he heard gunfire followed by a huge explosion shattering the windows and the front canopy of the mosque. Other eyewitnesses said that the attacker shot at the guards posted at the entrance of the complex before entering the premises where the explosives were detonated. The complex comprises of a madressa and an Imambargah belonging to the Shia sect. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Information Minister Shauakat Yousafzai told reporters at the hospital that 14 people were killed while at least 30 were wounded from the deadly blast. Officials at the Lady Reading Hospital said four bodies and at least 30 wounded had been taken to the hospital. Several of the wounded were reported to be in critical condition. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned the incident and the loss of innocent lives while ordering immediate treatment of the victims.Over the past few months, the world has watched as Edward Snowden – a now ex-employee of NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton – leaked information that confirmed what we all assumed; that the government is spying on us, in a very, very big way. Privacy and security have always been important to me, but far from being an expert, I decided to reach out to Simon Persson, the owner of secure email provider CounterMail, and ask him a few questions about PRISM, online privacy and security, and what he thinks about crypto-currencies like BitCoin. Let’s dive right in… Simon, could you tell our readers a little bit about yourself, your background, and why you decided to start a secure email service? My name is Simon Persson, and I am the founder of Countermail. I’m 40 years old, I live in Stockholm, Sweden. I got my first computer in 1983, it was a Spectrum 48k, which had 48k in RAM and a 3.5Mhz CPU, pretty exotic in those days, but today’s mobile phones are around 1000 times more powerful! I was immediately hooked, especially with the programming aspect, most of my friends preferred playing games on their computers, but I always had programming as #1 interest, playing games was #2. I have been programming since then. In the late eighties I became more and more interested in hacking and cryptography. I remember I always felt that IT-security is the future, because computerization will only increase, and when companies start sending their information through the cables, it must be protected well. But it wasn’t until 1999 I became seriously interested in cryptography, I got a present from my mother, it was The Codebook (by Simon Singh). At that time there was an active competition in the book, the cipher challenge, with a first prize of 10,000 pounds (GBP), so it made the book even more interesting. I still recommend it when people ask about books about cryptography. It’s one of the the best introduction books. After reading that book I really realized how important cryptography is, and will be. During world War II, it was a matter of life and death, strong encryption may save lives, and weak encryption may kill people. Since 1999 I started implementing cryptography in most programs I made, sometimes even though it was not necessary 🙂 I used Hushmail for many years, until 2007 when it became clear that they could disable the encryption for individual users. At that time, there was no other provider with web based OpenPGP end-to-end encryption. So I started planning to create my own service, with OpenPGP end-to-end security, no unencrypted emails or passwords should be stored on my server. I registered the domain name in 2008, but it was not until May 2010 the service was ready to open up. In light of PRISM and all the recent NSA shenanigans, where do we go from here? I’m especially curious to hear your thoughts on people’s behavior in regards to security going forward. More people will understand that they need to be cautious when the send stuff over internet, it’s not only NSA that could tap into your information, an advanced hacker or criminal organization could do similar things with your data. I hope that companies start realizing that their trade secrets could be compromised when using weak or backdoored encryption. I think more people will try to learn the basics in IT-security. How do you choose your passwords? Randomly generated, or do you have a system? Many people seem to have trouble striking a balance between security and memorability. I use different levels, a less important site gets an easier password, and more sensitive places get longer & harder passwords. The most sensitive information, like server disk encryption, gets a randomized password. I also use SafeBox (a password manager in Countermail) to keep track of passwords. I think it’s safe to assume that you’ve heard the “if you’ve got nothing to hide…” over the years. What are your thoughts on this in respect to personal privacy? Yes, I heard it many times. I think it’s based on ignorance or naivety. A Swedish professor of criminology said that those “I got nothing to hide”-persons do no exist IRL, everyone have something that they want to keep private. Information can also be misinterpreted, a quote from a french politician: “If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang them”. There are no government or police organization that can protect their data 100% against leakage, and the people working for the government are just like normal people, mostly good, but some evil. Some may abuse the information. The government must be allowed to use surveillance against targeted suspected individuals, but not against the whole population and innocent people, aka. mass surveillance. Secure email services seem to be a dime a dozen these days; what sets CounterMail apart from say, HushMail? There are many things, here are some of them: We are under Swedish jurisdiction and swedish laws, Sweden still have better privacy laws than many other countries We don’t log IP-addresses You can pay anonymously if you follow our instructions, or simply just use Bitcoin Incoming email will be encrypted to your public key, which means no emails will be stored as plaintext on our server, only in encrypted format Web based OpenPGP encryption with no possibility to disable the end-to-end encryption, passwords and decrypted texts is never sent to our server We have an USB-key option, which gives you two factor authentication, and increased protection Our webmail server do not have any hard drives, only CD-ROM, which means no “leakage” to any hard drive is possible Our customers never have any direct connection to our mailserver, regardless how they connect to their account, IMAP/SMTP/webmail always connects to a diskless server (tunnel) You can delete the private key from our server (but we recommend this only for advanced users, your private key is always encrypted on our server anyway) We have an additional encryption layer to protect against man-in-the-middle attacks If anyone can find any other established provider that have all our privacy and security features, we will give that person $10k as a reward! Aside from securing our email, what’s one other easy win for the average computer user in terms of securing their personal privacy? Learn how to use FireFox + the NoScript add-on, and use that as your main web browser. With NoScript, the first time you visit a domain you have to manually allow a certain domain to run a scripts and plugins. If I had to choose between an Anti-virus software and a “NoScript”-plugin, I will choose the “NoScript” plugin. You should not allow global scripting/plugin execution in your web browser, only to domains you trust. Also set your browser to remove cookies when you close it, to prevent tracking and give you more privacy. A good antivirus program and a software Firewall is of course also good to have. Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies have really started making waves this year. What are your thoughts on their viability? I’ve seen quite a bit of backlash along the lines of “they’ll only be used for money laundering!”. I like the idea with crypto-currencies, they are decentralized and give much more privacy compared to normal payment methods. However, I would not put all my savings into Bitcoin, there are some theoretical attacks that could crash the currency, but it’s very hard to “kill” BitCoin permanently. The Banks and the governments do not like it, so they will probably try to use the “fear”-factor or “criminal”-factor on it. Is there anything else you want to tell our readers about CounterMail or security in general? HTTPS/SSL-encryption alone do not give enough security against an advanced attacker, I and many other in the IT-security field already knew that before it was confirmed in the NSA leaks by Snowden. Start using PGP email encryption, or at least try to learn how it works. OpenPGP is not locked to a specific provider, it’s an open standard that could be installed on almost any computer platform, with many email providers. One benefit with Countermail is that most PGP-actions is done automatically, so it’s easier to get started, and of course the fact that incoming unencrypted email is automatically encrypted to your public key, this feature is something that many providers lack. When Edward Snowden started to communicate with the journalists, he wanted them to use PGP encryption, and he had to learn them how to use it. So far, everything indicates that PGP still holds up, even against NSA. Chad’s Thoughts… I’ve heard Snowden’s revelations described as “the least surprising, most unexpected” thing to happen, and I think that’s pretty accurate. Though governments have been spying on foreign bodies since time immemorial, advances in technology have made this easier than ever, both abroad and domestically.How could any spy agency resist that kind of temptation? In a way, I actually find the whole situation kind of funny. Temptation aside, can we really be upset when we’ve been so complacent pushing back as a society? I would really love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. And Simon, thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions, and allowing me to share them with my readers. I greatly appreciate it.May 28, 2016 Ξ Comments are off By Louis Chan AsAmNews National Correspondent If you’re like me and don’t have tweeners living with you, you probably haven’t paid much attention to Nickelodeon’s Make It Pop. The show,centered around three Asian girls who formed a KPop group, became a source of much controversy in the Asian American community last year when it debut without any significant Asian American male characters. In fact it was the most talked about and read stories on AsAmNews all of last year. A good thing happened in season two that pretty much went unnoticed among those upset about the lack of Asian American male representation. Two Asian American male actors joined the cast. Vinson Tran plays Linc who forms a band of his own and gives the girls some real competition. Joining him is Alex who has a great fashion sense and is played by Micky Nguyen. Reaction to the new characters has been positive. DTM Universal who wrote the original blog on AsAmNews about Make It Pop had this to say about season 2. RELATED STORY: TV Producer: “Asian Guy in My Show? Not Going to Happen.” “Last year I called out that ridiculous casting in that Make It Pop show and the internet exploded and I probably freed 10,000 minds like Morpheus,” said DTM Universal to AsAmNews. “Then those dinosaurs up there at Nickelodeon had to buckle to the bad PR and pressure and finally cast a couple of Asian guys. “Well, finally! The mainstream media is catching on? You know I been talking about this since 2009 (7 years ago)! I remember when I did my film pitch in front of my Sheridan classmates and faculty about mass media brainwashing, 90% of the people looked at me confused like I was an alien. Then the faculty was like “we don’t get your story, we don’t think you can pull it off” – so I got my team together and we got it done anyway. “I even got weird looks from my fellow confused Asians (who were happily plugged into The Matrix living in their dream world and may never ever free their minds) who were ignoring, deflecting, telling me these issues weren’t real, or coming up with silly reasons (excuses) like “Asian stars don’t do well at the box office so they don’t get cast!” or “They have to cast someone relatable to the audience!” – Meanwhile box office superstars like Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, John Cho, Steven Yeun, Sung Kang, etc. prove we are bankable and wanted by audiences when given the proper spotlight. “I’m glad in 2016 it’s starting to become socially acceptable / that people are starting to talk about these sort of issues out in the open – but we still have a long ways to go in terms of proper representation as we still get the silly casting choices slipping through the cracks like Ghost In The Shell, Dr. Strange, etc.” Make It Pop also features Megan Lee (Sun Hi); Erika Tham, (Corki); and Louriza Tronco (Jodi). AsAmNews is an all-volunteer effort of dedicated staff and interns. You can show your support by liking our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/asamnews, following us on Twitter, sharing our stories, interning or joining our staff.Intel pulled its Sandy Bridge launch forward today, launching the new family a full two days earlier than the planned January 5th date at CES. And with 15 desktop parts and 14 mobile parts, what a launch it is. The 29 total parts announced make it Intel's biggest launch ever. Initial reviews are now coming in, and it looks like Intel has a winner on its hands, at least for now. Anand is the first one out with truly comprehensive looks at both the desktop and mobile parts, and he's quite impressed. Sandy Bridge's completely overhauled microarchitecture gives it between a 10 percent and 50 percent performance boost over its predecessor in some instances, depending on the workload. For now, Intel has mainly chosen to exploit the benefits of its new design by keeping clock speeds low and offering the same level of performance as Arrandale, but at much cheaper prices. Apple watchers will note that Intel did indeed launch a 17W mobile Sandy Bridge part, which is a prime candidate for a MacBook Air. It's possible that once the platform's OpenCL x86 support is finalized, we could see Apple use the new processor in a MacBook Air refresh. We wouldn't expect this for some time, though, since Apple just updated the laptop. The main place where Sandy Bridge really leaps ahead of its predecessors is in GPU performance. Sandy Bridge's relatively simple, primitive, fixed-function GPU manages to compete with lower-end and midrange discrete GPUs in both the mobile and desktop spaces, thanks to a combination of high clock speed and tight coupling with the CPU. Once Intel delivers a fully modern, programmable GPU with Ivy Bridge, the chipmaker could put a serious hurt on AMD and NVIDIA eliminating the rationale for buying a low-end or midrange discrete GPU. But that's a topic for another day... One of the reasons why reviewers are so astounded by Sandy Bridge's on-die GPU performance in games is that Intel's previous GPU hardware has been so terrible. In this sense, watching Sandy Bridge's GPU compete with an NVIDIA 320M in a game run on the "low quality" setting is a bit like watching that scene in Forrest Gump where Forrest starts to run and his leg braces go flying off. Sure, he may not be going straight to the Olympics, but you still can't help but cheer. Aside from performance, the two other features of Sandy Bridge's GPU that have gotten attention are its hardware-based transcoding engine and its DRM-enabling security hardware. Both of these additions are artifacts of Intel's current obsession with all things TV and CE. The transcoding engine, called Quick Sync, absolutely chews through video file conversions at record speeds. This will be great for HTPC builders, or anyone else who does a ton of transcoding. The other big feature is a movie service tied to Sandy Bridge called "Intel Insider." Intel's pitch for the service is that it uses content protection technology that's built-in to Sandy Bridge's hardware so that, unlike software protection, it can't be cracked. So anyone who wants to use the service will need a Sandy Bridge CPU to view the content. If you're of the belief that the absence of ironclad DRM is the one thing holding back the digital movie revolution, then Intel Insider is great news. But if, on the other hand, you don't think that Big Content has the nerve to restrict 100 percent of its HD digital movie distribution to Sandy Bridge users, then you realize that Intel Insider won't make a lick of difference. It only takes one HD copy of a movie to leak out into the wild to enable Internet-wide sharing; so if Intel Insider can't protect every HD single copy of a movie, then it can't protect any of them. We'll have a lot more to say about Intel Insider and Intel's digital movie plans as more details come to light at CES. So stay tuned to this week's show coverage for more on this front. Listing image by Intel"A Ville Platte man and two teenagers are recovering after all three were hit by a truck. However, they are facing charges, and the driver isn't. Police have fined the three for not wearing reflective clothing at night and charged them with obstructing a public passage." From a story by Kendria LaFleu at KATC an ABC affiliate. Twenty-one-year-old Deonte Williams, 19-year-old Cody Mayes and 17-year-old Kevin Wilson need justice. If you're a victim of a crash, you shouldn't be the one charged with a crime. The fact that they are being charged with a crime after a crash is a gross miscarriage of justice. Charges need to be dropped on the two teenagers and young man, the laws and ordinances that is allowing for charges and fines need to be struck from the books, and Ville Platte needs to actively apply for Complete Streets funding, since clearly there are serious street design issues if people are being mandated to wear reflective gear for walking. My name is Teka-Lark Lo I am an alternative transportation advocate in New York City. My focus is Complete Streets for hypersegregated communities. The Black community has historically been and continues to be home to the most hypersegregated communities in the United States. We do not have equity in many areas, including areas of active transportation, such as walking and bicycling. I am joined with longtime Ville Platte Civil Rights Activist Arthur James Sampson Jr. and the NAACP Lafayette, La Branch # 6060. We all deserve the freedom to walk and bike in our communities without fear of being run over and charged with a crime. This situation is a clear example of transportation injustice. The Ville Platte, Louisiana, Police Department (VPPD) and the Evangeline Parish Sheriff’s Office (EPSO) was found by the Department of Justice in December of 2016 "to engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution" and instead of its politicians condemning the police and sheriff for such behavior they support and encourage it and actively use the police and sheriff for punitively enforcing mobility limiting and Civil Right violating policies, such as the walking curfew and mandating reflective clothing when walking. Regardless of where you're Black, whether it be in the metropolitan cities of Los Angeles & New York or in rural Ville Platte, Louisiana, you deserve justice. You deserve #TransportationEquity #BicycleEquity. Give Transportation Equity to Ville Platte. Help the citizens of Ville Platte walk home without fear of being run over by a truck and charged with a crime. Tell Mayor Vidrine to drop the charges against Deonte Williams, Cody Mayes, and Kevin Wilson.In Part 1 we discussed some of the pros and cons for physique athletes building the foundation of their programming around the “Big 3,” and for some, competing in the sport of powerlifting. Many of the recommendations within this article series will be built upon the foundational principle of managing and progressing training volume long term. Therefore, it’s important to understand its role in stimulating training adaptations. However, before we can discuss the role of training volume, let’s define what it is, and what other variables contribute to it. Defining/Quantifying Training Volume What is training volume? In its simplest form, volume is simply the amount of total work completed. This can be quantified within a set, an exercise, a training session, a mesocycle, a macrocyle, etc. Further Reading on Programming: There is only one type of periodization – Part 1 There is only one type of periodization – Part 2 Total volume can be quantified a number of ways depending on what you are trying to measure. Perhaps the most common way to quantify volume is to calculate total tonnage using known variables. This provides a product with a unit in lbs/kgs. Tonnage= load lifted x total reps With tonnage, it’s important to realize that load plays a role in establishing the volume. Therefore, with tonnage, intensity and volume are NOT two distinctly different variables as commonly described. A few additional ways volume could be quantified: total time under tension (TUT), total reps, total exercises, etc. So why is tonnage the most common way to quantify volume? Likely because the other methods of measure are also positively correlated with total tonnage, or they neglect the load aspect of the equation. If you rack up 15,000lbs of squat volume, chances are you had a substantial amount of time under tension. If you did 30 total reps on squat, that’s pretty meaningless in the absence of knowing the load used. Tonnage seems to provide the most comprehensive estimate of training volume, and can be used to objectively examine/plan our training. Volume is the main predictor of adaptation, provided adequate intensity is met The execution of multiple sets had been shown to be associated with greater strength and hypertrophy increases than single sets[vi] [vii]. This increased training volume influences force production through an increase in neural efficiency, as well as increases in hypertrophy. Volume’s effects on hypertrophy can likely be attributed, in part, to the prolonged increase in muscle protein synthesis (MPS) that been observed with multiple vs single sets [viii]. So if training volume is the variable most highly correlated with hypertrophy, why not just do tons of reps with an empty bar to get huge? It sure would be easier. While volume is the main predictor of strength and hypertrophy as a whole, research indicates intensity to be the driving factor up to a point. This threshold of intensity varies by application. While there is data indicating that training at an intensity level of ~60% of 1 RM is needed to yield a hypertrophic effect under non-hypoxic conditions[i] [ii], there is also evidence demonstrating that the use of 30% of 1RM taken to failure can also lead to increases in strength and hypertrophy[iii]. Furthermore, the use of blood flow restriction (BFR) has been shown to lead to increases in both hypertrophy and strength with loads as little as ~20-30% 1RM[v]. The story continues to unfold with regards to the required intensity eliciting strength and hypertrophic adaptations under different training conditions. That being said, our dual athlete will be spending the majority of their time >60% 1 RM anyway. Specificity should still dictate the loads used most frequently in training for the dual athlete. The best way to squat 500 lbs is still going to be practicing to squat 500 lbs. Volume as a means of progressive overload Early in one’s training career it’s easy to create overload and increase tonnage simply by adding weight to the bar. Volume can still be relatively low, and strength and muscle will pile on like an avalanche (usually in retrospect). As an example, I recall being a die hard DC (Doggcrapp) Training disciple early in my training career. A single rest pause set with heavy loads and a loaded stretch was all I needed to literally make linear progress in strength and hypertrophy for two full years. I set PRs almost every workout, and I was a believer. I remember being really proud of myself for finding the ultimate program so early in my training career. However, just after my second year using DC Training, strength and hypertrophy came to a slow crawl. I came to the depressing realization that progress isn’t forever linear, and in order to keep progressing, increased sets and/or reps would need to start to play a larger role in overload. Many frustrated trainees may first turn to different exercises, different tempos, different rest intervals, or perhaps attempt to eat their way to a new PR or inch on their arms. When it comes to programming, ALL of those options should fall below the principle of volume progression on the pyramid of importance. It’s not to say they don’t have an impact, but they should be implemented on top of a foundation of gradual and strategic volume progression. So should one just increase volume to break a plateau in size and/or strength? From a long term perspective, yes. From a short term perspective, it depends on the magnitude of increase and where the athlete is in their annual plan. Volume Thresholds Volume increases should be gradual and on an as-needed basis. Milk what you can out of every stage, but realize more work will ultimately need to be done down the road. Unfortunately, overly aggressive volume progression can be a common observation with some eager trainees. Some go from training a body part 1-2 times a week with low-moderate volume, to jumping into a program as aggressive as Smolov. It’s natural to want results as quickly as possible, but if it takes you 7 weeks to finish the base mesocycle of Smolov, then: 1) You aren’t ready for a program with that volume. 2) You likely don’t need anywhere near that volume to progress optimally at your level of training. Think of that as a good thing, and spend that extra time doing something you like outside of the gym. 3) You didn’t actually do Smolov. There seems to be a threshold of volume, beyond which there is a point of diminishing returns. That threshold is a moving target as we become more advanced in our training career, but the goal is to not raise it prematurely. That being said, some non trained individuals just seem to inherit an insane work capacity from the get go and that needs to be accounted for and not undercut. This has its positives and negatives. As an example, take a guy like Pete Rubish. In his early training career, his work capacity already extended beyond that of many seasoned lifters. Much of his raw strength was accrued in this time with him grinding out set after set in his parents’ basement. His early threshold was very high, and this dosing of volume (combined with his genetic predisposition for moving heavy objects), led to some absurd feats of strength at an early point in his career. But that rapid progress didn’t last: “After I moved out of my parent’s house, my training seemed to drop-off. The intensity wasn’t the same and my volume was pretty low overall. A typical deadlift day would include working up to a max single to triple and then doing maybe one backdown set of 10 followed by some uninspired pulldowns and hamstring curls. I think this is a big reason why I stalled for so long.” – Pete Rubish Such is the “curse” of an extremely high work capacity. You still have to progress your volume long-term, except that you start from an already-higher ceiling than most. Since Pete reimplemented a higher dose of volume and frequency, his progress has picked back up. So by now you should know that progressing volume is very important. However, its also important to know that volume can’t be progressed in a linear manner either. You would die and run out of hours in the day. The implementation of transition phases in the annual plan is a useful tool to essentially re-sensitize the athlete to the volume stimulus, while striving to maintain strength as best they can. This will be discussed in more detail later when we discuss long term planning. Correlation, NOT Causation An often-overlooked takeaway: increasing volume is merely a tool that’s applied to accomplish further overload. It isn’t the hammer, but the force created by swinging it that drives a nail. Increased volume does not directly cause hypertrophy. Your squat PR and increased biceps circumference are merely physiological adaptations to the mechanical loading, metabolic stress, and muscular damage that’s imposed under that umbrella of volume. By increasing these stimuli for training adaptations, training volume will increase as a result. Moving forward Managing training volume is an important concept in the annual plan. The rest of this series will begin to elucidate and strive to fine tune concepts of periodization for the dual athlete. Brian Minor, MS, CSCS is an natural pro bodybuilder, and raw powerlifter. He is a coach for INOV8 Elite Performance specializing in strength and physique oriented training/nutritional programming. He can be reached at [email protected] com Sources Cited: [i] M. J. McDonagh and C. T. Davies, ‘Adaptive Response of Mammalian Skeletal Muscle to Exercise with High Loads’, European Journal of Applied Physiology and Occupational Physiology, 52 (1984), 139–55. [ii] Mathias Wernbom, Jesper Augustsson and Roland Thomeé, ‘The Influence of Frequency, Intensity, Volume and Mode of Strength Training on Whole Muscle Cross-Sectional Area in Humans’, Sports Medicine (Auckland, N.Z.), 37 (2007), 225–64
army of trained, professional warriors, tribes of hunter-gatherers existed in close proximity to one another. These tribes competed with one another for access to limited resources like game animals and fresh water, no differently than modern man competes for limited resources like raw petroleum: with violence. Throughout the vast majority of our species’ spectacularly bloody existence on this little blue sphere we call home, both before and since the rise of civilization, most conflicts have not been resolved by well-equipped, nattily-dressed parade ground puppets of conventional military forces. On the contrary, for most of humanity’s existence, wars, rivalries, and grudges have been settled by small bands of haphazardly armed, ill-disciplined, and poorly trained or even untrained friends and neighbors banding together to protect their own turf, or to expand their control over finite resources by invading their neighbor’s turn and killing or enslaving the competition. Our modern use of “conventional” and “unconventional” labels for conflict is a reversal of the historical precedent. From the historical perspective, guerrilla warfare is far more “conventional” than formal armies are. Like the modern interpretation of the guerrilla, the classical tribal guerrilla used hit-and-run, asymmetric methods, choosing the survival advantage of fleeing before a stronger enemy, unless the fight could be clearly leveraged into his own favor. While many psychologists and revisionist historians have adopted the feel-good, New Age humanist view that animal species, including mankind, possess a natural aversion to intra-species killing, at least in the case of humankind, the archaeological and historical record demonstrates that they are wrong. Using the idea that inter-tribal battles were largely “ceremonial” affairs that actually resulted in little bloodshed or killing are patently absurd. The important factor that these pseudo-scientist “experts” overlook, or else pointedly ignore in the interest of a preconceived political position, is that “battles” are not the guerrilla’s fight. Instead, like his modern equivalent, the tribal guerrilla was more inclined to use the raid in the quiet, dark of the night, to kill his enemies in their bed, by burning the damned lodges down around him, followed by quickly fleeing before the victim’s friends and family could mount an effective counterattack. Only a sucker sticks around for a “fair fight.” That is the “way” of the classical guerrilla, just like it is the way of the “4GW” guerrilla. The idea of constraints being placed on the behavior of the guerrilla, or that he must fight according to the accepted rules of “conventional” military thought is also a cultural conceit without historical or archaeological relevance. “Mercy” in tribal guerrilla wars is seldom given or expected. Just like a modern US soldier, captured by so-called 4GW Al Qaeda fighters can expect to be sodomized, beheaded, or both, before being killed, a captured tribesman, through history, could look forward to being burned, castrated, beheaded, sodomized, or sold into slavery, if in fact, he wasn’t simply eaten. His women could expect to be raped and then killed, or sold into slavery. Even children would be either killed outright, or enslaved. Villages would be razed, crops destroyed, and livestock stolen. While we may naively expect the “modern” guerrilla to be constrained in his behavior by cultural background or training, or the demands of his nation-state sponsors, the use of this type of terror by the classical guerrilla sheds further light on the fact that the use of terror by “4GW” terrorist is in fact, not new at all. Guerrilla warfare, whether referred to for what it is, or given some cute new label to make it more marketable, is neither pretty nor romantic. The tribal guerrilla wasn’t interested in playing by opponent’s rules, if in fact, his opponent had any rules to play by. For the guerrilla, classical or modern, warfare is not an extension of politics. Warfare is simply survival. In his 1996 book illustrating the advantages of modern civilization and the nation-state that resulted, “War Before Civilization,” archeology professor Lawrence Keely points out that the evidence indicates that tribal societies engaged in inter-tribal “guerrilla” conflict suffer an average of 0.5% loss of their total population per year in directly conflict-related deaths. For the current US population, that would be the equivalent of 1.5 million deaths per year–more than all combat deaths in American military history, from 1775 until today (just under 850,000 according to the sources I checked). The absolute truth is, fighting as a guerrilla, whether modern or classical/tribal, pretty much sucks. You don’t get to go home and sleep in your soft bed, wrapped up around momma every night. Perhaps not for any nights for months or years at a time. You may never get to go home, since it may very well end up burned down by rivals who want your territory for themselves. You may not be around to protect your wife and children. Even if you are around, sniper fire can come out of the blue, at the least expected time and place. Kidnappings, rapes, and destruction of property are the norms in guerrilla conflicts. If you think, because this is “Amurrika!” that things will somehow be different, you’re fucking deluded, and missing the point of the entire preparedness conversation. People you love are going to die. Your wife may die. Your children may die. Whether you pick up a gun, or don’t pick up a gun, you will probably die. Life as a guerrilla, regardless of the overall impact of the conflict, will suck. It will not be comfortable. Many people in the liberty and preparedness movement cite the fact that some Taliban-aligned Pashtun tribal fighters in the mountains of Afghanistan were discovered to be fighting against US/Coalition forces clad in “man-jammies” and sandals, equipped with little more than a wool blanket and a single spare Kalashnikov magazine. The apparent lesson “learned” by these aspiring American guerrillas is that this guerrilla shit must be easy. Unfortunately for these folks, their ignorance is demonstrated by the fact that they’ve overlooked two critical facts: The equipment load-out of those Pashtun fighters was discovered during battle damage assessment (BDA) studies. In other words, they were dead…Guess that load-out maybe wasn’t so ideal after all? ( A gross oversimplification, I know, but it’s valid enough to make the point worth paying attention to ) A Pashtun tribal fighter from the mountains of Afghanistan is considerably tougher, physically and mentally, than you and I put together. Arguing otherwise isn’t even as benign as ignorance. It’s sheer stupidity and bravado. When you grow up sleeping on a blanket or two thrown on a packed dirt floor, in a mud hut with no window or door coverings except maybe a blanket or old hide tacked up, subsisting on rice, beans, and a handful of half-cooked, spoiled meat, while running up and down mountains all day, and fighting from the time you’re old enough to pick up a Kalasknikov rifle, and never advance to sleeping in a protected environment like a real house, with a soft mattress under you, then maybe you can convincingly argue otherwise. In the meantime, sleeping on a soft bed, in a warm house, with your biggest fear being whether the cable bill can be paid this month does not make you guerrilla warfare tough. When I was a young Ranger private, one of my mentors was a very skilled martial artist and a pioneer in what would become MMA. Knowing of my profound interest in all things combatives related, he once told me, “Ranger Mosby, a lot of guys come to the Regiment because they think they’re going to learn some high-speed karate shit. They get disappointed when they don’t, because we simply don’t have the time in the training calender for that silliness. When we do have time, we focus on stuff they think is too simple to be effective. What those idiots don’t recognize is, interpersonal violence is interpersonal violence. Regardless of the scale of the battlefield, the fundamentals of victory remain the same. I don’t care if it’s a brawl behind the bar, two rifle squads slugging it out in the jungle, or the armies of Good and Evil battling it out on the plains of Meggido, in the end, it all boils down to speed, surprise, and violence of action! The concepts you learn here, whether as a rifleman, a SAW gunner, or on a machine gun team, will do more for your “martial arts” knowledge than all the shoulder throws you will ever do in the dojo.” Being the highly motivated young Airborne Ranger that I was, and hungry for any knowledge that could glean from my wiser, slightly older, but vastly more experienced mentors, I remembered those words. In fact, I went back to my room in the barracks, almost immediately (I think it was after he allowed me to recover from the front leaning rest position for asking some sort of dumb-ass question about combatives…), and copied them into my ever-present journal. It wasn’t however, until I was considerably further along in my military career, while serving as a junior SF weapons sergeant, that I really began to understand what he meant. It wasn’t simply a matter of being faster, sneakier, and meaner than the other guy, although those certainly help. It wasn’t just about being more fit and stronger than the enemy, although that damned sure helped too. The truth was, the same tactics, techniques, and procedures that helped us successfully prosecute a small-scale fight against the Taliban in a tight canyon in Afghanistan, were the same TTPs that would allow me to prosecute a fight anywhere, against anyone. Whether you expect your fight to come in the bush, crawling around on your belly, eating bugs and drinking water from a stagnant, muddy pool, or you expect your fight to come in a large urban area, in fast moving sports cars, with pistols and stolen MP5s, or you expect your fight to come in your living room, against an up-armored FEMA or DHS entry team (in which case, you’re a dumbass for being there when they arrive), the same fundamental concepts apply, if you actually hope to win and survive. You need training, regardless of what you think. If you’ve served in a combat arms unit, in combat, you probably possess the fundamental skills to survive the initial bursts of violence as well as anyone, providing you the ability to learn as you go about how to modify the TTPs you already know, for surviving without the benefits of air support, indirect fire support, and a long support train behind you. If you’ve never worn a uniform though, or even if you have, if you’ve never performed in a profession that required you to mentally and physically prepare to look another human being in the face, while shoving eight inches of steel into their flesh, and dealing with the psychology of that, while still being able to provide leadership to others, you have no idea what you don’t know. What you don’t know is, you need tactical training. Being an effective fighter does not come naturally to anyone, I don’t care what anyone tells you. The fact that you can out shoot all the guys in your local pistol club, or all of the local cops who bother to come to the range doesn’t mean shit. The fact that you’ve won every fist fight you’ve ever been in at the local watering hole doesn’t mean shit. Being a big fish in a little pond is not the same thing as being a big fish in the ocean. The sharks aren’t going to fight you on your terms, regardless of your fantasies. While a Special Forces soldier should doctrinally be a subject-matter expert on guerrilla warfare, I don’t know many of us who are so bold or naive as to presume that we have all the answers. I certainly don’t. Whether looking at SF UW doctrine, or “traditional” light infantry doctrine at the team, squad, and platoon level, the doctrine, as it stands, may not fit a future conflict strictly. The doctrine may not even necessarily be how things actually get done today (it certainly hasn’t been for most of the GWOT in the SF community. Only recently has the SF community collectively returned to its UW roots after spending the better part of a decade focused on direct-action, door-kicking HVT missions better suited for the Ranger Regiment and SMUs). What the doctrine does, whether SF UW, or Light Infantry, is provide a frame of reference to begin to gain an understanding of the nature of the beast we’re dealing with. It is a reflection of the combat arms community’s collective self-image of how we hope to prosecute these types of operations, or at least how the authors of the appropriate manuals hope we fight. When considering the future application of this doctrine, whether in training or real-world applications, it is crucial to recognize two critical factors in regards to the doctrine, and choose to either apply the lessons that the doctrine teaches, or modify them to your perceived image of what is going to happen: At some level, despite the best efforts otherwise, a trainer’s own intellectual conceits, as a product of a 20th century upbringing in a largely Judeo-Christian culture, as well as subsequent professional military education and experience, will necessarily influence the conclusions that we reach, regarding the effectiveness and applicability of doctrinal considerations. A good trainer, with intellectual honesty, will recognize the existence of these prejudices and conceits, and strive heartily to overcome them. There is a very sad condition that exists in people everywhere, that is especially apparent in the gun and preparedness communities, for men to delude themselves into believing that they know more than they do. There;s even an “official” name for it, developed by a head-shrinking psychiatrist somewhere. It’s called “competency bias.” We all (and yes, I’m including myself in that “we all.”)want to believe that we’re naturally competent at anything we might ever want to do, and we tend to conveniently ignore or dismiss any evidence that would disprove our delusions. Unfortunately for both ourselves and our families, in the long term, we often get away with this in trivial matters. “Oh, I’m a good carpenter!” says the accountant who’s never swung a hammer for wages in his life, and the last thing he built was a birdhouse in Cub Scouts. His delusions won’t harm anyone, as long as he limits himself to building birdhouses. When he decides that he knows how to build a human house though, and absolutely refuses to even consider the help or advice of professionals, while he might get lucky, the house is likely to fall down around him. Even in a best case scenario, and he does manage to build it solid enough to not fall down in his lifetime, the roof and seams leak, the windows and doors sag and stick, and the whole building settles, because birdhouses don’t have foundations to worry about. “Hell, I’m a great driver!” says every man everywhere, who refuses to take a defensive driving or high-performance driving class, despite repeated fender benders and traffic tickets. That even works out well for him, until he’s staring into the eyes of a 600lb elk, in the middle of a two-lane blacktop, as he comes around a blind corner at 75MPH, at 0300. He either ends up with an elk in his lap, or the family minivan, along with the whole family, ends up on its roof, in the bottom of a ravine, unseen by passers-by on the road above the next day. “I know how to shoot! I’m better than any soldier at shooting! I shot my elk last year at 1500 yards, with my.30-06, holding two inches over his back!” says the hillbilly (actual statement, made to my face in a hunting camp!) Never mind the fact that the hillbilly obviously lacks an understanding of even the most elementary ballistics, and has absolutely no range estimation abilities whatsoever, while being too cheap to invest in a decent laser range finder. “I’ve read all the field manuals and I’m an expert in infantry tactics. It doesn’t matter that I can’t actually execute them because I’m forty pounds overweight though, because I’m going to be a 4GW ninja master, so I don’t need that stuff anyway!” says the 5’8″ 230 lb computer programmer turned militia commander, who really couldn’t even tell you what range his rifle is zeroed at, because he doesn’t understand that an 8″ group, at 100 yards, from the prone supported position, is not something you admit to, let along use as a standard for marksmanship, at even the most elementary levels of shooting. Competency bias, in mundane matters, is humorous. In life-and-death situations though, it results in the wrong people dying, because egos and pride are too important to some important. The comfort of sitting on the computer, blathering on blogs and forums about your prowess as a 4GW guerrilla commando ninja expert, and master of post-modern urban warfare, is far easier, and more comfortable than crawling around in the woods, sprinting from position to position, getting sweaty, tired, and bug-bitten while actually learning to be a novice guerrilla commando ninja expert. Sipping a Coke and whiskey, while typing about your incredible physical prowess in crawling up storm drains, and leaping rooftop-to-rooftop, three stories up, like a “Tier One” commando, is less miserable than being hungry, thirsty, dirty, smelling like you haven’t bathed in a month, and physically and mentally exhausted to the point of tears, from realistic, effective training. Who cares that it might actually keep you alive in a fight? That shit is hard work! Do you actually know how to develop and set up a multi-layered, in-depth security program, utilizing LP/OPs and roving security patrols correctly? Do you know how to plan and perform those security patrols? Do you know what to look for when planning a security patrol? Do you know how to hit a realistic, partially-obscured target, at 200 meters, with your rifle? When you’ve been moving under the weight of your fighting and sustainment loads for the last week, and have just sprinted three hundred yards? You need tactical training. You know, in your heart of hearts and soul of souls, that you need training. You just have to turn your ego down and listen to your brain for a change. Realistic, effective tactical training will teach you how to shoot, move, and communicate effectively. If you’re twenty pounds overweight, with a bodyfat percentage higher than 15%, I can categorically state, with absolute certainty, that you are not capable of moving tactically, correctly. If you cannot shoot a 2MOA group, from the prone, under field conditions, with your choice of fighting rifle, while rested, you do not know how to shoot effectively. If you cannot perform a speed reload, or immediate action, with your choice of fighting rifle, while in full gear, winded from running sprints or individual movement techniques, and blinded by the sweat running into your eyes, I can categorically state, with absolute certainty, that you do not know how to shoot effectively. If you’ve never performed a live-fire hasty assault or break contact battle drill, with multiple small teams moving over the battle space, I can categorically state, with absolute certainty, that you do not know how to communicate effectively. Realistic, effective tactical training, in today’s environment, is about more than shoot-move-communicate though. It will teach you leadership skills, under field conditions. It’s about mission-planning and troop-leading procedures, even in four-man cells. It’s about preparing yourself and others for future survival. Realistic, effective tactical training will teach you, better than anyone can ever tell you, exactly how dismally out-of-shape you actually are. Good training is a suckfest and a gut-check. It will require you to reach down the front of your pants to grab your nuts, and confirm that you really do have the intestinal fortitude to man the fuck up and do the right thing, by getting yourself in shape, so you can do what you need to do, instead of just talking about it. Realistic, effective tactical training will open your eyes to the importance of your spouse not only being accepting of your preparedness plans and actions, but of her being an active, willing participant. You’ll begin to understand that your partner really is your partner, and that you are not the only one in your family who needs to be trained. Your wife and even your kids of weapons-handling age, should be trained. Realistic, effective tactical training, planned and executed by someone who knows what they are doing, will teach you how to think about security, not just for your family, but for your home and your community, against a broader range of threats, in ways that are cost-effective, as well as simply effective. Planning just for home defense, or just for your personal or family retreat security is not enough. That’s the equivalent of saying, “I’ve got a gun in my nightstand, so I can leave the doors and windows unlocked, with bundles of cash sitting out on tables, even though I live in South Central Los Angeles. I mean, fuck, I own a gun!” That works great…right up until a crew of bad guys are coming through your front door with Kalashnikovs and hand grenades, while you’re sitting on the couch with the wife and kids, watching “The X Factor” and your gun is still in the nightstand. You need to learn to plan for security, at home and retreat, in a holistic manner, and good tactical training will give you the tools to do that. If you believe a fight is coming, whether you think it will be against the security forces of a tyrannical regime, or whether you think it will be against outlaw bands of cannibalistic San Franciscans, it doesn’t matter how many books you’ve read. If doesn’t matter how many times you’ve earned the Appleseed “Rifleman” patch. It doesn’t matter how many “Advanced Urban Combat” courses you’ve attended. Until you get quality training in the application of those skills in small-unit tactics, you’re just a lonely dude with a gun. Realistic, effective tactical training is a force multiplier you can’t live without, because you won’t live without it. If you don’t want to, or can’t, get to training with one of the guys in this collective “preparedness/liberty” community who are teaching, that’s okay. Go talk to your old high school buddy who just ETS’d after multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, and convince him to help you develop some training plans. You need the training. Regardless of the existence of educational and cultural biases, based on the established military orthodoxy of the organized, formal nation-state military, the reality is, small-unit tactics are small-unit tactics. The same underlying principles have worked since the time of antiquity, to leverage available technology (bows and arrows versus massed formations to precision rifle fire versus small-unit formations; burning a lodge down around the enemy’s family with torches and animal fat versus using a thermite charge to accomplish the same thing; sabotage of enemy food supplies via poisoning livestock or water sources versus blowing a rail line to interdict mass transport of supplies) against an enemy. While the current doctrine, SF or infantry, may not be perfect, it really is the best idea that the collective experience of fighters and historians can come up with for what will work to prosecute the fight. As the man said, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Get the training and you can begin to develop a frame of reference for what works and what doesn’t, so you can make intelligent, informed decisions about how to modify what is already known to work, versus what you think might work in the future. Now, when it comes to training, be like Nike and “Just Do It.” DOL, John Mosby AdvertisementsThe conceptual photographer Hitoshi Fugo’s series “Flying Frying Pan 1979-1994” has a simple premise: a 15-year study of Fugo’s iron pan. He chose the pan as a subject because he thought it would free him from specifics — of time and place, and even of recognizable shape. It also has personal resonance for the artist: He used the pan to prepare many meals for his wife and daughter throughout her childhood. In his studies of this everyday object, Fugo sets out to create images that don’t impose a sense of narrative. His abstracted photos play with the viewer’s perspective on the microscopic and macroscopic levels, conjuring both the cellular world and the edge of the universe. From photo to photo, our associations shift wildly: “Flying Frying Pan 18” might look like the view through a telescope, while “Flying Frying Pan 47” resembles the organelles inside a cell; “Flying Frying Pan 12,” in contrast to both, reminds the viewer of the sea hitting the coast. Fugo’s photos are spare, graphic — and always unexpected.Another day, another tale of how the “Too Big to Jail” Wall Street cartel manipulates a major global market with no repercussions whatsoever. Must be nice having essentially every Congressperson and regulator in your back pocket. Get caught? Pay a little fine and get on with it. Everyone wins! Actually, everyone loses. Except for the handful of FX manipulators, rigging global currency markets from their Essex villages outside of London. These traders for major TBTF banks refer to themselves by various names in their now silenced Bloomberg chat rooms, from The Cartel,” “The Bandits’ Club,” “One Team, One Dream” and “The Mafia.” Very classy guys. Glad we bailed your asses out… More from Bloomberg: Now regulators from Bern to Washington are examining evidence first reported by Bloomberg News in June that a small group of senior traders at big banks had something else on their screens: details of each other’s client orders. Sharing that information may have helped dealers at firms, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., UBS AG and Barclays Plc, manipulate prices to maximize their own profits, according to five people with knowledge of the probes. “This is a market where there is no law and people have turned a blind eye,” said former Senator Ted Kaufman, a Delaware Democrat who sponsored legislation in 2010 to shrink the largest U.S. banks. “We’ve been talking about banks being too big to fail. What’s almost as big a problem is banks too big to manage.” At the center of the inquiries are instant-message groups with names such as “The Cartel,” “The Bandits’ Club,” “One Team, One Dream” and “The Mafia,” in which dealers exchanged information on client orders and agreed how to trade at the fix, according to the people with knowledge of the investigations who asked not to be identified because the matter is pending. Some traders took part in multiple chat rooms, one of them said. The currency investigations are taking place as authorities grapple with a widening list of scandals involving the manipulation by banks of benchmark financial rates, including the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, and ISDAfix, used to determine the value of interest-rate derivatives. The U.K. regulator also is reviewing how prices are set in the $20 trillion gold market, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Don’t be ridiculous, everyone knows the gold market is the only market on earth that isn’t manipulated. “Some of these problems developed over many years without anybody speaking up,” said Andrew Tyrie, chairman of Britain’s Commission on Banking Standards and Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee. “This is remarkable. It suggests something very wrong with the culture at these institutions.” Blasphemy! In addition to seeking evidence of collusion, the FCA is looking into whether traders cut deals for personal profit before completing customers’ orders, according to a person with knowledge of the probe. Bloomberg News reported in November, based on the accounts of two people who witnessed the transactions, that some dealers placed side bets for personal accounts or through friends in exchange for cash payments. None of the traders or the banks they work for has been accused of wrongdoing. Of course not. We wouldn’t want to hurt these poor babies’ feelings now would we? God’s work is very sophisticated and very important. You serfs wouldn’t understand. Usher, Ramchandani and Gardiner, along with at least two other dealers over the years, would discuss their customers’ trades and agree on exactly when they planned to execute them to maximize their chances of moving the 4 p.m. fix, two of the people said. When exchange rates moved their way, they would send written slaps on the back for a job well done. The conversations echo those uncovered by regulators about Libor, in which bankers promised bottles of Bollinger champagne or cash to counterparts at firms willing to help them rig the benchmark interest rates used to price $300 trillion of contracts from student loans to mortgages. More than six banks have been fined about $6 billion since June 2012, and regulators are investigating traders at half a dozen more firms. The currency discussions were even more calculating, one of the people who reviewed the transcripts said. Spot currency trading is conducted in a small and close-knit community. Many of the more than a dozen traders and brokers interviewed for this story live near each other in villages dotting the Essex countryside, a short train ride from London’s financial district, and stay in touch over dinner, on weekend excursions or with regular rounds of golf at local clubs. On one excursion to a private golf club in the so-called stockbroker belt beyond London’s M25 motorway, a dozen currency dealers from the biggest banks and several day traders, who bet on currency moves for their personal accounts, drained beers in a bar after a warm September day on the fairway. One of the day traders handed a white envelope stuffed with cash to a bank dealer in recognition of the information he had received, according to a person who witnessed the exchange. Take the money, or you’ll be swimming with the fishes. Full article here. In Liberty, Mike Donate bitcoins: Like this post?Donate bitcoins: 3J7D9dqSMo9HnxVeyHou7HJQGihamjYQMN Follow me on Twitter.A Florida man who was convicted of performing sexual acts with his partner on a beach was sentenced Monday to 2.5 years in prison, local media outlets reported. José Caballero, 40, and Elissa Alvarez, 21, could not postpone their sexual desires and decided to unleash their ardor on a Florida beach in front of families with children in broad daylight. The Bradenton Herald reports that the incident happened on July 20, 2014, and Caballero was convicted in May of having sex on Bradenton Beach. On Monday, the Florida man learned his fate and he will spend the next 2.5 years behind bars. Caballero and his partner were convicted last May of two counts each of lewd and lascivious behavior after being videotaped while having sex on the beach. Speaking with reporters, assistant state attorney Anthony Dafonseca gave the following statement regarding the case. “Our office had discretion, and we felt that 2 1/2 years was something that not only held him accountable but also reflected his past history, as well.” The couple faced a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, but the state prosecution ruled that that penalty “was not a reasonable decision.” Ronald Kurpiers, Caballero’s defense attorney, said that although he felt 2.5 years was too long of a sentence, he didn’t protest it because otherwise the prosecution could reinstate the 15-year sentence. “Do I believe, personally, that 2 1/2 years is something that he should have to do? The answer is no,” Kurpiers expressed. “But I was caught between a rock and a hard place.” In his defense, Caballero explained to the jury that he and his partner were not having sex and that witnesses were wrong. However, at the sentencing hearing, a video was displayed in which Alvarez was seen moving on top of Caballero in a sexual manner, the Orlando Sentinel reports. Kurpiers, who said that never before in his career had he faced a similar case, feared the maximum penalty for Caballero, who had already been imprisoned on drug charges in the past. “We are grateful that the state has offered 2 1/2 years,” said Kurpiers. The lawyer also said that Caballero plans to appeal his case. For her part, Alvarez was recently convicted and she received time served, although she filed an appeal in her case last June. Both Caballero and Alvarez will have to register as sex offenders. [Image via YouTube screenshot]We have visited doctors and hospitals throughout the country and heard firsthand from those who face ever-escalating insurance costs. Indeed, in some specialties, high premiums are forcing physicians to give up performing certain high-risk procedures, leaving patients without access to a full range of medical services. But we have also talked with families who have experienced errors in their care, and it has become clear to us that if we are to find a fair and equitable solution to this complex problem, all parties — physicians, hospitals, insurers, and patients — must work together. Instead of focusing on the few areas of intense disagreement, such as the possibility of mandating caps on the financial damages awarded to patients, we believe that the discussion should center on a more fundamental issue: the need to improve patient safety. We all know the statistic from the landmark 1999 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report that as many as 98,000 deaths in the United States each year result from medical errors.1 But the IOM also found that more than 90 percent of these deaths are the result of failed systems and procedures, not the negligence of physicians. Given this finding, we need to shift our response from placing blame on individual providers or health care organizations to developing systems for improving the quality of our patient-safety practices.2 To improve both patient safety and the medical liability climate, the tort system must achieve four goals: reduce the rates of preventable patient injuries, promote open communication between physicians and patients, ensure patients access to fair compensation for legitimate medical injuries, and reduce liability insurance premiums for health care providers. Addressing just one of these issues is not sufficient. Capping malpractice payments may ameliorate rising premium rates, but it would do nothing to prevent unsafe practices or ensure the provision of fair compensation to patients.3 Studies show that the most important factor in people's decisions to file lawsuits is not negligence, but ineffective communication between patients and providers.4 Malpractice suits often result when an unexpected adverse outcome is met with a lack of empathy from physicians and a perceived or actual withholding of essential information.4 Stemming the causes of medical errors requires disclosure and analysis, which create tension in the current liability climate. The current tort system does not promote open communication to improve patient safety. On the contrary, it jeopardizes patient safety by creating an intimidating liability environment. Studies consistently show that health care providers are understandably reticent about discussing errors, because they believe that they have no appropriate assurance of legal protection.5 This reticence, in turn, impedes systemic and programmatic efforts to prevent medical errors. To overcome the impasse in the debate on medical liability, we have introduced legislation, the National Medical Error Disclosure and Compensation (MEDiC) Bill (S. 1784), to direct reform toward the improvement of patient safety. Our proposed MEDiC program provides grant money and technical assistance to doctors, hospitals, insurers, and health care systems to implement programs for disclosure and compensation. The MEDiC model promotes the confidential disclosure to patients of medical errors in an effort to improve patient-safety systems. At the time of disclosure, compensation for the patient or family would be negotiated, and procedures would be implemented to prevent a recurrence of the problem that led to the patient's injury.In a recent Foreign Policy article, “Galt Goes Global,” objectivist international affairs analyst Elan Journo argues for the influence of Ayn Rand’s philosophy on Paul Ryan’s foreign policy views. As Journo admits, those influences are not substantive. And for that, we should be thankful. But the question remains, what kind of foreign policy would Rand support? There are two ways of answering the question, the first would be to look at her opinions on foreign policy issues of her day. The second would be to look to the current banner-carriers of objectivism, foremost among them the founder of the Ayn Rand Institute, with which Journo is affiliated, Rand’s “legal and intellectual heir” Leonard Peikoff. Scholars there have extended her doctrines to the foreign policy challenges of today. This is necessarily a matter of interpretation, because though Rand opined about geopolitics in interviews, she was not a foreign policy theorist nor did she have any background in international politics. Her lodestar was individualism, the rational self-interest of the individual. Alliances, diplomacy, conquest, empire—these just didn’t factor into her best-known writings. So it’s difficult to draw straight lines from her thoughts on individualism and capitalism to particular opinions on foreign policy. Nevertheless, as a novelist, popular philosopher, and icon, she was asked about her foreign policy views throughout her life. Perhaps first among these is her opposition to American involvement in World War II. Her opposition was rooted in part in the idea that Europe’s wars were for Europe, and part out of antipathy toward Roosevelt and his projects. In an essay titled “The Roots of War,” she argued that “World War II led, not to Four Freedoms, but to the surrender of one-third of the world’s population into communist slavery.” In other words, we shouldn’t overlook those who were condemned to communist tyranny by Soviet emergence from the war, or the possibility that the Nazis and Soviets may have bled each other white on the Eastern Front, possibly heading off the Cold War. Advertisement Journo notes Rand also opposed U.S. intervention in Vietnam. In 1967 she wrote that not only was the war wrong, but “the ugliest evil of the Vietnam war [is] that it does not serve any national interest of the United States.” The bottom line was that we should never have gotten into the war, but since for Rand withdrawal would have meant appeasement and “the ultimate result of appeasement is a world war,” “in today’s conditions, the only alternative is to fight a war and win it as fast as possible.” More napalm, fewer strategic hamlets. As a broader philosophical matter, Rand judged that “anyone who wants to invade a dictatorship or semi-dictatorship is morally justified in doing so, because he is doing no worse than what that country has accepted as its social system.” Her rationale on World War II and Vietnam was based on the view that since American lives weren’t threatened, it would be wrong to go on a crusade on behalf of foreigners. Later in life, Rand weighed in on the
“empirical turn” by focusing on the nature of particular emerging technologies, on the other hand. We intend the present article to be a contribution to the latter kind of philosophy of technology. In particular, we are investigating foundational issues in the applied ethics of VR, with a heavy emphasis on recent empirical results. Both authors have been participants in the collaborative project Virtual Embodiment and Robotic Re-Embodiment (VERE), a 5-year research program funded by the European Commission. Despite this explicit focus, we do not mean to imply that the issues investigated here will not find fruitful application to themes from classical twentieth century philosophy of technology (see Franssen et al., 2009). Consider, for instance, Martin Heidegger’s influential treatment of the way in which modern technology distorts our metaphysics of the natural world (Heidegger, 1977; also Borgmann, 1984), or Herbert Marcuse’s prescient account of industrial society’s ongoing creation of false needs that undermine our capacities for individuality (Marcuse, 1964). As should become clear from the examples below, immersive VR introduces new and dramatic ways of disrupting our relationship to the natural world (see Neglect of Others and the Physical Environment). Likewise, the newly created “need” to interact using social media will become even more psychologically ingrained as the interactions begin to take place while we are embodied in virtual spaces (see The Effects of Long-Term Immersion and O’Brolcháin et al., 2016). In sum, the fact that connections with classical philosophy of technology will remain largely implicit in this article should not be taken to suggest that they are not of great importance. The main focus will be on immersive VR, in which subjects use a head-mounted display (HMD) to create the feeling of being within a virtual environment. Although our main topic involves the experience of immersion, some of the concerns raised, such as neglect of the physical environment (see Neglect of Others and the Physical Environment), can be applied to extended use of an HMD even when users do not experience immersion such as when merely using the device for 3D viewing. Many of our points are also relevant for other types of VR hardware, such as CAVE projection. One central area of concern has to do with illusions of embodiment, in which one has the feeling of being embodied other than in one’s actual physical body (Petkova and Ehrsson, 2008; Slater et al., 2010). In VR, for instance, one might have the illusion of being embodied in an avatar that looks just like one’s physical body. Or one might have the illusion of being embodied in an avatar of a different size, age, or skin color. In all of these cases, insight into the illusory nature of the overall state is preserved. The fact that VR technology can induce illusions of embodiment is one of the main motivations behind our investigation into the new risks generated by using VR by researchers and by the general public. Traditional paradigms in experimental psychology cannot induce these strong illusions. Similarly, watching a film or playing a non-immersive video game cannot create the strong illusion of owning and controlling a body that is not your own. Although our main focus will be on VR (see Figure 1), many of the risks and recommendations can be extended to augmented reality (Azuma, 1997; Metz, 2012; Huang et al., 2013 and substitutional reality (Suzuki et al., 2012; Fan et al., 2013). In augmented reality (AR, see Figure 2), one experiences virtual elements intermixed with one’s actual physical environment. FIGURE 1 Figure 1. Illusory ownership of an avatar in virtual reality. Here, a subject is shown wearing a head-mounted display and a body tracking suit. The subject can see his avatar in VR moving in synchrony with his own movements in a virtual mirror. In this case, the avatar is designed to replicate Sigmund Freud in order to enable subjects to counsel themselves. Thus, creating what Freud may have called an instance of avatar-introjection! (Image used with kind permission from Osimo et al., 2015.) FIGURE 2 Figure 2. An augmented reality hand illusion. Here, augmented reality is used to show the subject a virtual hand in a biologically realistic location relative to his own body. This case differs from virtual reality due to the fact that the subject sees the virtual hand embedded in his own physical environment rather than in an entirely virtual environment (image used with kind permission from Keisuke Suzuki). Following Milgram and colleagues (Milgram and Kishino, 1994; Milgram and Colquhoun, 1999), it may be helpful here to consider augmented reality along the Reality–Virtuality Continuum. The real environment is located at one extreme of the continuum and an entirely virtual environment is located at the other extreme. Displays can be placed along the continuum according to whether they primarily represent the real environment while including some virtual elements (augmented reality) or they primarily represent a virtual environment while including some real elements (augmented virtuality). Much of the following discussion will focus on entirely virtual environments, but readers should keep in mind that many of the concerns raised will also apply to environments all along the Reality–Virtuality Continuum. It is foreseeable that there will be ever new extensions and special cases of VR. We return to this theme with some philosophical remarks at the end of the article. For now, let us at least note that the very distinction between the real and the virtual is ripe for further philosophical investigation. One example of such a special, recent extension of VR that does not in itself form a distinct new category is “substitutional reality” (SR, see Figure 3), in which an omni-directional video feed gives one the illusion of being in a different location in space and/or time, and insight may not be preserved. Readers should keep in mind that VR headsets will likely enable users to toggle between virtual, augmented, and substitutional reality, and to adjust one’s location on the Reality–Virtuality Continuum, thus somewhat blurring the boundaries between kinds of immersive environments. FIGURE 3 Figure 3. Immersion in the past using substitutional reality. In this example, substitutional reality is used to allow switching between a live view of the scene and a panoramic recording of that scene from the past. Note that SR could also be used to provide live (or recorded) panoramic input from a distant location, creating the illusion that one is “present” somewhere else (image used with kind permission from Anil Seth). We divide our discussion into two main areas. First, we will address the research ethics of VR. Then we will turn to issues arising with the use of VR by the general public for entertainment and other purposes. To be clear upfront, we are not calling for general restrictions on an individual’s liberty to spend time (and money) in VR. In open democratic societies, such regulations must be based on rational arguments and available empirical evidence, and they should be guided by a general principle of liberalism: in principle, the individual citizen’s freedom and autonomy in dealing with their own brain and in choosing their own desired states of mind (including all of their phenomenal and cognitive properties) should be maximized. As a matter of fact, we would even argue for a constitutional right to mental self-determination (Bublitz and Merkel, 2014), somewhat limiting the authority of the government, because the above-mentioned values of individual freedom and mental autonomy seem to be absolutely fundamental to the idea of a liberal democracy involving a separation of powers. However, once such a general principle has been clearly stated, the much more interesting and demanding task lies in helping individuals exercise this freedom in an intelligent way, in order to minimize potential adverse effects and the overall psychosocial cost to society as a whole (Metzinger, 2009a; Metzinger and Hildt, 2011). New technologies like VR open a vast space of potential actions. This space has to be constrained in a rational and evidence-based manner. Similarly, we fully support ongoing research using VR – indeed, we argue below that there are ethical demands to do more research using it, research that is motivated in part with the goal of mitigating harm for the general public. But we do think that it is prudent to anticipate risks and we wish to spread awareness of how possibly to avoid, or at least minimize, those risks. Before entering into the concrete details, we are going to make the case for being especially concerned about VR technology in contrast, say, to television or non-immersive video games. We do so in two steps. First, in Section “Plasticity in the Human Mind,” we cover some of the relevant discoveries from psychology in the past decades, including the scientific foundation for illusions of embodiment. Then in Section “Illusions of Embodiment and Their Lasting Effect,” we cover the more recent experimental work that has begun to reveal the lasting psychological effects of these illusions. Then in Section “Recommendations for the Use of VR by Researchers and Consumers,” we will cover the research ethics of VR followed by risks for the general public. Plasticity in the Human Mind One central result of modern experimental psychology is that human behavior can be strongly influenced by external factors while the agent is totally unaware of this influence. Behavior is context sensitive and the mind is plastic, which is to say that it is capable of being continuously shaped and re-shaped by a host of causal factors. These results, some of which we present below, suggest that our environment, including technology and other humans, has an unconscious influence on our behavior. Note that the results do not conflict with the manifest fact that most of us have relatively stable character traits over time. After all, most of us spend our time in relatively stable environments. And there may be many aspects of the functional architecture underlying the neurally realized part of the human self-model [for example, of the body model in our brain, e.g., Metzinger (2003), p. 355] that are largely genetically determined. However, we also want to point out that human beings possess a large number of epigenetic traits, that is, a stably heritable phenotype resulting from changes in a chromosome without alterations in the DNA sequence. Context-Sensitivity All the Way Down The way in which our behavior is sensitive to environmental features is especially relevant here due to the fact that VR introduces a completely new type of environment, a new cognitive and cultural niche, which we are now constructing for ourselves as a species. It is not excluded that extended interactions with VR environments may lead to more fundamental changes, not only on a psychological, but also on a biological level. Some of the most famous experiments in psychology reveal the context sensitivity of human behavior. These include the Stanford Prison Experiment, in which normal subjects playing roles as either prison guards or inmates began to show pathological behavioral traits (Haney et al., 1973), Milgram’s obedience experiments, in which subjects obeyed orders that they believed to cause serious pain and be immoral (Milgram, 1974), and Asch’s conformity experiments, in which subjects gave obviously incorrect answers to questions after hearing confederates, all give the same incorrect answers (Asch, 1951). For a more recent result showing the unconscious impact of environment on behavior, the amount of money placed in a collection box for drinks in a university break room was measured under a condition in which the image of a pair of eyes was posted above the collection box. With the eyes “watching,” coffee drinkers placed three times as much money in the box compared to the control condition with no eyes (Bateson et al., 2006). Effects like this one may be particularly relevant in VR, because the subjective experience of presence and being there is not only determined by functional factors like the number and fidelity of sensory input and output channels, the ability to modify the virtual environment, but also, importantly, the level of social interactivity, for example, in terms of actually being recognized as an existing person by others in the virtual world (Heeter, 1992; Metzinger, 2003). As investigations into VR have interestingly shown, a phenomenal reality as such becomes more real – in terms of the subjective experience of presence – as more agents recognizing one and interacting with one are contained in this reality. Phenomenologically, ongoing social cognition enhances both this reality and the self in their degree of “realness.” This principle will also hold if the subjective experience of ongoing social cognition is of a hallucinatory nature. Potential for Deep Behavioral Manipulation Whether physical or virtual, human behavior is situated and socially contextualized, and we are often unaware of the causal impact this fact has on learning mechanisms as well as on occurrent behavior. It is plausible to assume that this will be true of novel media environments as well. Importantly, unlike other forms of media, VR can create a situation in which the user’s entire environment is determined by the creators of the virtual world, including “social hallucinations” induced by advanced avatar technology. Unlike physical environments, virtual environments can be modified quickly and easily with the goal of influencing behavior. The comprehensive character of VR plus the potential for the global control of experiential content introduces opportunities for new and especially powerful forms of both mental and behavioral manipulation, especially when commercial, political, religious, or governmental interests are behind the creation and maintenance of the virtual worlds. However, the plasticity of the mind is not limited to behavioral traits. Illusions of embodiment are possible because the mind is plastic to such a degree that it can misrepresent its own embodiment. To be clear, illusions of embodiment can arise from normal brain activity alone, and need not imply changes in underlying neural structure. Such illusions occur naturally in dreams, phantom limb experiences, out-of-body experiences, and Body Integrity Identity Disorder (Brugger et al., 2000; Metzinger, 2009b; Hilti et al., 2013; Ananthaswamy, 2015; Windt, 2015), and they sometimes include a shift in what has been termed the phenomenal “unit of identification” in consciousness research (UI; Metzinger, 2013a,b), the conscious content that we currently experience as “ourselves” (please note that in the current paper “UI” does not refer to “user interface,” but always to the specific experiential content of “selfhood,” as explained below). This may be the deepest theoretical reason why we should be cautious about the psychological effects of applied VR: this technology is unique in beginning to target and manipulate the UI in our brain itself. Direct UI-Manipulation The UI is the form of experiential content that gives rise to autophenomenological reports of the type “I am this!” For every self-conscious system, there exists a phenomenal unit of identification, such that the system possesses a single, conscious model of reality; the UI is a part of this model; at any given point in time, the UI can be characterized by a specific and determinate representational content, which in turn constitutes the system’s phenomenal self-model (PSM, Metzinger, 2003) at t. Please note how the UI does not have to be identical with the content of the conscious body image or a region within it (like a fictitious point behind the eyes). For example, the UI can be moved out of and behind the head as phenomenally experienced in a repeatable and controllable fashion by direct electrical stimulation while preserving the visual first-person perspective with its origin behind the eyes (de Ridder et al., 2007). For human beings, the UI is dynamic and can be highly variable. There exists a minimal UI, which likely is constituted by pure spatiotemporal self-location (Blanke and Metzinger, 2009; Windt, 2010; Metzinger, 2013a,b); and in some configurations (e.g., “being one with the world”), there is also a maximal UI, likely constituted by the most general phenomenal property available, namely, the integrated nature of phenomenality per se (Metzinger, 2013a,b). VR technology directly targets the mechanism by which human beings phenomenologically identify with the content of their self-model. The rubber hand illusion is a simple localized illusion of embodiment that can be induced by having subjects look at a visually realistic rubber hand in a biologically realistic position (Botvinick and Cohen, 1998; Tsakiris and Haggard, 2005). When the rubber hand is stroked synchronously with the subject’s physical hand (which is hidden from view), subjects experience the rubber hand as their own. While the rubber hand can be used to create a partial illusion of embodiment, the same basic idea can be used to create the full-body illusion, on a global level. Subjects look through goggles through which they see a live video feed of their own bodies (or of a virtual body) located a short distance in front of their actual location. When they see their bodies being stroked on the back, and feel themselves being stroked at the same time, subjects sometimes feel as if the body that they see in front of them is their own (Lenggenhager et al., 2007; see Figure 4). This illusion is much weaker and more fragile than the RHI, but it has given us valuable new insights into the bottom-up construction of our conscious, bodily self-model in the brain (Metzinger, 2014). In more recent work, Maselli and Slater (2013) have found that tactile feedback is not required for an illusion of embodiment. They found that a virtual arm with a realistic appearance co-located with the subject’s actual arm is sufficient to induce the illusion of ownership of the virtual arm. In addition to visual and tactile signals, recent work suggests that manipulations of interoceptive signals, such as heartbeat, can also influence our experience of embodiment (Aspell et al., 2013; Seth, 2013). FIGURE 4 Figure 4. Creating a whole-body analog of the rubber-hand illusion. (A) Participant (dark blue trousers) sees through a HMD his own virtual body (light blue trousers) in 3D, standing 2 m in front of him and being stroked synchronously or asynchronously at the participant’s back. In other conditions, the participant sees either (B) a virtual fake body (light red trousers) or (C) a virtual non-corporeal object (light gray) being stroked synchronously or asynchronously at the back. Dark colors indicate the actual location of the physical body or object, whereas light colors represent the virtual body or object seen on the HMD. (Image used with kind permission from M. Boyer.). The results sketched in these three sections reveal not only categories of risks but also three ways in which the human mind is plastic. First, there is “context-sensitivity all the way down,” which may involve hitherto unknown kinds of epigenetic trait formation in new environments. Second, there is evidence that behavior can be strongly influenced by environment and context, and in a deep way. Third, illusions of embodiment can be induced fairly easily in the laboratory, directly targeting the human UI itself. These results can be taken together as empirical premises for an argument stating not only that there may be unexpected psychological risks if illusions of embodiment are misused, or used recklessly, but that, if we are interested in minimizing potential damage and future psychosocial costs, these risks are themselves ethically relevant. In the following section, we review initial evidence that connects the three strands of evidence that we have just presented. That is, we review initial evidence that illusions of embodiment can be combined with a change in environment and context in order to bring about lasting psychological effects in subjects. Illusions of Embodiment and Their Lasting Effect In the last several years, a number of studies have found a psychological influence on subjects while immersed in a virtual environment. These studies suggest that VR poses risks that are novel, that go beyond the risks of traditional psychological experiments in isolated environments, and that go beyond the risks of existing media technology for the general public. A first important result from VR research involves what is known as the virtual pit (Meehan et al., 2002). Subjects are given a HMD that immerses them in a virtual environment in which they are standing at the edge of a deep pit. In one kind of experiment involving the pit, they are instructed to lean over the edge and drop a beanbag onto a target at the bottom. In order to enhance the illusion of standing at the edge, the subject stands on the ledge of a wooden platform in the lab that is only 1.5″ from the ground. Despite their belief that they were in no danger because the pit was “only” virtual, subjects nonetheless show increased signs of stress through increases in heart rate and skin conductance (ibid.). In a variation of the virtual pit, subjects may be told to walk across the pit over a virtual beam. In the lab, a real wooden beam is placed where subjects see the virtual beam. As one might expect, this version of the pit also elicits strong feelings of stress and fear. More recently, an experiment reproducing the famous Milgram obedience experiments in VR found that subjects reacted as if the shocks they administered were real, despite believing that they were merely virtual (Slater et al., 2006). In addition to a strong emotional response from immersion, there is evidence that experiences in VR can also influence behavioral responses. One example of a behavioral influence from VR has been named the Proteus Effect by Nick Yee and Jeremy Bailenson. This effect occurs when subjects “conform to the behavior that they believe others would expect them to have” based on the appearance of their avatar (Yee and Bailenson, 2007, p. 274; Kilteni et al., 2013). They found, for example, that subjects embodied in a taller avatar negotiated more aggressively than subjects in a shorter avatar (ibid.). Changes in behavior while in the virtual environment are of ethical concern, since such behavior can have serious implications for our non-virtual physical lives – for example, as financial transactions take place in a non-physical environment (Madary, 2014). But perhaps even more concerning for our purposes is evidence that behavior while in the virtual environment can have a lasting psychological impact after subjects return to the physical world. Hershfield et al. (2011) found that subjects embodying avatars that look like aged versions of themselves show a tendency to allocate more money for their retirement after leaving the virtual environment. Rosenberg et al. (2013) had subjects perform tasks in a virtual city. Subjects were allowed to fly through the city either using a helicopter or by their own body movements, like Superman. They found that subjects given the superpower were more likely to show altruistic behavior afterwards – they were more likely to help an experimenter pick up spilled pens. Yoon and Vargas (2014) found a similar result, although not using fully immersive VR. They had subjects play a video game as either a superhero, a supervillain, or a neutral control avatar. After playing the game, subjects were given a tasting task that they were told was unrelated to the gaming experiment. Subjects were given either chocolate or chili sauce to taste, and then told to measure out the amount of food for the subsequent subject to taste. Those who played as heroes poured out more chocolate, while those who played as villains poured out more chili. The psychological impact of immersive VR has also been explored in a beneficent application. Peck et al. (2013) gave subjects an implicit racial bias test at least 3 days before immersion and then immediately after the immersion. In the experiment, subjects were embodied in an avatar with either light skin, dark skin, purple skin, or they were immersed in the virtual world with no body. They found that subjects who were embodied in the dark-skinned avatar showed a decrease in implicit racial bias, at least temporarily. Recommendations for the Use of VR by Researchers and Consumers With the results from the first section of the paper in mind as illustrative examples, we now move on to make concrete recommendations for VR in both scientific research (see The Research Ethics of VR) and consumer applications (see Risks for Individuals and Society). Our main recommendations are italicized and listed together in Table 1. TABLE 1 Table 1. VERE code of conduct for the ethical use of VR in research and by the general public. The Research Ethics of VR In this section, we cover questions about the ethics of conducting research either on VR, or, perhaps more interestingly, research using VR as a tool. For example, it is plausible to assume that in the future there will be many experiments combining real-time fMRI and VR or ones using animal subjects in VR (Normand et al., 2012), which are not only about understanding or improving VR itself but only use it a research tool. To begin with a short example, Behr et al. (2005) have covered the research ethics of VR from a practical perspective, emphasizing that the risk of motion sickness must be minimized and that researchers ought to assist subjects as they leave the virtual environment and readjust to the real world. In this part of the article, we indicate new issues in the research ethics of VR that were not covered in Behr et al.’s initial treatment. In particular, we will raise the following six issues: • the limits of experimental environments, • informed consent with regard to the lasting psychological effects of VR, • risks associated with clinical applications of VR, • the possibility of using results of VR research for malicious purposes (dual use), • online research using VR, and • a general point about the inherent limitations of a code of conduct for research. For each of these issues, we offer concrete recommendations for researchers using VR as well as ethics committees charged with evaluating the permissibility of particular experimental paradigms using VR. Ethical Experimentation What are the limits to what we can do ethically as experiments in VR? We recommend, at the very least, that researchers ought to follow the principle of non-maleficence: do no harm. This principle is a central component of research ethics on human subjects where it is often discussed with the accompanying principle of beneficence: maximize well-being for the subjects. Note how such a principle applies to all sentient beings capable of suffering, like non-human animals or even potential artificial subjects of experience in the future (Althaus et al., 2015, p. 10). We will return to the principle of beneficence in VR in the following section. The principle of non-maleficence can be found in the codes of ethical conduct for both the American Psychological Association (General Principle A) as well as in the British Psychological Society (Principle 2.4). The British Psychological Society offers the following recommendation: Harm to research participants must be avoided. Where risks arise as an unavoidable and integral element of the research, robust risk assessment and management protocols should be developed and complied with. Normally, the risk of harm must be no greater than that encountered in ordinary life, i.e., participants should not be exposed to risks greater than or additional to those to which they are exposed in their normal lifestyles (The British Psychological Society, 2014, p. 11). Following this recommendation in the case of VR might raise some novel challenges due to the entirely new nature of the technology. For instance, a well-known domain of application for the principle of non-maleficence has been in clinical trials for new pharmacological agents. Although this domain of research ethics still faces important and controversial issues (Wendler, 2012), thinkers in the debate can avail themselves of the history of medical technology. In many cases, precedents can be quoted. In the case of VR, there is yet no history that we can use as a source for insight. On the contrary, what is needed is a rational, ethically sound process of precedence-setting. In its general form, the principle of non-maleficence for VR can be expressed as follows: No experiment should be conducted using virtual reality with the foreseeable consequence that it will cause serious or lasting harm to a subject. Although recommending adherence to this principle is nothing new, implementing this principle in VR laboratories may be challenging for the following reason. Attempts to apply non-maleficence in VR can encounter a dilemma of sorts. On the one hand, a goal of the research ought to be, as we suggest below, to gain a better understanding of the risks posed for individuals using VR. For instance, does the duration of immersion pose a greater risk for the user? Might some virtual environments be more psychologically disturbing than others? VR research should seek to answer these and similar questions. In particular, open-ended longitudinal studies will be necessary to assess the risk of long-term usage for the general population, just like with new substances for pharmaceutical cognitive enhancement or medical treatments more generally. On the other hand, it is difficult to assess these risks without running experiments that generate those possible risks, thus raising worries about non-maleficence. A strict adherence to non-maleficence would require avoiding all experiments using virtual environments for which the risk is unknown. We suggest that this strict interpretation of non-maleficence is not optimal, because substantial ethical assessments should always be evidence-based and necessarily involve the investigation of greater time-windows and larger populations. VR researchers could and should provide a valuable service by informing the public and policy makers of the possible risks of spending large amounts of time in unregulated virtual environments. The principle of non-maleficence should be applied in the sense that experiments should not be conducted if the outcome involves foreseeable harm to the subjects. On the other hand, the same principle implies a sustained striving for rational, evidence-based minimization of risks in the more distant future. We, therefore, suggest that careful experiments designed with the beneficent intention of discovering the psychological impact of immersion in VR are ethically permissible. In order to adhere to the principle of non-maleficence, researchers (and ethics committees) will need to utilize their knowledge of experimental psychology as well as their knowledge of results specific to VR. The kinds of results sketched in Sections “Plasticity in the Human Mind” and “Illusions of Embodiment and Their Lasting Effect” will be directly relevant for evaluating whether a line of experimentation violates non-maleficence. Similarly, the selection of subjects for VR experiments must be done with special care. New methods of prescreening for individuals with high risk factors must be incrementally developed, and funding for the development of such new methodologies needs to be allocated. We, therefore, urge careful screening of subjects to minimize the risks of aggravating an existing psychological disorder or an undetected psychiatric vulnerability (Rizzo et al., 1998; Gregg and Tarrier, 2007). Many experiments using VR currently seek to treat existing psychiatric disorders. The screening process for such experiments has the goal of selecting subjects who exhibit signs and symptoms of an existing condition. The screening process should also include exclusion criteria specific to possible risks posed by VR. Ideally, the VR research community will seek to establish an empirically motivated standard set of exclusion criteria. As we will discuss in Section “The Effects of Long-Term Immersion” below, of particular concern are vulnerabilities to disorders that could potentially become aggravated by prolonged immersion and illusions of embodiment, such as Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder (DDD; see American Psychiatric Association (2013), DSM-5: 300.14). Standard exclusion criteria may involve, for instance, scoring above a particular threshold on scales testing for dissociative experiences (Bernstein and Putnam, 1986) or depersonalization (Sierra and Berrios, 2000). Of course, there may be cases in which experimenters seek to include subjects with experiences of dissociation in order to investigate ways in which VR might be used to treat the underlying conditions, such as treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) through exposure therapy in VR (Botella et al., 2015). In those special cases, it is important to implement alternative exclusion criteria, such as Rothbaum et al. (2014), who excluded subjects with a history of psychosis, bipolar disorder, and suicide risk. Informed Consent The results presented above clearly suggest that VR experiences can have lasting psychological impact. This new knowledge about the lasting influence of experiences in VR must not be withheld from subjects in new VR experiments. We recommend that informed consent for VR experiments ought to include an explicit statement to the effect that immersive VR can have lasting behavioral influences on subjects, and that some of these risks may be presently unknown. Subjects should be made aware of this possibility out of respect for their autonomy (as included, for example, in the American Psychological Association General Principle D). That is, if an experiment might alter their behavior without their awareness of this alteration, then such an experiment could be seen as a threat to the autonomy of the subject. A reasonable way to preserve autonomy, we suggest, is simply to inform subjects of possible lasting effects. Please again note the principled problem that research animals are not able to give informed consent, their interest needs to be represented by humans. Also note that we are not suggesting that subjects ought to be informed about the particular effects that are being investigated in the experiment. Thus, our recommendation should not raise the concern that informing subjects may compromise researchers’ abilities to test for particular behavioral effects. Practical Applications: False Hope and Beneficence Another concern has to do with various applications of VR. One of many promising applications for VR research is in the treatment of disease, damage, and other health-related issues, especially mental health. For instance, researchers found that immersing burn victims in an icy virtual environment can mitigate their experience of pain during medical procedures (Hoffman et al., 2011). Here, we wish to raise some concerns about applications of VR. The first concern is that patients may develop false hope with regard to clinical applications of VR. The second concern is that applications of VR may encounter a tension between beneficence and autonomy. Patients may believe that treatment using VR is better than traditional interventions merely due to the fact that it is a new technology, or an experimental application of existing technology. This sense of false hope is known as the “therapeutic misconception” in the literature on the ethics of clinical research (Appelbaum et al., 1987; Kass et al., 1996; Lidz and Appelbaum, 2002; Chen et al., 2003). Researchers using VR for clinical research must be aware of established techniques for combating the therapeutic misconception in their subjects. For example, one established guideline for investigating new clinical applications is that of “clinical equipoise,” which is the requirement that there be genuine uncertainty in the medical community as to the best form of treatment (Freedman, 1987). It is important that researchers communicate their own sense of this uncertainty in a clear manner to volunteer subjects. Similarly, as Chen et al. (2003) note, physicians who have a lasting relationship with their patients may be better suited to form a judgment as to whether the patient is motivated by a clear understanding of the nature of the research, rather than motivated by false hope or even desperation. VR researchers aiming at new clinical applications should therefore work slowly and carefully, in close collaboration with physicians who may be better situated to make informed judgments about the suitability of particular patients for new trials. Therapeutic and clinical applications should be investigated only in the presence of certified medical personnel. Another relevant concern here is the way in which the general public keeps informed of new developments in science through the popular media. Members of the general public with less interest in science may have a more difficult time gleaning scientific knowledge from the media than those with more interest (Takahashi and Tandoc, 2015). When considering their responsibility as scientists to communicate new results to the public (Fischhoff, 2013; Kueffer and Larson, 2014), VR researchers working in clinical applications must be careful to avoid language that might give false hope to patients. We should also note here that there are other practical concerns about the use of VR for medical interventions. For instance, once the technology is available for patients to use, who will pay for it? Should medical insurance pay for HMDs and new software? How do we achieve distributive justice and avoid a situation where only privileged members of society benefit from technological advances? We make no recommendation here, but flag this question as something that needs to be considered by policy makers. Similarly, HMDs, CAVE immersive displays, and motion-tracking technology may have to be reclassified as medical devices. One risk when performing the research necessary for developing such applications is that the patients involved may develop a false sense of hope due to the non-traditional nature of the intervention. As this kind of research progresses, scientists must continue to be honest with patients so as not to generate false hope. There is also an overlap between media ethics and the ethics of VR technology: a related example is that many of the early experiments on full-body illusions (Ehrsson, 2007; Lenggenhager et al., 2007) have been falsely overreported as creating full-blown “out-of-body experiences” (Metzinger, 2003, 2009a,b), and scientists have perhaps not done enough to correct this misrepresentation of their own work in the media. While incremental progress has clearly been made, large parts of the public still falsely believe that scientists “have created OBEs in the lab.” Overall, scientists and the media need to be clear and honest with the public about scientific progress, especially in the area of using VR for medical treatment. The second concern about applications of VR has to do with the well-known tension between autonomy and beneficence in applied ethics (Beauchamp and Childress, 2013: Chapter 6). As the results surveyed in the first part of this article suggest, VR enables a powerful form of non-invasive psychological manipulation. One obvious application of VR, then, would be to perform such manipulations in order to bring about desirable mental states and behavioral dispositions in subjects. Indeed, early experiments in VR have done just that, making subjects willing to save more for their retirement (Hershfield et al., 2011), perform better on tests for implicit racial bias (Peck et al., 2013), and behave in a more environmentally conscious manner (Ahn et al., 2014). In a paternalistic spirit, such as that of the UK Behavioral Insights Team, one might urge that beneficent VR applications such as these should be put in place among the general populace, perhaps as a new form of “public service announcement” for the twenty-first century. Here, we wish to note that doing so may generate another case of conflict between beneficence and autonomy. If individuals do not seek to alter their psychological profile in the ways intended by the beneficent VR interventions, then such interventions may be considered a violation of their autonomy. Dual Use Dual use is a well-known problem in research ethics and the ethics of technology, especially in the life sciences (Miller and Selgelid, 2008). Here, we use it to refer to the fact that technology can be used for something other than its intended purpose, in particular to military applications. In the context of VR technology, one will immediately think not only of drone warfare, teleoperated weapon systems, or “virtual suicide attacks,” but also of interrogation procedures and torture. It is not in
spectacular sites for understanding dinosaurs in the world is now being destroyed by poachers,” Dr. Currie said. The dream, he said, is to explore the basin as an ancient ecosystem, learning how dinosaurs interacted with one another and their environment. Many puzzles remain. For example, scientists would expect to find far more plant-eating dinosaurs than meat eaters in one layer of the basin, yet the remains of carnivores predominate. Why? While the Mongolian government’s successful lawsuit over the T. Bataar skeleton did not end poaching, it has had other effects. The sale was voided, and the smuggler, Eric Prokopi, a fossil dealer from Gainesville, Fla., pleaded guilty in a criminal proceeding and awaits sentencing. The skeleton was returned to Mongolia in May.Palestinian mourners gather around the bodies of fifteen members of the Abu zeid, Duheir and al-Hashash families, that were killed in an Israeli air strike on their home, during the funeral in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on July 29, 2014.. A half-dozen years ago, I attended the first conference of J Street, a liberal pro-Israel organization, to debate the meaning of the term pro-Israel itself. Pitted against Matthew Yglesias, I maintained that, while one certainly did not need to agree with everything Israel does to be pro-Israel, a meaningful definition required some form of sympathy more concrete than the sort one might extend to humanity writ large. I suggested two possible qualifications: a sympathy for the country’s history vis-à-vis its critics, or an ongoing support for its political stance in relation to its international foes. It has dawned on me that I am one of the liberal Jews who, by the second definition, if not the first, has grown less pro-Israel over the last decade. This uncomfortable and alien feeling has washed slowly over me in fits and starts. An important moment came recently when I read Ben Birnbaum and Amir Tibon’s detailed narrative of the collapse of last year’s Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. A foundational basis for liberal Zionist support for Israel is the fact that, during the last major negotiations in 2000, the Israeli government offered a reasonable statehood plan to Palestinians, and Palestinians rejected it and launched the second Intifada. (Critics of Israel have challenged this historical interpretation, unpersuasively.) So long as this remains the underlying state of negotiations, then Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians are understandable, even if not always well-calibrated, as a defense against an enemy that denies its right to exist. The carryover from that episode has deeply influenced pro-Israel sentiment. But Birnbaum and Tibon show that it no longer pertains. Their story is comprehensive and evenhanded enough that readers can draw differing conclusions. David Frum, who is more hawkish than me, reads it and concludes that it damns the Palestinians, who demanded the release of prisoners in order to continue negotiating. What Frum fails to mention is that the Palestinians made this demand because the Netanyahu government insisted on continuing to build settlements in the West Bank during negotiations. The Palestinians would have looked like fools for negotiating under such conditions without a concession. Netanyahu could have frozen the settlements, but decided instead to release a group of prisoners including more than 100 murderers. Photo: Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images The story further reveals that Netanyahu appeared on several occasions to approach the brink of agreement, but pulled back in the face of right-wing pressure within his coalition. Numerous figures in the story attempt to plumb the Israeli Prime Minister’s psychology — does he truly have it in him to go over the brink and make peace, or is he merely bluffing? — but the exercise turns out to be ultimately futile. Either Israeli politics or Netanyahu’s own preferences kept Netanyahu from striking a deal. And since that failure, the most moderate leadership the Palestinians ever had, and probably ever will have, has been marginalized. Viewed in this context, the campaign of Israeli air strikes in Gaza becomes a horrifying indictment. It is not just that the unintended deaths of Palestinians is so disproportionate to any corresponding increase in security for the Israeli targets of Hamas’s air strikes. It is not just that Netanyahu is able to identify Hamas’s strategy — to create “telegenically dead Palestinians” — yet still proceeds to give Hamas exactly what it is after. It is that Netanyahu and his coalition have no strategy of their own except endless counterinsurgency against the backdrop of a steadily deteriorating diplomatic position within the world and an inexorable demographic decline. The operation in Gaza is not Netanyahu’s strategy in excess; it is Netanyahu’s strategy in its entirety. The liberal Zionist, two-state vision with which I identify, which once commanded a mainstream position within Israeli political life, has been relegated to a left-wing rump within it. I don’t mean to overdramatize the change within my own thinking. While less sympathetic to Israel than before, I still find myself far more sympathetic to Israel than to Hamas. I still believe a two-state partition will happen eventually, though the odds are increasing that a catastrophe will be required to bring it about first. I also bitterly attribute the shriveling of the Israeli left to the Palestinian rejectionists who deliberately engineered this very outcome. The change in my thinking is gradational, not transformational. Like many liberal Jews — Roger Cohen today being one of the latest — I recognize that the facts change, and I have changed my mind.SpazzStick is a caffeinated lip balm. It was created by Richie Holschen, the only police officer in the remote Alaskan village of Kaktovik, who needed to protect his lips and remain alert in an area so cold that coffee freezes.[1][2] When he first started making the product in 2004, he did so out of the police station.[3] In 2006, it was hailed as one of the "Best Business Ideas" by Coolbusinessideas.[4] In February 2008, on her show Rachael Ray reviewed several products that contained caffeine. One of those products was SpazzStick. The show had three reviewers and a medical doctor, Jeanine Downy, as part of a panel reviewing the caffeinated products. Downy observed that caffeine is not effective unless it is ingested or absorbed through thin skin such as the mouth; thus SpazzStick and the toothpaste were the two products she expected would have the best results.[5] The viewer who tested the SpazzStick swore that it provided the expected energy burst and that she would use it every day. Downy, however, warned that care should be taken in using the product since it did not come with SPF protection.[5] (Spazzstick is now SPF 15) Similarly, a review by EnergyDrinkReviews stated, "The power of the stuff is hard to quantify. I put it on and within a minute or two I definitely got a kick... a very noticeable one too."[6] It is estimated that each application of SpazzStick gives the wearer the equivalent of a sip of coffee.[3] Part of the marketing strategy for SpazzStick has been the incorporation of humor in its advertising.[3] The official website contains the standard questions, and then a number of non-sequiturs or flippant answers. For example, in answering the question about testing on animals, the answer is, "No, Spazzstick has never been tested on animals. The only animals in the area are arctic fox, caribou, and polar bears. We can't catch the foxes, and putting lip balm on a caribou is no picnic, so we don't even try. No one was willing to get close enough to a polar bear to put lip balm on it."[7] The website also boasts that SpazzStick is made "in a beautiful little Eskimo Village called Kaktovik, AK, by the inventor... and his hordes of worker trolls in a vast underground volcano lair." The trolls, Holschen admits, are his 5 children and that "[i]t's not uncommon to get [a tube] with a crooked label put on by a 2-year-old."[7]Hello my name is Aaron. I’ve been a freelance photographer for nearly 16 years. I shoot images used in print/digital distribution for local, national, and international publication. I love low light, fast-aperture photography for its challenges, and when Josh asked me if I’d like to borrow Hawaii Camera’s Sony A7s and the new(ish) Mitakon 50mm f/.95 lens and write a review about it, I couldn’t say “Yes” quickly enough. I don’t think I even let Josh finish pitching his idea to me before cut him off & asked him when I could do it. Sorry Josh. I’ve never written a camera review before, so please bear with me if my format isn’t up to standard. Personally, I’ve never felt that exhaustive reviews a la DPReview were very useful. Sure I do appreciate some of their testing, like seeing how many shots they got out of a camera before its battery died. That’s cool. But as far as seeing the same test scene at every aperture, or pixel-peeping the corners of a landscape at F/4 vs F/8, well I always thought that those silly details were boring, and most of all useless. Seriously, if you’re actually that concerned about what the corners of your pictures look like then you probably need to spend your time online learning more about composition and less about what the corners of that lens you’re checking out looks like at f/4. Anyway, I’ll get off my photo nerd soapbox and simply say that I’m not exhaustively reviewing this setup. You could call it more of an experiential review, with photos to back up my views. When Sony released their A7R, I was seriously considering the purchase of a Leica M. I’ve used an M8 and film rangefinders professionally for some time and with much success, and the features the M brought to the table were as tempting as it’s price is batshit insane. I bought the A7R instead. I use my A7R exclusively to adapt my Leica M-Mount, Nikon F-mount, and Leica R-Mount glass to, and don’t ever plan on buying native Sony E-Mount autofocus lenses. The images the A7R produces when paired with Leica glass are amazing, and so I’ve logged a lot of time with the A7 platform because it’s just so good. When Josh asked me about reviewing the A7S and the Mitakon, it was partially because he knew I had a good familiarity in using the Sony A7 line with manually-focused lenses. The Sony A7s The A7S has been reviewed by people a lot smarter/more thorough than I am, so if you want to know all the details about every menu feature and button, dial, and switch, you can google it. I know my video shooting friends seem to like the A7S, but while photographers seem to “oooh” and “aaah” at it’s low-light capabilities, we all seem like we avoided it because of it’s comparatively low megapixel count. I know the A7s was something I considered nice to have but totally impractical, and I immediately wrote off ever purchasing one. Overall, the A7S is just a little faster than the A7R. The A7S seemed to have a slightly more responsive shutter lock time vs the A7R, and the shutter noise itself is a little quieter than the A7R’s. The A7S also seems to power up a little faster, and it’s buffer goes a lot further than the A7R’s does, no big surprises there since the A7R has to move literally 300% more pixels to it’s SD card. It also seems to have slightly better battery life than the A7R, likely due to A7S images requiring shorter read/write times and less processing. Otherwise, the menus, form factor, and physical control buttons are pretty much the same across the entire A7 family, which is to say they’re quite easy to use, and never get in the way. The A7 family is compact, relatively discreet, and capable of accepting just about every lens I own via adapters I can find on eBay. It’s actually a great value by virtue of its versatility alone; if I had to buy a Leica M for my Leica lenses, a 5D mk III for my Canon EF glass, and a Nikon that can take my vintage Ai-S lenses I’d be spending considerably more than the ~$2k I spent on my A7R. And amazingly, unless one of the cameras I mentioned above was a Nikon D800E (which shares it’s sensor with the A7R), even if I did buy a dedicated camera for each lens system I own, the A7R would still be the better camera as far as image quality is concerned. If you haven’t yet used any member of the A7 family, the EVF is simply amazing. It’s so good I gave it a whole paragraph. I’ve been shooting professionally with EVF-based mirrorless systems for a few years now, and own another camera that’s well-known for it’s EVF, the Fuji X-T1. I keep the X-T1 around for reportage use as it’s a faster and more durable camera than the Sony, but when it comes to shooting the best quality images I can produce, I’ll always reach for the A7R and a lens like the Zeiss 50mm Planar T ZM, or a Leica Summicron. The Sony’s EVF is a little less contrasty and a little smaller than the X-T1’s but you’d be hard-pressed to call one or the other better. Lag time, or “jittering” in the EVF was an issue which kept many from adopting early EVF-equipped mirrorless cameras, and I’m happy to say that the A7S shows no noticeable lag in it’s viewfinder, ever. Which means the A7S has one of the best electronic viewfinders out there, period. And this totally matters, it’s the reason most pros stick to DSLRs with optical viewfinders…although EVFs are beginning to work so well that it wouldn’t surprise me to see many pros begin “changing teams” as EVF technology improves. It’s the future yo. The Mitakon 50mm f/.95 For hardcore fast-lens freaks, an f/.95 lens is the closest us mere mortals can get to legendary fast primes like the Zeiss 50mm f/.70 that Stan Kubrick used in his films. Without rehashing what aperture values mean, a lens with a maximum f-value of “1.0” is a lens that lets in 100% of the light it “sees.” Most lenses “lose” some amount of brightness in the image they project on a camera’s sensor, due to the lenses design. A lens with an f-value below 1.0 denotes a lens capable of drawing in more light than is actually present in the scene. Any lens with a maximum aperture of <1.0 is extremely exotic, and they all come with a certain amount of compromise. Rumor has it that Zhongyi, manufacturer of the Mitakon 50mm f/.95, reverse-engineered Leica’s Noctilux to create the Mitakon 50mm f/.95. The Mitakon retails for $899, not exactly cheap but considering what it is, the bargain of the century. From what I’ve seen in example images online, and from my limited-to-an-hour’s time with a demo Noctilux, the Mitakon and the Noctilux certainly appear quite close in terms of performance with the Noctilux being the obvious “best” lens in the fast 50mm category. That’s quite a feat in and of itself considering that in comparison the Noctilux costs upwards of ten grand and has a 1+ year waiting list! Zhongyi’s built up a reputation for building relatively cheap, relatively good, manual focus fast prime lenses, like the 35mm f/.95 for APS-C format mirrorless cameras. The Mitakon is their most expensive lens to date, and according to some, the best lens they’ve made so far. As for the lens itself, well, there isn’t much to say about it. It’s all-metal, feels reassuringly solid, and it certainly feels quite durable (how about a drop test, Josh?). It’s about the same diameter as a soda can, and maybe a centimeter or two shorter. Of course it’s a relatively big, heavy lens. The laws of physics demands it. I will say that the A7S with the Mitakon attached is extremely front-heavy, and given the diminutive size of the A7S itself, it made holding the camera securely a two-hand job. Unless I needed the F.95 aperture that day, I wouldn’t ever use the Mitakon as a walkaround lens; that task would fall upon a lens like the Zeiss Planar T ZM, which weighs less than a third of the Mitakon’s beefy 1.58lbs and puts the Mitakon’s image quality to shame. The focus ring started out feeling a tiny bit “gritty” instead of smooth in its movement, but after a day or so it seemed to get a little smoother. To be fair, Leica’s Noctilux weighs close to the same, and has a similar slightly “gritty” focusing feel…as with any fast prime, moving the heavy glass elements these lenses contain will always be less smooth than with smaller lenses. Remember what I said about exotic fast primes and compromise above? The first time I turned the focus ring, it felt a little on the heavy side, but when I started using the Mitakon wide open, I appreciated the heavier damping because it made it easier to make the kind of fine adjustments necessary when using an aperture that large, and it prevented accidental focus creep. The aperture ring is clickless (I’m not a fan of this; I wish a “clicky” aperture were available as an option). The finish on the lens was quite nice, especially if you’re used to modern plasticky/rubber construction on your lenses. This was just a pet peeve of mine but I noticed that the “.95” stamped on the aperture ring didn’t align properly with the little white dot on the lens. Seriously, Zhongyi!? You guys figured out how to make a Noctilux clone for less than 10% of the cost of the real deal but you couldn’t get painting your aperture ring right!? Finally, and this is the most serious issue I had with the Mitakon in operation: It focuses past infinity, meaning that shooting landscapes requires manually focusing, rather than simply turning the focus ring to the infinity stop and snapping a photo. I get that most people who use the Mitakon will be shooting at close-medium distances to get crazy bokeh, but still I just don’t understand why Zhongyi didn’t bother calibrating the Mitakon lens for “true” infinity. In use OK, so now it’s time for me to talk about what happens when you attach the Mitakon to the A7S and start shooting pictures of your favorite test scene, your cat, or an MTF chart. Or not. On my first day with the A7S and the Mitakon, I had a friend from Hilo who happened to be in town to paint a mural at Pow Wow Hawaii. It was Thursday, and he was due on Maui to do a talk Friday, so he was in for a long night of painting. Perfect. I got to Kakaako before sunset, and immediately began snapping pictures. With a max shutter speed of 1/8000, the A7S will take shots with the Mitakon wide-open even during the day at ISO 100. I didn’t bother stopping the Mitakon down below f/2 the whole time I had it: I figured what was the point? Nobody lugs this lens around to shoot it at f/4. The A7S’s focus peaking helps immensely and compliments the Mitakon well. On a side note, my experience with the A7R has been that focus peaking is of limited (if any) use, because the A7R’s crazy high resolution meant that if I weren’t zooming the EVF’s view in on every shot to confirm critical focus, it would inevitably be focused on the wrong part of the image. With the A7S having far fewer pixels, this was not as much of an issue. However, since f/.95 is an insanely shallow depth of field, I found myself zooming in from time to time just to be sure I nailed it. The A7S was a lot faster in use than my A7R, and with less lag between shots I found myself getting a lot more keepers in my “follow up” shots. The Mitakon…well it was quite impressive. I went into this review assuming that there had been a lot of corners cut in the process of making such a fast lens for so little money, and I was surprised to find that the corners cut were not as major as I expected. The Mitakon easily keeps up with my Nikon 50mm f/1.2 optically when wide open. This is impressive because the Nikon is about a stop and a half slower than the Mitakon and well, the Nikon 50mm is made by one of the most successful camera companies around. Impressive. In use, the Mitakon’s slightly stiff focus ring really helps you to control that super shallow depth of field. With an f/.95 lens, a few millimeter’s movement closer to or further from the focus point is enough to throw whatever you’re shooting out of critical focus, so I found myself having to be a lot more aware of how close or how far I was from my subject. It turns out just breathing is enough for me to throw my focus off if I’m not careful. Your mileage may vary. I was glad for the heavy focus ring almost immediately because of this, I had enough to worry about when it came to staying in focus, and not worrying about my clumsy fingers inadvertently nudging the lens out of focus meant one less thing to worry about. Ditto for the aperture ring being a little stiff, it was weird at first but makes perfect sense in actual use. Image quality-wise, I found the Mitakon to be quite sharp. Like, surprisingly so. It easily keeps up with the A7S’s 12 megapixels, and provides more than enough detail to be quite useful wide open. I also liked the color/contrast…the Mitakon is a little low contrast and has subdued colors; personally I prefer this look coming from my camera because contrast and color is something easily boosted in post production, and generally doesn’t do so well when it’s “turned down” in post because the lens was overly contrasty and saturated. I also like my images to have a unique signature, or “look.” Modern, aspherical, perfectly-corrected lenses often look “boring” in my opinion, because they completely lack any personality. This definitely is not the case with the Mitakon, and I loved this lens for that. As for vignetting: Yes, this lens vignettes pretty heavily when it’s wide open. But I’m not even bothering to evaluate this issue because, as you can see from all the mostly vignette-free images here, it’s so easy to fix in Lightroom that I don’t see how vignetting is even a “drawback” in this case. But the Mitakon isn’t all amazingness and perfection; wide open during the day, the Mitakon is prone to halation, which is what happens when light from a bright part of an image “bleeds” into less-bright parts of the image thanks to light bouncing around in the lens between glass elements. In most modern lenses, optical coatings prevent halation. Halation is a typical trait of vintage lenses, which don’t benefit from modern optical coatings/technologies. You could also expect halation to show up in an exotic lens design like the Mitakon. The halation isn’t rampant, but it seems to show up in high-contrast areas that are in critical focus. I imagine this probably happens at night too, but in lower light it just isn’t as noticeable. Some people like it and call it a “glow”, others hate it. Your own mileage will vary. The bokeh also tends to get a little busy with foliage/high-contrast detail in the background…it’s prone to spherical aberration with bright points of light, and with details like foliage in the background the bokeh can start to create these weird upside-down “U” shapes. Both the aberration and weird bokeh are more prominent off-center. The Mitakon is probably one of the most distortion-prone 50mm lenses I’ve ever used. It will visibly barrel, and this becomes even more prominent if you’re focusing on a subject that’s a few meters away. The image below is the worst-case scenario I could find in all 500 of the pictures I took with this combination. Even Canon’s $100 “nifty 50” 50mm f/1.8 will give you straighter lines than the Mitakon. The $10k current model Noctilux doesn’t distort, although to be fair the vintage Noctiluxes (which are still 5-6 times as expensive as the Mitakon) are very prone to the same kind of distortion. To belabor the point, these kinds of exotic lenses have always been about compromise. Then again, with bokeh this dreamy, does anybody really care about the distortion? One of the biggest issues I encountered with the Mitakon was flare. It would flare whenever given the chance. Off-axis light sources, as well as light sources in the dead middle of the frame would almost always generate an odd “ring” of flare, with a bright point of light on the opposite side of the frame from the light source. The first few times I saw the flare rear it’s head I thought it was kind of cool looking, but I could see how it would be annoying after a while in the long term (I wouldn’t want to see it in every other shot I took with the Mitakon if i used it often). I suspect some of this was attributable to the UV filter on the front of the lens (during Pow Wow, I didn’t dare remove the UV filter because there was a constant cloud of spray paint in the air everywhere I went). I did take the Mitakon out for a walk in my neighborhood one night without the filter on, and I can confirm that no filter reduced the frequency/harshness of “circle flare,” although it did still happen if, say, I pointed the lens directly at a street light. Take a look at the shot of the car on the highway below, it was taken with no UV filter. You can still see the circle flare but it’s a lot more subtle. Unlike other lenses I’ve used, the Mitakon seems more prone to flare when pointed directly at a strong light source that is on-axis rather than off. I could be wrong but it’s just what I think after using the Mitakon for a few days. OK, so the Mitakon distorts, exhibits halation, crazy flares, and can have weird bokeh. And do you know what? None of that matters when you get it right with this lens. When its behaving, the bokeh is epic, and the crazy shallow depth of field makes everything but the subject melt away, leaving you with a sharp, in focus subject that has a nice 3D “pop” from its background. For a fast lens like this, the detail in the shot is impressively high if you can nail the focus. Even the flare and halation can actually add to the dreamy feel that this lens will give you if you work within its parameters. And getting those killer shots feels all the more rewarding because of it. Take the image below for example. I took it a few seconds after the image above with the crazy flare. All I did was take a step to my right to put the offending street light behind the subject. By working within the lenses’ parameters, I got my favorite shot of the night. The crazy fast aperture and the A7S’s insanely high ISO abilities meant I was taking shots at night using crazyballs shutter speeds. I don’t think I spent any time with a shutter speed below 1/200 on my first night with the combo. And did I mention the A7S is an absolute beast at high ISO? Believe the hype, I was using ISO 128,000 the same way I’d use 3200 on my A7R. And when needed, the ISO dial on the A7S can be turned up to 409,600. That’s a half million ISO. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Mitakon and the A7S could be used for portraiture on a clear, full moon night without any artificial light or a tripod. The A7S and the Mitakon are a tool unlike any other. It means you can shoot a Chinese Lion dance by street light and use 1/500 shutter speeds to freeze the action, where I’d be plugging along at 1/60 or so on my other cameras and waiting for a moment when the lion isn’t actually dancing if I wanted to get useable results. It means that this camera and lens allows you to shoot things that you hadn’t even ever imagined that you could shoot. It’s amazing. I took a set of shots of cars driving by at freeway speeds at 8 PM from an overpass. The only light came from the cars and the street lights. Even with a car driving towards me at 60 MPH, the camera and lens were able to give me a high enough shutter speed to freeze the car as though it were day. The sky actually looked dark but it was overexposed in the photo. Amazing. It’s a shame that manually focusing limits your ability to capture action, because this combination is a low light action shooter’s dream. The fast aperture also does really interesting things at medium focus distances. Sure, I imagine most people would use this camera and lens for crazy portraits at the 1-3 meter range. But if you play with medium distances in the 3-10 meter range, the extreme shallow depth of field lets you highlight detail in part of the frame and makes it “pop” against objects in the foreground and background. I could highlight a detail or group of people and bring emphasis to them in a way you just can’t with slower lenses. It’s a crazy look, one that reminds me of how a fast telephoto like a 135mm f/2 wide open would separate a subject or subjects from the background thanks to compression. It’s a creative option that’s unique to lenses like the Mitakon, and I like it. A lot. Even subjects a little further away (say 10-20 meters) will actually show depth of field against objects in the background. It’s not as “slap you in the face” obvious as the bokeh in a closer shot, but it’s there and I think it’s pretty damn cool. Of course, I coudn’t not include an image taken at ISO 409,600. The trouble was, ISO 409,600 kept overexposing with the superfast Mitakon, even in street light! 1/8000 sec is too slow a shutter speed for the A7S and the Mitakon at f/.95 in street light. Think about that for a minute. It’s crazy. I had to find a dark garage to get the shot I wanted. The A7s isn’t very good at 409,600, but it wasn’t bad either: Landscape images taken wide open are possible, but results aren’t very good. It’s pretty obvious this lens was optimized to perform best in the 1-3 meter range, as are most 50mms. So what? The Sony A7S and Mitakon 50mm f/.95 are a unique, amazing combination. It let me do things in low light that I’ve never done with any still camera, ever. While the Mitakon has flaws, like any other camera or lens, it rewards with some really impressive, unique images you if you work within its limitations. Even when you pushed the A7S a little bit, and asked the lens to do things it wasn’t good at, it performed admirably under the right circumstances. Take the shot below for example, it was taken at ISO 12,800 and at near-infinity. And it made nearly-dark conditions at 8PM look a lot brighter than it really was. This shot would be possible with any number of cameras on tripods. But this was taken at 1/60 and handheld! The A7S and Mitakon are a great combination, and opens up entirely new areas of night photography that can be explored creatively. While I’m still not sure whether or not I really need an f/.95 lens or a 12-megapixel magical night camera, I do know that I really want one now. Try this camera and lens out sometime, because I think you’ll agree. Mahalo Hawaii Camera for having do this review. If you’d like to check out more of my work, you can find me at: honozooloo.com honozooloo.tumblr.com @honozooloo (IG & Twitter) -Aaron Post Details TagsRight now Payatas FC, the team we run at the Fairplay for All Foundation composed of kids living at the foot of Payatas dumpsite, are involved in two youth leagues. It’s an exciting – if busy – time for football here. LBC Foundation’s GK Liga The first we generally play on Saturdays, as we were kindly invited by Gawad Kalinga to be the first guest team for GK Liga, sponsored by the LBC Foundation. We’ve always enjoyed working with Gawad Kalinga. The first major collaboration was with Team Philippines in the Street Child World Cup, where 5 GK players made the final cut for the team. We also had a joint GK and Payatas FC team in RIFA thanks to FEU providing a slot under them. Now Payatas FC is the first guest team of LBC Foundation’s GK Liga. With a home and away format for 15s, 12s, and 10s, this means every team will play 18 games over the course of the 5 months of the league. If I’m not mistaken, GK Liga is the longest youth league in the country. The match rules are also built for player development. The 10s play without a goalkeeper, with 4 smaller goals instead. Each team aims for their two goals and learn to switch the play if one is guarded. The U12s and U15s play futsal (5 a side, goalkeeper and a goal), though the U12s must put 3 passes together before they can score. The U15s are straight futsal as by that time they graduated from the U10s and U12s already. Another point is that goals from girls count double, encouraging teams to get more girls involved in their games. One of the many good things about the league is that it’s run by volunteer alumni of GK. Each community is headed by 18-24 year olds who played football under GK. They meet each month to go through the rules and challenges of the past games, learning as they go. Naturally problems arise and mistakes are made. But this experience is invaluable for the admin and management, as well as the players, because it’s all part of a supportive environment. It’s all a learning process. Gawad Kalinga have put together the biggest youth league in the country, as far as I’m aware, and we’re grateful to be a part of it! Quezon City OPES Futsal League The second development is a futsal league for Quezon City. It’s a constant challenge for youth teams to brave the Manila traffic. When I was writing regularly for GMA I wrote about this in a series of articles about Pinoy Moneyball – how players often spend more time in traffic than on the pitch. The Quezon City OPES Futsal League is a solution to that, among other things. Run by Ralph Spencer and myself, the QC OPES league provides regular competition at a central venue, the Olympian Preparatory and English School in North Fairview. By limiting costs, the league has no registration fees, making it the perfect place to develop the players – to field a B or C team, or let younger or newer players get playing time. We also have a rule in place to prevent blowouts and with no trophies teams play for fun and for development. As always nothing’s perfect. This is the pilot league to work out the kinks and for us to get the model working. The potential is there though. Teams are lining up for a 2nd season. Currently we have 7 teams each with two age groups (born 2000+ and 2004+). Though in the future 9 will be the perfect number of teams under this format – where three teams play a round robin in an afternoon. With two games each visit (15 minutes each half) that’s a full hour of playing time, usually a lot more than a one day tournament for most teams too, and without the P3,000 fee. That’s why leagues are the backbone of every decent grassroots system. The Vision So here’s the vision: each city in Metro Manila provides a futsal venue. Two City Organizers run a futsal league on the weekend. This provides regular competition, in a format which gives six times as many touches, among other benefits noted in Rappler by Miguel Bermundo. Every team gets regular competition within a reasonable distance. Then at the end of the season the top two teams from each city meet for a Champions League. City versus City, in a one day big event extravaganza. The league provides the player development and sustainability. The City Rivalry and Champions League builds the hype and draws the crowds. Existing stadiums equipped for basketball and volleyball games now become potential venues for fast, action packed football. Think of it as a stepping stone for new fans, who get all the goals, all the action, and begin to understand the beautiful game. The potential of growing the sport is huge. So together what GK Liga and the Quezon City OPES Futsal League show is regular leagues in Metro Manila are possible. It shows a better tool of player development than one day tournaments. And it shows with the right motivation this is possible – at low cost too. Collectively such a system provides a futsal court (venue), develops players (the product), and draws the crowds (market). Nothing is perfect, and something like this always takes a lot of hard-work. But it’s exciting. In the meantime you can support our team in Payatas, where we will be building a futsal court for leagues in the future, by donating for your own Payatas FC
. <Ahem:cough> Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition. (1) Countless people have been executed or locked in mental institutions for being “differently aware,” and acknowledging a weirder reality than the average muggle. (2) Working at a metaphysical store means that our staff meets all kinds of folks, from all kinds of backgrounds, and they ask all kinds of questions. Much like being a bartender, standing on our side of that battered glass display counter means that on any given day we can be asked to serve the role of priestess, counselor, healer or confessor. That day we might be what stands between a customer and the ledge. They come to us crying sometimes, or angry, desperate, or terrified. It is our honor to be their safe port in the storm. They begin their questions with “this might sound crazy, but…” or, “I know this sounds weird, but…” My standard responses are, “there are no crazy questions here,” and “weird is relative; we are all weird here.” I do make a concerted effort, no matter what my customer says next, to arrange my response in such a way as to be neutral, informative and nonjudgmental. I am long practiced in the arts of straight-facery and subtle correction. I think I do OK with this task, most of the time. Aliens? Possibly. Which race, from which star? Faery? Depends. Terrifying and erotic, didn’t you think? Ghosts, guardian angels, spirit animals? All par for the course. If you actually released a demon through your Ouija board, NO I don’t think burning sage will be enough; NO, I do not vanquish demons; get thee to a Catholic priest! To a Panentheist Witch, this is all Normal and Natural Panentheism: noun Etymology: meaning “all-in-God”, from the Ancient Greek πᾶν pân (“all”), ἐν en (“in”) and Θεός Theós (“God”) (3) A belief system which posits that the divine interpenetrates every part of the universe and extends, timelessly beyond it. The divine is both immanent within nature, and has a transcendent consciousness that is greater than the sum of its parts. In my panentheistic paradigm where the entire universe is divine, then all these amazing things are my normal. The way I understand the language, words like paranormal and supernatural imply an entirely different paradigm. These come from an Abrahamic paradigm, and need to be dismissed from the pagan discourse, lest they drag in all their dissonance with them. In my humble opinion, there can be no paranormal if all of existence lies on a wide-ranging and relative scale of “normal.” Just like there can be no supernatural, if nothing can be “above” nature. But that’s just me. Per my paradigm, nature is a diverse and multifaceted beauty of both seen and unseen, matter and energy, all polarities, a tapestry of divine consciousness the likes of which we are only beginning to comprehend, and while that may be weird to some, I embrace the wyrd-ness. Bottom line: we can all be relatively “right” and that doesn’t have to mean you are “crazy.” Leveling Up My normal day at the office is to take students on meditative journeys to explore other spiritual dimensions, past-lives, the heavens and the underworld. They all come back with unique tales of who and what they experienced, and as far as I am concerned, they are all correct for them. To some folks, this work is crazy. <shrug> I do believe that people are evolving into a broader awareness, we can just see more now. Allow me to illustrate… Imagine you’re driving down a dark, country road at night, seeing only the plain black asphalt that lies immediately before you. In the lonely quiet you might think you are separate and isolated. Then, like kicking up the high beams, you awaken from the illusion of your separateness. The patch of lit road widens, lengthens, and suddenly you notice the road is lined with wonders and perils. You’re in break-neck traffic on a stacked free-way with all manner of spirits, gods and monsters riding your bumper. (Imagine Houston, Texas on LSD.) Your dead Granny is riding shotgun and shouting directions. At first, these new perceptions can be overwhelming. Then dawn breaks, and patterns form; a detailed map of the universe unfolds before you. It isn’t even a car you’ve been driving all along, but a Tardis from Dr. Who, rendering time and space fluid and luminous. You can go anywhere you want to go, but you’re on a one-way trip, never able to go home again. Try putting THAT white rabbit back into the hat. In a witch’s world “normal” is spectacular; “natural” will blow your mind. Who am I to question what you are perceiving? She who is without oddness, cast the first stone! Since we opened the shop in 2009, I’ve seen a mass awakening into this relatively broader view. From my perspective, humanity is leveling-up! The veil of the apocalypse was ripped away and we are finally seeing the gritty, wondrous, unpleasant truth of things. Call it what you like, there are more and more of us now asking the important question: Have I gone mad? I’m afraid so. You’re entirely bonkers. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are. ~ Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll And Yet…Mental Illness among Witches is a Real Concern All that being said, there are days when I run across witches with perceptions and behaviors that even I think cross the line into a mental health concern. WOWZA! If I think you’ve gone off the rails, that is really saying something! At Pantheacon in 2015, I took a workshop with Diana Paxson on mediumship and divine possession, where she made the very important distinction between truly channeling the voices of your gods, and being mentally ill and “hearing voices.” She implored us to be diligent in our reality checks with each other, and discretion in how we act on those messages. Try not to forget that mass murders have happened because “God told them” to do it. When I’m evaluating the messages I receive, I ask myself: Is this in alignment with my core values? Does this message seem consistent with the body of lore surrounding this messenger? Does it encourage me and others to be a better person, with better health, balance, love, and happiness? Does it live up to the laws of the land? Good taste or sense? If the answer to any of those questions is ambiguous, then it is very possible that your fears and imbalances are burbling up, and being projected onto the outer world in an unhealthy way. If “demons are everywhere” I’d go seek some professional help. The good news about neo-paganism is that we cannot only converse with our gods, we can argue with them. We have free will to say NO. The Moral of the Story: While I may not perceive the world the same way as all my customers, I’m going to lovingly and helpfully coexist with them, even if that is at a distance that I define. Namaste Away. I also am going to be the reality checker when necessary, being honest when I believe that they have fallen into imbalance. However, I’m not knocking on any doors, either. If you come into my shop to see the village witch for advice, don’t you want me to be (constructively) honest with you? Today, I ask myself where I draw the line between relative oddness and mental imbalance and I think that line is when the behavior or idea in question is sourced by fear, becoming anger, hatefulness, dis-ease, destruction and harmful actions. “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” ~Yoda, from George Lucas’ Star Wars Sure, you may have a wild idea, but how are you acting on that idea? If ever I find myself staring down that line with a fellow witch or a customer, then I may see fit to help that friend by finding the psychiatric help or law enforcement needed to prevent further harm. This is the same obligation a social worker or teacher has to report to authorities when someone is clearly a danger to themselves or others. This is how I’ll show perfect Divine Love and Trust that day. To even flirt with Witchcraft is to welcome a kind of madness. (Or is it to be truly sane?) We are all mad here! Be free in your oddness! Be the brightly colored, glittering and strange flock of my like-feathered kindred! Y’all make my strange corner of the world a very interesting place to be and I’m grateful for that. But let’s also be diligent with our reality checks for each other, okay? Blessed Be! ~Heron References:QR Code Link to This Post I was raised in a strict household. My parents bore offspring from the early-50's to the mid-60's. I was around the middle of this brood. With nine mouths to feed, we did not have a lot of extras. We worked for simple things, like bicycles.Nothing wrong with that. It's what we knew. And we were given a great foundation, on which we could create a life for ourselves. As I said, my parents were strict - which made me not wish to be such with my kids.Ah, my kids... I'm in my forties, and the wife is a bit younger. I make a fine income, and try not to sweat anything. I get up... have coffee... look out at the ocean... read the paper... move onto my business.I appreciate not having a house full of screaming kids in the morning (something that was impossible when I grew up). All I ask of my kids is to; a) be respectful of everyone, b) be honest c) get good grades, d) clean their rooms.I do not ask for much, nor do I demand much. However... that is going to change tonight. Events that occurred this morning will bring about change like these kids have never known. The wife has kept me in the dark about some things as well.It's my fault. I accept it. But I can reverse this downward trend - now. My generation (baby-boomers) has found that it is easier to go around a wall, than climb over over it - or knock it down. I'm as guilty as anyone.My guilt turned into rage this morning. My son (and my wife) convinced me that he NEEDED a car (he's seventeen). I was not keen on a kid driving, that has trouble standing a surfboard, or walking down the stairs without tripping.But I relented (again, why fight it). With some stipulations, we aquired a car for this child. The rules were put in place, and he proclaimed we were the greatest parents in the worls. Uh huh... It's 12:00pm, and he has yet to get out of bed. His mother has been instructed to tell my prodigy that he is GROUNDED. We have never done this, but we are today. And I mean GROUNDED in his room!Not out by the pool. Not in the gameroom. His cluttered abode is where he better be when I get home tonight. And I'm going to be stopping for a drink, first. I deserve a drink after this morning. Let me tell you about my day.I go out to my car in the driveway (I have a three-car garage - and "hers" is the only one that fits inside). My insanely over-priced piece of shit refuses to start today (3rd time in 2 months - the car is 6-monthss old). Okay... I call 'AAA'; it will 45-60 minutes. No time to wait. Okay... I'm going to take my kids' car.I go in and retrieve the keys (everyone is till asleep @ 8am). I leave a note telling him to call me. His car is down the street at a friends house. Why? He claimed that our driveway was too crowded (and the other kids might scratch it).Okay... I find his car... set off the alarm... Shit! People, one word; LOJACK. Goddamn, I hate those alarms.Anyways I get in the car, after noticing the REALLY nice rims & tires on it. Hmmm, how did he pay for those? WHEN, did he get those? I get in, and notice a new STEERING WHEEL... without the AIRBAG - that I demanded he have. Oh, this car is totally bitchin' dude! It gets better...I start it up... A huge racket comes from the exhaust (not stock anymore!)... And the stereo starts screaming out profanities! The backseat is now occupied by a huge box with speakers in it... and fast-food trash... and 'ziz-zag' papers... and empty 'trojan' wrappers (a chip off the 'ole block).To say the least I am pissed. I proceed to drive this rattling, screaming (I tear the faceplate off - finally), piece of doo-doo down the road. I swear, I think I awakened everyone in the neighborhood. I head out onto PCH, and drive less than a mile... when MB's finest pulls me over...WTF? I know I wasn't speeding. The officer comes up to the car, and asks for my license and insurance card... I hand over the license, and tell him I'm not sure where the insurance card is - 'it's my son's car'... "look in the glovebox" (he is - actually - smiling now)...I open the glovebox... and a small BONG falls out... I look at him... he looks at me... This is not happening! Oh, but it is. The first thing I say is 'it's not mine!'... "um, sir, could you step out of the car, please"...I get out, and we step onto the sidewalk. He tells me he stopped me for having an illegal exhaust (no shit - it sounds like two-dozen weedwhackers coming down the street). He also informs me that there are plenty more violations on this car... And I start laughing... He asks why am I laughing... And I tell him how my day is going."What about the water-pipe?" Indeed! I inform him that this is all a surprise to me, but I would like him to write up everything that is illegal about the vehicle. He looks at me like I'm crazy. But I want my kid to learn a lesson.And the officer obliges me. He, even, finds some weed in the trunk... 17 tickets later, we are finished... almost... I ask him if I can keep all of the drug paraphenalia? "Why?" I want my kid to destroy it. I want this kid to know his "fuck-off" days are over.The officer agrees. I could see he was wishing he could be there tonight, for the "lesson". He was pretty decent about the whole thing. This guy took, almost, a half-hour to go through all of this paperwork - and search. I thank him, and head out... He tells me if I get stopped again today, that I should show all the citations to the other officer - and I should not have any problems...Problems?!! We have problems. I have lost control of my family. My wife is a co-conspirator. She has just been told that I want a listing of all of our household bills & accounts. 'Yes, dear - we are going to perform an audit'. She is protesting, but I do not care. This is war.I know my family loves me, but they have played me for a fool. I may be a fool, but I am not dumb. She does not know that I just found out my son is in Summer school, because of bad grades. She doesn't know that DMV has provided me with her, and his, records; apparently they have a problem with obeying traffic laws.It's not going to be easy, but something must be done. I swear, I feel like I have become my father... I want the best for my family, and feel something radical must happen. I can only hope they - truly - understand it is for our own good.Some things that will be addressed tonight;1) Son's vehicle is gone; oil up that chain on your bicycle.2) All three kids will empty out the garage; sell it/ donate it/ whatever.3) Mom will have a household budget.4) Chores - that's right; everyone will have assigned chores.5) Chores will be done, before anything else.6) Homework will be done daily, before dinner. * Or, immediately after sports events, but always prior to 10pm.7) Son's tickets will be paid with his allowance.8) Son is grounded for the rest of the summer.9) Son will study from 8am until 4pm - daily, durint the rest of summer vacation.10) Videogames are banned from 10pm until 6pm - daily.11) Everyone will be up by 8am - daily.12) The youngest child is on a diet - now.13) Mother will inform father of ALL infractions.14) Dad will be home by 6pm - daily.15) Everyone will eat dinner, together.16) Mom will cook dinner - and it better not come out of the microwave.17) The maid is being given four weeks notice. * That is going to be fun - I may not see a sexual interlude for awhile.18) Dad is getting a new car, and parking it in his garage.19) Son may get a USED car, when his grades are A's & B's, for two - consecutive - semesters.20) Mom and son are to attend driving school.21) Son will explain drug usage - completely, or face rehab & boarding school.22) Mom will be weaned off of her "medications"; NOW.23) Children will make their own lunches, for school; no more money for shitty school food.24) NO soda. Maybe, when we dine out. Maybe, on the weekends.25) NO MySpace accounts, or any other assinine accounts - a computer geek will check all of their computers - monthly (they need fear put into their lives).26) Dad will attend all school functions.27) Everyone will be present for all birthdays.28) Children will wear clothes that Dad approves of.29) Mom will dress daughter like a little girl; not a 'hoochie-mama'. * and - definitely - no "juicy" pants on her bottom!30) Daughter will not have any underwear, except for briefs.31) Sons will not be told to pull up their pants, or face having said pants donated.32) NO 'Rap' music, within Dad's hearing range.33) NO tattoos, until you are out of my house.34) NO piercings (except for daughter's ears), until you are out of my house.35) NO dyeing of hair, until you are out of my house.Did I miss something?I'm continuing to add to the list...Tell me if I missed something...Tell me if I'm wrong...I've seen those "wife-swap" & "nanny" shows...I hate to think that is my life...Wish me luck...I may be sleeping on the patio tonight...Markets Insider The dollar is tumbling on Tuesday. The US dollar index was down by 0.4% at 98.46 as of 7:48 a.m. ET. "Dollar selling pressure emerged at the end of last week, partly in response to disappointing US economic data. This selling pressure carried over into yesterday's activity," Marc Chandler, the global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman, said Tuesday. "News that President Trump may have shared intelligence with Russia's foreign minister and US ambassador not only heightened ongoing concerns about the Administration's ties with Russia but also is seen by some as jeopardizing the aggressive legislative agenda," he continued. "Asia seemed slow to respond to the developments, but in the afternoon, it began to sell the dollar. The euro is the chief beneficiary." As for the rest of the world, here's the scoreboard as of 7:51 a.m. ET:A few weekends ago I spent the day locked in furious battle with friend and Monocle Studios co-founder Luke Hatcher. The event was DjangoDash, an event where teams of 1-3 spend a weekend trying to create a site from scratch. We went into the weekend with very little preparation. Luke went into the weekend with a partner who once fancied himself a Django blogger but had subsequently forgotten everything about Django (that would be me). Lop-sided competence and initial disorganization proved surmountable as cheery camaraderie manifested into our site, DrinkFindr. DrinkFindr is a pretty basic site for creating, rating and discovering mixed drinks based on ingredients and names. It probably won't shake your world, but it can give you a hangover. Most shockingly, the Monocle Studios team pulled through to get 10th place in the DjangoDash rankings. We'll use the staggering rewards of our victory for the benefit of mankind. Well, I'm probably going to Crepes on Cole for breakfast, anyway. That might benefit mankind. And unlike the DjangoDash website, Drinkfindr actually still serves pages. Just saying.Very few words have been said in defence of Lance Armstrong in recent days, but his former domestique José Luis Rubiera has declared that he still views the Texan as the greatest rider of his era. Speaking to El Diario de Mallorca, Rubiera, who rode with Armstrong at US Postal, Discovery Channel, Astana and RadioShack, also said that he never saw the American take banned products and eulogised the ability of controversy-mired coach Michele Ferrari, calling him “the best coach there is”. Related Articles Rubiera relishing Vuelta stage on self-named climb Rubiera signs off at the Tour of Lombardy Rubiera: My best move was joining US Postal Armstrong: It's been a difficult couple of weeks Asked about the accusations laid against Armstrong and the US Postal team in the USADA dossier, Rubiera responded, “I'm very relaxed about it. They were very happy years for me. For all those who competed in that era, or for the immense majority at least, Armstrong was the best. There were great riders who were close to him such as [Jan] Ullrich, [Ivan] Basso and [Alex] Zülle, but he was undoubtedly the best and he showed that by winning the Tour seven times.” Speaking specifically about doping, Rubiera said, “I never saw him dope. The regulations are evolving and you have to judge events in each era according to their context. I think that you have to look to the future and also judge the sporting quality of a person like Armstrong.” Rubiera did have some words of criticism, but they were directed not at his former team leader but at those who have confessed to past misdemeanours. “They are acting out of personal interest. They recognise that they have done something and by collaborating they are able to reduce the penalty they receive. “They are trying to pay for what they have done with a six-month suspension when others have had to have a two-year ban. If they are so sorry about what they have done and want to save cycling, they ought to give the money they’ve earned to the grassroots of the sport,” said the Spaniard. Rubiera added that by its very nature professional cycling is not a healthy sport. “Don’t let the UCI tell me that they are concerned about our health when we have to ride in 45-degree [Celsius] temperatures up the Tourmalet after riding 220km the day before and with another 200km to follow the day after. That’s not healthy,” he said. Rubiera acknowledged that he had been advised by Michele Ferrari in the past, and has no reason to hide the fact. “He was and is the best coach. Training with him had its price. I worked with him for two years and learned a lot about training and diet, but I decided to leave him because it seemed very expensive,” said Rubiera.A daily analysis of global temperatures shows that the Northern Hemisphere likely exceeded 2 degrees Celsius above "normal" around March 1, 2016, when measuring from pre-industrial levels. Ryan Maue/Weatherbell Analytics Update: since this post was originally published, the heat wave has continued. As of Thursday morning, it appears that average temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere have breached the 2 degrees Celsius above "normal" mark for the first time in recorded history, and likely the first time since human civilization began thousands of years ago.* That mark has long been held (somewhat arbitrarily) as the point above which climate change may begin to become "dangerous" to humanity. It's now arrived—though very briefly—much more quickly than anticipated. This is a milestone moment for our species. Climate change deserves our greatest possible attention. Original post: Our planet's preliminary February temperature data are in, and it's now abundantly clear: Global warming is going into overdrive. There are dozens of global temperature datasets, and usually I (and my climate journalist colleagues) wait until the official ones are released about the middle of the following month to announce a record-warm month at the global level. But this month's data is so extraordinary that there's no need to wait: February obliterated the all-time global temperature record set just last month. Using unofficial data and adjusting for different base-line temperatures, it appears that February 2016 was likely somewhere between 1.15 and 1.4 degrees warmer than the long-term average, and about 0.2 degrees above last month—good enough for the most above-average month ever measured. (Since the globe had already warmed by about +0.45 degrees above pre-industrial levels during the 1981-2010 base-line meteorologists commonly use, that amount has been added to the data released today.) Global temperatures hit a new all-time record high in February, shattering the old record set just last month amid a record-strong El Niño. Ryan Maue/Weatherbell AnalyticsWhen implementing new features for the Web, it’s important for us to be able to get them into the hands of developers early, so they can give new things a try. (Of course, this also helps us identify and fix bugs!) In the past, browsers did this by using vendor-prefixed names for features. This was intended to protect the Web from the churn of spec and implementation changes. Browsers would eventually implement the standard version with no prefix and drop support for the prefixed version. Over time this strategy has turned out not to work so well. Many websites came to depend on prefixed properties. They often used every prefixed variant of a feature, which makes CSS less maintainable and JavaScript programs trickier to write. Sites frequently used just the prefixed version of a feature, which made it hard for browsers to drop support for the prefixed variant when adding support for the unprefixed, standard version. Ultimately, browsers felt pressured by compatibility concerns to implement each other’s prefixes. The current consensus among browser implementors is that, on the whole, prefixed properties have hurt more than they’ve helped. So, WebKit’s new policy is to implement experimental features unprefixed, behind a runtime flag. Runtime flags allow us to continue to get experimental features into developers’ hands while avoiding the various problems vendor prefixes had. Runtime flags also make it easier for us to have different default settings between stable builds and preview builds such as Safari Technology Preview. We’ll be applying our updated policy to new feature work going forward. Whether or not a runtime flag should be on or off on WebKit trunk (and thus in nightly builds) depends on the maturity of the feature, both in terms of its spec stability and implementation maturity. What does this mean for Web developers? Initially, developers shouldn’t notice anything different. In the longer term we hope this change will make it easier for you to try out upcoming features. As always, we encourage you to give in-progress features a try. Feedback and bug reports on experimental features are very welcome. What about currently prefixed features? We’ll be evaluating existing features on a case-by-case basis. We expect to significantly reduce the number of prefixed properties supported over time but Web compatibility will require us to keep around prefixed versions of some features. We invite comments and feedback on the new policy from Web developers, educators, and our colleagues working on other browser engines. Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter (@hober), Jon Davis (@jonathandavis), @webkit, or email me directly at [email protected] Gonna Doxx Us a guest Aug 26th, 2015 448 Never a guest448Never Not a member of Pastebin yet? Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features! rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 2.03 KB "Not Gonna Doxx Us" Not gonna doxx us They're not gonna doxx us Not gonna doxx us Not gonna doxx us Not gonna doxx us They're not gonna doxx us They're not gonna doxx us Not gonna doxx us They're not gonna doxx us Not gonna doxx us! Starting from here, let's make a promise Journos and gamers, let's just be honest We're gonna fight, nothing can stop us Even the bomb threats that falls all around us Soon there will be ethics for game sites SJWS will whine, over the mountains We'll run away from sites without ethics Tweets from the gamers falling upon you Nothing can stop us, not now, I love games They're not gonna doxx us, they're not gonna doxx us Nothing can stop us, not now, I love games They're not gonna doxx us, they're not gonna doxx us They're not gonna doxx us (Not..) They're not gonna doxx us, gonna doxx us, gonna doxx us.. (Not gonna doxx us) They're not gonna doxx us (gonna doxx us, gonna doxx us!) Not gonna doxx us Not gonna doxx us, gonna doxx us. Not gonna doxx us NOT GONNA DOXX US, GONNA DOXX US! (Not gonna doxx us) Doxx Us, doxx us.. (Not gonna doxx us) Not gonna doxx us Not gonna doxx us We'll fight back, for games fun and simple Ethics will arise, our fighting motto We rush ahead, gaming is winning Our spirits rise, they're not gonna doxx us My love for games, always forever Just games and us, all else is nothing Not going back, not going back there They don't understand, They don't understand us Not gonna doxx us, gonna doxx us, gonna doxx us (gonna doxx.. doxx us.) Not gonna doxx us (gonna get.. gonna get..) Not gonna doxx us, gonna doxx us.. Not gonna doxx us Nothing can stop us, not now, I love you They're not gonna doxx us, they're not gonna doxx us Nothing can stop us, not now, I love you They're not gonna doxx us, they're not gonna doxx us They're not gonna doxx us (Not gonna doxx us) They're not gonna doxx us, gonna doxx us They're not gonna doxx us (Not gonna doxx us) Not gonna doxx us, get us Not gonna doxx us, get us Not gonna doxx us" RAW Paste Data "Not Gonna Doxx Us" Not gonna doxx us They're not gonna doxx us Not gonna doxx us Not gonna doxx us Not gonna doxx us They're not gonna doxx us They're not gonna doxx us Not gonna doxx us They're not gonna doxx us Not gonna doxx us! Starting from here, let's make a promise Journos and gamers, let's just be honest We're gonna fight, nothing can stop us Even the bomb threats that falls all around us Soon there will be ethics for game sites SJWS will whine, over the mountains We'll run away from sites without ethics Tweets from the gamers falling upon you Nothing can stop us, not now, I love games They're not gonna doxx us, they're not gonna doxx us Nothing can stop us, not now, I love games They're not gonna doxx us, they're not gonna doxx us They're not gonna doxx us (Not..) They're not gonna doxx us, gonna doxx us, gonna doxx us.. (Not gonna doxx us) They're not gonna doxx us (gonna doxx us, gonna doxx us!) Not gonna doxx us Not gonna doxx us, gonna doxx us. Not gonna doxx us NOT GONNA DOXX US, GONNA DOXX US! (Not gonna doxx us) Doxx Us, doxx us.. (Not gonna doxx us) Not gonna doxx us Not gonna doxx us We'll fight back, for games fun and simple Ethics will arise, our fighting motto We rush ahead, gaming is winning Our spirits rise, they're not gonna doxx us My love for games, always forever Just games and us, all else is nothing Not going back, not going back there They don't understand, They don't understand us Not gonna doxx us, gonna doxx us, gonna doxx us (gonna doxx.. doxx us.) Not gonna doxx us (gonna get.. gonna get..) Not gonna doxx us, gonna doxx us.. Not gonna doxx us Nothing can stop us, not now, I love you They're not gonna doxx us, they're not gonna doxx us Nothing can stop us, not now, I love you They're not gonna doxx us, they're not gonna doxx us They're not gonna doxx us (Not gonna doxx us) They're not gonna doxx us, gonna doxx us They're not gonna doxx us (Not gonna doxx us) Not gonna doxx us, get us Not gonna doxx us, get us Not gonna doxx us"Washington August has thus far been kind to Hillary Clinton's poll numbers both nationally and in some critical battleground states. The former secretary of state has been able to ride a post-convention bounce and mostly uncontested television airwaves to her strongest position yet in CNN's Electoral College outlook this year. This election is far from over, but the map now -- which is a snapshot of this moment and not a prediction -- more solidly favors Clinton. What's changed? - New Hampshire (4 electoral votes) moves from "battleground" to "lean Democrat" - Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes) moves from "battleground" to "lean Democrat" - Virginia (13 electoral votes) moves from "battleground" to "lean Democrat" That adds 37 more electoral votes to Clinton's total and puts her at 273 electoral votes -- just ahead of the needed 270 electoral votes to win the White House. Explore the map and make your choices Road to 270: Electoral College map The state of play If Donald Trump were to win all the remaining battleground states on the map, he'd still be shy of the 270 votes needed to win the White House which means he is going to have to pick off at least one of the states currently leaning in Hillary Clinton's direction in addition to running the table in those battlegrounds. This update to the map is far from a prediction that the election is over and Clinton has won. The next 80 days are going to be fiercely contested between the candidates and our current state of play shows Clinton holding a significant electoral advantage heading in to that intense fall campaign. The good news for Trump is that the election isn't being held today and a new national poll out from Pew Research shows some of Clinton's post-convention glory may be fading a bit. In an effort to steady his campaign after several rough weeks of controversies that knocked him off course, Trump put some new leadership at the top of his team this week and is about to begin his first real concerted television advertising campaign in the battleground states. He also started to shift his tone a bit, expressing general regret for some of the things he has said during this heated campaign. The initial $4 ad million buy will be hitting television screens in Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. And Trump's new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, has mentioned the goal of beefing up some of the state based operations in the key states. The current CNN battleground map gives Hillary Clinton 273 electoral votes from states that are either solidly or leaning in her direction compared to 191 electoral votes for Donald Trump in states that are solidly or leaning in his direction. That leaves 74 electoral votes up for grabs across 5 battleground states -- Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Iowa, and Nevada. Solid Republican: Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Arkansas (6), Idaho (4), Indiana (11), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (8), Mississippi (6), Missouri (10), Montana (3), Nebraska (5), North Dakota (3), Oklahoma (7), South Carolina (9), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), Texas (38), West Virginia (5), Wyoming (3) (158 total) Leans Republican: Arizona (11), Georgia (16), Utah (6) (33 total) Battleground states: Florida (29), Iowa (6), Nevada (6), Ohio (18), North Carolina (15) (74 total) Leans Democratic: Colorado (9), Michigan (16), New Hampshire (4), Pennsylvania (20), Virginia (13), Wisconsin (10), (72 total) Solid Democratic: California (55), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), DC (3), Hawaii (4), Illinois (20), Maine (4), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (11), New Jersey (14), New York (29), Oregon (7), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Washington (12), Minnesota (10), New Mexico (5) (201 total)President Donald Trump indicated that one motivation for pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord was the opportunity to bring jobs back to coal country. But regardless of the accord — which didn’t even prevent America from using more coal — the demand for coal is drying up. More than 250 U.S. coal plants have closed or announced their closure since 2010, and two of those plants are in Adams County, Ohio, which voted decisively for Trump. The J.M. Stuart Station and the Killen Station, which are scheduled to close next year, employ some 700 people in the community of 28,000. Their closures will translate to about $35 million in lost salary and
notes and comments March 31, 2014 Direct download links: MP3 & Ogg Bridge Linux – a wasted decade? – ShellCheck, vnstat Full show notes and comments March 17, 2014 Direct download links: MP3 & Ogg Interview with Rob Landley Full show notes and comments March 3, 2014 Direct download links: MP3 & Ogg Madbox Linux – Android-x86 – does anyone need desktop Linux any more? Full show notes and comments February 16, 2014 Direct download links: MP3 & Ogg PLD Linux Distribution – Antergos and Manjaro – does Linux need a benevolent dictator? Full show notes and comments February 3, 2014 Direct download links: MP3 & Ogg Musix GNU+Linux – Debian – more licensing – Window Maker Full show notes and comments January 30, 2014 Direct download links: MP3 & Ogg DoudouLinux – Slackware – to GPL or not to GPL Full show notes and comments January 30, 2014 Direct download links: MP3 & Ogg ALT Linux – Fedora 20 – 2014 predictions Full show notes and comments January 30, 2014 Direct download links: MP3 & Ogg Toorox – specialist USB distros – openSUSE 13.1 – ClipGrab – password managers Full show notes and comments January 30, 2014 Direct download links: MP3 & Ogg Swift Linux – USB stick distros – get_iplayer, youtube-dl Full show notes and comments January 30, 2014 Direct download links: MP3 & Ogg Source Mage – moving our host – distraction-free word processing tools Full show notes and comments January 30, 2014 Well, we got over the first hurdle for a new show, and reached our second episode. As Joe said in the recording, we most definitely will not become just another news ‘n’ releases style podcast, but there was an awful lot of important news to discuss this week… Direct download links: MP3 & Ogg Semplice – what is a distro? – GoAccess Full show notes and comments January 30, 2014 So, a new Linux podcast is born. As you might expect, our first show was somewhat rough and ready – and just a little bit ranty. Direct download links: MP3 & Ogg Bodhi – Year of the Linux desktop – Potamus Full show notes and comments The content of this website, and that of the podcasts produced by the website owners, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.“Unacceptable” new anti-Russian sanctions approved by the US Senate violate international law, affect European companies and have a real aim of benefitting the US oil and gas sector, Berlin and Vienna said in an angry joint statement. The new anti-Russian sanctions are outlined in an amendment to a bill imposing sanctions against Iran. It was approved by the US Senate on Thursday by a majority of 98 to 2, but still needs to pass the House of Representatives and be signed by the US president to become law. Read more The anti-Russian measures in the amendment involve imposing penalties on enterprises that cooperate with Russian oil and gas companies. A number of European companies are doing just that, participating for example in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project. “Europe's energy supply is a matter for Europe, and not the United States of America!” said the joint statement by German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel and Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern, published on Thursday. “We cannot accept threatening European companies that contribute to the development of the European energy supply [system] with extraterritorial sanctions that violate the international law.” “Sanctions as a political instrument should not be linked to economic interests,” the statement says. It adds that “threatening German, Austrian and other European enterprises, which take part in the gas supply projects such as the Nord Stream II together with Russia or finance them, with penalties on the US market would add an absolutely new and highly negative aspect in relations between the US and Europe.” The statement went on to say that Washington’s intention to impose new sanctions against Russia is guided not by some political or humanitarian reasons but rather by economic interest. “This issue is all about the sales of the US condensed gas [to Europe] and pressing the Russian energy supply companies from the European market. The actual goal [of such sanctions] is to provide jobs for the US gas and oil industry,” the statement says, citing the US bill on the new sanctions. Read more Gabriel and Kern also expressed their concerns over the fact that the US is actually trying to boost its own competitiveness at the expense of its European allies that the new measures would eventually negatively affect “competitive positions of our [European] energy intensive industries and thousands of jobs.” They also accused the US of attempts to interfere in Europe’s internal affairs and impose its will on its allies by undermining the principle of “open and fair market competition.” “It would be not only highly regrettable but also detrimental to the effectiveness of our position in the context of the Ukrainian conflict, if some unrelated issues such the US economic interests in exporting gas gain the upper hand in this matter,” the statement warns. The two politicians then urged the US authorities to back away from these plans and said that they “very much support” the efforts of the US Department of State aimed at changing the bill concerning the sanctions. US State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert refused to comment on the criticism voiced by Austria and Germany that the bill’s real beneficiary is the US energy sector. Instead she said that Washington “welcomes” the first US shipment of the liquefied natural gas to Poland (LNG) that arrived in the Polish port of Swinoujscie last week. She argued that such shipments provide an alternative to the Russian gas supplies as they come from the countries “that are perhaps more stable.” “Russia has the ability to turn off the natural gas and it puts the Polish people in a very difficult situation,” Nauert said. The amendment on anti-Russian sanctions stipulates “broad new sanctions on key sectors of Russia’s economy, including mining, metals, shipping and railways”. The bill also prohibits lifting any executive sanctions imposed on Russia by the Obama administration without congressional review. The amendment states that the goal of US policy in this particular case is to “oppose the Nord Stream II pipeline given its detrimental impacts on the European Union's energy security… and energy reforms in Ukraine.” According to the amendment, the US president can impose sanctions against entities and individuals that either make an investment “that directly and significantly contributes to the enhancement of the ability of the Russian Federation to construct energy export pipelines” or provides Russia with “goods, services, technology, information, or support that could directly and significantly facilitate the maintenance or expansion of the construction, modernization, or repair of [its] energy pipelines.” Read more The White House, meanwhile, said it is still looking at the Senate’s proposal to slap Russia with new sanctions, with deputy spokesman James S. Brady saying that the amendment first “needs to go through the House” for Trump to weigh in. Brady, however, added that the US administration views the existing sanctions against Moscow “the best tool for compelling Russia” to comply with the Minsk agreements. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said that Russia has been historically living under some form of sanctions from the West, which are used as a tool of economic competition as well as a means of containment. “If there were no situation with Crimea and other problems, they would have invented something else to contain Russia,” he said. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called for a more “flexible approach” to the issue of anti-Russian sanctions. He particularly said that he would not like to see Washington “handcuffed” to the progress in the implementation of the Minsk agreements as Moscow and Kiev could eventually find some other way to resolve the crisis in eastern Ukraine. Earlier, Tillerson also said that virtually all US partners and allies were calling on Washington to improve its relations with Russia and warned that a new set of restrictive measures against Moscow might further worsen relations with Russia. The Nord Stream II project will give Russia’s Gazprom additional capacity in supplying Europe with gas through a pipeline that would go under the Baltic Sea to Germany. The project is operated by the Nord Stream II company, which is fully owned by Gazprom. However, half of the project’s cost, amounting to €9.5 billion, is financed by several European energy as well as oil and gas companies, including Shell, Uniper, Wintershall, Engie and OMV, which thus can be affected by the new US sanctions. Some of these companies already suffered from the US Senate’s decision to approve the sanctions bill as the shares of the OMV fell 3.7 percent Thursday, while Engie was down 1.3 percent, Shell 1.1 percent and Uniper 0.9 percent, according to the Financial Times.Here's what you need to know... A weak grip can equal elbow pain. If you can't carry a load equal to your bodyweight in each hand for 15 meters, your grip sucks. Farmer's walks will help. The false grip can boost your maximal strength numbers, but it reduces the capability of the neuromuscular system to produce force through the hands and wrists. If your elbow hurts, use a neutral grip (palms facing each other) instead of a pronated or supinated position in your primary lifts. If you've been making one of the above mistakes and have achy elbows, give self-myofascial release a shot. Elbow Pain: Causes and Cures If your elbows resemble a rickshaw more than a functional piece of bioengineering, here are three probable causes, along with some hugely effective self-myofascial release techniques. 1 – A Weak Grip Without reliving the painful memories of the 1980's "grip trainers" that maimed more than their share of desk jockeys looking to Popeye-up their forearms, you must improve your grip strength to prevent or eradicate elbow pain for the long run. A lack of functional grip strength not only limits your big-boy gym stats, but it can cause some horrific trauma to the deep finger and wrist flexors that adds up over time. The test: If you think your grip is more than adequate, you're probably mistaken. The standards for a 15-20 meter carry are being able to lift and carry a load equal to your bodyweight in each hand. Last time I checked, that's pretty damn heavy! At the very least, a functional carry should consist of 75% of your bodyweight in each hand. If you aren't here, it's time to just get better at the basics. To enhance elbow health while increasing maximal grip force output, pick up the load on your carries in a linearly periodized progression. Keep the distance relatively short (10-15 meters) and treat your loads no differently than any other strength movement in your arsenal. Program carries at least twice a week, making sure adequate rest periods are taken between sets. The goal is to increase your anaerobic capacity, not to walk around with 50 pounds in each hand for a half hour like you're a UPS deliveryman. 2 – Using a False Grip Sure, the false grip can boost your maximal strength numbers. No argument there. Adding a few active muscle fibers firing at full capacity will obviously lead to greater force output. But can this technique sustain the chronic punishment imposed by your training? Probably not. Unfortunately, the false grip does a few questionable things to the overall function of the upper body. First, it reduces the capability of the neuromuscular system to produce force through the hands and wrists. The hand is the first link necessary to authenticate any movement of the upper body and shoulder girdle. Without the ability to form a fist around your chosen training tool, you're more likely to overstress the larger joints up the chain like the elbow and shoulder. While maximal tension can create PRs and boost your workout stats (along with your ego), high levels of mechanical tension can also cause an equally high level of soft tissue damage. In the case of the false grip being used as a primary mechanism for movement, you exponentiate acute and chronic trauma to the elbow and surrounding tissues. The small forearm and wrist flexors - highly comprised of tendinous junctions with bone and muscle - are basically being torn to shreds secondary to your training. Macro-tearing your tissues down multiple times a week is generally considered a bad thing. We can further limit this damage by simply ditching the false grip and wrapping your hand around the bar. Train with the traditional grip until your elbows are supremely strong and healthy. Only then should you consider the false-grip alternative. 3 – Pushing and Pulling With a Pronated or Supinated Grip The supinated (hands facing the body) or pronated (hand facing away from the body) grips used for pushing and pulling are standard operating procedure, but if your elbows hurt, start using a neutral grip. That means your palms will be facing one another. This innocent rotation can enhance the way you move without the necessity of employing additional tactics in your activation and movement patterns that may take years to perfect. The neutral grip allows a greater amount of shoulder joint centration along with decreasing the angle of the upper arm relative to the torso. Without torturing your with brain-numbing biomechanical analysis, the more centrally positioned we can place the shoulder, elbow, and wrist, the better those joints are going to naturally function. Use the neutral hand position in your primary lifts whenever possible. This includes multi-joint pulling movements like the deadlift, row, and vertical pull. The use of readily available equipment like the trap bar and cable handles makes assuming a neutral hand position on your heavy pull days a cakewalk. Things get a little more complicated for primary pressing movements such as bench variations and overhead pressing, especially if you're training at a commercial gym that frowns upon intelligently modified programming. The football bar will provide the best training stimulus when concentrating on a neutral hand position. If you can find one, get to work. If not, your options are limited, and you may start to question that $10 per month gym membership. Likewise, if you're crafty, the trap bar or Dead-Squat™ Bar can be a great way to vertical press if you can MacGyver a power rack setup. Additionally, use dumbbell flat and incline pressing until you're sure your shoulders are strong enough to revert back to using supinated and or pronated grips. Self-Myofascial Release Techniques If you've been making one or all of the above mistakes and find yourself struggling with achy elbows, give these self-myofascial release techniques a shot. The great thing about the elbow is that it's easily accessible to some serious soft tissue work. Start slow and reap the myriad of benefits of good ol' self-treatment! Treating the pronator teres Treating the medial wrist flexors Treating the deep wrist extensorsSince the Nintendo Switch presentation, the gaming community found itself in the typical three camps: hyped, disgruntled or 'IDGAF.' After the disaster that was the Wii U, it's easy to see why people would fall into the 'disgruntled' camp, however, we shouldn't be too worried about the Nintendo Switch. A rebuttal to "Opinion: Nintendo Switch is in trouble" If we look at the history of Nintendo – at least since their current competitors released the original Xbox and PlayStation – they haven't been the sole console in a home. Their consoles have been the additional console, the support console. They aren't the main piece of tech in the room, they are the supplementary tech that tends to be more useful than most of the other options if you have more than four people in a room. With this knowledge, Nintendo knows they don't have to compete with the Xbox One or PlayStation 4, they just need to woo you into wanting the unique feature they are offering. With the Wii it was the motion controls, with the Wii U it was the gamepad, with the Switch it's the mobility. Try lugging your PS4 and Xbox One on a bus and playing it – it won't be a fun endeavor. The Switch, on the other hand, is offering a unique addition to your gaming arsenal, a home console you can take with you to the outside world and pick up exactly where you left off on your TV screen when you're home. It's offering something you won't be doing with your Xbox One or PS4 unless you buy an accessory that allows you to do so (and that's still a pain in the butt 'cause those things are heavy). About the games… Stop complaining about them. Sure, the Nintendo Switch is launching with less games than the Wii U – but it is launching with some heavy hitters and third party games. In fact, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild could be a system seller – it's offering a fresh take on Zelda. If someone doesn't own a Wii U, there's a chance they will buy the Switch just for that game and it helps that Wii U consoles have been vanishing from shelves — a point I'll be circling back to. In addition to Breath of the Wild, we've got Splatoon 2, it's predecessor was shooter of the year in 2015, a brand new Super Mario game – Super Mario Odyssey (Holiday 2017), a Bethesda game (which the Wii U never saw) The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Fall 2017), a number of Dragon Quest games, Steep (recently released from Ubisoft), Minecraft, Xenoblade 2, Project Sonic, Stardew Valley, Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 and a bunch more. There are plenty of games to be excited about – especially a whole new take on Mario. Nintendo didn't spend time on bringing up somewhat exhausted games. Now back to the Wii U vanishing… The Wii U had a horrible shelf life, everyone knows it and there's no point in arguing it. It's no surprise that the console has been slowly disappearing as the Switch launch nears. Nintendo is limiting your options, and if you think you can buy a cheaper Wii U for Breath of the Wild – they don't want to make that an easy endeavor. It's really a beautiful, but cruel, way of making you buy the Switch (wipe that horribly beautiful corporate tear from your eye.). The Wii U suffered from a horrible lack of marketing, even clear marketing that let you know what that console offered over its similarly named predecessor. The Switch is already getting better marketing – its reveal trailer didn't feature many children, showing that the console isn't only for kids (a stereotype that got slapped onto the Wii U), that is was great for parties (Mario Kart and Smash Bros. are the games you pull out when you have friends over) and that it could be used for things like eSports (at the end). The Switch isn't the same beast as the Wii U and Nintendo is making a point of that. New features and technology are on the way The Switch is unique, we've been over that. The system will run 720p60 as a handheld and up to 1080p60 when docked, that means that when it's in handheld mode games will look like they do on the Wii U. It's launching with 32GB of space, more than the Wii U offered in its base version. And to reiterate a previous point, it doesn't matter if it's on par with the Xbox One and PS4 – the Switch isn't looking to replace those consoles. On top of that, the use of game cartridges helps mitigate that need for extra storage space. Nintendo is starting a paid online service with the Switch, we don't know enough about it develop a full-fledged opinion. We do know that the service will offer online gaming, sharing screenshots to social media, friend management, eShop access, exclusive deals and a monthly download (though you only have that game for a month, then it's gone). The online service needs to be fleshed out by Nintendo before we can really offer fair judgment. The accessories are priced the same way every other console prices their accessories, which is too damn expensive. Unfortunately, that's the status quo. Nintendo shouldn't have to offer cheaper accessories when everyone else charges too much, though they should at least be on par with the other accessories (which they nearly are, Xbox controller are anywhere from $60 to $80). The dock being $90 is negligible, you can pick yours up and move it – the same way you treat your Xbox One or PS4. Real talk, the Switch's success and third-party game availability depends on YOU Whether the Switch sees more third-party games and indie games doesn't depend on Nintendo, it depends on you. The Wii U didn't sell, there was no real user base – so developers didn't spend time and money developing for a console that wouldn't see any type of monetary return. Yes, game developers want to create games – it's their passion – but they also want money… like any other company. The Switch's adoption rate will decide whether or not Ubisoft, Activision, Bethesda, and other developers bring more games to the system.BOCA RATON, Fla. -- Wednesday's NFC Coaches Breakfast wheeled out another 16 leaders of men to discuss roster transactions, quarterback battles and scheme changes for 2016. The sprawling grounds here at the Boca Raton Resort and Club are flush this week with the most football talent anywhere on earth, but what would these coaches be doing if they never fell in love with the game? On Wednesday morning, we asked them that question. Here's what they had to say: Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy "I'd be behind that camera (points to a TV camera jokingly). You'd see a different side. I'd be in the media, definitely.... No, to be honest, I'd be in construction, I think. It's something -- business, construction -- just growing up, the way my father was wired, just always doing something in business. He was a fireman, we owned a bar, he had -- still does -- a couple rentals, so we were always doing something, so I'd be in some line of business." Arizona Cardinals coach Bruce Arians "School teacher. Probably a guidance counselor. That's what I studied, but I always knew I wanted to be a coach." Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll "Back in the day, I was told I should be a recreation director when I took my tests, so I'd be working in some city throwing out balls and playing hoops or something like that. That would probably fit me pretty good. But I would rather be digging and looking for historical stuff. I'd like to be an archeologist." Dallas Cowboys coach Jason Garrett "It's a hard question. I'm very fortunate, ever since I was a young kid, I wanted to be a football player and I had a chance to do that. Now I have a chance to be a football coach. This is what I've been thinking about my whole life. At the end of my playing career, I did a few games in NFL Europe for FOX as a broadcaster, so I messed around with that, but I feel really fortunate to play in the National Football League and now coach in the National Football League. It's something I've been thinking about since I was a young kid." (We then suggested that Garrett could partner with former teammate Troy Aikman in the booth, but he wouldn't bite, saying: "No, he's on the A team.") Carolina Panthers coach Ron Rivera "Something in service, whether it be in the military or a firefighter or a police officer. Something like that." Philadelphia Eagles coach Doug Pederson "I have a degree in business. I've always been intrigued with construction, architecture and I love the design of building something -- buildings even around here (at the Boca Raton Resort) -- I feel like that would be a nice path to go down if I weren't doing the football thing." Minnesota Vikings coach Mike Zimmer "Probably something in sports. Baseball coach, I guess. Or (a hunter), something like that. There's a lot of things I can say, but I won't." Detroit Lions coach Jim Caldwell "There's a number of different things. Number one, I've always had a sense that I wanted to have an impact on young people. You know, that's one of the things that's always been near to my heart. A lot of folks in my family are ministers and so I could always see the interaction they had with people and how they were able to inspire, uplift, encourage and get people to do some things a little bit above and beyond they thought at the outset. So I've always wanted to be in that arena. I've always gravitated toward that, but the teaching aspect -- and that's what I do now. I mean, we're teachers. We're high-paid teachers, but nevertheless, our job is to instruct. But also, the important part of teaching is having some impact on their moral compass, as well. Winning is extremely important, but I think you have to deal with the whole man." Atlanta Falcons coach Dan Quinn "If I had to have a second career path, I'd go into the military. I love being part of a team. I love what that represents, and I think nobody does it better than our armed forces in terms of being a part of a team." Chicago Bears coach John Fox "I would have been a teacher. Actually, I was going to be a teacher first. I only got into coaching because of Proposition 13 in the state of California, which basically I go through five years of college, alright? (Because they freeze) all my profession: Fire department, teachers and police department.... So I had to get a job, so I got hired by (former Rams, Chargers and Oilers coach) Sid Gillman at a little school called USIU.... I was going to be a P.E. teacher... so it was kind of a cosmic switch."Please enable Javascript to watch this video STURTEVANT/SYRIA -- When Jordan Matson's father told the FBI his son was fighting ISIS in Syria, they didn't believe him. But there Matson was, on televisions around the world, after being interviewed following an injury sustained from a six-hour firefight. For nine months, Matson had several close calls. After witnessing the world's bloodiest war firsthand, Matson is finally home, and he is explaining why he risked his life to fight in a war with a foreign militia. "You kind of feel like a visitor almost. After coming home from that. You don’t feel like you’re a native," said Matson. Matson was 27 years old in 2014, and had never been outside of the country. He bought a plane ticket, told no one, and traveled to the Middle East. "Flew into Turkey. And then took a connecting flight into southern Turkey where a bearded man picked me up. Didn’t speak any English. Just pointed at me and told me to come over and I was like 'this is it. I am either going to go where I’m going to go or I’m going to end up on TV.'So luckily it was the man I was talking to online," said Matson. Through Facebook, Matson discovered the YPG, a Kurdish militia that was fighting ISIS in northern Syria. Matson had made the decision in the months prior, that he was sick of watching ISIS advance, and was furious western governments including his own, were not helping. "I was just done with it. Just done with watching these people die. And nothing being done about it," said Matson. Matson's decision to risk his life was likely a result of his DNA. "I grew up wanting to join the military," said Matson. From the day he was born, Matson says he always looked up to his father. Tim Matson knows fighting in the Middle East well. A 30-year veteran of the United States Army, he served two tours in Afghanistan. "Since they’ve been little they’ve been riding in the 4th of July parades in a Humvee," said Tim Matson. Jordan Matson followed in his dad's footsteps, and joined the Army right out of high school. For him, it was a dream come true -- but that dream came to a screeching halt just over a year after he enlisted. "I left because at the time, I was married to a woman who was unfaithful. I may or may not have said some things to the man who she was unfaithful with and we were going to deploy to the same area of Iraq together and my unit didn’t think that was a great idea," said Matson. Attempts to re-enlist failed. "I felt like I had not completed what I had set out in life to do. I had set out to do a deployment and serve my country," said Matson. "It obsessed him. I could tell it 'took away his best friend' kind of thing. It was some pretty, I don’t want to say dark times. But it was bad," said Tim Matson "It was my dark time," said Jordan Matson. Please enable Javascript to watch this video Back home in Sturtevant, Jordan Matson found a new purpose as he watched Mosul, Iraq fall to ISIS. "This is a human problem. This is genocide. You’re not going to do anything about it?" said Matson. Matson found the YPG on the internet -- a secular group, in which Muslims, women and Christians all fight together. The group was welcoming foreign fighters. Matson left a note for his mother, and texted his father as he made his way to the airport. He says his first problem was learning to communicate with people he was entrusting with his life. "They didn’t have anything for people speaking English. Everybody spoke Kurdish. We’re the first Americans coming over there. They are like 'oh thank you for the support. We love having you here. This guy speaks 20 words of English so you are going to go with him.' So that’s how it was, "said Matson. Sent to the front lines, Matson saw his first action on his second day there. "The second night we were out, they attacked the Christian police station about 1,500 meters down the road. And around midnight they hit our base. That was a six-hour firefight as they attacked our position. Luckily we didn’t give in and we got armored support around 4:30 a.m. Thank God we made it through that. Some of my friends didn’t," said Matson. In the months that followed, Matson had several close calls. "I got blown up by an I-E-D once off a hill. I’ve been shot at, and barely missed a few times. Three times in Tel Tamer. Two times in Shangal. I can remember just getting missed by snipers. I had a mortar blow up the roof of the building I was staying in. We were covered by adobe and what not. I didn’t die from it, but it still caved in the entire roof of our building," said Matson. Matson says one of his greatest accomplishments was saving starving families from a surrounded mountain top. He helped liberate several villages and cities. He's seen ISIS atrocities firsthand. "I’ve seen the horrors that they’ve done to the families that have had to fight against them. All the loved ones that have paid the price," said Matson. After nine months, Matson knew it was time to leave. "After everything that transpired, I was getting a little battle fatigue. I wasn’t ducking when I should, when mortars were coming in. Or I’d be slow to react to gunshots, just because some of your friends get killed and you get filled with resentment and bitterness, you just don’t care anymore. You just want to kill these guys," said Matson. Please enable Javascript to watch this video Matson left the battlefield, traveled into Iraq and flew to Sweden. There he met up with a woman he was talking to online. He quickly married, and the two have a child due in June. Matson says he is not sure if he will return to Syria, although he says he cannot stop thinking about it. "That’s where my heart will always be. That’s where I will always want to go. Until Raqqa falls, when these people don’t have a place to go to, a pot to piss in, I’ll continue to have the desire to fight. I guess that’s the way it is with all soldiers who get into these professions. I think that’s why men do multiple tours," said Matson. For now, Matson is getting a break at home before he likely heads back to Sweden to be with his wife. He plans to start a non-profit to send medical supplies to Kurdish areas of Syria. He is once again at a crossroads in his life. "With everything that is going on, you have your life ahead of you. You have to decide where you are going to take it. It’s time for me to do what I need to do," said Matson. He says he knows he did the right thing by fighting in Syria. "As long as our government is willing to turn a blind eye on some of these atrocities, for whatever reason they want to keep to themselves, I’m going to stand up for them," said Matson.ANY USE OF THIS MAP MUST BE MADE USING THE APPROPRIATE CREDITS ( ANY VIDEO USING THE MAP MUST HAVE THE APPROPRIATE CREDITS IN THE DESCRIPTION: copy this to the video description: Lapiz Point City map by www.realismsociety.com, available for download here: www.planetminecraft.com/project/lapiz-point---modern-city-project/ ANY VIOLATION OF COPYRIGHTS COULD LEAD TO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. Based on a work at http://www.realismsociety.com/ ANY USE OF THIS MAP MUST BE MADE USING THE APPROPRIATE CREDITS ( www.realismsociety.com ANY VIDEO USING THE MAP MUST HAVE THE APPROPRIATE CREDITS IN THE DESCRIPTION:copy this to the video description:ANY VIOLATION OF COPYRIGHTS COULD LEAD TO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. Link to the texture pack: adf.ly/1dsq6v Introducing you to Lapiz Point City! A semi-realistic city project.Message regarding the adfly links; thank you for downloading the map, we apologize for the problems you might have encountered while downloading the map in regards of the ads, you may know the only reason why the ads are there is to help pay for the server running fees so we can keep delivering quality content builds to the Minecraft community, we thank everyone who took the time to go through the ads as it has helped running the server for 4 good years now ❤More than 15,000 hours of work in 1 year and an half of time.All custom buildings and vehicles.We would also like to apologize for any unprofessional stuff you could find in the map (Signs, builds ect) This map was on a server.Please contact me, Yazur, if there is any problems with the download or the map. Thank you.Do not forget to visit our server!Here are some resources for normie whites with an IQ above 100 and might be freaked out by "hate" literature or videos because they have a career and something to lose. My father was pretty receptive to this stuff. The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy Paperback – September 2, 2008 by John J. Mearsheimer (Author), Stephen M. Walt (Author) >>The Israel Lobby," by John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, was one of the most controversial articles in recent memory. Originally published in the London Review of Books in March 2006, it provoked both howls of outrage and cheers of gratitude for challenging what had been a taboo issue in America: the impact of the Israel lobby on U.S. foreign policy. >>Now in a work of major importance, Mearsheimer and Walt deepen and expand their argument and confront recent developments in Lebanon and Iran. They describe the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the United States provides to Israel and argues that this support cannot be fully explained on either strategic or moral grounds. This exceptional relationship is due largely to the political influence of a loose coalition of individuals and organizations that actively work to shape U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. Mearsheimer and Walt provocatively contend that the lobby has a far-reaching impact on America's posture throughout the Middle East―in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict―and the policies it has encouraged are in neither America's national interest nor Israel's long-term interest. The lobby's influence also affects America's relationship with important allies and increases dangers that all states face from global jihadist terror. >>Writing in The New York Review of Books, Michael Massing declared, "Not since Foreign Affairs magazine published Samuel Huntington's ‘The Clash of Civilizations?' in 1993 has an academic essay detonated with such force." The publication of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy is certain to widen the debate and to be one of the most talked-about books of the year. Tegenlicht - The Israeli Lobby (about AIPAC)Voynich researchers without a significant maths grounding are often intimidated by the concept of entropy. But all it is is an aggregate measure of how [in]effectively you can predict the next token in a sequence, given a preceding context of a certain size. The more predictable tokens are (on average), the smaller the entropy: the more unpredictable they are, the larger the entropy. For example, if the first order (i.e. no context at all) entropy measurement of a certain text was 3.0 bits, then it would have almost exactly the same average information content-ness per character as a random series of eight different digits (e.g. 1-8). This is because entropy is a log2 value, and log2(8) = 3. (Of course, what is usually the case is that some letters are more frequent than others: but entropy is the bottom line figure averaged out over the whole text you’re interested in.) And the same goes for second order entropy, with the only difference being that because we always know there what the preceding letter or token was, we can make a more effective guess as to what the next letter or token will be. For example, if we know the previous English letter was ‘q’, then there is a very high chance that the next letter will be ‘u’, and a far lower chance that the next letter will be, say, ‘k’. (Unless it just happens to be a text about the current Mayor of London with all the spaces removed.) And so it should proceed beyond that: the longer the preceding context, the more effectively you should be to predict the next letter, and so the lower the entropy value. As always, there are practical difficulties to consider (e.g. what to do across page boundaries, how to handle free-standing labels,
said. The unfinished building Back on Tayaran Street, 19-year-old Mohamed joined the fight on the side of the protesters. His tent at Rabaa was stationed in front of an unfinished building, known to protesters as the Muneyfa building. Seven stories high, this concrete skeleton was the nerve center of the resistance. Mohamed joined a gathering crowd at the entrance, smashing sections of the pavement with which to arm themselves. They threw chunks of concrete rapidly, and in waves. "Even if the man next to me was shot, I knew we couldn't stop," he says. The claim that a significant number of protesters were heavily armed lies at the center of the interior ministry's justification for what happened inside Rabaa on Aug. 14. “This was a proportionate response, just targeting those who used live ammunition against policemen,” General Hani Abdel Latif, the ministry spokesman, told GlobalPost last week. The interior ministry has repeatedly insisted that the clearance took place in accordance with internationally accepted crowd control standards. By contrast, testimonies from inside the Muneyfa building and publicly available video evidence suggest there were no more than a dozen guns in the hands of the protesters. Across the rest of the square, testimonies and video evidence show that some protesters carried clubs and several fired guns at the security forces. But the vast majority were unarmed. The disproportionate nature of the police response is clear from the numbers alone. Egypt's forensic authority says 627 bodies were brought to the official morgue or hospitals. That number excluded bodies buried directly by their families. The Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights has compiled a list of 904 names of people killed in the dispersal. Some NGOs believe the number to be higher still. Early health ministry figures suggested that only eight of those killed in side Rabaa al-Adaweya were policemen. Human Rights Watch later raised the number to nine. The fight intensifies Shortly after midday on Aug. 14, an exchange of heavy gunfire between police and those at the Muneyfa building shattered a lull in the fighting. From his vantage point in an alley on the western entrance, a local resident watched the fighting as it intensified. Across the street, he saw a young police officer sink to the pavement and stare blankly at the carnage. When the resident tried to enter the sit-in to help carry out the wounded, another officer shrieked that he must stay where he was. The look on the officer’s face was one of shame, the resident said. He was shaking. As the fighting wore on and police continued to advance, women and children huddled under tarpaulin tents. The Egyptian media would later say that Brotherhood leadership had encouraged families to stay in the square until the last minute, rendering them human shields. Rabaa’s mosque became a hiding place for hundreds more, although the space grew increasingly cramped as makeshift morgues overflowed and fresh corpses were moved to the prayer hall. But in the center of the camp, 34-year-old Yasmine Abdel Fattah refused to find shelter. The mother of three was searching for her husband, Ahmed. He’d been missing for three hours. Moving quickly, she snatched a glance at the notional safe exit on the western stretch of Nasr Road. Armored bulldozers crept past burning tents. Some had been lit by protesters; others burst alight when blisteringly hot tear gas canisters made contact with the flammable awnings. "Muslim Brothers were shouting at me to move fast and find shelter," says Yasmine. "But I kept stopping to ask if anyone had seen my husband. I felt frantic. No one knew where he was." Under a white shroud on the third floor of the Rabaa medical center, she found him. He'd been shot three times. Ahmed, an engineer, was with colleagues when he died. They say he was shot at point-blank range by a police officer. Forensic officials confirm that he was hit in his back and side with live ammunition, fired within close quarters. Yasmine was allowed only the briefest of goodbyes to her husband's lifeless body. New corpses needed to be laid to rest in the space where she stood. By mid-afternoon, Rabaa’s volunteer doctors had been overwhelmed. Equipment and drugs were in short supply, and ambulances had stopped entering the encampment after a paramedic was shot dead. For those inside the medical center, moving the injured to safety now involved braving a corridor of gunfire, to reach the ambulances stationed on the sit-in’s southern flank. For some, the desperate gamble paid off. Others were not so lucky. Standing behind the medical center on Mohamed Mandour Street, this reporter saw three casualties shot dead on their makeshift stretchers. In a fourth incident, a stretcher-bearer took the bullet. As his wounded charge rolled to the ground, he too was shot in the head. The bullets appeared to be coming from the surrounding rooftops. Cleared Shortly after 3:30 p.m., police finally took control of the Muneyfa building. They made arrests on every floor, and multiple eyewitnesses inside the building allege that beatings followed. Mohamed was on the second floor when police entered. He remembers the screams of his fellow fighters. "They were writhing, screaming as if they were dying," he says. In fact, they were. "Almost no one survived on the ground floor." With resistance from the Muneyfa building extinguished and Tayaran Street secured, police swept easily into the center of the sit-in, entering the mosque, field hospital and medical center. Asmaa, the journalist, was inside the medical center when police entered. She describes how men and women were ordered into separate lines, then escorted outside with their hands above their heads. After hours spent sheltering indoors, she was ill-prepared for what she saw next. Charred bodies scattered the blackened ground like driftwood. Police escorted ragged groups of protesters away from the carnage. Along Nasr Road streamed a constant flow of protesters, many limping, others crying. Some people carried corpses. "As we carried out the dead, the residents were laughing," says Asmaa. "They were cheering and chanting, some were ululating.” Over the months, the sit-in had grown deeply unpopular among locals. Many were scared by the trouble and disruption it brought to the neighborhood. But Asmaa was surprised, nevertheless: "After all that killing, I couldn't believe that our countrymen could have grown so estranged that they would take pleasure in such a tragedy," she says. After the massacre Thousands emerged from the square to learn that the killings had triggered spasms of retaliatory violence across the country. Mobs chanting sectarian slogans torched and ransacked Christian establishments — 65 churches and monasteries were attacked. Pro-Morsi demonstrators, sometimes heavily armed, clashed with police for hours. By nightfall, a curfew was in place in 14 governorates across Egypt. Inside Rabaa, the mosque, field hospital and medical center were engulfed in flames. The events of Aug. 14, 2013 ruptured Egypt's post-revolutionary politics. They marked the end for prospects of reconciliation between the embattled and intransigent Muslim Brotherhood and the increasingly repressive military-backed authorities that pushed Morsi from power. Morsi supporters display the four-finger symbol, used to remember those killed in the crackdown on the Rabaa al-Adaweya camp, during a demonstration against the military-backed government in Cairo on September 13, 2013. The Egyptian authorities have yet to establish a public record of what occurred that day. The prosecutor's office has not prosecuted a single member of the security services for excessive and unjustified use of lethal force. Over the past six months, Morsi supporters have adopted a four-fingered salute, often depicted as a black hand on a yellow background, to remember those who died inside Rabaa al-Adaweya. In Arabic, Rabaa means "fourth." As part of a far-reaching crackdown on the Brotherhood, displaying the sign is now a punishable offense. Editor's note: The language in this piece regarding the clashes on July 8 and July 27 has been updated to clarify the reciprocal nature of the violence on July 27. The Aug. 14 Rabaa Square body count from Egypt's forensic authority has been changed from 726 to 627, to distinguish between the bodies the forensic authority counted for Rabaa and the bodies the forensic authority counted for another protest camp on the same day. The independent counts for Rabaa on Aug. 14 remain at 904 and higher.1 of 6 Maddie Meyer/Getty Images 2013 Season Stats: 49 receptions, 681 yards, three touchdowns Jarrett Boykin already had a mini-breakout season last year, but expect him to fully break out in 2014. The reason for this is twofold. First, Boykin will get a full offseason and regular season to work with quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Last year, Boykin only had two full games with Rodgers before the QB fractured his collarbone against the Chicago Bears. Rodgers makes every receiver he throws to look better, and it shouldn't be any different with Boykin. Second, Boykin should see an increase in playing time this upcoming year. Part of that is due to the flashes of potential he displayed this past season, but most of it is due to the future of fellow receiver James Jones. Jones is a free agent this year, and there are plenty of needy wide receiver teams out there that may be willing to overpay for Jones' services. While Jones would like to re-sign with the Packers, the team might simply not have the financial capabilities to do so. With an increase in playing time and one of the best quarterbacks in the league throwing him the ball, look for Boykin to have an extremely productive season this year for the Packers.As I Lay Dying singer arrested for plotting murder As I Lay Dying singer Tim Lambesis has According to the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, Lambesis asked an undercover detective Tuesday to murder his estranged wife. Following an investigation, Lambesis was arrested this afternoon at an unspecified Oceanside, CA business. Authorities were apparently aware that Lambesis had soliticed someone to kill his wife, prompting the investigation. Lambesis has been charged with solicitation of another to commit murder and has been booked into the Vista Detention Facility. UPDATE #1: Jan Caldwell, spokeswoman for the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, made the following comments to Artisan News about the matter: "Information came to us late last week — last Thursday, to be specific — that Lambesis was soliciting another individual to kill his estranged wife, who also resides in the area. Our detectives, our fugitive task force and the sheriff's special investigations division immediately initiated an investigation into this allegation. We worked around the clock through the weekend and that culminated this afternoon when Lambesis solicited an undercover detective to kill his wife. The next step will be Lambesis' initial appearance in court, and that is where the charges are read, and if there's a bail to be set. And they will go from there and start setting different court dates. The investigation at our end is still ongoing, and I can't go into detail on that. And, thankfully, no one was hurt. But I believe that the captain who commented earlier said that we averted a tragedy today." Arraignment for Lambesis is scheduled to take place tomorrow, Thursday, May 9th. If convicted, Lambesis could face up to 9 years in a California state prison. UPDATE #2: Video report: UPDATE #3: As I Lay Dying has now issued a UPDATE #4: Lambesis has In one of the more unbelievable news items we've relayed since our inception many years ago,singerhas reportedly been arrested for hiring someone to kill his estranged wife.According to the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, Lambesis asked an undercover detective Tuesday to murder his estranged wife. Following an investigation, Lambesis was arrested this afternoon at an unspecified Oceanside, CA business.Authorities were apparently aware that Lambesis had soliticed someone to kill his wife, prompting the investigation.Lambesis has been charged with solicitation of another to commit murder and has been booked into the Vista Detention Facility.: Jan Caldwell, spokeswoman for the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, made the following comments to Artisan News about the matter:"Information came to us late last week — last Thursday, to be specific — that Lambesis was soliciting another individual to kill his estranged wife, who also resides in the area. Our detectives, our fugitive task force and the sheriff's special investigations division immediately initiated an investigation into this allegation. We worked around the clock through the weekend and that culminated this afternoon when Lambesis solicited an undercover detective to kill his wife. The next step will be Lambesis' initial appearance in court, and that is where the charges are read, and if there's a bail to be set. And they will go from there and start setting different court dates. The investigation at our end is still ongoing, and I can't go into detail on that. And, thankfully, no one was hurt. But I believe that the captain who commented earlier said that we averted a tragedy today."Arraignment for Lambesis is scheduled to take place tomorrow, Thursday, May 9th. If convicted, Lambesis could face up to 9 years in a California state prison.: Video report:: As I Lay Dying has now issued a statement on the matter.: Lambesis has pleaded not guilty. 220 comments anonymous 5/7/2013 6:19:34 PM Should i wait 94 hours to joke about this? permalink \| report abuse withoutashield 5/7/2013 6:20:25 PM I don't understand the problem, isn't this the normal Christian thing to do? permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:20:31 PM Uhhh what.... permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:21:42 PM Frankie Palmeri is stoked permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:22:03 PM A Shower Stall Between Us permalink \| report abuse xbumpx 5/7/2013 6:22:43 PM There's no way this can be real... hahah wat permalink \| report abuse MeatDelivery 5/7/2013 6:22:54 PM Total brutal. If he had said murder was the reason for a kickstarter, I would have donated. permalink \| report abuse mid90shardcorekid 5/7/2013 6:23:00 PM LOL AT THE THREAD TITLE permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:23:19 PM Emmure is shocked permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:23:20 PM this is weird permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:23:30 PM Sad. I doubt he did it though. He's big enough to kill anyone himself permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:23:40 PM This is bullshit, dunno any facts but all I'm saying is BULLSHIT! Not true! Lambesis is a saint, a good man, a good father, and fck the police! permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:24:25 PM Chris Benoit is stoked permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:24:55 PM Maybe he was going to tattoo his asscheeks with the blood of the female. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:26:37 PM Holy shit, this is fcked! permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:29:58 PM As I Get beatd In Prison permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:30:47 PM As She Lay Dying. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:31:42 PM Will plead insanity by way of saying he is following the word of god. Or dog. Or whatever the fck you kids call him. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:32:15 PM Wifeflip. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:32:44 PM When can I donate to the kickstarter so he can bail out permalink \| report abuse xfordirelifesakex 5/7/2013 6:34:28 PM Last I remember, he was super christian and had to miss tour dates because of adopting a foreign baby......seems like he went another route. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:34:33 PM Tim is being framed by EMMURE. DEFONCED! permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:34:43 PM...\m/... permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:35:58 PM he really takes austrian death machine too serious permalink \| report abuse ThatDude 5/7/2013 6:36:55 PM WWJD > WWTLD > Yes, master. permalink \| report abuse sadball 5/7/2013 6:37:55 PM Have her touch a mic during an Emmure set. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:38:01 PM Roid Rage permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:38:14 PM Thou shalt not kill permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:38:51 PM Maybe this is what his kick starter was funding???? permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:39:07 PM Why didn't he just hire mother fcker jones? permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:39:16 PM I'd like to thank steroid abuse for this bag of LOLs permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:41:07 PM Christian Metal is stoked. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:42:17 PM Lambesis is going to floorpunch when he drops the soap in the shower. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:43:03 PM Interrogate that bitch, i bet she has a reason to be killed. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:43:19 PM Hahah! What an idiot roid fck! permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:45:34 PM This is why he needed 60k for new Austrian death machine album permalink \| report abuse sadball 5/7/2013 6:47:01 PM San Diego Death Machine permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:47:09 PM fck anyone who's talking shit. Tim wouldn't do this. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:47:49 PM How long can they put him away for if convicted? permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:50:06 PM Can't believe no one said it, As Wife Lay Dying permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:51:26 PM totally sold out his DIY roots, what a rockstar. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:55:35 PM Shadows are not security. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 6:59:46 PM As I Pay Dying permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 7:00:55 PM Ass Pie Pay Brian -Kyle Plakmeyer 2013 permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 7:02:20 PM More like Tim LAMEbesis. permalink \| report abuse slut 5/7/2013 7:05:38 PM That's what you get for trying to get a Kickstarter to record in your own studio, gay. Also for plotting a murder I suppose permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 7:08:40 PM And to think, I was once chastized for swearing while on their tour bus... permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 7:11:19 PM Should have asked Tanner to do it. He and the Guardians boys will do ANYTHING for notoriety. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 7:16:50 PM http://www.sdsheriff.net Press Release posted. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 7:17:28 PM As I Pay Dying Wow, probably the best comment I've ever read on Lambgoat. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 7:18:20 PM what the heck permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 7:19:08 PM FOREVER....MY MOUTH.....WILL BE FILLED BY BLACK c-ck permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 7:20:15 PM Wait. Since I did merch for them on their last tour does that make me an accessory? permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 7:20:39 PM Kickstarter permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 7:21:47 PM no but does make you a gay permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 7:23:05 PM I guess Austrian Death Machine was gonna be a real thing not a new record. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 7:23:53 PM 25 to life no pun intended permalink \| report abuse baronsmom 5/7/2013 7:23:56 PM should have done it himself :\| permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 7:25:31 PM Baron Bodnar is secretly behind this. That fat tubby bitch. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 7:34:44 PM As I lay incarcerated ~ permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 7:35:45 PM banana flapjacks... hot diggity permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 7:48:01 PM lmao. As I worship Jesus & Plot Your Murder permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 8:03:20 PM "Tim didn't do it, I met him onc... Stood fifty feet away from him once and acted like a total fan girl! That's like meeting him so he's innocent!" You don't know this man outside of his music. It's very well likey that he's completely fcked in the head, and, infact, capable of doing such a thing. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 8:05:26 PM Frail Plots Collaps permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 8:13:17 PM It might have been all that Creatine for lifting? permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 8:13:26 PM 94 hours of regret for this guy. He deserved jail time for writing the lyrics "The torment of your eyes has awakened my soul." permalink \| report abuse i_talk_shit 5/7/2013 8:14:06 PM Kickstarter ---- more like HITstarter permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 8:14:35 PM I've met him, and he is a very nice guy. So she is probably a total bitch. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 8:19:44 PM Get married. love your wife. fck you. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 8:20:01 PM funded my indie go-go permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 8:20:26 PM Plot-flip permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 8:20:55 PM Ted Bundy was a nice guy too. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 8:21:39 PM I though the headline said As I Lay Dying singer arrested for potting murder. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 8:22:53 PM Two words.... roid rage. permalink \| report abuse LoydChristmas 5/7/2013 8:26:04 PM Im sure we'll all find Meaning In this Tragedy Keep the AILD puns coming tho im LOLing like crasey permalink \| report abuse LoydChristmas 5/7/2013 8:26:39 PM And Tim wasnt even close to huge enough to suspect he was juicing permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 8:27:46 PM Is her name Sarah Connor? permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 8:29:59 PM the powerless rise from the darkest nights of a black guy named bubba through struggle ass banging me for 94 hours. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 8:30:05 PM smile, you've just been erased permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 8:30:56 PM Best news yet out of 2013. Christian right wingers are some wacko fcks. Always hiding behind Jesus, dudes scheduled to catch some Steak Ala' Mexican right in his shitpipe. This is what happens when you ask for $65,000 for a jerkoff joke sideproject that wallstreet daytraders and lawyers kids love. l Closing statement.... GIVE HIM THE fckING CHAIR.!!! P.S. Darrell Issa is not stoked. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 8:34:41 PM I find it funny, their tour info is to the right of this story... guess that wont be happening as planned. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 8:38:42 PM As I Lay Crying (ass up) permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 8:50:13 PM hahahahahahahahahahahahaha ha permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 8:54:56 PM btw this is not a tragedy. death was averted and justice is being served. 'MERICA. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 9:00:39 PM All of you who are praising this dude's arrest because of his faith sadden me. All of you assume the believers of Christianity are all self righteous. It is the righteous who need Christianity, but the fallen, like, you know, the people who try to kill their wife, or cheat on them, or whatever. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 9:04:28 PM He Better call randy blythes lawyer permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 9:04:38 PM ^Go eat a dick, and embrace stem cells, gay. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 9:05:35 PM Crafter is pissed his shit band isn't going public. Keep an eye out on Australia mates....... permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 9:09:34 PM Oddly enough, someone in a town near me tried hiring a hitman to off his ex-girlfriend last year. Last week he was sentenced to 13.5 years in prison. Hope Tim didn't do it. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 9:15:06 PM http://apps.sdsheriff.net/ wij/wijDetail.aspx?BookNum =Tk7ILsJCeY44H7XW08kP1RI4L %2bU4wc5t2qobYfvsyFQ%3d LOL permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 9:22:31 PM This dude is solidly fuct, and rightfully so. Your worth millions, and are trying to pay an undercover cop to kill your wife to avoid losing half of your millions. MS13 dick is just right around the horizon. San Quentin Hardcore permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 9:33:48 PM Solitary is security permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 9:38:35 PM I just hope this mean these guys will go into retirement. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 9:44:32 PM I wonder how long he'll be CONFINED... Maybe for 94 HOURS... Maybe FOREVER... One thing's for sure... It'll be THE DARKEST NIGHTS. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 9:46:18 PM All the christian kids are shitting their pants, telling themselves it's not true. Local Pastors pacing over how to deal with it their next youth group meeting. Lying and saying it's not Tim is the most logical although it says... "Lambesis asked an undercover detective last Tuesday to murder his estranged wife" Can't get much more clear then that! But lying is the christian way to go! permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 9:51:17 PM What a freaking RETARD. Hope his mugshot ends up on thesmokinggun.com. Must be nice posing for muscle shots on your Instagram bro! BEWARE OF ROIDS - fast results get you in prison. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 9:53:15 PM Frail wives collapse permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 10:04:00 PM THANKS RONALD! permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 10:09:10 PM 94 swollen penii. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 10:21:38 PM It just doesnt really add up. Ive met the him and he was a great guy. I dont think he would do that. But then again some people are not what you think. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 10:23:18 PM tim's ex wife: i thought you were going to kill me last?! tim:....i lied. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 10:26:38 PM Might be a bit of heresay, but it makes me think twice about why he needed 50k to record a new Austrian Death Machine record. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 10:54:11 PM As I Tried to Lay Dying permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 10:54:51 PM Shout out to the dude who mentioned Chris Benoit. Best thing I've read on this website, ever. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 11:08:07 PM "As I Lay Prying....those butt cheeks apart" said Bubba, Tim's new cell mate permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 11:13:18 PM ArnoCorps is a rescue team, ADM hire assassins. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 11:13:33 PM So we have Fallin In Reverse new song, emmure dude almost getting electrocuted and this. Weirdest week in metal ever? permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 11:17:06 PM ^^^^^^^^^^^ BEST WEEK IN SHITTY MUSIC EVER permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 11:22:26 PM Defonced? permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 11:33:16 PM WTF?? permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 11:44:08 PM I AM NOT ON STERRROIDS permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/7/2013 11:48:23 PM How lovely it is to see one of gods disciples fall frozen from Heaven. How absolutely delightful \m/ permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/8/2013 12:10:15 AM Heres the link to show he is actually booked in jail. http://apps.sdsheriff.net/ wij/WijAList.aspx?LastName =Lambesis&FirstName=Timoth y permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/8/2013 12:16:17 AM Satan made him do it. Everyone get ready for born again Lambesis! permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/8/2013 1:27:12 AM i dont believe this shit permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/8/2013 1:50:51 AM For all you guys hoping its a misunderstanding, he asked a cop to kill his wife. Unless he gets off on a technicality, there's little chance he'll see another free day for quite a while. He's looking at California Penal Code Section 653f (b) Every person who, with the intent that the crime be committed, solicits another to commit or join in the commission of murder shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for three, six, or nine years. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/8/2013 2:08:07 AM Haha holy shit. Well the kickstarter is way cheaper than a time machine. Never forget a prenup. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/8/2013 2:29:59 AM I am dumb founded. Ive worked with Tim on numerous occasions. He is a loving father of two gorgeous adopted ethiopian kids, a gentleman and really lovely. The police statement looks stupid. Why would they put that he is the lead singer and co-founder of heavy metal band etc etc. Normally it would just say his full name and thats it. Im calling Bullshit. Tim is also a smart dude. Who on earth these days would hire a hit man? Really? This story is ridiculous and a sham permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/8/2013 2:32:50 AM As much as this saddens me it might be very true. As I Lay Dying is one of my favorite bands so what I am about to say dosent come from any hate spot. Not too long ago I was running for a band that was on tour with As I Lay Dying. I was standing next to the stage when Tim walked off after their set. All he could talk about was how fcked up he was on shrooms. To say the least this disappointed me greatly because of the preconception I had about him. I am praying that this rumor isnt true. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/8/2013 2:34:01 AM Lamb of god.....then Emmure.....now this..... Perhaps there IS justice in the musical universe. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/8/2013 2:47:57 AM wait? What? the sherriff statement says May 2nd he was found plotting, but he was in asia on tour May 2nd. None of this makes sense permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/8/2013 3:17:59 AM This is literally unbelievable...Like, I seriously can't believe this. His christian faith is among the strongest I've ever seen. The man has a tattoo of Jesus rockin' out on his calf. He loves his kid and I HIGHLY doubt he would even think about doing something like this. Someone must've framed him or something permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/8/2013 3:44:11 AM I met him once at an Applebee's.... There is no possible way he could've done this. permalink \| report abuse LoydChristmas 5/8/2013 4:01:46 AM ^lol. Best judge of character ever permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/8/2013 4:04:42 AM gunshot Consider this a divorce permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/8/2013 4:08:51 AM Mexicans love aild. He'll be a celebrity in prison. permalink \| report abuse SuckMeBeautiful 5/8/2013 4:13:58 AM And here I was thinking that nothing was going to top that Emmure story from yesterday... permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/8/2013 4:17:25 AM LAMBESIS LAMBASTED!!! Lengthy latin longjohn lovers will be on this. permalink \| report abuse Hibuddywazup 5/8/2013 4:21:58 AM I guess she won't lay dying. permalink \| report abuse YASAF 5/8/2013 4:55:32 AM very funny posts a bunch of VERY funny guys! permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/8/2013 4:59:05 AM i guess there are "parallels" between this and other situations. we should just "moving forward" and don't get "paralyzed", because "this is who we are" and just listen to "the sound of truth". permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/8/2013 5:37:45 AM http://www.sdsheriff.net/ Click " who's in jail?" Type tim lambesis Laughhhhhhhhhhh permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/8/2013 5:38:32 AM He should have sent a terminator through time to do his bidding for him. This is pretty shocking though. permalink \| report abuse anonymous 5/8/2013 5:56:31 AM Emmure is shocked permalink \| report abuse fuckyourxs 5/8/2013 5:56:32 AM They stripped me naked had me lift my ballsack up so they could check underneath it, and then had me bend over and
extended beyond Uber’s San Francisco headquarters. In New York, for example, Josh Mohrer was a general manager made in Kalanick’s image, according to employees. “Josh did what he wanted, and [Kalanick] gave him latitude to do what he wanted because he was so good. He was wicked smart, but he was brutal,” said a former senior operations employee. “He came in, cleaned house, and turned New York into a dominant market. He played hardball. He did the kinds of things [Kalanick] expected to get results.” Mohrer became well-known during his time at Uber for things like advocating against tipping drivers and admitting that he used Uber’s “God View” to track a journalist’s movements. His approach may have appealed to Kalanick’s sensibilities, but some of the people who worked under him in New York, three of whom shared their experiences with BuzzFeed News, felt he was overly aggressive. “He would yell at and berate employees in front of their direct reports, and the tone he used was always half joking,” said one former employee who worked for Uber on the East Coast. “He was an impulse bully who fought anyone if he didn’t get his way and routinely made his direct reports cry in the office from his bullying.” Mohrer left Uber in May. Sources told BuzzFeed News that Mohrer was a subject of an internal investigation inside the company, but Uber declined to comment on Mohrer’s behavior and the circumstances of his departure. He has since joined Tusk Ventures, a strategy firm he worked closely with at Uber. Mohrer declined to comment on this story. While more than a dozen Uber executives have left the company for varying reasons this year, including its CEO, many leaders who were bred in the ride-hail giant’s aggressive culture remain. But Hornsey said executives at Uber “know that we need to put our people first and know that this is an existential issue for us.” “Post Susan Fowler’s blog, many executives in this company have been somewhat personally shaken, somewhat shocked. And that shake and that shock gives you a remit for change,” she said. “It gives you a moment when people are more open to change than they might have been.” Eduardo Munoz / Reuters Josh Mohrer, Uber's general manager for New York, in New York, June 30, 2015. The personal consequences of working in an environment like the one at Uber — high-pressure, combative, all-consuming — can vary greatly based on personality and experience. Some people told BuzzFeed News they found it exhilarating. Others described it as a psychically draining but occasionally rewarding experience. For a few, some of whom shared their stories with BuzzFeed News, the mental health situation teetered on dangerous. Multiple former employees said they’d personally witnessed people having panic attacks in the office. A former employee who spent two years at Uber remembered watching a stressed-out teammate unravel at a meeting. “This guy broke down in tears, saying that he’s not happy here, this wasn’t what he expected. That he left his job where he was getting paid more for this, and he feels like it was a huge mistake,” he said. (The employee in question did not respond to multiple requests for comment from BuzzFeed News.) One former manager found a means of dealing with acute pressure: “You start faking meetings.” When he started to feel a panic attack coming on, he would say he had to meet someone off-site and he would walk to a nearby coffee shop that had benches outside. “I would go to turf there and lay down and look at the sky for 20 minutes and just try to calm my breathing,” he said. “I was just nonfunctional.” Hornsey told BuzzFeed News that about 10 to 15 employees told her in one-on-one sessions over the last five months that they experienced panic attacks while working at Uber. “I have talked to people, particularly in engineering, I’ve got to be honest, who felt overworked, who felt concerned, who felt heartbroken by some of the things that have happened,” Hornsey said. “I have to be honest with you. There are people that have been panicked and there are people that have been anxious. If any one person feels like that, it’s one person too many. My job is to turn this into a kind and compassionate and thoughtful company that puts its people first.” "There were days where I'd wake up, shower, go to work, work until midnight or so, get a free ride home, sleep six hours, and go back to work. And I’d do that for a whole week." In a statement to BuzzFeed News, Uber said it’s made mental health services available to employees since 2015. US employees were eligible for up to three face-to-face sessions with a counselor until January 2017, when Uber expanded its mental health benefits through a company called Lyra Health to include 24/7 counseling via an app, unlimited in-person sessions, and resources for family members of Uber employees. And since April, Uber has expanded mental health services to include on-site counseling services to employees in major offices worldwide. Asked about demand for and usage of these services, Uber declined to comment. One employee, an engineer, recently started seeing a therapist. “I probably should have been talking to somebody who would have pointed out more of the issues,” he said. “It’s pretty clear that giving that much of yourself to any one thing is not healthy. There were days where I'd wake up, shower, go to work, work until midnight or so, get a free ride home, sleep six hours, and go back to work. And I’d do that for a whole week.” In April, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Uber engineer Joseph Thomas killed himself in August 2016. His wife Zecole, who found her husband’s body, is now seeking worker’s compensation benefits from Uber after being initially denied them by the company. Through her lawyer, Zecole Thomas declined to comment for this story, but she and her late husband’s father both told the Chronicle that Uber’s competitiveness and high expectations pushed Joseph over the edge. “The guy just fell apart,” his father, Joe Thomas, told the Chronicle. “If you put a hard-driving person on unrealistic tasks, it puts them in failure mode. It makes them burn themselves out; like driving a Lamborghini in first gear.” Uber told BuzzFeed News it wasn’t made aware that Thomas’s death was a suicide until five months later, in December 2016. After the Chronicle story came out in April, Uber head of security Joe Sullivan sent an email to all staff explaining that, legally, the company had been prohibited from commenting on Thomas’s death sooner. “We care deeply about our employees well-being,” Sullivan wrote in an email Uber provided to BuzzFeed News. “As a community it’s important that we can talk about these issues openly and share our thoughts and feelings.” The day after the Chronicle published Thomas’s story, former Uber engineer Yu-En Tsai published a post on LinkedIn titled “Be human, at least to your employees,” in which he discussed the intense anxiety he experienced during his three years at the company. “It's not a surprise I got depression due to lack of sleep for straight several months,” he wrote. “I didn't kill myself but honestly I almost did.” (Tsai later updated his post to say that over time the working conditions at Uber improved, and that he doesn’t claim to be “a victim of anything.”) Reached by BuzzFeed News, Tsai said he didn’t want to talk about the post. But in the comments on the LinkedIn post, he did respond to some of the 14 self-identified current and former Uber employees who expressed their sympathy, support, and concern. “A healthy work culture is more important than anything,” wrote one. “I am grateful to my family for supporting my decision to leave this place after only a few months,” wrote another. “Sometimes money just isn't worth it.” Brendan Mcdermid / Reuters Protesters outside the Uber offices in New York, Feb. 2, 2017. Hornsey started in January. But in the years before that, employees say, HR was inadequate. “There was a complete lack of HR,” said one former operations employee. One former senior employee described it as one of the “bits of the puzzle” Kalanick “had to outsource.” As a result, individual managers had outsized control over who got to keep their jobs, a former employee said. Hornsey admitted to employees in a June email provided by Uber to BuzzFeed News that the HR team had been understaffed, but said the department was increasing its head count and adding more resources. In particular, sources described the performance review process as, variously, stressful, political, and a popularity contest in which connections to Kalanick, or other people in positions of power at Uber, could make or break your future at the company. Until recently, Uber used a ranking system that both measures employee performance on a scale of 1 to 5 and tries to predict future performance on a scale of 1 to 5. Employees who get 4s and 5s can expect big bonuses and maybe promotions; employees who get 1s and 2s are put on performance improvement plans, a sign that they should start looking for new jobs. One former operations employee based in the New York office remembered a colleague who was fired not long after he started at Uber. Chief among the reasons he was given for that person’s termination was that they were uninterested in attending a company retreat in upstate New York; the manager had determined that the individual was a bad fit. "On an individual level, it seemed like the systems were designed to make you feel like you were never good enough." Six months later, when the time came for the operations employee’s first performance review, he was surprised to hear that he, too, had been deemed a bad fit, specifically because he too often left work before 7 p.m. in order to spend time with his family. After that, he said, “[I] went in every day thinking I was going to get fired. That was one of the more psychically damaging and challenging parts of it.” By the time he left a year and a half later, he questioned whether the atmosphere of constant anxiety wasn’t intentional on the part of Uber management. “I wondered if there was a template managers used to make people feel like shit to get people to work harder,” he said. “It was like an abusive relationship. Your boyfriend keeps making you feel bad, and then they come back and say, ‘I love you, you’re so beautiful’. They’d come back and be like, ‘You’re a part of this amazing team, you’re part of the fastest growing company in history.' But on an individual level, it seemed like the systems were designed to make you feel like you were never good enough.” The performance review system used at Uber — until the company pledged to revamp reviews when it announced the results of the Holder report — is known as stack ranking. The system places all employees into categories, such that some must be ranked at the bottom, essentially pitting colleagues against one another. It’s similar to systems that have been used at Microsoft, GE, and, perhaps most infamously, Amazon. There are clear parallels between Uber and Amazon, a company that’s also notorious for its cutthroat, high-octane work environment. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is an Uber investor. Uber’s chief product officer Jeff Holden, who joined the company in 2014, is a nine-year Amazon veteran. Uber’s 14-point value system is said to have been derived from Amazon’s, though Amazon’s — which includes “insist on the highest standards” and “have backbone; disagree and commit” — is slightly more subtle. Some former and current Uber employees who spoke with BuzzFeed News felt that one way to avoid falling to the bottom of the stack ranking pile was to ingratiate themselves socially with their managers and other power players inside the company. Depending on what team you were on, that could mean staying at work until midnight in hopes of running into Kalanick on the floor. In other circumstances, it could mean putting in hours at the bar. “There was a lot of pressure to go to events and drink. That was seen as making your way up,” said one former Uber employee. “If you weren’t participating in that party culture and going to all those drinking events, you weren’t going to get promoted. You’d get sidelined.” "It was the only place I’ve ever worked where people would get aggressively drunk at work and continue working." Said another, “If you wanted to be recognized and noticed, you had to be social. Having to go out drinking with the team was a big deal.” A third former employee likened the environment at one company retreat to that of “a frat party.” One former employee cited a personal concern about substance abuse as one of his primary reasons for leaving Uber. “It was the only place I’ve ever worked where people would get aggressively drunk at work and continue working,” he said. “It was also a powerful wake-up call for me wanting out.” Last month’s workplace culture report advised Uber’s board members to limit the access to alcohol employees have at work, especially during core work hours, and to deemphasize its role in work events. Specifically, the report says that “Uber should support work events in which alcohol is not a strong component to ensure that employees who do not partake in consumption of alcohol still have opportunities to engage in networking and team building activities.” Ryan Young /The New York Times via Redux Uber's headquarters in San Francisco, March 27, 2017. Even employees who didn’t experience consequences to their health often take long breaks to recover after finally calling it quits at Uber. One person, who left Uber around the beginning of the year, told BuzzFeed News she took a few months off to “recover and recuperate and get back my confidence, because people there treat you like shit all the fucking time.” Another, who took three months off after quitting, said leaving Uber “felt like [I] got out of prison.” Another former operations employee said even though he left the company involuntarily, he “immediately felt liberated.” Not every Uber employee described their experience at the company as a time of suffering. One engineer described his own workload as manageable and his managers as fair, but said some teams were more stressful than others. For example, the engineers working on Uber China were pushed especially hard, in part because of how important the now-failed China expansion was to Kalanick. “If I experienced what my coworkers experienced, I probably wouldn’t still be at Uber,” he said. Another former employee said the perks of working a fancy tech job sometimes felt like a justification for how hard everyone was working. “You keep giving Uber the benefit of the doubt,” she said. “We have good coffee here, we have good food, a cushy office, some of the brightest minds in the world.” "You keep giving Uber the benefit of the doubt. We have good coffee here, we have good food, a cushy office, some of the brightest minds in the world." And there are some people who genuinely found Uber’s corporate culture rewarding. “There was a pretty strong correlation between the highest performers and how hard they worked,” said a former senior employee. “Most of the people who worked nonstop were also important people getting a lot done.” For years, one former operations person said, the intensity and camaraderie at Uber was fulfilling; the harder he worked, the more quickly he was promoted, and the larger his bonuses were. The culture was brutal but efficient, and high performers were always rewarded; as the company grew, his sense of validation swelled. The experience, he said, was not dissimilar to being an addict. “The highs were incredible,” he said. “But no addiction turns out to be good.” After a few years with almost no breaks, his enthusiasm started to lag. As he scaled back the amount of work he was doing, his rise through the company's ranks slowed. Eventually, he quit. Other Uber employees who’ve put in the hard time are also learning to set boundaries for themselves. One engineer who’s still with the company said when he started the job he was new to California. Previously, his hobbies included skiing, photography, cooking, and hiking. But after he started at Uber, those activities melted away. “It was easy to sink 100% of my life into [Uber]. I'd definitely say that on all dimensions, life outside of work suffered,” he said. But three years, two internal investigations, and much soul-searching later, he says he’s learned to separate his self-worth from what’s happening at Uber. “They're not able to prioritize our health,” he said. “So I probably shouldn’t be killing myself for this.” ●A Scottish university is “considering its position” in regards the awarding of an honorary degree to US presidential hopeful Donald Trump. Current Robert Gordon University principal, Professor Ferdinand von Prondzynski, has been asked to strip the business tycoon of the honour in the wake of his comments regarding Muslioms being prevented entry to the US. His comments were absolutely intolerant, Islamophobic and bigoted and it is very worrying to think that he could become President of the United States Ihram Iqbal Thousands have signed a petition demanding the degree be taken away “with immediate effect”. More than 4,000 people signed the online petition, claiming the US presidential candidate is guilty of “unrepentant, persistent verbal attacks on various groups of people”. A spokesman for Robert Gordon University said: “Mr Trump’s honorary degree was awarded in 2010. Business and entrepreneurship are key areas of focus for the university, and Mr Trump is recognised for these activities (including his investment in the North-East of Scotland). “This award was made prior to the appointment of RGU’s current Principal, Professor Ferdinand von Prondzynski, who is considering the position. “He is totally committed to equality of opportunity and to respect for different cultures, values which are an important part of RGU’s ethos.” Trump has courted controversy after proposing that Muslims be prevented from entering the US and calling for a wall to be built on the border with Mexico. Follwoing his latest comments on Muslims a Downing Street spokeswoman said: “The Prime Minister completely disagrees with the comments made by Donald Trump, which are divisive, unhelpful and quite simply wrong.” Us Republican rival Jeb Bush described Mr Trump, who owns golf courses in Aberdeenshire and South Ayrshire, as “unhinged” and his proposals as “not serious”. The petition takes issue with the university’s association with the business tycoon throughout his campaign. It said: “We feel that Donald Trump’s unrepentant, persistent verbal attacks on various groups of people based on nationality, religion, race and physical abilities are a huge detriment to RGU. “Hate speech must not have a place in academia, in politics or on the world stage. “We are confident RGU will agree with the petitioners, and act swiftly.” Spokeswoman for the university’s Islamic Society, Ihram Iqbal, 20, welcomed the petition. She said: “His comments were absolutely intolerant, Islamophobic and bigoted and it is very worrying to think that he could become President of the United States. “Anyone with such views should not hold any title - let alone one from our respected university. We certainly welcome the petition. “Donald Trump has his own views with regards to Islam and they’re very misguided. Islam does not stand for hatred and he is trying to mislead the public.” The award of the degree even led to the university’s former principal, Dr David Kennedy, handing back his own honorary doctorate in 2010. Donald Trump had been in Aberdeen at the time as part of his plans for the #1 billion golf course at the Menie Estate. But his stance on windfarms and wildlife in the protected area drew criticism. Dr David Kennedy, principal of RGU between 1987-97, had described Mr Trump’s behaviour in the north-east of Scotland as “deplorable”. He said, in September 2010: “Mr Trump is simply not a suitable person to be given an honorary degree and he should not be held up as an example of how to conduct business. “Mr Trump’s behaviour in north-east Scotland has been deplorable from the first, particularly in how he has treated his neighbours. “The university needs to realise how strongly people feel about this issue. “I can think of no better way to express my anger at the decision to honour Mr Trump than to return my own honorary doctorate to the university. “I would not want to hold the award after Mr Trump has received his.” SEE ALSO: Donald Trump calls for ban on Muslims entering USASince 2011, "Game of Thrones" fans have seen Arya Stark transform from a naive child into a cold-hearted survivor. And if Maisie Williams -- who plays Arya -- has her way, she'll play a "badass" for the rest of her career. "I'm never really going to be the normal teenager," the 17-year-old told HuffPost Live on July 7. "I'm never going to be the romantic lead because that's just not really who I am.... I hope I'd be playing these badass, strong female characters for a long time because that's what I enjoy." A hoarse Williams joined HuffPost Live to chat with host Ricky Camilleri about the show and her new movie, "Heatstroke." (Williams lost her voice at the Glastonbury Festival in Somerset, England over the weekend.) During the interview, she also shed some light on her post-"Thrones" plans. Williams says she can see herself acting, or at least performing, for as long as she can, unlike co-star Jack Gleeson (of Joffrey Baratheon fame), who has said he's retiring from acting after his stint on the show. Watch the rest of the clip above, and catch the entire HuffPost Live conversation here.The row over Damian Green’s sacking erupted again last night after leaked messages sent by the woman who accused him of misconduct showed that she was sending him friendly texts just weeks before pulling the trigger on his career. Kate Maltby’s claim that she had felt ‘angry’ and ‘professionally compromised’ after Mr Green touched her knee in a bar led to a Cabinet Office inquiry into the Minister, which widened into claims that he had downloaded pornography on his Commons computer. He was fired by Mrs May last week after the inquiry concluded that he had made misleading remarks about whether he knew about the pornography allegations. It did not come to a conclusion about his behaviour towards Ms Maltby, 31. Damien Green was sacked by prime minister Theresa May over misleading remarks about pornography on his Parliamentary computer The Mail on Sunday can now reveal that shortly before going public with her claims in October, Ms Maltby had sent warm messages to Mr Green – including one late at night which she signed off with an ‘x’. The disclosure comes as a Tory MP launches an outspoken attack on his party today for ‘throwing him to the wolves’ during the Westminster sex harassment scandal. Dover MP Charlie Elphicke, who had the whip suspended seven weeks ago over unspecified ‘serious allegations’, writes today that he has still not been told who his accuser is – or what the allegations are. He blames Tory Chief Whip Julian Smith – who referred the claims to the police – for the torrent of abuse he has received on social media, which has taken a ‘heavy toll’ on him. Ms Maltby sent warm messages to Mr Green before going public with an accusation he touched her knee in a bar The Green saga started two months ago when Ms Maltby claimed in a newspaper article that when she met Mr Green for a drink in a bar in Waterloo in early 2015, she had felt a ‘fleeting hand against my knee’. Her ‘embarrassment’ was compounded a year later when he sent her a message inviting her for a drink after seeing a picture of her wearing a corset in a newspaper article. According to messages studied by the Cabinet Office inquiry, in February this year Ms Maltby emailed Mr Green to say she would ‘wager a good few bottles’ that he was an unnamed Minister who had been the source of a political story. After Mr Green responds to say that he never reveals sources, Ms Maltby wrote: ‘Ha! Hope to catch up when things calm down.’ Mr Green says: ‘They never do, so let’s fix a date soon!’ Ms Maltby replies: ‘You’re the one with a ministerial schedule. Send me an email – or get a minion to do it!’ When Mr Green says: ‘Will do – myself or via minion’, she concludes: ‘Great. Night night’. The exchange came five months after Ms Maltby says she warned one of Mrs May’s No 10 aides about Mr Green’s behaviour. The leaked messages also show that on July 13 this year, a month after Mr Green had become Mrs May’s deputy, Ms Maltby texted him at 11pm after she had attended The Spectator magazine’s champagne-fuelled summer party in Westminster to say: ‘Sorry not to see you at the Speccie party. [Names a Green official] was working the room smoothly on your behalf x’. Mr Green replies: ‘That’s what he’s paid for!’ A week later, Ms Maltby responds to the news that Mr Green had been appointed to sit on 19 different Cabinet committees by writing: ‘Deeply disappointed to see there are two Cabinet committees you don’t have a seat on. Lax, Mr Green!’ On Wednesday, October 4 – just three weeks before making her devastating claims – she sent a message to Mr Green to wish him luck on the BBC’s Question Time ‘tonight’. When Mr Green corrects her to say it is being filmed on the Thursday, she writes: ‘Speaking of time travel, I recently found the old school magazines. Hope this cheers you up.’ Ms Maltby is referring to the fact that when she was 16, she was an editor of her school magazine which interviewed Mr Green. Ms Maltby was asked to go for a drink with Mr Green after he saw a picture of her wearing a corset The Cabinet Office concluded that while Ms Maltby was a ‘plausible’ witness, the ‘competing and contradictory accounts’ of the meetings between Mr Green and Ms Maltby meant it was not possible ‘to reach a definitive conclusion on the appropriateness of Mr Green’s behaviour’. In his resignation statement, Mr Green said that while he deeply regretted ‘the distress caused to Kate Maltby following her article about me’, he did not ‘recognise the events she described in her article’. He added: ‘I clearly made her feel uncomfortable and for this I apologise.’ Government insiders say Mr Green would not have lost his job if he hadn’t breached the ministerial code by making misleading statements about what he knew about police claims that pornography had been found on his office computer. On Friday, Mrs May denied she had been alerted to any claims about Mr Green’s behaviour before Ms Maltby wrote her article in October. It comes as friends of Brexit Secretary David Davis say he did ‘everything he could’ to save Mr Green, including setting up a ‘war room’ in his office to rebut claims made by former Scotland Yard officers about pornography being found on his computer. Mr Davis also lobbied the Prime Minister personally to not ‘give his head to the police on a plate’ – but had to admit defeat when it emerged that Mr Green had made misleading statements about his knowledge of the police claims. Brexit Secretary David Davis said he did everything he could to save Mr Green, including setting up a 'war room' to rebut claims facing him In his powerful article, Mr Elphicke says that – unlike Mr Green – his fate is being left in limbo. ‘Damian Green was informed of the allegations against him and afforded the courtesy of a full inquiry by the Cabinet Office,’ he writes. ‘In my case, it’s now more than seven weeks since I was accused of unspecified allegations. ‘To this day I have not been interviewed by the police and they have not told me what I am accused of or who my accuser is. ‘Just after 9pm at night on Friday, November 3, I was relaxing at home with my family. The phone rang and it was a journalist saying he’d heard I was having the party whip removed – did I want to make a comment? ‘My wife and I spent that weekend wondering whether I would be arrested at any moment. The knock never came. And has not to this day. Seven weeks on. ‘Throwing a public figure out to the wolves has grave consequences... Meanwhile, on social media, anonymous accounts spew vitriol that Twitter refuses to take down. After all, why not when the Chief Whip – who has never been my biggest fan – has declared open season?’ Mr Green follows Sir Michael Fallon and Priti Patel in being bundled out of the Cabinet in the past two months. While Mr Green has been close to Mrs May since university, both Sir Michael and Ms Patel have the potential to cause trouble for the Prime Minister. Damian Green was fired by Theresa May last week and has been accused of being a sex pest by Ms Maltby Friends of Sir Michael blame his successor as Defence Secretary, former Chief Whip Gavin Williamson, of having helped to engineer his departure by ‘whispering in the ear’ of Mrs May and using the harassment scandal as a device to prise him out. Sir Michael was forced out over claims of inappropriate behaviour towards women – including a ‘lunge’ at a journalist and ‘lewd’ remarks towards fellow Conservative MP Andrea Leadsom. One friend said: ‘He has been cast into darkness by Mrs May’s Downing Street, after complaining that he would get up at the crack of dawn to do the media rounds whenever there was a crisis.’ Last night, Sir Michael said: ‘I wish Gavin well.’ Ms Patel, who lost her job as International Development Secretary seven days later after it was revealed that she had held meetings in Israel without telling the Government, is also regarded as being ‘on leadership manoeuvres’ by No 10 – who fear that she could team up with Environment Secretary Michael Gove to form a ‘dream ticket’ leadership partnership if the May Premiership falters. Since leaving her job, Ms Patel has taken aim at Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson – another leadership contender – over the turf war between the Foreign Office and her old department, complaining to friends that she no longer thinks her and Mr Johnson are ‘on the same side’. Last night, Ms Maltby said: ‘It has never been a secret that I had a friendly relationship with Damian Green for some time before I cut off contact, and that I resumed contact with him by text after he joined the Cabinet. ‘I felt it was professionally necessary – and I gave the Cabinet inquiry multiple saved communications proving that I had asked the advice of several more experienced female journalists before doing so. ‘It is my clear understanding from the Cabinet Office that direct evidence as to his behaviour in this regard has already formed the background to the Prime Minister’s decision to sack him. Your story reflects much more on him than it does on me.’ Mr Green declined to comment tonight. The PM's enforcer has thrown me to the wolves, by Tory MP CHARLIE ELPHICKE It's more than seven weeks since Charlie Elphicke was accused of unspecific allegations Christmas should be a time of celebration – yet this year, for me and my family, it will be a more sombre occasion. Damian Green was informed of the allegations against him and afforded the courtesy of a full inquiry by the Cabinet Office. In my case, it’s now more than seven weeks since I was accused of unspecified allegations. To this day, I have not been interviewed by the police, nor have they told me what I am accused of or who my accuser is. Just after 9pm on Friday, November 3, I was relaxing at home with my family. The phone rang; it was a journalist saying he had heard I was having the party whip removed. Did I want to make a comment? Many minutes later, I spoke to the new Conservative Chief Whip Julian Smith who told me of ‘serious allegations’ that had been referred to the police. I asked what they were and he would not tell me. He would only say that I was having the Conservative whip suspended. My wife and I spent that weekend wondering whether I would be arrested at any moment. The knock never came. And has not to this day. Seven weeks on. In the meantime, the press pack descended on our home; neighbours watched horrified as our bins were checked out; the local pubs were full of press asking for the inside track on their MP for the price of a drink. Work colleagues and friends of the family have been subject to unwanted intrusion. Throwing a public figure out to the wolves has grave consequences. Yet the support of friends, my community in Dover & Deal and parliamentary colleagues has been incredible. Meanwhile on social media, anonymous accounts spew vitriol that Twitter refuses to take down. After all, why not when the Chief Whip – who has never been my biggest fan – has declared open season? In the febrile atmosphere that grips our country from time to time, we must never rush to judgment. We must always remember it is a cornerstone of our constitution that a person is innocent until proven guilty. Proper procedures should always be followed. Whatever allegations may be put to me, I deny any criminal wrongdoing. However I cannot deny that the pressure of these events has taken a heavy toll on me and my family and cast a long shadow this Christmas.(CNN) Deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders seemed to have a plan when she called on Breitbart News' Charlie Spiering first at Tuesday's briefing. Spiering asked about the retraction of a Russia-related CNN story and the resignations of three staffers associated with it. Huckabee Sanders took that hanging curveball and swung for the fences. "I don't know that it's that the response isn't good enough for the president. I think it's the constant barrage of fake news that is directed at this president, probably, that has garnered a lot of his frustration. You point to that report; there are multiple other instances where that outlet that you referenced has been repeatedly wrong and had to point that out or had to correct it. There's a video circulating now — whether it's accurate or not, I don't know — but I would encourage everyone in this room and, frankly, everybody across the country to take a look at it. I think if it is accurate, I think it's a disgrace to all of media, to all of journalism..." "I think that we have gone to a place where, if the media can't be trusted to report the news, then that's a dangerous place for America. And I think if that is the place certain outlets are going — particularly for the purpose of spiking ratings — and if that's coming directly from the top, I think that's even more scary." That led Brian J. Karem, a columnist for Playboy, according to his Twitter biography, to respond this way: Read MoreNetworking Events are a Waste of Time Len Kendall Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 18, 2013 I’m really introverted in a very specific way. If someone walks up to me and starts a conversation, I’m usually a very lively and engaged individual. But when it comes to randomly approaching people, I’m as shy as one could be. My reclusiveness doesn’t really stem from an inability to talk to people “IRL” though, it has more to do with my repulsion to inefficient communication. A networking event is really just a series of calculated bets. Kind of like dating. Cultural norms don’t let you simply exit a conversation if you quickly realize a person is neither useful or entertaining to you, so you’re stuck finding ways to wrap it up and move on to your next attempt. Regardless of how niche the event is, the reality is that no more than 1 or 2 people can really make a difference for you. That means the ROI of your time versus the value you’ll get out of fellow attendees is pretty darn low. Some may argue that it’s easier to get in front of someone at a networking event that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to talk to. To some degree that’s true (I met Mark Cuban that way) but so what? That person won’t remember you and they’ll just tell you to email them anyways. (And that’s what he did.) My perspective…work hard to filter down the people you really want to get in touch with, and then work even harder to find really unique and honest ways to get their attention. If you’re lucky, you can take them out to coffee and get their full attention. (And not have to pitch them while they’re giving you half of their attention). Networking events can pay off occasionally, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not a good use of your time.It seems as we increasingly become a nation of urban citizens it is cities that are leading the way on climate change and renewable energy. Poll after poll after poll has shown Canadians support action on renewable energy, and municipal politicians are moving the needle here too. Calgary buys renewable energy for all of its own operations, Banff has Canada's first municipal feed-in tariff and the small town of Craik, Saskatchewan, has an eco-village full of green homes. Look into the Green Energy Futures archives --every fifth story is about some innovative municipal project. So when a city says it's going to go 100 per cent renewable, that definitely got our attention. Vancouver's commitment came in March 2015, and they're not wasting time to put it in place. Vancouver has the advantage of British Columbia's legacy big hydro grid. Almost 95 per cent of the city's electricity comes from renewable sources, so the big issue isn't necessarily electricity. "A lot of it will hinge on the transportation technology and how quickly zero emission vehicles become the norm. And that's one that we don't necessarily control, but we can make sure we have the electric infrastructure for charging all the vehicles that the city would need," says Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson in this interview. "We see this as a huge economic opportunity for Vancouver. We're partnering with a group of 17 cities around the world that are looking at how we do this, how we work together, share best practices and really develop a framework for all the cities of the world to go 100 per cent renewable," says Robertson. And while Vancouver became the first city in Canada to make the 100 per cent renewable pledge, they were soon followed by Oxford County in Ontario; 29 cities in the U.S. and 26 more around the world have done the same. Even though it's a really big change, Robertson wants to do it in sustainable manner, one that "creates great economic opportunity, and ultimately, will serve the generations going forward and keep this world healthy." "In our greenest city plan we have a goal to double the number of green jobs in the city and we've seen that increase 19 per cent in the past three years," says Robertson. "We're seeing an incredible surge in green jobs whether they're in renewable energy or green buildings or local food production. It's been great success in creating new jobs and
lip reported that at the beginning of the study the average time 'from penetration to ejaculation' was 36 seconds for both groups.At the end of the study, three months later, the PSD502 group had increased this time to 3.3 minutes, while the control group was still under 1 minute.The WebMD article stated, 'A stopwatch held by the man or his partner was used to calculate the times. 'Talk about distracting,'.... 'But that's one of the strengths of the study; they got real data, not just men reporting back they think they lasted longer after using the medication.'"Also, 'The men getting PSD502 also reported better ejaculatory control and overall satisfaction with their sexual experience than the placebo recipients.'Page four concludes with the future of PSD502, along with further information about the study. The WebMD article warns that: 'This study was presented at a medical conference. The findings should be considered preliminary as they have not yet undergone the "peer review" process, in which outside experts scrutinize the data prior to publication in a medical journal.'However, the product shows promise in delaying premature ejaculation. Before being offered to the public, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will have to approve its use. Such approval is being sought by Shionogi,.For additional information on this study, please read the June 1, 2010 EurekAlert article'Pivotal data for the investigational treatment PSD502 for primary premature ejaculation.'Greetings Rocksmith fans! It’s Friday, and the clue has been cracked. It looks like we’ll be getting our first repeat DLC after all! It started when Dan posted this very familiar image: Which happens to be the same image used from last week’s DLC clue. The password tompetty revealed another GIF image hidden within: MentokMindTkr correctly identified it as the actor Michael McKeon from the movie Clue, which Jayrocks cracked using mrgreen as the password. This revealed yet another image: Those mysterious symbols on the sides turned out to be the Pigpen cipher, which KyleMRob translated as “Pick Two” along the top left and “Name The Band” along the bottom right. Which two weapons? Obviously the Rope and the Monkey Wrench of course, which Dan confirmed. Yep, it’s Foo Fighters! This comes as particularly surprising since we’ve already gotten a Foo Fighters 5-pack back in December of 2012, making this Rocksmith’s very first repeat DLC pack. Here’s what we’d like to see in addition to the confirmed tracks: Are you excited for more Foo Fighters? Could we expect to see more repeat DLC packs in the future? Could this possibly coincide with the release of their new album and HBO television documentary series, Sonic Highways? Let us know in the comments below! UPDATE: taps nose UPDATE THE SECOND: 4/5!We have thus hypothesized that CBD may be effective in SAD. However, no study to date has investigated the effects of CBD on human pathological anxiety and its underlying brain mechanisms. Therefore, in the present study, we applied functional neuroimaging to investigate the neurophysiological basis of the effects of CBD in patients with SAD. Based on previous Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) ( Crippa et al., 2004 ) and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) ( Fusar-Poli et al., 2009 ) studies of CBD effects, we predicted that, relative to placebo, CBD would reduce anxiety in subjects with SAD and that this effect would be associated with the modulation of the functional activity of temporo-limbic structures (amygdala-hippocampus complex and parahippocampal gyrus) and paralimbic regions, including the cingulate cortex. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to directly investigate the neural and/or behavioral effects of CBD in patients with an anxiety disorder. Although it is well recognized that cannabis use can cause adverse effects, including anxiety, there is consistent evidence that many individuals use the drug to obtain relief from anxiety symptoms ( Crippa et al., 2009 ). Moreover, it has been suggested that individuals with SAD are more likely to use cannabis than those with other anxiety disorders to ‘self-medicate’ anxiety reactions ( Buckner et al., 2008 ). These apparently conflicting statements may partly reflect the fact that low doses of the best-known constituent of the plant, Δ 9 -tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ 9 -THC), have anxiolytic-like effects, whereas higher doses produce anxiogenic reactions ( Crippa et al., 2010 ; Fusar-Poli et al., 2009 ; Viveros et al., 2005 ). Generalized Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is one of the most common and impairing anxiety conditions. However, the pharmacological treatment of SAD remains problematic since it is poorly controlled by the currently available drugs, with only about 30% of the subjects achieving true recovery or remission ( Blanco et al., 2002 ). Therefore, there is a clear need to develop and explore novel therapeutic agents for the management of SAD. Methods Section: Choose Top of page Abstract Introduction Methods << Results Discussion References CITING ARTICLES Subjects Ten right-handed men with generalized SAD, recruited from an epidemiological sample of 2320 university students, were selected by the screening procedure described elsewhere (Crippa et al., 2008; De Lima Osório et al., 2007). They had the SAD diagnosis confirmed by the SCID for the DSM-IV. Participants were aged between 20 and 33 years (mean age 24.2 years; SD 3.7), were treatment-naïve and did not have any comorbid psychiatric disorders. Their mean age of onset of illness was 9.1 years (SD 1.53), and the mean illness duration was 14.8 years (SD 3.12). Severity of SAD was assessed with the Portuguese version (Osório et al., 2006, 2010) of the Brief Social Phobia Scale (BSPS) (Davidson, et al., 1991) and using the Portuguese version (Osório et al., 2009) of the Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN) (Connor et al., 2000). The BSPS is an instrument whose objective is to screen and quantify the different symptoms characteristic of SAD. It consists of 18 items divided into three subscales (fear, avoidance and physiological symptoms) which are scored on a five-point Likert scale which, when summed, produce a total score of 0 to 76 points. Discriminative validity proved to be excellent for a cut-off score of 18 to 19. To improve and standardize the application and reliability of this scale, Osório et al. (2006) proposed an interview guide. The SPIN is a self-applied instrument derived from the BSPS consisting of 17 items scored on a five-point Likert scale, with a maximum total score of 68. Criterion validity revealed excellent sensitivity and specificity for a cut-off score of 19. Other psychometric properties of both BSPS and SPIN have been consistently considered adequate in different studies and cultures. All subjects had total scores higher than 52 on the SPIN and higher than 54 on the BSPS, thus classified as suffering from severe social phobia. Their mean weight ranged between 65–91 kg and their body mass index ranged between 21–25 kg/m2. They were included into the study if they did not have a history of head trauma, neurological illness, electroconvulsive therapy, current or previous drug/alcohol use or abuse or major medical illnesses, and had not received any medication for at least 3 months before the study (Mathew et al., 1992), based on a semi-standardized questionnaire and physical examination. All were non-smokers (tobacco), had not used marijuana more than five times in their lifetime, with no use in the past year. None had ever used any other illicit drug. Although no urine or blood tests were given to ensure absence of marijuana use, we have assessed past and current use of this or other illicit drugs use by means of a semi-structured questionnaire and the Addiction Severity Index (ASI) (McLellan et al., 1980). No subject had previously undergone SPECT or other nuclear medicine procedures. Clinical and demographic information of the patient sample are shown in Table 1. All subjects gave written informed consent after being fully informed of the research procedure, following approval by the local ethical committee (HCRP No. 11559/04). Table 1. Clinical and demographic characteristics of Social Anxiety Disorder patients (n = 10) View larger version Drug CBD (400 mg) approximately 99.9% pure (THC-Pharm; Frankfurt, Germany) was dissolved in corn oil. The same amount of corn oil was used as placebo. The drug and placebo were packed inside identical gelatin capsules. Previous studies showed that the plasma peak of an oral dose of CBD usually occurs 1–2 h after ingestion (Agurell et al., 1981; Borgwardt et al., 2008; Fusar-Poli et al., 2009). Self-rating scale for subjective states during the SPECT imaging procedure Subjective states were evaluated by mean of the Visual Analogue Mood Scale (VAMS) of Norris (1971), translated into Portuguese (Zuardi and Karniol, 1981). In this scale, the subject is told to mark a point that identifies his/her present subjective state on a 10-cm straight line placed between two words that describe opposite mood states (e.g. calm–agitated). It consists of 16 items that the factor analysis had grouped into four factors, namely anxiety, mental sedation, physical sedation and other feelings and attitudes (Zuardi et al., 1993b). The anxiety factor composed of three scales (calm–excited; relaxed–tense and tranquil–troubled) instead of the two scales obtained with the factor analysis of the English version (Bond and Lader, 1974). Reported results have shown that the VAMS is more sensitive than the STAI-S for the detection of drug effects on anxiety (Hallak et al., 2010; Zuardi et al., 1993b), provided initial instructions and supervision are given to limit the tendency to extreme choices by the subjects (Guimarães et al., 1989). Therefore, prior to the SPECT experiment each volunteer underwent a rigorous training session completing this scale. Subjective ratings on the VAMS were made at five different time-points: 30 min before drug ingestion (pre-drug; −30′); at the time of drug ingestion (drug intake; 0); at 60 min (pre-stress; 60′) and at 75 min afterwards (adaptation; 75′); and just after SPECT scanning (post-stress; 140 min after drug intake). The anxiety-evoking procedure consisted of the whole SPECT procedure itself, which involves the insertion of an intravenous cannula and the exposition to a totally uncommon situation (medical environment, large examination apparatus). The terms ‘pre-stress’, ‘adaptation’ and ‘post-stress’, refer to the moments of the scanning session in which the VAMS was completed.During a speech at the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Nashville last week, wannabe reality TV star and house flipper David Benham told an audience that he convinced a gay critic of his to walk away from his lifestyle merely by buying him tickets to a Chicago Cubs game and showing him “love.” Benham and his twin brother Jason became household names last year when they saw their HGTY do-it-yourself show canceled after their intolerant views on homosexuality and gay marriage became public. The two are sons of noted Christian evangelist Flip Benham. Since the kerfuffle over the show’s cancellation, the brothers have become celebrities among the far-right Christian crowd and have been booked to speak at numerous religious and conservative events. Having their program axed has only given them more credibility and notoriety with evangelicals and conservative advocates as it presents them as martyrs for both free speech and traditional Christian teachings. At the NRB conference, they found themselves warmly embraced and decided to tell a tale about how they converted a homosexual man and made him straight through good ol’ fashioned Christian love. While sharing the stage with his brother, David started talking about how the two of them had been besieged by criticism from “hostile” gays after their views and beliefs became public in the aftermath of their show’s cancellation. He explained to the crowd that instead of confronting their critics, they respond with love and kindness. In one particular instance, David said that after having a conversation with a gay man, he asked him who his favorite baseball team was and then later sent him tickets to a game. Below is an excerpt from The Blaze article recapping the Benhams’ speech: “We had so many people from the gay community reaching out to us and one man in particular from the city of Chicago reached out � and he said things to me that made me lose my appetite,” David Benham told the crowd during a panel discussion about religious liberty. “But I simply responded in love.” And that positive tone went well beyond merely listening and speaking with kindness. “After a little conversation back and forth, I found out he loved baseball � and I got him tickets to a Cubs game,” Benham continued. “He shot me a Facebook post and said, �I was not expecting that � and I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I’ve chosen to walk away from my lifestyle.'” According to The Blaze, after David recounted that story, the crowd gave the brothers a round of applause. The two concluded their speech by telling the audience that we need to insert God back into our country and they will continue to do what they do because they have “absolutely no hatred” in their hearts.In 2021, Michigan will re-draw its congressional and state legislative boundaries. The law says each of these geographic tracts of land must contain as equal a number of people as possible. This mandate creates a jigsaw puzzle of irregular shapes across the political map. For decades, political parties have “gerrymandered” these borders to their own advantage. Technically, it’s illegal for a single party to group its voting base in a specific area, but the practice can be hard to prove. Now, grassroots support is building to place redistricting back in the hands of the people. On the far northwest side of Lansing lies an interesting right angle. Two, actually. You can’t see them, because they’re imaginary. But if you happen to live, work or vote near the Capital Region International Airport in the vicinity of Waverly Road and Grand River, then you know this point is quite real. This is the spot where Clinton, Eaton and Ingham counties intersect. It’s also the junction of three Michigan congressional districts: the 4th, 7th and 8th. The place demographers call the Greater Lansing area straddles all three. Yet, not one of its three incumbents -- Republicans John Moolenaar, Mike Bishop and Tim Walberg -- live in or even close to Greater Lansing. And that’s not by accident. “That’s inherently unfair to the people of the Greater Lansing area,” says Walt Sorg with the Michigan Election Reform Alliance. “They should be represented by somebody who’s more consistent with the views of the Lansing area.” MERA is among of a number of groups that wants to see the era of gerrymandering come to an end when Michigan draws its next political map in 2021. Gerrymandering is the practice of drawing political boundaries to aggregate the voters who back the dominant political party. It’s a technique nearly as old as America itself...and both the donkey and the elephant do it whenever each gets the chance to mark its turf. In Michigan, Republicans have enjoyed that privilege for the past two election cycles. Sorg says a good example is the 24th state senate district, led by Senator Rick Jones. “His district now goes over the top of Lansing through Clinton County, then ducks back into Ingham County, once you get past Meridian Township into the Republican northeastern part of Ingham County,” Sorg says. “And as a result, the people who live on one side of Sheridan Road on the north side of Lansing...if they’re on the north side, they’re represented by Rick Jones, if they’re on the south side, they’re represented by (Democrat) Curtis Hertel. They are markedly different philosophically, and I suspect the spread between the two of them is far greater than the spread between neighbors on Sheridan Road.” Sorg believes gerrymandering polarizes the Michigan legislature and isolates its constituents. “The Democrats run as liberal as possible, the Republicans run as conservative as possible,” he explains. “The people that are centrist -- which is where Michigan is politically -- are really kind of left out in the cold. And that hurts everybody.” A recent court case in a neighboring state is fueling hope for some anti-gerrymandering crusaders in Michigan. In November, a federal three judge panel ordered Wisconsin lawmakers to re-map its districts after ruling the process had been overtly partisan. The decision was a departure from past cases where gerrymandering has been struck down as racially discriminatory. The Wisconsin case could make it all the way to the Supreme Court, whose even split could soon be broken by a conservative Trump nominee. Still, Sorg says courts are becoming more sympathetic to such lawsuits. “The Arizona redistricting plan, which is a citizens commission, was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. It was a 5-4 vote, but it was upheld. (The court) said that the people do have the power to do redistricting independent of the legislature.” Sorg’s group, the Michigan Election Reform Alliance, and the League of Women Voters of Michigan will hold a public forum about gerrymandering Sunday afternoon at East Lansing High School. Beyond that, Sorg says momentum is gaining among grassroots groups who are trying to put redistricting reform before Michigan voters.Views 51191 On June 15, 2017, Congress member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor claimed that 23 of the BJP-led government’s new programmes were merely renamed versions of schemes launched by the previous governments led by his party. Why we in @INCIndia insist this is a name-changing government, not a game-changing one! pic.twitter.com/Opdj3n2xaV — Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) June 15, 2017 Another Twitter user made the same claim on June 11, 2017. We found that 19 of the 23 programmes were indeed renamed versions of older schemes, as Tharoor claimed. Here’s our analysis: Claim 1: Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana=Basic Savings Bank Deposit Account Fact: True Basic Savings Bank Deposit Account (BSBDA) was a no-minimum-balance service with all facilities of a normal banking account except that withdrawals were limited to four a month, according to this Reserve Bank of India (RBI) circular dated August 17, 2012. The accounts came with an automated teller machine (ATM)-cum-debit card too. The BSBDA accounts were also meant for beneficiaries of government programmes, according to this answer in the Rajya Sabha (upper house of Parliament) on December 13, 2012. Under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), launched on August 28, 2014, an accident insurance cover of Rs 1 lakh, overdraft facility up to Rs 5,000 after six months and a life insurance of Rs 30,000 were added to BSBDA accounts. Unlike BSBDA, PMJDY accounts had a credit limit of Rs 1 lakh because of which pension reimbursements were getting rejected, The Financial Express reported on September 8, 2016. While BSBDA covered only villages with above 2,000 population, PMJDY has been extended to all areas–rural as well as urban. “They are more or less the same. All accounts opened prior to August 28, 2014, were BSBDA. Since then, they have all become PMJDY accounts. It’s only a change of nomenclature,” Prem Singh Azad, deputy general manager, Allahabad Bank, who is involved in the bank’s financial inclusion programme, told IndiaSpend. Claim 2: Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao Yojana=National Girl Child Day programmes Fact: True The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA)-I declared January 24 as the National Girl Day in 2008-09 and several objectives associated with previous continuing programmes were adopted as targets. Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao Yojana (BBBPY), launched in January 2015 under the ministries of women and child development, health and family welfare and human resource development, was a consolidation of old programmes scattered across schemes and ministries under the UPA government. For instance, the girl child education programme of BBBPY was a repackaging of older education schemes such as the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, according to this February 2016 report by the Centre for Development and Human Rights, a research and advocacy organisation in New Delhi. Similarly, BBBPY’s objectives of improving the child sex ratio and reducing school dropout rates among girls were already present in the UPA’s Dhanalakshmi and Sabla schemes, respectively. Dhanalakshmi was later discontinued as states already had better schemes in place. Claim 3: Swach Bharat Abhiyan=Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan Fact: True In September 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government approved a proposal that Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan scheme be restructured into Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, according to this government release. Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan was the new name adopted for the Total Sanitation Campaign on April 1, 2012 under UPA-II, according to the Abhiyan’s guidelines. Total Sanitation Campaign was the new name given to the Central Rural Sanitation Programme–launched by the Congress in 1986–in 1999, according to the drinking water and sanitation ministry’s website. Claim 4: Sardar Patel National Urban Housing Mission=Rajiv Awaas Yojana Fact: True “The government is shortly going to launch a comprehensive programme named Sardar Patel National Housing Mission by merging and improving existing urban housing schemes,” The Pioneer reported on October 10, 2014, quoting Housing and Poverty Alleviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. A parliamentary committee, headed by Biju Janata Dal member Pinaki Mishra, had even asked the government in December 2014 how merely changing the name could accelerate implementation, The Telegraph reported on December 30, 2014. Claim 5: Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana (Gramin)=Indira Awaas Yojana Fact: True A parliamentary standing committee report–submitted on August 31, 2016–pointed out that Congress’s Indira Awaas Yojana was “rechristen[ed]” Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana (Gramin). The “Guidelines”, “Scheme Allocation” and “FAQs” on the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana (Gramin) website still open Indira Awaas Yojana documents. Claim 6: Deen Dayal Upadhyay Gram Jyoti Yojana=Rajiv Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana Fact: True The UPA’s Rajiv Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana was “subsumed” under Deen Dayal Upadhyay Gram Jyoti Yojana, according to this government release on July 23, 2015. Claim 7: Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation=Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission Fact: True NDA’s urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu had said on assuming office that they would replace Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) with their own urban renewal schemes, The Hindu reported on May 29, 2014. Subsequently, Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), smart cities Mission and Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana (Urban) were launched on June 25, 2015. JNNURM was launched on December 3, 2005, for an initial period of seven years and then extended for two years up to March 2014, according to this Rajya Sabha answer on December 6, 2012. A comparison of some key objectives of the two programmes shows that under the NDA government, the targets of UPA’s umbrella programme have been spread over several schemes. The “sectors covered under JNNURM and [AMRUT and other urban development programmes] overlap significantly,” according this March 2016 report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, a global consultancy. “[V]arious urban sector components [that] were earlier addressed through a single mission (JNNURM) … have now been split across missions [such as AMRUT, Smart Cities Mission and Swachh Bharat Mission],” the report said. Comparison of Urban Development Programmes Sources: Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation,Town and Country Planning Organisation, AMRUT, Smart Cities Mission, PM Awaas Yojana-Urban Claim 8: Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana=Accelerated Irrigation Benefits Programme Fact: Unclear Three older programmes– Accelerated Irrigation Benefits Programme of the water resources ministry, Integrated Watershed Management Programme of the land resources ministry and the On Farm Water Management of agriculture and cooperation department–were merged to create the NDA’s Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana, according to Yojana’s website. As government websites (click here, here, here, here and here) do not reveal when exactly the programme was launched in 1996, it is difficult to check this claim, as three prime ministers–Congress’s P.V. Narasimha Rao (till May 16), BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee (May 16-June 1) and Janata Dal (Secular)’s H.D. Deve Gowda (June 1 onwards)–governed India during 1996. The watershed management programme goes back to the late 1980s when the country was mostly under Congress’s rule. Claim 9: BJP’s neem-coated urea=Congress’s neem-coated urea Fact: True Neem-coated urea was included in the Fertiliser (Control) Order of 1985 in 2004, according to government-owned National Fertilizers’ website, and was notified on June 2, 2008, according to this government communication. It was finally included in the 1985 Order through an amendment on February 6, 2017. Claim 10: Soil Health Card scheme=National Project on Management of Soil Health and Fertility Fact: True A soil health card was “added” to the National Project on Management of Soil Health and Fertility, according to the Outcome Budget 2015-16 of the agriculture and cooperation department. The centre would earlier provide support to states for issuing soil health cards under the central scheme, according to Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament) answers (click here and here). Under the UPA government, soil health cards were also issued under the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture, one of its several organic-farming programmes, according to the Outcome Budget 2015-16. This scheme was also merged with NDA’s renamed Soil Health Card programme. Claim 11: Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana=Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana and other programmes Fact: True “Some existing components … have been clubbed together as a cluster based programme and named Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana,” according to the Outcome Budget 2015-16 of the agriculture and cooperation department, FactChecker reported on July 22, 2015. Claim 12: Pradhan Mantri Matritva Vandana Yojana=Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana Fact: Unclear The ministry of women and child development’s website does not use the new name–Pradhan Mantri Matritva Vandana Yojana–for the maternity benefit programme (see the latest release dated May 19, 2017) but archives releases under the Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana under the same head. A senior ministry official was quoted as saying the name had been changed, Hindustan Times reported on May 25, 2017. Claim 13: Atal Pension Yojana=Swavalamban Yojana Fact: True Even as the Modi government folded Congress’s Swavalamban Yojana–a pension scheme for unorganised sector workers launched on September 29, 2010–under its Atal Pension Yojana, the features of the two schemes remain the same, according to this comparison by the Rajiv Gandhi Institute For Contemporary Studies, a think tank in New Delhi. Claim 14: Pradhan Mantri Jan Aushadhi Yojana=Jan Aushadhi scheme Fact: True The decision to launch the Jan Aushadhi scheme, a programme to supply unbranded medicines at lower prices, was taken on April 23, 2008. The first store under the scheme was opened on November 25, 2008, according to the Bureau of Pharma PSU in India, established under the department of pharmaceuticals on December 1, 2008, to coordinate the scheme through government-owned companies. The scheme is now called Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana, according to this Lok Sabha answer on March 14, 2017. Claim 15: Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana=Comprehensive Crop Insurance Scheme Fact: False The 1985 Comprehensive Crop Insurance Scheme concluded in 1999, according to this report of the agriculture and cooperation department. Claim 16: Make In India=National Manufacturing Policy Fact: True The Make In India website not only summarises the scheme as Congress’s “National Manufacturing Policy” but even the broken download link unsuccessfully directs you to a 2011 document of the older policy. The features of the National Manufacturing Policy and Make in India remain the same, shows a comparison on Twitter on February 13, 2016, by Amitabh Dubey, a political analyst at Trusted Sources, which provides investment research on emerging markets. So that's why Modi's #MakeInIndia agenda is so familiar; it's a cut-and-paste of the UPA's manufacturing policy. pic.twitter.com/0qIcZOuPf2 — Amitabh Dubey (@dubeyamitabh) February 13, 2016 Claim 17: Digital India=National eGovernance Plan Fact: True The National eGovernance Plan is “now subsumed under Digital India”, according to this government release on November 30, 2016. Both the Congress (click here and here) and the BJP schemes talk about building infrastructure for delivering government services electronically. Claim 18: Skill India=National Skill Development Programme Fact: True Previous skill development programmes were relaunched as Skill India with new branding, according to this government release on July 15, 2015. The older programmes–National Skill Development Corporation and National Skill Development Fund (launched in 2009), and National Skill Development Agency (launched in 2013)–were brought under a new department of skill development and entrepreneurship on July 31, 2014, according to this government release. The department became a ministry on November 9, 2014. Claim 19: Mission Indradhanush=Universal Immunisation Programme Fact: True Mission Indradhanush is the new name for special immunisation weeks, which were being conducted in areas of low immunisation under the Universal Immunisation Programme, FactChecker reported on July 23, 2015. Claim 20: Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana=National Rural Livelihood Mission Fact: True “The Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana … is a part of the National Rural Livelihood Mission,” according to the programme website. Claim 21: PAHAL=Direct Benefits Transfer for LPG Fact: True Launched on June 1, 2013, the “Direct Benefit transfer of LPG scheme PAHAL (Pratyaksh Hanstantrit Labh) [was] re-launched in 54 districts on November 15,2014 in the 1st phase and will be launched in the rest of the 622 districts of the country on 1.1.2015,” according to this government release on December 31, 2014. Claim 22: BharatNet=National Optic Fibre Network Fact: True The National Optic Fibre Network, approved on October 25, 2011, aims to provide “Broadband connectivity to Panchayats”. BharatNet merely repeats the claim: “to digitally connect all the Gram Panchayats (GPs) and Villages of India”, according to this September 2016 Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay report on the second phase of the programme. Claim 23: Sagarmala=National Maritime Development Programme Fact: False The programme was originally announced by former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on August 15, 2003, during the BJP-led NDA’s first stint in power, Frontline reported in March-April 2004. When the Congress-led UPA came to power, it launched its own National Maritime Development Programme even as Sagarmala lapsed, according to this Lok Sabha answer on August 3, 2009. The NDA revived the original programme on March 25, 2015.There is no economic case for building new coal-based power plants in India, let alone environmental reasons for not doing so. The existing fleet is facing economic hardships and willing lenders for new projects are hard to come by. According to Greenpeace experts in India, “Coal is facing a perfect storm: economics have changed, finance is drying up, and public opposition has never been stronger.” Plant load factors (PLFs or capacity) for the nearly 190 gigawatt (GW) of coal already commissioned in the country are hovering around the 60 per cent average, as opposed to the Central Electricity Authority's (CEA) normative 85 per cent goal. The reason for the low PLFs is lack of effective demand — cash-strapped distribution companies or discoms are curtailing purchase rather than trying to service their entire distribution areas. Over the last five-year plan (2012-2017), before the Planning Commission was disbanded, India built more coal power plants than the plan called for. As a result, there is overcapacity in the sector. That is why the CEA's new Draft National Electricity Plan now says no new coal power plants (other than those under construction) are needed for the next decade at least. The low PLFs are sub-optimal for the financial viability of many projects, and lenders and investors are already facing delayed payments. If banks are forced to restructure their loans, (a big if, for political reasons), we could see sell-offs or debt for equity trades. We are already seeing consolidation in the coal sector as companies (eg Jindal Steel and Power Ltd) try and offload their least productive assets. So the sector is currently in trouble for hard financial reasons. But there are several factors on the horizon that will make any recovery hard. Costs are rising: Coal India's cost of production is growing, as is the cost of coal transport. With air pollution finally becoming a political issue, the Ministry of Environment & Forests has notified new emission norms that must be complied with by the end of this year. While that deadline will clearly not be met, complying is inevitable and this means significant expense. Companies will have to absorb this at least partially, while the rest will be passed on in the form of higher tariffs. Competitiveness: Solar and wind are now at parity with (or cheaper than) new coal: With the recent Rewa bids of Rs 3.30/kWh for solar and Rs 3.46/kWh for wind, grid parity is effectively here. Tariffs from new coal power plants are in the Rs 3-5 range. The variable cost component for coal power is more flexible, with a greater risk of cost increase from the cost of coal, water, additional emission controls, operation and maintenance etc, whereas once the capital cost for solar and wind is incurred, variable costs tend to be negligible. Finance: Due to a combination of poor financials and eroding social and environmental acceptability, most leading global banks and investors are moving away from new coal investment. A spirited campaign highlighting coal’s negative environmental and social impacts has also played a role. Global banks such as Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank are now reluctant to underwrite any new Coal India share offers. The world’s largest sovereign wealth pension fund, the Norwegian Global Pension Fund, has divested itself of virtually all coal holdings. According to BankTrack, an international NGO monitoring the banking industry, banks that have made commitments to stop or restrict financing for new coal mines, power plants, and coal companies include the World Bank, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Standard Chartered, Morgan Stanley, and BNP Paribas. According to an updated Greenpeace Investor Briefing titled 'Water shortages cost Indian coal power companies over $500 million in revenues last year', “Large parts of the Indian subcontinent faced a severe drought in the summer of 2016… revealing coal’s vulnerability in water stressed areas. With growing variability in rainfall patterns due to climate change, and growing demand for water from a growing population, this vulnerability will increase.” Nearly 11 billion units of coal power, with an estimated potential revenue of $560 million, was lost in the first half of 2016 due to lack of water for cooling. NTPC and Adani Power are among the companies worst hit. NTPC’s Farakka plant in West Bengal has lost the generation of approximately 1.1 billion units, translating into lost revenue of over $58 million
Bill Murray, Lost in Translation is a black movie: That’s what it feels like to be black and rich. Not in the sense that people are being mean to you. Bill Murray’s in Tokyo, and it’s just weird. He seems kind of isolated. He’s always around Japanese people. Look at me right now. We’re sitting on the 35th floor of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel overlooking Central Park. And there’s only really one black person here who’s not working. Bill Murray in Lost in Translation is what Bryant Gumbel experiences every day. Or Al Roker. Rich black guys. It’s a little off. But the thing is, we treat racism in this country like it’s a style that America went through. Like flared legs and lava lamps. Oh, that crazy thing we did. We were hanging black people. We treat it like a fad instead of a disease that eradicates millions of people. You’ve got to get it at a lab, and study it, and see its origins, and see what it’s immune to and what breaks it down. Recently there’s been a spate of movies that have tried to look at the origins of the disease: 12 Years a Slave, The Butler, Lincoln. 42. But do they make any difference, or do people just say, “Oh, that’s history, and slavery was bad,” and they don’t cause people to reflect? I think it causes some people to reflect. I mean, again, it’s the kids. It’ll help a little bit. Of the ones you just mentioned, the only one I really liked is 12 Years a Slave, because it just didn’t feel the need to make people feel comfortable. Sarah Paulson was one of the most evil white people ever onscreen. She was brilliant. I don’t know who won the Oscar, but it should’ve been hers. When they had slave revolts in the past, they would always kill Massa’s wife first. Talk to me a little about the trajectory of Top Five. I gather there was wild enthusiasm at the premiere in Toronto and a bidding war — and now this very personal, independent movie is on a fast track. Has this been exciting? There’s a humongous screening in Toronto. All the buyers are there. All the critics are there. I believe the bids were coming in before the movie was over. That’s the ADD of the industry writ large. They had a little after-party at the Soho House in Toronto. And you know, you’re just shaking hands. It’s the Lionsgate people, and it’s the Fox 2000 people and Paramount and Screen Gems. “I hope we’re doing it with you. I hope we’re doing it with you.” It’s like running for office. They’re jockeying for distribution rights. Yeah. Everybody’s on the phone all night, essentially. It’s like election returns. It’s at 6. It’s at 10. You know what I mean? A lot of money for a film at a festival is like $3 million, so for a movie to sell for $12.5 million is unheard of. How are they opening the movie? In major cities first? You know what? They’re getting greedy, which is scaring me a little bit. It was supposed to be New York and L.A. the 5th, and then the rest of the country on the 12th. Now they’re just going for the whole country on the 12th. It feels like they’re going to go for 2,000 screens. Every screening’s gone amazingly well, but something inside me keeps saying, This is a little movie. So if the movie opens, and it’s disappointing, how do you think you’ll react? I mean you care, obviously, but … I mean, you care, but suppose, what, the movie makes a billion dollars? It’s not going to affect my day with my kids. If it makes two cents, it’s not going to affect my day with my kids. Fine, the movie comes out Friday, Saturday I will take Zahra to gymnastics. I hope Annie’s out. We’ll go see Annie. I’m always scared, though. I remember Sacha Cohen a week or two before Borat came out. I remember him being scared. He was like, “I don’t know if the tracking was right,” or whatever. It was supposed to open in about 2,000 screens, and they opened it in 800. It actually played better in 800, because it played to a packed house. I like the concept of every house packed. But who knows? The marketing costs are more than the movie. Some of that is them charging themselves. Paramount’s paying Viacom. Viacom owns MTV, BET, Comedy Central. So if you’re paying for a commercial on Comedy Central — it could be $20 million, it could be $5 million, it could be $50 million. Who the hell knows what the hell they’re really spending? It’s bookkeeping. What’s your relationship with the Hollywood power structure? How do you deal with the failures you’ve had there? I’m still on the table, which is good. No one’s yanked me off. You can be behind and on the table. I never take any of it personally. It’s all money, especially when you’re talking about playing a lead of anything. I guess if you’re a supporting character, friendships may come into play here and there — strings can be pulled in the lower echelons. But as far as being a leading man, there’s a printout, and there’s how much the movie made here, here, and here. How do you do in Budapest? How do you do in Calgary? Germany? And they make the decision. Does all that make you want to release on your own? I was talking to Steve McQueen a couple weeks ago about this. People come up to us and are like, “Get the funding yourself, and put it out yourself.” Dude, I can’t run a candy store. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, Top Five is a hit. What would be the top career goal on your wish list? I’ve been around a long time, and the thing not to chase is stardom. It’s like chasing hits. I would just do another little movie. But don’t get me wrong: If Marvel wants to throw me something— Put you in a costume— If they want to say, “Hey, that little movie you made? Well here’s a big movie” — like they did with Singer? Yeah, I’m open to that. If somebody wants to do something that crazy. Do you like directing? I do. I like the control. I like creating a world. It’s your world. If you want gravity in it, there’s gravity. If there’s not, things will float. And I like to create a tone. If there’s anything I’m proud of with this movie, it’s that we got a really good comedic tone that can be funny and real at the same time. I think parts of this movie feel like a Richard Linklater movie. And at times, like at the end, it’s almost a romantic comedy. There’s a sprinkle of Ephron in there. Just a sprinkle. I can’t pour on too much Ephron. She and I used to talk about making a movie all the time. She always used to say to me, “Are you ready to walk? That’s the only way we’re going to make a movie. We’re going to have to do a lot of walking and talking.” Who would’ve directed it? She would’ve directed it. I wanted her to direct me really bad. I’d love to do a Nancy Meyers movie. As an actor? Just an actor. Who’s a leading lady you’d like to be up against? I don’t know. Kerry Washington? It can be anybody though. Whoever she likes. I love her. It’s nice taking your mother to a Nancy Meyers movie. It’s tradition. They should have one every Thanksgiving or Christmas. You live in New Jersey. I’m in Alpine. That’s not Jersey. That’s like Beverly Hills with freaking snow. And with Chris Christie. Were you caught on the G.W. Bridge? I was caught on the bridge! He didn’t do it to mess up the bridge. He did it because it just messes up the whole town around the bridge. Just imagine: a whole town paralyzed. How did you react when you found out it might be politically motivated? You just want to choke somebody. If you live near the bridge, you know you’re going to have like seven bad days a year. But you hate to think one of them is on purpose. Christie’s running for president. It could also be Jeb Bush versus Hillary. It’s still not a done deal with Hillary. Remember, she was ahead last time. She had all the black people. And she lost to somebody she really shouldn’t have lost to. Obama came out of nowhere, basically. At which point Bill Clinton started making public statements that often seemed one step away from knifing Obama. He’s a dick, but you’re talking about a guy who’s embarrassed his wife. So he had a choice, and I couldn’t judge him. I had to choose between pissing off all the black people in the world or having my wife mad at me? Then the hell with the black people, because he doesn’t live with all the black people. He lives with his wife. Even though he was the first black president. Allegedly. Until a black guy showed up. Who in the Democratic Party could go after Hillary, though? There doesn’t seem to be anyone like Barack Obama. There was no Barack Obama until Barack Obama either. I mean, I would love to see Hillary, but there’s a part of Hillary that’s like the Democratic McCain at this point. As he showed, “It’s my time” is not really enough. But you know, I’m absolutely ready for a woman president. I’m ready for a woman nighttime-talk-show host, to tell you the truth. I wonder which will be first. What about your future? We talked about the risks of being a comedian in an age when politically correct vigilantes can pillory you on social media. What’s the worst thing that can happen to you? If you really got barred off of TV shows, that would hurt you a little bit. But comedians are like preachers, and they have congregations. As long as you’re good to your congregation, you’ll be fine. The congregation sort of protects you unless you really spite them. Unless you turn your back on them artistically. I’m going to say this about sitcoms. There might be one exception to this, but from what I can see right now, never in the history of television has television created a comedy star. The person was always rich and had a level of fame before they got there. Jerry Seinfeld. Bill Cosby was rich. Jay Leno was rich. Roseanne Barr was rich. Lucille Ball was big in vaudeville. Abbott & Costello were big in vaudeville. That’s right, and a lot of them were big in radio: Jack Benny— Redd Foxx. They all come with a congregation. Right, and that’s distinguishing comics from, say, Carroll O’Connor, who was an actor. That’s the advantage comedians have. So in some sense you have protection. But how do you push the envelope in stand-up now? You just do it. You do a movie for a lot of people. Hey, I’m doing a movie with Paramount, and so on some level that’s for the masses. When you do stand-up, you do it for your fans. I’d like to get new fans, don’t get me wrong, but I’m doing stand-up for the people that have come to see me throughout the years. They expect a little something. I’ve got to give them that thing. If I don’t, they’re going to be pissed. When you’re looking for subjects, do you go with your gut? You keep notes. You look for the recurring. What’s not going away? Boy, this police-brutality thing — it seems to be lingering. What’s going to happen here? You don’t even have the joke, you just say, “Okay, what’s the new angle that makes me not sound like a preacher?” Forget being a comedian, just act like a reporter. What’s the question that hasn’t been asked? How come white kids don’t get shot? Have you ever watched television and seen some white kid get shot by accident? And out of that comes comedy. Comes humor. You laughed right away. I just asked a question that no one had ever asked. Where do you think this comes from? When I started doing comedy at Catch a Rising Star, I used to get there at 7:45 and leave about two in the morning. That’s six hours a night watching comedians for a good six years straight. Just watching, watching, watching. What I learned more than what I wanted to be was what I didn’t want to be and what I didn’t want to say. For instance? There were just too many cliché jokes. I never wanted to do that horrible gay voice that everybody does. I didn’t want to be swishing and all that crap. I didn’t want to do impressions of each ethnic group. A lot of comedians are very, very similar. So I’ve always said, “Okay, what if the thing that everybody’s talking about is wrong?” Is there a part of you that feels ready to go back on tour? I don’t know. I think I’d rather be on tour right now. The exhilaration of performing? There’s the exhilaration of performing. There’s more money. It’s far more lucrative. And there’s a lot of compromise in movies. Whereas stand-up, you don’t even have a director. You literally make every decision. But kids, man. Kids, and schedules, and traveling. There’s such a romance about the road. Yeah, it’s a romance, but I’d still rather go to my daughter’s basketball game. Lola scored seven points on Sunday! Got a couple rebounds. Playing Radio City would not be as fun as watching my daughter hit a three. I’ll eventually get a James Taylor schedule. James Taylor? Some people just don’t play during the school year. They get that down, buff it. There’s the Memorial Day–to–Labor Day tour with James. You sound like a guy who’s turning 50 next year. Do you ever feel that you can never be as edgy as you once were? I probably can’t, but it’s okay. I didn’t recall a lack of edge in George Carlin. Joan didn’t seem to have calmed down at all. I don’t think they were thinking about edge. I think they were just thinking about, How am I going to be funny? It’s funny first. This article appears in the December 1, 2014 issue of New York Magazine.FuseBox is a new generation bundler and module loader, it is the result of our years of experience dealing with complex projects requirements and many of the development tools out there. First of all, let us establish a very clear fact, this post is not about undermining any of the bundlers out there and most certainly not the hard work of those who shared them with us, on the contrary, we highly appreciate the efforts that have been done, we used them in our work, truly got inspired by them and our goal is to compete to be part of what makes the JavaScript world and developer’s life better. Why? Well, we know that with modern day applications requirements, adding script links to a page does not cut it anymore, there must be a better way to manage the complexity, rapid changes and chain of dependencies of resources, therefore we need to use a bundler/module loader. There are many known and unknown tools in that domain, and like everyone else, hunting season started! We tried everything RequireJS, Browserify, WebPack and many many others… but there was always some requirement that we needed in our projects that none of those bundlers offered, so we decided to enter the kitchen and cook our own beast! We won’t go through the full details of our research and tests as it would take pages and pages, but we will try to highlight the main parts that led us to create FuseBox and how we feel it is one of the best tools out there. The tools that made it to our final round before creating FuseBox were WebPack, JSPM, StealJS. Again, all these tools are a great piece of engineering, can get you the job done and most importantly there are communities behind them, but here is what we really faced as issues: WebPack: No doubt a strong and deep tool, but the lack of documentation (to be fair, the team have released a new documentation website which is looking a lot better) and boilerplate code required to build your project is too much for us. You can do anything with WebPack but it is not easy! JSPM: this is our favorite one after FuseBox, it is really an underrated project, also Guy Bedford is one of the kindest and smartest people in the industry. JSPM configuration is more straight forward, it accepts virtually any module format but it is slow in the browser if you don’t create a build that targets UMD or CommonJS. StealJS: is an interesting project in that it shares parts of WebPack and JSPM. like JSPM it uses SystemJS under the hood as module loader, but like WebPack it uses npm as modules resource. Our problem was that some npm modules are not designed to run in the browser. As such, they log errors when loaded, though this doesn’t always affect their functionality. So what did we do to make FuseBox really different and in our opinion better? We studied all the above-mentioned tools carefully and took the best parts of each of them, enhanced them and added extra awesome features that made our life easier and we are sure it will make your life as a developer much better too. Philosophy What we have now is just the tip of the iceberg, we want to go beyond just an open source project, we want to provide professional services and set of tools to cater to the full requirements of the development life-cycle. Stick around with us and soon you will see awesome fruits that will shake some grounds in this field. With that being said we will always have three main goals on our mind Speed Extensibility Simplicity Turbo start (zero configuration) To start bundling all that you have to do is FuseBox.init({ homeDir : “./src”, outFile : “./build/bundle.js” }) That is it, now you can start coding and FuseBox will do the magic. The code above will allow you bundle the most complex projects on Github, like babel-core Shimming npm modules Some npm libraries are made to work in both client and server environments but some don’t, for example, some libraries have a dependency on Node’s `process` module, this will not work in the browser. therefore we made sure to shim all the major ones so they will work perfectly on the client, or at least will cause no errors if they are designed to work only in server environments. And if there is a library that does need shimming and we did not add it yet, you can always submit a PR or you can do it easily yourself in your project with one great feature custom modules folder. it is really simple, check the shim for URL module https://github.com/fuse-box/fuse-box/blob/master/modules/url/index.js TypeScript and Babel We love TypeScript, we use it on daily basis but it really gets slow when you have a large project, therefore we really worked hard to make sure that it works super fast and out of the box. For example, we have a project with over 200 files and with FuseBox TypeScript integration we were able to take down transpiling time from 5 seconds to 720 ms! Same goes for Babel we support it as a built-in plugin, just install it and use any of its plugins and it will work like charm. Bundle anything We have built-in plugins for most of the required files formats a developer needs, let it be HTML, CSS, SCSS, JSON, etc. here is a list of all built-in plugins we have so far http://fuse-box.org/#built-in-plugins. FuseBox plugin API is simple and intuitive. One great example of this is when we had a user who required the ability to pass some variables at build time for both client and server bundles, so we created the `EnvPlugin` which allows you to do the following: plugins : [ fsbx.EnvPlugin({ foo: “bar” }) ] Now you can access your `foo` variable in your code like this `console.log( process.env.foo )` and it does not matter if you are on client or on server, you can even use the plugin with libraries such as https://www.npmjs.com/package/safe-env. This is a great example that shows how combining FuseBox shimming of npm modules with the Plugin API can give awesome possibilities. Caching FuseBox has a powerful caching system. The way caching works is that on the first run, FuseBox will build a manifest of all npm modules you use in your code and on subsequent bundling Fuse will fetch those modules from the cache and only process your local code, this will cut down bundling process time tremendously! Fuse does not only cache top Modules you use, it also caches each Module dependencies, so imagine you have a total of 100 npm modules required in your code, without caching, every time you change one line in your code you will have to re-bundle all those modules. Dynamic Modules This is one of FuseBox’s best features, A feature that we can’t live without in our projects. The concept behind dynamic modules is simple yet very powerful, The idea here is that you can create modules at run-time that behave just like the modules you’d normally write at development time. what does that mean? It means you can easily write your code as a string, you can feed this string to Babel-standalone or even Typescript compiler or just directly write commonjs compatible code. Once the module is ready you can register it with FuseBox by calling FuseBox.dynamic with a module path and the CommonJS source string. Now you can import it like any other module. FuseBox.dynamic(“foo/bar.js”, “module.exports = {foo : ‘bar’}”) What is crazier is that FuseBox will treat it as a native module, so if you have import statements of real npm modules or your local code inside this dynamic module, FuseBox will resolve it correctly and everything will work as usual. Think about the wild possibilities! To get more nice cover on dynamic modules check out this article Wildcard imports Have you ever wanted to load multiple files with a single require statement? We did too, so we built glob support into FuseBox’s import function. For example, imagine you have page-a in your SPA project and you group all of its components in a folder called page-a/components, you can simply do the following: FuseBox.import(“./page-a/components/-component”) FuseBox import command will now return an object containing those components: { “page-a/components/carousle-component.js” : {code}, “page-a/components/articles-component.js“ : {code} } What is even better is that you can load any file format supported by FuseBox or any of its plugins, say you want to load all JSON files in config folder, then all what you need to do is this: FuseBox.import(“./config/*.json”) import relative to root When we have a complex large application, everything is modular and folder structure gets deep and complicated. Imagine you have the following file src/modules/module-a/validate/email.js and you have utility function called toCamelCase at src/utils/toCamelCase, to reference this utility function inside email.js typically you would need to do this import {toCamelCase} from `../../../../utils/toCamelCase This is ugly, but with FuseBox you can simply do import {toCamelCase} from `~/utils/toCamelCase` Much better right? Extended metadata properties If you are coming from JAVA or.NET background, this is called reflection. An amazing feature that grants you access to the full details of the loaded module like file name, directory name, exports, etc. which allows you to do wild things! A cool example of that is say that you have a convention of creating a folder for each component and store the JavaScript, HTML and CSS files next to each other and you want to automatically load the HTML and CSS files when you load your component’s JavaScript file, well you are in for a treat :) We can easily create a decorator that will do all of this for you automatically as follows: Now you can add this decorator to any component like this @componentDecorator() class MyComponent { } Boom! Fuse will load the component CSS file and add it to the DOM, load the HTML Template and now you can access it as a property on your class. Conclusions Working with FuseBox is really a pleasure, thanks to it now we have more time for playing Video Games at the office :) jokes aside, FuseBox is really a fresh new perspective on the whole module loading and bundling business, it really saved us Time and brain works, what makes it even better is that there is no objection on adding new features or going beyond what is considered a limit line for others. Hop on This 4 minute video demonstrates the absolute simplicity and power of FuseBox used with Typescript. This article only scraped the surface of what FuseBox is. FuseBox is still young, but we are working on it on a daily basis so Expect more to come, but meanwhile If you like the project don’t forget to star it on Github! And of course, spread the word by clicking ♥ we need your support and feedback :) Join our gitter channel, we are active and very friendly!The Flagstaff War – also known as Hōne Heke's Rebellion, the Northern War and the First Māori War – was fought between 11 March 1845 and 11 January 1846 in and around the Bay of Islands, New Zealand.[3] The conflict is best remembered for the actions of Hōne Heke who challenged the authority of the British by cutting down the flagstaff on Flagstaff Hill (Maiki Hill) at Kororāreka, now Russell. The flagstaff had been a gift from Hōne Heke to James Busby, the first British Resident. The Northern War involved many major actions, including the Battle of Kororāreka on 11 March 1845, the Battle of Ohaeawai on 23 June 1845 and the siege of Ruapekapeka Pā from 27 December 1845 to 11 January 1846.[4] Causes [ edit ] The signing of the Treaty of Waitangi started on 6 February 1840, and conflict between the Crown and Māori tribes was to some extent inevitable after that. Ostensibly, the treaty established the legal basis for the British presence in New Zealand. However, the actions of Hōne Heke and Te Ruki Kawiti in 1844 reflect the controversy that began soon after the treaty was signed, over its meaning and the understanding of the Māori signatories as to whether they intended to transfer sovereignty to the Crown or whether they understood the intention of the treaty was to retain the independence of the Māori people, while ceding to the Crown the authority over the matters described in the Maori version of the treaty. (A controversy continues into the 21st century as the Waitangi Tribunal, in Te Paparahi o te Raki inquiry (Wai 1040)[5][6] is engaged in the process of considering the Māori and Crown understandings of the Declaration of Independence of 1835 and the Treaty of Waitangi of 1840). On 21 May 1840, New Zealand was formally annexed to the British Crown, and the following year the capital was moved to Auckland, some 200 km south of Waitangi. In the Bay of Islands, Hōne Heke, one of the original signatories to the treaty, started to become increasingly unhappy with the outcome of the treaty. Among other things, Heke objected to the relocation of the capital to Auckland; moreover the Governor in Council imposed a custom tariff on staple articles of trade that resulted in a dramatic fall in the number of whaling ships that visited Kororāreka (over 20 whaling ships would visit the Bay of Islands at any one time);[4] a reduction in the number of visiting ships caused a serious loss of revenue to the Ngāpuhi.[4] Heke and his cousin of Tītore also collected and divided a levy of £5 on each ship entering the Bay.[4] Pōmare II complained that he no longer collected payment from American ships that called at Otuihu across from Opua.[7] Heke and the Ngāpuhi chief Pōmare II had listened to Captain William Mayhew (the Acting-Consul for the United States from 1840) and other Americans talk about the successful revolt of the American colonies against England over the issue of taxation. Heke obtained an American ensign from Henry Green Smith, a storekeeper at Wahapu who had succeeded Mayhew as Acting-Consul. After the flagstaff was cut down for a second time, the Stars and Stripes flew from the carved sternpost of Heke's war canoe.[4] Grievance of the Ngāpuhi [ edit ] In the Bay of Islands, there existed a vague but widely diffused belief that the Treaty of Waitangi was merely a ruse of the Pākehā, and the belief that it was the intention of the Europeans, so soon as they became strong enough, to seize all Māori lands.[4][8] This belief, together with Heke's views about the imposition of the customs duties, can also be linked to the further widely diffused belief that the British flag flying on Flagstaff Hill over the town of Kororāreka signified that the Māori had become taurekareka (slaves) to Queen Victoria.[9][10] This discontent appears to have been fostered by the talk with the American traders, although it was an idea that had existed since the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi; William Colenso, the CMS missionary printer, in his record of the events of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi commented that "[a]fter some little time Te Kemara came towards the table and affixed his sign to the parchment, stating that the Roman Catholic bishop (who had left the meeting before any of the chiefs had signed) had told him "not to write on the paper, for if he did he would be made a slave."[11] Memorial at Russell for HMS Hazard personnel killed when Kororāreka was burned to the ground The trial and execution of Wiremu Kīngi Maketū in 1842 for murder was, in the opinion of Archdeacon Henry Williams, the beginning of Heke’s antagonism towards the colonial administration, as Heke began gathering support thereafter among the Ngāpuhi for a rebellion.[12] However it was not until 1844 that Hōne Heke sought support from Te Ruki Kawiti and other leaders of the Ngāpuhi iwi by the conveying of ‘te ngākau’,[13] the custom observed by those who sought help to settle a tribal grievance.[14] Hōne Heke moves against Kororāreka [ edit ] Hōne Heke and Te Ruki Kawiti worked out the plan to draw the colonial forces into battle, with the opening provocations focusing on the flagstaff on Maiki Hill at the north end of Kororāreka (Russell).[14] In July 1844, Kotiro, a former slave of Heke, openly insulted the Ngāpuhi chief. Kotiro had been captured from a southern tribe 15 years earlier, and was now living with her English husband, the town butcher, in Kororāreka. There are differing stories as to the specific insult or the circumstances in which it was delivered. Cowan (1922) describes Kotiro as while bathing with other women, during a heated argument about Heke, she dismissed him as an upoko poaka or a pig's head; and that upon hearing of this insult Heke used the insult as a reason to begin his attack on the town.[4] Carleton (1874) used the presence of Kotiro, and her status, as pretext for a taua — a raid upon Kororāreka. “ It happened that a slave girl belonging to Heke, Kotiro by name, was living at Kororāreka with a butcher named Lord. Heke, having a colourable right to recover his slave. A karere [messenger] was sent ahead, to announce the intention; the message was delivered to the woman in the butcher's shop, where several fat hogs were hanging up. Kotiro answering contemptuously of their power to take her away, pointing to one of the hogs, said, ina a Heke [that is Heke]. In any event Heke used the insult as a reason to enter the town, to demand payment from Lord as compensation for the insult. Satisfaction was refused: for several days Heke and his warriors remained in the town persisting in the demand, but, in reality, feeling their way, trying the temper of the Pākehā.[15] ” The Auckland Chronicle reported the incident as such: “ [Heke and his warriors] brandished their tomohawks in the faces of the white people, indecently treated some white females, and exposed their persons; they took everything out of [Lord's, the husband of Kotiro] house.[15] ” Flagstaff cut down for the first time [ edit ] On 8 July 1844 the flagstaff on Maiki Hill at the north end of Kororāreka was cut down for the first time, by the Pakaraka chief Te Haratua. Heke had set out to cut down the flagstaff, but was persuaded by Archdeacon William Williams not to do so.[15] The Auckland Chronicle reported this event, saying: “ [They] then proceeded to the flagstaff, which they deliberately cut down, purposely with the intention of insulting the government, and of expressing their contempt of British authority.[16] ” In the second week of August 1844, the barque Sydney arrived at the Bay of Islands from New South Wales with 160 officers and men of the 99th Regiment.[4] On 24 August 1844 Governor FitzRoy arrived in the bay from Auckland upon HMS Hazard.[17] The Government brig Victoria arrived in company with HMS Hazard, with a detachment of the 96th Regiment under Lieutenant Colonel William Hulme.[4] Governor FitzRoy summoned the Ngāpuhi chiefs to a conference at Te Waimate mission on 2 September and apparently defused the situation. Tāmati Wāka Nene requested the Governor to remove the troops and redress the native grievances in respect of the customs duties that were put in place in 1841, that Heke and Pōmare II viewed as damaging the maritime trade from which they benefited.[18] Tāmati Wāka Nene and the other Ngāpuhi chiefs undertook to keep Heke in check and to protect the Europeans in the Bay of Islands.[4] Hōne Heke did not attend, but sent a conciliatory letter and offered to replace the flagstaff.[4] The soldiers were returned to Sydney, but the accord did not last. The Ngāpuhi warriors led by Te Ruki Kawiti and Hōne Heke decided to challenge the Europeans at Kororāreka. Flagstaff falls twice more [ edit ] On 10 January 1845, the flagstaff was cut down a second time, this time by Heke. On 17 January, a small detachment of a subaltern and 30 men of the 96th Regiment were landed.[4] A new and stronger flagstaff sheathed in iron was erected on 18 January 1845 and the guard post built around it.[17] Nene and his men provided guards for the flagstaff,[17] but the next morning the flagstaff was felled for the third time.[4] Governor FitzRoy sent over to New South Wales for reinforcements. Early in February 1845 Kawiti's warriors begun to plunder the settlers a mile or two from Kororāreka.[19] The Hazard arrived from Auckland on 15 February with the materials to construct the block-house around the base of the flagstaff. Within a few days the block-house was completed and a guard of 20 soldiers was placed in it.[4] Soon after this the officials purchased the mizzenmast from a foreign ship in the harbour and installed this as the fourth flagstaff.[20] The British force consisted of about 60 soldiers of the 96th Regiment and about 90 Royal Marines and sailors from the Hazard,[19] plus colonists and sailors from the merchant ships provided about 200 armed men.[17] Sacking of Kororāreka when the flagstaff was cut down again [ edit ] The next attack on the flagstaff on 11 March 1845 was a more serious affair. There were incidents between the Ngāpuhi warriors led by Hōne Heke, Kawiti and Kapotai on 7 and 8 March. A truce was declared for the next day, a Sunday, during which the Protestant Missionary Archdeacon Brown entered the camp of Heke and performed a service for him and his people. A Catholic priest conducted a service for those warriors among Kawiti's followers who were Christians.[19] Next day, Ngāpuhi warriors approached Kororāreka, but were fired upon. An account of the preparation for the attack later given by the CMS missionaries was that on Monday, the plans of Heke were disclosed to Gilbert Mair, who informed Police Magistrate Beckham,[4] who then informed Lieutenant Phillpotts of the Hazard, but the "information was received with indifference, not unmingled with contempt".[19] At dawn on Tuesday 11 March, a force of about 600 Māori armed with muskets, double-barrelled guns and tomahawks attacked Kororāreka.[19] Hōne Heke's men attacked the guard post, killing all the defenders and cutting down the flagstaff for the fourth time. At the same time, possibly as a diversion, Te Ruki Kawiti and his men attacked the town of Kororāreka.[17] In the early afternoon, the powder magazine at Polack’s Stockade exploded and surrounding buildings caught fire. The garrison of about 100 men managed
opposed to the spilling of the blood of any man. This was new to me. I was reared in a U.S. Pentecostalism that taught intense loyalty to the United States and deep pride in combatant military service. Where did this hidden history of Pentecostal nonviolence come from? Reading other early accounts of Pentecostal peacemaking prompted me to further examine where it had gone and whether it could re-emerge. It would also challenge and deconstruct my understanding of Christianity. In the 1930s, the Pacifist Handbook actually listed the Assemblies of God as the third largest church in the U.S. that “opposed war.” Although not universal, Pentecostal conscientious objection and noncombatant service in the U.S. continued into World War II and beyond. One day when I was at my grandparents’ home in east Texas, they asked me about the subject of my dissertation. With nervous hesitation, I shared that the Assemblies of God used to be a pacifist denomination and that I was researching the history of pacifism’s emergence and eventual decline in U.S. Pentecostalism. “Well, of course, we know that,” my grandmother responded.Victor LaValle: 'I was kind of a catch. And I knew this was true. As long as you couldn't see me' I'd have the charges billed to my telephone, while Margie dialled the same number, but never paid a fee. Much like at nightclubs and bars, it's a lot harder to get ladies into the room, so Margie, and the hundreds of women like her, would call the number and register, then punch through the recorded greetings from thousands of guys waiting to talk with them. One of those men was me. Each guy's greeting was his name and a little something about himself. Our messages were either lewd or pornographic, nothing else. Using euphemisms about your penis counted as a true gentleman's move. I was no better than the rest. Twenty-one, horny and incapable of getting a real-world date. The women's greetings tended to differ from the men's; they spoke about amusement parks and dining out and walks on the beach. Ridiculous shit. We all knew why we were here and it wasn't to line up any dates. We were there to talk dirty into our telephones and masturbate in our separate darkened rooms. At least that was true for me and Margie. We liked each other's voices – each other's imaginations – enough to keep calling back. We'd make appointments for the next "meeting", and then call the line. Scroll through the many recorded messages, listening for the voice we recognised. She was Margie and I was Michael. We spent two years having phone sex and, eventually, speaking to each other off the line, but we never told each other our real names. Why was I doing this? At 21? I was in college and, in theory, surrounded by eligible women. I should have been besieged by more appropriate partners. My little crew of friends enjoyed no end of sex. Even the losers were doing all right. Not me, though. I weighed 25 stone, and I didn't stand nine feet tall, so the weight didn't sit well on me. As big as a house? No. I was as big as an estate. Lumpy and lazy; I aspired to lethargy. In the second year of university, I missed half my classes just because I couldn't pull myself out of bed. But here's the thing: I was charming. Well read and well spoken. Observant and even kind. In other words, I was kind of a catch. And I knew this was true. As long as you couldn't see me. If you saw me, you'd think I was the sea cow that had swallowed your catch. Margie lived alone. Her daughter had grown up and moved away. She had retired because she got sick, but she'd saved her money, so she had enough in the bank and the mortgage had been paid off. She never mentioned a husband, and I didn't ask. During the day, Margie ran errands and spent time with her neighbours. At night she entertained her gentleman callers. One of them was me, Michael, a former school sports star who wanted to become a lawyer some day. I told her I was tall, broad and mixed race. She said she resembled Gina Lollobrigida. Did I know who that was? I said, "Of course" and then looked the actress up. Both our exaggerations were probably true enough. I did have one black parent and one white parent, and I had played sports at school. As for Margie, I felt sure she was at least a woman who had brown hair. Anyway, when we found each other on the chatline, all suspicions fell away. She was there and I was, too. Our rooms so dark we could imagine each other – and ourselves – exactly as we wanted. "Hello, Michael." "Hello, Margie." "I missed you," she said. "I'm there with you now," I said. "Right here in bed?' "No. I'm outside. Looking in through your window." She blew out a breath. "My neighbours will see you." "Then I'd better break in." "Aren't you afraid I'll hear you?" "Now I'm standing by your bed." Margie sighed. "It gets so dark in here at night. I can't see anything." "But you can feel me getting on the bed." Quiet. "Yes," she said. Margie and I were "together" for about two years. After the first year, she gave me her home number and I would call at our appointed times. Neither of us expected the other to stay off the chatlines. If I happened to hear her recorded message there, on one of our off days, calling out the name of a different man, I didn't mind. I was usually listening for a different woman. We'd defeated the madness of monogamy! It required only that we never actually see or touch each other. Sometimes we talked about visiting each other. But we never would. Both of us knew it. She was a 50-year-old woman with some undefined illness that had forced her to retire 15 years early. Maybe it took some toll on her physically. Maybe she was in a wheelchair, I don't know. But I sure as hell never would let her see me, either. If she did, how could we ever fantasise about me crouching over her chest again? In real life, I'd suffocate the poor woman between my meaty thighs. And yet, somehow, I convinced myself that Margie was helping to keep me tethered to the "normal" world of relationships. I knew what we had wasn't complete, but at least we were two human beings sharing some kind of real affection. I still felt this was infinitely better than the alternative: have you ever known men or women who don't get any kind of loving for years? They get weird. The women become either monstrously drab or they costume themselves in ways that make them seem unreal; they externalise their inner fantasies and come to believe that – on some level – they really are elves or princesses or, most disturbing of all, children again. And the men? They're even worse. Men who are denied affection for too long devolve into some kind of rage-filled hominoid. Their anger becomes palpable. You can almost feel the wrath emanating from their pores. Lonely women destroy themselves; lonely men threaten the world. With that fate in mind, I felt truly grateful for Margie. While I enjoyed phone sex with other women, Margie and I would also have real conversations after the sex was over. She'd want to know what I'd been reading and I'd ask about the home-improvement work she'd been doing. I enjoyed her company, her voice. And she sounded sincere when she told me she'd missed me. So it came as a shock when she said we'd have to stop talking. Her daughter's husband had lost his job and their home had been repossessed. The two of them, and their three-year-old child, would be moving in with Margie. There was no other way to go. Margie had plenty of space in her home, and she loved the idea of having them close. Her only regret was that she'd have to say goodbye to me. Someone would always be home, and she couldn't risk the embarrassment if one of them overheard us. So in 1995 my 50-year-old girlfriend, the one I'd never met, broke up with me. While she and I were "together", I'd thought of myself like an astronaut going on one of those spacewalks outside the space shuttle. Below me I could see Earth, the glorious terrain. The place where true couples dwelled. And while I wasn't there, I could still view it. I knew what it looked like. In time I'd make my way back into the shuttle; I'd hit the thrusters on my spaceship and return to that good soil. When Margie and I stopped talking, it was as if the craft had blown to bits. I had plenty of oxygen in my suit, but I was no longer tethered to anything. And the shock waves of the blast didn't send me hurtling down to Earth. Instead, they blew me backwards. Deeper into space. It's funny to have to relate all this first. Because I really want to write about my life after I lost weight. What sex was like once I'd exercised and dieted myself down to under 14 stone. How did I manage the miracle? I bought a refurbished StairMaster and used it four days a week. I started a weight-loss system, and it worked. I'd found my way back to Earth after drifting through the lifeless void for two years. Victory parades were thrown in my honour (by which I mean my mother was incredibly proud of my change). Here's our man, finally height- and weight-proportionate. Once again, a member of the human race. But in the time I'd been away – when I'd been inhuman, I guess – I'd journeyed well past innocent phone sex. I'd found another agency that introduced people who really did want to meet in person and make things happen. I had sex – lots of it – with women who were, essentially, just like me. By which I mean more than 25 stone and crippled by self-loathing. We made our introductions on a phone line, essentially negotiating the details of our affections in advance: I want this and you want that; I won't do any of those things, but I will try these. As a result, I'd show up at some woman's apartment for the first time and we'd be naked in about 10 minutes. Engaging in the kind of sexual fantasies that usually require six months of dating before anyone will even broach the subject. And then they probably still wait another six months before they trust each other enough actually to try it. We covered all that ground in a single night. And I'll tell you what I learned during those two years: fat people are perverts. By which I mean to say, loneliness perverts you. I'm not talking about the sex. Or not exclusively, anyway. My first date as a trimmer man scared me more than my first fight. Part of the reason was that I didn't even realise we were on a date. We met each other at a party in a bar. We shook hands and exchanged a few words. Once or twice we sat in the same frame for those group photos people take as a party wears on. When she sat next to me at a table and smiled before I'd said anything, I had the notion that she might be flirting with me, but the phenomenon had been so rare these last few years that I didn't trust my lying eyes. Then, a few hours into the party, she came up and asked if I liked her blouse. I was seated and she stood over me. She asked again if I liked her blouse and this time she flipped up the bottom of it and showed me her stomach. Now, that was flirting. Impossible to ignore. Plus, I didn't want to. This woman was beautiful by any measure. When I saw her skin, I realised how long it had been since I'd seen a belly without stretchmarks. Five years? Ten? I'm including my own in that count. Before I left, I asked if she would go to dinner with me, and when she said yes, she actually went up on her tiptoes, like a kid. I took her to a sushi restaurant and sat across from her, but after a few minutes it was clear her face showed none of the same enthusiasm as at the bar. I asked her questions, but she hardly answered. I made jokes, each one worse than the last. Maybe she'd been drunk at the party. Then, during another moment of silence, I looked away from her and out of the window. There were no couples between us and the restaurant's large front windows. I saw her reflection. She was as lovely as the other night, maybe more so. She wore a sheer sweater and a skirt that flattered her long legs. And me? I was still wearing my coat. Not a jacket. My winter coat. We'd been inside for half an hour and I hadn't taken it off. No wonder she seemed distant, even dismayed; it looked as if I couldn't wait to get away. And it wasn't just the coat. I had so many layers on. A sweater and a shirt. And a T-shirt under them. It wouldn't have surprised me if I had thermal underwear layered down there as well. In other words, I was dressed like a fat person. We make the mistake of thinking those layers of clothing are serving to hide us. A kind of protection. Instead, they make us look even bigger. Or, in this case, make me seem like an asshole. I wanted to explain everything to her. I'm going through a big transition. But I couldn't bring myself to tell her. No matter how I phrased it in my head, it always sounded like a bad pun, a sad joke. Finally, I slid off my coat, but the gesture must have seemed like pity, because she pulled on hers. We ate the rest of our meal quickly. I took her home on the train but when we reached her station, she said I didn't have to walk her home. All this changed after I dated the woman with the boyfriend. We became friends first. We worked in the same space, and at lunchtime we sometimes ate together and talked. We were attracted to each other, but did nothing about it for months. She continued to date the aforementioned guy and I was busy trying to live like a normal-sized man; meaning I stayed off the phone lines, ate sensible meals, exercised regularly and told no one that I'd ever been fat. The last seemed particularly important. If enough other people believed it, I hoped that I'd come to believe it, too. If they treated me like a guy who'd never knocked out a dozen Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnuts in one sitting, then I'd forget I ever had. I needed the outside world to convince me because I still couldn't quite believe the transformation had been real. I was flirting with this woman, but keeping a respectful distance. Getting closer and then pulling away. And she was doing the same. This slow build felt exciting and frustrating. Each time I saw her again, my feelings seemed even stronger. And that was a shock, too. Feelings. Not to be too self-pitying (or self-aggrandising), but I hadn't really cared about a woman outside my family since Margie and I had hung up our phones in 1995. I remember the first time she put her arms around me, outside a bar. I held my breath as she clasped her hands around my waist; then she rested her head against my chest. And finally the two of us are stumbling back to her building. We climb the stairs to her flat. Open the front door, listen for her flatmate, and when it seems we're alone we fall across her living room couch. I'm on my back and she's on top of me. She undoes my jeans and slides them down and lifts her skirt. She climbs back on top of me. And as much as I'm enjoying myself, as I anticipate the next step with three years' worth of pent-up glee, I'm also not really there. As soon as my trousers slide down to my knees and my shirt rides up above my belly, I feel myself wince, as if preparing for an explosion. I realise I've been thinking of my clothes as if they were the casing around a live bomb. Have you ever had out-of-body sex? It's not the same as that tantric business. As soon as my skin touched open air, my mind drifted away. I watched myself and this woman having some wonderfully energetic sex. I even felt proud of the guy down there, because he seemed so free. He was laughing and gripping her hips, but I was floating up by the ceiling, keeping watch. I felt sure that if this woman saw me at the wrong angle, or in the wrong light, her lust would suddenly fold up and be packed away. Then she reached down and touched my stomach; I'd lost a lot of weight, but the skin there was a little loose, and there were faint stretchmarks along the bottom that looked like dried-out riverbeds. She put her hand on my stomach and I sucked in my belly. I didn't even have that belly any more, but that didn't make the belly any less real to me. Her hand stayed there on my stomach and I waited to hear her say, "Stop." That, or a groan of disgust. But instead she did the most perfect thing. For which I remain grateful. She lifted her hand and then brought it back down hard. She smacked me. But not out of revulsion; not to punish me. "Harder," is the only thing she said. • This is an edited extract from Granta: 110 Sex, out now at £12.99. Annual subscription to Granta (for four issues) is £29.95. To subscribe, go to granta.com/GUARDIn a rare public ruling by the nation’s most secretive judicial body, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled Wednesday that it did not object to the release of a classified 86-page opinion concluding that some of the U.S. government’s surveillance activities were unconstitutional. The ruling, signed by the court’s chief judge, Reggie Walton, rejected the Justice Department’s arguments that the secret national security court’s rules prevented disclosure of the opinion. Instead, the court found that because the document was in the possession of the Justice Department, it was subject to release under the Freedom of Information Act. Privacy advocates who brought the case said Wednesday that the ruling could pave the way for at least the partial release of landmark -- but still classified -- court rulings that some government surveillance activities violated the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution barring "unreasonable searches and seizures." The release of the opinion, they say, may prove central in the current controversy over the scope of National Security Agency surveillance programs. “It’s a brand new day,” said Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy group that brought the case. He noted that it is extremely rare for any FISC ruling to be made public at all, much less for the court to rule on behalf of disclosure advocates over the objection of Justice Department lawyers. A spokesman said the Justice Department was reviewing the ruling and declined further comment. The EFF’s lawsuit was inspired by a July 20, 2012 letter from an aide to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., that stated that “on at least one occasion,” the FISC held that “some collection” carried out by the U.S. government under classified surveillance programs “was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.” The letter, from Kathleen Turner, Clapper’s chief of legislative affairs, provided no further information about what the FISC found to be unconstitutional, but did state that the government “has remedied these concerns” and the FISC has continued to approve its collection activities. Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has said he was barred from speaking any further about the matter because it remained classified. The EFF last year filed a lawsuit to compel disclosure of the FISC opinion under the Freedom of Information Act. As part of the case, the Justice Department acknowledged there was in fact an 86-page opinion by the FISC dated Oct. 3, 2011, that was responsive to the FOIA request. But department lawyers argued that the FISC opinion could not be released because the court’s own rules barred public disclosure. In Wednesday’s seven-page opinion, Judge Walton found otherwise, siding in part with the EFF over the Justice Department. He concluded that a FISC rule requiring that its opinions be sealed did not apply to an opinion in the government’s possession that had not otherwise been barred from disclosure. The ruling did not order the immediate release of the opinion, however, instead referred the matter to a lower court for a final decision on whether the opinion is eligible for release under FOIA, which requires the government to release documents not covered by security or other narrow exemptions. However, Walton did not immediately order the DOJ to release the order. Instead, he wrote, “This court expresses no opinion on the other issues presented” in the FOIA case “including whether the opinion is ultimately subject to disclosure.” Such questions, he wrote, are "appropriately addressed” by the federal court in which the EFF lawsuit was originally filed. More from Open Channel: Follow Open Channel from NBCNews.com on Twitter and FacebookMonday's return of Fox's Gotham sees Ben McKenzie's Jim Gordon reporting for duty at Arkham Asylum — an unexpected demotion from homicide cop to glorified security guard brought about by running afoul of the city's corrupt mayor at the end of last year's episodes. The career change doesn't just pay off weeks of foreshadowing about the importance of Arkham to the plans of the various crime families but allows the series the chance to explore one of the most important pieces of Batman mythology from the last half-century. Above, The Hollywood Reporter has an exclusive look at what to expect when Gotham relocates its leading man for the opening of the second half of the show's debut season. And below, there's a primer on the comic book history of the home-away-from-home for many of the Dark Knight's most dangerous villains, to help you get a jump on what's to come in the weeks ahead. The asylum — officially the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane in Batman's comic book mythology — debuted in 1974, created by Dennis O'Neil (who also created Ra's Al Ghul, currently causing trouble on The CW's Arrow) and artist Irv Novick for Batman No. 258. For years, it was known as "Arkham Hospital" — which O'Neil's narration helpfully described as "a polite name for an asylum [that] houses the criminally insane" — and, unexpectedly, located not in Gotham but in Massachusetts. Both the name and the first location of the hospital — it officially became an asylum (and located on the outskirts of Gotham) in 1980's Batman No. 326 — come from O'Neil's original inspiration for the institute, H.P. Lovecraft. In a number of stories by the horror writer, a sanatorium appears, located on the outskirts of the fictional town of Arkham, Mass. The history of the establishment has been unveiled in a number of stories, including Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth and Batman: The Last Arkham. Named for the mother of its founder, Amadeus Arkham, the building was bad news from the beginning — its architect was driven insane and killed those working on its construction with an ax. Following that unfortunate — to say the least — beginning, more tragedy followed: Arkham's mother, wife and child all died in the building before it was eventually transformed into its current institutional purpose. During the hospital's lengthy service, it's been home to many well-known supervillains, including the Joker, the Riddler, Scarecrow, Harley Quinn — who started out as a doctor there — Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy and Two-Face, to name just a few. It's not only bad guys who have enjoyed its hospitality, however; former Robin Dick Grayson, Justice League member Zatanna and Batman himself have enjoyed brief stays for a variety of reasons, although "enjoyed" might not be a word they would use to describe the experience. While the version of the asylum in Gotham is a recently reopened hospital with somewhat nefarious purposes, the comic book asylum has managed to keep its doors open even when — well, there weren't any doors. In fact, the building been destroyed on numerous occasions, such as when Bane liberated all the patients in the 1990s "Knightfall" storyline, when Black Mask did the same in the 2009 "Battle for the Cowl" storyline, or even current events in the Batman: Eternal series, which has seen patients moved to Wayne Manor temporarily (as also seen in the current Arkham Manor series). Throughout it all, it's stuck around as a more humane alternative to jail and a constant reminder that most of Batman's bad guys have mental problems. Whether viewers can expect Gotham's asylum to end up as busy — if not quite as easily destroyed — will remain a mystery for a bit longer. Gotham returns Jan. 5 at 9 p.m. on Fox.If you're a fan of all things beauty, set your DVR to Lifetime on September 21 at 10:30 PM for the premiere of American Beauty Star, the newest reality show you're going to obsess over. In a search for the next great hair or makeup artist, American Beauty Star features 12 contestants from around the globe who are expert stylists, YouTube influencers and straight-up beauty lovers. The series offers them a chance to duke it out, each acting as Beauty Director for one of the models. Throughout the competition, the contestants are partnered with a teammate of the opposite craft to achieve the best possible look — and will be mentored by one of the biggest makeup artists in the game, Sir John. The reality TV mentor and career artist has made up some seriously famous faces, including Beyoncé. Judges include world-renowned photographer Russell James along with beauty maven and former Vogue Beauty Director, Sarah Brown. Each week, a third celebrity guest judge will join Sarah and Russell, with spots from Huda and Mona Kattan, Michelle Phan, models Behati Prinsloo, Christie Brinkley and Camilla Alves, singer Michelle Williams, Empire actress Ta’Rhonda Jones, and our very own Editor-in-Chief, Elaine Welteroth. Hosting the star-studded competition is legendary Victoria's Secret model Adriana Lima. What's great about this new show — besides the in-depth view into how glamorous, epic hair and makeup looks come to be — is that you'll get to see a winner on every episode, along with a grand-prize champion at the end of the of the series. Not only will the winner of American Beauty Star receive a $50,000 cash prize and tons of free beauty loot, but they'll also win a coveted spot on the beauty team at one of Teen Vogue's editorial shoots. View more Watch the teaser below, and don't forget to tune in — there is some seriously beautiful stuff to be seen. The American Beauty Star contestants are: Amanda Terry, Special EFX and Beauty Makeup Artist– Los Angeles, California Andrew Velazquez, Makeup Artist – Los Angeles, California Catherine Shim, Social Media Makeup Influencer – New York, New York Corey Ford, Hair Stylist – Houston, Texas Danny Jelaca, Hair Stylist – Miami, Florida Jenny Strebe, Social Media Hair Influencer, Educator, Author – Tempe, Arizona John Blaine, Hair Stylist – Los Angeles, California Kym Nicole Oubre, Makeup Artist – Los Angeles, California Mitchell Halliday, Social Media Makeup Influencer – Manchester, U.K. Sandy Poirier, Hair Stylist – Boston, Massachusetts Silvia Reis, Social Media Hair Influencer – San Francisco, California Tyme The Infamous, YouTube Beauty Guru – Las Vegas, Nevada Photo Courtesy of Instagram/@americanbeautystar, left, right. Related: This Makeup Artist Creates the COOLEST Optical IllusionsThe research base for rock climbing has expanded substantially in the past three decades as worldwide interest in the sport has grown. An important trigger for the increasing research attention has been the transition of the sport to a competitive as well as recreational activity and this has been heightened with the inclusion of sport climbing in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic schedule. The International Rock Climbing Research Association (IRCRA) was formed in 2011 to bring together climbers, coaches and researchers to share knowledge and promote collaboration. In 2016 IRCRA published a position statement which was developed during and after the 2nd IRCRA Congress which was held in Pontresina, in September 2014. The aim of the position statement was to bring greater uniformity to the descriptive and statistical methods used in reporting rock climbing research findings. Until recently there had been a wide variation in the information provided by researchers regarding the climbers’ characteristics and also in the approaches employed to convert from climbing grading scales to a numeric scale suitable for statistical analysis. The IRCRA position statement provided details for recommended standards of reporting to be used for reporting climber characteristics. In addition, the position statement provided a universal scale (the IRCRA scale) for the conversion of local/national climbing grades to a uniform/standardised number system for statistical analysis. As a minimum, researchers should report answers to the following questions about the following characteristics of the climbers in a study to improve comparability between studies: Climbers’ self-identity in the sport – how they see themselves in-terms of predominant discipline (i.e. boulderer, sport climber, etc.)? Disciplines (i.e. bouldering, sport, traditional etc.) the climbers take part in (percentage of time devoted to each) in the past 3 and 12 months (include data for both time periods)? Percentage of time spent climbing indoors or outdoors in the past 3 months and over the past 12 months? Mean time (days per week and hours per session) spent climbing/training in a typical week in past 3 months and in the past 12 months? Time in the sport – the number of years/months experience? Are they involved in competition climbing, along with the disciplines and levels (i.e. bouldering, local versus national competitions)? Additionally researchers might report the climbers’ preference for style of ascent, (i.e. onsight, redpoint, top-rope) and for terrain (vertical, overhanging, slab climbing, varied). The full paper may be found here. Reference as: Draper, N., Giles, D., Schöffl, V., Fuss, F., Watts, P., Wolf, P., Baláš, J., España Romero, V., Gonzalez, G., Fryer, S., Fanchini, M., Vigouroux, L., Seifert, L., Donath, L., Spoerri, M., Bonetti, K., Phillips, K., Stöcker, U., Bourassa-Moreau, F., Garrido, I., Drum, S., Beekmeyer, S., Ziltener, J., Taylor, N., Beeretz, I., Mally, F., Amca, A., Linhat, C. & Abreu, E. (2016). Comparative grading scales, statistical analyses, climber descriptors and ability grouping: International Rock Climbing Research Association Position Statement. Sports Technology. [doi: 10.1080/19346182.2015.1107081]According to MSN, a new report by the International Joint Commission (IJC) found that the Great Lakes need more protection from factory farm runoff. The IJC, an organization responsible for preventing and resolving disputes regarding lakes and rivers along the Canada-United States border, stated that voluntary measures to protect the world’s largest freshwater lakes from animal excrement have been insufficient. The report found the problem to be most pronounced in Lake Erie, where algae growth is out of control and has created areas where oxygen levels are so low that no plant or animal life can survive, also known as “dead zones.” The report states: A major source of nutrient inputs to the western Lake Erie basin is concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). These are livestock confinement facilities that house large quantities of animals, generating significant quantities of animal waste. The algae growth is attributed to phosphorus-rich animal waste that runs off into waterways. This runoff also contaminates drinking water for the more than 40 million people who rely on the lakes. To fight these problems, the IJC recommends that both Canadian and U.S. governments put legislation in place specifically to protect the Great Lakes. This isn’t the first time pollution of the Great Lakes has been attributed to animal agriculture. A 2014 article in The Guardian highlights the spread of dangerous phosphorus algal blooms in Lake Erie that left hundreds of thousands of Ohio residents without safe drinking water. What’s more, animal excrement and other agricultural runoff from large-scale farms have polluted nearly one-third of rivers in the U.S. To make matters worse, animals on factory farms are treated as mere machines. Undercover investigations on farms around the country have revealed a culture of cruelty : animals intensively confined, painfully mutilated, and brutally slaughtered. Take a stand and fight for animals and the planet by leaving meat and other animal products off your plate."Parotid" and "parotids" redirect here. For the carotids, see Common carotid artery For the amphibian skin gland, see Parotoid gland Location of the left parotid gland in humans (shown in green). The parotid gland is a major salivary gland in many animals. In humans, the two parotid glands are present on either side of the mouth and in front of both ears. They are the largest of the salivary glands. Each parotid is wrapped around the mandibular ramus, and secretes serous saliva through the parotid duct into the mouth, to facilitate mastication and swallowing and to begin the digestion of starches. There are also two other types of salivary glands; they are submandibular and sublingual glands.[1] The word parotid (paraotic) literally means "beside the ear". Structure [ edit ] The parotid glands are a pair of mainly serous salivary glands located below and in front of each ear canal, draining their secretions into the vestibule of the mouth through the parotid duct.[2] Each gland lies behind the mandibular ramus and in front of the mastoid process of the temporal bone. The gland can be felt on either side, by feeling in front of each ear, along the cheek, and below the angle of the mandible.[3] The parotid duct, a long excretory duct, emerges from the front of each gland, superficial to the masseter muscle. The duct pierces the buccinator muscle, then opens into the mouth on the inner surface of the cheek, usually opposite the maxillary second molar. The parotid papilla is a small elevation of tissue that marks the opening of the parotid duct on the inner surface of the cheek.[3] The gland has four surfaces — superficial or lateral, superior, anteromedial, and posteromedial. The gland has three borders — anterior, medial, and posterior. The parotid gland has two ends — superior end in the form of small superior surface and an inferior end (apex). A number of different structures pass through the gland. From lateral to medial, these are: Location [ edit ] Superficial or lateral relations: The gland is situated deep to the skin, superficial fascia, superficial lamina of investing layer of deep cervical fascia and great auricular nerve (anterior ramus of C2 and C3). Anteromedial relations: The gland is situated posterolaterally to the mandibular ramus, masseter and medial pterygoid muscles. A part of the gland may extend between the ramus and medial pterygoid, as the pterygoid process. Branches of facial nerve and parotid duct emerge through this surface. Posteromedial relations: The gland is situated anterolaterally to mastoid process of temporal bone with its attached sternocleidomastoid and digastric muscles, styloid process of temporal bone with its three attached muscles (stylohyoid, stylopharyngeus, and styloglossus) and carotid sheath with its contained neurovasculature (internal carotid artery, internal jugular vein, and 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th cranial nerves). Medial relations: The parotid gland comes into contact with the superior pharyngyeal constrictor muscle at the medial border, where the anteromedial and posteromedial surfaces meet. Hence, a need exists to examine the fauces in parotitis. Blood supply [ edit ] The external carotid artery and its terminal branches within the gland, namely, the superficial temporal and the Maxillary artery, supply the parotid gland. Venous return is to the retromandibular veins. Lymphatic drainage [ edit ] The gland is mainly drained into the preauricular or parotid lymph nodes which ultimately drain to the deep cervical chain. Nerve supply [ edit ] The parotid gland receives both sensory and autonomic innervation. General Sensory innervation to the parotid gland, its sheath, and the overlying skin is provided by the great auricular nerve. The autonomic innervation controls the rate of saliva production and is supplied by the glossopharyngeal nerve.[4] Postganglionic sympathetic fibers from superior cervical sympathetic ganglion reach the gland as periarterial nerve plexuses around the middle meningeal artery and their function is mainly vasoconstriction. The cell bodies of the preganglionic sympathetics usually lie in the lateral horns of upper thoracic spinal segments. Preganglionic parasympathetic fibers leave the brain stem from inferior salivatory nucleus in the glossopharyngeal nerve and then through its tympanic and then the lesser petrosal branch pass into the otic ganglion. There, they synapse with postganglionic fibers which reach the gland by hitch-hiking via the auriculotemporal nerve, a branch of the mandibular nerve.[5][6]:255 Histology [ edit ] The parotid gland
the old adage goes: you can take the administrator out of the hospital, but you can never take the hospital out of the administrator. Heroes are heroes, plain and simple.In an effort to tackle the organ donor shortage, researchers in the United States have successfully created part-human, part-pig embryos and implanted them into a sow. Eventually, these animals could act as incubators for human organs, which concerns some ethicists. As reported by the BBC, researchers from the University of California, Davis, injected human stem cells into pig embryos to create the chimeras (the word “chimera” is derived from mythology, but it’s the scientific term used to describe an animal that has genetic information from more than one species). The human-pig embryos were then implanted into a sow, where they will be allowed to develop for 28 days before the pregnancies are terminated (the full gestation period for pigs is 114 days). The scientists will analyze the fetal tissue to make sure everything is developing normally. Advertisement In September of last year, the US National Institutes of Health said it would not fund this type of research until more was known about the implications. Even though the pigs are supposed to develop as normal pigs—save for the human organs—there’s fear that something unforeseen could happen, and that the pigs would somehow be humanized. There’s particular concern that the genetic material from humans might cause the chimeric pigs to develop human-like brains, but experts believe this is unlikely. Undaunted by the NIH’s concerns, several labs are now working to make this a reality. Human-pig embryos have been created before, but this marks a first for the UC Davis researchers. Advertisement To create the human-pig embryos, the researchers used CRISPR to knock out the genetic information required for the fetus to grow a pancreas, resulting in a genetic “niche.” To fill the void created by process, the scientists then injected human induced pluripotent (iPS) stem cells into the embryo. Theoretically, this should cause the pig embryo to grow a human pancreas. In the future, such pigs would be allowed to mature, and would later have their human organs harvested. In short, they’d basically serve as incubators for human organs. The current work is focused on the pancreas, but other organs could also be grown, including hearts, livers, kidneys, lungs, and corneas. There’s no question that something needs to be done about the ongoing organ donor shortage, but this solution already seems a bit anachronistic. This concept, originally known as xenotransplantation, has been around since the 1970s. By the 1990s, there was hope that GMO pigs could be used en masse to provide an almost unlimited supply of organs for patients, but research stalled due to fears that humans might be infected with animal viruses. The advent of CRISPR has revitalized this line of research because biologists can now selectively weed out these undesirable retroviruses. Advertisement Needless to say, animal rights advocates aren’t thrilled with this approach. As Peter Stevenson from Compassion in World Farming told the BBC’s Panorama program: “I’m nervous about opening up a new source of animal suffering. Let’s first get many more people to donate organs. If there is still a shortage after that, we can consider using pigs, but on the basis that we eat less meat so that there is no overall increase in the number of pigs being used for human purposes.” He’s not wrong; this quasi-dystopian solution seems like a major step backwards. And indeed, there are other research efforts currently underway that won’t require the use of animals, such as bioprinting, advances in cold storage, and the promising field of regenerative medicine where biologists can literally grow a patient’s organs in the lab. Advertisement So yes, let’s continue this line of research into human-pig chimeras—it’s probably the best short term solution that we have. Research into this area is developing quickly, and it’ll likely be available sooner compared to the other research efforts. But let’s go about this with the understanding that it’s a stop-gap measure and not a long term solution. [BBC]It was a big move for the Cincinnati Bengals to retain coach Marvin Lewis after his 13th season, despite his team's failure to win a playoff game for the fifth-straight year. It's looking like that critical decision was a mistake — it doesn’t appear that Lewis will lead the Bengals to a sixth straight playoff appearance this season. The Bengals are now 2-4 on the season and would need an incredible turnaround to work their way into the postseason. Cincinnati is only a game back of a playoff spot — they’re still in the hunt — but they’re yet to show that they’re a playoff-worthy team in 2016. Article continues below... Talent isn’t the issue with the Bengals — it’s discipline. The same issue that cost them last season’s playoff game to the Steelers. Said Lewis after Sunday's loss to the Patriots: “We continue to be our own Achilles heel.” The notion that Lewis didn’t realize he was self-incriminating himself was a flabbergasting lack of awareness. It’s Lewis’ job to create a culture of discipline — both assignment and temperamental — and that responsibility has either been shirked or Lewis is no longer capable of reaching his team. Both are equally fireable offenses. Considering the uneasy footing Lewis entered the season on, the next two weeks should determine the coach’s fate in Cincinnati. A loss to the Browns next week would be unacceptable, and the following week’s game in London against Washington seems a perfect litmus test for the team. Losses in either game should seal Lewis’s fate. Even in an AFC where nine wins are probably enough to make the playoffs, Lewis’ tenure in Cincinnati should be precarious at best. The Bengals are stuck in neutral, and the organization’s fear should no longer be that removing Lewis could tear the team apart, but rather that keeping him around might put the team in reverse. There’s no shame in losing to the Patriots, at the Bengals did Sunday — and to be fair, the Bengals have played as tough a schedule as any team in the league — but the product that’s being put on the field can’t be pinned to Andy Dalton failures or defensive injuries. This is a team does not have the same swagger as last year’s team. You only need to see the number in the loss column — four in 16 last year, four in six this campaign — to understand why Lewis' time in Cincinnati could be nearing an end.Meron Langsner plays the perpetrator in reversals of attempted assault. ♦◊♦ I know exactly what her rapist said. I have it in mind as I pin down her wrists. She opens her eyes. She knew this was coming, but still, she looks surprised. They always do. I repeat the words her rapist said. Then I add some embellishments of my own. I’ve had some time to watch her, I have some idea what scares her. I should. She told us why she was here and gave us express permission to use that information. I’m fairly certain that I struck a nerve with one of my embellishments. Her eyes are watering. I don’t like this part at all. She manages to stay calm. That’s good. I’m fairly certain that I’ve said enough. I shift my body and lower my weight, plus the weight of the huge armored suit I’m wearing, onto her …. The moment my weight settles, she shouts “NO!” as she explodes into action, launching me off of her body with her hips. She’s a fairly small woman, so this is no small feat. I recover from the throw and move towards her, spouting obscenities. Some of what I say I know is particularly painful to hear. This was also information she gave me. As I continue the attack, I see her reposition and begin to aim a kick at my groin from her place on the ground. The speed at which she takes the offensive is impressive. So is how accurate her targeting is. She’s crying, but she’s fighting. When I started this job my colleagues told me that some of the hardest blows we receive are through tears. Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free The scenario I am describing is an advanced one. We’ve slowly built up to these throughout the course of the training. We begin with physical skills and no verbal element, and slowly build up. We refer to the attempted-rape scenarios as “reversals,” because the student begins at a severe disadvantage and then reverses the expected power dynamic. ♦◊♦ I am a self-defense instructor with IMPACT Boston. I wear a specially designed suit of body armor and play out the role of a perpetrator. When I started this job a few years ago, one of my trainers told me it would be “The weirdest job you’ll ever love.” Our methodology is heavily invested in scenario-based adrenal stress operant conditioning. Which in layman’s terms means that we replicate real attacks as closely as is safely possible, and that our students practice their skills in something approximating the state they would be in should they need to apply our training. This includes verbal elements in the scenarios. And striking full power while being flooded with adrenaline. And also means that I wear maybe fifty pounds of specially designed armor that allows me to safely take those full power blows. Her kick hits my groin. It’s a solid hit and accurate hit, which knocks my center back behind me and brings my head into range. I’m not an especially big guy, but that’s an impressive kick. She aims another one, this time to my head. From my vantage point it looks like it might connect pretty solidly. I decide to make things hard for her. I block it, then hold on at the ankle for good measure. She lines up another kick with her free leg, still shouting “No!,” still crying. This feels real for the student, and I try to maintain that sense of reality as best I can. The techniques we teach are gross motor skills that a person can do during an intense adrenaline rush. They don’t need to be textbook perfect to work. As important as the techniques themselves is teaching the students to keep fighting in difficult situations. She quickly lines up another kick. She takes solid aim. I can tell that I may really feel this one, even through the helmet. Her classmates are cheering her on. As I watch her foot come at me I already know that this will end the fight. I line myself up so as to best be able to roll with it. It connects. I use the force to roll back on my side three times, maybe four. That was an impressive shot. Even harder than I expected. We do good work. She kept her commitment to herself to keep fighting no matter how difficult the scenario, and she fought well. I’m fairly certain the world will be a safer place for her when all of this is done. Her classmates applaud her. Another student lies down, pretending to sleep. Something like what I’ve just described plays out again. These are advanced scenarios. We’ve slowly built up to this throughout a three day course. In those three days I’ve taken harder shots through the armor than I have in many situations in my life as a martial artist. You read that correctly by the way: the course is three days long. As I said earlier, we teach gross motor skills that the students practice in an adrenalized states during scenarios replicating assaults, so that learned-state conditioning goes into effect, making the training extremely effective in a relatively short time. A significant amount of research has been put into the scenarios. We cover verbal de-escalation and situational awareness along with the physical skills. Once they can handle adrenaline in a physical scenario, we teach them handle verbal scenarios, then we combine the two. Many say that the verbal skills are significantly harder. Graduates sometimes keep in touch. We often hear that they’ve gotten out of threatening situations with just their verbal skills. I’m told that the ones who do report that they’ve been assaulted and had to go physical have rarely had to hit anyone more than once before being able to get themselves to safety. Many trauma survivors take the course, some are referred by therapists. Most say that this course is a major step in reclaiming their lives. There is some scientific evidence that completing the adrenaline cycle with a successful outcome changes the brain chemistry in a positive way. The program was started in the 1970s by a group of martial artists who saw a need, at the time it was called Model Mugging. There are chapters all over the world now, My chapter does men’s, children’s, and LGBT courses as well. We’ve started a new initiative for abuse prevention focused on people with disabilities. As I said before, we do good work. It’s my turn to do a scenario again. I know that the woman lying on the floor is a mother with young children. I pin her down. Her eyes snap open. “Whose little shoes are those out in the hall?” I know already that this is going to be an intense fight. Image credit: Pai Wei/IMPACT BostonMayor R.T. Rybak: “We are about to transform a part of Minneapolis that has long been overdue for great change.” On Thursday, Minneapolis was arguing in court that the city was acting within the letter of the law in the planned development district adjacent to the new Vikings stadium. Today, it followed through, with the City Council voting unanimously to move ahead with the project. “If I curled up in a fetal position every time somebody filed a suit against the City of Minneapolis, we would not have gotten much done,” Mayor R. T. Rybak told reporters after the council vote. “We’re extremely confident of our position — this will get built,” he said. “We are about to transform a part of Minneapolis that has long been overdue for great change.” “This has been very transparent, and we’re confident that ultimately the judge will see it that way,” said Rick Collins, vice president of development for the Ryan Cos. which is the developer for the five-block area known as Downtown East. Update: Friday afternoon a Hennepin County judge rejected much of the legal challenge. Hennepin County Judge Mel I. Dickstein is expected to rule on the matter early next week. The lawsuit has been brought forward by two former mayoral candidates, Dan Cohen and Stephanie Woodruff, and former City Council President Paul Ostrow. They argue that the city is exceeding a $150 million spending limit imposed by the stadium legislation. They also believe that the city wrongly declared the land to be “marginal” and that it does not have power to operate a park. Attorneys for the city argue that the Downtown East development is separate from the stadium and that city money spent there should not be counted as a stadium contribution. They also say that most of the land is currently used for parking lots and that the city also operates several parks independent of the Park Board. A plan for the city to sell the air rights about the city-built parking lot was not part of the lawsuit. Rybak said he will be meeting with a potential developer immediately and has another meeting scheduled for Monday with a second interested developer. “If we sell development rights, it’s gravy, and we want to use that gravy to help make the park better,” the mayor said. There will be enough money in the development package to purchase the park land and prepare it for use with about $500,000 left over. The Minnesota Vikings have also donated $1 million for park development. “In my mind, this is one of the greatest development sites we’ve had in the city,” said Rybak, noting that varying views from a building above the parking ramp would include the Mississippi River, the new stadium or the downtown skyline. There also will be access to light rail lines across the street. “If I wasn’t an almost-broke former mayor, I’d go bidding on it myself,” he said. Collins said the parking ramp itself would be equal to about six stories of a residential building and that the air rights could easily accommodate a building of six stories of office, hotel or residential space. The project includes two mixed-use buildings that could become office space for 5,000 Wells Fargo workers. The plan also includes a city-built parking ramp, the park and skyways connecting ramps to the mixed-use buildings and the stadium. Wells Fargo is expected to sign an agreement next week with the developer for the two buildings. “We will certainly not wait until the judge rules,” said Brent Hanson, vice president of Wells Fargo Corporate Properties Group. He said most of the workers in the new facilities would be re-located from other sites. The company has about 1.5 million square feet of office space in the suburbs and multiple locations downtown. “We’re not leaving Wells Fargo Center.” The project faces some quickly nearing deadlines. Dec. 27 is the expiration date on the purchase agreement between Ryan Cos. and the Star Tribune, which currently owns the land. That is also the date when negotiations would end with Wells Fargo if no agreement has been reached. “That is what we call our last contingency date, and if we don’t succeed in doing away with all the potential contingencies that have to be dealt with, we have all agreed that we have to re-examine,” Collins said. If the project moves forward, he said, a groundbreaking is scheduled for April, ith the buildings opening in two phases. The first would take place by the end of 2015, with the second opening in early 2016.Image caption Despite the Arab League's efforts, the violence is continuing in Syria At least 34 people have been abducted and killed by pro-government militiamen in the city of Homs, activists say. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights quoted witnesses as saying the bodies had been found dumped in a square in the restive city on Monday. The claim has not been independently verified, as most foreign media are banned from entering Syria. Meanwhile, Damascus says it responded "positively" to an Arab League plan aimed at ending months of unrest. Foreign ministry spokesman Jihad al-Makdisi told reporters a letter by President Bashar al-Assad's government had been sent to the Cairo-based Arab League, adding that he expected a deal to be signed soon. He spoke after the expiry of the organisation's latest deadline for Damascus to agree to its peace plan and allow in observers to monitor it or face the imposition of further sanctions approved last week. The Arab League secretary general, Nabil al-Arabi, confirmed receipt of the letter, but noted that it contained new elements which were now being studied by Arab foreign ministers. A spokeswoman for the Syrian National Council, an opposition umbrella group, said that any announcements made by the Syrian government while the crackdown on dissent continued had "zero credibility". Syria is under pressure to end its crackdown on an uprising the UN says has left more than 4,000 people dead since the unrest began in March. Later on Monday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights quoted witnesses as saying that the bodies of at least 34 civilians had been seen by an activist in the pro-government district of al-Zahra. It said the victims had been seized on Monday by armed regime supporters, known locally as "shabiha", from districts opposed to the government. Government forces have laid siege to Homs for the past two months. The Observatory also reported that shabiha had abducted a bus driver and his 13 passengers in Homs province on Monday. The Local Co-ordination Committee, an activist group that documents and organises protests, also said at least 17 people had been killed on Monday, including 14 in Homs. Last week, UN Human Rights Council strongly condemned the "gross and systematic" violations by Syrian forces, and said it was appointing a special investigator to report on the ongoing crackdown. The Syrian government says it is fighting armed terrorist gangs.The new chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell said the oil giant was making “hard choices” to improve returns as he unveiled a £690m divestment in Australia just days after Friday’s shock profits warning. Ben van Beurden, who only took over from Peter Voser at the start of the year, signalled another break with the previous management as he agreed to sell Shell’s minority stakes in the Wheatstone liquefied natural gas (LNG) operations in offshore Western Australia. Shell said it was selling its 8pc equity holding in the Wheatstone-Iago fields and its 6.4pc interest in the related 8.9m tonnes per year LNG project for $1.135bn (£690m) cash. The buyer is the Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Company. The Anglo-Dutch oil group acquired the stakes from Chevron as recently as April 2011 in return for gas contributions from its existing Australian blocks. The move was part of a push into developing Australian natural gas fields, which are forecast to feed a surge in demand from Asia for clean-burning fuels. Mr van Beurden said: “Shell will remain a major player in Australia’s energy industry. However, we are refocusing our investment to where we can add the most value with Shell’s capital and technology. We are making hard choices in our world-wide portfolio to improve Shell’s capital efficiency.” The London-listed B shares rose 3.5p to £22.38. Under Mr van Beurden’s predecessors, Mr Voser and Jeroen van der Veer, Shell invested heavily in LNG. But, a mix of rising costs and falling gas prices in some markets thanks to America’s shale revolution, has renewed investor calls for a more disciplined approach to spending. Last year’s $44.3m of capital investment was $5bn more than guidance, while Shell warned last Friday that earnings from its Australian upstream business were being “impacted by the weakening of the Australian dollar”. The pressure on Mr van Beurden to improve financial returns has intensified since last week’s profits shocker, the first warning for 10 years – though some analysts saw it as a kitchen-sinking exercise by the new chief executive to signal a clean break with the past. Mr van Beurden is thought to have played a pivotal role in Shell’s decision last month to abandon plans for a $12.5bn gas-to-liquids plant in Louisiana – though, at the time, Mr Voser had also referred to making “hard choices”. Jason Kenney, an analyst at Santander, said the decision on Wheatstone was “all part of the focus on capital discipline and cash under the new management”. Despite the deal to sell Wheatstone, Shell still has significant interests in the Australian gas market. They include a 25pc stake in the giant Chevron-operated Gorgon project off the north-west coast of Western Australia and Prelude, the company’s innovative floating LNG project involving a 488m long barge. The costs of the Gorgon development have rocketed, however, with a project initially envisaged to cost $37bn now priced at $54bn. Analysts expect further divestments this year, with Shell expected to sell at least $15bn of assets during 2014 and 2015, including mature North Sea assets, as it seeks to improve capital returns. Apart from more disciplined spending, Mr van Beurden is also seeking to tighten operational controls after a particular chastening fourth quarter hit by a slew of problems including rising exploration costs, a 10-year low in refining margins and fuel theft in Nigeria. Shell, which reports full-year results on January 30, said it expected pre-exceptional earnings of just $2.9bn (£1.75bn) for the last three months of 2013, way below Bloomberg consensus forecasts of $4.2bn. Friday’s warning was Shell’s first since January 2004 – an alert swiftly followed by the reserves misreporting scandal that plunged the group into crisis.A developer preview of Canonical's mobile-friendly version of Ubuntu will be published this week, enabling developers to port the platform to Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 4 smartphones. The Touch Developer Preview is intended for enthusiasts and developers to familiarize themselves with Ubuntu's smartphone platform and develop applications on spare handsets. [ Stay ahead of advances in mobile technology with InfoWorld's Mobile Edge blog and Mobilize newsletter. ] [ There’s more than one way to build a mobile app. See 25 simple tools for building mobile apps fast. \| Keep up with the hottest topics in programming with InfoWorld’s App Dev Report newsletter. ] Tools that manage the "flashing" of the phone will also be available from Feb. 21 in the Ubuntu archives, making it easy to keep a device up to date with the latest version of the developer preview. "Our platform supports a wide range of screen sizes and resolutions. Developers who have experience bringing up phone environments will find it relatively easy to port Ubuntu to current handsets" said Pat McGowan, who leads the integration effort that produced the images being released. "We look forward to adding support for additional devices for everyday testing and experimentation." Attendees of Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona can have their phones flashed to Ubuntu by Canonical team members at the Ubuntu stand, (booth number 81D3). Canonical has also released a preview SDK and App Design Guides to allow developers to create applications for the full range of Ubuntu platforms. The toolkit provides a range of documented templates to enable native applications to be created quickly and easily. These use QML (Qt Meta Language) widgets, as well as HTML5 and OpenGL for quick interface development. Developers will not need to cross-compile or package applications differently for phone, tablet, PC and TV, as one platform serves all four. "The release marks the start of a new era for Ubuntu, with true convergence between devices," said Canonical in a statement. "When complete, the same Ubuntu code will deliver a mobile, tablet, desktop or TV experiences depending on the device it is installed on, or where it is docked." The install process and supported device list are available here and will be updated as new devices are added. This story, "Ubuntu mobile developer preview set to launch " was originally published by Techworld.com.The recent bird deaths at a Syncrude oilsands facility in northern Alberta along with last month's Nexen Energy pipeline spill — one of the biggest in the province's history — show the need for better oversight, a local First Nation says. "In less than one month, we have seen two major events that clearly demonstrate that something is seriously wrong," said Allan Adam, chief of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN), in a news release. "These incidents, and the countless more seen in recent past, are contributing to the degradation of the local ecosystems and the treaty and aboriginal rights of nations in the region." Alberta's energy regulator said 30 blue herons died earlier this week at the Mildred Lake Facility north of Fort McMurray, Alta. An investigation into what caused the birds to die is still underway. Bob Curran, a spokesman for the agency, says a Syncrude worker found one of the heron Wednesday. The bird was alive but had to be euthanized. After the company searched the area, they found the rest of the birds dead in a run-off pond. "We have seen irreparable damages to the environment and now death of a species that is listed with special concern," said Adam. Adam is correct that the fannini subspecies of the great blue heron is listed as a species of "special concern" under Canada's Species at Risk Act, but they mostly reside on the B.C. coast. According to the Canadian Wildlife Federation's Hinterland Who's Who website, the overall great blue heron population is healthy, and scientists estimate there are tens of thousands of the bird in Canada. Still ACFN says it plans to work with Alberta's NDP government to ensure the province is meeting its environmental commitments. It says more oversight and management of Alberta's oilsands region is needed. Syncrude reacts The office of the Alberta Energy Regulator says its investigation into the latest bird deaths will look at the systems set up to keep wildlife away from the facility. Syncrude Canada spokesperson Will Gibson said the bird deterrent system was fully operational at the site. The regulator said that in light of several bird deaths at oilsands facilities in recent years, wildlife deterrent programs, including those at the Mildred Lake, are inspected regularly to make sure they're working. More than 1,600 ducks died after they landed on a toxic Syncrude tailings pond in northern Alberta in 2008, and the company was fined $3 million. Two years later, more than 550 birds had to be destroyed when an early winter storm forced them to land on waste ponds belonging to Syncrude and Suncor. The companies were not charged. Last November, Alberta's regulator also cleared three oilsands operators of responsibility for the deaths of 196 waterfowl that landed on their toxic tailings ponds, saying poor weather forced the birds down. Gibson says the company is co-operating with the Alberta Energy Regulator, as well as with provincial fish and wildlife officials and Environment Canada, in the investigation. "Our goal is finding out what happened and ensuring that it's not repeated," he said.Why Do Men Have Nipples? Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini by Published by Genres/Lists: Non-Fiction, Science/Technology/Psychology Pages: 224 Read synopsis on Goodreads Buy the book: by Mark Leyner Three Rivers Press on July 26, 2005224 Amazon/Audible (this post includes affiliate links) This past Thanksgiving I decided to make the trip to my parents house overnight. My plan was to avoid the horrendous traffic that was sure to clog the highways the day before the holiday and I was fortunate enough to sail through the full 8 hours without any delays. To keep myself occupied, I downloaded a few audiobooks from Audible, including Why Do Men Have Nipples? Hundreds of Questions You’d Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini. I knew going into it that it would provide me with a few good laughs, but I was not prepared to laugh from start to finish. The authors, Billy Goldberg and Mark Leyner, have a very odd sense of humor that is even more evident, I would imagine, in the audiobook because Leyner actually narrates it. Their at-times inappropriate remarks and dry sense of humor (for example, “Goosebumps occur from fear, cold or after looking at yourself in the mirror after a night of vodka-induced debauchery”) combine to create a hilarious book that will answer a lot of weird body questions that only come up after a few cocktails. Here are a few of the interesting tidbits that I picked up: Peeing on a jellyfish sting does not help, but instead makes it worse (who can forget the Friends episode with Monica and the jellyfish?) Sucking out snake venom is ineffective. You really can test positive for opiates by eating only 3 poppyseed bagels. Medical marijuana doesn’t help with glaucoma unless you are smoking 10-12 joints a day, and you can’t get a prescription for that amount. Chocolate does not cause acne (whew!). You can actually die from holding in a sneeze. You can actually eat so much that your stomach explodes. Asparagus pee is genetic. 46% of British tested have the gene. 100% of French tested do. There is no definitive reason for ice cream headaches. Cracking your knuckles does not cause arthritis (thank goodness). Tomato juice doesn’t get rid of skunk smells, it just tricks your nose into thinking that it is gone. The whole liquor before beer thing is farce. The carbonation means nothing. Although I already knew the answers to many of the questions (such as why we are still hungry after eating chinese and why onions make us cry), I learned that a lot of things I assumed to be true true were, in fact, false (jellyfish stings, liquor before beer and knuckle-cracking all come to mind). I am one of those people who likes to hoard strange facts and pull them out at random times, so this book gave me some great ammo for my arsenal. If you are one of those people, or just need a good laugh, I highly recommend this book. Related PostsAn American paratroop battalion being led by its commander Lt. Col. Garrison (with a cane) through the desert to take up peacekeeping duties between Israel and Egypt in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt on March 17, 1982. (Max Nash/AP) A dramatic rise in militancy and violence in the vast Sinai desert is increasingly threatening a peacekeeping force there that includes nearly 700 U.S. troops acting as guarantors of a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, according to Western military officials. Heavily armed locals have blockaded bases and convoys, and, in a few instances, launched attacks against the peacekeepers, raising concerns about not only their safety but also the long-term stability of their mission. That mission had become more challenging even before the most recent phase of Egypt’s post- revolution crisis, with regional volatility forcing members of the Multinational Force and Observers, many of whom operate out of remote bases, to bolster security and limit their movements. “Right now, the situation is very volatile up here,” Col. Thomas O’Steen, the chief of staff of the peacekeeping force, said in a phone interview last week. “As you can imagine, the Egyptian security forces are struggling to maintain security. We are being very cautious and prudent in the routes we allow for our patrols and resupply convoys to minimize our exposure.” The peacekeeping force, which relies heavily on the Egyptian government for security, is an integral part of the peace treaty, which has been at the heart of U.S. policy in the region since Egypt and Israel signed it in 1979. Keeping the coalition secure and viable has been among U.S. officials’ key — if largely unspoken — considerations as they have debated the pros and cons of shutting off or making conditional the $1.3 billion in military aid awarded annually to Cairo. Some U.S. officials worry that a rupture in the relationship between Washington and Egypt’s generals could diminish the Cairo government’s willingness and ability to host and protect the force. “All major strategic aspects of our relationship with Egypt are dependent on a highly cooperative relationship with the Egyptian military,” said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), who has closely followed the evolution of U.S. policy on Egypt since he worked as a Senate staffer in the early 1980s. “Disruption of that cooperation would have implications for all of those. It’s a very complicated relationship that does not lend itself to facile policy determinations.” ‘On maximum alert’ The 13-nation peacekeeping force, which includes American, Colombian, Fijian and Uruguayan troops, operates out of two main bases and a network of 30 small outposts. Security around the southern Sinai base, which is close to Sharm el-Sheikh, a resort town, has been fairly stable. But conditions around the northern camp have become increasingly dire. Militants have launched near-daily attacks on Egyptian security forces in the area, in a violent backlash to the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi. Last week, gunmen ambushed a convoy of Egyptian police recruits and executed 25 on the side of a road near a peacekeepers’ checkpoint. “This demonstrates the virulence of violence in that area,” said Agustín Espinosa, the Uruguayan ambassador in Cairo. “This compels us to be on maximum alert.” In response to the growing threat, the peacekeeping force has strengthened security at the bases, begun using armored SUVs and generously stocked remote outposts in case it becomes difficult to access them. A team from U.S. Central Command was recently dispatched to conduct a “vulnerability assessment” of the bases. Commanders have also provided troops with specialized training on a range of nonlethal responses to attacks, fearing that a fatal confrontation could make local communities turn on the troops. Under the terms of the Israel-Egypt treaty, the peacekeepers are not authorized to collect intelligence or conduct offensive operations. That means that they must rely on the Cairo government for information about the militant cells that have taken root along the Egyptian side of the border. New Zealand Maj. Gen. Warren Whiting, the commander of the force, said in a statement that the peacekeeping coalition has maintained strong relationships with the Egyptian and Israeli governments despite the recent regional upheaval and continues to perform its mission. “The MFO maintains close links with the Egyptian government in Cairo, and the Egyptian Army has placed a priority on maintaining communications with the MFO,” he said. Challenges, close calls The Sinai peacekeeping force and its challenges have gone largely unnoticed in recent years, in large part because it seeks to keep a low profile as a matter of policy. The force’s director general, veteran U.S. diplomat David M. Satterfield, who is based in Rome, declined an interview request. Still, the force’s latest yearly report provides a detailed and sobering glimpse into the recent challenges and close calls that the peacekeepers have faced. Since President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in January 2011, the report says, “the number of rock-throwing incidents, roadblocks, protests and overt surveillance of MFO positions (and in a few cases the display and use) of weapons has increased dramatically.” In spring 2012, gunmen opened fire on a peacekeeping convoy during the course of a blockade of the force’s remote sites and convoys. The most worrisome incident occurred Sept. 14, when a “violent crowd” launched an attack on the northern camp using molotov cocktails, breaching the perimeter. “Armed elements fired upon and ultimately destroyed a ballistically protected guard tower and threw an explosive device,” the report said. Eight members of the force suffered minor injuries in the attack, which was repelled by Colombian troops. The assault caused “significant damage,” including the destruction of a firetruck. During Mubarak’s rule, militant attacks launched from the Sinai triggered a crushing response from Egyptian intelligence and military units, which raided homes to seize weapons and rounded up hundreds of Islamists. Since his ouster, the government has struggled to push back against the rising militancy because residents have stocked up on heavy weapons that streamed into the country after Libya’s 2011 civil war and because Egyptian troops have been spread thin dealing with urban unrest across the country. That has allowed two particularly hard-line groups to launch attacks against Israel from the region. Israel is thought to have carried out a recent drone attack in response to rocket fire from the Sinai, the latest in a series of cross-border incidents that could strain Cairo’s relationship with Israel. “Both groups aim to drag Israel to retaliate in Sinai, thus sabotaging Egyptian territory and authority,” said Aviv Oreg, a security analyst in Tel Aviv who once led the Israeli military’s intelligence division that tracks al-Qaeda and like-minded groups. So far, he said, attacks launched from the Sinai have been largely ineffective. “The big question is how much can Israel contain or bear,” Oreg added. Israel and Egypt have developed a functional working relationship over the years, even as Egypt has deployed more troops to the Sinai than the original treaty authorized.
1868, is the longest running college newspaper in Canada. 25. Hieroglyphs written on birch bark, stone or wood by the Mi’kmaq people are considered to be the first written signs in eastern North America. 26. In the 1970s, you couldn’t order alcohol unless you bought food as well. 27. On the first day of HRM’s existence as an amalgamated municipality, City Council toured the entire region in a Metro Transit bus. 28. Canada’s last piracy trial took place in Halifax in 1844. Four crew members of the British vessel Saladin were the last people hanged as pirates in Canadian history. 29. Haligonian D.H. Craig was the first foreign correspondent for the Associated Press. 30. Only a quarter of the people living in HRM have skated on a lake or pond. 31. The first public library in Canada was Halifax’s Citizens’ Free Library, established in 1864. 32. One in every five Canadians is related to someone who passed through Halifax’s Pier 21. 33. In the early 1990s, Halifax was known as “Seattle of the North” because of the success of bands like Sloan, The Super Friendz and Thrush Hermit. 34. The Sir Charles Ogle was the first steam-powered ferry to cross from Halifax to Dartmouth. It began service in 1830. 35. In the 1950s, the Halifax Refugee Clinic on Grafton Street was a Chinese restaurant called Hum Mow. People would go there after the ballrooms closed to drink “special tea,” which was actually scotch. 36. In July 1918, the Halifax Herald accused members of the Halifax Council of stealing 20 gallons of rum and two cases of scotch from the Liquor Inspector’s office. Clarence Horton was arrested. 37. In 2010, Judge Timothy Gabriel became the first Mi’kmaw judge in Nova Scotia. 38. In 2010, Halifax’s volunteerism rate of 56.5 per cent was higher than the national and provincial rates. 39. From 1841 to 1994, aldermen in Halifax signed their oath of office on The City of Halifax Aldermanic Scroll. It’s 21 feet long. 40. In the early 1800s, a section of Grafton Street was named Hogg Street, after the owner of a brothel. 41. William Roue, who designed the Bluenose, also designed the Governor Cornwallis, a ferry that caught fire on December 22, 1944. Although there were over 200 people onboard, no one died. 42. On April 21, 1863, the Halifax Police swore in 120 temporary constables in an effort to control the widespread fighting that had broken out between soldiers and civilians at a brothel on Brunswick Street. 43. In 1849, Halifax became the first North American city to transmit European news to New York City and Boston. 44. Acadius or Love in a Calm, which was performed in 1774, was the first original English Canada Play to be written and performed in Halifax. 45. Maugher Beach on McNabs Island used to be called Hangman’s Beach. The Royal Navy often had four pirate corpses up at any given time. 46. Dartmouth had a city philosopher. In 1991, John Savage appointed Dr. Peter March of Saint Mary’s University to work on a series of programs, including the future of the waterfront. 47. The first newspaper in English Canada was the Halifax Gazette, initially published on March 23, 1752 by John Bushell. 48. In the early days of the ferries, people were called to the terminal with three blows of a conch shell and the crew’s shouts of the word “Over.” 49. Canada’s first covered ice rink was opened on January 3, 1863 in the Public Gardens. 50. From 1901 to 1902, Lucy Maud Montgomery wrote a column for The Daily Echo, which was housed on the second floor of the Nova Scotian building. Writer’s note: I had a lot of help with this article. I began by contacting a variety of people, including archivists, professors and bartenders. My appreciation goes out to the following people who shared their knowledge and helped with research. • Richard S. MacMichael, senior heritage interpreter, Maritime Museum of the Atlantic • Joanne McCarthy O’Leary, local history and genealogy librarian, and the Reference Department at Spring Garden Road Memorial Public Library, Halifax Public Libraries • Albert Lee, research associate at the Gorsebrook Research Institute for Atlantic Canada Studies, Saint Mary’s University • Susan McClure, archivist, HRM Municipal Archives • Jonny Stevens, executive director, Halifax Pop Explosion Additional sources include A Collection of Nova Scotia Firsts by Ruth A. MacDonald, The Journey Continues: An Atlantic Canadian Black Experience by Craig Marshall Smith, Maritime Firsts by Dan Soucoup, Halifax’s Vital Signs 2012 by The Community Foundation of Nova Scotia, Halifax Street Names, edited by Shelagh MacKenzie.Hey everyone! Join us for this week’s Friday Night Flight: Bay Area Blitz This week, we move to the original yet seldom used region of San Francisco. As we have been rolling out the update in stages through the week, let’s have a pre-celebration event where Infinite Flight began over 5 years ago. Come out and show your support in your favorite aircraft and livery, and let’s have a great event! Region: San Francisco NOTAMS: There are no established routes for this event. NO PATTERN WORK AT FIELDS WITH ACTIVE ATC DURING FNF PEAK HOURS! (Pattern work at controller’s discretion based on airport traffic conditions outside of peak hours) Follow all ATC instructions (when available). Ghosting will be enforced. Server: All Servers Event (Your choice) Airport: KSFO Aircraft: Any Aircraft / Any Livery FNF Event Hours: Begin - Friday 10/13 @ 17:30 ZULU (10:30am PDT) End - Saturday 10/14 @ 9:30 ZULU (2:30am PDT) Be respectful of everyone who is flying, and most importantly, HAVE FUN!! See everyone in San Francisco!! Happy and Safe Landings!By Hugh Robjohns I'd like to know more about the difference between monitor designs that feature ports and those that do not. How do they differ in terms of sound and performance? Also, why is the term 'infinite baffle' used to refer to un-ported designs? Surely'sealed cabinet' or 'enclosed speaker' is a more accurate description. Martin Lambert Technical Editor Hugh Robjohns replies: Strictly speaking, an infinite baffle is exactly that: a baffle panel of infinite size in all directions, so that the front of the loudspeaker drives sound into our world, while the rear of the speaker is loaded by an equally infinite volume of air behind it in someone else's world, and none of the rearward sound can ever reach the front. This is obviously impossible to achieve in practice, and the simplest solution is to fold the edges of the baffle around to form an enclosed space. This kind of cabinet construction is often referred to as an infinite-baffle or IB design, but it is actually rather different at a technical level. One of the most significant aspects is that the volume of trapped air is obviously finite, and in smaller cabinets acts as an appreciable'spring' against which the rear of the driver has to work. This affects the linearity of the system, as the driver has to work against different resistive loads when responding to input signals of each polarity, and at differing levels. So, yes, calling it a sealed cabinet would be more accurate and informative! The most common form of loudspeaker cabinet is the reflex or ported design, with one or more holes in the cabinet — either on the front baffle (as with the Fostex PM2 above) or sometimes on the rear panel. The idea of the port is to make the cabinet resonate at a carefully chosen low frequency — not unlike the effect of blowing across the top of an empty bottle. The effect of the resonance is to bolster the low-frequency response, and thus generate a greater low-frequency output from a cabinet of a given size than is possible with an infinite-baffle — sorry, sealed cabinet — design. There's no free lunch though. In an infinite-baffle cabinet the bass rolls off gently at 6dB-per-octave, which means that even small cabinets can produce an audible output at surprisingly low frequencies. The reflex design has a 12dB-per-octave slope, which means that although the upper end of the low-frequency region is louder than it is in an infinite-baffle cabinet of equivalent size, the lower end of the spectrum falls away much more quickly. This can give rise to the 'one note' bass effect — where the monitor's resonant frequency is emphasised at the expense of all others — which is common in many reflex designs. Another problem is that the port resonance causes 'time smearing' — its inherent 'ringing' at a low frequency when triggered by a transient signal can cloud low-level detail and give a false impression of the transient dynamics and balance of instruments. There are several other less common variations on these cabinet themes. Some designs place a 'passive radiator' or diaphragm over the port, so that the cabinet is a compromise between a sealed enclosure and a vented design. The Mackie HR series monitors take this approach, for example. Another technique is the 'transmission line' favoured by PMC. This involves an altogether more complex and expensive cabinet design, and requires drivers with unusual characteristics, but it offers some significant advantages. These include a large reduction in low-frequency distortion, a more consistent balance at different listening levels, and a vastly improved low-frequency extension over equivalent-sized reflex or infinite baffle cabinets.Fortune favours the brave. It's been an oft-used term during Brendon McCullum's New Zealand captaincy reign and fittingly he delivered it during his final pre-match press call. It contained a very strong hint that New Zealand will play the second and final cricket test against Australia with four frontline pacemen and no specialist spinner at Christchurch's Hagley Oval. McCullum confirmed hometown boy Matt Henry's recall for his fourth test, for the injured Doug Bracewell, while spinner Mark Craig's role as thrower at slips catching practice was strong evidence he'll miss the cut to Neil Wagner. The last time New Zealand went in without a specialist spinner was in Wellington in February 2014, which turned out well for the hosts when McCullum's triple-century secured a series-clinching draw against India. Ryan Pierse/Getty Images Brendon McCullum is eyeing all-out attack for the second test in Christchurch, his Black Caps farewell. READ MORE: * Pattinson on pace after slow recovery * McCullum: A great or just hype? * Baz finds award'surreal' * Test pitch holds no fears for Nicholls * The Brendon McCullum Story: Slash or Burn All out attack really is the only way for these Black Caps who were outplayed in Wellington, by an innings and 52 runs, and took 154.2 overs to dismiss Australia once on a fast-flattening pitch. A coveted trans-Tasman series victory is off the table for a second time this summer, but a drawn series, a buoyant send-off for McCullum and spoiling Australia's ascent to the world No 1 ranking remains. A draw will be enough for Steve Smith's tourists to climb past India. Smith's description of the Hagley Oval pitch as "green and wet" would have given both sets of openers cold sweats. A conversation between McCullum and turf manager Rupert Bool, after a long gaze at the green strip, confirmed his thoughts. A green seamer is a great leveller, as it was when New Zealand won their only trans-Tasman test in the last 23 years in Hobart in 2011. "It's not going to be necessarily a pleasant time out there with bat in hand. Maybe it's one of those times when fortune favours the brave," McCullum said of his selections. "We'll see what unfolds. I think it will go around [seam around] for a while, yeah." A pace quartet - with Bracewell instead of Henry - worked for the Black Caps in their 2-0 home series win over Sri Lanka in December, but they had Mitchell Santner's spin too. Kane Williamson bowled in the nets and will be their sole spin option without Craig, who started well in Wellington but has rarely troubled Australia's batsmen. Fourteen months ago in Hagley's debut test, Sri Lanka sent the Black Caps in and McCullum's blistering 195 off 134 balls saw them to 429-7 at stumps. Tim Southee and Trent Boult then took 13 wickets between them in New Zealand's eight-wicket win. If the ball swings and the moisture remains in the pitch then the dynamic duo might be back in business, against an Australian top-six very rarely tested on seaming pitches. It's batting where the Black Caps have multiple questionmarks, particularly if Smith calls correctly once more and unleashes recalled quick James Pattinson who took 14 wickets in two trans-Tasman tests in Australia in 2011. Williamson holds the key, heavily so without the injured Ross Taylor, after he was kept in check superbly by Josh Hazlewood and company in Wellington. Henry Nicholls was solid on debut but McCullum, Corey Anderson and BJ Watling form a worrying core; all short of runs and confidence in test cricket. The Black Caps' net session had a heavy emphasis on leaving the ball and Watling had extra lessons with coach Mike Hesson, with the former rock at No 7 having not passed 32 his last 10 test innings. McCullum will channel happy memories of Boxing Day 2014 and enjoy his farewell with his mates. It presents a chance for a coveted test win over Australia and to prove New Zealand's strong test form isn't a myth. Under McCullum the Black Caps have won three of 18 tests against current top-five teams (New Zealand are ranked sixth), and this summer they've had three losses and a draw against Australia, albeit one that went to the wire in Adelaide. His message was simply, relax. "The majority of games these days are reaching results so you can't be behind the eight-ball as far as we have been [in Brisbane and Wellington]. It's a combination of us being a bit tight and a bit keen to do well and also Australia being ruthless when they get the opportunity." Smith said the top ranking was high in his mind and was confident his bowlers, with Pattinson in for the injured Peter Siddle, would do a job again for him. "For me it's satisfying to get that ranking. I think that would be really good for us as a group. But when you're No 1, you want to stretch that distance between the teams. For us that's making sure we play well away from home, and that's really important." AT A GLANCE Second test at Hagley Oval, 10.30am start: New Zealand (likely): Martin Guptill, Tom Latham, Kane Williamson, Henry Nicholls, Brendon McCullum (captain), Corey Anderson, BJ Watling, Neil Wagner, Matt Henry, Tim Southee, Trent Boult. Australia: Joe Burns, David Warner, Usman Khawaja, Steve Smith (captain), Adam Voges, Mitchell Marsh, Peter Nevill, James Pattinson, Josh Hazlewood, Nathan Lyon, Jackson Bird.And it says that alternate means of transporting the oil — rail, truck and barge — also have significant environmental and economic impacts, including higher costs, noise, traffic, air pollution and the possibility of spills. The study does not say that one method is better for the environment than another. It does say that a spill is more likely for rail transport, although the report says that the volume of oil spilled from a pipeline is likely to be greater. Kerri-Ann Jones, assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs, said the report was careful not to pre-empt policy decisions that Mr. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry will make on the pipeline. She said the report was designed to analyze technical issues and serve as the basis for public debate. “I think it’s premature at this point to try to come down with strong conclusions, and we want to make sure we have a lot of comments and a full public debate on the document,” Ms. Jones said in a conference call with reporters. Publication of the document next week starts a 45-day public comment period and then a protracted review before a final impact statement is issued, meaning a presidential decision on the project is still months away. Jane Kleeb, director of Bold Nebraska, an advocacy organization that is adamantly opposed to the pipeline, said her group had wanted a 120-day period for Nebraskans to be able to comment on the supplemental environmental report. She said 45 days was not enough time, especially because local cattle ranchers were in the middle of calving season. Ms. Kleeb said that federal reviews of the pipeline have not yet addressed longstanding concerns about spills and the overall impact of Keystone XL on the environment. She also disputed the conclusion that the oil sands would be exploited regardless of whether the Keystone XL pipeline is built.Justice Antonin Scalia warned Monday that the Supreme Court is overstepping its authority on matters that should be left to Congress or voters. [WATCH VIDEO] ADVERTISEMENT Speaking at an event sponsored by the Federalist Society in Montana, Scalia said the high court should not intervene on issues such as wiretapping and “inventing” new minorities, according to reports. “It's not up to the courts to invent new minorities that get special protections,” Scalia said, in an apparent reference to the court's recent decisions on gay marriage and federal benefits for same-sex couples. Scalia said courts should not create new rights, leaving that to constitutional changes or to Congress. The Supreme Court in June overturned part of the Defense of Marriage Act that blocks married same-sex couples from receiving some federal benefits and, in a separate case, paved the way for gay marriages to resume in California. Scalia wrote a blistering dissent in the court's decision to overturn DOMA. Scalia on Monday also warned that courts should be careful not to rule on some intelligence questions that were historically handled by Congress, such as the extent of National Security Agency surveillance of phone and email records. Congress has information about how serious a national security threat is, Scalia said, where the judiciary does not. “Of all three branches, we are the one that knows the least about the nature of the threats to the country, and we have the least ability to find out about it,” Scalia said. On Sunday, 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.), a critic of the NSA’s surveillance, called for the Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of the top secret programs.Walt Disney Studios has announced the title for their Holiday 2013 movie — Frozen. All of the Hollywood tradepapers are reporting that the movie in question is the Pixar film announced at D23 Expo: Bob Peterson’s “The Untitled Pixar Movie About Dinosaurs“. This is not the case. It seems that the confusion came as the Dinosaur project originally had the November 27th, 2013 date, and it appears Walt Disney Animation has now taken that date for their own release. What is the film? The project formerly known as The Snow Queen. We have independently confirmed this with three sources. I was first tipped off when Pixar animators were tweeting the news, expressing their surprise as even they had not heard about the title. I confirmed with Disney Publicity that it wasn’t a Pixar movie after all, right before BleedingCool tipped me that the project might actually be The Snow Queen. And have since confirmed their report with people in the know. The story is an adaptation of author Hans Christian Andersen’s 1845 fairytale The Snow Queen. The project has been in development at the mouse house off and on for at least a decade, originally shelved in late 2002, Glen Keane infamously quit the project in 2003, and the film was put on hold again in March 2010. When the project was last in development, it was set to be Disney’s next hand drawn animated film after The Princess and The Frog. We don’t know if that is still the case or if it is now a computer animated release. BleedingCool seems to think it will be hand drawn. Before the project was put on hold in 2010, we learned that Alan Menken, the musical mastermind behind The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, was working on the music. I’m kind of surprised that the MPAA approved the title considering there was a popular indie movie released under the same title only two years ago, Adam Green‘s horror thriller Frozen. Frozen will be released in theaters on November 27th, 2013.Prison breaks, car bombs and cozying up to Iran? This is not what was supposed to happen. By Joshua Foust How could al Qaeda in Iraq have become this powerful? Last week, the indefatigable terrorist group supposedly broken by the mighty U.S. military after an eight-year war instead broke into two prisons — one of which is the infamous Abu Ghraib — and freed nearly 500 prisoners. They killed 29 police and soldiers and wounded another thirty-five. It was the largest prison break in recent Iraqi history, and prompts a terrifying question for the U.S.: Now what? Since the official withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq in December of 2011, Iraq has struggled with its own security. Civilian deaths climbed steadily in 2012 and 2013, and according to the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq nearly 700 died from terrorist attacks in June alone — nearly three times the monthly average in Afghanistan. In July, violence is yet again abnormally high, culminating this week with another wave of car bombs killing dozens of people mostly in Shiite areas. Al Qaeda warned us this would happen. Last summer the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in an online audio statement said that his militants were rebuilding the strongholds once cleared by U.S. forces. “I bring you good news,” he said. “We are starting a new phase in our struggle with a plan we named `Breaking the walls,’ and we remind you of your priority to free the Muslim prisoners.” “At the top of your priorities regarding targets is to chase and liquidate the judges, the investigators and the guards,” he said. Within a week, fighters in Hadid, just north of Baghdad, killed 19 people, including 12 policemen. The prison break last week echoed another large prison break last September, when al Qaeda attacked Tasfirat jail in Tikrit and released 90 prisoners. Prison breaks are depressingly common in Iraq (September 2011 in Mosul; March 2012 in Kirkuk). But the scale of the most recent break is without precedent. Scholars who study terrorist movements have noted before that prisoner releases can fuel jihadist violence. Writing in The Atlantic last year, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and Aaron Zelin of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy argued that prisoner releases during the Arab Spring movement helped jihadi causes rebuild themselves. The sudden influx of jihadi fighters back on the street, they wrote, “has allowed jihadis to regroup, recruit and spread their message.” Yet the wave of prison breaks also points to an institutional hollowness in Iraq that concerns many analysts. “By all accounts there is no way this break happened without inside help,” Michael Wahid Hanna, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, told me. The sudden increase of insider-attacks at prisons around the country is deeply worrying for Iraq’s long-term political prospects. Yet it is impossible to look at Iraq’s rapid deterioration without considering Syria. “The conflict in Syria has had an obvious impact on Iraq’s security,” Hanna says. A year ago, al Qaeda in Iraq was able to launch effective attacks but they were few and far between. Now, attacks happen almost daily and with devastating effectiveness. Something changed. Complicating efforts to monitor the rise of al Qaeda’s Iraq branch is the openness of the border with Syria. Almost no one is closely watching the border, and it seems to be a primary conduit for sending men and materiel between the two countries. “The Iraq-Syria border was porous while we were still there,” Hanna says. “But we also aren’t monitoring it closely, so we have no idea who is moving across it and in what numbers.” Those analysts and governments who are monitoring the conflict in Syria are based in either Lebanon or southern Turkey, with a small number in Jordan. There is reason to worry about last week’s prison break. Gregory D. Johnsen, an expert on al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, wrote in 2009 about how a similar 2006 prison break in Yemen led to the creation of AQAP. It’s too soon to tell if the Abu Ghraib break will be as consequential for Iraq. But the Iraqi government faces enormous challenges in responding to al Qaeda’s resurgence without additional outside help. Good intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance are vital components to tracking and targeting terrorist groups in Iraq. Yet most ISR assets in Iraq were American-owned and withdrawn along with U.S. troops in 2011. As a result, the Iraqi government cannot be as precise in its counterterrorism operations and its blunter methods have the potential to make the security environment worse. With Syria and Egypt also aflame, Washington’s Iraq response has been muted and scattershot. Over the last 10 months, there have been scattered reports that small teams of U.S. special operations forces have deployed back to Iraq in an advisory capacity. And the CIA is reportedly ramping up its presence and operations in Iraq to monitor and potentially to attack al Qaeda fighters slipping in from Syria. But American officials are increasingly frustrated by the Iraqi government’s inability (or refusal) to stop Iranian flights into Syria in support of Bashar al-Assad. Against this backdrop, Iraq is also seeking nearly $2 billion in military equipment from the U.S. What’s missing is a strategy. “There’s a sense that we bugged out,” Hanna says. “Neither the embassy nor the Obama administration have done a very good job of communicating just what they’re doing and what their plans are.”This is the long promised Sony FE 1.8/85 vs. Sony FE 1.4/85 GM shootout. This article should clarify what the differences between these lenses are. Even the physical appearance sets both lenses apart. Does the FE 1.4/85 GM also punch in a higher class optically, or just in terms of size and weight? Let’s find it out. This is a classic shootout article. For sample images and further informations, check out the dedicated lens reviews of the Sony FE 1.8/85 and the Sony FE 1.4/85 GM (coming soon). Side note: It is obvious that the Batis 1.8/85 would have fitted nicely into that comparison. I am a private person and review my own gear. I simply can’t afford to own all of them simultaneously. I have commented on the Batis 1.8/85 in the alternatives section of the Sony FE 1.8/85 review. Warning: This comparison is very detailed because I had to decide which lens I want to own personally. If you get bored by crop comparisons, just move on to the conclusion and make your decision. Comparisons like these are a huge amount of work. This is also the reason why there are not many comparisons like this on the web. If you appreciate this article, please consider buying the lens of your choice using one of these affiliate links: The Sony FE 1.8/85 sells for around 500€/$ (used) to 600€/$ at Ebay.de and Ebay.com. It is also available at Amazon.de and Amazon.com The Sony FE 1.4/85 GM sells for 1.350€/$ to 1.800€/$ at Ebay.de and Ebay.com. It is also available at Amazon.de and Amazon.com. The differences on the paper Sony FE 1.8/85 Sony FE 1.4/85 GM Diameter: 78 mm 89,5 mm Length*: 82 mm 107,5 mm Weight: 371g 820g Filter diameter: 67 mm 77 mm Aperture blades: 9 (rounded) 11 (rounded) Elements/Groups 9/8 11/8 Close focusing distance: 0.8 m 0.8 m Mount: Sony-E Sony-E Price (Aug. 2017): 580€ 1.670€ This the easy part of the equation – The Sony FE 1.4/85 GM is significantly larger, longer, needs larger filters, is more than twice as heavy, more than three times as expensive and also more complex. Not much to say about it, it’s obvious. Save your time and and just get the FE 1.8/85 (which already turned out to be a good performer in our Review) if you are just looking for a nice, light, small and cheap native 85mm lens. Build quality The FE 1.4/85 GM screams quality in every aspect of its appearance. Its outer barrel is made from high quality plastic, which is a good thing in my opinion, because it is very scratch and shock resistant. The rubberized focus ring is nicely dampened and the focus hold button as well as the AF/MF switch are larger and feel nicer than the external controls of the FE 1.8/85. The aperture ring has a smooth and well defined feeling and can be declicked for video usage. The weather sealing of the GM lenses seems to be improved – at least the rubber gasket around the lens mount indicates that. The lens hood has got a locking mechanism and a rubberized front ring. A practical lens pouch is also in the box. The build quality of the Sony FE 1.4/85 GM reminds me of a even more worthy interpretation of Canon’s L series which is a compliment. The FE 1.8/85 is also a nicely crafted lens. It’s made from light metal and feels very light and well put together. The focus ring is smoothly dampened and I appreciate that the lens features a focus hold button which can be reprogrammed for things like Eye AF. Nevertheless it doesn’t give you the feeling of a super robust tool like the Sony GM 1.4/85 does. The lens hood feels much cheaper, the feeling of the focus hold button and the AF/MF-switch is plasticky and I wouldn’t have too high expectations of the scratch resistance of its painting. No real criticism, especially regarding the price – I just want to clarify what sets them apart. Handling First of all, the FE 1.8/85 is much easier to carry around for longer times, especially if you own an APS-C body or don’t use a battery grip or L-bracket with your A7 series cameras. It makes its way into my camera bag much easier while I think twice if I really want to carry the glass brick (85 GM) around. In general, the operation of the FE 1.4/85 feels a little more satisfying to me because of the better feeling of the external controls. The manual focus by wire of both lenses is virtually the same and features direct transmission of the focus ring movement to the focus motor which is a good thing and comes closer to manual lenses. The biggest difference in terms of handling is the quality of the autofocus. The Sony FE 1.4/85 GM makes a audible scratchy noise when focusing. That doesn’t sound too healthy but seems to be unproblematic since I have never heard of long term problems. In contrast, the autofocus of the Sony FE 1.8/85 is virtually silent which might be an important aspect for video. The autofocus speed of both lenses is also significantly different. The Sony FE 1.8/85 is very fast and action-ready, the Sony FE 1.4/85 is quite slow although the last firmware update improved its speed. Not an issue for portrait photography but too slow for sports and playing kids. Sharpness Infinity – Center The central sharpness of both lenses wide open is quite comparable and a little affected by LoCA and/or purple fringing (only FE 1.8/85). At equal apertures (f/1.8 vs. f/1.7), the GM pulls ahead and is visibly more contrasty and crisp. The GM is superior at large apertures but the FE 1.8/85 catches up at f/5.6. Infinity – Midframe Surprisingly, the FE 1.4/85 doesn’t have a midzone dip and this area is already very sharp at f/1.7. The midframe looks pretty much equal to the central area and the FE 1.8/85 needs again f/5.6 to catch up to the GM. Infinity – Corner In the corners, the FE 1.4/85 looks already very sharp at f/1.7 and improves a little at f/2.8. The FE 1.8/85 needs again f/5.6 to catch up to the performance of the GM. Close Up Both lenses feature the same minimum focus distance (0.8m) although the magnification of the Sony FE 1.4/85 GM is a bit higher due to the slightly longer focal length. The Sony FE 1.4/85 GM is quite soft at f/1.4 at the minimum focus distance but it gets a great boost in sharpness at f/1.7. It is clearly sharper and more contrasty than the Sony FE 1.8/85 at every aperture. LoCA I tested LoCA on a very sunny day. You can see the scene in the image below – A metal ladder which is reflecting the bright sunlight. It’s hard to think of more demanding scenes to test LoCA, keep that in mind. The Sony FE 1.4/85 at f/1.4 shows the highest amount of LoCA in that comparison. Both lenses show almost the same amount of LoCA at f/1.7\|f/1.8 but I see a that the color of the aberration is quite different and the saturation of the GM’s fringing is a little higher. The Sony FE 1.4/85 GM shows less traces of LoCA at f/2.8 and is virtually free of it at f/4 while the Sony FE 1.8/85 still shows some color inacurracy. Keep in mind that the FE 1.8/85 has a tendency to show purple fringing, the FE 1.4/85 doesn’t show this. While the LoCA look quite intense in this sample, I have never had the LoCA-problems with these lenses that I had with the Sony FE 1.8/55 ZA. Both lenses don’t perform that bad in absolute terms but this is my subjective rating. One last thing that is visible but barely noticeable is that Sony FE 1.4/85 GM exhibits slight forwards focus shift on stopping down. I imagine that this is also the reason why the lens focuses stopped down at larger apertures (which upsets many users). Flare performance I have prepared three setups: Scene 1 – Sun almost in the corner The Sony FE 1.8/85 shows a big green ghost image opposite to the sun. Furthermore, there is a visible but not too obstrusive amount of veiling flare around the sun. The Sony FE 1.4/85 GM shows a higher amount of veiling flare around the sun but no ghost images. This position was the worst case for the Sony FE 1.4/85 GM with the sun in the frame. Scene 2 – Sun centrally on the edge of the frame The second scene is the worst case that I could find on that day for the FE 1.8/85. It still gets a little worse but the sun has to sit lower on the horizon for that. You can find a sample of that in the Sony FE 1.8/85 review. In this case, the Sony FE 1.8/85 shows a large green bulb which is surrounded by massive veiling flare. You have to provoke a scene like that but it is possible to encounter it in the field. Sony FE 1.8/85 { f/11The Sony FE 1.4/85 GM looks much cleaner in that scene. There is some veiling flare but nothing that would be an serious issue for me. Scene 3 – Sun just outside of the frame (no lens hood) A little later on that day, I have shot an additional scene and overexposed it a little. The sun was not in the frame but just a little outside of it. You can see here what happens if you don’t use the lens hood. The FE 1.8/85 shows a large green bulb and a rainbow arifact. There is also a warm veiling flare on the top left corner. The Sony FE 1.4/85 GM shows a large amount of coating- or sensor-reflection in the center of the image. Both lenses didn’t handle that situation well and I’d recommend to use the lens hood if you plan to shoot against the sun or bright light sources. In general, the flare performance of the Sony FE 1.4/85 GM is less problematic than the flare performance of the Sony FE 1.8/85 Landscape Rendering The images below should give you an idea how a typical landscape scene can look like when imported to Lightroom. I see a more saturated image of the Sony FE 1.4/85 GM and also a much warmer color. To me, that looks more appealing and natural, but it is a matter of taste and can be a adjusted to a certain amount in the postprocessing. Bokeh This is of course one the most important aspects of a bright 85mm lens. Most people will use these lenses for portrait work and therefore I will take the most detailed look. I will always compare three images: The FE 1.4/85 GM wide open at f/1.4 to demonstrate the difference between f/1.4 and f/1.7/1.8 The FE 1.4/85 GM stopped down to f/1.7 and the FE 1.8/85 wide open at f/1.8 to demonstrate the differences in lens rendering despite of the depth of field Scene 1 – Roses This scene
of Allah: http://the-finalrevelation.blogspot.com/2012/10/obligation-of-upholding-ties-of-family.html Narrated Jubair bin Mut`im: That he heard the Prophet (s.a.w) saying, "The person who severs the bond of kinship will not enter Paradise [Ref: Sahih Bukhaari, Vol. 8, Book 73, Hadith 13] It was narrated that Abu Hurairah said: "The Messenger of Allah (s.a.w) said: 'By the One in whose Hand is my soul! You will not enter Paradise until you believe, and you will not (truly) believe until you love one another. Shall I not tell you of something which, if you do it, you will love one another? Spread the greetings of Salam amongst yourselves. [Ref: Sunan ibn Maajah, Vol. 1, Book 1, Hadith 68] METHOD # 15: A WOMAN FULFILLING THE RIGHTS OF HER HUSBAND It was narrated from ‘Abd al-Rahmaan ibn ‘Awf (may Allaah be pleased with him) that the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said:“If a woman does her five (daily prayers), fasts her month (Ramadaan), guards her chastity and obeys her husband, it will be said to her: Enter whichever of the gates of Paradise you want.” [Ref: Daraqutni, Hadith 772, Musnad Ahmad, Hadith 1595 and Ibn Hibban] Abu Hurairah (r.a) narrated that The Prophet said: “If I were to order anyone to prostrate to anyone, then I would order the wife to prostrate to her husband.” (Hasan) [Sunan Tirmidhi Vol. 1, Book 7, Hadith 1159] Note: The rights of women which are to be taken care of by the husband are also many, and even the husband is held responsible for neglecting or exempting from it. See how the prophet (s.a.w) treated his wives; The world's best Husband : http://the-finalrevelation.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-the-prophet-treated-his-wives.html Rights of the Husband and Wife over each other : http://islaahh.wordpress.com/2012/11/01/rights-of-husband-wife/ METHOD # 16 : LOOKING AFTER ONE'S DAUGHTERS OR SISTERS Abu Sa'eed Al-Khudri narrated that :the Messenger of Allah said: "Whoever has three daughters, or three sisters, or two daughters, or two sisters and he keeps good company with them and fears Allah regarding them, then Paradise is for him [Ref: Jami'a at-Tirmidhi, Book 27, Hadith 2040, Al-Adab Al-Mufrad 79, 77, Also see Sunan Ibn Majah 3670, Al-Adab Al-Mufrad 76 and Sahih at-Targheeb 1973, ] Jabir ibn 'Abdullah reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "Anyone who has three daughters and provides for them, clothes them and shows mercy to them will definitely enter the Garden.{ (1) and in another narration the prophet said 'they will be a shield against the fire for him} " A man from the people said, "And two daughters, Messenger of Allah?" He said, "And two. [Ref: Al-Adab Al-Mufrad 78, Hasan (1) : Al-Adab Al-Mufrad 76, Sahih al Albaani and Sunan Ibn Majah 3669] To Look after the Divorced daughter who returns to you Musa ibn 'Ali reported that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "Shall I show you the greatest sadaqa (or one of the greatest forms of sadaqa)?" He replied, "Yes, indeed, Messenger of Allah!" He went on, "To provide for your daughter when she is returned to you and you are her sole source of provision." [Ref: Al-Adab Al-Mufrad 80, Da'eef] Even though this hadeeth is Da'eef, one can still urge to take care of his daughter for many obvious reasons. Why take the risk? It is better to love and care than be humiliated and regretful on the day of Judgement for missing out such an opportunity See the Nuclear warnings of severing the ties of Kinship (blood relations) : http://the-finalrevelation.blogspot.com/2012/10/obligation-of-upholding-ties-of-family.html This is how the prophet (s.a.w) treated his daughter : He prophet (peace be upon him) would stand up for his daughter fatimah (may allah be pleased with her) when she would come to him, take her hands, kiss her and let her take his seat. Likewise, whenever the prophet (peace be upon him) came to her she would stand up for him, take his hand and kiss him. [Ref: Al-Bukhari, Al-Adab Al-Mufrad, pp. 326 and 337-338, nos. 947, 971 and 1030; Abu Dawud, vol. 5, p. 391, no. 5217; Al-Tirmidhy, vol. 5, p. 700, no. 3872; and Al-Nasa'y, Al-Sunan Al-Kubra, vol. 7, p. 393, vol. 8, p. 291, nos. 8311, 9192 and 9193, ed. Mu'assasat Al-Risalah.] METHOD # 17 : TO BE PATIENT AT THE DEATH OF ONE'S CHILD Prophet (s.a.w) said, "A woman whose three children die will be shielded by them from the Hell fire." On that a woman asked, "If only two die?" He replied, "Even two (will shield her from the Hell-fire). [Ref: Sahih al-Bukhari 101] Anas ibn Malik reported that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "If someone has three children die before they reach puberty, Allah will admit him and them to the Garden by virtue of His mercy." [Ref: Al-Adab Al-Mufrad 151, Sahih] The Messenger of Allah (s.a.w) said, "Allah, the Exalted, says: 'I have no reward other than Jannah for a believing slave of Mine who remains patient for My sake when I take away his beloved one from among the inhabitants of the world" [Ref: Al Bukhaari and Riyad as Saaliheen, Book 1, Hadith 32] METHOD # 18 : SPONSORING AND CARING FOR ONE/MORE ORPHAN the Messenger of Allah said: " I and the sponsor of an orphan shall be in Paradise like these two."And he indicaed with his fingers, meaning his index and his middle finger(Sahih) [Ref: Jami'a at-Tirmidhi, Book 27, Hadith 2042, Sahih] METHOD # 19 : VISITING THE SICK The Messenger (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) said, “When the Muslim visits his (sick) Muslim brother, he is harvesting the fruits of Paradise until he returns..” [Ref: Sahih Muslim 2568] the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “Whoever visits a sick person or visits a brother in Islam, a caller cries out to him: ‘May you be happy, may your walking be blessed, and may you occupy a dignified position in Paradise’.” [Ref: According to al-Tirmidhi (2008), Classed as hasan by al-Albaani in Saheeh al-Tirmidhi] Imam Ahmad narrated that Jaabir (may Allaah be pleased with him) said: The Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “ Whoever visits a sick person is plunging into mercy until he sits down, and when he sits down he is submerged in it. ” [Ref: Classed as saheeh by al-Albaani in al-Silsilah al-Saheehah, 2504] Narrated that ‘Ali (may Allaah be pleased with him) said: I heard the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) say: “There is no Muslim who visits a (sick) Muslim early in the morning but seventy thousand angels send blessings upon him until evening comes, and if he visits him in the evening, seventy thousand angels send blessings upon him until morning comes, and he will have a garden in Paradise.” [Ref: Al-Tirmidhi (969), Classed as saheeh by al-Albaani in Saheeh al-Tirmidhi] See the virtues, and etiquette of visiting the sick : http://the-finalrevelation.blogspot.in/2012/08/ruling-virtues-and-manners-of-visiting.html METHOD # 20 : EASY GOING (MODERATE) IN TRADE ACTIVITIES ANT NOT BEING A MISER OR EXTRAVAGANT It was narrated that 'Uthman bin 'Affan said: "The Messenger of Allah said: 'Allah, the Mighty and Sublime, admitted to paradise a man who was easygoing in buying and selling, in paying off debts and asking for repayment. [Ref: Sunan an-Nasa'i 4696 also in Tarikh al-Kabeer of Imam Bukhaari] It was reported on the authority of Mu'adh ibn Anas (may Allah be pleased with him) that the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said, whoever gives up wearing elegant and expensive garments out of humbleness, while they can afford them, allah will call them on the day of judgment, and in front of all the people, he will give them the choice to wear whichever garment of iman (faith) they would like to wear. (Musnad Ahmad, vol. 3, pp. 438-439; Al-Tirmidhy, vol. 4, p. 650, no. 2481; Abu Ya`la, vol. 3, pp. 60 and 68, nos. 1484 and 1499; Al-Hakim, vol. 1, p. 61, vol. 4, pp. 183-184; Al-Tabarany, Al-Kabir, vol. 20, pp. 181, 188-189, nos. 387, 415, and 417, Al-Awsat, and Al-Awsat, vol. 10, p. 119, no. 9252, (verified by Al-Tahhan); Abu Nu`aym, vol. 8, pp. 47-48; Al-Bayhaqy, Shu`ab Al-Iman, vol. 11, p. 137, no. 5741, (ed.: Dar Al-Salafiyyah, India), Al-Adab, vol. s, p. 262, no. 665 (verified by `Abdul-Quddus Nadhir)) METHOD # 21 : FORGIVING THE POOR DEBTOR Allah's Messenger (s.a.w) said, "A man used to give loans to the people and used to say to his servant, 'If the debtor is poor, forgive him, so that Allah may forgive us.' So when he met Allah (after his death), Allah forgave him [Ref: Sahih Bukhaari, Vol. 4, Book 55, Hadith 687] These ahadeeth shows the virtue of being lenient in trade whereby the Prophet (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) mentioned that Allah granted paradise to a man who was lenient in his trade by fearing Allah in his buying, selling and loaning, also by being forgiving towards others if they struggle to repay their debts towards him and not pressuring them to sell their valuables in order to repay him. METHOD # 22 : COMBINING THESE 4 DEEDS IN ONE DAY The Messenger (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) asked, “Who is fasting today?” Abu Bakr (radi Allahu anhu) replied, “Me”. The Messenger (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) asked, “Who has followed a funeral procession today?” Abu Bakr (radi Allahu anhu) replied, “Me”. The Messenger (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) asked, “Who has fed a poor person today?” Abu Bakr (radi Allahu anhu) replied, “Me”. The Messenger (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) asked, “Who has visited a sick person today?” Abu Bakr (radi Allahu anhu) replied, “Me”. The Messenger (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) then said, “Any person that has done these four things in one day will enter Paradise.” [Ref: Sahih Muslim] Virtues of following the funeral of a Muslim مَنْ صَلَّى عَلَى جَنَازَةٍ فَلَهُ قِيرَاطٌ وَمَنْ تَبِعَهَا حَتَّى يُقْضَى دَفْنُهَا فَلَهُ قِيرَاطَانِ أَحَدُهُمَا أَوْ أَصْغَرُهُمَا مِثْلُ أُحُدٍ The Messenger of Allah said: "Whoever performs the funeral prayer then he will get a reward equal to a Qirat. Whoever follows it until it is buried then he will get a reward equal to two Qirat, one of them, or the least of them, is similar to Uhud (mountain)." This was mentioned to Ibn Umar, so he sent a message to Aishah to ask her about that, and she said: "Abu Hurairah has told the truth." So Ibn Umar said: "We have missed many Qirat." [Jami’a al tirmidhi, Arabic : Book 10, Hadith 1057, Eng : Vol. 2, Book 5, Hadith 1040] The Messenger of Allah said: "Whenever you see a funeral procession (Muslim or Non Muslim), stand up until it goes ahead of you or it is put down [Ref: Tirmidhi,Book 10, Hadith 1060, Sahih] For Q&A on Funeral, Ghusl and other related Issues please see this Link : http://the-finalrevelation.blogspot.com/2012/07/167-QA-On-The-Dead-and-Funeral.html METHOD # 23: BEING PATIENT WHEN BLIND The Messenger (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) said, “Allah The Most High has said, ‘If I take away the eyesight of a slave of Mine and he shows patience and seeks My reward, then I shall reward him with nothing less than Paradise.”‘ [Ref: Sahih al Bukhaari] Note: Many from salafus saaliheen, lost their vision nearing the end of their life cycle, but they always bore it patiently. METHOD # 24: WHOEVER SAYS I AM PLEASED WITH ALLAH AS MY LORD, ISLAM AS MY RELIGION AND MUHAMMAD AS A PROPHET Abu Sa'id al-Khudri reported the Messenger of Allah (s.a.w) as saying:If anyone says رَضِيتُ بِاللَّهِ رَبًّا وَبِالإِسْلاَمِ دِينًا وَبِمُحَمَّدٍ نَبِيًّا "I am pleased with Allah as Lord, with Islam as religion and with Muhammad (s.a.w) as Apostle" Paradise will be his due. [Sunan Abi Dawud 1529, Sahih, Also see : 3389] Another hadeeth informs us that when the Muaddhin (who gives the Adhan) says "Ashadu Allah Ilaaha Ill Allah or when he says "Ashadu Anna Muhammadur Rasool Allah" one should say "وَأَنَا أَشَْهَدُ أَنْ لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللهُ وَحْدَهُ لَا شَرِيكَ لَهُ وَأَنَّ مُحَمَّداً عَبْدُهُ وَرَسُولُهُ، رَضِيتُ بِاللهِ رَبَّاً وَبِمُحَمَّدٍ رِسُولاً وَبِالإِْسلاَمِ دِيناً". Wa 'anaa 'ash-hadu 'an laa 'ilaaha 'illallaahu wahdahu laa shareeka lahu wa 'anna Muhammadan 'abduhu wa Rasooluhu, radheetu billaahi Rabban, wa bi-Muhammadin Rasoolan wa bil'islaami deenan. I bear witness that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah alone, Who has no partner, and that Muhammad is His slave and His Messenger. I am pleased with Allah as my Lord, with Muhammad as my Messenger and with Islam as my religion.[To be recited in Arabic after the Mu'aththin’s Tashahhud or the words of affirmation of Faith] [Sahih Muslim 1/290, and Ibn Khuzaymah 1/220] METHOD # 25: THOSE WHO OBSERVE THE FAST OF RAMADAN It was narrated from Sahi bin Sad that the Prophet (s.a.w) said: "For those who fast there is a gate in Paradise called Ar-Rayyan, through which no one but they will enter. When the last of them has entered it, it will be closed. Whoever enters through it will drink, and whoever drinks will never thirst again. [Ref: Sunan an-Nasa'i 2237] METHOD # 26 : NOT INDULGING IN SHIRQ, BELIEVING IN ISLAM, THE PROPHETS, PARADISE AND HELL, DAY OF RESURRECTION Prophet (s.a.w said : He who said:" There is no god but Allah, He is One and there is no associate with Him, that Muhammad is his servant and His messenger, that Christ is servant and the son of His slave-girl and he (Christ) His word which He communicated to Mary and is His Spirit, that Paradise is a fact and Hell is a fact," Allah would make him (he who affirms these truths enter Paradise through any one of its eight doors which he would like. [Ref: Sahih Muslim, Book 1, Hadith 43] In the next hadeeth the prophet (s.a.w) said Allah would make him (he who affirms these truths by belief and practice) enter Paradise through one of the eight doors which he would like. METHOD # 27 : ONE WHO PRAYS FAJR AND 'ASR PRAYER Abu Bakr (Ibn Abu Musa) reported on the authority of his father that the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said: He who observed two prayers at two cool (hours or Fajr and 'Asr) would enter Paradise. [Ref: Sahih Muslim, Book 4, Hadith 1326] Umara b. Ruwaiba reported on the authority of his father that the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said: He who said prayer before the rising of the sun and its setting would not enter the fire (of Hell), and there was a man from Basra (sitting) beside him who said: Did you hear it from the Apostle of Allah (way peace be upon him)? He said: Yes, I bear witness to it. The man from Basra said: I bear witness that I did hear from the Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) saying it from the place that you heard from him. [Ref: Sahih Muslim, Book 4, Hadith 1325] METHOD # 28 : NOT INDULGING IN SHIRQ OF ANY KIND AND NOT SHEDDING BLOOD UNLAWFULLY It was narrated from Uqbah bin Amir Al-Juhani that the Messenger of Allah () said: “Whoever meets Allah (s.w.t) not associating anything in worship with him, and not having shed any blood unlawfully, will enter Paradise. [Ref: Sunan Ibn Maajah, Vol. 3, Book 21, Hadith 2618] The Prophet (s.a.w) said one statement and I said another. The Prophet (.a.w) said "Whoever dies while still invoking anything other than Allah ( such as ya Gauz Madad, Ya Ali madad, ya Muhammad Madad) as a rival to Allah, will enter Hell (Fire)." And I said, "Whoever dies without invoking anything as a rival to Allah, will enter Paradise." [Ref: Sahih Bukhaari, Vol. 6, Book 60, Hadith 24] Apart from sharing the attributes (power, characteristics) of Allah, there are other actions, which if indulged in will charge us from shirq (minor or major) such as : Sa'id ibn Ubaydah said:Ibn Umar heard a man swearing: No, I swear by the Ka'bah. Ibn Umar said to him: I heard the Messenger of Allah (s.a.w) say: He who swears by anyone but Allah is polytheist. [Ref: Sunan Abi Dawud 3251] See here : OMG, YES EVEN THIS DOING THIS IS SHIRQ : http://the-finalrevelation.blogspot.com/2012/07/omg-yes-even-doing-this-is-shirq.html METHOD # 29 : BECOME A MUSLIM Prophet (s.a.w) said "Verily none shall enter Paradise except a Muslim soul." [Ref: Jami'a at-Tirmidhi, Part of a long hadeeth, Book 38, Hadith 2744] The Prophet (s.a.w) said, "None will enter Paradise but will be shown the place he would have occupied in the (Hell) Fire if he had rejected faith, so that he may be more thankful; and none will enter the (Hell) Fire but will be shown the place he would have occupied in Paradise if he had faith, so that may be a cause of sorrow for him." [Ref: Sahih al Bukhaari, Vol. 8, Book 76, Hadith 573] METHOD # 30 : LOVING AND CARING FOR EACH OTHER FOR THE SAKE OF ALLAH The Messenger of Allaah (Sallallaahu `alayhi wa sallam) narrated that his Lord said: “My love is guaranteed for two who love one another for My sake; My love is guaranteed for two who visit one another for My sake; My love is guaranteed for two who help one another (financially) for My sake; My love is guaranteed to two who uphold ties with one another for My sake.” [Narrated by Ahmad, 4/236 and 5/236; al-Tanaasuh by Ibn Hibbaan, 3/338; the two ahaadeeth were classed as saheeh by Shaykh al-Albaani in Saheeh al-Targheeb wa’l-Tarheeb, 3019, 3020, 3021] METHOD 31: Two or Four people (Muslims) testifying to his piety after his death Narrated Abu Al-Aswad: I came to Medina when an epidemic had broken out. While I was sitting with `Umar bin Al-Khattab a funeral procession passed by and the people praised the deceased. `Umar said, "It has been affirmed to him." And another funeral procession passed by and the people praised the deceased. `Umar said, "It has been affirmed to him." A third (funeral procession) passed by and the people spoke badly of the deceased. He said, "It has been affirmed to him." I (Abu Al-Aswad) asked, "O chief of the believers! What has been affirmed?" He replied, "I said the same as the Prophet(pbh) had said, that is: if four persons testify the piety of a Muslim, Allah will grant him Paradise." We asked, "If three persons testify his piety?" He (the Prophet) replied, "Even three." Then we asked, "If two?" He replied, "Even two." We did not ask him regarding one witness. [Bukhaari 2/449] Note: This has terms and conditions and it all depends upon the intentions. Allah alone knows if that person was pious or he merely did it to show off. 32. Guarding one's tongue and private parts Allah's Apostle (s.a.w) said, "Whoever can guarantee (the chastity of) what is between his two jaw-bones and what is between his two legs (i.e. his tongue and his private parts), I guarantee Paradise for him. " [Bukhaare 8/481] 33. Doing some deeds of Charity referenced to Maniha Narrated `Abdullah bin `Amr: That Allah's Messenger (s.a.w) said, "There are forty virtuous deeds and the best of them is the Maniha [1] of a shegoat, and anyone who does one of these virtuous deeds hoping for Allah's reward with firm confidence that he will get it, then Allah will make him enter Paradise because of Hassan (a subnarrator) said, "We tried to count those good deeds below the Maniha; we mentioned replying to the sneezer, removing harmful things from the road, etc., but we failed to count even fifteen." [Reported by Al Bukhari in the book of donation, chapter on the virtue of Maniha 3/144]. [1] See the explanations of the Hadith along with other narrations with the same meaning in Fathul-Bary 5/242-246]. Imaam Bukhaari (r.h) titled a chapter in his Saheeh called : The excellence of the maniha (a she-camel or sheep lent to someone for milking) Under this chapter he bought the hadeeth : 2486. It is related from Abu Hurayra (r.a) that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "How excellent is the maniha given as a gift, one which has recently given birth and has abundant milk, and the sheep with abundant milk, giving a bowl in the morning and a bowl in the evening!' 'Abdullah ibn Yusuf and Isma'il related that Malik said, "It is excellent sadaqa!" So here in this context Maniha is being referred to as an act of charity such as indulging in lending such a livestock or removing a stone from the road and etc. 34. The one who has the following qualities among the three The Prophet (s.a.w) said : "T he inmates of Paradise are three: One who wields (executes) authority and is just and fair [1], one who Is truthful and has been endowed with power to do good deeds. And the person who is merciful and kind hearted towards his relatives and to every pious Muslim, and one who does not stretch his hand (i.e begging) in spite of having a large family to support." [Muslim Bk 40-6853] [1] Abdullah ibn Amr reported: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said: Verily, those who were fair will be in the presence of Allah upon pulpits of light, near the right hand of the Merciful, the Exalted, and both of His sides are right (being equal in honor); those who practiced justice in their rulings and with their families and in all that they did. [Saheeh Muslim 4493] 35. Reciting this Du`a morning and evening Narrated Shaddad bin Aus: The Prophet (ﷺ) said "The most superior way of asking for forgiveness from Allah is (by saying) اللَّهُمَّ أَنْتَ رَبِّي، لاَ إِلَهَ إِلاَّ أَنْتَ، خَلَقْتَنِي وَأَنَا عَبْدُكَ، وَأَنَا عَلَى عَهْدِكَ وَوَعْدِكَ مَا اسْتَطَعْتُ، أَعُوذُ بِكَ مِنْ شَرِّ مَا صَنَعْتُ، أَبُوءُ لَكَ بِنِعْمَتِكَ عَلَىَّ وَأَبُوءُ لَكَ بِذَنْبِي، فَاغْفِرْ لِي، فَإِنَّهُ لاَ يَغْفِرُ الذُّنُوبَ إِلاَّ أَنْتَ ‏" 'Allahumma anta Rabbi la ilaha illa anta, Anta Khalaqtani wa ana `Abduka, wa ana 'ala ahdika wa wa'dika mastata'tu, A`udhu bika min Sharri ma sana'tu, abu'u Laka bini'matika 'alaiya, wa abu'u laka bidhanbi faghfir lee fa innahu la yaghfiru adhdhunuba illa anta." The Prophet (ﷺ) added. "If somebody recites it during the day with firm faith in it, and dies on the same day before the evening, he will be from the people of Paradise; and if somebody recites it at night with firm faith in it, and dies before the morning, he will be from the people of Paradise." [Saheeh Bukhaari, Vol. 8, Book 75, Hadith 318] Note: this hadeeth in no ways means or implies towards killing one self to achieve such a position because first of all suicide is haraam and second of all this is not what the hadeeth implies towards. METHOD 36 : BY REPENTING AND REDUCING OUR SINS See the below Links : 25 + Ways and Shortcut to have our sins forgiven : http://the-finalrevelation.blogspot.com/2012/12/25-ways-and-shortcuts-to-have-all-your.htmlDuring the Saudi Arabia's national day celebrations on Saturday, Talal Salama was filmed singing a Quranic verse (Twitter) Saudis are furious after a musician was filmed singing verses of the Quran at a concert The performance took place during Saudi national day celebrations Many have blamed the government's new "Entertainment Authority" for "moral degradation" There is a growing divide in attitudes between liberal and conservative Saudis by Rosie Alfatlawi A Saudi musician has stirred anger after he sung verses of the Qu’ran at a concert. While the permissibility of playing music for Muslims is disputed, singing the religious text is generally not accepted in orthodox Islam. During Saudi Arabia's national day celebrations on Saturday, Talal Salama was filmed singing the words of Surat al-Falaq. #طلال_سلامه_يغني_سوره_من_القران هذا المقطع كامل لعنة الله على من اقتصه وابتلا على الرجل الطيب طلال pic.twitter.com/BOmwoJ3kay — كوب شاهي (@myle_77) September 25, 2017 As a video of the incident spread, enraged Saudis launched the hashtags “Talal Salama sings a verse of the Quran” and “the Quran to music with the agreement of [the General Authority for] Entertainment”. The General Authority for Entertainment was set up in May 2016 as part of the Saudi government's reformist Vision 2030 economic plan. The government body was behind the first Comic Con hosted by Saudi Arabia in February, and has screened movies despite the country having no cinemas. In a nation where the very celebration of a non-religious occasion is condemned by religious authorities, unsurprisingly this incident provoked fury. The issue of music is so controversial in ultraconservative Saudi Arabia that concerts are rare and often draw public anger and resistance. For instance, an online campaign demanding popular Saudi singer Mohammed Abduh cancel his performance in Jeddah was launched in December. In comments on Twitter, lawyer and legal advisor Musleh al-’Udayani described Salama's actions as “an insult to the Holy Quran”. He added that this carried a punishment of up to five years in prison and a fine of three million riyals (approx. $800,000). عقوبة امتهان القران الكريم في حفل غنائي سجن يصل ل5 سنوات وغرامة تصل 3 ملايين ريال أو بكلا العقوبتين كما نصت م6 من مكافحة الجرائم المعلوماتية September 25, 2017 Many Saudis on social media directed anger about the Entertainment Authority: لأول مره اخاف من المستقبل هيئة التغريب هي مسؤولة فيديو بالتعليق الاول#طلال_سلامة_يغني_سورة_من_القرَان#قران_بالموسيقي_بموافقه_الترفيهَ — Af.Mo0 (@rogan199) September 25, 2017 For the first time I am scared about the future. The “Westernization Authority” is responsible. #قران_بالموسيقي_بموافقه_الترفيه المصيبه مو بس إنه جالس يلحن القرآن المصيبه إلي سمح له يغني جهه معتمده من قبل الحكومه ( هيئة الترفيه )! — جيزآني طقطقة (@Gizani_07) September 25, 2017 The disaster is not just that he is sitting singing the Quran, the disaster is that it was a party approved by the government that is allowing him to sing (the Entertainment Authority) #طلال_سلامه_يغني_سوره_من_القران : هنا يأتي دور هيئة كبار العلماء ولجنة الأفتاء في تبيان هذا الأمر ومحاسبة المسيء وتوضيح مفهوم الوطنية!! — أبو لـُجين إبراهيم (@abulojain1) September 25, 2017 Here comes the role of the senior scholars and the Ifta committee to shed light upon this matter, hold the insulter to account and clarify the concept of patriotism!! "This is the result of the suspension of the Committee" @azooz_alshehri2 wrote on Twitter, refering to the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, or the religious police. In April 2016, the Saudi Council of Ministers issued a regulation stripping the religious police of their powers. Many of the comments revealed the rift that remains in attitudes between an increasingly liberal minority, reflected by the gradual liberalization of laws, and the majority of Saudi society where social and religious conservatism prevails. Tweets bemoaned what was described as moral decay and degradation. #طلال_سلامه_يغني_سوره_من_القران وهذي صاير بمدينة الرسول عليه افضل الصلاة والسلام! شصاير في الناس. اللهم لاتأخذنا بما فعله السفهاء منه pic.twitter.com/7Z1zD0I9tE —. (@1993__aa) September 25, 2017 And this is what happened in the city of the Prophet peace be upon him! What has happened to the people. Oh Allah, do not hold us responsible for what the foolish do. @toofi88810 tweeted: “A finished people who interpret everything as they wish and justify or forbid as they wish. I challenge you to ask one of them what are the pillars of Islam, he won't know.” “Degeneration has reached the level of singing the Quran”, wrote @Naail2014, appealing to God not to “punish us for their immorality.” No official statement has been made as to whether action will be taken against the singer.USA Network’s “Mr. Robot” is the latest show to embrace virtual reality (VR) at Comic Con this year. But staying true to its plot line, there’s a bit of mystery added to the release of the show’s first VR video: The “Mr. Robot VR Experience” will be streamed on the Within VR app at 10:45 am PT this coming Thursday — and promptly disappear from the app after the conclusion of the broadcast. This unique VR release is being billed as “the largest VR simulcast ever.” Users can watch the video via Within’s apps on Android, iOS, Gear VR, HTC Vive or Oculus Rift. It’s a collaboration of “Mr. Robot” show creator Sam Esmail, Within, the VR startup until recently known as VRSE, and Within’s sister production company Here Be Dragons. Within and Here Be Dragons are best known for their VR documentaries, some of which were produced in conjunction with the New York Times, Vice and the United Nations. Within co-founder Aaron Koblin recently told Variety that his team wants to keep producing this kind of documentary content, but also add more dramatic content to its roster. “For us, it’s very much about immersive storytelling,” he said. Within recently raised a $12.56 million round of funding from 21st Century Fox, Andreessen Horowitz, Raine Ventures, WME, Live Nation, Vice Media, Tribeca Enterprises, Annapurna Pictures, Legendary Pictures, and Elisabeth Murdoch’s Freelands Ventures.How bad neuroscience can mislead us If you watch or read much science fiction, you know that all it takes to suspend disbelief about fictional science is an explanation that sounds good on the surface and makes use of terms and ideas that your audience doesn't fully understand but does find
new avenue of research and potential therapeutic interventions." The research was funded through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.Today is Michael Jordan's 52nd birthday, giving the NBA Hall of Famer just over a half-century in the history books. By now, you've heard everything about MJ's prodigious rise to the top of the league throughout the '80s and the '90s. You know that he won six NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls. You know that he won as many Finals MVPs. You know that he's a 14-time All-Star and a 10-time scoring champion. The guy is as good as advertised, and if there's one thing you know about Jordan, it's that there has been a lot of advertising. However, there's one underrated aspect of Jordan's inspirational ascent in the NBA record books: the dude was a notorious asshole. Yes, Jordan is one of the winningest players in NBA history. Yes, winning in professional sports requires a sort of insane and irrepressible gene. But Jordan took it to a whole new level. Remember when he psychologically broke Kwame Brown? Remember when he punched Will Perdue? Remember when he would regularly call out his teammates while speaking with the media? We do. So, while there are a ton of things about Michael Jordan that should inspire you to aspire for greatness, let's not forget about the moments—told to us by those who have interacted with Jordan over the years—when his competitiveness soared to a slightly uncomfortable level. To properly capture all those times, we've immortalized the 10 least inspiring Michael Jordan quotes we've ever come across on the Internet in a series of posters that will make you feel completely worthless.The Slaying of BearWhale. Image: Christopher Edwin Steininger It's really hard to visualise Bitcoin. The whole point of the cryptocurrency, after all, is that it's entirely digital—and barely leaves a trace. Last week, Motherboard's Kaleigh Rogers deplored the attempts of stock photos to represent Bitcoin, which usually rely on a selection of visual clichés like the Bitcoin logo, anything that looks computer-y, and anachronistically physical money (because it's still called "coin," right)? But some undaunted Bitcoin fans have taken a more artistic look at the payment system and the culture around it. Bitcoin fan art is a thing. Despite the relative newness of the technology, some artists reference classical genres in their work. Take the French artist who goes by the name Youl and his work Last (Bitcoin) Supper, an homage, or perhaps simply an update, to Leonardo Da Vinci's 15th century mural. In Youl's acrylic-on-canvas reimagining, Jesus is replaced by a green creature with a Bitcoin logo necklace. According to Cryptocoins News, this is a personification of the blockchain: the distributed ledger central to the cryptocurrency's functioning. The painting came about in collaboration with Bitcoincito, an anonymous Bitcoin fan who is attempting to turn one bitcoin into a house via a series of incrementally increasing transactions. In a forum post on Bitcoin Talk, he explained that he and Youl were inspired by "the depth and profundity of how the stories of Bitcoin and Jesus intertwine." Judas's place at the table of Jesus's final meal is taken by a traditional banker in top hat and bow tie who, Youl explains on the same forum, represents Mark Karpelès, the CEO of first-ever Bitcoin exchange Mt Gox who oversaw its dramatic demise earlier this year. If art is all about interpretation, the painting doesn't leave much up for debate. In many ways, it's a perfect representation of the Bitcoin community—or at least, how the group views itself and its Blockchain deity. There's money to be made as well as painted in Bitcoin art. Last (Bitcoin) Supper sold for 4.65 BTC in July (then the equivalent of nearly $3,000) in an eBay auction. Eye of God. Image: Xania Dorfman But that price tag pales in comparison to the sum that Israeli painter Xania Dorfman's Eye of God exchanged hands for in October: 35 BTC, or around $12,000. Dorfman told me she didn't receive that much—she'd been assigned to make the painting for a Bitcoin conference in Israel, where Coindesk reports it was then sold to mining expert Yoshi Goto. The painting presents Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin's mysterious progenitor, as a face behind the V for Vendetta-style Anonymous mask. He seems to float above the Earth, raining coins; if Youl's Bitcoin is Jesus, Dorfman's Nakamoto is its creator—and The Creator. If it all seems rather sycophantically hyperbolic, there's more where that comes from. One of my favourites is Christopher Steininger's The Slaying of BearWhale. An orgy of semi-naked revolutionary types writhe around on a giant gold bitcoin, one of them triumphantly waving a red Bitcoin flag like Enjolras climbing the barricades in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. The Slaying of BearWhale. Image: Christopher Edwin Steininger Before these Bitcoin martyrs lies what can only be described as a chimeric mix of whale and bear. The scene commemorates a specific incident in recent Bitcoin history: Exchange site ShapeShift.io explains that October 6 of this year witnessed "one of the grandest and most brutal struggles ever to grace the tapestry of international crypto-finance." A reddit thread puts it in simple terms: this "bearwhale" listed 300,000 bitcoins on an exchange at a certain price, and owing to the vast quantity it essentially jammed the market so other traders couldn't raise their prices. ShapeShift commissioned Steininger's painting, as well as a work by illustrator Matt Habel, to commemorate the event. Control of Purchasing Power. Image: Ray Istre Not all Bitcoin art is quite so literal. American artist Ray Istre has a whole gallery of more abstract works, many of which contrast Bitcoin with US dollars and quotes from past presidents. Istre lists several pieces on BitPremier, a Bitcoin marketplace for luxury goods. One original piece is listed for a hefty 33.7 BTC ($12,000). Meanwhile, Danish contemporary artist Helen Kholin made this painting, which overlays ransom note-style newspaper text over a colourful canvas, pronouncing in Dutch, "We should be there, where Bitcoin is." We Should Be There, Where Bitcoin Is. Image: Helen Kholin The Bitcoin art world is full of variety, in style if not in outlook. As with most art, it ultimately perhaps says more about the artists—and their market—than anything else. I failed to find a single work that seemed in any way critical of the cryptocurrency. This is Bitcoin by the fans and for the fans, in brilliant oil and acrylic colour.Today, we're bringing Money Morning Members the top defense stock to buy today – and it's a stock that's currently dominating the global drone market. Drones have gone mainstream, from hobbyists flying their airborne cameras to the nightly news reporting on armed, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) flying missions over war zones. While flying cars and personal jetpacks have been part of Hollywood for decades, real drones, in many forms, are here today. It may sound like science fiction, but the growth rate is staggering… Money Morning Director of Technology & Venture Capital Research Michael A. Robinson agrees. "The fact is, flying cars are coming – and fast." One defense stock he has been following closely for decades is at the forefront of this industry. This company even bought a startup focused on self-driving air taxis. That's part of the reason why this defense stock is the single best way to play this emerging tech trend. The Top Defense Stock to Buy at the Forefront of This $21 Billion Industry Drones are now being used in law enforcement, agriculture, and even in real estate sales. Of course, the big topic of conversation is their use as delivery vehicles for products sold by companies from Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) to Domino's Pizza Inc. (Nasdaq: DPZ). Washington regulators have their hands full trying to keep up with the rapid growth and deployment of this new business model. MarketsandMarkets says the drones sector is growing at roughly 20% a year. By 2022, the global sector will be worth roughly $21 billion. Investing in Drones Will Be Like Investing in Smartphones in 2009: If you've thought of drones in military terms or just as toys, this is a wake-up call. Find out more. But Robinson says that the real killer app is not in the delivery of things but in the delivery of people – the autonomous air taxi. Late last year, TechCrunch reported self-driving cars – which, even while still not commercially ready, seem to be all the rage – might be exciting, but not nearly as much as what comes afterward. The technology for flying cars already exists, but it was not implemented because the human factor for error seemed to be too great. Enter autonomous vehicles – flying cars – and the future suddenly changes for the better. Driverless flying vehicles actually have an easier path than driverless land cars. In the air, there are no pedestrians, potholes, or construction to avoid. Live pilots are almost unnecessary. Indeed, commercial planes spend most of their flight time on autopilot already. More than a dozen startups are developing flying cars. They're backed by such luminaries as Alphabet Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOGL) co-founder Larry Page, the ride-hailing company Uber Technologies Inc., and even the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority. Then there's Aurora Flight Sciences Corp. The Manassas, Va.-based firm developed autonomous systems for military and commercial aircraft to be flown remotely. The firm's software provides the technology that automates a range of flight functions. Again, the application is in a drone carrying people – military and commercial people, in this case. While there are numerous visionaries working to make flying vehicles a reality, one defense company is positioned perfectly to profit as the industry grows. Here's the best defense stock to buy now to play this growing market, along with the $6.1 trillion commercial aircraft market… The Top Defense Stock to Buy NowPolice: Dad gave kids meth-spiked cookies to discredit ex Prejury charge filed against Des Moines dad locked in custody fight A Des Moines man accused of spiking cookies with methamphetamine in an effort to discredit his wife has been charged with perjury. Filing charges Friday, King County prosecutors contend Chad M. Holm gave the cranked-up cookies to his 5- and 7-year-old sons before forging a drug test result to obscure his own meth use. Both children subsequently tested positive for meth. Holm, 37, and the woman had been married and using methamphetamine together for several years before they split up in April 2011, a Des Moines detective told the court. Since then, they’ve been fighting over access to their children, who were placed with Holm while his ex-wife underwent voluntary drug treatment. The children’s mother had been clean for nearly a year in September, when she failed a drug test. Concerned about the positive result, the woman recalled a pair of unappetizing cookies she’d eaten with her children the day before. According to charging papers, the woman and a court-appointed monitor picked up the children at Holm’s home that day. Their 7-year-old son brought two pink-frosted cookies that Holm made for his ex; the woman and her 5-year-old son split one cookie, which they were unable to eat because it “tasted terrible.” On a subsequent drug test, the 5-year-old tested positive for meth, the Des Moines detective continued. The woman suspected Holm or his girlfriend were trying to sabotage her perfect drug test record before an upcoming child custody trial. Lab tests on leftover frosting confirmed the presence of methamphetamine on the cookies, the Des Moines detective continued. Both children also tested positive for methamphetamine. Confronted by police, Holm denied spiking the cookies with meth, according to charging papers. He also denied using or possessing meth, and tried to explain away a recent failed drug test. “Holm told me the positive test … was the clinic’s fault because they made a mix up or because of (his ex’s) meddling,” the Des Moines detective told the court. Suspecting Holm or his girlfriend may have poisoned the boys, police combed through drug test results submitted by Holm as part of the custody lawsuit. Reviewing those court records, investigators found a negative drug test filed in October by Holm. Detectives contacted the center that conducted the test and found Holm had in fact failed; prosecutors contend Holm forged the test results before submitting them to the court. For filing the apparent forgery, prosecutors have charged Holm with second-degree perjury. No one has been charged in the apparent drugging of the young boys. King County Prosecutor's Office spokesman Ian Goodhew said prosecutors cannot presently show Holm or his girlfriend put meth in the cookies. "We are unable to file charges at this time against Mr. Holm or his girlfriend for providing the methamphetamine to the children because we cannot prove the chain of custody of how the meth was placed in the cookies, who made the cookies and who, when, where or how the meth was given to the children," Goodhew said in a statement. Holm is not currently jailed.BY: Follow @BillGertz Two Russian nuclear-capable bombers intruded into the U.S. air defense zone near Alaska last week in the latest saber rattling by Moscow, defense officials said. The Tu-95 Bear H bombers flew into the Alaska zone on April 22. But unlike most earlier incursions, no U.S. interceptor jets were dispatched to shadow them, said defense officials familiar with the latest U.S.-Russian aerial encounter. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a spokesman for the U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), declined to confirm the incursion. But he said no jets were dispatched last week to intercept intruding aircraft. The incident was the first Russian bomber incursion of a U.S. or Canadian air defense zone this year. Officials said it likely signals the start of Russia’s long-range aviation spring training cycle. Further aerial incursions are expected. Last year, U.S. and Canadian jets intercepted Russian bombers on at least six occasions, and intruding Russian long-range aircraft were detected on 10 occasions, Davis said. Despite remaining in international airspace, "we believe that if the Russian military filed flight plans and self-identified—by ‘squawking and talking’—the overall safety of flight would be enhanced," Davis said. "And it could also reduce the number of times we scrambled fighter jets to intercept the aircraft, thereby reducing the potential for miscalculation." Davis said the increase in flights near North America coincided with Russia's incursion into the Ukraine and Crimea. "These flights often enter the U.S. or Canadian [air defense identification zone], but have not entered U.S. or Canadian sovereign airspace," he said, adding that the flights are legal since the ADIZ is not sovereign airspace. Last year’s intercepts included the following encounters, according to NORAD: On April 2, 2014, two U.S. F-22 fighters intercepted two Bear bombers west of Alaska’s coast. On June 9, 2014, two F-22s intercepted four Bears and one refueling tanker near Alaska. Two of the Bears later flew near the California coast and were intercepted by two F-15s. Early August 2014: NORAD notes a "spike" Russian aircraft operating in and around the U.S. ADIZ. On Sept 17, 2014, two F-22s intercepted two Russian IL-78 refueling tankers, two Russian Mig-31 fighter jets and two Bear long-range bombers in the ADIZ west of Alaska. The Russian aircraft flew a loop south, then turned west toward Russia. On Sept. 18, 2014, two Bears were intercepted and identified by two Canadian CF-18 fighters in the western reaches of the Canadian ADIZ, in the Beaufort Sea. On Dec. 8, 2014, two CF-18s intercepted two Bears near the Beaufort Sea off Canada's coast. In Europe, the latest bomber encounter took place on April 14, when two British Typhoon jet fighters intercepted two Bear H bombers near British airspace. A Russian embassy spokesman did not return an email seeking comment. Senior military officials have said Russia has stepped up such bomber flights near U.S. coasts as part of a strategic messaging and influence operation. Northern Command commander Adm. William Gortney told reporters April 7 that Russia is developing a far more capable military than its predecessor, the Soviet Union, which made up for its poor quality of troops and equipment by deploying very large numbers of forces, he said. Moscow also has published a new military doctrine that explains the military annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and covert backing of armed rebels in eastern Ukraine, Gortney said. "At the same time, they are messaging us," the four-star admiral said. "They're messaging us that they're a global power—we do the same sort of thing—with their long-range aviation." Both numbers of flights and numbers of locations for the bomber flights "have gone up," he said. "So we watch very carefully what they're doing," Gortney said. "They are adhering to international standards that are required by all airplanes that are out there. And everybody is flying in a professional manner on their side and our side as we watch very closely." "But really, my question is, what is their intent long-term-wise?" The latest Bear bomber intrusion near Alaska followed the intercept of a U.S. RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft over Baltic Sea on April 7 that the Pentagon said was provocative and dangerous. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Russian Su-27 jet conducted a "reckless" and "unprofessional" intercept of the RC-135 and noted that the Pentagon protested that U.S.-Russia aerial encounter. Gen. Phillip Breedlove, commander of the U.S. European Command, told a Senate hearing Thursday that a "revanchist" Russia threat under Vladimir Putin is the most serious security worry facing the region. "Russia is blatantly challenging the rules and principles that have been the bedrock of European security for decades," Breedlove told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "This is global. It's not regional, and it is enduring, not temporary," he said. "Russian aggression is clearly visible in its illegal occupation of Crimea and its continued operations in Eastern Ukraine." Breedlove said the Russians are waging "hybrid" warfare using both military forces and information operations. In Ukraine they have supplied proxies with significant assistance, he said. "What worries me is Russia as a nation now adopting an approach that says they can and will use military power to change international borders," Breedlove said. "That's what I truly worry about every day."UPDATE: Unfortunately it looks like this information is incorrect – we, and many others, inferred from the cloud icon that Nintendo was accessing a cloud-based save system, but it turns out the company is using that icon for simple downloads of game data. Nintendo most likely transferred the data during repairs, which still gives hope to those who may damage the system in the future. We’re sorry for any inconvenience. When Reddit user Patsuann ran into issues with his Switch and had to send it in for repair, he was disappointed to find that his saved data had been removed. Interestingly, when launching The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the first time, a prompt saying that necessary data could not be found and must be downloaded appeared, followed by a small cloud icon popping up. When the download was complete, the original save data for the game was returned to the console. Nintendo has yet to make any formal announcement regarding cloud saves, and this is the first time that we’ve seen it in action. This may be a very promising sign that the functionality could be coming to the masses in the future.Schalke starlet Weston McKennie has earned his first call-up to the USA senior squad, joining Wolfsburg’s John Brooks as the Bundesliga’s representatives in the selection to face Portugal next week. After making his Bundesliga bow with a cameo appearance on the final day of last season, McKennie has featured in seven top-flight matches for the Royal Blues this term. The 19-year-old midfielder has done enough to catch the eye of USMNT acting head coach Dave Sarachan, who could hand McKennie his senior international debut in the friendly against the European champions in Leiria on 14 November. A thigh injury sustained in pre-season following his summer move from Hertha Berlin to Wolfsburg has restricted Brooks to just two league appearances this term, but he is in line to win his 33rd cap as one of the more senior members of the 21-man squad. Hamburg forward Bobby Wood, who is nursing a knee injury, and Borussia Dortmund starlet Christian Pulisic, who is being rested after a draining start to the season, are notable absentees. Watch: Introducing Schalke starlet McKennie... Click right here for more Schalke news!On the 40th Anniversary of Its Release, Here Are 20 Facts About 'Jaws' That You Didn't Know By Cindy Davis \| Lists \| June 2, 2015 \| In 1975, after a long labor and great pains, Steven Spielberg birthed this first summer blockbuster and the highest grossing film of all time (at that time). With a great cast portraying memorable characters, a picturesque location and a believable (and much maligned) monstrous foe to root against, Jaws left audiences alternately terrified and ecstatic. The film still holds up today and in a testament to Spielberg’s efforts, I still jump every single time that head rolls out… If you’re a fan, the documentary attached to the 30th Anniversary edition DVD is well worth a watch, with commentary by Spielberg, Benchley, Scheider, Dreyfuss, David Brown, Richard Zanuck, Carl Gottlieb, John Williams and many crew members. 1. For years, author Peter Benchley thought about writing a book about sharks that attacked people and what would happen if the sharks wouldn’t go away. In 1964, he read a story about a fisherman who caught a “4550 pound great white shark off the shores of Long Island, and thought, what if one of those wouldn’t go away?” In 1971, a publisher told Benchley it would make an interesting story and so he wrote the novel. 2. The sport fisherman Benchley had read about was Frank Mundus, a “colorful character” who in fact, harpooned that white shark (estimated weight—no scale—of 4500 pounds) and still holds the record (with Donnie Braddick) for the largest fish caught by rod and reel: A 3,427 pound great white shark. Though Benchley denied it, many sources (including Jaws screenplay writer and actor Carl Gottlieb) say the character of Quint was based on Mundus (who died in 2008). Braddick and Mundus: 3. Benchley said he thought over novel titles for months, right up until 20 minutes before production. He thought most of them were too pretentious: The Stillness in the Water, A Silence in the Deep, Leviathan Rising, Jaws of Death, Jaws of Leviathan. In the last meeting with his editor, Benchley said the only word they could agree upon was “Jaws;” it was short and would fit on a cover jacket so they went with it. They didn’t think its prospects were good for a first novel about a fish—it was sent out to several literary houses and a book of the month club. After the club and Reader’s Digest both made it a selection, Bantam bought Jaws and then it immediately went out to movie auctions. Universal bought the rights for $150,000, which was for Benchley, “the moon.” 4. Producers David Brown and Richard Zanuck (A Few Good Men, Driving Miss Daisy, The Sugarland Express) loved the book, though Brown said they never thought about how they would get a shark to jump up on a boat and eat a man. He thought if they had read the novel twice, they might have had more time to think about the technical issues and not made the film. When the film was first sold, a director (unidentified on the commentary, listed as Dick Richards on Wikipedia) who always wanted to make a film about a “whale” was attached—but things didn’t work out and Richards was dropped. 5. Steven Spielberg said he first became aware of Jaws when he saw the name on a large stack of papers; he didn’t know what the title meant and thought it might refer to a dentist. The book was not yet in the national consciousness. He read it over a weekend and thinking back, said he remembers Jaws as a time in his life of great courage and stupidity. His first thoughts were: “Wow, this is like a movie I just made about a truck and a driver (Duel). Jaws and Duel both have four letters, they’re both about a leviathan going after man.” He felt it was kind of a sequel to Duel and was very interested because of that. 6. Zanuck and Brown wanted to get rid of the novel’s backstories, just do a straight-line adventure story. Benchley did the script adaptation and handed it over to Spielberg, who didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do with the movie—so he wrote an entire script himself (a few of the scenes survived). The director said writing the script was an exercise for him to decide what he wanted Jaws to be. Brown and Zanuck next suggested Spielberg go to Howard Sackler, a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright who wrote The Great White Hope and was also an expert scuba diver (as is Benchley). Very familiar with sharks and underwater activity, Sackler didn’t want any credit for, but committed to doing the film. The Screen Actor’s Guild contract was about to expire at the end of the year (1973) and the studio decreed that no movie would be started that could not be finished by June 30th of that year, because they didn’t want to be stuck (with an unfinished film). Spielberg, Zanuck and Brown met to discuss how quickly Jaws could be made and Spielberg said he didn’t have a finished script yet. Finally, Brown suggested Carl Gottlieb (“The Odd Couple, The Bob Newhart Show,” The Jerk). Gottlieb was first hired as actor and he helped with improv, along with contributing to the script. Gottlieb predicted they’d be doing for the water what Psycho had done for showers and commented that to this day, he hears about how people wouldn’t go swimming anymore after seeing Jaws. 7. Spielberg had written a different introduction for Quint, in which Quint was at a movie theater watching Moby Dick, laughing because it was so silly with the mechanical whale. Quint continued to laugh so hard and so maliciously that people got up and walked out of the theater, until finally Quint was completely alone in the theater, with his laughter echoing out into the streets. The scene was squashed because the director was unable to secure the rights to Moby Dick, relating (very carefully) that “Gregory Peck felt it wasn’t his proudest work; he didn’t want it to be made fun of or even to be in the film at all.” 8. Zanuck thought they should have footage of real sharks, so Australian experts Ron and Valerie Taylor (“Shark Hunters,” Blue Water, White Death) were hired. (Peter Gimble, who directed the documentary Blue Water, White Death was asked to do camera work, but because he insisted he direct the film, was not involved.) Since the sharks the Taylors worked with were only 14 feet, Spielberg looked for a little person to be used in their footage to scale the shark. The director hired Carl Rizzo, who came in to meet Spielberg with blood dripping from his head — Rizzo explained he’d just had an accident at the studio’s front gate. Spielberg thought Rizzo brave and felt he must really have wanted the job to come in that condition. The Taylors also used two small dummies in their footage of sharks attacking an underwater cage, but said that “Carl looked better and could move around.” Ron Taylor said they’d been working for about a week, trying to get a shark attacking the cage, but that sharks don’t normally do that. Finally one day, a shark came over and got its nose stuck in a bridle; sharks go crazy when they are trapped. So the shark went berserk and they used that footage (with an empty cage), because it looked as if the shark was attacking the cage. Taylor said it was the scariest thing he’d ever seen. 9. Roy Scheider was hired after Spielberg had begun searching for an unknown actor; the studio wanted “a name.” At a party, Scheider’s agent introduced him to Spielberg as the director was describing the story to someone. Scheider said, “That’s a great story, how about me?” 10. Scheider improvised the film’s most famous line: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” 11. Jon Voight, Timothy Bottoms and Jeff Bridges were considered for the part of Hooper; they each turned it down “for one reason or other.” Richard Dreyfuss was cast because Spielberg loved American Graffiti (the actor was suggested by George Lucas). Dreyfuss said he loved the exciting story as told by Spielberg, but when asked if he wanted to make the film he said he’d rather watch it because, “it’s going to be a bitch to shoot.” A few months later, Dreyfuss went to the premiere of his own film and saw himself as a leading man for the first time; he didn’t like his performance, saying “I figured I’d better get a job really soon.” He called Spielberg and asked to do the film. 12. Spielberg’s first choice to play Quint was Lee Marvin, but Marvin said he liked to fish for real, not in a movie. His second choice was Sterling Hayden (Spielberg was a fan of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb), but Hayden couldn’t do it. Producer David Brown suggested Shaw (liked him in The Sting). Spielberg screened A Man for All Seasons and From Russia with Love and decided on Shaw, saying he wished he had thought of the actor himself. Dreyfuss said Shaw was “the most extraordinarily, unnecessarily competitive person he’d ever met.” 13. Production Designer Joe Alves was sent to scout possible locations; they’d thought of Jamaica because of the water clarity. Martha’s Vineyard had never been photographed for a feature film before because of strict rules. But it was the only place they could go on the east coast 12 miles out to sea, there was a sandy bottom 30 feet below where they could put sharks and cameras down—no matter what direction cameras turned, land couldn’t be seen. Spielberg felt it was important the audience would feel there was no shore to run back to. The only set built was Quint’s shack; they had to promise to put everything back exactly. The billboard had to be put up, shot and then taken down that day. Nothing could alter the landscape or harmony of the island. 14. Stunt woman Susan Backlinie (first victim) wasn’t an actress and Spielberg was nervous hiring her, but ended up loving her.The director thought it would be much scarier not to see the shark at first—if it had come up out of the water, right away, Jaws “would have been monster movie.” Spielberg himself did the first jerk-down. Backlinie had a cable attached near her stomach, “he’d pull and she’d throw her head back.” According to Backlinie, they wanted to put her on an electric wench, but she didn’t want that, so they used man power. Cables ran from each side of her, to men back on beach. Several men pulled back and forth and she’d throw her arms to make it look more violent than it was. Sound re-recording (done back at the studio) had the stunt woman leaning back over a baby bassinet while Spielberg poured water over her head, as she screamed to get the appropriate sounds. For the victim’s hand found in the sand, Spielberg bought a fake arm which he said was too shiny and plastic looking. He instead had a person buried in the sand with her arm sticking up and put little crabs around it. 15. Spielberg said that had he met local, Craig Kingsbury (Ben Gardner) before hiring Shaw, he might have hired him to play Quint. The director called Kingsbury “the purest form of Quint” and “a drunk who drove cows around town and ad libbed his own lines.” Quint’s “Not like going down the pond chasin’ bluegills and tommycods” line came from Kingsbury. Meanwhile, Ben’s famous head popping out scene was highly coordinated by Spielberg for maximum scare. The director played with the timing and tested the scene with preview audiences and crew, choosing the version with the biggest reaction. 16. With little idea as to how to create a huge, mechanical shark, Joe Alves was thrilled to find retired Special Effects man, Bob Mattey, who had done the giant squid for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Mattey was very enthusiastic that they could make the creature instead of using miniatures. They decidef upon a 25 foot model because they felt it would be both formidable and credible. Alves borrowed a real set of shark jaws from Steinhart Aquarium and got the proportions for the model shark, “Bruce” (named after Spielberg’s lawyer). A team of experts (plastics, electronics, hydraulics, etc.) was assembled and the Taylors were brought in to comment and advise on the fake shark’s movement. They created several shark components and a full shark (Spielberg called the full model “The Great White Turd” and the effects team “Special Defects”), which on its first test run in the water immediately sank to the ocean floor. Richard Dreyfuss joked about constantly hearing “The shark is not working” over handheld radios everyone carried. Because of all the issues with the shark, shooting went way over schedule and budget, with Spielberg unable to say when the film would be finished; “Show Me the Way to Go Home” would bring tears to crew-members’ eyes. The crew did get to shore every Sunday, but Spielberg never went because he was afraid he wouldn’t come back. 17. Spielberg related a story about a big event being held, with a buffet for all the cast and crew and tons of wonderful food and desserts. Roy Scheider began a food fight by throwing mashed potatoes and gravy at Spielberg and “…it turned into a bit of a Three Stooges brawl. The help serving dinner came out and became hysterical and it was a tremendous blowing off of steam.” Then they all — covered in food — jumped into a pool. 18. Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss were out on a boat with a sound man when some sort of malfunction caused the boat to leak and start sinking. While the boat driver was trying to get back to shore before they sank, Spielberg sent out another boat, telling people, “Get the actors off the boat!” Sound man John Carter held up a sign reading “Fuck the actors, save the sound man!” A camera onboard got wet, but the film inside was recovered and usable. 19. It was Robert Shaw’s idea to take the cap off his tooth when Quint and Hooper compare scars. According to Spielberg, Shaw also rewrote part of Spielberg’s favorite scene, the Indianapolis speech (conceived by Howard Sackler and written by two scriptwriters). Dreyfuss said that as an actor one often has to feign interest in the story another actor is telling, but that Shaw’s tale was “one of the most riveting things he’d ever seen or heard.” 20. When Spielberg first heard Academy Award winning composer “Johnny” Williams (Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Schindler’s List, Empire of the Sun) play the Jaws music (on a piano), the director thought it was a joke—it was too simple. He asked Williams to play it again and then again, and “suddenly it was right.” Jaws won the Academy Award for Best Original Dramatic Score and is ranked sixth on the American Film Institute’s 100 Years of Film Scores. Spielberg and Bruce: Cindy Davis still suffers moments of panic when swimming in the ocean. ← 10 Age-Appropriate Actors Hollywood Can Pair Emma Stone With Pixar's First Trailer For 'The Good Dinosaur' Has All the Childhood Wonder You've Given Up Expecting From 'Jurassic World' →"Midsummer Classic" redirects here. For the NASCAR race at Eldora Speedway formerly known as the Mudsummer Classic, see Eldora Dirt Derby The Major League Baseball All-Star Game, also known as the "Midsummer Classic", is an annual professional baseball game sanctioned by Major League Baseball (MLB) contested between the All-Stars from the American League (AL) and National League (NL), currently selected by fans for starting fielders, by managers for pitchers, and by managers and players for reserves. The game usually occurs on either the second or third Tuesday in July, and is meant to mark a symbolic halfway-point in the MLB season (though not the mathematical halfway-point which, for most seasons, is usually found within the previous calendar week). Both of the major leagues share an All-Star break, with no regular-season games scheduled on the day before or two days[1] after the All-Star Game itself. Some additional events and festivities associated with the game take place each year close to and during this break in the regular season. No official MLB All-Star Game was held in 1945 including the official selection of players due to World War II travel restrictions. Two All-Star Games were held each season from 1959 to 1962. The most recent All-Star Game was held on July 17, 2018, at Nationals Park, home of the National League's Washington Nationals.[2] The 2019 and 2020 All-Star Games are scheduled to be held in Cleveland and Los Angeles, respectively.[3] A Major League Baseball All-Star is a professional baseball player who has been named to either the American League (AL) or National League (NL) All-Star Team. Major league All-Star namings began in July 1933. Fans have generally participated in the selection of the players who fill the AL and NL All-Star rosters; managers, players, and coaches have also made choices in the selection process during various seasons.[4] Between 1935 and
Wolffe sat down with Welsh Finance Secretary Mark Drakeford and Welsh government's top lawyer, Counsel General Mick Antoniw. The devolved administrations fear the legislation could see them lose powers over areas such as fishing and agriculture. The UK government denies this, and says the legislatures will actually gain powers as a result of Brexit.WASHINGTON — Former New Hampshire state Sen. Jim Rubens is jumping into the race to defeat Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen Wednesday. Before he even reaches the starting blocks, Democrats are questioning his ability to reach women voters. The reason? A 2009 post on his website that connects the rise of working women with what he says is a rise in mass shootings and other violence perpetrated by men. "The collaborative, flexible, amorphously-hierarchical American economy is shutting out ordinary men who were once the nation's breadwinners in living-wage labor and manufacturing jobs," Rubens wrote. "Because status success is more vital to the male psychology, males are falling over the edge in increasing numbers." A "collaborative" and "flexible" economy is one that has opened the door to more women working, Rubens wrote. And the nature of the changing economy has had a detrimental effect on men, including an increase in violence. "The collapsing number of male jobs in the increasingly female-centric economy just adds to the already harsher impact of OverSuccess on males," he wrote, referring to the title of his 2008 book. It's a view Rubens still holds today, and he seemed surprised in an interview Wednesday that anyone would care about it. "The point of this, if you read the whole thing, is that manufacturing jobs, which have been the basis for higher-wage working men during the post-World War II era have been in decline," he said. "Men are more sensitive than women to external indicators of status, which is one of the points in my book — which you might want to read so you can understand the whole point of this — and it's very important to all people, women and men, to have jobs, functions, and roles in life that are fulfilling and productive and engaging." The loss of manufacturing jobs that men often held in favor of "collaborative" jobs that favor women, Rubens said, "has increased stress in males." "It's a tiny fraction of males that become stressed for whatever reason and engage in acts of extreme violence," he said. "If you look through individual psychology of mass shooters over the past 10-20 years, you can see that in the profile. Often its a person who has been subjected to extreme stress in the form of social rejection, job loss and associated mental health issues." Tweaking the tax code to add manufacturing jobs would be one way to reduce this "stress" on men, Rubens said. On paper, Rubens is something of a radical when it comes to Republican politics. He favors a carbon tax, is pro-choice, and supports same-sex marriage rights. But Democrats, who were pushing Rubens' website on reporters in advance of his official announcement Wednesday, think his musings on a perceived rise in violence like serial killings and mass shootings perpetrated by men will make him a tough sell to women. "I am a moderate on social issues," he said. "I am not seeking to change the Roe v. Wade law as some Republicans have campaigned on in the past, and I am encouraging Republicans to focus on fiscal issues." Rubens says he's a strong supporter of women going to work, and cites the fact that he has a female business partner. He said what men — and society — need are an increase in the kinds of manufacturing jobs that have gone away. Rubens says that would help decrease violence by men. "If you read the... posting, I don't see anything that causes anyone to conclude I'm seeking to in any way make a claim that it's not great that women have come up in the economy," he said. "My wife is my business partner so I know that it's fantastic that the economy has made a fulsome role for women as I was pointing out in the posting. We need to get manufacturing jobs back." Adding those jobs "will help the problem identified in that posting," he said. He also called for mental health reforms, "decreasing the cost and increasing the quality" of care. Rubens said Shaheen's vote for Obamacare was a vote that added to the mental health care problem, as well as added the kind of stress to men that leads to violence. "[Obamacare] is contributing to a conversion of full-time jobs to part-time jobs. This is causing serious threats to working families," he said. "The source of this sudden interest in a post I wrote five years ago, I know where that's coming from. It's coming from my opponent, Jeanne Shaheen, who is the cause, personally, as the 60th vote of Obamacare, of this stress on working families."Exclusive Preview \| ‘Batman’ # 13 This week, “I Am Suicide” comes to a conclusion in the pages of Batman # 13. And while the survival of the Dark Knight is certain, it’s less clear who will be going home with him! Months ago, Psycho-Pirate drove the superheroes known as Gotham and Gotham Girl insane with his ability to manipulate emotions. Gotham is dead, but there’s still a chance to save Gotham Girl. To do that, Bruce Wayne has assembled his own Suicide Squad-like team including the Ventriloquist and Catwoman to infiltrate Bane’s stronghold and forcibly bring the Psycho-Pirate back to Gotham City to help Gotham Girl recover from her ordeal. However, Catwoman has betrayed her former lover and there may not be much of a team left! Our exclusive preview for Batman #13 picks up where we left off, as Batman confronts Bane. Meanwhile in the Batcave, Alfred is about to have an unexpected guest who doesn’t seem to think that Bruce Wayne will be returning any time soon… For the conclusion of the current story arc, writer Tom King is joined by artist Mikel Janín. Here’s the solicitation text from DC to set the stage for this finale. “I AM SUICIDE” conclusion! Batman and the remains of his team come face to face with Bane and the Psycho-Pirate in a final battle at Santa Prisca—and learn whether this was truly a suicide mission! What did you think about this scene from Berlin Station? Let us know in the comment section down below! Photo Credits: All images provided by DC Comics.The Orlando Magic are not in the market for much in the backcourt. But they could always use more versatility with their backcourt to add depth. If there is one position the Orlando Magic feel pretty set at it is shooting guard. Victor Oladipo is locked in as the starting shooting guard. He took a step forward his sophomore year and became a more consistent scorer and looks ready to break out as a star player for this team. Behind him on the depth chart is Evan Fournier, a solid shooter and creator off the pick and roll. The two are solid on defense too. It feels like the Magic are not going to have to worry about shooting guard for too long. The Magic though are not in a position to be too picky. They need to build depth wherever they can and bring in more talent. Orlando is not afraid to say it is positionless right now. Victor Oladipo, after all, is just a “guard.” Fournier can moonlight some at small forward. And the Magic are as likely as not to draft Justise Winslow, who probably fits better at shooting guard than small forward. Yes, the Magic are not afraid to look at wings right now, even if they might duplicate Oladipo or Fournier or whoever. Versatility has always been key for the Magic and they are not going to shy away from that as they prepare for free agency. Certainly two things will factor in that we did not factor into our review of the point guard free agent class: First, Scott Skiles‘ hiring allows us to focus more on players that fit his style and what he wants to do. Second, the draft and who the Magic pick will help them determine who they go after. Draft Justise Winslow, and the team’s needs in the backcourt suddenly dry up. The key when looking at this crop of players is versatility. Just like for the point guards, we turned to Tommy Beer of Basketball Insiders as he looked at the shooting guards of this free agent class and focused on targets the Magic might look at.Mirwaiz still under house arrest SRINAGAR, Mar 2: The state government did not allow Hurriyat Conference (M) chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and other executive members of the faction to participate in an executive committee meeting here. Mirwaiz continued under house arrest at his Nigeen residence. The meeting was convened to discuss present political scenario after execution of Mohammad Afzal Guru. The meeting was also expected to discuss the Muttahida Majlis-e-Mushawarat (MMM) protest programme and the detention of separatist leadership and youths after Guru was hanged. Former Hurriyat chairman Prof Abdul Gani Bhat later presided over the meeting. Others who attended the meeting included Zaffar Akbar Bhat, Yasmeen Raja, Hakeem Rashid, Abdul Manan and others. Meanwhile, Hurriyat (M) has strongly condemned the continuous house arrest of Mirwaiz Umar Farooq. The faction said house detentions and arrests were unacceptable, adding, Hurriyat leaders like Agha Syed Hassan Al Moosvi, Mukhtar Ahmad Waza, Shabir Ahmad Shah, Nayeem Khan continue to in jails or under house arrest.The FCC on Friday started its informal 180-day shot clock to review the proposed $55 billion merger of Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable. That opens the way for the public to formally file comments about the deal; the first wave is due October 13. But the key disclosure for insiders — including TV executives — is that the FCC is ready to grapple again with an issue that bedeviled it when it reviewed Comcast’s aborted deal to buy TWC, and AT&T’s acquisition of DirecTV. The FCC said in those cases that it wanted to let independent experts, including potential critics, review the terms of private programming agreements. The agency said it needed their insights to determine whether a merger might reduce video competition or hurt the public interest. Programmers including CBS, Viacom, and Disney opposed the FCC’s effort and persuaded the U.S. Court of Appeals to stop it from sharing the information. For now the FCC hasn’t asked Charter, TWC or others for the deal terms, and “there has not yet been any decision whether the Commission will collect such information,” FCC General Counsel Jon Sallet says today in a blog post. Still, the agency adopted a protective order that would — if the FCC changes its mind — “ensure that any objecting programmers have ample opportunities to protect their interests before any information is made available.” The order (read it here) includes a set of procedures that Sallet says “best balances legitimate confidentiality interests with [the FCC’s] desire to be informed by diverse opinions.” It also addresses the court’s call for the FCC “to clarify its procedures for handling confidential information in Commission transaction reviews.” The commission’s two GOP members say they’d oppose the gathering and sharing of programming deal terms. The agency showed that its requests were “chimeras,” Commissioner Ajit Pai says in a partial dissent, when the FCC decided to oppose Comcast and approve AT&T’s deal. “Even though the programming contracts were never disclosed, neither the Commission nor staff had any problem reaching a decision regarding the merits of the transactions.” RelatedFCC Votes To Review Rules That It Says Help Broadcasters In Retrans Disputes The new order would “set the stage for disclosing highly confidential programming contracts to parties with whom programmers must negotiate distribution agreements,” which could “inflict a large amount of collateral damage along the way.” Commissioner Michael O’Rielly called the order “hopelessly naïve,” adding that “the ‘safeguards’ proffered in this Order will be insufficient to provide any real protection.”Mayor Vincent C. Gray attends an Iftar event in the John A. Wilson Building in August. The feast, celebrating the end of Ramadan, was organized by the D.C. Muslim Caucus. (Photo courtesy of the D.C. Muslim Caucus) The endorsements are flying ahead of next week’s D.C. general election, but only one group’s have come with a religious edict. That would be the endorsements of the D.C. Muslim Caucus, a group that is backing the Democratic nominees in the races on the D.C. ballot, plus independent at-large council candidate Elissa Silverman and two candidates in nonpartisan State Board of Education races. It is also urging a vote against Initiative 71, which would legalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana. What sets the Muslim Caucus apart isn’t the candidates it is backing but this sentence in the Monday news release announcing those endorsements: “According to Islamic tenets, Muslims participating in democratic elections are obligated to vote as a bloc based upon a consensus of the Muslim community.” In other words, vote for Muriel E. Bowser, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Phil Mendelson, et al., or you’re not a good Muslim. Asked about that exhortation, Muslim Caucus spokesman Talib Karim offered two publications he said supported the view that followers of Islam should vote en bloc for favored candidates. One is a statement adopted by a council of Islamic legal scholars at a 2007 meeting of the Muslim World League in Mecca…Mayor of Ahmedabad Flags Off LGBT Pride March Ahmedabad held its first LGBT pride walk on December 1st, leaving the entire nation awestruck with the crowd it managed to rope in and the response it received. Considered as one of the most conservative states in India, Gujarat has now successfully organised two back-to-back prides in Surat in October and Ahmedabad in December. The Pride Walk was flagged off from IT Building by Meenaxiben Patel, Mayor of Ahmedabad, and ended at Gandhi Ashram. She was the chief guest of the event and her presence showcased the extended support the community has received from her office. The thrilled and overjoyed crowd of nearly 100 people included students from international schools, management brains from IIM-A and parents coming out in support of their kids. Swagat Shah, one of the organisers of the pride, declared the first pride of the city as super success. “We all knew the conservative Gujarat and now it’s time to know the rainbow-colored Gujarat,” he said. He expressed his gratitude to the administration for the help and support extended in organising the walk. “The co-operation and warm assistance we received from the administration and the society can never be paralleled with mere thanks,” he said. Conspicuous by his absence was well-known celebrity Manavendra Singh Gohil, also called as the “gay prince” by the media in the West. Manavendra refused to take part in Ahmedabad pride calling it as “a part of the Western culture” that should not be imitated. A few local NGOs also pulled back from the pride for their own reasons. Swagat Shah slammed those who refused to take part in the city’s first pride walk for belittling the importance of pride walks. “Such blatant word from someone who is being treated as icon in community is indeed shocking,” he added. (Pictures Courtesy: Gujarat LGBT Pride Festival Organisers)LISTEN: Your browser does not support the audio element. A Seattle rapper has accomplished something in music that hasn’t happened for about 20 years and he’s looking ahead to running for Mayor in 2025. It was the summer of 1992, the last time a Seattle artist had a platinum single in the music world. Sir Mix Alot’s “Baby got Back” has been replaced. On Thursday, Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” – by the way parents, offensive language warning on that video – went platinum, which means there have been 1,000,000 downloads of the song. If you’re familiar with Macklemore, it’s likely because you have a teen in your house or you might remember his tribute song to Dave Niehaus “My Oh My.” His song “Same Love,” in support of same-sex marriage was recently in the news because a teacher was reprimanded for playing it in class. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis have quietly become a national success. Their album “The Heist” reached number one on iTunes, he’s playing sold out shows, and now he’s announcing political goals. Macklemore, whose real name is Ben Haggerty, says he’s running for Mayor of Seattle. “I’m running: 2025 is the year,” he tells me after getting off a red eye flight back from a concert in Hawaii. “It’s time to fight for the city and stand up for the people. It’ll happen in 2025, he says, because his rap career will probably be winding down by then and he’ll be able to focus on other goals. “Politics is the new hip hop,” says Macklemore. Cool phrase, but what does that mean? “I’m going to make that the new phrase in 2025, and I’ll figure it out by then,” he says. Haggerty, who grew up in Seattle and went to public schools here, says education needs to be embraced as the “engine of our robust economy.” He also supports gun control and wants affordable, safe housing for all. There’s more. “We need a modern transportation system. We’re a growing city we need to meet those needs, and hopefully that means hover boards,” he says. Seriously? “Yes,” Macklemore says with a smile in his voice. “In 2025 I’ll make sure all the kids in Seattle get hover boards.” He’s gotten thousands of likes on a Facebook post about his plan to run for Mayor of Seattle. Some people even say they’ll move to the city if he’s in charge. Others, think maybe he’s taking his New Year’s resolutions a little too seriously and is “going a little crazy on us.” “Absolutely not,” he says. “I’m enjoying life.” By LINDA THOMAS My teen daughter who loves Macklemore will be 30 if/when Ben Haggerty runs for office. Exterior photo courtesy Macklemore’s Facebook pageRalph Lauren Corp., which closed its Buenos Aires shop last year over economic and currency issues (at a cost of US$3million in severance pay and lease expenses), self-reported to the US DOJ and the SEC, and agreed to pay $882,000 penalty as part of an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice and $734,846 to the Securities and Exchange Commission over bribes company employees allegedly paid to Argentine customs officials with dresses, perfume and cash to accelerate the passage of merchandise into the South American country… … The bribes, allegedly paid via a customs broker, were labeled as “loading and delivery expenses” or “stamp tax/label tax” on invoices in order to disguise the payments, according to U.S. authorities. … The Justice Department alleged that the bribes were paid in order to improperly obtain the paperwork necessary for goods to clear customs, to permit the clearance of prohibited items and to occasionally avoid inspection entirely. With a system of rampant corruption, the local employees probably figured it was the only way to get the merchandise to the store. Otherwise the cargo would sit in customs until a substantial part of it went “missing” – and you’d still have to pay off someone. RLC didn’t admit or deny the allegations in its agreement with the SEC, and this is the first time the SEC has entered a nonprosecution agreement in a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act matter.Cow urine mixed with neem leaves can be a better insecticide than the chemical ones, according to a MP. Nand Kumar Sai said in the that farmers were well-off earlier and happy with the yield using manure for cultivation and they should go back to that practice. During a discussion on the country's agrigarian crisis, he said with the rise in the use of chemical fertilisers, they are committing suicide while the quality of the produce has come down. "Why can't we use gomutra and mix it with neem leaves in place of insecticides now?... Farmers would not commit suicide earlier even if there was famine, but they are doing it now," he said. Sai suggested encouraging rearing of bovine creatures for both milk and cowdung, saying it would stop production and sales of artificial and adultrated milk-related products, now rampant in various states of the country. Members, cutting across the party-line, suggested various solutions for the welfare of the country's farming community, which constitute a large chunk of the total population. Some members also suggested that farmers above the age of 60 should get pension. Deputy Chairman P J Kurien endorsed, saying," That is a very genuine demand.Izvor: N1 Stjepan Mesić ide u još jednu izbornu utrku – na rujanskim parlamentarnim izborima bit će kandidat Narodne koalicije! Tako je dogovoreno na jučerašnjem sastanku šefova SDP-a i HSU Zorana Milanovića i Silvana Hrelje. Naime, Hrelja je za svoju stranku tražio tri sigurna mjesta na listi Narodne koalicije, a Milanović mu je pristao dati dva, piše Večernji list.. Tako će Hrvatska stranka umirovljenika treći saborski mandat loviti preko preferencijalnih glasova, a “lovac” će biti Stjepan Mesić. Prvi hrvatski premijer i predsjednik Republike u dva mandata bit će smješten oko desetog mjesta na listi Narodne koalicije u prvoj, zagrebačkoj izbornoj jedinici. Prema tome, u Sabor će moći ući isključivo preko preferencijalnih glasova. Glasnogovornik HSU Jurica Galešić potvrdio nam je da je Mesić zainteresiran za kandidaturu u I. izbornoj jedinici, a da se šef SDP-a Zoran Milanović složio s tim prijedlogom. Bivši predsjednik RH jučer nam je potvrdio da ide na listu Narodne koalicije. – Ako mogu pomoći, idem. Moram – rekao nam je Mesić. Listu u prvoj jedinici nosit će Milanović, druga će biti Vesna Pusić, a u borbi protiv lidera HDZ-a i Mosta Andreja Plenkovića i Bože Petrova – za koje se smatra da će se kandidirati u prvoj jedinici – pomagat će im i Mesić. Nositelji lista i glavni igrači uglavnom su već dogovoreni za sve izborne jedinice. Svih 10 lista nosit će SDP-ovci, mahom bivši ministri iz Milanovićeve Vlade, a njihovi partneri iz Narodne koalicije dobit će 14 takozvanih sigurnih mjesta, pozicija na listama za koje se pretpostavlja da vode u saborske klupe. HSU će dobiti dva sigurna mjesta – šef stranke Silvano Hrelja u osmoj i još jedno mjesto u drugoj jedinici. HSS će dobiti pet sigurnih mjesta – šef “seljaka” Krešo Beljak bit će drugi u sedmoj jedinici, a zagrebački župan Stjepan Kožić bit će drugi u drugoj jedinici. Vodstvo HNS-a odlučilo je da od sedam sigurnih mjesta na listama čak tri imaju u trećoj jedinici (Međimurje, Varaždin, Zagorje). Šef HNS-a Ivan Vrdoljak bit će drugi na listi u svojoj osječkoj, četvrtoj jedinici, Vesna Pusić druga u Zagrebu, a preostala dva sigurna mjesta uzet će u šestoj i sedmoj za Gorana Beusa Richembergha i Nadu Turina-Đurić. Zanimljivo, kao i na lanjskim izborima vodstvo HNS-a “zaboravilo” je svoju najpopularniju političarku, bivšu ministricu graditeljstva Anku Mrak-Taritaš. Za nju opet nije bilo mjesta među sedam sigurnih pozicija pa će ona u borbu za mandat ponovno u II. jedinicu i zbog niskog mjesta na listi opet isključivo preko preferencijalnih glasova. Kako doznaje Večernji list od izvora iz Narodne koalicije, bivša ministrica graditeljstva razočarana je takvim tretmanom vrha HNS-a, to više što je njihova kandidatkinja za gradonačelnicu Zagreba iduće godine.by Regardless of the outcome of November’s U.S. elections, what will count most is what happens in the streets. As Frederick Douglass put it plainly a century and a half ago, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will.” All the advances of the 20th century (most of which are being steadily eroded in these early years of the 21st century) came about through organized movements, forcing elected officials to react. I know that what I’ve written above is something that most of you reading this already know. But it does seem that we need to remind ourselves of this as United Statesians ponder a choice of two of the most unpopular candidates in the history of U.S. presidential campaigns, a choice reflecting the growing crisis of capitalism. The technocratic corporate war monger versus the proudly ignorant misogynist egomaniac. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that a ready-made alternative exists on the November ballot, and not simply because either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be the next president. Revolutions are made in the street, not in the election booth. Bernie Sanders can promise a “revolution” all he wants, but no matter how fervently some of his followers wish it, the Vermont senator offered no revolution. Significant reforms that would be welcome should they be realized, certainly. But Senator Sanders offered merely to ameliorate the conditions of capitalism, not transcend them. His example, Sweden, is not a socialist country, even if it is a county that is much more humane. The Swedish government didn’t keep its banks in public handsafter nationalizing them during an early 1990s crisis; instead it re-privatized them. Secretary Clinton supports every U.S. imperial adventure, while Senator Sanders supports only some of them. Moreover, Senator Sanders’ main complain about NATO isn’t its imperial mission but rather that Europeans don’t pay more. Why should I get worked up over this difference? And that brings us to Jill Stein, about to receive the Green Party’s presidential nomination. Or, rather, to the Green Party itself. Those who see the Greens as an anti-capitalist alternative are, sad to say, destined for disappointment. Here I can speak from personal experience, having been highly active in the New York State Green Party more than a decade ago, and even serving as the editor of state party’s newspaper for two years. There are Greens who are sincerely socialists, and who would like to see the party be socialist, but these folks represent the left wing of the party, not the party as a whole. Contradictory trends among Greens The New York Green Party at the time I was active was filled with liberals and ex-Democrats; the latter joined when the Greens earned ballot status in New York because they had not risen in the Democratic Party and believed they could be big fish in a small pond. Many of these folks wished for nothing more than to tug the Democrats a bit to the left and to cross-endorse Democratic candidates deemed sufficiently progressive. But as Democrats thoroughly dominate state politics and have no need for Green support, such cross-endorsements were worth nothing and these dreams of influence proved empty. At the national level, shortly before I ceased active involvement, a bureaucratic structure calling itself Green Party US was created, further cutting off the party’s rank and file from decision-making. The center and right wings of the party (more oriented toward electoral politics than activism) generally supported the creation of Green Party US; unfortunately they were supported by a minority of activism-oriented Greens, one of whom, a sincere life-long activist who should have known better, argued on the floor of a state party assembly against me that “the train is leaving the station and we have to be on board.” That the Green Party’s national committee this year approved an “ecological economics” plank that declares the party “anti-capitalist and in favor of a decentralized vision [of] socialism” does not magically turn a “big tent” party into a socialist one. The party’s platform has stated that “Greens support small business, responsible stakeholder capitalism, and broad and diverse forms of economic cooperation.” The new language, to be formally approved at this week’s national convention, states that the party “seeks to build an alternative economic system based on ecology and decentralization of power” and seeks to instead “build an economy based on large-scale green public works, municipalization, and workplace and community democracy.” Further, the new language states that “Production is best for people and planet when democratically owned and operated by those who do the work and those most affected by production decisions. This model of worker and community empowerment will ensure that decisions that greatly affect our lives are made in the interests of our communities, not at the whim of centralized power structures of state administrators or of capitalist CEOs and distant boards of directors.” Yes, a significant step forward from the thinly disguised “green capitalism” that the party previously had stood for. Green capitalism, the hope of liberals and social democrats that the same system that has brought the world to economic, political and environmental crisis will somehow solve these problems, is a fantasy, one best given no quarter. I certainly do not wish to discourage Greens, or anybody else, from moving beyond the chimera of “green capitalism.” But does an organization declaring itself “socialist” — or, in this case, “anti-capitalist” — make it so? A measure of caution is warranted. The record of the Green Party is not particularly strong. In 2004, maneuvering by David Cobb’s supporters wrested the presidential nomination from Ralph Nader (although national-convention attendees I talked to told me that had Mr. Nader campaigned for the nomination rather than expecting it to be handed to him by right he would have been the nominee). Mr. Cobb ran a “safe states” campaign, whereby he would only ask for votes in states that were firmly in the hands of one of the major parties, unmistakably implying that voters in states that were up for grabs should vote for pro-war Democrat John Kerry. I should note that when I had a chance to ask him about this intellectually dishonest campaign, he, with a straight face, told me that he was running a 50-state campaign. But his slick “professional politician” personality told a different story. Mistaking Bernie Sanders for a savior That mistake hasn’t been repeated. But Dr. Stein committed a serious strategic error when she offered to cede the presidential nomination to Senator Sanders if only he would abandon the Democratic Party and instead become his vice presidential running mate. Why a person as serious as she is would indulge in such a fantasy I do not know. There was no possibility of Senator Sanders doing anything other than endorsing Secretary Clinton; he not only said so clearly from the start but political reality (i.e., his ability to retain any influence in the party) mandated that he do so. Complaining that he is a “sellout” for doing so is naïve. Here, I would strongly disagree with the analysis of Chris Hedges that it was a mistake for him to have run as a Democrat instead of as an independent — his impact would have been minuscule had he done so. Whatever criticisms we have of Senator Sanders, he galvanized millions of people and put socialism into a national conversation, even if he wasn’t actually offering socialism. These are positive steps. Dr. Stein does offer a more progressive vision than that of Senator Sanders. And let us note the new anti-capitalist plank in the Green platform. But there is a world of difference between an abstract idea and practical work to make that idea a reality. The history of social democracy, theoretically parties working toward a form of socialism, provides ample evidence. Germany’s former Social Democratic chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, pushed through his “Agenda 2010” legislation in 2003 that imposed austerity. The so-called “German miracle” has been so only for German multi-national capital. The “secret” to Germany’s economic dominance within the European Union is cuts to German wages. Germany has undercut other countries that use the euro as their currency by suppressing wages, while the common currency has the effect of making German exports cheaper. In France, the “Socialist” government of Francois Hollande has resorted to bypassing parliament to impose rules speeding up layoffs and cutting wages. And then there is Tony Blair in Britain, Jean Chrétien in Canada and so on. German Greens invert definition of imperialism The Greens are not the Social Democrats. But does that make them genuinely different? Recall that when the German Greens attained power, joining a Social Democratic government as a junior partner, they found themselves administrating Germany’s nuclear power plants despite their anti-nuclear stance, and eagerly joined in the bombing of Yugoslavia, a particularly unfortunate place for Germany to intervene militarily given the history of World War II in the Balkans. This was the handiwork of Joschka Fischer and his wing of the German Green Party, who liked to call themselves “realos” (realists) while dismissing those who sought to uphold the party’s ideals as “fundis” (fundamentalists). The “realos” did not engage in Germany’s first post-World War II imperial adventure unwillingly. I was one of a small group of New York Greens who sent a letter to the German Green leadership asking them to honor party principal and not participate in the U.S.-led bombing of Yugoslavia. We received a response calling us arrogant and imperialists for daring to discuss their policies. Separately, a letter sent from The Greens/Green Party USA, the more progressive of the then two U.S. national organizations, asked the German Greens to “set an example” by opposing the bombing of Yugoslavia or participating in the U.S. war in Afghanistan. German Green leadership responded by dismissing the request as “a terrific exercise in ‘green imperialist’ thinking,” as “sectarian propaganda from afar” and as an “attempt to lecture and bully other parties.” A U.S. sister organization asks for support of its opposition to U.S. war-mongering waged to open new lands for U.S. multi-national corporations to exploit and for this they are called imperialists and bullies! Expecting socialism from such a party is futile. Remember, that swatted-away criticism wasn’t from U.S. Greens as a whole, but rather from the party’s left wing. The Greens are not a revolutionary grouping, and are and will be moved in the directions that social democratic parties are moved. That Dr. Stein in effect declared that a Democratic candidate who is in favor of many imperialist adventures and who supported the stationing of air force bombers against the will of his constituents is the savior of the United States amply demonstrates that the party has not shaken itself free of capitalism or properly analyzed the nature of imperialism. One of the underlying reasons for that is its lack of strongly defined principals. The “10 Key Values” on which the party bases itself are vague, a lowest common denominator representing what could be agreed upon. Much of the party is led by middle class people who tend to vacillate. For now, the campaign of Senator Sanders has helped put socialism in a national conversation, so the switch to anti-capitalism in the party’s program can be interpreted more as a weather vane than a sudden move leftward. If the wind shifts, it can not be excluded that the platform will as well. Expediency over principle Senator Sanders simply fails to make the connection between austerity at home and imperialism abroad, and that is a serious error reflecting his lingering nationalistic thinking and an inability to make a proper critique of capitalism. Dr. Stein, I believe, does not share these deficiencies, but that she was willing to indulge them for the sake of an ill-fated, chimeric short-term expediency reflects an organization that is groping toward some version of a kinder and gentler capitalism, not one working toward socialism no matter what its platform states. And thus not a party that genuinely offers an alternative to the detested two-party system, one deeply rooted in the winner-take-all, single-seat district U.S. electoral structure. And what choice is there between those two parties? One the surface, it would appear that there are drastic differences between the two. The demagogue Donald Trump offers a dark vision of turning back to the 19th century, when everybody not a White male possessing wealth knew their place. The technocrat Hillary Clinton, and other speakers at the Democratic Party national convention, offered soaring visions of a coming world of equality and hope, a kinder and gentler capitalism that will bring prosperity to all. President Barack Obama, in particular, gave a bravura performance. As I watched some of this, I couldn’t help but think “If only they meant it.” However outstanding the oratory, the dismal results speak for themselves. Bill Clinton was the most effective Republican president the U.S. ever had, putting into law policies that Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush could only dream of doing. The Obama administration organized repression against Occupy Wall Street, unilaterally kills people with drones and protects Wall Street. Given her record as a senator, her pathetic foot-dragging on same-sex marriage until it was absolutely safe to be in favor, her role as the leading hawk of the Obama administration and her support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership as the “gold standard” of trade agreements until political pressure forced her into carefully worded opposition that leaves her maneuvering room, can it be reasonable to believe her administration will be substantially different? The
ville Victory at Blue Ridge Pass, September 14th. 1802 View from the Intoriorof Fort Walker, Hilton Head, S. C. View of Rolla, Mo.. Taken from the Fort View of the Camp of the Twentieth Indiana Regiment; Also of Fort Hatteras, N. C View of the Town of Paducah, Ky View of Strasburg, Valley of the Sheiiaudoah Village of Clarksburg, Western Virginia. Headquarter! of General Rosecraus,.. 191 219 370 242 125 270 254 245 W. War in Georgia. The : Capture of Lost Mountain by General Hooker 421 Stevenson, Ala., Depot for General Rosecrans s Army 411 The Sixteenth Army Corps Fording the Chattahoo- chee 483 War in Louisiana, The : Army of General liauks Crossing Vermilion liayou. 410 Battle of Grand Coteau, November 3d. 1803 4112 Battle of Mansfield, April 8th, 1804 400 General Bimks s Army Crossing Cane River 418 General Franklin s Army Crossing the Prairie in Lafayette Parish, November 10th, 1801! 494 New Iberia 413 War in Mississippi, The : Defeat of Wirt Adams s Confederate Cavalry 478 General McPherson Driving tin; Enemy from their Position near Brownsville 487 General McPhersou s Army Crossing the Big Black at Messenger s Ferry. October 15th, 1803 410 General McPherson s Troops Foraging at the Con federate General Whitficld s Headquarters,:... 479 War in Tennessee, The: Capture of Missionary Ridge, November. 18(53..450, 457 Confederate Massacre of Federal Troops after the Surrender of Fort Pillow, April 12th. 1804.... 401 Federal Pickets Approached by Confederates in Cedar Bushes near Chattanooga 407 General Hooker s liattle above the Clouds 408, 400 Lookout Mountain and its Vicinity, 480 War in Texas, The : Brownsville, Occupied by the Army under Major General N. P. Banks in 1K03 4ia War in Virginia, The : At the Battle of the Wilderness, May Oth, 1804 Waiting for the Enemy 404 Battery Captured by the Eighteenth Army Corps.. 396 Battle of Spottsylvania Courthouse. May 8th, 1804. 405 Hurnside s Corps Charging the Confederate Posi tion in Front of Petersburg 307 Caissons and Horses on the Field at Bristoe Station. 403 Capture of Three Confederate Guns by General Custer s Cavalry Brigade!)57 Carrying a Portion of Deaurcgard s Line in Front of Petersburg 420 Confederate Station near Bcvcrley Ford ;.. 412 Contrabands Coming into the Federal Camp 401 Discovering Unburled Federal Dead on the Old Battlefield of Hull Run 367 Explosion of a Torpedo under the Ovmmwlore Hartley, on Jatnes River, August 4th, 1803... 434 General Butler s Lines South of the James, Va.... 419 General Hooker s Army Marching past Mauassns. Va. 4?1 General Meade Recrossitig the Rappahannock before Lee s Advance 413 Hospital Scene after the Battle of Bristoe; Station.. 486 Railroad Bridge over the Rappahanhock Station... 470 Roemer s Battery, Third Division, Ninth Artiiy Corps, Shelling Petersburg 415 Sheridan s Great Battle with J. E. B. Stuart at Yel low Tavern, May llth, 1864 424. 425 Storming a Fort on the Right of the Confederate Line before Petersburg 437 The Twenty-second Colored Regiment, Duncan s Brigade, Carrying the First Line of Confed erate Works before Petersburg 437 War on the Red itiver. The : Admiral Porter s Fleet Passing through Colonel Bailey s Dam above Alexandria 402 Waterhouse s Battery before Vicksburg 363 Wharf Boat at Carrollton, 111.. Opposite Howesville, Ky. 275 Winter Quarters on the Rappahanuock 316 White House Landing, Pamuukey River, Va 142 INDEX TO HISTORY. A. Allatoona Pass, Capture of 498, 499 Antietam Creek. Battle of 474, 475. 47G Army of the Potomac Goes into Winter Quarters..48], 482 Army of the Potomac, Movement of the..494, 495, 49(i, 497 Atlanta Taken 498, 499 Averill. Brilliant Exploit of General 482, 483 B. Bauks s Attempt to Recover Texas 492, 494 Baton Rouge, Battle of 47(5. 477, 478 Beauregard Transferred to the West 463, 4G4, 405 Belmont, Battle of 461, 4(12, 463 Bentonville, Battle of 499, 500, 501 Big Bethel. Battle of 451, 452, 453 Bowling Green, Confederate Retreat from 4C>5, 46fi, Buchanan, Election of 449, Bull Kun, Battle of 459, 460, Bull Run, Second Battle of 469, 470, 471, Buruside Made Commander, Army of the Potomac, 474, 475 Butler at Bermuda Hundred 497, Bragg Evacuates Chattanooga. 482, Brave Drummer Boy. A 474. 475, Brown, Raid of John 449, Brown s Ferry, Capture of 485, 486, 487, 467 450 461 474 476 498 483 476 450 490 c. Call for Troops, Answering the 451, 452, 453 Carnifex Ferry, Battle at 461, 462, 463 Carthage, Engagement at 459, 460, 461 Charleston, Desolation of 490, 491 Charleston Taken 499, 500, 501 Chickamanga, Battle of 483, 484, 485 Cold Harbor, Battle of 497, 498 Columbus, Bombardment of 461, 462, 463 Conclusion 510, 511. 512 Confederacy, Formation of 449, 450 Confederacy, Great Britain Ignores the 491, 492 Confederate Government Made a Permanent One, 478. 479, 480 481 Confederate Government, President and Cabinet of, 478, 479, 480 481 Confederate Ram Arkanmn 476, 477, 478 Congress Authorizes the Raising of Troops and Money, 453, 454, 458 459 Congress, Extraordinary Session of 453, 454, 458, 459 Constitution, Amendments to the 510, 511, 512 Oorinth, Battle of 474, 475, 476 D. Dahlgren, Death of Colonel 494, 495, 496, 497 Davis and his Cabinet, Flight of 503, 506, 507 Davis Captured 503, 506, 507 Dpvis s Declaration 501, 502, 503 Destruction of the Albemarle 498, 499 Destructive Raid, A 497, 498 Donelson, Fall of 465, 466, 467 Dorothea L. Dix s Benevolence 453, 454, 458, 459 Draft Riots in New V- 482, 483 Dred Scott Case Decision 449, 450 E. Early s Invasion of Maryland 497, 498 Efforts to Secure Peace 501, 502, 503 Ellsworth, Assassination of Colonel 451, 452, 453 Events Leading to the War 449, 450 Exchange of Prisoners 508, 509, 510 F. Jfarragnt s Bravery 499, 300, 501 Five Forks, Battle of 501, 502, 503 Floyd and Pillow, Cowardly Flight of 465, 466, 467 Fort Donelson, Assault on 465, 466, 467 Fort Gaiues, Capture of 499, 500, 501 Fort Hindmau, Capture of 478, 479, 480, 481 Fort Morgan, Capture of 499, 500, 501 Fort Pillow, Massacre at 492, 494 Forts Henry andHeiman, Siege and Capture of.. 463, 464, 465 Fort Sumter, Attempts to Take 490, 491 Fort Sumter, Bombardment, and Destruction of....490, 491 Fort Sumter, Bombardment of 450, 451 Fort Sumter, Evacuation of 450, 451 Franklin, Battle near 482. 483 Fremont s Plan for Reaching New Orleans....459, 460, 461 Fredericksburg. Battle of 474, 475, 476 G. Gaines s Mill, Struggle at 469. 470, 471, 474 Gallant Charge 481, 482 Galveston, Surrender of 476, 477, 478 Gettysburg, Battle of 481, 482 " Give Them the Cold Steel " 483, 484. 485 Glendale, Battle of 469, 470. 471. 474 Government Buildings at Harper s Ferrry. Burning of, 450 451 Government Resources, Condition of the 450, 451 Government Peculiar Position of the 508, 509, 510 Grant and Lee, Correspondence between 501, 502, 503 Grant in Command, Military Division of the Missis sippi 485,486,487, 490 Grant Made Lieutenant General 491, 492 Grant s Army before Petersburg 497, 498 Grant Takes Jackson 478, 479, 480, 481 Gosport Navy Yard, Loss of the 450, 451 Growing Antagonism of the North and South 449. 450 Guerrillas, The 474, 475, 476 H. Helena, Confederate Attack on 491, 492 Hooker Succeeds Burnside 474. 475, 476 Horrible Scene, A 491, 492 Hostilities Ended 503, 506, 507 I. Island No. 10, Capture of 465, 466, 467 luka, Battle of 474, 475, 476 J- Johnson and Congress, President 510, 511, 512 Johnston Succeeded by General J. B. Hood 498, 499 Johnston Surrenders to Sherman 503, 506, 507 K. Kautz s Raid, General 497, 498 Kea/rsa/rge and Alnbamn, The 499, 500, 501 Kilpatrick s Raid 494, 495, 496, 497 Knoxville Besieged 485, 486, 487, 490 L. Lawrence, Kalis., Massacre at 491, 492 Lee s Retreat 481, 482 Lexington, Siege of 461, 462, 463 Liberal Contributions.507, 508 Lincoln, Assassination of.. 503, 506, 507 Lincoln, Election of 449, 450 Lincoln s Inauguration 450, 451 Little John Clem and the Confederate Colonel.. 483, 484, 485 Lookout Mountain, Battle of 485, 486, 487. 490 Lyon, Death of General 459, 460, 461 M. Malvern Hill 469, 470, 471, 474 McClellan Appointed General in Chief 461, 462, 463 McClellan Seeks a New Position 469, 470, 471 474 McClellan s Hesitation 474, 475, 476 McPherson, Death of General James B 498, 499 McRae, Bravery of Captain 463, 464, 465 Mechanicsville. Battle of 469, 470, 471, 474 Mill Springs, Battle of 463, 464, 465 Missionary Ridge, Battle of 485, 486, 487, 490 Missouri, Events in 476, 477, 478 Missouri, War in 459, 460. 461 Mobile, Fall of 499, 500, 501 Monitor and Merrimac 463, 464, 465 Monster Gun, A 490, 491 Morgan s Raid 482, 483 Munfordville, Battle of 474. 475, 476 Murfreesborough, Battle of 476, 477, 478 N. Navy in the War, The 503, 506, 507 Negro in the War, The 507, 508 No Quarter " 492, 494 P. Pea Ridge, Battle of 4f,3, Perryville, Battle of 474, Petersburg, Fall of 501, 1 etrfCs Mistake, The 453, 454, Pickeus, Speech of Governor.... Plotting for Disunion Polk, Death of Bishop Prairie Grove and Labadieville, Battle at 476, Preparations for Seizing the Capital 451, President and McClellan, Disagreement of the, 467, President s Call for Troops, The Price Driven into Arkansas 463, Price Invades Missouri Proclamation of Emancipation 478, 479. Putnam, Death of Colonel 464 475 465 476 502, 503 458, 459 450, 451 449, 450 498, 499 477, 478 452, 453 468, 469 450, 451 464, 465 492, 494 480, 481 490, 491 R. Rappahannock Station, Capture of 481, 482 Reconstruction Committee 510. 511, 512 Reorganization 510, 511, 512 Return of the Seceding States to the Union....510, 511, 512 Richmond Captured 501. 502, 503 Rich Mountain, Capture of 453, 454, 458, 459 Roanoke Island, Capture of 461, 462. 463 Rosecrans Driven Back to Chattanooga 483, 484, 485 Rosecrans s Supplies Cut Off 485, 486, 487, 490 s. Sabine Pass, Attempt to Capture 491, 492 Savage s Station, Conflict at 4jl >9, 470, 471, 474 Sedgwick, Death of General 494, 495, 496, 497 Shaw, Death of Colonel 490, 491 Sheridan s Ride 497, 498 Sherman Moves toward Atlanta.498, 499 Sherman s March to the Sea 498, 499 Sherman s Raid 492, 494 Hhiloh, or Pittsburg Landing, Battle of 465, 466, 467 Sick and Wounded, Care of 507, 508 Sixth Massachusetts Regiment Attacked by a Mob, 451, 452 453 Slavery Abolished by Congress 507, 508 Slavery Considered a National Institution 449, 450 Steele Takes Little Rock, General 491, 492 Southern People. The 508, 509, 510 Spottsylvania, Conflict at 494, 495, 496, 497 Stoneman B Raid 499, 500, 501 " Stonewall " Jackson 459, 460, 461 Streight, Expedition of General. 482, 483 Strong. Death of General 490, 491 Stuart s Raid 469, 470, 471, 474 Surrender of Lee s Army 501, 502, 503 Surrender, Terms of 501, 502, 503 T. Terrible Cannonade,..482, 483 Terrible Loss of Life 494, 495, 496, 497 Thomas s Gallant Stand 485, 486 Treatment of Union Soldiers in Confederate Prisons, 508 510 Trent Affair 461, 462, 463 Two Noble Organizations 507, 508 u. Unconditional Surrender 485, 466, 467 Unfair Exchange, An 508, 509, 519 V. Vicksburg Batteries, Running by the 478, 479, 480, 481 Vicksburg, Efforts o Take 476, 477, 478 Vicksburg, Siege of 478, 479, 480, 481 Virginia Peninsula, Opening the Campaign in, 467, 468, 469 w. Wagner, Assault on Fort 490, 491 Washington, Critical Condition of 451, 452, 453 Western Virginia, War in 453, 454, 459 460 Winchester, Battle of 467, 468, 469 Wilderness, Battle of the 494, 495, 496^ 497 Williamsburg, Engagement at 467, 468, 469 Wilson s Creek, Battle of 459, 460, 461 Woman s Work in the War.453, 454 458, 459 THE CIVIL WAR OF 1861 65. NU&TBER OF MEN IN THE UNION ARMY FURNISHED BY EACH STATE AND TERRITORY, FROM APRIL 15. 18(51, TO CLOSE OF WAR. STATES AND TERRITORIES. NUMBER OF MEN FURNISHED. AGGREGATE REDUCED TO A THREE VEAB8 STANDING. STATES AND TERRITORIES. NUMBER OP MEN FURNISHED. AGGREGATE REDUCED TO A THREE YEARS STANDING. 2,55(5 8.280 15.725 4,903 56,864 12,284 1,290 1,611 7,836 15,725 3.697 50,633 10,322 1,290 New York 448,850 3,166 313.180 1.810 337,936 23,236 392,270 3.150 240,514 1,773 265,517 17,866 North Carolina. Ohio.. Oregon Connecticut Pennsylvania... Rhode Island Florida South Carolina Georgia... Tennessee.... 31,092 1.965 33,288 26,391 1,632 29,068 Illinois.. 259.09- 214.133 153,576 68,630 18,706 70.832 4,654 56.776 41,275 124,104 80.111 19.693 545 80.530 2.175 1.080 30.849 57.908 Texas. Indiana 196,363 76,242 20,149 75,760 5,221 70,107 46.638 146.730 87,364 24,020 545 109,111 3,157 1,080 33,937 76,814 Vermont Iowa... Virginia West Virginia 82,068 91,327 206 16,534 3.530 27,714 79,260 206 1,506 3.530 Louisiana.. Dakota District of Columbia Massachusetts Montana 6,561 4,432 Minnesota Utah. 964 964 Missouri U. S. Armv Nebraska U. S. Volunteers.11.789 2,326.168 93,441 2.778.304 New Hampshire.. Total The number of casualties in the volunteer and regular armies of the United States during the War of 1861 65 according to a statement prepared by the Adjutant General s Office, was as follows: Killed in battle. (57,058: died of wounds. 43,012 ; died of disease, 199,720: other causes, such as accidents, murder. Confederate prisons etc.. 40, 154 ; total died, 349,944: total deserted. 199.1(15. Number of soldiers in the Confederate service who died of wounds or disease (partial statement). 133.821. Deserted (partial statement). 104.428. Number of United States troops captured during the war. 212,608: Confederate troops captured, 476,11)9. Number of United States troops paroled on the field, 1(5,431 : Confederate troops paroled on the field, 248.599. Number of United States troops who died while prisoners, 30,15(1: Confederate troops who died while prisoners, 30.152. NAMES AND PLACFS OF BATTLES. PRINCIPAL BATTLES OF THE LATE CIVIL WAR. FEDERAL. COMMANDERS. KILLED, WOUNDED, PRISONERS. CONFEDERATE. CONFEDERATE. 1861. April 12 Bombardment Fort Suinter. Major Anderson General Beauregard no one hurt. 5 w. April 19 Riot at Baltimore Sixth Regiment Mass. Vols.. :! k. 7 w. 7k. and 8 w. June 10 Big Bethel. Va lirigadier General Pierce... Major General Magruder 1C. k. 34 w. (i in. no report July 5 Carthage. Mo Colonel Sigel* Generals Price and Jackson.... 13 k. 31 \v. 250 k. and w. July 12 Rich Mountain, \V. Va General McClellan* Colonel Pegrain 11 k. 35 w. 140 k. 150 w. July 21 Bull Run. Va General Irwiu McDowell... General Beauregard* 4.50(1 k. w. p. 28 c...481 k. 1,011 w. 700 p. - 1.852 k. and w. Aug. 10 Wilson s Creek. Mo General Lvon* Generals Price and McCulloch.....223k. 721 w. 292 m....421 k. 1.317 \v. 3 m. Sept. 12 14.. Cheat Mountain. \\. Va General J. J. Reynolds General R. K. Lee 13 k. 20 w. 60 p.....100 k. and w. 20 p. Sept. 20 Lexington, Mo Colonel Mulligan General Price...42 k. 108 w. 1,624 p. 25 k. 75 w. Sept. 21 Ball s Hluff. Va Colonel K. I). Baker General Evans....220 k. 26(5 w. 500 p. 36 k. 204 w. 2 p. Nov. 7 Belniont, Mil General Grant* 84 k. 288 w. 285 in.....2(11 k. 427 w. 278m. Nov. 7 Port R..yal. S. ( ( Commodore Dupont A: 1 l Gen. T. W. Sherman* \ General Dravton 8 k. 23 w. 250 p. * k. and w. no report. ) 1 2.500 p. 42 guns cap i Nov. 8 Piketon. Kv General Nelson* 6 k. 24. w...400 k. and w. 2.000 p. Dec. 18 Milford, Mo ( Colonel J. C. Davis and) j General Steele* i 2k. 17 w. 1.300 p. 1862. Jan. 19 Feb. 8 Feb. 8 Feb. 16 March 8.... March 14... March 23.. Mill Spring, Ky Roauoke Island, N. C Fort Henry. Tenn... Fort Donelson. Tenn. Pea Ri<: Ark. t ea Kidge. New Berne. N. C. Winchester. Va... General Thomas* i Coin. Goldsborough and / ( General Burnside... \ Surrendered to Com. Koote. ( Commodore Foote and > / General Grunt ) General Curtis* General Burnside. General Shields.. April 6 7... Pittsburg Landing Tenn... Generals Grant and Buell. April 10 Island No. 10 May 5 Williamsburg. Va (Commodore Foote and i General Pope (ieueral Zollicoffer 39. k. 207 w. General Wise 50 k. 150 w. General Tilghman General Buckner 44(1 k. 1.735 w. 150 p. Generals Van Dorn and Price 1.351 k w. and m. General Branch 91 k. 466 w. General T. J. Jackson 100 k. 400 w. Generals Johnston it Beauregard ;, f.,,~. General Maekall.. 150 p., loss of camp. ( Beauregard s report. i Federal report. General Lvou killed. Colonel Baker killed. 70 wagons with stores ( and equipage. 192 k. 140 p General Zollicoffer kill d.....30 k. 50 w. 2.500 p. 231 k. 1.007 w. 15.000 p. 1,100k. 2.500 w. 1.600]). 50 k. 200 w. 200 p....600 k. and w. 300 p. 1,728 k. 8,012 w. 959m. May 25 May 29 May 30 May 31 June 1 June 8 June 9 June 26 June 27 Jnly 1 August 5.... August 9.... August 22... August 27... August 29... August 30... Aug. 29-30.. Sept. 1 Sept. 14.... Sept. 15... Sept. 17 Sept. 19 20. Oct. 3-5.... Oct. 8 Dec. 7 Dec. 13 Dec. 27 29 1868. Jan. 2 Jan. 11 Feb. 3.. May 1. Winchester, Va Hanover Courthouse, Va. Corinth, Miss Fair Oaks, Va Fair Oaks, Va Cross Keys, Va Port Republic, Va Chickahoniiny. Va Gaines s Mill, Va... < Generals Kearny ( Hooker* General Banks.. and General Morell... General Halleck.. General McClellau..53 k. 526 m. General McClellan. General Fremont... General Shields General McClellan.. (ieneral Porter.. General Lougstreet 2,073 k. and w. 623 p. Generals Ewell & Johnson* General Branch.... General Beauregard General J. E. Johnston* 890 k. 3.627 w. 1 General J. E. Johnston 5.739 k. General T. J. Jackson* 125 k. General T. J. Jackson* i 67 k. 361 w. General R. E Lee....80 k. 17 k. 6,300 p...700k. 1,000 w. 300 p....400 ic. and w. 600 p. Malvern Hill, Va Baton Rouge, La Cedar Mountain, Va.. Gallatin, Tenn Kettle Run, Va.. General McClellan... General Williams.... General N. P. Banks..222 p. and w. 500 w. 574 m. 150 w. and m. and m. and m. and m. General Johnson (ieneral Hooker (Generals Hooker, Sigel, I < Kearny, Reno j (ieneral Pope Groveton, Va Bull Run 2d Richmond. Ky Chantilly, Va". South Mountain, Md Harper s Ferry, 3 days siege Antietam, Md" luka, Miss Corinth, Miss Perryville, Ky Prairie Grove, Ark... Generals Blunt & Hernui.. Generals Manson <fe Cruft... General Pope Generals Hooker and Reno* Colonel Miles General McClellan* General Rosecrans* I Generals Ord, Hurlbut I and Veatch* i General Buell.. Fredericksbnrg. Va. Vickslmrg, Miss General Burnside. (ieneral Sherman. General R. E. Lee* 7.500 k. w. General R. E. Lee 1,000 k. w. General J. C. Breckinridge 250 k. w. General Jackson 1.500 k. w. General Morgan* 64 k. 100 w General Ewell 800 k. w. Generals Jackson <fe Longstreet 6,000 k. and w. General Lee* 800 k. 4,000 w. 3,000 p. General Kirby Smith* 200 k. 700 w. 2,000 p. General Lee* 1,300 k. and w. General Lee 443 k. 1,806 w. 76 m. General A. P. Hill* 80 k. 120 w. 11.583 p. General R. E. Lee 12.500 loss. General Price 135 k. 527 w. (Generals Price, Van Dorn:.. 315 k. j 8 i 2 w. 232 in. I and Lovell > Geuer.-l Bragg 3,200 k. w. and m. (Generals Ilindman. Marina- >, () - ^ (;oo w i duke. Parsons and Front.) General R. E. Lee* 1.512k. (1,000 w. 2.078 p. General Johnston....191 k. 982 w. 756 m. May 1 May 2... ; Stone River, Tenn General Rosecrans. Fort Hindnmn, Ark...< Admiral Porter & (Jen-) i eral MeClernand.... Fort Donelson, Tenn Colonel Harding Suffylk, Va Colonel Nixon* La Grange, Ark j Captain DeHuff Frederii-ksburg, Va...... \| General Sedgwick 2,800 k. 3897 w. 8,000 k. and w. 600 k. and w.....1.000 k. w. and m. 1.000 k. and w. About the same. Nearly 5.000 600 k. w. and in. 1,000k. 1.500 w. 200 p. \| 110 k. and w. and m...800 k. and w. 1,000 p. 12,000k. w. and m. 700k. 3.000 w. 250 k. 500 w. 800 k. and w. 500 k. 2,343 w. 1.500 p. 1,500 k. and w. 15.000 loss. 263 k. 400 w. 600 p. 1,423k. 2.268 p. 5,C92w. 1,300 k. 3,000 w. 200 ji. 1,500 k. and w. 1.800 k. and w. no report. (6 forts. 65 guns, 17.500 I small arms captured. Generals McCulloch, Mclntosh and Slack killed. ( 6 forts captured. "(Confederate report. Federals retreated, 2,000 prisoners captured. Federals were driven back. General Williams killed. Confederates repulsed. General Johnson cap d. Kearuy and Stevens kd. General Reno killed. Colonel Milui killed. General Bragg 1,533 k. 6.000 w. 9,000 k. and w. 1.000 p. General Churchill 1.000 k. w. and m...550k. and w. 5.000 p. Generals Wheeler and Forrest 12 k. 20 w 100 k. 400 w. 300 p. 130 k. 718 w. 5 m 1.500 k. w. and m. 2,000 k. w. ami m General Longstreet* 2,000 k. and w. \| Confederu es repulsed. * Indicates the victorious party. PRINCIPAL BATTLES OF THE LATE CIVIL WAR- (Continued). DATES. NAMES AND PLACES OP BATTLES. COMMANDERS. KILLED, WOUNDED, PRI8ONKB8. REMARKS. FEDERAL. CONFEDERATE. FEDERAL. CONFEDERATE.. General E. E. Lee General Johnston..15.000k. &w. 17,000 p. 40 k. 240 w 6 m 18,000k. and w. 5,000 p 400 k and w 29 cannon captured. 17 cannon captured. Cavalry fight Rear guard Johnston s army. Longstreet wounded. 2 Confederate generals, 30 guns captured. Johnston flanked. McPherBon killed. 150 guns captured. Mav 12 Jiu-kwon Miss (it neral Grant. Lli t T May 14 May 16 May 18 22... May 27 Champion Hills, Miss liig Black River, Miss General Grant* General Pemberton. 426 k 1 842 w. General Pemberton 29 k 242 w 2 600 k w and m General til-nut. Admirals I Porter and Farragut. > General Pemberton.2,500 loss Port Hudson Milliken s B ul La... General Gardner General McCulloch 900 k. w. and m....127 k. 287 w. 157 m. 600 k. w. and m. 200 k 500 w General Thomas* June 9 Juuo 14 June 20 July 1-23.. July 4 Julv 4 Beverly Vonl, Vn Generals Buford and Gregg* General Milroy (Generals J. E. B. Stuart and> 380 k. w. and m. 750 k. w. and m. General Ewell* 2,000 k w and m General Rosecraus* General Meade* General Grant* General Bragg General R. E. Lee General Pemberton < Generals Price, Holmes and > 85 k. 468 w. 13m. total loss 23,198..245 k. 3,688 w. 303 p. 250 k. \v. and m. 1,634 p. no report k. t t w. total loss 37 000 9,000k. andw. 30,000 p...500 k. and w. 1,000 p. 4 000 p 1 (Vlmm. Ark.. General Preutiss* General Grant* General Joseph E. Johnston * Julv 8 Port Hudson surrenders.... Fort Wagner, 8. C General Banks* General Gardner 5 500 p July 18-19.. Sept 9 General Gillmore General Burnside* General Beauregard* General Fraz er 700 k. w. andm. 500 k. 331 w. 2 000 p Sept. 19-20.. Sept. 14 Dec. 4 Dec. 23-25.. Dec. 25 Dec. 27 rhiokamauga Bristow Station, Va Knoxville, Tenn General Rosecrans General Bragg..... 1. 1144 k. 9,262 w. 4,945m. 51 k. 329 w 17.000 k. w. and m. 1 200 k and w 800 p General Warren General Burnside* General Grant* General A. P. Hill General Longstivet 1 600 p General Bragg General Bragg 4,000k. and w. 16,000 k. w. and m. Missionary Kidge General Hooker* General Hooker* General Meade. General Hardee 800 k. w and m 300 i) Dec 27-30 General Lee General Forrest 1,000 k. w. and m. 14 k. 46 w. 2.5(1(1 k. \v. and p. 1.000 k. and w. 2 000 p 1864. March 5.... Pmlnrah. Kv Colonel Hii-ks April 8-9.... April 17-20.. May 5-7 Mansfield, La Plymouth NO. General Banks* General Kirby Smith.. 500 k. and w. 1 500 p General Wcssclls. General Hoke.150 k 1 700 p 1 500 k and w Wilderness, Va General Grant General Lee loss 30.000 loss 30 000 May 5 7.... May 12 May 12-1 5.. May 13-15.. May 25 -28... June 1 June 15 18 Spottsylvania, Va General Grant Spottsylvania Va General Grant. General Lee General Lee General Beauregard. loss 10,000 loss 10,000 4 000 p Fort Darling Va... General Butler."> 000 k w and in Kesaea, Ga General Sherman* Dallas Ga.. General Sherman* General Joseph K. Johnston 700 k 2 SOO \v General Longstreet General Lee* 1.KOO k. and w..l.OOO k \v and m..:() p. 4,000 k. and w. H 000 k w and m Cold Harbor Va. General Grant Pptprslmrp. YJI General Grant General Lee loss 10 000 June 22 Wpl
allow Mr Naseer to consult lawyers over a possible bail application. A Home Office spokeswoman said a full extradition request must be received and submitted to court within 65 days. Another hearing was set for 8 September, when a judge will decide if Mr Naseer, 24, can be extradited. Home Secretary Theresa May will have the final say. 'Significant threat' Mr Nasser appeared at the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court on Wednesday night, accused of planning attacks on Manchester city centre and communicating with al-Qaeda leaders behind the plot. Mr Naseer, who used to live in Manchester, is also accused of conspiracy to use a destructive device. Melanie Cumberland, for the US government, said he was alleged to have been an al-Qaeda operative who was motivated by "deeply held religious beliefs". She said: "The conspiracy was co-ordinated by al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan. The targets were in the US and in the UK. "Mr Naseer's particular involvement in the conspiracy is alleged to be that he and a number of associates prepared to carry out attacks between 15 and 20 April in Manchester city centre." Setting out US objections to any future bail application, Miss Cumberland said Mr Nasser was a "key part" of the UK conspiracy and posed a "significant threat" to the national security of the UK. The US believes senior figures in al-Qaeda had co-ordinated both operations from Pakistan. Suspects on the run In the US, Mr Naseer will be accused of conspiring alongside other al-Qaeda suspects to bomb the New York subway system last year. Senior officials in the US said the plot was one of the most dangerous since the 9/11 terror attacks. Two men have admitted planning to detonate home-made suicide bombs and a third is waiting for trial. Several suspects remain on the run, possibly along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Confirming his arrest on Wednesday, a Metropolitan Police spokesman said: "Naseer's extradition is sought by the United States government for the purposes of standing trial." Mr Nasser was arrested last April as part of a massive counter-terrorism operation in Liverpool and Manchester. Deportation blocked He was among 10 Pakistani nationals arrested. The security services believed the men were planning to attack within days of their arrest, but Mr Naseer was not charged. The government attempted to deport him and a second man, Ahmed Faraz Khan, 26, to Pakistan, but a judge blocked it on the grounds they could be tortured or face death in Pakistan. Mr Naseer won his appeal to stay in the UK in May although the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) said it believed Mr Naseer had posed a serious threat to national security. It found he had been sending e-mails to an "al-Qaeda operative" in Pakistan - the e-mails were said to be at the heart of a plot to bomb targets in north-west England. But Mr Justice Mitting said it would be wrong to return him to Pakistan. At the time, Home Secretary Theresa May said she was disappointed but would not be appealing against the ruling. She said: "We are now taking all possible measures to ensure they do not engage in terrorist activity." The coalition government later announced it was to create a commission to review the UK's Human Rights Act.Image caption The hearing was temporarily suspended after an attempt to throw foam over Mr Murdoch It's not every day the most powerful media mogul the world has ever seen - and his son - are hauled before a committee of mere backbench MPs. But predictions that this would be the modern day equivalent of the stocks - with those judged to have transgressed public morals being pelted with fruit, or at least with abuse - seemed far fetched as James Murdoch, very smoothly, and Rupert Murdoch, at times monosyllabically - adopted the strong defensive shield of ignorance and regret. Murdoch Sr had got off to a shaky start. We knew he was 80, but he seemed more frail - and certainly more human - than the figure of legend. Not so much a titan before whom all must tremble, as an elderly man on a day trip to the coast, mistakenly arrested for shoplifting. There were long pauses. He could not recall the details. He still had an old newspaper man's knack for grabbing headlines, dramatically interrupting son James to deliver a heartfelt declaration that he had been "humbled" by the phone hacking scandal. But under questioning from Labour MP Tom Watson - a softly-spoken Brummie - his grasp of the facts about what had gone on at the News of the World was not all it might have been. Flashes of steel In an organisation of 53,000 people - and with the now-defunct News of the World accounting for 1% of revenues - Murdoch and son were simply too far removed from some of the alleged dodgier practices of some of their employees, he explained. The rest of the committee did not quite scale the forensic heights of the West Bromwich MP. And Rupert Murdoch soon got into his stride, looking at times as if he was almost enjoying himself - although there were also flashes of the steel that has made him such a formidable figure, as he banged the table to emphasise a point. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Rupert Murdoch, his son James and Rebekah Brooks each denied knowledge of the alleged abuses at the NoW The MPs, meanwhile, got to grips with tricky problem of how to address a father and son team. Alan Keen went for "Mr Rupert" - striking a feudal note that can hardly have been the Labour MP's intention. Philip Davies decided he was going to be on first name terms with the Murdochs - like David Cameron or Gordon Brown at one of Mr Murdoch's now-infamous parties. His Tory colleague Damian Collins split the difference, addressing his questions to "Rupert Murdoch". Mrs Murdoch But just as those viewing proceedings from the public benches were getting restless and a little bored, they were treated to an act of theatre, if not farce, as Rupert Murdoch was accosted with the modern-day equivalent of a custard pie. A plate of shaving foam-was pushed in his general direction by a disgruntled protestor. The mogul's wife Wendi - sat behind him throughout and occasionally chipping in with advice and moral support - gave as good as Rupert got, stretching out to grab the "weapon" and then set about the protester. It was a massive distraction and led to the public benches being cleared, much to chagrin of some who had travelled from as far away as Vancouver to witness it. A Commons investigation into the incident is being launched. This one might even get somewhere. But while the Murdochs had been billed as the main event, there were some distractions of potentially much greater substance. The Murdochs' evidence did not take the scandal close to the door of Number 10 - indeed, Rupert said he had "gone in the back way" at Downing Street to meet David Cameron after last year's election. It had been Downing Street's idea though, not his, he said. He had seen a lot more of Gordon Brown - their children played together and their two wives got on famously. But at an earlier session of the home affairs committee, Assistant Commissioner John Yates said, almost en passant, that Mr Cameron's chief of staff Ed Llewellyn had rejected an offer of a briefing on phone hacking allegations published by the New York Times in September 2010. Even as the Murdochs were being cross examined, the exchange of emails between Mr Yates and Ed Llewellyn were released by Downing Street. Phone hacking is not referred to directly - an omission Labour claims has more to do with Andy Coulson's presence in Downing Street at the time than any desire to respect the operational decisions of the police. Not, perhaps, a smoking gun for David Cameron - but potentially more ammunition for the Opposition than the Murdochs' select committee double act provided. The same might also be said of the home affairs committee's somewhat overlooked second session. While we were all transfixed by a man with a shaving foam custard pie, Keith Vaz and his panel were examining former Director of Public Prosecutions Lord Macdonald. As an "arms length" legal adviser to News International, he had reviewed material which the company has since handed to investigating officers. It had, he told the committee, contained evidence of serious criminal offences. So while the Murdochs took centre stage today, perhaps more attention should have been paid to the noises off.Louisville City FC is considering building its planned stadium in New Albany, Ind., with government officials there actively courting club leaders for the $20 million to $30 million project. Chairman John Neace said that the club had narrowed the potential locations for a stadium to two — down from four — and though he wouldn’t talk specifics, IL has learned that New Albany is in the running, at least as a fallback option. “We desperately need a stadium, or quite honestly, the team will probably have to go elsewhere,” Neace told IL in an interview in the club’s downtown offices. Without revenue from sponsorships and concessions, the club is unlikely to be able to sustain itself and to keep growing, he said. New Albany officials said they would welcome the investment of a new stadium and would consider some public support to lure the venue to Indiana. New Albany Mayor Jeff Gahan told IL that city leaders had held “preliminary discussions” with Neace and proposed a couple of sites. Gahan and New Albany City Council President Patrick McLaughlin said that the soccer stadium could address the city’s need for a large venue, which city leaders have identified as a catalyst for growth. New Albany is seeing a lot of public and private sector investments, Gahan said. Floyd County voters in November approved $87 million in construction renovations that will include the rebuilding of two elementary schools. A $16 million, high-end housing development, with nearly 200 apartments downtown is expected to welcome its first tenants any day. And a new hotel is planned for State Street. The city is improving roads and minimizing traffic by eliminating one-way streets, and entrepreneurs have added lots of retail and dining options, including breweries, a winery and a new steakhouse, said Gahan, who became mayor five years ago after serving eight years on the council. “I think New Albany has some momentum,” Gahan said. “I think we have the right atmosphere that would lend itself to developing a great soccer audience.” A sports venue also could foster additional growth, with hotels, bars and restaurants, and would benefit people across the whole county, he said. “A soccer stadium would be very exciting,” the mayor said. McLaughlin, the city council president, said he understands soccer’s growing audience and its potential as an economic driver. McLaughlin said he played the sport growing up, as did his sons. The president of a local LouCity FC fan club said he viewed the possibility of a stadium across the river with mixed emotions. “I would prefer downtown Louisville, but I also understand the reality of the finances. I would rather have a club in New Albany than no club at all,” said Ken Luther, president of The Coopers. However, Luther said that over the long haul, building the stadium in New Albany would be “shortsighted” and would hurt growth and attendance. “Playing in New Albany would likely deter casual fans and limit attendance, especially with bridge tolls, lack of public transportation, etc.,” he said via email. Neace said that a stadium in New Albany would be only a short drive away and would not deter fans, especially in the right venue. With growth in Louisville, Jeffersonville, Clarksville and New Albany, the entire metro area is going to look a lot different three to five years from now, he said. Financing the stadium remains a major challenge. While generally supportive of the club, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer has said that “a significant portion” of the stadium funding would have to come from the private sector. And if the club builds its stadium in Indiana, Louisville Metro Government will not participate, said Jeff Mosley, deputy chief of Louisville Forward, the city’s economic development arm. The club played its first two seasons at Slugger Field, home of the Louisville Bats, to great athletic success, twice reaching the Eastern Conference Final, losing last year in a penalty shootout to eventual United Soccer League champion New York Red Bulls II. LouCity’s fan support ranked third out of 29 teams in the third-division USL. However, the club lost $1 million last year, and Neace said that while finances are improving and the loss will be smaller this year, the club may continue to incur losses unless it builds a soccer-specific stadium. Neace pegged the cost of the venue between $20 million and $30 million. A stadium would increase the club’s revenue stream because of naming rights, other advertising and concession sales, luxury seating and revenue generated by hosting other events, such as concerts, Neace said. The importance of a soccer-specific stadium also is increasing because the USL has said that it wants every team to play in its own 10,000-seat stadium, he said. Slugger Field eventually will not suffice for a USL club, Neace said, because the pitch is too small and uneven, in that it contains a mix of artificial and natural surfaces. “You need to play soccer in a soccer stadium,” he said. And if LouCity wants to play in the first division Major League Soccer — an eventual goal the owners have identified — it needs a 20,000-seat stadium. It makes no sense to build a smaller stadium first only to build a bigger one later, Neace said, so the local owners want to build a 10,000-seat stadium that eventually could be expanded to 20,000 seats. “The owners do understand that and are committed to getting there,” he said. Neace in September succeeded Wayne Estopinal, a local architect and driving force behind the club who had gotten Neace involved in LouCity FC. The appointment of Neace, a local venture capitalist, reflected a sense of urgency in the club’s pursuit of a stadium. Neace said that LouCity FC is working with two companies that are preparing renderings and financing options for a stadium in two Louisville-area locations, which he declined to identify. A $75,000 Louisville Metro-financed study had identified four possible sites that the city kept secret to prevent land speculation. Neace said that he expects the stadium and the club’s planned soccer academy to be built in two locations, because of space constraints. That means, for example, the academy could be in downtown Louisville, with a stadium in New Albany, or vice versa. Or either venue could be at the east or west ends of Louisville. Public-private partnership Neace said that the club owners, of which there are about 30 (though Estopinal is no longer among them), would have to raise millions of dollars to get the project started, with a bond to be paid back with revenue generated by the venue. The chairman acknowledged that it’s unlikely the club will be able to persuade any municipality to commit tens of millions of dollars “for a playground for millionaires,” but he said a public-private partnership makes a lot of sense because the venue could bring lots of people downtown and even attract talent from other areas. That would address one of the area’s big economic development challenges: Some employers have said that even with wages that are twice the federal minimum wage they’re struggling to attract good employees. To lure the stadium, a municipality could, for example, create a tax increment financing district, which would direct property taxes collected from growth in the district — hotel, restaurants, bars — to be used to help pay off the stadium bond. But that approach, too, bears some financial risks, as Louisville Metro government’s experience with the Yum! Center has shown. Neace said he approached the club’s other owners recently and shared with them LouCity FC’s financial situation, how much they need to raise to continue to operate the club and how much they would need on top of that for the stadium. He said he asked them whether they were in or out. “Most of the people are still in,” he said. Neace, whose venture capital firm is based in New Albany, said that he got involved with the club initially for family and financial reasons and still believes that LouCity FC will be a good investment eventually. Neace has followed soccer for years because his two adult sons played through high school. He traveled with them to Brazil in 2014 to watch some World Cup matches. He initially viewed his involvement with LouCity FC as a continuation of the family’s love for soccer, giving him and his sons more opportunities to spend time together. But the businessman in him also sees the soccer club as a financial opportunity. “I really think that over time … it will be a very good investment for my children,” he said. Neace said the owners know what they need, and he has a “pretty good degree of confidence” that a local soccer stadium can be built. Both New Albany officials told IL that while the club has not asked them for specific means to support for the stadium, the city has economic development tools, such as TIFs, to be able to make a good case for hosting the stadium construction. Construction plan Neace said that within the next 45 to 60 days, the club will get the renderings and details on stadium costs and financing options, at which point he will seek feedback from fans and owners. He said he hopes to announce the project before the end of the first quarter and begin demolition in the second quarter. If all goes as planned, the club could begin hosting games at its new home in summer or fall of 2019. Whatever happens with the stadium, the club will make at least one move next year: The lease on its offices, 127 6th Street, is running out in October. The building is owned by Estopinal and previously served as the headquarters of his architectural firm, TEG Architects, which is now based in Jeffersonville. Neace said the club is looking for a new office location and plans to keep its offices in downtown Louisville. Clarification: One sentence in this post was changed to eliminate potential confusion about whether the city of New Albany is one of the two finalists the club is considering for a stadium.A federal regulatory agency on Friday upheld its findings, including a $2.63 million fine, against Exxon Mobil Pipeline Co. as a result of an oil spill in a Mayflower neighborhood just over three years ago. Document Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration decision View Even so, the case may not be over. Exxon Mobil spokesman Ashley Smith Alemayehu said the company, a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil Corp., was evaluating it options, including a possible court appeal. One major concern for the oil giant appears to be that part of a compliance order would apply to all of the company's older, pre-1970 electric-resistance welded pipe, not just that on the Pegasus pipeline. The Pegasus pipeline cracked open March 29, 2013, between two houses in Mayflower's Northwoods subdivision, spilling tens of thousands of gallons of heavy crude into the neighborhood, drainage ditches and a cove of Lake Conway. Only a 211-mile section of the roughly 850-mile-long pipeline, running from Patoka, Ill., to Nederland, Texas, has resumed service since the accident. Twenty-two houses were evacuated, some for months. Some residents never moved back, and three of the homes were demolished. Exxon Mobil has told federal authorities that the accident caused $57 million in property damages. "The pipeline remains down, and at this time we do not have plans to submit a revised remedial work plan," Alemayehu said in an email. According to the order by the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, Exxon Mobil had argued that the agency should withdraw its compliance order "because the Company committed no violations." "In the alternative, [Exxon Mobil Pipeline Co.] argued the Compliance Order is overbroad and an abuse of discretion because some provisions apply to all pre-1970 ERW [electric resistance welded] pipe subject to the Company's [integrity management plan], not just the Pegasus Pipeline." The agency countered that it has the authority to issue orders directing compliance with integrity-management regulations. Further, it said, "The Final Order also found the corrective actions were appropriately tailored to ensure [Exxon Mobil] considers the risk of seam failures on its pre-1970 [electric resistance welded] pipe covered by the regulation." Jeffrey Wiese, the government's associate administrator for pipeline safety, notified Exxon Mobil of the decision in a letter Friday. "When the civil penalty assessed in the Final Order has been paid and the terms of the compliance order completed, as determined by the Director, Southwest Region, the enforcement action will be closed. This decision constitutes the final administrative action in this proceeding," Wiese told Gerald Frey, global pipeline manager and president for Exxon Mobil Pipeline Co. In November 2013, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration notified Exxon Mobil that the oil giant had committed nine violations of federal safety regulations in connection with the accident. The agency proposed a civil penalty of $2,659,200 and corrective action but later lowered that to $2,630,400 -- the sum upheld Friday. Exxon Mobil appealed that decision under a safety-agency process. When that didn't go as well as the oil giant wanted, it appealed again, asking for reconsideration. Any other appeal now would have to be to a court. Upheld findings included: • The oil company failed to establish a continual assessment schedule for the Pegasus based on all of the risk factors. Exxon Mobil should have considered the Pegasus, built in 1947-48, susceptible to seam failure since the type of pipe used was known to have an increased risk of seam failure, in part because of manufacturing defects such as hook cracks. That is exactly what Exxon Mobil has said caused the pipeline's rupture in Mayflower. • Exxon Mobil failed to perform an integrity assessment of the Pegasus pipeline at an interval not to exceed five years or 68 months using a method that could assess seam integrity. • The company failed to notify the federal Office of Pipeline Safety that it planned to exceed the five-year interval for performing a seam integrity assessment. • Exxon Mobil failed to prioritize its pipeline segments properly for reassessment when it performed a seam integrity assessment of the Patoka-to-Conway segment in 2010 but waited until 2012-13 to do the same check on the Conway-to-Corsicana, Texas, segment. It was in that latter segment that the Mayflower accident occurred. • Exxon Mobil failed to reduce operating pressure temporarily or to shut down its pipeline until it completed certain repairs. • The company failed to obtain information about its pipeline conduction no later than 180 days after an integrity assessment, unless that period was impracticable. • Exxon Mobil failed to follow its own procedures for identifying changed conditions and its procedures for determining if changes required updating the risk assessment. • The company failed to follow procedures associated with its integrity management program when it did not follow instructions for using its threat identification and risk assessment program. • The company didn't implement and follow provisions of its integrity management plan when it merged four testable pipeline segments into two. State Desk on 04/02/2016Accelerator physicists have a vision: an energy-efficient X-ray source that can make high-resolution movies of molecules in chemical reactions. And the US National Science Foundation (NSF) has backed the dream — since 2005, it has invested more than US$50 million to develop such a source, most likely beneath the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. But there is one big problem: despite the inflow of cash, no US government agency has any plans to build the machine. The source, called an energy recovery linear accelerator (ERL), would be a hybrid of a synchrotron, in which electrons emit X-rays while whirling around a ring, and a free-electron laser, in which straight beams of electrons are induced to produce bright pulses of X-ray light. The Cornell project is currently receiving $27 million in a single award from the NSF’s materials division — by far the division’s largest grant for instrument development. But in July, the ERL concept was ranked the lowest of three potential next-generation X-ray sources by an advisory panel to the US Department of Energy. And in December, officials at the NSF told Nature that the agency has no plans to move forward with construction. Despite all this, Thomas Rieker, the NSF programme manager for the ERL materials grant, says that the research effort has been a success, providing component designs that would allow an accelerator to be built quickly. “We wanted to keep our options open,” he says. “That was the impetus for funding it.” Source: Cornell Univ. An NSF advisory panel had strongly recommended in 2008 that the NSF invest in an ERL. So why the turnaround? Agency officials now say that the NSF’s priorities and the budgetary climate have changed, and that a machine costing upwards of $1 billion would not be a good use of taxpayers’ money. Some physicists are expressing frustration over seeing so much research money apparently going nowhere. “The NSF should really decide if there’s a real need for this in the country,” says Sunil Sinha, a condensed-matter physicist at the University of California, San Diego, who advised on the energy-department panel. The idea for an ERL was developed in 1965 by Cornell physicist Maury Tigner. It involves injecting electrons into a linear accelerator (linac) and then wiggling the particles to prompt the emission of X-ray pulses. The energy-recovery aspect comes from a loop that ushers the electrons gently around to enter the linac a second time. Their arrival is timed so that their energy is transferred to a new bunch of electrons that will then be accelerated. The approach has several advantages. For starters, it would be vastly more energy-efficient than a free-electron laser, which recovers no energy. That makes it practical to keep electrons streaming continuously, rather than in widely separated bunches. An ERL can also focus its electron beam, and hence the resulting X-rays, to a tighter spot than the beams in current synchrotron rings, which spread out as they lose energy going around in circles. This would allow for more-advanced studies of the atomic energy levels in materials. Japan and the United Kingdom have both expressed interest in building an ERL, and there is a small demonstration version of an infrared ERL at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Virginia. But Cornell’s plan is the most advanced X-ray ERL effort in the United States. “The NSF should really decide if there’s a real need for this.” Grant documents stress that the ERL research is not site-specific, meaning that it could feed into projects elsewhere. But most experts think that, if an ERL gets built, it would be at Cornell, where it could reuse the tunnels of an existing NSF-funded X-ray light source, the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (see ‘Electrons in recovery’). “We feel the construction of an ERL can go right ahead,” says Georg Hoffstaetter, an accelerator physicist who is leading the Cornell effort. The capabilities of an ERL would overlap with those of other planned light sources. In California, the Department of Energy has plans to build a free-electron laser, perhaps by upgrading the Linac Coherent Light Source at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California. This machine would provide images of materials with unprecedented resolution in space and time, using fast pulses of high-energy X-ray beams. Pulses of X-ray light from an ERL would not be as fast, but they would be gentler, and nearly continuous — more appropriate for probing sensitive samples such as biological specimens. However, next-generation ring-shaped light sources, such as an upgrade planned at the Advanced Photon Source near Chicago, Illinois, will also stream continuous light. Although less bright and lower in energy than an ERL, such sources would still prove useful for biological imaging. The energy department’s decision to go with the other machines will make it harder for the ERL to justify itself scientifically, says Paul Evans, a materials scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “Defining the niche they’re headed for is the critical challenge.” Even if the ERL is not built, Cornell scientists say that the research has been useful. Their work is aiding design of superconducting cavities for the Deparment of Energy’s future free-electron laser, which could also one day have energy-recovery loops tacked on. Cornell has also developed a high-current electron gun that could be used in other accelerators to generate X-rays or to study particle collisions. But although he takes satisfaction in the spin-off possibilities, Hoffstaetter is not ready to give up on the ERL’s construction. “The ERL is a wise investment,” he says.Less than a week after a mistrial was declared in Bill Cosby’s criminal case for the 2004 sexual assault of Andrea Constand, the actor shamelessly is getting ready to go on the road to teach people how to avoid being charged with sex crimes. “We have received hundreds of calls from civic organizations and churches who want to hear Mr. Cosby speak at town halls about the issue of criminal justice, how the deal he was given was taken away and the Willie Horton style ad that got the current D.A. in office and after Mr. Cosby,” Cosby’s spokesman Andrew Wyatt told Deadline today, confirming remarks he and fellow flack Ebonee Benson made on Alabama local TV earlier Thursday (see video below). “These organizations fear for young men and women today; this is bigger than Bill Cosby,” Wyatt added. “We have just started talks this week, but Birmingham is going to be one of the cities, perhaps Chicago and Detroit, lots of places,” Wyatt said of the tour that starts in July, which could come as the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office continues to move forward with a planned new trial by the end of the year. Wyatt had no comment on questions about the appropriateness or optics of such a tour by Cosby, who would have to register as a sex offender among his punishments if found guilty in a new trial. The PR rep was reprimanded by the judge in the Norristown, PA, courtroom for his remarks to the media during the trial that ended on June 17 after more than 50 hours of deliberations by the ultimately deadlocked jurors. Cosby, who turns 80 next month, faces more than 10 years in jail if convicted on three felony charges of second-degree aggravated indecent assault that the Montgomery County D.A. Kevin Steele still is charging the actor with. Cosby took to social media today in what sure felt like the opening salvo in a victory lap: Today, Steele’s office had no response about the announcement of the planned tour, but another lawyer representing several other women among the dozens and dozens who have said that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted them sure did. “Mr. Cosby’s so-called workshops appear to be a transparent and slick effort to attempt to influence the jury pool from which jurors will be selected for his second criminal trial,” Gloria Allred said Thursday. “Mr. Cosby should understand, however, that this is not about optics,” added the attorney, who was in Judge Steven O’Neill’s courtroom every day of the June 5-starting trial. “It is about evidence, and according to news reports at least 10 jurors out of 12 voted to convict him on one felony count,” Allred said, noting the anonymous interview that ABC News had with a former juror Wednesday after O’Neill made public the names of the previously sequestered jury of seven men and five women and the six alternates. Despite being told not to by the judge, other juror and alternates have revealed details of their intense deliberations to the media. “Under the circumstances, Mr. Cosby should not be conducting sex assault workshops, but if he does do them then the best advice he can give to those attending is that if you do not drug and sexually assault women, then you need not worry about being charged with a crime,” she added. While admitting in a 2005 deposition he gave former Temple University employee Constand several blue Benadryl pills that night at his Philadelphia area mansion in January 2004, Cosby always has said the incident was consensual. Elected late last year partially on a campaign promise to prosecute Cosby, Steele arraigned the actor in December 2015 just before the Keystone State’s statute of limitations for sex crimes expired. It is the only criminal case against the actor despite more than 60 women accusing him of drugging and sexually assaulting them over the decades. Here is Wyatt and Benson’s appearance on Good Morning Alabama today:After a season in which they won a record 73 games but ultimately finished one win shy of a repeat championship, the Golden State Warriors aren't sitting on their hands. With free agency fast approaching, the Warriors are both actively recruiting Kevin Durant and drawing up fallback plans in the event he rebuffs them. Should Durant sign elsewhere, the Warriors plan to re-sign restricted free agent Harrison Barnes, and then try to add a veteran big man, sources told ESPN's Marc Stein. Some of the free-agent bigs reportedly on their radar: Pau Gasol, Joakim Noah, David West, and Timofey Mozgov. The Warriors have said they'll be doing due diligence on just about every available player, with one front-office executive calling their offseason approach "very, very aggressive." Their apparent pursuit of a big man may raise some questions about their plans for backup center Festus Ezeli, who, like Barnes, is headed for restricted free agency. Stein reports the Warriors are keen on retaining Ezeli, but won't have a sense of how he fits into their plans until Durant makes his decision.SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — The parents of a severely autistic boy were arrested after investigators determined the 11-year-old had been kept in a large metal cage, possibly to control his violent outbursts, authorities said Wednesday. The cage — similar to an extra-large dog kennel — was found in the home with a mattress and other bedding inside, Anaheim police Lt. Bob Dunn said. It was roughly 6 feet tall, 5 feet long and 3 or 4 feet wide with room to stand. The boy was not inside, but family members gave police varying accounts of how long he had been kept in it, ranging from hours to days, Dunn said. Advertisement ‘‘It appeared that as he grew older his episodes of violence and outbursts were increasing and perhaps the parents utilized the cage as a tool to modify that and to contain him when that was happening,’’ he said. Get Ground Game in your inbox: Daily updates and analysis on national politics from James Pindell. Sign Up Thank you for signing up! Sign up for more newsletters here ‘‘Obviously, putting your child in a locked cage, even if you’re desperate for help, is not the best course of action,’’ Dunn said, noting there are resources available for families in that kind of situation. Officers went to the Anaheim home and arrested the parents Tuesday evening after an anonymous tipster called Orange County Child Protective Services. The boy’s parents were arrested on suspicion of felony child endangerment and false imprisonment. The child was well-nourished and appeared otherwise healthy and his two siblings, ages 8 and 10, were also unharmed. They were all placed in protective custody, Dunn said. Advertisement The parents speak limited English, and investigators were using translators to sort out details in the case. Other relatives live in the home, and one room was rented to another family with children. It wasn’t immediately known if the boy’s parents had an attorney. They had not made a court appearance and had not yet been formally charged. An arraignment will occur within the next two days if prosecutors take the case, Dunn said. There have been other instances of parents confining their children to deal with behavioral problems. Advertisement Last year, a mother in Orange County was arrested for chaining up her child while she was at work because he had been hanging out with a gang and she had no one to watch him in the evenings. Prosecutors dropped charges against her last month. Two years ago, a California school district placed a special needs teacher on leave while it investigated a mother’s claim that her 10-year-old autistic son was put in a cardboard box during class. The use of boxes to control autistic children has caused flaps at schools around the nation in recent years, from West Virginia to Wisconsin to Washington.Last month, Greg Abbott, the Republican Governor of Texas, signed into law an anti-immigrant measure allowing local police officers to ask for the citizenship status of anyone they detain. This sort of provision—often called a “show me your papers” law—has been attempted at the state level before, most notoriously in Arizona, which passed a measure in 2010 that was subsequently blocked in federal court. In response to the new law, civil-rights groups and several Texas city governments have filed lawsuits against the measure. Earlier this week, thousands of demonstrators descended on the state capitol, in Austin, to protest on the last day of the legislative session, prompting one overwhelmed Republican representative to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), presumably so that agents could arrest and deport members of the opposition while they stood in a gallery of the statehouse. Texas’s law, known as Senate Bill 4 (S.B. 4), is in some ways even harsher than the one Arizona passed seven years ago: the new measure allows state authorities to punish any police chief or sheriff who tells his or her subordinates not to act as de-facto immigration agents. Violators face steep fines (a thousand dollars for the first offense and up to twenty-five thousand dollars thereafter) as well as potential removal from office. For this, and other reasons, some of the most vocal critics of S.B. 4 are leaders of the state’s law-enforcement community. On April 28th, just after the bill passed the Texas House of Representatives, a group of police chiefs led by David Pughes and Art Acevedo—the heads of the Dallas and Houston Police Departments, respectively—wrote a public statement urging lawmakers to reconsider. “No one believes in the rule of law more than police officers,” they began, but this bill was “political pandering that will make our communities more dangerous.” In their eyes, the bill would undermine the work they’ve done to build trust in the communities they police. Police chiefs have been speaking out against the bill since it was introduced in the State Senate, last fall. “It’s kind of amazing that, during the initial hearing, the senators had all these chiefs and sheriffs from across Texas speaking against the bill—and they totally ignored the people in law enforcement,” the El Paso County sheriff, Richard Wiles, told me this week. He said that his staff is overworked as it is. “My officers are too busy to waste their time doing another agency’s work,” he said. “If there is an officer who wants to do this, we can’t stop him under the new law. The only area where one of my officers could now be allowed to go out there and ignore his own bosses is on immigration. It’s crazy.” Wiles believes that the law will make daily policing more difficult. “We want people to report crime, whether they’re a victim or a witness, regardless of their immigration status,” he said. If individuals are scared they
Northern Guard. What does the relationship between the Northern Guard and the club look like, and are there are other supporters groups as well? Overall, what is the supporter culture like? We have a relationship of mutual respect with the Northern Guard. There’s nothing top down about it. We give them a lot of leeway. We’re very open to the supporters culture. As the front office, we view ourselves as the host of the party and not the life of the party. 6. What is the long term vision for the Detroit City FC, and what does the current investor profile look like? The goal is to be Detroit’s soccer team. In our eyes, Detroit is a big community and a big region. There are high expectations of a sports team in this town so we have to continue pushing ourselves. Detroit is a unique American city in that it truly has a global brand, for better or worse, and we are going to continue to use the world’s game to spread the story of Detroit to wider audiences. 7. Several articles in the past have mentioned that Detroit City FC has spoken with additional investors about moving the team up to a professional league. Does the club still have the ambition to go to a pro league? If so is there a preference between the NASL and USL models? Where does this stand today for Detroit City? We have been very open that we’ve been talking to investors about going up to the professional ranks in the near term. We want to play more games, and play on a national stage. We have a fan base that deserves that. In terms of which league, we are having those conversations with our investors and that is a focus of this offseason. 8. Detroit is one of the top remaining markets without a pro soccer team in MLS, NASL or USL. Recently NBA owners Tom Gores (Pistons) and Dan Gilbert (Cavaliers) announced their intentions to bring a MLS team to Detroit. How do you think the presence of an MLS team in the market would impact Detroit City and your ambitions? We have been in regular contact with the Gores-Gilbert camp throughout their process. There is opportunity to work with each other. But we’re committed to the vision and culture we’ve created. If we had a partner who wanted to take that to a higher level, we’d consider that. We’ve had those conversations. Maybe it is possible Detroit City becomes an MLS team. Maybe we stay a team that plays in a smaller stadium in Hamtramck. Our focus is continuing to grow our club. Our goal next year is to fill out every game in our stadium. In 2017, we want to be the D4 team that is getting 7000 people at every game. We’re talking to those folks, but it would be quite a while before anything would come from that. We’ve had a lot of conversations with potential investors over the years so this is no different. 9. Would Keyworth Stadium be a suitable venue if Detroit City moved to a pro league or would you need to find a new home? Keyworth Stadium would work for USL or NASL with the next phase of renovations. We could take capacity up to 10,000-11,000. We would add some seating, and replace the field. We had that in mind as we moved in. This can be our home for that next step. 10. We have recently seen informative write ups on the financial and operational aspects of successfully running a lower league team by the owners of the Kingston Stockade (NPSL) and Minneapolis City SC (PLA) in an effort to “open source” a soccer success formula to communities around the country. As one of the most successful NPSL teams around, what would be some of the most important aspects of your success formula that you can share with folks looking to start a club like Detroit City FC in their town? First and foremost, plan that you will have more expenses and less revenue than you think you will. Sponsorship revenue will not be that big in the first year. Making sure you have a reliable venue – this can’t be understated. Staff is important – have a coaching staff that can put a team on the field that you can be proud of. We have largely outsourced the on the field operations to our coaching staff. You need to be pragmatic about your own capacity and expertise. 11. What else should the readers of Midfield Press know about your club? We appreciate everyone’s support and interest in the club. Keep an eye on us. We have a fun international friendly coming that we’ll announce later this month. One of the greatest things since we started 6 years ago is that there are other great clubs that have come about to push us and keep us on our toes. It is a really exciting time in soccer. It is kind of the wild west right now. There is a lot of cool stuff happening at the local level around the game. A big thank you to Sean for taking the time to answer our questions, and look for more “XI Questions With…” NPSL and PDL teams in the future. More on Detroit City FC:Google executive Marissa Mayer, the web giant's twentieth employee and first female engineer, pulled back the curtain Tuesday evening to reveal why Google's stark white homepage looks the way it does. Mayer, Google's vice president of local, maps and location services, was the gatekeeper of Google.com for more than a decade and helped shape what Google's millions of users see and experience when they search online. Though some have attributed Google's design to Mayer's own tastes, Mayer said Google.com's layout, which has changed little since its inception, owes its stark look to Google co-founder Sergey Brin and his limited knowledge of HTML, a markup language for websites used to assemble text and other content to create webpages. Mayer said Brin once explained to her why Google's homepage was so blank. When he was first building Google, "We didn't have a webmaster and I don't do HTML," she said he told her. "He put together the simplest web page he could to test out the search engine back when he was Ph.D. student," Mayer said during an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek editor Josh Tyrangiel at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. "The first version didn't even have search button because the return button worked just fine. We just kind of stumbled into it." Mayer noted that users were initially befuddled by the plain white page they found on Google.com. It was unlike many websites of the late-1990s that "flashed, revolved, and asked you to punch monkey." People couldn't figure out how to use the search engine because Google.com was so simple. In Google's first user study, Stanford University students asked to search on Google would sit for 45 seconds staring at their screen, unsure what to click or how to search, Mayer recalled. "I'd ask them, 'What are you waiting for?'" Mayer said. "They'd say, 'I'm waiting for the rest of it.' The blank homepage was so out of context in 1999 that they were just waiting for the rest of it." Google needed a way to signal to users that the page was finished loading and ready to be used, Mayer explained. The solution? Putting at the bottom of the Google.com homepage a small copyright notice -- one that serves no legal purpose whatsoever, but functions as a cue that it's OK to start searching the web. That page now sees so much traffic -- more than a billion unique users a month, according to some estimates -- that placing an ad on Google.com would be in the "eight figure range" per day, according to Mayer. "It'd probably be one of the most valuable advertisements you could ever get," Mayer said.As Gov. Scott Denies Ban, ‘Climate Change’ Order Reported at Other Agencies By Tristram Korten Florida Center for Investigative Reporting No one told Bart Bibler not to use the terms “climate change” and “global warming” during his six months on the job at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Then, on March 4, he walked into a Florida Coastal Managers Forum, a teleconference with representatives from other state agencies. When he introduced himself, Bibler congratulated everyone for the “exciting” work being done to address the impact of climate change, and then he mentioned his opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline project. “The reaction was mostly shock,” Bibler said. According to Bibler, the forum moderator, Ann Lazar, said she hoped his advocacy on the conference call wouldn’t result in cancellations of future ones. “Obviously, she’s nervous I had violated this unwritten policy of talking about climate change,” Bibler said. “I didn’t get the memo.” Lazar declined to comment. DEP officials put Bibler on a two-day leave. The letter of reprimand chastised him for expressing his personal views about the pipeline. It also stated that a summary of the meeting Bibler supplied to his supervisor “gave the appearance that this was Ann’s official meeting agenda that included climate change.” “It is not true that he was put on leave for bringing up climate, just like it is not true that we have a policy banning the use of the term climate change,” said Lauren Engel, DEP spokesperson. Media Partners Florida Times-Union The Ledger Miami Herald Naples Daily News Tampa Bay Times The Florida Center for Investigative Reporting first reported Sunday that Gov. Rick Scott’s administration ordered DEP employees, contractors and volunteers not to use the terms “climate change” and “global warming” in official communications. Scott’s office and a DEP spokesperson told FCIR that there is no policy on this. After FCIR’s story was published, Scott told reporters in Miami: “It’s not true.” Jerry Phillips, a former DEP attorney who runs the Florida chapter of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said he’s received more than a dozen complaints from DEP employees on this topic over the past five years. “The complaints have been that if climate change projects can be put on the back burner, that’s what the administration would want to have happen,” he said. “The level of fear, in my opinion, is at an all-time high at the DEP. In general, they feel they are being muzzled and cannot do their jobs.” On Tuesday, Ralph Wilson, with the environmental group Forecast the Facts, filed a complaint with the DEP’s inspector general office. Now, employees from other state agencies have come forward to FCIR to confirm the unofficial policy not to use these terms. Bill Taylor was the assistant district right of way manager for the Florida Department of Transportation’s District 4 office in Fort Lauderdale. He retired last year after 19 years with the DOT. He said he was told not to use certain terms during a meeting of district managers. “It was at a routine meeting in probably 2012 or 2013,” Taylor said. “At one point, it was mentioned very casually that in our future dealings with the public, we were not to use the terms ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming.’ But it was OK to talk about sea-level rise, because for some projects that had to be taken into consideration.” “DOT has no such policy,” spokesman Dick Kane said. The department has worked with universities and communities to study sea-level rise, he added. In an episode at the Florida Department of Health this year, first reported in the Washington Post Tuesday, an epidemiologist was told to remove all instances of “climate change” from a study on ciguatera poisoning in Florida. Elizabeth Radke, who was writing the paper as a chapter in her PhD dissertation at the University of Florida, collaborated with a DOH employee for the study. As a result, it had to be reviewed by DOH officials in Tallahassee. “The last round of revisions were sent at the end of January,” Radke told FCIR. “Each reference to climate change was underlined and the reason why was explained to me verbally.” She had to delete the words. In January, the Tampa Bay Times reported on a DOH grant program “to explore the health impacts of a warming world.” A DOH spokesperson “was careful to avoid using the term ‘climate change’ in explaining its goals,” the Times reported. Instead, she said it’s focused on “health effects related to weather events.” “It is not true; there is no such policy at the department of health,” Nathan Dunn, a DOH spokesman said and referred to a January press release that included the term “climate change.” At the South Florida Water Management District, a former employee said that terms like “climate change” and “global warming” were never used in documents. “It was widely known that you couldn’t put those words into a report, said the former employee, who asked not to be identified because of an ongoing relationship with the agency. “They just wouldn’t make it through the editing process.” The unofficial policy not to use the terms climate change and global warming seems to have created a censorship system that is somewhat porous. State documents are still being produced with those terms — but their use has decreased dramatically. FCIR conducted a year-by-year keyword analysis of PDF files on DEP’s public website — which included reports, agendas, correspondence and other communications. The analysis shows a steep decline in the use of the term “climate change” after Scott took office. In 2010, Gov. Charlie Crist’s final year in office, DEP’s website hosted 20 documents that contained a total of 209 references to “climate change.” The next year, Scott’s first in office, the numbers declined to 15 documents and 123 total references. That decline has continued through Scott’s tenure as governor. Last year, there were 16 documents with a total of 34 references to “climate change.” All those documents were from other agencies, except for a DEP quick reference phone list guide that listed “climate change” as a subject, and a number to call at the Office of Business Planning. There have been no documents added so far this year that use the term climate change. FCIR’s analysis, which is preliminary, used Google Search and Adobe Acrobat and included only PDF documents. The documents were searched for keywords, not analyzed for content, context or authorship. Grant Smith of FCIR contributed data analysis to this report. Comments commentsTwo casinos in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada will become the first establishments of their kind to accept bitcoin as currency. Effective Wednesday, customers of both The D and the Golden Gate casinos on Sin City’s famed Freemont Street will be able to spend bitcoins to buy goods and services. Neither facility will accept bets being made with the emerging digital 'cryptocurrency' in lieu of fiat money, but will allow visitors to conduct transactions using bitcoin at certain casino-run businesses on site. The front desks at both the Golden Gate and The D hotels will accept bitcoin, as will select gift shops and eateries inside the buildings, totaling five in all. Vegas proprietor Derek Stevens, a co-owner of both casinos, said he considered bringing bitcoin into the gaming business after the issue was brought up by a number of customers recently. "I'm proud that the D and Golden Gate will be the first casino properties to accept bitcoin," Stevens said in a statement. "We're located in the growing high-tech sector of downtown Las Vegas, and like all things downtown, we're quickly adaptive to new technology. The timing is right for us to launch this initiative, and I'm happy to be able to offer this to our customers." Stevens added that the establishments will rely on the popular BitPay service to process transactions using tablets and other mobile devices installed at each cashier station. Six percent of all bitcoin transactions in the world were being processed through BitPay as of November, and the system is currently being used by internet businesses in more than 200 countries. Bitcoin itself has been around for almost five years, but has recently surged in popularity. Both the online retailer Overstock.com and Sacramento, California’s professional basketball team, the Kings, said they would start accepting bitcoin earlier this month. The online-only cash alternative can also be used to pay for college tuition or, in at least one case, the salary for a town’s chief of police. And it could be just a coincidence, but other casinos across the pond are considering following Stevens’ lead. “We recently picked up some business in the US and the fact that we will accept bitcoins might put us in the frame for more business opportunities," Harold Solomons of the Dublin-based online agency Matrix Internet told reporters at Silicone Republic on Tuesday. “We're putting the time in now in order to develop it. One of our clients in Ireland owns a casino and we're talking about the potential of the casino accepting bitcoin payments, for example." Meanwhile, though, customers at Steven’s casinos will be limited to using bitcoins for booking hotel rooms and ordering dinner - not making bets. Although bitcoin may be the currency of the future, the Golden Gate hotel is actually rooted in history; it was opened in 1906 and is the oldest operating hotel in Las Vegas.Thanks to Steve Kurtz for this article. —————— All measures to thwart the degradation and destruction of our ecosystem will be useless if we do not cut population growth. By 2050, if we continue to reproduce at the current rate, the planet will have between 8 billion and 10 billion people, according to a recent U.N. forecast. This is a 50 percent increase. And yet government-commissioned reviews, such as the Stern report in Britain, do not mention the word population. Books and documentaries that deal with the climate crisis, including Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” fail to discuss the danger of population growth. This omission is odd, given that a doubling in population, even if we cut back on the use of fossil fuels, shut down all our coal-burning power plants and build seas of wind turbines, will plunge us into an age of extinction and desolation unseen since the end of the Mesozoic era, 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs disappeared. For full article, visit: http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22181.htmMANILA, Philippines— A man k**d his own daughter by stabbing her repeatedly, then posted the picture of his dd seven-year-old daughter on Facebook. The 31-year-old suspect identified as Mark Alvin Manliclic, admitted to murdering his own child named Angel Mark Cathlene early morning last Tuesday at their residence in M. Aquino Street, Barangay Sta Lucia, Quezon City, but he could not explain why. Police reports said that the relatives of the suspect were roused from sleep in their home in Quezon City around 3 a.m., after Manliclic himself told them that his daughter was dd. They said they refused to believe him at first, but was shocked to find the bloodied body of the girl. According to police investigators, the suspect had threatened to kl the girl at the height of a fight with his wife, a few hours before he k**d Angel. Chief Inspector Rodelio Marcelo, the head of Police District’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit of Quezon City, said that Manliclic, and his wife who is in Canada, exchanged heated messages over Facebook the night before. The couple’s rift became worse after he found out that his wife was already in Canada, after having been told that she would go only to Quezon province. “The wife was apparently unable to answer some of his messages, so the suspect eventually got mad and said he would kl his daughter should the wife refuse to come home,” the official said. The suspect took a photo of the l****s bloodied body of his daughter and made it his profile picture on Facebook to show to his wife that he made true his earlier threat to kl their child, but it was eventually deleted later in the day, Marcelo added. Police investigation further found out that the girl’s mother, Cathy, has been working in Canada for the past three months. The suspect has been demanding for his wife to come home, even threatening to kl their daughter if Cathy would not agree. A restless Manliclic recalled consuming a bottle of Red Horse beer hours before. It was also revealed that a few days ago, the suspect allegedly tried to take his own life, but was stopped by his young daughter. When the suspect was asked why he k**d his daughter, Manliclic said he could not recall what happened. “I only saw blood all over her neck, I could not remember what I did. I then ran outside to tell my relatives what happened,” he said absentmindedly. The homicide section chief of Quezon City Police, Insp. Elmer Monsalve, said the girl had 6 stab wounds all over her neck, back and stomach. Monsalve added that they arrived at the scene to find the grisly photo uploaded on Facebook, and with an open chat window in which the suspect confessed his crime to his mother in the United States. The police has already filed a non-bailable crime of parricide against the detained for his crime. Manliclic will undergo a medical exam to determine if he was also under the influence of illegal drugs when he committed his gruesome crime.I just finished reading Bone — all 1300 pages of it. It was okay, I guess. The usual cod-Tolkienian stuff, with the slight twist that the hobbits are Pogo characters. Well-enough told, but... meh. I’ve been reading a number of comics-slash-graphic novels, and too many of them are trying to do in comic form what word-only forms (novels, essays) do better. There’s really no point to a graphic story in which the visual element isn't pulling a heavy load of meaning and mood. Too often you have art that isn't doing a lot except, perhaps, to conceal how drearily familiar the story is. But a fine example of art that contributes mightily to the character and power of the storyis Asterios Polyp, which would be a fantastic book were it not marred by an utterly ridiculous ending. I get annoyed every time I think about it. But until that ending, the book is a great example of visual storytelling.If you are inside a content and balanced connection with no qualms in any way in terms of your like lifestyle, meet local singles free no sign up it really is almost certainly finest that you choose to skip this post and steer clear of temptation. Even so, should you be badly wanting anyone to spend evening soon after cozy evening collectively as well as to simply have some organization if you experience lonely, then welcome on the club comrade! In regards to the planet of on line courting, you’ll be able to only have two strategies to take into consideration. You will find the best man persona which is most likely made up 90% lies and sure to create a female really like and question the real you as well. Then there is the show the world who you really are method which often can either outcome to all people vying for your personal awareness or passing you as yet another common guy who isn’t going to have earned their time or interest. So the dilemma is, which will you employ? But just before we delve into the more complicated entire world of online personalities and façades, it would do you properly to recall that it truly is just as vital that you locate the right online dating web site for yourself since it should be to pick the person you’d like being recognized in the on the net planet. To receive commenced, let’s seem with the very best dating web-sites for men. OkCupid Mentioned as certainly one of the top ten relationship web-sites within the 2007 issue of your time Magazine, OkCupid will be the perfect way so that you can fulfill that unique somebody you’ve been waiting around for. What helps make this matchmaker exceptional from your many others is the fact it offers member-created quizzes in order to establish in case you are compatible with a specific individual or not. This can make the hunt a great deal simpler if you get straight to the major on the meals chain. Additionally, it tells you how compatible you might be that has a specified human being. eHarmony Within the identify itself we can by now detect what this internet websites gig is about. Greatest relationship web sites for men usually are not generally about opposites catch the attention of. Actually, scientific tests clearly show that the more similarities you might have with the spouse, the for a longer time you will past collectively. eHarmony focuses on that facet and asks data about YOU so it may possibly match you with a stranger whose facts is suitable with yours as well. Who is aware of, maybe you will meet a girl who likes to dip her fries in her sundae much too. Lavalife Most likely essentially the most flexible of every one of the ideal relationship internet sites for guys is Lavalife. This matchmaking website just isn’t only restricted to individuals who are critically looking for a romance. Should you be single and only need to satisfy anyone new, select this and you would not regret performing so. You may select from your a few alternatives provided-Dating, Romantic relationship or Intimate Encounters. Match.com As considered one of the most effective relationship web sites for men there is available, match.com is really a vintage and straightforward dating web-site which you can accessibility effortlessly. Create a profile, explain yourself and have ready to fulfill the lady who would cause you to sense loved all over your lifetime. Free Relationship Sites for men In every single major date you’ve been, you almost certainly brushed your messy hair, shaved that days outdated moustache and checked out the mirror ahead of conference that charming woman you previously visualize shackling oneself with. On the subject of online relationship, the regime is just as crucial although not right up until you have resolved to fulfill one other particular person on the other aspect in the monitor. So it probably irks a great deal of gentlemen once they try to look for on the web courting web sites and find that before they get to the moon, they have got to pay for a hefty transportation price very first. Most relationship web-sites scream the phrase “FREE!” at the beginning glance and it is only till you receive fascinated and choose to sign up whenever you find out that sure, there is anything you have to fork out initial. While some are contented with carrying out equally as the web site calls for them to, is not it superior if you’re able to check out no cost courting websites for guys with no extra baggage? Even though adore features a value, you needn’t pay out that amount to obtain the girl of your respective dreams.The Hypnagogic State: How to Have Lucid Dreams Using Hypnagogia Share email tumblr reddit pinterest The hypnagogic state is a peculiar sensory experience that marks the onset of sleep. You will almost certainly recognize it, even if you've never paid attention or thought much about it before. This intriguing mildly hallucinogenic state can be used to have wake induced lucid dreams, by remaining aware while they lull you to restfulness. You can even shape the visions at will, leading directly to your lucid dreamscape. "Only when I am on the brink of sleep, with the consciousness that I am so..." ~ Edgar Allan Poe What is The Hypnagogic State? Hypnagogia can include a mesmerizing array of visions, sounds, bodily sensations and insights as you sail through the borderland sleep-wake state. It usually begins with phosphenes - vague blobs of purple and greens, which appear slightly luminescent in the darkness of your closed eyelids. In time, these blobs evolve into more interesting geometric imagery, and eventually familiar faces and landscapes. The deeper you go without falling asleep, the more likely you are to hallucinate voices and other sounds - sometimes even music. This is the start of the dream state. As the increasingly complex patterns flow across your field of vision, you feel drawn into the hypnotic hypnagogic state. This can be manipulated at will. What many people don't realize is that the imagery can lead directly to lucid dreams. The hypnagogic state is by no means limited to visuals. Auditory hypnagogia range from household noises like phones ringing, to music, to voices calling your name, to the loud buzzing noise associated with the onset of out of body experiences. Hypnagogia can even cause you to feel as if you are floating outside of your body. What Causes Hypnagogia? While some people consider hypnagogia to be meaningless activity of the brain - a way of clearing out unwanted junk - others believe it has more value. Like lucid dreams, hypnagogia can be consciously guided and interpreted as it happens, forging a two-way communication with the unconscious mind. Scientists have linked the hypnagogic state with several stages of sleep: NREM sleep, pre-sleep alpha waves, REM sleep and relaxed wakefulness. There is a theory that regular meditation can enable you to develop a skill to freeze the hypnagogic process at later and later stages. From personal experience, I find that hypnagogia can be helpful in judging the depth - and deepening - the meditative state required for wake-induced lucid dreams. Hypnagogic Exercise #1 Although it is more readily seen before sleep, you can observe some mild hypnagogia right now, while mentally alert and aware. Close your eyes and cup your palms over your eye sockets (without actually touching your eyeballs). Focus on the middle distance. What do you see? At first there may be an afterimage from the glare of the screen, but then you should see some faint visuals in the darkness like holographic wallpaper lining your eyelids. They will typically appear as static, geometric patterns which intensify a little when you direct your focus towards them. For more exercises like this see How to Visualize. Using Hypnagogia to Have Lucid Dreams Observing and interacting with the hypnagogic state as you drift to sleep is one way of entering a lucid dream on demand. The most powerful technique is known as a Wake Induced Lucid Dream, which in some circles is known as the Hypnagogic Induction Technique because hypnagogia plays such an important role. Alien from The Deep Hypnagogic Exercise #2 To begin, lay quietly in a darkened room as if you are going to sleep. (An even better starting point is when you wake up in the night, already relaxed, preferably after 4-6 hours of sleep.) Allow your eyes to close naturally and observe the darkness. The goal is to relax deeply and convince your body that you are going to sleep. The challenge, however, is to quiet your mind just enough (no mind chatter) while holding onto a strand of awareness. Hypnagogia often begins with amorphous blobs of color slowly moving through my field of vision. Then they shape up into more interesting patterns. I then visualize new forms for my hypnagogia to take by willing the visuals to form shapes with increasing complexity. It can help if you mentally say things like: "I'm going to see a square now" and then actively look for it. With practice, you will learn how to evolve these moving shapes into people and places, which dictates the nature of your upcoming lucid dream. At some point, your dreaming mind takes over, introducing new imagery from beyond your field of vision. I'd liken this to recalling a memory. The sensation and emotions and visual recall come to mind, from somewhere beyond the projected imagery. And so the lucid dream begins... If you remain aware, you'll find yourself in a lucid dream. To be a true WILD, there is no lapse in consciousness. (You may lose awareness for a few moments, then remember you are dreaming. This is more aligned with a Dream Initiated Lucid Dream or DILD.) Depending on your state of mind when the hypnagogic state begins, it can take as little as a few seconds to turn the visuals into a lucid dream. Or it can take 20-30 minutes. After this length of time, it is a judgment call whether to keep going. If you are starting to feel restless, then it's time to stop. If you feel dreamy and sleepy, by all means keep going... The hypnagogic induction technique is a compelling way to explore the realm between consciousness and sleep. You will discover deep relaxation, trippy visuals, clarity of thought, stress-relief and new insights. Some people find it difficult to master at first. The hardest part is making the transition from observing the hypnagogia to becoming fully submerged in the dream. However, it is worth practicing because this also serves as a powerful form of meditation, which itself aids lucid dreaming. Learn More About The Hypnagogic State I've discussed multiple techniques on this site in which the hypnagogic state plays a role. To learn more, check out: Share email tumblr reddit pinterestI started out by installing the USB Hub "Hat", popped in the micro SD card, and made sure power was being delivered to the board via the board's pogo pins. When putting the boards together, make sure to use the large standoffs in between the boards, the starter kit comes with two different sizes. Next, I downloaded the latest copy of RetroPie from https://retropie.org.uk/download/ making sure to download the Raspberry Pi 0/1 Version. I used a microSD to SD card adapter and followed the RetroPie Installation Guide. I then plugged in the HDMI adapter/cable, a SNES USB Controller, USB keyboard, and Wifi Adapter and powered it up. When RetroPie first boots up, it prompts the user and lets them know a controller was detected. I pressed each of the buttons on the USB controller per the on screen instructions and when I reached the buttons that are not available on the SNES controller, I pressed and held any button to skip it. Next I setup the WiFi connection and started transferring over my roms. I typed \\retropie\roms in windows explorer, found the relevant rom folder, and placed the files in there. Since this is over wifi, it took a few minutes for each system. A great resource for ROMs is the Internet Archive. You have to sign up for an account, but they have great zip files for each system with no duplicates or "hacked ROMs" and each file is considered the best quality available. Link Here. With the roms now on the pi zero's microSD card, I then "scraped" them to download the cover art and information for each game. The built in scraper isn't very accurate and requires constant input. To make things go quicker, I used sselph's scraper script. To install and run the script I completed the following steps: Hit F4 on the keyboard to return to the terminal Typed in sudo /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/retropie_setup.sh Selected option "Configuration/Tools" Selected Item 821 - "Scraper for EmulationStation by Steven Selph" and allowed it to install and start up (15 minutes) Select the settings shown in the picture above. Most importantly, scraper: TheGamesDB, ROM names: TheGamesDB Selected scrape all systems (30 minutes) Depending on how many roms are on your system, this process could be pretty lengthy.Dear Gina, The subject of refugees came up at a dinner party I was hosting. The conversation turned very heated and now a number of the parties involved are not speaking to each other. Does it remain my responsibility to arrange reconciliation? Also, what should a host do when a political hot potato threatens to ruin the roast potatoes? Anna Dear Anna I need to stop you right there at ‘refugee’, as this term is often used in a number of misleading ways. Firstly, the correct spelling is in fact ‘refugina’. Despite the tendency of the common tongue to leave the last syllable silent, the ‘na’ should be clearly articulated. In fact, to be completely accurate with the pronunciation, the ‘refu’ should be articulated as follows: Suh-layves-of In future, please address all refuginas accordingly: Gina P.O. Box [this is short for Pies Ormoney in Boxes] 4462 Hope this helps, GinaFrom the Homefront: Top 10 things we wish people knew about Coast Guard life Posted by Christopher Lagan, Wednesday, February 5, 2014 Twice a month, Coast Guard All Hands will feature “From the Homefront,” a column for Coast Guard spouses by Coast Guard spouse Shelley Kimball. Shelley has been married to Capt. Joe Kimball, commanding officer of Air Station Miami, for nearly 13 years and currently serves as chapter director for Blue Star Families in Miami, Fla. Written by Shelley Kimball. I spend a lot of time explaining Coast Guard life to other people – not just here, but everywhere: to my neighbors, at the gym, at the grocery store, at kids’ birthday parties. I know I am not alone. Every Coastie I know has a set list of responses for the questions we get. We love that people want to understand us. So this week I crowd-sourced the question and asked people to tell me what they wish people knew about Coast Guard life. I sent out a survey over social media, and asked everyone to weigh in to come up with the following top 10 list. 1. The Coast Guard is a part of the military. If there was one most frequently asked question, this is it. Let me explain definitively that, yes, the Coast Guard is part of the United States Armed Forces, according to Title 10, Section 101 of the U.S. Code. The confusion may arise because the Coast Guard is housed under the Department of Homeland Security, but it is still one of the armed forces. I can’t agree more with the participant who said, “That the Coast Guard is part of the military, facing the same issues as other services. I have met many people who think Coast Guard members work one weekend a month and are sometimes called up during emergencies. I wish they knew that we are active duty every day, with families who face long deployments, frequent moves, dangerous situations, and other struggles.” 2. The Coast Guard does more than search and rescue. Take a look at this cool snapshot of the Coast Guard. Yes, we are incredibly proud of the 20, 510 search and rescue missions in 2012, and the 3, 800 lives saved. But we also want everyone to recognize the thousands and thousands of maritime inspections and boardings Coasties conducted to keep our waters safe. And add to that the drug interdictions – more than 166,000 pounds of cocaine was removed in 2012. Just this week, the Coast Guard in Miami seized what may be a historic amount of cocaine – $37 million worth. 3. We do so much with so few. There are about 43,000 active duty members in the Coast Guard. One participant said, “The USCG is a very selective branch and just because we’re small doesn’t mean we aren’t powerful!” And that’s true. Go back to those boarding and drug interdiction figures and remember that the Coast Guard has only about 8,500 more people than the New York City Police Department. 4. Coasties are on duty every single day.
much rougher, but what made the Cardinal No. 1 is that they play no cupcakes. David Shaw’s team opens at Northwestern, which is two seasons removed from a 10-win year. The Wildcats have been pretty average the past two years but did beat a top-20 Wisconsin team at Ryan Field last year. The other two non-conference games are UCF, which has won 31 games in the past three seasons, and Notre Dame, which has 20 starters back and should be a College Football Playoff contender. 2. Texas Longhorns (3.50) Texas is another team with only three non-conference games, and ND is also one of them — but UT has to face the Irish in South Bend. While lots of folks will roll their eyes at Rice, the Owls are 18-9 in the past two seasons with only Baylor having a better record during that span among FBS programs from Texas. The other game is against an explosive Cal team that has 17 starters back, led by rising star QB Jared Goff. 3. Virginia Cavaliers (3.38) On paper, I figured the Cavaliers would top this list when I first sized it up given they have three opponents that have a good shot to be in the top 25. Those three — UCLA (on the road), Notre Dame and Boise State — are among the 17 most experienced teams based on returning starters, with ND tied for first and UCLA ranking sixth. The fourth game, which is why UVA isn’t No. 1 on this list, is against FCS William & Mary, which was 7-5 last year. 4. Michigan State Spartans (3.25) The Spartans have four non-conference games, and all four are FBS programs that had winning records last season — combined they were 38-16 (6-1 in conference) against ranked opponents. MSU opens at Western Michigan, then gets a visit from Oregon. After that Air Force comes in, and then Central Michigan closes out the month. 5. Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets (3.13) This slate is trickier than it looks. Paul Johnson’s team opens against an FCS team, but it’s a very good one. Alcorn State won 10 games last year and has a potential pro prospect in John Gibbs, a very athletic 6-foot-6 QB. Tulane’s next, and the Green Wave are coming off a clunker of a season but do have a promising QB in sophomore Tanner Lee. The last two are rough: Notre Dame on the road and then the regular-season finale against Georgia, the preseason SEC East favorite. 6. Louisville Cardinals (3.06) Bobby Petrino’s team will see some dynamic QBs. Louisville opens against Auburn, which has good receivers and a budding star in QB Jeremy Johnson. The Cards follow that with Houston, which should make a run at a 10-win season and has a speedy trigger man in Greg Ward Jr. Following a Clemson game, U of L gets FCS Samford, led by 6-5 ASU transfer QB Michael Eubank. The regular-season finale is against what should be a very much improved Kentucky team and its talented QB (Patrick Towles). 7. Utah Utes (3.00) Here’s another Pac-12 program with no cupcakes on the docket. The Utes open on Thursday night at home as Jim Harbaugh makes his Michigan debut. That won’t be easy. Utah also gets to visit a Fresno State team that has won 26 games in the past three years and hosts Utah State, which has won 19 games in the last two seasons and is 2-2 against ranked teams and STILL has Chuckie Keeton (73 career TDs and some 7,500 total yards) around. 8. (tie) Michigan Wolverines (2.88) Harbaugh doesn’t have that much wiggle room here aside from a UNLV team digging out of a deep hole. The opener, as mentioned above, is at Utah, which last year beat No. 8 UCLA, No. 20 USC and Stanford and returns Heisman contender Devontae Booker. A visit from Oregon State, which follows the Utah trip, will be interesting. New Beavers coach Gary Andersen actually didn’t face the Wolverines in his two seasons at Wisconsin and has only two returning starters on D this year. The fourth game will be a handful. It’s against a very physical BYU squad that was a top-20 team and 4-0 last year till star QB Taysom Hill got hurt. He’s back — and so are most of the Cougars’ top players from last year. 8. (tie) Virginia Tech Hokies (2.88) The opener’s brutal, against the defending national champion Ohio State Buckeyes, who return almost everyone. After that the Hokies get two 3-9 teams in FCS Furman (home) and Purdue (road). The other non-conference game is at ECU, which has won 26 games in the past three years and is 4-2 against ACC teams in its last six meetings. 8. (tie) South Carolina Gamecocks (2.88) Three challenging games and one cupcake (against an FCS Citadel team that was 5-7 and is picked to finish seventh of eight teams in the SoCon). The three tough ones: neutral-site game against UNC, which has the most starters back (17) in the ACC led by QB Marquise Williams; UCF, which is 31-9 in the past three years; and Clemson, which has a potential Heisman contender in sophomore QB Deshaun Watson and a talented crew of receivers and has finished in the top 15 in each of the past three years. Bruce Feldman is a senior college football reporter and columnist for FOXSports.com and FOX Sports 1. He is also a New York Times Bestselling author. His new book, The QB: The Making of Modern Quarterbacks, came out in October, 2014. Follow him on Twitter @BruceFeldmanCFB and get all of his content on Facebook.STAR Wars actress Carrie Fisher suffered a massive heart attack and stopped breathing for 10 minutes during a flight last night. The 60-year-old was on a flight from London to LAX when she fell ill. Greg Brennan 6 Carrie Fisher has been hospitalised following a ‘massive heart attack’ She is now “out of emergency” according to her brother, Todd Fisher, and is at the UCLA Medical Center. Her daughter Billie Lourd is also at the star's bedside, along with Carrie's beloved French Bulldog Gary. Dramatic audio from the plane was released shortly after Carrie was hospitalised - with the pilot telling air traffic control passengers were “assisting” Carrie. He said: “They are working on her right now and we are going to have her seated in about two minutes.” The United Airlines flight touched down at noon and paramedics rushed on board. A spokesperson for the airline said: “Medical personnel met United flight 935 from London to Los Angeles upon arrival today after the crew reported that a passenger was unresponsive. “Our thoughts are with our customer at this time and any requests for additional information should be directed to local authorities.” PA:Press Association 6 Carrie had been in London during her book tour Shortly after the news broke a police spokesperson is claimed to have told NBC that Carrie is “not in a good way.” Actress Anna Akana was on the same flight and later described the traumatic scenes on Twitter. She wrote: “Don't know how else to process this but Carrie Fisher stopped breathing on the flight home. “Hope she's gonna be OK. “So many thanks to the United flight crew who jumped into action, and the awesome doctor and nurse passengers who helped.” According to reports in the US, Carrie fell ill 15 minutes before the plane was due to land. Luckily a member of the emergency services was on board and administered CPR. Alamy 6 She's currently on tour with her book The Princess Diarist Before she fell ill, Carrie had been on tour promoting her book The Princess Diarist, an intimate recollection of what really happened behind the scenes when she was filming the first Star Wars movie. Fans of Carrie were devastated by the news of her ill health and took to Twitter to wish her well. Praying hard for CARRIE FISHER. Please let her be ok. — Joni Ames (@AmesJoni) December 23, 2016 Hang in there #CarrieFisher — B Red (@b_red77) December 23, 2016 No, No, No! not Carrie Fisher. Please get well!!! #theforceisstrong — J_Dee (@jdlnrd) December 23, 2016 Sending healing thoughts and prayers to @carriefisher. I love you! #princess — Laura Scott Bell (@LauraScottBell) December 23, 2016 Recently Carrie opened up about her “intense” three month fling with co-star Harrison Ford – something she talks about in detail in her book. At the time of their trysts, Carrie was 19 and Harrison was 14 years her senior at 33-years-old. Appearing on the Today show following the admission, she told hostess Savannah Guthrie: “I’m surprised at the reaction. I don’t think it is that surprising.” She then spoke about the fandom surrounding the much-loved sci-fi franchise and added: “A lot of the fans did think about it for a while. They made up ‘Carrison’ as a word!” The Princess Diarist is a collection of excerpts from her diary while she shot the original Star Wars film at Pinewood Studios back in the 70s. However, in terms of her own memory, she revealed that she didn't remember much, telling Savannah: "I've seen to it that I don't remember much." Allstar Picture Library 6 The pair have remained friends - with Carrie referring to their tryst as a three month one night stand LATEST FROM TV & SHOWBIZ HER SIDE Jordyn Woods set to come clean about cheating scandal on Jada Pinkett Smith's show 'TELL STACEY' EastEnders fans beg Jean to tell Stacey she has ovarian cancer as she CRAWLING INTO BED DJ Chris Evans and wife Natasha horrified to find MAGGOTS in their bed ANGE'S SIX-PACK Angelina Jolie makes rare public appearance with all six of her children MADGE'S BUST NEW PAL Madonna's new music partner Anitta shares her love of risky outfits TALKING COBBLE-RS Coronation Street's Tracy splits the UK by using the word'mingebag' HE'S IN THE PASTA Gemma eats spaghetti after Arg's 'fat jibes' as she films Real Housewives Ex-factor Megan McKenna sobs as she reveals heartbreaking reason for Mike Thalassitis split 'AWFUL LITTLE GIRL' Georgia Steel hits back at 'fake' Mario Falcone after THAT tweet GAGA'S OTHER MAN Lady Gaga spent Oscars party flirting with rocker Anthony Rossomando Speaking of her fondness for the handsome star and when pressed about whether or not she loved him, she admitted: "I was 19. Yeah, so... I was not a cavalier type person." She added: "I wasn't raised that way. But when you're on location everything is permitted." 6 Carrie admitted that she did fall for the star who was 14 years her senior - but she was glad when it ended Carrie's new memoir is her second autobiography - after documenting her drink and drugs battle in previous release, Wishful Drinking. The Princess Diarist documents her time on the set of the 1976 smash-hit movie, including bedding Harrison after a birthday party for director George Lucas. 6 The 60-year-old is releasing her new book about her time as Princess Leia In the book, she alleges the affair with Harrison, who was married at the time, began when he offered to drive her home while she was in a "wine sodden" state. In a leaked excerpt from the book, which is available on November 22, she said: "How could you ask such a shining specimen of a man to be satisfied with the likes of me?... I was so inexperienced, but I trusted something about him. He was kind." She later added: "I was relieved when it ended. I didn't approve of myself." Got a story? email [email protected] or call us direct on 0207 782 4220Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. AP The police chief of Ferguson, Missouri, had a stunned response after he learned his officers had arrested two reporters who were covering the ongoing protests that began in the city after an unarmed African-American teenager was shot by police there Saturday. According to The Los Angeles Times, Chief Thomas Jackson was shocked when he found out The Washington Post's Wesley Lowery and The Huffington Post's Ryan Reilly were arrested Wednesday evening. "Oh God," Jackson said after learning of the arrests. The Times reported that Jackson said he immediately called the St. Louis County Police Department, which was leading the command, after learning the reporters were in custody. The police have said the teenager who was killed, Michael Brown, attempted to attack an officer and take his gun. Protesters have accused law enforcement in Ferguson of engaging in racial profiling. Officers have responded to the protests with rubber bullets and tear gas. Both Reilly and Lowery said they were taken into custody and released soon after SWAT teams came into a McDonald's where they were working Wednesday. Lowery did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. Reilly, who said he was held with Lowery, told Business Insider he did not hear from Jackson after his arrest. "We asked to speak with him when we left," Reilly said of Jackson. "I think he was probably closer to the protests." Reilly said the police released him and Lowery after asking if they were members of the press. "When we were in our cell, an officer came through and asked if we were journalists. We were both in the same cell and said we were journalists," Reilly said. "We were then taken out, given our bags, and sent on our way without any answers." Reilly said he and Lowery were given a police report number. "They said it would probably be a couple weeks before we got the report," he said. Reilly added that he did not travel to Missouri "intending to be the story." "There are people who have probably been treated much worse," Reilly said. "We have the privilege that we're journalists and we've been given a get-out-of-jail-free card because of the sort of coverage that would result if we were kept in jail."US President Donald Trump signs a revised executive order for a travel ban, leaving Iraq off the list of targeted countries, after his controversial first attempt was blocked in the courts. US President Donald Trump has signed a new executive order banning travellers from six Muslim-majority countries after his controversial first attempt was blocked in the courts. The new executive order will keep a 90-day ban on travel to the United States by citizens of Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, and comes into effect on March 16. Iraq is no longer included in the ban because the Iraqi government has imposed new vetting procedures, such as heightened visa screening and data sharing, and because of its work with the United States in countering Islamic State militants. Thousands of Iraqis have fought alongside US troops for years or worked as translators since the US-led invasion in 2003. Many have resettled in the United States following threats for working with US troops. READ MORE: * US states warn court renewed Muslim travel ban would 'unleash chaos again' * Has Trump's 18-month winning streak ended? * Inside Trump's latest fury After several weeks, Donald Trump has signed a new travel ban. The new executive order also ensures that tens of thousands of legal permanent residents in the United States - or green card holders - from the listed countries would not now be affected by the travel ban. More than two dozen lawsuits were filed in US courts against the original travel ban, which was signed on January 27, and the state of Washington succeeded in having it suspended by the 9th Circuit court of Appeals by arguing that it violated constitutional protections against religious discrimination. .@POTUS has signed a new executive order that will keep the nation safe. Read it at https://t.co/XcBwwEJJHF pic.twitter.com/Yx2mikXl2A — Sean Spicer (@PressSec) March 6, 2017 POOL US President Donald Trump's new travel ban doesn't include Iraq, as the failed original ban did. Trump publicly criticised judges who ruled against him and vowed to fight the case in the Supreme Court, but then decided to draw up a new order with changes aimed at making it easier to defend in the courts. NEW BAN The new executive order bans travellers from the six countries who did not obtain a visa before January 27, according to a fact sheet the administration sent to Congress. RNZ Immigration law specialist Zach Norris says the new Trump travel ban will put New Zealanders under greater scrutiny if they have dual citizenship with one of the six countries on the banned list. In addition, the nation's refugee program will be suspended for 120 days, and it will not accept more than 50,000 refugees in a year, down from the 110,000 accepted last year by the Obama administration. The order represents an attempt by the Trump administration to tighten security requirements for travellers from nations that officials said represent a terrorism threat. The new order provides other exceptions not contained in previous versions: for travellers from those countries who are legal permanent residents of the United States, dual nationals who use a passport from another country, those attending diplomatic missions, and those who have been granted asylum or refugee status. "The United States has the world's most generous immigration system, yet it has been repeatedly exploited by terrorists and other malicious actors who seek to do us harm," the fact sheet stated. The Department of Homeland Security was preparing to release the order publicly on Monday morning under an embargo. The Washington Post received the documents separately from an immigration lawyer who obtained them from a member of Congress. The new order drew condemnation from immigrant rights advocates. "The president has said he would ban Muslims, and this revised version - in these preliminary fact sheets - still does that, even if they have removed Iraq from the list," said Gregory Chen, director of advocacy for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "In its oral argument before the 9th Circuit, the government was unable to provide any evidence to the 9th Circuit that acts of terrorism had been committed by the nationals of seven countries initially designated. That was an embarrassment, but now weeks later, in these preliminary fact sheets, they still have not explained why people from these countries pose risk to America's national security." MAJOR DISRUPTIONS While the first order imposed restrictions immediately, the new directive would have an as-yet undefined implementation delay to limit the disruptions that created havoc for some travellers, the senior White House official told Reuters. Refugees who are "in transit" and have already been approved would be able to travel to the United States. Trump's original order barred travellers from the seven nations from entering for 90 days and all refugees for 120 days. Refugees from Syria were to be banned indefinitely, but under the new order they are not given separate treatment. "This executive order has scrapped that division and the indefinite suspension, and has collapsed them into a single category of a 120-day suspension," the official said. During the presidential election campaign last year, Trump called for a temporary ban on all Muslims entering the United States. He said his initial executive order issued just a week after he took office was needed to head off attacks by Islamist militants. However, the White House official said the new order was based on national security considerations and had nothing to do with religion. "It is substantially different from the first order yet it will do the same thing in this important way: It will protect the country and keep us safe," the official said. The administration would also reset the clock on the 90-day travel ban. The official said US government agencies would determine whether Syria or other nations had made sufficient security improvements to be taken back into the refugee admissions program. The new order launches a 90-day period for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to define a new series of requirements for countries to have full participation in US entry programs. For countries that do not comply, the US State Department, the DHS and intelligence agencies can make recommendations on what, if any, restrictions should be imposed. "It's not an all-or-nothing scenario," the official said. The new order spells out detailed categories of people eligible to enter the United States, such as for business or medical travel, or people with family connections or who support the United States. "There are a lot of explicit carve-outs for waivers and given on a case-by-case basis," the official said. Many of Trump's supporters approved of the initial ban but critics said it was unjustified and discriminatory. US technology firms who had employees affected by the executive order also complained, and some members of Trump's Cabinet urged him to remove Iraqis and green card holders from the list of those affected. The White House was widely criticised for not working with the State Department, the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security and allies in Congress in drawing up the initial ban. The confusion that caused led to a weekend of chaos, legal wrangling and protests in cities and at major airports across the United States. - Reuters and Washington Post * Comments on this article have closed.Peter Gelderloos is an anarchist and author from Virginia. His books include How Nonviolence Protects the State, Consensus, Anarchy Works, The Failure of Nonviolence, the travel narrative To Get to the Other Side, and the collection of short stories Sousa in the Echo Chamber. He currently lives in Barcelona, where he takes part in ongoing social struggles. In his book Anarchy Works (Ardent Press, 2010) Gelderloss argues that “free societies are not possible so long as governments try to crush any pocket of independence, corporations fund genocide in order to manufacture cell phones, and supposedly sympathetic people are more interested in writing ethnographies than fighting back.” (19) Anarchy Works is a book I highly recommend for anyone (important because how we organize ourselves affects everyone) who wants to understand anarchism and how the objections to it being pie-in-the-sky, besides being a non-argument, do not hold much water. The following is a recent interview I did with Peter Gelderloss by email. ***** Kim Petersen: In Anarchy Works, you wrote, “It is no mistake that the institutions of power in our civilization — media, academia, government, religions — have exaggerated the prevalence of war and understated the possibility for peace. These institutions are invested in ongoing wars and occupations; they profit from them, and attempts to create a more peaceful society threaten their existence.” (26-27) To paraphrase what you are saying here: there is profit in war and no profit in peace? Yet the profits go to the ones fomenting war and not to the people actually fighting the wars. How does such a system of violence perpetuate itself? Does patriotism blunt rationality? If so, how can patriotism best be overcome? Do you identify any other major non-historical factors that predispose people to fight wars? Peter Gelderloos: On the contrary, in the society we live in today, there is plenty of profit in war and in peace. But when they talk about war, they mean common people in one country slaughtering common people in another country while generals, journalists, and business leaders cheer them on. And when they talk about peace, they mean stability, social order, and obedience. Peace, in the capitalist sense, is very dangerous for people like us. It means hundreds of thousands of people dying every year due to workplace accidents, pollution, bad food, driving to and from work, police violence, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia. As long as sales are good in the holiday season, this is what they call peace. What really threatens them is when we start fighting back. Not murdering our neighbors but turning on our bosses and leaders. So when I talk about a more peaceful society, I mean one without this fundamental antagonism that arises from exploitation and domination. It is an antagonism that splits the human community and one that also turns us against the planet that gives us life. If we get rid of that fundamental exploitation, there will still be conflict, but war as we know it will become both impossible and senseless. So properly speaking, it’s not a system of violence but a system of exploitation that uses a great many tools to maintain order, from police torture and carpet bombing to dialogue and public education. It perpetuates itself by accumulating ever more wealth and power among those who rule, letting privileges and benefits trickle down to those who help them out, and convincing everyone else to go along with it, controlling the terms of the debate so they never even have to acknowledge that another world is possible. Patriotism definitely plays a role in this. It turns exploited people in one country against exploited people in another country, while those who do the exploiting laugh all the way to the bank. And it replaces a healthy love for one’s land with a love for the government or a more abstract national concept. You can kick a patriot off their land, poison their water, bulldoze the place where their relatives are buried, and give them a crappy job, and as long as they can keep waving their flag and blame it all on immigrants, they’ll do as they’re told. Other factors that predispose people to fight wars? War isn’t inevitable, but it’s clearly a human possibility and always has been. Before the State, wars more often took the form of raiding, and sometimes the form of highly ritualized sports with very little actual death. Some societies chose never to engage in war. It’s a human choice. But today, a lot of people are so bored, and so eager to look for someone to blame, that signing up to go to war makes sense. For some people, it’s better than a video game. For others, it’s a way to avoid the violence of the city, the violence of prison, the violence of a really demeaning, low-paying job. KP: You wrote, “Those who attempted to put themselves permanently in the role of chief or spokesperson were ostracized — or even treated to a pie in the face, as high profile organizer Medea Benjamin was at the US Social Forum in 2007.” (33) It seems that much of the independent media inclines to the words of certain anarchist/leftist gurus — wannabe or not. What, for you, is the connection or disconnection between anarchists and other leftists when it comes to predilection toward experts or celebrity? PG: Anarchists can sell out their principles just as easily as anyone else. The difference is, anarchists who aspire to the authority and power of professional expertise or fame isolate themselves. Anarchists who try to be media spokespersons, who go to the negotiating table and strike a deal with power, are generally treated with utter suspicion and contempt, both in our histories and in day-to-day communication. They are held up as examples of what to avoid. In many other political currents, those who “make it”, those who become famous or powerful, are held up as positive examples. KP: In a somewhat related vein, much of the Left continues to put credence in elections dominated by well financed parties with corporate media backing and playing by the rules established by elitists. What role do you see that anarchists should play in elections? Should they participate? Is holding one’s nose and choosing a lesser evilist candidate, as one prominent anarchist has suggested, practical or worth considering? PG: Anarchists have generally remained true to their anti-electoral and anti-political positions, neither taking part in elections nor assuming positions in government. I think this is the right position to take. There is no such thing as a good government policy. Even if the results of a government policy bear some similarity to outcomes we would like to see, these are outcomes handed down from on high in a completely alienated and authoritarian process. The crux of the problem is that we are prisoners of this society with no chance to meaningfully take part in the organization of our own lives. We are constantly turned into spectators and consumers of our own lives. Within such a framework, talk of better or worse candidates or policies is meaningless. Alienated means can never solve the fundamental problem of alienation. A ruler by definition cannot make you free. Dialogue of any kind with political powers increases their power over us. This is not a step in the direction of the self-organization of our own communities and our own lives. There’s also the fact that governments that portray themselves as progressive have often done the most to institutionalize popular struggles and increase the power of the State to regulate and organize our lives. Look at Obama. His campaign, tapping into the grassroots, succeeded in simply shutting off a great deal of popular anger and initiatives that surfaced during the Bush years. For what? More torture, more drones, more spying, more surveillance, more police killings, higher border walls, the same wars by other means, and the most minimal of healthcare systems. Look at Evo Morales in Bolivia. His government has been able to institutionalize what were once powerful social movements and mobilize them to support some of the worst neoliberal development projects underway in South America. Delegating power over our lives can never be a step towards winning back the power to organize our own lives. KP: You wrote, “Technology is not blinking lights and whirring gadgets. Technology is adaptation. By adapting a complex set of techniques that have allowed them to meet all their needs without destroying their environment over 7,000 years, the New Guinea farmers have accomplished something Western civilization has never even approached.” (80) You challenge the notion that invention of devices constitutes technology, and yet the Eurocentric viewpoint often fails to take into account disregarding the Precautionary Principle and the negative effects of technology; whereas Indigenous peoples often created or molded the environment to sustain them in ingenious ways. In his book 1491, Charles Mann argues that the Original Peoples of the western hemisphere were as technologically advanced as any European civilization. Mann described Indigenous agriscience as pre-eminent and considered the development of maize as “arguably man’s first, and perhaps his greatest, feat of genetic engineering.” My father came to me to share an article he was reading in his newspaper. The title was “Is Technology Dangerous?” (Paul Mohapel, Times Colonist, 6 March 2014: A11) My immediate response was, “What about GMOs and nuclear technology?” To which I added, “Technology is not dangerous; it is the uses people put that technology to that renders it dangerous or not.” The writer warns, “Information technology usage may be making us dumber by impairing and possibly damaging our brains.” How do you see anarchism vis-à-vis technology? PG: I disagree with the view that technology is not dangerous, it is how we use it that is dangerous or not. Some people make a distinction between “technics” as devices or practices that serve as tools, and “technology” as a society-wide complex that uses new devices to transform how society is organized and how people relate to one another and to their environment. In this latter sense, technology is not only dangerous, it is coercive. You might think, for example, that using a cellphone is a choice. But nowadays, it is almost impossible to get a job without a cellphone, and not having a cellphone has been used as evidence of political extremism in criminal trials. How about driving a car? Cars have caused a huge deal of damage to this planet, and there are many places where you can’t get to work or get to the store without a car. It’s not voluntary. What about nuclear technology? This has directly caused cancer rates to go up, to the tune of millions of deaths. We’re all forced to accept nuclear radiation, which has become a planetary reality, because some governments have decided they want nuclear power. And with that power comes an excuse for new forms of emergency and disaster management, more dictatorial powers justified on the basis of public safety. It’s no coincidence that governments like technologies that give them such power. The technologies I was talking about in the passage you cited are forms of adaptation that can help us feed ourselves or communicate and share information without damaging the planet or submitting ourselves to some authoritarian structure. Such technologies demonstrate people’s creative and adaptive capabilities, showing that we don’t need governments or private researchers to live well or come up with solutions to the problems that will arise. Examples of hyper-complex, intelligent adaptation from New Guinea and other places also shows that the idea of more or less advanced societies, the idea of progress as a line from less to more evolved, is a Eurocentric and often racist fiction. KP: “… the institution of police emerged as a means to give the ruling class greater control over the population and expand the state’s monopoly on the resolution of social conflict.” (114) Since the police are of the working class, why is it that you see that they are so often willing to do the bidding of the elitists? PG: In any society, there are always going to be some people that have a mercenary sentiment. There will always be bullies. In a society where bullies are celebrated, given jobs, and called heroes, there’s going to be a lot more bullies, they will be encouraged to develop even more sadistic and arrogant methods, and the rest of us will be largely defenseless against them. In a society that discourages this kind of behavior, bullies and mercenary types won’t have free rein to do as they please, they’ll isolate themselves if they act the way police act in our society, and they’ll get the kind of encouragement they might need to solve some of their issues and work on being better human beings. In many revolutions, even the military has deserted and joined the rebels. The police, on the other hand, stay true to power as long as power continues to exist. For those who are inclined to talk about good cops, they only need to realize that there would not be a police left in service, that all of them would get fired, if they refused to do what any healthy human being would refuse, like arresting someone for being homeless or kicking someone out of their house because the bank said so. If someone is an active duty cop, it’s because they’re okay with doing those things. KP: “Borders don’t protect people; they are a means by which governments protect their assets, which include us. When the borders shift in a war, the victorious state has advanced, staking its claim to new territory, new resources, and new subjects. We are plunder — potential cannon fodder, taxpayers, and laborers — and borders are the walls of our prison.” (189) This speaks again to patriotism, the belief that residing in the borders of a state demands fidelity to the state. Why do people accept borders that hinder their freedom of movement – or they accept this? PG: Borders have been around for so long, they’re seen as natural. Being able to control a territory is essential to the existence of the State. People usually don’t respect borders when borders get in the way. Every year, millions of people cross borders without permission, or they overstay their permission, they work in countries where the government says they can’t, they don’t believe that they have any less right to go to a part of the world where certain governments want to prohibit or limit their access. Yet many people, especially those people who are considered civilized or sedentary, accept the existence of borders. They can’t imagine a world without borders and they’re told it would be impossible, though once upon a time there were no borders and even today, those horrid little imaginary lines governments base their sovereignty on are not fully a part of consensus reality, given how many people refuse to obey them. KP: Your latest book is The Failure of Nonviolence, which I haven’t read yet (except for the review), but it seems in line with what I written a few times previously: that violent resistance against the violence of occupiers/oppressors is legitimate. For me, there is nothing that a oppressor would prefer better than to face a resistance that limits itself to non-violence. Your view? PG: Of course I agree. Many proponents of nonviolence assert a conspiracy theory that governments secretly want us to use violence, but visible indications to the contrary abound. The media demonize us if we fight back, the police target us, the courts criminalize us, even punishing us as terrorists for simple property destruction. Time and again, people have peacefully taken the streets to learn that by confining themselves to nonviolence, they cannot transform society. They cannot even take over and defend spaces where no social relations can be put into practice. Nonviolence can’t exist without amnesia, without forgetting the lessons of past struggles. KP: In line with gift-giving economies, your “book is priced at cost and our goal in distributing it is not to make money, but to share it with you.” I am interested further in your views on publication. You wrote, “Publishing is an enterprise we were supposed to leave to the professionals, and books were something we were supposed to buy and consume, not to make ourselves. But we forged ourselves the permission slip to pursue this project, and we hope to show that you can too.” PG: I would like it if the book were even cheaper. That’s why we put the full text online. The printing of the book is not an attempt by anyone to make money. It’s priced so that an anarchist printing project can pay for its costs, pay for other books that it puts out, and go on publishing. The motivation is a desire to share ideas, to take part in a conversation that is unfolding among people who take to the streets, challenge authority, and commit themselves to the unending learning process that rebels, noncomformists, and revolutionaries always encounter when they decide to live freely and fully or to live for their own principles. Unfortunately, many people who start off struggling against oppression eventually turn their projects into another business, another way to make a living. This has been especially true in the world of publishing. Many writers try to pay their bills by publishing, in other words by selling radical ideas, and many presses that spring up to make new ideas available take on an increasingly mercantile logic. But it’s not enough to get new ideas out there if we’re not putting our ideas into practice. After all, none of these are really new ideas. All of these complaints, all of these dreams, have been articulated a thousand times before. Democracy allows us to voice all the opinions we want as long as we never try to actually do anything. It’s the same logic as solitary confinement in a prison cell: total freedom of expression, zero freedom of action. It’s not the ideas, but the practices that have been forcibly suppressed. Publishing is nothing but another opportunity to put the ideas of solidarity and mutual aid into practice. Writing about freedom without trying to live it is nothing but self-betrayal.BREAKING on Rice-Gate: Obama Admin Spied on SEAN
of our towns, I pledge to you one more time. Together we will make American wealthy again. We will make America strong again. We will make America safe again and we will make America great again!B.J. Penn is still coming out of retirement. It just won't be as quickly as he thought. Penn announced via his website, BJPenn.com, that he will be competing against an unnamed opponent at UFC 197 on April 23 in Las Vegas. The Hawaiian legend said he was originally planning on fighting at UFC 196 on March 5. "I thought the fight guaranteed was going to happen because the UFC, they set up medicals for me to do," Penn said. "I did the medicals and they were sending a film crew down and we were getting all that together and I assumed we were setting up the fight, and that might have been what was happening. But, at the end of the day, [UFC matchmaker] Sean Shelby called me and said it would be more convenient for all of us to move the fight to April 23." Penn, 37, said it's his understanding that it will be the same opponent he was going to face at UFC 196. Ariel Helwani reported last week on UFC Tonight that Dennis Siver has been a name bandied about. The UFC has made no official announcement about Penn's return fight. Penn, a UFC Hall of Famer, said he would be staying in Albuquerque to train at JacksonWink MMA right up until April 23. "You have heard ‘what you feed the most, grows the biggest,' and I'm going to stay here and immerse myself in the martial arts and see how good I can get," Penn said. Penn's new teammate Jon Jones will be in the headliner of UFC 197, attempting to get his light heavyweight title back from current champion Daniel Cormier. In the co-main event, Demetrious Johnson defends his flyweight title against Henry Cejudo. Penn (16-10-2) is one of only two men, along with Randy Couture, to hold two titles in different weight classes in the UFC (welterweight and lightweight). He will be making his return in the featherweight division. Penn has not fought since a loss to Frankie Edgar in July 2014. He has not picked up a UFC win since 2010 when he knocked out fellow legend Matt Hughes.The upcoming possession flick INCARNATE is going to be the only wide release horror movie in theaters this holiday season, so even though I've had my doubts about it, I'm hoping it proves to be a good time. Today we're sharing a brand new exclusive clip from the film, and I can honestly say it's the best one I've seen so far, which is reassuring. A fast-paced action moment, it tosses you into a nightmare world that looks like a Jean Claude Van Damme flick meets INSIDIOUS, and if that's how the whole film turns out to be, I'm actually pretty keen on the idea. Check it out below! Scripted by Ronnie Christensen (DARK TIDE), the film revolves around... A scientist with the ability to enter the subconscious minds of the possessed must save a young boy from the grips of a demon with powers never seen before, while facing the horrors of his past. INCARNATE also stars Mark Henry (WWE), David Mazouz (THE DARKNESS), and Catalina Sandino (AT THE DEVIL'S DOOR). The film was directed by Brad Peyton (SAN ANDREAS). BH Tilt, a division of Blumhouse, is putting INCARNATE out in theaters on December 2nd.dirty-diode asked: Is this blog related to this is innocent privilege? No. As far as I can tell, thisisinnocentprivilege is just some anti-sj troll blog that has latched on to me since it’s apparently “cool” to bully me right now (until the next easy target appears and the tumblr hate army forgets about me to go harass them). If you go to their blog, most of their posts are just directly copied and pasted from mine, but they swapped a couple of words out to make it look original. Kind of pathetic really. Not only are these troll blogs a waste of time (how fucking sad do you have to be to dedicate your life to writing fake posts on the internet) but they also trivilialize real oppression like filthphobia, fat hate and misogyny. Anti-sj assholes are going to see those blogs and snicker to themselves, feeling oh-so-superior to those sjw strawmen, and systematic hatred will continue to be perpetuated uninterrupted. These people try to troll the social justice movement but they are really only trolling themselves.Originally Posted by fergal (Source) Originally Posted by The amount of merits involved makes it difficult to believe its the work of saboteurs, or call them 5th columners if you prefer. 355000 merits, all fast tracked would cost 3.5 billion cr. The entire Kumo Crew does around 100000 merits in fortification, on a good week, so you are talking about an organised group 3 times the size of the Kumo Crew dedicated to making Aisling have bad preparations. I don't believe thats whats happening. Its possible there is a 5th column element involved, where they seed the system early, to get it on the map, so the greedy many can see it. Its my understanding that there is a very profitable trade route to this system from Aislings capital, so players who don't care can get their 5666 merits per week, to maintain rating 5, as easily and quickly as possible, while costing them the least amount of cr. It looks to me like its 60 mindless grinders maintaining rating 5 the laziest way possible, not 60 dedicated saboteurs. Either way, their motivation doesn't matter to the guys at Aisling, they need to prep more to keep it from getting on the expansion list. Every power is facing this, its just Aisling seems to have it much worse. Hudson had to put 360000 in 2 weeks ago to push bad systems off their list. Aisling gets a greater consumption of high value goods in her control systems, this makes it easy to make large amounts of cr while preparing and fortifying, but that seems to promote this mindless cr and merit grinding.1877 disaster Date 22 October 1877 ( ) Time 09:30 Location Blantyre, Scotland Type Coal mine disaster Cause Firedamp explosion caused by either a naked flame or a modified Davy lamp Death(s) 207 Inquiries Report by the Inspectors of Mines to both houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty OS grid reference 1878 disaster Date 5 March 1878 ( ) Location No 3 Pit, Blantyre Scotland Type Coal mine disaster Cause Winding gear overrun Death(s) 6 Accused Arthur Cleland Charges Culpable homicide Verdict Not proven 1879 disaster Date 2 July 1879 ( ) Time 21:00 Location Blantyre, Scotland Type Coal mine disaster Cause Firedamp explosion (possible cause: smoking) triggering a coal dust explosion. Death(s) 28 Inquiries Explosion of fire-damp at Blantyre Colliery. The Blantyre mining disaster, which happened on the morning of 22 October 1877, in Blantyre, Scotland, was Scotland's worst ever mining accident. Pits No. 2 and No. 3 of William Dixon's Blantyre Colliery were the site of an explosion which killed 207 miners, the youngest being a boy of 11. It was known that firedamp was present in the pit and it is likely that this was ignited by a naked flame. The accident left 92 widows and 250 fatherless children. Blantyre was also the scene of two further disasters[a] in 1878 and 1879. There was a succession of lesser fatalities, some of which - particularly in the earlier years - were caused by firedamp. Background [ edit ] The Lanarkshire coalfield in the vicinity of Blantyre had three seams of coal being worked in the 1870s. They were the ell coal, 7 feet (2.1 m) thick at 117 fathoms (702 ft; 214 m); the main coal, 4.5 feet (1.4 m) thick at 129 fathoms (774 ft; 236 m) and the splint coal, 5.5 feet (1.7 m) thick at 155 fathoms (930 ft; 283 m). Precise depths vary with the elevation of the top of the various shafts. The Blantyre colliery had five shafts: No. 1, 24 feet (7.3 m) by 8 feet (2.4 m) working the ell and main coals. No. 2. 16 feet (4.9 m) by 8 feet (2.4 m) working the splint coal. No. 3. 24 feet (7.3 m) by 8 feet (2.4 m) working the splint coal. No. 4. 24 feet (7.3 m) by 8 feet (2.4 m) working the splint coal. At the time of the explosion No. 4 had not yet connected with the rest of the colliery. No. 5. 10 feet (3.0 m) diameter used as the upcast[b] for numbers 1, 2 and 3. Numbers 2 and 5 shafts were close to each other, within 30 yards (27 m). Number 3 shaft was 680 yards (620 m) away. Number 1 shaft was between the two but only reached the ell and main coals. Blind pits, that is shafts that do not extend to the surface, connected the ell and main coals to the splint coal. The main coal ceased to be worked in November 1878 and the passages from shaft 1 bricked up. Shaft 1 continued to work the ell coal. Four main districts were formed in the splint coal: A smaller area with workings to the north and south of number 3 pit. An area lying in the north-west quadrant from number 2 pit. An area lying in the south-west quadrant from number 2 pit. An area lying in the south east quadrant from number 2 pit close to, and in communication with, the workings from number 3 pit. Conditions in the mine were held to be poor by the colliers. The previous year the miners had sought a wage rise to compensate for the poor safety and been refused. They went on strike and were immediately sacked. Since the miners lived in tied cottages they were therefore evicted by force. The mine owners then brought in Irish Catholics to work the mine. Working the coal [ edit ] Most of the coal was worked using the Newcastle system, also known as "pillar and stall" or "stoop and room". A heading was driven into the coal and at intervals along it rooms were excavated, around 12 feet (3.7 m) wide. As the rooms got deeper another heading was driven from room to room to leave pillars (or stoops) about 20 yards (18 m) square behind. During this stage only around 30% of the coal was extracted. Eventually the whole district consisted of a grid pattern of passageways around stoops. The final stage in extraction was "stooping". The furthermost roof was supported by pit props and the stoops removed. Once a complete row of stoops had gone the props were removed from the furthest part which would collapse into the space ("goaf" or "gove") behind. During this process settlement and fracturing of the roof and seams above could occur, potentially releasing larger quantities of gas. The alternative method of working the coal was the longwall system. Two headers were driven forward to the far end of the district and an interconnecting passageway excavated. The passageway was supported by props and the long wall on the shaft side of the passage excavated. As this wall retreated the roof was propped and the furthermost props removed, allowing the overburden to collapse into the goaf. With longwall the same fracturing and gas release that stooping could cause was always present. The ell coal was mainly worked by stoop and room, with longwall in the southern part only. The main was exclusively worked by longwall and the splint (apart from a trial section) worked by stoop and room. Ventilation [ edit ] In collieries at that time air circulation was induced by a furnace at the base of the upcast pit. Hot air rising up the pit, as if up a chimney, drew the exhausted and contaminated air out of the galleries. Downcast pits let the fresh air in to replace it. The route the air took was carefully controlled by doors and partitions. At Blantyre pit, number 5 was the upcast shaft for pits 1, 2 and 3. About 5 tons of coal were burnt per day in two out of three grates, each 7 feet (2.1 m) by 4 feet (1.2 m). Air for the ell coal was drawn down pit number 1. At the base it split north and south then after passing around the respective parts of the workings it was led to the upcast pit. Ventilation in the splint coal was more complex. Air from number 3 pit was split in two and passed along the north and south levels. After passing through the respective workings the two currents passed through the north and south headings before recombining on the "rise" (west) side and passing into the workings of number 2 pit. On average the air circuit was 2,400 yards (2,200 m) in number 3 pit. Air was drawn down number 2 and split in two. The larger portion went north, circulated around the north-west workings for 3,674 yards (3,360 m) before returning to the upcast pit. The smaller part was led to the south, circulated around the south-western area for 2,901 yards (2,653 m) and then back to the upcast. The air from number 3 pit entered the workings associated with number 2 pit in the east and circulated around number 2 pit's south-eastern portion before finally reaching the upcast. The air circuit at 3,500 yards (3,200 m) might not be considered excessive, but when both pits are added the total circuit was 8,096 yards (7,403 m). After the disaster this policy of using the air from number 3 workings to ventilate number 2 workings was roundly condemned in the trade press: "It is a very dangerous system, and should be abandoned at once". 1877 disaster [ edit ] Explosion [ edit ] On the morning of 22 October nothing was thought to be amiss. The officials seemed to think that the workings were in their normal state. At 04:40 four firemen[c] inspected number 2 pit. At 05:30 the regular workmen started to descend. The firemen assured the workers all was well and ascended to sign reports and have breakfast. Having received these assurances the workforce went about their various tasks. At around 09:00 a blast was heard on the surface and flame and steam rushed up number 3 pit for a few minutes. Smoke was seen from the upcast pit and air came from number 2. Nothing was seen from number 1 pit, but below ground the miners felt the blast and at once ascended. The smoke was seen in the surrounding area so miners and managers hurried to the pithead. Shortly after 10:00 the Inspector of Mines, Mr Moore, and the Assistant Inspector, Mr Robson, were alerted by telegraph. They arrived at the colliery at noon. Rescue attempts [ edit ] Number 3 pit was blocked by debris falling from the damaged shaft and by tubs and similar being blown up the shaft. The cages and ropes had been damaged, so an attempt at descending was made in a "kettle", basically a large bucket. Air was still travelling down the shaft and voices could be heard at the bottom, below the blockage. Number 2 pit was relatively undamaged, normal winding operations could continue. Moore, Robson and some engineers went down number 2 pit but were stopped by falls and afterdamp.[d] The route to number 3 pit ("More's dook") appeared to be free of falls but was full of chokedamp. A brattice[e] was constructed to divert the air passing from number 3 pit directly to the upcast, and by this means More's dook became passable by 22:00. Four survivors were found, all badly injured. One of them, a boy, died shortly afterwards. The remaining three were brought to the surface through number 2 pit and sent to Glasgow Infirmary, but all died within the month. Rescue parties explored number 3 pit as far as they could, but were limited by chokedamp and firedamp. Seventeen bodies were found and brought to the foot of the blocked number 3 shaft for later retrieval. The shaft was unstable, and if it closed up the rescuers would be deprived of air so they retreated until the shaft could be secured from above. All hope of finding more survivors was abandoned. Recovery phase [ edit ] The following day, Tuesday 23 October, an underground engine at the upcast was adapted to assist the ventilation. The slide valve was removed and steam sent down. The escaping hot steam rising up the upcast drew the air around the mine in the same way that the furnaces would. By this means 70% of the normal air supply was restored and recovery work could commence. All the men in the northern part of the colliery had left their work and headed for number 2 pit, only to be overcome by chokedamp before reaching safety. Ventilation continued until Saturday 27 when the debris at the foot of number 3 shaft could be cleared. By Sunday the first bodies could be brought up number 3 shaft, but it was not until Thursday 1 November that the mine was free of gas and recovery could be carried on from both downcast pits. Investigation [ edit ] The investigations commenced as soon as the air was safe. Significant damage had been done in both the number 2 and number 3 workings, though particularly in number 3 pit. Damage in number 2 pit was mainly in the south eastern part, that in communication with, and ventilated from, pit 3. This was the area where stooping was occurring, so that the place most likely to be liberating firedamp was being ventilated with firedamp laden air from number 3 pit. The official report notes that naked flames and blasting were allowed throughout the colliery, except in the area around the stooping. Near there no blasting was permitted and all lamps had to be "gauze lamps". The report states: "These gauze or safety lamps were not Davy lamps, but of a kind in common use throughout Scotland. They are much larger than the Davy lamp and give a better light. Mr Moore [the lead inspector] has frequently tested them in gas, and on no occasion has the gas been exploded outside". Lupton, writing 15 years later, inveighs against modifications to the Davy lamp including: "The larger the lamp the greater the force of the explosion, and if the lamp were too large, the explosion would force the flame through the gauze; for that reason the diameter of the gauze must never be larger than 1½ inch". In addition, the Blantyre explosion was before Trimdon Grange (1882) and the Bedford Colliery Disaster of 1886 and so the shielding of gauzes from direct currents of air had not yet been introduced. Notwithstanding Moore's claims for the Scottish safety lamp, the report's conclusions call for the banning of naked lights and the introduction of locked Davy lamps which "are better than the present safety lamps". The report also roundly criticises poor discipline (including shots being fired by unauthorised workers), poor ventilation around old or incomplete stoops and the whole method of ventilating one pit from another. The report does not come to a firm conclusion about how the explosion started. Aftermath [ edit ] It is reported that, six months after the accident, Dixon's raised summonses against 34 widows whose husbands had been killed and who had not left the tied cottages which they and their husbands had rented from the mining company. They were evicted two weeks later, on 28 May 1878. 1878 disaster [ edit ] On 5 March 1878 at No. 3 Pit, six men were killed when the cage they were in was drawn up past the top of the pit and 32 feet (9.8 m) into the pithead wheels. The cage was wrecked and overturned, throwing six men to the bottom of the 150-fathom (900 ft; 270 m) shaft. A seventh man (James Gerrity) managed to hold on until he was assisted down and, apart from being shaken, was unhurt. At the time of the accident Mr J T Robson (Assistant Government Inspector for the district) and Mr Robert Robson (his assistant) were in the colliery office with Mr Watson, the manager. Robert Robson descended number 2 pit and went to the bottom of the number 3 shaft to supervise the recovery of the bodies from a flooded sump. Meanwhile, several men descended number 3 pit in a "kettle" to examine the shaft for damage. The shaft being undamaged the bodies were recovered that way. The engine keeper, Arthur Cleland, stated that "something had gone wrong" with the indicator to the colliery engineer, James Patterson, was in the vicinity at the time of the accident. Patterson examined the indicator which showed the cage's position and found it registered 40 fathoms (240 ft; 73 m) from the pit head, about a quarter of the shaft's total depth. Cleland was advised to stay but left shortly afterwards. After going home to clean up and change Cleland was observed heading across the fields towards Glasgow but was overtaken by a policeman and arrested. After helping down Gerrity, Patterson had returned to the engine house and seen that the indicator now showed 7 fathoms (42 ft; 13 m) although the cage had not moved in the meantime. Cleland was charged with culpable homicide and tried at the High Court in Glasgow on 24 April. At the trial Patterson said that when he touched the indicator it was "very loose. He had never noticed it so loose before". Two engineers called for the defence at the trial also criticised the method of attaching the indicator as "not proper" and "not... to be the best mode known to engineers". Michael Flanagan, a furnaceman at the pithead, reported that Cleland said "the indicator was wrong" and Flanagan observed that the indicator was further down than it should have been. The manager, Watson, admitted under cross-examination that it was the duty of the oversman to examine the indicator but he did not do so. Most witnesses also gave Cleland a good character reference. After a short retirement, the jury returned a verdict of not proven. 1879 disaster [ edit ] The 1879 disaster occurred in the ell coal, the shallowest of the three seams. The coal was worked from number 1 pit which was the downcast. There was a "blind pit" down to the main coal, which was no longer being worked, and a communication mine down to the splint coal at the foot of pit number 3. Air came down number 1 pit and the current was split to ventilate the north and south workings respectively. The south current passed along the south level for 770 yards (700 m) to the southern extremity. It passed through the longwall workings there and returned via the older stoop and room workings before joining the north current return and passing up the upcast, number 5 pit. The inspectors report concluded "1 That the arrangements for the ventillation of this pit were sufficient, and that the quantity of air sent in was ample under ordinary conditions". Although the owners banned the men from opening lamps or from taking smoking materials below ground, several prosecutions had occurred for breaches of the rules. The last such was the day before the explosion when a miner was fined £2 (equivalent to £200 in 2018[f]) for opening his lamp. The explosion was first noticed on the surface as a "sharp retort" at 21:00 on Wednesday 2 July 1879. Once John White, the oversman, had been summoned an attempt was made to lower the cage, but it stuck. White then descended number 3 pit and found that the men there were unaware of the explosion. He, a group of men, and shortly afterwards Mr Watson (the manager) proceeded up the communication mine into number 1 pit's workings. Parties descended the blind pit into the main coal and other parties searched the north workings and both reported all was well. Exploration of the south workings was stopped by falls and afterdamp. Various attempts were made to recover the bodies during the Thursday, but it was 04:00 on Friday before the whole workings could be reached and recovery completed. Not all the safety lamps were found, however one was found that was unlocked. Smoking materials including matches were found in the clothes of the deceased, one man was found with a half full pipe in his hand. Several men had unofficial (and therefore illegal) lamp-keys on them. In the immediate vicinity of the seat of the explosion little burning was seen, the supposition was that a firedamp explosion had raised dust in the passageways and the coal dust had exploded. The official investigation tentatively suggested that shot firing had displaced the gas towards the area where men were smoking and that a naked flame there triggered off the explosion. Monument [ edit ] The mine owner erected a 5.5-metre-tall granite monument to mark the two explosion disasters. An engraved dedication reads: "William Dixon Ltd—in memory of 240 of their workmen who were killed by explosions in Blantyre Colliery on 22nd October, 1877 and 2nd July 1879 and many of whom are buried here". There is also a memorial to the Catholic miners killed in the disaster of October 1877 which is located in Dalbeath Cemetery, London Road, Glasgow. In addition a memorial commemorating the centenary is located at Blantyre Cross, Blantyre. In music [ edit ] Irish folk artist Christy Moore recorded a song called "Blantyre Explosion". It appears on his 1985 album Ordinary Man. It had previously been recorded by Ewan MacColl. The exact origin of the song is unknown, but it is thought to have been collected by A. L. LLoyd from an unnamed local singer. The text first appears in A. L. LLoyd's 1951 book "coaldust ballads". [17] See also [ edit ] References [ edit ] Footnotes Citations ^ "Victora's Inferno", John Raven, 1978, Broadside p.94 Bibliography Coordinates:There most certainly are people who made sincere conversions from a state of godlessness to one of devout certainty. This is actually a very interesting process, and I’d like to know more about it, because I can’t imagine myself ever becoming a god-believer. I want to understand what makes for a persuasive argument for patent nonsense. One example is Holly Ordway, an atheist professor of literature who became a Catholic. She’s got a whole memoir on the subject, which I haven’t read because all the summaries make it sound awful and unbelievable. For example, Ordway describes her state of atheism: Dr. Holly Ordway has published a book titled Not God’s Type, telling her personal story. She begins “I had never in my life said a prayer, never been to a church service. Christmas meant presents and Easter meant chocolate bunnies–nothing more.” But her views get hardened: “In college, I absorbed the idea that Christianity was historical curiosity, or a blemish on modern civilization, or perhaps both. My college science classes presented Christians as illiterate anti-intellectuals who, because they didn’t embrace Darwinism, threatened the advancement of knowledge. My history classes omitted or downplayed references to historical figures’ faith.” Still later, “At thirty-one years old, I was an atheist college professor–and I delighted in thinking of myself that way. I got a kick out of being an unbeliever; it was fun to consider myself superior to the unenlightened, superstitious masses, and to make snide comments about Christians.” Uh, what? I’m probably about as radical and harsh an atheist as you’ll find on any college campus, and am openly hostile to Christianity. But even I don’t teach what she claims: Christianity is a major force in Western civilization. When I teach the history of science, I most certainly do not present Christians as “illiterate anti-intellectuals” — from Augustine to James Clerk Maxwell, the elites who also happened to be Christian were, well, elite. I make a point of bringing up the religious beliefs of scientists, especially among 19th century scientists, where the conflict between science and religion was brought to the fore by the ideas of Charles Darwin…and I also point out that Darwin himself respected religion (it was one of the reasons he personally struggled with releasing his book), that his wife was a sincere Unitarian, and that there were many thinking Christians who did not oppose the theory, such as Asa Gray. A great deal of the modern conflict comes from the fundamentalist creationist yahoos — a major concern of Christianity was to reconcile the facts of geology and biology with their theology, not to simply deny the science. So I guess Dr Ordway could have been the victim of educational malpractice, but I have to wonder…she’s a professor of English literature. Just how many science classes did she take? And when surveys have been done of college professors (PDF), it’s typical to find that maybe a quarter of them identify as atheists. The reality is always much more complicated than this vision of godless academe constantly oppressing Christian thought, so I’m already dubious. But then we get to her explanation of how she arrived at an intellectual acceptance of Catholicism, and we get what amounts to the standard unconvincing trope. The rest of Ordway’s book tells of her meeting a fencing coach that she trusted, a person who she did not discover was a Christian until after she had begun working with him. He and his wife merely answered her questions, not pressing anything religious on her. She is intellectually honest enough to investigate the sources... When she asks for reasonable works on the resurrection of Jesus, she is given N. T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God, 740 pages of scholarly examination. She reads Lewis’ Surprised By Joy, and Does God Exist? by Kreeft and Moreland, among others. Fucking hell. C.S. Lewis? Really? Why is it always C.S. Lewis? I’ve read C.S. Lewis, and Lewis is a glib twit. I know serious philosophers who rag on Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion for being superficial, but jebus…Lewis is so shallow and unconvincing and unthinking that I cannot believe that anyone is convinced by him without a prior predisposition. Whenever a convert cites Lewis as a source, I immediately lose all respect for the intellectual honesty of their arguments. I can believe they have an emotional response to his writing — he’s surprisingly popular — but don’t try to tell me you became a believer in the Jesus myth because you thought deeply about C.S. Lewis. You clearly didn’t, or you would have gagged and thrown the book in a fire as soon as you saw the Trilemma. As for N.T. Wright, you must read Robert Price’s review of that book. Wright’s massive book on the resurrection is, even for the garrulous bishop, an exercise in prolixity. It is several times longer than it needs to be, as if designed to bludgeon us into belief. One might save a lot of time and money by finding a copy of George Eldon Ladd’s I Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus (Eerdmans, 1975), which used most of the same arguments at a fraction of the length, and without skimping. The arguments have not gotten any better. They are the same old stale fundamentalist apologetics we got in Ladd, essentially the same old stuff we used to read in Josh McDowell and John Warwick Montgomery. The same hash reslung. Only now it is getting pretty smelly. Perhaps that is why Wright seeks to perfume it, reminiscent of Joseph and Nicodemus attempting to fumigate the decaying corpse of Jesus by encasing it in an extravagant hundred pounds weight of spices (John 19:39). Wright backs up much too far to make a running start at the resurrection, regaling us with unoriginal, superfluous, and tedious exposition of Old Testament and Intertestamental Jewish ideas of afterlife and resurrection, resurrection belief in every known Christian writer up into the early third century, etc., etc. The mountain thus laboring is doomed to bring forth a messianic mouse, alas. All this erudition is perhaps intended to intimidate the reader into accepting Wright’s evangelistic pitch. But it is just a lot of fast talking. In the end, Wright, now Bishop of Durham, is just Josh McDowell in a better suit. His smirking smugness is everywhere evident, especially in his condescension toward the great critics and critical methods of the last two centuries, all of which he strives to counteract. He would lead the hapless seminary student (whom one fears will be assigned this doorstop) backwards into the pre-critical era with empty pretenses of post-modern sophistication, shrugging off the Enlightenment by patently insincere attempts to wrap himself in the flag of post-colonialism. Genuine criticism of the gospels he dismisses as the less advanced, muddled thinking of a previous generation, as if “cutting edge” scholarship like his were not actually pathetic nostalgia for the sparkling Toyland of fundamentalist supernaturalism. It is a familiar bag of tricks, and that is all it is. The tragedy is that many today are falling for it. Witness Wright’s own prominence in the Society of Biblical Literature, to say nothing of his ecclesiastical clout. The weight of this book’s argument for orthodox traditionalism is to be found, of all places, in the acknowledgements section, where Wright thanks the hosts of the prestigious venues where he first presented bits of this material: Yale Divinity School, South-Western Theological Seminary, Duke Divinity School, Pontifical Gregorian University, St. Michael’s Seminary, etc., etc. Wright is the mouthpiece for institutional orthodoxy, a grinning spin-doctor for the Grand Inquisitor. What credibility his book appears to have is due to the imposing wealth, power, tradition, even architecture, of the social-ecclesiastical world which he serves as chaplain and apologist. It is sickening to read his phony affirmations of the allegedly political and radical import of a literal resurrection (if you can even tell what Wright means by this last). Does Bishop Wright espouse some form of Liberation Theology? No, for, just as he emptily says Jesus redefined messiahship, Wright redefines politics. When he says the early Christians were anti-imperialistic, all he has in mind is the fact that Christians withstood Roman persecution, valiant enough in its way, but hardly the same thing. Like a pathetic Civil War reenactment geek, he is sparring at an enemy safely dead for centuries. In attempting to co-opt and parody the rhetoric of his ideological foes, Wright reminds me of Francis Schaeffer, a hidebound fundamentalist who began as a children’s evangelist working for Carl MacIntyre. Schaeffer, posing as an intellectual and a philosopher, used to stamp the floor speaking at fundamentalist colleges, shouting “We are the true Bolsheviks!” Right. So I’m still left with the mystery of why — why do people convert to Catholicism? We cannot trust the self-reporting of the victims of this loss of intellectual rigor, because of course they always fall back on the claim of “I am too really smart”, citing bad books with pretentions that have an elevated reputation in the theological community, despite being what Price calls “pseudo-scholarly attempts to pull the wool over the eyes of readers, most of whom will be happy enough for the sedation”. I have my suspicions, but these true believers will never confess to them, and most likely are even unaware of their motivations. I think a clue is in Price’s comment above: the credibility of the “imposing wealth, power, tradition, even architecture, of the social-ecclesiastical world”. Catholicism in particular is very good at bombing you with the immense weight of its traditions. It’s a kind of tribalism where you choose your tribe not because of a careful assessment of its positions, but because it looks the most powerful. I am also all too aware that atheism has the same problem. I’ve met too many atheists who despite not understanding science at all, are very rah-rah about the trappings of science, who like to claim the mantle of the Great and Powerful Science for their beliefs. I do believe that science is locked in a mutually interacting relationship with naturalism, which implicitly rejects a role for a deity, but it’s mighty unconvincing when someone pulls the Science Authority argument as the basis of their atheism, who then spews out bad science arguments. So I’m still unconvinced by these conversion stories. I guess in order to get a believable answer we’re going to have to strap a few of them to a gurney and wheel in the lasers and giant arcing electricity machines.HOUSTON -- When the Texans released D.J. Swearinger last month, it left a hole in their secondary in need of addressing. But it's not the hole that's often talked about. They aren't seeking a strong safety under the traditional definition of that position. The discussion of the Texans' safety position needs nuance. "One thing about when you play defensive back is that you want to be able to play all positions," safety Rahim Moore said. "You can’t be a free safety and say, ‘You know what, I don’t cover, I don’t go in the box.’ You don’t want to be that guy. Now you’re going to be one dimensional. What we’re trying to do here if we’re going to play man coverage, we shouldn’t have to pull in another corner to play a safety.
elementals, and the swarms of Eldrazi—were locked together like two wrestlers. Each of them occupied about half the surface of Sea Gate's dam, with the lighthouse between them. The elementals had helped clear away the Eldrazi that had worked their way past the front lines, so the Zendikari had a solid grip on their half of the city. And the Zendikari had the upper hand. They were going to win! Outnumber \| Art by Tyler Jacobson At Gideon's command, the eel-rider let him down near the lighthouse. He shouted orders, and horns carried them throughout the host. Soldiers marched, kitesailers lifted into the air, scouts slipped among the buildings, and victory drew closer. Beyond the lighthouse, the battle became gradually less intense. Instead of fighting upstream against a flood of Eldrazi leaving the city, the Zendikari were driving the Eldrazi before them out of the city at its other end. The creatures still fought; they seemed as intent as ever on turning the Zendikari into food or dust. But the Zendikari had momentum on their side now. When they paused for the night, Drana's vampire soldiers had little difficulty holding the Eldrazi back. And it was barely noon on the next day when a quiet fell across the city. A moment later, a cheer went up near the wall and spread throughout the troops. His heart pounding, Gideon signaled for an aerial scout's report. "Fighting has stopped, Commander-General Jura," the elf reported. "I can't see any more Eldrazi within the city walls." Gideon needed to see for himself. "The top of the lighthouse," he said. "Can you get me there?" The elf nodded, and Gideon climbed onto the back of the undulating flying ray. A moment later, he climbed through a window at the top of the lighthouse spire and looked out over Sea Gate. The city was in ruins. Many buildings were dust and rubble, and the streets were littered with the bodies of the dead. The mighty dam itself had held, but he could see patches of dusty corruption here and there on the surface. But Sea Gate was theirs. The army of Zendikar had reclaimed it from the Eldrazi. They had won. A signaler joined him at the top of the tower and blew out his orders on her horn—two strong groups of soldiers gathered at either end of the dam, smaller patrols along the Halimar side to watch against Eldrazi coming from the waters, archers along the oceanside wall. They had claimed Sea Gate, but they still had to defend it. Slowly, other commanders joined him, and eventually Nissa arrived as well—and then Kiora. "I have some questions for you," he told the merfolk Planeswalker, grinning. "I bet you do," she said. Before he could ask them, he heard shouting in the city below. Afraid that the Eldrazi had made another incursion, he rushed to the window. A merfolk in white coral armor that contrasted with her reddish skin was running at full tilt, heading for the lighthouse. "Jori En?" he said. She was shouting, but he couldn't make out her words. As she entered the lighthouse, he started down the stairs to meet her. Then he finally heard her clearly: "Ulamog!" They met in the middle of the stairway. Panting with exertion, she repeated her warning. "Ulamog is coming!" The next two Uncharted Realms stories will showcase new characters from Commander (2015 Edition). Battle for Zendikar stories resume November 18! Battle for Zendikar Story Archive Planeswalker Profile: Gideon Jura Planeswalker Profile: Kiora Planeswalker Profile: Nissa Revane Plane Profile: ZendikarPresident Obama's 2011 federal budget, a nearly $4-trillion monstrosity, includes an increase of $117 million for domestic violence programs -- a 22-percent increase. It is time to shine the light of truth on so-called "domestic violence" issues. Instead of "spousal abuse," the broader term "domestic violence" provides cover for the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) to spawn widespread distortion of data that is used for political ammunition to hold taxpayers hostage to the VAWA Mafia -- all those bureaucrats and social workers whose existence depends upon convincing the public that husbands are dangerous to their wives and children. In fact, the mothers' boyfriends are most often the perpetrators of abuse deaths, and mothers are more often responsible for the neglect fatalities. In fact, many of the experts in the area of abuse against women and children report that VAWA advocates have been pushing a slated message for more than two decades, an agenda that is detrimental to the traditional family and destructive of the Constitution. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to refer to the "VAWA Mafia" because the Violence Against Women Act does little to protect women or children. Instead, it wastes money (over $1 billion a year) and propagates false information. Let's be clear: Violence against women and children is a heinous act. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports that every year in the United States, there are over 3 million referrals of child abuse that involve "the alleged maltreatment of approximately 6 million children." Who does not recoil when innocence is stolen, whether in one awful trauma or through persistent, unrelenting acts of neglect, anger, sexual dominance, or vengeance? However, what is often overlooked is the central role that family structure plays when it comes to incidents of violence against women and children. While the majority of American children move through the stages of childhood in a secure environment where they are both loved and protected, increasing numbers of children live in household arrangements where they are neglected and abused rather than cherished. Millions of children learn early that they rate a distant second or third in priority behind drugs and/or their mothers' boyfriends. Little wonder that many children live in fear of what might happen to them next when there is a rotating cycle of boyfriends moving in with their mothers. Their family instability, lack of supervision, and desperate conditions keep them from having the happy childhood that we would wish for all children; worse, their childhood mistreatment threatens their future, and indeed, their health and life. At the same time that our nation has improved so many living conditions for Americans across the board, we have produced a culture that is injurious to our women and children. It is virtually impossible for society to protect our nation's children from the conditions resulting from the sexual revolution and the breakdown of the family. The sad reality is that we are spinning our wheels as a nation in trying to keep up with the problems of children who are denied the presence and protection of mature, concerned fathers. The latest figures show that federal spending on children is now 15.4 percent of the total federal domestic spending, yet UNICEF ranks the United States 20th in children's well-being among the twenty-one richest democracies in the world. How many more children will be abused before we acknowledge that the investment America needs to make for the nation's children is to encourage marriage? A married father-mother home is the safest and most nurturing place for the nation's children. The latest National Incidence of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-3) reveals a 67-percent increase in the incidence of child maltreatment since 1986 and a 149-percent increase since 1980. The NIS-3 reports, not surprisingly, that children of single parents were "overrepresented" compared to their counterparts living with both parents. While predators may target any child, the data is overwhelming: The safest place for a child is with his or her married mother and father. All other household arrangements carry a higher risk of abuse and neglect. Abuse is six times higher in stepfamilies than in intact families. Abuse is fourteen times higher in a single-mother family than in intact families. Abuse is twenty times higher with cohabiting parents than in an intact family. Abuse is thirty-three times higher with cohabiting partners than in an intact family. These unstable cohabiting households are dangerous places for children. The United States leads the developed nations in the number of child maltreatment deaths. The child abuse death rate for American children is three times higher than Canada's, is higher than Japan's, Germany's, France's, the United Kingdom's, and is eleven times higher than Italy's. Households that are poor owing to patterns of dysfunctional behavior (particularly where alcohol and drugs are abused) are dangerous places for children. Doubtless this finding is influenced by the fact that more than three out of five poor families with children are headed by single women, and when they cohabitate, their children are at risk by the presence of a adult male with whom they have no biological relationship but with whom the children compete for the mother's time and affection. Abuse, however, can occur across the economic and social spectrum; it is not limited to the poorest families. Herbert Ward pithily said, "Child abuse casts a shadow the length of a lifetime." We all need to shine lights of truth into the shadows. We need to work to bring dads back into families so that the nation's children will be protected now, and equally important, will be enabled to realize their potential as they move forward toward a bright future.Sen. Bernie Sanders at the Oncenter in Syracuse, New York, April 12, 2016. (Photo: Mark H. Anbinder) I know my heroes from books, from grainy filmstrips and stories told by elders. I smell their lives in the dust on the jacket of the third biography to the left on the fourth shelf of the fifth bookcase in the den. They are my absent teachers, ever present and gone forever. I am, because they once were. John F. Kennedy was murdered eight years before I was born. Medgar Evers was murdered eight years before I was born. Malcolm X was murdered six years before I was born. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were murdered three years before I was born. I have borrowed as best I can attributes from all of them so as to craft within myself a complete person, a moral person, angry and resolute and generous, and yet I have spent not one second in this world while any of them were alive. The true north of my moral compass is aimed at ghosts. But. Not all of my heroes are gone. Being a New Englander for nearly half a century — Boston and then New Hampshire — I have been well aware of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for a long time. The Democratic Socialist, the anomaly within the binary reality of our two-party system who kept getting re-elected to Congress by astonishing margins of victory. This year, he decided to run for president straight into the teeth of the most powerful and well-funded political dynasty the Democrats have to offer. For more original Truthout election coverage, check out our election section, “Beyond the Sound Bites: Election 2016.” Nobody gave Sanders even the slimmest hope of a chance against the Clinton machine, and then he won New Hampshire by double digits and the nation went, “Oh.” The old man with a riot of white wool on his head and a bull-throated Brooklyn roar wasn’t here to get some face time on the networks. The man came to play, and started throwing chairs and flipping tables in state after state because he meant what he said, because his bones burned with rage at the injustice endured by so many people in this country. Bernie Sanders wanted to lay his body upon the gears and force the machine to stop, and he wanted us to join him, and a great many did. Bernie Sanders is one of my heroes, a truth-teller, a genuine iconoclast in his own right. We have not seen his like in electoral politics for a long time. I would give just about anything to see him sworn into office come January, but that’s not going to happen. The math simply isn’t there, so here I sit: terrified of the GOP nominee, terrified of the Democratic nominee, and hit on all sides by those who say Sanders should bow to the inevitable and step aside. Hell with that. Take it to the convention and hats over the windmill. At a minimum, his presence will keep Hillary Clinton from careening to the right upon first glance of opportunistic daylight. Sanders can march into the convention hall a hero, triumphant even in defeat, full in the knowledge that he became the change he wished to see in the world and left this joint a little better than he found it. Most of my heroes were gone before I arrived, but that’s OK. Earth is more than 4 billion years old, and I have the great good fortune of knowing that I occupied this planet at the same time as Sen. Bernie Sanders. Psst! Want to see more stories like this one? Reader contributions are the driving force behind Truthout and your donation is critical to our future! Donate today by clicking here.August 6, 2015 IOWA CITY, Iowa -- The University of Iowa wrestling program opens the 2015-16 season hosting Oklahoma State in the "Grapple on the Gridiron" at Kinnick Stadium on Saturday, Nov. 14, at 11 a.m. (CT). The Hawkeyes and Cowboys, with a combined 57 national titles (Iowa 23, OSU 34), aim to become the first NCAA wrestling teams to compete in a Division I football stadium in NCAA history and set a new NCAA dual meet attendance record. The dual is scheduled in advance of the Iowa football team's game against Minnesota at 7 p.m. (BTN). The "Grapple on the Gridiron" is included in the Iowa wrestling season ticket package, which is available for purchase at the UI Athletic Ticket Office, online at hawkeyesports.com, or over the phone at 1-800-IA-HAWKS. Season ticket holders have the first opportunity to purchase additional single tickets to "Grapple on the Gridiron." General public tickets are available Oct. 1, 2015. Seating is reserved. The first 15,000 tickets sold will have reserved seating at Carver-Hawkeye Arena should the dual move indoors. Tickets purchased after the first 15,000 will be redeemable for an adult admission ticket to any other home dual on the Hawkeyes' 2015-16 schedule. Beginning today, season ticket holders also have the first opportunity to purchase ticket packages to Carver-Hawkeye Arena postseason events, including the 2016 Big Ten Championships and 2016 U.S. Olympic Team Trials. Iowa, the national attendance leader in each of the last nine seasons, is chasing the NCAA dual attendance record currently owned by Penn State (15,996). The Hawkeyes' attendance record of 15,955 (Dec. 6, 2008 vs. Iowa State) stood for five years before the Nittany Lions broke the record against Pitt on Dec. 8, 2013. Iowa's remaining home schedule includes five Big Ten opponents, a nonconference dual against South Dakota State, the Iowa City Duals, and the Big Ten Championships. The conference tournament is March 5-6 on Mediacom Mat at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Maryland headlines an Iowa City Duals lineup that includes Cornell College, Iowa Central CC, and Grand Canyon State. The Terps will make their first ever appearance in Carver-Hawkeye Arena on Nov. 20. The Big Ten home schedule includes duals against Rutgers (Dec. 10), Purdue (Jan. 22), Minnesota (Jan. 30), and Indiana (Feb.5). Conference road dates include trips to Illinois (Jan. 8), Northwestern (Jan. 10), Wisconsin (Jan. 16), and Nebraska (Jan. 24). The Hawkeyes return to the Midlands Championships in Evanston, Illinois, on Dec. 29-30. The NCAA Championships are contested March 17-19 at Madison Square Garden in New York. SCHEDULE NOTES: All start times and broadcast information will be announced at a later date.BANGOR, Maine — The owner of about 87,500 acres of Maine woodlands called Maine Gov. Paul LePage’s Friday announcement that the state would re-establish access to state land surrounded by her property “bluster.” Roxanne Quimby, who owns land east of Baxter State Park and has led a controversial push to establish a national park in the area, said in a post on social media Saturday that she takes no issue with state’s desire to establish access to its parcel across her property, but called the governor’s announcement “political grandstanding.” Friday afternoon, the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands said it started to re-establish access to 2,500 public acres surrounded by Quimby’s property by plowing and repairing roads in the area. LePage later said the push was a response to concerns about a “federal takeover,” putting himself into the tempestuous debate over the proposed park and land rights. “The [right of way] to the public land cited by the governor has never been denied,” Quimby responded Saturday. “With little wood of commercial value to harvest, the [right of way] has not been maintained by the state. If the state wishes to upgrade its [right of way] to begin a harvesting operation, so be it. No argument from us.” She argued that Friday’s announcement by the governor was an effort to “distract his constituents from his failure to create a vision of sustainable economic well being in the region.” The paper industry has departed from the area in the past decade. The governor’s office did not respond to a message requesting comment Saturday. The governor’s move came a day after members of Maine’s congressional delegation criticized the federal government for a letter that was noncommittal on whether President Barack Obama would make the property a national monument. The North Woods park idea is perhaps Maine’s hottest public debate: It was rejected last year in advisory votes in East Millinocket and Medway, but Quimby’s family, led by her son, Lucas St. Clair, has been lobbying Obama to give it national monument status, which — unlike a national park — doesn’t require congressional approval. BDN writer Michael Shepherd contributed to this report. Follow Nick McCrea on Twitter at @nmccrea213.Dnipro have made it clear that according to them, the blame for the Yevhen Konoplyanka to Liverpool deal collapsing lies firmly at Merseyside club's door. Liverpool were busy on Transfer Deadline day - attempting to wrap up the signing of impressive Ukrainian international Yevhen Konoplyanka on a lucrative deal from Dnipro Dniproprovetsk. It was a deal that went right to the wire - with the player even completing a medical - and even after Big Ben chimed 11pm it seemed a deal might have been brokered in time. But it was not long until it was confirmed that Liverpool had missed out on their man. It was subsequently reported in the British press that the deal collapsed due to the Dnipro owner Igor Kolomoysky. It was said that he had vetoed the deal at the last minute - refusing to let the player leave the club, as he is a major asset. Now, the club have spoken out in relation to the botched deal - releasing an interview on their official website. The clubs executive director Andriy Rusol has been speaking about the deal - and seemed to lay most of the blame at Liverpool’s door for the failure of the deal. First he explained, that even if the president wanted to veto any deal, he couldn’t - as he has a release clause in his contract that was met by The Reds: “First, the president could not keep midfielder, because his contract spelled out the specific amount of compensation. In fact, the British did not have time to complete the transaction. Our club could not sign documents shuttle until the account is not received money. And they have not received before the deadline.” He then moved on to make it clear that it was not Dnipro’s fault - saying that Liverpool did not move the necessary funds quick enough, and that they could have made a move for the player earlier: “Igor Kolomoisky gave the go-ahead for the deal immediately, as soon as between the clubs had reached an agreement on all issues concerning the sale of a player. Another thing is that the time to complete this transition, not a lot left. But it is not our fault, representatives of Liverpool could arrive a day or two earlier.” SEE ALSO: Liverpool fans react on Twitter to Konoplyanka deal collapse So it appears that Liverpool are to blame according to the Ukrainian club - but as for Konoplyanka, he seems on his way at some point, whether Liverpool will get him remains to be seen: “Yevhen (is) a very strong person and a true professional, he knows that his move to a big club, it is only a matter of time.” image: © tomaszdComing into round 7 at Nürburgring GP on Sunday April 10, the season is coming to an end. It’s been a roller coaster ride with ups and down for both teams and the organization. Heading into this final race we still have a lot of things to settle with regards to the championship standings. SimRC.de has already taken the championship in GT2, but in both GT1 and Prototype the champions will be crowned not until the end of this last race. Apart from the battle in the lead, several teams are fighting for survival to stay inside the top 8 in each class. A team is given an automatic invitation to the next season of NEO Endurance Series if the team finishes within top 8 of the class championship. This means we have a lot of important racing to watch this Sunday! Take a look at the current standings to get the complete picture. Here is an overview of what to look out for in the 8 hours race. Prototype In the lead Virtual Racing School Coanda Simsport just need 15 points in this race to secure the championship on their own. With Radicals Online in second place needing a win and bad luck for the Coanda team, it’s the VRS Coanda Simsport championship to lose. For the survival game, technically about 7 teams are fighting to get the automatic invitation, but in reality it would seem that it’s a battle between #3 Revolution Racing (51 pts), #14 Odox Motorsport (35 pts) and #10 Fenix Motorsports (34 pts). GT1 Leading with 43 points to Hammer Down Racing, Thrustmaster Mivano Racing (245 pts) is as close to clinching the championship as they can be. They will have to make sure Hammer Down Racing (202 pts) does not win the race and the title is theirs. Thrustmaster Mivano Racing has been in a class of their own this season with only the third round at Watkins Glen being a disappointment. Radicals Online GT1 (199 pts) seem to have secured at least 3rd position for the team, so expect them to go all-in to achieve 2nd place ahead of Hammer Down Racing. In the middle of the class championship just 22 points separate VergilRacing in 12th position and IRDK Endurance in position 7. Mainly the battle for at least a top 8 is between IRDK Endurance, Geko Vortex SimRacing and SRN Motorsports just 11 points apart. But the VergilRacing guys are quick if they stay trouble free and may jump them all. Statistics are against this team though after having only one successful race this season so far. GT2 As earlier mentioned, SimRC.de is already crowned winners of the GT2 championship after 3 wins, 2 second positions and one third place, which is very impressive. Fenix Motorsports in second position has also secured their position with 211 points. Despite 35 points between eight and ninth position in this class and a top 8 most likely certain, multiple positions still have to be determined between 3rd position of Torrent Motorsports and 4th position IRDK Assault Racing, as well as a fight between Racing Lions and Asbury Motorsports for 6th and 7th. All in all, there are plenty of races in the race and one thing is certain: nothing is determined before the checkered flag after 8 hours of racing this Sunday April 10. The race starts at 13:00 GMT. Watch the race on our live page to see how the final positions are being determined.Posted 6 years ago on April 11, 2012, 10:58 a.m. EST by OccupyWallSt Students occupy the Centre de Commerce Mondial in Montreal earlier today Students in Montreal and across Quebec today continue their protest against tuition increases and austerity measures in education with a 12-hour ¨“marathon of intensive vindication,” according to organizers. Today will see rolling student protests mostly focused against banks. In Montreal, marches leave from Victoria Square every hour and will each take unique routes through downtown. Just after 8am ET this morning, Montreal police dispersed a blockade ot the Banque Nationale tower using chemical weapons, preventing hundreds from getting to work inside. Meanwhile, in Quebec City, 60 protesters occupied a CIBC bank near the National Assembly. When police entered to remove them, the group merely crossed the street and occupied a Banque Nationale branch. Student groups have held demonstrations nearly every day since they declared an indefinite strike on classes nearly two months ago. The strike is the longest in Quebec's history and some marches have topped 200,000. Follow on Twitter: #BloquonsLaHausse, #marathondemanif, @occuponsmontrea, #printempsquebecois, @99_Quebec.Disclaimer: The below review is my opinion, which I will try to provide as many examples for and as much evidence as possible to support. Readers can learn more about how I conduct my reviews, my methodology, etc – here. More information on review badges here. This review’s roll was #123 (currently Unblock VPN). Written Jun 10, 2016 Welcome back to the next in this series of reviews! Hopefully you’re all finding the information I present valuable. I’ve had a positive measured response from both the community and even one of the companies I’ve reviewed so far (indicating that they would be making changes as a result). Time will tell if this is the case, but I hope that other VPN services begin taking note, because the luck (or unluck) of the dice may choose them next! One company even emailed me asking to remove them from the review rotation because they wanted to have a review only after making some changes they’re now implementing. I declined to skip them if they were to come up on my “rolls”, however. Signing up for the service: Signing up for service with Unblock VPN started off a little annoying. This particular service requires a full name, a country of residence, and an email address. Right off the bat from a privacy standpoint, I can’t take them seriously. Just asking for this information as a VPN company makes me raise an eyebrow. Admittedly, the company doesn’t appear to be marketing itself heavily towards the privacy crowd, but more for geo-unblockers interested in streaming. When registering, you are automatically set up with their 3 day trial. You can immediately purchase service for 1, 3, 6, or 12 months, which is fairly standard. The 3 day trial is extremely limited – having a daily connection limit of 5 sessions each limited to 5 minutes – basically enough time to see if a streaming service works and generally how fast the speeds are. As there was no advertised throttling or speed limit when using the free trial, I decided it would probably be fine to conduct tests with, even if it will take an extra day due to its limits. The design of the site itself was pretty clean, with the exception of what appeared to be clutter towards the bottom of the page. This could probably have been displayed more smartly as you’ll read about below. Configuring the service: I went to the downloads section of the website first thing after registering. The main downloads section of the site was divided into two parts – a top section with large badges for each supported platform and a bottom section with what looked like archived posts or something unrelated. This caused some confusion as I expected to find what I was looking for under the main platform badges. When checking under the main Linux guide, not only were there no.ovpn files to be found, but neither were there instructions to create an OpenVPN tunnel – it had instructions for PPTP only. Android was the same way. To my surprise… none of them had.ovpn files or manual configuration instructions available from what appeared to be from the main downloads – and worse, the platforms that presumably would be used the most didn’t have it in their installer documentation either. Windows had PPTP, L2TP, and SSTP and Mac had PPTP and L2TP as options in the download page instructions. None of the platforms I looked at in the top of the main download section seemed to support OpenVPN – at first. I only found what I was looking for after discovering the much less emphasized “other” guides section which appeared to be archive footers at first glance. The OpenVPN guide here had Linux command line instructions only and no Android instructions at all. This seems like a pretty big oversight. Luckily I’ve installed these enough to know what to do – but there’s a chance not everyone would. I was finally able to download the.ovpn and ca cert files from the link in the guide mentioned above. Unfortunately there were only really US and European servers among the available servers. After setting up the connection (and consulting the only instructions they had for Linux and OpenVPN), I was technically able to establish a connection first try, however, I could not reach anything while connected, trying a few news sites and speedtest.net. I checked over the config files to see if there was anything preventing them from working, and there was nothing obvious – protocol, port, etc looked to be the way it should. So, I contacted support, see below. Speed & Stability tests: I was able to establish a VPN tunnel almost immediately, but despite my attempts with support (as you will see below), I was never able to connect to any sites or perform any speed tests. Getting support: The only method available to get a hold of support on the contact page, was a web form. The form had a message at the top, reading, “Get your reply within the [sic] hours … not days ;-)”. “We’ll see”, I thought. Oddly enough, on the web form was a pull down for “priority”, where I was able to choose from low, medium, high, and urgent. I sent two requests – the first being a support ticket marked urgent to help get me connected to the service, the other marked medium containing a few misc questions about where I could find instructions for OpenVPN on Android as well questions about their policies. I received a reply back addressing each question a few hours later, however, the answers were mostly not helpful, here they are (paraphrasing) Q: Where can I find Android OpenVPN instructions? A: Here is a link to the Android PPTP instructions. Q: Why do you require a name and country during registration? A: For “invoicing” purposes. Q: Why do you keep connection logs, isn’t that bad for a customer’s privacy? A: We don’t keep logs of your activity… But we do store timestamps, bandwidth, and IP addresses to enforce terms and identify accounts if action is needed. When I replied that the PPTP instructions are not helpful as I’m only interested in OpenVPN, that a lot of other services don’t require this information and that I never asked about activity logs, I received a reply in an hour or so, telling me I could be given Android config files by email, which I then requested. The next morning I had been sent a link that “Mike” from support sent me. It was to the Windows instructions for OpenVPN – which contained a link to an.ovpn zip that was 5 months newer than the Linux download. Not sure why there wasn’t an up-to-date zip for Linux and Android as well. At the very least he had granted me a 2 day unlimited trial to test things out and get set up. As I was not able to establish a connection given what I deemed to be a reasonable amount of effort and attempt for support through official channels, I believe I knew what I needed to, and I called it there. Getting a refund: As I took advantage of Unblock VPN’s free trial, I did not need to request a refund. Concerns in Terms & Conditions / Privacy Policy: Terms of Service and Acceptable Usage Policy are the same page, but broken out into two separate links right next to one another. Not really a concern so much as an annoyance… “The User is the sole user of the Service provided and is responsible for its safe usage, which complies especially with the Terms and Conditions, valid legal provisions, international law, good manners and business customs.” – “The User undertakes to… prevent abuse of the Service or to refrain from using the Service himself for fraudulent or false activities or activities that are in contradiction to good manners” Screw that, man! You can’t tell me what to do! “The User also further undertakes to: not use the Service for excessive data transfer. The Provider reserves the right to limit the User’s transfer speed if the daily average of data transferred by the User exceeds 2 GB.” For a service that seems to be trying to appeal to streamers and downloaders, 2 GB a day is pretty darn skimpy. “When registering and setting up a user account on the UnblockVPN.com website, the future User is obliged to enter information required by the Provider in the registration form, the minimum being the following: first name, last name, city and country, contact e-mail address. All the registration information required by the Provider must be truthful, full and correct, which is solely the User’s responsibility.” Any VPN service that not only requires personal information, but also requires that it be “truthful, full, and correct” isn’t worthy of anyone’s time, if privacy is a concern. “The Provider reserves the right to verify the identity of the User via an SMS message and thus carry out the verification process of the person of the User. The User agrees with identity verification via an SMS message.” I wasn’t asked for a phone number during sign up, but buried in Unblock VPN’s terms is this line that says they might have to verify you using SMS. One more strike against privacy. “The Provider respects the User’s privacy and does not track the User’s activities when using the Services … Operational and localization data are not used for tracking or censoring the User’s Internet activities. Operational and localization data are saved for … the potential identifying of illegal activities which are in contradiction to these Terms and Conditions.” You can’t in one breath say, “the data isn’t being used for tracking”, and then in the next, say, “data is saved for potential identifying of illegal activities”. A complete contradiction. Connection metadata is personal info. If you are logging it, you’re not really respecting your user’s privacy, are you? Final thoughts: I was a little annoyed at the sign up process for Unblock VPN so blatantly ignoring the user’s privacy by requiring a name and country of residence. I was further annoyed at their terms requiring them to be truthful. Getting the files I needed to set up a connection was confusing and not straightforward as the relevant download pages were tucked away in a difficult-to-find place. Even after I was finally given a link to the “right” ones, I couldn’t get a connection to anything, and when requesting support I was only made more aware of the lack of streamlined config files and real OpenVPN support. I would not suggest using this service if you want care about using OpenVPN. Or about privacy. Or using bad manners. FROM THE VPN COMPARISON CHART CATEGORY VPN SERVICE Unblock VPN JURISDICTION Based In (Country) Czech Republic Fourteen Eyes? No Freedom Status Free LOGGING Logs Traffic No Logs DNS Requests Logs Timestamps Yes Logs Bandwidth Yes Logs IP Address Yes ACTIVISM Anonymous Payment Method No Accepts Bitcoin No PGP Key Available No Warrant Canary No Meets PrivacyTools IO Criteria No LEAK PROTECTION 1st Party DNS Servers No IPv6 Supported / Blocked No Kill Switch No PROTOCOLS Offers PPTP Yes Offers OpenVPN Yes OBFUSCATION Supports Multihop Supports TCP Port 443 Supports Obfsproxy Supports SOCKS Supports SSL Tunnel Supports SSH Tunnel Other Proprietary Protocols PORT BLOCKING Auth SMTP P2P Some SECURITY Weakest Data Encryption Strongest Data Encryption Weakest Handshake Encryption Strongest Handshake Encryption AVAILABILITY # of Connections 1 # of Countries 7 # of Servers 21 WEBSITE # of Persistent Cookies 0 # of External Trackers 0 # of Proprietary APIs 6 Server SSL Rating C SSL Cert issued to No SSL Cert PRICING $ / Month (Annual Pricing) 4.09 $ / Connection / Month 4.09 Free Trial Yes Refund Period (Days) 3 ETHICS Contradictory Logging Policies Falsely Claims 100% Effective Incentivizes Social Media Spam POLICIES Forbids Spam Requires Ethical Copy Requires Full Disclosure AFFILIATES Practice Ethical Copy Give Full Disclosure If you like the project and find my work useful, please consider donating – your generous contributions help pay for the hosting, tools, and time I need to do my research and keep the data fresh.Posted on 2/16/2016 The low printing and survival rate of the 1933 $10 Silver Certificate makes it one of the most desirable notes on almost every collector's wish list. Last November I wrote about Experimental Silver Certificates and the importance of this specific issue during the turbulent times of the Depression Era in the early 20th Century. This time around I want to take on the 1933 $10 Silver Certificate - "The King of Silvers.” Mere mention of the date 1933 conjures up some thoughts of the most fabled items in numismatics including the clandestine 1933 $20 Double Eagles. In the world of paper money, no Federal banknote carries this date except FR: 1700, the 1933 $10 Silver Certificate. 1933 $10 Silvers carry the Julian / Woodin signature combination. The Series was actually cut short with the retirement of Woodin and the administration’s change in silver policy. The official print run was only 216,000 notes. The situation is further complicated as government records indicate a large number of 1933 notes (some 60,000) were destroyed along with the entire 1933A issue. It is therefore suggested that ultimately only 156,000 Series 1933 $10 silvers were released. Today, the actual number of survivors equates to the smallest fraction of the total number released. $10 1933 Silver Certificate from the Thomas M Flynn Collection Click
is in danger of losing Arizona to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, a belief he's held publicly since June. Arizona has voted Republican in every election except one since 1952. Bill Clinton in 1996 was the only Democrat to carry the state in that span. Donald Trump campaigning in Arizona. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni "Arizona should still be a red state. But Donald Trump, with the rhetoric that he's under and the characterizations of, you know, many of the state's population, have put the state in play," Flake said. Arizona is more than 30 percent Hispanic, according to the latest Census data. Independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin came to Sen. Flake's defense with a jab at Trump, saying the GOP nominee is "[demonstrating] his fragility" by attacking people who oppose him. Clinton joined the fray, adding, "There's going to be no one left in Washington for Trump to work with who he hasn't insulted." The real-estate mogul has been criticized from both sides of the aisle after doubling down on his hard-line immigration platform, which includes building a wall along the US-Mexico border. View Trump's tweets below: Watch Flake's interview on CNN here:The government is appealing a ruling from a federal judge in Maryland that blocked President Donald Trump's revised travel ban from taking effect. The government filed a brief notice Friday saying that it would appeal the Maryland ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. Following the news, the American Civil Liberties Union said it looks forward to defending the recent rulings blocking Trump's immigration order. "President Trump's Muslim ban has fared miserably in the courts, and for good reason — it violates fundamental provisions of our Constitution. We look forward to defending this careful and well-reasoned decision in the appeals court," Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants' Rights Projects, said in a statement. The ruling in Maryland and another in Hawaii earlier this week were victories for civil liberties groups and advocates for immigrants and refugees. They argued that a temporary ban on travel from six predominantly Muslim countries violated the First Amendment. The Trump administration argued the ban was intended to protect the United States from terrorism. Federal law gives the president broad authority over immigration. Jimmy Carter used it to deny some Iranians entry to the U.S. during the hostage crisis, Ronald Reagan to bar Cubans who didn't already have relatives here and President Barack Obama to keep out North Korean officials. When federal courts blocked Trump's revised travel ban from taking effect, the judges spelled out their major concern: the unusual record of statements by the president and his advisers suggesting the executive order's real purpose was to discriminate against Muslims, in violation of the Constitution's ban on officially favoring or disfavoring any religion.In this preview from E3 for EA Sports’ Madden NFL ’13, many features of the game are revealed. One such feature is a Twitter feed featuring NFL reporters and personalities talking about your player and the rest of the league in the game’s career mode. Among the featured personalities are Adam Schefter, Rich Eisen, Ross Tucker, Mark Schlereth, Chris Mortensen, and… Skip Bayless. Of course. Yep, that seems like a typical real life Skip Bayless tweet – crapping on a player and then using his own brand of rhetoric to justify it. Part of me wants to start a career as Tim Tebow and play terribly in order to get Bayless’ virtual account to… gasp …talk negatively about his favorite player. Imagine that tweet, but with “T. Tebow” replacing “R. Wayne.” Or maybe there’s some sort of filter that shifts the blame from Tebow to his teammates if he’s struggling. Keep an eye on this when the game comes out in August, it could lead to some hilarious exchanges that you would never see in real life.Swansea goalkeeeper Michel Vorm will require a knee operation at some point this season, manager Michael Laudrup has confirmed. Vorm won the Capital One Cup with Swansea last season. • Hicks: Consistency needed Vorm, 30, joined the Swans from FC Utrecht in 2011 and has proved to be an inspired piece of business from the Welsh club. A key player at the Liberty Stadium, Laudrup confirmed the Netherlands international will require an operation, but no decision has yet been made as to when he will go under the knife. Gerhard Tremmel started in goal for the Swans for Monday's 1-1 draw at home against Hull City, with 18-year-old Slovenian goalkeeper Gregor Zabret on the bench. With an expected recovery period of four to five weeks for Vorm, Laudrup conceded he may need to bring in cover in the January transfer window. "Let's see," Laudrup told BBC Sport. "It depends when we can do it [Vorm's surgery]. "We have games, and there are times when we have very many games, and times when we have less. But we always have games and you can't play with one keeper. That's much too risky. If something happens to Gerhard then we would have to play with an 18-year-old who is not an experienced goalkeeper. That's not good for him or for the team." Vorm is still set to travel with to Switzerland for Thursday's Europa League tie against St Gallen.Former Tennessee Titans coach Jeff Fisher will interview with the Miami Dolphins and St. Louis Rams within the next week as he begins his return to the NFL, a league source told ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter. Fisher will interview with the Dolphins in Florida within the next 24 to 48 hours and with the Rams later in the week, the source said. The Dolphins fired coach Tony Sparano on Dec. 12 and general manager Jeff Ireland and owner Stephen Ross confirmed Monday that the team has begun the search for its next coach. Chicago Bears special teams coordinator Dave Toub will interview for the job, a league source confirmed to ESPNChicago.com's Jeff Dickerson. The New York Daily News reported the Dolphins also are interested in talking to New York Jets defensive coordinator Mike Pettine. The Rams fired coach Steve Spagnuolo and general manager Billy Devaney on Monday and both Fisher and former Buccaneers and Raiders coach Jon Gruden have been mentioned in connection with the opening. However, Gruden, currently an analyst for ESPN, has said he is remaining with ESPN and the "Monday Night Football" broadcast team. Fisher sat out the entire 2011 season after being fired by the Titans in January. He had served as coach of the franchise for 16 full seasons, including before the Titans moved from Houston to Tennessee. Information from ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter and The Associated Press contributed to this report.When a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, the transformation is so radical that it's hard to believe they belong to the same species. But regardless of the new wings and body, the new diet and airborne lifestyle, butterflies remember what they learned as babies. In a study published yesterday in Public Library of Science ONE, Georgetown University biologists gave mild shocks to tobacco hornworm caterpillars while exposing the caterpillars to particular odors. After the hornworms built cocoons and emerged as moths – a process that involves the reorganization of both brain and nervous system – they still avoided the smells that once brought them shocks. The findings "challenge a broadly-held popular view of lepidopteran metamorphosis: that the caterpillar is essentially broken down entirely, and its components reorganized into a butterfly or moth," wrote the researchers. Led by evolutionary ecologist Martha Weiss, they suspected that larval memories, if maintained at all, would be stored in the so-called mushroom bodies – areas of the brain that receive information directly from the antennae. Since mushroom body neurons that accumulate early in larval development are lost during metamorphosis, the hypothesis was easy to test: the researchers conditioned the caterpillars at different ages. As they predicted, caterpillars that learned late to associate shock and odor kept the memory into adulthood. Those who made the association early emerged from their cocoons without remembering. Beyond immediate imagination-capturing metaphorical impacts, the findings could help scientists understand the population dynamics of wild caterpillars – how they select habitats, and ultimately how populations evolve. Scientists studying caterpillars in laboratories are also advised to take larval conditioning into account as a confounding factor in their experiments. Further research, wrote the researchers, "will yield greater insight into the process of complete metamorphosis and move us closer to an integrated understanding of organisms, providing links between complex cognitive behaviors and the molecules and developmental processes that give rise to them." Indeed. And wouldn't it be poetic if scientists ended up developing treatments for dementia based on the persistence of butterfly memories? Retention of Memory through Metamorphosis: Can a Moth Remember What It Learned As a Caterpillar?[PLoS ONE] * Images: Jeffrey Pippen (caterpillar), Illinois State Museum (moth)* See Also: WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim's Twitter and Del.icio.us feeds; Wired Science on Facebook.There’s an old saying, “Don’t let the fox watch the henhouse.” This may well be true when it comes to crypto-industry insiders and their opinions about the price of Bitcoin. But whether anti-Bitcoin fanatics like it or not, the price is steadily climbing toward the $6,000 mark. Bitcoin liquidity, adoption With the price of Bitcoin climbing toward the elusive $6,000, the reasons behind this rise are a point of contention. With the industry in an uproar, some market leaders link the rise in price to the increase in Bitcoin liquidity. For example, Luis Cuende, cofounder of Aragon said: "I think the rise in Bitcoin prices reflects the enthusiasm that the public has into Bitcoin being a digital currency and new technical solutions like SegWit, that enable more scalability and new solutions for instant payments.” Not everyone thinks that Bitcoin is a good choice for currency, especially since prices fluctuate so rapidly and massively. Nevertheless, in countries like Argentina, where the fiat currency is effectively valueless, Bitcoin may well be the only option. According to David Henderson, Founder of Sweetbridge: “A quick look at Bitcoin’s price history (the two pizzas famously ordered by a developer for 10,000 BTC in 2010 would be worth about $30 million each today!) shows the challenges in using this as a transactional currency or as collateral, as the fluctuations are significant and frequent, unlike most fiat currencies. That said, it can provide an alternative in countries where the local currency is heavily controlled, restricted and subject to very high inflation.” Bitcoin vs. gold, other assets Additionally, beyond the liquidity issue, Bitcoin is also carrying its weight as an asset in itself, and has even been suggested as a reserve currency. According to Yonatan Sela, SVP Business Development, YouNow: “The soar in the price of Bitcoin isn't surprising, and I expect that while price fluctuations will continue, in the long term Bitcoin will continue to rise in price far beyond $6,000, especially if you buy into the thesis that Bitcoin could become the prominent digital reserve currency. The main reserve currency in the world is gold, with a market cap of ~$7 trillion USD. Bitcoin is currently at ~$94 billion which is less than 1.5% of that. Even if it stays just 2% of gold, it will surpass the $6,000 price point.” Other leaders were quick to point out that the asset characteristics of Bitcoin are only just now becoming mainstream. As more and more people discover Bitcoin, the price will only trend higher. In fact, the fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) caused by comments from Jamie Dimon, Larry Fink and others simply adds to public awareness, which in turn drives up prices. Per Serafin Lion Engel, CEO and Founder of DataWallet: “Bitcoin proves to be an antifragile asset which, due to its characteristics of immutability, transparency, and disintermediation, thrives in a world of ever-increasing political and socio-economic uncertainty. Comments, such as Jamie Dimon’s, drive the Bitcoin hormesis we are currently witnessing, where adversarial comments by renowned beneficiaries of the current centralized system simply add to the strength of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Furthermore, it also simply boils down to exposure: The more people hear that about Bitcoin, the more people will adopt Bitcoin since its benefits over the past financial system are so abundantly clear.” However, most industry experts see that the power of Bitcoin is not only in its technology, but in its longevity. As the oldest and most stable cryptocurrency, it has the trust of the digital currency community. Eyal Herzog and Galia Benartzi Co Founders of Bancor said: “What’s interesting here to remember is that Bitcoin has at least 4 years of momentum accumulation before Ethereum. This is a great reminder that real value networks don't just spike into existence. They take time and dedication to build and take real root. We should keep this in mind as we look at new alt coins and somehow expect them to skyrocket in days or weeks.” Bitcoin instability and volatility In spite of the huge run up in price over the last few days, the value of the cryptocurrency may well see substantial volatility. Even if Bitcoin does hit $6,000 (which appears quite likely), the price may see another massive drop, just as it did when the $5,000 price point was first touched. Further, any negative news may cause some unrest in the price. According to Bharath Rao, CEO of Leverj: “The Bitcoin price has moved from under $1,000 at the beginning of the year to around $6,000. The price should certainly be expected to fluctuate quite a bit, both due to the uncertainty and promise of new technology. We believe that Bitcoin is not yet mainstream and will continue to grow in value as more financial use cases move to crypto. Buying and holding Bitcoin has outpaced every single traditional investment since 2009 and is likely to continue to do so for several years." Bitcoin long term? Among experts, most see the strength of Bitcoin being assured, at least in the short term. While anti-Bitcoin pundits may critique the platform, the reality that Bitcoin has achieved some consensus for mainstream acceptance is clear. According to Rob Viglione, Co-Founder of ZenCash: "It's always tough to say what's driving prices, but what we do know is that there's more demand for Bitcoin now than ever. A big part of that is due to the fact that it has steadily achieved more mainstream credibility and that there's now a robust global conversation. For those of us who study cryptocurrency characteristics, there's growing consensus that we're witnessing the birth of a new asset class, and that's huge." However, many see fundamental flaws within the structure of Bitcoin technology - particularly with block creation. The continued production of blocks depends on substantial electrical use and huge output of resources. Some say that Bitcoin, with its Proof of Work (PoW) protocol, may well be overtaken by other altcoins with the Proof of Stake (PoS) protocol. Technical experts see a need for change, like Lior Yaffe Core Developer at NXT ARDOR: “The recent increase in Bitcoin's value is likely due to it being the de-facto exchange currency between the fiat and crypto worlds, much the same as the US dollar is between fiat currencies. It is quite obvious that Bitcoin is not going to replace any fiat currency any time soon due to scaling issues and the waste generated by the POW process. Going forward I predict that most innovation in the crypto world in the mid to long term will take place on POS based blockchains, but being the bridge between the worlds gives Bitcoin a huge short term boost.” The move toward $6,000 is not only encouraging because of the price point for Bitcoin holders. To some industry experts, the price shift is really reflective of the power of Bitcoin and Blockchain technology to truly change the world. According to Carl Bennetts Co-Founder of Status.im: "Reaching milestones against fiat currency certainly aren’t inconsequential, but what’s far more interesting to me is the long term trend at play, and what this signifies for the future of blockchain technologies. While 6,000 USD certainly reflects some market maturity, what’s truly exciting is that we’re slowly edging towards mass-adoption, a world of true financial self-sovereignty, and an open financial system that brings fair access the anyone with an internet connection." Generally, the consensus among industry leaders is that the Bitcoin bull will continue to run, and $6,000 will be achieved.Soccer fans are the most passionate fans on the planet. Yes, every team in every sport has their diehard fans that live and die on every shot, every save and every move but there is something special about being a Soccer fan. Across the globe, there are villages that shut down when the local team is playing. Rivalries are intense. Outside of North America, this worship of the jersey can sometimes go too far. Many cases of violence, racism and destruction are often reported. Thankfully, in North America and specifically the MLS, the fans are passionate yet rarely go over the top. Since the boys in blue are in Portland to play against the Timbers this Saturday, Mount Royal Soccer took the opportunity to talk with Sherrilynn Rawson, one of the key members of the Timbers Army. The ‘TA' is known as the biggest and most passionate group of supporters in the MLS. They take their passion to a whole new level and are definitely considered, or should be considered, a role model for every other supporters' group not only in the MLS, but across the globe. Known as Sheba, Sherrilynn is a member of the Timbers Army and the 107 Independent Supporters Trust (107IST), the nonprofit arm of the Timbers Army. Her credentials also include: Secretary, 107IST Co-chair, Community Outreach Committee Chair, Web Team Season ticket holder in the west side of the stadium since 2005, back in the USL days Let the tour begin! 1. Let's start off with some basic info. What is the capacity at JELD-WEN Field? How much of that is taken up by season ticket holders? JELD-WEN always sells out for Timbers' matches. Capacity is currently a little over 20,000. The organization would like to expand to about 22,000 seats but the front office must find the perfect balance of maximizing seating and making the rest of the match day experience (concessions and bathrooms) workable for such a large crowd. This year, there about 15,250 seats were sold to season ticket holders. There is also a waiting list of about 6,500. 2. Is there more than one supporters' group? If so, who are they and how big are they? There is only one supporters' group, the Timbers Army (TA). How big we are depends on how you measure. The North End of the stadium, which is a general admission section, holds about 5,000 people. However, you don't have to be in general admission to be TA. For example, I am on the west side in reserved seats and I am DEFINITELY TA. For us, it's simple: If you want to be a part of the Timbers Army, you already are. For those who want to take their involvement in the Timbers Army to the next level, there is the 107 Independent Supporters Trust, or 107IST. We currently have about 3,000 members and that number only continues to rise. We do charge an annual membership fee of $25. That money goes towards our tifos, it helps with the upfront costs of travel and allows us to do significant charity work in the community. The 107IST has eleven elected board members who work to ensure that we fulfill our mission which is "to support soccer in and around Portland, Oregon - from the grass roots to the highest professional level." 3. Portland is known to have one of the best fan bases in the league. Do many of you go see road games? If so, how many travel and which cities are your favorite destinations? Yes, we do travel. Last year, we had TA representation at every away match and we certainly hope/expect to repeat that success. Our largest away travel is for games against our Cascadia rivals, Seattle and Vancouver. Last season, our biggest travelling group was 1,500 strong for a game against the Sounders. 4. How much communication do the supporters' groups have with the team's administration? Our board of XI has regular monthly meetings with the front office, which include various levels of management, occasionally including the owner, coach and/or general manager but always including high level front office management. 5. What is your reputation amongst the MLS as a fan base? Any history of violence? We are passionate supporters but we are not violent. We jump, clap, chant, shout and sing for the full 90 minutes. Again, we are not a violent bunch. We work very hard at self-policing and we also have zero tolerance for racism, sexism, or homophobia. 6. What are the future plans for the TA? We are in the second year of a five-year strategic plan created by the 107IST board at last year's annual retreat. We have ambitious plans for growth in several areas, including: TAFC (our locally organized amateur soccer league in Portland) Membership numbers Gross revenue (for our tifos, travel, and community outreach) Charitable work Youth soccer Volunteer hours Community outreach Away support Cascadia match support. 7. Can you give us some of the highlights of the TA's recent success? In January, we held our Annual General Meeting. Here are some of the points that were highlighted: The 107IST made over $62,000 in charitable contributions in 2012. This figure does not include an additional $15,000 raised in 2012 and earmarked for donation in 2013. We paid for and donated close to $10,000 worth of uniforms and equipment for local area high schools. We donated over $1,400 in match tickets for community outreach, both as fundraisers for auctions and as ways to bring community members to matches. We had four separate Oregon Food Bank volunteer opportunities, two in Portland and two in Beaverton. We had three successful blood drives, two in Portland and one in Vancouver. We had 368 individuals who we know volunteered over 5,000 hours in 2012 in service to the TA and to the community. These individuals logged over 1500 hours of volunteering in the community, and engaged in MANY more activities which didn't get included in the totals. They also logged over 3500 volunteer hours in support of the club, including everything from setting out flags to painting tifos to working on the fan laden to running the merch operation, and engaged in MANY more activities which didn't get included in the totals. We all know that our very own ‘Ultras de Montréal' is a very passionate group. The atmosphere that they create within Stade Saputo is absolutely electric and magical for the fans and absolute hell for visiting teams. Most teams would love to have that kind of atmosphere in their stadium. However, what the Timbers Army are doing is on a different level. As a Soccer fan, I would love to see the Timbers Army model copied and applied in every MLS city and every Soccer city across the globe. Great communication with the front office, great reputation across the league, a ‘religious-like' following and getting involved in the city and for those in need is simply amazing. Supporters' groups like that are a true blessing for everyone involved. Whether you are a fan of the Timbers, a Soccer fan or even a fan of one of their rivals, you can only respect what they are doing and tip your hat to them. Special thanks goes out to Sherrilynn Rawson for her contribution. You can follow her on Twitter @shebainpdx Article written by Gio Sardo. You can follow him on Twitter @GioSardoWhen company representatives stand on stage or meet with the press, there’s always a level of inflation expected when it comes to the facts and statistics shared. That’s especially true, typically, for the realm of game length. During the Nintendo 3DS conference that was held before the Tokyo Game Show in September, Shigeru Miyamoto offered up his version The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword‘s gameplay length. Here’s the official Nintendo of America Twitter account with the specifics: Mr. Miyamoto says Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword could have 50-100 hours of gameplay, one of Nintendo’s largest projects EVER! The gaming community, as one collective entity, heard that news above and immediately considered the numbers to be inflated. A Zelda game of that magnitude would be monstrous. Well, one of the first reviews of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is in from the Official Nintendo Magazine, a publication based in the United Kingdom. They’ve given the game a 98%, marking it as one their highest reviewed titles ever and the best in the entire Zelda franchise. In the meat of their printed review, as reported by CVG, was this statistic: The main quest will take more than 35 hours to complete, while the sidequests and extras can bring another 35+ hours to the experience. Pencils down, that signifies that Skyward Sword will, in fact, have between 50 and 100 hours of gameplay once it launches. Hear that? That’s the sound of game reviewers everywhere letting out one giant death scream. Zelda titles have always promised lengthy gameplay. It’s a staple of the franchise, and one that Nintendo likes to cite often in their marketing efforts. Now, Skyward Sword appears to own the crown of that franchise statistic. If you’re part of the fanbase looking to snag this new, Wii specific adventure, expect to buy it with a lot of gameplay time in mind. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword will launch on November 20th in the States. [via CVG]Kim Gu-Hyeon, 88, was able to go back to his North Korean hometown thanks to virtual reality. The trip wasn't physical, as Korea is still a strictly divided nation. But it was the next best thing: using advanced mapping technology and two months' worth of interviews with Kim about his specific, detailed recollections of the place, Hyundai Motor Group, South Korea's largest automobile retailer, set up a virtual reality creation of Kim's hometown. It was a "cozy little village surrounded by mountains", Kim recalls fondly during a two months interview to computer designers. He hasn't been back since he was a much younger man in 1947. Kim is one of 66,000 North Koreans currently living in South Korea – displaced, to this day, by the tumultuous Korean War that cut millions of people off from their families and communities. Kim's hometown was entirely recreated – including the wild flowers and streets he used to walk every day – in virtual reality thanks to his memories and using automotive design technology and a CGI landscape creation software called Vworld 3D Spatial Information Open Platform. Hyundai set up a car in the center of a circular screen and Kim sat in the passenger seat, before entering his address in the car's navigation system. Projected on the screen was the illusion of a journey through North Korea, passing borders, the capital Pyongyang, and finally Kim's hometown in the middle of the mountains. Going Home The project, Going Home, which can be seen in its entirety here, is a result of a campaign that was first imagined by Yundai founder Chung Ju-Yung, who died in 2001. On 5 November, Kim was finally able to see his hometown and Hyundai has concluded that the day Korea will be reunified they will help Kim going back to his village for real. If at first Kim seemed skeptical about the project, he gave in to the experience before being submerged by emotions when virtually reaching his family home. His journey concludes to the site of his parent's graves where Kim took a solemn bow pressing his hands and head all the way to the ground. "Father," he says. "Forgive me for taking so long to come back home."When we think about wearable technology today, the first thing to come to mind is still clunky wrist-worn devices – smart watches and fitness trackers that no matter how hard they try, haven’t yet truly nailed looking like something we all want to wear everyday. In fact, that “fashion” aspect of wearables continues to have a really long way to go in terms of true integration in our lives. Didn’t we all imagine we’d have completely connected wardrobes by now? As Matthew Drinkwater, head of the Fashion Innovation Agency at London College of Fashion, said to me for a story in Wired UK: “It’s 2016, where’s our smart clothing? Where is it?” Indeed, “fashion tech” as a term rarely means anything close to what we actually put on each morning and rather still relates to things like dresses that light-up – beautiful Cinderella gowns that enhance the wearer on their journey along the red carpet for instance (Met Gala anyone?). Or lingering memories like that of Google Glass and its collaboration with Diane von Furstenberg... Say no more. As a starting point, all of these launches have been incredibly important in terms of experimentations that lead the industry forward, but they also do a relative disservice to “wearable technology” as a category to be taken seriously in fashion. So what are the solutions that are going to win? Here’s an outline of 10 brands to be aware of in the rather small but fashionable wearable tech space. Some of them even stretch what the term “wearables” might mean – stepping beyond connected textiles into deeper fibre science, which is the area looking the most likely to shape the future of our wardrobes. Levi’s and Google Project Jacquard The Levi’s Commuter x Jacquard by Google Trucker Jacket is a piece of wearable technology designed for urban cyclists. Conductive yarn is weaved into the left cuff enabling touch interactivity so users can tap, swipe or hold to fulfill simple tasks like changing music tracks, blocking or answering calls or accessing navigation information (delivered by voice). What’s stand out here however is that not only does the functionality answer an actual need for cyclists, but it genuinely looks good while doing it. Why? Because it looks like a jean jacket and not a piece of technology. The Unseen for Selfridges London-based The Unseen is one of few examples on this list that has actually launched to market. Founded by Lauren Bowker, who refers to herself as a material alchemist, this is a start-up that has captured the simple idea of colors that alter based on user interaction or the environment they’re placed in. The resulting line of luxury accessories for Selfridges in late 2015 included a backpack, scarf, phone case and more, which responded to things like air pressure, body temperature, touch, wind and sunlight. An Italian alligator-skin shoulder bag for instance saw environmentally-responsive ink shifting from black in the winter, to red in the spring, blue in the summer and green fading to red in the autumn. Emel + Aris Emel + Aris is a crowdfunding success story having raised over £100,000 (GBP) on Kickstarter in March 2016 for the launch of its smart coat. Much like Levi’s and Google, this one also doesn’t look like technology; but rather a line of outerwear for both men and women. On top of that however, comes hidden intelligent heating technology inside. Made from a lightweight polymer, rather than a load of wires, it produces FIR (far infrared) heat energy from various panels across the garment that is then absorbed by the skin to heat the muscles and increase blood flow. The only cable that does exist is one that leads to the battery pack powering it. At this point, that’s still the evident bit, but get past having to also carry that in one of the pockets and this is one of the most appealing wearable tech functionalities to date. Who doesn’t want to hit a button and be cosy inside their coat whatever the weather? Wearable Experiments Billie Whitehouse, founder of Wearable Experiments, introduced a piece called the Fan Jersey ahead of this year’s Super Bowl; a shirt that fans can wear to feel major plays on the American football field. Connected via Bluetooth, the haptic vibrations occur in real-time with the game, creating an emotional attachment for the wearer. She’s also just launched a version for soccer in Europe. The exciting thing here is not really to do with wearables at all, but about what it might mean for entertainment. If you can feel the heartbeat of your favorite player for instance, does it draw you ever more into the game? What if that was applied to sitting in the theatre watching a high adrenaline film? Long term, it’s entirely possible we might indeed be wearing such shirts while enjoying sports or certain Netflix shows sat at home on the couch too. Tension would have all new meaning. Zenta The only wrist-worn wearable on this list is the all-new Zenta from Vinaya. Still in the midst of its crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, it has already exceeded its $100,000 goal by more than 100%. Much like its sister collection (called Altruis) it enables the user to switch off from digital noise and just remain connected to their most important smartphone notifications. More than that however, it also tracks emotion. Tapping smartly into the market for wellness and mindfulness, it monitors activity, sleep quality, breathing patterns, stress levels, emotion states, and overall mood. It also connects its biometric sensing technology with machine learning algorithms so it learns about the wearer as time goes on, and improves the experience accordingly. Thesis Couture Self-proclaimed as the world’s first high performance stilettos, these shoes from Thesis Couture are indeed focused on functionality. By that, what we mean is that they combine being high heels (four inches) with comfort. Sound impossible? Founder Dolly Singh, herself a former SpaceX employee, has hired a rocket scientist, an orthopedic surgeon, a mechanical engineer, a shoe designer and an Italian shoemaker to create a shoe that does exactly that, according to the NY Times. The short story: a ballistic-grade polymer in the heel stops it from feeling so painful underfoot, while the angle of the shoe and the platform at the front enables it to seem like you’re wearing something an inch lower than it is. Wearable tech by definition, perhaps not – but it sure is a great use of technology applied to something most women would kill for. The above example was merely a sandal for user testing, but the first true design for retail will be revealed over the next couple of weeks and shortly open for reservations thereafter. VFiles x XO While light up clothing might usually appear under the more gimmicky header of fashion tech to date, XO creative director and co-founder, Nancy Tilbury, makes a really good argument for it being entirely suited to a very specific shopper. Generation Z streetwear consumers, she says, are waiting for their wardrobes to get on the grid. As a result, she teamed up with VFiles to launch an interactive collection during New York Fashion Week in February comprised of fibre optic apparel and accessories. A cap and rucksack will retail later this year, enabling the wearer to change the surface colors and patterns in response to music via an accompanying app. Bolt Threads One of the buzziest announcements of 2015 was Bolt Threads, a San Francisco-based company brewing spider silk protein in fermentation vats and then spinning it into yarn. Surpassing what we typically think of as wearables, this bioengineering (and the two further examples below) is one of the most exciting developments for the future of fashion today. The beauty of engineering such textiles is the additional properties you can add along the way. Spider silk is already stronger than Kevlar, and more durable but at least as flexible as Lycra – create it in this way and you’re also able to do so at scale. Bolt Threads has just raised $50 million in Series C funding in order to start bringing products to market in 2018. It has also announced a deal with Patagonia. Spiber Also playing in the engineered spider silk space is Spiber; this time a Japan-based company that’s been researching how to produce such polymers on a mass level since its launch in 2007. It’s already working with The North Face, having launched a prototype jacket called The Moon Parka made from it late last year. A one-off design, The Moon Parka then toured the brand’s Japanese stores with plans reportedly in the pipeline to make a production ready version of it some time this year. Modern Meadow Last but not least is Modern Meadow, another company growing materials; this time leather (as well as meat) in a lab. That means it's able to design and engineer leather to make it not only a more sustainable material but also so that it has additional performance properties that it couldn’t have in nature. “If you think about the 20th century being one that facilitated a generation of materials that came out of the petrochemical industry – like DuPont creating Lycra, or earlier than that with nylon and the synthetics facilitated by chemistry – the 21st century is about biotechnology,” said Suzanne Lee, chief creative officer at Modern Meadow, in Wired UK. She believes such fabrics will be commonplace within a decade or two.Agriculture minister emphasises his opposition to federal approval of NSW mine, as Jacqui Lambie challenges him to appear with her on Q&A program Barnaby Joyce has said he opposed the $1.2bn Shenhua mine as agriculture minister, not as a local MP as Jacqui Lambie has joined the calls for him to resign. The agriculture minister has strengthened his opposition to the Chinese-owned mine in the Liverpool Plains after the federal environment minister, Greg Hunt, approved it on Wednesday. Barnaby Joyce says approval of Shenhua mine shows 'the world has gone mad' Read more “It’s my view as the agricultre minister, I’m sort of agnostic about whether it’s in my electorate or not,” told Radio National on Friday morning. “If somebody said we are going to put a mine in the middle of [another] plain I would say that’s not a good spot for a mine, that is a bad decision.” On Thursday, Tony Abbott excused Joyce’s criticism of the decision by Hunt, saying Joyce was speaking as a local member. Joyce sidestepped the question of whether the federal government was ignoring the advice of its agriculture minister, and said there were 17 steps for a mine approval and the commonwealth had a role in only one. He said he planned to write to the New South Wales premier, Mike Baird, who is on holiday, and urge the NSW government not to allow the mine to go ahead. The acting premier and leader of the Nationals in NSW, Troy Grant, did not answer a question about whether he supported the mine, instead directing queries to the resources minister’s office. The Labor party has tried to put pressure on Joyce to resign, saying if he was truly opposed to the mine he would step down from cabinet. Joyce said: “
treated as having been collected in full by both States, and any amounts expended by a State in carrying out a special project assisted under section 455(e) shall be excluded. **i.e. If two States are working together to collect funds, they both get credit for the purposes of establishing bonuses – this is pure gravy. Note a couple of things here. First, the bonus values are doubled for the categories of paternity test performance and cost performance. So why would the Feds care about State costs? Because this is the bonus and incentive program, and States already receive a 66% dollar for dollar reimbursement for administrative costs (and I’m not sure, I’ll have to check, but i think there is a way they can finagle the remaining 34% to get even dollar for dollar match) under a different section of the Social Security Act. So, there you have it. States can get up to 100% reimbursement for administrative costs plus up to two times the bonus pool share for two categories along with the rest of it. Now add to this, the fact that Courts often charge fees for posting these certified payments, and may assess additional fees and fines for enforcement, and you’ve got a very lucrative incentive for States and Courts to maximize child support payments. In Other Words, It Should Be No Surprise That: _ (1) Child Support payments are maximized, regardless of whether the NCP can afford them. States and Courts don’t care; the debt can’t go way or be retroactively reduced. (2) Equal and Shared parenting is disincented – this will reduce revenue to the States and Courts. (3) More and more States are requiring mandatory garnishments and payment administration. People who are already paying on time will improve their performance ratings for bonus calculations. (4) States like TX make it difficult for non-paternal parents relieve themselves of child support burdens. And lastly, (5) Why States and Courts are not persuaded by reasonable and humane arguments for shared parenting reforms. The system has been corrupted by money and the Feds are driving this corruption. It’s time to fire politicians. ~ Michael Source: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cse/pol/related/3130.htmPosted on 01. Jan, 1972 by Ryan in 1970-1979, 96, 97 (Sonett II & III), 99, Orange, Connecticut FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: LEN LONNEGREN 72 SAAB MODEL FEATURES ORANGE, CONNECTICUT — Saab offers new safety, comfort features for 1972 : impact absorbing bumpers, heated seat. Continuing its efforts to provide the most advanced in comfortable and safe transportation, Saab for 1972 incorporates two new features, unique to the entire automobile industry. The 1972 Saab 99E model s are the first producti on passenger cars offered anywhere in the world with impact absorbing bumpers, able to withstand barrier impacts up to 5 mph without any damage whatsoever. Both the Saab 99 and the smal ler Saab 96 sedan and the Saab 95 station wagon are equipped with an electrically heated driver’s seat, a seat that will automatically and quickly heat up to comfort temperatures as soon as the ignition is turned on. These two features are among a number of modifications and improvements on all the 1972 Saab models: the 99 two and four-door sedan ; the 96 two-door sedan; the 95 station wagon; and the Sonett III sports coupe. For the Saab 99E, the changes also include a larger engine, increased for 1972 to 1854 cc (113. 1 cu. in.) and equipped with an electronically controlled fuel injection system for better performance at all speeds and lower exhaust pollution. The new Saab 99 bumpers are the first in the entire automobile industry that have been certified as capable of withstanding 5 mph front and 2-1/2 mph rear end impacts in an SAE barrier without sustaining any damage whatsoever, the 1972 thus exceeds the Federal bumper regulations for 1973 model automobiles. Although several auto makers have introduced new bumpers for 1972 only Saab has yet been certified through independent laboratory tests as being able to withstand the SE barrier impacts without damage. Tests of the Saab bumpers have been conducted at an independent automotive safety laboratory in this country. The Federal safety authorities, as well as the insurance industry have long asked that automobile makers develop and install new and more sturdy bumpers. Test crashes conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety have shown that repair costs for domestic 1971 model cars after a 5 mph front end impact averaged $331.69. For the 1972 Saab 99, such a collision will cause no damage whatsoever. The Saab bumper consists of a U-shaped steel profile in which are located energy absorbing cellular plastic blocks, which absorb the impact and quickly return to their original shape, even after repeated crashes. The exterior of the bumper is faced with a rubber covering and a decorative metal strip. Points where the bumpers are attached to the car body have been strengthened to prevent body damage. The electrically heated driver’s seat, standard in both the Saab 99 and 95 and 96 models, is another exclusive Saab feature for 1972. Built into the seat pad and backrest of the seat, the system heats up automatically and quickly when the ignition is turned on and the interior temperature is below 58 F. A thermostat turns off the heat when the seat temperature reaches 82 F. The heating system is completely safe from electric shock and is not affected by dampness or water that might come in contact with it. The Saab 99 E is powered by an in-line four cylinder overhead cam engine, with electronically controlled fuel injection. An electronic computer metering system monitors engine speed, inlet manifold pressure, throttle position and temperature and controls magnetic valves at each injection point to deliver to each cylinder the exact amount of fuel needed for any driving condition. For 1972 the engine size has been increased to 1854 cc and the power output is now 95 net horsepower (SAE), compared to 87 for 1971. The Saab 99E is available either with a four-speed manual transmission or with a three-speed automatic transmission. Saab has long been an industry forerunner in the automotive safety design field and has utilized safety construction and front wheel drive since the first Saabs were produced in 1949. One of the first auto makers to offer a dual braking system, now required by law on all cars, Saab as early as in 1963 introduced a dual diagonal system, which is still unique in the industry. The 1972 model Saab with the new impact absorbing bumpers is further evidence of the constant effort to offer the best in automotive transportation. Of course, retained in the 1972 models are such Saab features as the front-wheel drive, the dual diagonal braking system and the roll-cage construction which has been tested by dropping a Saab 99 upside down from a height of nearly seven feet onto a concrete floor with an impact velocity of 25 feet per second. Repeated tests of this type have proven that the passenger compartment will remain intact even after this kind of an impact. Other special features on the Saab 99 Include: Fully adjustable front seats with infinitely adjustable rake of the backrest for both driving and resting and independent seat pad controls for the driver, allowing him to raise or lower the front and rear edges of the seat. Special doughnut shaped “see-through” head restraints on the front seats. The convertible rear seat — also standard on the Saab 96 sedan — that can be folded down to open up some 67 inches of metal floored baggage area from the trunk opening to the back of the front seats. Individual heat controls for the rear seat passengers, located on a console between the front seats and easy-to-reach for passengers in the back seat. The aerodynamically designed and wind tunnel tested, body that has an air resistance coefficient of only.37 — compared to the normal of.40 and.60 for standard automobile — which increases fuel economy even at very high speeds and assures exceptional stability under severe side wind pressure. Two new colors will be offered in the Saab 95, 96, and 99 models for 1972: Verona Green and Amber Yellow. The other colors for 1972 are Polar White, Toreador Red, Tyrol Green, Blue and Black. Upholstery, of nylon velour material with vinyl reinforcements, is color matched to the various exterior colors. ##################Welcome! As you've probably noticed, you've been redirected here from europe.fiveultimate.com. That's because we had to close our Amsterdam office after two wonderful, trying, exhausting, exhilarating years. What this means for you. The biggest change is that we now operate entirely out of Five HQ in Seattle, Washington, USA. That means that gear will be sold in US dollars, and shipped from Seattle. Shipping from Seattle means that it'll take longer to get your gear, and everything will need to go through customs. We have some ideas about how to streamline that process without breaking the bank, or getting your stuff stuck in some warehouse somewhere, and we're hoping to launch some of those ideas in the few months. What to do now. If you're looking to start a team uniform order, you can fill out a quick form here, and you'll see an email from Paige within one business day. If you were hoping to shop in our online store, you click the big ol' STORE link in the header of this page, or you can click this lil' link right here and get to shopping! Thanks y'all, The Five TeamCreated for: The Sims 3 This is a Set with 17 Creations - Click here to show all This Fantasy bedroom is stylish yet brins out the kid in all of us! I like to encourage the themes of (TSR). I am following this time the theme (myth and magic). Not to forget our dreams of children. in this set. 17 items. 1 single bed, with one side of the heart, and the other side coverage is longer, That way you have a choice when the position of the bed. Structure castles center, which is created specially for the bed (if you have n 'anywhere, the sims will pass through (Created Specially for the bed). A structure castles left (small steps with decorative), (you can disposed of decoration on the stairs). strcuture the same, with the same property (but right side). A ceiling decoration (small ball and cub). Two giant decorative candy (Left side + right side). A small table (with lace doilies). decorative lollipops (You can change the color of the base and stick). A giant ice cream sundae (recolorable, ice and glass bowl). A small cup of ice (with the same property that large). A heart-shaped box. bear with head and decorative mirror (mirror is a decoration does not work in the game, just the reflection works correctly).6 Air (just for the bed &amp;amp;quot;small fantasy&amp;amp;quot;).2 apple of love decorative, very real (the stick is recolorable).1 little teddy (head girl dog), (recolorable). Almost all objects are categorized Kids. All screenshots are taken in the game.all individual objects (Murano backdrop)thank you! Creator Notes single bed, with one side of the heart, and the other side coverage is longer, That way you have a choice when the position of the bed.T Structure castles center, which is created specially for the bed(if you have n 'anywhere, the sims will pass through (Created Specially for the bed). Cushions creat specially for the bed too. Almost all objects are categorized Kids.(THANK YOU RICCINUMBERS TSR for your help! All screenshots are taken in the game.all individual objects (Murano backdrop)thank you! Credits: murano backdrop. Short URL: http://www.thesimsresource.com/downloads/1174022 ItemID: 1174022As eToro social investment program added Bitcoin stocks for its 3 million users already as of January, 2014. Now, many Forex trading platforms are thinking to allow their platform users to trade Bitcoins with CFDs (Contract of Differences). AvaTrade Forex trading platform allows its users to trade Bitcoins with CFDs. Now, investors from world-wide can easily invest on Bitcoins using eToro, AvaTrade and other Forex trading platforms (We will cover all Forex trading platform and review them who allows their users to trade Bitcoins). Using AvaTrade you can now trade the currency of the future(Bitcoin). Bitcoin is a crypto-currency (electronic/digital currency) that is created (Satoshi Nakamoto) and exchanged online without the involvement of any bank or any Federal government. More about Bitcoin. 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You will need to upload the following documents to verify your AvaTrade account: Color copy of a valid government-issued ID (passport, ID card, driver’s license) (passport, ID card, driver’s license) Utility bill for address verification issued in the past three months How to Trade Bitcoins with AvaTrade Follow the steps to start trading Bitcoins with AvaTrade: Signup at AvaTrade Once your account created, try logging into your account (by clicking the button Customer Login ) ) On login, an email will be sent to your inbox containing your Username/Account Number Now, you need to download and install Ava Trader and run on your computer Using your login details thatAvaTrade sent to you on your email address login to your desktop Ava Trader account DesktopAvaTrader will retrieve the data to provide users the best experience and accurate information Once the Update Progress done updating the files, you will see the live trading platform screen below: How to Buy/Sell Bitcoins with AvaTrade Now, here is the game begins about buying and selling Bitcoins using AvaTrade. Let me give you a short introduction about how you will be doing to buy and sell Bitcoins in your AvaTrade Forex account. AvaTrade Forex trading platform allows its users to trade Bitcoins with CFDs and investing in CFDs carries risks to your capital. Concept of buying or selling Bitcoins with AvaTrade Buy Bitcoins – When you buy Bitcoins in AvaTrade means you are holding Bitcoins in exchange of USD (In short, you are selling USD and buying equivalent amount of Bitcoins). If the value of BTC rise you will earn from the trade, depends on leverage that you take from the Forex broker. Sell Bitcoins – And when you sell Bitcoins in AvaTrade means you are holding USD in exchange of BTC (In short, you are selling BTC and buying equivalent amount of USD). However, in this case if the value of BTC fall and USD value increases you will earn from the trade, depends on leverage that you take from the Forex broker. Risk Warning: Investing in leveraged products carries a high degree of risk. The Game Begins NOW! For example, if you want to buy Bitcoin click the button Buy from the top left corner like: For example, if you think that Bitcoin will lose its value you can sell Bitcoins using AvaTrade by clicking the Sell button from top left corner like: Conclusion AvaTrade Forex broker is one of the most considered trading platform now a days by investors of Bitcoin and other Forex traders. Comment below if you have any confusion with this article.FORT BRAGG, N.C. — Top Army leaders have ordered its elite Special Forces unit to change its motto from the Latin “De Opresso Liber” (To liberate the oppressed) to something that would be more culturally sensitive, after a large number of Afghans holding child sex slaves have complained. “We want to make sure we are not offending our coalition partners and not judging them based on our own biases,” said Col. Dwight S. Barry, a Pentagon spokesperson. “At the end of the day, we just have to respect that raping young boys and mutilating female genitals is just a part of their culture.” Started in 1952, Army Special Forces chose its Latin motto of “De Opresso Liber” at a time when the U.S. was heavily focused on freeing people around the world from the chains of Soviet Communism. Now decades later, Army leaders want operators to be more aware of cultural differences they may not understand in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Berkeley, California. The move comes in the wake of numerous complaints from Afghan men, who have chided U.S. military officials over previous run-ins with Special Forces soldiers unaware of the ancient Afghan custom of “bacha bazi.” The practice, which literally translates to “boy play,” consists of chaining children to beds, taking off their clothes, and then sexually assaulting them until they scream “bingo.” Anger over U.S. military insensitivity toward “bacha bazi” is not the only issue in which Afghans have raised concern. The use of Special Forces “night raids” on high value targets has aroused suspicion among many locals in the past, and U.S. troops expressing discomfort around opium-addicted Afghan policemen as they throw acid in the faces of young girls has strained coalition partnerships. In one high-profile incident, two Special Forces soldiers beat up an American-backed militia commander after they had learned he had raped a young boy and beat up his mother, a practice which goes back centuries and is perfectly normal in Afghan society. Fortunately, one of the American soldiers decided to leave the Army after the incident, while the other is being kicked out. “I thought we were all about liberating the oppressed?” said Bob Samuelson, a former weapons sergeant with Army Special Forces. “How is it right for the Army to kick someone out who was literally trying to do that, and free a young boy from assault?” The Pentagon just recently learned the motto included a typo for decades, and the actual English translation is “to free the oppressors,” according to a senior defense official. Officials are currently weighing a number of potential mottos as replacements, which include “Tolerate Iniustitia (Tolerate Injustice)” and “Ad Dissimulare (To Turn a Blind Eye).” In addition to the change in motto, the Army band has also been directed to record a new version of the “Ballad of the Green Berets,” which was recorded during the Vietnam War. An initial draft of the lyrics include: “Silver wings upon their chest / These are men, America’s best / One hundred slaves get raped today / But all ignored by the Green Beret.” Duffel Blog investigative reporters Dick Scuttlebutt, Jack S. McQuack, and Jay-B contributed.Sign-up for the Urban Milwaukee daily email Two aldermen held a dramatic press conference Wednesday to broadcast a nuisance lawsuit the City of Milwaukee has filed in circuit court against a landlord in an attempt to break up alleged prostitution and drug dealing in their south-side neighborhoods. Alds. Bob Donovan and Jose Perez boldly held the event right outside an alleged house of prostitution at 3200 W. Greenfield Ave., an otherwise innocuous brown-and-tan, two-story home. Their point was to demonstrate that the city is actively working to stamp out drug dealing and prostitution in the neighborhood with whatever means the city has at its disposal, while also sending a message to property owners and residents. “The message we want to send is very simple,” Donovan said. “Landlords be aware of what’s going on at your property and don’t tolerate any illegal activity.” As Donovan spoke to reporters his words boomed out over the neighborhood from a set of loudspeakers, delivering the message to residents and any landlords, should they be within hearing. This particular case is being filed under a state statute called the “bawdy house” statute. “Bawdy” typically refers something that is comical and sexually indecent in nature. But there was nothing comic in the tone of the elected leaders. “We are not gonna manage your properties,” Perez said to the press, but aiming his warning at local landlords. “The City of Milwaukee is not gonna manage it, the residents are not gonna manage it.” The “Bawdy House” statute is a nuisance statute. The Language describes the specific nuisance as, “Lewdness, assignation or prostitution.” The city is using this law to go after the landlord with the hope he or she relinquishes the ownership. The ultimate goal would be for someone else to buy the property and make sure the home is no longer a place for “lewdness, assignation or prostitution.” This is the second time in the last two months the city has pursued litigation against a nuisance house on W. Greenfield Avenue under the “Bawdy House” statute. The first one was further east, near 23rd St. As for the house now targeted, immediately east of it, at 3144 W. Greenfield Ave., is Reinke Brothers fishing tackle shop. Bob Reinke’s family has operated the shop there since 1949. He first started noticing the odd activity at the house about a year ago, and he said it’s been blatantly obvious ever since. “She’d come out of there half naked and dress herself on the front of the stoop,” he said. Reinke said he only wishes he had security cameras at his business to catch everything over the past year. “It was horrible.” Reinke’s store is a “destination store,” he said. His customers come from far and wide for his unique merchandise. And in the last year, a resident of the nuisance house would sometimes proposition his customers as they walked past. Assistant City Attorney Heather Hough said that the actions taken against the owners of the houses on W. Greenfield Avenue are the direct result of resident complaints to the local alderman. Speaking to the press she urged residents to continue to complain and be vigilant, to “take ownership of their neighborhoods.” Reinke said Donovan is, “My man,” adding, “If you got a problem and you go to Bob he addresses it.” He was clearly happy with the actions announced Wednesday and called the city’s action a “wonderful thing.” With a number of resident complaints, and certainly those like Reinke who said they’ve witnessed blatant “prostitution and drug dealings,” Donovan said the idea to use this nuisance ordinance came out of meeting with a who’s-who of south-side leaders and city law enforcement representatives: “Myself, Ald. Perez, the Police Chief, the DA, the City Attorney, and the Captain from District Two.” He said it was Hough’s “outside the box thinking” that led them to the action they are now pursuing. While some of the activities alleged to have taken place at the residence are crimes, Hough said criminal prosecution has a higher burden of proof. “We’re hopeful though, because we’ve gathered enough evidence where we’re pretty confident we will prevail in a circuit court action,” she said. Moreover, the city has evidence that the landlord has personally participated in “prostitution activities,” she said. Donovan and Perez both expressed commitment to further action on prostitution and drug dealing on the South Side. And Donovan said the press conference was held because use of the “bawdy house” statute is rare, and because he wanted his constituents to know the city was taking action. Hough and Donovan both made the point that it takes time to address these problems and build a solid case. “We want to get the message out that in fact some things are in the works,” Donovan said. Donovan said there has already signs of improvement following the actions taken over the past two months. But, like time, crime can slip away yet keep going forward. “I am seeing less activity along that particular section of Greenfield over the last couple weeks,” Donovan mused. “However, it’s my understanding a lot of the activity has gone over to Orchard or National.”Announcing the second full release for Ironwatch Games, we’re proud to bring you Mawbeast Madness, from the mind of Glenn Allan! Featuring all the high-adrenaline excitement of racing combined with the temperamental and homicidal Mawbeast nature pitted against the devious cunning of Goblins, Mawbest Madness uses the Dungeon Saga rules as a base to enable you to race your friends and enemies around underground tombs, forgotten lairs, and forsaken ruins! Use hidden passages to zip across shortcuts, pick up items to improve your own odds and impede your opponent, and of course get into good old-fashioned brawls along the way. Featuring custom cover art from Boris Samec, this short-but-sweet rules supplement is a must-have for those seeking to throw down a checkered flag of challenge at your next tabletop wargame session! Google Docs High Resolution Scribd High Resolution Happy gaming! AdvertisementsFREE LINK NOTIFICATION The URL you requested has been accessed 69 times. NCANE.COM is supported by advertising. If you received this link in an email, please DO NOT click "continue" unless you are sure that the link is safe to look at. NCANE.COM does not tolerate spam or abuse of our services. Please contact us on [email protected] to report spam. You can continue to the site you entered by clicking continue. (Link is: http://www.reddit.com/user/boban1987). Type any long URL in the box provided, and watch our generator create a much shorter (and permanent) URL for you that will take you directly to the original address. Check this box if the target URL contains any adult content (Link creation button removed) (Form clearing button removed) Still can't find what you're looking for? Custom Search Home - My Account - About Us - What's New - Link To Us - Top Hits - Advertise With Us * WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO DENY ACCESS TO CERTAIN URLs. SPAM AND ILLEGAL USE OF OUR SERVICE IS FORBIDDEN, AND WILL RESULT IN EXPIRATION OF THE LINKS AND REPORTING TO YOUR INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER AND LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT. Copyright © Intelligent Technology Solutions. All rights reserved. Logo by Delano. The NCANE family includes the following domain names: ncane.com, ncane.co.za, ncane.net, kleinurl.com, kleinurl.co.za, kleinurl.net, minurl.co.za, minurl.net, adres.co.za Report spam on [email protected] being almost religiously devoted to Donald Trump during his presidential campaign, the legions of online racists referred to as the "alt-right" have already decided to move on to their next big project: sparking widespread political conflict that they hope to turn into a nationwide race war. White nationalists worldwide have fantasized about such conflicts for decades in photocopied manifestos and novels like “The Turner Diaries,” which reportedly inspired Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. Racist killers like Dylann Roof have tried to spark the racial apocalypse through mass murder. This time around, their dreams seem slightly more plausible, thanks to two important tools that didn’t really exist for racists of yore: the democratizing nature of the internet (allowing anyone with enough dedication to grow a following) and a realization among members of today’s far right that they can adopt the tactics of nonviolent civil disobedience — long associated with the activist left — to spread their message of hate. Advertisement: Before the web, the expense required to engage in mass communications was such that only wealthy individuals and political parties could do it effectively. That changed with the emergence of the internet. Before the web, white nationalists simply could not afford to get out their message effectively to large numbers of people. Now, finding racist materials online is a matter of a simple Google search. The widespread adoption of the web has also given rise to a new form of culture based on trolling, the practice of posting abusive messages in discussion forums and social networks with the sole intent of provoking others to anger. At first, trolling was simply an apolitical form of amusement — web posting as performance art. The image board 4chan soon became its mecca. Over time, however, the trolls began moving from joking about racism to advocating it in their desire to become ever more edgy. Andrew Anglin, creator of the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer and a longtime troll before that, described the transformation process in a lengthy post on his blog: “The sentiments behind the jokes slowly became serious, as people realized they were based on fact," he wrote. "Non-ironic Nazism [began] masquerading as ironic Nazism.” As online neo-Nazis immersed themselves into the thought stream of what today’s young racists call "White Nationalism 1.0," they soon were joined by many members of the so-called “manosphere,” a loose collection of anti-feminist blog communities that originally began as dating tip sites for men. Advertisement: The political rise of Donald Trump and his harsh critique of American conservatism as corrupt and effeminate — as cuckolded, as in the insult "cuckservative" — provided the perfect mechanism for the racist alt-right to eject its nonracist elements and grow its ranks by radicalizing more mainstream white conservatives. Demonstrating a media savvy far beyond the ken of 20th-century white nationalists, the new race warriors have managed to spread their message to an audience of millions. Since 4chan literally invented the internet meme, it’s no surprise that the board's members (and those who frequent its rivals and spinoffs) have successfully created political propaganda that appeals to more mainstream conservatives. In fact, conservative media in general has become so polarized against the left that it both wittingly and unwittingly spreads alt-right messages to its audiences. Trump himself tweeted memes produced by neo-Nazis on several occasions during his presidential campaign. Having proved their ability to manipulate the right long before they began to sour on Trump, America’s homegrown Nazis have now set their sights on using the left to push white nationalism into the mainstream. The strategy essentially began coalescing last June after a crew of white nationalists demonstrating in Sacramento, California, were physically attacked by a group of “antifa" activists, members of a radical left-wing underground movement who seek to use political violence to forcibly shut down organizations they perceive as fascist. Nine people were hospitalized after the fracas as the skinheads and their allies retaliated with knives and other weapons. Advertisement: This brawl received comparatively little national media attention but was obsessively covered within the alt-right, as the notoriously fractious community came together to sympathize with the demonstrators. The incident soon became a rallying cry on the far right, dubbed the “Battle of Sacramento.” Publishing an interview with Matthew Heimbach, a leader of the group that had organized the march, the Daily Stormer’s Anglin proclaimed that the skirmish would “go down in history as the day the American race war really heated up.” Heimbach strongly agreed, saying that he hoped the highly educated web trolls would understand their need to work together with the blue-collar skinheads they have generally derided: Advertisement: I have had the pleasure to get to know a lot of different people in the White nationalist movement over the years I have been involved in this Cause. One of the biggest problems I have found in our movement is the sub cultural divides between various factions and classism within certain factions. The skinhead subculture is a working class movement with a lot of diversity within it.... One of our primary functions as a movement must be uniting our people and promoting class cooperation, gender cooperation and religious cooperation. The enemy seeks to divide us, we must unite as one people; standing shoulder to shoulder in defense of our folk. Seeing the galvanizing power that such skirmishes could bring to their cause, Heimbach and other far-right activists have held dozens of rallies since last summer. They’ve also made it a point to join up with protest events organized by “normie” Republicans who support President Trump, in the hopes of recruiting new members and generating sympathy for their cause. This bears a striking similarity to the "popular front" strategy practiced for years by Marxists and other left-wing revolutionaries. By their own admission, the racist activists see attacks by antifa activists as useful to their cause. In hundreds of web postings examined by Salon, members of the Daily Stormer and many other websites such as 8chan’s /pol/ board have discussed at length their plans to infiltrate antifa social-media groups and use them to foment violence against right-wingers, in a strategy ultimately aimed at radicalizing “basic bitch” white conservatives. The strategy is a grotesque variation of methods employed by Mohandas K. Gandhi in his struggle for Indian independence, and for that matter by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during his fight for civil rights for black Americans. Historian David Garrow and others have documented how King and his allies would sometimes place children and elderly women in important protest positions, believing that any violence directed against such vulnerable people would engender outrage from journalists and the general public. Subsequent events proved his strategy was a sound one. Advertisement: Seizing upon violence from the opposing side, regardless of who started the aggression, is also a key component of the radicalization strategy of Islamic terrorist groups like ISIS or al-Qaida. Such militant Islamists have long pointed to real or alleged abuses of Muslims committed by Western governments as a justification for their revolutionary theology. It’s not a coincidence that Anglin has called for “white sharia” in a series of recent web postings. Those on the alt-right and Islamic jihadists have more than a few similarities, despite their mutual hatred. “If you can portray yourself sympathetically, suffering violence is a strategic advantage,” said David S. Meyer, a sociology professor at the University of California, Irvine, who studies social movements. “It brings people into the conflict and portrays your opponent unsympathetically.” The far right’s radical vision has also been aided by the emergence of a conservative media niche sometimes referred to as the “alt-lite.” Such outlets frequently take neofascist memes, strip them of overtly white nationalist content and then repackage them to the much larger conservative media world for clicks and advertising dollars. Nathan Damigo, a white supremacist who was caught on film punching a female antifa activist named Emily Nauert during an April 15 brawl at a pro-Trump rally in Berkeley, California, is a perfect example of the way neo-Nazis are using clashes with antifa activists to mainstream their views within the larger right. Advertisement: It’s not clear who originally sponsored the pro-Trump event in what may be America's most liberal community. An online flyer promoting it featured a mixture of alt-right and more mainstream conservatives. Irma Hinojosa, a Latina supporter of Trump, was featured alongside Brittany Pettibone, a Christian nationalist contributor to alt-right websites, and Lauren Southern, an alt-lite commentator who has bragged that anime fans masturbate to photos of her. While centrist and left-wing news sources focused on Nauert and condemned Damigo for hitting her, conservative and far-right websites began digging up information on her. They discovered video evidence appearing to show that Nauert had been throwing bottles at her opponents earlier in the confrontation. Soon a number of conservative sites such as The Rebel (which formerly employed Southern) that had denounced the alt-right in other contexts were demonizing Nauert with the epithet “Moldylocks.” Many regular conservatives on Twitter have also promoted memes that glorified Damigo. Another Berkeley rally riot a few weeks earlier, on March 4, provided an example of the confluence of alt-right and alt-lite. Kyle Chapman — a pro-Trump commercial diver who showed up at the protest armed with pepper spray, a knife and a shield — hit with a long piece of wood the head of an antifa activist who appeared to be struggling with a Trump supporter. Within minutes after the video of Chapman's encounter surfaced online via 8chan’s /pol/ forum, he was dubbed “Based Stickman” on the neo-Nazi forum and the meme magicians went to work devising numerous propaganda images of him. These images and clips quickly migrated to more mainstream conservative sites that also cater to alt-right audiences, including The Rebel, Breitbart News and Gateway Pundit. Heat Street — a blog owned and operated by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. that is attempting to cultivate a younger right-wing readership — praised Chapman in an extraordinarily flattering article. Hailing his actions as “giving America one of its greatest victories since Guadalcanal,” the site denounced Berkeley police for arresting the “hero.” Advertisement: “Chapman’s brief stint as a political prisoner should be a disturbing reminder that America would benefit from more modern-day Patrick Henrys,” blogger Joe Simonson wrote. None of the people praising “Based Stickman” bothered to look up his violent past, his "likes" of white nationalist pages on Facebook or his seemingly indiscriminate pepper-spray attack on a fellow Trump supporter. Chapman was just as nonchalant when he was asked by Wired reporter Emma Grey Ellis if he approved of people circulating memes of white supremacist Nathan Damigo. “I honestly just don’t care," he was quoted as saying. The radicalization process appears to be working among at least some conservatives. Read through almost any thread about antifa activists on 4chan, 8chan, the Daily Stormer or any of the larger alt-right blogs and you’ll find stories like the one below recounted by an 8chan /pol/ member: The thing is I WANT them around. My 70 y/o mom was a basic indy voting normie a year ago. Now she's all but telling me we need to gas the cultural marxists and exterminate the muslims. This is all because of the stupidity of the last year. All the safe space shit, the 4000 genders, riots, [jihadist] attacks, white genocide, etc.... She'd literally just look the other way as commies and muslims are genocided knowing it needs to be done. My brother is going the same way. Antifa is our greatest ally. Their insanity is pushing the normies to the far right. Leveraging far-left activists who think that they help their cause by engaging in violence is the dream of many neo-fascists. Advertisement: “Lol how do they still not get it?” asked one /pol/ poster earlier this month. “They're escalating with people that have been dreaming about killing them for years and have been preparing the whole time.” Chapman, the “Based Stickman,” seems to be moving in that general direction. On April 21, he announced the formation of a group called the Fraternal Order of Alt Knights, which appears to have more than a few similarities to the Sturmabteilung, the infamous Brownshirts paramilitary organization that predated the Nazi Party
ies going into blocked accounts Real estate and other property held through registered agents and front companies for the Iranian government. The banks The revolutionary government in Iran nationalized all Iranian banks in 1979. Even today, there are no private banks in Iran. Under the constitution of the Islamic republic, the banks have no independent legal existence; they are agencies of government, not corporations. Three of Iran’s largest banks operate and own property in the United States: Bank Melli, Bank Saderat and Bank Sepah. As foreign banks, their activities are regulated by the Federal Reserve Bank. All three were fined in 1994 for “filing of late and incomplete regulatory reports” to the Fed, according to Federal Reserve reports. Bank Melli, which operates in New York and Los Angeles, was assessed a civil penalty of $60,000 by the Federal Reserve on Sept. 22, 1994, which it paid two months later. Bank Saderat was fined $125,000 and Bank Sepah was fined $100,000 at the same time. When President Clinton imposed the trade embargo banning financial transactions with Iran, all three were doing a booming business in the United States, according to reports submitted by the banks to federal regulators. On April 21, 1995, the chief agent of Bank Melli Iran in California, Amir Ali Taghati, reported cash flows for the previous month on Bank Melli’s accounts with U.S. corespondent banks. Account No. 12336 81030, which Bank Melli maintained with the Bank of America, showed credits of $1.3 million for the month. A separate account with the Wells Fargo Bank showed credits of $16 million. But the bulk of Bank Melli’s U.S. funds were held in Account No. 5512 11523 with the Sanwa Bank California. This account showed $191.2 million in credits during a one-month period in March 1995. For the most part, these accounts were used for time deposits and money market funds, with the monies transferred out at the end of each month (and in some cases, at the end of each banking day). But at the very least, the Iranian government was benefiting from the U.S. banking system and from U.S. financial instruments. Like any other foreign investor, the government of Iran is making money on Wall Street. But the government of Iran is not like any foreign investor. The U.S. Department of State has made a legal determination that it is a terrorist state. So has the president, in numerous executive orders. And yet, the activities and investments of that state are being protected by President Clinton. So beneficial was the U.S. banking system for Iran that it used U.S. banks for its offshore deposits as well. The Marine Midland Bank of New York maintained several accounts for Bank Melli and Bank Saderat on the books of its British subsidiary, Midland Bank plc, in London. Bank Melli’s account with Midland Bank showed 272 transactions in excess of $1 million each for the month of April 1995. The average daily balance on Bank Melli’s account was $268.2 million. For the month, a total of $5.2 billion transited through Bank Melli’s account with Midland Bank in London. Were the Clinton administration to enforce the damages awarded U.S. victims of terrorism against the government of Iran, they could freeze the offshore accounts used by the Iranian government with U.S. banks, where the bulk of Iran’s oil income gets deposited. A fourth Iranian bank, Bank Tejarat, also uses New York as its banking capital. Its U.S. correspondent bank, the Australian and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ Worldwide), booked transactions worth $6.8 million in April 1995. Citibank, Bank of New York and Chemical Bank also maintain accounts for the government of Iran in New York. Citibank’s account for the state-owned Bank Sepah showed debits of more than $11 million in April 1995. A separate Citibank account, in the name of Bank Melli, showed $79 million in debits that month. Since the trade ban, the three main Iranian banks operating in the United States have all but closed their once highly-visible branch offices in Los Angeles and New York. But they have not stopped all banking activity. All three continue to manage letters of credit for purchases of industrial equipment and consumer goods, worth millions of dollars each month. These purchases increased following President Clinton’s quiet decision in April 1999 to partially ease sanctions by allowing Iran to buy U.S. food products. U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics, released Oct. 21,1999, showed that Iran purchased nearly 400,000 tons of American corn since the U.S. lifted the embargo on food sales to Iran in April. Those purchases were financed through Iranian banks. Letters of credit for grain purchases, oil sales and other trade could be seized under current U.S. law, if it weren’t for President Clinton’s efforts to protect Iran’s assets and its commercial activities in America, as part of his secret back-channel negotiations with Tehran. The Alavi Foundation The Pahlavi Foundation in New York and its parent, the Pahlavi Foundation in Tehran, were seized by the revolutionary government of Ayatollah Khomeini in a decree dated Feb. 28, 1979. The Shah’s assets and those of his supporters were placed under the direct legal control of the supreme leader, in theory to be managed “in favor of the needy.” Today, the foundation is controlled by law by his successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i, who appoints a chairman to manage its day-to-day affairs. In Iran, the foundation controlled vast real estate holdings, factories and luxury resorts. It had share-holdings in major joint-venture corporations set up in Iran with foreign partners, including General Motors and Jeep. In the United States, its main asset was the 36-story mid-town Manhattan office building. Back in 1979, it was valued at approximately $50 million. The revolutionaries forced the resignation of the foundation’s pro-Shah Board of Directors in 1979, replacing them with persons loyal to Ayatollah Khomeini. Top among them was Mohammad Hadi Nejad Hosseinian, who assumed control of the Foundation on Aug. 27, 1979. Nejad-Hosseinian today serves as the Islamic Republic’s ambassador to the United Nations, after 20 years in various government positions in Tehran. Under his leadership, the foundation proceeded to establish “Islamic Education” centers around the U.S., with the aim of spreading pro-regime propaganda. In recent years, the centers have become a magnet for the Iranian community by offering Farsi-language primary school classes that are fully accredited with the Iranian national educational system. But they continue to spread virulent anti-American and anti-Semitic propaganda, including videotaped speeches of neo-Nazis such as Ahmed Huber, who praises Ayatollah Khomeini as the living embodiment of Adolf Hitler. Over the past five years, the foundation has financed a Farsi-language satellite TV network in the United States known as Aftab television, which rebroadcasts state-run television programs from Tehran. Aftab is controlled through a New York agency, Cina Productions. Despite the foundation’s clear ties to Tehran, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control failed to include it in lists of Iranian government assets it published following President Clinton’s trade embargo in May 1995. Officials at the Office of Foreign Assets Control said in interviews that they had not been able to establish Tehran’s “day-to-day control” over the foundation in a manner that would hold up in a U.S. court. A U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York agreed, and in late 1995 rejected an effort by an Iranian-American to attach assets of the Alavi Foundation to satisfy a claim against the government of Iran. These rulings came despite a May 18, 1988, investigation by the New York district office of the Internal Revenue Service. An IRS memo documenting the probe, obtained by this reporter, concluded that the Alavi Foundation was controlled by Tehran. (It was then called the Mostazafan Foundation, after its parent foundation in Tehran). On page 1, the IRS notes that the entire capital of the original foundation, $42,000,000, was provided in 1975 by the Central Bank of Iran “on instructions from the Shah.” The money was used to construct the building at 650 Fifth Ave. The Central Bank “used another bank in Iran, Bank Melli, as its agent for transfer of funds to the United States.” The report goes on: “The entire $42,000,000 was given interest-free to the Mostazafan Foundation and is secured by a mortgage on the property at 650 Fifth Avenue.” It was to be repaid in “15 annual installments of $2,800,000 each, commencing in December 1978 …” After repeated defaults by the foundation following the revolution, they re-negotiated the repayment schedule with Bank Melli. “The debtor-creditor relationship in this case is cloudy and does not appear to be an arms length relationship,” the IRS concluded. “Trustees of Mostazafan Foundation historically have been appointed by the government of Iran and it has been demonstrated that the Bank Melli is an instrument of the government of Iran. Therefore, Mostazafan Foundation and Bank Melli both may be controlled by the government of Iran.” Despite this and numerous other documents presented to U.S. District Court in New York, the administration continues to allow the Alavi Foundation to finance propaganda activities in the United States with impunity. Real estate The Iranian government still owns a 6-story Manhattan townhouse that used to serve as the residence of the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations. Located at 34 East 69th St., it was appraised for tax purposes at $5 million in 1995. The Treasury Department has managed the property on behalf of the Iranian government since the 1979-81 hostage crisis. At one point, the Office of Foreign Assets Control rented the house to a criminal lawyer named Ivan Fisher for $50,000 per month. That money went into an escrow account for the Iranian government, which the Clinton administration has prevented the Flatow lawyers from attaching. On April 14, 1997, the Alavi Foundation purchased land in Queens from the Korean Presbyterian Church for $405,000. That transfer occurred despite U.S. regulations banning financial transactions by the government of Iran in the United States. In Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., the Alavi Foundation purchased six separate lots located on Georgia Lane, in the Waldwoods subdivision. The foundation transferred ownership through an insiders deal to a private corporation, repurchased it, refinanced it, and flipped the properties in the early 1990s. U.S. government investigators believe profits from this and numerous other real estate transactions were done as a means of financing undeclared activities by the Alavi Foundation and the Iranian government in the United States. Bank Melli and Bank Saderat — both agencies of the Iranian government — also engaged in a variety of real estate holdings across America. Bank Melli recently purchased property assessed at $694,000 at 135 Puritan Ave. in Flushing, N.Y. In Los Angeles, a 1995 court judgment against four rug and furniture companies gave it liens worth several million dollars. Bank Saderat has won title to numerous properties in California over the past five years as a result of mortgage defaults. These include a $2 million villa located at 515 North Rodeo Drive in the center of Beverly Hills, condominiums, lots, a convenience store, and more. In February 1995, just three months before President Clinton’s executive order, Bank Saderat established a separate corporation, the California Land Holding Corporation, to manage its real estate portfolio. Bank Saderat’s New York agency director, Ibrahim Bahmaie, was listed as the company’s president. Following the trade embargo, the company transferred its assets to a series of front companies, which have continued to shuffle them to throw investigators off the scent. A preliminary review of corporate and real estate documents relating to these holdings shows that the California Land Holding Corporation may control as much as $10 million in property through various front companies. Because they are a direct subsidiary of Bank Saderat, their holdings are the property of the Government of Iran and could be seized under the anti-terrorism legislation — if President Clinton had not taken steps to protect them. But the mother lode has been hiding beneath the noses of the Flatow attorneys since day one. And it makes all these other holdings — even the Fifth Ave. skyscraper — look like small potatoes by comparison. Next — The mother lode: The U.S. is protecting several billion dollars worth of Iranian military spare parts, and after 20 years is ready to release them. But Tehran is still not willing to make concessions to the U.S. In this election season, Tehran may win.Sorry for the interruption last week. At times it’s necessary to concentrate on the job that pays your bills. Unfortunately at this time it’s not my writing. I won’t dwell on that for long because nobody likes to listen to others whine. So let’s get to it. Today I start Phase Four in my journey of revisions.At which point you might be asking yourself, “Wait a second. What happened to Phase Three?” Well I’m glad you asked. During my very short hiatus here, I was able to refocus what little time had left into my revision process. After completing Phase Two, I jumped straight into the next Phase. In Phase Three I rearranged my note cards into a sequence that best suited the story. In my particular case (in this novel anyway), I didn’t need to switch anything around. I did however discover a few gaping holes. I inserted place holder cards or those spots. And in one instance, I found I had given a character’s back story twice! Bad form on my part, I know. Now I need to decide in which scene it was better to give and ixnay the other. All in all, that was a pretty short phase. It might have taken longer if I actually had to swap chapters around. At that point I would have taken the time to rearrange the manuscript chapters as well and then go through a re-read. As it is now, I’m considering melding Phase Three into a larger Phase Two. Now on to Phase Four! In this phase I’m taking notes on each chapter. “What!?!” You’re exclaiming. “Still no writing?” Not quite yet. Here I’m going through it once again to get all my thoughts down. Now that I’ve gone through it twice, I know where certain elements need to be peppered in earlier, or which scenes need steroids or Slim Fast. I also have a bit of extra help here. About a third of the novel I’ve submitted to a critique group and the remainder to a select few Alpha readers. I’m going to take their thoughts and notes into consideration while in this phase. In essence I’m creating a road map. Once I’m all done, I’ll start the rewrites with my map in hand which will hopefully keep me on course for what’s needed. I don’t want to spend a whole lot of time on this phase, but given the nature of it, I’m sure it will take longer than the previous phases. I’ll keep you posted as the work progresses. In the meantime, are you working on any projects? How are they coming along for you? Let me know in the comments. [tweetmeme]At a rally in front of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and fellow liberal Democrats such as Rep. Barbara Lee of California unveiled a national agenda for greater economic equality. The 13-point “Progressive Agenda,” which was heavily influenced by Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz’s new 100-page report for the Roosevelt Institute on policy solutions to income inequality, is a left-wing wish list meant to echo Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Contract with America. “The Progressive Agenda” includes plenty of popular, and populist, ideas, from raising the minimum wage to mandating paid employee sick leave. The emphasis is on correcting a system that has been rigged for the benefit of corporations and the wealthy, particularly through the tax code, and replacing it with a fairer system that rewards labor rather than just wealth. The agenda would do a lot to help the U.S. catch up to the policies of other developed countries that have more equitable income and wealth distributions. Notably absent, though, is practically anything to do with the fossil fuel economy, suburban sprawl, and the policies that prop them up, which are bad for both regular Americans and the climate. De Blasio’s agenda contains a token reference to environmental protection, along with labor rights, as something that shouldn’t be sacrificed to global trade deals. Stiglitz makes brief mention of a carbon tax. But many sources of inequality related to the dirty energy economy — and sources of opportunity that arise from a shift to a clean economy — go unmentioned. Still, just because these concerns weren’t out front on Tuesday doesn’t mean they’ll be neglected. De Blasio’s climate plan for New York City, unveiled last month, is heavily focused on addressing poverty, so he certainly understands how the issues are linked. And a source with knowledge of de Blasio’s plans said that more Progressive Agendas will be forthcoming and they will address other aspects of economic inequality, possibly including environmental issues. To help progressive leaders develop such a plan, here’s a list of six policies that would help cut carbon pollution, clean up the air, strengthen our cities, and redistribute tax dollars from fossil fuel companies and rich individuals to the poor and middle class. Impose a carbon tax and redistribute the revenue to citizens. Currently, polluters pay nothing when they spew CO2 into the air, despite the massive costs that the emissions impose on society by worsening climate change. Discouraging emissions through taxation of big polluters would help get climate change under control — and it could also generate huge amounts of revenue. That money could be spent in any number of ways; one of the more progressive would be to rebate some of it to low-income taxpayers and use some of it for social programs. Even simply cutting carbon pollution is progressive, since the worst effects of climate change will fall disproportionately on the poor. And by getting our country off of coal and oil burning, we would also reduce the particulate pollution that plagues low-income, minority, and inner-city neighborhoods. Eliminate the mortgage interest tax deduction. While de Blasio’s agenda calls for some relatively small-bore tax reforms, this would be the big kahuna, saving at least $70 billion every year. Since homeowners tend to be richer than renters, we’re currently subsidizing housing for the rich more than for the poor. And since renters are more likely to live in cities and homeowners in suburbs, we’re taxing cities to subsidize suburbia and encouraging sprawl. Instead of increasing home ownership, the mortgage interest deduction just helps people buy bigger homes. It’s all a waste of resources: chopping down forests to build new subdivisions and paving new roads ever farther away from city centers, where commutes are longer and the average resident’s carbon footprint is higher. We’re also, by favoring spending on homeownership over other forms of spending or investment, increasing spending on, and therefore the cost of, housing. Invest in affordable rental housing. In thriving metropolitan regions, the cost of housing is high, rising, and a growing burden on the non-rich. The cost of housing plus transportation is outpacing income growth. The federal government spends far less on affordable rental housing than it does on subsidizing home ownership for the affluent. As the mortgage interest deduction is phased out, some of that money could be spent on programs to support affordable housing that is well integrated into the community, such as Section 8 housing vouchers. Housing subsidies should particularly favor developments that are close to mass transit, giving residents greater access to jobs, education, and services. Raise the gasoline tax to fund mass transit. Stiglitz’s paper calls for increased investment in mass transit (while de Blasio’s plan, remarkably, does not). It’s a good idea that would connect low-income workers to jobs while reducing carbon emissions. But Stiglitz doesn’t specify where the money would come from. Currently, federal mass transit spending is supported by the gasoline tax, which hasn’t been raised in more than 20 years and so has lost one-third of its value to inflation. We need to raise the gas tax substantially and peg it to inflation. Ideally, we’d raise it by even more than we need for mass transit investment, and then use the extra money to fund an income tax rebate to people with lower incomes. That would make the gas tax, which is regressive, much fairer to poor people. It would also increase the incentive to shift away from driving or choose more efficient cars, especially if we coupled it with rule changes that steered more transportation spending to mass transit instead of highways. Eliminate subsidies for fossil fuel development. While social programs are starved in the name of balanced budgets, the federal government forgoes huge piles of revenue through tax subsidies and loopholes for oil, gas, and coal companies. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) have proposed a bill, the “End Polluter Welfare Act of 2015,” that would get rid of many of these giveaways to climate polluters; they estimate it would save more than $135 billion over 10 years. Reform federal fossil fuel leasing programs. Here’s another way the federal government could bring in much-needed revenue that could be used for social programs, and at the same time discourage the burning of fossil fuels. Currently, we sell leases to drill for oil and gas and mine for coal on federal land or offshore for below-market prices, never mind accounting for the social cost of all that carbon pollution. Sanders and Ellison’s bill would raise those rates to reflect current market prices, adding billions of dollars to the federal Treasury every year. But we should raise the prices even further to reflect the full costs to society of conventional and climate pollution from burning the fossil fuels extracted from our public land. That would increase revenue by tens of billions per year, or lead to less fossil fuel leasing. As mayor of the nation’s biggest city, a coastal metropolis that faces some of the worst threats from climate change, de Blasio should use his national profile to promote climate action as much as anything else. That isn’t a distraction from his commitment to reducing inequality; it can be a core part of it.As promised... there you go the " original" piece with no logos... stay tuned as i'll be also posting a picture with me holding the real, original painting just to give you the idea of the actual size of this baby... 15" by 21" full hand painted, acrylics and colored pencils on heavy ill.tion board and a million thanks to my friend Leonard John Baird-Boydfor posing for this come promesso, ecco la versione "originale" senza i vari logo... Rimanete connessi perchè fra poco posterò anche una foto di me mentre mi "abbraccio" il pezzo originale, per darvi un idea delle "vere" dimensioni di questo bambino... 30 cm per 55 cm dipinto a mano con acrilici e matite colorate su cartoncino e un milione di grazie al mio amico Leonard per aver posato per questo...YouTube Jerry Rice broke the hearts of Black Twitter last year when he came out as an “All Lives Matter” guy in his criticism of Colin Kaepernick’s protest of the national anthem. The legendary 49er later changed his tune and apologized for the tweet while also supporting Kaep for “bringing awareness for injustice.” And now Rice is digging a hole for himself again. The Hall of Famer is getting all sorts of heat for a Popeyes commercial entitled, “Popeyes Wingovations with Jerry Rice.” In the ludicrous ad, Rice wears the “Taste Mask,” a football helmet with a spinning fried chicken attached for “360 degrees of pure wing rotation for handsfree wing eating.” My goodness. While there isn’t anything wrong with loving fried chicken, the image of a grinning black man wearing a helmet with a spinning drumstick plays too much on the “black people love chicken” stereotype. Oddly enough, the stereotype has its roots in A Birth Of A Nation, the 1915 silent movie about the founding of the Ku Klux Klan. In one scene, the film depicts black elected officials acting crudely, drinking and boorishly eating fried chicken at a legislative meeting. Since then, the stereotype has been used in racist depictions of black people and remains a sensitive issue. So, with all that in mind, Jerry Rice is once again feeling the wrath of Black Twitter. Jerry Rice whole career void pic.twitter.com/OCwhqbZyfe — 20:01® (@IAMKRIS24) January 18, 2017 First jerry rice said all lives matter…. now he doing fried chicken commercials. Smh. My childhood hero smh — Coach Aaron (@vettepassby35) January 17, 2017 Jerry Rice is so gone. The GOAT of hoops owns a team. The GOAT of football peddles fried chicken. https://t.co/OIyoWQDbA4 — ⚡️DJ Styles⚡️ (@somanystyles) January 18, 2017 Jerry Rice went from Top 3 NFL WR All-Time to the General for General's Fried Chicken — B-ING (@imBINGnotGOOGLE) January 18, 2017 Jerry Rice is a spokesman for Popeyes..and they have him holding giant biscuits and wearing a helmet with a piece of chicken on it #wtf pic.twitter.com/Zg5goUuj7U — Tariq Nasheed (@tariqnasheed) January 18, 2017 THE MAN got jerry rice out here with a rotating piece of fried chicken on a football helmet…be safe man smh — Scuba Steve (@MrDopeMojo) January 18, 2017 RIP to my childhood. RT @SheHatesJacoby: Smh man what happened to Jerry Rice pic.twitter.com/l34QYnCXDm — Skankhunt42 (@Trap_Jesus) January 18, 2017 I come back to Jerry Rice acting like a Coon outta Hell. My heroes are disappointing me by the minute….. — 2 SWATCHEZ (@SuckaFreeTee) January 18, 2017 Chicken fried rice > Jerry Rice. — Dynamics • £ (@theDYNAMICS) January 18, 2017Steve Kush, the executive director of the Bernalillo County Republican Party in New Mexico, called a 19-year-old Working America volunteer a "radical bitch" on Twitter Tuesday night after she testified before the county commission in favor of raising the minimum wage. "Nice hat Working America chick but damn you are a radical bitch," Kush tweeted. Working America, a labor movement advocacy group, sent several members to the county meeting on Tuesday to advocate for a measure that would increase the county's minimum wage. As the organization’s state director, Chelsey Evans, stood in line to testify on the proposal, Kush disparaged her on his Facebook page. "Uh oh," he wrote, "another Working America chick...nice boots...I know she makes more than min wage." He later added in the comments, "she was hot enough to almost make me register democrat." He also referred to Maggie Hart Stebbins, the chairwoman of the county commission and a Democrat, as a "Gestapo leader," writing on Facebook, "Gestapo leader Hart Stebbins reduced comments to 1 and a half mins. Anything to suppress opposing views." ProgressNow New Mexico, a progressive advocacy organization, said on Wednesday that Kush should resign. “In a state run by one of the country’s most high-profile Republican women, the party’s leaders appear to see nothing wrong with misogynistic statements towards working women time and time again," said spokeswoman Marsha Garcia. "Mr. Kush should resign." “If the Republican Party wants to know why they have such a hard time connecting with young women, they should start by examining the very public way their leaders feel about young working women,” said executive director Pat Davis. ProgressNow New Mexico confirmed that the woman who was the target of Kush's first remark is 19 years old, but Working America said that she wished to remain anonymous. Kush did not respond to The Huffington Post's request for comment. Bob Cornelius, the county Republican party’s former executive director, replied to Kush's "nice boots" remark Tuesday by insinuating that Evans is a prostitute. "Maybe she uses those shoes to walk Central," he wrote under Kush's post, referring to a street that is notorious for prostitution. "Even in this economy she can exchange bumper cables for boots." Cornelius later deleted his post and apologized. "I've been thinking about my comment last night," he wrote. "I did make that comment in jest & I do apologize to this lady for this off color comment. It's not fair to her, and it was inappropriate for me to makes comments like that." Evans told HuffPost that she has accepted Cornelius' apology but has not heard from Kush. "We are disappointed by the attacks made through social media at yesterday’s county commission hearing," she said. "Comments like those have no place in public discourse. We have received an apology from one offending party and have accepted it." The proposal being debated at the meeting Tuesday night passed by a vote of 3-2. The Bernalillo County minimum wage will increase from $7.50 to $8.50 per hour. UPDATE: The Albuquerque Journal's Dan McKay is reporting that Kush has been "suspended indefinitely without pay" for his social media posts. Kush also apologized, telling McKay, "It was in ill-fated attempt at humor, on my personal page, not the county party’s page."David Moyes can have no complaints at his treatment from Manchester United fans, according to one of the club's most high-profile supporters. Moyes was sacked this morning after a disastrous 10 months in charge. "The fans have been very supportive, surprisingly so under the circumstances," said Andy Mitten, editor of the United We Stand fanzine. The club put a lot of trust into Sir Alex's decision but who else would know who was the best person to replace him? Andy Mitten Fanzine editor "David Moyes can have absolutely no complaints about that, but the vast majority will not be disappointed." Mitten noted a difference in attitude towards Moyes at Old Trafford compared to the social media sites which, in latter weeks, have been so critical. Indeed, a plane trailing a 'Moyes Out' banner ahead of the Premier League encounter with Aston Villa last month was booed as it circled Old Trafford. Ultimately though, managers are judged by results. And the Scot, who celebrates his 51st birthday on Friday, simply did not deliver. "David Moyes spoke about the difficult start, so the fans accepted early disappointments," said Mitten. "But then October came and went, November, into January, still that improvement did not happen. And results this year have been even worse. "Added to that, the football itself was poor and he always seem to capture the wrong mood. "At times he would be positive and optimistic at other times it was exactly the opposite. Yet on each occasion it tended to go against the general view of the game. "I was at Cardiff when he said a draw was an acceptable result. I could point to another 20 occasions this season when he has said something similar. I just thought 'you are Manchester United manager - you can't say things like that'." Analysis Moyes, who was convinced he had the ability and resolve to succeed at Old Trafford even as he understood the near-impossibility of following the club's greatest ever manager with one of its weakest squads, has seen his defining ambition end in total humiliation. Read the rest of Tom's feature here Admitting Liverpool were favourites for a recent meeting at Old Trafford was another example, while Moyes' repeated use of the words 'try' and 'hope' did not sit well with supporters of a club accustomed to battling for the biggest prizes. Sir Alex Ferguson was responsible for the appointment, but Mitten does not believe he should get the blame. "He made a mistake," said Mitten. "People do. "The club put a lot of trust into Sir Alex's decision but who else would know who was the best person to replace him? He knew more than Joel Glazer did. "I do not buy into the argument that he did not want his successor to succeed. I think he will be as disappointed as anyone that this has not worked out. " Ryan Giggs must now steady the ship ahead of a permanent appointment in the summer. "Personally, I would love Ryan Giggs to be the manager for the next 30 years," said Mitten. "He has done his coaching badges, which is difficult when you are still playing, and he won't take any messing about in terms of discipline and control. "The question mark is the experience side of it. "8 Reasons Children of the 1970s Should All Be Dead By By Yeoman Lowbrow on 9 June 2014 \| comments 1173 Like Like 378k 378k Tweet The way things are going, every kid is going to go to school wearing bubble wrap and a helmet. Back in the 1970s (and earlier), parents didn’t stress about our health and safety as much as they do today. It’s not that they cared less – they just didn’t worry compulsively about it. Parents of 2014 need to be reminded of how less restricted, less supervised, less obsessively safety-conscious things were… and it was just fine. 1. JARTS: IMPALING ARROWS OF DEATH Can your mind comprehend a more deadly toy than a weighted spear that kids hurl through the air like a missile? No one ever obeyed the actual manufacturer’s rules, we just flung these damn things everywhere. We threw them. They stuck where they landed. If they happened to land in your skull, well, then you should have moved. After roughly 6,700 emergency-room visits and the deaths of three children between 1978 and 1988, they finally outlawed Jarts on December 19, 1988. I suppose it needed to be banned, but a part of me is sad that kids today won’t have the battle scars and Jart survival stories we had. Goodbye Jart – you were an impaling arrow of death, but I loved you anyway. 2. LOST AND NOT FOUND: SEAT BELTS Cars came with seat belts in the 1970s, but no one used them except maybe out of curiosity to see what it was like to wear one. Of course, you’d have to fish them out of the deep crevice of the backseat cushion where they often came to rest, unwanted and ignored. The only “click” heard in the 1970s automobile was your dad’s Bic lighting up a smoke with the windows rolled up. (cough!) I should also mention that, not only were there no seat belts, child seats were nowhere to be found. Whether it was the front seat of your mom’s station wagon or her bicycle, chances are, you were entirely untethered. 3. SEMI-LETHAL PLAYGROUNDS OF HOT METAL Remember when playgrounds were fun? Sure, there was a pretty good chance you’d be scalded by a hot metal slide, or walk away with tetanus, but that’s what memories are made of. The ground wasn’t coated with soft recycled rubber or sand as most are today – they were asphalt. Remember being hurled from a spinning merry-go-round, then skidding across the gravel at full speed? Good times. I remember my school playground had a metal ladder “wall” that I swear went up three stories – it didn’t connect to a slide or anything. It was literally a ladder to the sky. I remember fully believing the oxygen was thinner at the top. One false move and I’d have been a flesh colored stain on the asphalt. we are making playgrounds so safe that they actually stunt our kids’ development. So, while blood was spilt and concussions were dealt on the playgrounds of the 1970s, we were at least in a developmentally rich environment – and we had the bruises and scabs to prove it. According to the New York Times we are making playgrounds so safe that they actually stunt our kids’ development. So, while blood was spilt and concussions were dealt on the playgrounds of the 1970s, we were at least in a developmentally rich environment – and we had the bruises and scabs to prove it. 4. PRECIOUS LITTLE SUN PROTECTION “Tanfastic lets the sunshine in. It’s not loaded up with sunburn protection like old folks and kids want. Tanfastic’s for you 15-to-25 year olds who can take the sun. Especially if you want to get superdark. Superfast.” Back in the 70s, your goal was to get as brown as your skin would permit. Sun BLOCK or sun SCREEN was basically nonexistent. You wanted to AMPLIFY your rays, so women typically lathered on Crisco and baby oil to get that deep baked look. For the kids, SPF numbers hovered around 2, 4 and 8. The idea that you would spray an SPF of 50 or even 30 wasn’t even an option, except perhaps from medical ointments prescribed for albinos. 5. HELMETS: FOR THOSE WITH MEDICAL CONDITIONS ONLY Whether you were riding a bike, roller skating, or skateboarding, one thing was for certain: you were not wearing a head protection. You would have been looked at as a sideshow freak by other kids, and parents would assume you had some kind of medical condition. 6. IGNORED AND UNATTENDED ON THE REGULAR Hey, who’s watching the kid in the stroller? YOU MUST HAVE YOUR EYES ON THE KID AT ALL TIMES OR ELSE HE WILL DIE! My mother routinely left me alone in the car at a young age while she ran errands. Today, this will literally get you arrested. You see, once upon a time it was okay to leave your kids for long periods without supervision (remember the so-called “latch-key kids” of the 70s?), or let them free roam without constant surveillance. Today, parents won’t let their kids go out to get the mail alone, and any fun with friends has to be scheduled, closely monitored “play dates”. On summer break or weekends in the 1970s, parents kicked their kids out the front door and didn’t let them back in until the sun went down. “Go play,” were their only words, and you were left to your own devices for hours upon hours. Neighborhoods looked
then also my enjoyment from competitive Heroes, competitive gaming in general, and being a way to stay involved in it while also trying to be that translator. I think that describing yourself as a translator is interesting because a game like Heroes, which is casually approachable but has this depth at the competitive level which casual fans might not be able to interpret. Did you always approach it from that perspective, to make it accessible? Or did you just fall into that? I think it's a little of both. I don't know if I'd say I pushed for it, but I wouldn't say that it's not natural for me, specifically. I can tell you that like, looking at some of the interest that I had in League for instance, I enjoyed casters that told me what I couldn't see. And I think that was something that was really appealing for me specifically. So take that, and my position in the community was already kind of an educational [one], a lot of the time, and it seemed to be what people really enjoyed. And I realized I enjoyed it myself. It made it very natural for me to kind of be that guy, or at least try to be. Are you full-time esports right now? I've been full-time esports right now, for almost a year and a half, two years. I quit my senior year of college my very last semester, to try and pursue video games full-time. And that was before we got picked up by Tempo Storm, like four or five months. What were you studying? I was a double major in criminal justice and psychology. What was that moment like, when you decided to go full-time? A lot of it was my own philosophy on things, more than anything else. It wasn't so much that there was a breaking moment where I was like, 'you know what, I can do this.' I mean, there were a couple where I realized it might be a realistic goal. But I view a lot of what I do in life as, I would rather all-in something and fail than split my interest and focus in two different things and be mediocre at both. And so I viewed it as, if I want to pursue college and everything else ― which I think is still a reasonable thing, and honestly I probably took the more radical route ― but I'd rather all-in to esports and fail, and then just come back and finish my schooling. But I felt like, as you mentioned about "rolling the die," that window is a lot smaller, and I realized that mine might not exist if I didn't just commit then, so I went for it. Seemingly you've picked the right window, as you'll be casting on the BlizzCon stage here. Were there any surprises during your transition that you didn't anticipate? I think I was surprised at the work ethic you see from the other casters. It was something I maybe didn't totally understand. But without a doubt, the one thing that did really catch me off-guard by a large margin was how subjective, but also firm people are in their casting preferences. And how you can provide the same information 50 different ways, but only five of them are appreciated, or are valuable to a large amount of the audience. The farther you go up in the numbers, the smaller the demographic it kind of appeals to. It's as simple as repeating the same word... I can almost the same thing, but if I said the word value three different times, suddenly I'm almost this buffoon that's trying to speak teach you about the video game and how simple those small things can be, and how big they are from an audience perspective. Like, "You said it three times, nothing you say is applicable?" It's like, "I can't even listen to you anymore because you didn't choose a different word," things like that I found really interesting. You've casted with people who have been around esports a long time. Every single person has been around a lot longer than me. For me personally, my favorite pairing for you in Heroes has been Khaldor. For me, it's because you guys are willing to take little jabs at each other, but it's all in good fun. Do you have a preference for what kind casting dynamic you like to have when you're up there? I think, first and foremost, making it exciting but not over-exaggerating the skill or the quality of the game while having fluid conversation, which I think is a huge part. But also, being educational. I think those are the three major points that I look for as an ideal cast. And that fun side can come from poking jabs, or it could be as simple as small joked elsewhere, they don't always have to come in that form. My first major tournament I ever casted was the Spring Global Championship, and I got to cast with Artosis, and hang out with him. When I first got into casting I asked people, as somebody to learn from, who is the best caster in the world? And for a lot of people, his name was frequent to pop up. I got to ask him about a lot of the philosophies he had on casting, and why he felt the way he did. One of them that he brought up, that I thought was really cool, was: you should view your cast as two best friends from college drinking a beer and watching your favorite game. And you want the audience to be the third guy. They want to be that third guy on the couch. And though they aren't going to be able to give that feedback, you want them to desire to be in your conversation. Granted, I'm not sure I share that exact same philosophy now on my own, but I think it was a really good foundation to start on. Shifting to the North American region, Astral Authority's CauthonLuck called you one of their greatest detractors in a recent interview. I have never put my faith into them as a team, and I feel like a lot of it comes down to the fact that I don't think a lot of them have the common traits that you see on good or great teams. I can see why they view that as unfair, but... I'm not here to represent North America. In my opinion, I'm here for the best games in the world. If that is not something from the North American region... I don't have that nationalistic perspective. I want to see the best team in the world vs. the best team in the world, and great games. If North America ― not even them specifically ― is not the one providing it... I'm not saying it's wrong, but I've never really been the one to be like, "But it's North America, so my heart has to be behind it." I always, in my heart, want to see someone take out the Korean team, any time that I can. But I also realize how good they are, and I've studied a lot of them to try and understand what they do that is right and wrong, and everything else. I feel like, if those teams are consistently doing so well, it's hard for me to view the traits of things they do so well, and then not see that anywhere within your own region, and then be like, "there's still a chance because I want there to be one, not because there really is." I can see how some people might view that as rude, but it's something that I've not really been able to wrap my head around. What about Astral against their own region? In the Fall season, many people ― myself among them ― seemed surprised by their initial success. I think this is a very talented roster, but even in their own region they seemed to have been cast aside, with people saying, "There's no way they do it." I did that. I did that to them whole-heartedly. And granted, after putting up the results twice, I was one of the first people to be like, I do think they are definitely the team [that should be representing NA]. I think, for me, why they see such success is... when you look at what they do really well, it's bullying their opponents in the draft. I even referenced that in the Town Hall episode. It comes down to them bullying in the draft. They will constantly attack weak hero pools and put you on things that you aren't very comfortable on. And whenever that happens, whether it be through draft or picking it themselves to isolate it, they always pick on the two weak links, or the weak link of their opponent. And that puts them in a position to have the upper hand in the draft. Now, as long as they play reasonably mechanically and at a team level, they will be the ones to come out on top at the end of that game. Now, every single team we see the teams like that go to the international level, suddenly you don't memorize what your opponent loves to play. When it comes down to knowing your opponents to be successful, you're almost never going to thrive in the international perspective. You're good within your territory, within your comfort zone. But international play always pushes you out of it. Looking at the games they've had here, they didn't do anything to attack a team like Please Buff Arthas, who showed they had holes in their draft. They have major comfort picks, and they didn't stab at any one of those. And they lost the games every time when they gave their opponents two of them, because there's two players that have that weak hero pool. So if that's your strength in NA... at the international level, the team that is by far the most weak in your area of strength, and you aren't willing to abuse that? I don't know what you want from me, as a guy who is supposed to support. And again, it could be any region. I'd say the same words. Josh "Gauntlet" Bury is a news editor for theScore esports. You can find him on Twitter.A recurring trope in the Road Runner cartoons is Wile E Coyote chasing the Road Runner only to run off a cliff and taking a few protracted moments to realise before succumbing to the effects of gravity. In a way, the entire census farce has been much like our beloved Acme Coyote overestimating its competence and then finding itself at odds with forces far more powerful than itself. Unlike Wile E, gravity took months to catch up with the Australian Bureau of Statistics, but unlike Wile E, this isn’t a cartoon and coming crashing down to earth will have serious consequences. This is a standard technology stuff-up story: the brash claims before of “extreme cost efficiencies and savings”; the herculean boasts about system performance and it being “impossible” for the system to crash; how the system is the eTitanic and will stand up to incredible loads; it’s a fantastic system, you’re going to love it, it’s going to be online and we’re going to collect all your data and get the taxpayers to pay for it. It’s wonderful. It’s incredible. Census 2016: the political game has changed and Coalition failed its first test Read more Anyone who works in technology knows you don’t spite the Production Gods and spite the Production Gods the ABS did, from statements made beforehand to apparently a substantive lack of testing. The ABS’s public statements indicate they expected about 1,000,000 or so form submissions an hour. That’s key, that doesn’t mean they had the capacity for 1,000,000 concurrent users, just that people would submit 1,000,000 censuses, distributed over that hour, so about 17,000 a minute. If we estimate that 12 or so million households would fill it out online (this is a generous estimation) that’s 12 hours to get the whole kit and caboodle in without a single issue or error. Technology simply doesn’t work that way, there are always weird ghosts in the machine and a 100% perfect strike rate is unheard of. Something can always go wrong. Heck, even a bit of mild spelunking into the system shows they most likely didn’t build a system with servers all over the country. A system with servers across the country is pretty trivial to set up these days: you’d have a data centre in Sydney, one in Perth and maybe one in Adelaide. If the internet to the Sydney data centre was cut you’d be able to fail people over to one of the other data centres, rather than having the whole census taken offline. Sure, there are security and other reasons to initially beware about multiple data centres but this was a seriously long product development cycle – they could have proposed and audited multiple data centres as part of that system. It appears they did not. This isn’t even taking into consideration the myriad privacy issues brought up with this census that were flatly hand-waved away by the ABS. If they’d done a proper privacy impact assessment with external stakeholders, members of the public and NGOs, rather than doing an in-house assessment dropped just before Christmas, the response would have been drastically different. In no uncertain terms, the comms management from initial handling of public concerns (such as threatening to fine Senators, a very smart move in the long run) to handling the aftermath of the system’s crash, have been a fantastic example in what not to do. Not to mention the “we was hacked” claims which came out in response to the system falling over. No existing network traffic maps show large amounts of DDoS traffic into the census network, but even if there was and through some mechanism it wasn’t recorded, DDoS mitigation should absolutely have been part of the initial requirements scoping. The census was having a big technology launch on a big day and it would obviously be an attractive target for those wanting to put egg on the government’s face. All in all this looks like serious structural organisational failure. The ABS, a government body that by all accounts had substantial respect and esteem in the community, hand-waved away concerns before, during and after the eCensus debacle. They seemed wholly unconcerned that Australian citizens were rightly worried about what their data was being collected for and why the scope of data had changed. In the post-Snowden world, citizens have a right to know how their data will be collected and how it will be stored to protect it from both state and non-state actors. This is a serious honeypot of valuable data. Malcolm Turnbull’s proposal that the audit of the aftermath be performed by the ABS – the same organisation that has failed time and time again – is on the face of it, laughable. Computer says no: Australian census shambles explanation depends on who you ask Read more The ABS has absolutely proven beyond any reasonable doubt that we cannot just “take their word for it”. The ABS is too important and vital an institution to let a few individuals tank it to save face. The accountability process must be open so these mistakes do not happen again. The census is too important and public trust in public institutions shouldn’t be so easily frittered away without consequences. Time will tell whether the census will even be able to recover from the series of systemic failures that led to Tuesday night’s failure. Needless to say, the next Senate Estimates will be extraordinarily interesting. Keep in mind this is merely an eCensus, running a system that has less throughput and uptime than Facebook handles in an hour from Australia. If the government can’t build and deliver secure and reliable IT systems then we should resist letting it fail in this field over and over again. If we can’t take the census online securely then for goodness sake we should definitely not consider taking voting online, unless we want Sun Yang to win every single seat.Sex is a gift from God. It is meant to unite a husband and wife and to bring life into the world. The Catholic Church has always held that to remove either aspect perverts the sex act as designed.Artificial birth control can be directly linked to our current abortion rate, sexual promiscuity, births to single mothers, adultery, and the treatment of women as sex objects.Prior to the invention of the "pill" all Christian faiths, the Muslim faith, as well as others, believed birth control to be against God's will and therefore a sin. In the 1960s, under pressure from society most all Christian faiths caved and changed their position, the Catholic Church did not.In fact, if you read the encyclical called Humanae Vitae, which addressed artificial birth control, you will see exactly how much the Catholic Church loves the faithful and desires only the best for all of humanity: http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Paul06/p... Today's society considers artificial birth control to be the norm. We have been told so often that it is the responsible way, and that we should not ever have to deny our sexual urges. Both these ideas are wrong. The Catholic Church, and the Bible, teach that sexual intercourse is a means by which a husband and wife share their love and their bodies without holding back. It is to be selfless in every way, a gift of one to the other. The most beautiful thing that can come of such love is human life. God does not need us to make people for him, he allows us to participate in creation with him.It isn't about making more Catholics, it's about human life, about God's plan, about self-control and loving someone so much you don't want to use them but give to them.Marriage is meant to mirror the love Christ has for his bride, the Church. Can you imagine Christ holding anything back? No, Christ's love for us is life giving, and our love for each other should be the same.Abstinence can be a time of sacrifice for a couple, they can turn to prayer, and share in an expression of love that is non-sexual. There is nothing wrong with not having sex every time you feel like it. In fact, abstience actually increases sexual desire. Married couples who can have sex whenever they want, take it for granted and end up having sex less often than NFP couples.From the statistical side, here are some facts:The average married couple has sex twice a week. This means that people, even who use birth control, are only having sex about 8 days a month.If a couple using Natural Family Planning (which is abstinence during fertile times) were to have sex every day they could without getting pregnant, they'd have sex at twice the national average.Natural Family Planning is 99% effective when used properly. It's healthier. Women who use NFP tend to be more in tune with their bodies and are usually aware of any problems or diseases in the very early stages.Hormonal birth control has been linked to cancer. Also it causes weight gain and moodiness.Contraception has given us the idea that sex is sterile and only procreative when we want it to be. Hence we need abortion for the times when birth control fails. 54% of women seeking abortions say they were using birth control (pill or condoms) when they got pregnant. Because we have come to consider sex with out procreation the norm, we need a fall back plan and that plan is abortion.Contraception has also contributed to an increase in adultery and sex outside of marriage.The Catholic understanding of "procreation" and its importance in God's plan is not a chapter and verse, but a look at the Bible as a whole. God's plan for all of humanity, his plan for salvation, and his love for us. Human beings is what salvation is all about. Jesus Christ, became a human being in order to bring us salvation. He reaffirmed the importance of life. The Catholic Church has always held that all life is sacred from conception to natural death, and we have the responsiblity to be open to that life and guard it.http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/2964/birthcontrol.htmlhttp://www.catholic.com/library/Birth_Control.asphttp://www.memoryhole.net/kyle/2005/08/natural_family_planning.htmlhttp://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=11004Do songbirds and humans have common biological hardwiring that shapes how they produce and perceive sounds? Scientists who study birdsong have been intrigued for some time by the possibility that human speech and music may be rooted in biological processes shared across a variety of animals. Now, research by McGill University biologists provides new evidence to support this idea. In a series of experiments, the researchers found that young zebra finches – a species often used to study birdsong – are intrinsically biased to learn to produce particular kinds of sound patterns over others. “In addition, these sound patterns resembled patterns that are frequently observed across human languages and in music,” says Jon Sakata, Associate Professor of Biology at McGill and senior author of a paper published online in Current Biology on Nov. 22. On the shoulders of Chomsky The idea for the experiments was inspired by current hypotheses on human language and music. Linguists have long found that the world’s languages share many common features, termed “universals.” These features encompass the syntactic structure of languages (e.g., word order) as well as finer acoustic patterns of speech, such as the timing, pitch, and stress of utterances. Some theorists, including Noam Chomsky, have postulated that these patterns reflect a “universal grammar” built on innate brain mechanisms that promote and bias language learning. Researchers continue to debate the extent of these innate brain mechanisms, in part because of the potential for cultural propagation to account for universals. At the same time, vast surveys of zebra finch songs have documented a variety of acoustic patterns found universally across populations. “Because the nature of these universals bears similarity to those in humans and because songbirds learn their vocalizations much in the same way that humans acquire speech and language, we were motivated to test biological predisposition in vocal learning in songbirds,” says Logan James, a PhD student in Sakata’s lab and co-author of the new study. A buffet of birdsong In order to isolate biological predispositions, James and Sakata individually tutored young zebra finches with songs consisting of five acoustic elements arranged in every possible sequence. The birds were exposed to each sequence permutation in equal proportion and in a random order. Each finch therefore had to individually “choose” which sequences to produce from this buffet of birdsong. In the end, the patterns that the laboratory-raised birds preferred to produce were highly similar to those observed in natural populations of birds. For example, like wild zebra finches, birds tutored with randomized sequences often placed a “distance call” – a long, low-pitched vocalization – at the end of their song. Other sounds were much more likely to appear in the beginning or middle of the song; for example, short and high-pitched vocalizations were more likely to be produced in the middle of song than at the beginning or end of song. This matches patterns observed across diverse languages and in music, in which sounds at the end of phrases tend to be longer and lower in pitch than sounds in the middle. Future research avenues “These findings have important contributions for our understanding of human speech and music,” says Caroline Palmer, a Professor of Psychology at McGill who was not involved in the study. “The research, which controls the birds' learning environment in ways that are not possible with young children, suggests that statistical learning alone -- the degree to which one is exposed to specific acoustic patterns -- cannot account for song (or speech) preferences. Other principles, such as universal grammars and perceptual organization, are more likely to account for why human infants as well as juvenile birds are predisposed to prefer some auditory patterns.” Sakata, who is also a member of the Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music (CRBLM), says the study opens up many avenues of future work for his team with speech, language, and music researchers. “In the immediate future,” he says, “we want to reveal how auditory processing mechanisms in the brain, as well as aspects of motor learning and control, underlie these learning biases.” Denise Klein, Director of the CRBLM and neuroscientist at the Montreal Neurological Institute, says James’ and Sakata’s study “provides insights on universals of vocal communication, helping to advance our understanding of the neurobiological bases of speech and music.” The research was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music, and an award from the Heller Family Fellowship, and was shaped by discussions with McGill linguists including Heather Goad and Lydia White. "Learning Biases Underlie ‘Universals’ in Avian Vocal Sequencing," Logan S. James and Jon T. Sakata, Current Biology, published online Nov. 22, 2017. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.10.019 www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)31322-2 PHOTO: Zebra finches CREDIT: Raina Fan A video, infographic, and audio recordings are available here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2xwyptik9rbne9b/AAAM5eT1f4GIpmwC59TaQO7da?dl=0 Contact: Jon Sakata Department of Biology, McGill University jon.sakata [at] mcgill.ca Chris Chipello Media Relations, McGill University 514-398-4201 christopher.chipello [at] mcgill.caHarvey Weinstein attends the Sun Valley Conference on July 12 in Sun Valley, Idaho. Drew Angerer/Getty Images On Thursday afternoon, the New York Times published a damning piece about A-list film and television producer Harvey Weinstein, who has been accused of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior for nearly three decades. The Times found at least eight settlements Weinstein reached with women who have brought suits against him, including actress Rose McGowan and young employees of his company. For years, both women and men told the Times, Weinstein has promised women help with their careers in exchange for sexual favors, naked massages, or their agreement to watch him bathe. They allege that he groped them, scheduled work meetings with them only to bring them to his hotel room and repeatedly proposition them for sex, and forced young female employees to wake him up in his bedroom or do “turndown duty” at night. Even female executives allegedly felt so uncomfortable around him that they wouldn’t be in a room with him alone. Ashley Judd is the most famous named accuser. Many of the others chose to remain anonymous; most of those who settled their suits signed confidentiality agreements, and Weinstein Company employees sign contracts forbidding them from besmirching the organization’s reputation. But Weinstein’s alleged pattern of behavior “wasn’t a secret to the inner circle,” a former assistant to Harvey’s brother Bob told the Times, and Judd said that women “have been talking about Harvey amongst ourselves for a long time.” Yet Weinstein has had one of the most successful production careers in contemporary Hollywood, winning six Best Picture Oscars and lending his name to dozens of other critically acclaimed films and television shows. If Judd’s account is true, the people around Weinstein who weren’t directly victimized by him still knew what he was doing when he had them pick out aspiring actresses to send up for meetings in his hotel rooms. The board of the Weinstein Company knew about the pattern of allegations since at least 2015, the Times reports, but the members didn’t do so much as launch an internal investigation. As allegations of Weinstein’s harassment spread throughout the film industry and adjacent fields, Weinstein hit no roadblocks, suffered no stunting blow to his trajectory, felt no financial blowback. For decades, almost everyone hushed up and went along, because wealthy, famous men in the entertainment industry are the kings and the kingmakers, fully aware of the perverse privileges their status brings. Woody Allen, R. Kelly, Bill Cosby—these men made millions in the years after they were credibly accused of perpetrating unforgivable crimes against girls and women who trusted them. In the entertainment industry, there’s no shame to working with an alleged creep or criminal, because money is money, and most industry folks are socialized to believe that creeps and criminals are the norm. Anyone in a position of power in Weinstein’s circle could have come forward during the past 30 years and thrown a wrench in his toxic cycle of harassment, coercion, and cover-ups. Instead, they played nice, even as Weinstein (and maybe his company—the Times wasn’t able to confirm the origin of the settlement cash) spent hundreds of thousands of dollars keeping women silent. The company and its executives were willing to bargain away the comfort, dignity, and safety of their female colleagues for a prominent name, a bank account, and a Rolodex. The Times’ piece exposes a seeming rift between Weinstein’s private persona and his public one. His company distributed The Hunting Ground—a documentary lauded by anti–sexual assault advocates—and he produced several films with arguably feminist themes and strong female characters. He fundraised for the woman who might have been our first female president, contributed to an endowed Rutgers chair for feminist studies in the name of Gloria Steinem, and took part in the Women’s March in Park City, Utah. None of that matters. Weinstein is the same as every other man who has tried to use his financial power to bend women to his will, which his astoundingly point-missing nonapology illuminates. It is possible for men to believe in theoretical ideals of female empowerment while treating actual women like sex puppets for sale. Weinstein can hate fellow alleged groper Donald Trump—he’s making a movie about the president, he makes sure to mention in his apology statement—and still grope women. A man who hires a female lawyer to “tutor” him on why exposing himself to young female employees is wrong is not self-aware nor humane enough to care about the conflicts between his behavior and his professed values. In fact, it’s not unlikely that Weinstein’s pro-woman donations were an integral part of his self-absolution process. That Weinstein has allegedly been able to harass women for decades with no public reckoning is a demoralizing reminder that he is just one of thousands of men who will never be found out because, like Weinstein, they’re too insulated by money and power to ever be held accountable for their actions. There are Weinsteins in every industry who essentially buy their way out of compulsory codes of decency and respect. To stop them, it takes victims coming forward and people in power rejecting the benefits they reap through their complicity. Most of all, it takes believing women when they say something’s terribly wrong, even when those women aren’t Ashley Judd.During the past few months regular movie-goers could hardly avoid James Cameron’s film-trailer announcing the recent release of a 3D version of his Titanic movie in response to the Centennial the shipwreck this month. However, few are aware that the relationship between the motion picture industry and the disaster stretches back nearly a full century. Even fewer realize the two films that “frame” the 100-year span are gross distortions. Staring a notable and authentic personality, Saved from the Titanic was the first movie in May of 1912. Twenty-three-year-old Dorothy Gibson was among the era’s highest paid movie stars and was also a Titanic survivor. She sketched-out the movie plot herself. Dressed in the same clothes worn the night of the wreck, Dorothy played a young woman returning from a European vacation to marry her lover, a Navy Ensign. The young man learns of the shipwreck from a buddy who is a wireless operator. He is compelled to call upon the girl’s parents to inform them of the disaster. Later in a post-disaster scene when Dorothy’s character is telling her family of the events at the dinner table, she is overcome and faints. Her mom calls upon the Ensign to resign from a seafaring career if he wishes to marry the girl. After some dramatics, the Ensign declines by announcing it would be dishonorable to abandon his duties to the Navy. Admiring the officer’s patriotism, the young lady’s dad says, “My daughter, there’s your husband”, as the final scene closes. As befit her movie star image, Dorothy is portrayed as a heroine. But her actual conduct was lacking. When she realized the danger was serious, Dorothy became hysterical and entered the first of twenty lifeboats. Once upon the water she began to shiver and accepted an overcoat from a thereafter-coatless gentleman. After the ship foundered a lifeboat crewmember wanted to return to rescue people thrashing in the water. Everyone aboard, including Dorothy, shouted him down. After the victims’ cries faded away, Dorothy proclaimed that the loss of life was minimal since most of the passengers were saved in lifeboats. She was silenced when a crewmember interrupted to say, “If the boats were filled, not more than a third could have escaped.” Although married, Dorothy vacationed in Europe without her mate and was greeted with a $1,000 engagement ring by her extramarital lover upon returning safely in New York. She would not divorce her pharmacist-husband for another four years. Meanwhile she continued to accept the largess of her benefactor-lover who was a rising movie industry mogul. By the early 1920s she was living in Europe where she remained until her death by heart attack 1946. A hundred years later, James Cameron’s 3D Titanic foists another misrepresentation. The familiar plot characterizes the leading lady as a victim of gender discrimination whose miraculous survival convinces her to thereafter lead a lifestyle that boldly challenges the evils of patriarchy. She is portrayed as a pioneering feminist decades ahead of Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda. In reality, far from being victims, the ladies of RMS Titanic were highly privileged. As the preceding table documents, three-of-every four women were saved as compared to only one-in-every-five men. Moreover, five-to-ten percent of male survivors were pulled out of freezing water, many of whom stood for hours on an overturned lifeboat. Finally, of the four First Class ladies who perished, at least three bravely elected to stay on board despite being offered a chance to enter a lifeboat. (The most oft-cited example was Ida Straus who was the 63-year-old wife of a Macy’s Department Store co-owner.) Female privilege even trumped the needs of children. The fifty percent survival ratio for children is scandalous compared to the seventy-five percent fraction for adult women. Contrary to feminist dogma, Titanic males convincingly prioritized the safety of women and children ahead of their own. While the ladies routinely accepted male sacrifice as a gender entitlement, some could unfairly take advantage of men who might simply have been alleged to have of evaded it. For example, two wives famously divorced surviving husbands. Each woman dubiously charged the men with cowardice on Titanic. Given the assumed era-specific female virtues — and reciprocal male obligations – such accusations were enough to condemn the men within society at-large. Despite the obvious male sacrifices documented by survival statistics, modern feminists are determined to characterize women as victims and men as selfish perpetrators of the disaster. For example, Professor Ann Larabee of Michigan State University states: Although many men seemed to have behaved admirably…They may simply have had a cavalier trust in technology. Some did not behave like gentlemen at all, jumping on top of women…and when in the boats refusing to return to the disaster site to save those in the water. Thus, Larabee implies the disproportionate male death ratio merely reflects a false hubris in male inventions, to wit, the ship itself. (Later she contradictorily asserts that men ascribed a feminine identity to the ship in order to designate blame for technological failure on a female as well.) She further implies that men alone failed to rescue those in the water, whereas women objected to returning even more often and forcefully than men. There are few reports of lifeboat ladies even suggesting a return. Trivializing male disadvantages is popular sport among feminists. For example, women have outnumbered men on college campuses for so long that, The New York Times feels justified in publishing articles portraying men as advantaged because of their superior dating environment. Although men have long outnumbered women in the military I’d wager $100 against a good Cuban cigar that The Times has never published an article lamenting the dating disadvantages of male soldiers. More importantly, however, dating status is a trifling matter compared to the growing hostility toward males on campus where they are often forced into indoctrinations accusing them of being latent, if not active, rapists. As former Senator Moynihan was put it, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.” Simple honesty requires that feminists and Hollywood admit that the overwhelming gender privilege aboard Titanic favored ladies. Even among the crew, over ninety percent of the women were saved. Sources: Larabee, Ann, “The American Hero and His Mechanical Bride”; Wilson, Andrew, Shadow of the Titanic; Biel, Steven, Down With the Old Canoe; Foster, John Wilson (Editor), The Titanic Reader; Wilson, Frances How to Survive the Titanic; Lord, Walter, A Night to Remember; Lord, Walter, The Night Lives On; Wade, Wyn Craig, Titanic; Marcus, Geoffrey, The Maiden Voyage; Thayer, John B. The Sinking of S.S. Titanic; Gracie, Colonel Archibald Titanic; Lightoller, Charles, Titanic and Other ShipsA Florida teacher tells Obama he disappointed her By Valerie Strauss This was written by Miami public school teacher Jennie Smith, who attended President Obama’s speech last week at a Miami high school and a following education roundtable. Smith, incidentally, was the only teacher invited to the roundtable. By Jennie Smith I had the honor not only of attending President Obama’s speech at Miami Central High School, but also of participating in the President’s Education Roundtable following his speech. Of the 14 participants, I was the only teacher, and the only representative of a teacher’s union. Although the Chamber of Commerce had more than one representative, the leadership of United Teachers of Dade was not even invited. It was my responsibility therefore to represent not only Florida teachers but also our unions. Obama, in his speech, spoke about why investing in education is a priority even in tough fiscal times: "When we sacrifice our commitment to education, we’re sacrificing our future. And we can’t let that happen. Our kids deserve better. Our country deserves better." This is a statement that any educator or parent would agree with. However, it is not a statement with which the new governor of the state of Florida, Rick Scott, agrees, as his proposed budget would slash education funding by 10%--after repeated budget cuts over the past 2 1/2 years. The president expressed respect for the teaching profession and he reiterated that teachers need to be honored for the challenging work that they do every day. As a teacher and a union member and activist in the audience at this speech, none of this stirred me much. What did create an impression--and not a positive one--was the fact that the president was sharing the stage with ex-governor Jeb Bush. He even congratulated Bush for his work in education reform: "We are also honored to be joined here today by another champion of education reform, somebody who championed reform when he was in office, somebody who is now championing reform as a
users in protecting their financial privacy. The Bitcoin Foundation was supposed to help develop Bitcoin’s social capital, but the enormity of the task, the diffuse (or lacking) vision of its varying leadership, and some significant early missteps relegated that organization. Despite the appointment of another well-meaning executive director mid-way through the year, the foundation has been achievement-free in 2016. Why does this matter? Technology is about people. It only exists with reference to humans and human ends. The bitcoin ecosystem is not self-actuating or self-correcting. It requires attention and maintenance like any system of human organization. The story of bitcoin in 2016 has been one of retrenchment back from the highs and successes that it could be achieving by now, which go beyond capital gains for tech-savvy investors. It masks the long way the cryptocurrency ecosystem has to go before it truly delivers on its revolutionary potential. Have an opinion on blockchain in 2016? A prediction for the year ahead? Email [email protected] to learn how you can contribute to our series. Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, CoinDesk. Image via ShutterstockFeb. 8, 2019 To what extent are people prepared to show consideration for robots? A new study suggests that, under certain circumstances, some people are willing to endanger human lives -- out of concern for... read more To what extent are people prepared to show consideration for robots? A new study suggests that, under certain circumstances, some people are willing to endanger human lives -- out of concern for... Feb. 5, 2019 In a recent study, researchers reveal how the Pokémon GO augmented reality game positively impact the physical activity in players over 40. The authors hope the findings will inform urban planners... read more In a recent study, researchers reveal how the Pokémon GO augmented reality game positively impact the physical activity in players over 40. The authors hope the findings will inform urban planners... Jan. 30, 2019 A team of researchers recently discovered that most people overlook artificial intelligence despite flawless advice. AI-like systems will be an integral part of the Army's strategy over the next... read more A team of researchers recently discovered that most people overlook artificial intelligence despite flawless advice. AI-like systems will be an integral part of the Army's strategy over the next... Jan. 22, 2019 In Europe, people are more reserved regarding robots than they were five years... read more In Europe, people are more reserved regarding robots than they were five years... Jan. 22, 2019 New research has found that a novel Artificial Intelligence (AI) system can dramatically reduce the time needed to ensure that abnormal chest X-rays with critical findings will receive an expert... read more New research has found that a novel Artificial Intelligence (AI) system can dramatically reduce the time needed to ensure that abnormal chest X-rays with critical findings will receive an expert... Jan. 17, 2019 Organizations looking to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution should be cautious about putting all their eggs in one basket, a study has... read more Organizations looking to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution should be cautious about putting all their eggs in one basket, a study has... Jan. 16, 2019 Engineers present a novel, 'ambidextrous' approach to grasping a diverse range of object shapes without... read more Engineers present a novel, 'ambidextrous' approach to grasping a diverse range of object shapes without... Jan. 14, 2019 Researchers believe the robot, nicknamed RAS, could eventually help those with dementia and other limitations continue to live independently in their own... read more Researchers believe the robot, nicknamed RAS, could eventually help those with dementia and other limitations continue to live independently in their own... Jan. 9, 2019 Single lens eyes, like those in humans and many other animals, can create sharp images, but the compound eyes of insects and crustaceans have an edge when it comes to peripheral vision, light... read more Single lens eyes, like those in humans and many other animals, can create sharp images, but the compound eyes of insects and crustaceans have an edge when it comes to peripheral vision, light... Jan. 7, 2019 How smart is the form of artificial intelligence known as deep learning computer networks, and how closely do these machines mimic the human brain? They have improved greatly in recent years, but... read more How smart is the form of artificial intelligence known as deep learning computer networks, and how closely do these machines mimic the human brain? They have improved greatly in recent years, but... Jan. 7, 2019 Researchers have for the first time used game theory to enable robots to assist humans in a safe and versatile... read more Researchers have for the first time used game theory to enable robots to assist humans in a safe and versatile... Dec. 21, 2018 Bees can solve seemingly clever counting tasks with very small numbers of nerve cells in their brains, according to... read more Bees can solve seemingly clever counting tasks with very small numbers of nerve cells in their brains, according to... Dec. 20, 2018 Researchers have demonstrated a computer system that can discover and identify the real-world objects it'sees' based on the same method of visual learning that humans... read more Researchers have demonstrated a computer system that can discover and identify the real-world objects it'sees' based on the same method of visual learning that humans... Dec. 19, 2018 Researchers have created a micro-robot whose electroadhesive foot pads, inspired by the pads on a gecko's feet, allow it to climb on vertical and upside-down conductive surfaces, like the inside... read more Researchers have created a micro-robot whose electroadhesive foot pads, inspired by the pads on a gecko's feet, allow it to climb on vertical and upside-down conductive surfaces, like the inside... Dec. 19, 2018 Researchers have created the fastest and most energy efficient simulation of part of a rat brain using off-the-shelf computer... read more Researchers have created the fastest and most energy efficient simulation of part of a rat brain using off-the-shelf computer... Dec. 13, 2018 A research team has uncovered significant and previously unknown vulnerabilities in high-performance computer chips that could lead to failures in modern... read more A research team has uncovered significant and previously unknown vulnerabilities in high-performance computer chips that could lead to failures in modern... Dec. 11, 2018 New 'classification models' sense how well humans trust intelligent machines they collaborate with, a step toward improving the quality of interactions and... read more New 'classification models' sense how well humans trust intelligent machines they collaborate with, a step toward improving the quality of interactions and... Dec. 4, 2018 Using precise brain measurements, researchers predicted how people's eyes move when viewing natural scenes, an advance in understanding the human visual system that can improve a host of... read more Using precise brain measurements, researchers predicted how people's eyes move when viewing natural scenes, an advance in understanding the human visual system that can improve a host of... Nov. 27, 2018 Researchers trained a deep neural network to classify wildlife species using 3.37 million camera-trap images of 27 species of animals obtained from five states across the United States. The model... read more Researchers trained a deep neural network to classify wildlife species using 3.37 million camera-trap images of 27 species of animals obtained from five states across the United States. The model...The rich and elite are perhaps more susceptible to being trapped by their own desires, but none of us are immune Before I joined the Daughters of St. Paul, I wanted to take a trip to India. I asked for two months off of work and got it (my boss was from Kerala and was thrilled that I was so pumped to visit India). But then I changed my plans at the last minute to visit the convent. After prayer, I realized that my travel plans were my plans, not God’s plan. But my wanderlust has reared its head again and it probably won’t surprise you to hear that I have recently been feeling cabin fever in the convent. I have a love for adventure in my blood and anytime I can see months or years in the same location stretching out before me I begin to feel stifled, like I can’t breathe. In a world of glamorous Instagram travel pics, social media buzz around the romantic Hiddleswift whirlwind tour of the world, and loads of Catholics heading to Krakow for “Catholic Woodstock,” a nun stuck in a convent can begin to feel cabin fever. A nun like me at least. (I won’t even begin to think how I would feel if God had called me to the cloister!) So, I recently brought these feelings to prayer and I began to reflect on the incident in Acts when Peter escapes from prison (Acts 12). Peter was captured by Herod and he is very likely going to be killed the next day. So Peter does what we all do when we are overwhelmed with grief, he sleeps. Peter is sleeping between two guards, secured by “double chains” when suddenly, “a light shone in the cell” and an angel of the Lord comes and strikes him on the arm. The angel basically says, “Hey let’s go, but first put on your shoes and your cloak, ya bum” (in a New York accent, I am pretty sure). Peter, bleary-eyed and confused, follows the angel out of prison. It is not until they pass through the iron gate to the city and the angel disappears that Peter realizes with shock that what he is experiencing is real (despite the fact that he was released from prison by an angel before, earlier in Acts; I guess we all are slow learners). When I first reflected on this passage, I melodramatically thought, “I am in a prison like Peter! My prison is the convent. I want to jump on a plane right now for New Delhi or Krakow!” But as I sat with this passage and prayed, I realized that there are prisons that frighten me much more than buildings. I am scared of growing older and not growing more mature. I am scared of checking off bucket lists at the expense of growing in love. I am scared of living a life that elevates choice above freedom of soul. I am scared of becoming older, but having the soul of an immature teenager. I am scared of lying on my death bed with regrets. “You want to live life on your own terms,” a superior told me recently in her loving, blunt way. It’s true. We all do to some extent. We are never satisfied with our lives because secretly, no matter how much we try to pretend it’s not true, we all expect life to coddle us, to fulfill us, to give us what we want, to be tailored to our self fulfillment. Even in the Church, we expect our parishes, our dioceses, our priests and religious, our laypeople, our apologists to conform to our ideas, our wants, our desires. Then, we want to live in community, to find relationship, but no community is ever good enough for us. There are always so many problems, so many issues that would be fixed if only other people would just follow our prescriptions for their problems. We want to live life on our own terms. But, as my soul screams out for freedom, I pray to listen to a deeper scream. It is a plea for true freedom. Not wanderlust, not an expansion of choices, but holiness. So many people with all the money and the choices in the world are confined within prisons of their own immaturity, (a certain Kardashian/Swift feud comes to mind). But rich people aren’t the only ones susceptible to immaturity. We all are immature in the many ways we are not like Jesus Christ. Maturity in the Christian worldview is to become more like Christ, and this is possible through the sacraments and participating in the self-emptying dynamic of the Christian life: [The Church] snatches [people] from the slavery of error and of idols and incorporates them in Christ so that through charity they may grow up into full maturity in Christ. (Lumen Gentium, 17) If we draw closer to God, the God who willingly allowed himself to be nailed to wood and left to die, we find a freedom that is deeper than the fleeting now, deeper than Snapchat feuds, yachts, and million-dollar mansions. Deeper even than our good desires: our desire for love, acceptance, self-fulfillment, and happiness. By laying down our lives and our desires (good and bad) before God, we find freedom from the prisons of our egoism, our selfishness, our pride, and our desire to get our way, all the time. From the only prison we should ever fear, from the prison of our sinfulness, set us free, Jesus. More to read: In Feud with Taylor Swift, Kardashian is more Lady MacBeth than Godiva [Editor’s Note: Take the Poll – Does your growth in faith feel stunted?][social_buttons] Just a few hours after General Motors called for a standardized EV plug, one has been created! Caroline Reichert, a spokeswoman for the Germany energy company RWE, said leading automotive and energy companies have reached an agreement for a standardized plug for electric cars. Some of the automakers include in that agreement are Volkswagen, BMW, Ford, General Motors, Fiat, Toyota and Mitsubishi. “A car must be able to be recharged in Italy in exactly the same way as in Denmark, Germany or France,” she was quoted saying in an edition of Die Welt to appear Monday. The three-point, 400-volt plug, which will allow electric cars to be recharged anywhere in a matter of minutes, will be unveiled Monday at the world’s biggest industrial technology fair in Hanover, northern Germany. No time frame for the introduction of the plug was mentioned, saying that talks between the companies were ongoing. If electric vehicles are going to stand a chance against petro-based cars, standards are a must. This is a major step froward in EV mass production. Update: The plug depicted above is not the agreed upon standard. At the time of the press release, I could not find a definitive picture. Sorry for any confusion. More on Electric Cars: A Few Pictures of Upcoming Electric Cars: Source [PhysOrg.com] Image Credit: Clayton B. CornellWe [Canadians] … are very lucky, in that we have all kinds of places to go within our own boundaries. – Grey Owl Grey Owl (b. 1888 – d. 1938) was one of the first and most powerful spokespersons for the preservation of a pristine wilderness and a strong Native identity in Canada. At the time Grey Owl was writing, in the 1920s and ’30s, it was generally assumed by whites that the Canadian wilderness and the Canadian Indian were doomed to disappear. This was imagined to be an inevitable consequence of progress. Grey Owl believed that for Canada to remain a unique country, both the wilderness and the Indian must continue to play a real (and not just mythological) role within it: "I want to arouse in the Canadian people a sense of responsibility they have for the north country and its inhabitants, humans and animal" (Grey Owl 1936: 144). Grey Owl therefore tried to convince white Canadians to support his conservationist plan by arguing that the continued presence of an untamed North within Canada was vital to national identity and well-being because it held out to Canadians the possibility of another place to go, another way to be. White Indian The dual identity of civilized/savage which Grey Owl envisioned for Canada also formed part of his own being. Grey Owl was born Archibald Belaney in Hastings, England in 1888. From childhood he had a fascination with all things Indian. He devoted himself to learning about the Native peoples of North America, drawing pictures in his notebooks of Indians in feathered headresses who looked very much as he himself would one day look in his reincarnation as Grey Owl. With his friends Archie played the role of a "Red Indian", learning woodcraft, sleeping outdoors, practising bird calls. Archie Belaney was raised by the two aunts with whom he had been deposited as a baby by his parents. His father, George Belaney, was an inveterate wanderer, travelling to Florida to try his fortunes at orange growing and taxidermy and returning years later to Hastings a romantic, mysterious figure wearing a sombrero. About his mother, Elizabeth Cox, Belaney knew little, except that she was an American. The ambiguity about his parentage led the boy, with his love of Indian lore, to fantasize that his mother was an American Indian and that he himself was therefore half Indian. One gift George Belaney had sent his little son was a miniature model of a Mexican village. As Grey Owl would later tell his Mohawk companion, Gertrude Bernard: My father sent me a miniature Mexican ranch – I was about five at the time. I thought it the most wonderful thing in the world, and it was. It had the little adobe houses, stables, and carved wooden horses – they had Navajo blankets instead of saddles on their backs, and little Mexican figures. Two of these figures I picked out as being my father and me, and I used to spend hour upon hour moving them about, imagining that he and I were working together on our ranch (Anahareo 1972: 180). Here then were the seeds of Belaney’s alternative – and in his mind true – identity. His father was a Scotsman who had fought in Mexico; his mother was an Indian who gave birth to him in a Mexican encampment. Eager to escape his strait-laced aunts and hum-drum life in Hastings, at the age of seventeen Belaney left England for Canada. His intention was to fulfill his dream of living with and learning from Indians, for – unlike most other British immigrants – it was not to English or French Canada that Belaney wished to immigrate, but to Native Canada. Once in Canada, his identification with Native culture led Belaney to openly claim – in this new land so far from England – that he was a half-breed who had been born in Mexico. In Search of Native Canada In search of Native Canada, Belaney first made friends with Objibwas living on Bear Island in Ontario. Through them he learnt the lore of the woods – how to snowshoe, canoe, track and trap animals – and the Ojibwa language. He learnt how to snowshoe and how to canoe, how to track and trap animals, how to survive a Northern winter in the woods. He also spent many evenings immersing himself in Ojibwa myth and ritual. In 1910, he married an Ojibwa woman, but possessed of a restless spirit like his father, it was not long before Belaney left his wife and continued his travels through the northlands. When news of the war in Europe came, Belaney, along with many of his "fellow" Indians, enlisted in the army. The war over he returned "home" to the North. As an adolescent in Hastings Archie had boasted to a friend that he was going to Canada when he finished school. "To fight the Indians?" his friend had asked, thrilled. "No, to become an Indian", Archie answered. His friend retorted "But you can’t become an Indian if you haven’t been born one." Archie, who did not in his hometown claim to be of Indian blood, stated: "Yes you can…. You can be adopted into a tribe. That’s what I’m going to do" (Dickson 1939: 53). Among the Ojibwa, Belaney would come to think of himself as adopted into the Indian nation, a naturalized citizen of Native Canada. In later life, Belaney would describe this rite of adoption (which Grey Owl’s biographers tell us never actually took place) as follows: A blood-brother proved and sworn, by moose-head feast, wordless chant, and ancient ritual was I named before a gaily decorated and attentive concourse … The smoke hung in the white pall short of the spreading limbs of the towering trees, and with a hundred pairs of beady eyes upon me I stepped out beneath it when called on … Hi-Heeh, Hi-Heh, Ho! Hi-Heh, Hi-Heh, Ha! … and there I proudly received the name they had devised (Grey Owl 1931: 225-6). The name Belaney claimed to have received throgh this ritual was Washaquonasin – Grey Owl. For the next decade Archie Belaney roamed the Canadian backwoods, making a living through trapping and increasing his knowledge of the wilderness and of Native cultures. In the towns where he stayed he inevitably presented himself as a half-breed, startling the inhabitants with his war dances and knife-throwing, and overplaying the role of "dumb savage" when condescended to by whites. He dyed his brown hair black and darkened his fair skin with henna. He could do nothing about his blue eyes but attribute them to the "white" side of his parentage. For Victoria Day, 1923, Belaney organized a "war party" in Biscotasing, Ontario. Playing the role of Indian chief, Belaney tied a symbolic white prisoner to a pole and "told him the wrongs that the white man had done to the Indian" (Smith 1990: 74). An odd way of celebrating Queen Victoria’s birthday, but the drama was a great success and got written up in the local paper. Conservationist It was not until Belaney was in his forties that he began his career as the conservationist for which he is best known today. This change of direction was occasioned by a number of revelations. Belaney was deeply disturbed by what he perceived as the destruction of the native way of life due to the loss of territory and the influence of white culture. Modern influences have taken away much of the romance, picturesque appearance from Indian camps… Their racial pride has been sapped, and destitute and hopeless, they no longer have the ambition to keep up the old methods and traditions, so that home life is slipshod and wretched, and national character is falling into decay (Grey Owl 1936: 33). Belaney also realized that great Canadian forests were being steadily pushed back. Increased prices for pelts and lumber, and a growing railway, brought droves of trappers and loggers into the North. Most of these had no interest in the land except as a source of quick cash. First the trappers would denude a region of wildlife, then the loggers would cut down the trees, and in the dried out bush which resulted, fire would often burn down what was left. While Indians had been able to live off the land without changing it, whites, apparently, could only make a living from the forest by destroying it. Finally, Belaney became disgusted with the brutality involved in trapping. This disgust was triggered by the revulsion his new companion, a Mohawk woman named Gertrude Bernard, felt for the practice. When Bernard, otherwise known as Anahareo, adopted and raised a pair of beaver kittens whose mother had been killed in a trap, Belaney came to recognize that animals he had trapped for most of his life were highly intelligent and affectionate beings. After establishing a close bond with the kittens, Belaney vowed never to trap another beaver and to work to stop the wholesale slaughter of beavers. Belaney henceforth devoted himself to writing of his experiences of the Canadian wilderness and of Native culture in order to forward his conservationist message and to provide an income to replace the one he had formerly earned by selling beaver pelts. Belaney’s vision was to establish wildlife sanctuaries throughout the North. He was also interested in prohibiting commercial traffic in animal skins to protect animal life and to prevent native culture from becoming commercialized and driven by European fashion trends. Belaney thought that Native peoples, instead of killing animals for profit, could work as conservationists and forest rangers in wildlife sanctuaries. In his own writings Archibald Belaney presented himself as Grey Owl, a half-breed who was more Indian than white. The popularity of his writings led to extended lecture tours for Grey Owl in Britain and in North America. Grey Owl played up his Indianness for these lectures, darkening his hair and skin as was his custom and dressing in Native apparel. The Canadian woodsman, with his fringes, feathers and beads provided a thrilling sight on the streets and stages of England of the 1930s. (Although, ironically, some of Grey Owl’s Indian costume was actually bought in England, where it was sold as an exotic novelty from the colonies.) His message was thrilling to an audience jaded with and troubled by many of the traits of modern Western culture: "You are tired of civilization. I come to offer you, what? A single green leaf" (Raddall 1968: 144). On one occasion Belaney lectured before the royal family. Walking onto the stage, Grey Owl "flung up his right arm in salute, and addressing the King directly, said "How Kola". There followed a few words in the Ojibway tongue, then his arm was lowered: "Which, being interpreted, means `I come in peace, brother’" (Dickson 1973:249). Little did the King realize he was being addressed by a fellow Englishman. Grey Owl’s lectures and books were extremely popular and he was probably the best-known Canadian author of his day. The Times Literary Supplement stated that "it is difficult to recall any record of the great North so brilliantly and lovingly handled" (Smith 1990: 102). The New York Times wrote approvingly "Grey Owl is no stuffed Indian" (Smith 1990: 105). One suspicious reviewer from the University of Manitoba wondered "how in the world could a half-breed trapper pick up such an elegant style?" (Smith 1990: 106). Grey Owl angrily dismissed this criticism as a case of racial prejudice. Due to his celebrity and his potential as a tourist attraction, the Canadian government offered Grey Owl a home and a place to raise his beavers within the new Prince Albert National Park in Saskatchewan. There the author poured the proceeds from his book sales into making educational films about wildlife. Grey Owl’s new fame and fortune had not in any way deterred him from his original purpose. In 1936 he declared: Every word I write, every lecture I have given, or ever will give, were and are to be for the betterment of the Beaver people, all wild life, the Indians and halfbreeds, and for Canada, in whatever small way I may (Smith 1990: 162). Such dedication was gaining the immigrant to Canada recognition. Grey Owl was called "Canada’s ambassador" by his enthusiastic supporters, and deemed "among the greatest Canadians of us all" (Smith 1990: 169). In 1938, Grey Owl died suddenly in a Prince Albert Hospital from pneumonia brought on by overwork. Shortly after his death stories began to appear in the papers regarding his true identity: Far from being a Red Indian – as Native Americans were called – Grey Owl was of thoroughly British ancestry. Indeed the two maiden aunts who had raised him were still living in Hastings. A Red Indian with maiden aunts in Hastings was too much for public credulity and Grey Owl was transformed back into Archibald Belaney – not noble savage but wily white imposter. The former trapper was himself trapped and skinned. Describing Grey Owl’s death, one cynical writer would jibe: And what became of Grey Owl, stripped of his imposing plumage and revealed as a petty body after all? The Prince Albert undertaker, preparing the corpse for burial, rejected the buckskins sent along by the hospital people, and dressed it in a white shirt, tie, socks, shoes and a blue serge suit. So Archie went to the Happy Hunting Ground dressed for a businessman’s luncheon (Raddall 1968: 155). Northern Lights Grey Owl’s Canada was two Canadas; one the civilized South, home of Europeans, the other, the wild northlands, home of Indians. "The settled country to the South is, to the dwellers in [the] Wilderness, a world apart" (Grey Owl 1936: 11). So opposed are the two in Grey Owl’s mind that for many years he would not have a radio in his cabin for fear this strange device of modern technology would disturb the Northern climate: We all had an idea in those days that radio caused electrical disturbances that had a bad effect on the weather, so that on account of some gigolo with corrugated hair singing "Ting-a-ling" or "You’ve got me crying again" in Montreal or Los Angeles, a bunch of good men had bad snow-shoeing all winter (Grey Owl 1934:19). Grey Owl decried the tendency of European Canadians to despise the North. Such Canadians prefered to emphasize the advance of civilization in Canada over the expanses of wilderness, and would rather praise Canada’s skyscrapers than its forests and rivers. "North" in people’s minds, seemed to be associated with Arctic wastelands; while "Winter" was that frozen skeleton Canadians wished they could keep in the closet. "There seems to be a disposition to hide that part of our life that emanates from the North under a bushel, though it may yet prove to be the brightest ray of our national illumination" (Grey Owl 1936:145). The North, according to Grey Owl, is what makes Canada unique among nations – "We have something here that no other country has" – it offers Canadians a dual existence: to walk city streets and paddle forest rivers (Grey Owl 1936: 148-9). The North provides the world-weary with an antidote to civilization, an antidote no longer available in much of the Western world. At the present time countries having a heavy population are all in trouble, the accumulation within their borders seeking an outlet in any direction, and finding themselves surrounded by others in a like predicament are all dressed up and have nowhere to go. We, on the other hand, are very lucky, in that we have all kinds of places to go within our own boundaries (Grey Owl 1936: 145). At a time when it was taken for granted by most whites that civilization was superior to wilderness, and whites superior to Indians, Grey Owl insisted on their equality. His vision of Canada was founded on a unity of you and I. Employing typical British imperial rhetoric a friend of Grey Owl wrote a poem lauding the Prince of Wales: If the Prince of Wales is an English lad His blood is the best, the best! (Smith 1990: 169) After reading this poem Grey Owl wrote one word at the bottom: "Why?" Later Grey Owl would advise his friend to concentrate on exploring "the heart of Wilderness" rather than raving about how "England is the best (or any other nation)" (Smith 1990: 169). The North, for Grey Owl, was the Canadian frontier, but not in the same way that the West is the American frontier. No one ever speaks of "how the North was won." To Grey Owl, you can destroy the North or learn to live in it, but you do not win it. The North is not about cowboys killing Indians, but about learning to live from and with Indians. An important consideration here is that, while in the United States the Indian was typically the enemy, in Canada the Indian was often an ally. For example, in the War of 1812 – that engagement which looms large in Canadian history but tends to be forgotten by Americans – it was largely thanks to the joint forces of British troops and Native warriors led by Tecumseh that the invading Americans were pushed back. The Canadian North, therefore, has a very different ethos from the American West. The young man who goes North, does not go to conquer, but to survive. He does not establish his dominion over God’s creation, he discovers (if he is good enough) his equality with other living beings. Man should enter the woods, not with any conquistador obsession or mighty hunter complex, neither in a spirit of braggadocio, but rather with … awe …. For many a man who considers himself the master of all he surveys would do well, when setting foot in the forest, to take off not only his hat but his shoes too and, in not a few cases, be glad he is allowed to retain an erect position (Grey Owl 1936: viii). In the dualism of North and South, Indian and white, Grey Owl preferred to identify himself with the former. He wrote that he "irrevocably belonged" to the North and that "I feel as an Indian, think as an Indian, all my ways are Indian, my heart is Indian" (Smith 1990: 166)). Yet Grey Owl had the same dual identity that he assigned to Canada. He was one of those weary products of civilization whom the North provided with another place to go, another way to be. To some extent he acknowledged this dual identity by calling himself a half-breed, but he was a cultural half-breed, rather than a racial half-breed. If he had been born Native, or half Native, and grown up in the wilderness, Archibald Belaney might well have had the longing for Western culture and learning that as a well-schooled English boy he had for the trackless Northern forest. In his writings Grey Owl condemns those half-breeds who try to pass themselves off as whites without recognizing that their aspirations might not be that dissimilar from his own – to find a better life in the life of the other. After years of living in the backwoods, his own British background would come to seem as ridiculous to Belaney, as it would seem to those people who had known him as Grey Owl, when his other identity was finally revealed. In a letter to his companion Anahareo, with whom he had a daughter, he wrote: Two old maiden ladies living in some part of Scotland have written me through Country Life [magazine] and claim to be first cousins, or some kind of cousins of my father’s side of the family…. Funny how things turn out. No doubt we will find that you have inherited your war-like spirit from the Duke of Buckingham. Perhaps our daughter is the rightful Queen of Scotland, or an Apache Princess. Who knows what next will be heard? (Dickson 1973: 23). Perhaps that Grey Owl, the renowned Indian author and spokesman for the Canadian North, was an Englishman? Good Indian or Dead White Man? Grey Owl wrote that his conservationist message was best received by whites as opposed to Indians or half breeds (Grey Owl 1936: 86). He preferred speaking in Canada and England, however, to speaking in the United States, where the figure of the Indian formed part of that country’s subjugated frontier history, and where he became "sick of walking the streets… in Indian regalia and having playful people ask him what cigar store he was working for" (Smith 1990: 206). The most enthusiastic response to Grey Owl’s lectures and books came from his British homeland. It is not surprising, in many ways, that this should be so. Who should know better how to inspire the imaginations of an English audience with stories of Indians and wildlife than a man who as an English youth had his own imagination kindled by stories of the North? Unlike the storybook Indians who lived up to the romantic ideals of their white readers, most real Indians – as reported by immigrants to the Canadian colony – seemed to be depressingly unromantic, drunk, dirty and hapless. When Grey Owl arrived on the scene, he redeemed the image of the Indian – here, at last, was a good Indian, an Indian who could hold himself with dignity and speak of the wisdom of the wilderness. After Grey Owl died, however, it was uncovered that what had seemed like the only good Indian was a dead white man. In the opinion of many, Grey Owl’s native persona had been assumed solely to promote his books. Belaney’s reputed Indian identity certainly must have contributed to the enormous popularity of his books and lectures and also lent authority to his conservationist message. However, this Indian identity was not adopted only for promotional purposes. Belaney had been living and representing himself as Indian, or half-Indian, for many years previously, at a time when there were no ostensible advantages to be gained from doing so, and many disadvantages. Half-breeds, as Grey Owl claimed to be, were nothing rare or romantic in the Canadian bush. As he wrote "there are thousands of mixed bloods like myself kicking around the North" (Smith 1990: 166). The truth is that both Belaney’s Indian identity and his works on wildlife came from the same source: his drive to live in and for the wilderness. After the first shock produced by the revelation of Grey Owl’s white identity, many commentators were reluctant to denounce him as a fraud. One of his contemporaries wrote: "I care not whether he was an Englishman, Irishman, Scotsman or Negro. He was a great man with a great mind, and with great objectives which he ever kept before him" (Smith 1990: 214). An editorial in the Ottawa Citizen asserted that, far from jeopardizing the value of his work, Belaney’s masquerade as an Indian added to his accomplishments. The general feeling – at least among white Canadians – seemed to be that Belaney, if not an Indian by birth, was a self-made Indian, and that the benefits of his work in favour of nature conservation and the advancement of Native interests far outweighed any possible negative effects of his impersonation. After a period of neglect, Grey Owl was brought to the attention of the public again in the 1970s as a pioneer conservationist. His message once again seemed vital and inspiring to a generation concerned about the vanishing wilderness. By this time his imposture had come to seem more interesting and romantic than fraudulent, enhancing, rather than detracting from, his reputation. Ironically, if Belaney’s Indian persona was what first gained him widespread fame, it would be the intriguing falsehood of that persona which would keep his memory alive. More recently, Grey Owl, and other "white Indians", have been criticized as whites who appropriated for themselves the voice of the Indian. This criticism has been motivated by the contemporary concern over issues of cultural appropriation. As Deborah Root writes in Cannibal Culture, individual acts of cultural appropriation do not float in space but are underlain by very precise systems of authority.
. [Jaromir] went above and beyond this time. He created a computer which can be programmed in everyone’s favorite esoteric programming language. Brainf*cktor uses 1019 bytes of program memory in [Jaromir’s] PIC18F26K22. You can write, execute and edit programs. [Jaromir] ran into a bit of a problem with his LCD. The character tables would have thrown him over the 1 kB limit. Not a problem – he designed his own compressed character set, which is included in the 1019 bytes mentioned above. All the clever software takes physical form with a homemade PCB, and a case built from blank PCB material. Best of all, [Jaromir] has explained his software tricks, as well as included a full build log for anyone who wants to replicate his project. All that hard work will be rewarded with a Digi-Comp II kit from EMSL. First Prize First prize goes to [Dumitru Stama] with M0S – CortexM0 RTOS in 1024 bytes. Operating systems are complex beasts. Many of our readers have toyed with the Linux Kernel. But writing a real-time OS from scratch? That’s quite an undertaking. [Dumitru] didn’t shy away from the challenge. He designed a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) for ARM processors, written completely in ARM thumb assembly instructions. This is no bare-bones executive. M0S has a rich list of features, including preemptive task scheduling, mutexes, and inter-process communication. [Dumitru] even gave us memory allocation with an implementation of malloc() and free(). The OS was demonstrated with a NUCLEO-F072RB board from ST-Micro. [Dumitru] didn’t just drop a GitHub link and run. He documented M0S with seven project logs and a 37-minute long video. The video uses electronic whiteboard drawings to clearly explain all the internal workings of the operating system, as well as how to use it. [Dumitru] is the proud new owner of a Maker Select 3D printer V2! Second Prize Second prize goes to [Cyrille Gindreau] with 1K Challange Laser. Vector lasers generally take lots of memory. You have to manage galvanometers, laser drive, and perform all the magic it takes to convert a set of vectors to lines drawn in space. The project uses 912 bytes of program and initialized data memory to command an MSP430 to draw an image. Proving that flattery will get you everywhere, [Cyrille] picked the Hackaday logo as the subject. The Jolly Wrencher is not exactly simple to convert to vector format, though. It took some careful optimizations to come up with an image that fit within 1 kB. [Cyrille] wins a Bulbdial Clock kit from EMSL. Third Prize Third prize goes to [Mark Sherman] with tinygames. Video games have been around for awhile, but they are never quite this small. [Mark] coaxed the minuscule Atmel ATtiny84 to play Centipede with only 1024 bytes of program memory. Even the BOM is kept small, with just a few support components. Control is handled by an Atari 2600 compatible joystick. Video is black and white NTSC, which is demonstrated on a period accurate CRT. [Mark] generates his video by racing the electron beam, exactly the same way the Atari 2600 did it. [Mark] will take home a Blinkytile kit from Blinkinlabs. Final thoughts First of all, I’d like to thank the judges. Our own [Jenny List], [Gerrit Coetzee], [Pedro Umbelino], [Bil Herd], and [Brian Benchoff] worked hard with me in judging this contest. I’d also like to thank our community for creating some amazing projects. The contest may...A U.S. survey shows that 60 percent of Americans say they would vote for a qualified presidential candidate who happened to be a Muslim, a position at odds with that of one of the leading Republican contenders for the party's 2016 presidential nomination. The Gallup Poll recorded the finding in June when it asked voters whether they could support a candidate who was Catholic, a Jew, a Mormon, an evangelical Christian, a Muslim or an atheist. The survey showed support ranging from 93 percent for a Catholic candidate to 58 percent for an atheist. On Sunday, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said on NBC's "Meet the Press," "I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that.'' With the U.S. Constitution banning a religious test for holding public office, Carson's stance was quickly condemned. The Council on American-Islamic Relations said he was unfit to be president and called for him to quit the nominating contest. On Tuesday, Carson blamed political correctness for the furor over his comment. He said that he would also oppose a Christian who wanted to establish a theocracy in the U.S. Theocracy is a form of government in which a deity is recognized as the supreme civil ruler. Carson, a devout Christian, said his view was that anyone seeking the presidency ought to embrace the country's Constitution and American principles.“Green gold.” “Future plant.” “World vegetable dromedary.” These are just a few of the terms used for the prickly pear cactus, a humble plant that, according to a new book co-published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, can serve as a lifesaving crop for many countries, especially those struggling to adapt to climate change. “It’s actually a fairly amazing crop that can grow in most dry areas of the world,” Makiko Taguchi, a cactus expert at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, told Earther. “And the dry areas of the world are expanding in some places.” Advertisement The prickly pear is, as Taguchi says, “amazing” for a few key reasons. First, it’s extremely easy to grow: the flat, spiney cladodes, or pads, of the cactus will grow roots wherever they touch soil, so generating a new crop of cacti is as easy as spreading rows of pads on the ground. It’s also extremely hardy: prickly pears can grow in harsh, arid lands where other plants refuse to grow (as long as temperatures don’t dip below freezing, that is). “When they can’t grow anything else, cactus is there to feed the people as well as their animals.” Second, it barely needs irrigation—and in regions that get at least a little periodic rain, it doesn’t need it at all. Like other cacti, it stores water in its pads, which can be up to 95 percent liquid. It also uses a form of photosynthesis—crassulacean acid metabolism, or CAM—that allows it to shut down during the day, when it’s hottest and the rate of water loss would be highest, and collect carbon dioxide during the night. Because of its low water needs, it’s a plant that can thrive even in drought conditions, when other crops wither and die. That’s good news for regions experiencing more frequent and more intense droughts, because the last amazing thing about the prickly pear is that both the cactus’ pads and its fruits are edible, and make nutritious and water-rich foods for humans and their livestock. Advertisement “In countries like Ethiopia and Madagascar, where they’re experiencing extreme drought, a lot of the people there are actually surviving on cactus,” Taguchi said. “When they can’t grow anything else, cactus is there to feed the people as well as their animals.” A few years ago, for instance, Madagascar was in the midst of a multi-year drought. Crops failed, and many were forced to sell their livestock. But the country narrowly avoided a famine in part because it was able to survive on prickly pear. Advertisement It’s these life-saving qualities that prompted the UN FAO to spread the word about the prickly pear with the new book, Crop Ecology, Cultivation and Uses of Cactus Pear, co-published by the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), which delves into the spiny plant’s history, ecology, and uses around the world. The FAO hopes the book, which also contains tips for growing cacti crops, will help alert arid regions to the cactus’ potential. The book’s release comes as higher temperatures due to climate change are increasing the risk of severe drought around the world. Years that are hot and dry are more likely to result in extreme droughts than years that are cool and dry, and in some places—like California—climate change is making the hot and dry years more frequent. Luckily, the prickly pear thrives in hot, dry weather, and the cactus can even help facilitate the growth of other plants when it’s planted in regions with dry, degraded soil. The prickly pear is native to Mexico, a country where it’s steeped in culture: The plant is featured on the Mexican flag, and Mexico is one of the few places that regularly eats prickly pear pads—or nopales—as well as the plant’s fruit. The pads are grilled and served in salads, tacos, stir fries and other dishes, while the fruit is typically eaten raw or made into jams, juices, or even gelato. The fruits are water-dense and have a refreshing taste similar to watermelon, Taguchi says, while the pads are slightly bitter with a taste typically compared to green beans. The fruits, according to Taguchi, have more antioxidants than apples and tomatoes, and are rich in flavonoids and vitamin C. Advertisement Apart from Mexico, prickly pears are grown in 26 countries, with countries like Morocco and Algeria beginning to grow the plant for its seed extract, which can have cosmetic and medicinal uses. Cacti were spread from Mexico to Europe by the Spanish conquistadors, who—like the cacti-obsessed of today—valued the plant for its decorative purposes. The plant’s popularity is spreading around the world, Taguchi says, and the UN hopes the book will continue to boost prickly pear’s popularity. “We have been receiving a number of requests from countries in Africa mainly and some South Asian countries for technical support,” she said. “Some countries are realizing that [cacti] are growing in the wild, but they’re not being used.” Advertisement The prickly pear’s resilience is a rare piece of climate-related good news when it comes to crops. The unpredictable rainfall and temperatures that come with climate change have the potential to disrupt the production of cocoa, coffee, and even corn and wheat. But prickly pear, as well as standing firm in the face of climate change, may even have the potential to help fight it: researchers in Mexico have been looking into ways to turn the cactus’ tough, spiny skin into renewable biogas. Prickly pear, of course, isn’t a miracle crop for everyone: in parts of the world that are getting wetter, for instance, the cactus won’t thrive. And even where it does, other sources of protein and carbohydrates will be necessary for a complete diet. Taguchi says the FAO is looking into a variety of crops, including perennial rices and wheats which could be resilient to different forms of future climate scenarios. Crops that are indigenous to certain regions are also high on their list of priorities, because these crops can tend to be more resilient to climatic changes than introduced crops. But for those regions where hot and dry is becoming more and more the norm, the FAO is going to continue to press for more prickly pear cultivation. Katie Valentine is a freelance writer focusing on the environment. You can follow her @katiervalentineIn the beginning, the Bible says, God created the heaven and the earth. And it was good. Really good. Earth’s natural bounty blew us away — lavish forests teeming with wildlife, fertile soil, clear skies, clean, flowing water and all of it so abundant, it seemed to go on forever. We didn’t think of the ecological health of the planet because it never occurred to us. The earth was our oyster, our playground. Thems was good days. Then we started to see more than a few signs the earth was changing. It occurred to us it wouldn’t last forever. We’d get around to fixing things, we said, just as soon as we crossed off a few other items on our To Do list. Centuries passed. If it’s any consolation, concerns about conservation and pollution date back to the dawn of civilization. You think we’re mucking up the environment? Rampant deforestation did in the Middle East 6,000 years before Christ. You’d think we’d learn. We didn’t. Fast-forward six millenia or so to the Roman Empire. Those guys? Total pigs. Massive overpopulation, big deforesters, rotten conservationists. They mined lead like maniacs until it leached into the soil and water and poisoned people. Not so smart for one of the so-called great civilizations. The Roman Empire did itself in. We could learn from this. I could go on through history, but basically, we’ve been botching our role of planetary custodians since we got the job. All through the centuries, though, brave men and woman have been battled to protect our natural resources. Some did it by holding our feet to the fire, making us accountable, others by making their voices heard, by awakening us to the beauty the planet and the risks it faces, still others by initiating change in environmental policy or practice. Every way is good. Often these people have caught grief for their actions, been branded nutters and downers. They shrugged it off. They were motivated by something bigger — a deep, abiding love of the planet. Now it’s our turn. We’ve been given custody of the earth and it’s time we kick butt and take names. It’d be nice if the governments of the world would do this for us. Copenhagen showed us not to hold our breath. Turns out Gandhi, one of my favorite green guys, was right — we’re going to have to be the change we want to see in the world. Yeah, something else on our To Do list, but look, we have a huge stake in this. Eviction isn’t an agreeable option. The earth can live without us. We can’t say the same. So it’s in our very best interest to care for this amazing place. However, it’s hard to care for the earth without a bond with it. The connection between man and nature has always been vital, but we need to honor it now more than ever. We've been given custody of the earth and it's time we kick butt and take names. Click To Tweet As we enter a new year, a new decade, tap into the same love for the planet environmental avengers of yore felt. Go ahead and hug a tree, if you’re that way inclined. If you’re less demonstrative, that’s fine, too. But feel the love. Love’s got a lot going for it. Love energizes. Love casteth out fear, to throw in another bit from the Bible. And fear is so last decade.Quebec's environmental hearings into the Energy East Pipeline got off to a difficult start Monday evening, as protesters chanted and disrupted proceedings seconds after the project's vice-president began speaking. Joseph Zayed, with Quebec's environmental regulation agency, was forced to temporarily suspend the hearings as protesters snuck into the audience room, unfurled a banner denouncing the pipeline and sang songs to try and silence the presenter. The room was brought under control after roughly 15 minutes and Louis Bergeron, Energy East's vice-president for New Brunswick and Quebec, was able to start again. TransCanada makes its case Earlier, Bergeron had said participating in the hearings was necessary if TransCanada was to reach the "level of social acceptability" the company wanted for its Energy East project. 'The Energy East project will bring a major reduction of foreign imports of oil into refineries in Eastern Canada. - Louis Bergeron, Energy East's vice-president In his presentation, Bergeron outined the broad strokes of the project to the agency's three commission members as well as to those gathered in the audience room in Lévis, across the St. Lawrence River from Quebec City. "The Energy East project will bring a major reduction of foreign imports of oil into refineries in Eastern Canada," Bergeron told audience members. Canada's oil sands are currently landlocked and TransCanada says an export pipeline to the Atlantic Ocean would open international markets and grow the country's GDP, benefiting all Canadians. "Pipelines are a way to transport oil that is safe, reliable and efficient," Bergeron said. TransCanada Corp.'s proposed pipeline project, which would carry 1.1 million barrels a day from Alberta through Quebec to an export terminal in Saint John, N.B. (Canadian Press) After TransCanada's presentation Monday evening, Canada's National Energy Board gave a brief presentation about its role in reviewing energy project proposals. A question-and-answer period was scheduled with members of the public after Monday night's presentations. The hearings are being held by Quebec's environmental review agency, known as the Bureau des audiences publiques sur l'environment (BAPE) and are slated to last nine days. Battle of injunctions Opponents of the Energy Est pipeline project protested outside a refinery in Sorel-Tracy on Sunday. (Karine Morin/Radio-Canada) Environmental groups upset that TransCanada won't have to offer an impact study as part of the hearings had tried to get them halted by seeking an emergency injunction last month. But a Quebec Superior Court judge threw out the motion on Friday, allowing the BAPE hearings to go ahead. The Quebec government has filed a separate injunction that would force TransCanada to submit an impact study and undergo an evaluation. It is unclear when a judge will hear that motion. Some Western politicians — including Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall — accused Quebec of trying to sabotage a project that would benefit their economies. 'Generic BAPE' The hearings are being held under a section of Quebec's Environmental Quality Act that is less demanding on companies considering environmentally sensitive projects. These are known as "generic BAPE" hearings. A more demanding series of BAPE hearings can be held, under a different section of the law, when a company has formally submitted a notice of application. Despite requests by the Quebec government, TransCanada has yet to submit such a notice. The injunction filed by Environment Minister David Heurtel last week would force them to do so. If a judge sides with Quebec, that could require a second, more detailed, series of BAPE hearings to be held. TransCanada says the documentation it has filed with the BAPE for the generic hearings is "equivalent" to what is required of an impact study.Spread the love “This seems to be a brainwashing that all but guarantees immunity for the cops. It really seems outrageous and holds the potential of tainting the jury.” Houston, TX — Texas grand juries have an unusual manner of presenting “evidence,” unique only to Texas. It’s called a shooting simulator. The DA’s office, which began using the simulator in 2003, contends it helps grand jurors understand pressures of police work and the split-second decisions officers must make. “It’s made very clear at the orientation that self-defense applies to citizens as well as police officers, so it applies to both types of cases,” Anderson said. “This wasn’t a primer on police shootings, it was a primer on self-defense in Texas.” Terri Burke, director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Texas, said grand juries should serve as a check on abusive police practices. “This seems to be a brainwashing that all but guarantees immunity for the cops,” Burke said about the simulator. “It really seems outrageous and holds the potential of tainting the jury.” The simulator creates a biased level of empathy within the jurors as it doesn’t show the officer’s actual situation prior to a shooting, but instead it shows a one-sided barrage of scenarios designed to “train” the juror into understanding the “police officer’s experience when he goes on some of these calls.” An investigation conducted by the Houston Chronicle found that the grand jury process in Harris County is severely stacked in the favor of police. Between 2007 and 2012, according to HPD records, officers killed citizens in 109 shootings. Every killing was ruled justified. The 112 instances of an officer shooting and injuring a person were justified, too. So were the 104 times an officer wounded an animal, and the 225 times an officer killed an animal. There were 16 shootings found “not justified,” but they were all ruled accidental. In more than one in five cases in which officers fired on citizens, the citizen was unarmed. In the report by the Chronicle, it was found that Harris County grand juries have cleared HPD officers in shootings 288 consecutive times, from 2004-2013. On December 23, another cop was added to this streak as he was cleared of any wrong doing after shooting and killing an unarmed man. Jordan Baker, a 26-year-old father and college student was riding his bike through a Northwest Houston strip mall in January of this year. HPD officer Juvenito Castro was working off-duty as a security guard, when Baker came riding by. Unfortunately for Baker, who had committed no crime, he “fit the description” of a robbery suspect, according to Castro. According to police reports, Officer Castro approached Jordan and asked to see his identification, to which the officer claims Jordan began to scuffle with him and eventually ran away. Officer Castro claimed that a foot chase ensued, to which the officer caught up with Jordan and cornered him in an alley behind the strip mall. Castro told investigators that Jordan lunged at him and charged towards him, “reaching for his waistband,” prompting him to discharge his weapon, firing the one shot that killed Baker. The number of unarmed men who “reach for their waistbands” to grab a non-existent weapon, which causes police to “fear for their lives” and shoot them, is a statistical anomaly which is oddly common in instances such as Castro’s. Sadly Jordan Baker is now a part of that statistic, and the grand jury that just cleared Castro for killing him, has reinforced the power of the phrase, “reached for his waistband.” On December 26th, a major protest was held in front of Houston Police Department headquarters to demand answers for the shooting death of Jordan Baker. Another massive demonstration was held on December 29th, where hundreds of people gathered in front of the Harris County District Attorney’s office to express their disappointment with everything from the grand jury decision not to indict Officer Castro.During Friday’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher asked MSNBC military analyst and retired U.S. Army Colonel Jack Jacobs what generals would do if President Trump “gives a crazy order” and starts a war. Col. Jacobs eased into an answer, saying that although every president has the opportunity to push the button, generals serving the administration do play a part in the process. “If you’re at the bottom of the food chain like I was, you’re required to put your two cents in,” Col. Jacobs said. “As long as the order is not immoral or illegal, you have to carry it out. But when you get to be at the top of the food chain, you’re responsible for making sure also that we don’t do anything stupid.” Also Read: That Time Woody Harrelson Had Dinner With Donald Trump and Jesse Ventura (Video) Maher was relieved to hear that… until Jacobs finished his answer. “If you want to know if the president can order the destruction of the entire known universe by himself and not be checked by anybody,” Jacobs said, “yes, he could.” “Ah. OK,” Maher said with a straight face, then burst into shocked laughter. Also Read: Bill Maher Calls Trump's Relationship With Fox News 'a Very Bad Axis of Evil' And what about Gen. Kelly, the White House Chief of Staff who many came to believe would keep the POTUS in check? His comment during an interview with Laura Ingraham that “the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War” left many shaking their head in disbelief. “Anybody who articulates that the [Civil] War was not about slavery has been smoking too many left-handed cigarettes,” Jacobs joked.The five biggest stocks at the end of 1999 were Microsoft valued at $600 billion, General Electric at $507 billion, Cisco Systems at $355 billion, Wal-Mart at $307 billion and Intel at $275 billion. The current five largest companies are Apple at $689 billion, Alphabet at $565 billion, Microsoft at $490 billion, Berkshire Hathaway at $400 billion and Amazon at $388 billion. Cramer also looked at Facebook's $387 billion, since it's only one billion less than Amazon. Back in 1999, Microsoft and Intel sold at 65 times earnings, and 35 times earnings. The assumption was that the internet would take over the world and these companies had the software and hardware to make it happen. Unfortunately, the earnings explosion that investors expected never happened. Cisco's earnings pretty much collapsed soon after its business was crushed by telco carriers that raised money in the stock market to build out their networks. Wal-Mart was supposed to be the fastest growing retailer, too. Unfortunately, the company over-expanded and the model didn't scale overseas like it was supposed to and Wal-Mart hit a wall. "You could argue that all of these companies were overvalued on past earnings and they turned out to be even more overvalued on future earnings," Cramer said. Looking at today's top companies, Apple sells at just 14 times earnings with a rapidly growing service revenue stream. Alphabet sells at about 21 times next year's earnings with $52 billion in cash overseas and has a 16 percent growth rate. Facebook sells at 22 times next year's earnings with 52 percent revenue growth and has $29 billion in cash. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway sells for 20 times earnings. The only outlier was Amazon, trading at 110 times earnings. But Amazon has always been an outlier, Cramer said. Given how it has crushed Wal-Mart and threatened the entire brick-and-mortar business with extinction, Cramer thinks it is merely taking the market capitalization away from the businesses it destroys and said the market cap is justified. "The question to ask isn't how did this current group of behemoths get so expensive. It's how did they get so cheap," Cramer said. With only one of the six largest companies not bound by conventional metrics, Trump or no Trump, the valuations seemed completely rational to Cramer. Questions for Cramer? Call Cramer: 1-800-743-CNBC Want to take a deep dive into Cramer's world? Hit him up! Mad Money Twitter - Jim Cramer Twitter - Facebook - Instagram - Vine Questions, comments, suggestions for the "Mad Money" website? [email protected] what has become a bit of a pastime here at SplatF, let’s take a look at AOL’s latest dialup subscription stats, revealed in today’s Q2 earnings report: 2.58 million subscribers, down 15% from last year and down 3% from last quarter. , down 15% from last year and down 3% from last quarter. Average monthly revenue per subscriber: $20.03, up 12% from last year. , up 12% from last year. Churn rate — the percent of subscribers who leave the service each month — of 1.4%, a nice improvement from 1.7% last year. In short: Fewer people are leaving than before, as AOL dialup becomes a service you still pay for either because it’s actually your best option, or because you forgot you had it many years ago. Btw, it’s entirely possible that AOL still has more paying subscribers in the U.S. than Spotify. Last December, Spotify announced it had 1 million subs in the States. Has that number tripled this year? Don’t miss: AOL vs. Netflix, The Entire Internet In One Simple ChartIts been bothering me for years now: For a few hundred bucks we can place powerful mini computers in our pockets with high resolution displays, precise touch technology and dozen of sensors. But in our cars we have to pay thousands of dollars for infotainment systems with small screens, outdated technologies and interface designs that seem to be 5 years old. Tesla’s current interface http://www.blog.jay-greco.com/wp/?p=42 I was very excited when Tesla launched its Model S a few years ago hosting a brilliant 17 inch capacitive touchscreen as it’s main control unit. However I was a little disappointed when I saw their interface design. While the UX has some promising rudiments, the visual design could be from the early Web 2.0 era. When you’re brave enough to replace all your in-car controls with a huge touchscreen, why stop there? Why use plenty of skeuomorphisms to mimic actual buttons instead of emphasizing the fact that you no longer have those haptic buttons and detach your UI from their technical restrictions? As a side note: I’m not saying getting rid of all tactile buttons and focusing solely on a touchscreen is necessarily the best way to go for a car interface, but it’s definitely an interesting and challenging approach. As mentioned I’m exited by Teslas general approach to bring modern technology into our cars and even if their UI seems visually a little bit out of date, they are still among the creative leaders. Looking at some of Teslas competitors it’s frightening how old fashioned the interfaces of most car makers look and feel. You can find a big selection of bad in-car UX in this great read from Geoff Teehan MyFord Touch http://www.cnet.com/news/myford-touch-gets-graphics-performance-update/ Mercedes A-Class Command System http://www.caricos.com/cars/m/mercedes-benz/2013_mercedes-benz_a-class/1024x768/148.html During the big trade shows the same car makers present their most recent concept cars with shiny new screens and interfaces. Those infotainment concepts often look gorgeous but are solely designed for their visual appearance and to showcase fancy technology. However, the functionality of those concepts is usually not optimized to work in everyday environments. VW Cross Coupe GTE Concept http://image.motortrend.com/f/roadtests/suvs/1501_volkswagen_cross_coupe_gte_concept_first_look/89526289/volkswagen-cross-coupe-gte-concept-interior.jpg Audi Prologue Concept http://ewoudluppens.blogspot.de/2014/11/audi-prologue-interior-as-intern-i.html With all that in mind, we at Bureau Oberhaeuser asked ourselves how we would approach the UI for a car infotainment system. So we decided to challange ourselves with a quick design exercise and ran a side project over a few weeks. As mentioned, we really like Tesla’s general approach and since they provide the best hardware on the market we decided to base our concept on the awesome Model S and it’s 17 inch touchscreen. We designed a concept using responsive widgets that can be rearranged on a flexible grid. The widgets are available in multiple sizes and can freely be combined for a customized user experience by simply dragging and dropping them. The widget size can be adapted either by hitting a button or using a “pinch to zoom” gesture. The color coding of the different widgets makes it easier to quickly recognize the functions you’re looking for. Multiple screen layouts can be saved and managed through a dropdown menu in the statusbar. Hitting the startscreen button always takes you back to your customized startscreen. Cockpit Photo by: Markus Winninghoff, www.winninghoff.net I want to emphasize again that this is an early stage concept that was built within a few weeks as a side project. We are aware that it’s much harder to design a car interface under real life conditions with all the technical and budgetary restrictions of building a production car for the mass market. It would require much more work and real life testing to make this concept ready for market, but we believe in the general approach and will continue to refine it. The good news is that the conversation about next generation infotainment systems has already started and with Apple and Google entering the market there will be a huge lift in the near future. Even the traditional car makers are starting to realize the lack of great UI design by introducing enhanced infotainment systems like Audi’s new virtual cockpit or Volvo’s Sensus System. Either way, I’m looking forward to finally driving my car without getting frustrated while using my infotainment system. For more background information also read some more thoughts about our telsa interface concept on Medium. View the full case study at Behance: https://www.behance.net/gallery/23771657/Tesla-Interface-Concept Martin Oberhäuser Founder Bureau OberhaeuserThis finale heavily used white and red for compositional purposes. White is often associated with purity and good. Red is an intense and eye grabbing color that’s attached to strong emotions, whether they’re positive (love, passion, excitement) or negative (hate, pain, violence). The latter being the representative meaning of red in this episode. The centered wide shot of Kaneki and Rize gives a strong visual of what each character represents. The white flowers are an imagery of what Kaneki aspires to be, which is kind, pure and caring just like his mother. Rize is the ghoul side of Kaneki that infringes upon this vision of himself and tries to awake his real emotions. This is reinforced by the white flowers turning red within her vicinity. In Kaneki’s memory sequence about his mother the white and red flower imagery continues to hold significance. In the first shot, the white flowers are symbolic of a happy moment that exemplifies his mother’s kindness. In the second one, the flowers turn red as Kaneki re-experiences the painful memory of his mother dying. These shots also show that imagery can be the point of interest despite being in the background and even out of focus as long as it’s established convincingly. __________________________________________________________________________ The overhead shot of Kaneki and Rize in a sea of red flowers is the culmination of long held emotions being released. First of these emotions was the pain of not being chosen by his mother over his aunt and the resentment that came along with it. More importantly the red signifies his choice to be a ghoul and the acceptance of violence for the sake of people he cares for. I really liked the way this scene uses circular camera movement. It functions as a way to put more dramatic focus on Kaneki’s anguish and to transition to the horrible vision causing that anguish. The circular movement almost feels like a cycle of pain and misery. ________________________________________________________________________ The use of one point perspective in these shots works in multiples levels. Both shots make Kaneki look distant from what he’s witnessing. It communicates his feeling of helplessness, unable to do anything as he watches his mother get taken advantage of. These shots also isolate him and create a sense of loneliness that stems from his mother’s inability to choose him over anything.This article is about telecommunications in Antarctica. Telephone communication [ edit ] United States bases [ edit ] Telephones - main lines in use: 0 ( note: information for US bases only, 2001 ) Telephones - mobile cellular: Argentine bases have GSM networks provided by Argentinean carriers Claro and Movistar; Iridium system in use Telephone system: general assessment: local systems at some research stations domestic: N/A international: via satellite from some research stations Australian and New Zealand stations [ edit ] Five locations (Casey Station (AU), Davis Station (AU), Macquarie Island Station (AU), Mawson Station (AU) and Scott Base (NZ)) all have telephone connections that enable direct dialling to and from the outside world. Argentinian and Chilean bases within their claims, which have families living at them, are also connected by direct dial connections. Connection to Scott Base and the nearby United States base McMurdo Station is via the New Zealand Country calling code +64,see Telecommunications in New Zealand. Television [ edit ] Television broadcast stations 1 - American Forces Antarctic Network at McMurdo Station, US; cable system with six channels ( note: information for US bases only, 2002 ) Television channels several hundred at McMurdo Station, US ( note: information for US bases only, 2001 ) Internet [ edit ] Internet Service Providers (ISPs): Argentine bases have WiFi provided by Argentinean internet provider Speedy, a fiber cable[clarification needed] on polar plateau which was installed in 2009.[citation needed] Country code (Top level domain):.aq Data access to the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station is provided by access via NASA's TDRS-F1, GOES & Iridium satellite constellation. Marisat F-2 provided data communications until it was retired in 2008. For the 2007-2008 season, the TDRS relay (named South Pole TDRSS Relay or SPTR) was upgraded to support a data return rate of 50 Mbit/s, which comprises over 90% of the South Pole's data capability, which is used primarily for scientific data return.[1][2] See Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station#Operation for more info. Argentine bases in general: Marambio Base has wireless internet and 2 mobile phones servers Orbcomm satellites which pass over Antarctica can relay short messages to and from transceiver units to email or XML over HTTP. Radio [ edit ] Official broadcasts [ edit ] Argentina Bases: Radio Nacional Arcangel San Gabriel, Esperanza Base, on 15476 kHz with 2 kW and 97.6 MHz. QSL cards verified. Chile Bases: Radio Soberania, Villa las Estrellas on 90.5 MHz with 100 W. United States Bases: American Forces Antarctic Network AFAN McMurdo, on 93.9 MHz with 30 W and 104.5 MHz with 50 W. Amateur radio [ edit ] Several bases used their transceivers also to provide amateur radio worldwide communications on HF or amateur radio satellites with specific club callsigns, also useful on utility and emergency communications. Notes [ edit ]Quietly, Bitcoin is on a roll. They key word there is quietly. After spending a long time in the $400 area, the price of the digital currency is now in the high $600s. Via Bitcoinwisdom, here's a long-term chart, which shows the recent climb in perspective. Bitcoinwisdom What feels different about this Bitcoin rally is the lack of hype, and the calmness of the market. While the media mostly forgot about Bitcoin over the last several months, venture capitalists have continued to pour money into startups. And more and more businesses are accepting Bitcoin as payment. Meanwhile, yesterday, Apple appeared to open the door for Bitcoin apps in the app store, a very positive development for the community. Bottom line: The whole
white and as a color, or I at least think it works both as a color picture and a black and white photo. Usually I feel strongly one way or the other, but the contrast here works just as strongly as white on black as it does pale yellow on blue in the color photo. Good contrast, a dark sky, a sense of colossal scale, appealing textures and interesting textures on the concrete (especially on the underside). This photo has a lot of components I really like but for some reason the composition isn’t entirely appealing to me as a whole and I can’t decide why. The light and the shadow from it in the bottom right isn’t the reason, but it is an annoyance that I’ll edit out at some point. The same comments for the above photo are applicable here. I love the contrast of the texture of the windows and the concrete. I feel like it’s got a good visual balance, good range of tones, and yet there’s still something I can’t quite put my finger on where this photo isn’t entirely appealing to me. These are the photos from Boston I most liked. I had a few ideas for upcoming posts while writing this: A color album from Maine (photos also taken on this trip) along with a discussion of color editing. Black and white editing techniques. A further study of perspective control. As always, post your comments and thoughts in the comment section below. I really do appreciate hearing your thoughts and feedback on my work. And, this is very important: if you like the blog, subscribe and tell a friend, it would mean a whole terribly lot to me. Advertisements“Is that a swan?” I ask J. Only the neck gives it away, a shadowy curlicue standing out amid the crushed ice and frozen gloom. The bird appears to have been set into the river as the frilly, lily-like ice floes finally locked together after days of drifting downstream. The River Neris does not freeze easily; even now there are pools of water, pockets of resistance. It is an unsettling spectacle. As J and I stand there hopelessly trying to think of a rescue plan, two journalists come along and start snapping pictures. There are flecks of blood on the bird’s back; the crows encircling it have probably been pecking away at it, impatient for the swan to turn into carrion. Is it a sign of impending misfortune? No, it is a cygnus cruelly stuck in ice. We walk on. J is disturbed, I am ruffled. We are walking fast to stay warm, following the sinuous contours of the river, trying not to slip on the ice. The river was unusually high when it froze over; the expanding ice forced the water to spill over onto the riverside pathway. “Everything is strange today,” J says. I murmur in agreement as I think about the bird starving to death while being eaten alive. J tries to think of which municipal department she should call to get help for the bird; I wonder what to have for dinner. As we approach the White Bridge, I see a young woman and her dog venture out onto the river so she can take a selfie. She is on the other side and does not see me as I angrily signal for her to get off the ice. It isn’t safe, she will fall in, she and her dog will die, all for the sake of a picture that her friends will glance at for a second or two. She ought to be more careful; selfiedom is a hazardous place where cars mysteriously crash, people topple off bridges and cliffs, bulls and bison gore you to death, terrorists blow you up, trains run you over, you spontaneously burst into flames, get washed out to sea or fall through the ice into a frozen river. The woman takes her selfie and returns to the safety of the bank. Each bridge in Vilnius has its own stainless steel sculpture installed beneath it as part of a project to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the restoration of Lithuanian independence (Lithuania has so many anniversaries it can get confusing). The “Ray-Spear” is a 20-metre javelin sticking at a slight angle out of the White Bridge. I like some of the sculptures but not the official explanations for them. Instead, I prefer to imagine that Zeus angrily hurled his thunderbolt down to earth where it landed on a humble little pedestrian footbridge in Vilnius (rather than, say, a farm in Kansas). Why was Zeus so angry? No one knows for sure. Some say he was outraged at the low wages and high cost of living. Others say he had been spurned by a pretty supermarket cashier by the name of Birutė. Or perhaps the swan stuck in the frozen river encircled by hungry crows is his beloved Leda (Zeus threw his thunderbolt to free her but mistimed it by 6 years – a blink of an eye to him!) Hollywood tries to manufacture myth (it has had a few laughable stabs at Zeus) using expensive special effects and words like “hero” and “epic” but it seldom rings true. Myth, by which I mean a story that taps into and resonates with a cosmic frequency, and which does not merely pitch symbolic good versus nominal evil, remains stubbornly dormant in our desolate culture. This is sad, even a tad tragic. Instead, we fumble through life doing psychic battle with inhuman Christian norms of moral behaviour, we vainly seek salvation in whatever form confers it on us (such as a voluptuously shaped bottle). Roberto Calasso wrote of the age of the Greek heroes: “Existence was beyond salvation. Life: something incurable, to be accepted for what it was, in all its malice and splendour.” Just as the swan is frozen in crystallised time, we remain stuck in the dark ages when it comes to being healthily, honestly, mythically human. There is a sign on every bridge in Vilnius whose purpose is to try and deter people from jumping. Lithuania has long been a world leader in suicide: it currently has the highest rate in Europe and the fifth highest in the world. The sign reads: “There are people who CARE about YOU. Free emotional support helpline.” This is followed by a “hope” line number that YOU can call “day and night.” The sign even uses the less formal tu instead of jūs (third person plural), which is commonly used when addressing strangers. It is good. The sign is there. But it is not buoyant. It will not keep people afloat with hope in the slipstreams and crosscurrents and vortices of nonsense on dry land. How is any sensitive, reasonably intelligent person supposed to get by in a world as glib, vacuous, duplicitous and philosophically barren as this? J was recently describing how her former German colleagues would constantly “laugh like hyenas”. I knew painfully well what she meant. In England you have to quip, chitchat and riposte your way through the working day: it felt so alien and exhausting that I struggled to form a facial reaction to it (as tu knows, I can’t smile insincerely). There is such intense social pressure to be outwardly upbeat that just getting through a day leaves you psychically drained. The world has become so trite that misery, which is a socially engineered iteration of far subtler states of discontentment, is explained away by crude external agency (drugs, poverty, bad luck) rather than mined for the rich vein of truth it contains. I remember going to see Scenes from a Marriage when I was 19 at an empty cinema in Boston. A man breaks down in front of his wife in their bedroom. He convulses with tears as he tells her how unbearable life is for him. I sat there and wept in gratitude at this (somewhat stagey) recognition of humanity in all its unbearable complexity and contradictoriness. Later, a kindly teacher wrote a quote from Nietzsche in large chalky letters on the blackboard by way of an introduction to linguistics: “We won’t get rid of God until we get rid of grammar” (sic). At the time I simply understood this as a call to arms, a radical desire to commit symbolic deicide. Later still, I prefer to think it means our existence is vastly limited by our Christianity-inflected language. Where life under ancient Greek polytheism flowed and oozed (and freely boozed), we are still, over 2,000 years in, shackled by the conceptual polarity that monotheistic belief inculcated into every nook and cranny of (Western-influenced) humanity. Or let’s just call it a form of bipolar disorder, to borrow from the jargon of modern psychiatry. In my (admittedly somewhat solipsistic) head, everything flows and oozes (and freely boozes). But out there, in the highly doubtful and profoundly dubious world, I feel like tu. I am become object, thing. I feel wrong, off. I know not what I do. When the Embankment Arch sculpture was installed by the river in 2009, an irate citizen strung up an effigy from a horizontal section of the large rusty pipe. The effigy (named Felix) dangled from it as though it/he had committed suicide. Felix even left a curious suicide note behind: “I am Feliksas. I am asking you not to create and not to exhibit depressing artworks of outdated expression as examples of modern art. Because it’s boring. [So boring] one might hang oneself. I hope that my sacrifice will encourage the emergence of artworks that are visually stronger, more attractive, more modern, in line with the title of the European capital of culture 2009. Feliksas, who has been in Europe.” (translation by J) I have to disagree with poor, dead Felix about the artwork in question, but I find his method of dispatching himself revealing. The anti-suicide signs on bridges in Vilnius are largely redundant because Lithuanians (men and women alike) unquestionably tend to hang themselves. I have heard many (too many) heartbreaking stories of beloved bodies dangling from rafters and ceilings. The rusty pipe sculpture that so offended Felix’s sensibilities is all about flux: historical, political, temporal, artistic. If Felix had had a bit more flux himself he might not have felt so flummoxed by a fucking pipe. And here, finally, we come to the crux of the problem. If tu don’t understand something, admit it. If tu don’t like something, don’t hate it. And if tu find life too painful to bear, try flowing free of the insular conduits and constrictive canalization of your righteous synaptic pathways. J and I have walked 10 kilometres by the time we get back to find the swan (Leda?) still there. We have brought bread but he/she/it is too far out. There is no way we can throw a slice of bread that far, much less with the accuracy needed for the swan to be able to get at it. But there are three men in bright high-visibility vests. One is talking on the phone. The other two are busily conferring. I love these men right now. They are heroes in their bright orange vests and with their manly way of solving strange problems. J exchanges a few friendly words with them. They tell her help is on the way. The next day the swan is gone. We search for footprints on the frozen surface of the river but find none. “Maybe they used a ladder?” J suggests. There is no obvious answer as to how our cygnine friend was liberated. There is not a forced hole in the ice, there is no trace of human activity between the riverbank and where the swan had been stuck. Perhaps the warm wastewater flowing beneath the ice melted it just enough for the bird to break free. Perhaps the swan wriggled and pecked its way to freedom. Perhaps Zeus nipped down to earth to save his feathered amour. Perhaps the ghost of Felix, which now haunts the riverside, was afraid it would turn into another depressing sculpture and got rid of it. Either way, the swan is not there, absent, gone. While life, god help us all, flows on. AdvertisementsDoes our mutual friend Kirk Bohls still have a direct line to Bellmont? According to the Statesman's statesman, Texas Longhorns Athletics Director Steve Patterson has given men's basketball Head Coach Rick Barnes a well-deservec vote of confidence. "We don’t plan on making any changes," Patterson said. "He's the conference coach of the year. He had something like the second-best home record ever (at 16-2). I think everybody feels like we made a great turnaround this year." This comes on the heels of Barnes winning the Big 12 Coaches' vote for Coach of the Year. Prior to the season, the odds of Barnes coaching the Longhorns in 2014-15 would have seemed beyond minute. Instead, Barnes declared that he never worried about keeping his job, and believed his team would make the NCAA Tournament. Well played, Rick. With just one upperclassman (Jonathan Holmes) and a bevy of talent-maximizing freshmen and sophomores, the future looks good for Texas basketball and Rick Barnes. Still, some concerns abound. This is a roster with just one high school five-star prospect (Cameron Ridley). Beyond Holmes, the team lacks a size+quickness component necessary to consistently defend the larger wings and combo forwards that gave the young Horns trouble this year. And shooting. Shooting. Shooting. Can Barnes capitalize on this season's success? With a Big 12 and NCAA Tournament run forthcoming, it may be too early to think about next year. But If Barnes can keep Ridley, develop his scorers, get something out of 6' 7" incoming freshman Jordan Barnett, and (fingers crossed) land five-star game-changer Myles Turner, next year really could be something special.On Monday, after the Boycott Law passed by a vote of 47-38, Likud MKs flocked around MK Zeev Elkin, chairman of the Likud faction and the coalition, a resident of the Etzion Bloc in the West Bank, and the laws sponsor. His seat in the next Knesset is guaranteed. MKs Danny Danon, Tzipi Hotovely, Zion Pinyan and Yariv Levin were there; Ofir Akunis embraced Elkin. If this had been the Teddy Stadium, they would have hoisted Elkin onto their shoulders and carried him in a victory procession. I wasnt out for all the media all the noise, Elkin said modestly the next day. Im also not sure about my seat in the next Knesset. Wholl remember this in another two years? But Elkin knows his voters in the settlements never forget. Amos Biderman At first, he added later, this law was of no interest to anyone. In the preliminary reading everyone supported it, and there were no problems in first reading. Only last week did the media campaign start. In fact, the work was done for me by Peace Now and the left-wing organizations. Then Kadima also got on the bandwagon. Tzipi Livni did not take part in the previous votes; it was only on Monday, when she saw what was going on, that she remembered she was against it. Elkin is right. He worked on the legislation for a few months, scurrying between the relevant ministries, taking part in discussions of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee. The only one from Kadima who tried to shoot down the bill there was MK Yohanan Plesner. In private conversations, Elkin sounds a lot less ideological and extreme than he comes off elsewhere. Someone asked if he thinks the law will cause Israel international damage. In the long run, I think not, he said with satisfaction. But the campaign against the law is causing us a certain amount of damage. There are some who attribute Elkins aggressive behavior to his Russian origins; in some Knesset circles, hes known as the Bolshevik. His Hebrew is good, but he has a strong accent. Ten years ago, he was a member of Natan Sharanskys Yisrael BAliyah party. In 2005, he spearheaded Likuds Russian-language campaign against the withdrawal from Gaza. Afterward, still a political unknown, he got an offer from Kadima leader Ariel Sharon to defect to that party and enter the Knesset easily, as part of a slate of candidates drawn up by the partys founder, who was in need of a settler who was also Russian. Elkin put ideology aside momentarily, and entered the Knesset on the Kadima list under Ehud Olmert. On the eve of the last elections he returned to Likud and was chosen in the party primary to run as a representative of the new immigrants constituency. MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List-Taal) asked Elkin if his passion for enacting legislation of this kind had to do with his being beaten up as a kid. The immigrants, veterans and newcomers alike, sometimes carry unpleasant memories from Mother Russia or from the torment of trying to integrate in Israel. Keep updated: Sign up to our newsletter Email * Please enter a valid email address Sign up Please wait… Thank you for signing up. We've got more newsletters we think you'll find interesting. Click here Oops. Something went wrong. Please try again later. Try again Thank you, The email address you have provided is already registered. Close Grace and decorum As the left continues to crumble and be increasingly irrelevant, the parliamentary right is becoming ever more militant against the Arab public, the professors, the Supreme Court, creative artists, so-called intellectuals, donors from abroad and so on. In the past Israels right wing was characterized by grace and decorum, as decreed by Revisionist leader Zeev Jabotinsky, and by grace and courage, as per the Betar anthem. These days, Benjamin Netanyahu is not ashamed to take the floor and declare that if not for his support of the problematic law, it would not have come to a vote. If so, why didnt the government sponsor it? Why was it dragged in by Elkin? And why didnt Netanyahu bother going to the Knesset Monday night to vote? The answer is that there is no government in Israel and no head of government. The tail is wagging the dog. Junior MKs dictate the national agenda to the government. One time its Elkin, another time its David Rotem from Yisrael Beiteinu, with the admission committees law or maybe Fania Kirshenbaum, from the same party, with her suggestion to establish parliamentary committees of inquiry against left-wing organizations. Or it might be Alex Miller, also from Yisrael Beiteinu, with the Nakba Law or with his Cinema Law, which says that only those who declare loyalty to the state as a Jewish and democratic country will get government funding for making films. Behind the scenes the settlers are at work: They are the real government in Israel. MKs from Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu compete with one another in persecuting the left, which for years has been dealt one electoral blow after another. New members of Likud are increasingly extreme. Likud activists know whom to appeal to in order to get votes in the next primaries: Both Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman are in competition for support of the right. Less than two days after Elkin pushed through the Boycott Law, Lieberman announced that next week, his Yisrael Beiteinu faction will submit Kirshenbaums proposal involving parliamentary committees of inquiry. A few hours after that announcement, Bibi declared that the Boycott Law was his baby. Betwixt and between, Lieberman vanquished the government on the question of raising the retirement age for women to 67, and said his faction would support the bill proposed by MK Dalia Itzik (Kadima) to leave it at 62. Netanyahu balked and declared that Likud MKs could vote as they wished. Thus Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz was the only one to vote against Itziks bill, versus 67 supporters. Speaker of the Knesset Reuven Rivlin tried to block the Boycott Law. Just before the vote, he was under heavy pressure from cabinet secretary Zvi Hauser to remove the bill from the agenda to avoid embarrassment to the government while the Quartet was meeting in Washington. Rivlin said he would comply if the government were to announce, even as a formality, that it would examine possible revisions to the bill. Hauser could not promise any such announcement from the Prime Ministers Bureau. Rivlin nevertheless asked Elkin to reconsider. Elkin declined. If we postpone it for a week, the pressure will only grow, he explained. Rivlin threw in the towel. Do you know the old song, We dont want to sleep / We want to go crazy? Well, go crazy. I, for one, will not vote for this bill. At midday Wednesday, at the height of the storm over the Boycott Law, MKs Levin and Elkin stated that they intend to submit a bill giving the Knesset veto power over appointments of Supreme Court justices, by means of hearings for candidates in the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee. Shortly after the two made their announcement in the press, the cell phones of the 2,500 or so members of the Likud central committee vibrated with the following text message: Toward a revolution in the Supreme Court the transparency law for appointment of justices, sponsored by MK Yariv Levin. The whole Likud is mobilizing! Someone invested quite a lot of money in this project. But it was too much to swallow, even for Likudniks. The first to issue a tough rejection of the idea was Education Minister Gideon Saar. He set the tone. Following him, the bureaus of Rivlin and of ministers Begin and Meridor released similar statements. A few hours later, Netanyahu took the podium in the Knesset to present his governments achievements and to defend the Boycott Law. We respect the Supreme Court, we will protect the Supreme Court, he said. An hour later, the premiers office issued a more detailed communique, stating that Netanyahu opposes unequivocally a bill that will grant the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee the authority to disqualify candidates for judgeships and intervene in the appointment of judges. Next week, the Knesset will go back to squabbling over the bill to investigate left-wing groups. More brilliant ideas await us in the week after that, and then the Knesset will disperse for a long summer recess, and quiet shall descend upon Israel at least for 80 days.New Delhi: State power distribution companies have started reporting handsome savings and improvements in operational efficiency after local authorities refinanced utility debt with over Rs1.6 trillion worth of state bonds and found ways of cutting down power theft under the debt restructuring-cum-turnaround scheme, the Ujjwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY), rolled out 15 months ago, according to a review by the Union power ministry. Utilities in Rajasthan, Haryana, Chhattisgarh and Punjab are among the major gainers in lowering their interest cost. Three state-owned power utilities in Rajasthan have reported that their collective interest cost in 2016-17 will drop by half to Rs4,739 crore, compared to what they incurred a year ago, according to the review. The projection for the current financial year is based on the interest cost savings made in the first half of the year. The Rajasthan government is refinancing Rs60,500 crore of the collective debt of Jaipur Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd, Jodhpur Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd and Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd under the scheme. Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam Ltd, which has turned around and reported a small profit in the first half of this year, has projected a saving of ₹ 66 crore in interest cost for FY2017 as the liability comes down to ₹ 1,005 crore for the year. Chhattisgarh State Power Distribution Company Ltd projected a saving of ₹ 526 crore as interest cost in the current financial year falls to just 19% of what was in 2015-16. Fifteen states with loss-making utilities, out of the 21 that signed up for the scheme, have been allowed by the finance ministry to refinance their collective utility debt of ₹ 1.94 trillion so far. The remaining over ₹ 4,000 crore of debt is set to hit the market shortly. Six states with healthy utilities signed up for UDAY only for operational benefits. While savings in interest cost from the debt restructuring is evident, consolidating the turnaround will hinge on how utilities make sharp cuts in losses from transmission and theft (called AT&C losses) and close the gap between their cost of supplying power and the revenue realised. Although utilities in states like Goa, Jharkhand and Puducherry have reported improvements on this front, such losses still are high in many states with 47% in Bihar and over 71% in Jammu and Kashmir. States are devising various ways to cut these losses. Haryana government increased electricity supplies to ensure uninterrupted energy access in areas where electricity bill payment is prompt, while Manipur experimented with pre-paid metering and naming and shaming of defaulters. Finance departments in state governments are paying special attention to reducing losses of utilities as these will be counted as part of the state’s fiscal deficit from 2018-19. However, interest costs and other operational expenses account for only a relatively smaller part of the overall cost of a distribution company, about 80% of which is its power purchase cost, which needs to be kept under control. Experts say utilities need to make sure that industrial consumers do not switch to other sources of power such as power exchanges. “Along with large scale metering and loss reduction programmes, discoms should take urgent measures to optimize their power purchase cost and rationalise tariff to retain and attract high value (industrial) customers. As the demand picks up (due to GDP growth, the Make in India drive, electrification and 24x7 power) and gap between cost of service to revenue realised is bridged, many utilities will become profitable in the next two-three years, said Sambitosh Mohapatra, partner, energy utilities and mining, PwC India.Just like in Antonio Tabucchi’s novel, Pereira Maintains (set in Portugal in 1938, under the fascist regime of Antonio Salazar), Spain’s acting Foreign Minister José Manuel García Margallo appears to have perceived the excesses of a government (in this case, the European Union) with regard to its citizens, and he is asking for changes in its policy of budget austerity. Margallo maintains that “while nobody can indefinitely spend more than what they make, it is no less true that we have gone way overboard with the issue of austerity.” If it were not for the fact that the speaker is a salient minister of the Mariano Rajoy administration (that champion of fiscal rigor), the story would have gone unnoticed – just one more statement from another international expert asking for greater budget flexibility in the EU to stimulate economic growth and create jobs. Podemos proposes embarking on a public spending spree with no thought to the consequences Although the foreign minister is very prone to extemporaneous statements, this time his words could mean a number of things. The first (and least likely) option is that it is simply something he said off the top of his head during a television interview. The second possibility is that the minister repeated something he heard back home, and that a theory is gaining traction within the Spanish government that Madrid needs to ask the European Commission for more fiscal flexibility. But there is a third option (and chances are good that this is the right one): this is the same type of message that we will soon be hearing during the upcoming campaign race. Margallo has already said: “Yes to austerity, but no to killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.” Sign up for our newsletter EL PAÍS English Edition has launched a weekly newsletter. Sign up today to receive a selection of our best stories in your inbox every Saturday morning. For full details about how to subscribe, click here. Whatever the case may be, the foreign minister’s words resonate with a good portion of European social-democratic politicians, and his view is in line with the latest recommendations by the International Monetary Fund. As Margallo notes, the thesis is quite simple: the euro zone has to analyze why it is growing less than its competitors and it also needs to acknowledge that monetary policy has nothing more to offer, because it is not possible to lower interest rates any further. Consequently, it is necessary to loosen the reins a bit on fiscal policy in order to grow and create jobs. This line of reasoning was laid out in the Socialist Party’s platform for the December 20 election, and it will surely be included once more on its list of proposals for June 26. It was also there in the investiture deal that the Socialists signed with Ciudadanos. As recently as this week, the Popular Party (PP) continued to defend the kind of fiscal austerity imposed by the German government, while at the other end of the spectrum, Podemos is proposing ending austerity altogether and embarking on a public-spending spree with no thought to the consequences. Meanwhile, the government continues to await possible sanctions after the European Commission opened proceedings against Spain for its continuous public deficit excesses. At the same time, Madrid is negotiating the macroeconomic scenarios for the coming years. Perhaps this would be the right time to, as Margallo maintains, insist on greater fiscal flexibility to better address Spain’s main problem: unemployment. English version by Susana Urra.Computer keyboards have come a long way, they took the forms of typewriters and change themselves so as to fit with contemporary needs. There are many types of keyboards, with different quirks to them, in contrast to the misconception that all keyboards are alike. Some prefer their keyboard to have easier access to certain keys (personalized or industrial gaming keyboards), some prefer it to be wireless, some want it to have a wide range of multimedia applications, which is a properties many integrated laptop keyboards have etc. Each one of them has their own unique thing, however, there’s one thing most are similar in: they are not specifically designed to give you a better time typing. Alas, an article about keyboards, the tools that guarantee your hourly journeys’ safety to the Internet, a place of wonders and memes. Also they guarantee that the potentiality of getting fired from your office job is significantly reduced, as long as you type really fast when your boss is looking. However, as all things, excessive usage maketh bad things, and if you use keyboards too much there’s high chance something bad comes from it. I’m talking about how the average keyboards aren’t designed so that you can get comfortable typing on it – in fact, your form while typing most likely is very awkward, and specifically harmful to your wrists. On that note, ergonomic keyboards came to being as a knight in shining armors… depends on the style of the prototype, of course. More... Office ergonomic tools being good is no longer talked about as a ruse, au contraire, they’re now on the positive ends of what’s considered necessary and what’s not for your working experience. As you hopefully already know, these rants of mine are usually very long in relation to other similar listicles and general opinion posts, as I somewhat intend to have a mix of both in all of them. That would mean in order to have a good rant I must have spent a lot of time typing, alongside thinking up things to type, which I don’t usually do. And, as implied, if I were using a normal keyboard, my wrists would have a lot of subtle pain that most likely only appears at random unlike cued unfunny cutaway gags on Family Guy. Of course, that indeed happen for a while, my wrist would often be bent to the side of my forearms unbeknownst to me, as it can happen very frequently in the midst of enthusiastically typing up something. This can apply to workers who actually are workaholics too and too focused in their work to know about twerking… or bad rhyming… or that their typing form is unnatural. According to professor Alan Hedge, director of Cornell University’s Human Factors and Ergonomic Research Group, “When you put your hands on a regular keyboard, your wrist is often bent so that the little finger is really bending away from the wrist, since your arms are coming in from the sides. That’s called ulnar deviation. That results in compression on the ulnar nerve, and also it can cause compression of some of the tendons used to flex the fingers.” In other words, having bad typing forms can lead you to being unable to play flutes as well as others. That said, people often overlook this, obviously. Most of the time the pain or particularly wrist pain that results from this can generally be pretty minor and harmless, so it’s not enough to ruin their day, so they don’t care. However, for those who use keyboards at a much higher volume than most i.e. content marketers or copywriters, after a certain period of time depends on your biological design that minor pain can develop into a serious problem. Of course, at that stage, there aren’t many keyboards that can help revert things back, however if you want to prevent such a scenario from happening, getting yourself an ergonomic keyboard is one of the solutions. Again, they can’t help you if you already have serious repetitive stress injury or some serious forearm pain, but they can really help you get much more comfortable time typing as opposed to an traditional keyboard. Of course, this is 2017, and people (some) have started to use text or speech programs to get rid of the need for typing entirely. Still, most of those programs are underdeveloped and too cool for school, or for work, making themselves inefficient and maybe beyond inconvenient in some cases. For ergonomic keyboards, I recognize that they also look and seem too cool for school, but as long as you’re willing to learn the ropes they can become very useful and powerful tools. What this means is, they are designed to rid you of the ol’ flawed hand postures, decreasing potential chances of hand especially wrist injuries, which in turns increasing your typing efficiency since now you feel more relaxed typing. I know this because while making the switch was hard for me at first as well, like my relationships with most ergonomic products, the benefits I received afterwards was absolutely worth it. Everybody’s different and so are their body types, thus no one specific keyboard is good for everyone. So, as unfunny and rude as I am most of the time, I am a good guy, and I will give you a tour through 3 of my favorite ergonomic keyboards, particularly favored for their relatively minimalistic outlook and also their effectiveness in preventing wrist injuries, which can be the root of many pain that results from overworking with a normal keyboard. For the first keyboard on the list, I want it to be a Microsoft type, and no better one to start off with than the Microsoft Natural Keyboard Elite. Microsoft has produced a lot of good ergonomic keyboards over the years, in fact they are one of the pioneers in this market, with the Natural Keyboard Elite as one of their longest on sale products, and for good reason. You know how most laptop keyboards are integrated? So when you buy a laptop, you most likely will be stuck with it’s keyboard until you throw the whole thing out of a window in a fit. But these laptop keyboards, especially these days, make up for it by including a lot of multimedia features and commands that a normal keyboard don’t usually have. This Natural Keyboard Elite, however, being hailed as one of the best ergonomic keyboards ever, takes pride in it’s ability to include all of the features that fulfill your ergonomic needs. Most ergonomic keyboards are designed so that the layout is split and spread out to both sides. That way the angle of our hands can be straight on the keys. This Microsoft keyboard is one of the first to realize that trend and even despite that, the layout design that it dresses upon is still very much in line with contemporary times and more. Besides the split design, the keyboard comes with a gently sloped curve and both combined to promote a more natural hand and arm position, as well as helping alleviate wrist strain. And not just that. As implied, this keyboard embeds within itself a very proficient multimedia control system, a one touch control over various computer functions and it’s own enhanced F-key commands. These combined give you easier access to your favorite music, video clips or media programs, as well as setting the perfect sound level with the integrated volume controls, enabling you to tailor your keyboard to match your needs. In a lot of ways, the Natural Keyboard Elite can pretty much be the one to get as your first ergonomic keyboard, just to test the waters. It’s split, sloped design in my opinion is one of the best in that it gives you an easier time on the learning curve, as it naturally transitions you into a favorable hands and arms position, preventing wrist injuries without forcing it. Coupled that with multimedia control features, the Natural Keyboard Elite’s guaranteed to be the opposite of a waste of money. Slick, easy to use layout for new users Enhanced F-key commands allowing better access Multimedia control I always point to this product when people say they want an ergonomic keyboard that they don’t have to get too far out of the comfort zone in order for them to use it efficiently. It won’t be the Natural Keyboard Elite, while plenty easier to use than most still actually requires a learning period, nor it will be any hip split (literally split, I mean) keyboards out there. No, it has to be the Logitech K350 Wireless Keyboard, or so according to me. There’s a reason it’s one of the best selling keyboards on the market right now, which is that it’s specifically designed so as to making itself the best compromise between the ease of use such as that of a normal, classic keyboard and the contemporary ergonomic design. The Logitech K350 Wireless Keyboard adopts a wave design with constant curve layout instead of a split one, and it functions just as well in guiding your hands into the right positions like a split layout would. This wavy curve also allows the inclusion of the cushioned palm/wrist rest just below a more natural feeling, collectively helping your hands, arms and wrists get comfortable even for long term use. This keyboard also has a multimedia center in the form of a black set of keys that is positioned at the top center, which includes volume control, and pause/play/stop/ff/rev system. As it’s wireless, it requires the use of battery, but this feature’s good enough even for professional computer user as the battery gives you up to 3 years of battery life, longer than most on the market. My one complaint with this type, however, for all of it’s goodness in ergonomic design, programmability, is that’s it’s durability can be inferior than say the Natural Keyboard Elite. However it’s not too noticeable in
substances continues - while having the definition be too wide could make it too unwieldy," it adds. "Following the legislative change, we hope the government will do all it can to raise public awareness of the issue, particularly so that shop owners don't fall foul of the law." Image caption Grace was addicted to Spice but has not used it now for more than three weeks It also worries that forensic labs currently being used for Misuse of Drugs Act offences "are already under pressure to get an already high workload processed and this will add more work." But the government says the ban will make the UK the first country in the world to put in place a rigorous system of testing to demonstrate that a substance is capable of having a psychoactive effect. Back at the drop-in centre in Manchester. 24-year-old Dean disappears every 15 minutes - he's popping out for his next hit. Last year he almost died when his heart stopped after smoking a £5 bag of Spice. But he's still using. "I got hooked on it the first time I ever tried it. My mate said 'hey I've got a spliff for you', I had three, four drags, and I was stuck up against a wall for two hours. "Ever since that day I haven't stopped smoking it. I hate the fact I'm on it. I wish I never heard of it, I wish I never touched it." He says when he tried to come off the substance, he got stomach ache and threw up in pain every eight hours. Image caption Dean had a cardiac arrest last year while smoking a bag of Spice However, the staff at Lifeshare have helped some kick the habit. Grace says for the first time in a long time, she is hopeful. She has been off Spice for 22 days. "It's difficult, but not as difficult as it's been in the past. A lot of the rattling is in your head, but you keep yourself calm and think no, it'll be ok, I'm going to get through this." The teenager is now on a mission to help her friends get off it too. This summer she is planning a "Spice Free" BBQ with one rule - they cannot get high or be high that day. When asked if it would have made a difference if Spice was banned when she started taking it, Grace sighs. "It might affect people's original decision to start using it but after you have got hooked on it, it doesn't have any play on it at all. "You are not bothered by whether it's legal or safe, because it's doing the trick for you… so you keep taking it."The quiet of the day is destroyed by the roar of a Space Shuttle rising of the pad. In this historical photo from the U.S. space agency, hundreds of birds scatter as the typical quiet reverie of their day is temporarily broken by the roar of a Space Shuttle surging off the pad on Nov. 3, 1994. The orbiter Atlantis returned to space after an approximately two-year absence with a liftoff from Launch Pad 39B at 11:59:43 a.m. EST. The planned 11-day flight of Space Shuttle Mission STS-66 will continue NASA's Mission to Planet Earth, a comprehensive international collaboration to study how Earth's environment is changing and how human beings affect that change. Primary payloads for the last Shuttle flight of 1994 include the Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science (ATLAS-3), making its third flight, and the German-built Cryogenic Infrared Spectrometers and Telescopes for the Atmosphere-Shuttle Pallet Satellite (CRISTA-SPAS), which will be deployed and later retrieved during the mission. Mission commander is Donald R. McMonagle; Curtis L. Brown Jr. is the pilot; Ellen Ochoa is the payload commander, and the three mission specialists are Joseph R. Tanner, Scott E. Parazynski, and Jean-Francois Clervoy, a French citizen who is with the European Space Agency. Each weekday, SPACE.com looks back at the history of spaceflight through photos (archive).For unlimited access to the best local, national, and international news and much more, try an All Access Digital subscription: We hope you have enjoyed your trial! To continue reading, we recommend our Read Now Pay Later membership. Simply add a form of payment and pay only 27¢ per article. Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year. Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year. Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year. Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year. For unlimited access to the best local, national, and international news and much more, try an All Access Digital subscription: We hope you have enjoyed your trial! To continue reading, we recommend our Read Now Pay Later membership. Simply add a form of payment and pay only 27¢ per article. For unlimited access to the best local, national, and international news and much more, try an All Access Digital subscription: We hope you have enjoyed your trial! To continue reading, we recommend our Read Now Pay Later membership. Simply add a form of payment and pay only 27¢ per article. Part of why challenges were running so long was because coaches would use the TV timeout to look over a play before throwing a challenge flag. Under the new rule, coaches will now have just 30 seconds into a commercial break to decide whether they want to challenge a call. Johnson said one of the biggest issues the league wanted to address was to reduce the amount of time it takes for a coach’s challenge. The goal, Johnson said, was to have challenges last no more than 90 seconds, something his group achieved by the end of last season. Glen Johnson, senior vice-president of football for the CFL and chairman of the league’s rules committee, was in Winnipeg Wednesday to walk media through some of the finer points behind what and why the moves were made. The Canadian Football League is introducing five new rule changes for the 2017 season in an attempt to speed up the game, maintain player safety and provide an overall better product on the field. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 12/4/2017 (684 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 12/4/2017 (684 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The Canadian Football League is introducing five new rule changes for the 2017 season in an attempt to speed up the game, maintain player safety and provide an overall better product on the field. Glen Johnson, senior vice-president of football for the CFL and chairman of the league’s rules committee, was in Winnipeg Wednesday to walk media through some of the finer points behind what and why the moves were made. Johnson said one of the biggest issues the league wanted to address was to reduce the amount of time it takes for a coach’s challenge. The goal, Johnson said, was to have challenges last no more than 90 seconds, something his group achieved by the end of last season. Part of why challenges were running so long was because coaches would use the TV timeout to look over a play before throwing a challenge flag. Under the new rule, coaches will now have just 30 seconds into a commercial break to decide whether they want to challenge a call. To help aid coaches, the backup timekeeper in the game will step onto the field and once the game breaks for a timeout, he’ll raise a green flag. An official will then stand beside a coach, giving him the full 30 seconds to make a decision. "We’re not trying to trick the coach or catch them," said Johnson. The league has also limited what a coach can challenge when it comes to roughing the passer, a challengeable offence that was brought in last season. When the rule was first implemented, what Johnson said happened was confusion started over what could and couldn’t be challenged. In order to dispel any further confusion, the CFL has informed each team a play can only be challenged under the true definition of roughing the passer — rule 7.2.4 on page 56 of the CFL rulebook — meaning the quarterback must be in the midst of a passing motion for a play to be challenged. Also, when it comes to head contact, it must be a deliberate blow to the helmet, with inadvertent contact not classified as a punishable offence. There will also be an increase in the duties of the video official. Before, a video official would be monitoring every play in search of the right call. Now, when a penalty flag is thrown the video official will be in charge of correcting or looking for additional infractions. This includes dead-ball penalties, with the video official now able to look back on the play and to see how the melee first started and provide additional penalties if necessary. This rule has also been put in place to ensure, in the case of an ejection, the right player is penalized. In an attempt to rid potentially dangerous low blocks from the game, the CFL will now issue a 15-yard unnecessary roughness penalty when it occurs on a possession change (kickoff, punts). Johnson said although the number of injuries were low last season, the number of blocks that were happening are too high to ignore. And the only punishment — a 10-yard illegal block call — was not enough of an incentive to prevent them from happening. Teams would usually just decline the 10-yard penalty because often the return was greater and therefore deemed useless. Now, teams will earn an additional 15 yards on the return. Furthermore, the league has restricted Team B (defence) substitution rules on kick-return plays. Johnson said the issue arose after a few occasions last season when the returning team, considered the "defence" on the play, took advantage of being able to substitute a player at any time without the ref acknowledging a change. Under the old rules, a team was able to have a player step off the sidelines just before the play started and, in some cases, it resulted in a trick play, with the returner lateralling the ball across the field to a player with an open run up field. Now, a player must come into the numbers and be recognized by an official. [email protected]: @jeffkhamiltonAndrea Passoni/Flickr The Milan skyscrapers Bosco Verticale — "vertical forest" in Italian — are two of the most eye-catching in the world. Now, according to the jury of The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, they're also the winner of the Best Tall Building Worldwide award. The plant-covered buildings beat out more than 120 skyscrapers, including titans like 1 World Trade Center, in New York City, and Burj Mohammed Bin Rashid Tower, in Abu Dhabi. Forgemind Archimedia/Flickr The 256-foot and 344-foot towers are covered head to toe in more than 700 trees and 90 species of plants. Earlier this year, the innovative design earned the structure and its architecture firm, Stefano Boeri Architetti, second place in this year's Emporis Skyscraper Award. Bosco Verticale's foliage-heavy design goes way beyond eye-catching. The green architecture really is "green." Stringer Italy/Reuters All the plant life helps reduce smog, dampen noise levels, produce oxygen, and regulate temperatures inside the two buildings. During the winter, sunlight can easily pass through the bare plant life and help heat people's rooms. During the summer, the leaves can block harsh rays from making apartments too hot. Inside the building, a complex irrigation system redirects the water people use back onto the porches to sustain plant life. Forgemind ArchiMedia/Flickr Designer and architect Stefano Boeri says the added greenery also serves as a way to redefine the urban space. "It is a model of vertical densification of nature within the city," he says. And dense it is: If all the trees were laid flat on the ground, the forest would cover an area of nearly two acres. Forgemind ArchiMedia/Flickr Pruning the trees themselves took two years, Boeri says. They had to be specially designed to fit beneath balconies of varying heights. Forgemind Archimedia/Flickr Boeri's towers have already inspired others to take up the same "reforestation" model. In Australia, the world's tallest vertical forest is currently under construction. Architect Jean Nouvel and artist and botanist Patrick Blanc have teamed up to create One Central Park, located in Sydney. The structure houses more than 190 plant species native to Australia and features teeming vines that climb up the side of the building. In Seoul, South Korea, a 70-story urban Skyfarm stacks trees and other vegetation on a structure that, itself, looks like a mammoth tree. The concept allows for efficient crop farming without the need to leave the city. That drive to bring the rural into the urban could end up being less of a novelty and more of the standard. In 1800, only 3% of people lived in cities. By 1950, that rate had risen to 30%, and today it sits at an even split. In developed nations, the rate is even higher — approximately 74%. If the trend of vertical forestation holds, we had better get used to the sound of birds chirping a little closer to home.Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. Some of the best parenting advice I’ve ever gotten was from a website for prison guards. While researching a story on prison riots, I was browsing CorrectionsOne, a site for corrections professionals whose typical stories have titles like “Mass. man escapes jail wearing only boxer shorts” and “Alternative Uses for Batons” (sorry, that one’s for sworn correctional officers only). There, amid the Taser ads and tales of prison gangs, I came across an article that changed the way I think about being a dad. The article, “7 things never to say to anyone, and why”, listed common statements used by prison guards and police officers and explained why they make people do the exact opposite of what they’re being told to do. The seven things were: 1. “Hey you! Come here!” 2. “Calm down!” 3. “I’m not going to tell you again!” 4. “Be more reasonable!” 5. “Because those are the rules!” 6. “What’s your problem?” 7. “What do you want me to do about it?” If you’ve ever been a child or have your own, you undoubtedly recognize those as the greatest hits of the pissed-off parent. As the father of three kids under five, I’ve probably said some variation of each of these phrases dozens, if not hundreds, of times. The list was compiled by Dr. George “Rhino” Thompson, an English professor-turned-cop whose theory of “tactical communications” has been packaged into a training program called Verbal Judo that’s been used by prisons and police departments across the country. Its core principle is that you should never say what first comes to mind, especially when you’re angry. “The most dangerous weapon you have is not the 9-millimeter or the.357 or the Ithaca pump shotgun,” Thompson says in one of his instructional clips. “No! The most dangerous weapon is the cocked tongue.” Here’s what he means. Consider why barking the command “Come here!” doesn’t really work. Thompson explains in his article, You have just warned the subject that he is in trouble. “Come here” means to you, “Over here, you are under my authority.” But to the subject it means, “Go away—quickly!” The words are not tactical for they have provided a warning and possibly precipitated a chase that would not have been necessary had you, instead, walked casually in his direction and once close said, “Excuse me. Could I chat with [you] momentarily?” Notice this question is polite, professional, and calm. As a parent, your job is to care, feed, and protect people who find themselves in a situation from which they can’t escape. They’re often not too happy about it. Now substitute the word “subject” with “three-year-old,” and you have a perfect description of how an everyday exchange with your child can rapidly turn into an all-out confrontation. Another familiar example: “I’m not going to tell you again!” This phrase, Thompson says, “is almost always a lie. You will say it again, and possibly again and again!” And there’s the old parental fall-back, “Because those are the rules!” It only encourages resistance, says Thompson. Better to explain the rules and why they’re important: “A true sign of respect is to tell people why, and telling people why generates voluntary compliance.” Reading Thompson’s article made me realize two things: One, I needed to rethink how I talked to my children. Second, raising kids isn’t totally unlike being a prison guard. I don’t mean to belittle the hardships of prison or exaggerate the irritations of family life. But as a parent, your job is to care for, feed, and protect people who find themselves in a situation where they don’t make the rules and from which they can’t escape. They’re often not too happy about it. (The other day, my two-year-old pressed up against the glass next to the front door and growled, “I want to get out—jail!”) Being a parent sometimes means enforcing lights out, serving unpalatable meals, confiscating contraband, and punishing infractions by rescinding privileges or using the kiddie equivalent of solitary: the quiet corner/chair/room. You have to manage ever-shifting alliances and rivalries between siblings, with their turf battles, insider lingo, idiosyncratic concepts of fairness, and the fashioning of weapons from household objects. You’re often overworked, outnumbered, and outwitted. Yet if all goes well, your kids do their time and enter the outside world with the values and skills they need to survive. (Hopefully, they never “break parole” and come home again.) Thankfully, as a parent, you don’t have the recourse to violence that prison guards do. But when you screw up, things can devolve into a Stanford Prison Experiment-type situation: a feedback loop where everyone assumes oppositional roles that feed the tension and conflict. That’s why, whenever my kids and I have a failure to communicate, I try to think of the advice contained in Thompson’s list of seven things not to say to anyone. Its overall lesson is this: No matter how mad or frustrated you are, you can—and should—communicate in a way that conveys respect and empathy. While such courtesy may feel like a concession of authority, it is actually the best way to keep control of the situation. If you stay calm, your kids are more likely to cool down. (Bonus points if you acknowledge their feelings and explain the consequences of their behavior.) If you escalate, your kids are likely to get even more defensive or obstinate. And that will probably prompt you do something futile, like shouting “Be quiet!” or making elaborate threats you either have to follow through with or lose face. “Natural language”—what our gut tells us to say—”is disastrous,” writes Thompson. Easier said than done, right? Admittedly, doing some Verbal Judo on your kids would probably a lot simpler if you looked and sounded like Doc “Rhino,” a barrel-chested guy with a shaved head and a raspy voice caused by a bout of throat cancer. (Sadly, Thompson died unexpectedly last week at the age of 69.) But in my sporadic application of his strategies, I’ve been pleasantly surprised. My kids don’t always react with “voluntary compliance,” but I feel a lot better about how I’m treating them, even if inwardly I’m not feeling like the equanimous dad I aspire to be. Is it weird subjecting your kids to communication strategies designed to talk down angry convicts? I don’t think so. In fact, it’s striking how much overlap there is between Thompson’s message and that of Positive Discipline, a parenting philosophy that shuns traditional yell-and-punish techniques for a more touchy-feely approach in which parents try to understand the emotions behind kids’ actions. Both are based on the idea that empathy and steadiness aren’t mutually exclusive. As Jane Nelson, one of the advocates of Positive Discipline, states, “If you’re being too kind without being firm, you’re probably being too permissive. And if you’re being firm without being kind, you’re probably being controlling and disrespectful.” Or as Thompson succinctly puts it, “Polite civility can be a weapon of immense power!” Keep that in mind the next time you’re ready to tell your kids to go the f*** to sleep.With no BMO Field renovations this winter, Toronto FC’s schedule to open the 2017 season is fairly normal. That’s a nice break from the past two years, where the Reds haven’t seen home field until early May, saddled with a seven-game road trip in both seasons. TFC do start on the road at Real Salt Lake this weekend, but the home opener follows later this month against Sporting KC. With all that in mind, Toronto’s early-season schedule means they need to hit the ground running this year. Putting up points in the first few months of the season, particularly while the squad is healthy, could make or break their position in the standings come October. Looking at TFC’s 2017 calendar, the month of July sticks out like a sore thumb as a potential disaster waiting to happen. Not only do the Reds play FC Dallas, the Colorado Rapids and New York City FC (twice), but they’ll also be losing as many as seven first-team players to the CONCACAF Gold Cup that month. Jozy Altidore, Michael Bradley, Jonathan Osorio, Tosaint Ricketts, Jordan Hamilton, Jay Chapman, and Armando Cooper are all likely to play for the USA, Canada, and Panama at the Gold Cup. There’s also the chance that Eriq Zavaleta joins El Salvador, further hurting Toronto’s backline. The tournament runs from July 7–26. To a TFC fan, that month is rightfully terrifying. Toronto will be praying that Sebastian Giovinco goes into July on top form, because he’ll be pretty much relied upon for offence against some of the best teams in the league. July is far and away the hardest month for TFC, with opponents that averaged 53.4 points last season. That’s why padding out their position in the Eastern Conference is so important in the first few months this year. The Reds have some very winnable games in March and April, clashing with the likes of the Philadelphia Union, Chicago Fire and Houston Dynamo. Actually, April looks likely to be the easiest month of the year, with three opponents averaging 33.7 points in 2016 on the calendar as well as the enigmatic Atlanta United early in their first MLS campaign. Toronto won’t really see a true known contender until May 6, when they head to Seattle for an MLS Cup rematch with the Sounders. Over the nine games until then, they’ll be playing opponents with an average 2016 point total of 39.5 (not counting Atlanta, of course), only three of which made the playoffs a year ago. So, the ball is truly in TFC’s court with regards to how they come out of the gate. Preseason had its ups and downs (they’ll want to leave that Chicago game last weekend behind them quickly), and the 12-week offseason could leave them with a bit of an MLS Cup hangover. Still, Greg Vanney seems to be settling on his optimal lineup, and most of this group has had plenty of time to mesh. Really, TFC have no excuse for not starting the season well. The team seems to be hinting that they fancy a run at the Supporters’ Shield this year, and fair play to them for it. That said, work toward such a lofty goal needs to start immediately. The Reds cannot afford to be far off the top of the Eastern Conference by the summer.Chasmville is the first in a series of 5 Mapping Challenges called The Hammer Cup 2016, which has a Grand Prize of a NECA Gravity Gun, plus other prizes for second and third places. This challenge contains 13 entries all with the idea of a Chasm as the main theme. Theme Details The main element of the map must be a chasm. Canyon, gorge, abyss, rift – whatever you want to call it, but it must be the key feature of the map. This chasm can be inside or outside. Think the perilous pits in Black Mesa, the insane heights inside the Citadel, and the dark antlion caverns. These are just Half-Life examples to get your brain started! Put a new spin on one of these, or come up with your own thrilling chasm! The player is not required to cross it but it must form the main gameplay element of the map. Bridges CAN be used but are NOT compulsory and they can be anything from huge solid metal bridges to loose, wonky wooden ones. There CAN be puzzle elements involved in crossing the chasm or just combat. The player could work their way to the bottom and up the other side or fly across! Basic Details Title: ChasmVille ChasmVille Filename: hl2-ep2-sp-mc-thc16-chasmville.7z hl2-ep2-sp-mc-thc16-chasmville.7z Size : 118MB 118MB Author: Confused Travolta, Bastion, Flamdar, Boonie, Pedro Marques AKA Dalannar, Dan M, Jason Gimba AKA Maki, Abdulhamid Cayirli, melc311, Niker107, Erik-Silver AKa ESToomere, Joacim Rappu, StrikeVonNice Confused Travolta, Bastion, Flamdar, Boonie, Pedro Marques AKA Dalannar, Dan M, Jason Gimba AKA Maki, Abdulhamid Cayirli, melc311, Niker107, Erik-Silver AKa ESToomere, Joacim Rappu, StrikeVonNice Date Released: 06 February 2016 Authors and Entries In Alphabetical order, as in the mod itself: Abyss by Confused Travolta Coast by Bastion Core Facility by Flamdar Disposal by Boonie Drain by Pedro Marques AKA Dalannar Fissure by Dan M High Wire by Jason Gimba AKA Maki Megastructure by Abdulhamid Cayirli AKA crowbar Northern Face by melc311 Outpost 57 by Niker107 Retraction Valley by Erik-Silver Toomere AKA ESToomere The Gap by Joacim Rappu Watering Hole by StrikeVonNice Winners and Points Here are the points for ChasmVille. Winner: Jason Gimba AKA Maki for High Wire Second Place: Confused Travolta for Abyss Third Place: Niker107 for Outpost 57 Full Points Listing Confused Travolta for Abyss receives a total of 60 points Bastion for Coast receives a total of 28 points Flamdar for Core Facility receives a total of 22 points Boonie for Disposal receives a total of 23 points Pedro Marques AKA Dalannar for Drain receives a total of 34 points Dan M Fissure receives a total of 24 points Jason Gimba AKA Maki for High Wire receives a total of 81 points Abdulhamid Cayirli aka Crowbar for Megastructure receives a total of 25 points melc311 for Northern Face receives a total of 28 points Niker107 for Outpost 57 receives a total of 48 points Erik-Silver Toomere AKA ESToomere for Retraction Valley receives a total of 28 points Joacim Rappu for The Gap receives a total of 29 points StrikeVonNice for Watering Hole receives a total of 24 points Scoring Process: 1. All three judges played the maps and ranked them first, second and third. 48 points for first, 36 for second, 24 for third and 12 points for the rest. 2. Then the maps were allocated either 0,3,6 or 9 in the following categories: Design (layout, foreshadowing, secret areas, concept etc) Visuals (lighting, textures, etc) Sound (ambient sounds, voice acting, special effects etc) Gameplay (flow, exploration, 3 dimensions etc) Misc (g-man sightings, humour, seriousness, scares etc) The average from each category was then added to the places. Future Publication. The judges are still in discussion as to whether release the full points table. Menu Music Brane Scan by Kelly Bailey from Half-Life 2 Video Credit The RunThinkShootLive.Com intro video was made by ĜL1TCĦ³: https://www.youtube.com/user/tlmmisback Custom Grid View Images Thirteen grid view icons are included in this file. To use the included grid view icon, select “Grid view” in Steam (top right corner). Right click on “ChasmVille” and select “Set Custom Image”. Then browse to the SourceMods folder and then to ChasmVille/steam-gridview-icons folder and select the image. Then click “Set Image” and that’s it. Of course, you can create your own custom image if you prefer. Sponsor Previous challenges were sponsored by Nodecraft – High Performance Game Servers. Download Options Download to your HDD [118MB] You can still use it with Gauge once you have downloaded it. Manual Installation Instructions Copy the THC16-ChasmVille folder into your …\Steam\SteamApps\sourcemods\ folder. Restart or start Steam. ChasmVille should now be listed in your Library tab. If you require more help, please visit the Technical Help page. You chance to vote for your favourites. You may select up to 3 entries as your favourites. This vote DOES NOT affect the points for The Hammer Cup 2016. Which are your 3 favourite maps from ChasmVille Videos The playthrough below is provided by Custom Gamer. See more of his playthroughs on this site: VP: Custom Gamer The playthrough below is provided by Bolloxed Gaming. See more of the channel’s playthroughs on this site: VP: Bolloxed Gaming Screenshots Coming Soon. Reader Recommendations Avoid It! Think Twice Maybe Play It Later Play It Now! 15 recommendations, average score: 4.87 (out of 5), standard deviation: 0.12 ( recommendations, average score:(out of 5), standard deviation: 0.12 ( what's that? Total Downloads 3,464 Overall 1 Today 8 Last 7 days 37 Last 30 days 506 365 days Meta Review Data 17 comment(s) with meta review data. Installed: Users Manually: 14 Users Using Gauge Manually: Time Taken: Average: 3 Hours, 9 Mins Shortest: 2 Hours by Hec Longest: 5 Hours, 15 Mins by PlanetPhillip Total Time Played: 53 Hours, 25 Mins Statistics based oncomment(s) with meta review data. Categories (? ) Tags (? ) Collections (? ) If you believe this release is missing important tags, please suggest them in a comment? Jump to a reviewSACRAMENTO — In a deal indicating all sides appear ready to call a truce, Amazon.com is offering to back down from its referendum drive to repeal an online sales tax in exchange for a one-year moratorium on collecting the tax, sources close to the talks with Amazon said Wednesday night. Under the deal, the Seattle-based online sales giant would agree to begin collecting the tax from California residents in September 2012, unless Congress takes action on Internet sales taxes before then. The federal deal would supersede any agreement with California, according to sources who declined to be identified because the deal was not yet public. It was a breathtaking turnabout a week after the Mercury News and the Bay Area News Group broke the news that Amazon had offered a deal that was quickly shot down by retailers and Democrats, who maintained that Amazon was merely trying to delay paying taxes. Just on Tuesday, a group of Democrats insisted there would be no deal and that they would pursue legislation to kill the referendum with a two-third votes in the Legislature. When that bill appeared to lack Republican support, however, talks resumed. While Democrats and Gov. Jerry Brown fretted that they would lose $200 million a year in sales taxes with such as a deal, it became clear that the state was having difficulty getting Amazon to collect taxes from their buyers and pay them to the state even after the law took effect on July 1. Looming large was the potential for losing an additional nine months of revenues once the referendum got on the ballot. An agreement would essentially mean that California would lose out on more than a year of revenues but have the certainty of taxes thereafter. “It’s a good deal,” said one source who was involved in the talks. “All those uncertainties are gone. A referendum, whether they’d win a referendum, whether we could get the votes, whether we’d have to get involved in a big fight. No worries about litigation.” All sides planned to get together to finalize details Thursday, one source said. Reach Steven Harmon at 916-441-2101. Follow him at Twitter.com/ssharmon. Read the Political Blotter at IBAbuzz.com/politics.Archive photo of survivors of the Deir Yassin massacre. (File) PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi mourned the “heartbreaking tragedy” in which “more than one hundred innocent men, women and children... were brutally murdered by armed members of Zionist terrorist organizations.” Deir Yassin has long been a symbol of Israeli violence for Palestinians because of the particularly gruesome nature of the slaughter, which targeted men, women, children, and the elderly in the small village west of Jerusalem. The number of victims is generally believed to be around 107, though figures given at the time reached up to 254, out of a village that numbered around 600 at the time. The massacre left more than 50 young children orphaned, Ashrawi noted, adding that the deadly attack was part of a broader plan in 1948 to expel Palestinians from their homes “with the deliberate intent of establishing the State of Israel on Palestinian soil.” “After sixty-nine years, the Deir Yassin massacre still remains an important reminder of Israel’s systematic measures of displacement, destruction, dispossession, and dehumanization,” Ashrawi said. “The calculated efforts by Israel to completely erase the history, narrative and physical presence of the Palestinian people will not be ignored or forgotten. It is time for Israel’s lethal impunity to come to an end.” “We urge all members of the international community to hold Israel to account immediately, to curb its ongoing violations against the Palestinians, and to support our nonviolent and diplomatic efforts to seek justice and protection in all international legal venues," she added. The Deir Yassin massacre was led by the Irgun militia, whose head was future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, with support from other paramilitary groups Haganah and Lehi whose primary aim was to push Palestinians out through force. Records of the massacre describe Palestinian homes blown up with residents inside, and families shot down as they attempted to flee. The massacre came in spite of Deir Yassin resident's efforts to maintain positive relations with new Jewish neighbors, including the signing of pact that was approved by Haganah, a main Zionist paramilitary organization during the British Mandate of Palestine. The massacre was one of the first in what would become a long line of attacks on countless Palestinian villages, part of a broader strategy called Plan Dalet by Zionist groups aiming to strike fear into local Palestinians in hopes that the ensuing terror would lead to an Arab exodus, to ensure only Jews were left in what would become modern-day Israel. The attack on Deir Yassin took place a month before the UN Partition Plan was expected to be carried out, and was part of reasons later given by neighboring Arab states for their intervention in Palestine. The combination of forced expulsion and flight that the massacres -- what would later become known among Palestinians as the Nakba, or catastrophe -- led around 750,000 Palestinians to become refugees abroad. Today their descendants number more than five million, and their right of return remains a central political demand. The anniversary of the deadly razing of the village comes as modern day Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank continue to face widespread illegal settlement expansion, home demolitions, detention campaigns, and extrajudicial executions at the hands of Israeli forces. BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) -- The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) marked on Sunday the 69th anniversary of the Deir Yassin massacre, when at least 100 Palestinians were killed by Zionist militias in the Jerusalem-area village of Deir Yassin in 1948.United Russia politician Ruslan Gattarov says he has set up a website to gather money for the NSA whistleblower Russian senator Ruslan Gattarov has begun a campaign to raise funds for Edward Snowden, claiming that the whistleblower is running out of money. Gattarov is also seeking the whistleblower's help in investigating the security of Russians' personal data. Gattarov, a member of the ruling United Russia party, has said he will open a bank account and create a website to gather donations for the National Security Agency leaker, who was last week granted temporary asylum in Russia. Gattarov told the
is the first of seven fixtures Reysol have scheduled for May, but if Kudo ends the year with a trophy in his hands, the effort will all have been worth it. “We don’t have much time between games, so we have to make sure we get the most out of the time we do have off,” he said. “When we don’t have games, we try to relax. I think that’s the best way to concentrate and prepare for the games ahead. “Of course everyone here wants to win the J. League, but last year it was very frustrating for us to lose in the last 16 of the ACL, so we want to put that right by winning it this year. We want to show Asia the strength of the J. League and the strength of Kashiwa Reysol.”The Saudis tend to see any threat to the established order in the region as a gain for their nemesis Iran, and its allies Syria and Hezbollah. They have grown increasingly worried that the Obama administration is drifting away from this perspective and supporting movements for change whose outcome cannot be guaranteed. Those worries were heightened by the crisis in Egypt, where the Saudis felt that Mr. Mubarak should have been allowed to stay on and make a more “dignified” exit, Saudi officials say. King Abdullah had at least two phone conversations with President Obama to convey his concerns in the weeks before Mr. Mubarak’s ouster, and the last conversation ended in sharp disagreement, according to officials familiar with the calls. Saudi officials have tried to appear unruffled. On Wednesday evening, Prince Nayef bin Abdel Aziz, the interior minister, invited a group of prominent intellectuals and journalists in Riyadh to discuss the recent turmoil. He struck a confident tone, saying that Saudi Arabia is “immune” to the protests because it is guided by religious law that its citizens will not question. Photo “Don’t compare us to Egypt or Tunisia,” the prince said, according to one of the attendees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the meeting was meant to be off the record. But the attendee said he and others were skeptical, and suspected the prince was merely hiding his anxieties. The Saudi and pan-Arab news media have been cautiously supportive of the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, with a number of opinion articles welcoming the call for nonviolent change. That may change now that protests and violence have seized Bahrain, which lies just across a 15-mile causeway from the Saudi border. Bahrain is a far more threatening prospect, in part because of the sectarian dimensions of the protests. Bahrain’s restive population is mostly Shiite, and is adjacent to the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, an important oil-producing area where the Shiite population has long complained of unfair treatment by the puritanical Saudi religious establishment. They feel a strong kinship with their co-religionists across the water. “The Bahrain uprising may give more courage to the Shia in the Eastern Province to protest,” said one Saudi diplomat. “It might then escalate to the rest of the country.” Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. Most analysts say that is unlikely. Although Saudi Arabia shares many of the conditions that bred the democracy uprisings — including autocracy, corruption and a large population of educated young people without access to suitable jobs — its people are cushioned by oil wealth and culturally resistant to change. Moreover, analysts tend to agree that Saudi Arabia would never allow the Bahraini monarchy to be overthrown. Ever since Bahrain began a harsh crackdown on protesters on Thursday, rumors have flown that Saudi Arabia provided military support or guidance; however, there is no evidence to support that. In recent days, the deputy governor of the Eastern Province, Saud bin Jalawi, spoke to Shiite religious leaders and urged them to suppress any rebellious sentiment, according to Saudi news media reports. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “Saudi Arabia did not build a causeway to Bahrain just so that Saudis could party on weekends,” said Toby Jones, an expert on Saudi Arabia at Rutgers University. “It was designed for moments like this, for keeping Bahrain under control.” The sectarian divisions in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia could also work against unrest, allowing the authorities there to blame a sectarian agenda by Iran or its Shiite proxies for any protests. That accusation is a powerful weapon in a region where suspicion of Iran runs deep. Saudi protesters have issued a call for demonstrations in all of the country’s major cities on March 11, though many seem skeptical about the results. “I do not expect much,” said Ali al-Ahmed, the director of the Washington-based Institute for Gulf Affairs, himself a Shiite who has been critical of the Saudi monarchy. “I think people still expect that the Saudi king will make things better.” Still, the Saudis are closely watching American diplomatic gestures toward Bahrain. Any wavering of American support for Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy, analysts say, would provoke a deep sense of betrayal, and could create an unprecedented rift in a partnership with the United States that has been a pillar of Saudi policy since 1945. “Saudi Arabia has always had a fear of encirclement, whether with Communism or with Iranian influence,” said Rachel Bronson, an expert on Saudi Arabia at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “Bahrain to me is the tipping point for when this becomes really unsettling.”Photos: Photos: Boulder derails train in French Alps Boulder derails train in French Alps – Rescue workers work the scene of a train accident near Digne-les-Bains in the French Alps after a train derailed on February 8. The train collided with a large boulder, leaving two people dead and several others injured. Hide Caption 1 of 7 Photos: Photos: Boulder derails train in French Alps Boulder derails train in French Alps – The boulder that caused the derailment sits below the damaged train. Hide Caption 2 of 7 Photos: Photos: Boulder derails train in French Alps Boulder derails train in French Alps – Authorities say the train was carrying 35 passengers and was traveling on a route between Saint-Benoit and Annot in a mountainous area of the department of the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. Hide Caption 3 of 7 Photos: Photos: Boulder derails train in French Alps Boulder derails train in French Alps – The train reportedly collided with a boulder that fell from the mountainside onto the track. Hide Caption 4 of 7 Photos: Photos: Boulder derails train in French Alps Boulder derails train in French Alps – A man inspects the wreckage of the train. Hide Caption 5 of 7 Photos: Photos: Boulder derails train in French Alps Boulder derails train in French Alps – Authorities look over the wreckage as rescue operations take place. Hide Caption 6 of 7“Public education is supposed to be the great equalizer in this country,” Ms. Rhee said, adding, “That’s not the reality we have in D.C.” Instead, she said, children who grow up in Georgetown and those who grow up in the poor, mostly black neighborhood of Anacostia “get two wildly different educational experiences. There’s a lot of data showing that we’re utterly failing our children in this district.” This is Ms. Rhee’s second school year, and there is upheaval and recrimination — but also progress. Test results showed more educational gains last year than in the previous four years put together. Her aim is for Washington to become, in just six years, one of the best-performing urban school districts in the country, while drastically reducing the black-white achievement gap. “A byproduct of that,” she added, “will be that we will take away from all the other school districts and schools across the country the excuse that because the kids are poor, minority, whatever it might be, that they can’t achieve at the same high levels.” Photo Ms. Rhee’s weakness is her bedside manner. Her transition from rebel to chancellor has been a little rough, and she is often perceived as trying to mount a cultural revolution in a way that antagonizes teachers and itself can undermine education. Surveys show that when teachers leave their jobs, it’s not just because of low pay but also because of unhappiness with their bosses or work environment. Perhaps recognizing the problem, Ms. Rhee lately has reached out to teachers to try to explain her ideas. The reform camp is driven partly by research suggesting that great teachers are far more important to student learning than class size, school resources or anything else. One study suggests that if black kids could get teachers from the profession’s most effective quartile for four years in a row, the achievement gap would disappear. As a result, Ms. Rhee has proposed that teachers surrender some job protections in exchange for the chance to earn more money — up to $131,000 annually, more than double the average salary for an American public school teacher. But teachers worry, not unreasonably, that their performance is difficult to measure, that they will be judged by incompetent principals, and that promised bonuses may later dry up. For now the two sides seem stalemated. Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. “If we come to an impasse, we’re going to move forward with our reforms anyway,” Ms. Rhee said. “Then it potentially gets uglier.” She’s right on both counts — it could get very ugly, and Washington’s children shouldn’t suffer indefinitely in broken schools just because of a collective-bargaining stalemate. It would help if President Obama firmly backed Ms. Rhee. Education reform could be the most potent antipoverty program in the country, and Ms. Rhee represents the vanguard in this struggle to try new tools to revive American schools. Unless we succeed in that effort and get more students through high school and into college, no bank bailout or stimulus package will be enough to preserve America’s global leadership in the long run.I tried to be as evil as possible in The Sims 4, and I was not disappointed. You might have heard that The Sims 4 removed a (according to some players) pretty key series feature: pools. While swimming was, in previous games, a great way to build up athleticism and take a load off, many gamers would use pools as watery testbeds for demented social experiments. That in mind, I decided to play The Sims 4 with a mind toward discovering new, different forms of evil. Mwahahaha, etc. However, when I first showed up to a recent Sims 4 preview event in San Francisco, I found myself at a loss. Step one? Create a new Sim. Other journalists had come up with some damn cool character ideas (Game of Thrones families!), but I was running on the sleep deficit from hell. What could I possibly do to be interesting? I hate playing "myself" in these things, because the most interesting thing about me is my collection of off-kilter pants. Unable to settle on any particular idea, I just started messing around with the new (and nicely intuitive) Create-A-Sim option, which let me physically grab, pull, and pinch Sims' features until they were as handsome, hideous, or akin to kind of, like, an anteater—but fleshier and from my nightmares—as I wanted. That's how Evil Da Vinci was born. Based on the famous artist/inventor, I envisioned him as the antithesis of everything the real Leonardo Da Vinci stood for. Evil Da Vinci did not create art, he stole it. He brought out the worst in people with his foul mouth, ugly heart, and cool purple hat. He was also a total bro. Yes, in addition to the "evil" trait, I selected "bro" as one of Evil Da Vinci's defining characteristics. So while the former let him derive happiness—an observable, statistical boost in emotion and ability—from other Sims' suffering, the latter turned him into a fun-loving lug the second sports or other bros entered the picture. He was a beautiful, frightening contradiction, his own sort of masterpiece. Advertisement As soon as I plopped him down into a plain but functional starter house, I noticed that the traits I'd selected for him manifested not only in his personality when interacting with other Sims, but also in a series of quest-like goals that would give him powerful (but temporary) emotional boosts. The first suggestion? Declare someone an enemy. I glanced outside Da Vinci's barren misery lair and saw a balding man in a tanktop stroll by. I felt kinda bad for the guy, to be honest. He'd earned the searing ire of Evil Da Vinci. By existing. Since Evil Da Vinci was, you know, evil, one of his first conversation options was "rude introduction." Predictably, Da Vinci's target wasn't pleased. With greetings out of the way, I had full access to the conversation wheel, which offered tons of options in multiple categories, from nice to mean. I went all-in on the latter. I had Da Vinci jeer at the guy, compare his mother to a llama, insult him, shock him with a hand-buzzer, and give him fake bad news, only to be like "jk haha it was funny because you cried delicious, nourishing tears." After talking with Da Vinci for a couple minutes, this man hated him. Mission accomplished. With enough negative points on our relationship meter, all that was left was to select "declare enemy" from the conversation menu and the deed was done. Just for good measure, I then had Da Vinci get into a roaring, Looney-Tunes-style fistfight with the guy. What better way to seal the deal on being arch-nemeses than with a few swift socks to the gut? Advertisement The whole exchange left Da Vinci feeling happy and inspired, the second of which temporarily opened up a new set of conversation options and modified old ones. He became more daring, capable of asserting himself to total strangers and telling jokes that would fall flat if spoken by a tongue dulled from anxiety. It even affected his approach to, er, using the bathroom. "Pee like a champion," read the option wheel as Da Vinci approached a toilet. Would that we could all pee like champions all the time. What a better world that would be. Advertisement So that was the beginning of Evil Da Vinci's descent into vile jerkitude, but I decided to experiment to see just how low I could go. Here are the questions I asked and answered in the process: Can I... become an international art thief? — Basically. Using a quick and easy "smart phone" interface, I could do all sorts of things, from traveling to another neighborhood to getting a job. One optional activity stood out: "crime." Evil Da Vinci, inherently evil and Leonardo Goddamn Da Vinci though he was, started out as a small-timer, but he slowly ranked up through experience and completing various semi-related objectives when he wasn't at work. At first he came home embarassed (and therefore prone to crawling under his covers and sulking while surfing the Internet; too real, The Sims 4, too real), but eventually he got a handle on it. Can I... quickly and easily burn down everything? — I couldn't find a direct, surefire method, but I definitely witnessed a couple fires as the day went on. The person next to me left their game running after they left, and even though Sims are able to decently take care of themselves when left to their own devices, that didn't stop one from burning his house down and getting a surprise visit from The Grim Reaper. The developers also told me that, theoretically, it's easier to start fires than ever. I just never figured out exactly how. Advertisement Can I... make everyone storm out of a bar? — One of The Sims 4's best new features is multi-tasking. No longer is a Sim confined to a single activity, stuck behind the cold, lonely bars of their own tunnel vision. Now they can walk and talk, so to speak. Or sit down, surf the web, watch TV, and carry on a conversation all at once. This also means they can converse with large groups of people, and because of this Da Vinci sure did love his nightly trips to the neighborhood bar. He'd saunter in with that showy little walk of his, order a drink, and immediately begin firing off insults at anyone nearby. Multiple people would then join the conversation, at which point I'd just have him switch between conversational targets to maximize the simmering rage until they stormed out. It was like grilling up a few burgers on a nice summer's day—bouncing back and forth between each as it sizzles and pops—only instead of beef patties they were people, and their outrage was more delicious to Da Vinci than any mere sandwich. Advertisement Then, something unexpected happened: Evil Da Vinci found love. Don't ask me how. I pulled out all the stops to infuriate and alienate everyone at the bar, but a lady named Nancy dug it. She was a bit evil herself, not to mention vain—a trait that Da Vinci began to learn from her by interacting with her frequently. But not every relationship slots together just like that, like some kind of ready-made puzzle. Sometimes you've gotta do a little... house-cleaning to make it all work. Can I... break apart a family to win someone's heart? — Nancy had a family. At least, she did when she first met Evil Da Vinci. All was not well, however, and Da Vinci proved exceedingly good at making things worse. He took every opportunity to insult her husband and son, usually when Nancy wasn't around. But of course, when it was just the two of them, Da Vinci was a perfect gentleman. Funny, too. Before long, she was showing up at Da Vinci's place every day, and it seemed like her family had just… ceased to matter. Advertisement Here's what I think might have happened: Sims in bad moods often feel the need to vent to other Sims, to air their frustrations even though it might strain their relationship with the Sim to whom they're venting. So Da Vinci's appearance gave Nancy a little push, and inertia took care of the rest. By the time I was done, Da Vinci and Nancy lived together—along with a cabal of, like, five artists, because Evil Da Vinci was a master of the long con. Can I... trap a man inside his own home and make him slowly but surely lose his mind? — Yeah, OK, that escalated quickly. Granted, this is The Sims. There is a long and rich tradition of demented shenanigans, a gnarled tome in which I was simply writing the latest chapter. Before moving in with the artists, I had Da Vinci set up shop alongside two scientist brothers named Malakai, one good (Good Malakai) and one evil (Evil Malakai). I quickly decided there was only room enough in this tow— er, household for one maniacally terrible scumbag, so I reprised a classic Sims tactic to rid myself of Evil Malakai. One room, no doors, no anything else. I would've used a pool with no ladders, but in a sad, parched world devoid of pools, you've got to make do with whatever you can find. Advertisement Can I… involve pink bunnies in the previous plan? — Oh right, Evil Malakai wasn't completely alone in his little room. Sims games are nothing if not hotbeds for strange, exceedingly specific social experiments, so I decided to give him one fern to admire. When that didn't really have an effect on his sanity or overall disposition, I deleted it and added a small legion of pink bunnies. What transpired was fascinating: Evil Malakai didn't enjoy his cramped bedroom prison for long. He became hungry, tired, and frustrated, and would intermittently gesture rudely toward me, his cruel new god. And yet, he survived with no food, no toilet, and no proper place to rest his head. For more than a week of in-game time. Advertisement I couldn't figure out what was going on, but suddenly it hit me: Evil Malakai had taken to continuously interacting with the bunnies, because that was literally all he could do. As dark as this is going to sound, he'd gone totally nuts from isolation and starvation. Now he was talking to an army of stuffed pink bunnies, addressing them as friends and countrymen, guests at what he perhaps believed to be some kind of Gatsby-style dinner party. And that's what kept him going. The bunnies managed to keep Evil Malakai's "fun" meter consistently topped off, meaning that even though all other stats were united in a chorus of flatlines, he was having the time of his life. He didn't need food, or water, or comfort. He had bunnies. Advertisement Can I... turn two brothers against each other? — I don't really know why this happened, but for some reason Good Malakai would always make a point of eating in front of Evil Malakai while he was trapped in fluffy pink hell. Every single time: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It might have been a glitch, but it was a hilariously mean-spirited one—especially coming from the "good" brother. Later, I had Good Malakai throw a party next door while Evil Malakai chanted something not of this world to his unholy pink bunny gathering—insult to injury, basically. The party was great. Good Malakai even managed to flirt up a storm despite his crippling awkwardness, at least until Evil Da Vinci walked over and threw a drink in his face. Can I... trap the grim reaper? — Eventually, inevitably, the Grim Reaper showed up to take Evil Malakai away. With a simple swing of the scythe, Malakai was reduced to a tiny urn of ashes, the quiet credit sequence after a loud lifetime of evil science and talking to inanimate objects. Advertisement ...with pink bunnies? — But the Reaper didn't leave. He kind of just… stood there. And then he began interacting with the bunnies. Not even the Grim Reaper could resist their mysterious allure. After a day or so, the Reaper poofed back to the underworld, having apparently finally gotten his fill of inanimate rabbit chit-chat. It was at this point in the day that I realized The Sims 4 is kind of a strange game. Advertisement Can I... witness the five stages of grief in immaculately depressing detail? — So it turns out that Good Malakai liked his brother pretty well after all, even though he always made sure to eat directly in front of his starving brother. The new Sim emotion system actually managed to express Good Malakai's grief rather brilliantly, whether intentionally or not. Half the time Good Malakai seemed to be trying to get on with his life, working, reading, and playing video games. But then he'd wander over to the urn that contained his brother's ashes, take a long stare into its cold, unfeeling metal, and all that bluster would go right out of him. He'd get despondent, fail miserably to complete a basic task (like cooking), and go hide under his covers. It was… heartbreaking. Actually heartbreaking. Can I... kill a Sim with pure emotion? — I began to worry about Good Malakai. The developers told me that Sims can now die from particularly overwhelming emotional states (oh goodness, the possibilities for rampant evil there), and damn it, I'd taken a liking to the goofy old man. I wanted to experiment with that new feature, which producer Graham Nardone told me the team had put in with an eye toward players who play The Sims to do admittedly monstrous things, but not on Good Malakai. His was a beautiful soul. I decided what Good Malakai and Evil Da Vinci needed was a change of scenery, so I moved them in with a bunch of young, hip artists. "Jackpot," I imagined Da Vinci thinking to himself, a diabolical grin spreading from ear to ear. That's when I realized I was getting way too invested in these characters. Advertisement Then, something weird happened: I stopped with all the social experiment shenanigans and started playing like a non-sociopath. I watched Evil Da Vinci struggle to be not a total asshole—to fight against his very insipid nature—and decided to just go with that. He was now a recovering psychotic reincarnation of one of history's greatest minds, and he was in a stable, happy relationship to boot. He was also excelling in his role as a criminal lackey, skipping home each day with a smile on his face and someone else's money in his pocket. It was basically the American Dream. Good Malakai, meanwhile, lost his taste for rocket science and space exploration after his brother passed away. For a short time, all he'd do was play video games, eat, and sleep. However, he began hanging out with all the other members of Artist House during dinner—taking part in these massive, laugh-packed conversations while chowing down on homemade food—and soon he fell in love with a member of the household. They both took up music together, her doing a terrible job on guitar while his clumsy pretzel fingers made a piano hack up choking melodies that had no business being called music. Advertisement It was beautiful. I… I really liked them. They were quirky and sometimes horrible—to themselves and each other—but I had a lot of fun making them interact with other Sims. All the new emotion stuff turned this big, bustling household into a playground of drama and intrigue, with the occasional heartwarming moment mixed in. I basically took to playing dolls, and it was mesmerizing. Here's the problem, though: before long (six hours or so), I started getting bored. I really liked the changes to the game's core systems and AI (a focus on emotions, more surprising Sim autonomy, multitasking) but I still felt like I was playing a game a bit too fundamentally similar to every other Sims game. Advertisement I don't know. Sometimes I think the reason people end up playing The Sims in really demented ways is because the game's fundamental mechanics aren't actually very interesting. People get bored, and they start dumping water on the anthill. Last week's preview event didn't give me close to enough time to explore the full range of stuff that'll be in the full game, and I certainly can't say whether or not The Sims 4 will be worth picking up, especially if you've already invested a ton of time in The Sims 3 and its various expansions. But the short version is, I had fun with The Sims 4, and am surprised to find myself itching to try more, to experiment more, and to discover new uses for those pink bunnies.To the best of my knowledge, there has only been one Muslim player in the history of major league baseball: Sam Khalifa, a Pirates backup shortstop who played 164 games in the 1980s before retiring following his father’s unexpected murder. (His Egyptian father, Rashad Khalifa, was a heterodox Muslim scholar in Tucson, Arizona, where Sam Khalifa grew up. Sam is now a baseball coach at his old high school, Sahuaro.) Other American sports have featured well-known Muslims — Nigerian Hakeem Olajuwon and American Shareef Abdur-Raheem in the NBA; Americans Ahmad Rashad and Az-Zahir Hakim in the NFL; Lebanese-Canadian Nazem Kadri in the NHL; and of course, boxer Muhammad Ali has a claim to being the most famous American Muslim, period. (Incidentally, Ahmad Rashad was a student of Rashad Khalifa.) In baseball, meanwhile, while the majority of players have come from a Christian background, there have been members of many other religious minorities, both practicing and nonpracticing, like Ryan Braun (Jewish); Bryce Harper (Mormon); and Khalil Greene (Baha’i). (For that matter, back in 2009, when he was dating Kate Hudson, Alex Rodriguez considered converting to Buddhism.) So why haven’t there been more Muslims in baseball? It’s something of an accident of history and geography, according to two sportswriters I contacted. Parvez Fatteh is the editor of SportingUmmah.com (a blog devoted to the accomplishments of Muslim athletes), a doctor, a passionate Braves fan, and an Indian immigrant who came to Georgia when he was 5. He emphasized geography. “The Muslims in other American sports are generally either African-American Muslims (American football) or immigrant Muslims (basketball),” Fatteh told me. And those immigrants come from regions/countries that actually play and promote basketball: West Africa (Nigeria & Senegal), Eastern Europe, and Turkey. And none of those countries/regions have a passion for baseball. Nazem Kadri is a bit of an aberration. Canada is such a one-sport country, that if any immigrant, regardless of religion or race, is going to pursue a team sport, it’s darn well gonna be hockey! Second, that brings up the issue of African-Americans in baseball. As you and I know, the number of African-Americans in professional baseball has been dwindling over the past two to three decades… the diminished presence of African-Americans in American baseball reduces one more pool of potential Muslim baseball players. Rany Jazayerli comes from a similar background — he’s also a full-time doctor who moonlights as a sportswriter and passionate baseball fan. He was born in this country, the son of a Syrian immigrant. “Among immigrant Muslim Americans, baseball is much less popular than football and basketball,” Jazayerli told me in an email. “This stands in stark contrast to immigrants 100 or even 50 years ago. I don’t know if that’s true of all immigrant groups, but it might be. In 1930, the best way to assimilate and prove yourself a True American if you were a 12-year-old kid was to memorize the Yankees’ lineup. Today, being an SEC or Big 10 expert is probably a truer sign of your Americanness.” (It does bear mentioning that, in America, the word “Muslim” has a few different meanings. In addition to the standard definition, in the context of the African-American community, it is also often used to refer to the Nation of Islam or its offshoots, such as the Five Percent Nation and the now-defunct Your Black Muslim Bakery; members of these sects have typically been called Black Muslims, though many Orthodox Muslims would dispute their being included as members of the same faith. A fuller discussion of The Nation of Islam is, quite obviously, beyond the scope of this article.) One player who had a chance to bridge the gap was Khalid Ballouli, the son of a Lebanese father and an American mother who was the daughter of Philadelphia Athletics pitcher Dick Fowler. His father raised him as a nonpracticing Muslim, but the family also celebrated the Christian holidays with his mother’s family. He grew up in Austin, went to Texas A&M, and was drafted in the sixth round in 2002. He pitched in the Brewers system until 2006, making it as far as Double-A Huntsville before an injury ended his career. He returned to A&M afterwards to complete his Ph.D., and currently teaches sports marketing at the University of South Carolina — making him the third person I interviewed with the title of “Dr.” “My career started professionally in 2002, after 9/11,” Ballouli told me. “I’ll be the first to tell you because of my looks, my presence, I think people identified me as being white like them. I’m not sure I didn’t get lost in the shuffle, get identified as another white American player. I never felt discrimination. However, there were awkward times when we would be watching live coverage of what was happening in Iraq, or a speech from President Bush in 2002-2003-2004, and that would be an awkward moment of hearing some comments made, overgeneralizing what that culture is about.” Actually, in 1986, Sam Khalifa reported much the same experience to a writer for Aramco World, a magazine published by the Saudi oil company. “Sure, there’s always some clubhouse ribbing and I’ve been called ‘the shaikh,’ but it’s been in fun,” he told Brian Clark. “I never felt any prejudice in Arizona or anywhere else. People respect me for what I am and that’s good.” However, Ballouli felt very conscious of being the only minority on his teams — the only Arab-American, the only Muslim. “The makeup of my tee-ball team probably was the same as the makeup of my college and professional team,” he said. So he got used to being surrounded by Christian coaches and players. At Texas A&M, he said, there was “a very Christian coach who was very passionate about Sunday chapel and bible study.” On that team, he was often conscious of being different. We had a tight-knit team, so we had a pregame meal, and one of the more awkward moments is when he would have players go around and give the blessing. He would go to players — and you could decline. But in some ways it was tough. It put the player in an awkward position, if he’s Jewish or Muslim or another religious minority. Even by declining, you’re calling attention to yourself. Or, if you agree to it, it calls even more attention to yourself, because they don’t know what you’ll do. I was probably the only person who was not Christian on the team to decline the prayer. Ballouli had a family connection to the game. But most other second-generation American Muslims aren’t lucky enough to be related to major leaguers. If Jazayerli is right, other first- and second-generation American Muslims may gravitate first to basketball and football. So that may mean that the next Muslim major leaguer may need to come from outside America — a Muslim who grew up in a country where the kids invariably play baseball. That’s what Adnan Virk suggested. He’s a Canadian of Pakistani descent who became the first Muslim anchor on ESPN when he was hired in 2010. “My brother and I grew up in Eastern Ontario, played hockey in the winter, baseball in the summer, typical Canadian kids who enjoyed sports a lot,” he told me. “The first Muslim star is not going to be from a Muslim country, it’s going to be a guy like me. Like DiMaggio — his family was from Italy, but he was from San Francisco.” That might be a player like Darvish — the son of an Iranian father who grew up in a baseball-mad country and turned out to have one of the best pitching arms in the world. Or it might be a Pakistani kid growing up in the Caribbean. (Or, perhaps, it could be an Indian who won a reality TV show to pitch for the Pirates.) Either way, that player will follow a road like Nazem Kadri, who rose to prominence in the national sport. As it is, many American Muslims, like Jazayerli and Ballouli, are still baseball fans. Shiraz Rehman is currently the Assistant General Manager for the Chicago Cubs, and is proud of both his heritage and his religion. In Oakland, Farhan Zaidi is the director of baseball operations and one of the key architects of the A’s successes, and is likewise a proud Muslim. Like our two Quaker presidents — Hoover and Nixon — many Muslims punch the clock, go to work, and yell for their favorite teams without many people knowing their particular religious background. To be sure, the countries with the most Muslims are not generally the countries with the most baseball fans. But as baseball seeks to expand its reach into countries around the world, there’s a good possibility that the first Muslim baseball star will turn up somewhere — as Ballouli mentioned to me, that there’s a strong Little League program in Saudi Arabia. So you never know. Still, it may not happen until after the Pirates win the World Series. Or maybe the Cubs.CBS Local — A man in Florida is recovering in a hospital after taking a bet with his wife way too far during the Dallas Cowboy’s loss to the Green Bay Packers. The Cowboy jersey-wearing fan reportedly set himself on fire after wagering with his wife, who was in a Green Bay jersey, that the losing team’s shirt would have to be set ablaze. What the wife didn’t see coming was that her husband would try to put the flaming jersey back on while it was still on fire. The poor decision came about after Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers led his team on a last-minute comeback to beat Dallas 35-31. The 27-year-old was rushed to the nearby Indian River Medical Center where he allegedly admitted to deputies that he wasn’t quite sober when during the incident. According to the Sebastian Daily: A witness told Sebastian Daily, “He was set on fire after losing a bet on the Cowboys game … Skin was hanging off his arm and back.” The man suffered third-degree burns on his right arm and right hand and second-degree burns to his back. When the woman’s team won, her husband went outside to light his jersey on fire. He told deputies that he was drunk and tried to put the jersey on while it was burning. While Dallas moves on to their next game against the San Francisco 49ers after a stinging defeat, the scars for one intoxicated Cowboys fan in Florida will unfortunately be much more permanent.Sabo — the conservative LA street artist — crashed a Trump-bashing art exhibition Saturday night, unveiling his own work to a shocked crowd. SHEPARD FAIREY HIT LAST NIGHT. A VIEW FROM THE INSIDE. ;) https://t.co/qVRytfQwcg pic.twitter.com/abYEz7T6bU — unsavoryagents (@unsavoryagents) November 12, 2017 Left-wing artist Shepard Fairey, known for his viral 2008 “Hope” poster of Barack Hussein Obama, was debuting his new, anti-Trump exhibit “Damaged” to an adoring crowd. The event was the artist’s biggest to date, utilizing a bevy of media including painting, sculpting, printmaking, and collage. The leftist’s “We the People” series was created in response to President Trump. According to Fairey, at a press conference Friday for the show: “The state of our society is damaged…I know it sounds pretty dire
people drive. The graph shows vehicle miles dropping from 12 billion miles in 2009 to 11 billion miles in 2012 for Chicago, a drop of 8%. If people drive fewer miles, it seems reasonable there will be fewer accidents. We can analyze this by looking at the accident rate for each mile traveled. This graph shows that when we account for the fewer miles driven, there is no longer a steady drop in accidents. Instead, there have been more accidents per mile driven over the last few years. So once we account for people driving less, we actually see that the rate of accidents are not dropping. This step of considering the amount of miles driven is important and often neglected. If you don’t recognize people are driving less, statistics will show fewer accidents at construction zones, school zones, highways, traffic signals, and everywhere else. It can then seem that other variables, e.g., RLCs, are leading to a drop in accidents. The best research accounts for these factors by using a control group, so it’s possible to identify only the contribution of the safety device or program. Otherwise it will appear that RLCs have led to a drop of 6% in accidents, even though the drop is due to other factors. Accidents at Traffic Signals So while accidents have not dropped throughout Chicago, are traffic intersections safer now? Advocates of RLCs argue for a “halo effect” where the threat of tickets will lead to safer driving at other intersections. To consider this, we analyze accidents at traffic signals in Chicago. The IDOT data contains a separate variable for accidents at traffic signals that I use. A quick look at this graph shows that it is very similar to the overall drop in accidents. In this case, accidents have fallen 4% at traffic signals (compared to the overall 6% drop in accidents). To better understand the drop at traffic signals, I next looked at the percentage of accidents that occur at traffic signals in Chicago between 2009 and 2012. If people were driving more carefully at traffic signals, it would be expected that accidents at traffic signals would become more rare. For example, dropping from a share of 25% of all accidents to 20% of all accidents. This graph shows that the percentage of accidents at traffic signals hasn’t changed appreciably between 2009 and 2012. The results here suggest that traffic signal accidents are holding relatively constant (accidents have increased by 0.5%). This also suggests the RLCs are not having a “halo effect” (making all intersections safer), because accidents are not dropping throughout the city at traffic signals. I next looked at the types of accidents occurring at traffic signals in Chicago between 2009 and 2012. My previous research suggested the introductions of RLCs might lead to a rise in rear-end type of accidents. This graph shows the percentage of each type of accident. For example, in 2012 at traffic signals, rear-end accidents made up 38% of all accidents, while turning accidents account for 22% and angle accidents account for 14%. In looking at the trends here, the biggest finding is the drop in turning crashes of about 3%. While this is noticeable, it will be important to see if this is a temporary drop or one that keeps increasing. The decrease in the turning crashes and the rise in rear-end are consistent with behaviors affected by RLCs. It’s too early to tell, but there may be a slight change in the type of accidents occurring at traffic signals. I also took a look at changes in crash severity. I found that property crashes dropped 4%, injury crashes dropped 3.6%, and fatal accidents dropped from 42 to 29, a drop of 31%. I will use these numbers in the next section, when I look specifically at RLC intersections. Analyzing Accidents at RLC Intersections This part of the analysis focuses on intersections with RLCs. One way to examine the effectiveness of the RLCs is to compare accidents before and after the camera was installed. I did this analysis in my earlier study. For this study, I selected all the RLCs that would provide a year of before and after data. This gave me 11 cameras with installation dates in 2010 and 2011. This is a very small sample. The results found accidents increased from 109 to 115 accidents at these 11 intersections, so an increase of 5%. This increase is not statistically significant. The increase matches earlier studies for RLC intersections. The next step was looking at 190 RLC intersections, with cameras installed prior to 2013. The criteria for accidents were that they acknowledged a traffic signal in the accident report and occurred within a 100 feet of the intersection. I did this analysis in two ways, the first included all cameras active prior to 2013 and the second was only cameras that were active during the 2009-2012 period (therefore excluding cameras installed during 2009-2011). The results were roughly similar, but I will present data only on cameras that were active during the entire 2009-2012 period. The result was a drop of 11% at intersections with red light cameras from 2264 to 2016 accidents over 4 years. This was a reduction of 248 accidents at the RLC intersections. This is much larger than the overall 4% drop at traffic signal intersections! Let us next assume this drop at RLC intersections is entirely due to the cameras and not other factors, such as better enforcement by the police or changes to the intersections. We could then say that accidents at RLC were reduced by 4% as compared to the overall general trend at traffic signals. 4% of the accidents at the RLC intersections is about 91 accidents. So the cameras reduced 157 accidents! If you look carefully at the graph, you will notice there is a big drop in the number of accidents in 2012 at RLC intersections. From 2009 to 2011, the drop in accidents at traffic signals was 2.7% and a drop of 4% at RLC intersections. So if we were looking at 2011 data, it would seem the RLC intersections were slightly safer. But between 2011 and 2012, accidents at traffic signals dropped 1.2%, while they dropped 7% at RLC intersections! I don’t know what changed during 2012, but some factor led to a substantial drop in accidents. We will have to watch the 2013 data to see if this was a hiccup or a trend. The 2013 traffic data is due to be released in September 2014. The types of accidents at RLC intersections also changed as the graph shows: Between 2009 and 2012, at the active RLC intersections, angle accidents went up 3%, rear-end accidents dropped by 8%, and turning accidents dropped by 18%. For turning accidents, where there is the largest drop, accidents went from 727 to 532 between 2009 and 2012. This shows that the type of accidents are changing at RLC intersections. I also examined changes in crash severity at RLC intersections. I found that property crashes dropped 13%, injury crashes dropped 2.6%, and fatal accidents stayed even at 5. Comparing this to traffic intersections generally, we see property crashes at RLC intersections dropped much faster (13% versus 4%) and injuries relatively rose (2.6% versus 3.6%). This suggests crashes at intersections that occur at RLC intersections are more severe. Tickets and RLC Intersections This sections considers the influence of RLC tickets on accidents. If the purpose of RLCs is to ticket risky behavior that leads to accidents, then you would expect intersections that give out lots of tickets to have lots of accidents. After all, more people are breaking the law, so you would expect that as law breaking increases, so would accidents. A scatter plot is often used to investigate relationships between two variables. The graph shows a scatter plot of the number of tickets versus accidents. Looking at the graph, its clear there is no relationship between tickets and accidents. Whether an intersection gives out lots of tickets or few tickets has no relationship to the number of accidents. For more details on this portion, see my blog post on the relationship of RLC accidents to tickets. So why aren’t tickets affecting behavior? There are two reasons I can suggest. First, tickets are given out inconsistently. There is not a clear relationship between running a red light and getting a ticket. The spikes found in red light camera tickets, first identified by the Chicago Tribune in 2014, best exemplify this. I went through the ticket data and used a statistical technique, which looks for outliers in a time series. I ran this on both a daily summation and a weekly summation of the tickets. The results were revealing. Over 100 intersections had a spike. The spikes affect at least 20,000 to 40,000 tickets. Spikes are largely pre-2010. I found that 2007 and 2008 accounted for 68% of all the spikes. By 2010, the amount of spikes dropped considerably. This suggests that whatever the cause of the spikes was, it was largely corrected several years ago. You can find more details about this analysis on my blog post on ticket spikes. The second reason is that accidents are a very rare phenomenon. Consider the traffic volume for Ashland & 63rd with about 8.6 million vehicles per year (based on daily volume of 23,500) and an average of 30 crashes per year. This is about one crash for every 287,000 cars that pass through the interesection. This is how rare crashes are and how difficult it is to reduce them. The average number of tickets at Ashland is about 2,750 a year. If you assume all tickets are related to running red lights (a huge jump in logic), this would still only mean that 1% of red light runners cause a crash. Thinking about these ratios should help illustrate why cameras can reduce the number of people running red lights, but not have a significant impact on the number of accidents at an intersection. In the end, distractions, alcohol, driving conditions, and other factors can play a much more important factor than the presence of a red light camera. Summary: In Chicago, between 2009-2102 accidents have gone down overall about 6%. This is expected, since there has been a reduction of 8% in the miles driven in Chicago. In looking at intersections with traffic signals, we find that the drop in accidents is only 4% and the percentage of accidents at traffic signals hasn’t changed appreciably. However, there is a slight change in the types of accidents with a slight increase in rear end accidents and a drop of 3% in turning accidents. In examining intersections that had RLCs introduced during this study, there is a 5% increase for accidents (even though accidents generally were falling due to decreased driving). In contrast, accidents are down 11% at cameras with RLC intersections. One very interesting finding is the large drop in accidents at RLCs during 2012. There was a one-year drop of 7%. It’s hard to interpret this finding right now; we will have to look at the 2013 data to see if this is a trend or an anomaly. If this trend is sustained, it could support the notion of RLCs as a safety measure. I can’t explain why the camera effect would start after more than 5 years for some of these intersections. Perhaps it is due to increase attention from the media on RLC in 2012 that led to a greater awareness which in turn affected driving. Or maybe there were structural changes at some of these intersections that made them safer. Finally, the study considered the role of tickets. It is clear that there is no relationship between tickets and accidents. Whether an intersection gives out lots of tickets or few tickets has no relationship to the number of accidents. I offered two explanations for this, the inconsistent ticketing, e.g., spikes, and the unique factors that go into the very rare occurrence of an accident. The results here mirror my earlier study. The findings here are mixed, and at best, the RLCs have a slight reduction on accidents. Despite the million of dollars invested in RLCs and half a billion dollars in tickets, there is no evidence that the RLC have had a significant safety benefit. Limitations: This study relies on data provided by the Illinois Department of Transportation. I have not accounted for any changes that have occurred at the intersections or increased enforcement. Both of these are likely to intersections that have high accident rates. The analysis here is also very simplistic, as it doesn’t account signal timing, lane geometry, and traffic volume. I also have not explored every interesting finding in depth, such as large drop in 2012 RLC intersections in detail. Data: The data analysis here encompassed the entire year of 2009 through all of 2012. I have created a research tool for red light camera analysis at MiningChi.com. The site allows anyone to find the accident and ticket statistics for any RLC intersection in Chicago. Future Work: I hope to update this report during the winter with 2013 data. I would also like to extend the data in several ways. First, take into account injuries in accidents. Second, use that information along with the type of accidents to generate an economic impact of the red light cameras. Finally, take into account traffic volume in these calculations. Acknowledgements: The data in this study was collected with the help of several parties. First, I would acknowledge the wonderful help of the IDOT in providing accident data. The Chicago Tribune’s publication of ticket data acquired through a FOIA was also valuable for my analysis.“Don’t cultivate a ‘bicycle face,’” an 1895 list of don’ts for women cyclists admonished just before the bicycle became a major vehicle of women’s liberation. That selfsame year, Bertrand Russell and George Bernard Shaw collided on their bicycles as each was making his respective trailblazing intellectual and creative contributions. In fact, the bicycle has a rich history as a witness to and comrade in revolutions both cultural and personal. (As a devoted cyclist myself, I have extracted from it both tremendous creaturely joy and an existential metaphor for my values.) “When we have scraped together enough money, we can buy bicycles and take a bike tour every couple of weeks,” young Albert Einstein wrote in one of his love letters as he was incubating his world-reorienting theories — theories that would pave the way, among innumerable other things, for the invention of rockets, the first builders of which received their initial funding via bicycle, and for computers, which Steve Jobs likened to “a bicycle for the mind.” Nowhere does the bicycle’s cultural role come more alive than in literature, where it endures as a beloved vehicle of writers as wide-ranging as Leo Tolstoy, Henry Miller, Sylvia Plath, and H.G. Wells, whose official biographer anointed him “the writer-laureate of the cyclists” and who is credited with proclaiming, “When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race.” (It is perhaps not coincidental that the very first line delivered in Wells’s visionary novel The Time Machine comes from a man on a bicycle.) But no one captures the bicycle’s writerly sacredness more vibrantly than journalist, essayist, novelist, and poet Christopher Morley (May 5, 1890–March 18, 1957) in an essay titled “Wheels on Parnassus” — a play on the title of Morley’s debut novel, Parnassus on Wheels. It was originally published in his wonderful 1926 essay collection The Romany Stain (public library), which was printed in a limited illustrated edition of 365 copies, each signed by the author. Morley writes: The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets. How pleasant if one could prove that a decline in literary delicacy followed the disappearance of the bike from American roads… In a car you are carried; on a bike you go. It is in moments of artistic stagnation and creative block that such goingness becomes most essential, and it is for such moments that Morley prescribes the bicycle as a most potent cure: An odd feeling comes sometimes to a writer who has long carried in the knapsack of the mind some notion that he was to put in ink. It is a sensation I can only describe as Getting Ready to Write. Those phantoms of imagination, so long halted frozen in mid-gesture, begin to show marks of animation. In my particular case, it is now four and half years that I have seen them sitting in their absurd unchanged attitudes. No wonder they are stiff: one of them (what a dear she is!) told me her foot had gone to sleep. They are sitting round a table; it is a birthday party. You would think that the cake must be very stale by this time, the little red candles guttered out. But no: I can see them burning steadily, the bright untrembling candles of a dream. Even in the puppet postures where I left them I can see those phantoms strangely show an air of expectation. Something must be done about it. In these moods bicycling seems perfectly the right employ. It is all very well to say to yourself that you are not thinking as you wheel serenely along: but you are, and that sure uncertainty of the cyclist’s balance, that unconsciously watchful suspension (solid on earth yet so breezily flitting) seems to symbolize the task itself. The wheel slidders in a rut or on a slope of gravel: at once, by instinct, you redress your perpendicular. So, in the continual joy and disgust of the writer’s work, he dare not abandon that difficult trained alertness. How much of the plain horror and stupidity is he to admit into his picture? how many of the grossly significant minutiae can he pause to include? how often shall he make a resolute fling to convey that incomparable energy of life that should be the artist’s goal above all? These are the airy tinkerings of his doubt; and as he passes from windy hill-top to green creeks and grazings sometimes the bicycle sets him free. He sees it all afresh; nothing, nothing has ever been written yet: the entire white paper of the world is clean for his special portrait of all hunger, all joy, and all vexation. I was led to this forgotten treasure of a book through an oblique mention in Diane Ackerman’s fascinating inquiry into the evolutionary and existential purpose of deep play, of which cycling is no doubt a prime example. For more on overcoming creative block, see this compendium of advice by contemporary artists and Lewis Carroll’s three tricks.(CNN) -- Washington Redskins defensive lineman Albert Haynesworth is named in a misdemeanor assault warrant accusing him of punching a motorist who had complained the NFL player was tailgating, a police spokeswoman said Friday. A Fairfax County magistrate issued the simple assault warrant Thursday night, police spokeswoman Mary Ann Jennings said. Haynesworth's agent, Chad Speck, said it was the other driver who instigated the incident and called the accusation "ridiculous." The incident between Haynesworth and the motorist, whom police declined to identify, occurred Wednesday as the two drove on the Fairfax County Parkway. The motorist told police the driver of a pickup truck -- later determined by police to be Haynesworth -- was tailgating him, so he delivered a "non-verbal hand gesture" to the driver, Officer Shelley Broderick said. The man told police that when the two stopped at a red light, Haynesworth got out of the truck and the two briefly exchanged words before Haynesworth threw a punch, according to Broderick. The man called police. After making a statement, he drove himself to a hospital for treatment of minor injuries, Broderick said. Speck said Haynesworth has not yet told his side of the story to police. "If contacted by the authorities, Albert will certainly cooperate in any way," Speck said in a statement e-mailed by his office. "This man, who actually provoked the situation himself, recognized Albert and is now simply trying to turn it into his 15 minutes of fame and get, we can only assume, some money." The warrant allows Haynesworth to turn himself in and simply sign a summons promising to appear in court, Broderick said. In Virginia, simple assault is a misdemeanor punishable by up to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine.Their collective net worth stood at $1.9 trillion at the end of 2012, Bloomberg calculates. The 184.5-carat Jacob Diamond, the seventh-largest in the world. (Photo11: MAHESH KUMAR, AP) Story Highlights Retail and telecommunication averaged 20% gains Clothing tycoon Amancio Ortega came out on top Bloomberg's index uncovered 54 'hidden' billionaires The planet's 100 richest people piled on $241 billion to their combined net worth of $1.9 trillion in 2012, Bloomberg reports. As 77% of American households face higher payroll taxes in 2013, the new year will continue to tilt toward the wealthy. "Last year was a great one for the world's billionaires," said John Catsimatidis, who owns the oil-and-gas conglomerate Red Apple Group. "In 2013, they will continue looking for investments around the world — and not necessarily in U.S. — that will give them an advantage." According to Bloomberg's daily ranking of the richest 100, only 16 netted a loss in 2012. Fortune smiled broadly on fortunes in retail and telecommunication, which averaged 20% gains. Who came out on top? Amancio Ortega, the "mysterious" founder of the Spanish clothing retailer Inditex SA. His $22.2 billion piggy bank fattened up to $57.5 billion. Bloomberg's index uncovered 54 "hidden" billionaires, including the fourth-richest woman in America, Elaine Tettemer Marshall, 70, of Dallas. She was worth $14.1 billion in 2012, thanks to her 14.6% ownership of privately held Koch Industries, the Kansas-based multinational conglomerate controlled by Charles and David Koch. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/UkXuiEThe U.S. government has asked Chevron, Shell, and our old friends at Transocean to halt drilling on wells in the Gulf of Mexico. Why? Because the systems connecting the rigs to the ocean floor contain defective parts. From Bloomberg: [The companies] have been directed by U.S. regulators to suspend work aboard rigs that employ General Electric Co. devices connecting drilling tubes to safety gear and the seafloor. The equipment must be retrieved so defective bolts can be replaced, the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said in an alert issued on Jan. 29. … The defect was discovered last month after a leak of drilling fluid was linked to bolts that failed because of stress corrosion, according to the Jan. 29 alert. The regulator didn’t identify the owner of the rig or which oil company was leasing it. GE declined to identify the manufacturer of the bolts. Thanks for your help, GE. How big a deal is this for the companies? Installing new bolts and resuming drilling may take as long as three weeks for each rig, Credit Suisse Group AG said. For oil companies paying upwards of $600,000 a day to rent the most-sophisticated deep-water vessels and another $500,000 a day to staff and supply each of them, the delays may be significant, said Craig Pirrong, director of the University of Houston’s Global Energy Management Institute. “This certainly will be costly for the industry,” Pirrong said in a telephone interview yesterday. “This is a result of increasing government scrutiny of deep-water activities. The question is, will the increased costs be so onerous that they discourage some companies” from searching the deep oceans for crude. 1. You know what’s more expensive than spending $1.1 million a day to replace faulty bolts? Massive oil spills. 2. If a company is going to be discouraged from drilling offshore because it might have to fix defective, leaky parts, it’s probably for the best.Congress is now debating legislation, dubbed the Marketplace Fairness Act, that would add state sales taxes to many items shoppers now buy from Internet retailers. On a 75-24 vote, the U.S. Senate passed an amendment to its 2014 budget resolution that would require large retailers to collect and remit applicable state and local taxes on Internet orders from out-of-state customers based on the tax rates in the customer’s taxing jurisdiction. The amendment would exempt from the tax collection requirement businesses that do less than $1 million in online sales to customers outside their home state. A 1992 Supreme Court decision involving catalog orders stipulated that sellers could collect sales taxes only in states where the retailer has a physical presence, such as stores or distribution centers. U.S. Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., is among the 26 cosponsors of the proposed legislation that would change sales tax collection rules. “It’s a fairness issue for our Main Street businesses,” Boozman said last week. If the online buyer isn’t paying sales tax, he said, the buyer is paying about 9 percent less than at a brick-and-mortar store. The average combined state and local sales tax rate paid in Arkansas is 8.61 percent, according to the Washington-based Center for Federal Tax Policy, which studies tax policy issues at the federal, state and local levels. Boozman said that in the early days of Internet shopping, it made sense to exempt such businesses from collecting sales taxes due to the widely varying state and local rates. Since then, however, computer software programs have been developed that can apply the appropriate tax rate based on the buyer’s home address. “If you start out 9 percent behind, it’s hard to overcome that,” he said. Ultimately, Boozman added, states should be able to set the tax rates on all commerce within their boundaries. A companion bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, cosponsored by U.S. Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., is awaiting action. The pending legislation in both chambers has the support of retail groups including the National Retail Federation and the Retail Industry Leaders Association. “I have become very optimistic that we might now get something passed,” Womack said. “We still have work to do, but the Senate vote was very encouraging to me. The fact that it got 75 votes might up the ante a bit, or at least be more inviting in the House. I just think it’s an unfair disadvantage to the Main Street retailers.” The Senate has 100 members, the house 435. Forty-five of the 50 states levy a statewide sales tax. In addition, other government entities such as cities and counties apply sales taxes, including those in Arkansas. Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon have no statewide sales tax. Arkansas’ statewide sales tax is 6 percent. David French, senior vice president for government relations for the National Retail Federation, based in Washington, said the Senate’s move was “a big deal for us. Getting a level playing field has long been apriority.” The organization, he said, has been working on the issue for more than a decade. In the early days of online shopping, lawmakers and policy makers were reluctant to tax those transactions, contending that it was a new channel of commerce that should not be burdened with tax collection. That’s no longer the case, French said, with online shopping growing at double-digit rates. “It wasn’t much of an argument then and it certainly isn’t an argument now,” he said. French cautioned that state governments will face funding difficulties if online sales remain untaxed. “It’s been a slow leak in state budgets. It will be a titanic leak in the future,” he said. As for prospects that online sales taxes will be enacted, he said, “I think this is going to be the year that it actually happens. Clearly, most of the challenges have been answered. Now, it’s a matter of finding a piece of legislation to attach it to.” The Retail Industry Leaders Association is an organization that represents the nation’s largest retailers. “The overwhelming bipartisan vote in the Senate is proof-positive that the federal government’s special treatment of online-only retailers will soon be a thing of the past. While we take nothing for granted, today’s vote opens many pathways to making theMarketplace Fairness Act law this year, leveling the playing field for Main Street merchants once and for all,” Sandy Kennedy, the group’s president, said in a statement last week. Brooke Buchanan, a Wal-Mart spokesman, said the company collects sales taxes on all online purchases. Wal-Mart has stores in all 50 states, as well as other facilities. The sales taxes are owed by the consumer, she said. “We’re supportive of the Marketplace Fairness Act to level the playing field for the bricks-and-mortar businesses,” she said. However, Steve DelBianco, executive director of netchoice. org, a trade association of ecommerce businesses and online shoppers, said states should not be given new taxing authority without simplification of the tax codes.Those codes cover about 10,000 taxing jurisdictions in 45 states, he said. “The biggest impact of this legislation is to erect barriers on any business that wants to reach customers across the country” he said. “Arkansas businesses will face auditors from 45 different states.” DelBianco said Womack’s bill creates a false hope for bricks-and-mortar retailers that shoppers will be drawn away from the online channel. “Most consumers buy online for convenience, not to avoid sales tax,” he said.Migrants and refugees queue to enter the Regugees centre near Porte de La Chapelle, AFP The EU has issued a 24-hour warning to Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland saying that they have to start taking in refugees under an EU migrant-sharing plan. Wildfires destroy part of Winnie the Pooh's 'Hundred Acre Wood' as UK temperatures rise The three countries immediately rebuffed the threat and appeared ready to go to court. The European Commission said in a statement that it has repeatedly urged them to relocate refugees or at least pledge to do so under the legally-binding refugee plan agreed two years ago. But it said they have failed to take action ‘in breach of their legal obligations,’ and that it “has decided to launch infringement procedures.” The plan to share 160,000 refugees in overwhelmed Italy and Greece among other European countries over two years was endorsed in September 2015 by a qualified majority vote. Police patrol a huge fire at the Grande-Synthe migrant camp outside the northern French city of Dunkirk late April 10, 2017 AFP It was seen as a major plank of the EU’s migration policy, and was lauded as a pan-European show of solidarity in 2015 when more than a million people arrived in Europe seeking sanctuary or jobs. Advertisement Advertisement But just three months before the September 2017 deadline, fewer than 21,000 people have been relocated. The Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia voted against the scheme. Hungary and Slovakia had previously launched their own legal action against it.DIGG THIS "To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!" ~ H. L. Mencken Before you send Johnnie off to earn his college tuition the hard way — make sure he can read all the "Warning Labels" that pertain to military service. He won’t find these as easily as the Surgeon General’s Warning on his cigarettes even though cigarettes are slower killers. There are classes in schools that warn about "casual unprotected sex," but not many about casual unprotected war. The government schools, being infested by sycophants beholden to the State, will have coffee and doughnuts ready when the recruiters arrive to make sure Johnny gets a crack at trading an eye or a leg or a mind or a life for some college tuition and some shiny medals — maybe even a Gold Star. Take some time and look at a couple of the glitzy new recruiting sites for the armed forces of the United States and see if you can find anything in the form of a warning that would really tell the whole truth about what could happen as a result of trying to "be all that you can be." Even if they warn about injury and death — they are not going to talk about being ordered to kill people under less than honorable and lawful circumstances. The military sites are not going to directly criticize their Commander-In-Chief for getting them into an unlawful, unconstitutional war. They are no more "Fair and Balanced" than Fox News. And the generals turn into pussycats after they retire, or, worse yet, "War Entrepreneurs" — still shilling for the War Party — with at least One very rare exception. The Few, The Proud, The Constitutionally Literate? If the US Marine Corps were really all about being "Semper Fi" to Honor and the Constitution before anything else, they would treat Major General Smedley D. Butler, USMC, Retired [the most highly decorated marine] with a lot more honor and respect. And if they would do justice to him there could be a lot of injustice prevented. Go to their site and look for him. His name is good for naming military bases — but his perspective on lawful and unlawful war is not being taught by the Marine Corps or the other armed services. There are important reasons for that. You can search their site for him by clicking here. Another subject not often mentioned on those enticing recruitment sites: The Constitution. Major General Butler was never a pure "Peacenik." A fierce adversary on the field of battle, he was always in favor of Lawful War for Lawful Defense and Never for Aggression or Plunder. This is precisely the position of the Founding Fathers and the Framers of the Constitution. When he found out the truth about war he turned against the Machine. And that is the honorable reaction for a True Marine and True Patriot. When confronted with Truth he takes his position on the side of Truth. It would be one thing to bury his history after he left the Corps if he had turned against his country and dishonored the uniform. But General Butler continued to serve his country — and its veterans — better and better in the years after his active duty — until he even thwarted a fascist coup to take over our government — and finally risked everything including his reputation to boldly come out against the Warfare State and the Military Industrial Complex — exposing War in general, as the Racket it is and always has been. Apparently other retired generals have not been so quick to join his ranks. If this was not a "Marine’s Marine" there is no such specimen. Even his Two [2] Congressional Medals of Honor cannot do justice to this man, who, even now, in his death, has the potential to save thousands, perhaps millions of American lives, as well as the lives of millions upon millions in other countries, who should not, who must not, be lost to benefit the Warmongers among us who have become drunk on the blood of Empire. "HELL NO — WE WON’T GO!" In my opinion, no young person who cannot intelligently discuss General Butler’s book, "War Is A Racket," should be permitted to join any of the armed forces. I would further insist that all military personnel be schooled in "War Crimes Avoidance." This would primarily be centered on teaching the difference between lawful and unlawful orders and lawful and unlawful wars. Most military personnel do not consciously think about this until perhaps after their service — or never — according to Smedley Butler. They just follow orders. That is why Michael New is such an anomaly. We put warnings on all sorts of products. I once went into a store where they sold motorcycles and other sports vehicles etc. I couldn’t help but notice a large yellow tag fastened on the back of a quad cycle seat. It read, "Caution: You May Fall Off and Be Killed." I am not making this up. My first reaction was a guffaw. At the time I wrote that off to political correctness. I thought perhaps "cause and effect" had been educated out of the culture for such a warning to be necessary. Kids had been falling off of things for a long time. But if the same kids that need to see a warning like that are joining the military to get money for college I think severe and repeated warnings are definitely in order and should be required by law. They are already mathematically challenged if they think most college degrees will result in higher lifetime net incomes than many of the trades. My plumber used to be a brain surgeon. We must heed the warnings of a true Hero like Smedley Butler if we are ever going the Preempt the next Preemptive War. If you have never read his book you must read it and get your kids and all of your relatives and friends to read it — and talk about it — to all of their circles of friends and relatives. It is an extremely powerful little book — and it is Unimpeachable. Change a few company names; add a few zeros to the obscene profits of war, and you will see that this 1935 Classic is quite up-to-date. Get at least one for your coffee table. I have set aside a dedicated website to promote the reading of General Butler’s book "War Is A Racket" and another work of perhaps equal value: "The War Prayer," by Mark Twain, a short story so controversial that its publication was reserved until after Twain’s death. There are a few ways for you to read and promote these works, starting with reading them on line at no cost and linking to them in your emails, on your blogs and on your websites. You can also purchase a new pamphlet with both works at a nominal charge — or go to Amazon and buy the glossy publisher’s paperback version of Butler’s book. The main objective is to get you to read the pamphlet a few times — or at least until it makes a permanent impression on your mind, heart and soul. Then you can help us to circulate millions of copies. Let me know if you want to distribute the pamphlet in volume so we can make it more cost effective for you or your organization. We will be happy to make a special cover for your organization [unless it is Fox News]. Read both works for free by clicking here. Or copy and paste this link everywhere you can think of. You can use the hyperlinked graphic below on the web or in emails. If you have already read these two works you don’t need to be told how important they are — you have already been "vaccinated." But also please consider this a challenge to help circulate them more widely. We are at a place where both major political parties see perpetual unlawful war as practically a necessity. This is the chosen method of suicide for Empires. I am writing most of this on April 19th, the
"discord" - echoing a common al Qaeda complaint against Islamic State's record of clashing with rival Islamist groups in Syria. The statement also warned al Qaeda's new wing against oppressing local populations - another complaint levelled against Islamic State by critics in Iraq and Syria. "If you said that you are doing jihad to defend the sanctities of the Muslims, then you must not transgress against them or their money or honour, and not even transgress your mujahideen brothers by word and action," he said. "Discord is a curse and torment, and disgrace for the believers and glory for the disbelievers," he said. "If you say that by your jihad you do not want but the pleasure of Allah, then you must not race for governance and leadership at the first opportunity." Muslims account for 15 percent of Indians but, numbering an estimated 175 million, theirs is the third-largest Muslim population in the world. Centuries of rule by medieval Muslim invaders drove a wedge between Hindus and Muslims. Tensions have grown since Pakistan was carved from Muslim-majority areas of India in 1947, a violent partition in which hundreds of thousands were killed. In the era of Washington's "war on terror", some Indian Muslims have begun to sympathise more with hardline pan-Islamic groups and causes. Reuters Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.(Reuters) - North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, who took office last month in the height of tensions surrounding the Dakota Access Pipeline, said he believed the line would eventually be built and asked opponents to clean their protest camp before spring floodwaters create a potential ecological disaster. A man holds an American flag while marching with veterans and activists outside the Oceti Sakowin camp where "water protectors" continue to demonstrate against plans to pass the Dakota Access pipeline adjacent to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, U.S., December 5, 2016. Picture taken December 5, 2016. REUTERS/Stephen Yang A centrist Republican with no prior political experience, Burgum was elected in a landslide on a platform of streamlining government and improving relations across the state. Burgum built a successful software business before selling it to Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) in 2001. Burgum told Reuters that approval of the pipeline appeared to be a foregone conclusion once Donald Trump moved into the White House. “I expect the world’s going to change dramatically on that day relative to finding resolution on this issue,” Burgum said in an interview. “I would expect that (Energy Transfer Partners ETP.N) will get its easement and it will go through.” A coalition of Native American groups, environmentalists, Hollywood stars and veterans of the U.S. armed forces protested the $3.8 billion oil project at a North Dakota camp, which at one point held more than 5,000, though that number has shrunk in size during the winter. Opponents contend construction would damage sacred lands and any leaks could pollute the water supply of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. Last month, President Barack Obama denied a key permit needed to complete the pipeline, but Trump has said he will review that decision. Local law enforcement have voiced concerns that any reversal by the federal government could cause the area to swell again with protesters, straining resources. David Archambault, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, has repeatedly asked protesters to leave the area and let the pipeline fight play out in courts. Burgum said he agrees with Archambault and asked protesters to help clean up the camp before it threatens the environment itself. More than 300 vehicles, along with dozens of temporary dwellings and other detritus, have been abandoned at the campsite, which sits in a flood plain that is likely to be overrun by spring rain and snowmelt. State officials are concerned that floodwaters could carry that material away. “The amount of cleanup that needs to take place is enormous,” Burgum said. “We’ve got a potential ecological disaster if this land floods and all the debris flows downstream into tribal lands.”WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Army apologized on Wednesday for sending 7,000 letters addressed to “Dear John Doe” to the relatives of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The letters, printed by a contractor and mailed in December, were intended to inform family members about private organizations that offer assistance to those who have lost relatives in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. The Army said the letters should have contained specific salutations and addresses, instead of the anonymous greeting. It blamed a printing error for the mix-up. “The U.S. Army is apologizing,” the armed service said in a statement. Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, will send a personal letter to each person who received improperly addressed correspondence, the Army said. The U.S. Army Human Resources Command’s Casualty and Mortuary Affairs Center, which issued the letters, formally apologized on Wednesday. “There are no words to adequately apologize for this mistake, or for the hurt it may have caused,” said Brig. Gen. Reuben Jones, the Army’s adjutant general. “It is important the original intent of the letter is not lost. The organizations mentioned are dedicated to honoring loved ones and recognizing their sacrifice and commitment.” About 4,224 U.S. service members have died in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. Another 627 have died in Operation Enduring Freedom, which includes military operations in Afghanistan as well as other countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.An Exatron Stringy Floppy (cover removed) designed for use with the TRS-80 Model 1 The Exatron Stringy Floppy (or ESF) is a continuous loop tape drive developed by Exatron. The company introduced an S-100 stringy floppy drive at the 1978 West Coast Computer Faire, and a version for the Radio Shack TRS-80 in 1979. Exatron sold about 4,000 TRS-80 drives by August 1981 for $249.50 each, stating that it was "our best seller by far". The tape cartridge is about the size of a business card, but about 3⁄ 16 inch (4.8 millimetres) thick.[1] The magnetic tape inside the cartridge is 1⁄ 16 inch (1.6 millimetres) wide. There is no single catalog of files; to load a specific file the drive searches the entire tape, briefly stopping to read the header of each found file. The tape loop only moves in one direction, so a file that starts behind the current location cannot be read until the drive searches the entire loop for it. The device is capable of reading and writing random access data files (unlike a datacassette). If a record being sought has been overshot the drive advances the tape until it loops around to the beginning and continues seeking from there.[2] According to Embedded Systems magazine, the Exatron Stringy Floppy uses Manchester encoding, achieving 14K read-write speeds and the code controlling the device was developed by Li-Chen Wang, who also wrote a Tiny BASIC, the basis for the TRS-80 Model I Level I BASIC. In the July 1983 issue of Compute!'s Gazette the Exatron Stringy Floppy for the Commodore VIC-20 and the 64 was reviewed. Calling the peripheral "a viable alternative" to tape or disk, the magazine noted that "under ideal conditions, a Stringy Floppy can outperform a VIC-1540/1541 disk drive". Texas Instruments licensed the Stringy Floppy as the Waferdrive for its TI 99/2 and CC-40 computers.[2] Exatron pitched the ESF as "The viable alternative". The ESF was faster and more reliable[citation needed] than a data cassette, and half the price[citation needed] of a floppy disk. Cartridges, or "wafers", were available with tape lengths ranging from 5 to 75 feet.[1] Known data capacities/tape length are: 4 kB/5 feet, 16 kB/20 feet, 48 kB/50 feet, and 64 kB/75 feet.[3] One complete cycle through a 20-foot tape takes 55 to 65 seconds, depending on the number of files on it.[2]Language Versions We have recently added the ability to support different language versions for each language. Moving forward this will help us keep kata compatible as versions change. It also allows us to support languages who have multiple popular versions still in active development (such as Python). These changes have already been deployed to our Coderunner and Codewars servers. Currently you can select between Python 2/3 and Node 0.10.33/6.0. You can optionally compile your JS code with Babel JS. Soon we will be adding the ability to filter kata by language version. How version selection works An interesting thing to be aware of if you are a kata author/translator. When authoring/translating, you select the version that the kata should default to for that language. However when you publish, we use your solution and test cases to check if the kata is completable in all versions for that language. Any versions that pass will automatically be enabled. So for example, if you want to create a kata that is solvable in both Python 2 and 3, just make sure to write your test cases and solution in a cross-version compatible way. New Languages We have two new languages which were recently deployed and are in beta. We would love help from the community to create content and test any integration issues that may still be lurking. If you are itching to have your favorite language added to Codewars, make sure to check out the CLI project. As soon as support is fully added to that project we will make it available on Codewars. Check out the Language Support Status section to see where your favorite language current stands in terms of being supported. Elixir Thanks to a community contribution from Sergii Bolki @cris on Codewars and Github, we now support Elixir. Testing is done using ExUnit. This is an interesting language which is picking up steam, particulary with Ruby developers who enjoy the Ruby-ish syntax. TypeScript TypeScript support was added by @jhoffner. Testing is done using Mocha. TypeScript is starting to become more popular now that Angular 2 is out. New Libraries Added Along with all of these updates, we have also make a number of new libraries available for some languages. JavaScript & Ruby in particular now have a number of new packages/gems available, many centered around machine learning and data science. In addition to Python which already had scipy/numpy available, this should make for some new and interesting possibilities in the types of kata that can be created. Check out the following links for more info: Speaking of Machine Learning and Python, we also added the TensorFlow library to our Python environment. This is an amazing machine learning library created by Google and definitely worth checking out. We can't wait to see what kata codewarriors come up with that make use of this packageNormally when an illegal garbage dump catches fire and causes serious damage to public property, the blame falls on the various government agencies responsible for public health and safety. In 1989, agencies in the State of New Jersey tried to close down an illegal dump in Newark that was underneath I-78 near the airport. They were blocked by a state court judge who held it was a "legitimate enterprise 'that should be encouraged.'" Shortly thereafter, the garbage pile caught fire and caused the bridges above to buckle and the federal government had to spend millions of dollars to repair the damage. New Jersey's chief justice described the episode as a "serious judicial error". Here, the court, not the agencies, suffered the public wrath for causing a disaster that inflicted a traffic nightmare on the state. Yesterday the Ninth Circuit held oral arguments on the federal government's attempt to remove a temporary restraining order or an injunction (it is not clear which we are dealing with) imposed by District Judge James Robart blocking the implementation of President Trump's executive order governing border security. The political question here for the Ninth Circuit is whether they want to own responsibility for border security. Right now, the buck stops at President Trump's desk. If some foreign national commits a terrorist act, Donald J. Trump will get the blame, even if the perpetrator came in to the country during a previous president's administration. Congress has been explicit in regard to the president's power here: Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. The statute here is unambiguous: The president may exclude any alien from entry into the country. (Somehow, Judge Robarts has determined that "any alien" does not mean "any alien", but I will return to that.) Politically, if the Ninth Circuit does decide that they, not the president, have the power to decide who can enter the country, they are now responsible. If any future terrorist attacks are made by or assisted by foreign nationals, they would be responsible. Should such an event occur, you can be sure that President Trump will rightfully blame the "idiot judges on the Ninth Circuit". The real issue before the Ninth Circuit is whether they want to take on this responsibility. This question has to be analyzed in terms of politics because there is no legal analysis to debate. In order to get an injunction, the party must show they are likely to prevail on the merits. When the statute says the president can exclude any alien from the country, what other principle of law says otherwise? We have no idea. Judge Robart simply wrote, "The States have satisfied the Winter test because they have shown that they are likely to succeed on the merits of the claims that would entitle them to relief." That kind of writing would, quite literally, get you a D in law school (stated the rule, no analysis). One might excuse the judge on the grounds of time, but this order has not been followed up by any opinion explaining how he reached his decision. One of the problems in the federal courts is that there are too many judges who seek to provide outcomes, rather than consistent law. If you take the same question of law to multiple judges, you can get entirely different answers. The District Court in Massachusetts issued a temporary restraining order against the executive order. However, it allowed the order to expire and issued an opinion. The Massachusetts court noted settled law that existed before Trump was elected: It is "beyond peradventure" that "unadmitted and non-resident aliens" have no right to be admitted to the United States. Adams v. Baker, 909 F.2d 643, 647 (1st Cir. 1990) But if it does not work in Boston, then try it in Seattle. When we bring cases challenging government action, the biggest issue is always standing. We spend more time on standing then actually arguing the merits of the case. In Texas v. United States, the Fifth Circuit devoted 17 pages to analyzing whether the states had standing. But there was nothing like that here. In the video of the District Court hearing the standing issue comes up (at 1:00:54). Judge Robart says "It is an interesting question in regard to the standing of the states to bring this action." Then he immediately goes on to say, "I'm sure the one item that all council will agree on is the standing law is a little murky." Then he finds the plaintiffs have standing. Judge Robart demonstrated that standing is pure hokum. If a court wants a case to move on, standing is "murky" and the plaintiff goes forward. If a court does not want a case to move on, the court simply invents a new rule out of thin air to deny standing.With the Union Cabinet deciding to approve promulgation of an ordinance to keep state boards out of the ambit of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for one academic session, the Congress Party on Friday alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government was serving the interest of a medical lobby, which included a large number of politicians and businessmen. Advertising Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala asked the NDA regime to roll back the ordinance so that meritorious students get admission on the basis of their merit and the entire system of fleecing students through capitation comes to an end. [related-post] “Modi Government is trying to help private medical colleges, who are charging capitation fee of Rs. 60 to 80 lakh from every student aspiring to be a doctor in this country. With this view, NEET, which was espoused by the Congress Government in 2010 and has been a subject matter of litigation till the Supreme Court decided it, is sought to be deferred by way of ordinance,” Surjewala told ANI. Also read \| Need more time to decide on NEET ordinance: Goa CM Advertising “Who is Modi Government serving? Are they serving the interest of private medical colleges hold 100 examinations across India at which students spend crores of rupees? Is Modi Government serving the interest of students or a medical lobby just because a large number of politicians and businessmen have interest?” he asked. The Congress leader said that according to him, to dishonour the order of the Supreme Court is biggest dis-service to the young in this country. “We reject in toto. We demand that Modi Government should roll back this ordinance and permit NEET to happen so that meritorious students get admission on the basis of their merit and the entire system of fleecing students through capitation comes to an end,” he said. Meanwhile, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis welcomed the Centre’s decision to clear the ordinance to postpone the NEET by a year so that the students have enough time to prepare. “I am happy that the Central Cabinet promulgated ordinance to postpone NEET exam by a year. There is a huge difference between the central board curriculum and state board curriculum because of which many students would have suffered,” Fadnavis told ANI. The Centre earlier in the day cleared the ordinance to postpone the NEET exam by a year so that the students have enough time to prepare. The decision comes after a meeting chaired between Union Health minister JP Nadda and other state health ministers over the matter. The meeting was convened after several parliamentarians opposed the common medical entrance test, saying the NEET has created confusion among the students who have already applied for the state entrance exams. Earlier on Friday, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal wrote to Prime Minister Modi asking him not to bring any order against the Supreme Court ruling on NEET, saying the students had welcomed the decision as it discouraged well endowed parents from making ‘donations’ to get their children admitted into reputed private medical colleges. “It has come to my attention that reports are adrift that the Centre is making plans to overturn the decision by the Supreme Court and people have been tensed upon hearing this news. The people of the nation will be cheated if the Centre goes through with this decision. Just a few days ago, Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda called a meeting over the issue, where almost all health ministers opposed NEET, except Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain,” the letter stated. Kejriwal added it is also being said that many politicians are running their own private medical colleges, in which some institutions are indulging in the practice of accepting large donations, which is why they were vehemently against the NEET examinations. “It is my humble request to you to ensure that no orders are brought against the Supreme Court ruling in the matter, otherwise people will think that the Centre stand with those who garner black money,” Kejriwal said. The apex court had earlier ruled that the students will have to appear for NEET starting this academic session to seek admission to any medical or dental colleges in the country. Advertising The opposition parties have raised concerns that the students passing out from the state boards in vernacular languages and living in remote areas may not be able to perform well enough in common entrance exam despite being competitive.This Soldier training publication (STP) is for Skill Levels 1 through 4 Soldiers holding the military occupational specialty (MOS) 37F, Psychological Operations Specialist. It contains standardized training objectives in the form of task summaries to train critical tasks that support unit missions. All Soldiers holding MOS 37F should have access to this publication. This publication applies to the Active Army, the Army National Guard (ARNG)/Army National Guard of the United States (ARNGUS), and the United States Army Reserve (USAR) unless otherwise stated. … Conduct Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield as a PSYOP Planner 331-305-0233 Conditions: Given the requirement to plan PSYOP support during mission analysis phase 2, a supported unit’s mission, the higher headquarters’ operation plan, and an area study. Standards: Integrate PSYOP-relevant information into the supported unit’s mission analysis in accordance with the four-step intelligence preparation of the battlefield (IPB) process. TASK STEPS AND PERFORMANCE MEASURES 1. Define the battlefield environment by determining significant characteristics of the physical, informational, and cognitive dimensions of the information environment. a. Establish the limits of the area of interest. b. Determine the political aspects. (1) Leadership. (2) Organizations. (3) Political system. (4) Legal system. (5) Political climate. c. Determine the military/security aspects. (1) Leadership. (2) Organizations. d. Determine the economic aspects. (1) Production. (2) Distribution. (3) Consumption. e. Determine the social aspects. (1) Groups, subgroups, social system, and society. (2) Demographics and education. (3) Attitudes, behavior, values, and beliefs. (4) History and religion. (5) Language, ethnicity, and culture. f. Determine the information aspects. (1) Global information systems (international memberships and information technology sources). (2) National information subsystems (mass communication media—amplitude modulation [AM], frequency modulation [FM], short wave [SW], and satellite radio; television; print; and Internet—and audiences). (3) Defense information subsystems (military command, control, and communication). g. Determine the infrastructure and technology aspects. (1) Utilities. (2) Transportation. (3) Industry. (4) Public facilities. h. Determine the environmental/physical aspects. (1) Geography. (2) Weather. … Refine Potential Target Audiences 331-305-0222 Conditions: Given the requirement to begin target audience analysis, supported commander’s operation plan/operation order, a blank target audience analysis work sheet (TAAW), the PSYOP estimate, the PSYOP tab/appendix, PSYOP objectives, supporting Psychological Operations objectives (SPOs), and potential target audience (TA) analysis list. Standards: Identify TAs able to accomplish a specific SPO. TASK STEPS AND PERFORMANCE MEASURES 1. Identify the primary actors (TAs engaging in [or likely to engage in] the targeted behavior [SPO]). 2. Identify the secondary actors (TAs directly or indirectly influencing the behavior of the primary actors). 3. Identify the subcategories among the primary and secondary actors. a. Organizations (military units; political, religious, social, or advocacy groups; charities; professional associations). b. Demographic sets (geographic area, gender, age, ethnicity, and tribe). c. Leaders. d. Key communicators. …A city woman has launched a $900,000 lawsuit against the Edmonton Ski Club and the City of Edmonton after alleging she was seriously injured while tobogganing. According to a statement of claim filed in Court of Queen’s Bench on Dec. 19, Samantha Giese was hurt when she collided with a ski jump while sliding down Gallagher Park hill on a circular plastic disc on Dec. 22, 2010. Giese alleges the ski jump consisted of a solid obstruction on the hill which was covered with snow and ice and says the collision left her spun around and facing the hill top. Giese, who was 19 at the time and in her third year of a Bachelor of Physical Education and Recreation degree at the University of Alberta, claims she suffered two fractured vertebrae and a left wrist sprain. As well, she alleges she suffered serious and permanent pain, loss of strength and loss of range of motion to her neck, back and hips, ongoing permanent numbness in her upper thighs and sleep disturbance. Giese alleges her injuries resulted in her being delayed in returning to school, hampered her part-time work and prevented her from completing the training she had been taking toward becoming a certified personal trainer. The statement of claim says the Edmonton Ski Club and the City of Edmonton were negligent for inviting the public to toboggan at the park in an area that was unsafe. It also alleges they were negligent for building or allowing the ski jump to be built in an area where it created a hazard and for failing to post any warning signs about it. Gallagher Park, the site of the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, is on the south side of the downtown river valley, between Cloverdale Hill Road and Connors Road. Statements of defence have not yet been filed. Statements of claim and statements of defence contain allegations which have not been proven in court.Christians seek to kill Atheists objecting to cross at Ground Zero Loving Christians want to murder and rape Atheists objecting to Jesus symbol at Ground Zero Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com Facebook Christians Advocating Death, Rape and Harm to Atheists As a result of a cross being erected at Ground Zero, Atheists filed a suit to have it removed citing the many different religions and beliefs of those unfortunates who perished on 9/11/2001. According to the lawsuit, among the 2,792 people killed in the twin towers, 31 were Muslim Americans, approximately 400 to 500 were Jewish Americans, approximately 500 were non-religious Americans, and an unknown number were Americans of other faiths. (So, about half of the people who died were not Christian.) The Christians, however, are outraged by this action and, following the piece that was aired on FOX, posted thousands of comments on the Fox Facebook Page. The range and malevolence of these God loving, Jesus jumping Christians is astonishing. Read them for yourself and let us know what you think about these kind and gentle church goers. The list below, assembled by One Man’s Blog, represents just some of the comments directed at Atheists that were captured before the content on Fox’s FaceBook page was deleted. Each commentator’s name is linked to their Facebook profile if it can be found, along with the quote attributed to that person. i say kill them all and let them see for themselves that there is God Bob O’Connell Shoot them. Shoot to kill. Joe Martinez To ALL ATHEIEST DIE AN GO TO HELL HAHA IF I COULD ID SHOOT ALL OF YOU IN THE HEAD WITH A 12GUAGE Joseph Sneckenberg thats easy shoot them Shoot em. At least we know where they’re going, waste of oxygen Nail them to the cross then display it. Chris Dunn I thinly we should hang the leader of that group on the cross with nails through their hands and feet, place a crown of thorns upon their head, RAM a spear through their side all after being whipped and beaten publicly! Just so they can endure what Christ dod so they understand the sacrifice behind what that cross symbolizes. Bob O’Connell They’re atheists so it won’t matter if you kill them. Tim Allison KILL THEM. Richard Silvia someone show me where they live&and they will live no mere! Here’s my solution, kill the group..just kidding, you figure it out. I’m so sick of people that pick and choose when they want to truly be American. They can go to Hell oh wait they will. stupid atheists, I hope God kills them all. I love Jesus, and the cross and if you dont, I hope someone rapes you! Eileen Rourke Any court or lawyer who takes this case should be hung!!!! If you look at some of the people who are atheists they are all miserable looking because they don’t have any faith in anything. You should all go live in another country. You have taken enough of my rights away. Hans Anderson atheist has no rights a snail has more rights than a atheist has I say throw them out to the sharks let them eat them like the ate bin laden Michael Perri these people are f’ing scum of the earth. can we start killing them now? few groups are filled with more hatred than atheists. Scott Miller IF THE CROSS OFFENDS YOU: SO SHOULD THIS COUNTRY; LEAVE BEFORE WE KILL YOU!!!! Patrick Alley Kill em all…let God sort em out. Guess what Atheists… So, What Do You Think? There have also been a lot of Tweets related to this issue, but I’m really wondering what YOU think about it? Christians, is it really acceptable to say, “I’m not like them. Those aren’t real Christians!” After all, the people who made these comments would say the exact same thing about you. Non-Christian people who identify with another religion, do you think your religion should be able to display a memorial to the believers who died alongside the Christians? Non-believers, is it really so important to warrant a national campaign to not allow a single Christian symbol at a monument for the dead? We at MMA are DYING to hear what you think about these gentle souls and their charitable comments concerning the Atheists. Hat tip to Pedro Bonilla. Follow MadMike’sAmerica on Facebook and Twitter, and don’t forget to visit our HOME PAGE.People inside a bus watch others take part in a rally against what they see as growing racial and religious intolerance in the world's largest Muslim-majority country, in Jakarta, Indonesia November 19, 2016. REUTERS/Darren Whiteside JAKARTA (Reuters) - Thousands of Indonesians held a peaceful rally on Saturday to promote unity, saying they were worried by signs of growing racial and religious intolerance in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country. Dressed in red and white shirts, the colours of the Indonesian flag, religious leaders, members of human rights groups, lawmakers and others marched along a central Jakarta street. Some held posters with the national motto “Bhinneka Tunggal Ika”, which means unity in diversity, while others performed traditional dances. “This is about diversity, but also about unity. We have to separate politics from ethnicity, religion, and race,” said 25-year old Iwan Saputra. “I want Indonesia to stay united.” Concerns about rising hardline Islamic sentiment in the country of 250 million people have grown since police decided on Wednesday to investigate a blasphemy complaint by Muslim groups against the Christian governor of Jakarta. More than 100,000 Muslims protested against Governor Basuki Purnama Purnama earlier this month. Police fired tear gas and water cannon to quell the protest. “The economy is growing, infrastructure is being built everywhere. Don’t let this all be destroyed just because of ego,” said Saidiman Ahmad, an activist with Liberal Islam Network. Some analysts have said the police decision to pursue the case was a blow to democracy as well as diversity. Indonesia recognises six religions and is home to several minority groups that adhere to traditional beliefs.One of Donald Trump‘s most trusted confidants is coming to his defense after a California woman filed suit against the presidential contender, claiming he raped her when she was a teen. “This lawsuit sounds like BS — plain and simple,” former Trump adviser Roger Stone, who remains close with Trump, told RadarOnline.com. “It smacks of a political smear job!” As Radar reported, the woman — identified as Katie Johnson — filed documents in a California court on April 26, accusing Trump and billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein of “sexual abuse under threat of harm” and “conspiracy to deprive [her] civil rights.” PHOTOS: The Prince & The Pedophile! The Jeffrey Epstein Sex Scandal Like Stone, Trump ripped apart Johnson’s story as manufactured to destroy his political aspirations. “The allegations are not only categorically false, but disgusting at the highest level and clearly framed to solicit media attention or, perhaps, are simply politically motivated,” he told Radar exclusively. “There is absolutely no merit to these allegations. Period.” Johnson claimed Trump, 69, turned her into a “sex slave” and in 1994 when she was 13 in exchange for the chance at a modeling career. She filed the lawsuit herself — without legal representation — and is suing for $100 million.Victor Conte remains suspicious of Jon Jones’ low testosterone levels prior to UFC 182. \| Dave Mandel/Sherdog.com While test results released by the Nevada Athletic Commission indicate that Jon Jones did not take exogenous testosterone ahead of UFC 182, Victor Conte does not seem to be completely convinced that the light heavyweight champion should be free and clear.The Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) founder and president recently appeared on the Sherdog Radio Network’s “Beatdown” show to discuss the use of performance enhancing drugs in mixed martial arts and the effectiveness of the current testing methods. Conte was particularly interested in Jones’ testosterone-to-epitestosterone (T/E) ratio and total testosterone level leading up to his triumph over Daniel Cormier on Jan. 3.Jones had his T/E levels measured on three occasions -- an extra test was ordered because his first sample was diluted -- as part of out-of-competition drug testing ordered by the NAC. His ratio in the three tests were 0.29:1, 0.35:1 and 0.19:1, well below the normal ratio (1.3:1) for an average African-American male, according to Conte. In addition, Jones’ testosterone levels in those three tests were 1.8 ng/mL, 0.59 ng/mL and 4.9 ng/mL; the average level for a male is 61.3 ng/ML.However, the NAC later revealed to MMAJunkie.com that Carbon Isotope Ratio testing was performed on each of Jones’ drug tests, including a pair of post-fight samples, and the results came back clean. Although the CIR tests would be able to detect if Jones had been using exogenous testosterone, Conte remains skeptical not only of the champion’s low overall levels, but of the great variance in Jones’ T/E ratios as well.“If they see a deviation in the T/E ratio of greater than 30 percent, there is something up. That’s a red flag,” Conte explained. “If you look at Daniel [Cormier’s] two ratios, they were.42 and.47; that’s about an eight percent deviation. If you look at the numbers for Jon Jones, his was basically an 80 percent deviation. His is suspicious and Daniel Cormier’s is not. It’s not just that he’s got very low [testosterone] levels, much lower than Daniel. Daniel’s are normal, his are extremely low.”Cormier’s T/E ratios were 0.40:1 and 0.48:1, while his testosterone levels were 50 ng/mL and 70 ng/mL.“These are highly suspicious for Jon Jones, in my opinion,” Conte said. “This is the reason that sophisticated anti-doping officials do target testing. So based on what we see here, my opinion is Jon Jones should be on a very short leash and should be random tested here until they sort out why he has these anomalies.”That Jones’ levels were as low as they were should raise a red flag, according to Conte, because the use of performance enhancing drugs could be a potential culprit.“The question is what was suppressing his testosterone production for that period of time. Something caused it to go down, and I do not believe it was overtraining,” Conte said. “Exogenous testosterone and other steroids in a period of time, depending on dosage and method of administration, can completely shut your testosterone and epitestosterone levels in urine to 0....The levels being low there can be many explanations. [People say], ‘Well maybe it’s because he was taking cocaine.’ There’s no solid science out there that shows cocaine lowers testosterone."Typically without using drugs with black males, 50 to 150 would be the normal range [for testosterone], compared to Jon Jones came back his highest level was 4.9. Even on the low end he’s only got 10 percent of that. It’s really, really low,” Conte continued. “It wasn’t just that one time. The first part of December when he tested again the second time it’s still relatively low. Those are in my opinion just highly suspicious, very, very low levels.”A Barclays sign is seen on the exterior of the Barclays U.S. Corporate headquarters in the Manhattan borough of New York City, May 20, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Segar (Reuters) - Barclays Plc plans to cut more than 30,000 jobs within two years after firing Chief Executive Antony Jenkins this month, The Times reported on Sunday. This redundancy program, which could reduce the bank's global workforce below 100,000 by 2017 end, is considered as the only way to address the bank's chronic underperformance and double its share price, the newspaper said, citing senior sources. (http://thetim.es/1CKc13g) These job cuts are likely to affect staff at middle and back office operations, where largest savings are achieved, the Times said. The paper said that a potential candidate, who would replace Jenkins, is expected to axe jobs much faster and more deeply than the ousted boss. Barclays deputy chairman Michael Rake joined payments processing firm Worldpay as its new chairman in mid-July. Barclays could not be reached immediately for comments outside regular business hours. (Reporting by Rishika Sadam in Bengaluru)Line 0.0.0 THURSDAY, MAY 13th. Line 0.0.1 Before Dr Lloyd (chairman) and Messrs Line 0.0.2 Barwise, and Wylie, J's.P. Line 0.0.3 ALLEGED INDECENT ASSAULT. Line 0.0.4 Wm. Ramden, otherwise " Fattam," Line 0.0.5 was remanded for a week on a charge Line 0.0.6 of indecently assaulting a little girl Line 0.0.7 Robertson. Bail was allowed in one Line 0.0.8 surety of £30.
The Diabolical Business of Global Public Relations Firms The expansion of public relations and propaganda (PRP) firms inside news systems in the world today has resulted in a deliberate form of news management. Maintenance of continuous news shows requires a constant and ever-entertaining supply of stimulating events and breaking news bites. Corporate media are increasingly dependent on various government agencies and PRP firms as sources of news. The PRP industry has experienced phenomenal growth since 2001. In 2015, three publicly traded mega PR firms—Omnicom, WPP, and Interpublic Group—together employed 214,000 people across 170 countries, collecting $35 billion in combined revenue. Not only do these firms control massive wealth, they also possess a network of connections in powerful international institutions with direct links to national governments, multi-national corporations, global policy-making bodies, and the corporate media. In The Practice of Public Relations, Fraser P. Seitel defined public relations as “helping an organization and its public adapt mutually to each other.” Propaganda can be defined as the dissemination of ideas and information for the purpose of inducing or intensifying specific attitudes and actions. Both PR and propaganda seek to change behaviors and ideas among the masses in support of the agendas of public and private institutions. As Douglas Kellner and other researchers have documented, since 9/11 public relations firms have contributed to increased levels of media propaganda. Consider the Rendon Group, one of the key PR firms supporting US propaganda efforts during recent wars. In the 1980s, it produced public relations propaganda for the ousting of Panama’s president, Manuel Noriega. The Rendon Group also shaped international support for the first Gulf War, and in the 1990s created the Iraqi National Congress. The Rendon Group provided the images that mobilized public support for a permanent war on terror, including the fake news stories of the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad, the heroic rescue of US Army private Jessica Lynch, and dramatic tales of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. As James Bamford reported in a 2005 article in Rolling Stone, Pentagon documents show thirty-five contracts with Rendon from 2000-2004, worth a total of between $50-100 million dollars. PRP firms have emerged as orchestrators of global information and news. The world today faces a military-industrial-media empire, bolstered by PRP firms, that is so powerful and complex that truth is mostly absent or reported only in disconnected segments with little historical context. In late 1999, Ben Bagdikian, the author of Media Monopoly and former Washington Post editor, told me that he estimated that two-thirds of all news stories originated with PR firms; in 2003, an article from the Guardian conservatively estimated that 50-80% of news and business stories originated from public relations firms. The result is managed news by governments, corporations, and PRP firms—often interlocked—including both the release of specific stories intended to build public support as well as the deliberate non-coverage of news stories that may undermine capitalist elites’ goals and interests. PRP firms provide a variety of services to major corporations and institutions around the world. Brand enhancement and sales are undoubtedly among their key services. However, companies offer much more, including research and crisis management for corporations and governments, public information campaigns, web design and promotions, and corporate media placement. WPP’s Hill & Knowton proudly brags on its website that they service 50% of the Fortune Global 500 companies from their offices in forty countries. Along with Omnicom’s Fleishman and Hillard, Hill & Knowlton have been the key PRP firms working with Monsanto to protect its brand Roundup, which contains the herbicide glyphosate. Roundup is the most widely-used herbicide in the world, being sold in over 130 countries, but the World Health Organization recently declared glyphosate a human carcinogen. As countries begin to restrict its use, PRP firms gear up to protect Monsanto’s profits. WPP’s Hill & Knowton is also well known for its early involvement with the Council for Tobacco Research (CTR), originally established in 1954 to counter the 1952 Reader’s Digest report linking cancer to tobacco smoking. In 1993, the Wall Street Journal described CTR as the “longest-running misinformation campaigns in U.S. business history”. It was WPP’s Burson-Marsteller who created the frontgroup Global Climate Coalition (GCC). From 1989-2001, the GCC helped the oil and auto industries downplay the dangers of global warming. Initial members of the coalition included Amoco, American Petroleum Institute, Chevron, Chrysler, Exxon, Ford, GM, Shell, and Texaco. In addition from 2007-2015 the US federal government spent over $4 billion dollars for PRP services. The US employs 3,092 public relations officers in 139 agencies. An additional $2.2 billion goes to outside firms to perform PRP, polling, research, and market consulting. The world’s top PRP firms reaped millions of US dollars in 2014 including Laughlin, Marinaccio & Owens ($87.98M), WPP-Young & Rubicam Inc. ($57.5M), WPP-Ogilvy Public Relations ($47.93M), Omnicon-FleishmanHillard ($42.4M), and Gallup ($42.0M). WPP’s Burson-Marsteller won a $4.6 million contract with the US Department of Homeland Security in 2005 to develop public awareness and education for a major emergency, disaster, or terrorist attack in Washington DC. Before the first Gulf War, a fake news propaganda spectacle took place courtesy of WPP’s Hill & Knowlton. They were hired by Citizens for a Free Kuwait and eventually received nearly $10.8 million to conduct one of the most effective public relations campaigns in history. Hill & Knowlton helped create a national outrage against Iraq by publicizing the horrifying events supposedly caused by Iraqi soldiers during Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. In testimony to the House of Representative’s Human Rights Caucus, a young woman named Nayirah said that she saw “Iraqi soldiers come into the [Kuwaiti] hospital with guns, and go into the room where 15 babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.” What the public was not told was that Nayirah was the daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador to the US, and that her performance was coordinated by the White House and choreographed by the US public relations firm Hill & Knowlton on behalf of the Kuwaiti government. As Johan Carlisle reported, former CIA official Robert T. Crowley, who served as a liaison between the agency and PR firms, acknowledged that “Hill & Knowlton’s overseas offices…were perfect ‘cover’ for the ever-expanding CIA. Unlike other cover jobs, being a public relations specialist did not require technical training for CIA officers.” Furthermore, Crowley admitted, the CIA used its Hill & Knowlton connections to “put out press releases and make media contacts to further its positions… Hill & Knowlton employees at the small Washington office and elsewhere distributed this material through CIA assets working in the United States news media.” A global war on terrorism requires continuous ideological justification, aimed at the mass of people who instinctively favor peace. PRP firms provide an on-going rationalization for war by servicing government propaganda activities, military contractors, pro-war Hollywood films, and the marketing of war toys, cartoons and related products. The techniques for marketing brands are essentially the same as for marketing war. PRP firms produce creative, visually-stimulating, emotional ads that spotlight families with loving children in danger of others, protected by official authorities, including homeland security, police or military personnel: “To get to you…they’d have to get past us,” touted the narrator of “America’s Navy—the Shield,” produced by the advertising firm Campbell Ewald, which first aired on CBS during the 2014 Army-Navy football game. In May 2015, the Navy Times reported that the Navy had awarded its Recruiting Command contract—“initially valued at $84.4 million for a one-year fixed-price”—to New York-based Young & Rubicam. The big three global PRP firms are key contributors to the global hegemony of capitalism. PRP firms and their corporate media partners aid corporations, governments, and non-governmental organizations in an unrelenting ideological assault on, and pacification of, the minds of the masses around the world. The overall message is the continued acquisition of material products and consumption, expanded desire for a life of luxury, fear of others—including terrorists, criminals, and threatening peoples—the support of police states, acceptance of a permanent war on terrorism, and the equation of private corporations with democratic governance. This is what Noam Chomsky called engineering opinion and parading enemies. The PRP industry is highly concentrated and fully global. With $35 billion in annual revenue, the big three PRP firms are key components of the transnational capitalist class. The PRP industry’s primary goal is the promotion of capital growth through hegomonic psychological control of human desires, emotions, beliefs, and values. PRP firms do this by manipulating the thoughts and feelings of human beings worldwide. In many ways PRP firms are the ideological engine of capitalism, due to both their massive influence in world corporate media and their increasing embedded role in the propaganda of national governments, including psychological operations in support of a permanent war on terror. Perhaps democracy movements can offer us some hope for the future. Consciousness of the dark side of PRP and its unrestricted power to warp minds is an important first step. Among some recent positive steps taken by activists to limit the power of PRP, Quebec has become one of the first regions to ban commercial advertising targeting children under the age of 13. For that matter, three generations of people in Cuba have grown up without product advertising in their lives. A group of graduate students from the Univeristy of Havana simply laughed when I asked them five years ago if they ever wanted a “Happy Meal.” It seemed absurd to them to even consider the idea. We too need to understand the absurdity of the PRP industry, and to move to eliminate its influence from our lives, our cultures, and our world. • Sonoma State University students Ratonya Coffee, Nicole Tranchina, Robert Ramirez, and Mary Schafer provided research support. NOTE: This article is based on more in-depth research, originally published as “Selling Empire, War, and Capitalism: Public Relations Propaganda Firms in Service to the Transnational Capitalist Class,” pp. 285-315 in Censored 2017: Fortieth Anniversary Edition, edited by Mickey Huff and Andy Lee Roth (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2016). The full report is available on Project Censored’s website.The Chief of Frankfurt’s police is warning lawmakers to take the threat of underage radical Salafist children seriously in order to prevent potential future acts of terror. The threat of radical Islamic terrorism in Germany has greatly increased over the past year, in a large part due to the migrant crisis as well as the radicalisation of very young Muslim boys and men. The chief of Frankfurt’s police force is warning that the trend could continue as more young Muslim boys are educated in Salafist schools that put them on the path to terrorism reports Die Welt. Wolfgang Trusheim, head of the Frankfurt state police is sounding the call on young children who may become radicalised and later commit violent acts against their fellow Germans. Mr. Trusheim has a term for children that have been raised and educated by Salafist preachers, calling them “Hate children.” Speaking on German radio the police head said that the Salafist preachers and parents are teaching the children that all other religions and beliefs are wrong and that they should hate men and women of other faiths. According to Trusheim many of the children are already exhibiting radicalised behaviour at a very young age. He claimed that in some schools children have even made it known that their career choice would be a “jihadist” and said that the main problem was Salafist couples having so many children and passing a hateful ideology on to their children. The answer, for Trusheim, could be to remove the children from Salafist parents so that they do not grow up in households where they are taught to hate. Adults who go off to Syria or elsewhere to fight for the Islamic State or other jihadi groups should also have their children taken away he said adding that if the current laws won’t allow for such a policy, there must be reform. President of the German Child Protection League, Heinz Hilgers claimed that his agency was taking real steps to address the problem. He said, “If there is concrete evidence that parents educate their children, promoting violence, youth welfare offices must act in the interests of the child.” Many of the attacks in Germany this year have been carried out by underage Islamists like the stabbing of a police officer by a 15-year-old female ISIS sympathiser earlier this year. The authorities had found the young girl had even attempted to go to Syria to join the terror group, aided by her aunt. The statement from Trusheim also coincides with the ever increasing number of underage Muslim migrants coming into Germany, some of which may be easy targets for radicalisation like the Syrian who attempted unsuccessfully to blow himself up at a music festival in July.South Australia braces for worst Christmas Day fire conditions in almost 30 years Updated Emergency services will be on high alert on Friday as South Australia's Country Fire Service (CFS) warns it cannot remember a Christmas Day that has had such bad fire conditions forecast. High temperatures are expected across South Australia for Friday with very strong winds sweeping through during the afternoon. CFS state coordinator Leigh Miller, who has been in the CFS for 29 years, said the forecast weather meant there would likely be fire bans and fire weather warnings issued, potentially in 10 districts. "I can't remember any [Christmas] day like this since I've been in CFS," Mr Miller said. "It is going to be a hot day, it's going to be windy day and even if there aren't any fire bans it will still be a significant fire day with those types of conditions, so people need to think about their plans for Christmas. "They also need to think about their bushfire survival plan, make sure they are up to date because there's going to be a change of circumstances for their family on that day." He warned if total fire bans were issued, the use of solid-fuel cookers would be banned and people who were planning on using them should have an alternative for cooking the Christmas meal. "You can still use a gas or electric barbecue – just make sure there is someone in attendance at all times," he said. The official fire bans and fire danger ratings for Christmas Day will be announced after 4:00pm on Thursday. This afternoon the CFS issued total fire bans with a danger rating of severe for Christmas Eve in the West Coast, Eastern Eyre Peninsula and Lower South East districts. Temperatures up to 40C expected across SA The Bureau of Meteorology said Christmas Day would see the state reach temperatures of high 30s or low 40s with northerly winds. Sorry, this video has expired Video: An increased fire risk predicted for Christmas Day due to high temperatures and strong winds (7pm TV News SA) Acting regional director John Nairn said Adelaide was heading for a top of 37 degrees Celsius, with a change expected late in the afternoon. He said the east and south-east of the state would face particularly bad fire weather conditions. "It's going to be in the east where we are going to see the higher winds during the day, in those northerly winds," he said. "So that's probably where we're going to see, particularly the south-east, where we're going to see the higher fire dangers. "Despite the cooler temperatures arriving with the change later in the day, the strength of its strong south to southwest winds will still pose a fire weather threat." Emergency service personnel will be on high alert throughout the day, with additional crews on standby. Topics: bushfire, fires, disasters-and-accidents, emergency-planning, sa First postedFoued Mohamed Aggad returned from Syria undetected and was reportedly subject of two warnings from Turkey before Paris attacks French anti-terror police are investigating how a known jihadi was able to return to France undetected to carry out a massacre at the Bataclan concert hall in which 90 people died. The third gunman, who blew himself up during the attack, was identified on Wednesday as 23-year-old Foued Mohamed Aggad, from Strasbourg, whose name was on a police “security list”. He had remained with Islamic State in Syria after his brother and friends returned to France in February 2014 where they were later arrested and charged with having links to a terrorist organisation. According to family members, Aggad appears to have travelled back to France some time between August and November. On 13 November he was one of a commando group made up of radicalised Europeans who carried out a series of shootings and suicide bombings in Paris that killed 130 people and injured hundreds more. The men who attacked Paris: profile of a terror cell Read more The two other Bataclan gunmen have been identified as Omar Ismaïl Mostefai, 29, and Samy Amimour, 28. Police said Aggad’s identity was established at the end of last week when his DNA was matched with that of his mother. Confirmation that all three Bataclan gunmen were French and slipped under the anti-terrorist radar comes at a critical time for France’s government. Local elections at the weekend showed a rise in support for the far-right Front National, which has criticised the Socialist administration’s security record. Amimour, a former bus driver, was on a “Fiche S” security list and was supposed to report to police each week when he disappeared in September 2013. He later resurfaced in Syria. Mostefai had been on the S-list since 2010 and Turkey reportedly warned France at least twice before the Paris attacks that he posed a threat. Manuel Valls, the French prime minister, confirmed on BFMTV that the third Bataclan man had been identified. “What is important is that the investigation is progressing, that the accomplices are found out, that arrests happen,” he said. “This will all take time and in the face of the terrorist threat that is unfortunately here, we need to carry on with this work of tracking down terrorists because we are at war with radical Islam, with Daesh,” he said, using an Arabic acronym for Isis, which claimed responsibility for the attacks. The French interior ministry estimates there are 1,683 French people “implicated” in Isis networks in Iraq and Syria. It believes that 457 of them are in the region while the rest have returned to Europe or are French citizens in contact with jihadi cells. An estimated 113 French fighters who joined Isis have been killed. Number of foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria doubles in a year, report finds Read more Aggad’s father, Saïd Mohamed Aggad, told Le Parisien: “He lied to us. He said he was going on holiday two years ago and he went to Syria. I thought he would die in Syria or Iraq, not come back here and do that.” He added: “The last time I heard from him was four or five months ago via Skype. As usual, he didn’t say where he was or what he was doing. He spoke a lot about jihad. What can I say? It was like talking to someone different, someone who had been brainwashed. There wasn’t anything more to say to him. “Each time there was a call, I was expecting to hear he had died in a bombing or something else. It would have been better that he died in Syria.” Aggad, one of four children, was born in Wissembourg, a pretty town on the French-German border, and grew up in Meinau, a working class district of housing estates in south-west Strasbourg. He and his friends would hang out in a cafe in Kehl, just the other side of the border in Germany, where police believe they planned their trip to Syria. The friends agreed to leave in small groups to avoid alerting their families or the authorities, and to meet up in a hotel near the airport at Hatay in southern Turkey, a familiar stop on the jihadi route to Syria. Aggad, who was unknown to French police at the time, was one of the last to go, arriving at Hatay on 17 December 2013 after missing his plane when relatives of another would-be Isis recruit raced to the airport to persuade him not to go. Two members of the group that went to Syria with Aggad were killed. All the others, except Aggad, returned to France in February 2014 after a few weeks in Syria. They were arrested three months later, a judicial source and other sources close to the situation told Reuters. Aggad’s older brother Karim, 25, who also visited Syria, is in jail in France, along with the other members of the group who have been formally put under investigation for “links to a terrorist organisation”. The Frenchman alleged to have recruited them, Mourad Fares, is also in custody. All are charged with terror-related offences and face trial. During their first appearance before a French judge, the young men said they had gone to Syria for “humanitarian reasons” and claimed they were shocked by the atrocities they saw being committed by Isis. Aggad’s identity came to light 10 days ago after his wife in Syria sent his mother a text message in English announcing: “Your son died a martyr with his brothers on 13 November,” a typical way Isis notifies families of casualties. The mother, who has not been named, gave French police a DNA sample which showed that one of her sons was killed inside the Bataclan, her lawyer told French journalists. “Foued Mohamed Aggad’s mother received the message at the end of November. She immediately alerted me and we contacted the authorities,” said the lawyer, Françoise Cotta. “His brother wanted to return because he said he couldn’t accept the situation there. However, Foued told his mother he was very happy, that he had married and had just had a child.” Aggad had told his family in August when they were last in contact with him that he was going to be a suicide bomber in Iraq and had no intention of returning to France, Cotta said. “The family has had no news of him since.” Aggad’s mother told Le Parisien she had separated from the children’s father in 2007 and had recently sent money to her youngest son in Syria where he was living with his French wife and newborn child. “He couldn’t get out of the country. But I didn’t ask any more questions. The money was to pay someone to get him out of the country,” she said. The latest information confirms that all assailants identified so far were French or Belgian and all native French speakers. All three Bataclan attackers were killed, two by detonating suicide vests and one shot by police. David Thomson (@_DavidThomson) Deux autres photos de Foued, 3e kamikaze du Bataclan, également postées sur sa page Facebook en 2014 pic.twitter.com/7du4YMN4c7 David Thomson, a journalist with Radio France International and an expert on French jihadis, posted photos of Aggad on Twitter. Thomson told France Bleu Alsace that Aggad was a “small-time jihad celebrity”. He said: “He wasn’t in hiding … one might have thought he’d have problems crossing the border and yet, he crossed.”For at least two years, the Palestinian terror group Islamic Jihad could see what the Israeli military’s surveillance drones saw. That’s the accusation of Israeli prosecutors, who this week arrested a man they saw hacked into the drones’ video feeds. If true, the hack had obvious value to terrorist leaders as they planned their operations against Israeli troops and civilians. Israeli authorities arrested the alleged hacker, 23-year-old Maagad Ben Juwad Oydeh, this year. On March 23 the Beersheba District Court indicted Oydeh on charges of spying, conspiracy, contact with enemy agents, and membership in an illegal organization. The Israeli press has referred to Oydeh as a “master hacker.” But his alleged crimes were, on a technical level, probably far less impressive than whatever methods the Israelis used to appprehend him. In fact, American drones were for years succeptible to the same kind of hacks. Israeli authorities have provided only the barest details of Oydeh’s background and alleged crimes. Press reports citing the indictment claim Oydeh first came into contact with Islamic Jihad while working in his father’s electronics store in Gaza. The terror group reportedly provided Oydeh a satellite dish for picking up radio signals and a frequency counter for pinpointing the signals’ location on the electromagnetic spectrum. It reportedly took Oydeh three tries to intercept the signals from Israeli drones flying over Gaza. On the third attempt in 2012, Oydeh was allegedly able to record the video that at least one of the unmanned aircraft was beaming to a military ground station. The court claimed that during his alleged four-year terror career, Oydeh also tapped into ground-based security cameras belonging to the Israeli military and police—and also electronically infiltrated the data network of Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport. The drone hack is possibly the most dramatic of Oydeh’s alleged crimes, if not the most useful for terrorist planners. Viewing the video drone would have allowed Islamic Jihad leaders to determine where in Gaza Israeli authorities were focusing their attention—and possibly deduce from that information which of the terror group’s own operatives were under surveillance. But intercepting a drone’s video feed isn’t exactly difficult. It’s actually much harder to tell when someone is illegally hacking a feed than it is to illicitly capture the feed in the first place. Indeed, for many years now insurgents, terrorists, and even professional spies have been surreptitiously tapping into America’s drone video streams. In 2009, U.S. authorities admitted that Iranian-backed insurgents in Iraq had used consumer-grade hardware and software to intercept and record video feeds from U.S. military drones flying overhead. More recently, whistleblower Edward Snowden—a former U.S. National Security Agency analyst—provided to The Intercept evidence that American and British spies based in Cyprus had tapped into Israeli drones feeds in 2009 and 2010. That’s not hard to do because drones’ video streams are, by design, meant to be easily accessible. To that end, the feeds might be totally open and unencrypted. That’s especially true of drones belonging to the Israeli Defense Forces, which tries to make overhead video available to as many frontline soldiers as possible. “It’s hard to make this feed both secure and conveniently accessible to any IDF forces who need it,” Todd Humphreys, a professor at the University of Texas’ Radionavigation Laboratory, told The Daily Beast in an email. “With the right encryption and strict security protocols, there is no way even a ‘master hacker’ like Juwad Oydeh could get access to these feeds,” Humphreys added. “But sometimes the strict security put in place also keeps IDF Lieutenant X from seeing the feed when he desperately needs it. It’s a classic security-convenience tradeoff.” To tap into an unencrypted video feed, all you really need is a satellite dish and a radio receiver. The frequency counter can help to speed up the hacking process. All these items “exist in the marketplace with no problem whatsoever to acquire them,” Richard Langley, a satellite tracking expert at the University of New Brunswick in Canada, told The Daily Beast. Prop up the dish, tune the radio, pinpoint the signals from drones flying overhead—and voila. You’ve hacked the drone. What you’re likely to get is a stream of digital code. “You need to decode it,” Langley explained. “You have to figure our what protocol is being used to transmit the bits of information that make up picture or video that's being transmitted.” But for convenience, most drone operators probably use the same video standards that, well, everyone else does. “There are standards such as MP4, which is commonly used by almost everyone to take video,” Langely pointed out. “You could certainly transmit that via drone.” And anyone with even the barest experience in software engineering could easily decode the raw data into a viewable video, Langely said. But what’s missing from the video stream is arguably more important than what’s present—namely, the drone’s command signal, which is transmitted to the robotic aircraft from a single, secure ground station via a highly encrypted radio link. Sure, any hacker can intercept a drone’s raw video, which the robot broadcasts for the benefit of potentially hundreds of soldiers and analysts on the ground. But that’s what Humphreys called a “passive hack.” You can see what the drone sees, but you can’t control the drone. So yes, Oydeh allegedly tapped into Israeli drone feeds. But what’s really impressive is the fact that Israeli authorities caught him allegedly doing so. That’s because there’s no easy way to know whether someone has intercepted your drone video. U.S. troops discovered the drone-hacking going on in Iraq only after apprehending an insurgent fighter—and happening across recorded drone video on his laptop. It took Snowden, arguably the world’s most notorious whistleblower, to reveal to the world that American and British spies had tapped Israel’s drone feeds. It’s possible Oydeh blabbed about his hacking—in person, on the phone, or in an email—while Israeli agents were listening in. It’s also possible an Islamic Jihad double agent implicated Oydeh. But absent that traditional tradecraft, there’s just one way that Langley said he can think of for Israel to have detected Oydeh’s intrusion. Recalling how the British government requires TV owners to pay a user fee, Langley explained that—to catch freeloaders—government officials drive around in specially equipped vans that can detect the oscillators inside unregistered televisions. Oscillators help a device capture a signal. And—this is key—they emit tiny, nearly undetectable signals of their own, ones that can give away their own location. If the Israelis are using equipment similar to British T.V. enforcers, they could—in theory—detect the drone-video detector. “But you’d have to be pretty close to the receiver to pick up its local oscillator signal,” Langley said. If the Israelis used this method to catch Oydeh, they were either acting on a tip—or they got lucky. In any event, the Israeli government claimed it succeeded in blocking Oydeh’s electronic intrusion in 2014 —two years before authorities finally arrested the alleged hacker. Perhaps like their American counterparts, the Israelis have begun adding some encryption to their drone feeds. But Humphreys warned that fully protecting drone data streams can be “hard and expensive.” Hackers just might adapt faster than the drone operators do.OhioHealth has put three of its protective service officers on suspension while the healthcare company investigates an incident between the officers and man at Grant Medical Center was caught on tape and widely spread on social media. The officers arrested Shelton Adams, 38, for disorderly conduct, but the woman who shot the video questions why. "The way they handled that situation, it should not have been handled that way," said Mellena Jackson. "It could have been completely different." She said she was compelled to record the incident after seeing the officer follow Adams out and hearing him say, "Leave me alone.'" The video shows the officers pushing Adams and one officer extending a retractable baton. At that point Adams flicked his cigarette towards the officers, prompting one officer to use pepper spray on Adams and then to tackle him. Any conversation between the officers and Adams is inaudible on the video. A spokesman for OhioHealth said the company began an investigation as soon as this happened last night and that the officers were placed "on a fact-finding suspension." Ohio Health Protective Services is a police agency with full law enforcement powers. The video has been seen more than half-a-million times on Jackson's Facebook page and shared more than a thousand times. "People need to see this," said Jackson. "People abuse their power and it seems like they're above the law." (Content Warning: Adult language) Full statement from OhioHealth: "We are aware of the incident that happened at OhioHealth Grant Medical Center last night and began investigating the matter immediately. The three security officers involved have been placed on a fact-finding suspension until the investigation is complete. When a situation like this occurs we take it very seriously. We anticipate providing more information about the investigation later today.”While most of the world was focused on the first day of Apple’s June 2 Worldwide developer conference, Apple changed their iOS policies to permit iOS apps that transmit virtual currencies. Begging the question: was the change to allow bitcoin wallets? Apple has Approved Coin Pocket Bitcoin Wallet The question on everyone’s mind was Will banned wallet functionality from apps like Gliph, Blockchain, and Coinbase be allowed in the app store? Now, Coin Pocket bitcoin wallet app has been approved answering the question. Why Apple’s Approval Matters Apple’s ban was a barrier to adoption for bitcoin. Bitcoin is heralded as a great technology that can send money between two people anywhere in the world instantly. With many thought leaders, executive, and early adopters using iPhone, the wallet ban makes that message hard to convey. Instead of convenience and simplicity bitcoin was inconvenient and complicated for iPhone users. Making bitcoin a non-starter for many. It is hard to think how bitcoin can benefit your company and developing countries when bitcoin doesn’t work on a $600 smartphone. Related Story: Bitcoin's Shocking Resilience and Achilles' Heel This change in policy makes it easier for everyday people to participate in the bitcoin economy. Before Blockchain.info’s app was banned in February, it had already been downloaded 120,000 times. Apple’s change in policy will let those customers receive updates to their app as well as enable more people to participate in the now larger and growing bitcoin ecosystem. Why Apple Reversed Course Apple’s ban enraged bitcoin fans, who claimed the move was antithetical to Apple's image of being innovative and anti-establishment. There was even a campaign for bitcoiners to smash working iPhones and switch to Android. Related Story: Signs A Bitcoin Tidal Wave Is Forming To Disrupt Business It is speculated Apple reversed their stance before this trickle of a migration became a mass exodus to Android as bitcoin continues to explode in usage. This also hints Apple sees a bright future for digital currencies. Disclosure: At the time of this writing David Smith has a long bitcoin position<.Get the latest news and videos for this game daily, no spam, no fuss. Which NHL team will win the Stanley Cup this year? EA Sports has now conducted its annual simulation of the real-world season, using NHL 17 to predict that the Nashville Predators will defeat the Montreal Canadiens to hoist the trophy. EA's simulation has failed to accurately predict the Stanley Cup winner for three years in a row now. Last year, the simulation said the Washington Capitals would win, but it was the Pittsburgh Penguins that ended up on top. In 2015, it predicted the Anaheim Ducks would win the Cup, but it was the Chicago Blackhawks that won. A year before that in 2014, the simulation said the Boston Bruins would win, but the Los Angeles Kings took home the trophy. According to EA's newest simulation, the Predators will win the Western Conference title, capping off the regular season with 110 points before heading into the playoffs. The team will eventually beat the Canadiens in Game 6, according to the simulation. Predators winger Filip Forsberg is predicted to win the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoff MVP, picking up 26 points in the postseason. The predicted Stanley Cup finals loss will sting all the more for the Canadiens, as the team traded star defenseman P.K. Subban to the Predators in the offseason, a move that some criticized. The NHL 17 simulation also predicted all the major end-of-season awards. These are listed below. Presidents' Trophy: Nashville Predators Nashville Predators Conn Smythe Trophy: Filip Forsberg (NSH) Filip Forsberg (NSH) Hart Memorial Trophy: Connor McDavid (STL) Connor McDavid (STL) Art Ross Trophy: Connor McDavid (EDM) Connor McDavid (EDM) James Norris Memorial Trophy: Brent Burns (SJS) Brent Burns (SJS) Maurice "Rocket" Richard Trophy: Vladimir Tarasenko (STL) Vladimir Tarasenko (STL) Vezina Trophy: Carey Price (MTL) Carey Price (MTL) William M. Jennings Trophy: Martin Jones (SJS) Martin Jones (SJS) Frank J. Selke Trophy: Anze Kopitar (LA) Anze Kopitar (LA) Lady Byng Memorial Trophy: Nicklas Backstrom (WAS) Nicklas Backstrom (WAS) Calder Memorial Trophy: Auston Matthews (TOR) Auston Matthews (TOR) Ted Lindsay Award: Connor McDavid (EDM) EA's annual Madden NFL simulation has been more reliable in recent years. The simulation's prediction for Super Bowl XLIX between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks was eerily accurate, not only getting the final score right (28-24), but also the fourth quarter comeback and the final score play. The 2016/2017 NHL season begins next week. For more on NHL 17, which came out in September, check out GameSpot's review and what other critics are saying.Orange is the first colour I ever remember someone disliking. I was seven or eight, not yet into black, and I was surprised to hear my mother say she found orange-coloured things repulsive. I hadn’t imagined people could dislike colours. I mean, sure, it made a kind of sense: I certainly knew which foods I disliked, for example; it just hadn’t occurred to me that colours were up for discussion. I knew I liked tigers, and that they were mostly orange. It was an earthquake of a moment. My mother, like all mothers, was half-right. Orange mixes its messages. It’s both warning and invitation. It has connotations of illness, of plague, of those glistening little rainforest dart frogs that exude poisonous syrups – and yet think of apricots, the nudity of peaches, the juice of tangerines and of, well, oranges. It’s sweet, is what I’m getting at, with all the sin and danger that word implies. But we’re talking blaze orange here. Saturated safety orange. The colour of road cones and the Plymouth Barracuda. The colour of easyJet aeroplanes and the mobile phone company. That bright, toxic, new-basketball orange. The shade of deer-can’t-see-it orange you’d find
entertain objective dialogue and discussion of their reverent and pious position. Mormonism, after all, like other religions, has a rich tradition of miracles and testimony building "proofs" of its divine nature. 108 Also, many individuals have personal examples of how their lives have been affected and made better as a result of intimate personal faith. Faith and "miracles" do not, however, prove divine intervention. 109 It should be obvious that all concerned would benefit from the truth of Mormonism's beginnings being made known now, with approximately nine million Mormons, rather than waiting for there to be a larger membership to deprogram. 110 Of course, for those born into Mormonism and now outside it's controlling influences, who thrive on a Clash of Ideas, 111 there is no serious concern, beyond a deeply felt personal interest in the welfare of the Mormon membership, like Mark Hofmann and the other bomb "victims" and their families and friends, both current and former, each deserving our love, compassion and concern. Being more realistic and with "pessimism," however: The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure that it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry. 112 Considering Mormon Roots, it is clear that early Mormons, like ourselves, did their best under their circumstances and their obvious limitations. _______________________ 108 When the pioneers who traveled by ox and hand carts to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake first arrived, a story is told of an attack on their crops by millions of crickets. Only after a prayerful appeal to "God" were they saved by an invasion from a multitude of seagulls. As the story goes, these heavenly visitors gorged themselves on the pests and then, after discarding their prey, came back for more (Salt Lake being about a thousand miles from the nearest ocean, these seagulls had miraculously come from the coast). Seagulls remain in abundance around the Great Salt Lake. 109 The Author, in an unpublished autobiography dealing with the topic of the Mormon church's 1978 "Revelation" allowing blacks into the Mormon church priesthood, was the subject of such a "miracle": Following heart surgery, after being administered to with oil and a priesthood blessing, "coming from the depths of hell," recovered. It is conceded today that in many cases of major surgery there is a period -- usually two or three days following the operation -- when a physical change in the patient occurs, brought on by the stresses of the procedure. This is the time when religious assistance is most welcome but the priesthood has little, if anything, to do with the patient's recovery ("Mormon Wrangles and Rainbows," an unpublished book manuscript by Byron Marchant, Section 1 Chapter 1). 110 The 1994 membership statistics of the Mormon church claim about 8.75 million. 111 Willey's, p 18, "He [John Stark] loved action, and the roar of musketry was music to his ears." 112 A Farewell to Arms, 1929, Chapter 34, by Ernest Hemmingway. [23] [ blank]Immediately after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s new government was sworn in earlier this month, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Navdeep Bains announced the re-introduction of the mandatory long-form census previously binned by the Conservatives. “We’re focused on sound, evidence-based policy,” Bains said at the time. Here’s some evidence that Trudeau and his new foreign affairs minister, Stéphane Dion, might not have noticed: Today, Iraqi Kurdish fighters, backed by Yezidi militias and fighters from the Turkish Kurdish PKK, liberated the Iraqi town of Sinjar from the so-called Islamic State—a murderous Islamist group that controls large chunks of Syria and Iraq. Islamic State’s advance into the town and surrounding villages more than a year ago was what triggered military intervention against it by the United States and several of its allies, including Canada. American President Barack Obama said at the time he was acting to prevent a potential genocide. Islamic State members consider the Yezidis, whose faith draws from a mix of ancient beliefs, pagans and devil worshippers, and slaughtered them by the thousands. Women and girls were enslaved and raped. Survivors fled. Yesterday, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, an institution that knows a thing or two about genocide, issued a report concluding that one had, in fact, been committed against the Yezidis, and that it is ongoing because of the continued enslavement of the Yezidi women and girls. Naomi Kikoler, lead author of the report and, full disclosure, a friend, said during the report’s presentation that when conducting research in northern Iraq, she was reminded of her grandfather’s family that was wiped out during the Holocaust. Never again, the world had pledged after those horrors. What’s happened to the Yezidis, she said, testifies to our failure to keep our word. Genocide can’t be reversed, and the liberation of Sinjar won’t free Islamic State’s Yezidi captives. But it’s justice just the same. It’s a symbolic victory in a struggle that has already claimed the lives of at least two Canadians: Sgt. Andrew Doiron of the Special Operations Regiment, who died in a friendly-fire incident while advising Iraqi Kurds in March; and John Gallagher, a former Canadian soldier who volunteered to fight with the Syrian Kurdish YPG and died fighting Islamic State this month. By severing the major supply route between Islamic State-held Raqqa in Syria and its Iraqi stronghold of Mosul, the capture of Sinjar is a strategic victory, also. Which brings us back to Navdeep Bains and the Trudeau government’s declared dedication to evidence-based policy. “Ten years ago, we learnt through the first Iraq war what happens when Western troops get involved in combat... It doesn’t necessarily lead to the kinds of outcomes people would responsibly like to see,” Trudeau told the CBC this summer, by way of justifying his plans to end Canada’s participation in the air war against Islamic State. The Conservative government, Trudeau continued, had failed “to demonstrate why the best mission for Canada is to participate in a bombing mission.” It’s worth pausing to unpack Trudeau’s conception of combat, because the distinction between combat and non-combat is one Trudeau has often referenced. There’s a clear line between the two, he told Parliament this year. “It is much easier to cross that line than to cross back.” Trudeau says he believes Canada should have a non-combat role in the fight against Islamic State—by which he means training. On the ground, however, Canadian soldiers at times conduct their “training” on or near the front lines. They’ve exchanged gunfire with Islamic State and called in air strikes against it. Trudeau has vowed to expand Canada’s training mission. But if he is genuinely opposed to a Canadian combat role against Islamic State, he’s gong to have to overhaul it, as well. But let’s play along and pretend there is something qualitatively different between dropping bombs on Islamic State’s ethnic cleansers and child rapists, and targeting them from the ground so someone can do so. Let’s also pretend, as the Liberals do, that the surveillance and refuelling planes Canada has committed to the mission are more involved in combat than our special forces on the ground and, therefore, must be withdrawn, too. Let’s pretend, in other words, that Trudeau’s promise to end Canada’s air mission, while leaving soldiers on the ground, is consistent with his commitment to a non-combat role against Islamic State, and judge that commitment on its merits. Trudeau said past evidence—the Iraq war and the combat mission in Libya (which the Liberal party backed unanimously)—demonstrates the often-negative consequences of Western military intervention. Whether the consequences of stopping Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s assault on Libyans, or overthrowing Iraqi mass murderer Saddam Hussein, were as uniformly negative as Trudeau seems to suggest is debatable. But there is much more recent, relevant and compelling evidence staring Trudeau in the face—if he would only choose to acknowledge it. Sinjar has been liberated with the help of Western air strikes. Canadian pilots, not yet withdrawn from the war, took part—an accomplishment of which they should feel forever proud. Like Kobani before it, and like many other formerly Islamic State-held towns and villages, Sinjar fell to a combination of local and Western combat forces. It is no longer enough for Trudeau to claim that combat is not a particularly useful role for Canadians in Iraq and Syria, nor to argue that air strikes don’t necessarily lead to the kinds of outcomes we would want—because that is manifestly not the case. Air strikes are effective. Sinjar, the once-black heart of Islamic State’s genocide against the Yezidis, is free, in part, because of them. And if Trudeau can’t claim that Canada dropping bombs on the génocidaires of Islamic State is ineffective, he must explain why it is wrong. That is a harder task. I want to believe that, deep down, Trudeau knows it is an impossible one. He took a position to end Canada’s combat role against Islamic State before he was Prime Minister, when he didn’t have the political capital to spend that he does now. Those who supported him because of that promise will likely forgive him well before the next federal election, if he breaks it. But if he doesn’t, if he pulls Canada out of this fight, the moral stain—on his record and perhaps on his conscience—will persist long after he leaves office.Recieve emails about upcoming NOVA programs and related content, as well as featured reporting about current events through a science lens. Email Address Zip Code Subscribe Octopuses are typically solitary animals—they goes about their days hiding in a den and emerging at night to hunt. But new research suggests they may not be as solitary as we once thought. Off the coast of Australia, marine biologists discovered a city of sorts grouped around some rocks and built from scavenged junk and discarded prey shells. Ten to 15 gloomy octopuses—the common name for Support Provided By Learn More Octopuses—typically a solitary animal—built a small city using scavenged junk and discarded prey shells. Using video footage from divers and camera traps, the researchers watched how the octopuses behaved and interacted. At least three pairs of neighbors mated along with a couple near-miss mating attempts. (Since octopuses are normally solitary creatures, their reproductive systems are tailored to long-distance fertilization— typically, males shoot a package of sperm at a female, which then burrows into the female’s skin and releases the sperm.) Not all the interactions were harmonious, though. Researchers also witnessed octopus evictions, where one octopus would yank another from a den and take its place. Sometimes this would lead to a fight, exposing the octopuses to predators like sharks. In fact, Scheel and his colleagues said that sharks would routinely circle above the city, waiting for their prey to emerge from their dens. This isn’t the first the time researchers find a colony of octopuses living in close quarters. In 2009, divers off the coast of Australia found a small group living together in burrows around a piece of discarded metal and called it “Octopolis.” But what might make these animals want to live together? Perhaps the same reason other species cluster into groups: limited shelter and an abundance of food. Here’s Annalee Newitz for ArsTechnica: The rocky outcropping and metal debris at the cores of Octlantis and Octopolis are rare examples of shelter-ready regions on a generally flat ocean floor. Plus, the shell mounds of the cities create perfect habitats for scallops and other octopus food. It’s likely that octopuses gathered in these spots for the shelter and food, and their social behaviors evolved over time. The existence of octopus cities such as “Octopolis” and “Octlantis” calls into question how much we actually know about how these underwater creatures live, especially given that gloomy octopuses also aren’t the only species of octopus to be observed living in clusters of dens. Perhaps octopus cities are more common than we knew.The Ebert test gauges whether a computer-based synthesized voice[1][2] can tell a joke with sufficient skill to cause people to laugh.[3] It was proposed by film critic Roger Ebert at the 2011 TED conference as a challenge to software developers to have a computerized voice master the inflections, delivery, timing, and intonations of a speaking human.[1] The test is similar to the Turing test proposed by Alan Turing in 1950 as a way to gauge a computer's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior by generating performance indistinguishable from a human being.[4] If the computer can successfully tell a joke, and do the timing and delivery as well as Henny Youngman, then that’s the voice I want. Ebert in 2011[2] Ebert lost his voice after surgery to treat cancer. He employed a Scottish company called CereProc, which custom-tailors text-to-speech software for voiceless customers who record their voices at length before losing them, and mined tapes and DVD commentaries featuring Ebert to create a voice that sounded more like his own voice.[5] He first publicly used the voice they devised for him in his March 2, 2010 appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show.[2][6][7] References [ edit ]The Starter Edition has been updated StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void is out, and with it, a few new modes, such as the full co-op portion and Archon Mode -- which allows two players to control one base. But if you aren't willing to take the plunge yet, the Starter Edition has been updated recently to account for the Void expansion. In essence, you can download the game for free and get all of the new units, but you can only play with friends. As an added bonus due to the recent patch, co-op mode is available, with three of the six characters at your disposal. If you're interested in seeing how the game has changed over the years, give it a shot. Starter Edition [Battle.net] You are logged out. Login \| Sign upCardinal women athletes win another Capital One Cup at ESPYs Highlighted by three NCAA championships, Stanford captured its record fourth Women’s Athletics Program Capital One Cup with the 2016-17 crown. The award was recognized during the annual ESPY sports award ceremony, aired live on ABC Wednesday, July 12. Onstage were alumna NNEKA OGWUMIKE, star of the Los Angeles Sparks, with INKY AJANAKU, star of the national championship women’s volleyball team. Volleyball star Inky Ajanaku Stanford, which also won the Women’s Athletics Program Capital One Cup during the 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2014-15 seasons, owns the most Women’s Athletics Program Capital One Cup trophies with four in the first seven years of the Capital One Cup program. The CARDINAL captured five national championships during the 2016-17 season, winning NCAA women’s titles in volleyball, swimming and diving, and water polo. (Stanford also claimed the NCAA title in men’s soccer and the Intercollegiate Rowing Association national championship in women’s lightweight rowing.) Stanford’s women’s athletic programs, which totaled 12 top-10 finishes in 2016-17, captured the Capital One Cup lead in the fall and held the top spot throughout the year, en route to a Capital One Cup points record of 175.5. USC finished second with 129 points. The Capital One Cup is awarded annually to each of the best men’s and women’s Division I college athletics programs in the country. Points toward the Capital One Cup are earned and tracked throughout the year based on final standings of NCAA Championships and final official coaches’ polls. Capital One awards a combined $400,000 in student-athlete scholarships and the Capital One Cup trophy to the winning schools.The official Windows 8 launch is less than two weeks away and judging by much of the commentary ahead of the consumer launch, you’d think that Windows 8 on the desktop is a total, unmitigated disaster. It isn’t. It does take some getting used to, but the vast majority of desktop users will do just fine with Windows 8. Those who think Microsoft went off the deep end with Windows 8 tend to focus on how much of a hybrid between a desktop and tablet/touch operating system it is. They ask how users will ever live without the traditional Start menu? How will they figure out how to switch between Metro apps? How will they ever find their way back to the familiar desktop once they open the new Start menu? How could Microsoft ever release an operating system that places such a massive cognitive burden on so many users? Metro: Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind Sure, Windows 8 introduces new concepts, including the Metro-style Start menu. But for the most part, you can happily use Windows 8 just like you do Windows 7 and just think of it like a service pack. The old, familiar desktop is always there and waiting for you. Indeed, you can completely ignore the Metro/Windows 8-style user interface 99 percent of the time. You may have to face it when you launch Windows 8, but you can just launch any desktop app from there with one click and you’re out of the Metro UI and back on the desktop. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen called Windows 8 “elegant” and “puzzling” at the same time. I think that sums up the first experience pretty well. It’s not a hard puzzle, though, and Microsoft does a good job at explaining how everything works the first time you start it up. Yes, Windows 8 can feel like weird hybrid of a desktop and tablet/touch operating system. Unlike the latest versions of OS X, where you can safely ignore the iOS-like Launchpad, you can’t fully keep Metro out of your sight. But during those brief moments when you do have to deal with Metro, it’s actually not that bad. It sure takes some getting used to and looks a bit out of place on the desktop. I doubt it will ever feel completely natural, but it’s not the showstopper some would like you to think. Microsoft sees Windows 8 as the stepping stone towards a future where touch-enabled laptops and desktops are standard. To bridge the gap, the company decided to fuse the touch interface and the traditional desktop interface into one OS. Looking back, the Microsoft probably would’ve done well to give desktop users an option to just get back the old Start menu and not force users to learn to use hot corners and essentially turn the desktop into app. At the end of the day, however, it’s not as big a deal as it seems at first (and you can already install a number of utilities to get the old-school Start menu back, too). It is, however, a huge gamble on Microsoft’s part and some of the rumored $1.5 billion it plans to spend on Windows 8 marketing will surely go towards simply explaining people how to use it. Windows 8 shows a Microsoft – and the whole industry, for that matter – in transition. It sure won’t go down as Microsoft’s best version of Windows, but I’ve been using it almost daily for the last few months and I wouldn’t go back to Windows 7. Windows 8 starts up faster, runs smoother, is safer and far more stable (I have only seen the new blue screen once since I started using it in March). Just like the minor OS X upgrades, Microsoft also polished the desktop UI and made some workflows (especially those dealing with files) faster and more intuitive. You can never tune the Metro UI out completely, but it doesn’t get in your way. Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a must-have upgrade. If you’re happy with Windows 7, you don’t need Windows 8 (and Microsoft’s sales will surely suffer because of this). As I said a few weeks ago, Windows 8 will confuse you the first time you use it, but give it some time and chances are you won’t want to go back to Windows 7.When award-winning writer Varda Burstyn complained to the Canadian Human Rights Commission about her treatment by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), the last thing she expected was to be caught in the crossfire of a war between these government agencies. Burstyn suffers from Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS, also known as Environmental Sensitivities). People like her become extremely ill when they are exposed to chemicals in concentrations that do not cause obvious injury to most people. Doctors say the best way to deal with this illness is to create a safe home environment by removing and replacing building materials and mould that give off volatile organic chemicals (VOCs). That’s what Burstyn and her husband did, at a cost of over $200,000. When her husband filed an income tax return claiming a deduction for about $100,000, he was turned down even though the medical expense tax credit is given to claimants who need renovations for other medical reasons. Burstyn took the matter to the Human Rights Commission. This is when she began a voyage through the legal equivalent of Alice’s looking glass. The Canada Revenue Agency claims it is not bound by the Canadian Human Rights Act because it is not providing a'service' when it processes a claim for an income tax deduction. ( Star file photo ) Burstyn argued that the Income Tax Act systematically discriminated against sufferers of MCS and others with severe respiratory ailments such as asthma. Not only did the CRA ask the Federal Court to prohibit the commission from investigating her complaint, but the CRA also made the astounding claim that it is not required to comply with the Canadian Human Rights Act. The act provides that no one may discriminate against individuals on “prohibited grounds” in the course of providing services customarily available to the general public. Prohibited grounds include race, national origin, colour, religion, age, sex, marital status and, as in Burstyn’s case, disability. The CRA claims it is not bound by the Canadian Human Rights Act because it is not providing a “service” when it processes a claim for an income tax deduction; this despite the fact that the CRA website boasts that it provides a high quality “service” to the public. The disconcerting effect of this reasoning is that if the CRA is interpreting the Canadian Human Rights Act correctly then its staff is free to discriminate against people because of the colour of their skin, because they are married, because they are single or on other prohibited grounds — actions that would be illegal if the CRA were a business selling airline tickets instead of a government body deciding whether to accept a claimed tax deduction. Article Continued Below The CRA is not the only federal agency that claims to be immune from the Canadian Human Rights Act. The Department of External Affairs has argued in Federal Court that processing visa applications is not a “service” and, therefore, the Human Rights Commission has no jurisdiction to investigate complaints that it discriminates when carrying out this function. In a recent case, an aboriginal woman claimed that she was frequently subjected to searches at the Canadian border because of racial profiling. The Canadian Border Services Agency argued that searching her vehicle is not providing a service and, therefore, this activity is insulated from the Canadian Human Rights Act. Last year, the federal Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development claimed that it is exempt from the human rights law when providing funding to aboriginal child services organizations that is lower than the funding provided to non-native children’s aid societies. Federal government agencies are far from alone in arguing for this unusual (not to say bizarre) interpretation of human rights laws. Every province and territory of Canada has a human rights statute with a provision similar to the one in the federal human rights law. Provincial and territorial government departments and municipalities also argue that they are exempt from these human rights laws when individuals are claiming benefits such as disability pensions or workers’ compensation. Their lawyers argue that awarding research grants, issuing public proclamations, and providing education and training, are all functions that are immune from human rights protections. According to ARCH Disability Law Centre, an Ontario legal aid clinic for the disabled, if such claims are upheld by the courts, “This will have far-reaching implications. A wide range of benefits that support persons with disabilities will be exempt from the operation of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Even if these arguments are not successful, low-income persons with disabilities (who may be unrepresented) will have to spend significant resources defending these complex legal arguments.” Varda Burstyn eventually reached a settlement with the CRA. Her four-year ordeal is over. But government attempts to persuade courts and tribunals to exclude their activities from human rights laws continue relentlessly. Burstyn calls this a wholesale attempt to gut Canada’s human rights legacy and an attack on democracy. Civil society advocates have not been speaking out about this issue. Perhaps they are unaware of how widespread these efforts to undermine human rights laws are. It’s time they took notice. John Swaigen is a staff lawyer at Ecojustice, a national charitable organization dedicated to protecting Canadians’ right to a healthy environment. He represented Varda Burstyn before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. Read more about:Police Arrest Three After Finding Meth, Heroin And Squirrel Bradley Bundy Sheila Aslinger Phillipe Nathan Fields (BEDFORD) - Three people were arrested Tuesday after the Lawrence County Drug Task Force served a search warrant at a home in the 2600 block of Tunnelton Road. According to Bedford Police Chief Dennis Parsley, officers from both the Bedford Police Department and Lawrence County Sheriff's Department SWAT Team executed the warrant. "Working on information received about illegal drug activity at the home officer secured a search warrant," Parsley says. "When officers arrived there were three people in the home and all three were arrested after officers found various amounts of meth, heroin, firearms, marijuana, drug paraphernalia and a large amount of cash. They also found ginseng and a squirrel." Officers arrested 51-year-old Sheila Aslinger Phillipe and 53-year-old Bradley Bundy, both of Bedford, on charges of dealing heroin over 5 grams with a firearm; dealing heroin; possession of heroin over 5 grams with a firearm; possession of meth with a firearm; possession of meth; possession of marijuana; possession of drug paraphernalia; possession of ginseng out of season and possession of a wild animal without a permit. 27-year-old Nathan Fields of Bedford is facing charges of possession of heroin over 5 grams with a firearm; possession of heroin over 5 grams; possession of meth with a firearm; possession of meth; possession of marijuana; possession of drug paraphernalia and visiting a common nuisance. The Department of Natural Resource was called to the scene after police found the ginseng and the squirrel, which was running around the house and eating out of a cat food bag. DNR added the charges of possession of ginseng out of season and possession of a wild animal without a license. DNR Officers confiscated the ginseng and the squirrel. Have a question or comment about a news story? Send it to [email protected] Shaquille O'Neal was in Boston, he went up against the Sacramento Kings' DeMarcus Cousins. (Photo11: Charles Krupa AP) Story Highlights Shaquille O'Neal plans to use new role as part-owner of Sacramento Kings to mentor DeMarcus Cousins Kings, under new management haven't said if they're planning to sign Cousins to a long-term deal O'Neal, soon-to-be Hall of Fame center, hopes to pass along words of wisdom to mercurial big man So now that new Sacramento Kings minority owner Shaquille O'Neal has taken on the task of mentoring DeMarcus Cousins, that has to be a sign that a contract extension is coming for the mercurial 23-year-old center, right? "I don't want to say anything premature, but I've been constant in my support for DeMarcus," new Kings owner Vivek Ranadive told USA TODAY Sports. "I reached out to him when we first closed the deal. He was the first person I reached out to. They're out there practicing on their own every day, and he's out there leading those practices. He's out there with the team practicing every single day by themselves. They all came to Sacramento early. I don't know if that's ever happened. So 'Dr. O'Neal' and I are going to have dinner with him on Monday night, and Dr. O'Neal is going to spend a couple of days with him and the team. So I'm very, very pleased with everything that I'm seeing." SHAQ OWNER: O'Neal buys stake in the Kings WISDOM: 5 things Cousins can learn from Shaq As O'Neal begins his unexpected tenure with his former rival team, he has one goal on top of his to-do list: to make Cousins the most feared big man in the game. Neither Ranadive or O'Neal was willing to offer clarity on the extension that can be agreed upon up to the Oct. 31 deadline, but it continues to be clear that Cousins is a major priority for the new regime that took over after Ranadive and his group bought the team for a league-record $535 million valuation in late May. If an extension is not agreed upon, Cousins would become a restricted free agent next summer and - if only because his long-term future would appear uncertain - likely spend much of this season as the topic of trade rumors. O'Neal, however, plans on leaving the business to Ranadive while focusing on the basketball. "You hear people say all the time that he's probably the most talented big man in the league, so now if you've got that behind your name, then everything else must follow," O'Neal told USA TODAY Sports. "I'm going to teach him a few things to add to his game." WATCHABILITY: Cousins makes Kings exciting COUSINS: How will he click with new Kings coach? Cousins has quickly become one of the biggest enigmas in the game, a widely-respected talent whose penchant for outbursts and clashes with coaches have marred his first three seasons in the league.But O'Neal, who held the title he wants Cousins to have for most of his 19-year career, sees the potential for Cousins to take his torch. The two have no prior relationship, but they have spoken by phone since an agreement was reached for O'Neal to become a Kings minority owner. "DeMarcus is so excited at just the thought that (Shaq) is going to be talking to him, going to be spending time with him, going to be watching him, on the practice court, that he just can't contain himself," Ranadive said. "When he first heard that (Shaq) was looking at becoming an investor in the Kings, he just texted me and said, 'Can I please, please reach out to (Shaq)?'" VIDEO: USA TODAY Sports' Sam Amick discusses Shaq's move CLOSE USA TODAY Sports' NBA insider Sam Amick talks to News10's Sean Cunningham about the Sacramento Kings' new minority owner, Shaquille O'Neal, and the impact he will have on the team and NBA. USA TODAY Sports As O'Neal discussed at length, the work they do between the ears will be even more important than the work they do between the lines. It's the beginning, he hopes, of a powerful pairing. O'Neal has strong views on his new minority ownership endeavor and on Cousins. Here are some of his comments on the young Kings big man. On how he got better in his playing days, and what he can pass on: "What took my game to the next level wasn't practicing, it was conversation. What took my game to the next level was conversation with (former Lakers general manager) Jerry West, and conversation with (former Lakers coach) Phil Jackson. You know, you can go in the gym all day and do a hundred moves, but it's the conversation. Jerry West believed in me, and he was like, 'Hey, look up Shaq, your jersey will be up there someday.' So now I was like, 'I've got to step my game up.' And then conversations with Phil, who's saying, 'Shaq, I know you're doing movies and doing rap, but if you put that down this year I guarantee you I'll get you MVP.' So we're going to be having conversations and I'm going to stay on him. When you're good, and you're becoming great, expectations are high. But if you're well prepared, then you can meet any expectation." On how he sees Cousins' game: "I like his game. I like his ferocity. And he hates to lose. When you have those ingredients, like I said it's all about conversation. I was putting up big numbers and couldn't win anything. We'd get swept by Utah every year, and then all it took was one or two conversations — one time I heard Larry Bird say, 'You're the greatest big man ever. It's just conversations. We're going to have nice, light-hearted conversations. I'm going to teach him one or two things that I think he can do better. "I'm not going to try to change his game — I like his game. But he's the leader on our team, so I'll talk to him about leadership and good examples. I'll talk to him about doing things a certain way and doing things consistent. First thing I'm going to say to him is, 'How many points do you want to average?' And hopefully he says 26 or 27, and I'm going to show him an easy way of how to get that and get it every night and expect it and want it and go for that every night. And then I'll also have a conversation with him about how to make his teammates better. I would like to see Sacramento back where it used to be." On how he plans to help Cousins: "I used to do a million drills I never needed, and then do one or two things that – for example, Dominique Wilkins told me, 'Shaq, don't try to score all 28 (points) in the first half, you're going to tire yourself out for the second half. Seven points a quarter — three jump hooks and a free throw.' "The way I'm going to evaluate him is I'm going to evaluate him four times a year, every 20 games. 'OK, what are you doing? You need to do this. You need to do that.' I can't teach him everything, and I don't want to teach him everything. He has a fabulous game, so it's all about the conversation. We're all going to look at him now like, 'Hey, you're the man. You want to be the man. Let's do it.' He's going to do it. He's ready. He's going to get some guys around him and be young and exciting." PHOTOS: Sacramento rallies behind KingsPeople who are kinder to themselves tend to be happier, healthier and to cope better when bad things happen. There’s also some evidence that training to be more self-compassionate is beneficial. Overall, self-compassion seems to be a sensible practice, so why are some of us averse to it? In their new study in Self and Identity researchers from Canada, Germany and the USA predicted that people averse to self-compassion think it will make them feel bad about themselves – for example, that they’ll feel more selfish – and also that they hold different values from their more self-compassionate peers, such as believing more strongly in the importance of success. They’d probably agree with motivational speaker Zig Ziglar who said: “When you are tough on yourself, life is going to be infinitely easier on you”. Kelly Robinson and her colleagues surveyed 161 young adults about their tendency to be self-compassionate or not, the importance they ascribed to different values from prosperity to equality, and then asked them to imagine two scenarios of personal failure, one in which they treated themselves with self-compassion and forgiveness, and one in which they were hard on themselves and self-critical. Finally, the participants said how they’d feel about themselves after these two scenarios, based on 18 different character dimensions. The less self-compassionate participants tended not to have different values from the self-compassionate, and they also agreed that self-compassion is good for well-being. But the less self-compassionate said they’d see themselves differently after showing care and tenderness towards themselves. Specifically, they said they would feel less industrious, ambitious, responsible, modest, careful, and competitive as compared with the participants who practised more self-compassion in their lives. Also, after being self-critical, the less self-compassionate participants said they would feel stronger and more responsible. Overall, the results suggest that people who differ in self-compassion are just as interested in success and achievement, it’s just that the less self-compassionate think that being kind to themselves will hinder their ability to achieve because they associate self-kindness with being weak and less responsible and ambitious. The findings have implications for self-care interventions – those of us who struggle with self-compassion don’t just need to learn ways to be kind to ourselves, but we also need help challenging the negative assumptions we have about showing a little TLC to me. —Resisting self-compassion: Why are some people opposed to being kind to themselves? _________________________________ Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest. Our free weekly email will keep you up-to-date with all the psychology research we digest: Sign up!2015 marks the 150th birth year and the death centenary of one of India’s great, but less remembered, sons. In the recent public din surrounding the adoption of other great Indians, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and B.R. Ambedkar, the name of Gopal Krishna Gokhale is but faint. Gokhale’s life was short and he died without bearing witness to India’s independence, but there is little denying that his influence on the people involved in the freedom struggle was immense. For starters, Gokhale and Mahatma Gandhi shared a guru-shishya relationship. In an anthology of his writings on Gokhale entitled Gokhale – My Political Guru, published by Navajivan Publishing House, Gandhi makes reference to this multi-faceted relationship beginning with the first time he met Gokhale in Poona in 1896. In poetic language, Gandhi describes Gokhale, contrasting him to others in the Congress party, thus: “but Gokhale was as the Ganges. One could have a refreshing bath in the holy river. The Himalaya was unscalable, and one could not easily launch forth on the sea, but the Ganges invited one to its bosom. It was a joy to be on it with a boat and an oar." In what would now appear to be a strange turn of phrase, Gandhi often referred to Gokh
lot of people that think the Bible -- we talk about walking by faith -- it leaves out things such as, I don't know, people just get strange. But when you read the Old Testament, you find that it is full of precautionary measures, and it is full of the law. Why did the Jewish people, why did they not die out during the plague? Because the Bible told them how to be clean, told them how to disinfect, told them there was something contagious. And the interesting thing of it, it wasn't a medical doctor per se who took care of those things, it was the priesthood. It was the ministers, it was those who knew how to take the promises of God as well as the commandments of God to take care of things like disinfection and so forth.... Many of the things that we have in medical practice now actually are things you can trace back into scripture. It's when we find out what's in the scripture that we have wisdom. She concludes by announcing that the church was hosting a pair of free vaccination clinics and urging everyone to show up, advice that probably would have been more helpful two months ago. On the next page is a taste of what it's like to be in Pastor Copeland's congregation. "Kenneth Hagin & Kenneth Copeland - Pentecostal Bedlam" "Kenneth Copeland -Power in the Tongue" "Election Prophecy at Prayer Mountain 2012 - Kenneth Copeland" "Kenneth Copeland - Faith And Finances (Jan.91)"AS DEBATE raged over potential harm caused by Eddie McGuire’s “drowning” jokes about Caroline Wilson, some in the community saw shades of grey. Not Wendy Steendam, the state’s top female cop. After 32 years of witnessing the impacts of violence against women and girls up close, she felt compelled to act. Deputy Commissioner Steendam, a mother of three, was firmly in the camp that felt banter about holding a woman under water was toxic. She wanted the whole force to know via an internal memo. Since 2001, this no-fuss crime fighter and police executive has been a driving force behind Victoria Police’s ongoing campaign to reduce violence against women and children and better respond to family violence; she has zero tolerance for disrespectful treatment of women, as seen in her leaked memo. “They are not just words, and it’s not to be taken lightly. If we allow a permissive environment to exist, then people will continue to be demeaning to women,” Steendam wrote in an internal that was later leaked. The “normalisation” of language which in this case included broadcast jokes about holding a woman under to make sure she didn’t come up “makes us more accepting of violence (towards women) … It’s 2016 and we all have a right to be treated with dignity and respect and to feel safe in our workplace and in our community”. She acknowledged that given the well-publicised issues of discrimination, harassment and gender inequality in Victoria Police some members may not have seen the “drowning” banter as problematic. Her memo was a rocket across their bows to remind them that they should. One of Steendam’s wideranging responsibilities is to oversee the implementation of the 20 recommendations of the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission’s damning 2015 report into sex discrimination, harassment and predatory behaviour in the police force. Of around 5000 officers and staff surveyed by the commission, 40 per cent of women said they had been sexually harassed resulting in mental or physical harm, including one who had been pursued and raped by a male colleague. The commission found “chronic under reporting” of sexual harassment because people were too scared of repercussions to come forward. If Wendy Steendam is fazed by the need to confront and help transform a culture in which so many of her female colleagues have had experiences at work described by Commissioner Graham Ashton as “terrible”, she doesn’t show it. With her highlighted, pulled-back hair and feminine makeup she may appear like any other mother at school pick-up, but her arrow-straight talk and ultra-professional demeanour suggest someone whose warning about workplace behaviour, or anything else, you’d be dumb to ignore. Steendam comes across as strong, identifies as a feminist but says she never considered herself a “tough” policewoman. She puts her resilience down to a childhood spent moving often with her family due to her father’s military job, including living in Papua New Guinea in the “formative years” spanning the end of her primary schooling and the start of secondary school. She attended a high school in Port Moresby and says she loved it. She joined Victoria Police in 1984 at a time when thanks to a relaxing of rules around women being permitted to continue working after they married and had children, more females were signing up and staying on. Former Deputy Commissioner Lucinda Nolan was about 12 months ahead of her at the Victoria Police Academy. Nolan and Steendam were part of a wave of women who progressed up the ranks of Victoria Police in enough numbers to make what she describes as a “critical mass” that helped carve a career path for policewomen coming after them. She’s still striving to boost the numbers: “We’re nowhere near the numbers we need to be in terms of true representation of women; in policing overall we’re about 27 per cent, and at recruiting level about 37 per cent. “At the rank of constable and senior constable it’s 30 to 35 per cent and that varies as you start to move up in higher ranks, when it gets much more diminished to around 12 to 14 per cent (women). We certainly have a long way to go,” says Steendam, who met her one-time policeman husband at the police academy. He has since moved into the private sector. Steendam climbed the ranks and had stints as Assistant Commissioner Eastern Region (commanding a whole region) and Chief Information Officer (at a time of significant IT reform) before her current role as Deputy Commissioner of Capability, charged with exploring innovation. In her long career at the coalface of policing, including working in a criminal investigation unit in which she was the only woman, Steendam has been privy to the kind of crimes against children and young people that you don’t forget. She confesses to having seen enough to have taught her own children, a son now aged 28 and twins (a boy and a girl) aged 17, “protective behaviours” from early childhood and to having “a list of do nots” for when they were in other people’s homes. “There are cases that I’ve dealt with personally, because I’ve worked in sexual offence and child abuse units as a practitioner as well as supervisor, there are cases that for me … have had more impact than others. “You don’t forget those cases, they sort of stay with you,” says Steendam, who Ashton appointed along with fellow experienced crime fighter Shane Patton to the role of Deputy Commissioner in August 2015. She has seen “significant injuries and terrible harm occur to young children or to young women” and says while none of these are easy to deal with and seeing abuse “distresses me greatly”, she is focused on prevention and improving responses. “You can’t un-know what you know, but having said that my commitment is to make sure we have good responses. But we also need to be able to prevent these things from happening and (make sure) that every woman, and children, should be safe in their home.” Steendam says she did not become more concerned for her own safety at work after becoming a mother, but having kids did make aspects of the job feel more personal. It “never crossed my mind” to leave policing post-kids, and having a husband then in the job made life easier as they could do opposite shifts and avoid large amounts of child care. But returning to work in the sexual offence and child abuse unit was sobering. “The change for me when I had children was not that I didn’t want to do policing, I was probably more affected by the issues that I was dealing with and the families I was dealing with,” says Steendam, whose large corner office at Victoria Police’s Docklands complex overlooks the back of buildings on the Yarra’s edge, railway lines and the Detroit end of Flinders St. “It’s harder to separate the personal and the professional when you watch and see young children that have been abused or treated appallingly; it’s certainly hard not to think about your own family and your own children.” Steendam devoted herself to helping address violence against women and their children 13 years before the awful murder of Luke Batty by his father put family violence at the top of the state’s social agenda. When then Commissioner Christine Nixon made tackling violence against women a priority, Steendam, by then supervising the child and sex abuse unit, was appointed to review Victoria Police’s response processes. That 2001 review was “the stepping stone for change” in the way family violence is regarded by police — no longer dismissed as simply “a domestic” as was notoriously once the case, but treated with very structured systems which formed the foundation of the way family violence is approached today. That victims are treated with dignity was a key recommendation of her report and is now the norm. Though the Royal Commission into Family Violence outlined many areas in which improvement is still needed, Steendam says the fact even a code of practice for investigation of family violence did not exist until the 2001 review recommended one is a sign of how far police have come. “I’d like to leave legacy pieces, and I feel like that is a legacy for me,” says Steendam. “I’m passionate about helping women and children, that has been a central theme of my career and something that even when I leave policing I will stay committed to.” And that includes not making light of violence. As the commission report shows, “it’s the permissive environment that allows people who will do greater harm to thrive; if that’s not challenged and if we don’t set standards... we create permissive environments where greater harm can occur”, Steendam says. “That is my experience... The evidence is very clear about gender inequality and all the issues that sit with that being causal factors for harm against women and other members of the community that are more vulnerable.” It seems like they could do a lot worse than have Deputy Commissioner Wendy Steendam in their corner. [email protected] technologies have transformed traditional filmmaking and refashioned the market. New and innovative technologies in both production and post-production have paved the way for a more versatile, cost effective and advanced workflow. The ZEISS CP.3 family is the latest contribution from ZEISS to support creative and progressive filmmaking with an affordable, future-proof and premium quality lens set. The ZEISS CP.3 lenses offer the perfect combination of high image quality and reliable usability. They exhibit the clean, crisp characteristics ZEISS is known for, together with an interchangeable mount system and full-frame coverage. The ZEISS CP.3 XD version features innovative and ground-breaking lens data technology to speed-up and simplify the workflow on set and in post-production. The ZEISS eXtended Data is a unique technology which is based on the /i* Technology and provides information about the lens’ distortion and shading characteristics in real time. With the ZEISS CP.3 XD lenses, even small productions on a limited budget gain access to the advanced techniques common in state-of-the-art, big budget films, commercials and television shows.On Friday, Gov. John Kasich's spokesman said the governor's office knew nothing about an August 2012 state marketing plan for fracking in state parks and forests. But after an email about the plan involving most of Kasich's top officials was disclosed yesterday, spokesman Rob Nichols said: "Of course, the administration is going to coordinate and plan ahead on an important issue like gas production on state land." On Friday, Gov. John Kasich�s spokesman said the governor�s office knew nothing about an August 2012 state marketing plan for fracking in state parks and forests. But after an email about the plan involving most of Kasich�s top officials was disclosed yesterday, spokesman Rob Nichols said: �Of course, the administration is going to coordinate and plan ahead on an important issue like gas production on state land.� The turnaround came after an email became public. It was from Kasich senior adviser Wayne Struble, who sought a meeting about the public-relations campaign with top Kasich officials. Those invited included Beth Hansen, the governor�s chief of staff; Scott Milburn, top communications manager; Matt Carle, his legislative liaison (who is now his re-election campaign manager); Jai Chabria, a senior adviser; Tracy Intihar, who was cabinet secretary at the time; Craig Butler, a policy adviser who is now head of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency; and leaders of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. The Aug. 1, 2012, communique called for a �state-land leasing-strategy and communications meeting� on the 30th floor of the Riffe Tower, where the governor�s offices are. The meeting was slated for Aug. 20 � the same day that the PR plan is dated. The plan was never implemented. Nichols told The Dispatch on Friday night that the governor�s office had no knowledge of the marketing plan because it had never left the Natural Resources department. �Clearly, that�s not the case,� Brian Rothenberg, head of the liberal nonprofit organization ProgressOhio, said in a news conference yesterday in which the email was divulged. �The fact that people at the highest level of the governor�s office were involved in this is pretty unsavory.� Brian Kunkemoeller, conservation-program coordinator with the Sierra Club�s Ohio chapter � which obtained the material through a public-records request � said, �This is not only a sad day for our parks and forests, it�s also a sad day for our democracy.� Rothenberg and Kunkemoeller expressed outrage that a state agency given the statutory duty to regulate the oil and gas industry actually was partnering with the industry to promote it. Their two organizations called for an investigation into who ordered the PR push, who paid for it and why several environmental groups and two Democratic legislators were named as part of � zealous resistance� by �opposition groups� that must be overcome. Natural Resources spokeswoman Bethany McCorkle said, �Any responsible organization plans in advance what it is going to do, especially when it knows it is going to face fierce opposition to progress. The fact that these secretly funded extremist groups are attacking us today validates the wisdom of anticipating the attack and planning for it.� Said Nichols: �If we didn�t (prepare a marketing plan), these same extremist groups would be attacking us for not planning ahead.� Critics say the 10-page plan goes well beyond a traditional communications effort. The memo itself recognized that the public-relations initiative �could blur public perception of ODNR�s regulatory role in oil and gas.� The document was prepared by Mark Anthony, a senior policy adviser with the Natural Resources department who once was a press secretary for then-Columbus Mayor Dana G. �Buck� Rinehart. Anthony was hired by the Kasich administration the month before the memo was prepared. McCorkle said she wasn�t sure whether Natural Resources or the governor�s office had directed Anthony to draw up the plan. �To tell you the truth, the assignment was a year and a half ago, (and I�m) not sure who asked him to do it,� she said. �No action or next steps came out of the meeting.� In 2011, the legislature passed, and Kasich signed, a bill allowing fracking on public lands. Fracking � hydraulic fracturing � starts with drills first going vertically thousands of feet underground and then turning 90 degrees to carve long horizontal shafts through shale formations rich with gas and oil. The actual fracking involves pumping millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals below ground to shatter the shale and free the petroleum products so they can be pumped to the surface. [email protected] Dymburt and KOIN 6 News Staff - FOREST GROVE, Ore. (KOIN) --- Hundreds of Forest Grove High School students walked out of class on Thursday morning and marched into downtown. More HS students protest over "build a wall" banner at Forest Grove HS. This is the scene at Tigard HS pic.twitter.com/f9Zg7p8NRl — Andrew Dymburt (@DymburtNews) May 19, 2016 The 9:45 a.m. walkout was established to protest a banner that was hung in the school on Wednesday during lunch hour. Students from other high schools in the area, including Beaverton, Hillsboro, Tigard and Aloha walked out in solidarity as well. Copyright by KOIN - All rights reserved The banner that was hung in the high school. (Facebook/Juan Carlos Gonzalez) Copyright by KOIN - All rights reserved The banner that was hung in the high school. (Facebook/Juan Carlos Gonzalez) The banner, according to Connie Potter, the Chief of Staff for Forest Grove Public Schools, read "build a wall." Potter says the banner was only up for a "brief moment" and was taken down by the principal within a minute. The "build a wall" sign is assumed to have a connection to Donald Trump's comments supporting building a wall between the United States and Mexico. The Forest Grove district has the highest percentage of Latino students in the Portland metro area. Potter says two students hung the banner and have been disciplined. "It was taken down because it was unauthorized and we also believe that it was put up to create a disruption," superintendent Yvonne Curtis told KOIN 6. One of the students responsible for the banner wrote an apology letter to the community, which was posted on a public blog. The student writes that the banner was hung in protest to what the student sees as restrictions on free speech. The student understands why it was seen as racist and apologized to anyone who may have been hurt. On May 18th, I hung a banner in Forest Grove High School that said, “Build a Wall.�?I don’t actually believe that a wall needs to be built along our border. I wanted to do something provocative to protest what I see as restrictions on freedom of speech. I was feeling like people weren’t open to discuss sensitive issues, because no matter what is said, no matter what words I used, someone says, “That’s offensive!�?I was angry, and I thought this would be a great way to express my belief in freedom of speech. "A lot of people say it's a first amendment right, it's freedom of speech," said Hugo Salmeron, Forest Grove High School student body president. "But there's a difference between spreading awareness and just being hateful." "Students have free speech rights, as long as it's not disruptive and complies with whatever procedural requirements the school may have," free speech attorney Charles Hinkle said. The hashtag #StandUpFG has been used on social media to discuss the story. Glad to see peaceful action against racism and intolerance. #StandUpFG — Suzanne Bonamici (@RepBonamici) May 19, 2016 Copyright by KOIN - All rights reserved Forest Grove High School students walk out over 'build a wall' banner, May 19 2016. (KOIN) Copyright by KOIN - All rights reserved Forest Grove High School students walk out over 'build a wall' banner, May 19 2016. (KOIN) width="100%" height="620" scrolling="yes" frameborder="0" src="https://wx.koin.com/html/twitter/standupfg.html"> Your browser does not support iframes.Abstract Background Suicide is one of the leading causes of premature mortality worldwide. Few studies have assessed long-term trends or sex differences in its incidence over time. We have investigated the age-, sex- and method-specific trends in suicide in England and Wales from 1861 to 2007. Methods Overall age-standardized suicide rates using the European Standard Population and age-, sex- and method-specific rates were calculated for ages ≥15 years from 1861 to 2007. Results Rates in males were consistently higher than females throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, although the male-to-female sex ratio fluctuated from 4 : 1 in the 1880s to 1.5 : 1 in the 1960s. Suicide rates increased in all age groups in the 1930s, coinciding with the Great Depression. The highest male rates (30.3 per 100 000) were recorded in 1905 and 1934 and have since been declining. Female rates peaked in the 1960s (11.8 per 100 000), declining afterwards. In both sexes the lowest recorded rates were in the 21st century. There was a rapid rise in the use of domestic gas as a method of suicide in both sexes following its introduction at the end of the 19th century. There was no evidence that this rise was accompanied by a decline in the use of other methods. Self-poisoning also increased in popularity from the 1860s (5% of suicides) to the 1990s (22% of suicides). Conclusions The epidemiology of suicide in England and Wales has changed markedly over the past 146 years. The rapid rise in gas suicide deaths in the 1920s highlights how quickly a new method of suicide can be established in a population when it is easily available. The increase in suicides during the Great Depression has implications in relation to the current economic crisis. Changes in the acceptability and lethality of various suicide methods may account for the large variations in sex ratios over time. Introduction Suicide is one of the three leading causes of death amongst 15- to 44 year-olds worldwide, and is the cause of almost one million deaths each year in people of all ages.1 Between 2004 and 2006, it accounted for 5.2 and 2.3% of potential years of life lost before 75 years of age in men and women, respectively, in England and Wales.2 There were marked declines in suicide rates in the past 50 years of the 20th century in England and Wales.3,4 With a few exceptions,4,5 previous analyses of secular trends in suicide in England and Wales and other countries have largely focussed on discrete time periods. Earlier analyses have not investigated changes in the relative incidence of suicide in men and women, changes in age patterns or long-term secular trends in commonly used methods of suicide. Analysis of such trends may shed light on potentially preventable factors such as the impact on overall rates of the changing popularity of certain suicide methods and the risk posed by periods of economic recession.6,7 Knowledge of such factors contributes to national suicide prevention strategies. We investigated the age-, sex- and method-specific trends in suicide to quantify the changing patterns of risk over the past 146 years in England and Wales. Methods Suicide mortality and population data for England and Wales were obtained for the period 1861–2007 from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The year 1861 was the earliest year for which complete mortality records were available. Data prior to 1911 were transcribed from paper records provided by the ONS. Yearly age-specific overall suicide mortality rates per 100 000 were calculated within 10-year age bands (15–24, 25–34 until ≥65 years). Three-year moving averages that were centred on the last year of each 3-year period were then calculated to smooth the annual rates. Yearly age-standardized rates using the European Standard Population and 3-year moving averages were calculated for ages ≥15 years. The codes used for suicide in the 20th and 21st centuries are shown in Table 1. After 1968, a new category of deaths—deaths from injury undetermined whether accidental or purposely inflicted—was included in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). There is evidence that ∼75% of undetermined deaths are actually suicides.8 Therefore, age-standardized suicide rates including undetermined deaths for ages ≥15 years were also calculated after 1968. The ICD codes were also used to ascribe deaths to particular methods (Table 1). Table 1 ILCD-1 ILCD-2 ILCD-3 ILCD-4 ILCD-5 ICD-6 ICD-7 ICD-8 ICD-9 ICD-10 1900–1908 1909–1919 1920–1928 1929–1937 1938–1949 1950–1957 1958–1967 1968–1978 1979–2000 2001–2007 Suicide Recorded suicides 190 155–163 165–174 163–171 163–164 E970–E979 E970–E979 E950–E959 E950–E959 X60–X84 Undetermined E980–E989 E980–E989 excluding E988.8 Y10–Y34 excluding Y33.9 where verdict pending Method of suicide Recorded suicides Overdose 155 165–166 163 163aa–163ad E970–E971 E970–E971 E950 E950 X60–X65, X68–X69 Gases 156 167 164 163ba–163bc E972–E973 E972–E973 E951–E952 E951–E952 X66–67 Hanging 157 168 165 164a E974 E974 E953 E953 X70 Drowning 158 169 166 164b E975 E975 E954 E954 X71 Firearms and explosives 159 170 167 164c E976 E976 E955 E955 X72–X75 Other and unspecified (including jumping from a high place and cutting and piercing) 160–163 171–174 168–171 164d–164f E977–E959 E977–E959 E956–E959 E956–E959 X76–X84 Undetermined Overdose E980 E980 Y10–15, Y18–Y19 Gases E981–E982 E981–E982 Y16–Y17 Hanging E983 E983 Y20 Drowning E984 E984 Y21 Firearms and explosives E985 E985 Y22–Y25 Other and unspecified (including jumping from a high place and cutting and piercing) E986–E988 E986–E988 Y26–Y34 ILCD-1 ILCD-2 ILCD-3 ILCD-4 ILCD-5 ICD-6 ICD-7 ICD-8 ICD-9 ICD-10 1900–1908 1909–1919 1920–1928 1929–1937 1938–1949 1950–1957 1958–1967 1968–1978 1979–2000 2001–2007 Suicide Recorded suicides 190 155–163 165–174 163–171 163–164 E970–E979 E970–E979 E950–E959 E950–E959 X60–X84 Undetermined E980–E989 E980–E989 excluding E988.8 Y10–Y34 excluding Y33.9 where verdict pending Method of suicide Recorded suicides Overdose 155 165–166 163 163aa–163ad E970–E971 E970–E971 E950 E950 X60–X65, X68–X69 Gases 156 167 164 163ba–163bc E972–E973 E972–E973 E951–E952 E951–E952 X66–67 Hanging 157 168 165 164a E974 E974 E953 E953 X70 Drowning 158 169 166 164b E975 E975 E954 E954 X71 Firearms and explosives 159 170 167 164c E976 E976 E955 E955 X72–X75 Other and unspecified (including jumping from a high place and cutting and piercing) 160–163 171–174 168–171 164d–164f E977–E959 E977–E959 E956–E959 E956–E959 X76–X84 Undetermined Overdose E980 E980 Y10–15, Y18–Y19 Gases E981–E982 E981–E982 Y16–Y17 Hanging E983 E983 Y20 Drowning E984 E984 Y21 Firearms and explosives E985 E985 Y22–Y25 Other and unspecified (including jumping from a high place and cutting and piercing) E986–E988 E986–E988 Y26–Y34 View Large Table 1 ILCD-1 ILCD-2 ILCD-3 ILCD-4 ILCD-5 ICD-6 ICD-7 ICD-8 ICD-9 ICD-10 1900–1908 1909–1919 1920–1928 1929–1937 1938–1949 1950–1957 1958–1967 1968–1978 1979–2000 2001–2007 Suicide Recorded suicides 190 155–163 165–174 163–171 163–164 E970–E979 E970–E979 E950–E959 E950–E959 X60–X84 Undetermined E980–E989 E980–E989 excluding E988.8 Y10–Y34 excluding Y33.9 where verdict pending Method of suicide Recorded suicides Overdose 155 165–166 163 163aa–163ad E970–E971 E970–E971 E950 E950 X60–X65, X68–X69 Gases 156 167 164 163ba–163bc E972–E973 E972–E973 E951–E952 E951–E952 X66–67 Hanging 157 168 165 164a E974 E974 E953 E953 X70 Drowning 158 169 166 164b E975 E975 E954 E954 X71 Firearms and explosives 159 170 167 164c E976 E976 E955 E955 X72–X75 Other and unspecified (including jumping from a high place and cutting and piercing) 160–163 171–174 168–171 164d–164f E977–E959 E977–E959 E956–E959 E956–E959 X76–X84 Undetermined Overdose E980 E980 Y10–15, Y18–Y19 Gases E981–E982 E981–E982 Y16–Y17 Hanging E983 E983 Y20 Drowning E984 E984 Y21 Firearms and explosives E985 E985 Y22–Y25 Other and unspecified (including jumping from a high place and cutting and piercing) E986–E988 E986–E988 Y26–Y34 ILCD-1 ILCD-2 ILCD-3 ILCD-4 ILCD-5 ICD-6 ICD-7 ICD-8 ICD-9 ICD-10 1900–1908 1909–1919 1920–1928 1929–1937 1938–1949 1950–1957 1958–1967 1968–1978 1979–2000 2001–2007 Suicide Recorded suicides 190 155–163 165–174 163–171 163–164 E970–E979 E970–E979 E950–E959 E950–E959 X60–X84 Undetermined E980–E989 E980–E989 excluding E988.8 Y10–Y34 excluding Y33.9 where verdict pending Method of suicide Recorded suicides Overdose 155 165–166 163 163aa–163ad E970–E971 E970–E971 E950 E950 X60–X65, X68–X69 Gases 156 167 164 163ba–163bc E972–E973 E972–E973 E951–E952 E951–E952 X66–67 Hanging 157 168 165 164a E974 E974 E953 E953 X70 Drowning 158 169 166 164b E975 E975 E954 E954 X71 Firearms and explosives 159 170 167 164c E976 E976 E955 E955 X72–X75 Other and unspecified (including jumping from a high place and cutting and piercing) 160–163 171–174 168–171 164d–164f E977–E959 E977–E959 E956–E959 E956–E959 X76–X84 Undetermined Overdose E980 E980 Y10–15, Y18–Y19 Gases E981–E982 E981–E982 Y16–Y17 Hanging E983 E983 Y20 Drowning E984 E984 Y21 Firearms and explosives E985 E985 Y22–Y25 Other and unspecified (including jumping from a high place and cutting and piercing) E986–E988 E986–E988 Y26–Y34 View Large All suicide death rates in the figures were expressed as numbers of deaths per 100 000 men or women. The sex ratio was calculated as the ratio of male suicide rates to female suicide rates. Results Overall suicide rates Figure 1 shows the standardized male and female suicide rates in those aged ≥15 years from 1861 to 2007. The overall trend was similar when undetermined deaths were included for both sexes from 1968. Figure 1 View largeDownload slide Age standardized suicide rates for ages ≥15 years in England and Wales (3-year moving averages) 1861–2007 Figure 1 View largeDownload slide Age standardized suicide rates for ages ≥15 years in England and Wales (3-year moving averages) 1861–2007 Suicide rates in males steadily increased by 67% from 1861 to reach a peak of 30.3 per 100 000 by 1905. Rates then decreased to 21 per 100 000 in 1917 (during World War I), increasing to reach a second peak of 30.3 per 100 000 in 1934, coinciding with the Great Depression. Subsequent declines were interrupted by small increases in the 1950s and 1980s. The lowest male suicide rate (11.6 per 100 000) was recorded in 2007. In contrast, suicide rates in females increased gradually from 6.0 per 100 000 in 1861, peaking at 11.8 deaths per 100 000 in 1964, with slight declines during the two world wars. The rates steadily declined in subsequent years and the lowest female rate (3.2 per 100 000) was seen in 2007. The male rate was consistently higher than the female rate over the entire time period, although the male-to-female (sex) ratio rose from 3.3 in 1861 to 4.0 in 1886 and 1906 and subsequently declined steadily to its lowest level (1.5) in 1966 before increasing again to around 3.9 in the mid-1990s (Figure 2). Figure 2 View largeDownload slide Male-to-female sex ratio in England and Wales (3-year moving averages) 1861–2007 Figure 2 View largeDownload slide Male-to-female sex ratio in England and Wales (3-year moving averages) 1861–2007 Age-specific suicide trends Figure 3 shows the age-specific suicide rates in men and women for all methods of suicide from 1861 to 2007. The patterns differed markedly in males and females. Figure 3 View largeDownload slide View largeDownload slide (a) Age-specific mortality rates (males) in England and Wales (3-year moving averages) 1861–2007. (b) Age-specific mortality rates (females) in England and Wales (3-year moving averages) 1861–2007 Figure 3 View largeDownload slide View largeDownload slide (a) Age-specific mortality rates (males) in England and Wales (3-year moving averages) 1861–2007. (b) Age-specific mortality rates (females) in England and Wales (3-year moving averages) 1861–2007 Amongst males, the highest suicide rates were seen in those aged 55–64 and ≥65 years until the late 20th century when they declined steeply and were surpassed by 25- to 34-year-olds and 35- to 44-year-olds. Males aged 15–24 years had the lowest suicide rates over the entire period. Wide (8-fold) differences in age-specific suicide rates were seen from 1861 to the mid-1950s, when rates began to converge. One of the most striking features of male rates is the halving of suicide rates in men aged >45 years during the two world wars (1914–18 and 1939–45), whereas there were small rises in younger men. However, the peaks of suicide rates observed in 1917 in men <35 years are data artefacts due to the disproportionate number of young men who were conscripted and sent to fight in World War I. The population of young men aged 15–24 years dropped by 40% from 1911 to 1917. Rises in all age groups were seen during the Great Depression (1929–35). The highest age-specific rate (56.6 per 100 000) was observed in males aged 55–64 years in 1933. In females, age-specific suicide rates widened between 1861 and the mid-1960s from 3- to 10-fold differences in rates between older and younger women. Just as in males, suicide rates in all female age groups converged in the 1990s due to a fall in rates in older women. From 1861 to 1966, 55- to 64-year-old females had the highest rates, peaking at 20.1 per 100 000 in 1965. Rates in the 45- to 54-year-old females were very similar to those aged 55–64 years until the 1930s, when the gap increased. After 1944, the rates in >65-year-olds increased to become almost identical to the rates in the 55- to 64-year-olds. By 2007, the 45- to 54 year-olds had the highest female suicide rates. For the entire time period 15- to 24 year-old females experienced the lowest suicide rates. Between 1861 and 1917 their rates were close to those of 25- to 34 year-olds, although the gap widened subsequently. There was a dip in suicide
leisure time, according to Kessler. “That’s what he does there. He works. And that’s what he enjoys,” he said, noting that one won’t find Trump swimming. “He’ll be on the phone, he’ll be going over paperwork and, meanwhile, Melania will be having a good time.” This vacation, in terms of Trump’s propensity for work, appears no different. The transition, already ahead of schedule in terms of appointments, was not about to slow down for the holiday. After arriving in Florida on Tuesday night, Trump announced two Cabinet-level picks Wednesday: South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley for ambassador to the United Nations and Betsy DeVos for Education Secretary. And on Thursday, Trump took to Twitter to let the nation know he wasn’t kicking back. “I am working hard, even on Thanksgiving, trying to get Carrier A.C. Company to stay in the U.S. (Indiana). MAKING PROGRESS - Will know soon!” Trump wrote, referring to a manufacturing company whose plans to move a plant to Mexico provided Exhibit A as he railed against trade deals during the campaign. Trump also released a video Wednesday to wish the nation a happy Thanksgiving. "It is my prayer, that on this Thanksgiving, we begin to heal our divisions and move forward as one country, strengthened by a shared purpose and very, very common resolve," he said. It was a far cry from Trump's previous Thanksgiving Eve missives. “HAPPY THANKSGIVING to everyone--I love you all, even my many enemies (sometimes!),” Trump wrote on Twitter the day before Thanksgiving in 2012. “Happy Thanksgiving to all--even the haters and losers!” Trump tweeted the day before Thanksgiving in 2013. The soon-to-be First Family is hoping for some privacy as they enjoy the vacation, a transition spokesman told reporters Wednesday. The president-elect's traveling press pool will spend its holiday at a nearby Hilton, cloistered in a conference room. While aides, Secret Service agents and fellow club members will be around the incoming president, he will be shielded from the press and the public.In 2002, at age 33, I’d been waitressing at Julienne, a high-end restaurant in San Marino, Calif., for over eight years. My husband, a painter and graduate of Art Center College of Design, worked at a local private school. Our two sons were toddler-aged. We juggled parenting duties. I squeezed in writing time. Forget about writing at home: laundry, dishes, and chaos. I wrote at coffee shops and libraries, craving solitude and quiet, and never quite managing to get it. The closest I’d come was a decrepit coffeehouse in Alhambra (long since out of business), the main clientele of which seemed to be ditching teens. The teens made out on the ratty couch near my chosen workspace and mostly left me alone. They had a system: rotating lookouts for the truancy officer who periodically stopped by. A long whistle, and then I’d watch as they scrambled and disappeared. After the truancy officer left, they’d come back one by one, wariness and giddiness in the air. When I would turn on the light to use the dimly lit, token-operated bathroom, cockroaches would scramble and disappear (one time scurrying over the skin of my flip-flop wearing foot) like a bug reenactment of the ditching teens. There was occasional drama. Drug deals, homeless people, fights, and yelling. But I could stay and work without pressure to give up my space for other clientele, since there really wasn’t much other clientele, and people mostly left me alone. The coffee was awful, the food bad. The workers behind the counter (they didn’t call themselves baristas) were in their early-20s, respectful and friendly. They shared their newly acquired tattoos with me, told me about their hangovers, and complained about the owner. Often they’d turn the music down for me. I can’t count the number of times the live version of “Free Bird” played while I wrote. Sometimes workers wouldn’t show up (too hung-over, they’d explain later). I’d wait outside for someone to open the doors, and then finally concede defeat, resorting to the dreaded corner Starbucks, where I’d sit beneath a poster of a man holding a steaming toffee-nut latte while playing with his golden retriever. The poster asked, What Stirs You? Right around Christmas that year, David Partridge, a wealthy businessman, came into Julienne for lunch. I served him, as I’d been doing for eight years. He — like other preferred regulars — had a personal account, meaning he didn’t pay by cash or credit. He signed for his meals and was billed later. I knew that he worked across the street in a red brick building. He collected art and was on the boards of museums. Like other regulars, he often ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner (taking it home) from Julienne. After so many years of serving him, a familiarity had grown between us. He was one of my favorite regulars, openly optimistic and kind. He often asked me about my writing. That afternoon while signing he said, “You can work in my office.” When I didn’t speak, he looked at me and said, “I mean it. I’m serious. Come by tomorrow before your shift, or after. Work. No one will bother you. It’ll be quiet.” Writers know what it’s like: countless rejections, everything and everyone seemingly an obstacle. Looking back, it wasn’t just that Mr. Partridge offered me a quiet and private space. He believed in me. He — with his booming, confident voice — said, “You can do this! I’ll help.” I showed up the next morning in my Julienne uniform — dress shirt and dark slacks, my tie in my pocket — and waited in the lobby for someone to open the door. From the lobby window, I could see the servers and customers at my workplace across the street. David (he asked me to call him David and not Mr. Partridge, and though this never came easy, I’ll try again here) shared his workspace — a floor of offices — with lawyers. I’m not sure the arrangement, but I assume that David must have owned the space, since no one ever kicked me out. A secretary to one of the lawyers arrived and opened the door, giving me a strange look when I entered. She never did warm to me, nor did the other secretaries: over the years, their open hostility turned to indifference. But I grew to appreciate their cold professionalism. They worked, so I worked. How could I not? It seemed wrong to fiddle around on the Internet or stare into space when others diligently worked nearby. It was a conference room: quiet and private. I fell in love. A long table with chairs around it, reminding me of scenes in movies of important business meetings. A large window overlooked the other offices, the kitchenette, and the bathroom on the floor. A couple of abstract paintings hung on the wall. I scanned the bookshelves: financial records and business books: The Changing World of the Executive, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, Innovation in Marketing, U.S. Competitiveness in the World Economy, The Achieving Society. I began to leave some of my books (William Trevor, Andre Dubus, Richard Yates, and Alice Munro) amongst the business tomes, like wild, beautiful hippies poking through a humorless crowd of overachievers. Unfortunately I had to share the space with the lawyers when they had arbitration and deposition meetings. David set up a daily planner/calendar on a table by the conference room door for the lawyers to fill out, so that I could see when the room had been signed out and plan my writing time accordingly. David said I could share his office with him when the conference room was occupied. I tried once. It was just too weird, his booming voice discussing money and such on the phone. He owned and operated Data Devices International, which sounded like a huge company, but was actually run by him and his private secretary, an Indian woman named Patty, who also looked at me with skepticism. He had big crate boxes on the floor, and a Fed Ex man came every now and then to take them away. From what I understand, his business erased data permanently from computers. He did very well, his daughter once told me, during the Bush years. That first morning, David lightly tapped on the conference room door, poked his head inside and asked, “Can I get you a coffee?” “This is weird,” I said, and he laughed before shutting the door. Later as I was leaving, I told him: “When I publish a book, I’ll thank you in my acknowledgments.” It bothered me that I couldn’t reimburse his generosity, and it was the only thing that I could come up with. “I’d like that,” he said, nodding. I wanted a key to the floor, since waiting in the lobby was inconvenient, only to find out that the conference room was signed out. But I didn’t dare ask David. Businessmen and lawyers came through on their way to their offices. I’d watch them go up the stairs or take the elevator to the second floor. Some said hello, others ignored me. I waited on most of them across the street. I hoped not to run into Mr. Galbraith, another regular with a personal account. Sometimes I delivered his breakfast to his office. Two poached eggs and dry toast. For my small effort, he tipped me five bucks. But he made me nervous — an A-type personality. I didn’t want to explain to him why I was there. One morning Mr. Galbraith (he’s asked me more than once to call him Jim, so from here on, with the usual difficulty, he’s Jim) found me in the lobby, my laptop opened on my lap. “I like your office,” he said. “Actually,” I said, “Mr. Partridge lets me use his conference room. I’m just waiting for someone to open the door.” “Well,” he said, “good for him.” Soon word spread through the restaurant that I worked at David Partridge’s office. The other waiters and busboys teased me. My bosses didn’t like it. It felt like the boundaries of the conventional San Marino class hierarchy had somehow smeared. About six months later, Jim told me that I could work in his office instead of waiting in the lobby for the conference room. Tuesdays and Thursdays were best, he said, since his partner didn’t come in on those days, and I could use Andy’s desk. I said I’d think about it. A few weeks before Christmas of 2003, Jim found me waiting in the lobby yet again. He invited me upstairs to write. I took the elevator with him. I started using Andy’s office. I could hear Jim on the phone while I worked, which made me want to work more, since Jim’s a no-nonsense kind of guy. He poked his head through the door at one point, offering me coffee or water. I declined. I couldn’t believe it: Mr. Galbraith offering to serve me! Phones rang, doors buzzed. Jim got hot because of his Crohn’s disease, and so he kept it very cold. The secretary arrived and answered Andy’s phone from her desk. Andy’s office was a mess, papers everywhere. His wife smiled at me from a photograph on his desk. At one point, my boss warned me, saying that Jim couldn’t be trusted. He would want something in return, she said. Be careful. He’s a ruthless businessman. (He’s a corporate finance lawyer, I found out later, and he apparently helped pioneer the concept of leveraged buyouts.) But that wasn’t my experience. Sometimes he showed me photographs of his children and grandchildren. We chatted. He tried to be easy going. I appreciated his efforts. For five years, I alternated between working at David’s conference room and Jim’s partner’s office. David gave me pep talks and encouraged me. Jim’s seriousness rubbed off on me and helped me work. Drift, my collection of short stories, was published in 2009. In my acknowledgments I wrote: Thank you, as well, to David Partridge and Jim Galbraith, for serving a waitress by acknowledging her as a writer: they gave me a space to work, away from the countless interruptions and distractions of libraries and coffeehouses. David told me he bought a box full of my books. He died of complications from pancreatic cancer on March 29, 2014. His daughter emailed me: “My dad adored you.” “I adored your dad as well,” I wrote back. Jim and I are still in touch. His eyesight has dwindled due to his Crohn’s disease. He has told me more than once, “I’m your biggest fan.” Image Credit: Pixabay.Feels Like Coming Home is a celebration of hometowns and musical communities. Last fall, Special Passenger Records asked bands in our network and beyond to reflect on their homes and towns and lives and write an original song for a compilation. The songs are really amazing and we are so excited to finally release the album. In addition, Kelly and Amanda will be going on tour to release the CD in each city, meet and talk to wonderful people, film interesting and beautiful things and share it all via the internet. We will post short webisodes on www.feelslikecominghome.com throughout the trip and will eventually release a documentary about independent musical communities and the trip. The money raised from Kickstarter will go towards making 200 cds, renting a car and fueling our adventure. We are paying for half of the cost, and any additional money we make will go towards future Special Passenger projects. Thanks so much for checking this project out and for supporting us and other independent record labels and musicians. Please contact us at [email protected] if you would like to participate in the documentary or if you have any other questions! Music in the video by Midtown Dickens and Shenandoah Davis.The information and links I’m about to share are NSFW and honestly NSFL. Read at your own risk. Most people that know me personally know that I could be called a conspiracy theorist. I believe some things that most people would scoff at. However, after about three days of studying all of this information - and with more information being discovered daily - I believe that there is too much information here that links together to just be coincidental or circumstantial. In case you were unaware, Wikileaks has been releasing emails involving John Podesta. Podesta is Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. He’s a longtime friend of the Clintons who also served as Bill’s Chief of Staff. (https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/) Since the leaks of the Podesta emails, some really smart people have discovered what they and what I now believe to be a pedophilia/child pornography ring within the elite of this country. I’ll stop right there because I can assume you think I am crazy for believing that. You probably think it could never happen, and that this is the kind of thing that would only happen in movies or TV shows. Well it has happened before (https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/3sfiai/the_dutroux_affair/, https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/43lxlb/the_dutroux_affair_part_i_background_convictions/, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/guilty-after-six-year-trial-portugals-high-society-paedophile-ring-2070112.html are among some examples), and it’s happening right now. Provided here are links to several sources (on top of the links already provided above) that I highly recommend reading because if what this collection of people has discovered is true, one of the biggest crimes in the history of the world may be close to being exposed. Again, I have to warn that all of this information is to be considered NSFW/NSFL. http://theantiglobalist.com/eyes-wide-shut-suspected-pedophile-ring-exposed/ http://pedocrats.com https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5b1qtf/comet_ping_pong_pizzagate_summary/ And here is what has become essentially the central hub (outside of *chan boards) for this unofficial investigation: https://www.reddit.com/r/pizzagate/Assembly: A sharp rock. Very popular in its time, and still occasionally useful. Forth: Obsidian. As simple as the sharp rock, but mindbogglingly sharp, even by modern standards! C: A spear. Easily recognizable as a weapon, but if you look closely you can see it’s a sharp rock tied to a stick. Newer versions tend to be a bit more polished variations of the same theme. Lisp: A laser-guided bomb. Due to some freakish historical accident was actually invented before the spear, but until recently there were no airplanes that could carry it. You just “paint” the target and it automatically finds a way to blow it up. C++/Java/C#: A standard-issue assault rifle. Not particularly interesting, but gets the job done. Innovates by re-purposing parts from the laser-guided bombs. Python/JavaScript: “Instead of stealing parts from the bomb, let’s just start with the bomb and see what kind of assault rifle it can be turned into!” APL: Something we found in a downed flying saucer. Doesn’t appear to be made with human physiology in mind - it seems to require at least three hands to operate. Wickedly efficient if you happen to find the right sequence of alien glyphs. Haskell: Also alien technology, but made by humanoids (even if their intelligence seems to be different and much more advanced than ours). It doesn’t seem to actually kill stuff - it just creates a new Universe where the thing you’re pointing at doesn’t exist. PHP: A combat knife. You wouldn’t use it if you had any other choice, but at least you can always count on having one. Prolog: An autonomous drone. You describe the rules and facts of a world where the targets have been destroyed, then it figures out how to make that happen on its own. Occasionally flies backwards.How to Say No — Protecting Yourself for Fun and Profit Coach Tony Blocked Unblock Follow Following Sep 14, 2016 This is secretly a post about saying yes. You’ll see. When I joined my first startup I interviewed with one of the board members, George Zachary. I was trying to position myself as a manager that, while young, had a lot of potential. So I asked George what growth would he predict for me as a young manager. Here’s roughly what he said: Eventually the emotion of saying NO goes away. People are going to ask you to do work that’s both impossible and unnecessary, ask you if they can work on personal projects, rewrite core systems for the hell of it, etc. You need to be able to say yes to what you think is right and no to everything else. But when you’re young it feels like a big deal anytime you say no. Young managers either drag their feet or give in, even when they know better. Look at me, I’m a VC. I’ve said yes 5 times and no 995 times. It got a lot easier to say no. George has been completely right. The more time I’ve spent as a manager and then as a founder, the more I get asked for things, time, money, resources. And the less anxious I am about saying no. Any time I feel myself delaying a decision for any emotional reason, I think back to George’s advice. Everyone has emotions, but at the end of the day you need to be able to make a rational decision. Here are some ways to master turning people down. #1. Reserve time in your calendar. I spend most of my day making things. So when someone wants to talk to me, I send them a scheduling link that has very few free spots. What I’m saying no to, subtly, is the idea that I have time to talk to you today. I used to lose my maker time to meetings and calls that were scheduled last minute. No more. #2. Have a canned response If you run a startup, every other startup will email you asking if they should get on the phone. It makes no sense — none of these turn into real partnerships. I used to respond with my requirements, something like “We’re looking for partnerships that achieve X & Y.” That was supposed to be a way to filter out the bad requests. But still none of those panned out. So now I just say: “We’re in a heads down mode and aren’t doing partnerships.” The best start to a canned response is always: “My policy is…” That’s a classic, it’s not you, it’s me move. It helps to depersonalize your rejection. #3. Have a shit test A friend was telling me how much she hates people asking to pick her brain. “The visual is gross and then they don’t do anything with what I tell them!” A shit test is to give the other person something a hurdle to jump in order to judge seriousness. The obvious shit test is money. “I would love to help you, but before I do, I need you to understand that I am a professional and this is my job. My hourly rate is $300.” The other shit test is preparation. Imagine a son of a friend of your aunt wants help getting a job in your industry. Then you take the meeting and you ask them what sorts of jobs they’re looking for. They don’t know. You ask them what their passion is. They don’t know. You ask them what companies they respect. They don’t know. They thought you could just tell them what their life path should be without any input from them. Instead, always, always, always request preparation before giving advice. “I would love to help. Before we schedule a time to talk, could you send me X, Y and Z.” If the materials they send over are sloppy, just tell them: “I’m so glad you sent these over because they help me see that I’m not a good fit to help you. Good luck!” #4. Repetition Sometimes people don’t take no for an answer. They start hunting for some crack in your confidence by asking question after question. My favorite example of this was a friend trying to quit their job. His boss kept coming back with theoretical counter offers, “What if we could…” Those counter offers were increasingly ludicrous and ended with “What if I could get my investor to offer you their private plane for the honeymoon you and your wife never had?” I find that these pushy people are looking for a signal that you’re not going to budge and the very best signal you can give is to repeat yourself. Here’s how it works.Available on DVD/Blu-Ray/Digital HD now! Order today. Hillary’s America, the latest film from the creators of America: Imagine The World Without Her and 2016: Obama’s America takes audiences on a gripping journey into the secret history of the Democratic Party and the contentious rise of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. In Hillary’s America, New York Times #1 bestselling author and celebrated filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza reveals the sordid truth about Hillary and the secret history of the Democratic Party. This eye-opening film sheds light on the Democrats’ transition from pro-slavery to pro-enslavement; how Hillary Clinton’s political mentor was, literally, a cold-blooded gangster; and how the Clintons and other Democrats see foreign policy not in terms of national interest, but in terms of personal profit. Hillary’s America uncovers how their plan is to simply steal America. Official movie trailer Hillary’s America is available now on DVD, Blu-ray, and Digital HD. What are the Democrats hiding? In The NewsBANGOR, Maine — Law enforcement officials on Wednesday released the identities of the man shot and killed by Bangor police and the officer who pulled the trigger after a traffic stop near a convenience store the night before. Joshua Jozefowicz, 23, most recently of Swan’s Island, was fatally shot Tuesday night after he pulled his vehicle into the parking lot at the Leadbetter’s at 1105 Hammond St. and then fled from police to a wooded area behind an adjacent field. The Maine attorney general’s office and Bangor police released the identities of Jozefowicz and Ryan Jones, the officer involved in the shooting. Court records show there was an arrest warrant out for Jozefowicz, whose criminal history includes convictions on drug-related offenses and a weapons violation involving brass knuckles in Hancock County. Jones joined the Bangor Police Department in 2010, according to Bangor Daily News archives. He has been placed on paid administrative leave, according to Bangor police, which is standard procedure in an officer-involved shooting. Jones was one of six Bangor police officers originally named in a wrongful death lawsuit filed in federal court over the death of Phillip McCue, 28, of Bangor on Sept. 17, 2012. McCue’s father, Michael McCue of Jackson, filed an eight-count wrongful death lawsuit in March 2014 in U.S. District Court in Bangor seeking $6.65 million in damages. McCue’s attorney, David Van Dyke of Lewiston, dropped Jones from the lawsuit when he filed an amended complaint in July 2014. Bangor Police Chief Mark Hathaway referred questions about the lawsuit to Bangor attorney Fred Badger, who is on vacation this week. The remaining defendants are officers Kim Donnell, Wade Betters (who is now a sergeant), Joshua Kuhn, David Farrar and Chris Blanchard. An attempt to reach Jones for comment Wednesday was unsuccessful. The attorney general’s office, which investigates all shootings involving police, and Bangor police declined to release further details about the shooting, citing the ongoing investigation. Initial reports suggested police pulled over the vehicle Jozefowicz was driving after it had been reported stolen, prompting the traffic stop. Those reports have not been verified. Investigators also would not say whether Jozefowicz was armed or whether he used a weapon or threatened to use a weapon against police. Multiple people reported hearing more than 10 shots fired as police and emergency medical personnel swarmed the area. Witnesses said police had stopped a car and a male occupant bolted into the woods before shots were fired. Police would not comment on the number of shots fired or who fired them. Investigators, including several from the Maine Warden Service, were on scene throughout the day Wednesday, sweeping a field and wooded area adjacent to the Leadbetter’s property with metal detectors and dogs. Leadbetter’s, which sells gasoline, food and other items, remained open for business throughout Tuesday night and Wednesday. A criminal background check revealed that Jozefowicz was convicted of carrying a concealed weapon, a Class D crime, in 2013. That charge stemmed from a 2012 arrest in Ellsworth after police found brass knuckles on him when they stopped a vehicle in which he was a passenger, according to The Ellsworth American weekly newspaper. That same year, Jozefowicz was charged with multiple drug offenses in Hancock County, according to court documents filed at the courthouse in Ellsworth. He was charged with two Class B felony counts of trafficking in oxycodone stemming from incidents on Jan. 22 and 23, 2013, in Bucksport. Details about the circumstances that led to those charges were not included in court documents. He was charged again with unlawful trafficking in drugs in May 2013, after he knowingly participated in a drug purchase that was set up and monitored by the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency, according to a probable cause report filed in Hancock County Unified Criminal Court. He was wired to record audio by MDEA agents, given $450 in cash and told to purchase 10 pills from a woman at a Bucksport apartment, the documents indicate, but when he returned, he had only nine pills. He initially told police he may have been “ripped off,” but when he was searched, authorities found the 10th pill hidden in the top of a cigarette lighter, according to the report. The document says that when police asked what he was trying to do, he responded, saying that “if he was going to rat on a friend he might as well try to make [$50] by selling one of the pills.” As a result, he was arrested on charges of violating bail, unlawful trafficking and unlawful possession of scheduled drugs. That October, in a plea deal, Jozefowicz pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful trafficking, one count of unlawful possession and one count of violating bail. He received an overall sentence of four years behind bars with all but 120 days suspended. He also was ordered to pay $980 in fines and serve 30 months of probation upon his release from jail. After serving his jail time, Jozefowicz had difficulty meeting the terms of his probation. He was arrested for probation violations this past June but was released on bail with instructions to report to his probation officer the next day — something he did not do. “Mr. Jozefowicz clearly does not want to be on probation,” his probation officer, David Cyr, wrote in a motion to revoke Jozefowicz’s probation. A mandated Sept. 1 court appearance also came and went without Jozefowicz being present, resulting in a warrant for his arrest. The shooting is the second involving Bangor police this year, according to records provided by the attorney general’s office. The previous incident occurred Feb. 2 during a standoff on Union Street involving Nicholas Condon of Portland. Bangor police officers Brian Smith and Dennis Townsend fired their weapons but Condon was not injured. The last fatal shooting involving Bangor police occurred on Aug. 3, 1997, when Gregory Baker was shot and killed by Sgt. Robert Bishop. BDN writers Bill Trotter and Judy Harrison contributed to this report. Follow Nick McCrea on Twitter at @nmccrea213.Devastating changes to sea levels, rainfall, water supplies, weather systems and crop yields are increasingly likely before the end of the century, scientists will warn tomorrow. A special report, to be released at the start of climate negotiations in Cancún, Mexico, will reveal that up to a billion people face losing their homes in the next 90 years because of failures to agree curbs on carbon emissions. Up to three billion people could lose access to clean water supplies because global temperatures cannot now be stopped from rising by 4C. "The main message is that the closer we get to a four-degree rise, the harder it will be to deal with the consequences," said Dr Mark New, a climate expert at Oxford University, who organised a recent conference entitled "Four Degrees and Beyond" on behalf of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. Tomorrow the papers from the meeting will be published to coincide with the start of the Cancún climate talks. A key feature of these papers is that they assume that even if global carbon emission curbs were to be agreed in the future, these would be insufficient to limit global temperature rises to 2C this century – the maximum temperature rise agreed by politicians as acceptable. "To have a realistic chance of doing that, the world would have to get carbon emissions to peak within 15 years and then follow this up with a massive decarbonisation of society," said Dr Chris Huntingford, of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Oxfordshire. Few experts believe this is a remotely practical proposition, particularly in the wake of the failure of the Copenhagen climate talks last December – a point stressed by Bob Watson, former head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and now chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. As he put it: "Two degrees is now a wishful dream." Researchers such as Richard Betts, head of climate impacts at the Met Office, calculate that a 4C rise could occur in less than 50 years, with melting of ice sheets and rising sea levels. According to François Gemenne, of the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations in Paris, this could lead to the creation of "ghost states" whose governments-in-exile would rule over scattered citizens and land lost to rising seas. Small island states such as Tuvalu and the Maldives are already threatened by inundation. "What would happen if a state was to physically disappear but people want to keep their nationalities?" he asked. "It could continue as a virtual state even though it is a rock under the ocean." Peter Stott of the Met Office said the most severe effect of all these changes is likely to involve changes to the planet's ability to soak up carbon dioxide. At present, around 50% of man-made carbon emissions are absorbed by the sea and by plants on land. "However, the amount of carbon dioxide that can be absorbed decreases as temperatures rise. We will reach a tipping point from which temperatures will go up even faster. The world will then start to look very different."Story highlights States reach agreement with Washington on parks to find way around shutdown They have arranged separate financing to maintain park operations Agreements are limited, however, so states hoping government will reopen soon Landmarks are vital for tourism, jobs; fall a key time for major attractions The Statue of Liberty, the Grand Canyon and Mount Rushmore have found a way around the government shutdown for now and will reopen with the help of state funding. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Friday that the state struck a deal with the National Park Service to fund Lady Liberty's operations for the time being. "Every day that Liberty Island is closed means we are losing visitors who would otherwise be spending at our local businesses," Cuomo, a Democrat, said in a statement. "Not to mention the employees who maintain the park and have been forced out of work." New York state's tourism budget will fund the park and the state will pay $61,600 a day over the next several days. According to the statement, a 2012 annual report from the National Park Service counted 3.7 million visitors to Liberty Island in 2011, generating nearly $200 million in economic activity and supporting more than 2,000 jobs. "This is a practical and temporary solution that will lessen the pain for some businesses and communities in New York during this shutdown," Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in a statement. "We want to reopen all of our national parks as quickly possible for everyone to enjoy and call on Congress to pass a clean continuing resolution to open the government." The inability of Congress to approve spending for the fiscal year that began October 1 triggered a government shutdown that -- along with most everything else -- resulted in the closure of national monuments and parks. More than 20,000 National Park Service employees who maintain and secure the facilities were furloughed. The nation's 401 National Park Service sites collectively average about 715,000 visitors per day. Arizona, South Dakota strike deal to open parks Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer also negotiated an agreement with the federal government to reopen Grand Canyon National Park as well, also using state and local funds amid the ongoing federal government shutdown. "I'm gratified the Obama administration agreed to reverse its policy and allow Arizona to reopen Grand Canyon, Arizona's most treasured landmark and a crucial driver of revenue to the state," said Brewer. Under the agreement, the state will pay the National Park Service $651,000 -- $93,000 per day -- to reopen Grand Canyon and fully fund park operations for up to at least seven days using state and other monies. The state will continue to assess next steps if the shutdown has not ended in seven days. A similar deal was struck in South Dakota in order to reopen the mountain bearing the faces of some of America's greatest statesmen. The state government is paying $152,000 in order to keep Mount Rushmore open for 10 days, from Oct. 14 through Oct. 23. "Visitors from around the world come to the Black Hills to see Mount Rushmore, and I'm pleased that our nation's Shrine to Democracy will be reopened," Gov. Dennis Daugaard said in a statement. "I appreciate the willingness of the National Park Service to partner with us to operate the monument." Mount Rushmore will reopen first thing Monday morning, according to the release, at a cost of $15,200 a day. The funding is expected to come from a variety of local organizations the state government partnered with to "buy a day" of operation for the monument. Utah will reopen its five national parks as well as three other nationally run locations under a similar deal with the government. Gov. Gary Herbert said Utah will pay the National Park Service up to $1.67 million— $166,572 per day—to reopen eight national sites in Utah for up to 10 days. If the federal government shutdown ends before then, the state will receive a refund of unused money, a statement said. That deal would reopen Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Zion and other parks. California and Wyoming also have sought alternative financing solutions for their parks. The Republican-led House has passed a series of bills to refund parts of the government, including the national parks. But the Democratic-controlled Senate demands the government be funded all at once. A few areas mainly related to the military have been funded.Correction: This story incorrectly stated that Westlake is among the communities in Ohio with stiffer penalties than state law demands for possessing small amounts of marijuana. Westlake's law mirrors the state law. The offense is a minor misdemeanor, punishable by a $150 fine. With Joe Guillen Comment highlights Users are having a detailed debate about marijuana laws in the comments on this story. Here are some key points being made: "I prefer to have people as functional as possible when they are at work or on the highway. While there seems to be growing support for the legalization of marijuana, it appears there is really very little use for the substance except to escape from reality." -- nonsense "Prescription drugs and alcohol abuse are much more deadly than pot, and generally have more "escape from reality" qualities than the best that cannabis has to offer." -- JUGShead "It appears to give relief to some people, but is largely untested and probably doesn't rise to the level of a legitimate prescription therapy. It's also a huge loophole for casual users who want to get high without getting busted." -- nokiddin9 "An analogous situation would be Prohibition. Legal drug made totally illegal. Drove production and distribution underground, where it was run by the mob, and all the related problems that come with the mob started happening." -- mogul345 "Times of economic distress usually result in prohibitions being repealed or eliminated. The cost of enforcement is too high and the opportunity to add a new tax stream for government is too great. Prohibition of Alcohol was repealed during the Great Depression for the above two reason." -- cask23 "Unfortunately for cancer patients dying, and even with only weeks or days to live, are denied enough pain medication by law to ease the eventual end. I know, I have witnessed it first hand. The law is afraid they will become addicted. Is this stupid, or what?" -- livelifenow
" ipv6_ifconfig_stf0="2001:db8:cb00:710e::1/32" ipv6_defaultrouter="2001:db8:cb00:7101::1" -reboot Authors' Addresses Mark Townsley Cisco Systems L'Atlantis, 11, Rue Camille Desmoulins ISSY LES MOULINEAUX ILE DE FRANCE 92782 FRANCE Phone: +33 15 804 3483 Email: [email protected] Shishio Tsuchiya (editor) Cisco Systems Shinjuku Mitsui Building, 2-1-1, Nishi-Shinjuku Shinjuku-Ku, Tokyo 163-0409 Japan Phone: +81 3 6434 6543 Email: [email protected] Townsley, et al. Expires January 5, 2012 [Page 12] Internet-Draft 6rd in an LDC July 2011 Shuichi Ohkubo Sakura Internet 33F Sumitomo fudosan Nishi shinjuku Bldg.,7-20-1 Nishi shinjuku Shinjuku-Ku, Tokyo 160-0023 Japan Phone: +81 3 5332 7070 Email: [email protected] Townsley, et al. Expires January 5, 2012 [Page 13]SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- The offenses fizzled early, exploded late and the two marquee playmakers in the this game, Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck and Oklahoma State wide receiver Justin Blackmon, shined on the brightest stage. It was so good, 60 minutes couldn’t contain it. Here’s how it all went down, with Oklahoma State winning 41-38 over Stanford in overtime in the desert: How the game was won: In the first overtime, after Stanford kicker Jordan Williamson missed a 43-yard field goal attempt (he previously missed a 35-yard attempt for the win as time expired in regulation), Brandon Weeden connected with Colton Chelf on a 24-yard pass down to the Stanford 1-yard line. Weeden took a knee to center the ball, setting up a 22-yard field goal that Quinn Sharp nailed. Second guessing: Trailing 28-21, an interesting decision by OSU coach Mike Gundy to kick a 19-yard field goal rather than going for it on fourth-and-goal at the Stanford 1-yard line. Not saying it was the wrong call, but clearly it was the conservative one. Hey, they won. Stanford player of the game: As good as Luck was, running back Stepfan Taylor was fantastic, carrying 35 times for 177 yards and two touchdowns. He made holes when they weren’t there and exploded through the ones that were. Oklahoma State player of the game: Blackmon was everything the Cardinal thought he would be -- and a whole lot more. The wide receiver caught eight balls for 186 yards and three touchdowns. He was clearly the most athletic player on the field. What it means: For two teams feeling more than a little disrespected for being left out of the national championship game, both showed why they there were among the nation’s elite this season. Oklahoma State was the benefactor of a couple of missed field goals, but fought their way back all game and proved to be the more clutch team in overtime. For the Cardinal, it’s a disappointing end to the Luck era -- one of the most successful stretches in school history.Get Tiled2Unity Tiled2Unity was created before Unity had support for tiles and tilemaps. It is still available for download but is outdated and unsupported. Consider using SuperTiled2Unity instead. Thanks! Tiled2Unity is a free utility with one goal in mind: Easy exporting of Tiled Map Editor TMX files into your Unity projects. Tiled2Unity takes your Tiled files and creates Unity prefabs from them that are easily placed into your Unity scene. Complex collision is supported through Unity’s PolygonCollider2D class. (Windows and Mac) Tiled2UnityLite is a command line version of the Tiled2Unity utility. It can be used on any platform but was primarily designed to give Linux users a way to use Tiled2Unity on their operating system. Updating Tiled2Unity When you install a new Tiled2Unity version you will also want to update the Tiled2Unity scripts in your Unity project folder as well. The easiest way to accomplish this is through the Import Unity Package to Project menu item while your project is open in Unity. Note: Both the Tiled2Unity output window and the Unity console will complain if there is a mismatch. All Source is Freely Available on GitHub Tiled2Unity is made up of two parts: The Tiled2Unity utility that exports a Tiled file. The Tiled2Unity Unity scripts that imports the *.tiled2unity.xml files and puts the textures, meshes, and prefabs into your Unity project. Both components are publicly available on GitHub.Australian Navy rescues hostages from pirates Updated The Australian Navy has rescued a group of sailors who were being held hostage by Somali pirates off the Horn of Africa. The Defence Force says the pirates boarded the Yemeni-flagged boat several weeks ago and were holding three crew members hostage. HMAS Stuart was in the area and sent a boarding crew to rescue the boat on Monday. Defence says no shots were fired during the rescue and 15 pirates quickly surrendered to the Australian crew. It says 11 AK-47 assault rifles with 16 magazines, a large quantity of small arms ammunition and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher with grenades were found during a search of the boat. The weapons were catalogued and thrown overboard. Defence says the unarmed pirates were then offloaded into their skiff and given "adequate food, water, fuel and communications equipment" to make it to the Somali coast, and the Yemeni fishing dhow was escorted from the area. Chief of Joint Operations Lieutenant General Mark Evans says he is pleased with the way HMAS Stuart's crew handled the mission. "Stuart's boarding party did extremely well in maintaining the safety of the dhow's crew and ensuring a potentially challenging situation did not escalate," he said. The Navy frigate is deployed to the Middle East conducting maritime security, counter-terrorism and counter-piracy operations with the Combined Maritime Forces. Topics: navy, defence-and-national-security, defence-forces, law-crime-and-justice, piracy, somalia, australia, yemen First postedJAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesia says it’s looking to set up joint patrols with the Philippines and Malaysia to prevent Islamic militants who have laid siege to a city in the southern Philippines from entering its territorial waters. Indonesia’s military chief, Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo, said late Monday that he and Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu would meet next week with their counterparts from Malaysia and the Philippines on Indonesia’s Tarakan island in northern Borneo, just across the border from Sabah, Malaysia. He said they’ll discuss increasing security and signing an agreement to step up joint patrols. ADVERTISEMENT The conflict in the city of Marawi has raised fears that the Islamic State group’s violent ideology is gaining a foothold in the Philippines’ restive south, where Muslim separatists have fought for greater autonomy for decades. Nurmantyo, speaking with reporters and military officials in the capital, Jakarta, said Indonesia needs to be aware of the movement of IS-aligned militants in the Philippines who assaulted Marawi three weeks ago because Indonesia already has sleeping cells that most likely have been long embedded in the country. He said IS-affiliated cells exist in all of Indonesia’s provinces except Papua. Authorities in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, have carried out a sustained crackdown on militants since the 2002 bombings by al-Qaida-affiliated radicals that killed 202 people in Bali. In recent years, it has faced a new threat as the rise of the Islamic State group in the Middle East has breathed new life into local militant networks and raised concerns about the risk of Indonesian fighters returning home. Marawi is located about 500 kilometers (310 miles) north of Sangihe island in Indonesia’s North Sulawesi province. Maj. Gen. Ganip Warsito, the regional military chief overseeing the closest areas to neighboring Philippines said Indonesia army, navy and air force have deployed extra troops to boost security in the region. “So far, we have not found any indication of Islamic militants infiltrating from the Philippines to our territory,” Warsito said. “We have conducted intelligence, territorial and combat operations to anticipate it.” Read Next LATEST STORIES MOST READThe politics of end-of-life care are beginning to disappear in Washington six years after Tea Party darling Sarah Palin injected false claims that Congressional health reform legislation included “death panels.” Bipartisan legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate by Virginia Democrat Mark Warner and Georgia Republican Johnny Isakson to help patients suffering serious illness with advanced care planning is gaining momentum. The Care Planning Act of 2015 would have Medicare reimburse doctors and other health professionals for consulting with their patients about end-of-life care. It’s the first major push to pay doctors and other health care providers for consultations about end-of-life care since Palin, the former GOP vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor, and other Republicans accused the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress for creating “death panels.” Even though she was wrong, as several organizations pointed out at the time, the political hubbub contributed to lawmakers’ decision to strip Medicare reimbursement of doctors for end-of-life consultations from the legislation that eventually became the Affordable Care Act. “Sen. Warner believes that there is a growing desire on both sides to stop politicizing end of life care, and he is optimistic that this bipartisan bill has a better chance than ever before of being passed into law,” said Rachel Cohen, spokeswoman for Sen. Warner in a statement. Heading into Congress’ summer recess, the planning act has the support of three Democratic Senators and three Republicans. It’s also been endorsed by more than 40 advocacy groups, including AARP, the Alzheimer’s Association, the American Heart Association and the National Council on Aging. “It brings more accountability, better care coordination and better alignment of what the family desires being delivered to them,” Jonathan Keyserling, senior vice president at the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, told Life Matters Media. Sen. Isakson said the Care Planning Act provides those who have been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness as well as their families “an opportunity to have face-to-face conversations with their doctors, nurses and religious advisors to develop a plan for care.” “I know from my own experience with my parents that having a plan makes a world of difference in ensuring a high quality of life during a loved one’s last days,” Isakson said in a statement. Currently, physicians can by paid by Medicare for a consultation about end-of-life care that occurs during the annual wellness visit, but such conversations can’t be the sole reason the government health program would cover the cost. The Care Planning Act would create a new Medicare benefit for “planning services.” Payment from Medicare would be to doctors but also include reimbursement for a team of medical care providers including nurses, social workers and spiritual counselors. “The Senators have taken a different tack, envisioning an interdisciplinary approach,” Keyserling told Life Matters Media. House legislation has yet to emerge as the Senate's but supporters are optimistic. Stay tuned.With the Olympics in Rio just around the corner, LWOS takes a look at how team GB may fare in tennis. Singles With the current reigning Gold medalist, and 2013 & 2016 Wimbledon champion, on the team in the form of Andy Murray, there is a very good chance of team GB retaining the Gold won four years ago. As other members of the top echelons of the ATP tour have withdrawn through injury, or fear of the Zika virus, the potential fly in the ointment for Murray is his current nemesis Novak Djokovic. Moving away from the obvious favourite, team GB has another singles player on the ATP side. Kyle Edmund will be taking part in the Olympics for the very first time. At the age of 21, the young Brit has been proving his mettle recently. Against Serbia in the quarterfinals of the 2016 Davis Cup, Edmund took on the lead role. Murray was absent from the court, taking a break after winning Wimbledon for the second time, but the British number one flew out to support the team. Edmund proved that he can cut the mustard, as the Serbs were without their top two players. The Brit won both his singles rubbers helping GB to another semifinal. Edmund is likely to be in the same half of the draw as Djokovic, as if it follows the 2012 draw, there will be a Brit in each half. The young Brit could do well in the event with lots of the top players already withdrawing, however Edmund is unlikely to progress to the medal matches. On the ladies’ side, GB has sent two players–Johanna Konta & Heather Watson. Konta is currently ranked 13th in the world. The British number one should progress towards the latter stages of the tournament, although medalling may just be a step too far. Watson, as the British number two, has won a title on the WTA this year (as has Konta), however, like Edmund, reaching the medal matches could be just a little too far. Men’s Doubles GB has sent two teams for the men’s doubles. Only one team is made up of doubles specialists. Jamie Murray will play the doubles with younger brother Andy. They are the second seeds. Although the younger Murray does not play doubles often, when teaming up with Jamie the brothers are a formidable force. Having played three of the four doubles ties in the 2015 Davis Cup title run, the brothers do play well together. They did not lose in any of those ties, plus the first round in 2016. This makes the Murray brothers a good call for the Gold medal. Dom Inglot & Colin Fleming are the other men’s team. Inglot has been a fixture of the Davis Cup team throughout the last couple of years. Playing in three ties, Inglot teamed with Jamie Murray in Serbia and won his first rubber. In the previous rubbers he found himself against the Bryan Brothers. Like Edmund, Inglot and Fleming will be in the opposite side of the draw to the Murray brothers. The Brits could go deep into the event as both are good doubles players in their own right. On the women’s side, the Brits only have one pairing–Konta & Watson. As neither play doubles together regularly, it is going to be tricky for them to medal, but not impossible. Mixed doubles GB have a number of combinations that they could enter into the mixed. Obviously the ladies in the partnership can only be Konta & Watson. The real “dilemma”, if you can call it that, is with the male part. Depending on how many teams are allowed by the IOC will depend on which combination the Brits enter. Jamie Murray, being the highest ranked doubles player, is likely to be the player to partner Konta–especially if brother Andy is going deep in the singles and the brothers are still in the doubles. However, if the brothers go out early in the doubles, or Andy fails to reach the final rounds of the singles, the younger brother could chose to play the mixed. Watson is another option for the mixed, with again either Jamie, Andy, or even Inglot or Fleming. The combinations are likely to all stem on Andy and which events he chooses to participate in. At the last Olympics in 2012, the younger Murray played all three of the events. Inglot is the second highest ranked doubles player, so is a valid option to play with Watson. Watson won the mixed doubles at Wimbledon, defeating seeded players along the way. This will be a boost to her confidence going into the mixed doubles at Rio, and could be the player Jamie Murray chooses to play with. With both brothers playing events, there is no reason to suggest that both brothers can’t win doubles Gold in Rio. Or if Andy Murray chooses to play all three, that he can’t win triple Gold. Whoever the mixed doubles players are, GB appear to have a great shot at more than one Gold medal in Tennis.Get the latest news and videos for this game daily, no spam, no fuss. [UPDATE] Kotaku Australia has obtained information regarding the offending scenes that informed the Classification Board's decision to deny classification to Outlast 2. The Board's report noted that the game would potentially be considered for an R18+ rating "without the depiction of implied sexual violence." More details can be found on Kotaku's story, but readers should be aware of potential spoilers and descriptions of sexual assault. [ORIGINAL STORY BELOW] Upcoming horror game Outlast 2 has been refused classification in Australia, meaning it will not be released in the region. In a ruling issued on March 15 2017, the Australian government's Classification Board stated that Outlast 2 has been identified to "depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults to the extent that they should not be classified." Kotaku noted that the demo for Outlast 2, released in September 2016, received an R18+ rating which acknowledged the game's high impact violence, blood and gore, strong themes, moderate language, and mild nudity. Outlast 2 will not see a release in Australia unless developer Red Barrels decides to resubmit the game for classification with changes that would help their work meet Australia's rating guidelines in a manner that appeases the Classification Board. GameSpot has contacted Red Barrels for a statement. Until 2013, Australia's highest classification rating for games was MA15+, meaning games that had themes unsuitable for those above fifteen years of age would be refused classification. In July of 2011, after years of contentious lobbying, all Australian state governments finally agreed to begin the process of introducing the R18+ rating for video games in the same manner that has existed for films since 1970. Because of the historically narrow scope of Australia's video game classification system, many significant games have been banned in the country. Fallout 3 was initially banned in 2008 for portraying morphine to have a positive effect on the player, which encouraged Bethesda to rename the drug "Med-X" in all versions of the game. Since the instatement of the R18+ rating for video games, titles that have been refused classification include Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, Hatred, and South Park: The Stick of Truth, although South Park's offending content was eventually humorously edited for the region. Outlast 2 was originally due for release at the end of 2016, but was eventually delayed until April 25. Red Barrels also recently announced Outlast Trinity, a physical collection of all three Outlast games, also releasing on April 25. You can listen to some eerie tracks from Outlast II's soundtrack right here.A PAPUA New Guinea man described as a vampire has been arrested after allegedly murdering his young daughter by biting her neck, eating her flesh and drinking her blood, a report said today. Police called the grisly incident that occurred on Wednesday at a settlement near Lae "an act of cannibalism''. The PNG Post Courier cited local councillor John Kenny, who was one of the first on the scene, as saying the three-year-old child and her mother were visiting the father when he grabbed the girl and ran off into nearby bushes. Suspect had the perfect cover in vampire murder case Satanic lesbian vampire killer terrorised Australians in 1990s trial Kenny said the man allegedly held the toddler close to him, bit deep into her neck, ate the flesh and sucked her blood. Two boys who were climbing a coconut tree nearby saw him and ran quickly to raise the alarm. "He was just laughing at the boys and continued eating the flesh and sucking the blood,'' Kenny told the newspaper. "The boys were scared and ran quickly to alert the people.'' When people arrived to investigate the man reportedly dumped the body in the bushes and ran away before being caught and turned over to police. PNG is a sprawling nation where black magic, sorcery and cannibalism sometimes occur. Last year police arrested dozens of people linked to an alleged cannibal cult accused of killing at least seven people, eating their brains raw and making soup from their penises. There have been several other recent cases linked to cults, witchcraft and cannibalism, with a man in 2011 reportedly found eating his screaming, newborn son during a sorcery initiation ceremony. ###Before he has even confirmed Rex Tillerson, chief executive of oil and gas giant ExxonMobil, as his choice for secretary of state, US president-elect Donald Trump has been explaining why he wants him in the job, appearing to end weeks of speculation about the most important post in his “America first” cabinet. In the 64-year-old oil industry veteran, Trump sees a likeness: Tillerson has established a reputation as a top negotiator with some of the world’s most powerful people, including Russian president Vladimir Putin. While the Texas native has no diplomatic experience, Trump clearly views the globetrotting Tillerson as the right man to broker a new US detente with Putin, of whom the next president has spoken admiringly. Tillerson is said to have a close personal relationship with Putin. He is the closest thing the American business world – the one Trump knows best – has to its own secretary of state. Trump told Fox News Sunday that the ExxonMobil lifer, whom he met at his Trump Tower offices in New York on Saturday, was “much more than a business executive”. “He’s a world-class player,” he said. “He’s in charge of an oil company that’s pretty much double the size of its nearest competitor. It’s been a company that has been unbelievably managed. And, to me, a great advantage is he knows many of the players, and he knows them well.” Equivocal Sounding a little more equivocal on Sunday morning about the appointment to a role linked to at least seven others, Trump tweeted: “Whether I choose him or not for ‘State’, Rex Tillerson, the chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil, is a world class player and dealmaker. Stay tuned!” As chief executive of the world’s second-biggest company (after Apple) by market value – worth $370 billion (€350 billion) – Tillerson runs operations in more than 50 countries and has inked deals with tough negotiators. He signed a deal with Rosneft, Russia’s largest state-owned oil company, for joint oil and gas exploration. The two companies have 10 joint venture projects in Russia. Tillerson started out at Exxon working as a production engineer in oilfields in 1975. He has worked for no other company and has led Exxon since 2006. A former president of the Boy Scouts of America, the Texan created a merit-badge system at Exxon, where employees earn coins for skills such as teamwork. Nicknamed “T Rex” by the former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, Tillerson took an 18 per cent pay cut this year to $27.3 million (€26 million) – about 500 times the average US household income – as low petroleum prices ate into profits. Most of his Exxon shares cannot be sold straight away and more will vest over the coming decade, which could raise potential conflict-of-interest issues with his appointment. Connections While Tillerson’s connections with Russia make him, in Trump’s eyes, an ideal choice to be the top US diplomat, other Republicans are not so sure. Senator John McCain of Arizona, a foreign-policy hawk who has described Putin as a “thug, bully and murderer”, has said he is worried about Tillerson’s connections with the Kremlin. In 2013 Putin presented the Exxon chief executive with the Order of Friendship, one of Russia’s highest civilian honours. US-imposed economic sanctions, imposed because of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, have hurt Exxon’s business in Russia, so all eyes will be on whether a Tillerson-controlled State Department might seek to ease up on these penalties, under Trump’s direction, in a thawing of relations with Moscow. “I don’t know what Mr Tillerson’s relationship with Vladimir Putin was, but I’ll tell you it’s a matter of concern to me,” McCain said. Mark Salter, a former aide to the Republican senator, was more unambiguous. “Tillerson would sell out Nato for Sakhalin oil and his pal Vlad,” he tweeted. “‘Should be a rough confirmation hearing and a no vote on the Senate floor.”How and Why We Lie to Ourselves: Cognitive Dissonance Understanding this experiment sheds a brilliant light on the dark world of our inner motivations. The ground-breaking social psychological experiment of Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) provides a central insight into the stories we tell ourselves about why we think and behave the way we do. The experiment is filled with ingenious deception so the best way to understand it is to imagine you are taking part. So sit back, relax and travel back. The time is 1959 and you are an undergraduate student at Stanford University… As part of your course you agree to take part in an experiment on ‘measures of performance’. You are told the experiment will take two hours. As you are required to act as an experimental subject for a certain number of hours in a year – this will be two more of them out of the way. Little do you know, the experiment will actually become a classic in social psychology. And what will seem to you like accidents by the experimenters are all part of a carefully controlled deception. For now though, you are innocent. The set-up Once in the lab you are told the experiment is about how your expectations affect the actual experience of a task. Apparently there are two groups and in the other group they have been given a particular expectation about the study. To instil the expectation subtly, the participants in the other groups are informally briefed by a student who has apparently just completed the task. In your group, though, you’ll do the task with no expectations. Perhaps you wonder why you’re being told all this, but nevertheless it makes it seem a bit more exciting now that you know some of the mechanics behind the experiment. So you settle down to the first task you are given, and quickly realise it is extremely boring. You are asked to move some spools around in a box for half an hour, then for the next half an hour you move pegs around a board. Frankly, watching paint dry would have been preferable. At the end of the tasks the experimenter thanks you for taking part, then tells you that many other people find the task pretty interesting. This is a little confusing – the task was very boring. Whatever. You let it pass. Experimental slip-up Then the experimenter looks a little embarrassed and starts to explain haltingly that there’s been a cock-up. He says they need your help. The participant coming in after you is in the other condition they mentioned before you did the task – the condition in which they have an expectation before carrying out the task. This expectation is that the task is actually really interesting. Unfortunately the person who usually sets up their expectation hasn’t turned up. So, they ask if you wouldn’t mind doing it. Not only that but they offer to pay you $1. Because it’s 1959 and you’re a student this is not completely insignificant for only a few minutes work. And, they tell you that they can use you again in the future. It sounds like easy money so you agree to take part. This is great – what started out as a simple fulfilment of a course component has unearthed a little ready cash for you. You are quickly introduced to the next participant who is about to do the same task you just completed. As instructed you tell her that the task she’s about to do is really interesting. She smiles, thanks you and disappears off into the test room. You feel a pang of regret for getting her hopes up. Then the experimenter returns, thanks you again, and once again tells you that many people enjoy the task and hopes you found it interesting. Then you are ushered through to another room where you are interviewed about the experiment you’ve just done. One of the questions asks you about how interesting the task was that you were given to do. This makes you pause for a minute and think. Now it seems to you that the task wasn’t as boring as you first thought. You start to see how even the repetitive movements of the spools and pegs had a certain symmetrical beauty. And it was all in the name of science after all. This was a worthwhile endeavour and you hope the experimenters get some interesting results out of it. The task still couldn’t be classified as great fun, but perhaps it wasn’t that bad. You figure that, on reflection, it wasn’t as bad as you first thought. You rate it moderately interesting. After the experiment you go and talk to your friend who was also doing the experiment. Comparing notes you found that your experiences were almost identical except for one vital difference. She was offered way more than you to brief the next student: $20! This is when it first occurs to you that there’s been some trickery at work here. You ask her about the task with the spools and pegs: “Oh,” she replies. “That was sooooo boring, I gave it the lowest rating possible.” “No,” you insist. “It wasn’t that bad. Actually when you think about it, it was pretty interesting.” She looks at you incredulously. What the hell is going on? Cognitive dissonance What you’ve just experienced is the power of cognitive dissonance. Social psychologists studying cognitive dissonance are interested in the way we deal with two thoughts that contradict each other – and how we deal with this contradiction. In this case: you thought the task was boring to start off with then you were paid to tell someone else the task was interesting. But, you’re not the kind of person to casually go around lying to people. So how can you resolve your view of yourself as an honest person with lying to the next participant? The amount of money you were paid hardly salves your conscience – it was nice but not that nice. Your mind resolves this conundrum by deciding that actually the study was pretty interesting after all. You are helped to this conclusion by the experimenter who tells you other people also thought the study was pretty interesting. Your friend, meanwhile, has no need of these mental machinations. She merely thinks to herself: I’ve been paid $20 to lie, that’s a small fortune for a student like me, and more than justifies my fibbing. The task was boring and still is boring whatever the experimenter tells me. A beautiful theory Since this experiment numerous studies of cognitive dissonance have been carried out and the effect is well-established. Its beauty is that it explains so many of our everyday behaviours. Here are some examples provided by Morton Hunt in ‘The Story of Psychology ‘: When trying to join a group, the harder they make the barriers to entry, the more you value your membership. To resolve the dissonance between the hoops you were forced to jump through, and the reality of what turns out to be a pretty average club, we convince ourselves the club is, in fact, fantastic. People will interpret the same information in radically different ways to support their own views of the world. When deciding our view on a contentious point, we conveniently forget what jars with our own theory and remember everything that fits. People quickly adjust their values to fit their behaviour, even when it is clearly immoral. Those stealing from their employer will claim that “Everyone does it” so they would be losing out if they didn’t, or alternatively that “I’m underpaid so I deserve a little extra on the side.” Once you start to think about it, the list of situations in which people resolve cognitive dissonance through rationalisations becomes ever longer and longer. If you’re honest with yourself, I’m sure you can think of many times when you’ve done it yourself. I know I can. Being aware of this can help us avoid falling foul of the most dangerous consequences of cognitive dissonance: believing our own lies. Image credit: Darwin Bell“Star Wars” will rule the galaxy this December. “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” is on pace to open to more than $130 million, according to pre-release tracking. The film is the first spinoff in the space opera franchise. It is a prequel that follows a group of rebels as the try to steal plans for the Death Star, the spaceship that serves as the Empire’s base of operations. Some box office agencies and tracking services have “Rogue One” opening even higher. If it hits those projections, “Rogue One” will enjoy the second-biggest debut ever for a December release. The record belongs to “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which kicked off its run with a $248 million bow last year. It went on to become the highest-grossing domestic release in history, earning $936.7 million in the U.S. and $2.1 billion globally. Disney, the studio behind the “Star Wars” franchise, has lowered expectations for “Rogue One.” Company head Bob Iger has said the studio is not expecting the film to do “Force Awakens”-level business because it exists outside of the main narrative about the Skywalker clan. It relies largely on a new cast of characters, instead or bringing back fan favorites such as Han Solo and Princess Leia. Felicity Jones stars in “Rogue One,” alongside Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, and Forest Whitaker. Gareth Edwards, who previously oversaw the 2014 “Godzilla” reboot, directs the film. It opens in the U.S. on Dec. 16. In a recent interview with Variety, LucasFilm chief Kathleen Kennedy said that “Rogue One” would be reminiscent of World War II adventure films. “We’re stepping into entirely new territory with ‘Rogue,'” she said. “It’s certainly a different genre. I hesitate to say it’s darker, because the entire story moves towards ideas of hope.”Back in 2011, as that season’s presidential pandering was getting revved up, the President Obama said we can’t drill our way out of energy problems. President Obama called for the elimination of billions of dollars in oil industry tax breaks Friday, while stressing that the United States can’t drill its way out of high gas prices. “We can’t just drill our way out of the problem,” Obama said during an energy policy speech in Indiana Friday. I hate to admit it: Obama is right. We didn’t drill our way out, we fracked our way to a fuel surplus. There has been so much winning recently that OPEC is now complaining. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) asked the U.S. to stop producing so much oil, according to a report Thursday. OPEC’s report blames the U.S. in particular because hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has greatly increased American oil production. The new production has led a lengthy period of very low oil prices. OPEC claims raising global oil prices will “require the collective efforts of all oil producers” and should be done “not only for the benefit of the individual countries, but also for the general prosperity of the world economy.” New American oil production is undermining OPEC’s efforts to keep global prices between $50 and $60 per barrel, with current prices hovering around $47 a barrel. “I think [OPEC] are now acutely aware that they don’t have the kind of influence they used to have 10 years ago, and that shale is now the swing producer in the market,” Tom Pugh, commodities economist at Capital Economics, told CNN Money. The fracking industry seems to be unbound with President Donald Trump in charge. The petroleum industry actually now has the temerity to demand that anti-fracking stories be labeled by Google as #FakeNews! An oil and gas drilling advocacy group published an open letter to Google asking the search engine giant to consider “purging or demoting” websites spreading misinformation about hydraulic fracturing. Google rewrote its search engine algorithm to bury “fake news” websites in the wake of the 2016 presidential election. The industry-funded Texans for Natural Gas wants Google to include anti-fracking websites. “We believe many of the most prominent anti-fracking websites have content that is misleading, false, or offensive – if not all three,” the group wrote in an open letter to Google published Monday. “As a result, we urge you to consider purging or demoting these websites from your algorithm, which in turn will encourage a more honest public discussion about hydraulic fracturing, and oil and natural gas development in general,” the group wrote. Ronald Baily, the science correspondent for Reason magazine, has a great summary of the lies told about fracking. The tall tales of explosions, poisons, pollution, cancer, and global warming are clearly untrue, and should really be the targets of any Google truth campaign. Tom Shepstone, a contributor for Natural Gas Now, has coined a term for anti-fracking eco-activists: Fractivists. Shepstone has analyzed the data and concludes that there will be fracking “as far as the eye can see.” Thursday and Friday’s Today In Energy posts from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) together provide a big picture of our energy future. It is one of unstoppable natural gas. Fracking is here to stay. The first post, by Richard Bowers, is about how natural gas has displaced coal in the Northeast with respect to electricity generation. The second, by the EIA staff, is all about the expected decline in nuclear energy capacity and generation. Put them together and all you see is unstoppable natural gas. I hope my friends in the other 49 states enjoy their lower fuel prices. We Californians not only have to be content with energy suppliers, but also energy taxers.What Makes You Happy RIght Now… gailsimone: …about your fandom? Whatever it is you are a huge fan of, comics, Doctor Who, Star Wars, cosplay, whatever. What is it in that fandom that makes you happy right now? No matter how many nasty, mean-spirited, hateful people for some reason try to attach themselves to the fandom of a show which is literally titled “Friendship Is Magic”, all it takes is half a minute of looking around to see that they are a vanishingly small minority, no matter how loud they try to shout. I have never seen a fandom so full of hope and optimism and cheerful openness, so willing to accept and embrace anyone who shows interest and just ignore those who sling mud and vitriol. Pony conventions have donated all of their proceeds to to local food banks, and charities like Bronies For Good and The Brony Thank You Fund have provided college scholarships, sponsored blood drives, funded clinics and schools in Uganda, helped terminally ill children and their families to have some
i. “Attracting the best talent isn’t optional,” Bodor said. “It’s crucial to keep our competitive edge and our business’ success.” [email protected] important aspect of the debate over “diversity of tactics” (i.e. the decision whether to be exclusively nonviolent) in the Occupy movement relates to mounting evidence of the role CIA and Pentagon-funded foundations and think tanks play in funding and promoting nonviolent resistance training. The two major US foundations promoting nonviolence, both overseas and domestically, are the Albert Einstein Institution (AEI) and the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC). Both receive major corporate and/or government funding, mostly via CIA “pass through” foundations. While the ICNC is funded mainly by the private fortune of hedge fund billionaire (junk bond king Michael Milken’s second in command) Peter Ackerman, the AEI has received funding from the Rand Corporation and the Department of Defense, as well as various “pass-through” foundations, such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the International Republican Institute (IRI), the US Institute of Peace and the Ford Foundation (see The Ford Foundation and the CIA),which all have a long history of collaborating with the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA in destabilizing governments unfriendly to US interests. This is a strategy Frances Stonor Saunders outlines in her pivotal Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. According to Sanders, right wing corporate-backed foundations and the CIA have been funding the non-communist left since the late sixties, in the hope of drowning out and marginalizing the voice of more militant leftists. It’s also noteworthy that the governing and advisory board of both AEI and ICNC have been consistently dominated by individuals with either a military/intelligence background or a history of prior involvement with CIA “pass-through” foundations, such as NED and USAID. Gene Sharp, the Fervent Anticommunist Much of this debate focuses around America’s godfather of nonviolent resistance, Gene Sharp, the founder and director of the Albert Einstein Institution. Sharp’s handbooks on nonviolent protest were widely disseminated in the Eastern Europe color revolutions, in the Arab spring revolutions and in the Occupy movement in the US (see Nonviolence in the Service of Imperialism). Unfortunately Sharp has become a decoy in this debate, deflecting attention from the larger question of whether the US government is actively financing and promoting the work of the AEI, the ICIC and other high profile organizations that promote nonviolent civil disobedience. The question is extremely important, in my view, because it possibly explains the rigid and dogmatic attitude in the US progressive movement regarding nonviolent civil disobedience. In other words, I think it explains the knee-jerk rejection of more militant tactics, such as smashing windows and other property damage that don’t involve physical violence towards human beings. Is Military-Intelligence Funding Compatible with Progressive Politics? The institutional nonviolence clique has cleverly refocused the debate on whether Sharp, who is 83, is a CIA agent and whether he actively participated in US-funded destabilization efforts in Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iran and elsewhere that resulted in so-called “Arab Spring” revolutions. The obvious answer to both questions is no. For me the more important question is why the alternative media and “official” progressive movement embrace Sharp unconditionally as a fellow progressive without a careful look at his past or his ideological beliefs. Sharp has never made any secret of his fervent anticommunist (and antisocialist – he shares the US State Department’s animosity towards Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez) views. Sharp makes no secret of the funding he has received from the Defense Department; the Rand Corporation; CIA-linked foundations, such as NED, the IRI and the US Institute of Peace; and George Soros’s Open Society Institute. All this information is readily available from the AEI website. Sharp himself states, “I have been arguing for years that governments and defense departments – as well as other groups – should finance and conduct research into alternatives to violence in politics and especially as a possible basis for a defense policy by prepared nonviolent resistance as a substitute for war.” (See The living library: some theoretical approaches to a strategy for activating human rights and peace, George Garbutt, 2008, Southern Cross University). Less well known is the role military and intelligence figures have played in helping Sharp set up and run the AEI. I think most progressives would be extremely disturbed by the major role played by the military-intelligence establishment in funding and running the AEI. I think they would find it even more troubling that progressives who refer to any of this on so called “independent” or “alternative” media websites and blogs have their posts removed. To be continued.The Cardinals got a lot of ink this winter when they traded Shelby Miller (and pseudo-prospect Tyrell Jenkins) to the Braves for Jason Heyward (and Jordan Walden’s scandalous delivery). Heyward was justifiably the centerpiece of the deal as far as the coverage of the trade was concerned, but Miller represented a fascinating reclamation project for the new-look Braves. Prior to his full-season debut, Miller was one of the most-hyped prospects in baseball. Baseball Prospectus ranked him 16th, Fangraphs 25th, and 6th by Baseball America and SB Nation’s own John Sickels. His rookie campaign resulted in a third place finish for the National League Rookie of the Year award, a sparkling 122 ERA+ and 2.4 fWAR. xFIP says that Miller’s 3.06 ERA should have looked a bit more like a 3.73 mark, however. That includes a less-than-stellar 4.33 xFIP in a second half that saw his HR/9 balloon to 1.31 and a 3.67 BB/9 rear its ugly head. 2014 was even worse and saw him compile a minuscule 0.5 fWAR in 183 IP. He only struck out 6.25 batters per nine innings, and worsened the problem by walking 3.59 per nine. Miller’s 4.47 xFIP was an albatross for the former top prospect, which made him an excellent candidate to be targeted as a reclamation project in a trade. That’s precisely what the Braves did. Atlanta's widely respected pitching coach, Roger McDowell, appears to have gone to work on the young right-hander. One of the main problems that Miller had in 2014 was that he was essentially a two-pitch pitcher due to his poor changeup. His plus fastball was his bread and butter, while also displaying a useful curveball. However it’s very hard to be an effective starting pitcher while throwing only two good pitches, and this made Miller a rather predictable pitcher. 67.82% of Miller’s pitches in 2014 were four-seamers according to Brooks Baseball, while 19.56% were curveballs. In 2015, Shelby Miller has pitched to a 1.69 ERA in three starts, with peripherals of a 3.20 FIP, 4.06 xFIP and a 4.30 SIERA. The more intricate the peripheral statistics get, the less fond of Miller they are. However, Miller has only tallied 16.0 IP thus far, so we’re working with an extremely small sample size and those marks are improvements from last year. What’s really noticeable is Miller’s pitch selection. Here’s how his selection profiles between 2014 and 2015, according to Brooks. YEAR FOURSEAM SINKER CUTTER CURVEBALL CHANGEUP 2014 67.82% 3.92% 6.38% 19.56% 2.25% 2015 33.22% 32.16% 21.20% 13.07% 0.35% Miller has all but disposed of his changeup, and it’s possible that the one (one!) changeup that he’s thrown was a misidentified cutter or sinker. Because he’s realized that his changeup isn’t going to cut it, Miller’s taken the Nathan Eovaldi route of "Screw it I’ll just throw cutters." He’s also throwing a lot more sinkers, which gives him three different fastballs with different movement to throws to hitters. He’s also throwing his pitches in different places. Elevated fastballs are good ways to get outs, and as Eno Sarris pointed out at FanGraphs, the Braves are good at those kinds of things. Miller’s K/9 is still at an all-time low (6.19) while his BB/9 is at an all time high (3.9). He’s certainly not being helped by the fact that he’s been throwing to A.J. Pierzynski (who’s been worth -0.4 pitch framing runs according to Baseball Prospectus) and Christian Bethancourt (-0.7 runs). Once again, it’s only 16 innings that we’re working with here. Yet Shelby Miller’s new plan of attack is certainly something to keep an eye on. ... Statistics courtesy of BaseballReference, FanGraphs, Baseball Prospectus and Brooks Baseball. Nicolas Stellini is a contributor at Beyond the Box Score. You can follow him on Twitter at @StelliniTweets.CAUGHT “RED HANDED”: #NeverTrumper Geoff Diehl Pretends He Is Pro-Trump – PHOTOSHOPS Handshake W/ POTUS [UPDATED] As previously reported: The Gateway Pundit has gotten our hands on a series of memos detailing RINOs in Massachusetts stealing Trump campaign voter data and colluding with top Democrats to regain power in an effort to quell the sort of political reform that Trump touted during the campaign trail. We will continue to publish this information as we have an opportunity to go through an analyze the documents.Our last report on this subject matter involved the revelation that RINOs in MA have set Elizabeth Warren up with a weak candidate in the 2018 race to guarantee her another term in the Senate before, ultimately, her run for the presidency. Many of these notes will deal with their shady tactics and the misinformation their campaign is spreading. In these newly released documents, it is revealed that Geoff Diehl using stolen data from the Trump campaign to pander to Trump’s base. In his latest attempt, he has hilariously slipped up; to prove that he is “good friends” with the President, Diehl sent out a picture of him shaking hands with Trump… There is only one problem… not only is it a fake image, but when he was doctoring the images of the alleged “handshake” he forgot to clean the image up – leaving a lone dis-embodied Trump hand flipped and in the background. Via MEMOS: Immediately, what is needed is a direct and complete renunciation and expose’ of this Designated Loser of the Establishment and Fake Trumper Geoff Diehl, who is mis-presenting himself as the MA Trump Co-Chair, which is completely untrue as Vincent DeVito was the ONLY MA Trump Chair. Concomitantly, other immediate legal steps against this Fake Trumper need to be taken since he is using stolen and misappropriated property of the Donald J. Trump Campaign for President, in raising money for his campaign. What’s most egregious (and exposes his stupidity or hubris, or both) is that this Fake Trumper has released a picture of himself shaking hands with President Trump at an October 2016 event. The problem is that the picture is a FAKE — has been PhotoShopped. It’s included below, and we’ve had an independent Forensics Lab in Cambridge, MA, review the picture and write an independent third- party report. The local media of the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, WRKO and Howie Carr, are all promoting this Fake Trumper. Notice the extra hand in the image? The FAKE TRUMPER cannot even doctor an image properly, how is he going to win against Warren? Long time Trump-supporter and “real Indian” Republican Senate candidate, Shiva Ayyadurai, was made aware of the altered image and hired tech forensic firm TechFusion to investigate. Their findings have come back as positive – the image was not only Photoshopped, but poorly Photoshopped at that. Via TechFusion Document: Based upon the examination as set forth above, this photograph has been modified, altered or photoshopped. Techfusion utilized 3 other pictures of the same event to place the relevant photo into context. No one else was in close enough proximity for the disembodied hand to belong to another person. The lighting caused shadows to appear on the floor, but their absence creates inconsistencies concerning the relevant photo. The distance between President Trump and Diehl does not correlate with the distance at which the handshake would occur. The disembodied hand is a mirror image of President Trump’s right hand. UPDATE: A Diehl supporter and member of the media reached out claiming that the digital forensics report is incorrect and that the photographer of the photo vouches for its authenticity. The Gateway Pundit was then forwarded a video of Shiva Ayyadurai on the Howie Carr show. Howie Carr dismissed the doctored photo before bringing up Mr. Ayyadurai’s arrest after a domestic dispute [below].The 2015 PDGA World Championships are finally upon us! DiscGolfPlanet.tv will provide live coverage all week long for disc golfers everywhere to enjoy. If this year’s tournament is anything like the 2014 Worlds, we’re in for a treat. The schedule below was announced on the World Championships Facebook page earlier this week and is subject to change. Times are all Eastern Time. All streams can be found at DiscGolfPlanet.tv through their 2015 Worlds Portal. Streams will be hosted at Livestream and will require a free account to access the streams. Sunday, August 2 9 a.m.–4 p.m. — Field events are Moraine Monday, August 3 6–9 p.m. — Disc Golf Workshop 01 (History of the Sport/Jim Palmer and Opening Ceremonies at the Visitor Center Tuesday, August 4 8:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. — Womens Pro Open at Moraine 1:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m. — Mens Pro Open at Moraine 7–8 p.m — Disc Golf Workshop 02 (All Aspects of Sponsorship: Jonathan Poole/Guest) Wednesday, August 5 8:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. — Mens Masters at Moraine 1:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m. — Mens Pro Open at Slippery Rock 7–8 p.m — Disc Golf Workshop 03 (Manufactures Corner: Bamba Rico and Steve Rico/Guests) Thursday, August 6 8:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. — Womens Pro Open and Mens Masters at Slippery Rock 7–8 p.m — Disc Golf Workshop 04 (Importance of PDGA: Matt Gregoire and Vic Allen) 8-9 p.m. — Hall of Fame Ceremonies Friday, August 7 8:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. — Mens Pro Open at Moraine 1:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m. — Mens Grandmasters at Moraine 7–8 p.m — Disc Golf Workshop 05 (Who is a Disc Golfer? Demographics Survey) Saturday, August 8 8 a.m.–noon — Mens Pro Open at Moraine 1 p.m.–end of tournament — World Championship Final 9s at Slippery RockResponses in Amsterdam, where property prices have been rocketing due to a crippling housing shortage, have ranged from astonished indignation to wry resignation. An estate agent has been caught offering for rent a 35 sq metre apartment, boasting its own “private kitchen”, for €1,100 (£995) a month (or €1,000 not including bills). Just a couple of catches, however: cooking is strictly prohibited and no more than two people are allowed into the flat at any one time. Amsterdam has been undergoing a property price boom in recent years, bringing costs back almost to the levels before the 2008 financial crisis. Prices in the Dutch city have risen nearly 22%. In large part, this has been due to a housing shortage that is expected to peak next year when demand outstrips supply in the Netherlands by an estimated 200,000 dwellings. However, the most recent example of the sky-high values being apportioned to relatively humble abodes has raised eyebrows, even in the current market. “This studio apartment on the first floor has a private bathroom and private kitchen,” the advert on the website of the estate agent, Stone Capital, says of the property in the central Jordaan area. “The kitchen is fully equipped, except for a cooking plate. Cooking is explicitly not allowed in this apartment due to regulations.”. The advert adds: “However, the apartment has a microwave. Water heater. Maximum two people at all times.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest The apartment’s kitchen area – just don’t think about doing any cooking or inviting your friends round. Photograph: Handout The Dutch broadcaster RTL, which discovered the ad, also reports that while it has been advertised as a two-room flat, one of those is the bathroom and the other is a joint bedroom/kitchen. One person responding to the advert suggested: “Please also add – maximum weight of tenant 65kg when fully dressed.” A second wrote: “The lack of space and the huge increase in demand due to Airbnb has given landlords a irrational amount of power … now they can start asking for ridiculous conditions and still the apartment will be rented/sold.” One saw the funny side, however: “I can understand this. When our dear Lord with his culinary watering can spread the art of cooking on the face of the earth the Dutch were not the first in the queue.” Stone Capital did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment. A spokeswoman for the estate agent told RTL she was “unsure” what regulations prevented cooking in the flat, adding that the landlords were responsible for the wording of the adverts. The advert has since been pulled from the estate agent’s site.This weekend, the gaze of all Halo esports-loving eyes will be firmly fixed upon Nevada’s neon oasis as HCS Las Vegas by Millennial Esports takes center stage. These duels in the desert will have it all, from an incredible field of FFA combatants to a chance for upstart teams to take on the best of the pros – and maybe the opportunity to take their place come relegation time. TOP STORIES We’ve had an incredible season thus far with equally incredible storylines, and HCS Las Vegas will be no exception. Let’s check out some of the biggest beats to watch this weekend. They Wanted it the most – HCS Open Circuit team Most Wanted are looking to claim a position in the Fall 2016 Season relegation bracket. MW very nearly defeated current HCS Pro League-leading Team EnVyUs at HCS Orange County, going up early 2-0 in the match, only to fall 2-3. Most Wanted would love to fight their way into the next HCS Pro League season to get a chance to even the score. Can bubu take the double? – Twitch chat-favorite bubudubu will be looking to repeat as FFA champion after winning the Halo 5 FFA Powered by Astro Gaming at HCS Orange County. Will he be dethroned by a new challenger? Team EnVyUs members Huke and Pistola will certainly look to see to it, as they were both in the FFA Finals at HCS Orange County. The threat won't just be from the pro ranks, however. A host of incredibly talented amateurs and Open Circuit combatants such as King Nick, Monster, Rammy, BabyJ, Boamx, and more, will all be looking to steal the FFA title. Talkin’ bout my relegation – Without a doubt one of the biggest stories to watch this weekend will be which two teams survive the Open Circuit Finals head to relegation, where they will face off against HCS Pro League teams Team Allegiance and Enigma6 at Fall 2016 Finals to determine who will remain in the HCS Pro League. European Invasion – Perhaps the most tantalizing prospect of the entire HCS Las Vegas event is current EU HCS Pro League kings, FAB Esports traveling from Europe to take on North America’s best. FAB Esports will be looking to grab some valuable experience against top NA teams before their anticipated return for the 2017 Halo World Championship. HOW TO WATCH HCS Las Vegas takes place Nov. 18-20 in Las Vegas, NV and you can watch it live beginning at 11 a.m. PST each day on Twitch.tv/PGLpro. Check out full event details here, and if you are in the area, don't hesitate to come down and watch all the action unfold live and in-person for free! VENUE Millennial Esports Arena @ Neonopolis 450 Fremont St Las Vegas, NV 89101 TEAMS TO WATCH One of the best aspects of events like HCS Las Vegas is the vast array of talented teams it draws in, and from a variety of venues. Let’s check out some of the top squads to watch this weekend. Teams from NA HCS Pro League Team EnVyUs - Snip3down, Huke, Mikwen, Pistola Team Liquid - Commonly, Penguin, Rayne, Spartan Enigma6 - Suspector, Cratos, Shooter, Bubu Dubu Evil Geniuses - Lunchbox, Roy, Ninja, Stellur Str8 Rippin - Eco, APG, Ace, Heinz Team Allegiance - Contra, PreDevonator, Str8 Sick, Falcated Teams from EU HCS Pro League FAB Games - Jimbo, Respect, Tuf0xy, MOSE Confirmed Open Circuit Finals teams from HCS Orange County Most Wanted - Swiftkill, DasTroyed, LifeStyle, Nemassist Solstice - Xrossfade, Kaiss, Galaxy, Stress 3sUP Enterprises - Rammyy, Prototype, Monstcr, Renegade NOTABLE Open Bracket Teams Chaotix Gaming - I3igTexas Cx, Slafty, Samartixn, Ix NightFury xI Too Tipsy for Tyrant - Damage, Russo, The Ph3nomenon, FIoppiE Placeholder - kAMANDAboom, zGhetto, Minority, Xinity Flex Squad - FLX Hazard, FLX Big Body, FLX Kira, FLX Salamander lucid sound - retrotwin john5, retrotwin bob44, r00kie, tasteless Team Wired - Zero, Berry, Zombo, DreamMyReality Money Shot - RIFLEx1, TuSicK PGL, Sidekyk, Insaviour Team LPA - SLEEPY H0L0W, DarknesS28, c0nd0, SteakandSheik 6S Gaming - Boamx, Trippey, Tire Iron, Saiyan EVENT FORMAT and Schedule FRIDAY NOV. 18 Halo FFA Powered by Astro Gaming at HCS Las Vegas $5,000 prize pool 2games played per round Players score points for placing 1st-6th After 2games are played, the top 3 scores advance to the next round Maps: Mercy, Truth, and Regret SATURDAY NOV. 19 4v4 Open Bracket Double Elimination Best of 5 matches Top 4 go to Open Circuit Finals Open Circuit Finals (Saturday night) Double Elimination Best of 5 matches Top 3 teams from HCS Orange County + Top 4 teams from HCS Las Vegas Open Bracket Top 2 Teams from Open Circuit Finals advance to Relegation to faceoff against Enigma6 and Team Allegiance SUNDAY NOV. 20 Championship Bracket 7 teams from Open Circuit Finals + 9 Pro League teams (1 EU) $25,000 prize pool Best of 5 matches until Grand Finals – Grand Finals is Best of 7 As always, for all updates on the Halo Championship Series and Halo esports, follow @HCS and @ESLHalo on Twitter, and keep it locked to Halo.gg and ProLeague.com/Halo.An amateur race to ski or snowboard 26 resorts across four countries in North America and Europe, clocking up thousands of miles in a bid to win an international lift pass for life, is well under way. The Epic Race, organised by Vail Resorts and started on November 22, has already seen 44 competitors tick off all 12 resorts in America. They now have to travel to Europe to visit resorts in France, Switzerland and Austria if they are to be in with a chance of winning a lifetime Epic Pass, a lift pass that covers all the resorts in the race. Competitors prove they have “completed” each resort by submitting a number of photos and videos on the mountain on the day of their visit, obtaining lift operator stamps and lift pass scans. The first 10 racers to log the full raft of resorts, which includes Vail in Colorado, Heavenly at Lake Tahoe, Verbier in Switzerland and St Anton in Austria, will receive an Epic Pass for life. “The passion of the participants is staggering, but the camaraderie that has developed amongst many of the contestants is a testament to the worldwide community of skiers and snowboarders,” said Vail Resorts’ chief marketing officer, Kirsten Lynch. “We’re seeing racers enjoying one another’s company on the slopes and cooperating to help each other. A group even had Thanksgiving dinner together in Tahoe.”The Dalai Lama was busy the past week representing Tibet, complimenting Chinese President Xi Jinping on recognizing Buddhism, and calling for world peace. India and China have historically had difficulties agreeing on their shared border over the Himalayas, and China became incensed by the decision in 1959 that India made to take in the religious leader the Dalai Lama. However, after a successful visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to the country of India recently, the Dalai Lama complimented the president’s open-mindedness. The Dalai Lama stated that: “Xi Jinping is more open-minded; his thinking is more realistic.” The Dalai Lama believes that this means that “he [President Xi Jinping] can learn more from India.” The Dalai Lama is often seen as the most important representative of Tibet, a nation of people that has been struggling under Chinese control for generations. Tensions Between China, Tibet, and India May See Some Relief Throughout Xi Jinping’s visit to India, there have been many protests against the way that Tibet and its people have been treated. Many Tibetans who now live in India marched on the hotel where he was staying, and still others tried to prevent him from attending some events. The Dalai Lama did not personally sanction these demonstrations, but Xi Jinping’s visit to India has certainly been an excellent way to highlight the concerns of the Tibetan people. Many Tibetans who have escaped now live in India, and the Tibetan government is now held in India. China has always claimed ownership of Tibet, and reports of torture and army movement against Tibetan people have always followed China. Many people hope that India and China’s recent trade agreements will give India a better position to negotiate on behalf of the Tibetan people for greater freedom and the ability to return to their homeland. President Xi Jinping Acknowledges Buddhism, and the Dalai Lama Gives Him More Compliments The Dalai Lama’s praise for President Xi Jinping continued Monday, September 22 when he complimented the president’s recognition of Buddhism as central to Chinese history and culture. According to the religious leader, this is the first time an authority in the Communist Party of China has recognized religion’s role in Chinese culture. “I think till 30 years ago… or even 15-20 years ago, no other Communist party leader [was seen] showing some respect to or appreciation of Buddha dharma. Preservation of Tibetan culture, Buddhism, Buddhist leadership… should be paid some attention,” Dalai Lama said. Dalai Lama Joins List of Leaders Who Condemn ISIS On Saturday during his interfaith conference, the Dalai Lama had less kind words for those who use religion to justify violent acts against others. The Tibetan leader had a simple message: “Killing in the name of faith is unacceptable.” He specifically addressed the Islamic State, ISIS, saying that a jihad is “to combat our inner destructive emotions. It does not mean harming other people.” The Islamic State has been ravaging Syria and Iraq committing genocides against many religious minorities and anyone who disagrees with their extremism. The Dalai Lama believes the world must stand up to ISIS and that “spiritual people can show the world that it can be a happy family [despite] the different faiths.” Resources Follow the Conversation on TwitterWhat will happen with the gold price in 2015? While gold is widely used to diversify portfolios and provide a hedge against inflationary forces, the burning question for medium-term investment is always, "Which way is the market going?" This is undoubtedly a tricky question, one that constantly occupies the minds of many well-paid analysts and money managers. The problem with predicting what the gold market will look like is deciding what factors are most important. Rather than provide a single answer about how we think the gold market will perform in 2015, we've done something even better: we reached out to a wide array of personal finance experts and posed the question to them! We have compiled all of their answers to give you a broad overview of what the different opinions and expectations are for gold this year. Instead of relying on one person's view wholesale, we've provided a sampling of expert opinions from across the industry to create a more complete picture of market sentiment for gold in 2015. Our respondents gave a variety of different outlooks for the gold market, from bearish responses to bullish responses, and everything in between. In addition to making predictions about what the gold market will look like throughout this year, our expert respondents have also offered their own reasoning as to why they believe this to be the case. Briefly, in descending order, here are their most frequently cited factors affecting gold this year. Top 10 Factors Affecting Gold in 2015: Real interest rates, specifically the Fed raising its key rate Generally bearish on paper money and central banks Inflationary (or deflationary) pressures Geopolitical strife and global economic instability Strength or weakness of the U.S. dollar Growth in the developing world and emerging markets Monetary easing (i.e. currency devaluation) in Europe and Japan Strong demand from China and India Performance of the equities market A boost in mining output from falling energy costs These insights may help you formulate your own personal financial strategies; keep in mind, however, that our participants' answers are provided for general informational purposes only, and do not constitute professional investing advice. Check out all of the different responses to our Expert Round-Up below! "Will Gold Be In a Bear Or Bull Market in 2015?" Jason Burack - Co-Founder of Wall St for Main St, LLC www.wallstformainst.com Rather than 3 factors, I would rather just focus on how the majority of Wall St investment banks research is lazy (or more morally questionable than lazy) and only quotes the World Gold Council, CPM Group's numbers etc and doesn't fact check any of their figures with say Koos Jansen's research over at Bullion Star. Koos accurately tracks Shanghai Gold Exchange withdrawals and how tight the physical gold and physical silver markets are in terms of supply and why the paper price could not have gone much lower than it did in 2014. The last I heard from my contacts, Swiss refiners are still running 24/7/365 to recast older gold bars into new 1kg bars. If metals prices had went lower or stayed around 2014 lows for months, many primary gold and primary silver miners were close to shutting down their mines and putting them on care and maintenance. The miners had burned through most of their cash on their balance sheets and large amounts of debt and equity were at punitive levels and simply not available in large enough quantities for many miners to keep their mines open and running at enormous losses. In other words, there was about to be a potential supply shock or growing shortages for 8 figure or larger orders of gold and silver had the mines started to shut down. Primary silver miners make up ~25% of the global annual physical silver supply and only a handful of tiny primary silver miners in the entire world who produced less than 8 million oz of silver a year combined were making a profit mining silver at $16/oz. That's a lot of primary silver miners deeply in the red and running their mines at huge losses so that's simply not sustainable over the long term because unlike say the solar industry or corn ethanol which is 100% subsidized by the government and can run at enormous losses, miners eventually have to make a profit. In my humble opinion, nearly all or all of the physical gold and physical silver miners pull out of the ground each year is basically already spoken for. That's how tight supply has been for the last few years yet the paper price was in a large cyclical bear market since 2011 and has not reflected the reality of supply and demand fundamentals. The market cannot ignore reality forever and with demand for physical gold and physical silver still extremely strong in Russia, Middle East, China, India, Asia, etc. Russia is putting almost 100% of their monthly trade surplus money into physical gold preparing for the next global financial system. So the paper price going down and down every year was simply not sustainable given the real demand figures (again not the ones Wall St investment banks and the World Gold Council put out in research reports) we were seeing for physical metal coming out of the countries that are driving demand. The Western, US investor who tends to be educated in Keynesian Economics and brainwashed out of their common sense if they went to business school or watches CNBC or Bloomberg doesn't buy value and instead chases momentum as a trend trader has also ignored gold and silver since 2011. Those US investor types have not been buying any metal since 2011 and probably also dumped their metal and/or have been shorting the paper price for gold, silver and miners. Sentiment levels became absurdly negative in 2014 as I believe they registered a zero (an all time low) from SentimentTrader.com. I am fairly confident gold and silver have put in their cyclical bear market bottom similar to the long and painful cyclical bear market bottom gold and silver experienced in 1974-1976 before resuming the secular bull market. Globally, the US, Japan, UK, EU, etc are still trying to solve a debt problem with more debt. No government has really done the right thing for their long term economic health. Gold and silver still have major tailwinds as insurance to protect people's savings and their portfolios from financial repression and theft of purchasing power by all world governments addicted to rent seeking Keynesian Economics Simon Black www.sovereignman.com I don't really view it as a bull market in gold and silver so much as a bear market in paper currency. Gold had a pretty flat year against the US dollar in 2014, but a strong year against pretty much every other paper currency. Why? Because, like the dollar, gold is starting to be viewed as a safe haven again. But when you see a paper currency based financial system where interest rates are negative in real terms (US) or even nominal terms (Europe), mountains upon mountains of debt have accumulated in the "rich" west, and entire banking systems that are borderline insolvent, it's clear that the wheels are coming off the bus. There aren't too many places to hold savings outside of this system in a liquid, portable, widely accepted form other than precious metals... or digital currency. Bron Sucheki - Manager, Analysis And Strategy The Perth Mint goldchat.blogspot.com I have been influenced by Ben Hunt’s work on how narratives drive market as much as fundamentals. The first key factor for 2015 is that the narrative that gold is (was) in a bear market I believe is broken and gold’s recent strength has shifted the story to gold having formed a firm bottom. Second, the idea that central bankers are, and can, control the markets to “manage” it better than the free market had its first blow with the Swiss giving up its peg, followed by the change in Greece questioning whether the ECB can hold the Euro together. The resulting uncertainty has certainly been driving gold recently. The final factor that is still working against gold is the idea that the US economy is OK and the US will raise rates. Whether the Fed makes that move, and how that is perceived by the market, could provide a tipping point for gold to move higher in 2015. Dr. Richard Grossman - Author of Wrong: Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn From Them unsettledaccount.com My hunch is that three factors that are going to contribute the most to gold fluctuations in 2015. Inflation--or its continued absence--in the industrialized world. This will depend to a large extent on what happens with the US recovery, Europe’s continued precarious position, and developments in Japan. Political and military uncertainty around the world, particularly in Ukraine and the Middle East. Growth in the developing world, especially India, China, and Latin America. Jordan Roy-Byrne thedailygold.com The bear market in precious metals, specifically in Silver and gold mining shares has reached limits in terms of both time and price when compared to historical bear markets. As a result, a new bull market could have already begun or if not, then is quite likely to begin at somepoint this year. Last week Gold reached a 21-month high when priced against foreign currencies. At the same time, Gold was able to reach $1300 in spite of the US$ index reaching multi-year highs. This type of relative strength in Gold is often seen near important lows in the Gold price. With the US$ being the 3rd most overbought in its history, its very likely to endure a prolonged correction which in turn would obviously help Gold. The last factor is the performance of global equities and US equities. If they continue to move higher then it puts pressure on Gold. If not, then Gold as an alternative would pick up more interest. Dr. Mark Thornton - Senior Fellow mises.org/Blog We do not offer financial advise. Obviously the policies of central banks is crucial. They impact interest rates, currency values, and the real economy. In a fiat money regime, I am personally a perma bull on precious metals. I recommend them to my friends and family and encourage people to find a way to regularly purchase them as an important form of savings and as protection against personal or economy-wide problems. Scott Sumner www.themoneyillusion.com I believe gold does well when there is: Strong growth in China and India High inflation in developed countries Economic turmoil I don't see much of any
looking for information online about pressure cookers. Her husband, in the same time frame, was Googling backpacks. Wednesday morning, six men from a joint terrorism task force showed up at their house to see if they were terrorists. Which begs the question: How'd the government know what they were Googling? RELATED: We'll Never Know What Google's Doing With the NSA Catalano (who is a professional writer) describes the tension of that visit. [T]hey were peppering my husband with questions. Where is he from? Where are his parents from? They asked about me, where was I, where do I work, where do my parents live. Do you have any bombs, they asked. Do you own a pressure cooker? My husband said no, but we have a rice cooker. Can you make a bomb with that? My husband said no, my wife uses it to make quinoa. What the hell is quinoa, they asked.... Have you ever looked up how to make a pressure cooker bomb? My husband, ever the oppositional kind, asked them if they themselves weren’t curious as to how a pressure cooker bomb works, if they ever looked it up. Two of them admitted they did. The men identified themselves as members of the "joint terrorism task force." The composition of such task forces depend on the region of the country, but, as we outlined after the Boston bombings, include a variety of federal agencies. Among them: the FBI and Homeland Security. RELATED: PRISM Companies Start Denying Knowledge of the NSA Data Collection Ever since details of the NSA's surveillance infrastructure were leaked by Edward Snowden, the agency has been insistent on the boundaries of the information it collects. It is not, by law, allowed to spy on Americans — although there are exceptions of which it takes advantage. Its PRISM program, under which it collects internet content, does not include information from Americans unless those Americans are connected to terror suspects by no more than two other people. It collects metadata on phone calls made by Americans, but reportedly stopped collecting metadata on Americans' internet use in 2011. So how, then, would the government know what Catalano and her husband were searching for? RELATED: Which Tech Company Does the NSA Use Most? It's possible that one of the two of them is tangentially linked to a foreign terror suspect, allowing the government to review their internet activity. After all, that "no more than two other people" ends up covering millions of people. Or perhaps the NSA, as part of its routine collection of as much internet traffic as it can, automatically flags things like Google searches for "pressure cooker" and "backpack" and passes on anything it finds to the FBI. RELATED: Very Similar Statements from Facebook and Google on PRISM Still Have Holes Or maybe it was something else. On Wednesday, The Guardian reported on XKeyscore, a program eerily similar to Facebook search that could clearly allow an analyst to run a search that picked out people who'd done searches for those items from the same location. How those searches got into the government's database is a question worth asking; how the information got back out seems apparent. RELATED: Will Google's Request to Publish Secret Court Orders Do Anything? It is also possible that there were other factors that prompted the government's interest in Catalano and her husband. He travels to Asia, she notes in her article. Who knows. Which is largely Catalano's point. They mentioned that they do this about 100 times a week. And that 99 of those visits turn out to be nothing. I don’t know what happens on the other 1% of visits and I’m not sure I want to know what my neighbors are up to. One hundred times a week, groups of six armed men drive to houses in three black SUVs, conducting consented-if-casual searches of the property perhaps in part because of things people looked up online. But the NSA doesn't collect data on Americans, so this certainly won't happen to you. Photo: Massachusetts police search a home after the Boston bombings.Active military service members, veterans or first responders, here’s what you need to know. For those who serve, we offer: Discounts on Go, Beyond or Above Unlimited plans. One line on your account? Save $15. Two lines? Save $35. Three or more lines? Your best savings are $40 on your account access fee.* , or plans. One line on your account?. Two lines?. Three or more lines? Your are on your account access fee.* or, a 15% discount off other eligible plan's monthly account service fee off monthly account service fee as well as up to a 25% discount off select accessories when purchased online through My Verizon. But first, you'll need to verify your service. As an active military, you can provide one of the following documents: Military-issued email, Military paystub, Military enlistment DD Form 4 or SCRA Status Report. , you can provide one of the following documents: Military-issued email, Military paystub, Military enlistment DD Form 4 or SCRA Status Report. Military veterans can provide one of the following documents: Your DD Form 214, Veteran's ID Card, Military Retiree Account Statement or VetRewards Card from Veterans Advantage. can provide one of the following documents: Your DD Form 214, Veteran's ID Card, Military Retiree Account Statement or VetRewards Card from Veterans Advantage. First responders can provide one of the following documents: Paystub, pension stub, volunteer ID or Statement of volunteer service. To register your existing account, click in the menu directly above and enter your Verizon mobile number in the My Verizon User ID or mobile number field to start. *The line-based tiered discount for the Go, Beyond or Above Unlimited plans applies if the account was activated with, or plan changed to, one of these plans 6/28/18 or later. For military, Any Go or Beyond Unlimited plans activated prior to 6/28/18 will receive a flat $15 account level access fee discount or for first responders, the plan will not qualify for a discount. At any time the plan can be changed to the new Go, Beyond or Above Unlimited plan to receive the line-based tiered discount.Google wants to know everywhere that you’re looking. Today, Eyefluence announced that it has been acquired by Google. The eye-tracking interface startup founded in 2013 had raised $21.6M in funding from investors including Intel Capital, Jazz Venture Partners, Motorola Solutions Venture Capital and NHN Investment. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Eyefluence shared the announcement quietly today in a blog post, spotted first by Mattermark: Today, we are excited to announce that the Eyefluence team is joining Google! With our forces combined, we will continue to advance eye-interaction technology to expand human potential and empathy on an even larger scale. We look forward to the life-changing innovations we’ll create together! As Google launches its Daydream virtual reality platform next month with its Daydream View headset, there is already attention being directed to its next-gen headset efforts. Eye-tracking is a very important technology to future virtual reality headsets. Other companies in the space like SMI and Tobii have devoted efforts to using the eye as a method of signaling attention in interfaces but Eyefluence has devoted itself fully to using eye gesture cues for navigating menus and making selections. Eyefluence enable users wearing head-mounted virtual reality or augmented glasses to use their eyes as a mouse and making selections only with their eye movements. Eye-tracking has other more technical use cases like foveated rendering which allows high-density displays to selectively choose areas of the screen to display images at lower-resolution based on where you’re focus actually is on the display. Other companies in this space include Fove, which is beginning pre-orders for its VR headset with eye-tracking sensors early next month. This acquisition is really not a huge surprise for most who had seen Eyefluence’s impressive technology up close. I chatted with Eyefluence CEO Jim Marrgraff about his thoughts on the future of human-computer interaction at Disrupt SF last month and he had some bold ideas.Most of the time, when people talk about Sawtelle Boulevard, they mention the Japanophile stretch near Olympic, known as Little Osaka, where you can buy authentic red bean mochi, Sanrio knickknacks and mouthwatering ramen. (The general area around the stretch is now technically known as Sawtelle Japantown). But if you walk a few blocks north of that stretch, toward Santa Monica Boulevard, you’ll discover Analog Alley. It’s where the eight-decade-old Nuart Theatre shows indie and cult films and where you can rent videos from one of the last independently owned video stores in the city. You’ll find a record store with a hammock hanging out front and a used bookstore with a tintype photography studio. Down the side street of Idaho Avenue, there’s another used bookstore, this one filled with gewgaws and doo-dads from yore. If you want a slice of the past, this is where you go. Continue Reading Two or three years ago, recalls Sebastian Mathews, the owner of Touch Vinyl and Cinefile Video, “there’s these little obsolete businesses around and we were all starting to feel that analog needs to come to the forefront.” As a result, local shopkeepers decided to brand the area Analog Alley, and since then, foot traffic and business in general have improved. EXPAND Tony Jacobs of Sideshow Rare and Remarkable Books Photo by Jessie Schiewe The businesses in Analog Alley have been around for years. The Nuart has been there since the 1930s and Alias Books since 1959. Cinefile Video popped up in 1999. Touch Vinyl and Sideshow Rare and Remarkable Books set up shop in the mid-2000s, in part because the other three businesses were already there. In 2012, Cinefile Video was on the brink of closing, until the owner of the record store stepped in. “I said, ‘We really don’t want to lose it from the block,’ ” says Mathews, who originally just owned Touch but ended up buying Cinefile. “It's a big piece of what makes [Analog Alley] work.” EXPAND At Sideshow Rare and Remarkable Books Photo by Jessie Schiewe Most of the shopkeepers on the block agree that there’s strength in numbers. “There’s a really interesting synergy between what happens from store to store,” says the owner of Sideshow Books, Tony Jacobs, who coordinates his book displays with what’s currently playing at the movie theater. “The neighborhood shares its customers and it also inspires its customers from one place to another.” EXPAND Photo by Jessie Schiewe On a recent Wednesday afternoon, after renting a DVD from Cinefile, a man made a stop next door at Touch Vinyl to buy a record for his son. Meanwhile, a bibliophile wandered from one used bookstore to the next. “It’s like going to Target or Wal-Mart, but you’re supporting multiple businesses,” says Ginger Buswell, an employee at Alias Books. Shopkeepers see Analog Alley as more than just a kitsch enclave. Their businesses, they believe, pay homage to a simpler time and promote a slower lifestyle. “It’s about keeping yourself present in your experience,” says Jacobs, who sells, in addition to old books, found photographs, vintage matchbooks, and 16 mm films. “It’s the idea of hanging around and taking your time with something.” Even the hookah lounge on the block is an example of slow consumption. EXPAND Outside of Touch Vinyl Photo by Jessie Schiewe Looking forward, shopkeepers hope that the ethos of Analog Alley is more than just a passing fad. They’d like to see a bar or café open on the block or another analog business. But as much as they want to expand, they worry about what will happen if the area becomes too popular. Just down the block in Little Osaka, where rents are high and space is scarce, they see businesses come and go. And, as development creeps further north, shopkeepers worry that the future is just around the corner. Jessie Schiewe on Twitter: Follow @j_schiewe Follow us on Facebook and Twitter: Follow @laweeklyartsThe opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent the views of Townhall.com. Washington Post reporter Callum Borchers should win some kind of award for the worst pre-debate spin. He tried to defend NBC anchor and presidential debate host Lester Holt: "It turns out Holt is actually a registered Republican. Trump still might find things to complain about Monday night, but a case for partisan bias against him will be tough to make." Right after the debate, despite all evidence, the Post's Chris Cillizza doubled down, saying: "Want a testament to how well Holt did? I guarantee you no one is talking about him tomorrow. That's a win." That is precisely as the press would want this. But that's not what America saw. Holt's performance was a partisan disgrace. Holt asked Donald Trump about his taxes, and then challenged him on his answer. He asked Trump about stop-and-frisk policies, and then challenged him, stating it was ruled unconstitutional, which it wasn't, thus conjuring visions of the Candy Crowley Ghost of Flubbing Debate Moderators Past. He asked Trump about the birther issue, and then challenged him on his answer. He asked him about Iraq, and then interrupted and challenged him five different times. What about Hillary Clinton? There was not one single challenge to anything she said, not one tough question about any policy or any controversy, be it Benghazi, the Clinton Foundation, her medical records or her emails -- unless you want to count when Holt politely suggested: "(Trump) also raised the issue of your emails. Do you want to respond to that?" The Rasmussen Reports poll that came out just before the debate showed that based on the historical record, 46 percent of Americans believe most moderators will tilt the debates in favor of Clinton. Only 6 percent think they will try to help Trump. That's an 8-to-1 landslide. Holt confirmed the wisdom of the American people. It became obvious that Holt internalized all the howls of outrage from the liberal media against Matt Lauer for being even-handed with the candidates at the commander-in-chief forum earlier in the month. Editorials were written by anguished staff of both The New York Times and the Washington Post. He might have even heard Jimmy Kimmel rant at "The Apprentice" creator Mark Burnett while hosting the Emmy Awards. He said, "Thanks to Mark Burnett, we don't have to watch reality shows anymore because we're living in one." Holt's colleagues -- and Clinton's campaign -- said very publicly that he must go after Trump as a clear and present danger to America. That's exactly what he did. On the morning after this one-sided assault, Holt's colleagues in the liberal media projected an image of him as mellow and reserved, and therefore nonpartisan. The New York Times headline was "Lester Holt Opted for Restraint." Reporter Michael Grynbaum began the column saying, "Call him the minimalist moderator." He described how Holt "opted to lie low" and "was silent for minutes at a time," and then reported that The New Yorker had published a liberal parody called "CNN Launches Manhunt After Lester Holt Vanishes From Debate." To stick to its "minimalist moderator" spin, the Times chose to ignore most of the debate. Weeks before, Grynbaum wrote an anguished piece after the Lauer forum called "Matt Lauer Fields Storm of Criticism Over Clinton-Trump Forum." He even quoted tweets that mangled the facts, such as one from political commentator Norman Ornstein, which said: "Lauer interrupted Clinton's answers repeatedly to move on. Not once for Trump." In fact, Lauer interrupted Trump 13 times and Clinton seven times. The only similarity in the stories is that Grynbaum failed to locate an actual conservative or Republican critique of either NBC journalist. That's because the liberal media can't help but slant everything in favor of the left. It's no wonder most Americans no longer trust them.I'll be the first to admit that I find most live wallpapers pretty pointless. It's not that I don't appreciate the time and effort that goes into making them - it's just that I like to keep things clean, and all the background movement just seems so impractical. However, every once in a while a LWP shows up that makes me second guess my stock wallpaper. This is one of those times. With what may possibly be the most cut-and-dry app name in the Play Store, this wall is simply called 3D Image Live Wallpaper. And that's exactly what it does: brings the third dimension alive for basically any image you can currently set as your wallpaper. The thing I like most about it is that it's a subtle change - you won't find any crazy floating objects and constant movement with this one. Just a simple wallpaper that gives your background image some pretty incredible depth. 3D Image Live Wallpaper will set you back $1.60 in the Play Store, and you can find it by hitting the Play icon below.Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), opened his remarks on Internet privacy today with a colorful analogy—companies who use your personal Internet information without first obtaining consent are like the Redcoats, quartering in your home against your will. "I'm going to read the Third Amendment to the Constitution of the United States," Barton began. "'No Soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law' If the Founding Fathers would have had the Internet, instead of saying that without the consent of the owner to put soldiers in your home, they would have said without the consent of the Internet user, they couldn't collect data." Barton was on the warpath today at the fourth House hearing looking into Internet privacy issues. "It's time that the Congress of the United States has a strong, general, explicit privacy protection law," he said. "We've approached the use of the Internet more from a marketing standpoint " But this sort of thing doesn't go down at all well with other Republicans. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), another heavy hitter on tech policy issues, dusted off an odd analogy of her own—personal information on the Internet is like rich oil buried deep in the ground, and behavioral advertisers and others are the helpful Exxon Mobils of the world who retrieve it for us. And who would possibly want to regulate Exxon Mobil? "I've decided that this data should be treated as a natural resource, and that the DNA of this data is very powerful. It really is the lifeblood of a thriving Internet economy," Blackburn said in her opening remarks. "Should we allow our free market to explore this natural resource and learn to commercialize it, protect it, and respect it? Or are we going to restrict it altogether? Why should government be the decision maker? Government seems to know so little, it reacts slowly, works poorly." (If you thought those were actually open questions, Blackburn later quoted economist F.A. Hayek and praised "empower[ing] people instead of government.") "Enough is enough" Lawmakers are trying to decide whether self-regulation and the existing authority of the Federal Trade Commission are enough to handle the huge array of Internet privacy concerns surrounding geolocation data, behavioral advertising, and more—or whether legislation is needed. Today's hearing served as a reminder that privacy isn't a strictly partisan issue, as Barton found himself in agreement with Democrats like George Butterfield (D-NC), who argued for a "national baseline privacy law." While the Representatives presiding over today's hearing sounded knowledgeable about the general issues involved, the occasional comment brought down the facade and served as a reminder that, when it comes to technical details, most Congressmen are simply out of their depth. Here, for instance, is Barton's take on Amazon's intriguing new Silk Web browser, which routes requests through Amazon's cloud service for faster backend processing of website data, before delivering it to the local browser. "My staff yesterday told me that one of our leading Internet companies, Amazon, is going to create their own server and their own system and they're going to force everybody that uses Amazon to go through their server and they're going to collect all this information on each person who does that without that person's knowledge. Enough is enough." While Silk does indeed raise some fascinating privacy questions, they aren't the ones Barton is asking. Amazon has already told Ars that all collected usage data is anonymous and stored in aggregate, and that Silk users can switch the browser to behave like a conventional one if they wish. The browser is also designed for Amazon's Fire tablet, not for "everybody that uses Amazon." So the great privacy debate marches on. While some Republicans, who currently control the House, have already made up their minds about the best path forward, others have not. As Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), who chaired today's hearing, put it in her opening statement, "Despite everything that I have heard in our previous hearings, I still remain somewhat skeptical right now of both industry and government. Frankly, I don’t believe industry has proven that it’s doing enough to protect American consumers, while government, unfortunately, tends to overreach whenever it comes to new regulations." In the end, the privacy legislation debate may come down to a simple calculation: who sucks less?Allow me to offer a heartfelt welcome to those of you passing through the ‘ole blog today- hopefully you are staggering under the weight of all the virtual food you’ve devoured before arriving here. Some of you are already grizzled veganaut veterans, but because of the popularity of the Virtual Vegan Potluck, many of you are new to the veganaut crew. Welcome aboard! About a year and a half ago I started this blog to help chronicle my overnight transformation from Atkins dieter to plant based dieter and eventually to compassionate vegan. It has been a wild and wonderful ride that changed me more than I ever expected. Generally this blog steers clear from posting recipes. Instead, I leave that up to the overly skilled culinary bloggers I am sharing this digital food festival with. However, having a chance to be a part of something as fun and innovative as the Virtual Vegan Potluck seems to bring out my inner Alton Brown. In the previous two VVPs I offered up Super Awesome Guac and Emergency Black Bean Salsa, both in the Appetizers section. For this round I find myself in the big leagues with Main Dishes. To be honest, I am a little nervous especially considering the other big name vegan bloggers participating. Luckily, I have a secret weapon: Shannon. Shannon and I celebrated our 20th Anniversary this year (thank you, thank you, hold the applause) and for more than two decades I have witnessed her using an improvisational cooking style to create and recreate culinary masterpieces. When we were on the Standard American Diet in the 90s she created amazing food using ingredients and processed components from across the edible spectrum. As we invested several years into the Atkins diet during the 2000s she became adept at inventing low carb, high deliciousness foods that, like the Atkins diet itself, seemed too good to be true. Now in this new decade, living this new life, she has become a machete wielding explorer searching for new kinds of food to eat and build recipes around. I’d hate for you to get the wrong idea about us. We do not subscribe to the preassigned gender rolls of the 1900s in our house. It is just a coincidence that Shannon loves to cook and I really, really love taking out the garbage and changing the oil in the mini-van. I also enjoy taking pictures which is what I did when we created our dish for the VVP: ‘Breakfast for Dinner’ Burritos! These Breakfast Burritos are filled with tofu and mushroom scramble, faux sausage, and home-fries before being covered in gravy. Did I mention Shannon was raised on Southern cooking? She would try to put gravy in our green smoothies each morning if I didn’t beg her to save it for the salads and stir fry. This dish is modeled after the Breakfast Burrito available on the brunch menu at Ethos Vegan Kitchen in Orlando. Since they only offer the brunch menu on the weekend, Shanon toiled away in her laboratory recreating the burrito so we wouldn’t have to wait for an entire work week to pass before having another. If you are ever in the area I highly recommend Ethos for all of your compassionate dining needs. This pile of ingredients makes around 8 giant burritos depending on how full you make them or how many cubes of potato you eat during the preparation stages. You are encouraged to alter this recipe in any way that would make you happy. Here is what we used to make ourselves happy: 8 big flour tortillas, 12 oz. firm tofu, 8 oz. of faux sausage (we used Gimme Lean), 16 oz. sliced mushrooms, one onion, 6 medium red potatoes, 1.5 Tbsp corn starch, 1/2 tsp black salt, 1 Tbsp oregano, 1/2 Tbsp sage, 1 tsp onion powder, 1 tsp garlic powder, lack pepper, 2 vegan bullion cubes, 2 Tbsp Braggs Liquid Aminos, 3 cloves of garlic, 1 Tbsp of Earth Balance butter substitute. First dice the red potatoes, sprinkle them with garlic salt (optional) and bake them until done. No oil needed, but if you have guests over you may want to cover your nasty looking baking sheet with tinfoil like we did. Next dice the onion and mince 2 cloves of the garlic and toss them both in a pan with the Tbsp of Earth Balance. Move the bits around the medium-hot pan and get them ready for the next step. Once the onions start to turn clear, dump all of the sliced mushrooms into the pan EXCEPT for 1/2 cup that you set aside for later. Saute the mushrooms until it looks like more than half of them disappeared and then dump them on a platter for later. Next take the same pan- DON’T WASH IT- and brown your faux sausage. Once that is done browning dump it next to the mushrooms and onions on the platter. Now it is time to get the gravy started. In a blender, pour 4 cups of water, 1/2 cup of raw mushroom slices, 1/4 cup of diced onion, both bullion cubes, the corn starch, sage, garlic powder, onion powder, Braggs Aminos and black pepper to taste. Hit blend for 2 minutes and take a break, you’ve been working hard. You can dump all the ingredients in a pot directly if you don’t want to deal with a blender. Shannon uses the blender because it ensures there wont be any lumps and because she loves her new Vitamix enough to include it on the Christmas card list for this year and take it for walks. After blending for two minutes, dump the liquid into a small pot on high heat. Add a cup of the mushrooms and onions from your platter, stir occasionally. Let it boil for a minute then turn to simmer. Take off the heat after about 10 minutes and let the thickening fun begin! Now it is time to make the tofu scramble. Using a slightly pressed firm block of tofu, crumble it into pieces in the same unwashed pan you’ve been using. Use a wooden spoon to break the tofu down to the consistency of scrambled eggs. Next, add the black salt. Tofu scramble tastes exactly like eggs if you use black salt. If you don’t have black salt, no worries, just add salt and pepper and you will still have plenty of flavor from the sausage, mushroom, and onions. Now you get to grab the platter with the mushrooms, onions, and browned faux sausage and scrape it into your trusty pan with the waiting tofu scramble. Mix it together and stir in one cup of your gravy mixture. Once you are done with this step you’re done with all the complicated cooking and you become a simple burrito making factory. This is entirely up to personal preference, but we warm up the tortillas and fill them with 1/4 cup of cubed red potatoes and a rounded 1/2 cup of tofu scramble mixture. After wrapping them tightly and placing them on a platter it is time to garnish them with left over ‘taters and gravy. These little beauties are perfect on their own but sometimes I like to pull out the sriracha and go to town. No matter how YOU eat them or how YOU change the recipe, or if YOU even attempt the recipe, it has been an honor to have YOU over to break burritos with us. I hope you’ll find some way to stay connected with us here Jason and the Veganauts. There are a lot of options to the right of the page like receiving new posts by email and following with RSS. You could also click on links in this very sentence that connect you to the Facebook Group, Facebook Page and Twitter account. It is like vegan magic (meaning no doves or rabbits are used during the tricks). Enjoy the rest of the Virtual Vegan Potluck. Thanks for coming!They’ve played with the likes of Lady Gaga and their Youtube hits are in the millions. What did you do before finishing high school? By Matthew Hernon It shouldn’t work. Heavy metal music is supposed to be macho and fierce, not cute. It’s certainly no place for innocent-looking teenage idols singing songs about chocolate and bullying. At least it never used to be… then Babymetal turned up. Su-metal, Yuimetal, Moametal, and their backing group Kami Band might not be to everyone’s taste, but they have become impossible to ignore. Over the past few months they’ve played at some of the of the world’s most prestigious rock festivals alongside mega acts like Metallica, Slipknot and Iron Maiden. Their eponymous first album entered the American, British and German iTunes metal charts at number one with the most popular track from that record—“Gimme Chocolate”—garnering, at the time of writing, more than 33 million views on YouTube. Despite being viewed as a gimmick that won’t last by many metal purists, Babymetal’s popularity continues to grow. “We’re not performing common metal music, so we know there will be criticism,” lead singer Su-metal tells Weekender. “We think they are valuable opinions, but there are also many who describe our style as ‘new’ and ‘interesting’ so we’ll continue to bring our music to those people and be ourselves.” “We make our own original sound,” continues Yuimetal. “Along with the band’s music, Su-Metal sings while Moametal and I dance and scream. We’re having lots of fun and hope our fans are too.” The three girls tell me they had no idea what metal music was when they first got together in 2010, but it’s never really mattered. Kami Band provide the heavy stuff while the teen idols bring the pop element. The contrast appears to be working well. On YouTube songs like “Doki Doki Morning,” “Megitsune,” “Ijime, Dame, Zettai,” and “Gimme Chocolate” have gotten views well into the millions. Lady Gaga was so impressed she invited them to open for her during the “ArtRave” tour in 2014. (Babymetal make their US TV debut on “Late Night with Stephen Colbert”) “We couldn’t believe it,” says youngest member Moametal. “It was an incredible opportunity and so exciting to have people from a completely different genre watch us perform. Lady Gaga came to see our show twice. When we met her she told us she liked our music and advised us to continue doing what we were doing.” Lady Gaga isn’t the only famous musician to have jumped on the Babymetal bandwagon. Jeff Walker—lead singer of extreme metal group Carcass—described them as “a very cool band,” and told reporters at Sonisphere that his highlight of that festival was getting his picture taken with them. The girls have also been photographed with members of Judas Priest, Deftones, Slayer and their personal favorite—the band that Moametal describes as their “metal masters”—Metallica. “We’ve met Metallica more than once,” Yuimetal informs me. “The second time was at a festival in Canada. They actually remembered who we were so we were delighted about that. They are the band we’d most like to play with.” Closer to home, a collaboration with one of the country’s most successful ever bands, X Japan, could be on the cards in the near future. When asked about it in an interview with “Metal Hammer” magazine co-founder of the group Yoshiki said he could see the two groups performing together. The girls also sound like they’d be keen. “It was an honor to have him come to our show in London,” Moametal tells us. “We raise our spirits by listening to X Japan songs at shootings. They opened the door to new music. It’s humbling to hear that he’d be interested in playing with us.” Finding the time for a collaboration might be difficult. The girls always seem to be working. Following an arduous world tour they are currently playing a number of live shows throughout Japan and will return to England next year to perform at the iconic Wembley Arena in London. It’s set to be the biggest gig of the group’s short career. “We’re already preparing and working hard for the Wembley show,” says Moametal. “It’s great to be able to play at so many memorable venues around the world. We want to go beyond countries, age and gender. Our goal is to put music out there for everyone.”A persistent flow of migrants from the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, in combination with a lackluster economy and a growing fear of Islamic radicalism, is fueling anti-Muslim sentiment in Sweden. An Anti-Muslim movement is finding a foothold in Sweden, “where a solid core of citizens still supports the 65-year-old open door policy toward immigrants facing hardship that has long earned international respect for the country,” reports The New York Times (NYT). As of January 2, there had been three suspected arson attacks on mosques in Sweden over a ten-day period, including one on Christmas Day. A “relentless stream of migrants to Europe–propelled by the war in Syria and turmoil across the Middle East and the Horn of Africa–has combined with economic troubles and rising fear of Islamic radicalism to fuel a backlash against immigrants,” notes the Times, adding that this has been “directed most viciously at Muslims.” Citing the D.C.-based Migration Policy Institute, NYT points out that Sweden received the third-highest number of asylum seekers in 2012, after Germany and France. According to the Swedish Migration Board, about half the 81,000 people seeking asylum in Sweden in 2014 were from war-ravaged Syria. Last week, Breitbart News reported: The series of mosque attacks follows the surge in popularity of the “Sweden Democrats” party, a far-right anti-immigration party. (The phrase “far right” has different meanings in Europe and America.) The party won 13% of the vote in September elections, and recent polls put the party’s support at over 17%. In early December, the Sweden Democrats precipitated a government crisis by withdrawing its approval of the government’s proposed budget. The entry of the Swedish Democrats to Parliament in 2010 has paved the way for a discussion of ending the country’s open door policy for foreigners seeking humanitarian relief, something that would have been unthinkable in the past, the Times reports. An estimated fifth of Sweden’s population of 9.6 million was either born outside the country or to immigrant parents in Sweden, according to the article. The Islamic Association of Sweden represents roughly 40 communities inside the nation. Omar Mustafa, the president of the organization, told the Times that “the recent fires at mosques were the culmination of a year of rising anti-Islamic attacks, from women having their hijabs, or head coverings, pulled off in the streets to the vandalism of 14 mosques, as well as racist or anti-Muslim vitriol spread through social media.” The article highlights a growing anti-Muslim sentiment in other parts of Europe, as well. “German officials recorded more than 70 attacks against mosques from 2012 to 2014, including an arson, and the police in Britain have recorded an increase in hate crimes against Muslims,” reports the Times. “Worries about immigration have helped buoy [European] right-wing parties in Britain, Denmark, France and Hungary,” adds the article.The Knot Shop Sale: Discount Gifts, Favors, Wedding Décor Bride on a budget? Welcome to heaven! 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, hurried to call in the play. Seattle brought three receivers and a tight end out of the huddle, as the Patriots were initially in the largest goal line package. Seeing the change in personnel, it was time to call a defensive audible. This defense would need three corners. Three. Ayers coming off the field. Sprinting to the sidelines. Two words uttered. Two very simple, very direct words. Malcolm. Go. Butler back in the game. Had just given up a huge play, now back in the game. Second and goal at the five. Clock continues to tick. Thirty seconds left now. Twenty-eight. Twenty-six. Hawks have two receivers lined up to the weak side. Brandon Browner is on Kearse. Darrelle Revis is alone on the other side. Behind Baldwin, just off the line, is Lockette. Behind Browner is Butler, only just in the game on this last-minute substitution. This goal line package being run for the very first time that year. The offense sets. Twenty-five seconds. Snap the ball. Tight end staying in to block. Lynch drawing Jamie Collins out of the center of the line by running into the flat. Vince Wilfork crashes the center, knowing full well that this may be the last snap he ever plays as a member of the New England Patriots, barelling into the backfield before center Max Unger can even set his feet. Rob Ninkovich charges the edge, hoping to play contain in case Wilson rolls right. The receivers start to run their routes. Freeze. Back up. Rewind a few days. Patriots practice in the days leading up to this game. Situational football has Jimmy Garoppolo, running the prep team, down near the goal line, where they run a pick play. Malcolm Butler, assigned to the in-cut receiver, gets beat on the play. They run it a few more times. He gets beat again. Belichick is unhappy with the performance, reams him out, lets him know what he's doing wrong. Makes sure he knows that he has to be ready for anything. Like this very moment. Ball back to Wilson in shotgun, he takes it. Single step drop. Lockett cuts to the middle as Baldwin engages with Browner, looking to push him back and into Butler's running lane. Browner holds his ground, as impenetrable as the man with the giant 7 and the giant 5 on his jersey currently giving the entire Seahawks offensive line everything that they can handle and more. Baldwin gets zero push. But Lockett cuts free. Malcolm Butler reads the cut. He plants his foot and goes. He doesn't think. He doesn't question. He has committed himself entirely to this one motion. He sprints to where he thinks that Lockett will be. Wilson sees his man coming open. He plants his foot. Releases. Two men collide. Between them is a small, oblong, brown object that has been the singular focus of almost the entire planet for the past three hours. One of them feels the impact, stumbles, is knocked off balance. The other continues his motion, the motion he had committed so wholly to, and wrests the football away and into his arms. He secures it, takes a step, and falls to the ground. Interception. Interception. Interception. Patriots ball, 1st and 10 at their own one yard line. Elation. Relief. Mania. Grown men screaming like GOATS. Fans everywhere going crazy. Collinsworth trying to contain his rage, unable to speak. And somewhere deep in the borough of Brooklyn, a lone, paranoid, insecure, hopeless Patriots fan lets out a single sob. The Patriots were about to win the Super Bowl. There was no helmet catch. No missed interception. No epic drop. No miracle throw. There was just a defensive back who gave up a big play and then made up for it and then some. Part of me didn't believe it. I was still waiting for something to happen, some kind of delayed flag or retroactive timeout or Roger Goodell calling from the booth for a do-over because the Patriots aren't allowed to win games. But none of that happened. The only flag on the field was for celebrating after the fact. The play was going to stand, and the ball was back in Brady's hands. In my Fan Notes from The Super Bowl, I shared with everyone my reaction to the play: My friend called me shortly after the game ended to ask me what came out of my mouth when Butler made that pick, and I'll tell all of you what I told him: an audible sob. Just one, and just a few tears came with it, but that's what happened. I didn't jump out of my chair. There was no air humping. There was no cheering, or screaming, or dancing in the streets. There was just one man, alone in his apartment, watching one of the greatest plays in New England Patriots history, and sobbing once. I watched the replay to see that it was real, that I had in fact just witnessed it, and that there were no flags on the ground. I then placed my laptop on the floor, stood up, went over to the window, and leaned my head against the cool glass surface, trying to gather myself. I didn't want to lose it. I wanted to watch the rest of the game with vision not blurred by tears. So I pulled myself together. I went back to my chair, sat down. And I didn't get up again for a very, very long time. And that note is, for the most part, true. There was that single sob, that rising up, head against the window, then back to my chair. I remember it as clearly as I have ever remembered any other event in my life. However, what I did not share at that time was that I was quite unsuccessful in my efforts not to break down entirely after that play. After walking away from the window, I sat down, put my head in my hands, and bawled. I bawled like a small child. Wracking, heaving sobs, the culmination of ten years of being so close only to have my heart ripped out on some of the craziest football you will ever see. Floodgates opening after years of waiting on the precipice of immortality - all of it came out of me in buckets. I wasn't ashamed of it then, nor am I ashamed of it now. But I wanted to have that moment to myself for just a while longer before I shared it with my beloved community here at Pats Pulpit. Enough time has passed now so that I'm happy to tell the world that all of the joy, the elation, and the relief I felt after that Malcolm Butler pick poured out of me not in jumping up and down or screaming into the frigid February air, but in wonderful, gushing tears. But the game wasn't over yet. Seattle still had a timeout, and New England was backed up at their half-yard line, the offense sent back due to an unsportsmanlike celebration flag. Brady had no room to take a knee. He was going to have to try and sneak forward to buy himself some room to close out the game. The Seahawks had their entire team on the line. They were going to force the safety, get the ball back on a punt, and try for a late field goal. It was their only play. What happened next is yet another subtle example of the pure brilliance that is Tom Brady. Tommy B had been calling for the snap on the second helmet bob for the entire game. It was a slight tell, and one he willingly conceded to insure his receivers got the jump they needed for the short receptions they were running. But this time, as Brady came out to take the snap, he bobbed his helmet once, twice, and three times. Michael Bennett, needing to attach, snuck offsides to draw the encroachment penalty, giving the Patriots the ball at the five yard line. Game over. Brady immediately takes a knee, Seattle calls a timeout. The Seahawks, letting their anger get the better of them, start a scuffle in the end zone that turns into an all out brawl. Brady, however, does not move. As everyone else runs into the fray, he stays on one knee, trying to take it all in, knowing what his team has just accomplished. Richard Sherman, who has also not joined the scuffle, comes over to Brady with his hand extended. Tommy B, still lost in his reverie, doesn't see him at first, but ultimately stands, takes his hand, and tells him what a great player that he is. 15 yards forward and one more knee, and the final whistle blew. The Patriots were world champions. One of the wildest endings to a Super Bowl in NFL history. A play that will live on forever. A playcall that will be the subject of scrutiny for decades to come. The Butler did it. The Patriots did it. That interception isn't just the Number One Patriots Moment of 2015. I think it's the number one moment in Patriots history, and I have already made the case that it's the single greatest play in the history of all of Boston sports. It was a legacy altering play. It shifted the landscape of the entire National Football League. It was one of the most exciting finishes of any Super Bowl ever. And on top of all that, it was a phenomenal individual play, made by an absolute nobody who took the opportunity he was given in both hands and didn't let it go until he was a hero on the world's greatest stage. It's just an unbelievable story, and unbelievable play, and an unbelievable moment. Should I be lucky enough to live long enough to one day put together a Top 20 Most Memorable Top 20 Patriots Moments of the last 20 Years where I rank all the number one plays of the past two decades, I can say with some confidence that something absolutely remarkable is going to have to happen for me to knock this one out of the top spot. I'll never have an easier choice ranking my number one Patriots moment, and while I haven't even come close to doing the play justice in this piece, to be able to relive it again all these months after the fact, in the wake of Tom Brady's suspension getting overturned and on the eve of the team's fourth banner going up in the rafters of Gillette Stadium has been an absolute privilege. Malcolm Freaking Butler. Game highlights here. Inside the NFL 1st half highlights here. 2nd half highlights here. Watch the interception for the millionth time here. Picture of Sherman reacting to that play here. Watch a collection of Patriots fan reacting to the play here. And just for fun, a few more Pats fan reactions here. Oh, what the heck. One more here. (It may come as a surprise, but there are more than a few swear words in there. So consider this your official NSFW designation.) And if you're one of those people who is inexplicably happy when other people are miserable, you can watch a collection of Seahawks fans reacting to the play here (warning: some colorful language here as well). I've personally never been one for relishing too deeply in the misery of others, especially considering that I know all too well what it feels like to be on the short end of a crazy play that cost you the Super Bowl, but you'll get no judgments from me if you want to take some time and giggle with devilish glee. And with that, it's time to close the books on yet another Top 20 Most Memorable Patriots Moments of 2014. I hope you had half as much fun reliving this last season as I did. The 2013 Patriots were extremely likable for their toughness, their versatility, and how they never quit in spite of an insane string of injury after injury. But the 2014 Patriots were something else altogether. They started slow, took their licks, let the media hounds tear them down, banded together, rallied behind their coach and their quarterback, and they went on to make history. They went on to secure the legacy of a Hall of Fame quarterback and brought a Lombardi back to Boston where it belongs. And as it so often does, it ultimately all came down to one play. That one play, and the 19 on this list that preceded it, put the cap on one of the best seasons I'm likely to ever experience, and it was an honor to share that crazy ride with all of you. Thanks for reading, everyone. I can't imagine I'll ever get to write up a play quite like the one I just described here, but I can't wait to see if these Patriots can prove me wrong. We're on to the Steelers. We're on to 2015. We're on to one for the thumb. Go Patriots.Having doubled off the post-PBOC-ban-and-Fed-Taper lows, Bitcoin, trading at USD910 currently is becoming increasingly ubiquitous as a payment method for many businesses. The latest, as NY Post reports, is Manhattan-based real-estate broker Bond New York, is "using Bitcoins to help facilitate transactions." With overseas money-laundering as a key support, and Manhattan apartment sales setting a record in Q4 for volume of transactions (+27% YoY), we suspect the acceptance of Bitcoin will merely ease the Chinese (or Russian) ability to transfer funds directly into NYC housing - blowing an even bigger bubble. Via NY Post, The bitcoin has gained a foothold in one of the hottest business sectors in the country: Manhattan real estate. Bond New York, a Manhattan-based real estate broker, has started accepting the digital currency for real estate transactions, The Post has learned. Bond New York believes it is the first real estate brokerage firm to accept bitcoin. “Real estate brokerage is a service industry,” said Noah Freedman, a co-founder of Bond New York. “Our job is to make real estate transactions easy for our customers. Bitcoins are just another mechanism to help people facilitate transactions.” Several larger real estate brokers are not sold on the idea and have no plans to set up bitcoin accounts any time soon. “We don’t accept them, and we have no plans to accept them,” Pam Liebman, CEO of the Corcoran Group, said Friday. “We prefer the American dollar.” “Bitcoins could be here today and gone tomorrow,” But it is that perspective that could indeed be lost on the burgeoning foreign interest in moving money overseas (into US real estate)... (as we noted in September) In August 2012, when isolating one of the various reasons for the latest housing bubble, we suggested that a primary catalyst for the price surge in the ultra-luxury housing segment and the seemingly endless supply of "all cash" buyers (standing at an unprecedented 60% of all buyers lately as reported by Goldman) is a very simple one: crime. Or rather, the use of US real estate as a means to launder illegal offshore-procured money. We also identified the one key permissive feature which allowed this: the National Association of Realtors' exemption from Anti-Money Laundering provisions. In other words, all a foreign oligarch - who may or may not have used chemical weapons in their past: all depends on how recently they took their picture with the Secretary of State - had to do to buy a $47 million Florida house, was to get the actual cash to the US. Well good thing there are private jets whose cargo is never checked. But now, with the acceptance of Bitcoin, we would imagine the "funds" transfer process is even easier... blowing what is already a bubble... (via Bloomberg) Manhattan apartment sales surged in 4Q, setting a record for yr-end transactions, as prospect of rising interest rates and prices pushed buyers to make deals before purchases became costlier. Sales of condos and co-ops jumped 27% from yr earlier to 3,297, highest 4Q total in 25 yrs of record-keeping, according to report from Miller Samuel Inc. and Douglas Elliman Real Estate “There’s a concern that homeownership will be more expensive and therefore the time to act apparently is now,” said Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel... Median price of Manhattan transactions that closed in 4Q climbed 2.1% to $855,000A second successive defeat at Twickenham would eliminate the hosts, but where will Saturday’s Pool A game be won and lost? Robert Kitson Who will win? England What will the scoreline be? England by three pts (28-25) Why? As host nation England simply cannot contemplate defeat. Fear of failure can be the most powerful of stimulants – and the Wallabies’ first-choice XV have played just one game together since 8 August. Key man Owen Farrell. Australia do not possess a goal-kicker of his calibre, range and consistency. Graham Henry Who will win? England What will the scoreline be? England by two points Why? Big World Cup contests are often decided by goal-kicking Key man Owen Farrell. A freakishly accurate goal-kicker to kick those goals Paul Rees Who will win? England What will the scoreline be? By six points Why? Because they have to. The tournament likes the hosts in the knockout stages. Key man? Brad Barritt. He is their defensive leader and the defence doesn’t function with him at 13. They have got to handle Pocock at the breakdown Andy Bull Who will win? England Scoreline? By six points Why? It’s hope more than expectation. But they are a better side than they’ve shown, will be driven by desperation, and Australia may find the intensity of the occasion a shock after their matches so far. Key man Chris Robshaw needs to have a great game. He is a better player than he is often given credit for, and, on form, usually ends up topping England’s tackle count by a distance. Mike Averis Who will win? England Scoreline? England by three points Why? They’ve got to have one big game in them. Key man Tom Youngs: So important at lineout and scrum. Without set-piece ball, england don’t have the ammunition. Michael Aylwin Who will win? England What will the scoreline be? England by 13 points Why? Australia’s first team have had one game in the last two months. England will be seething and are a much better team than people give them credit for. Key man? Jonathan Joseph: has the loss of a single player ever so completely thrown the balance of a team as it did against Wales? Rugby World Cup 2015 power rankings: England plummet, Australia climb \| Gerard Meagher Read more Eddie Butler Who will win? England Scoreline? England 23 Australia 22. The only bonus point is Australia’s losing one. Why? Desperation is a fine motivational tool. England face the public flogging of all time if they lose; Australia may have it in the back of their minds that they have the Wales game as a fall-back plan. Key man? Ben Morgan. Somebody has to prevent Michael Hooper and David Pocock (and Scott Fardy) from dictating where they may roam. Morgan must commit all three of the opposition back-row to bringing him down. An hour of Morgan at full tilt may reduce both him and his targets to premature exits from the meat factory.Seeing is believing when it comes to emotions. We smile, we gasp, we yawn when we see others do the same—a phenomenon called emotional contagion. A new study published last week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that emotional contagion occurs even if the "seeing" step is bypassed. The blind patients in the study could not consciously see images of the faces of happy or fearful people that they were shown. Although their eyes and optic nerves were functional, the region of their brains involved in visual processing had been damaged. Instead, other parts of the brain took over, allowing the subjects to still respond normally with their own happy or scared facial expressions. These patients also made the appropriate happy or fearful face in response to emotions that were communicated through bodily expressions, suggesting that blind empathy can happen even without a facial template to imitate. "We're actually infected by the emotions of others. [This study shows] this phenomenon can be carried out in the absence of visual awareness," says Marco Tamietto, a neuroscience researcher at Tilburg University in the Netherlands and lead author of the study. "We can say that emotional contagion cannot be reduced to a simple mimicry." To tease apart the mechanism underlying emotional contagion, Tamietto and his colleagues took advantage of what is known in neuroscience as "blindsight". Starting a few decades ago, researchers found that patients who have damage to the part of the brain called the visual cortex, which processes visual information, retain a sort of sixth sense of sight. Although they are not aware of information in their visual fields, that input, whether it is a color, shape or facial expression, is still entering their eyes and being sent to and processed by other regions of their brains. One area known to receive visual information independently of the visual cortex is the amygdala, the brain's emotional control center. "With these patients, they feel they're blind…. If you flash them [an image of] something, they claim they don't see anything, but they guess reliably above chance" what the image is, says Marco Iacoboni, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, (U.C.L.A.) and author of the book Mirroring People. Iacoboni was not involved in the recent PNAS study. Tamietto and his colleagues studied two adult patients whose visual cortices had been damaged—one because of surgical removal at age 33, the other by a traumatic brain injury at age seven. As a result, each was blind in either the right or left side of the visual field. Even though both of their eyes was sending information from both sides of the visual field to the visual cortex, damage to the left side of the visual cortex, for example, made the patient effectively blind in the right side of the visual field. The authors showed them pictures of faces of people with happy or fearful expressions on either the right or left side of a computer screen while the patients kept their eyes fixed on the center of the screen, and measured the spontaneous change in their facial muscles via electromyography (EMG). The patients responded by smiling at happy faces and frowning at faces showing fright that were shown to both their sighted and blind visual fields. As Tamietto says, these facial responses could still be the result of the patients automatically mimicking the expressions that they see, even if they are seeing them on an unconscious level. The alternative is that the expressions on the screen are actually eliciting the same mood in the subjects. To distinguish between these two possibilities, Tamietto and his colleagues showed the patients images of happy or fearful body postures that would be emotional cues but not provide the information needed for facial imitation. The response was the same: In both visual fields, the patients responded by smiling at happy bodies and frowning at fearful bodily postures. These results suggest, "you are really into the same emotional mood, so you are not simply imitating but you are unknowingly driven to the same emotional mood," Tamietto says. Iacoboni at U.C.L.A., however, is not convinced that mimicry is not involved. Because the study did not look at muscle movement in the body, only the face, it remains possible that the patients adjusted their bodily positions to imitate those on the screen, and then that emotion spread to their faces. One way to examine the role of imitation, he says, would be to look if the parts of the brain where there are mirror neurons are active in these studies. In addition to suggesting that we can empathize with others' emotions on an unconscious level, the authors also noticed that this reaction was faster than the one that involved the visual cortex. Whereas patients took about 1.2 seconds to respond to images on their functional side, they reacted in 0.9 second to images in the blind visual field, according to the EMG recordings. When the visual cortex is working, most of the visual information is routed through this part of the brain, says Alan Pegna, director of the Laboratory of Experimental Neuropsychology at Geneva University Hospital in Switzerland who was not involved in the current study. He has studied patients with blindsight, or the type of seeing that does not involve the visual cortex. "The idea is the information is reaching the amygdala in a kind of direct, quick and dirty route," he says. When the visual cortex is out of commission, more of the visual information could be fast-tracked to the reflexive regions of the brain. Tamietto says the unconscious route could also process visual information for other basic human emotions, including anger and sadness. "Those were events relevant for survival of our ancestors that required a rapid reaction to the environment mediated by phylogenetically ancient pathways that bypass the visual cortex," he says. But lest we forget the importance of the visual cortex, he adds: "To really understand the intentions of others, we have to be conscious." For that, we need the awareness that arises from those perceptions derived from the visual cortex.Cryptosporidium confirmed in three Milton HS students Milton High School, in southern Wisconsin’s Rock County, has at least three confirmed cases of the protozoan parasitic infection, cryptosporidiosis, in students at Milton High School, according to a WKOW 27 report. This is a corrected count from previous reports at the school. According to the report, the school’s football coach stated “he has lots of sick kids on his team”. Rock County health officials are attempting to get samples for testing to determine their status. Although there is not a press release on the Rock County Health Department website, they are headlining “Cryptosporidium” on the front page with links to CDC information. Cryptosporidiosis, or Crypto, is a microscopic parasite causing a diarrheal illness. Common symptoms include: diarrhea, stomach cramps or pain, dehydration (which is often most serious in the very young and the very old), nausea, vomiting, fever andweight loss. Symptoms usually begin 2 to 10 days after infection and normally last for one to two weeks. Once a person is infected, the parasites live in the intestines and are passed in the stool. Related: What is Cryptosporidium? How do you prevent getting cryptosporidiosis?In some of this planet’s driest regions, where rainfall is rare or even nonexistent, a few specialized plants and insects have devised ingenious strategies to provide themselves with the water necessary for life: They pull it right out of the air, from fog that drifts in from warm oceans nearby. Now researchers at MIT, working in collaboration with colleagues in Chile, are seeking to mimic that trick on a much larger scale, potentially supplying significant quantities of clean, potable water in places where there are few alternatives. Fog harvesting, as the technique is known, is not a new idea: Systems to make use of this airborne potable water already exist in at least 17 nations. But the new research shows that their efficiency in a mild fog condition can be improved by at least fivefold, making them far more feasible and practical than existing versions. The new findings have just been published online by the journal Langmuir, a publication of the American Chemical Society, in a paper by MIT postdoc Kyoo-Chul Park PhD ’13, MIT alumnus Shreerang Chhatre PhD ’13, graduate student Siddarth Srinivasan, chemical engineering professor Robert Cohen, and mechanical engineering professor Gareth McKinley. Fog-harvesting systems generally consist of a vertical mesh, sort of like an oversized tennis net. Key to efficient harvesting of the tiny airborne droplets of fog are three basic parameters, the researchers found: the size of the filaments in those nets, the size of the holes between those filaments, and the coating applied to the filaments. Most existing systems turn out to be far from optimal, Park says. Made of woven polyolefin mesh — a kind of plastic that is easily available and inexpensive — they tend to have filaments and holes that are much too large. As a result, they may extract only about 2 percent of the water available in a mild fog condition, whereas the new research shows that a finer mesh could extract 10 percent or more, Park says. Multiple nets deployed one behind another could then extract even more, if so desired. While some of the organisms that harvest fog do so using solid surfaces — such as the carapace of the Namib beetle, native to the Namib desert of southern Africa — permeable mesh structures are much more effective because the wind-blown fog droplets tend to be deflected around solid surfaces, Park says. Thus, a woven mesh structure resembling a window screen turns out to be most effective. With the right chemical coating, fog droplets that form on the screen then slide down to be collected at the bottom and are funneled into buckets or tanks. A comparison of the current standard fog-harvesting mesh material (top) and the new version designed by the MIT team (bottom), under identical conditions, demonstrates how much more rapidly water accumulates from the improved version. Video courtesy of the researchers Video courtesy of the researchers The researchers found that controlling the size and structure of the mesh and the physical and chemical composition of this coating was essential to increasing the fog-collecting efficiency. Detailed calculations and laboratory tests indicate that the best performance comes from a mesh made of stainless-steel filaments about three or four times the thickness of a human hair, and with a spacing of about twice that between fibers. In addition, the mesh is dip-coated, using a solution that decreases a characteristic called contact-angle hysteresis. This allows small droplets to more easily slide down into the collecting gutter as soon as they form, before the wind blows them off the surface and back into the fog stream. While the systems currently deployed in the coastal mountains at the edge of the Atacama Desert tend to yield a few liters of drinking water per day for each square meter of mesh, the theoretical calculations show that newly designed systems operating in the strong winds and dense fogs that form along the Chilean coast at certain times of the year could yield up to 12 liters per day or more, the researchers say. In collaboration with researchers at the Pontifical Catholic University in Santiago, Chile, the MIT researchers have recently installed a variety of test screens made of different materials on hilltops in a semi-arid region north of Santiago, an area that sees very little rainfall, but which is regularly enshrouded in a strong windblown coastal fog called camanchaca rolling in from the Pacific Ocean. The team is currently carrying out a yearlong test to study the durability and water yield of different configurations. Maria Tou ’14, an MIT undergraduate, worked with the team in Chile, helping to install instrumentation that can observe the fluid mechanics associated with the fog droplets as they collect, grow and coalesce on the meshes. Large mesh structures, of hundreds of square meters each, could be set up relatively inexpensively; once in place, they cost virtually nothing to operate. They consume no energy, needing only an occasional brushing to remove particles of grit and bugs. “The operating cost is essentially zero,” McKinley says, because “nature has already done the hard work of evaporating the water, desalinating it and condensing the droplets. We just have to collect it.” Chilean investigators have estimated that if just 4 percent of the water contained in the fog could be captured, that would be sufficient to meet all of the water needs of that nation’s four northernmost regions, encompassing the entire Atacama Desert area. And with the MIT-designed system, Park points out, 10 percent of the fog moisture in the air passing through the new fog collector system can potentially be captured. Daniel Beysens, director of the Physics and Mechanics of Heterogeneous Media Laboratory at EPSCI in Paris, who was not involved in this research, says, “This is a very important paper for anybody who wants to get water from fog. The authors have performed a thorough theoretical and experimental investigation of the influence on the final water yield of the structure of a fog net. … Their study is a breakthrough in the design of fog collectors.” The research was supported by a Samsung scholarship, the MIT-Legatum Center for Entrepreneurship and Development, MIT’s MISTI-Chile program, and the Xerox Foundation.Mali was an old and rich land. Wisely led by their Imams, they had grown powerful in western Africa. The legions were able to beat Mali’s armies in any battle, but had a hard time maintaining any sieges as the Malinese army would travel to where the Legions were not and put Imperial controlled regions to siege. It took two years for the Legions to find some semblance of order to the war. By 1752, the western parts of Mali were besieged by XVII. Legio, XVI Legio was bringing the Timbuktu region under control (with constant marching by the largest part of the Legion to defeat newly raised and organized Malinese forces), IX. Legio was clearing the Guinean region of forces and beginning the critical sieges, and XII. Legio (shipped over when it was apparent Mali was not an knockover) fended off Malinese raids and dreamed of marching on the Lake Tchad region. The war was a draining one for the Legions. In order to better recruit replacement soldiers, Konstantios tied each cohort to a particular province from which recruiters could find replacement soldiers. Finally in November of 1753, Mali agreed to release Kanem Bornu and to give up a swath of territory to the Empire. Missionaries were sent to the conquered territories, and Kanem Bornu was disavowed of any ideas of alliance that they held. During this war, the North Andean people had expressed dissatisfaction with the neglect their region had faced. No doubt, the fact that the North Andeans a primarily local culture that integrated themselves into the Imperial system once given the chance played a role in their independent mindset. A corrupt governor did not help their dissatisfaction, even though they were repaid for their losses. Konstantios, recognizing that it would be a long time (if ever a time) before the Empire could directly administer them to a degree that made their lands worthwhile, granted them a great measure of independence. During the peace while the Legions recovered, Theodoros (who was heir to the Empire and had recently had a coming out party) died of a strange fever. While Konstantios made no overt moves, he was suspicious of this death. To no-one’s surprise, Konstantios declared war on Kanem Bornu. Not too long after, the Empress gave birth. The astrologer’s advice was ambiguous, and Konstantios chose to remember the Greek heritage in his heir’s name. This proved to be a good choice, as Kanem Bornu soon after agreed to give up most of their lands. As did Songhai after them. With truces yet to expire in western Africa, Konstantios looked to eastern Africa. The old cursed land of Sennar was attacked so its land could be given to Ethiopia. It was during this war that Konstantios died a little too soon, leaving a regency council to rule for Alexander until his majority.A machine force feeding a human. Being brutally and utterly dedicated to our whims they show us how perverted our ideas of success, good and bad are when taken critically. Effectively giving us a taste of our own "medicine". Rick is interrogated via a mind-computer link, inside a galactic federal prison. Summer and Morty attempt to rescue him, but they are captured by SEAL Team Ricks, who take them to the Citadel of Ricks and decide to assassinate Rick. Back at the prison, Rick tricks both the federal agents and his aspiring assassins by switching bodies with them. He then teleports the entire Citadel into the federal prison, prompting a massive battle. Amid the confusion, Rick rescues Morty and Summer and uses the Galactic Federation's mainframe to make their currency worthless. The Federation falls into chaos and collapses as a result, with the aliens leaving Earth. Back at home, Jerry asks Beth to choose between him and Rick, but she chooses Rick. After the new status quo is established, Rick reveals to Morty that his ulterior motive was to become his de facto male influence. This escalates into a nonsensical angry rant, centered around Rick's desire to find more of the discontinued McDonald's Szechuan sauce, a promotional product for the 1998 film Mulan. The Brainalyzer Rick in the Brainalyzer. Rick's Mind Virus(es) Rick's exploit being uploaded... Rick literally psychoanalyzing his opponent.i.e. in fact "getting inside his head". Gotta go take a sh*t... Rick beings social engineering his way to level 9 The privilege escalation attack Rick analogously "Phone Phreaking"/Hardware hacking his way into the citadel The person in the center here looks strikilngly similar to Rick in the image above. The armor, the hair; this is the defcon site banner; also some might recognize the "Butter Robot"-esque android being built in the background. By the way defcon is the worlds biggest hacking conference :) The BitFlip attack Before we dig into what the episode means here's a quick summary of it from wikipedia:Lets dig in...Rick is trapped in something called a "brainalyzer" which is effectively a brain to computer link. In a couple different ways this is already a computer sciencey pun. One obvious way is that it references some cutting edge computer science research being done to literally connect peoples brains to computers. People have already in academic circles effected a way to both control computers using one's brain AND have computers control the faculties of someone's brain i.e. you can now control a computer with your brain OR/AND have your brain controlled by a computer.Another way it is a hacker/computer science pun is that the brainalyzer is actually an ironic expression of the false ideology people have of computers: that they are NOT directly connected to our brains.The software we write for the computer, the hardware we make for the computer and the perspectives we have of all of those things are also entirely inside our heads.As a hacker I can tell you that what you do when you try to break someone's algorithm is basically argue with the person who wrote the algorithm in your head! One persons implementation of their idea of security is 'competed' with yours; its all mind games! Coming back to the episode this is literally what Rick is doing in the scene; he inside his head argues with the person who is'securing him' in the prison.The flip side of this brainalyzer; from a security perspective, is that it is a huge security design mistake i.e. risking security by separation failure. By interfacing the thoughts of the prisoners to prison computer system (which controls the prison). Ironically; the prison exists to physically restrain the prisoners because they are bad people
Israel only if it withdrew to the pre-1967 borders. As for whether HAMAS can be democrats or not, they have already participated in democratic elections (and won), so some in HAMAS are already politicians and democrats. Poyan Nahrvar, Toronto, Canada Menachem Begin was nothing like the Hamas of today. Begin and the gang were fighting military personnel. Today's Hamas and other terror groups deliberately target civilians. There exists a MAJOR difference between the two ideologies. Akiva Goldberg, Jerusalem, Israel Informative and worthwhile article. But what is the truth? Obviously the son is biased regarding the father. Robert, Boston, USA I once met an elderly woman who sharply rebuked us after a pro-Palestinian demo back in the 1980s - "Stern Group - not Gang!" she insisted. She was a left winger of sorts (The LEHI seems to have no coherent left/right focus) who said she most admired George Habash among contemporary activists in the region (reminded her of David Stern, she said). And no-one should be surprised when police &/or their informants lie, so the report of bombs may well have been a total fabrication. Thanks for the story... and don't be surprised if some Palestinians also transmute from terrorist to statesman. Greg Williamson, Berkeley USA What a disgraceful leaflet; and yet there is so little compassion on the plight of the Palestinian people. Begin didn't get all he wanted, but creating the state of Israel was huge. Hamas could change from terrorist to democrat in a day if illegal settlements were returned and they were recognized as an independent state. Carolyn, Canada Bookmark with: Delicious Digg reddit Facebook StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionThe 3rd Annual Catskill Chill Music Festival is hitting Hancock, New York this upcoming September 7-9, 2012, and we’re beyond psyched to be attending the festival this year for coverage on the site. For those who haven’t followed this fest, it’s definitely an up-and-coming must-go festival, with the attendance doubled in the second year (and it may triple this year with a lineup like this). The “Chill” is set on a lake deep in the beautiful Catskill Hills and the camp has breathtaking views of the lake. Everyone is super friendly and very respectful. And like most festivals these days, there is a fluid mix of music genres this year including electronica, jamtronica, funk, bluegrass, rock and many many more!! So we rounded up our list of the TEN acts that are sure to be straight fire! 10. Rubblebucket In March 2008 Rubblebucket self-released their debut album, Rose’s Dream under the name Rubblebucket Orchestra and began to tour full time. Musical couple Alex Toth (trumpet, band leader) and Kalmia Traver (vocals, saxophone) first met at the University of Vermont where they were both enrolled as music majors. Upon graduating in 2006 they joined the reggae group John Brown’s Body and began touring the United States. Alex had been developing a dance band that merges psychedelic indie rock, upbeat dance and left field arrangements. In June 2007 the pair met percussionist Craig Myers at an art opening and party in the old Hood Milk plant in Burlington, VT. The music that was improvised that night would later be arranged and elaborated by Alex and become the first contributions to band’s repertoire. Here is a lick called “Silly Fathers” off the album Omega La La … Rubblebucket – Silly Fathers – Official Music Video Watch this video on YouTube 9. Break Science Raised in the cultural hotbed of New York City, Adam Deitch and Borahm Lee fuse the city’s rich musical legacy- jazz, funk, soul, with a deep-rooted connection to its hip-hop heritage to create their own take on modern electronic music. Armed with Deitch’s thunderous breakbeat style on the drums and Lee’s seasoned trip-hop/dub aesthetic on keyboards and laptop, their instrumental styles are perfectly interwoven within their beautiful, banging and extremely danceable tracks. This sound is bound to make a major mark on the modern musical landscape. Deitch and Lee have worked with premier artists — everyone from Wyclef Jean and the Fugees, Raekwon and GZA of the Wu Tang Clan, to reggae/dub legend Lee Scratch Perry and Miles Davis collaborator John Scofield. This duo never disappoints ever. They are sure to get the crowd jumpin! Heres a personal favorite track of mine off their second EP entitled Monolith Code (available as a FREE download via Pretty Lights Music)… (HQ) Break Science – Forest Of Illumination [Monolith Code] Watch this video on YouTube 8. JGB with Melvin Seals Melvin and JGB brings an intuitive, expressive style, soul, spontaneity and remarkable chops to the table. With acoustic and electric ingredients and unique combinations of Dave Hebert’s guitar and vocals, Jimmy Tebeau’s savory bass, Pete Lavezzoli’s hearty drums and, of course, a heapin’ helpin’ of the wizard’s magic on Hammond B-3 Organ and keyboards. Along with backing vocals, the result is a most satisfying blend of natural organic grooves that challenges genre boundaries. Their chemistry is the focus from which they create a spontaneous and high art where the sky is the limit musically. They offer an exciting, often psychedelic musical journey that changes nightly and keeps the audience dancing and smiling (and some staring in amazement) for hours. Here is a taste of what this wonderful group has to offer! 7. Soulive In their 13 years together, Soulive has followed the muse in the direction of hip-hop, R&B, blues and rock, collaborating with the likes of Chaka Khan, Dave Matthews, Talib Kweli, John Scofield, Derek Trucks, Maceo Parker, Susan Tedeschi, Robert Randolph, Joshua Redman, Kenny Garrett, Fred Wesley, The Roots, Ivan Nevilleand so many others, even going so far as to record a full album of covers by The Beatles (Rubber Soulive). But, no matter how they push the limits of the organ trio, they always come back to their bread and butter: blistering solos and grooves that don’t quit. Here’s a sample of their sound for the uninitiated… Soulive – Mary live Watch this video on YouTube 6. EOTO Consisting of Michael Travis and Jason Hann the duo mixes the organic sounds of live drums, bass and guitar through a variety of programs and gadgets to create a style of music that is more likely found in a dance club, then a live music theater. What sets EOTO apart from other artists in this emerging genre is how the music is created. While some artists may spend hours pre-mixing samples and elements of music for their live show, EOTO uses nothing pre-recorded, giving them the ability to approach each song with on-the-spot spontaneity and 100% live improvisation. These guys are pure raw talent and fun live! They are sure to throw down hard at Catskill! Here’s a vibrating tune that is sure to get you pumped! EOTO – Flying Red Watch this video on YouTube Read on for our final five must-see picks at the festival…Today I was handcuffed and detained by 2 police officers from the Studio City Police Department after refusing to agree that I had done something wrong by showing affection, fully clothed, in a public place. When the officer arrived, I was standing on the sidewalk by a tree. I was talking to my father on my cell phone. I knew that I had done nothing wrong, that I wasn’t harming anyone, so I walked away. A few minutes later, I was still talking to my dad when 2 different police officers accosted me and forced me into handcuffs. As I was sitting in the back of the police car, I remembered the countless times my father came home frustrated or humiliated by the cops when he had done nothing wrong. I felt his shame, his anger, and my own feelings of frustration for existing in a world where I have allowed myself to believe that “authority figures” could control my BEING… my ability to BE!!!!!!! I was sitting in that back of this cop car, filled with adrenaline, my wrist bleeding in pain, and it occurred to me, that even there, I STILL HAD POWER OVER MY OWN SPIRIT. Those cops could not stop me from expressing myself. They could not stop the cathartic tears and rage from flowing out of me. They could not force me to feel bad about myself. Yes, they had control over my physical body, but not my emotions. My feelings. My spirit was, and still is FREE. I will continue to look any “authority figure” in the eye without fear. NO POLICE OFFICER OR GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL IS MORE POWERFUL THAN ME. WE ARE EQUALS. I KNOW THAT I WILL ALWAYS BE FREE BECAUSE THAT IS THE NATURE OF MY SPIRIT. And moreover, I deeply enjoyed connecting with the cops who detained me. I allowed myself to be honest about my anger, frustration, and rage as tears flowed from my eyes. The tears I cry for a country that calls itself "the land of the free and the home of the brave" and yet detains people for claiming that very right. Today I exist with courage, knowing that I am blessed to have experienced what I did today. All of those feelings, no matter how uncomfortable. These feelings are what builds my internal strength, my ability to grow through WHATEVER may happen to me. That internal knowing is what guides me in this world. Not the law, not fear, not mistrust of government or cops or anything else. In this moment there is a still small voice whispering to me. It says: You are love. You are free. You are pure. Today, Daniele Watts & I were accosted by police officers after showing our affection publicly. From the questions that he asked me as D was already on her phone with her dad, I could tell that whoever called on us (including the officers), saw a tatted RAWKer white boy and a hot bootie shorted black girl and thought we were a HO (prostitute) & a TRICK (client). This is something that happened to her and her father when she was 16. What an assumption to make!!! Because of my past experience with the law, I gave him my ID knowing we did nothing wrong and when they asked D for hers, she refused to give it because they had no right to do so. So they handcuffed her and threw her roughly into the back of the cop car until they could figure out who she was. In the process of handcuffing her, they cut her wrist, which was truly NOT COOL!!! Our freedom isn't freedom folks, when people can abuse others with no reason or evidence at all just because they "think" they have been given the power by people that are ONLY equal to us. Of course, they had to let her go eventually cuz we weren't a threat to anyone. They weren't expecting D to be so intelligent and outspoken, and left truly feeling the fear vibration finding out that they had just fucked with 2 celebrities (Celebrated People). WE ALL HAVE THE SAME POWER INDIVIDUALLY IN THIS WORLD, AND I'M GLAD WE'RE ALL TAKING IT BACK ONE BEING AT A TIME! Actress Danièle Watts was wrongfully detained under the suspicion that she was a prostitute after being affectionate with her boyfriend in Studio City, California.Many will remember Danièle Watts from her role as "Coco" in Quentin Tarantino's 'Django Unchained' or her current role as Martin Lawrence's daughter in 'Partners.'Watts was dressed in a t-shirt, shorts, and tennis shoes when she was approached by police who believed her to be a prostitute. When she refused to show the ID, she was then handcuffed by multiple officers and detained.She told the entire story on her Facebook page Danièle's boyfriend, Brian Lucas, who is white, shared these photos on his Facebook page. He says he believes they were targeted because they are an interracial couple.He also told his version of events.Watts alleges that the officer her placed her in handcuffs so tight that they broke the skin on her wrists.The two were eventually let go, but they were clearly angry and hurt by the experience.Update: We previously referred to Brian Lucas as Watts' husband. He is, in fact, her boyfriend.Kimberly Foster is the founder and editor of For Harriet. Email or Follow @KimberlyNFosterOften described as a hybrid between old-school table top RPGs and action RPG video games, the subgenre of tactical RPGs is one of the oldest and most popular types of RPG, even by today's standards. Tactical RPGs, while they do share many characteristics with their cousins in the broader RPG category, differ on several specific counts. First of all, rather than discovering or unlocking a world, most emphasis is put on battles and combat strategies. The building of characters often utilizes customizable classes in a similar fashion to other RPGs, but combat almost always takes place on a grid battlefield, as opposed to most real-time fighting scenes, which often do not have a specific battlefield at all. Because tactical RPGs can be fairly time-intensive and tricky to beat, they tend to appeal to the most hardcore of gamers, gaining particular popularity with many of the titles released on the Playstation and PS2. Here are ten of our favorites! Front Mission: Alternative – Playstation, PSN Many of the Front Mission games are excellent, and everyone has their favorite. However, Front Mission: Alternative is sometimes overlooked because it was initially released only in Japan, and did not become available to a larger on the Playstation Network until nearly a decade after its 1997 release. In the year 2030, Africa has become one united nation, which was initially beneficial to all the former nations involved, but soon devolved into disagreement and outright conflict. Peacemaker factions are sent in to help resolve the fighting, and the player assumes control of one such faction, the Independent Mobile Attack Company, using experimental weapons methodology, referred to as the "Wanderung Wagen". Led by Earl McCoy, the IMAC is dispatched to various locations in Africa to establish and maintain peace, in spite of many terrorist organizations that appear fragmented. After a while, I deeper connection between the splinter groups is discovered and must be brought to light in order to bring a sustainable peace. Shining Force – PC, Game Boy Advance, Sega Genesis In the land of Rune, Guardiana, Max is sent on a quest to protect the world from Darksol and his hordes of Runefaust, who is bent on opening the Shining Path and invoking the Dark Dragon. Max forms the Shining Force when joined by several allies, including the Princess Narsha. Unfortunately, Darksol has allies as well, in the form of King Ramladu, and the warrior Kane. Combat is turn-based, with the standard one-unit-per-square on the map. Turns are determined by each unit's agility, and there is one action per turn, though certain actions do not constitute a turn, such as equipping and dropping items. Shining Force is a good choice for any players who wish to experience a very traditional Japanese tactical RPG, and is similar in feel to some of the earlier Final Fantasy games. Also, it may be worth noting that though this title is part of a larger series, not all the games in the series adhere to the tactical RPG style. Several others are of the dungeon crawler variety, which can provide variety in gameplay, but keep to the same universe. Stella Deus – PS 2 The world of Solum is gradually being devoured by a poisonous mist called "Miasma". Some, like the followers of the Church of Aeque, see this as the natural order of things, and assume that it is the will of the almighty for this to happen. Others, such as Dignus the warlord and Viser the alchemist are more interested in exploiting the situation for their own ends. The game's protagonist, Spero, is second in command to Dignus, and must attempt to navigate his way through a delicate and dangerous situation, while trying to save Solum. This title is bound to catch me some flak for its inclusion on this list, due some fairly terrible voice acting. Everyone knows that this can be a game-ruiner, even though there are many other titles with equally terrible voicework that manage to achieve popularity in spite of this. However, the visual style of Stella Deus makes it worthy of at least a second glance. Stella Deus is also a good choice for anyone who is new to tactical RPGs, as the gameplay is not as difficult as many of the other titles on this list. Fire Emblem – Game Boy Advance The seventh game of the series by the same name, Fire Emblem takes place in the land of Elibe, where man and dragon used to coexist in a generally peaceful manner. However, this was not to last, as a conflict led to all out war, known as "The Scouring". Man eventually trumped over dragon, and took over the land as the dragons vanished through a portal to a new world. The events of Fire Emblem see Eliwood, Hector, and Lyndis, three humans connected to the ruling family in various ways, encounter a mysterious and dangerous group known as the Black Fang. This group has created humanoid creatures akin to golems, known as "morphs" who serve the Black Fang leader, Nergal. When the main characters discover that the Black Fang's ultimate goal is to open the Dragons' Gate, bringing war Elibe once again, they must figure out to thwart Nergal's faction at any cost. This is the only title on this list which is exclusive to a handheld platform, and is the first of the larger Fire Emblem series to be released outside of Japan. Fire Emblem includes several game modes, as well as multi-player options. Though the leveling system is simple in comparison with many other RPGs, the multiple modes more than make up for any initial lack of complexity. Vandal Hearts – Playstation, Sega Saturn, PC In Sostegaria, the Ashah Dynasty rules with military force and religious indoctrination. Because the dynasty is directly descended from an ancient holy man named Toroah, they have remained in power for some time, but the people have become discontent in recent times, and have put their faith in Arris the Sage, who has united many dissenting factions into one army. This force has managed to defeat the Royal Army, burning the Ashah Dynasty palace and seizing control of the nation to attempt to install a democracy. Many of the people fighting directly under Arris have gone on to become leaders in this new country, known now as Ishtaria. However, Arris himself has vanished, and no one has managed to find him since the collapse of the Ashah Dynasty. Meanwhile, the anti-terrorist Crimson Guard has brutalized much of the country, stamping out those who show the slightest resistance to the new Ishtarian government, while bandits and highwaymen roam the land freely, and pirates dominate the seas. Ash Lambert, a fighter in the Ishatarian Security Forces and his fellow soldiers begin to suspect a conspiracy, which points to the highest levels of the new government. The player must take control of Ash's unit, the third battalion, and try to root out the source of the corruption to restore order to the fledgling nation. Final Fantasy Tactics – Playstation Taking place in the same universe as Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy XII, this title is a throwback to some of the early Final Fantasy games in that it uses many of the original character classes, including black and white mages, summoners, monks, lancers, and thieves. The story revolves around two characters, Ramza and Delita, who have grown up in Ivalice during the Fifty Years War. When a regent is needed, a conflict arises between two members of the royal family, backed by two princes, referred to as the White Lion and Black Lion. The story addresses class issues of surprising complexity quite skillfully, and it was released in 1998, is no less relevant today. X-Com: UFO Defense – Playstation, PC Unlike many of the titles in this list which are set in imaginary realms, X-COM: UFO Defense takes place on the familiar territory of Earth. UFO sightings are increasing around the world. There are rumors of people being abducted, and even attacks by aliens in various places. The countries of the world attempt to form military units to defend the world with very little success, and so come together in Switzerland to form the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit, or "X-COM". The player is in command of this unit, battling the aliens as more information about them becomes available over the course of the game. Eventually, it comes to light that the alien threat is based out of Cydonia on Mars, and controlled by the Alien Brain, which the player must then attempt to destroy. With numerous offshoots including novels and board games, this chapter of the X-COM story continues to be popular, and is widely considered to be the best among a very strong series. Disgaea: Hour of Darkness – PS2 Laharl, a prince, awakes in a coffin, and is informed that his father, King Krichevskoy has passed away. Laharl knows he is the rightful heir to the throne, but unfortunately, it has been usurped by Vyers, a demon referring to himself as the "Dark Adonis". After Vyers' defeat and subsequent renaming to "Mid-Boss", Laharl is joined by Flonne, an angel trainee, and royal advisor Etna. An archangel, Vulcanus, witnesses these events, and is convinced that Flonne is committing treason. Through a fairly absurd series of events, with hidden identities and enemies eventually becoming friends and joining the party, it becomes clear that the Big Bad of the story is actually Vulcanus and the angel government to which he reports. Combat takes place on a gridded map, with the player controlling a party of humans and monsters alike. Each characters occupies a single square on the map, and can deal damage either to a specific enemy or region of the map. With unique combat and and an innovative map/panel system, this game established itself as a favorite, and continues to have a loyal following. Valkyria Chronicles – PS3 Developed by the same basic team responsible for Sakura Wars, this title combines the classic "tank/scout" dynamic with a few variations such as assault infantry, engineers, snipers, and "lancers" who concentrate on anti-tank warfare. Set far in the future on a fictional world that bears striking resemblance to WWII-era Europe, Valkyria Chronicles features a variety of charismatic characters. Combat is turn-based, as one might expect in Target Mode, and shifts to real time when in Action Mode. With a satisfying and engaging story arc, this game easily appeals to fans of JRPGs and old school strategy games alike. Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together – Playstation, Sega Saturn In the war-torn nation of Valeria, three ethnic groups are at odds: The majority of people belong to the Gargastans, who are split among themselves between moderates and extremists who differ greatly upon how a government should be set up and run. Along with the Gargastans, there are the Bacrumese, who are the upper class and wealthy elite, and the Walstanian, who are an very small, oppressed minority. After many years of strife, King Dolgare comes to power, and the tensions between the ethnic groups appear to cease. However, the Dolgare and his family are soon lost, and because there are no living heirs, the conflict arises once again, and Cardinal Barbatos comes to power. He begins a campaign of ethnic cleansing, with particular attention paid to eliminating the Walstanians. Denim Powell, a Walstanian from the city of Griate, and his sister Kachua, after suffering the loss of their father to a group known as the Dark Knights, plot revenge and attempt to seize power of the kingdom. Along with them is their friend Vice who, though he is a bit arrogant, has also lost both of his parents to the Dark Knights. The narrative of the game is heavily dependent upon character responses, with multiple endings for the ultimate outcome. Combined with a stirring soundtrack, this game is still enjoyed by many classic gamers.In response to a court deadline, today the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed the first-ever national standards for mercury, arsenic and other toxic air pollution from power plants. The new power plant mercury and air toxics standards – which eliminate 20 years of uncertainty across industry – would require many power plants to install widely available, proven pollution control technologies to cut harmful emissions of mercury, arsenic, chromium, nickel and acid gases, while preventing as many as 17,000 premature deaths and 11,000 heart attacks a year. The new proposed standards would also provide particular health benefits for children, preventing 120,000 cases of childhood asthma symptoms and about 11,000 fewer cases of acute bronchitis among children each year. The proposed standards would also avert more than 12,000 emergency room visits and hospital admissions and 850,000 fewer days of work missed due to illness. This rule will provide employment for thousands, by supporting 31,000 short-term construction jobs and 9,000 long-term utility jobs. “Today’s announcement is 20 years in the making, and is a significant milestone in the Clean Air Act’s already unprecedented record of ensuring our children are protected from the damaging effects of toxic air pollution,” said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. “With the help of existing technologies, we will be able to take reasonable steps that will provide dramatic protections to our children and loved ones, preventing premature deaths, heart attacks, and asthma attacks.” Toxic air pollutants like mercury from coal- and oil-fired power plants have been shown to cause neurological damage, including lower IQ, in children exposed in the womb and during early development. The standards also address emissions of other toxic metals linked with cancer such as arsenic, chromium and nickel. Mercury and many of the other toxic pollutants also damage the environment and pollute our nation’s lakes, streams, and fish. In addition, cutting these toxic pollutants also reduces fine particle pollution, which causes premature death, heart disease, workdays lost to illness and asthma. “The American Lung Association applauds the release of this sensible public health measure. When it becomes final, the cleanup rule that the EPA is putting forward today will save lives, protect the health of millions of Americans and finally bring about an action that is 20 years overdue. This must happen,” said Charles D. Connor, president and CEO of the American Lung Association. Power plants are the largest remaining source of several toxic air pollutants – responsible for half of mercury and more than half of acid gas emissions in the United States. In the power sector alone, coal-fired power plants are responsible for 99 percent of mercury emissions. Currently, more than half of all coal-fired power plants already deploy the widely available pollution control technologies that allow them to meet these important standards. Once final, these standards will ensure the remaining coal-fired plants, roughly 44 percent, take similar steps to decrease dangerous pollutants. The updated standards will provide a first-ever level playing field for all power plants across the country, ensure that they play by the same rules, and provide more certainty to business. The proposed rule provides up to 4 years for facilities to meet the standards and, once fully implemented, will prevent 91 percent of mercury in coal from being released into the air. More than 20 years ago, the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments mandated that EPA require control of toxic air pollutants including mercury. Since then, EPA has taken action to reduce mercury emissions from many high-emitting sources; however, there is still no national standard for mercury emissions from power plants. Today’s announcement is long awaited, coming 11 years after EPA announced it would set such limits for power plants, and following a February 2008 court decision that struck down the previous administration’s mercury rule. In October 2009, EPA entered into a consent decree that required a proposal to be signed by March 16, 2011, and a final rule to be completed by November 2011. The proposed mercury and air toxics standards are in keeping with President Obama’s executive order on regulatory reform. They are based on the latest data and provide industry significant flexibility in implementation through a phased-in approach and use of already existing technologies. The proposed standards also ensure that public health and economic benefits far outweigh costs of implementation. EPA estimates that for every dollar spent to reduce pollution from power plants, the American public and American businesses will see up to $13 in health and economic benefits. The total health and economic benefits of this standard are estimated to be as much as $140 billion annually. Also in keeping with the president’s executive order, the proposed standard puts a premium on important input and feedback from stakeholders to inform any final standard. The public comment period, which will last 60 days after appearing in the Federal Register, will allow stakeholders including the public, industry and public health communities, to provide important input and feedback, ensuring that any final standard maximizes public health benefits while minimizing costs. As part of the public comment process, EPA will also hold public hearings on this proposed rule. Additional details on these events will be announced at a future date. More information: http://www.epa.gov/airquality/powerplanttoxics/A US-based rights watchdog said the abduction-slay of a South Korean businessman by antidrug police operatives bolstered suspicion that law enforcers are behind the vigilante-style killing of more than 3,600 alleged drug suspects in the past six months. Human Rights Watch also voiced fears that policemen who now enjoy a license to kill in the name of President Duterte’s war on drugs will eventually venture into killing for personal profit. ADVERTISEMENT The nongovernment organization has been vocal in lambasting Duterte’s antidrug campaign, which has claimed the lives of more than 6,000 alleged drug suspects and bystanders mostly in extrajudicial fashion. At least 2,250 drug suspects were reportedly killed in police operations since July 1, 2016 while 3,603 more alleged drug users and dealers were killed by unidentified gunmen. Human Rights Watch said the extrajudicial killing of Hanjin executive Jee Ick-joo is “notably grotesque.” “Jee’s extrajudicial execution bolsters allegations that ‘death squads’ composed of police personnel operating in civilian clothes, are committing some and perhaps many of those killings,” Human Rights Watch deputy director for Asia Phelim Kine said on Thursday. The killing is “an ominous indicator of the breakdown of rule of law” under the Duterte administration, he said. The Department of Justice has recently approved the filing of kidnap for ransom with homicide charges against three members of the Philippine National Police Anti-Illegal Drugs Group and several John Does who abducted Jee from his home in Angeles City on Oct. 18 on false charges of illegal drug activities. A police officer was identified as the one who strangled Jee inside Camp Crame on the same day. But his abductors still demanded a $100,000 ransom, which the businessman’s family paid. Kine said the murder was the result of Mr. Duterte’s pledge to give policemen effective immunity if they kill in the name of his drug war. “Police have good reason to believe that they can literally get away with murder … Yet our previous research in the Philippines shows that those given a license to kill with impunity will eventually start doing so for personal profit,” he said. ADVERTISEMENT Read Next LATEST STORIES MOST READRoma winger interesting Malaga By Football Espana staff Roma winger Juan Iturbe could be set for a switch to Malaga in the close season. The 22-year-old has been on loan at Bournemouth since January but has struggled to cement a place in Eddie Howe´s side, appearing just twice for the Cherries. However, the Buenos Aires-born player could be offered a chance to kick-start his career in La Liga, with Malaga monitoring his situation. Reports in Italy claim Roma director of football Walter Sabatini wants the player to return to the Giallorossi, but boss Luciano Spalletti is not convinced Iturbe will fit into his plans for next season. The Costa del Sol outfit are understood to have wanted to take him on loan in the last transfer window, but eventually lost out to the Premier League club. Nonetheless, they are now looking to take Iturbe on loan with a view to a permanent deal at the end of next season should the arrangement prove successful. Although born in Argentina, the youngster was raised in Paraguay and has two caps for Los Guaranies, while he is likely to feature for them in this summer´s Copa America.All in the name of “officer safety,” of course: LEHIGH COUNTY, PA — A man may never walk again after he was shot in his driveway by a constable who had showed up to his home regarding unpaid parking tickets. Kevin McCullers, 38, was just about to make a trip to go buy some morning doughnuts when his life changed forever. Around 7:30 a.m. on July 17th, McCullers got into his car, opened his garage door, and put his car into reverse gear. As he backed out of the driveway, his girlfriend abruptly heard gunshots ring out. Two strange men were outside, and one had just shot Mr. McCullers while in the driver’s seat of his car. “They never knocked on the door! No nothing! I just heard the gunshots! He pulled the car out of the garage and all I heard were gunshots,” Hafeezah Muhammad told NBC 10 Philadelphia. She was inside the house during the attack. The shooter turned out to be a Pennsylvania State Constable, performing an early morning warrant service over unpaid parking tickets. The unnamed constable claimed that he feared for his life by Mr. McCullers backing out of his driveway — so he opened fire. “For someone to get shot, on the way to Dunkin’ Donuts, unarmed, for parking tickets? For tickets?! Its insane,” said Ms. Muhammad. Mr. McCullers was shot in the back. The bullet struck his spine, and he is now paralyzed from the waist down. He may never regain the ability to walk. The shooter has been allowed to remain anonymous. There has been no word on any discipline or criminal charges that he may face, if any.Photos by Sam Allard The West 65th Street "Eco Village" Red Line Rapid Station has two passenger entrances: one off Lorain Avenue, the other off Madison, where two fare machines greet riders on the honorary Fr. Bob Begin Bridge behind St. Colman's Church. One day this spring, while three RTA transit police officers were interacting with passengers in the main station (off Lorain), a robbery occurred on the opposite side. The perp stole a phone and was able to successfully flee, officers told Scene, because the officers were "focused on checking fares rather than patrolling the whole station." "Interacting with passengers" is how transit police brass now refer to writing citations for fare evasion. In current usage, the terms are interchangeable. If an officer assists an elderly rider with directions, that's not an interaction. If an officer breaks up a fight between juveniles, that's not an interaction either. If an officer responds to a call about a stolen cell phone or deals with everyday incidents such as public intoxication, open containers and disorderly conduct, those aren't interactions. Yet for the fare-enforcement officers on the 107-strong RTA transit police, "interactions" have become the primary focus and mission of the job. Officers told Scene that they're now expected to have 10 interactions (that is, to write 10 citations) per eight-hour shift, an unofficial quota that has steadily increased to its current number through 2017 for reasons they can't quite figure out. These more aggressive fare-enforcement methods have been pushed since March, they said, and have resulted in sinking staff morale and a high degree of turnover. "People are leaving left and right," said one officer, Brian (not his real name). "The department is in a state of chaos." "They keep putting pressure on us," said another officer, Vikram (not his real name). "Enforce fares, enforce fares, enforces fares. It's a zero-tolerance policy. If we don't enforce fares, our jobs are in jeopardy." Scene spoke with these two officers, who both agreed to share their personal experiences on the condition of anonymity due to an RTA employee policy that forbids employees from talking to the media. They described what they viewed as problems with the current honor-based fare collection and enforcement system. They said that transit police leaders (and possibly RTA executive leaders) are taking advantage of flaws in that system to generate revenue. In fact, the officers said, many of their colleagues feel like they have become "nothing more than revenue generators" for the cash-strapped RTA. Some background: On both the HealthLine, which shuttles riders from Public Square to East Cleveland along the Euclid Corridor, and the Red Line, which runs from the airport to the Windermere Station in East Cleveland, passengers board without having to show proof of payment. This "honor system" is intended chiefly to increase route efficiency. When the Euclid Corridor project was conceived and funded, level boarding, off-board fare collection and traffic signal prioritization were all central components in the design. On the Rapid's southeastern Blue and Green lines, meanwhile, riders aren't required to pay until they exit the train. Fare enforcement officers only do random checks on the Red Line and the HealthLine, where riders are supposed to pay before they board. Those random checks were the subject of an American Civil Liberties Union study in 2010. The ACLU analyzed RTA data and found that nine out of 10 riders who were given citations on the HealthLine were black. RTA president and CEO Joe Calabrese said at the time that officers weren't being discriminatory; the percentage of blacks cited for fare evasion was reflective, he said, of the percentage of black residents living in neighborhoods served by the HealthLine. That explanation wasn't good enough for the Cleveland NAACP (at that time led by George Forbes); the organization got involved to explore a civil remedy to what was then a criminal matter. Too many people of color were being needlessly exposed to the criminal justice system, the NAACP argued. Fare evasion was (and still is) a fourth-degree misdemeanor and must be processed in court. The ticket is $150, but can cost much more after additional fees and court costs. In 2011, RTA reached an agreement with the ACLU and the NAACP to establish an administrative fee waiver. First-time adult offenders were given the option to pay a $25 fee directly to RTA and forego criminal proceedings. As long as the fee was paid within three days
misuse of their products and an executive order determining the meaning of certain words used in federal statutes. The liability-shifting proposal is akin to punishing General Motors whenever a drunken driver misuses his Chevy and injures someone. The courts would surely reject that. The executive order proposal assaults the Constitution. Those in the gun sale business must conduct background checks via computer services offered by the FBI. The background checks look for reports of crimes of violence, domestic violence and mental illness. Private people who occasionally sell their hardware or give guns as gifts are exempt from conducting background checks. Clinton would create a presidentially written and mandated definition of occasional sales and gifts so as to require background checks for all gun transfers -- a requirement Congress rejected. We are 13 months from Election Day 2016, and Clinton has already promised that she would rule by pen and phone rather than govern by consensus. As a lawyer, Clinton should know that only the federal courts -- not the president -- can decide what statutory language means. Moreover, if she knew anything about FBI background checks, she would know that they are only as good as the database on which they rely. If a madman hides his mental illness, no database will reveal it. Her attacks on the Supreme Court decisions were direct. She rejects their characterization of the right to keep and bear arms as a fundamental right -- meaning that it is akin to thought, speech, press, association, worship, travel, etc. Yet if she were to become president, she would take an oath to uphold the Constitution; that means the Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court. The presidential oath of office would require that she execute her duties "faithfully" -- whether she agrees with the law or constitutional provision or not. She apparently has no intention of fulfilling the presidential oath of office. We are 13 months from Election Day 2016, and Clinton has already promised that she would not enforce Supreme Court decisions with which she disagrees. What did both the Newtown and the Roseburg tragedies have in common? Both murderers were madmen. Yet neither had a record of mental illness, so the background checks the anti-self-defense lobby loves would not have prevented either of these killers from buying a gun and using it to murder indiscriminately. If killers are prepared to murder innocent children, does Clinton really think they would obey the laws regulating gun ownership? Both mass murders occurred in no-gun zones. A no-gun zone is the most dangerous place on the planet when a madman intent on killing enters. No-gun zones are arbitrarily designated on public property by local authorities, stripping law-abiding folks of their lawfully owned guns -- their natural right to self-defense -- and exposing them to terror and death. The Constitution does not permit public no-gun zones any more than it does public no-free-speech zones. If the right to keep and bear arms is truly fundamental, the government cannot interfere with it based on geography. If the Army veteran/college student who stopped seven bullets with his body last week and saved the lives of his classmates (and survived!) had been permitted to carry a gun into the school building, the madman who murdered nine innocents would have been stopped long before police arrived -- long before he completed his killings. The right to keep and bear arms has more than just the Second Amendment to protect it. By characterizing the right as fundamental and pre-political, the high court accepted the truism that this right is merely a modern extension of the ancient right to self-defense. And the right to defend oneself does not come from the government; it comes from our humanity. It is a natural right. Who among us, when confronted with the terror of nearly certain annihilation, would concern himself with the niceties of the law? Life itself is at stake. The right to self-defense is a manifestation of the natural instinct for survival, borne in the hearts of all rational people. But Hillary Clinton rejects that instinct because she prefers we become dependent upon the government -- as long as she is running it. The police cannot stop mass killings, because they cannot be everywhere all the time. And madmen willing to kill do not fear being lawbreakers. Guns in the hands of the people give not only tyrants second thoughts but also madmen. Even madmen fear an early death.In a line of small central Massachusetts towns that voted for President Trump, Gov. Charlie Baker is popular. Though a new WBUR poll (topline results \| crosstabs) finds he's even more popular among registered Democrats than his fellow registered Republicans. Overall, Baker is viewed favorably by 65 percent of those surveyed in the communities, compared with 13 percent who view him unfavorably. And among this thin slice of the Massachusetts electorate, 71 percent of Democrats have a favorable view of Baker, compared with 65 percent of Republicans who view him favorably. The strong overall views of Baker are not new. A Morning Consult survey released this week found him to be the most popular governor in the country. Approval in this Republican area of the state is unsurprisingly lower for Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren. She's viewed favorably by 39 percent of voters, and 50 percent view her unfavorably. And unlike Baker, Warren's numbers in these towns clearly break down along partisan lines. Seventy-six percent of Democrats view her favorably, while just 8 percent of Republicans feel the same way. Forty-six percent of respondents think Warren has been too critical of President Trump. The survey was done in conjunction with our series on the "red line" running north to south through central Massachusetts. The poll found a strong majority of Trump voters in these towns have so far stood by the president. A majority of voters surveyed were registered as unenrolled; that's true at the state level as well. A plurality of voters in these towns said they supported Trump in November. Conducted from Friday through Sunday, the live telephone poll surveyed 501 voters in selected central Massachusetts communities. It has a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points. Poll recap written by Benjamin Swasey. Series reporter Anthony Brooks joined Radio Boston to discuss the poll and the series. Listen to the segment atop this post. Guest Anthony Brooks, WBUR senior political reporter. He tweets @anthonygbrooks.10:09am: The deal being discussed is not for Latos, Jason Beck of MLB.com tweets. That would appear to mean that Cincinnati is having active discussions on two of their starters. 9:35am: The Tigers are talking about a deal with the Reds to add a starting pitcher and could be close to an agreement, Jon Morosi of FOX Sports reports on Twitter. Discussions are completely separate from Detroit’s talks with the Red Sox, C. Trent Rosecrans of the Cincinnati Enquirer tweets. Cincinnati, of course, has several quality starters playing out the final year of their contracts. The club has long been rumored to be a possible trade partner for teams seeking to boost their 2015 rotations. Of course, it was not at all clear that Detroit would be such a club, but it appears that it re-entered the market for starters after agreeing to send Rick Porcello to the Red Sox today. With the Reds said to be in talks with both the Tigers and Marlins on starters, it will be fascinating to see whether that means the club is shipping out two arms or instead overseeing a bidding war over the same one. Reports have tied the Marlins’ interest to Mat Latos, though Johnny Cueto, Mike Leake, and Alfredo Simon all are theoretical trade candidates as well.Nigel Farage with Donald Trump at an election rally in Jackson, Mississippi. Credit:AP He is now, of course, president-elect Donald Trump's chief strategist, having guided his campaign since mid-August in a "let Trump be Trump" hardball run to the finish line. Insiders say it is thanks to Bannon that Nigel Farage became the first foreign politician to meet Mr Trump after his election win, in a major embarrassment to British prime minister Theresa May and foreign secretary Boris Johnson. Then Anglo-American relations were blown into uncharted waters on Tuesday, when Mr Trump tweeted his desire to see Mr Farage as the next British ambassador to the US. Back in 2014 Bannon had discovered a kindred spirit in Farage, says Andre Walker, a former Conservative staffer who joined Breitbart when it opened its London office in early 2014, and is familiar with most of the players. He is now a lobby reporter for the New York Observer – owned by Mr Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson got the job after Brexit, now must fight off efforts to install Nigel Farage as US ambassador. Credit:Getty The matchmaker was the Breitbart's London editor-in-chief Raheem Kassam, an ambitious then-27 year-old Londoner, the atheist son of Tanzanian Muslim immigrants. According to Walker, Kassam suggested to Bannon that he meet Farage – and Bannon was keen despite the long travel time. Donald Trump making his visit to Scotland during the campaign. Credit:AP "Bannon said if he's in Cambridge, if he can give me 10-15 minutes I'm happy to do it," Walker said. "So he's flown over to the UK (and) jumped into a cab to Cambridge (a 4-5 hour round trip)." Walker recalled that Farage was in Cambridge for a speech at the Cambridge Union. Theresa May, UK prime minister, is not the first British politician to meet President-elect Trump. Credit:Bloomberg Fairfax Media was unable to find a record of any such speech in 2014, and asked if Walker was referring to a speech in May 2014 in St Ives, close to Cambridge. Walker said he was. "That was the start of the relationship… from my discussions with Bannon he very much sees the Tea Party and UKIP as the same thing. He described to me that the key difference was that the Tea Party was using primaries to put their candidates in power as Republicans, whereas obviously UKIP can't do that. Stephen Bannon lounging around his luxury townhouse located beside the Supreme Court in Washington. Credit:Bloomberg "They firmly believe that Brexit and the election of Trump are indivisible movements of people who don't like the way establishment Conservatives have failed them." Walker said Bannon and Farage are temperamentally alike, too, they (and Trump) "all believe in just putting it out there". "You never have to worry that Steve Bannon's going to backstab you because he will simply tell you to his face what he thinks," he said. Kassam confirmed to Fairfax that "I am the link" between Bannon and Farage, but declined an interview because "I don't want to pump myself up". Months after the Cambridge meeting Kassam would jump ship to UKIP to become a senior staffer for Farage in the run-up to the 2015 general election. At the time, Bannon wrote he was a "huge piece of manpower… the entire company will miss his intelligence and drive". Kassam returned to Breitbart after the UK election, reportedly on a mission to increase UKIP coverage. In mid-August this year, Bannon took over the running of Trump's campaign. Days later Trump cryptically tweeted "They will soon be calling me Mr Brexit!". And a week later Farage addressed a Trump rally in Jackson Mississippi, to the bemusement of many, telling them "I come from the United Kingdom with a message of hope… if the ordinary decent people are prepared to stand up and fight for what they believe in, we can overcome… we made June 23 our Independence Day when we smashed the establishment." Farage's speech predicted what is now orthodoxy: that Trump would win for the same reasons and against the same headwinds as Brexit. Then three days after Trump's win Farage became probably the first foreign politician, certainly the first British politician, to meet the president-elect. He tweeted afterwards a photo of himself standing with Trump in front of a Trump Tower gold door. He didn't go in alone. Kassam later Tweeted another gold door photo. This featured Trump (giving the thumbs up) alongside Farage, Kassam, UKIP's multi-millionaire backer Arron Banks and Leave campaign comms chief Andrew Wigmore. Kassam then tweeted a photo from outside Trump Tower of himself, Farage, Banks and Wigmore, with the comment 'The Brex Pistols". Walker believes Bannon orchestrated the meeting, with Trump's approval, to send a message. "What it says is 'here are the people I can work with'." Then on Tuesday came the tweet. The response from Whitehall and Number Ten to the idea of putting Farage, an unpredictable and uncontrollable political opponent, into a key ambassadorial role was a stiff "the job's taken". Foreign secretary Boris Johnson told parliament "we have a first rate ambassador in Washington doing a very good job … and there is no vacancy for that position." But, Walker said, "you've got to be realistic. There will now be a role for Farage in one shape or form." If it's not as Britain's official ambassador, it will be as de facto chief negotiator in post-Brexit trade talks with the US. "One thing that is guaranteed, whether May likes it or not Farage is going to end up advising on the US-UK trade deal, simply because Trump will call on him and Bannon will call on him to discuss it. That is just a fait accompli and (the British government) might as well bring it within the tent. Loading "In a post-Brexit world the most important thing is bilateral trade deals. Trump is keen on them. And he's a kindred spirit with Farage in terms of what the trade deal would look like. "The whole Breitbart thing and the whole Trump narrative is about the Anglosphere, about free trade agreements with all the English speaking nations of the world. That's the game."Last week, the first live action trailer for Destiny 2 came out and I didn't hate it, which surprised me because almost all live action trailers for videogames are god awful. But, shucks, now I hate the US live action trailer because the Japanese take is fucking incredible. Yeah, I just cussed in the first paragraph. It's that good. Here's the brief, in case three minutes is too much time to gamble with. Adults in fancy guardian cosplay have a dance-off, one-upping each other by busting out their supers abilities, glow sticks, and a soccer ball. On first watch, it's absurd, but then the realization creeps in. Destiny 2 isn't really about mild space drama and'saving the puppies'—it's about using your dance emote whenever it's the least appropriate. It's about using the best dance emote animation in videogames to communicate with strangers in an abandoned industrial lot (metaphor for life) and to enjoy the abandoned industrial lot despite how abandoned and industrial it is. It's about looking Ghaul in his weird Bane face and working it. Destiny 2 is out now on consoles and Tim thinks it's an incremental, worthwhile improvement on the first game, but while you wait until the October 24 PC release date, you can dream about how nice your dance moves will look in our complete performance analysis.What do we make of a boy like Thomas? Thomas (his middle name) is a fifth-grader at the highly competitive P.S. 334, the Anderson School on West 84th. Slim as they get, Thomas recently had his long sandy-blond hair cut short to look like the new James Bond (he took a photo of Daniel Craig to the barber). Unlike Bond, he prefers a uniform of cargo pants and a T-shirt emblazoned with a photo of one of his heroes: Frank Zappa. Thomas hangs out with five friends from the Anderson School. They are the smart kids. Thomas’s one of them, and he likes belonging. Since Thomas could walk, he has heard constantly that he’s smart. Not just from his parents but from any adult who has come in contact with this precocious child. When he applied to Anderson for kindergarten, his intelligence was statistically confirmed. The school is reserved for the top one percent of all applicants, and an IQ test is required. Thomas didn’t just score in the top one percent. He scored in the top one percent of the top one percent. But as Thomas has progressed through school, this self-awareness that he’s smart hasn’t always translated into fearless confidence when attacking his schoolwork. In fact, Thomas’s father noticed just the opposite. Thomas didn’t want to try things he wouldn’t be successful at, his father says. Some things came very quickly to him, but when they didn’t, he gave up almost immediately, concluding, I’m not good at this.’ With no more than a glance, Thomas was dividing the world into twothings he was naturally good at and things he wasn’t. For instance, in the early grades, Thomas wasn’t very good at spelling, so he simply demurred from spelling out loud. When Thomas took his first look at fractions, he balked. The biggest hurdle came in third grade. He was supposed to learn cursive penmanship, but he wouldn’t even try for weeks. By then, his teacher was demanding homework be completed in cursive. Rather than play catch-up on his penmanship, Thomas refused outright. Thomas’s father tried to reason with him. Look, just because you’re smart doesn’t mean you don’t have to put out some effort. (Eventually, he mastered cursive, but not without a lot of cajoling from his father.) Why does this child, who is measurably at the very top of the charts, lack confidence about his ability to tackle routine school challenges? Thomas is not alone. For a few decades, it’s been noted that a large percentage of all gifted students (those who score in the top 10 percent on aptitude tests) severely underestimate their own abilities. Those afflicted with this lack of perceived competence adopt lower standards for success and expect less of themselves. They underrate the importance of effort, and they overrate how much help they need from a parent. When parents praise their children’s intelligence, they believe they are providing the solution to this problem. According to a survey conducted by Columbia University, 85 percent of American parents think it’s important to tell their kids that they’re smart. In and around the New York area, according to my own (admittedly nonscientific) poll, the number is more like 100 percent. Everyone does it, habitually. The constant praise is meant to be an angel on the shoulder, ensuring that children do not sell their talents short. But a growing body of researchand a new study from the trenches of the New York public-school systemstrongly suggests it might be the other way around. Giving kids the label of smart does not prevent them from underperforming. It might actually be causing it. For the past ten years, psychologist Carol Dweck and her team at Columbia (she’s now at Stanford) studied the effect of praise on students in a dozen New York schools. Her seminal worka series of experiments on 400 fifth-graderspaints the picture most clearly. Dweck sent four female research assistants into New York fifth-grade classrooms. The researchers would take a single child out of the classroom for a nonverbal IQ test consisting of a series of puzzlespuzzles easy enough that all the children would do fairly well. Once the child finished the test, the researchers told each student his score, then gave him a single line of praise. Randomly divided into groups, some were praised for their intelligence. They were told, You must be smart at this. Other students were praised for their effort: You must have worked really hard. Why just a single line of praise? We wanted to see how sensitive children were, Dweck explained. We had a hunch that one line might be enough to see an effect. Then the students were given a choice of test for the second round. One choice was a test that would be more difficult than the first, but the researchers told the kids that they’d learn a lot from attempting the puzzles. The other choice, Dweck’s team explained, was an easy test, just like the first. Of those praised for their effort, 90 percent chose the harder set of puzzles. Of those praised for their intelligence, a majority chose the easy test. The smart kids took the cop-out.Starting May 31, T-Mobile users are going to be able to use their phone numbers in an entirely new way. The new feature, known as DIGITS, is rolling out to all customers, the company said Thursday. It lets you connect all the devices you own to a single phone number — meaning you'll be able to receive text messages and voice calls not just on your own phone, but to any other device you link with that number, such as a work phone or smartwatch. You'll also be able to send and receive messages on a PC through a Web browser, T-Mobile said. For people who juggle multiple devices, this could make life easier by making it so that they no longer have to give out numerous phone numbers. And users won't need to do anything to make it happen; T-Mobile said it will add DIGITS capabilities to its customers' existing lines automatically. Another feature of DIGITS is that users will be able to associate the same device with multiple phone numbers. So, for example, if you want to keep work and personal life separate but still receive both types of calls on the same phone, you can sign up for an additional phone number and give that one out to your professional contacts while reserving your original phone number for close friends and family. T-Mobile is charging an extra $10 per month for each additional phone number, though customers who are on the T-Mobile One Plus plan are temporarily being offered one extra phone number for free. This could come in handy if you intend to use a DIGITS number like a throwaway email address to protect your privacy — giving it out whenever you're dealing with someone you might not fully trust with your personal data. As more Americans turn to smart, connected devices for everyday tasks, some are also having to make sure that any work they do on one of them gets reflected across all of them. Universal phone numbers that work across devices can help us keep track of our gadgets — and allow us to get creative with our communications strategies. Google was among the earliest to experiment with this idea. Released in 2009, its Google Voice service allowed users to assign themselves a new, virtual phone number that could ring all of their phones. AT&T rolled out a similar feature in 2015 called NumberSync. But T-Mobile getting in the game means that many more people who haven't linked their devices together will soon get their first opportunity to try.Edward Thomas Schafer (born August 8, 1946) is an American businessman and politician who was the 30th Governor of North Dakota from 1992 to 2000. Schafer also served as the 29th United States Secretary of Agriculture from 2008 to 2009, appointed by President George W. Bush. From January through June 2016, he served as interim president of the University of North Dakota.[1] Early life, education and family [ edit ] Schafer was born and raised in Bismarck, North Dakota, United States and is the son of Marian Nelsen and businessman Harold Schafer. He is of German descent.[2] He has one sister, Pamela (Pam). Schafer attended the University of North Dakota, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1969. He pledged and became a member of Sigma Nu fraternity while an undergraduate. His M.B.A. degree was obtained from the University of Denver in 1970.[3] The former Nancy Jones is Schafer's wife. Together, they have two children: Thomas "Tom" Schafer and Ellie Schafer. Schafer has two stepchildren: Eric Jones and Kari (Jones) Hammer.[4] His sister, Pam Schafer, was the first wife of former Democratic-NPL U.S. Senator Kent Conrad.[5] Gold Seal Company [ edit ] Schafer took a full-time job after graduation with his family's firm, the Gold Seal Company. Gold Seal was a North Dakota-based manufacturing company founded and owned by his father, Harold Schafer, in 1942. Gold Seal was the distributor of "Mr. Bubble" bubble bath, "Glass Wax" glass cleaner and "Snowy Bleach".[6] Ed Schafer rose through the ranks at Gold Seal, working in several divisions of the company. Eventually, he served as company president from 1978 to 1985. At its height, Gold Seal generated more than $50 million in annual revenues, which made it one of North Dakota's largest privately held firms.[7] Junkyard Wars engineering game show TV competition [ edit ] Schafer has had a long-time interest in building machinery and equipment from used, scrap materials. Schafer was selected as a contestant on the Discovery Channel's engineering game show Junkyard Wars, when his team worked to build a machine from junked components.[8] In 2003, Schafer was seen competing during the fifth season of the show, when he also served as the captain of the "High Flyers" team. His team took 2nd Place in the competition, losing to the "Jet Doctors" in the Season Five finale.[citation needed] Governor of North Dakota [ edit ] Schafer was elected twice and served as the 30th governor of North Dakota, holding office from 1992 to 2000.[4] He is a Republican and a self-styled conservative.[9] In 1990, Schafer unsuccessfully challenged then-U.S. Congressman Byron Dorgan as Dorgan ran for re-election. Schafer captured 35% of the vote, to 65% for the Dorgan, the Democratic candidate. He entered the North Dakota gubernatorial general election campaign of 1992 as the Republican nominee. He and the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor Rosemarie Myrdal were victorious over the Democratic candidate for governor, former Attorney General of North Dakota, Nicholas Spaeth and the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, Julie Hill. Schafer and Myrdal captured nearly 58% of the vote, compared to 41% for Spaeth and Hill. Upon his inauguration, Schafer became the first North Dakota Governor to be married while in office. When Schafer became chief executive, North Dakota was facing major budgetary and financial hurdles. This continued, on and off, throughout his two terms. "As governor, Schafer had to deal with budget crunches during his eight years as state budget maker in the Capitol," according to the Bismarck Tribune.[10] While governor, Schafer oversaw annual state budgets that exceeded $4.5 billion and a state employee workforce of more than 12,000.[4] Schafer made the expansion and diversification of North Dakota's economy a priority. For example, he worked with the private sector to expand the production and distribution of value-added agricultural products such as corn sweeteners and pasta. During his time in office, he helped to build a closer trading relationship with China in concert with other North Dakota government officials, federal government trade specialists and private sector business leaders. These efforts assisted in the development of China into a primary export market for North Dakota's products and services in the 1990s. As governor during the rise of the global internet and the internet's introduction to broader society, Schafer realized the need for internet access across North Dakota. Schafer worked with both government and business leaders, implementing various efforts "to upgrade North Dakota's communications infrastructure and make high-speed voice and data networks available to farmers, ranchers and rural businesses", and to individual households.[4] In 1995, Schafer served as Chair of the Midwestern Governors Association. When Governor Schafer ran for reelection in 1996, he and Lt. Gov. Rosemarie Myrdal defeated Lee Kaldor, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate and Barbara Pyle, the Democratic candidate running for lieutenant governor. Schafer and Myrdal received about two-thirds of the total votes in the general election. Schafer's long-held interest in conservation led him to help arrange the U.S. Forest Service's May 2007 purchase of the 5,200 acre Elkhorn Ranch in North Dakota, while Schafer was governor.[11] The Elkhorn Ranch was established by former United States president Theodore Roosevelt as his main working ranch in the North Dakota Badlands, and is now protected as a unit of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. In 1999-2000, during the final portion of his second term, Schafer served as chair of the Republican Governors Association. He did not seek reelection for governor in 2000. Work life and political activities in the 2000s [ edit ] Schafer was co-founder and CEO of Extend America, a start-up wireless communications company he founded after leaving office as governor. In 2002, Schafer was appointed as civilian aide to the United States Secretary of the Army. Schafer acted as a frequent guest host of the "Hot Talk" radio program on WDAY-AM in Fargo, North Dakota. Prior to his appointment to the cabinet, Schafer also served as an advisor and occasional spokesperson for the North Dakota chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group backed by the Koch Brothers.[12] Ed Schafer became a supporter of the North Dakota Taxpayers' Association, serving as an advisor and a keynote speaker. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture [ edit ] In October 2007 Schafer was nominated by then-President George W. Bush to be the next Secretary of Agriculture.[13] Schafer had wide support in the Senate. His hearing was originally scheduled for January 30, 2008, but was moved up on the request of North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad so that Schafer could attend the State of the Union address as a cabinet member.[14] That confirmation hearing was held on January 24,[15] with Senators asking Schafer questions on various topics such as US beef exports to Japan and South Korea, the Department of Agriculture's ability to deliver on programs passed by Congress, policy on sugar, and cotton prices.[16] On January 28, he was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Later that same day, as Secretary of Agriculture, Shafer did attend the State of the Union Address with other members of the President's cabinet.[17] Schafer was in office for less than two days when a major scandal erupted concerning animal cruelty and unsafe food practices by Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Company, the nation's second-largest supplier of ground beef to the National School Lunch Program. The school lunch program is administered by the Department of Agriculture. This led to the largest recall of meat in the history of the United States. The issues of how best to handle the problems of unsafe food practices and animal cruelty by USDA-inspected meat processing plants became a major focus of Schafer's administration. The Humane Society of the United States received video showing multiple instances of workers abusing and torturing cattle who had fallen and were unable to walk into kill pens on their own, videographed in October and November 2007. The Humane Society, and many meat animal experts, ethicists and nutritionists objected to the use of downer cattle, or non-ambulatory cattle for human food, because of health, food safety - and because the cruelty showed ethical lapses on the part of Hallmark's management in over-seeing the behavior of their employees. The company recalled massive quantities of beef and voluntarily shut down the plant where these videos were taken. According to the Cattlemen's Beef Promotions Board "The 143 million pound recall of beef from Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Company triggered significant (media) coverage and renewed skepticism about the safety of the nation's beef supply and the competency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)."[18] At issue for USDA, under Schafer, and the Senate was whether these sick, injured and/or aged non-ambulatory cattle were safe for humans to eat. In his February 28, 2008 testimony before the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies, Secretary Schafer indicated "that he would not endorse an outright ban on "downer" cows entering the food supply or back stiffer penalties for regulatory violations by meat-processing plants in the wake of the largest beef recall in the nation's history."[19] Specifically, "the penalties are strong and swift, as we have shown," Schafer said. "Financially, I don't see how this company can survive. People need to be responsible and, from USDA's standpoint, they will be held responsible.... They broke the rules. That does not mean the rules are wrong. I believe the rules are adequate."[20] Under Secretary Schafer's leadership, the Agriculture Department promised to improve animal welfare and human food safety. On August 27, 2008, USDA announced a proposed change in the rule regarding the treatment and handling of downer cattle. In a reversal of his February testimony to the Senate, Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer indicated that "to maintain consumer confidence in the food supply, eliminate further misunderstanding of the rule and, ultimately, to make a positive impact on the humane handling of cattle, I believe it is sound policy to simplify this matter by initiating a complete ban on the slaughter of downer cattle."[21] As Secretary Schafer predicted in his February 2008 Senate testimony, Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Company subsequently went out of business. Based in part on the initial work done by USDA personnel during Schafer's tenure as Agriculture Secretary, the U.S. Government sued Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Company based on farm animal cruelty (to downer cattle), misrepresentation and fraud, winning a massive final judgement of $497 million. This was the largest judgment ever entered for agriculture-related fraud and farm animal cruelty in federal court history. In this first-of-its-kind fraud case, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) at the behest of USDA joined a lawsuit with the Humane Society of the U.S. against Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Company. The lawsuit alleged that the Hallmark/Westland defrauded the federal government by violating and misrepresenting their compliance with the terms of their federal school lunch program contracts requiring the humane handling of animals. A final judgement was entered in the case against defendant Hallmark Meat Packing Company in the amount of $497,000,000.00 in 2012 in favor of the DOJ. Yet that the majority of the $497 million was never recovered by the DOJ because of the company's bankruptcy and cessation of all business. The amount was reduced to $155 million as part of the final settlement with the remaining defendants. Part of the judgement amount was paid personally by company executives and members of the Hallmark family in structured settlements.[22][23] These huge judgements and settlements in favor of the federal government were intended by the Department of Justice and the Department of Agriculture to deter future animal cruelty in and fraud by the nation's slaughterhouses.[24] Schafer left the Secretary of Agriculture position at the end of the Bush administration in January 2009.[25][26] Interim president of the University of North Dakota [ edit ] Schafer was appointed as the interim president of the University of North Dakota on November 9, 2016, by the Board of Higher Education. Among several dozen applicants for the interim office received by the state, Schafer stated he had no intention to apply to become the next permanent president.[27] Shafer signed a contract on December 2, 2015, to fill in for former University of North Dakota president Robert Kelley upon Kelley's retirement, which took place on January 14, 2016. This interim position Schafer accepted with "some hesitancy", he said. Schafer's appointment as interim president of the University of North Dakota "did not sit well with a significant portion of the university faculty, according to the faculty representative on the Board of Higher Education." This lack of support by that portion of the university faculty was due in large part to the facts that Schafer did not possess an earned doctorate nor did he have any administrative experience in a research university, according to Eric Murphy, the advisor to the North Dakota State Board of Higher Education. "The faculty voice is in opposition to" Schafer's selection as interim president, Murphy said.[28] Schafer's working life was spent primarily in the realms of business and politics. Despite his lack of academic leadership experience, Schafer became the highest-paid administrator in the state's entire higher education system history to that time. Schafer was paid $33,216 per month for his work that commenced on January 15, 2016, and continued through June 30, 2016.[29][30] Schafer's contract paid him $2,250 per month more than the retiring president, Robert Kelley, was earning after more than seven years in that position. Among the tasks Schafer inherited was overseeing the final stages of the Fighting Sioux naming issue that erupted over objections by various tribes, ethnic groups, and First Nation peoples identifying as Sioux, many other groups and thought leaders because of the University's use of the Sioux name and identity for its sports teams. On Schafer's first day as interim president, the University's Graphic Identity RFP Evaluation and Recommendation Team met to begin reviewing the 16 proposals from design firms for a new logo design for the Fighting Hawks. Five months later, near the end of his interim term, Schafer revealed the new logo at a news conference on June 22, 2016, referring to the logo's debut as a "historic moment".[31] On March 15, 2016, the selection of Mark Kennedy as the 12th president of the University of North Dakota was announced.[32] Kennedy's term began on July 1, 2016, succeeding Schafer. Electoral history [ edit ]There isn’t much local Chef Pedro Miguel Schiaffino won’t eat. His highly accliamed Amaz restaurant is devoted to finding and using Amazonian food native to the country, like a 600-pound freshwater fish or a little-known fruit nicknamed “cannonball” that tastes like a cross between a guava, coconut, and melon. But a year ago Mr. Schiaffino stopped eating supermarket tomatoes. Even though Peru is the birthplace of the crop, it’s difficult to find anything other than hard, pale Roma tomatoes in supermarkets, and Schiaffino says that worried him. “They’re a big monoculture, which is why people usually end up using [genetically modified organisms] GMOs. Because when you have monocultures, the crops end up getting diseases, and you have to look for these extreme ways to fix them,” he says. Peru was the cradle of the Inca Empire, and today it’s home to many crops indigenous to the Americas. It has 400 varieties of potato alone, and a geography that allows farmers to grow almost anything. It's also the only country in the Americas to put a 10-year ban on genetically modified food, with a law that was first introduced in 2011, and went into effect at the end of last year. Its basic intention, say Schiaffino and
that the Commerce Tower Group, of which Mr. Knight is a partner, acquired the property just 70 days after he walked through it for the first time a year ago. In October, the company plans to begin converting the 500,000-square-foot tower into a $90 million vertical city of residential and office space, and retailing and restaurants. The renovation will also include a Park University satellite location, which already operates in the building, and an early childhood school, among other amenities like a fitness center and a rooftop gathering spot. “The best plan really doesn’t matter if timing isn’t on your side, and in Kansas City, the timing couldn’t be better,” Mr. Knight said. “It’s like all the tumblers on a safe door lining up. Click — you’ve got a winner.”Listen to the biggest and most memorable hits of this very week in each of the years listed, or visit the decade-specific pages on this site. Take a trip down memory lane, or learn about a time in popular music before you came along. © 2019 numberoneinhistory.com Free Spotify sign-up This Week’s Top 40 Hits: 5 years ago this week (2014): 10 years ago this week (2009): 15 years ago this week (2004): 20 years ago this week (1999): 25 years ago this week (1994): 30 years ago this week (1989): 35 years ago this week (1984): 40 years ago this week (1979): 45 years ago this week (1974): 50 years ago this week (1969): 55 years ago this week (1964): 60 years ago this week (1959): 65 years ago this week (1954): 70 years ago this week (1949): 75 years ago this week (1944): What’s in these playlists? The top hits from this very week in that year, plus other songs that may not have been huge hits at the time but that have gone down as classics, or as influential, or as memorable novelties. How often are these lists updated? Each list gets freshened at least every two weeks. I can’t get the songs to play in Spotify. Try opening the app in the background first. Then click on several different songs and be patient. Sometimes the app is slow to respond at first but eventually catches up.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday forcefully defended her handling of the September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in the Libyan city of Benghazi and denied any effort to mislead the American people. The attack by armed militants that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans threatens to stain Clinton’s legacy as secretary of state and could cast a longer shadow should she decide to make a White House run in 2016. By turns emotional and fierce, Clinton choked up at one point in six hours of congressional testimony as she spoke of comforting the Benghazi victims’ families and grew angry when a Republican accused the Obama administration of misleading the country over whether the attack stemmed from a protest. “With all due respect, the fact is that we had four dead Americans,” Clinton said angrily as she testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, an appearance delayed more than a month because of her ill health. “Was it because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make?” she said, making chopping motions with her hands for emphasis. “It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again.” During the morning Senate hearing and a later session in the U.S. House of Representatives, Republicans and Democrats pointed fingers at each other, with Republicans accusing Clinton’s State Department of mismanagement and Democrats defending her. But little new information about the Benghazi incident and the administration’s response to it emerged from the lengthy hearings. Clinton did say that there were at least 20 other U.S. diplomatic posts under serious security threat, but declined to name them at the public session. Clinton cast the Benghazi incident as part of a long history of such violence as well as the result of instability since the Arab Spring of popular revolutions began in 2011, toppling authoritarian rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. “Benghazi did not happen in a vacuum,” Clinton said. “The Arab revolutions have scrambled power dynamics and shattered security forces across the region.” ‘I TAKE RESPONSIBILITY’ On the same day as the Benghazi assault, a mob angered by a U.S.-made video depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a fool and philanderer attacked the U.S. embassy in Cairo. There were later attacks on U.S. embassies in Tunisia, Yemen and Sudan. Republicans harshly criticized Clinton, and President Barack Obama’s administration more generally, with Senator Bob Corker saying the Benghazi attack and the U.S. response displayed “woeful unpreparedness” for the events sweeping the region. Senator Rand Paul said Clinton should have been fired. Clinton, echoing comments she first made on October 15, said: “I take responsibility.” She stressed that she had accepted all the recommendations of an independent panel that investigated the incident and that held lower-level officials responsible. “Nobody is more committed to getting this right. I am determined to leave the State Department and our country safer, stronger and more secure,” Clinton said. Militants attacked and overwhelmed the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 in a sustained assault. The official U.S. inquiry released on December 18 concluded that “leadership and management failures” in two State Department bureaus led to a security posture “inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place.” The unclassified version of the “Accountability Review Board” report also faulted poor coordination and unclear lines of authority in Washington. Four lower-level officials were placed on administrative leave following the release of the inquiry, which did not find Clinton personally at fault. Clinton is expected to step down in the coming days once her designated successor, Senator John Kerry, is confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Originally due to testify on December 20, Clinton had to postpone after she suffered a concussion when she fainted due to dehydration. Doctors later found she had a blood clot in her head and hospitalized her for several days. Several senators, noting the vehemence of Clinton’s defense, said she appeared to have fully recovered. While many senators warmly praised her four-year tenure as secretary of state, and several hinted at the possibility of her running for president in 2016, some Republicans were scathing. They pressed Clinton about what they described as an August 16, 2012 cable from Stevens saying that the Benghazi mission could not withstand a coordinated attack. “That cable did not come to my attention,” Clinton replied, saying that the State Department receives 1.43 million cables a year. U.S.Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies on the September attack on U.S. diplomatic sites in Benghazi, Libya during a hearing held by the House Foreign Affairs committee on Capitol Hill in Washington January 23, 2013. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque “Had I been president at the time and I found that you did not read the cables... from Ambassador Stevens, I would have relieved you of your post. I think it’s inexcusable,” Paul, a Kentucky Republican, told Clinton. ‘AS COMBATIVE AS EVER’ Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, told Clinton it was “wonderful to see you in good health and as combative as ever,” before going on to say that he categorically rejected one of her answers and found others unsatisfactory. While clouding Clinton’s tenure at the State Department, the controversy over the Benghazi attack also cost Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, her chance to succeed Clinton as secretary of state. Republicans in Congress blasted Rice for her comments five days after the attack in which she said it appeared to be the result of a spontaneous protest rather than a planned assault. Rice, who has said her comments were based on talking points from the U.S. intelligence community, eventually withdrew her name from consideration for the top U.S. diplomatic job. “We were misled that there were supposedly protests and then something sprang out of that, an assault sprang out of that,” Senator Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, told Clinton, referring to Rice’s appearance on Sunday television talk shows. Clinton rejected the charge. “People have accused Ambassador Rice and the administration of, you know, misleading Americans,” she said. “Nothing could be further from the truth.” Earlier in her testimony, Clinton appeared to try subtly to distance herself from Rice’s comments. “The very next morning, I told the American people that heavily armed militants assaulted our compound, and I vowed to bring them to justice. And I stood with President Obama in the (White House) Rose Garden as he spoke of an act of terror,” she said. Clinton’s voice cracked as she spoke of comforting families who lost relatives in the incident, the first since 1988 in which a U.S. ambassador was killed. “For me, this is not just a matter of policy - it’s personal,” Clinton told the Senate panel. Slideshow (4 Images) “I stood next to President Obama as the Marines carried those flag-draped caskets off the plane at Andrews,” she added, her voice breaking as she described the ceremony at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland when the men’s remains were brought home. “I put my arms around the mothers and fathers, the sisters and brothers, the sons and daughters and the wives left alone to raise their children,” she said.Stardate 94150.44 Introduction One of the problems about Utopia Planitia was it size, each Drydock had to be connected via Conduits to a Hub, which then connected to a Spire, which usually had Hangar Bays and several Checkpoints in order to proceed into the Hubs and Drydocks. Unlike the other Docks, Dock 9 of Spire 18 was much larger than the standard Drydock, trumping even Hub 21's Docks which had been used to produce the Odyssey class. It was here in Dock 9 that a dream was finally coming to fruition. It had been 6 months since the Fleet Admiral's little Jaunt to the previously unknown Kelvin Timeline. Which, in the aftermath of a need for a new Dreadnought platform resulted in the wishes of one Admiral Marcus coming to fruition. Utopia Planitia, already spun up to produce Odyssey classes had been easily been able to modify Dock 9 to accommodate for the Dreadnought class's enlarged platform compared to the Odyssey. As such, the first of the new Vengeance-class, USS Kronan NCC-92828 was ready to set sale. — Utopia Planitia Shipyards - Spire 18, Dock 9 - Bridge - USS Kronan Admiral's Log: Stardate 94150.44 - Kronan, finally having been built after much deliberation is ready to set sail. Home to about 3,500 crew, she'll hopefully be the first in a long line of new warships much like the Arbiter class to defend the Federation against any threat, no matter the time. Unfortunately, we seem to have a serious problem, Kronan's original deployment date was pushed forward. As such, over half Kronan's Damage Control Engineers are racing to meet Kronan in the Regulus System before she completes her Training Exercise with the Galaxy Class, Olexa. "So you mean to tell me, after Quinn's held up deliberations, we finally get Kronan?!" "Calm down Lt. no need to bust everybody else's ears, we can barely see you anyway…...Computer lights" The Bridge, previously unnavigable, suddenly lit up on command. Displays and the Holotable at the back whirred to life, providing system readiness displays and structural integrity percents. "Captain, I'll be in my ready room, try to answer the Lieutenant's questions about Kronan…..and, while you're at it, send an Ensign from the dock up, I need to make sure all the paperwork is done before we set sail." "Aye Admiral, Now Lieutenant, about that new power core….." The Xindi-Reptilian drifted off Unlike the standard bridge that every Vengeance class had, the back wall of Kronan's bridge had been moved back, allowing a Holotable to be utilised to help conduct Fleet Maneuvers. Directly to the left and right of the Holotable were the Ready Rooms for both the Captain and myself. It was here that I began through the long and arduous task of beating the influx of paperwork that the Dockyard Ensign had brought in…. — After a gruelling hour of getting through paperwork and another hour or so arguing about the fact almost 2 Cargo Bay's worth of Neutronic Torpedos had mysteriously been rerouted to the Vulcan Shipyards instead of Kronan's dock at Utopia Planitia, it was time to launch off and head to Regulus to have a knock around with Olexa. "Lieutenant Zel, cut all moorings and request to leave the Yards, Lieutenant Commander Zeta, coordinate with our resident Chief Engineer, tell Zarva I want our Warp Core ramped up to 120% of normal to test it before dropping down to 85% efficiency. Commander Vakel, have our Antiproton Arrays and Torpedo Launchers partially warmed up, just enough to have them ready incase we get ambushed by Olexa before we reach the Gunnery Range, that Captain has a few too many tricks up her sleeve, and Captain Tholra, avoid crashing Kronan into those stars out there, I don't know how you passed the Academy but try to avoid ramming us into the stars. I don't think any of us enjoyed repainting the hull of the Pincer, T'Nae certainly didn't". There were laughs all around as everybody remembered T'Nae's haughty expression after the Admiral had been told that the Arbiter class Battlecruiser required time in Spacedock to have a new paint-job done. "On the other hand, Captain, please engage warp" "Aye sir, Helm, get us to Transwarp 34 for our flight to Regulus." "Aye sir" The Breen swung his chair around and Kronan went to warp. — Regulus System - Starfleet Gunnery Range Four Hours Later "Vakel, lock onto Olexa's Impulse Manifolds and fire, redirect Torpedo Tube 4 to prioritize those Fighters she's dropping, Zel, see if you can use our thrusters and fling us around, have Leeta drop our Assualt Drones out the back, see if they can slowly get under her shield grids to fire at her Shield Generators!". Unlike others of her class, Kronan had her blueprints modified, mainly as to whether or whether to not utilise RCS Accelerators and utilise Thrusters. RCS Assemblies had the advantage of being protected inside the hull while Thrusters allowed Kronan to turn quick but were easier to destroy. In the end, Kronan's planned RCS Assembly had been stripped out and replaced with state of the art Impulse Thrusters, a blend between the usual thrusters and a pair of impulse engines. This allowed her to maneuver like a Heavy Cruiser aka the Resolute class while still retaining her formidable firepower and defensive systems. "Firing now". Vakel seemed to slowly speak as the first of Kronan's Antiproton Beam Arrays, optimised for Armour Penetration and Critical Damage (aka smashing hull plates so bad they needed to be fully replaced instead of repaired) spoke, easily smashing through hull plates at their simulated yield. Lieutenant Exil, having seemingly planned for this, launched a nasty little Virus, designed to knock out the Sensors and Cloak so Kronan could slip back into her own Battle Cloak, stolen from a Voth Vessel who had only been "to kind" to Pincer. "Phew, Leeta, keep those drones harassing Olexa, don't give them too many commands though, otherwise Captain Aurelia's Sensor Officer will pick up our signal. 0718, how's sickbay going?." "Fine sir, only a couple of minor injuries when they started lobbing their Quantum and Neutronic Torpedoes sir!" Olexa had gotten the jump on Kronan, materialising from Stealth and raining hell with their forward torpedo tubes, having gotten their Stalkers to form a Tachyon Detection Grid, previously having only been avaliable to Nebula classes. Those torpedos, having stuck directly at Kronan's secondary hull, had smashed into Hangar 4 and ruined a whole flight of Assualt Drones with their simulated yield. Damage Control is still trying to contain the fire in order to open the hangar doors, allowing us venting the oxygen from the hangar and stifling the flames. Main Engineering isn't pretty either, one of those Quantum Phase Torpedos had been able to "knock out" (in the Computer's Simulation) a EPS Junction, whacking the stolen Voth Battle Cloak offline and in the process weakening the aft shield grid with energy flowing to it from 4 junctions and not 5. "Zel, see if you can orient us for an Alpha Strike, Vakel drop everything on them, Antiproton Beams, Neutronic Torpedos, hell even our Retrofitted Antiproton Broadside Beam Array, everything to their max simulated yield. Nelen Exil, drop a Grav Well on them, see if you can cluster the Stalkers together with their mothership, see if the computer will register their simulated warp cores going up as damage to their shield." My chair swings about to face the Reptilian, standing at the Holotable with Leeta who was busying toying with Olexa's defence turrets, The Reptilian looks up. "Drop our Cloak, and see if you can also get Commander Four of Nine to confuse them with our EW suite, hell, use our Distortion Tech we stole from Vosk before Destiny went boom, whatever you do, do not let them lock onto our signature before Vakel is done emptying the Simulated Neutronic Torpedos and Antiproton Beam Arrays". "Yes sir" The Xindi strode off to a console located at the back right of the bridge, tapping a few buttons and launching a Distortion as Kronan broke from stealth, Olexa's shields vaporising as the full simulated force of Kronan spat death at her playmate. Olexa seemed to shudder as the Computer's Training Mode registered dozens of simulated breaches and fires. Not soon after, Olexa seemed to run dark as it's Computer's Training Mode registered the Warp Core going critical, putting an end to the match. "Sir, we are being hailed by Olexa. Captain Aurelia seems to be signalling defeat," "Open a channel, let her know we accept the defeat and…." It is at this moment in time as Aurelia appears on the screen, her image is unceremoniously thrown to one side as Daniels takes up the other half of the view screen. "Daniels…..". A low growl seems to erupt from the Fleet Admiral as he mentally prepares to slam through the view screen to kill Daniels. "Fleet Admiral, Captain, I'm afraid I'll have to borrow your time, at 0300 hours, we lost contact with Temporal Fleet Command, I need you to head to the Gamma Quadrant specifically to New Khitomer." "This Daniels, is the last bloody time I'll deal with your shit". Each word seemed grated out as the Admiral's fist clenched. "First you make me deal with your Doomsday Machine, then you want me to smash the Sphere Builders in a different reality and last time, you asked me to bash the Vorgons into submission and in the process, damn near vaporise half of Pincer's Spaceframe. We're damned lucky we dropped back home, in the correct time with a single jury rigged nacelle!" "Ah yes about…" "This Is The Last Time I Do Your Job" "Uh Admiral, who exactly is Daniels…" "Xiomek, drop the channel, send him a text message saying that we'll do his job one last time, have Captain Aurelia meet me at the Conference Room, we need to talk" "Aye Sir", the Reman swings around and types rapidly at his console. "Tholra, you have the bridge, keep me informed if we have problems." "Aye sir", As I head into the turbo lift, the Xindi drops down into the Captain's Chair, barking out orders as Kronan and Olexa jump to warp. — Stardate 476999.19 New Khitomer System "Temporal Transit complete sir" Nelen Exil looks up from his console, while his hands seem to finish typing on his console. "We have arrived in the New Khitomer System, reading a small blockade between us and Temporal Fleet Command. Our "esteemed" guest seems to have an idea of how to proceed." "Ah yes, Captain, Fleet Admiral seeing as both your ships have cloaks, I was wondering if we could….." Ordering Exil to drop him, I signal Olexa. "What do you have in mind?". Curtly nodding, I drop a message via PADD, quickly outlining a plan for us to wipe out the entire blockade and smashing those dastardly little Kremim into the ground. "Ah" "I'll be launching our Drones within minutes, I assume your Stalkers will be ready?" "Yes sir",her image drops and replaces itself with a view of Temporal Fleet Command. "Leeta, drop our drones, time for Noye to have a little wake up call" "Yes sir", the drones drop and speed off, closely followed behind by Olexa's Stalker Flights, already masking their energy signatures as the drones tear into the feeble resistance offered by the Na'khul and Kremim Frigates. "Zel, have us and Olexa drop out of Slipstream here, at Mark 04 by 218, get our broadsides and torpedoes locked on. If Aurelia has any MACO's tell her to drop them into the corridors of Temporal Fleet Command, she'll be able to do it safely if she drops Olexa about to our left." While Exil and Zel go about their jobs, I go and grab a Coffee from the Chair's inbuilt replicator, savouring the taste as we drop out of Slipstream and the Drones and Stalkers, having stripped the tinny frigates into space dust begin their assault on the Krenim Battleships and Na'khul Battlecruisers. "Drop our cloak now, Vakel, full broadside, drop a few Neutronic Cluster Torpedos out the side while your at it as well, R&D wants some feedback about them. They seem interesting enough but….." The Coffee spills as the first Neutronic Cluster Torpedo explodes against an Acheros, completely destroying her forward plasma emitters and her plasma wave projectors. Secondary explosions dot across her flank, the EPS Junctions almost exploding in order. "Sir, escape pods launching from N.V. Stripper, shall we stop them sir?" "No, they are of no harm, however if they attempt to get close to us, shoot to disable, no point in supposedly alienating us further." "Understood, Leeta, you mind targeting… There we go, that's another Acheros down" "Tholra, take over, have Captain Aurelia meet me over at Temporal Fleet Command with her finest. Exil, 0718 your with me. Zeta, as our resident Intelligence Officer, see if you can crack the programming code of those unlaunched lifeboats first, see if that gets you a back door into their systems" A chorus of Aye Sirs come up as Exil and myself enter the turbo lift, heading direct for the Armoury. — We beam down, having armoured up in those new spiffy and stolen Herald Tactical Combat Armours, smoke and little fires blaze around from M/AM explosions that Photon Grenades caused. Aurelia salutes me before her team sprints off down the corridor, their Phaser Rifles blazing. Exil pulls out an Omega Force Antiproton Carbine, most often utilised by MACO's in a close quarters situation. 0718 pulls out a Kelvin Timeline Phaser Rifle, having been modified to fire fully automatic while still retaining the Bolt and Sniper Modes. I pull out a unique weapon, utilised by Khan Noonien Singh of the alternate reality, literally a starship grade weapon, the Boolean Heavy Assault Cannon fires every second in return for one dead enemy. Sprinting off after them, and easily covering the distance, (Herald Tactical Combat Armours seem to have exoskeleton motors designed to boost speed and defensive capabilities) we catch up with them and several MACO's shooting in the Entrance Hall as Krenim and Na'khul beam off the transporter pads to assist their comrades. Too bad Zeta managed to figure out how to mount Micro Chroniton Torpedoes into our suits. Three sprays of Micro Chronitons slam into the bunkering Na'khul and Krenim, throwing them all over the place as the MACO's advance, pulling out Pulsewaves and utilising both the Grenade Launchers mounted underneath and the pulsewaves themselves, easily disembowelling the enemy at such close range, almost creating a bounce effect as we sprint past, throwing ourselves into another pack of Krenim, scattering them like bowling pins. Unlucky for us, they seemed to have locked the door in the Ampitheatre, unlucky for them a real time link with Kronan's Intelligence Officer seems to crack the code in seconds, instantly giving us access to the Ampitheatre. Daniels who had been beamed down with Aurelia's team seems to sprint inside, soon followed by MACO's, and our respective teams. "Specialist Krog, we meet again, i'm surprised Jarok let you out, Bolarus, oh looky, how is Ajur by the way, is she here?" snarks Aurelia. No surprise, she seemed annoyed that she couldn't take custody of Krog and "peacefully" resolve the Vorgon dispute. Both seem to growl and Krog's hand gently moves to her sword, gripping it and flexing her fingers, both seemed to be held back by the third figure standing between them. The Envoy… "So here it is, the so called Guardians of the Future…" He babbles on and I take the time to have the MACO's reorient to a flanking position. "But we seem to be missing someone and yadda yadda yadda". The Envoy loves his voice, and just as soon as I arm the Boolean to wipe the smirk of his face, we hear shots, Mirror Leeta not Mirror Holo-Leeta, as in the one aboard Kronan decloakes behind us smashes a phaser beam into Daniels, instantly killing him. MACO's instantly start shooting as she beams off with Noye, aka the Envoy, big deal there. Krog sprints towards me, I drop the Cannon and parry her blow with my own Assasin's Blade, curtesy of the Lobi Crystal Consortium. Aurelia and the others smash Bolarus into the ground, their respective weapons hammering into him like no tomorrow. Krog who seems taken aback by Bolarus's quick demise, seems to falter and I push the advantage, smashing the pommel of the sword over her head before decapitating her, making her only a head shorter. By this time, Xiomek, ever so grateful for that cross trained Science/Comms Officer rings in, informing us that the ISS Enterprise is impulsing away like no tomorrow. Bad luck for Leeta, Aurelia and I are out for blood. — There are some things that we all hated about Daniels, his constant need for us, his overbearing need for a lengthy mission briefing on the view screen and most of all, his need to interrupt everyone to but in his points. I think we all missed his comments. Probably too late to admit it though, I think as I step out of the turbo lift, having dropped off 0718 at Sickbay, and leaving our armour and weapons dumped outside the armoury, poor Karara'Clan. The Jem'Hadar is Chief of Security after all. Zel ever so on the ball is already typing in an intercept course as Olexa trundles ahead, having beamed up her MACO's. She begins gaining on Enterprise before being rudely shoved back by a Krenim Battlegroup and its swarm of mines, most of them careening wildly into her saucer, leaving little marks on the paint. Bad Luck for them. Kronan having caught up to her shipmate begins lancing her beams into the remaining warships as Olexa dispatches a warship from the Na'khul Battle Group Virtuous Destiny. Man they have a grudge, prioritising Federation Targets when faced with the combined Alliance Fleet. With the mines and completely laughable resistance offered to Kronan, we chase after Enterprise, Leeta's drones ramming the Na'khul warships attempting to decloak and fire upon us. Pity, we could've used some extra pieces of Na'khul tech, especially those distortions, Kronan might have it but Olexa and most of the fleet don't, what a waste. Mirror Leeta, who finally twirls Enterprise around seems to gleeful smirk at us from the view screen as she decloaks her rather numerous fleet of Mobius Temporal Destroyers. Or, was numerous. Vakel and Olexa's Tactical Officers hammer away, wiping a dozen Mobius Destroyers off the holotable's plot. Leeta's Drones and Olexa's Stalkers knocking out most of the remainder. Mirror Leeta, who seems rather enraged at her fleet blowing up like fireworks leads the charge against us with a handful of Mobius Destroyers, soon fleeing as we pick off her escorts before she even gets in range. Oh well, a missed opportunity to show why even our Enterprise lost against Kronan. By the time we catch up to her at the edge of the system, she's already in formation again with dozens of Temporal Defence Front Warships facing us. Noye and the Annorax casually giving us a wave as they all streak off to Procyon V. Oh well, at least those Assualt Drones knocked out part of her propulsion system before she left. She'll be running there at a sedate Warp 7 instead of Transwarp Velocities. Quinn hails us, asking us for our mission reports and personnel casualties lists. Starfleet might dislike the concept of revenge, but Kronan's dedication plaque has a saying. "Revenge, is best served cold." EndThe Mississippian culture is what archaeologists call the pre-Columbian horticulturalists who lived in the midwestern and southeastern United States between about AD 1000-1550. Mississippian sites have been identified within the river valleys of nearly a third of what is today the United States, including an area centered in Illinois but found as far south as the Florida panhandle, west as Oklahoma, north as Minnesota, and east as Ohio. Mississippian Chronology 1539 - Hernando de Soto's expedition visits Mississippian polities from Florida to Texas 1450-1539 - mound centers regroup, some develop paramount leaders 1350-1450 - Cahokia abandoned, many other mound centers decrease in population 1100-1350 - multiple mound centers arise radiating out from Cahokia 1050-1100 - Cahokia's "Big Bang," population peaks at 10,000-15,000, colonization efforts begin in the north 800-1050 - un-palisaded villages and intensification of maize exploitation, Cahokia population at about 1000 by AD 1000 Regional Cultures The term Mississippian is a broad umbrella term that includes several similar regional archaeological cultures. The southwestern portion of this huge area (Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma and adjacent states) is known as Caddo; the Oneota is found in Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois and Wisconsin); Fort Ancient is the term referring to Mississippian-like towns and settlements in the Ohio River Valley of Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana; and the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex includes the states of Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. At a minimum, all of these distinctive cultures shared cultural traits of mound construction, artifact forms, symbols, and stratified ranking. Mississippian cultural groups were independent chiefdoms which were primarily connected, at varying levels, by loosely organized trade systems and warfare. The groups shared a common ranked societal structure; a farming technology based on the "three sisters" of maize, beans, and squash; fortification ditches and palisades; large earthen flat-topped pyramids (called "platform mounds"); and a set of rituals and symbols referring to fertility, ancestor worship, astronomical observations, and war. Origins of the Mississippians The archaeological site of Cahokia is the largest of the Mississippian sites and arguably the main generator for most of the ideas that make up Mississippian culture. It was located in the segment of the Mississippi River Valley in the central United States known as the American Bottom. In this rich environment just east of the modern day city of St. Louis, Missouri, Cahokia rose to become an enormous urban settlement. It has by far the largest mound of any Mississippian site and held a population of between 10,000-15,000 at its heyday. Cahokia's center called Monk's Mound covers an area of five hectares (12 acres) at its base and stands over 30 meters (~100 feet) tall. The vast majority of Mississippian mounds in other places are no more than 3 m (10 ft) high. Because of Cahokia's extraordinary size and early development, American archaeologist Timothy Pauketat has argued that Cahokia was the regional polity which provided the impetus for the incipient Mississippian civilization. Certainly, in terms of chronology, the habit of constructing mound centers began at Cahokia and then moved outward into the Mississippi Delta and Black Warrior valleys in Alabama, followed by centers in Tennessee and Georgia. That is not to say that Cahokia ruled these areas, or even had direct hands-on influence in their construction. One key identifying the independent rise of the Mississippian centers is the multiplicity of languages that were used by the Mississippians. Seven distinct language families were used in the Southeast alone (Muskogean, Iroquoian, Catawban, Caddoan, Algonkian, Tunican, Timuacan), and many of the languages were mutually unintelligible. Despite this, most scholars support the centrality of Cahokia and suggest that the different Mississippian polities emerged as a combination of a product of several intersecting local and external factors. What Connects the Cultures to Cahokia? Archaeologists have identified several traits connecting Cahokia to the vast number of other Mississippian chiefdoms. Most of those studies indicate that Cahokia's influence varied over time and space. The only true colonies established identified to date include about a dozen sites such as Trempealeau and Aztalan in Wisconsin, beginning about 1100 AD. American archaeologist Rachel Briggs suggests that the Mississippian standard jar and its usefulness in converting maize into edible hominy was a common thread for Alabama's Black Warrior Valley, which saw Mississippian contact as early as 1120 AD. In Fort Ancient sites, which Mississippian immigrants reached in the late 1300s, there was no increased use of maize, but according to Americanist Robert Cook, a new form of leadership developed, associated with dog/wolf clans and cult practices. The pre-Mississippian Gulf Coast societies seem to have been a generator of artifacts and ideas shared by the Mississippians. Lightning whelks (Busycon sinistrum), a Gulf Coast marine shellfish with a left-handed spiral construction, have been found at Cahokia and other Mississippian sites. Many are reworked into the form of shell cups, gorgets, and masks, as well as marine shell bead making. Some shell effigies made from pottery have also been identified. American archaeologists Marquardt and Kozuch suggest that the whelk's left-handed spiral may have represented a metaphor for the continuity and inevitability of birth, death, and rebirth. There is also some evidence that groups along central Gulf Coast made stepped pyramids before Cahokia's rise (Pluckhahn and colleagues). Social Organization Scholars are divided on the political structures of the various communities. To some scholars, a centralized political economy with a paramount chief or leader appears to have been in effect at many of the societies where burials of elite persons have been identified. In this theory, political control likely developed over the restricted access to food storage, labor to build platform mounds, craft production of luxury items of copper and shell, and the funding of feasting and other rituals. Social structure within the groups was ranked, with at least two or more classes of people with different amounts of power in evidence. The second group of scholars is of the opinion that most Mississippian political organizations were decentralized, that there may have been ranked societies, but access to status and luxury goods was by no means as imbalanced as one would expect with a true hierarchical structure. These scholars support the notion of autonomous polities who were engaged in loose alliances and warfare relationships, led by chiefs who were at least partly controlled by councils and kin- or clan-based factions. The most likely scenario is that the amount of control held by elites in Mississippian societies varied considerably from region to region. Where the centralized model probably works best are in those regions with clearly evident mound centers such as Cahokia and Etowah in Georgia; decentralization was clearly in effect in the Carolina Piedmont and southern Appalachia visited by 16th-century European expeditions.Since there is still some debate about Drupal 8’s performance in the performance-related meta issue on Drupal.org, I thought I would take a look at current performance numbers on several platforms and see how D8 is shaping up. (Since the time of this writing this issue has been close in favor of this profiling-related meta but most of the debate happened in the earlier thread.) Authenticated user performance and scaling of uncached page requests has never been one of Drupal’s particularly strong points, and I was interested in gathering enough information to get an accurate picture of how things look right now. (As discussed at the end of the post, I also wanted to do it in a way that others could easily replicate.) I hope the following data is useful
Maybe a couple of these young pitchers will ditch the change and embrace the curve this year. Maybe it’ll lead to their breakout performance.While roofs across the world sport photovoltaic solar panels to convert sunlight into electricity, a Duke University engineer believes a novel hybrid system can wring even more useful energy out of the sun's rays. Instead of systems based on standard solar panels, Duke engineer Nico Hotz proposes a hybrid option in which sunlight heats a combination of water and methanol in a maze of glass tubes on a rooftop. After two catalytic reactions, the system produces hydrogen much more efficiently than current technology without significant impurities. The resulting hydrogen can be stored and used on demand in fuel cells. For his analysis, Hotz compared the hybrid system to three different technologies in terms of their exergetic performance. Exergy is a way of describing how much of a given quantity of energy can theoretically be converted to useful work. "The hybrid system achieved exergetic efficiencies of 28.5 percent in the summer and 18.5 percent in the winter, compared to 5 to 15 percent for the conventional systems in the summer, and 2.5 to 5 percent in the winter," said Hotz, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering. The paper describing the results of Hotz's analysis was named the top paper during the ASME Energy Sustainability Fuel Cell 2011 conference in Washington, D.C. Hotz recently joined the Duke faculty after completing post-graduate work at the University of California-Berkeley, where he analyzed a model of the new system. He is currently constructing one of the systems at Duke to test whether or not the theoretical efficiencies are born out experimentally. Hotz's comparisons took place during the months of July and February in order to measure each system's performance during summer and winter months. Like other solar-based systems, the hybrid system begins with the collection of sunlight. Then things get different. While the hybrid device might look like a traditional solar collector from the distance, it is actually a series of copper tubes coated with a thin layer of aluminum and aluminum oxide and partly filled with catalytic nanoparticles. A combination of water and methanol flows through the tubes, which are sealed in a vacuum. "This set-up allows up to 95 percent of the sunlight to be absorbed with very little being lost as heat to the surroundings," Hotz said. "This is crucial because it permits us to achieve temperatures of well over 200 degrees Celsius within the tubes. By comparison, a standard solar collector can only heat water between 60 and 70 degrees Celsius." Once the evaporated liquid achieves these higher temperatures, tiny amounts of a catalyst are added, which produces hydrogen. This combination of high temperature and added catalysts produces hydrogen very efficiently, Hotz said. The resulting hydrogen can then be immediately directed to a fuel cell to provide electricity to a building during the day, or compressed and stored in a tank to provide power later. The three systems examined in the analysis were the standard photovoltaic cell which converts sunlight directly into electricity to then split water electrolytically into hydrogen and oxygen; a photocatalytic system producing hydrogen similar to Hotz's system, but simpler and not mature yet; and a system in which photovoltaic cells turn sunlight into electricity which is then stored in different types of batteries (with lithium ion being the most efficient). "We performed a cost analysis and found that the hybrid solar-methanol is the least expensive solution, considering the total installation costs of $7,900 if designed to fulfill the requirements in summer, although this is still much more expensive than a conventional fossil fuel-fed generator," Hotz said. Costs and efficiencies of systems can vary widely depending on location -- since the roof-mounted collectors that could provide all the building's needs in summer might not be enough for winter. A rooftop system large enough to supply all of a winter's electrical needs would produce more energy than needed in summer, so the owner could decide to shut down portions of the rooftop structure or, if possible, sell excess energy back to the grid. "The installation costs per year including the fuel costs, and the price per amount of electricity produced, however showed that the (hybrid) solar scenarios can compete with the fossil fuel-based system to some degree," Hotz said. 'In summer, the first and third scenarios, as well as the hybrid system, are cheaper than a propane- or diesel-combusting generator." This could be an important consideration, especially if a structure is to be located in a remote area where traditional forms of energy would be too difficult or expensive to obtain. Hotz's research was supported by the Swiss National Science Fund. Joining him in the study were UC-Berkeley's Heng Pan and Costas Grigoropoulos, as well as Seung H. Ko of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejon.When the United States and its allies began to withdraw their troops from Afghanistan in December 2014, Afghanistan’s economy collapsed, unemployment soared, and hundreds of thousands of Afghans fled the country. The government had no functioning fiscal policy: corruption and mismanagement plagued its tax and revenue collection efforts, and its budget was disorganized, unbalanced, and opaque. Budgetary shortfalls and economic instability were especially hard on the most vulnerable—the poor and the unemployed, who together make up the majority of the population. But recently, Afghanistan’s National Unity Government has adopted several significant reforms as part of its so-called self-reliance agenda in an attempt to jumpstart the country’s economy. In July, at the NATO summit in Warsaw, world leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, lauded these reforms. They were right to do so. In 2015, the government introduced a new law, the Tax Administration Law, which provides a legal framework for a centralized taxation administration. At the same time, it conducted an assessment of small taxpayers in Kabul to deepen the tax base and formalize tax obligations. This assessment was the first step in the digitization of a tax registration system for thousands of small taxpayers, which also records the GPS coordinates of businesses to create a Geographic Information Map for future years of tax collection. The government doubled the Business Receipts Tax, which applies to all businesses with gross receipts of over $8,500, from two to four percent. The government also increased levies on imported fuel and gas, imposed a ten percent tax on the top-up of mobile phones, and raised the overflight fee for commercial airliners, all adding to the government’s revenue base. Meanwhile, Kabul has taken on the customs system, which contributes 46 percent of domestic revenue but has become a center of corruption. The government has sacked a quarter of customs officials and revenue directors, established strict oversight led by younger technical staff, automated the system for customs data and payments, and moved toward digitizing tax administration.WASHINGTON — The White House on Sunday continued to distance itself from national security adviser Michael Flynn in the face of his entanglements with Russia. President Trump’s surrogate Stephen Miller made the rounds on the Sunday shows, but declined to say whether the commander-in-chief still has confidence in the retired general. “That’s the question that I think you should ask the president, the question you should ask Reince [Priebus], the chief of staff,” Miller told NBC’s “Meet the Press. “General Flynn has served his country admirably,” he added. NBC’s Chuck Todd pressed for more information. “So the White House did not give you anything to say…” “They did not give me anything to say,” Miller, the senior policy adviser, said. “… It’s not for me to answer hypothetical. It wouldn’t be responsible. It’s a sensitive matter.” The Washington Post reported Thursday that Flynn had private discussions with the Russian ambassador about US sanctions prior to the inauguration, despite the Trump administration saying otherwise. The conversation, confirmed by nine Washington Post sources, put the White House, especially Vice President Pence in a tough spot. The vice president claimed publicly in a CBS interview he spoke to Flynn about dealings with the ambassador and was reassured the conversation “had nothing whatsoever to do with those sanctions.” Trump declined to come to Flynn’s defense Friday and said he wasn’t aware of the Washington Post’s revelations. “I don’t know about that,” Trump told reporters. “I haven’t seen it. What report is that? I haven’t seen that. I’ll look into that.” In a separate interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Miller said he had nothing to offer about Flynn’s White House status. “I don’t have any news to make to you today on this point,” Miller said. It’s a great question for our chief of staff. It’s a great question for the office of vice president.” ABC host George Stephanopoulos pushed Miller: “How do you think he can continue to serve as National Security Adviser after misleading the vice president?” “I don’t accept what your question is saying is accurate,” Miller said, again calling Flynn’s Russian talk a “sensitive” and “important” matter. “I don’t have any information one way or another to add anything to this conversation.” Democrats and some Republicans have long questioned Trump’s ties to Russia and his unwillingness to criticize President Vladimir Putin. The reportedly misleading statements by Flynn have fanned their outrage. “General Flynn should be suspended and have his intelligence clearance revoked,” House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi tweeted Saturday. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) told “Fox News Sunday” that Flynn’s “credibility” is in trouble and he’s “not the type of person you want to have around you giving advice.” Cardin, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said the issue is “broader” than Flynn and suggested an independent body, similar to the 9/11 commission, needs to be convened to investigate Russia’s influence on the election. “Russia attacked us,” Cardin said. “We need to have an independent investigation, and General Flynn’s comments just add to our concern about the relationship with Russia.”The Ottawa Men’s Refuge, supported by fourth-year sociology students attending Carleton, hosted a panel discussion about domestic and sexual violence against men on Nov. 9. The event, titled “Coming Together In Conversation,” took place at the Heron Road Community Centre. The Ottawa Men’s Refuge is an emerging service that will eventually allow men who are victims of domestic violence to call a hotline if they are experiencing a crisis. After the hotline is created, the group hopes to have collected enough funds to create a shelter for male victims. “I believe anyone who has experienced violence deserves support,” said Matt Schaaf, of the Ottawa Coalition to End Violence Against Women’s I can MANifest Change Program, when he addressed the crowd. Schaaf acknowledged there are still many stigmas facing male victims of domestic violence today, the most prominent one being that they are supposed to be the “dominant” partner in a relationship. According to panelists, shelters for victims of domestic abuse in the Ottawa area are underfunded. Attendees also heard that there is currently no emergency safe housing for men fleeing violence in the majority of Canada, Ottawa included. The panelists unanimously agreed that this is a prominent issue for the city of Ottawa, and that it is expected to increase over the next few years. Melissa Heimerl is the executive director of Ottawa Victim Services (OVS), which provides emotional and practical assistance to victims of crime and tragic circumstances in the Ottawa community. Heimerl said that Ottawa should be concerned with the lack of beds in the Ottawa region for domestic abuse survivors. “Our domestic violence shelters for women are full, and when talking about male victims in specific, there are no shelters available for them,” Heimerl said in an interview. Other gaps in services that the OVS recognizes is that there are no free services for men fleeing intimate partner violence, or any specific groups and legal services catered to male victims. Jason Riopel is a member of the Ottawa Police Service who was with the Domestic Violence Unit for five years, and is also on the board of the Ottawa Men’s Refuge. According to Riopel, there are approximately 5,500 domestic violence calls in Ottawa each year, with about 3,000 of them serious enough to be elevated to a second stage investigation. Deborah Conners, a Carleton sociology professor in charge of the Community Engaged Sociology class hosting the panel, said she believes that Ottawa needs to create resources for male victims of domestic abuse and intimate partner violence. Conners said in an interview that these services are crucial so victims can help themselves leave potentially dangerous relationships, as their safety is the key concern. “The Ottawa Men’s Refuge is a new service in Ottawa that is trying to address gaps in men’s services... and their goal is to work with individuals who have identified as victims of domestic violence, whether it is a same-sex relationship, an opposite sex relationship, or masculine identified in a non-binary relationship,” Conners said. Nastaran Alqaddoumi, a fourth-year sociology and political science student who helped host the event, said people often don’t understand that all genders can be victims of abuse. “We want people to recognize males can be victims, whether they are in a same-sex relationship or not,” Alqaddoumi said. Photo by Aaron HemensRoss Douthat’s new column prompted the comments in Rod’s post this morning. Douthat writes: The Reagan nostalgia, the fears of looming socialism, the paranoia about a shiftless 47 percent: They are all symptomatic of a party on the brink of transition rather than one incapable of change. Republicans seem to be clinging to the past mostly because their leaders haven’t shown them what they should stand for in the present. There could be something to this, but I’m skeptical. The “paranoia” (to use Douthat’s word) over the number of people not paying federal income tax isn’t an example of “clinging to the past,” but instead represents a very contemporary and bizarre reaction to the success of past Republican tax policy. It is a response to the supposed “problem” that lower-income Americans aren’t paying enough of their earnings to the government. This is a problem only for those who think that the federal government should have a larger claim on all Americans’ income than it does. Though he has belatedly renounced this view, Romney obviously catered to its adherents not long ago when he thought it would be useful. Reagan nostalgia continues be a distraction for Republicans, but after looking back at most of what has passed for Republican leadership in the last quarter century it’s not hard to see why. Many Republicans are guilty of indulging in this nostalgia, but there has perhaps been no candidate more fawning in his reliance on conservative mythology surrounding Reagan than Romney. No candidate has gone to the well of anti-Carter rhetoric as much as Romney since the ’80s. Even though half the population can’t even remember the Carter Presidency, Romney has pushed the Obama-Carter comparison more than anyone, and along the way he has been making the implicit comparison of himself to Reagan. This is someone whose main idea on trade policy is the “Reagan Economic Zone”. He endlessly repeats the phrase “peace through strength” without showing much interest in the first part of that formulation. Romney doesn’t cling to this because others haven’t shown him the way. He does it because he doesn’t have the credibility or the ideas to leave it behind. Romney has likewise catered to “fears of looming socialism” with his constant railing against the evils of “Europe” and administration goals of making the U.S. more like “Europe” when it is clear that Romney doesn’t understand or pretends not to understand what has been happening in Europe. He just did this again on Wednesday with his claim that he didn’t want to go down “the path of Spain,” which in his mind means continued deficit spending. This characterization of what the “path of Spain” has been couldn’t be more misleading. As Scott Galupo has pointed out before, beating up on Spain over its fiscal policy in this way makes no sense: The country was running budget surpluses before the Eurozone’s financial crisis began. Spain is not suffering because of big-government profligacy, but rather because it is party to an ill-conceived transnational currency. Romney’s Europe-bashing isn’t exactly old, but it’s also just a holdover from his first presidential campaign. If the Republican Party is capable of change, Romney has shown no interest in encouraging it to do so. It’s strangely fitting that the one so deservedly mocked as the “candidate of change” will be the least able to deliver it even if he wins.A small town in Missouri has told its residents they cannot post political protest signs—or any other type of political-issue signs—on their own property. According to the Clinton County Leader, the issue began when residents of the town of Plattsburg posted protest signs opposing the construction of wind turbines in the area. Other signs however, like election signs and real estate signs, are still allowed in front yards under its sign code. “This is an absolute violation of the First Amendment,” said Erica Smith, Attorney at the Institute for Justice. “Political protest signs are core political speech. What’s more is that these sign restrictions discriminate based on content–completely contrary to clear Supreme Court precedent.” Last summer, the United States Supreme Court struck down a sign code for being “content based,” meaning it restricted some signs but not others, based purely on the signs’ subject matter. The Supreme Court was clear that such content based restrictions are unconstitutional under the First Amendment. According to the report, residents will receive a warning first, followed by a notice of violation, and then a citation.Google has acquired a company that has created a new process for highly efficient isotope separation, we’ve confirmed from multiple sources. The primary use of this technology, say experts we’ve spoken with, is uranium enrichment. Enriched uranium is a necessary ingredient in the creation of nuclear energy, and one source we’ve spoken with at Google says that this is part of the Google Green Initiative. The company will use the new technology to enable it to design and possibly build small, mobile and highly efficient nuclear power generators. “Google has already begun building an enrichment plant,” says a high ranking IAEA source. As GreenBeat points out, “Google finally decided to launch a dedicated unit of the company for designing and building its own solar panels, wind turbines, energy efficiency devices, etc. So far, its green efforts have been pursued by separate projects within the company. Nuclear is an obvious next step for the company.” GreenBeat first broke the story (first titled Google Has A Big Alternate Energy Announcement Forthcoming) after seeing multiple tweets about the impending announcement. But other sources we’ve spoken with say Google has no real intention of pursuing nuclear energy, despite the fact that the company has promoted the use of alternate energy sources for years. Of particular concern is the fact that the company Google acquired is based outside of the U.S., and little is known about the new enrichment technology they’ve developed. Nuclear power generation is a highly regulated industry. And enriched uranium is a particularly sensitive topic and creation and distribution of the substance is highly controlled. Enriched uranium can also be used for nuclear weapons production, which is why the industry is so highly regulated. Says one source: “The story Google is putting out there is that the new technology will be built for clean energy production. But all of the research and development they’re doing in this area is being conducted outside of the U.S., and the enrichment facility is also outside of the U.S.” And more chillingly: “It would be trivial for anyone with this technology to build a nuclear weapon.” Google, which has been shaken by its inability to counter Chinese censorship and hacking efforts, may be engaging in enrichment research as part of a new effort to simply protect itself from outside threats. One source pointed out that if Google were its own country, its revenues would place it at 74th on the list of countries sorted by gross domestic product. “The U.S. government clearly won’t protect Google from China, so Google is taking the logical step of protecting itself with a physical deterrent.” To be clear, most of this is speculation. All we’ve confirmed is that Google has acquired a company with a new enrichment process and that they have begun researching small, nuclear portable generators. But there is real evidence here that Google may be working on something much more sinister to counter the China threat. More as this develops.March 22, 2017, 11:14 AM GMT / Updated March 22, 2017, 11:14 AM GMT By Marissa Armas Fear and uncertainty generated by the current political climate has prompted the cancellation of one of the nation's largest Cinco de Mayo related festivals. Organizers of Philadelphia's "El Carnaval de Puebla" announced that the celebration would no longer happen amid fears of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and sweeps. File photo of marchers in Philadelphia's El Carnaval de Puebla. PR NEWSWIRE Edgar Ramirez, one of the organizers of the event, said that when they started asking community members whether they would attend the event, many residents said no, prompting the cancellation of the 11th annual festival and parade. "We suspended the event so that people aren't at risk," Ramirez said. "Some of the reasons are because of the current administration in the country, some of it was because we want them to notice our absence, but mainly for the safety of our communities, and to show them respect." Ramirez explained that similar to the "A Day Without Immigrant" protests, organizers wanted to show others what it would be like to not have the Mexican community present during one of Philadelphia's biggest events. The festival is a time for community members of all backgrounds to enjoy the annual event without having to be scared, said Ramirez, and they didn't want anyone to have to worry about their safety. RELATED: ICE Says California Immigration Raids Planned Before Trump Orders The event which honors the 1862 Battle of Puebla, is usually held in late April in South Philly, drawing thousands of people from all over the state. In a statement sent to NBC News, the mayor of Philadelphia Jim Kenney, also expressed his disappointment with the cancellation of the event. "I’m devastated to hear that ICE has had such a chilling effect that Philadelphians no longer feel comfortable engaging in this public celebration," the statement read. "While we can't stop ICE from conducting these raids, I want our immigrant community to know that we want them here, we remain committed to being a Fourth Amendment city and protecting these values, and we will do whatever we can to help them feel comfortable bringing this celebration back in the future," stated the mayor. The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution provides protection from unreasonable search and seizure. Adrian Smith, a spokesman for the ICE office in Philadelphia, said in a statement that ICE's enforcement actions are targeted and lead driven. "ICE does not conduct sweeps or raids that target undocumented immigrants indiscriminately," Smith said. When asked whether ICE agents attend public demonstrations, Smith said that "DHS is committed to ensuring that people seeking to participate in activities or utilize services provided at any sensitive location are free to do so without fear or hesitation." Since President Donald Trump issued immigration executive orders, ICE has been stepping up arrests of people who might not have been targeted during the Obama administration. Arrests of some immigrants in other parts of the country outside a church-run hypothermia shelter, a school and in homes where warrants for other immigrants were being served have made many immigrants skeptical of ICE's reassurances. Jennifer Rodriguez, president and CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said that she and the chamber support the festival organizers' decisions. "It's very unfortunate that they didn't feel confident and safe and have taken this measure," Rodríguez said. "It's a very worrisome message, and it speaks to the uncertainty and fear of the community. They know themselves best and will take the proper measures to protect themselves." Follow NBC News Latino on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.KCNA / Reuters Kim Jong Il visits the Pyongyang Cornstarch Factory, in this undated picture that was released by North Korea's KCNA news agency on Aug. 26, 2010 Only in North Korea the world's most opaque, secretive state could the country's most important political conclave in 30 years appear to be imminent and yet entirely shrouded in mystery. It was rumored this week that delegates from all over the country are streaming to Pyongyang for the first congress of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) since 1980. But no one in authority has said publicly when the event would start, how many days it would run or what the agenda and purpose of the meeting might be. At the time of the last party congress, Kim Jong Il's father, Kim Il Sung, was still in charge, and the point of the exercise was to solidify the position of the Dear Leader as heir apparent to the Great Leader. Now, a generation later, the agenda appears to be similar. A statement earlier this summer from the Political Bureau of the Workers' Party said a meeting in early September "would elect [the party's] highest leading body to reflect new demands of the party and for the development of the revolution." Translated from tortured communist-speak, that means the meeting is all about the boy: Kim Jong Il, whose health has been shaky since the stroke he suffered in August 2008, is moving to ensure that his third son, Kim Jong Un, will take the reins whenever dear old Dad pops off to wherever it is that ruthless communist dictators go when they die. "The power succession from Kim Jong Il to Jong Un is expected to be made official," says Cheong Seong-chang, a senior fellow at Seoul's Sejong Institute, a leading South Korean think tank. (See TIME's photo-essay "The Iconography of Kim Jong Il.") Even though the succession process has been under way for more than 18 months, little is known about Kim Jong Un, other than that he's in his late 20s and attended a boarding school in Switzerland as a boy. Most analysts believe that his political standing in the North has been overseen by a regent of sorts: his uncle Jang Song Taek (Kim Jong Il's brother-in-law). According to Cheong, Kim Jong Un has in the past year taken on roles in the General Political Department of the North Korean army as well as in the State Security Ministry the two key centers of authority in North Korea. "The swift establishment of a succession structure," says Cheong, "is deeply correlated with the fact that Kim Jong Il's health [remains] unstable." Whenever the party conclave begins (one NGO in Seoul that claims to have sources in the North reported that it began on Wednesday, but there is no confirmation of that), outsiders will be looking to see what new position Kim Jong Il's son is handed. Cheong believes that Kim Jong Un will be appointed a secretary within the Central Committee of the Workers' Party. Hwang Jang-yop, one of the most senior defectors from North Korea, has said that the Central Committee secretaries wield great influence in the regime. Outsiders are also looking to see whether the young Kim is given a senior position in the Central Military Commission. Analysts say either promotion and most certainly both would indicate that the succession is solidly on track. Analysts believe that adding to Kim Jong Un's résumé over a period of years is the only plausible way to mollify those within the North Korean elite who might harbor doubts about the young man's ability to run the country. Indeed, at the 1980 party meeting, Kim Jong Il was named a party secretary and a member of the Central Military Commission. The Dear Leader didn't take over from his father until Kim Il Sung died 14 years later. (See pictures of the rise of Kim Jong Il.) North Korea watchers have no sense of how the dynastic political maneuvering will affect the long-suffering citizens of the North. The press is once more full of speculation that in the wake of Kim Jong Il's surprise trip to northern China a couple of weeks ago he met with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Changchun on Aug. 27 the North may launch new economic reform. China's media reported that Kim once again visited a few Chinese factories and reiterated his interest in how China had reinvigorated the northeastern portion of the country. If Kim Jong Un's rise signals a youth movement within the North Korean leadership, as some have speculated, then perhaps he will manage the country more pragmatically and finally ditch the hard-line economic ideology that has driven North Korea to penury. The only problem with this optimistic line of thinking is that there is not a shred of evidence to back it up. Kim Jong Il has been to China several times over the years and is always reportedly awestruck at what his Chinese communist cousins have accomplished. They urge Kim to follow their enlightened economic path. Then the Dear Leader returns to Pyongyang... and nothing happens. Perhaps Beijing doesn't care that much, or doesn't have that much influence over what happens in North Korea. But the impact of China's economic miracle, now more than 30 years old, on North Korea has been negligible. (See TIME's photo-essay "Rare Visions of Rural North Korea.") Maybe young Kim Jong Un, if and when his time comes in the next few years, will be different. But those who claim to have any insight into the intentions of North Korea's heir apparent are kidding themselves. The Kim family has presided over a dynastic depression in a country that, decades ago, used to be more prosperous than South Korea. All that anyone knows is that the dynasty appears set to continue. If you were a North Korean, would that cheer you up? See pictures of North Koreans at the polls.OMG!!! I figured out a recipe for batter free deep fried cheese curds! These little golden beauties also have almost no carbs! Living smack in the middle of dairy land USA cheese curds are plentiful and delicious on there own, but when you fry them up its like your taste buds died and went to deep fried cheesy heaven. I have been experimenting with this recipe for a little while now and so far hadn’t found a batter-less way to do it. I tried to make a batter with coconut flour which was a gigantic disaster. Helpful hint about coconut flour: it is super absorbent because of the high fiber content, so you either have to use way less flour, or more liquid. I decided to try and make them without the batter. Three simple ingredients make this dish wonderful. Ingredients: 1 lb of Cheese Curds 1 Tbs of Coconut Flour 1 Tsp of your Favorite Seasoning (I used some creole seasoning) Simply add the coconut flour and seasoning into a large bowl with a lid or in a gallon sized ziploc baggie. Next add your cheese curds to the mix and shake it up. This just puts a very light coating on the outside of the cheese curd to form a barrier from the hot oil. I used peanut oil for frying, you can use whatever kind of frying oil you prefer. My oil was at 375 degrees and the cheese curds took about 3 minutes. Fry them to a nice golden brown and enjoy! According to Myfitnesspal.com this will make 4 servings. Each serving has 895 calories, 3g of carbs, 73g of fat, and 57g of protein.Pat Robertson: "Vicious" gay people use "special rings" to give people HIV/AIDS “Really. It’s that kind of vicious stuff, which would be the equivalent of murder,” Robertson said Pat Robertson believes that there are "vicious" gay men in cities like San Francisco who wear "special rings" to "cut your finger" and give you "the stuff," which some people call HIV/AIDS. "You know what they do in San Francisco, some in the gay community there they want to get people so if they got the stuff they’ll have a ring, you shake hands, and the ring’s got a little thing where you cut your finger,” Robertson said. “Really. It’s that kind of vicious stuff, which would be the equivalent of murder.” Advertisement: The whole clip, from the question from the "700 Club" viewer to Robertson's rambling response, is ignorant and hateful, per Robertson usual. The comment was so patently false and odious (even by Robertson standards) that the Christian Broadcasting Network cut it out of the program before it aired, but you can watch the full clip here: h/t Right Wing WatchInfamous D in The Deck of Destiny We all want to find the deck that will take us to Orange County and eternal glory. Wurtil brings us today’s Latest Brew! Getting that deck just perfect is one of the big draws to a game like HEX where the target is constantly shifting and all of your personal creativity is required to keep up. However, designing decks by yourself is often too difficult a task to sustain for long periods of time. Your own ideas start to coalesce around the same core lines of thinking, and as a result you end up getting stumped due to the diminishing returns from leveraging just a single point of view. Thankfully between forums, twitch, and in game chat it is surprisingly easy to start up conversations around deck building. After all, you have a pretty sweet point of reference to kick off conversations with… For the deck that Team Rated-Hex used in the last round of qualifiers, its origin necessitated a merging of ideas. My good friend Infam0usNe0 and I just so happened to be working on some Mono-Diamond solutions to the metagame at the same time, yet both came to the table with wildly different approaches. Personally, I was starting to get some decent testing results with a Righteous Paladin centric lists that brought tons of removal to the table alongside recursive elements like Ethereal Caller to ensure that the deck always had the largest threat on the table. A combination of health gain, Diamond removal and a large beatstick like Paladin was proving to be very potent against the Ruby Gem of Destruction focused boogeymen of the format. The deck was not without issue though, as the deck relied upon the Paladin to grow large enough to meet your opponent’s troops in combat. Only Living Totem created a backup way to have a gigantic Diamond troop on the cheap. Having Dimmid and troops like Adamanthian Scriviner meant that the deck could find itself behind in long games against the card advantage focused control decks. Ne0 in the meantime was working on a deck to break Noble Heart in every way possible. Utilizing threshold enablers like Lixil, the Deathless Gem and Royal Herald he could start dropping Noble Hearts very quickly. Once you have a Steadfast, Invincible troop with Flight like Spearcliff Cloud Knight, Angel of Dawn, or Living Totem the game often became close to impossible to win for decks like Cressida Ramp to win as her 8/8s just weren’t going to do anymore damage. The issue this time however was that Lixil, Herald, and other low-cost aggressive Diamond troops were often at a strategic clash with the Noble Heart plan. as Noble Heart wasn’t helping Ne0 push through damage when he had a hand full of Diamond weenies. It sounds easy when writing it out, but the breakthrough was realizing that Ne0’s Noble Heart + Flight/Steadfast was just better in most matchups than a gigantic Righteous Paladin. Now, instead of relying upon health gain mechanics to power up a single card, you could create a core of Diamond’s best troops to be enabled by Noble Heart. This also freed the deck to look at what Champions besides Dimmid could be used, and one unexpected Champion in particular is in a great spot for the current meta – Prairie Meadow! One of the few drawbacks to Angel of Dawn is that you get little control over playing around a Crocosaur when bringing her. Prairie Meadow’s ability means that you typically can have multiple troops out and be relatively confident that your entire board isn’t going to disappear due to a single Dinosaur. Prairie Meadow also is quite good against the rise of AzureCannon where holding back then protecting a Cloud Knight against a multitude of damage actions is key, as well as the upswing in Terrible Transfers that were being brought by Mono Blood. Throw in some Hopeheart Unicorns to further the decks plan of creating one master troop to rule the board, add in a bit of testing from the rest of the team to flesh out numbers and we have a contender: Infamous D Champion: Prairie Meadow It might look strange having Meek and Pride’s Fall sitting right next to each other, but save Mono Ruby virtually every deck has important troops to hit that are range from big to small. Crocosaur and Periwinkle. Reese the Crustcrawler and Azurefate Sorceress. Even Vampire King and Vampire Princess fit the mold, and so it means that having a wide range of removal options to stall out the game until you can bring an Invincible troop online is important. Solitary Exile does a fine job in most cases of being a catch-all, but being unable to hit most of AzureCannon’s troops before they do their damage (literally and figuratively) is a big knock against it. You do have to be mindful of Meek’s somewhat poor interaction with Monument of the Martyrs, but typically you only will be playing Martyr first in the most dire of situations. One big technology in the reserves is Reversion. Scorn of Oberon has seen occasional play in Cressida Ramp’s reserves with the actual reversion portion being a bonus rather than the focus, but here we are counting on using Reversion against especially AzureCannon to help give us more time. Rock Elementals go back to 0/0s and freshly un-tunneled Reese’s suddenly make insignificant Worker Bots again. Scorn is also is a fine card to bring in against the Sapphire control decks looking to use Cripple and Polymorph: Dingler to nullify your troops. Against AzureCannon, we bring in some Reversions but also look to add a few Deathless Guardians to the mix. Living Totem and Spearcliff Cloud Knight are both vulnerable to Burn and Heat Wave, so Deathless Guardian gives one more layer of protection for them to have to defeat in order to deal with your best troops. These will often come at the expense of the Solitary Exiles and His Majesty, King Gabriel (who is particularly vulnerable to Countermagic himself) followed by a shaving of Unicorns and Noble Hearts. Even though Noble Heart might be the namesake of the deck, drawing too many against AzureCannon can be a big problem as they can build up for big turns with Time Ripple and Mesmeric Hypnoscientists which will require you to have troops and removal at the ready. Prairie Meadow often will try to protect a Living Totem when you have resources open to give it +1/+1 in response to any potential Burn, but if the AzureCannon player gives you an opening to put Prairie Meadow’s power on a Cloud Knight you will happily run with it. For Cressida Ramp, more removal in place of some Unicorns is the biggest change. If you suspect or have seen Scorn of Oberon then Stoneskin can come in, but otherwise you are going to be banking upon getting the game to a point where your Invincible Flight troop will dominate the board. Cressida Ramp
sounding a bit defeated. “L-lets t-talk somewhere e-else…”, he says pulling him into the bathroom, “W-we’ll b-be b-back.” The boy put up his hand and begins to speak. He closes his mouth and nods. A lot has happened this night, especially for him. Besides, he hasn’t really had much time to talk to their boyfriend. The boy could imagine that in his head, everything’s been a huge jumble since he left his fiance’s. While the boy’s disappointed by not being able to hop in bed with the two objects of his affection, he’s willing to give it a by, for now. He sighs and begins to undress. While he can see the boy undressing out of the corner of his eye, it’s entirely too brief before he and his boyfriend are around the corner and in the bathroom. He sits on the toilet while his boyfriend closes the door quietly. “It’s been sometime since you and I have been in a bathroom together…”, he starts. (To be continued)Hockey may be Canada's national pastime, but criticizing the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) surely ranks as a close second. From the substitution of Canadian commercials during the Super Bowl broadcast to Canada's middling performance on broadband Internet services, the CRTC is seemingly always viewed as the target for blame. How Serious Are Feds About Net Neutrality? read more Announcements, Events & more from Tyee and select partners ‘Punch to the Gut’ Musical on Residential Schools Returns to Vancouver Children of God has been shaped by intense audience reactions, says director Corey Payette. Yet if the commission is criticized (sometimes wrongly) when it makes mistakes, it surely deserves kudos when it gets things right. That is the case on the thorny issue of net neutrality, which only a few years ago seemed destined to become mired in a never-ending battle between regulation-averse telecom companies and mounting public calls for government intervention. Instead, the CRTC took carriage of the file, established widely praised guidelines, and after some prodding over weak enforcement, pushed the industry to the point that Internet traffic shaping -- often described as throttling -- will soon be a thing of the past in Canada. Throttle slow down When the CRTC conducted hearings on Internet traffic management practices in the summer of 2009, most Internet providers used traffic-shaping technologies to limit peer-to-peer applications, arguing that it was necessary to manage subscriber demands and to avoid network congestion. The providers were virtually unanimous in their opposition to regulatory guidelines or even mandatory disclosure requirements. For example, Rogers Communications told the commission "The Internet is too new and is changing too quickly to establish ITMP guidelines at this time." The CRTC rejected that advice and implemented guidelines that required Internet providers to publicly disclose their traffic management practices. Moreover, it established rules that required providers to respond to complaints by describing their practices, demonstrating their necessity, and establishing that they discriminate as little as possible. Not much changed during the first two years of the net neutrality policy. The commission received dozens of complaints, but there were few, if any, consequences for the providers. For example, a complaint against Xplornet, a satellite Internet provider, dragged on for months before any action was taken. Over the past six months, however, the commission has prioritized the enforcement issue, and when combined with changing Internet usage patterns and several dogged complainants, traffic shaping in Canada is about to disappear from the Internet landscape. Late last year, Bell announced that it will drop its throttling practices as of March 1 and earlier this month Rogers advised the CRTC that it intends to do the same by the end of the year. Traffic shapers jammed Why the dramatic change to a policy described by providers as essential only two and a half years ago? Part of the change can be attributed to the rapidly evolving habits of Canadian Internet users. In 2009, Internet providers claimed peer-to-peer traffic was a major source of network congestion. Today, the emergence of Netflix and other services has made streaming video the dominant traffic source. Much as some providers might like to throttle streaming video (for competitive and network reasons), the law won't allow it. Yet changing traffic patterns alone would not have been enough to alter Internet provider practices. Enter the net neutrality guidelines that limit traffic shaping to instances that are demonstrably necessary and discriminate as little as possible. Since peer-to-peer traffic is no longer a significant source of traffic congestion, it is increasingly difficult for providers justify throttling it. Once the CRTC demonstrated its willingness to enforce the guidelines, it was game over for traffic shaping. In September, the commission issued an advisory on responding to complaints and enforcing the rules. The Canadian Gamers Organization followed up with complaints about guideline violations at Rogers and within months, the company threw in the towel, grudgingly promising changes by end of the year. [Tags: Science + Technology, Rights + Justice.]Yesterday was a big day for the city of Cleveland. One of the biggest names of their 1990s powerhouse team had his statue unveiled at Progressive Field, and he announced his retirement as a member of the Indians organization. The five year clock for Cooperstown induction is ticking, and there can be no doubt as to which cap he will be wearing when his plaque is revealed. But at the end of Jim Thome’s run in Cleveland after the 2002 season, the Cubs had an opportunity. As one of the game’s premiere sluggers, it was clear that he was going to sign with someone for big money. It was equally clear that the small-market Indians could no longer afford his services. The list of teams who could afford a 40+ homers and 100+ RBI man was short but the Cubs–by virtue of their big-market status–could do so. It turned out that Thome, as a Peoria, Illinois native, had an affinity for the Cubs after watching them on TV, as many Cubs fans of his generation did. Thome wanted to be a cub, to fulfill a long-held dream of hitting baseballs out onto Sheffield Avenue. And there’s no doubt he could have hit a ton of them out there, as well. I recognized the possibilities of having Jim Thome in the Cubs lineup to protect Sammy Sosa (or maybe it would have been the other way around). I took to the message boards on the Cubs website–which was the best we could do in the pre-social media world of 2003–to make the case for signing Thome. The team needed another superstar to offset Sammy Sosa’s clubhouse dominance, and to strike fear into the hearts of pitchers across the National League. Most people who encountered my Thome reasoning were quick to dismiss them. The reasoning went that A) Thome would have cost too much money, B) Thome would likely get hurt, C) Thome would have trouble adjusting to the National League, and D) The Cubs already had Hee Seop Choi at first base, and thus didn’t need to bring Thome on board. Remember Hee Seop Choi? If you were in that time and that place back in 2003, you sure do. He was billed as the slugging prospect who had “superstar” written all over him. And yet, after a nasty fall in a Saturday game against the Yankees in June of 2003–which necessitated an ambulance being driven onto the field at Wrigley–Choi vanished. He didn’t technically vanish, but he played sporadically over the final half of the season, was left off the playoff roster, and was traded to the Marlins after the season ended for Derrek Lee. Choi never came close to being the superstar that so many people thought he would be. The best things Choi had going for him were his size (6′ 5”) and his miniscule salary ($305,000 for the 2003 season). He made in a year what Jim Thome could command for two weeks worth of games. So the Cubs politely told Thome “no thanks” and watched as he signed with the Phillies for six years and $85 million. To put those numbers in perspective, Alfonso Soriano’s deal with the Cubs–signed just five years later–was eight years and $136 million. By not signing Jim Thome after the 2002 season, the Cubs were penny wise but pound foolish. Yes, Thome did get hurt in the 2005 season, and was traded away for the final three years on his contract. And yes, the Cubs did pay Derrek Lee far less money in 2004-2009 than Jim Thome was paid in those years. If the goal was to keep payroll down, signing Jim Thome would not have been the way to do that. But consider what Thome did at the plate in 2003. The fears that National League pitching would be too much for him did not apply, as he led the league with 47 home runs, drove in a career-best 131 runs, and finished fourth in the league’s MVP voting. Whatever we may have felt about Eric Karros and Randall Simon as the Cubs’ firstbasemen that season, they couldn’t hold a candle to Jim Thome that year, or any other. The thought of Jim Thome and Sammy Sosa in the same batting order in 2003 is an exercise in frustration, if only because all we can do now is wonder about it. If Thome had gone down to injury in 2005 while in a Cubs uniform, the naysayers would have been proven correct. But then again, the World Series ring that eluded Thome throughout his 22 seasons in the majors might very well have been in his possession already. And isn’t that all that really matters? R. Lincoln Harris is a guest contributor for Wrigleyville Nation. He also writes for BlueBattingHelmet.Wordpress.com, ChicagoSideSports.com, ThroughTheFenceBaseball.com, and FiveWideSports.com. Thanks R. Lincoln for the contribution! Photo: Jim Thome / Erik Drost / CC BY 2.0 / Alteration: CroppedThe U.S. government's shadowy National Security Agency spied on the Arab news network Al Jazeera and the popular Russian airline Aeroflot, according to a new report. Germany's Der Spiegel reported the NSA hacked Al Jazeera's internal communications system and read communications from "interesting parties" and managed to breach Aeroflot's reservation system. Al Jazeera, a Qatar-based news organization that recently launched an American cable news network, has repeatedly broadcast video and audio messages from terrorist organizations including several from Osama bin Laden. The NSA called hacking into Al Jazeera's communications a "notable success" and listed that target, as well as Aeroflot, as those with "high potential as sources of intelligence," Der Spiegel reported. READ: NSA Spied on Al Jazeera Communications (Der Spiegel) The newspaper said their reporting was based on a document passed to them by former NSA contractor and fugitive Edward Snowden. Snowden, currently living in Russia after being granted temporary asylum, has said he provided several news organizations with a trove of secret documents he allegedly stole from the NSA before fleeing the country in May. Ever since there has been a steady stream of reporting on the NSA's alleged domestic, international and diplomatic spying. Snowden has been charged in the U.S. with espionage-related crimes. U.S. intelligence officials have not disputed that the previously disclosed spy programs exist, but have contested the breadth and lack of oversight alleged by some of the reports. CLICK HERE to return to The Blotter homepage.April’s news that Blockchain.info would be managing the ‘Bitcoin.com‘ domain name for a period of five years made a splash in the community. It’s prime internet real estate, not to mention easy to remember. A premium domain broker is now attempting to sell the revered BTC.com domain name. If the fact that a three-letter domain name wasn’t enough, it also represents the most common abbreviation of bitcoin. So if you’re not getting the point here, it’s a rare domain, and it’s likely anything but cheap. “Whether you’re a Bitcoin startup or existing company wishing to solidify your authority and optimize your marketing, there is no better opportunity than acquiring BTC.com,” said Jen Sale, co-founder of Domain Guardians, the company exclusively brokering the domain name. “In the right hands, this domain has the power to change the Bitcoin landscape and establish a market leader.” Interestingly enough, domains related to bitcoin are becoming a big business in themselves. Take, for example, the recent sales of BitcoinWallet.com, which is estimated to have sold for $250,000. Another noteworthy domain sale included BTCS.com, acquired by Bitcoin Shop, Inc. for an undisclosed sum. “For Bitcoin related companies, BTC.com is the best domain name currently available for sale that I am aware of,” says Roger Ver, a bitcoin evangelist who’s better known as “Bitcoin Jesus” in the community. “Any business using BTC.com would almost certainly catch a lot of extra attention because of this premier domain name.” “In our fast-paced mobile world, a shorter name is always best,” said Mike Robertson, co-founder at Domain Guardians. “There’s a reason companies are buying and using 2-3 letter domain names – they are quick to type and easy to remember. BTC.com ticks all of the right boxes!” No word as to whether or not the broker will be accepting bitcoin for the acquisition, but you can probably bet it’s going to be a pricey one!Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. April 24, 2014, 5:00 PM GMT / Updated April 25, 2014, 12:02 AM GMT Measles cases in the U.S. are surging at the fastest pace in nearly two decades, fueled mostly by unvaccinated travelers sparking outbreaks from California to New York — and, now, in Ohio, where 13 members of an Amish community may have fallen ill. The travelers are contracting the highly contagious virus in places like the Philippines — where a measles outbreak has sickened more than 20,000 people and killed at least 50 — and then infecting communities of unvaccinated children and adults back home. "Current outbreaks of measles in the U.S. serve as a reminder that these diseases are only a plane ride away," CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said Thursday. "Borders can't stop measles, but vaccination can." At least 129 measles cases from 13 states have been reported in the U.S. in 2014 so far, the highest number for the period since 1996, officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. But those figures don’t count cases reported after April 18, including four unvaccinated Amish people who went to the Philippines to help with typhoon aid and returned to possibly infect nine others, according to Pam Palm, a spokeswoman for the Knox County, Ohio, Health Department. Test results are pending for victims who range in age from 2 to 48 in the community where vaccination is discouraged. Health officials are concerned about the growing cases of measles nationwide, which are on track to outpace the 189 logged last year and the 220 cases reported in 2011. "People think their decision only impacts them and they overlook the young babies who are affected and don’t have a choice." In California, which is leading the surge, there have been at least 58 measles cases this year, nearly all of which have been imported by unvaccinated travelers, according to the CDC report. Those travelers spread the highly contagious infection to people at a church, on an airplane and at a school, the report said. Most of the California cases were in people who were unvaccinated or had no vaccination documentation. Of the 25 who weren’t vaccinated, 19 had philosophical objections to the vaccine. Three of those cases were in kids too young to get the vaccine, a situation similar to current outbreaks in New York, where 26 cases have been identified, including at least four in babies younger than 12 months, health officials said. That alarms Megan Campbell, 35, of San Diego, California, whose son contracted measles when he was 10 months old after sharing a waiting room with a sick child whose parents didn’t believe in vaccination. “He breathed the same air in the waiting room for about 30 seconds,” Campbell said. Her son was hospitalized and ran a 106-degree fever for weeks in 2008. Campbell said she’s still haunted by the illness that threatened his life, all because of another family’s choices. “It is a very selfish perspective. People think their decision only impacts them and they overlook the young babies who are affected and don’t have a choice,” she said. But recent research shows that pro-vaccination messages actually backfire and that growing numbers of parents are deferring or delaying vaccines because of concerns about possible side-effects on their own children. Despite the rise in cases, some U.S. doctors might not recognize the signs and symptoms of measles, which was considered eradicated in the country in 2000, said Dr. Julia Shaklee Sammons, in an online commentary published Thursday in Annals of Internal Medicine. Indeed, Campbell said doctors thought her son had Kawasaki disease, which also produces a rash. Others mistake measles for scarlet fever or Fifth disease, wrote Sammons, a professor of pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. “It is crucial that providers become familiar with this deadly disease and apply the necessary control measures to contain it,” she wrote. "It is crucial that providers become familiar with this deadly disease and apply the necessary control measures to contain it." Before a measles vaccine was licensed in the U.S. in 1963, about 500,000 cases occurred nationwide each year, resulting in 48,000 hospitalizations and 500 deaths, the CDC says. Measles is highly contagious; about 90 percent of people who aren't immune will catch the disease if they're exposed. Immunizations for measles and other childhood diseases provided through the national Vaccines for Children program have prevented more than 21 million hospitalizations and saved 732,000 lives since the program was implemented in 1994, the CDC said in a report Thursday. The VFC program was launched in direct response to a measles resurgence that caused more than 100 deaths. More than 90 percent of U.S. parents choose to vaccinate their kids against measles and other childhood infections on schedule, but in certain parts of the country — particularly 20 states that allow philosophical exemptions to vaccination — opt-out rates for the are much higher, research shows. Some states have tackled the problem by making it harder to obtain philosophical exemptions. In California, a law passed in 2012 requires that parents visit a doctor to discuss the benefits of vaccination before they can file a personal belief exemption with the school. But other health experts believe that simply adding hurdles isn’t the best way to solve the problem leading to outbreaks of measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases such as mumps and pertussis or whooping cough. A new report Thursday from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences calls for new research into how, when and why parents make vaccination decisions and the best way to communicate with those who are hesitant. A certain proportion of parents objects to vaccines and there’s probably no changing their minds, said Barry Bloom, an expert in infectious diseases from the Harvard School of Public Health who is co-chairing the effort. But if they want to reach parents in the middle — and stop the surge of public health consequences — doctors and researchers are going to have to do better. “This concerns an awful lot of people who genuinely want to do what’s best for their kids,” he said.Alex Gallardo/Associated Press UCLA head coach Jim Mora is spreading a little bit of Los Angeles to the nation via the recruiting trail, and in turn the Bruins' 2014 signing class could take on a geographically diverse look. The UCLA roster is largely comprised of California products, and California continues to be the program's primary supplier of talent with 12 commitments from in-state high school players in this year's class, which currently has 17 total. But UCLA is making a push for key prospects beyond California's borders before national signing day 2014, and its success recruiting these regions is crucial to the program's long-term mission. "We want to be a national player," athletic director Dan Guerrero told The Los Angeles Times in December after UCLA signed Mora to a two-year extension. Being a national player applies both to the pursuit of championships and on the recruiting scene. The program's reach outside of the Golden State has been more quality over quantity, both under Mora and predecessor Rick Neuheisel. Consider a few of the Bruins' impact players in 2013: Quarterback Brett Hundley came from Arizona; linebacker Myles Jack is from Washington and offensive lineman Xavier Su'a-Filo is from Utah and wide receiver Devin Fuller came across the continent from New Jersey. That same approach is reflected among the 18 recruits verbally committed to give their national letters of intent to Mora on Wednesday. Three of the class' five most highly rated commits are from out-of-state, including 4-star athletes Austin Roberts of Carmel (Ind.) and Nathan Starks of Englewood (Colo.) Cherry Creek. The third of that group might also be the centerpiece of UCLA's out-of-state efforts in this recruiting cycle, and that's Houston North Shore 4-star linebacker Zach Whitley. Whitley's commitment marks a major score for UCLA recruiting in a number of ways. Most obvious is he's another talented linebacker capable of flourishing in the Bruins' corps much the same way Akeem Ayers, Jordan Zumwalt, Anthony Barr and Jack have in recent years. Mora beat out recruiting savant Nick Saban and Alabama for Whitley's commitment, which is a meaningful head-to-head victory against a national powerhouse and part of the process of UCLA becoming a top-tier contender. Whitley is also one of three UCLA commits from Texas along with guard Najee Toran and dual-threat quarterback Aaron Sharp. A presence in the Lone Star State is of growing importance in the Pac-12. Head coach of reigning South Division champion Arizona State and native Texan Todd Graham said last season that it was one of the three highest priority regions in his recruiting strategy. UCLA is also going head-to-head with conference heavyweights Oregon and Stanford for two top prospects this year: defensive tackle Trey Lealaimatafao and defensive end Solomon Thomas. UCLA's 2014 Out-of-State Commitments and Top Targets Player Position From Star Rating Status Budda Baker Athlete Bellevue (Wash.) 4 Oregon, UCLA, Washington Malachi Dupre WR New Orleans John Curtis 5 Alabama, Florida State, LSU, Ole Miss, UCLA Trey Lealaimatafao DT San Antonio Warren 4 LSU, Oregon, UCLA Austin Roberts Athlete Carmel (Ind.) 4 Committed Aaron Sharp QB Humble (Tex.) Summer Creek 3 Committed Nathan Starks Athlete Englewood (Colo.) Cherry Creek 4 Committed Solomon Thomas DE Coppell (Tex.) 5 Arkansas, Stanford, UCLA Najee Toran OG Houston North Shore 3 Committed Zach Whitley LB Houston North Shore 4 Committed Kenny Young LB New Orleans John Curtis 4 Arkansas, LSU, Texas A&M, UCLA 247Sports.com Going beyond the Pac-12's geographic footprint might be the most reliable blueprint for building a national championship-caliber program and, to that end, UCLA is also trying to break into SEC territory on this home stretch. The Southeast isn't uncharted territory for the Pac-12—UCLA's rival USC has successfully mined Florida for some of its top talent on the 2014 roster. But it is a pipeline that is largely untapped for the conference as a whole. A Mode Analytics breakdown of college players' home states shows the Southeast is overwhelmingly the highest producer of talent as a region. That translates to more players to be had—and with USC already operating in the region, UCLA has added incentive to find its way in. On a grander scale, recruiting the Southeast means recruiting against the SEC, which had a seven-year monopoly on national championships from 2006 through 2012. Going head-to-head with the SEC in its part of the country is a bold strategy and surely a challenge. UCLA appears to have lost out on 5-star linebacker Rashaan Evans of Auburn, Ala., who could stay at home to play with the defending SEC champion Tigers. But the strategy could pay off with 4-star New Orleans John Curtis linebacker Kenny Young. Either way, Mora is establishing a presence nationwide opposite the programs that are competing for national championships, and doing so now will help grow the Bruins' brand in the near future. Kyle Kensing is the Pac-12 Lead Writer. Recruiting information obtained via 247Sports.com.With Vera Wang in attendance at Wednesday evening’s state dinner, there was some speculation as to whether Michelle Obama would wear an outfit by the Chinese American designer to the historic event. The first lady did not opt for Wang, however, nor did she choose a smaller label – but instead she donned an Alexander McQueen gown. Unsurprisingly, the dress, like her gloves, POTUS’s tie and Sasha Obama’s pants this morning, is red – the color symbolic of good luck in Chinese culture. At previous state dinners, Obama has opted for lesser-known designers. In November 2009, when the White House honored the prime minister of India, FLOTUS wore a strapless, gold metallic and crème floor length gown by Naeem Khan. For the state dinner in honor of Mexico in May, she wore a sparkling blue one-shoulder dress by Peter Soronen. FLOTUS may not have chosen a dress from Wang, but when asked what the designer herself was wearing on the red carpet, Wang responded, “I’ll let you guys guess.”A conservative group on Friday threatened to sue the city of San Francisco over an outdoor urinal installed during a recent upgrade at Dolores Park. The urinal near a J-Church light-rail line stop on the edge of the park, which consists of a semi-circular screen and a drain into the sewer system, violates the privacy rights of both users and those forced to watch them, discriminates against women and the disabled and poses a public health risk, according to a letter sent to the city by the Pacific Justice Institute, a conservative legal defense nonprofit. The letter demands that the city remove the urinal within 20 days, and says the group will file a lawsuit if the city does not comply. Institute President Brad Dacus said: “The people of San Francisco deserve a city that wishes to meet the needs of both men and women, and have it done in a manner that is respectful of those who need to use it.” San Francisco Recreation and Parks officials said yesterday they had received five form emails regarding the urinal, and referred all further questions to the City Attorney’s Office. City Attorney’s Office spokesman Matt Dorsey said the office had received the institute’s letter: “We intend to give their legal theories all the consideration they deserve.” The urinal, or “pissoir,” was installed as part of an extensive $20.5 million renovation project at Dolores Park just completed last month. The renovation project included new picnic areas, an off-leash dog park, a scenic overlook at 20th and Church streets, repairs to tennis, basketball and multi-use courts — and the construction of new restroom facilities. The popular and heavily-used park now has 27 toilets in addition to the outdoor urinal, as compared to the four it had previously, according to rec and park officials.Closures, Partial Application and Currying: Effective Functional JavaScript Hugo Di Francesco Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jan 12, 2017 To use JavaScript to its full potential you have to embrace its strong functional programming base. We’re going to explore some crucial and powerful functional constructs: closures, partial application and currying that make JavaScript terse yet understandable. The basics Functional programming is a programming paradigm that follows a more mathematical computation model. Let’s go through some basics to make your JavaScript more functional. Declarative programming Functional programs tend to be declarative (as opposed to imperative), that’s a case of telling the compiler what you want instead of how you want it. const list = [ 1, 2, 3 ]; // imperative style const imperative = list[0]; // declarative style const declarative = firstElement(list); In the above code snippet we’re trying to get the first element of list, the declarative example says what we want, firstElement can do whatever it likes as long as it returns the first element of the passed parameter. Whereas in the imperative style, we say I want index 0 of list explicitly. In JavaScript and at this program size, this doesn’t make a massive difference. To build functional programs, we should prefer the declarative style and avoid mutation. Recursion and higher order functions There are no loops in functional programming, just recursion and higher order functions. Mechanisms such as pattern matching allow for easier recursive function declarations. In ECMAScript 6 (the 2015 edition of the standard JavaScript is based on) we’ve added destructuring to the toolbox, which is a basic pattern matching that works for lists. You can read more about it here. Higher order functions allow you to traverse iterable collections (Arrays). In JavaScript we have Array#map, Array#filter and Array#reduce. Each of these takes a function as an argument. This is possible because we have first-class functions in JavaScript, which means you can pass them around like any other type of variable :). Lambdas (anonymous functions) In JavaScript we can declare lambas (anonymous functions), which is quite handy considering the API of a lot of libraries expects a function as a parameter. We can just declare the function inline. It might mean a bit of a indentation/bracketing problem but inlining until you can generalise or refactor is actually great. [ 1, 2, 3 ].map(function(el) { return el * 2; }); Closures Here are some >140 character explanations of closures, thanks to Mateusz Zatorski for asking and his esteemed followers for answering :). We can use closures to put state inside an outer function while having access to that state in an inner function. That state is not global but still accessible to child functions. function outerFunction() { const someState = { count: 0 }; return { increment: function() { someState.count++; }, getCount: function() { return someState.count; } } } const counter = outerFunction(); counter.increment(); counter.increment(); counter.getCount(); // 2 counter.increment(); counter.increment(); counter.getCount(); // 4 someState; // ReferenceError: someState is not defined The state ( someState )isn’t global since the last statement returns an error. It is however available to the functions it returned, because they can “see” someState, it’s in their lexical scope. Function application Function application is the first “hardcore” functional programming concept we’re going to introduce today. It’s a concept that comes from the mathematics world. A function application, in JavaScript, can look like a function call but doesn’t have to be. function someFunc(arg1, arg2) { return arg1 + arg2; } // function call someFunc(1, 2); // 3 // different ways to apply a function someFunc(1, 2); // 3 someFunc.apply(this, [ 1, 2 ]); // 3 someFunc.call(this, 1, 2); // 3 A function call is an imperative construct whereas a function application belongs to the realm of functional programming and mathematics. In JavaScript you can even use apply and call to define what this will be set to during the application. Partial application Partial application is when you apply some of the required parameters of a function and return a function that takes the rest of the parameters. We’re going to flip the parameters to the map function. Instead of taking parameters (list, fn) it’s going to take (fn, list). This is to illustrate the value of partial application. function functionalMap(fn, list) { return list.map(fn); } function partialFunctionalMap(fn) { return function(list) { return functionalMap(fn, list); } } // Example 1 // Let's apply all the arguments at once functionalMap(x => x * 2, [ 1, 2, 3 ]); functionalMap(x => x * 2, [ 2, 3, 5 ]); // Example 2 // Let's apply them one at a time const doubleListItems = partialFunctionalMap(x => x * 2); doubleListItems([ 1, 2, 3 ]); doubleListItems([ 2, 3, 5 ]); What the code does in example 1 is less obvious than in example 2. You have to read what the lamba does instead of being told by the variable function name. This is something we can use in places like React event handlers. Now if we went the Object-oriented route, we would use.bind partialHandleClick function to the component instance ( this ) and to be able to access this.props.activeType from inside partialHandleClick. We’re trying to leverage functional programming, so no accessing this from all the way inside an event handler. We get to store some information that we can get at.map time (which type is this handler for). When the event triggers, we get the final parameter we need e (the event object) and the handler can finish applying. Currying A curried function is a function that you apply 1 parameter at a time. function partialFunctionalMap(fn) { return function(list) { return functionalMap(fn, list); } } partialFunctionalMap is curried. In the event handler example partialHandleLinkClick isn’t, since the first application provided 2 parameters. We could rewrite it though. function curriedHandleLinkClick(type){ return function(activeType) { return function(e) { const hasKeyboardModifier = e.ctrlKey \|\| e.shiftKey \|\| e.altKey \|\| e.metaKey; updateType(type, activeType, hasKeyboardModifier); }; }; } And we would use this.curriedHandleLinkClick(type)(this.props.activeType) instead of this.partialHandleLinkClick(type, this.props.activeType). This isn’t as pretty in JavaScript as in other languages since we’re replacing (arg1, arg2, arg3) with (arg1)(arg2)(arg3). Currying and partial application Currying is strict: a curried function always applied 1 parameter at a time. Partial application is not this strict. A curried function tends to be partially applied but a partially applied function does not have to be curried. This means we can automate the currying process. In JavaScript we can use libraries to curry functions with multiple arguments. Lodash has a curry function and so does Ramda. They take a function and when applied with a parameter either returns if all required arguments are present or returns a curried function that accepts the rest of the arguments. You can also write your own by accessing the arguments object of the function and using Function#apply. Here are a couple of tutorials that take you through this process. Some languages like Haskell are auto-curried. This means that if the function application does not provide the required number of parameters, it will return a function which will accept the rest of the parameters one at a time, just like the Lodash and Ramda curry functions do. Another cool thing in Haskell is that partial application looks like non-partial application and curried function calls aren’t ugly, since the separator for parameters is a space. times a b = a * b times 1 2 double = times 2 Effective Functional JavaScript Recipe Use and abuse closures, partial application and currying. This will enable you to compose your functions and write code that is extremely terse without losing readability. Remember to give this post some 💚 if you liked it. Follow me Hugo Di Francesco or @hugo__df for more JavaScript content :).California state senators will give sexual harassment complaints to outside law firm FILE - In this Aug. 26, 2016, file photo, state Sen. Tony Mendoza, D-Artesia, listens at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif. The California Senate announced Sunday, Nov. 12, 2017, that it is changing its process for investigating sexual misconduct complaints following new allegations against a sitting Democratic senator. The changes come after allegations that Mendoza sexually harassed at least a few women who formerly worked in his office. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File) less FILE - In this Aug. 26, 2016, file photo, state Sen. Tony Mendoza, D-Artesia, listens at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif. The California Senate announced Sunday, Nov. 12, 2017, that it is changing its process... more Photo: Rich Pedroncelli, Associated Press Photo: Rich Pedroncelli, Associated Press Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close California state senators will give sexual harassment complaints to outside law firm 1 / 3 Back to Gallery SACRAMENTO — California senators will no longer review complaints of sexual harassment against themselves or their staff under a new rule announced by state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León and other lawmakers. Instead, he and other members of the Senate Rules Committee said they will send “complaints, allegations and open investigations, including the most recent allegations against a sitting senator” to an independent outside law firm for investigation. De León, a Los Angeles Democrat, made the change following allegations against his roommate, state Sen. Tony Mendoza, D-Artesia (Los Angeles County), by two of his former female employees. On Saturday, de León moved out of the home they shared a short drive from the state Capitol. “The people who work here and the public we serve must have complete confidence that no public official is above the law or our strict zero-tolerance harassment policies,” de León said. “Those who violate these policies will be held to account — swiftly and justly.” The allegations against Mendoza, first reported in the Sacramento Bee, involve a 23-year-old Cal State Sacramento fellow who says the 46-year-old senator repeatedly invited her to his home when she went to him looking for a permanent job and suggested she stay in his hotel during a fundraiser. Mendoza denied any wrongdoing, saying he would “never knowingly abuse my authority nor intentionally put an employee into an awkward or uncomfortable position.” He did not respond to whether he invited the woman home with him. A second employee alleged that in 2008 when she was a 19-year-old intern in Mendoza’s office, he singled her out by flying her to San Jose for the Democratic convention and asked her to have a drink at a minibar in his hotel suite, where he booked her an adjoining room. The woman, Jennifer Kwart, said Mendoza’s behavior made her so uncomfortable that she made up a reason to fly home, according to the Bee. Kwart, who now works for Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, said she only came forward with her allegation against Mendoza after reading that another woman
the hospital twice about it and they tell me I need an mri and they can not do it for me, they give me meds and an anti inflammatory shot the shot last a day the steroids last five days the pain never leaves and the swelling comes back. I don’t know what to do anymore feeling hopeless if you can help me please do I’m so confused on how to go about this situation. I just want to get it fixed." Will my auto insurance be affected? Couple month ago, I was in an accident while driving my friend’s car. Police were called, and police report were filed. I didn’t have a car nor auto insurance, so I paid for all the repairs on both car, so insurance company wasn’t involved. If I decide to buy a car and get auto insurance now, will my rate be affected? better yet, should I even tell the insurance company about it? Thanks in advance!" Did you agree over a decade ago when California made police asking for auto insurance illegal? Jack I do carry my passport card, but that is irrelevant. If you have a drivers license, you are obviously authorized to be here. The law does not say aliens cannot be here-only that illegal aliens cannot be here. The reason innocent people are inconvenienced with insurance they may never use is because not-so-innocent people drive without having the ability to pay. This is similar to mandatory health insurance-they will even make sure Rush buys it. Likewise, the reason citizens have been driven to this level of security is because the illegal alien problem is epidemic. Rights only exist in proportion to the degree in which the law is obeyed in any area. A law abiding society retains many rights, one infested with illegalities is highly restricted." Life insurance payout for suicide goes to who? If you commit suicide, life insurance will pay out to the next of kin / whoever you put it out to pay. However, will it first be used to pay off your debts first, or will your debts be gone (assuming no cosigners) and all the money go towards whoever you wanted it to? Note: Please do not argue over whether or not life insurance pays out for suicide, as it does after a certain period of the policy in effect. Also please do not argue over you shouldn’t commit suicide!""" Does this sound right? My pelvic ultrasound with insurance cost $4000? I had 3 light periods in a row so I asked my doctor if I could get an ultrasound to make sure i wasn’t pregnant/had an ovarian cyst and to make sure everything down there was working properly. I went in yesterday to get an ultra sound done an had to put $500 down. The total cost was $4000. Does this sound right? I’ve been reading online and I see that the most anyone really paid was $1000-$2000 range. What can I do? Which it better medicare or private insurance? Which it better medicare or private insurance? How much would motorcycle insurance cost for a 15 year boy in the state of Wyoming? How much would motorcycle insurance cost for a 15 year boy in the state of Wyoming? Does my car insurance cover this? Somebody broke my windshield with a rock and I don’t know if my insurance covers it First car recommendations and insurance help? I’m 17 and I’m about 3 or 4 months away from passing my driving test. I’ve been looking at cars and really like the look of a peugeot 206 or 207 or a new model renault clio. however, the insurance is at the cheapest 2,220 – that’s with out any pass plus or other drivers on it. I was just wondering if there are any other cars you people would recommend for me (my budget is 1000 for a car) and any insurance tips. no-one be stupid please, I’m a good driver and yes i do need a car 🙂 ANSWER: I recommend one to visit this internet site where one can get rates from the best companies: http://QUOTESDEAL.NET/index.html?src=WP2penleiviesentgenKing James Version of the Bible DAVID GRUNFELD / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE The Louisiana Legislature is considering declaring the Holy Bible the official state book of Louisiana. Legislation that would make the Holy Bible the official state book of Louisiana cleared the House Committee on Municipal, Parochial and Cultural Affairs with a vote of 8-5 Thursday afternoon. It will now head to the full House of Representatives for consideration. Rep. Thomas Carmody, R-Shreveport, originally filed a bill to declare a specific copy of the Bible, found in the Louisiana State Museum system, the official state book. But by the time he presented the proposal to the committee, he changed language in his legislation to make the generic King James version of the Bible, a text used worldwide, the official state book. Carmody said his intention was not to mingle religion with government functions. "This is not about establishing an official religion," he said. Still, Legislators became concerned that the proposal wasn't broad enough and did not reflect the breadth of Bibles used by religious communities. In particular, some lawmakers worried that singling out the King James version of the Bible would not properly reflect the culture of Louisiana. The Catholic Church, for example, does not use the King James text. "Let's make this more inclusive of other Christian faiths, more than just the ones that use the King James version," said Rep. Stephen Ortego, D-Carencro. A few committee members fought the bill vehemently, saying the legislation was likely to upset some citizens who are not Christian and open the state up to legal challenges. "I am so bothered by this bill that I just called my pastor. My pastor just said that he thinks we are going to have a legal problem," said Rep. Wesley Bishop, D-New Orleans, who voted against the legislation. Rep. Ebony Woodruff, D-Harvey, tried to amend the bill to declare "all books of faith" the official state books of Louisiana, but the proposal failed 5-8. When asked if he would be open to making "all books of faith" a group of official state books, Carmody was fairly adamant in his opposition. "I would certainly be against that amendment," he said. The American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana already has concerns about the bill. "[The official state book] ought to be one that relates to the history of Louisiana and not one that is going to discriminate against a large number of Louisianans," said Majorie Esman, executive director of the organization. Esman declined to say whether the ACLU would fight the Holy Bible designation in court if it became law. Michael Weil, who heads up the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans, said his organization -- which is cultural and not religious in nature -- hasn't take a stance on the bill. But the legislation gives him some personal pause. "I think the state should consider a text that is not religious," he said. HOW COMMITTEE MEMBERS VOTED: Those who voted in favor of declaring the Holy Bible Louisiana's official state book: Reps. Taylor Barras, R-New Iberia; Johnny Berthelot, R-Gonzales; Robert Billiot, D-Westwego; Terry Brown, I-Colfax; Mike Danahay, D-Sulphur; Dalton Honore, D-Baton Rouge; Stephen Ortego, D-Carencro; Tom Willmott, R-Kenner Those who voted against declaring the Holy Bible Louisiana's official state book: Bishop, Woodruff and Reps. Jared Brossett, D-New Orleans; Austin Badon, D-New Orleans; Barbara Norton, D-Shreveport .... Julia O'Donoghue is a state politics reporter based in Baton Rouge. She can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at @jsodonoghue. Please consider following us on Facebook at NOLA.com and NOLA.com-Baton Rouge.There's still hope, even if your team is one of the eight to have started 0-3 this season. Brent Schrotenboer of the San Diego Union-Tribune reports that the NCAA has begun discussions about the possibility of allowing teams with losing records to play in bowl games. Under existing rules, teams must finish 6-6 or better to be eligible to play in the postseason. Only one victory against a Division I-AA opponent can count toward the necessary six victories. But in April, the governing body approved 35 postseason games, an all-time high, and that put a strain on the requirements to become bowl eligible. With 35 bowls, 70 of the 120 teams in I-A will be playing in the postseason. But with USC on probation and banned from bowl play for the next two seasons, the pool of teams has been cut to 119. The margin for error was already razor thin. Last season, 71 teams fell under the category of bowl eligible. Complicating matters: More I-A teams are losing to I-AA opponents. Of the 90 games involving I-A vs. I-AA, the big boys are 63-6. Last season, I-A teams totaled 89 "easy" wins. They can do no better than 84 this season.This morning my alarm was set for 05:10. When it went off I really wondered how it could have seemed like a good idea yesterday. It was pitch black outside, but soon the sky began to brighten. Google had the sunrise at 6:23. I met up with Tara Thean at the backs. You might remember her from the levitation blog post. This time the idea was to do some ballet shots with a bit of morning light and maybe some mist. We got kicked out of Clare College by a porter that thought we looked too professional and told us that we need to get the Head Porter’s permission to photograph at the College. That was unfortunate, but no point arguing with him, so we went to the centre instead for a few shots before turning back and taking the Garret Hostel Lane to the bikes. It has been a long day. After the morning shoot I headed in to work, and now I have spent the evening photoshopping and writing this blog. Time to call it a night! I hope you enjoyed the photos, if you want to see more check out the street ballet photos. Cheers, JohannesBrowsers and JavaScript are constantly getting more powerful and fully featured. There was a time when is building any type of game required Flash. But with this out of the way, the stage is set for powerful HTML5 and WebGL gaming! Here are 30 of our favorite games which run in all modern browsers and are build only with web technologies. Genre: Arcade, Racing HexGL HexGL is a futuristic, fast-paced racing game built on HTML5, JavaScript and WebGL. You can control a space ship by using your keyboard, a touchscreen device or even a leap motion controller if you have one. Genre: Action, RPG Cross Code A retro-inspired 2D game set in the distant future. This one is full of great game mechanics such as combos, puzzles, skill trees, quests, items and more. Genre: Arcade Sketchout The objective of Sketchout is to protect your planet and destroy the opposition by deflecting meteors as you control an Breakout-style paddle and draw lines at the same time. Design is where this game shines with awesome visuals and music. Genre: Multiplayer, RPG, Action Treasure Arena Treasure Arena is a dynamic battle-arena game for up to 4 players built with the power of socket.io. It features different game modes, excellent framerate and a great soundtrack. A very fun game. Genre: Arcade, Puzzle,Relaxing Bejeweled The classic Bejeweled game in HTML5 form. This is an official clone and as such it runs and looks perfectly. The ultimate time killer. Genre: Arcade Missile Game A very challenging game in which you play as a missile being lunched into a tunnel. The game has cool black and white graphics that are nicely used to create a strong dept of field effect. Genre: Puzzle Gods Will Be Watching You and your crew have to survive for 40 days in isolation in this creepy (but awesome) game. There are six members of your team including a dog, a psychiatrist and a robot and you have to interact with them the right way to keep them warm, fed and sane. Genre: Arcade Sinuous A simple game with minimalistic graphics and a fluid frame rate. Avoid colliding with the red dots while picking up power-ups. Also, never stop moving around if you want those extra points! Genre: Arcade Swooop Fly around and collect gems and stars in a beautiful and colorful 3D world. Genre: Arcade, Racing Free Rider HD Free Rider HD is an addicting game where you race a bike on tracks drawn by other players. You can play on any of the thousands of player made tracks or create your own and share it. Genre: Puzzle, Relaxing Entanglement The point of this game is to create a path as long as possible by placing segments on a grid. You can play alone on one of the many levels or play against friends. Genre: Action, Arcade Escape From XP Celebrate the end of Windows XP support with Escape from XP. It's your job to rescue the last developer trapped in Clippy's tyranny. Fight to survive endless waves of XP enemies then finish off the OS with a bang. Genre: RPG, Tower Defense, Action Polycraft In this awesome 3D game you run around collecting resources, building stuff, completing quests and fighting stuff. Everything about it is polished and it runs perfectly smooth. Genre: Puzzle 2048 A very addictive game that you've probably already played. In 2048 you move numbered tiles around and merge them. Get that elusive 2018 tile to win! Genre: Action Onslaught Arena A fast-paced retro styled survival game where you fight off hordes of enemies using different weapons. Genre: Puzzle Angry Birds The (once) popular Angry Birds game in HTML5, so you can play it in your browser. Genre: Arcade, Multiplayer Cube Slam The classic pong game done with fun colors and cool 3D graphics. You can challenge a friend by just sending them a URL and if you want to, you can see each other via webcam. Genre: Action, RPG, Strategy The WIzard The Wizard is a turn-based dungeon crawler where you’ll encounter mythical monsters and find marvellous spells. The game features cool combat mechanics and can be quite challanging at times. Genre: Action, Arcade Survive as many bossfights as you can in this cool looking space shooter. Genre: Casual, Funny Cookie Clicker Cookie clicker is a game that was probably created as a joke but offers tremendous amounts of fun nonetheless. You start off with 0 cookies and after some productive cookie clicking you will find yourself with billions of cookies to spare. Genre: Puzzle, Coding Elevator Saga And here is something for programmer-types. Your task in Elevator Saga is to transport people in the most efficient manner by programming the movement of elevators. Just one little thing - every move you make is done with JavaScript. Genre: Action, RGP, Multiplayer Game Of Bombs Game of Bombs is a bomberman type game placed in a vast map full of enemy players. Collect power-ups, skins and achievements in your way to becomming the best bomberman player. Genre: Platformer, Action Olympia Rising A dynamic platformer with nice retro looking graphics. It is set in ancient Greece, where you play as a woman who is given another chance at life, and has to escape from the world of the dead. Genre: Arcade, Racing Pixel Race A game with awesome frame rates and a simple concept, in which you control a car to avoid obstacles, while collecting coins. If you have the patience and the free time you might become the best in the world (the record is 36309 coins). Genre: Puzzle Little Alchemy Start off with the four basic elements and combine them to create the 510 possible combinations. Genre: Arcade Arena 5 Fly around a digital field and shoot geometrical enemies to get a high score. Genre: Arcade Vector Runner Remix Make it as far as you can in this platformer full of colors and geometrical shapes. Genre: Action, Platformer Biolab Disaster An awesome pixel art platformer where you have to escape a lab full of mutated creatures and other baddies. Genre: Arcade World's Biggest Pacman A huge collection of PAC-MAN mazes - probably more then you can beat in your lifetime (this isn't a challenge, please don't try). Genre: Action, Arcade New Super Resident Raver Save panicking people from the incoming zombie invasion. Collect money, upgrade your weapons and fight zombies. To Wrap it Up And this concludes our list of HTML5 games! They are all fun and have huge time wasting potential. Some of them don't have sound, but frankly they don't need it. Do you have a favorite HTML5 game that is not included in this list? Share it in our comment section.A day after bashing lobbyists, President Barack Obama Barack Hussein ObamaWith low birth rate, America needs future migrants 4 ways Hillary looms over the 2020 race Obama goes viral after sporting black bomber jacket with '44' on sleeve at basketball game MORE’s administration has invited K Street insiders to join private briefings on a range of topics addressed in Wednesday’s State of the Union. The Treasury Department on Thursday morning invited selected individuals to “a series of conference calls with senior Obama administration officials to discuss key aspects of the State of the Union address.” ADVERTISEMENT The invitation, which went to a variety of stakeholders, was sent by Fred Baldassaro, a senior adviser at the Treasury Department’s Office of Business Affairs and Public Liaison.The invitation stated, “The White House is encouraging you to participate in these calls and will have a question and answer session at the end of each call. As a reminder, these calls are not intended for press purposes.” The calls are scheduled to begin at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, with the first topic being job creation and economic growth. Another call, at 1 p.m., is on government reform and transparency. Republicans have criticized the Obama White House for not being more transparent in its discussions with Congress on healthcare reform. Obama recently acknowledged that the legislative process has not been as open as he promised on the campaign trail. Other issues that will be addressed on Thursday include education, climate change and healthcare reform. A handful of lobbyists told The Hill on Thursday morning that they received the invitations and were planning to call in. Some lobbyists say they are extremely frustrated with the White House for criticizing them and then seeking their feedback. Others note that Democrats on Capitol Hill constantly urge them to make political donations. One lobbyist said, “Bash lobbyists, then reach out to us. Bash lobbyists [while] I have received four Democratic invitations for fundraisers.” In his State of the Union on Wednesday, Obama once again targeted K Street: “We face a deficit of trust — deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years. To close that credibility gap, we have to take action on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue — to end the outsized influence of lobbyists; to do our work openly; to give our people the government they deserve.” The Treasury Department referred The Hill’s request for comment to the White House, which at press time had not responded to questions on this issue. On Thursday afternoon, White House spokesman Josh Earnest stated in an e-mail, "As part of our effort to reach out and engage with the public and policymakers, it is standard for our outreach team to organize a conference call, so that we can include people who are not in Washington, after a major speech or announcement through the president's priorities. These calls are targeted at a diverse group of community and government leaders including mayors, governors, faith groups, women's organizations, representatives from the African American and Latino communities to share as much information about the administration's agenda as possible. The calls, which include question-and-answer sessions, typically include hundreds of people from across the country..." Lobbyists say the Obama White House has held many off-the-record teleconferences over the past year. For example, lobbyists and others were invited to a teleconference with “senior Obama administration officials” on Monday to discuss the administration’s plan to improve the lives of middle-class families. The invitation, which is addressed to “Friends,” emphasizes in bold and italics that “this call is for background information only and not intended for press purposes.” It advises callers to tell the operator “you’re joining the ‘White House Briefing Call.’ ” Another lobbyist said these types of teleconferences occur “all the time.” And that is why many on K Street are exasperated with Obama’s use of lobbyists as a punching bag. Some have said they understood why he used strong rhetoric on the campaign trail but are irritated the White House solicits their opinions while Obama’s friends in Congress badger them for political donations. This article was updated at 12:11 p.m. and at 4:50 p.m.Every week, baking expert Alice Medrich will be going rogue on Food52 -- with shortcuts, hacks, and game-changing recipes. Today: Yes, make-ahead whipped cream is a thing. Dinner parties -- especially Thanksgiving -- just got less stressful. Shop the Story Real whipped cream takes just seconds to make, but that doesn’t mean you have to do it at the very last minute. Here’s how to do it ahead: Whip the cream (with vanilla and sugar or whatever) as usual, but beat it less stiff than you ultimately want it to be. Cover the bowl and put it in the fridge until needed, several hours or even a day or two ahead. When the cream is needed, give it just a few strokes with a wire whisk to stiffen it and re-incorporate any liquid that has accumulated at the bottom of the bowl. That’s all! More: Alice's 5 Rules for Better Whipped Cream Alice's new book Seriously Bitter Sweet is a complete revision of her IACP award-winning Bittersweet, updated for the 54%, 61%, and 72% (and beyond) bars available today. It's packed with tricks, techniques, and answers to every chocolate question, plus 150 seriously delicious recipes -- both savory and sweet. Photo by James RansomISO-100 Overview Dymatize ISO-100 is a super clean 100 percent whey isolate protein powder for athletes who want protein — and only protein — in their shakes. Dymatize ISO-100 Whey Isolate Protein is some of the purest whey protein on the market and has been super purified to remove even more of the non-protein components, providing athletes with more protein in fewer scoops. The intense purification process adds to the cost of the product, but ensures that elite athletes or dedicated bodybuilders get the nutrition they need with none of the fillers. For anyone watching their carb and fat intake, super-pure Dymatize ISO-100 is well worth the extra expense. Each flavor contains just one gram or less of carbs and 24 grams of protein per serving. Best of all, the protein powder mixes easily and completely for a lump-free shake in your choice of delicious flavors. ISO-100 Description from Dymatize Nutrition Take your performance to the next level with ISO-100. You expect only the best from yourself and your nutrition. DYMATIZE ISO-100 is one of the most advanced and effective proteins available and was developed to give you 100% of what you need to support muscle growth and achieve your ambitions. The Fastest-Acting Protein. ISO-100 provides 25 grams of super-fast absorbing 100% whey protein isolate and has been hydrolyzed for even faster absorption and digestion. It delivers quick amino acid replenishment, perfect first thing in the morning to stop catabolism or after intense training to speed your recovery. Each serving of ISO-100 has 5.5 grams of BCAAs involved in activating Muscle Protein Synthesis to ensure your workouts are not going to waste. The Highest Level of Purity. ISO-100 uses only whey proteins derived from cross-flow microfiltration processing (cold-filtered) to preserve the many important whey protein fractions including lactoferrin and immunoglobins, which can be lost in other forms of processing. We have carefully formulated ISO-100 to deliver more of what you want, and less of what you don't want: free of gluten, fat and lactose, plus only one gram of sugar. With only a short list of ingredients, it is easy to see why ISO-100 is one of the purest proteins available. In addition, ISO-100 is produced in our own Sport certified providing assurance to the athletic community that ISO-100 is free of banned substances. New Improved Taste. Dymatize has taken flavor to a whole new level! Our in-house flavor specialists worked long and hard to create an even more delicious taste. ISO-100, the reward you deserve for all your hard work and dedication. So delightfully delicious, you will look forward to the next shake. Supplement Facts Serving Size: 31.7 grams Servings Per Container: 71 Ingredient Amount % Daily Value Calories 110 Calories from Fat 5 Total Fat 0.5g 1 Saturated Fat 0g 0 Trans Fat 0g Cholesterol 5mg 2 Sodium 160mg 7 Potassium 290mg 8 Total Carbohydrate 2g 1 Dietary Fiber 1g 4 Sugars <1g Protein 25g 50 Vitamin A 0 Vitamin C 0 Calcium 15 Iron 4 Percent Daily Value is based on a 2000 calorie diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs. † Daily Value not established. Contains milk & soy (lecithin). Ingredients: Hydrolyzed Whey Protein Isolate, Cocoa (Processed with Alkali), Natural & Artificial Flavors, Salt, Potassium Chloride, Sucralose, Stevia Leaf Extract. Manufacturer's Directions Add one rounded scoop to 5-6 oz. (150ml-180ml) of water, juice, or milk and mix thoroughly. For maximum results, use before and/or after workouts and at other strategic times daily. Manufacturer's Disclaimer Store in a cool, dry place. Keep out of reach of children.A large Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figure (you can find these at garage sales or on e-bay for around $10) A bottle lamp kit A can of white glossy spray paint WARNING! THE FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS ARE SUPER SOPHISTICATED AND SHOULD ONLY BE ATTEMPTED BY A TRAINED PROFESSIONAL. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! (Not really. Any schmuck with a drill and a thumb can pull this one off.) Take the Ninja Turtle and pull his head off. Discard the head or your children will find it and question why you killed Donatello. Drill a hole into the back of the turtle. Be sure the hole is small enough that the cord from the lamp kit goes in tightly. Snake the cord up through the neck and be sure that it fits smoothly. Take the cord out, go to a well ventilated place (or not if you like to get high off of spray paint, but you shouldn't...you are a dad and doing drugs is setting a bad example you freak), and spray paint the headless turtle with the the high gloss spray paint. Wait for it to dry and put another layer on. You want it to be candy polish white when you are done. Once it is dry, insert the cord, connect the cord to the area where the bulb goes in (I am not a trained electrician...the round thingy). I removed the cardboard piece and place the round thingy directly into the neck. It should fit perfectly. Now all you have to do is add a bulb and voila...You have your very own Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle lamp...Total cost around $25 (maybe a little more if you use an Edison bulb to make it real fancy schmancy). Here is the final product in all of its glory. So what do you think? Do you have any ideas for other dads that are looking to decorate their kid's room? Let us know in the comments below. Keep coming back for more Dadcorating ideas. As we have stated before on Stunt Dad, kid's room decor sucks. My kids are not the typical puppy and rainbow kinds of kids...and dammit, I don't want them to be. The last thing I want to see when I go into their room at night is a 5 foot Dora on my daughters bed or a wall of happy animals leering from across the room. So what is a dad to do? Start dadcorating!Dadcorating can be defined as taking anything that you think is cool and modifying it to fit into your children's life (or better said...anything you think is cool, but your wife won't let you put up in your house).Our first Dadcorating project for you is something I think any father that was raised in the 80's would appreciate: a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Lamp.This is a really simple project. You will need:Last November, I made a review for Fallout 4, based on my impressions after a weeks or so with the game. I actually was planning on moving the review over to Real Gamer Reviews, but as I was re reading it, I was amazed at how my impressions of it now are so drastically different from when I played it back then. I was actually shocked at how much I found myself playing Fallout 4 after the fact of beating the campaign, and one of my original complaints was how I felt like the game had little replayability after beating the campaign. That’s still true to a certain extent but what I didn’t consider was starting over with a new character! I have about 4 or 5 different characters now, each of them playing very differently from each other and in each one I got a LOT of quests that I never found or encountered in my original playthrough. I didn’t play any of my secondary characters nearly as much as I did my first but I have close to 200 hours loaded into the game now and I can absolutely say that this game has replayability. Another thing that I really didn’t appreciate on my first run, was the different factions. Some of my initial complaints are still completely valid, they all have repeatable side quests or as they’ve been come to be known as, “Radiant Quests” and those are completely pointless other than cheap money and EXP. But some of the story quests were actually WAY more interesting than I gave them credit for. Take the Railroad for example, probably the second faction I’m least interested in supporting but they have a quest where you infiltrate the Brotherhood of Steel and there are character checkpoints you have to get through. Just having charisma is enough to get through it, but from a story perspective it was REALLY entertaining! As far as Fallout 4 goes in comparison to 3 and New Vegas, I can absolutely see the faults that people complain about. Fallout 4 really doesn’t have the same depth that it’s previous two titles had when it comes to dialogue trees, or situations, or consequences but I rarely see people complimenting Fo4 on what it did well. Graphically, it might not be outstanding by today’s standards but it’s leagues above New Vegas and I can absolutely appreciate that. A lot of people complain that having “Good” shooting mechanics takes away from the game but I frankly disagree. It’s one thing to have intentionally bad shooting because you’re not trying to be an FPS, but when 90% of your gameplay is shooting, and you can’t talk your way out of it, it’s not BAD to have your primary gameplay mechanic be usable. If I had to give a reason as to why a lot of aspects of Fallout 4 lack depth, it would be because they put so much effort into making Fallout 4 from the ground up. As a sequel, it’s a little weak, but as a base for future games, it has AMAZING potential. As I see it, Fallout can only go up from here and developers from New Vegas have expressed interest in working on a new Fallout game using the Fallout 4 engine! Fallout 4 is still a great game! Not many games have held my attention this long. I can absolutely see why people complain about it, but that doesn’t mean it’s worth complaining about. If you want to see my original review of Fallout 4 you can find it in the link below and if you have any comments or thoughts on this re-evaluation I’d love to hear them! Thanks for reading! Fallout 4 Review AdvertisementsCredit: Kenneth Rocafort (Marvel Comics) Marvel's Ultimates 2 title ended in October with a unique proto "Legacy" issue #100, but the team is living on as the newest additions to Netmarble's MARVEL Future Fight mobile game. America Chavez and Blue Marvel have joined the game as the Ultimates, as well as three surprise recruits to the team not seen in the comic books - Quasar (Avil Kincaid), Anti-Man, and Nova (Sam Alexander). “The Ultimates are extremely important protectors of the Marvel Universe, saving Earth from cosmic and dimensional rifts and threats that aren’t seen or acknowledged by the average human,” said Seungwon Lee, Netmarble Games Chief Global Officer. “By adding them to MARVEL Future Fight, we’re hoping to bring more recognition to a beloved team of interstellar saviors.” Credit: Netmarble Games Lumped in with this update are also two new costumes for Agent Coulson are available as well as a new character - the Inhumans' Inferno. "This update introduces a new chapter to Story Missions titled “Ultimate Solution” where players will join with the members of the Ultimates team to stop the destruction and collapse of all the known worlds," explains Netmarble. "The chapter reveals fundamental foundations of the MARVEL Future Fight lore and provides an all-new background for the heroes and villains from the Ultimates comic book series." MARVEL Future Fight is available now for Android and iOS devices.Effects Of This Vulnerability. DNSSEC specification However, t's not clear how practical some of the attacks would be in real-world settings. While it's possible to use symmetric encryption to cryptographically authenticate an NTP service, keys are difficult to acquire. More details can be obtained from the research paper at http://www.cs.bu.edu/~goldbe/papers/NTPattack.pdf Sources: http://www.pentester.es/2015/10/delorean.html, http://www.cs.bu.edu/~goldbe/NTPattack.html, http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/10/new-attacks-on-network-time-protocol-can-defeat-https-and-create-chaos/ This vulnerability, if properly exploited, can cause debilitating outages, snoop on encrypted communications, bypass important security measures such aspreventing the tampering of domain name system records, etc The most troubling scenario involves bypassing HTTPS encryption by forcing a computer to accept an expired transport layer security certificate.However, t's not clear how practical some of the attacks would be in real-world settings. While it's possible to use symmetric encryption to cryptographically authenticate an NTP service, keys are difficult to acquire.Sources:http://www.pentester.es/2015/10/delorean.html,http://www.cs.bu.edu/~goldbe/NTPattack.html,http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/10/new-attacks-on-network-time-protocol-can-defeat-https-and-create-chaos/ These serious weaknesses in the Internet's time-synchronization can be used to change the actual time in computers, to whatever time the attacker chooses. These attacks could be used by malicious actors to wreak havoc on the Internet. An attack that prevents sensitive computers and servers from receiving regular time-synchronization updates could cause malfunctions on a mass scale. In many cases, such denial-of-service hacks can be carried out even when attackers are "off-path,Instead of challenging the legal basis of the strike, the institutions we regard as “checks” on the president have simply fawned and simpered. Military force is dangerous; its lawless use is even more dangerous. The constitutional and statutory constraints on the war power, as interpreted in practice over the past 75 years, already afford a president broad leeway to send American forces into harm’s way; but Trump has now blown past the few constraints that remain. And nobody is calling him on that. President Trump, after watching televised footage of a gas attack on the rebel-held city of Khan Sheikhoun, ordered U.S. forces to strike at a Syrian Air Force base. That was not an attack on the United States. Trump did not request authorization from Congress. He also did not seek authorization from the United Nations Security Council; he did not consult with the NATO allies who have been supporting U.S. military operations elsewhere in the Middle East. Let’s be clear about the strike against Syria. It is not and cannot be part of the ongoing “war” the U.S. is waging against the successors of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Syria’s armed forces aren’t part of Al Qaeda or any of its successors; the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force doesn’t cover Syria. By launching missiles against Bashar al Assad’s military, Trump was crossing an important legal line. Under the Constitution, the crossing of that line must, either at the time or soon afterwards, involve both of the “political branches” of the government—Congress and the President. Tiresome as it may be to reminded of this, Article I § 8 cl. 11 gives to Congress, not the President, the power “to declare war””—that is, to begin hostilities against another country. The President is designated by Article II § 2 cl. 1 as “commander in chief” of the armed forces. By implication—and, from what we can tell from the founding-era materials, by design—this gives a president power to respond to emergencies and what James Madison called “sudden attacks.” This, however, is a narrow, temporary exception to Congress’s plenary power over war and peace, not a backdoor to full-scale warfare. Some people believe War Powers Resolution changes this constitutional calculus—“giving” the President power to commit military forces for up to 60 days. It doesn’t. The Resolution in its first section repeats that the president’s commander-in-chief powers are properly “exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” The 60-day limit is an additional limit, not a blank check for short wars. In a War
it I had some very heavy Shin Megami Tensei vibes. I know Garoad is behind the games’ soundtrack-did you give him directions on how what you wanted the soundtrack to be like or did he just have glimpses of the game and work from the game’s theme and art direction? Fernando: Yeah, we just let him be for the most part. He got the feel and ambiance of the game and rolled with it. It also helped that his specialty just so happened to fit like a glove with the game. I think the most direction we gave him was “We need a song for this or that situation”. The in-game jukebox also meant that he could make songs he thought were cool regardless of context and we could add them with no problem. Christopher: Right, the jukebox gave Michael a lot of liberty in that regard. And I was never too specific with our music needs, so I don’t know if it made things complicated for him! Most of the time he’d came up with a song and say “I think this might fit for a sad scene” and I was like “holy shit yes,” but sometimes we didn’t have ideas for that sad scene haha, so in parts his music inspired scenes that weren’t there, and exist purely because he made a song for that mood. I think the ending is a good example of that. Fernando: When writing it (Fun fact: It took a fucking week) my main direction was “What does this song make you feel?” Christopher: The ending was by far the most complicated endeavor in this game, and a vital part of that creative process was feeling what the song was trying to convey. Diogo: To finish up the interview, any words you want to say to the gamers that buy the game? Fernando: We made the game thinking about the player sitting back and relaxing. So… please do exactly that. Enjoy it at your own pace. VA-11 HALL-A is currently available on Steam, and has a planned release on PS Vita sometime in the future. In case you missed it, you can find our review for the game here (we highly recommend it!). Niche Gamer regularly interviews developers on a variety of subjects—if you’re a developer and want to chat with us, please contact us!Hou's US Atty not as shook up as Reuters: "When we file an indictment under seal, it means generally that the investigation is completed." — T.L. Langford (@tlangford) January 8, 2016 John Wittman, Abbot's spokesman, said the governor's office was briefed on the case by the Texas Department of Public Safety, and that the office was not told the information was under seal. "After the arrest, a reporter contacted the governor’s office, stated details about the case, and asked for comment on the arrest," Wittman said. "Unaware that the information was sealed, the governor’s office provided a comment in response to the reporter's inquiry.” In a statement sent late Friday, Dan Patrick's communications director Keith Elkins said, "Apparently Reuter's is more interested in claiming a false exclusive report than in reporting the facts. If the Washington reporters had professionally done their job, and requested a comment prior to publication, they would have learned the Lt. Governor's office did not issue any public statements about the arrests or investigation until they had been widely reported in both Houston and Sacramento, California. To suggest otherwise, is ridiculous." The Texas Democratic Party wasted no time offering its own take. “The security of Texas families ought to be our elected officials’ utmost concern not how to best score cheap political points,” Texas Democratic Party Deputy Manny Garcia said in a prepared statement. “We trust elected officials with serious information and our lives. Governor Greg Abbott and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick are seriously out of line here. Reports that these Republicans may have jeopardized an inquiry into terrorism are troubling to say the least." A second person, Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, 23, was arrested Thursday morning in Sacramento and accused of traveling to Syria to fight alongside terrorist organizations, officials said. A criminal complaint unsealed Thursday said that Al-Jayab, a Palestinian born in Iraq who came to the United States as a refugee in October 2012, communicated online about his intent to return to Syria to fight for terrorist groups, discussing his previous experience fighting against the regime in Syria. When he was interviewed by citizenship officials, he lied about his travels and ties, the complaint alleges. The top two Texas officials may have publicly released details of an investigation into a terrorism suspect while it was still in progress, which may have jeopardized the investigation, sources familiar with the investigation told Reuters Friday.According to Reuters, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick released details from documents still under court seal.Authorities announced Thursday night that two Iraqi refugees had been arrested on terrorism-related charges in Houston and California.According to the FBI’s Houston office, Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan, 24, was charged with attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State, unlawfully attempting to gain U.S. citizenship and making false statements.Al Hardan, a Palestinian born in Iraq, entered the United States as a refugee in November 2009 and has lived in Houston since being granted legal permanent residence in August 2011, the FBI said in a prepared statement.Al Hardan appeared before a Houston judge Friday morning.Authorities said Al Hardan is accused of attempting to provide support and resources, including “training, expert advice and assistance and personnel -- specifically himself -- to a known foreign terrorist organization.”The FBI also said that Al Hardan lied on his application to be a naturalized U.S. citizen.The official announcement came nearly two hours after Abbott announced Al-Hardan's arrest and released a statement calling "for a halt to refugees entering the U.S. from countries substantially controlled by terrorists.”Though Abbott did not identify Al-Hardan in his announcement, the sources told Reuters that the announcements “forced federal authorities to wrap up their inquiries and rush out public statements and court papers on the case earlier than planned.”According to Reuters, Al- Hardan was already in custody at the time, but interviews of potential witnesses were still being conducted when the announcements were made.However, the Texas Tribune reported the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Houston was not as concerned about the timing of the statements.Thousands of people travelled from all over Ireland and beyond to pay their respects to former GAA president Joe McDonagh last night. Mr McDonagh reposed at the Cillín within Church of Mary Immaculate Queen in Barna in Galway throughout the day before his removal to the church late Monday night. The former Galway hurler, GAA official, teacher, Irish language promoter and education administrator, passed away on Friday after a short illness aged 62. GAA players, managers and officials were among thousands from all over the country who travelled to the small village at the entrance to Connemara. They queued for hours outside the church which overlooks Galway Bay, with the church full to capacity an hour before Mr McDonagh’s body was brought from his home a short distance away. Joe McDonagh: The West's Awake Mr McDonagh, who is survived by his wife Peig, son Eoin and daughters Muireann and Eilis, will be laid to rest at Rahoon Cemetery after noon mass on Tuesday. He won an All-Ireland medal in 1980 when Galway ended a 57-year wait for the Liam McCarthy Cup and famously sang ‘The West’s Awake’ after captain Joe Connolly collected the trophy. Mr Connolly said Joe McDonagh was an integral figure in the revival of Galway hurling, but that was just one of the many things he achieved in his life. “One thing I would absolutely say with certainty, in our era as Galway hurlers we had wonderful fun. We had brilliant fun from beginning to end. The greatest social nights you can imagine of a gathering of people, we had it. “We took our hurling so seriously, there was a phenomenal spirit engendered in the group at the time, but bang in the middle of all that was Joe. He was just a wonderful raconteur, a wonderful singer, a great hurler. “In his last few years, rising to the top of the GAA and education, we shared Joe with the country, but for those years we had him to ourselves when we were hurling for Galway,” said the former Galway captain. His former Ballindeereen and Galway colleague Noel Lane said that his long-time friend had left a huge legacy behind him. “He lived in Barna in recent years and there is plenty of granite out there. Joe has laid granite foundations in so many things in the GAA, in education, in the Irish language. So many things that will benefit communities locally and internationally for years to come,” he said. A book of condolence is open at City Hall in Galway city, while Galway County Council held a minute’s silence before their meeting in Abbeyknockmoy.The Dallas Cowboys square off with the Philadelphia Eagles tonight on Sunday Night Football. According to OddsShark, the Cowboys enter the contest as four point favorites over the Eagles. The over-under is set at 43 points. Dallas has been nearly flawless against the spread this season at 5-0-1 while the Eagles have been a respectable 4-2. The OddsShark computer likes the Cowboys a lot in this matchup. The computer projects a 30.3-16.9 Dallas victory. The computer is taking the Cowboys to cover the spread and the over on the point total. Dak Prescott gets additional help tonight with the return of star receiver Dez Bryant. Prescott has managed to play well without Bryant’s presence for most of the season, but Bryant gives the Cowboys an added dimension. Prescott and the Cowboys offense have a difficult matchup against the Eagles defense. We expect Carson Wentz to have a bounce back game but think the Eagles come up short. Heavy expects this one to be a back and forth contest. We like Prescott and the Cowboys at home to come away with the win. Heavy’s Pick: Cowboys 31 Eagles 24. Cowboys -4. Over on the Point Total.Moussa Sissoko joined Tottenham from Newcastle for £30m on transfer deadline day Tottenham's Moussa Sissoko will be banned for three matches for elbowing Bournemouth's Harry Arter, missing the north London derby with Arsenal. The France midfielder has accepted a violent conduct charge for the incident during Saturday's goalless draw. Sissoko, 27, apologised but was charged by the Football Association. Spurs will not appeal against the decision. His suspension will include Tuesday's EFL Cup tie at Liverpool, plus league games against Leicester and Arsenal. The FA said the incident was missed by match officials. "I need to say the elbow was in the face of Arter and it is clear," Spurs manager Mauricio Pochettino said on Monday. "We are in a period where we need all the squad, all the players to compete. It's difficult now because he is a player who was in our plans to play tomorrow, so we have to change a little bit." Speaking to Match of the Day after Saturday's game, Arter said he was happy to accept Sissoko's explanation that the contact was accidental. He said: "I never want to see a player get into trouble if they didn't mean to. Sissoko apologised. I'm happy to move on from it."In 1914, the world exploded into a huge episode of death and destruction. What was then called “The Great War” was a horrific bloodbath, in which millions died in the trenches across Europe. 100 years later, the danger of a new world war is hanging over us once again. One of the most disturbing patterns in the current period is what has been called the “Asian pivot.” The US and its allies seem to be gearing up for war in Asia. The increased presence of the US military in the Philippines is becoming more controversial there, in light of the recent killing of Jennifer Laude. Many in the Philippines believe U.S. Marine Corps PFC Joseph Scott Pemberton murdered her, and are demanding that he be turned over to the authorities. He is currently being protected on a US Navy vessel. In addition to the US military presence, the US-aligned government of the Philippines has increased its military spending by 17 percent, according to the most recent report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The South Korean government, backed up by thousands of US troops, has become the eighth-largest arms importer in the world, according to the same report. The US military presence in the southern half of the Korean peninsula is also expanding. The US-aligned settler regime of Australia is increasing its military spending and arms imports, as is the US-backed Central Asian human rights violator Azerbaijan. The BBC reporter Rupert Wingfield-Hayes’ article published on October 14 reveals that the US Navy has gone as far as essentially rehearsing for war against the People’s Republic of China. The drills include preparing missiles to be launched from US aircraft carriers. While the weapons and military forces are being put in place, the demonization of US enemies is being used to psyche up the public for conflict. The China- and Russian-aligned Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has become a fixation of Hollywood war propaganda. For example, in December, US moviegoers are to be subjected to a film called The Interview, a comedy portraying the assassination of Kim Jong-un. In 2013, two films portraying a North Korean invasion of the US, Red Dawn and Olympus Has Fallen, were also shown in theaters. Every war that is currently taking place is, in effect, a proxy war with Russia and China. The Syrian Arab Republic, which has been devastated by four years of western-backed civil war, is an ally of Russia and China. The arms that flowed to the insurgent forces, including the now reviled “ISIS” grouping, came directly from the United States, as well as through US allies such as Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. The fighting in Ukraine erupted after the overthrow of its elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, who was growing closer to Russia. Since the coup, the son of the US Vice President has been hired to direct Ukraine’s top natural gas corporation. The Petro Poroshenko regime that has slaughtered civilians is being backed up and supported by the United States and the European Union. Nigeria, long the turf of Shell Oil, is gradually moving into China’s camp. Former Chinese President Hu Jintao recently visited Nigeria. China’s economic presence in the country is growing, and China recently gifted the Nigerian military with a warship. As Nigeria, now the top the African oil producing country, moves closer to China, the US military presence is escalating there. A rapid expansion of US military presence in Nigeria took place after the “Bring Back Our Girls” public relations campaign. US drones now fly through Nigerian skies, and US troops and military bases are increasingly scattered across the continent. Cuba and Latin American Bolivarian countries have escalated their partnership with Russia and China. Vladimir Putin recently conducted a tour of Latin American countries, where he gave speeches denouncing the US attacks on Cuba and Venezuela, and signed many economic deals. As Latin America gets closer to both Russia and China, the US is escalating its support for the “opposition.” The recent assassination of Venezuelan official Robert Serra, and the destruction of various government buildings in the early months of 2014, show how desperate and vicious this US-backed opposition is becoming. The various governments proclaiming the goal of Bolivarian Socialism across Latin America are becoming more threatened. A New World War For Profits? Just like 100 years ago, the dangerous conflict on the horizon is about profits. The centers of economic power in London and Wall Street are losing their grip on the world. Russia and China, countries that were once part of the impoverished developing world, are surging forward in the lasting legacy of two earthshaking revolutions from the 20th century. When the financial collapse occurred in 2008, throwing the western markets into chaos, China continued to grow. With a multi-trillion dollar stimulus, the Chinese state stepped in when the market failed, and the nation’s rapid economic expansion simply continued. The Chinese market seems to be protected from the boom-bust cycle that western capitalists say is inevitable. The government, rooted in the 1949 revolution and led by the Communist Party, has the ability to intervene rapidly and firmly when it so chooses. China and Russia are the key economic links in a global bloc of opposition. Countries throughout the world such as Cuba, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, People’s Korea, and Zimbabwe are aligning with them in opposition to the old order of western financial rule. With “expand or die” as the rule of the global market, Wall Street and London are increasingly slipping into a state of panicked desperation. Reports on military spending and even strategic drills indicate they are considering and even rehearsing a war of titanic proportions to ensure their survival as top dogs in the global market. A direct military confrontation of the United States against Russia and China would be catastrophic for humanity. The US invasion of Iraq, which resulted in a million dead and displaced, would look like a barroom scuffle in comparison. Russia, China, and the United States are all nuclear powers, and they all have massive armed forces with huge capabilities of destruction. The fact that such a war is increasing each day in its possibility should be startling to the US and British public. Such a war would not simply be something they viewed on CNN, but that would dramatically change their daily lives. An Unseen Factor: The Next Generation In their calculation of how many could die in a war with Russia and China, there is one factor that the warmakers in Wall Street and London may not be considering. Within the United States there is an increasing level of dissent. In 2011, the Occupy Wall Street protests exploded into something that the small group who planned them never could have anticipated. Millions of people from all throughout US society suddenly became politically active, taking to the streets, confronting the police and demanding justice. The upsurge following the death of Trayvon Martin, and the recent events in Ferguson, all point toward a force that could, potentially, be a serious factor in world events. There is an increasing number of people in the United States who are angry, confused, and uncertain about the patriotism and market-worship they have been indoctrinated with. The potential for massive domestic unrest continues to reveal itself in brief episodes of popular rage. The new generation of young people throughout the US and Europe, now being told to accept a far lower standard of living than their parents – as well as a higher level of police surveillance and repression — may not passively accept the declaration of a massive war against Wall Street’s economic rivals. Such a war would likely be extremely costly, and would involve some form of military conscription, making it extremely unpopular. One hundred years ago, when the First World War broke out, many of the socialist leaders — who had once opposed it — obediently got in line once the shooting started. In one country, however, the revolutionaries held true to their principles. Lenin and the Bolsheviks’ response to the outbreak of the First World War was “Turn the Guns Around!” and “Make War Against the Warmakers!” Three years into the bloody conflict, millions of Russians heard Lenin’s call. History has never been the same, and the emergence of Russia and China as economic powers is rooted in the events of October 1917. What will the young people who joined with Naomi Klein to “Flood Wall Street” against climate change do if their government declares a new war against China and Russia? What will the young people of Ferguson, Missouri do if they are told they must go kill Russians, Chinese, Cubans, or Iranians — or else face being locked up by the same police department that killed Michael Brown? Will the youth of Florida, who screamed “I am Trayvon Martin” be successfully riled up to fight in a foreign land by the rightwing, flag-waving vigilantes who defended George Zimmerman? Will the youth of London, who shook their city in 2011 with an urban rebellion, obey orders from a Tory, Lib-Dem, or Labour Government, even if that means risking their lives in war against the two largest countries on earth? The military strategists may not be factoring it in, but the political will of the next generation of working class people in western countries could be decisive in the scenario of a Third World War. Will the people march in compliance and obedience? Or will they take history into their own hands, and join with the rest of humanity in revolt against the ruthlessness of the western profiteers? This question could determine the very fate of humanity. Caleb Maupin is a political analyst and activist based in New York. He studied political science at Baldwin-Wallace College and was inspired and involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.Nxt, which has in the past offered functions specifically designed for crypto developers, has announced that it is turning its focus to use cases which have more to do with everyday life, from introducing new voting mechanisms to offering transparent international bank transfers. Learn how to buy Bitcoin and Ethereum safely with our simple guide! Join the iFX EXPO Asia and discover your gateway to the Asian Markets It revealed that Accenture Spain have already tested using a blockchain as a voting solution. While voting on all public blockchains is traceable and transparent, Nxt differs in that its algorithms allow the vote count to be instantaneous and voters to remain anonymous. Suggested articles Why Brokerages Outsource Their Broker TechnologyGo to article >> BNP Paribas is also experimenting with a private blockchain based on Nxt, to reduce the limits on one’s ability to send money or make a purchase from across the world. BNP Paribas utilizes Nxt technology to develop a blockchain that will ease burdens among BNP customers, described by the company as a “cash without borders project.” The developers say that the Nxt platform will free BNP from restraints caused by swift codes and correspondent banks, which often complicate international transactions. They promise that this is just the first step in utilizing Nxt’s technology in order to ease international transactions across the globe. “I truly believe that blockchain technology has the potential to change the world for the better,” said Lior Yaffe, co-founder and Senior Developer of Jelurida, “The Nxt voting feature, as well as BNP’s adoption of Nxt technology, are just the first steps of many in order to achieve this goal.”The official YouTube channel of the upcoming 3D CG animation project Sushi Police streamed the first official trailer for the anime on Sunday. The trailer reveals the names and roles of the main characters: Honda the leader, Suzuki the data analyst, and Kawasaki the android investigator. An official website for the anime opened in September. Director Tatsushi Momen of creative studio KOO-KI is working on the project. The Fukuoka-based creative studio has previously won awards at Cannes Film Festival for its commercials. KOO-KI shopped the "Sushi Police" project at Cannes in May. The promotional poster received a nod from The Hollywood Reporter's "Cannes Poster Awards," which recognize "most amusing and over-the-top promotional materials from the festival's market." KOO-KI's website refers to the project as a short anime series. The title refers to a term used by western news sources such as The Washington Post to refer to the Japanese government's initiative to offer official seals of approval to overseas Japanese food restaurants. The 2006 initiative was a response to overseas restaurants that labeled themselves as Japanese food restaurants, but served other Asian foods, or just bad food. The story follows three men who investigate foreign restaurants. The project will be one of several anime displayed at the "Rinpa-nimation: Rinpa 400th Anniversary x Newtype 30th anniversary Rinpa Homage Exhibition" at the Kyoto International Manga Anime Fair this Saturday. The exhibition will feature visuals from various anime titles in the style of the historical Rinpa school of Japanese painting. Thanks to Rachel S. for the news tip. Source: Anime! Anime!Pearson airport employees will be able to ride the new $456-million Union Pearson Express train at a discounted fare as part of a freshly negotiated agreement between the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA) and Metrolinx, the Toronto Star has learned. The GTAA has further agreed to drop a $1.85 surcharge that was to be incorporated in every UP Express ticket, in part to compensate the airport for parking revenue it expects to lose when people start using the train rather than driving to Pearson. Airport workers will get a special fare when the new Union Pearson Express trains start running next year. The size of the discount remains unclear, as are the fares generally. Metrolinx is expected to announce the train’s fares at its Dec. 11 board meeting and they’re believed to be about $29, minus the $1.85 airport allocation. Airport workers have complained about that being too expensive for commuters. On Wednesday a Metrolinx official would only say the agency is in talks with the GTAA — “Those are pretty positive so we are hopeful that we will find a positive resolution that works for everyone,” said Anne Marie Aikins. The provincial transportation agency that will run the train has long insisted the service is intended for travellers, not for the approximately 40,000 Pearson workers. It has, however, said that there will be a variety of concession fares for seniors, families and children. Article Continued Below The fares will also be distance-based so riders who board at Weston or Bloor stations would pay less than those who ride all the way from Union Station. The deal between Metrolinx and the GTAA is expected to be OK’d at the GTAA’s board meeting on Wednesday, which is not open to the public. The UP Express is expected to start running in the spring and carry 5,000 people a day between Union and Pearson in under half an hour. Read more about:States' Refusal To Expand Medicaid May Leave Millions Uninsured toggle caption Joe Raedle/Getty Images President Obama on Tuesday appointed one of his top management gurus, Jeffrey Zeints, to head the team working to fix what ails HealthCare.gov, the troubled website that's supposed to allow residents of 36 states to enroll in coverage under the Affordable Care Act. But even if the team gets the website working as it should, millions of Americans may still log on to discover that they aren't eligible for any health coverage at all. And that won't be due to any technical glitch. It's because their state has decided not to expand its Medicaid program. This is not the way the health law was designed and enacted, says Bruce Siegel. "Originally the idea was that millions and millions of Americans would get health insurance," says Siegel, president and CEO of America's Essential Hospitals, a group that represents safety net institutions around the country. "They'd get coverage through Medicaid or through private insurance on the exchanges." Currently in most states you have to be a child, pregnant or disabled to get Medicaid. The health law was supposed to change all that — expanding the program to include nearly everyone with incomes up to about 133 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $15,000 a year for an individual. But in the summer of 2012, when the Supreme Court upheld the health law as constitutional, it did something unexpected, Siegel says. "They said states had the option of expanding their Medicaid program or not expanding it. And that led to a very, very different landscape than what we expected." Even with Ohio's decision earlier this week to opt in, still only half the states have said they will expand their Medicaid programs, even though the federal government is paying the entire cost of the additional people for the first three years, and 90 percent going forward. As a result, according to the Urban Institute, between 6 million and 7 million low-income uninsured adults live in states that are so far not expanding their programs. And some of those states have among the largest populations of low-income uninsured people. "Over 3 million of them live in just four states," says Genevieve Kenney, senior fellow and co-director of the Urban Institute's Health Policy Center. Those states are Florida, Texas, Georgia and North Carolina. The problem, says Kenney, is that for many of those people the law offers them nothing. Because they were supposed to get Medicaid, they're not eligible to buy private insurance at the exchanges unless their incomes are above the poverty line. That's about $11,000 a year for an individual. "I think it's going to be confusing for individuals who are applying for coverage," says Kenney. "It certainly makes the message about the new affordable coverage that's available a lot more complicated to target." Among the people who could get left behind is Ellen Wall. She's a nanny and sometime music teacher from Atlanta. She says her income fluctuates, but most years it's right around the poverty line. She says as long as she can pay her bills, she doesn't mind earning that amount. "I love doing what I do because I'm very good at what I do, that's why I've chosen this profession," she says. "But there are those years when it's quite lean and then I'm just barely making it. And what am I gonna do if something comes up and I'm really sick and I need some help?" Wall doesn't have and hasn't had health insurance. She says that was a real problem a few years back when she was in the hospital after an asthma attack. "It was kind of a very embarrassing situation to be in, not to have the health insurance that could have covered that few days that I was in the hospital," she says. If Wall lived in a state expanding Medicaid she would clearly qualify. But so far, Georgia isn't. And her income may or may not be high enough to let her qualify for help buying private coverage on the state's exchange. So she'll likely remain working, poor and uninsured. Most advocates say people like Wall should turn to community clinics and public hospitals if they can't get insurance. But there's a problem there, too, says public hospital advocate Siegel. The health law cut funding for public hospitals because it assumed so many more people would have insurance. But in those states that aren't expanding Medicaid, the need for free care is likely to go up instead of down. "Many of these hospitals will be overwhelmed," Siegel says. "Some of them are already overwhelmed; many of them are already losing money, providing a high level of service to people in need. And this will simply not be a tenable position." Public and other hospitals are among those lobbying hard for Medicaid expansion in the states that so far have opted not to expand their Medicaid programs. Some states are still considering opting in. But in others, patients left behind may have to scramble even harder to find care if they get sick.Military chopper keeps tabs on family at gun range in Utah Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com November 14, 2014 Video footage shot near Salt Lake City shows a military Apache helicopter harassing gun owners by performing low fly overs. A family visiting co-workers in Salt Lake City was taken out to a gun range in the Utah desert to shoot pistols and shotguns but their day was interrupted on two separate occasions by the chopper. According to the wife of the man who uploaded the video to YouTube, “you could see the gun under the nose waving at us.” The video shows the Apache swooping across barely 30 feet above the heads of the family, while a subsequent clip shot later in the day shows the chopper hovering nearby as it appears to be keeping tabs on the gun owners. The helicopter violently kicks up scrub brush as it passes in front of the individuals. The first flyover occurred just after noon while the second incident took place around five hours later. “Low flybys are one thing, but lingering and waving machine guns at people? Perhaps they were showing off,” writes the individual who uploaded the video. As we reported last year, authorities in the United States have shown interest in using aerial surveillance to spy on gun owners. The Shadowhawk drone, a 50lb mini helicopter that can be fitted with an XREP taser, was approved by the Department of Homeland Security in 2012 and has since been acquired by numerous different law enforcement bodies. Promotional video for the drone shows it being used to spy on an outdoor gun sale. The footage shows two men driving to meet clandestinely in a remote area, before they exit their vehicles and proceed to conduct a transaction for a handgun and a semi-automatic rifle, before driving off at high speed. During the commentary over the clip, which features dramatic music, role players run the license plates of both vehicles before describing the transaction as the spy drone hovers above. Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/paul.j.watson.71 FOLLOW Paul Joseph Watson @ https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet ********************* Paul Joseph Watson is the editor at large of Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. This article was posted: Friday, November 14, 2014 at 7:39 am Print this page. Infowars.com Videos: Comment on this articlePablo Zabaleta has insisted that Manchester City still believe the title can be won, with the right-back suggesting Liverpool could slip up at home to Chelsea before City travel to Crystal Palace for Sunday's late game. City are six points behind with a match in hand and need Liverpool to lose one of their last three games while winning all of their final four and maintaining a superior goal difference. Zabaleta pointed to Monday's 3-1 win over West Bromwich Albion as evidence of how focused City remain. "We have belief. This is the main reason we won on Monday, to show again this team wants to win the league," he said. "In football you never know what can happen. Liverpool are doing great, winning 11 games in a row in the league, the first time in one season in Premier League history, I believe. They have three games until the end, and we have four. If they drop any points, we have a chance if we win our games. "It's going to be very tough, but if they drop points – that is why we talk among ourselves about winning all of our games. If they win all of their games, we must just give them credit, and there will be nothing we can do. We need to keep focused on what we are doing and move on to the next game." Liverpool kick off against Chelsea before City on Sunday and Zabaleta, right, said he and his team-mates will be monitoring what happens at Anfield. "The manager always tries to give us some information, but the main thing is to play our game. If we do our best, we know we will get chances. We will see what happens with Chelsea and Liverpool, hopefully they can drop some points which would be great for us and give us a chance to close the gap with a win at Palace. "We know we are playing for something big. We want to win this league, and you can always have problems with players getting injured. It has been a very difficult season for us with a lot of injury problems, but even if players have been struggling with an ankle problem, or a muscle problem, you can see players pushing and giving everything for the team. "That is the spirit we need from everyone, as we know these last few games will decide the league. We all need to give our maximum, and that will be great for the team. "We will see, as we know how difficult it is to play Crystal Palace away. They are in a great moment and Tony Pulis is doing a great job so it will be a very tough game." The home victory over West Brom featured goals from Zabaleta and his countrymen, Sergio Agüero and Martín Demichelis. "It was Argentina night, it was a special night for the Argentinian players – we made history, as I don't remember any other time in Premier League when three Argentinians have scored. This is a special season and it was great to come back with another win," said the 29-year-old, after a defeat at Liverpool had been followed by the disappointing draw with Sunderland at the Etihad Stadium. Manuel Pellegrini will definitely be without David Silva for the trip to Palace, while whether the City manager can select Yaya Touré is doubtful. City are assessing the results of a scan on Silva's injured ankle that could rule him out until the final week of the season. Touré could be available again following a muscle issue, with the midfielder training for the first time since suffering the injury in the defeat to Liverpool on 13 April.Today my contract with Team Liquid has officially ended. I will talk a bit about the history of the roster and how this lineup came to be. As well as what I plan to do in the future. I joined this team replacing Rush because mosbeck and Rush did not get along at all and I was known as more of a fragger back then instead of a leader so they saw me as the optimal replacement since I was playing really well at the time. When it was RONIN5 and the original roster was mosbeck, hades, wabbit, juv3nile and I. I came into a team that was falling apart on the inside which had players wanting to cut each other almost every week. First to go almost 2-3 weeks after I had joined was hades. I had not played with hades for very long but it seemed to be a topic they had been talking about even before I had joined the roster. Being the new guy on the team I didn't really know him well enough or have much of a say in the decision other then sending a message to the admin to confirm a mutiny of the roster. Hades replacement would end up being monte. Our roster at this point is now mosbeck, wabbit, juv3nile, monte and I. Not long after we picked up monte (roughly 3-4 days) we decided that mosbeck really isn't working within the team and most of the problems center around him, not that he wasn't getting kills but he was emotionally draining the team and always wanted a player gone if we lost a match or 2. Mosbeck's replacement would end up being NAF. Now finally our roster has a little extended period of time to finish out ESEA Season 16 with wabbit, juv3nile, monte, NAF and I. We end up finishing the season tied for 4th with compLexity but end up losing the tie breaker to them in rounds and end up missing the lan. Now is the start of Season 17, we become LunatiK as their first CSGO team ever. wabbit ends up quitting csgo and monte ends up leaving to play with another team. This is where we end up getting FugLy and ShahZam. At the time people thought FugLy was a blatant cheater and ShahZam was really disliked by the community at the time. NAF, juv3 and I talked and felt the risk was worth it and we ended up settling on these two players for the whole season. Our
, unsteady, or my fingers won’t type. And sometimes I get brain fog, so tired that I just can’t think.” He finds that, as a trans, disabled person, he constantly has to request accommodations; he has to correct pronouns and names, or ask for a chair and for breaks. As a society, we often fail to make room for him and for others in both the transgender and disabled communities. This problem is not exclusive to privileged groups, either; Benwell has found that even in marginalized spaces, there isn’t always a place for him. “Finding somewhere that all parts of you can comfortably get along is hard: queer spaces may not be accessible, disabled spaces may not be queer friendly.” To fix this, he points to the need for diverse representation, which will fuel discussions and, hopefully, create broader awareness of the plights of people like him. This Benwell has already begun to do in his own writing: his debut novel, The Last Leaves Falling, examines ableism in our society. After Sora, a Japanese boy, is diagnosed with ALS, he turns to the internet for escape. He meets friends who value him for who he is—a lover of baseball and an aspiring professor—and who see him as something more than his illness. A beautifully honest novel, it examines in particular the objectifying tendency of able-bodied people to project pity onto members of the disabled community. In this way, Benwell’s first foray into the YA book world embodies his own hopes: to ignite discussion, to spread awareness, and to make the world better for the next generation. He describes his forthcoming sophomore novel, Kaleidoscope Song, as “a South African LGBTQ music narrative, set in a township, all rhythm and first loves and finding your voice.” The novel, he says, has helped him discover who he is. “There’s attraction which looks a little like mine, and actual queer culture. There’s a non-binary character and a bi character and gay characters, and one who really doesn’t know how she identifies yet, except in love with the girl.” He is also working on a middle grade novel, which he tells me is about “a genderfluid main character, their disabled best friend, 17 motorbiking dads, a crow, and all things pirate.” Clearly, Benwell’s mission to create a more accommodating, understanding world is well underway. Benwell’s LGBTQ+ book recs: George follows Melissa, a trans girl whose gender is either not known or not acknowledged by her family members and many of her classmates. But when Melissa’s fourth-grade class puts on a theater production of Charlotte’s Web, she finds a way to make them all see who she really is. From Benwell: “Everyone should have Alex Gino’s George in their life. Middle grade trans representation, written by a trans author? Where the character is not misgendered through the narration, and it feels entirely real? Yesssss.” Set in a futuristic world that takes cues from our own, Lizard Radio follows Kivali, who is thrust into a camp where teens are forced to choose who they are (boy or girl, leader or follower) in order to become adults. It examines binaries of all kinds, but especially the gender binary. From Benwell: “Right now, I’m pushing Pat Schmatz’s Lizard Radio into everybody’s hands. It’s brilliant and weird, and the closest I’ve ever come to seeing myself on the page. It’s not me, but no book can ever represent everyone, and the sense of queerness and otherness and rejection of the binary even while you’re stuck existing within it is spot on.” Anna-Marie McLemore For Anna-Marie McLemore, magical realism is an essential staple of both her writing and her cultural heritage. As a queer Mexican-American girl, she grew up reading the genre—she cites magical realism novels such as Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate as the reason she fell in love with literature. Now, they are the reason she writes it. To McLemore, writing magical realism comes naturally. “[Magical realism’s] heart is the intermixing of the ordinary and the ethereal, and I fell into that easily both because it felt right for my work and because it’s where I come from. The origins of magical realism hold close the idea of culture and community, and rising out of the forces that try to hold down your culture and community. It’s a worldview that feels true to who I am and where my stories live.” On Twitter, she once described her relationship with magical realism—and her struggle to properly define it—like this: “Because [magical realism] is a language, I can quickly tell you its name, its origins. But it’s hard to say what it sounds like, [because] I grew up speaking it.” But she is certain about one aspect of the definition of magical realism: the genre is above all for the marginalized, as it is born out of oppression. This is evident in McLemore’s own work. Her debut novel, The Weight of Feathers, features two marginalized narrators—a Latina girl and a Romani boy. For more than a generation, the Paloma and Corbeau families have been locked in a bloody feud. As competing performers, the two families seem to be at odds in every sense. The Palomas swim; the Corbeaus dance. The Palomas have scales; the Corbeaus have wings. The Palomas speak Spanish; the Corbeaus speak French. They are bound only by their mutual fear of each other. Enter Lace, the newest Paloma performer, and Cluck, a Corbeau with darker skin and redder wings than the rest of his family. After Cluck saves Lace’s life without realizing she is a Paloma, Lace winds up in the house of the enemy—the Corbeaus—in order to be forgiven a debt. Her only chance of survival? That they don’t find out who she really is. In October, she will release a second magical realism novel, When The Moon Was Ours. She describes it as being about “a Latina girl, a transgender boy, and their decade-long friendship. Like [The Weight of Feathers], it’s a story of magical realism, love across cultures, and staying true to your family while becoming your own person, but also includes themes of non-traditional families and queer identity.” She centers her stories on marginalized characters not only because it’s what she knows, but because if she were to force out the diversity, her books would lose their heart. “Marginalized communities have so many things to teach each other, and so many ways to help each other. And that starts with realizing how much overlap there is between our communities,” she adds. McLemore grew up in a large family in Southern California. When the first signs that she was interested in more than just boys began to manifest themselves, her immediate reaction was to ignore them. She was religious—and still is—and it took realizing “that God made me to love, not to hate who I am” to accept her sexuality. She describes the coming out process as, among other things, “uneven”—for years, she was out in some spaces but not in others. She has also, for an extended period of time, oscillated between labels. Though she was at points partial to bisexual, she decided that “queer” fit her best. “It wasn’t so much that I was against labeling myself as that I wasn’t sure what the right label was.” In many ways, the term helped guide her when her husband came out as transgender. “Queer still fits with who I am, a girl loving a boy, a boy who happened to be born female,” McLemore says. One important realization she had after her husband’s coming out is that no one should make assumptions about another person’s sexuality. She and her husband both remain queer even though on the surface neither of them appears that way—he is a boy married to a girl and she is a girl married to a boy. Further, her husband’s experiences have pushed her to write even more inclusive and intersectional stories. “[His coming out] has made me even more aware of how important it is to me to portray marginalization in its many forms, and how love pulls our lives together.” Today, McLemore remains deeply connected to her culture—and not just through her writing. Though her hobbies include writing, swimming, baking, photography, painting, and dancing, it is scrapbooking that remains the most important to her. She says: “it’s something I do with my mom, and it’s been a really meaningful way both to record new memories and to document the history of our family.” That proximity to family and heritage has become a hallmark of McLemore’s novels. McLemore’s LGBTQ+ book recs: The year is 1959, and Sarah is about to become one of the first black students to attend Jefferson High School in Virginia. When she is forced to work together on a school project with Linda, whose father is one of the region’s most vocal segregationists, the two start to develop feelings for each other. In Under the Lights, Vanessa navigates her parents’ disapproval, the marginalization by Hollywood of Asian American actresses like herself, and the feelings she is beginning to develop for her new manager, Bri. McLemore says of both books: “As a queer Latina, I look for books that depict queer women of color. Two of my favorites? Robin Talley’s Lies We Tell Ourselves and Dahlia Adler’s Under The Lights. [Lies We Tell Ourselves] shows us a pivotal moment in history, and [Under the Lights] takes us inside an industry that helps define what our society considers beautiful. Both offer emotionally vivid portrayals of racism meeting homophobia, external and internalized, and of racial identity intersecting with queer identity.” Erica Cameron Erica Cameron is fighting for visibility. As an asexual author writing asexual characters, she is working to make her identity known and normalized in the public consciousness. Asexuality—describing individuals who experience little or no sexual attraction to anyone—is frequently misunderstood. Even people familiar with its definition may not fully grasp why, for example, there are asexual awareness marches. Cameron is well aware of this. “What they don’t realize is that we’re not fighting for rights, we’re fighting for recognition,” she says. The problems facing the asexual community begin with culture. There is a notion in our society that sex is essential to any extended romantic relationship—as an example of this, Cameron points to the idea of consummating a marriage. Further, Cameron, like others in the community, is rallying against the idea that sexual desire is natural; though the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has recently stopped classifying asexuality as a psychological disorder, many still view a lack of sexual desire as something that needs to be remedied. Cameron says: “The theme of a lot of coming out discussions has been something like, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that! That sounds so sad. Here, let me see how I can fix that for you. Have you tried ______?’” Among other common responses, she lists, “You’ll change your mind when you meet the right person,” “Were you abused in the past? Maybe it’s just fear,” and “So, what? You’re a prude? Or just celibate?” Through her writing, Cameron is telling the world she is none of the above—that being asexual is as inherent as being straight or bi or gay. “We want people to see us, to acknowledge our experiences as valid and real and not broken… What we’re fighting for and making noise about is the right to exist.” She adds: “We want a lack of sexual desire to not be something people look at as a classifiable disorder.” Growing up in an open-minded community in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Cameron from a young age was presented with three options for her sexuality: straight, gay, or bisexual. Because she had no desire to kiss girls and “didn’t mind the thought of kissing boys,” she assumed she was straight. A fourth option was never on the table. She first heard the term asexual used to describe a legitimate human sexual orientation when she was 29d. Immediately, something inside of her clicked. “The loudest thought in my head was, ‘Holy hell. I’m not the only one. I’m not broken.’” By then, she had married and divorced an emotionally abusive partner. “Because I never had any explanation or understanding of why I didn’t want sex the way that the rest of society seemed to, the only answer I could come up with to the question ‘Why don’t you want me?’ was ‘Because something is wrong with me.’ It was a belief that developed over years and was reinforced by my ex, by the media, and, inadvertently, my friends.” After another relationship of hers ended, Cameron stopped dating, believing she was broken. “There was an incredibly strong fear burrowing inside my head that I wouldn’t ever be able to make anyone happy.” In many ways, finding the term “asexual” changed her life. Though accepting her identity has been a long process, being able to interact with members of the community has shown her first of all that nothing is wrong with her, and, secondly, that one day soon she might find a relationship with a level of physical intimacy that makes her more comfortable. In the past year, reflecting on how important finding the term asexual has been to her life, Cameron developed a new mission as an author: to include characters who openly identify as asexual in all of her new releases. Though she has written several novels over the course of her career (including Sing Sweet Nightingale, Taken by Chance, and Loyalty and Lies), Deadly Sweet Lies, her December 2015 release, is the first book she has published since making that promise. Deadly Sweet Lies is the sequel to Cameron’s debut novel, Sing Sweet Nightingale, but it can be read as a standalone. The novel follows Nadette, a girl tormented by creatures who prey on teenagers with special abilities. These creatures, known as the Balasura, are at their strongest at nighttime, and they work to convince Nadette to go to sleep and never wake up. When that fails, they threaten her family. Desperate, Nadette turns to Julian, another gifted teenager, for help. Julian’s and Nadette’s powers? Nadette can see through lies, and Julian can make people believe them. What is perhaps most revolutionary about Deadly Sweet Lies is that Julian, a major point-of-view character, discovers throughout the novel that he is asexual. His asexuality is no small part of the book, either: an entire chapter (chapter 21) is devoted to his lack of interest in physical intimacy, and the term “asexual” is introduced and explained right there on the page. “I went three decades without encountering the word, and so I want to make sure that doesn’t happen to someone else,” Cameron says. Since a young age, Cameron has seen the power in books. She and her two younger sisters were all dancers (when she was a high school senior, she choreographed a dance she later performed at the National High School Dance Festival), but she was the only bookworm. She started writing seriously in college. Her first full novel was fanfiction; now, she has completed “somewhere between twelve and sixteen novels.” Dealing with Devalo, due out this spring, will feature a prominent demisexual character, with the identity confirmed on the page. Cameron’s LGBTQ+ book recs: In None of the Above, Kristin Lattimer has everything going for her: she was voted homecoming queen, she is a star athlete, and she already has a full scholarship to college. But when she’s outed as intersex to her school, everyone begins to see her differently—including Kristin herself. From Cameron: “One of the most recent stories I fell in love with was I. W. Gregorio’s None of the Above. It was beautiful and brought light to intersex, a corner of the MOGAI [Marginalized Orientations, Gender Alignments, and Intersex] community that a lot of people don’t know exists.” Tamora Pierce’s Circle of Magic series is an eight-part book series beginning with Sandry’s Book. It centers on four teens with magical powers who are living in a community for mages-in-training. Cameron says: “One of the first YA series I remember reading with verifiably queer characters was the Circle of Magic series by Tamora Pierce. She’s been a favorite author of mine since I was a kid, but seeing Daja begin to form relationships with other girls (especially in Cold Fire and Will of the Empress) was like finally finding someone in a book who reminded me of my best friend. Seeing the expansion of that representation since then has been so heartening.”Where to buy: iZods UK [Here] (one of the few places I have seen stock this ink – particularly in the UK) Price: £14.50 Bottle size: 50ml Shading: Some Sheening: Yes Recommend?: If you’re into teal inks that lean a little bit closer to green, then this is for you. I’m on my third cup of coffee. I feel I’m coming down with a cold or something and I’m very very tired. One thing I am not tired of, however, are these Robert Oster inks. Now, a disclaimer – for me, Blue Sea wins between these two inks. I’m very enthusiastic to get a few more of the Oster inks, particularly the blue ones, just to compare them. But this review is of Deep Sea. Yep. It has sea in the name, but I don’t have the brain power right now to think of puns so you’re spared. Prior to getting these inks from iZods to review, I actually had a small sample of this ink from a pen meet-up I go to each month in London. It was about the time that I first had a sample of Pelikan’s Aquamarine and this is what started my love for teal inks. Deep Sea pushed me ‘deeper’. In comparison to Pelikan’s ink, Deep Sea is a darker teal – much darker. I did get one comment regarding my previous post from someone saying that I should include more comparisons between inks, so I took four swatches of inks I thought were rather similar, though the fourth one is a little far stretched to be ‘similar’. Being a dark ink, I thought it would be useful to highlight it’s more true-teal than lending itself towards green. In my opinion, the ink sits very nicely between Blue Suede and Aquamarine (well, it sits above and left of respectively, but you get the idea). I included Ebony Green (which I have also reviewed) because it’s a very dark green, and this is a dark teal. When writing with it I was questioning whether it was more green, but this highlights it quite nicely and demonstrates that this is not the case. Something to point out – of all the inks, when doing the swatches it was Deep Sea which was the wettest. No surprises, Aquamarine was the driest. Noticeably wetter than Private Reserve, but not excessively. I think noticeably is the best word to describe it. In terms of behaviour, I was very impressed. The ink flows well (it lubricates very nicely) and is easy to clean out of pens. I think we still see Oster inks as the ‘new kid on the block’ (and not for a bad reason, but because the inks have made such a sudden impact on our community) and I would ordinarily be a little cautious of putting them in, say, my Pelikan M800 which is one of my favourite pens if it’s a new brand (the best example would probably be KWZ). From my experience everything has been fine. Like inside the pen, the ink is also well behaved on paper. On Rhodia it appears a little darker than normal, depending on how you catch it in the light (mainly with ‘ink’, I can definitely remember why I wold consider this as a green-black/teal) As I said, it looks similar to Blue Suede but a darker shade On cheaper paper the ink actually appears lighter, which I find interesting. Can see showthrough, but bleedthrough is only really where I’ve pushed down when trying to get line variation. Pros: Teal Wet and flows well Cons: Nothing that really makes it wow me Perhaps a bit too dark for what I’d expect from a teal Advertisements(CNN) Across the nation, so-called "sanctuary cities" are scrambling to assess what they stand to lose if the Trump administration carries out a threat to take away federal funds from jurisdictions it says do not comply with immigration laws. What's at stake? It's too early to say. Complicating the issue: There's no clear definition for what constitutes a sanctuary city. It's a broad term applied to jurisdictions that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. And courts have ruled there are restrictions on what money the government can withhold from states and cities to influence local laws. Some mayors and police chiefs have pressed the administration to clarify its definition, saying they already comply with federal law. Their policies, they say, are intended to maintain trust between law enforcement and communities by not complicating their work with the duties of federal immigration officers. Still, the administration's threat could potentially result in slashing billions of dollars in federal grants that pay for a range of programs for crime and domestic violence victims, drug treatment, missing and exploited children, forensic labs, services for the disabled, and boys' and girls' clubs. Here are five US cities and what they stand to lose: JUST WATCHED Sanctuary cities: what you need to know Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Sanctuary cities: what you need to know 01:39 Seattle More than $55 million of Seattle's 2017 operating expenses come from federal funding. More than $99 million is dedicated to longer-term capital investments, the city says. Of the Human Services Department's 2017 budget, which amounts to about $150 million, more than $42 million -- or 28% -- derived from those funds, the lawsuit says. That includes $15 million from the budget of the Homeless Strategy and Investment Division for shelter, outreach, hygiene, and health care for homeless people. A Community Development Block Grant provides $4 million for emergency shelter, transitional housing and other services for homeless single men, women, and families. More than $11 million is destined for home-based care for elderly people with disabilities. Support for low-income housing, meals for children in child-care homes and youth violence-prevention programs would also be affected, the lawsuit says. "Without this funding, many programs will be diminished, less effective, or cease functioning entirely." The Police Department is scheduled to receive north of $2.8 million from the federal government. That's a portion of more than $10.5 million in federal aid over several years. The money helps pay for bomb suits, human trafficking investigations, body cameras, community policing, terrorism prevention, and efforts to combat the sexual exploitation of children over the Internet. The Transportation Department is due more than $63 million in capital funds for maintenance, bridge replacements, seismic retrofits, and bike and pedestrian path improvements. Bottom line: At least $276.8 million JUST WATCHED De Blasio: I'll defy Trump on sanctuary cities Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH De Blasio: I'll defy Trump on sanctuary cities 03:48 New York City New York received about $53 million from the Justice Department in fiscal 2017, according to city officials. That's a small fraction of its total budget. The bulk of the funds went to the police and corrections departments for crime lab equipment, drug and gang task forces, crime prevention and domestic violence programs. About $17.5 million were for the purchase of new ballistic helmets and vests for the country's largest police force, city officials say. Since fiscal 2012, the average amount the city received in revenue from Justice Department was $43 million. The funding helps pay for the city medical examiner's molecular genetics lab, which works to identify gene defects that may be responsible for sudden unexplained deaths, particularly in young people, according to spokeswoman Julie Bolcer. The office also receives funding for its DNA crime lab, the largest in North America. The potential loss of $4.7 million in federal grants could affect the testing backlog on some 50,000 items of DNA evidence collected each year from sexual assaults, homicides and other crimes. Bolcer said the medical examiner's office was working with city budget officials to prepare for possible cuts. "We really can't discuss impacts without having more information about what might happen," she said. The Administration for Children's Services received a three-year Second Chance Grant totaling $750,000 for services to incarcerated juveniles returning to the community, according to city officials. Bottom line: At least $53.7 million JUST WATCHED Emanuel: Federal help welcome in Chicago Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Emanuel: Federal help welcome in Chicago 01:23 Chicago In Chicago, $3.6 billion in federal funds are at stake, possibly jeopardizing money to pay for everything from feeding low-income pregnant women to repairing roads and bridges, according an analysis by the Better Government Association, a nonpartisan state watchdog group. At least $72 million to build or rehabilitate affordable housing are among those funds, the group says, Police could lose $9.6 million from the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant, which alone allocated $274.9 million throughout the country in 2016, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. California, for instance, received $30.5 million from the Byrne grant, Texas got $21.4 million. Also in danger are $100 million to fight homelessness and maintain affordable housing, $178 million for infrastructure, and $861 million for the Chicago Public Schools, the Better Government Association says. Bottom line: At least $3.6 billion JUST WATCHED Undocumented mom prepares for her ICE check-in Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Undocumented mom prepares for her ICE check-in 00:39 Philadelphia The Justice Department awarded the city $26 million in fiscal 2015, says mayoral spokeswoman Ajeenah Amir. The funds supported police training and equipment, technological improvements in city courts, gun violence prevention efforts, and a legal clinic for victims of domestic violence. JUST WATCHED Why Donald Trump keeps this immigrant awake at night Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Why Donald Trump keeps this immigrant awake at night 03:15 "The Executive Order makes clear that the federal government would use its discretion and that they would be cautious about cutting law enforcement funding," the city says in a fact sheet on immigration and sanctuary cities. "The Trump administration has already said that it is unwilling to cut some law enforcement funding, even for sanctuary cities -- so we are not likely to face losing all of our federal funding." Bottom line: At least $26 million Los Angeles Los Angeles receives more than $500 million annually in federal grants, according to spokesman George Kivork. The money helps pay for an array of services -- from securing the city's port to sheltering its homeless. Those funds include more than $115 million for public safety programs. Bottom line: More than $500 million 'Ultimately, the courts will determine' In total, nearly $27 billion in federal grants and direct payments poured into America's 106 sanctuary cities in fiscal 2016, according to an analysis by the nonprofit OpenTheBooks.com. Most of the federal money went to infrastructure such as housing, education, law enforcement and transportation, says Adam Andrzejewski, the study's author. "Ultimately, the courts will determine the scope of federal funding penalties," he adds. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said that cities and states hoping to receive federal funds or grants must comply with federal law requiring local authorities to share citizenship or immigrant status of individuals to the Immigration and Naturalization Service if requested. In a series of letters to officials in major cities like New York, Chicago and Philadelphia, the Justice Department reiterated its threat. Local governments have been given until June 30 to prove compliance with federal immigration law or risk losing justice assistance grant money. The administration had been vague about which cities or which funds it may claw back. The policy was actually put in place by the Obama administration. JUST WATCHED Mayors fight Trump's sanctuary city order Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Mayors fight Trump's sanctuary city order 02:03 Legal precedent makes clear the federal government cannot broadly use federal funds to coerce local jurisdictions into certain actions. The government would likely be limited to pulling funds that it can prove are related to the policy it is targeting, namely immigration enforcement. Laurie Robinson, a former assistant attorney general who headed the Office of Justice Programs in the Clinton and Obama administrations, believes Sessions will deliver on the threat to pull funds. How far will the administration go, however, remains unclear. "Trump had said, 'We're going to cut off all money to the sanctuary cities,' but yet they haven't actually defined what sanctuary cities are," said Robinson, a criminology professor at George Mason University in Virginia. "One might ask, 'What about HUD (Housing and Urban Development) money or Department of Education money or transportation money?'"'Anti-vaxxers' keeping their decision secret amplifying health risk to others, study suggests Updated 'Anti-vaxxers' who feel they will be judged for their decision are keeping it a secret, putting others at greater risk, a new study suggests. Key points: Parents fear judgement when sharing decision not to vaccinate children Trend putting pregnant women and newborns at risk, study says Expert says shaming is not an effective way to raise vaccination rates AMA says lack of vaccination an "immense frustration" Edith Cowan University school of psychology and social science researchers said the study showed the health of pregnant women and newborns was at risk from parents who refused to be honest about their decision not to vaccinate their children. Lead researcher Dr Bronwyn Harman told The Guardian it was important to understand the reasons parents were not vaccinating their children. "It really does frighten me a lot if people coming into contact with those women and children aren't disclosing their status out of fear of being perceived as bad parents," she said. Early results from the study indicate reasons included a mistaken belief a healthy diet alone could protect their children as well as herd immunity. But mainly, feelings of manipulation by governments was driving under-vaccination, Dr Harman said. "These parents believe they are being lied to and believe they have done enough of their own research to believe vaccinating is risky, even though much of their research comes from unreliable sources on the internet." Australian Childhood Immunisation Register data shows as at September 30 last year 93 per cent of children aged 12 to 15 months were fully immunised. For children aged two years to 27 months, the rate dropped to 90.4 per cent. An Australian study published in journal Vaccine last year found that of the infants incompletely immunised, just 16 per cent had mothers who disagreed with immunisation. We are trying to protect newborn children in our community and it's fair to say we regard our newborn children as the most precious things we have. Dr Stephen Parnis, AMA vide president It reported other "barriers" associated with under-vaccination included low levels of social contact, health issues, large family size and not using formal childcare. University of Sydney paediatrics expert Professor Nicholas Wood said promoting shame among parents who did not vaccinate was not an effective tactic to improve vaccination rates. "Driving all to feel shamed is not the ideal way to promote vaccine uptake," Associate Professor Wood, who is also from The Children's Hospital at Westmead, told the ABC. "The anti-vaxxers are likely to believe it is just more of an attack on their choice. "What we need to do is to tackle the wide range of reasons that the 'not very many' are not vaccinated in an open and individualised way, remove shame and lessen confusion." He said it was important to not "lump" people who wanted to get their children vaccinated but could not for genuine reasons with those that were anti-vax. 'They think they know better' Australian Medical Association (AMA) vice president Dr Stephen Parnis said it remained a source of "immense frustration" some parents chose not to vaccinate their children. "There are people who in spite of overwhelming and controvertible evidence choose to believe myths which have no basis and fact," he told the ABC. "These groups are resistant to science and think they know better than the medical and scientific communities." Dr Parnis said keeping a decision to not vaccinate a child a secret was dangerous. "There is a risk irrespective of whether they disclose it or not. But that risk could be amplified if they gain access to places where they shouldn't on the basis of not telling the truth — that might be a school," he said. Dr Parnis said choosing not to hide the truth would hopefully trigger a person to consider why they chose not to vaccinate in the first place. Herd immunity believers 'playing with fire' The Edith Cowan University study highlights that many parents who do not vaccinate their children rely on herd immunity. The concept is based on the belief that once immunisation rates reach between 90-95 per cent, unimmunised people are protected indirectly. A National Health Performance Authority report on immunisation rates for children in 2012-13 showed immunisation rates for 1-year-olds was lower than 85 per cent in some areas. The herd immunity theory is unreliable, according to the AMA. "They are playing with fire if they continue to hold that belief... and the evidence has shown their own children are the most susceptible," Dr Parnis said. The study also indicated many parents believed a healthy diet and lifestyle was enough to protect against infectious diseases. Dr Parnis said that alone could not reduce the risk of fighting an infectious disease. "Those things are helping in terms of allowing for healthy growth and development," he said. "But the fact of the matter is infectious diseases have varying methods of spread [and] are prevalent to varying factors like the time of year." In addition to the well-known infectious diseases including whooping cough and rubella, Dr Parnis said people should be concerned about the spread of tetanus, diphtheria and the rota virus. "We see those tragedies where an infant dies, Riley Hughes (who died from whopping cough) last year is the most prominent," he said. "We are trying to protect newborn children in our community and it's fair to say we regard our newborn children as the most precious things we have." Topics: vaccines-and-immunity, health, community-and-society, medical-research, australia First postedSlide Show It was late July, and the monsoons had finally arrived in Delhi. The month of July had been particularly good for me: my work from the northeast was finally getting some recognition and I had been awarded a prestigious global grant to continue my project on ethnic conflict related displacement in western Assam, India. I was in just the initial planning phases for my next trip to Kokrajhar in the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous District, home of the Bodo tribals, which was to be the epicenter for my reportage work. Clashes there had displaced more than 400,000 ethnic Bodos and Bengali Muslims just over a year earlier, which I had documented. Meanwhile, in the national capital, the government finally gave the go-ahead to the proposal for the formation of Telangana, a new southern state to be carved out of Andhra Pradesh. Soon afterward, many areas in the northeast saw a renewed call for statehood. I was particularly interested in the Bodoland areas, where people were calling for a separate state of Bodoland, and Karbi Anglong, one of the largest hill districts in India, where the ethnic Karbis were also demanding their own state. In my initial years as a photographer, I had spent considerable time in both these places covering conflict-induced displacement. I found out through my sources in Kokrajhar that the ethnic Bodos would be putting up a rail blockade starting Aug. 2 in Kokrajhar to draw attention to their demand for statehood. At the time, I was still in Delhi, and I was told that traveling by road wasn’t safe. I decided to go anyway, first flying to Guwahati on the morning of Aug. 1 and then catching the evening local from the Kamakhya station to Kokrajhar. As it was the last day before the rail blockade, hordes of people were on the train, heading home. Kokrajhar has seen much violence in the past few decades, and everyone seemed edgy as I got into town. Nearly 100,000 people turned up the next morning, standing on the railway tracks, blocking all rail traffic connecting mainland India to the northeastern corridor. The chants of “Why Telangana? Why not Bodoland?” stopped only later in the evening. I had never seen such a gathering in this idyllic small and sleepy town. People had come from far-flung villages all over western Assam to ask for a separate homeland. There was a strike the next day, a regular occurrence in these parts, followed by another huge rally. This was followed by another strike, which went on for a full 72 hours, bringing the town to a total standstill. Even the cooking gas in our hotel ran out, which meant limited food for a few days. Stuck in my tiny hotel room in Kokrajhar, I watched TV. The flashing headlines of a local news channel informed me that numerous government buildings had been torched and train tracks removed in the Karbi Anglong district by angry activists of different organizations demanding a separate state. Karbi Anglong, a district in Assam with an area of 10,434 square kilometers (4,000 square miles), has mostly been in news for its militancy and sectarian disturbances, but the statehood movement, which started in 1960, had been fairly subdued in recent years. The fresh demand of statehood in Bodoland also revived the statehood movement in the Karbi Anglong region. On July 31, an angry group of students marched up to the Karbi Anglong Autonomous District council in Diphu, the district headquarters of Karbi Anglong, to plead with their leaders to hold talks with New Delhi on statehood. Subsequently, security forces, including the Assam police and Central Reserve Police Force cadres, were deployed to disperse the crowd, which refused to budge. Eventually, the officers started firing tear gas canisters and live bullets without any warning, which led to the death of one youth and injuries to nine others. Then the angry mob started torching government buildings and public vehicles in Diphu. I immediately started looking for a way to get to Diphu, which I eventually reached with some difficulty. I spent many days there shooting the scenes of devastation. Meanwhile, protesters in the Darjeeling Hills of West Bengal had escalated their demands for their own Gorkhaland. They had blocked access to the hills for close to two weeks by the time I decided to head to Darjeeling. Reporting in Assam can be a tedious task,
The firings at Blue Origin’s West Texas test site included a representative BE-4 preburner and a regeneratively-cooled thrust chamber using multiple full-scale injector elements, the company said in a statement. The engine on the test stand us a sub-scale BE-4 generating about 20,000 pounds of thrust, Meyerson said. “It demonstrates all of the injector elements,” he said. “We’re demonstrating performance, we’re demonstrating combustion stability, we’re demonstrating the manufacturing techniques we need to build those injectors and those chambers. “The powerpack itself is the other part of the testing,” Meyerson said. “The powerpack includes the main pump, the boost pump, the preburner, and all the main valves on the engine, and we’ve been testing that extensively as well.” Meyerson said the BE-4 engine is also intended to power Blue Origin’s own unnamed orbital launch vehicle scheduled to fly by the end of the decade. Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard booster, designed for space tourist and research flights, uses a smaller hydrogen-fueled BE-3 engine. “We didn’t go into this 10 years ago with the idea that we want to build engines for the community,” Meyerson said. “We went into this going to build technologies to support New Shepard, and those engines happen to be very unique in the industry, and one-of-a-kind capabilities that can support multuple launch companies.” The most unique trait of the BE-4 engine is its funding pipeline, according to Meyerson. “I emphasize that the BE-4 is fully funded because a rocket engine that’s available for others to buy, that’s a new trajectory,” Meyerson said. “Jeff Bezos has stepped in and invested in the BE-4. ULA has come in and made an investment as well for application on the Vulcan, and I think that’s unprecedented.” ULA chief executive Tory Bruno said the AR1 engine is about two years behind the BE-4, and managers will decide on an engine by the end of 2016. “We see that (decision) as some time next year, probably late next year,” Peller said. “We’re monitoring the risk burn down with our primary option, and with more progress both on our side with the booster and with Blue Origin, we’ll make that decision.” Email the author. Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.No wonder Pence didn't want the signing ceremony done in public, or that Pence refused to identify these guys to the press when the photo became public. via Towle Road Indiana Governor Mike Pence told George Stephanopoulos that SB101, the "religious freedom" bill he signed into law, is not about anti-gay discrimination. Yet when he signed it, as the graphic above so helpfully points out, he was surrounding by several men, Micah Clark, Curt Smith, and Eric Milled, who have been working for years to demonize gays and lesbians. When asked by the Indianapolis Star who the lobbyists in this photo are, Pence refused to identify them. Mike Pence is a liar out to destroy the state of Indiana with his anti-gay animus. (graphic by @seamonkey237 based on GLAAD cap by Jeremy Hooper)No. 3 Ohio State will play No. 2 Clemson in the Fiesta Bowl Copyright by WCMH - All rights reserved Ohio State's Terry McLaurin (83) gestures after tackling Maryland punt returner Teldrick Morgan in the first half of an NCAA college football game in College Park, Md., Saturday, Nov. 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) [ + - ] Video COLUMBUS (AP/NBC4) -- The No. 2 Ohio State Buckeyes will play No. 2 Clemson in the Fiesta Bowl on December 31, it was announced today. The Buckeyes and Tigers face off at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale at 7 p.m. EST. No. 1 Alabama will play No. 4 Washington in the Peach Bowl that same day. https://facebook.com/NBC4Columbus/videos/10153948143792751/ Penn State comes in at No. 5 and Michigan at No. 6 in the final CFP rankings. The Crimson Tide was No. 1 in the final AP Top 25 of the regular season Sunday, just as it has been since the preseason. Ohio State is No. 2, Clemson is No. 3 and Washington is No. 4. The Super 16 poll puts Alabama at No. 1, Clemson at No. 2. Washington and Penn State round out the top five in the Super 16 at No. 4 and 5, respectively. Penn State was fifth, followed by Michigan, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. The Crimson Tide enters the postseason looking to win back-to-back championships and to join Florida State in 1999 and Southern California in 2004 as the only teams to be AP No. 1 from start to finish. Alabama would be the 12th team to win two straight AP championships. In the National Football Foundation Super 16 poll, Ohio State comes in at No. 3AHMEDABAD: Responding to Congress charge that Narendra Modi was a "fake" OBC, Gujarat government today cited its two-decade old notification which says the Modh-Ghanchi (oil-pressers) caste, to which Modi belongs, was included in Other Backward Castes (OBCs) category."The Social Welfare Department of the Gujarat Government had passed a notification on July 25, 1994 which included 36 castes as OBCs and at number 25 (b) Modh-Ghanchi caste has been mentioned to which Narendra Modi belongs. The caste has been included amongst OBCs," Nitin Patel, the state government's spokesperson, said. Congress leader Shaktisinh Gohil said earlier in Delhi today that Modi was "a fake OBC ".Patel pointed out that the notification was issued way back in 1994 when Congress was in power in the state. "When Modi's popularity is at a peak, Gujarat Congress leaders are misleading the people. The state government condemns such an act," he said. Gohil released copy of a Gujarat government's circular to claim that Modi indulged in some manipulation to include his caste in the OBC category after he became the Chief Minister.Congress launched this attack following Modi playing the caste card to counter Priyanka's "neech rajniti" barbs, saying Congress was targeting his lower caste origins."Modi does not belong to Other Backward Castes (OBC) as he has been claiming to exploit OBC votes. He belongs to rich and prosperous Modh Ghanchis who were never given any kind of reservation nor were included in OBCs before Modi became CM. Like the fake encounters in Gujarat, Modi is also a fake OBC," Gohil said. Quoting Gujarati lexicon `Bhagvadgomandal', the Congress leader said Modhs are rich people living in a particular village and Ghanchis belong to the prosperous trading class.02/06/2016 - KTOS sunhwapark Jun 1st, 2016 ( edited ) 12,240 Never 12,240Never Not a member of Pastebin yet? Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features! rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 5.61 KB 02/06/2016 - KTOS Live Maintenance. The following errors have been corrected. [Skills] 1. SchwarzeReiter [Retreat Shot] skill was breaking constantly. - We apologize for the inconvenience this particular bug caused. We will be monitoring this skill, even after todays patch. 2. Pyromancer's [Hell Breath] was granting immunity from all Boss Attacks. 3.[Cloaking] Hidden enemy characters getting healed by heal tiles effects were being shown to everyone. [Quest] 1. Overlong Bridge Valley [Unfinished Commision (1)]: Fixed bug where the stone was an invisible to the player. 2. Starving Demon's Way [Can't be taken Away (2)]: Fixed a bug where monsters weren't dropping the related quest items. 3. Istora Ruins [Pull out the Metal Plate] - If you happened to have a companion or Sorcerer pet near you, it wasn't possible to recover the metal plate. - using [Conversion] on monsters also made this an issue. [General Gameplay] 1. Fixed a bug where the sell tab on the marketplace was not displaying correctly. 2. Fixed a bug where [Toy Hammer] was exploding due to additional damage dealt from other explosions. 3. Fixed a bug where [Plunger] was not afflicting enemies with a [Decay] debuff. 4. The effects of [Decay] from the [Plunger] will no longer affect the player. 5. When warping using Basic Warp Scroll and lacking in silver, the player could still warp. 6. Fixed a warping bug on the map [2nd Demon Prison] 7. Companions will now look in the direction of their accompanied character inside the Lodge. 8. Some items have had their tool-tips corrected ( space typos on; Potion, Small Potion, Large Potion ) The game has been updated with the following changes: 1. The Cross-Server Guild Wars have received some changes. The below changes only apply in Guild War locations: - Guild Tower's HP has been changed from 300 HP to 1500 HP. - The duration of Guild Wars have been reduced from 30 mins to 15 mins. - 30 Seconds will be given to allow for combat preparations, After that time passes you may travel to the center of the battle room. - When spectating others, you will no longer see other invisible spectators. 2. The level limit (lv. 219+) for a gimmick on the Map [Extension] has been changed. 3. When using Thaumaturge's [Swell Left Arm], [Swell Right Arm], Equipped items will become even larger. 4. Whilst channeling Krivis' [Melstis] skill, you can no longer consume items. 5. Vuvuzela, Watering Can and other special items will have the'star' removed from their tool-tip windows. 6. Warp Scrolls will change so that prices aren't displayed when using them. 7. The effect from [Toy Hammer] now lasts 10 seconds. - There was a minor bug where this was displaying as 2 seconds, has since been fixed back to 10 seconds. 8. Some dialogue has changed for some NPCS and quests. - Jonas' Medicine (1) - Jonas' Medicine(2) - Jonas' Medicine(3) - For Your Safety - Crazy Archivist (1) - Crazy Archivist (2) - Missing Researcher (5) - The Keys Within the Spatial Gap - Mop Up the Forger(3) - Andale Village Priest's Favor (1) - Release Goddess Saule(2) - Release Goddess Saule(3) - Searching for Goddess Saule - NPC Florijonas Dialogue - NPC Liaison Officer Niels Dialogue [New TP Item] 1. Dievdirbys Circle 3 Costume (M, F) - 129 TP Some skills have received some changes: Rodelero: - Slithering : - Now also adds 70% Resistance against negative status ailments for its duration. Sapper: - Claymore: - Damage per skill level has been increased. (53.4 → 80.1) Cleric: - Cure: - The Damage scaling by INT stat has been increased. Priest: Blessing: - The duration of the skill is now 60 Seconds. ( Previously 45) - The skill now also scales according to SPR and INT. Krivis: - Aukuras: - When in range of the Aukaras, Debuffs will have a reduced duration. (For every 0.1 seconds debuffs duration will decrease by 0.05s.) Bokor: - Bwa Kayiman: - Additional damage will be applied based on the average stats of summoned Zombies. Cryomancer: - SubZero Shield: - This skills effects now only apply to melee attacks. - Being hit by [Bodkin Point] will now remove this skill. ( 70% Chance in PVP) PvP has been rebalanced with changes to the following skills: (TN: THE BELOW CHANGES ONLY APPLIES INSIDE BATTLE LEAGUE/GvG, PLEASE DON'T MISUNDERSTAND) Wizard: - Sleep: - Attack threshold now has a cap of 5 Attacks before waking the target. ( Previously 15 Attacks ) Psychokino: - Gravity Pole: - Now only affects (1 + Skill lvl) Targets. Was Previously: ( 5 + Skill lvl ) Targets. - Damage is now reduced by 75% (1/5). Was Previously: 50% Damage. (1/2) - Raise - Indulgentia can now cleanse this effect. - Fumigate can now cleanse this effect. Necromancer: - Dirty Pole - The duration of summoning the dirty pole has been changed to 15 minutes. Warlock: - Pole of Agony: The damage duration of this skill has been reduced to 5 seconds. ( Previously 10 Seconds) Sapper: - Stake Stockade: - The duration of this trap has been changed to 15 minutes. - Punji Stake: - The duration of this trap has been changed to 15 minutes. - Spike Shooter: - The duration of this trap has been changed to 15 minutes. Priest: - Revive: - The duration of this skill is now 30 seconds. ( Previously 90 seconds) Dievdirbys: - Carve Laima - The movement speed reduction effect has been reduced to 10. ( Previously 20) - Carve Owl - The duration the Carve Owl is summoned for is now 15 minutes. Source Post: http://tos.nexon.com/community/tosnotice/view.aspx?n4ArticleSN=369 Translation by Gwenyth @TOS Forums. RAW Paste Data 02/06/2016 - KTOS Live Maintenance. The following errors have been corrected. [Skills] 1. SchwarzeReiter [Retreat Shot] skill was breaking constantly. - We apologize for the inconvenience this particular bug caused. We will be monitoring this skill, even after todays patch. 2. Pyromancer's [Hell Breath] was granting immunity from all Boss Attacks. 3.[Cloaking] Hidden enemy characters getting healed by heal tiles effects were being shown to everyone. [Quest] 1. Overlong Bridge Valley [Unfinished Commision (1)]: Fixed bug where the stone was an invisible to the player. 2. Starving Demon's Way [Can't be taken Away (2)]: Fixed a bug where monsters weren't dropping the related quest items. 3. Istora Ruins [Pull out the Metal Plate] - If you happened to have a companion or Sorcerer pet near you, it wasn't possible to recover the metal plate. - using [Conversion] on monsters also made this an issue. [General Gameplay] 1. Fixed a bug where the sell tab on the marketplace was not displaying correctly. 2. Fixed a bug where [Toy Hammer] was exploding due to additional damage dealt from other explosions. 3. Fixed a bug where [Plunger] was not afflicting enemies with a [Decay] debuff. 4. The effects of [Decay] from the [Plunger] will no longer affect the player. 5. When warping using Basic Warp Scroll and lacking in silver, the player could still warp. 6. Fixed a warping bug on the map [2nd Demon Prison] 7. Companions will now look in the direction of their accompanied character inside the Lodge. 8. Some items have had their tool-tips corrected ( space typos on; Potion, Small Potion, Large Potion ) The game has been updated with the following changes: 1. The Cross-Server Guild Wars have received some changes. The below changes only apply in Guild War locations: - Guild Tower's HP has been changed from 300 HP to 1500 HP. - The duration of Guild Wars have been reduced from 30 mins to 15 mins. - 30 Seconds will be given to allow for combat preparations, After that time passes you may travel to the center of the battle room. - When spectating others, you will no longer see other invisible spectators. 2. The level limit (lv. 219+) for a gimmick on the Map [Extension] has been changed. 3. When using Thaumaturge's [Swell Left Arm], [Swell Right Arm], Equipped items will become even larger. 4. Whilst channeling Krivis' [Melstis] skill, you can no longer consume items. 5. Vuvuzela, Watering Can and other special items will have the'star' removed from their tool-tip windows. 6. Warp Scrolls will change so that prices aren't displayed when using them. 7. The effect from [Toy Hammer] now lasts 10 seconds. - There was a minor bug where this was displaying as 2 seconds, has since been fixed back to 10 seconds. 8. Some dialogue has changed for some NPCS and quests. - Jonas' Medicine (1) - Jonas' Medicine(2) - Jonas' Medicine(3) - For Your Safety - Crazy Archivist (1) - Crazy Archivist (2) - Missing Researcher (5) - The Keys Within the Spatial Gap - Mop Up the Forger(3) - Andale Village Priest's Favor (1) - Release Goddess Saule(2) - Release Goddess Saule(3) - Searching for Goddess Saule - NPC Florijonas Dialogue - NPC Liaison Officer Niels Dialogue [New TP Item] 1. Dievdirbys Circle 3 Costume (M, F) - 129 TP Some skills have received some changes: Rodelero: - Slithering : - Now also adds 70% Resistance against negative status ailments for its duration. Sapper: - Claymore: - Damage per skill level has been increased. (53.4 → 80.1) Cleric: - Cure: - The Damage scaling by INT stat has been increased. Priest: Blessing: - The duration of the skill is now 60 Seconds. ( Previously 45) - The skill now also scales according to SPR and INT. Krivis: - Aukuras: - When in range of the Aukaras, Debuffs will have a reduced duration. (For every 0.1 seconds debuffs duration will decrease by 0.05s.) Bokor: - Bwa Kayiman: - Additional damage will be applied based on the average stats of summoned Zombies. Cryomancer: - SubZero Shield: - This skills effects now only apply to melee attacks. - Being hit by [Bodkin Point] will now remove this skill. ( 70% Chance in PVP) PvP has been rebalanced with changes to the following skills: (TN: THE BELOW CHANGES ONLY APPLIES INSIDE BATTLE LEAGUE/GvG, PLEASE DON'T MISUNDERSTAND) Wizard: - Sleep: - Attack threshold now has a cap of 5 Attacks before waking the target. ( Previously 15 Attacks ) Psychokino: - Gravity Pole: - Now only affects (1 + Skill lvl) Targets. Was Previously: ( 5 + Skill lvl ) Targets. - Damage is now reduced by 75% (1/5). Was Previously: 50% Damage. (1/2) - Raise - Indulgentia can now cleanse this effect. - Fumigate can now cleanse this effect. Necromancer: - Dirty Pole - The duration of summoning the dirty pole has been changed to 15 minutes. Warlock: - Pole of Agony: The damage duration of this skill has been reduced to 5 seconds. ( Previously 10 Seconds) Sapper: - Stake Stockade: - The duration of this trap has been changed to 15 minutes. - Punji Stake: - The duration of this trap has been changed to 15 minutes. - Spike Shooter: - The duration of this trap has been changed to 15 minutes. Priest: - Revive: - The duration of this skill is now 30 seconds. ( Previously 90 seconds) Dievdirbys: - Carve Laima - The movement speed reduction effect has been reduced to 10. ( Previously 20) - Carve Owl - The duration the Carve Owl is summoned for is now 15 minutes. Source Post: http://tos.nexon.com/community/tosnotice/view.aspx?n4ArticleSN=369 Translation by Gwenyth @TOS Forums.While no one knows what ultimately will happen next November, it will be fun to compare the diminished expectations the left has for the One, having gone from literally asking, "Is Barack Obama the Messiah?" to simply wondering if the would-be messiah can simply crawl over the finish line next year. And if the GOP holds the House and/or takes the Senate, so will all of the talk of a permanent Democratic Majority. At least until 2017. QED: James Carville, as paraphrased by a US News & World Report headline, April 26, 2009: "Democrats Will Rule Washington for 40 Years." Forty years flies when you're having fun, I guess. Regarding the tulip mania of 2008, Mark Steyn explores "Finally, The Cognoscenti Ask: What Could We Be Thinking?" in his latest op-ed: The most dismal thing about that David Brooks column conceding that "yes, I'm a sap... remember, I'm a sap... as you know, I'm a sap" was the headline his New York Times editors chose to append to it: "Obama Rejects Obamaism." In other words, even in a column remorselessly cataloguing how one of its smartest smart guys had been repeatedly suckered by Obama on jobs, on Medicare, on deficits, on tax reform, etc., the New York Times chose to insist that there's still something called "Obamaism" — prudent, centrist, responsible — that for some perverse reason the man for whom this political philosophy is named insists on betraying, 24/7, week in, month out, spring, summer, autumn, tax season. You can set your clock by Obama's rejection of "Obamaism." That's because there's no such thing. Never was. "Obamaism" was the Emperor's new centrism: To a fool such as your average talk-radio host, His Majesty appears to be a man of minimal accomplishments other than self-promotion marinated in a radical faculty-lounge view of the world and the role of government. But, to a wise man such as your average presidential historian or New York Times columnist, he is the smartest guy ever to become president. In part, this is a natural extension of an ever more conformist and unrepresentative establishment's view of where "the center" is. On issues from abortion to climate change, a Times man or Hollywood activist or media professor's notion of "centrism" is well to the left of where American opinion is. That's one reason why a supposedly "center-right" nation has wound up regulated into sclerosis, drowning in debt and embarking on its last decade as the world's leading economy. But in the case of Obama the chasm between soft, seductive, politico-media "centrism" and hard, grim reality is too big to bridge, and getting wider all the time. But then, the notion of an actual "center" in any meaningful sense left the building about the same time Bill Clinton did. (Actually sooner, given that Al Gore campaigned much further to the left in 2000 than Bill ever did.) As Jonah Goldberg writes today, "‘Centrists’ Are Abandoning Ship," but "The establishment solution to unpopular liberal policies is still more liberalism:" President Obama’s failure to fully achieve the liberal agenda and remain popular in the process is fueling dangerous radicalization in the oddest of places: the media establishment, which considers itself the guardian of the political center. I should say “the so-called center,” because one of those most tedious — yet meticulously maintained — fictions is the claim that the establishment is, in fact, “centrist.” If you’ve ever met these people and talked to them about how they see the world, heard them give a college commencement address, read their books, or endeavored to find out the political views of their spouses, you’d have all the evidence you need to learn that the establishment’s centrist facade is so much Potemkin poster board.For example, remember the media obsession with the cockeyed fantasy that Obama was the next FDR? Go back and watch some of those late-2008 and early-2009 episodes of Meet the Press. The guests were so giddy about the prospect they looked like six-year-olds at a birthday party ordered to sit still while the clown got ready to make balloon animals. But Obama is not an FDR, nor a Lincoln, nor a liberal Reagan. At this point he’s simply hoping not to be a Carter. And that’s fomented establishment despair. Tina Brown, editor of both the Daily Beast and Newsweek, recently let it slip on MSNBC (a trifecta of establishmentarian liberal media outlets!) that she thinks Obama “wasn’t ready” for the job in 2008. And just in from the left side of the aisle, via Jacob Heilbrunn (who wrote plenty of mythological prose himself about Obama at the HuffPo back in the day), in addition to not being, Lincoln, FDR, JFK and RWR, he's no Harry Truman, either: The new revelations in Ron Suskin's book about Obama being ignored by his own advisers only compound the sense of unease surrounding the Obama presidency. Now we are promised, as Robert Merry and Paul Pillar note in their stimulating essays, a new Obama, one on the fighting lines of Truman. Merry notes that it is the record, not rhetorical flimflam, that will count when voters assess Obama. Part of the trouble with Obama may simply be his inexperience. It would be hard to think of anyone more different than Obama and Truman. Truman served and saw fierce combat in World War I. He commanded men in battle. The corruption of Kansas City politics probably helped him to prepare for dealing with Stalin in the postwar era. Truman was also a student of history—in retirement he wrote a history of the Roman empire. Obama, by contrast, refused to attend the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. But why do you need to know history, when everyone around you is telling you that you are history? As I've written before, the problem for Obama wasn't just, as he told a biographer at the peak of hopenchange fever that "I actually believe my own bulls***," it's that he believed everyone else's, too. See also: most important lesson from Animal House: Of course, given the symbiotic relationship between the MSM and BHO, he could say the same thing back to the people who elected him. And in a way, he is.theBlues Profile Blog Joined April 2010 El Salvador 633 Posts Last Edited: 2011-02-22 22:32:04 #1 Greetings to TeamLiquid from El Salvador This blog might be a long read so better hold your horses (see what I did there, tl, horses, ) but don’t worry there will be pictures! This is the story of a small organization in El Salvador that was inspired by team liquid to spread the Starcraft love in a place where video games are a true luxury. Allow us to introduce ourselves. We are StarcraftSV, basically the only Starcraft community in El Salvador a small country located in Central America and in fact the smallest country on the whole continent. Our Starcraft journey began in 2007 with the solitary endeavours of our founder Jacopana. He basically was the only competitive starcraft fan in the whole country for a long time. (At least to the best of his knowledge). He was a big fan of the korean leagues thus he used to lurk sites like teamliquid (specially teamliquid), among other communities. (So basically he didn’t have any IRL friends xD) he eventually wanted to know if there was a community like this in our country and sadly there was nothing to be found but a few disperse players who only played with their mouse. Gladly he didn't quit there and began recruiting these latin pros, they played online casually for a while, at least to have some starting point to make a clan to compete. Sadly again, nothing became solid but like our starcraft hero that he is Jacopana did not quit there. (you might know him for his blog about his paper mache marine gun right here our starcraft hero in question,also a terran player the tiniest country in America By 2008 Jacopana met some friends from out of town that owned a small Computer Cafe (the other 2 guys that knew about competitive gaming in El Salvador) made a contact with the organizer of the largest anime convention in El Salvador (of course like everything in our country comparatively small). This guy agreed to give us a space to make the first ever national tournament within the convention. They didn’t want the action to end there with a single tournament so they gave the organization a name thus SCSV was born (short for starcraft El Salvador if it isn’t too obvious) Our banner The first tourney ever, the rumour is the guy in the orange cap would launch a nuke then stand up to see how it fell on the opponents screen xD, notice all the one handers... We even had a girl in there This tourney was an absolute new experience for jacopana, he actually had to come up with a system to run a tourney with the 30 players that showed up, and opted for a group phase followed by single bracket elimination. This resulted in the tournament taking too long and the organizers of the convention kicking everyone out of the building come nightfall. The final game was between the players Vic (later AcmeSV) (P) and Belcebez (Z), Belcebez trampling Vic like a bull on mating season due to the fact that apparently he was a C+ Zerg player on Iccup (No one knew what that shit was), so basically we found out there where actually decent players in the country, we just had to find them. By 2009 we had a small staff formed by members of the community in order to organize the tourneys. This time it ran a double bracket elimination format (we learned a lesson, Incontrol might be proud that we did not try extended series) and had 26 participants that had vastly improved since last year, the top 8 players where all C level players on ICCUP and we had a very exciting final between Belcebez(R) and Itrainsforever(Z) with 3-2. itrainsforever playing while everyone watches attentively, this guy had gosu muta micro... In 2010 we got our first visitors from another country, we got the Guatemalan champion at the time Chivu.GT (P) and WCG veteran and some of his friends. This time we had even a smaller affluence of players, but got a very nice final between our champion and the Guatemalan, who played at B level at the time and rocked our Salvadorian asses 3-0 The tourney Acmesv, hums and extasis looking confused discussing strategy with Josh our youngest player, all tricky protoss players Notice the map pool stuck on the board, fighting spirit was one of them The guys from Guatemala holding our banner with some of our staff We even had cake, the cake was not a lie And then came the dawn of a new Era, the launch of starcraft 2. We aimed high in making a sort of launch event where people could try out the game in some FFA, challenges and team games.We ran into many issues including the rampant poverty that we have in SV, we only had about 6 members who could afford Starcraft 2 on the date of launch (and had computers capable of running the game) so we had to improvise so everybody could play (Thanks God for Guest Passes although no lan really made it tough for us). Thankfully the event was a success. The boom of a new game was enough to get everyone’s attention, we had an attendance of about 300 people ready to meet and try out the new game. A new era! Belcebez our Older player with Acme.sv and Hums also oldschoolers Me and my brother playing in the teams tournament, we were both diamonds and rocked everyone. After the first SC2 event we got a corporate sponsor for the first time (like everything in El Salvador, small, but we Thank AEON computers for giving us prices, I really got lucky finding our sponsor. I am a business student so I have gotten my practice doing marketing and relations for us and this was my first big contribution to our community). But the largest thing of all is that the WCG took notice of us and for the first time a Salvadorian representative in the World Cyber games for Starcraft was a possibility. We creamed our pants after we heard the news, our hard work finally was getting noticed. We finally ran a SC2 tournament this last December, had a small turnout like always, and visitors from Guatemala. The finals where between myself and a former WC3 pro from Guatemala that runs under the handle “Cool” in Masters league. I came a long way to achieve that second place, I was a d- zerg during the broodwar days and currently rank at high diamond zerg(haven’t been able to hit masters yet with all the cheese and rushes, somehow I have a very low mmr, but I hope to get into masters soon) I had to topple a few currently masters league players and even our former champion, but everything is possible when you have the spirit of fruit dealer inside of you. Best thing is that the WCG has decided to run a Starcraft tournament in our country and because I got second place I get seeded directly into the round of 8. The winner of that tourney will head for korea in the WCG 2011. Needless to say everyone is training their ass off. First sponsored prices! Usb drives courtesy of Kingston, I got the 8gb then it was taken from me by Jacopana but that is a different story xD We even got a projector and a crowd There where actually 2 players behind the screen, also the tournament brackets on the tv... We have always been a small organization with all the funds coming from the players. We don’t charge more than 2$ entry fee for our tournaments and rely mostly on our own equipment and recently what our sponsors can afford to provide us with. With all those limitations we have been able to run the events we have and even run some online leagues with Central American players. We currently are at the best we have ever been and have some good players with a promising future. We have our old veteran player Belcebez who has been playing the game for 9 years now and is rumored to have played with the best of the best in his time (maybe someone knows him from back then.) We have our youngest player called Josh who is a 15 year old masters league protoss. His biggest dream is to get trained by Incontrol and to challenge pokebunny to earn teenager supremacy. Me and Jacopana dream of meeting all the big names here in Teamliquid, I personally would like to shake hands with Idra as he has been my inspiration in playing Zerg in Starcraft 2 and to follow his path I have been playing my best even though I complain about balance every now and then. Maybe I can even shake hands with the guys from State of the Game, one can only dream... So basically this is it for this blog. Feel free to ask for our Character codes so we can play some games (We play on the NA servers since LA servers suck ), and also feel free to visit our website. Also if any of you are in the country feel free to contact us, we will take you out for dinner and talk starcraft, and if we have a tournament running you can play as a guest with us. Team liquid, we salute you, you have been a huge inspiration to us and we hope one day we can meet in a LAN and play like the biggest of rivals! TheBlueOne signing off! This blog might be a long read so better hold your horses (see what I did there, tl, horses,) but don’t worry there will be pictures!This is the story of a small organization in El Salvador that was inspired by team liquid to spread the Starcraft love in a place where video games are a true luxury.Allow us to introduce ourselves. We are StarcraftSV, basically the only Starcraft community in El Salvador a small country located in Central America and in fact the smallest country on the whole continent.Our Starcraft journey began in 2007 with the solitary endeavours of our founder Jacopana. He basically was the only competitive starcraft fan in the whole country for a long time. (At least to the best of his knowledge). He was a big fan of the korean leagues thus he used to lurk sites like teamliquid (specially teamliquid), among other communities. (So basically he didn’t have any IRL friends xD) he eventually wanted to know if there was a community like this in our country and sadly there was nothing to be found but a few disperse players who only played with their mouse. Gladly he didn't quit there and began recruiting these latin pros, they played online casually for a while, at least to have some starting point to make a clan to compete. Sadly again, nothing became solid but like our starcraft hero that he is Jacopana did not quit there. (you might know him for his blog about his paper mache marine gun right here Gauss riffle made of paper our starcraft hero in question,also a terran playerthe tiniest country in AmericaBy 2008 Jacopana met some friends from out of town that owned a small Computer Cafe (the other 2 guys that knew about competitive gaming in El Salvador) made a contact with the organizer of the largest anime convention in El Salvador (of course like everything in our country comparatively small). This guy agreed to give us a space to make the first ever national tournament within the convention. They didn’t want the action to end there with a single tournament so they gave the organization a name thus SCSV was born (short for starcraft El Salvador if it isn’t too obvious)Our bannerThe first tourney ever, the rumour is the guy in the orange cap would launch a nuke then
s-style movie about 1944? One quick point to make, in passing, because it will be important to some people’s experience of the movie: This might be a trash movie; and it might rewrite history in preposterous ways; but its use of historical detail is nonetheless meticulous. The movie’s evident precision begins with its attention to language. It’s a tri-lingual movie, and the German in the movie is impeccable—entirely unlike the Halt!-und-Schnell! that you get in Schindler’s List and other graduates from the Hogan’s Heroes School of War Cinema. And beyond that, the movie is full of historical references that aren’t in the least offhand—references, I mean, that are knowing and apt. Tarantino works in references to early twentieth-century German children’s literature; he briefly introduces, as a character, a cat named Emil Jannings, who was 1) a real German actor of the period; 2) the first person ever to win an Oscar; 3) and a prominent Nazi. And on and on. Now if you’re in a position to appreciate these details—which basically means if you’re German—the experience of the movie has got to be all the more bewildering. The puzzles I’ve been describing intensify, because in lots of ways the movie seems unusually committed to 1944—the movie’s erudition, I mean, can’t help but convey a certain respect for the movie’s historical materials—and yet at the same time 1944 is constantly slipping from sight. So … a second question. My third question is easier to explain, though it’s probably also the most important one. It all comes down to this image and to the scene that contains it: We have to be clear about what’s going on here. I can imagine a person being keyed up enough at the sweet sight of all those Nazis getting killed to overlook the second thing that’s going on in the movies climactic scenes—not a second event—but a second, equally plausible way of describing that one event: The movie is showing a Jewish woman wreaking vengeance upon Germans, but it is also showing a filmmaker killing her own audience. That’s amazing; and serious thinking about the movie has got to start there. We need to think hard about the conditions under which some of us saw this movie. If you were lucky enough to see Inglourious Basterds during its original run—and so not on DVD—then you sat in a movie theater and watched people in a movie theater get wiped out. You might have been rooting for Shosanna or the Basterds—I know I was—but the people getting offed were, at the moment of their death, unmistakably like you. The aspect of the movie that most leaps out, I think, is its extraordinary hostility towards the audience. So my third question is: Why does Quentin Tarantino hate us so much? So those are my three questions: 1) Why take the triumphalist American history of WWII and make it even more triumphalist? 2) Why channel our perceptions of the 1940s via the 1970s? 3) And why commit mass murder upon the audience? I will next attempt some answers. …MORE TO COME…AUSTIN -- The state legislator and Houston schools vendor who took The state legislator and Houston schools vendor who took school trustee Larry Marshall on two all-expenses-paid trips to Costa Rica last year says he's offered the same trip to school trustees across Texas. “Did I do anything wrong? Did I?” state Rep. Borris Miles asked in response to a reporter's question, stiffening. “I didn’t do anything wrong.” Miles -- who, outside his service in the state House is an insurance agent who services the Houston schools' flood insurance policy -- says he's made the same offer to others. “I’ve offered this same trip to school boards across the state," including Dallas ISD and many school districts in Houston's suburbs, Miles said. "I’ve offered it to many of the representatives here in the House. I’ve offered it to union groups. To any people of influence.” Miles wanted Texas Watchdog readers to know that he offered the same trip yesterday to a Watchdog reporter to whom he spoke for an hour at the state Capitol after the House adjourned for the day. When asked if he thought it appropriate for an HISD vendor to offer the trip, Miles declined to comment, saying that a defense would imply that he had done something wrong, which he said he hadn’t done. “Y’all can spin that answer any way you want it, so I’m not going to comment,” he said. The Houston Democrat offered to take most of the members of the HISD trustees to Costa Rica last year, offering them the chance to venture to the Central American nation to research "medical tourism" -- in which people travel to other countries to have medical treatment performed at much lower costs than back home. Only Marshall took him up on his offer, Miles said. Both trips were paid for by the Costa Rican government, Miles said. “In regards to the Medical Travel Conference and Medical Facilities tour in Costa Rica, I was an invited guest, just like Mr. Marshall," the legislator said in a written statement he also provided to Texas Watchdog. ( Read the complete statement here .) "I was asked to extend an invitation to others who I felt might have any interest in looking into ways to reduce their health care spending for select procedures. “More than 200 benefits professionals, business owners and public officials from across the U.S. have attended this conference. As best we can tell, the public officials number... less than 2 percent. Which is really bad, because innovations tend to come to the public sector last. “The state of Texas and its residents spend nearly $1 trillion -- with a 'T' on health care. The people of my district, 146, pay some of the highest costs for health care in the state and the nation. Instead of complaining about the new health care reform act, some of us have elected to take a more proactive role at looking into ways to lower those costs.” He defended his work with HISD, saying he has had the flood insurance contract with the school district since 2004 -- that was two years before he was first elected to the state House, though campaign finance records show he was already politically active at that time and had donated to major Houston-area candidates . A spokesman for HISD said the district began doing business with Miles “on or about April 2005.” (Miles lost a re-election bid in 2008 to rival Al Edwards; he defeated Edwards last year by a handful of votes in a sometimes-bizarre political season during which Miles, accepting Edwards' challenge, took a drug-urine test during a live radio broadcast.) Miles is a close friend of two HISD trustees, trustees president Paula Harris and trustee and former Houston city councilwoman Carol Mims Galloway. The Houston school district, the nation's seventh-largest, has flood insurance through Miles' agency for 94 buildings at 51 locations, as well as surety bonds through Miles, HISD spokesman Jason Spencer said in an e-mail. Miles said three of his staffers manage nearly 170 policies for HISD. The flood insurance actually comes from the federal flood insurance program, and Miles' agency, a Farmers Insurance firm, services the policy. The school district has paid about $900,000 in premiums to Miles' agency. The legislator said his agency received only a small percentage of that amount, though he declined to say how small. HISD did business with Miles' agency after he submitted the lowest bid of the two firms that responded to a request for proposal for the flood insurance, Spencer said, beating out McGriff, Seibels & Williams of Texas. The Costa Rica offers were all made in the same way they were made to Houston ISD, by e-mail. State legislators and candidates for legislative office are required to fill out an annual ethics form -- one that instructs filers to "identify any person or organization that has given a gift worth more than $250 to you, your spouse or a dependent child, and describe the gift." It also requires filers to "identify any person who provided you with necessary transportation, meals, or lodging... in connection with a conference or similar event in which you rendered services, such as addressing an audience or participating in a seminar, that were more than perfunctory." Miles' ethics form covering calendar year 2010, which he was required to file as a candidate for the state House, shows both sections marked "N/A" for "not applicable." The trips would not appear on any of his ethics filings, Miles said, because it was offered when he was a private businessman, not an elected official.Bernie Sanders is launching his Our Revolution organization tonight with a live stream that starts at 9 p.m. Eastern. You can watch the launch above. We will also add other livestreams below, including any house party live streams from Sanders supporters that may be available. Although Sanders’ supporters are excited about the launch, there’s already quite a bit of controversy surrounding what’s going to happen. Jeff Weaver, his campaign manager, was appointed to lead the political organization, which resulted in many staff members resigning in protest, The New York Times reported. The staff who quit were concerned that Weaver had made some poor decisions while he managed Sanders’ campaign. They were also concerned about the group’s tax status as a 501(c)(4), which allows it to collect donations and keep the donors anonymous. However, Weaver has said this new organization will be focused on empowering progressive candidates’ campaigns so they can win in November. Starting two hours before the launch, Political Revolution TV is live streaming an organizing kickoff event at 7 p.m. Eastern. This preparty live stream can be viewed below: Supporters are hoping that the Our Revolution message will include a big push for Tim Canova, who is running against Debbie Wasserman Schultz in Florida. The congressional primary is August 30. Schultz was at the heart of the DNC email leaks scandal and resigned as chair of the DNC as a result. Canova has been previously supported by Sanders and is a big favorite among his supporters. Please see these stories below to remember some of the highlights of Bernie Sanders’ campaign: Read about Donald Trump and Melania in Spanish at AhoraMismo.com:Red Star OS is a Linux distribution developed in North Korea. Not only is it North Korea’s official Linux distribution, it’s their country’s official operating system period. Microsoft’s Windows operating system is written and developed in the USA, so it’s no surprise North Korea doesn’t really trust it given the tense relations between the two countries. Until 2002, when Red Star OS began to be developed in the DPRK, the few available computers in North Korea generally ran Windows. (Interestingly enough, the North Korean hackers which seem to be behind the hack of Sony Pictures appear to have been using Windows PCs instead.) Other countries—especially ones very wary of U.S. influence—have also chafed at Windows. China once developed Red Flag Linux, but that project was shut down in 2014. Russia and Iran have also looked to Linux’s open-source code as a customizable alternative to Windows. But Red Star OS isn’t just designed to shield North Korea from potential U.S. government backdoors. The Korea Times, a South Korean paper, reported that the operating system "is mainly designed to monitor the Web behavior of its citizens and control information made available to them.” It’s not clear if Red Star OS could do this outside of North Korea, but I don’t recommend taking that chance. It’s like a normal Linux distribution, but… North Korea’s Red Star OS feels a bit like a Linux distribution from a bizarro world. There's a lot that’s very recognizable, but it’s been twisted in ways that feel unfamiliar. Will Scott North Korea's Red Star OS 3. Red Star OS is a Linux distribution with a customized, themed KDE 3 desktop. Previous versions of Red Star OS looked more similar to Windows, but the current Red Star OS 3.0 has a Mac OS X-like theme complete with a dock. A photo of Kim Jong-un in 2013 showed him with an iMac on his desk, so the reason for this redesign could simply be because the country’s “dear leader” picked up a Mac and liked the interface. Along with the KDE 3.0 desktop, North Korea’s official browser of choice is Mozilla Firefox, which is renamed “Naenara,” which translates to “my country.” It’s used to access a web portal also named Naenara, a country-wide intranet with limited access to the outside Internet. The operating system uses North Korea’s Juche calendar, which was introduced in 1997. The first recorded day in history is Kim Il-sung’s date of birth on April 15, 1912. 1912 was year 1. This means that 2014 is year 103 in Red Star OS. Red Star OS bundles various other utilities and games you’d recognize from a traditional Linux distribution, including the Wine compatibility layer for running WIndows software. The only language available is Korean, with North Korean spelling. The wallpapers folder contains various photoshopped background images designed to function as propaganda, according to Fast Company. This is not for you Red Star OS isn’t made to be shared with the outside world. We only know about the operating system because we’ve gotten occasional snapshots of it from visitors to North Korea. Russia’s RT news network covered Red Star back in 2010 after a Russian student returned from North Korea with it, showing off a fairly standard looking KDE 3 desktop. In late 2013, Will Scott picked up a copy of it from a Korea Computer Center retailer while visiting Pyongyang to give a lecture at a university. That’s where the news about—and screenshots of—the Mac OS X makeover came from. Want to stay up to date on Linux, BSD, Chrome OS, and the rest of the World Beyond Windows? Bookmark the World Beyond Windows column page or follow our RSS feed. It’s not hard to find ISO images of Red Star OS that have somehow leaked to the outside world, though. Copies of Red Star OS 3.0 and earlier versions are floating around torrent sites. No, I’m not going to link to them here. You probably shouldn't run software developed by the North Korean government on your computer. Interestingly enough, Red Star OS 3.0 seems to require a serial key to run. Perhaps North Korea isn’t happy its operating system is being “pirated” online! Red Star OS is an oddity. It’s easy to be amused at from afar, noticing how the operating system became a Mac clone after the country’s dictator got his hands on a Mac. But it’s also a Linux distribution designed to filter and monitor web usage, created by perhaps the most oppressive government on the planet. It’s both sad and interesting to see Linux twisted into such a system—although it’s an allowed use of open-source software. (North Korea probably wouldn’t give you the source code to Red Star OS if you asked, though.)Truck driver Normand Lavoie has been sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to dangerous driving causing the deaths of three high school boys from Carrot River, Sask., in a May 2015 highway construction zone crash. The Winnipeg trucker, 41, told police that he didn't fall asleep at the wheel, but that he was in "la la land, basically — I'm there behind the wheel but I'm not." With it being Saskatchewan, it's flat and [you] kind of just go into autopilot. - Normand Lavoie, truck driver The sentence was delivered Monday in Court of Queen's Bench in Melfort, 280 kilometres north of Regina. The deaths of three teenage boys — Carter Stevenson, 17, Kristian Skalicky, 15, and Justin Gaja, 14 — rocked their hometown and shocked the province at a time when there was much public attention about the dangers of speeding in construction zones. A flagperson from B.C. who was injured in the construction zone crash is still unable to work and receives weekly counselling. Lavoie will serve one year of concurrent time for injuring the flagperson. He will also be prohibited from driving for five years after his release. Normand Lavoie's semi truck rear-ended the Chevrolet Cobalt with three teenage boys inside. (Court document) The defence said the Crown's request for a six-year prison sentence was much too severe for Lavoie's "mistake." A deadly crash An agreed statement of facts presented at the sentencing hearing laid out the following facts of the case. On May 3, 2015, the Winnipeg semi-trailer driver was hauling foam insulation panels on a highway south of Spalding, Sask., when he entered a construction zone driving about 100 km/h. Mr. Lavoie knows precisely how the families feel. - Michael Nolin, defence lawyer Lavoie later told police that he didn't recall entering the construction zone or seeing six construction zone signs, including an electronic billboard, advising him that workers were present and to slow down. He was travelling 84 km/h when he crashed into and crushed a small white car that had been stopped by a flagperson. The three teenage boys inside the car travelling home from a football camp were killed on impact. Defence lawyer Michael Nolin says his client Normand Lavoie knows precisely how his victims' families feel. (CBC) Their car hit a truck hauling a trailer, and that truck then hit and seriously injured flagperson Sam Fetherston. Logbooks seized by the RCMP and analyzed by the Highway Traffic Board didn't reveal any issues with how many hours Lavoie had been driving, or the distance he had covered, that would indicate fatigue. In his statement to police, Lavoie said, "With it being Saskatchewan, it's flat and [you] kind of just go into autopilot." After the collision, he was diagnosed with a mild form of sleep apnea, a physical condition that can lead to daytime sleepiness, but the doctor couldn't determine if it contributed to the crash. In May 2017, Lavoie pleaded guilty to three counts of dangerous driving causing death and one count of dangerous driving causing bodily harm. 'A part of me died' During the sentencing hearing, the victims' families presented emotional victim impact statements to the court. Many of the statements talked about the immense loss they've experienced. "The pain, the hurt and great sadness of losing Carter and how it affected me and so many relationships and my activities these last two years is huge," wrote Carter Stevenson's mother, Shelley Enns. "The depth of heartache experienced puts you in a category not everyone, fortunately, understands." And 15-year-old Kristian Skalicky's mother, Lisa, wrote about having to walk away from her home, as it was too difficult to continue living there. "A part of me died," wrote Skalicky. "I felt I couldn't breathe …. I just remember thinking, 'how, how could this happen?'" Flagperson Fetherston also wrote about being the last person to see the boys alive. "Little things happen and I have to remove myself from the group at rehab in motion, because I have to go cry," he said. "Sometime nothing even happens, it's just my own thoughts triggering these panic attacks. Normand Lavoie has been given a three year sentence after the deaths of three teens in a Saskatchewan construction zone. (Charles Hamilton/CBC News) 'Rarest of rare situations' Crown prosecutor Tyla Olenchuk asked for a six-year prison sentence and a nine-year driving ban. "Professional drivers — especially when they're operating a vehicle in that professional capacity — have a responsibility to others on the road. There are cases that talk about that trust that is put in them, given that they are required to go through extra licensing and training in order to be able to operate those vehicles," Olenchuk said. It kind of makes it hard for you to feel bad about what happened to yourself. - Sam Fetherston, injured flagperson Olenchuk wanted a stiffer sentence than was given to off-duty trucker Keith Dunford, who was sentenced to two years less a day for killing 18-year-old flagperson Ashley Richards in 2012 in southern Saskatchewan. Lavoie's defence lawyer, Michael Nolin, said that sentence is much too severe. "The Crown prosecutor has asked for something that is roughly three times the sentence that has ever been given in Saskatchewan [for that crime], and twice the highest sentence ever given out for crimes of this nature given out in Canada," Nolin said. Previous Next The defence asked for two years plus a day to be served in a federal penitentiary so Lavoie can be transferred back to Manitoba where he'd be closer to family. Sam Fetherston, with his mother, Cynde Fetherston, in the background, is still recovering from injuries he suffered while working as a construction zone flagperson. (CBC) Nolin believes his client fell asleep at the wheel but was too ashamed to tell police because of his family history. When he was 18, a semi truck driver who fell asleep at the wheel killed Lavoie's mother and grandmother and seriously injured his brother. "One of the rarest of rare situations, and the first time in my career that I was able to go before the court and say, Mr. Lavoie knows precisely how the families feel," Nolin said. Flagperson traumatized The flagperson who was seriously injured in the crash spent a week in a medically induced coma. More than two years later, Sam Fetherston is still unable to work, barely leaves his mother's house and has difficulty eating or socializing. "It's never-ending," Fetherston said in a telephone interview from Comox Valley in B.C. "I'm not back to work yet. I'm still seeing a counsellor every week." When he thinks about the three boys who were killed in the crash, and their grieving families, he feels survivor's guilt. "It kind of makes it hard for you to feel bad about what happened to yourself," Fetherston said. Fetherston emailed a victim impact statement to be presented during the sentencing hearing. Justin Gaja's mother, Crystal, also shared a statement. She told the court that the only thing she looks forward to now is her dying breath.A federal jury has found former Los Angeles County sheriff Lee Baca guilty of corruption charges. He previously avoided conviction when a mistrial was declared. Now the prominent law enforcement leader could be behind bars for two decades. After two full days of jury deliberations, a unanimous verdict was handed down against Baca on Wednesday, finding him guilty of assisting in the obstruction of a 2011 FBI investigation into LA County jail guards brutally beating inmates, taking bribes and lying to federal agents about it. Read more Baca, 74, himself was also determined to have been lying about his role in the obstruction, which prosecutors said was ordered from the top in the nation’s largest sheriff’s department. During the trial, Assistant US Attorney Lizabeth Rhodes said, “when defendant Baca learned the FBI and a federal grand jury was investigating, he obstructed and when he learned the FBI has turned its focus on him, he lied,” KABC reported. Defense attorney Nathan Hochman told jurors there was “no evidence Sheriff Baca gave orders to obstruct the FBI,” according to KABC. This was Baca’s second trial on corruption charges. The first was declared a mistrial in December when one juror out of 12 refused to vote for acquittal. Upon learning that the FBI had an informant inmate in the LA County jail system, guards secretly moved the informant and lied to FBI agents about his whereabouts. In September 2011, a female FBI agent working the probe was threatened with arrest at her own home by two sergeants from the LA Sheriff’s Department. Former Los Angeles Times reporter, Robert Faturechi, told jurors in the first trial that Baca had told him in an interview that he “directed” the sergeants to initiate the encounter. Baca was sheriff from 1998 to 2014, when he retired as news of the jail guard scandal broke. He is the eighth department official to be convicted in the FBI’s probe, according to KCBS. Baca is also reportedly to be in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.The head of Europe’s central bank thinks cryptocurrencies are too low-impact to regulate. Speaking to the European Parliament on Monday, Mario Draghi said digital currencies are not a threat to the ECB’s control over the euro due to a lack of adoption within the 27-member economic bloc. As a result, cryptocurrencies’ impact on the economy would be limited, according to Reuters. He was quoted as telling lawmakers: “We think that all this is pretty limited. So it’s not yet something that could constitute a risk for central banks.” Draghi’s remarks come just days after an ECB governing council member said central banks are trying to decide whether to regulate digital currencies. National Bank of Austria president Ewald Nowotny said lawmakers are asking themselves whether they should get involved in regulating cryptocurrencies, citing China’s recent shutdown of bitcoin exchanges. Indeed, this week’s statements are the latest in which Draghi, who previously serves as head of Italy’s central bank, has opined on the subject of cryptocurrencies – while also demurring on the question of whether the institution will ultimately pursue some form of regulation. Draghi said the ECB would not regulate the space last month, telling the press that he saw bitcoin as being too immature to regulate. He followed up by noting that people should “cherish” innovations in the financial sector, including cryptocurrencies, while still being wary of any potential risks. Draghi also does not think the ECB can regulate bitcoin, telling the parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs in September that regulating cryptocurrencies falls outside the scope of the bank’s powers. Draghi image via Matthi / ShutterstockThe Calgary Flames made a splash Tuesday by plucking goaltender Jonas Hiller off the free agent market. The 32-year-old signed a two-year, $9-million contract with the Flames, and appears to be quite excited about the opportunity to play in a passionate hockey market like Calgary. Here's what Hiller had to say on Sportsnet 960 Tuesday afternoon: I’m definitely excited to kind of like join a team where people and the city care more about it. I’m really excited about it. Sure, it’s probably going to be a little change and it’ll probably take me a couple of days to adjust that there are probably a few more people in the dressing room after practice and after games, but yeah, at the same time I’m really excited to be part of a team where the city really cares and the people are into it and people really know about hockey. Hiller added the following on how his tenure in Anaheim came to a rather disappointing conclusion: I felt like I had a really good year, even until after the Olympics. I thought I played really well at the Olympics. Kind of came back and had one or two games where I probably wasn’t at my best and suddenly after that I didn’t feel like Bruce Boudreau was really playing me against the good teams and didn’t feel like there was the confidence there. Yeah. He made the decision kind of against me or for Frederik Andersen for the playoffs. It was definitely disappointing because I felt I played well and I deserved to play in the playoffs, but at the end it’s always coach’s decision and that’s kind of the tough part of being a goalie. At the end, there’s one guy playing and that’s kind of it. If you’re the guy, it’s fun. If you ain’t the guy, it’s a little tougher. Hiller added Calgary appealed to him because he wanted the opportunity to "play quite a few games", and "at the end there kind of weren't too many teams really looking for a goalie."Electronic Arts chief executive John Riccitiello is feeling “awfully good” about the Mass Effect 3 launch.” Speaking at today’s Wedbush Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference in New York City, Riccitiello estimated that the game sold 890,000 units during the first 24 hours in North-America alone, meeting the company’s expectations: “We anticipated it doing well, so we’re happy.” International sales numbers are not included because Mass Effect 3 launched a couple of days later in Europe. Riccitiello is optimistic about the game’s prospects as editorial reviews are very favorable with an aggregated Metacritic score of 94 out of 100. [Update: EA said today that it has shipped 3.5 million copies of the game to retailers. ] He also pointed out the success of the downloadable content (DLC) that was already available for purchase on Mass Effect 3’s launch day. Retail chain GameStop saw a tie ratio of 40 percent of day one customers who purchased a download code for additional content together with the game: “The tie ratio at the register is the highest in their history”, said Riccitiello. Using packaged-good products to increase digital revenue is becoming increasingly important for game publishers like EA because of the higher growth and margin numbers associated with digital products. Mass Effect 3 is the latest action role-playing game by EA’s Bioware studios. This conclusion to an epic SF trilogy is the first Mass Effect game to launch simultaneously on PlayStation 3, PC and Xbox 360. It adds a new co-op multiplayer mode to the story-driven single-player campaign. Riccitiello called the Mass Effect franchise “one of my favorite IPs; my family is as addicted to it as am I.” Electronic Arts’ CEO also updated and clarified subscriber numbers for Star Wars: The Old Republic, the company’s big gamble in the massively multiplayer online (MMO) game category and another high-profile release by its Bioware division. Riccitiello reported 1.7M active subscribers, which sounds like nothing much has changed compared to the earnings report numbers released on February 1. But a month ago about half of those players were still in the first 30 days of the subscription period, which is included with the purchase of the game, while the “vast majority [of players] is now triggered through that point and they’re recurring subscribers.” Obviously EA doesn’t want 1.7M subscribers to be the limit for the Star Wars MMO, which took six years and an alleged $200M budget to produce. Riccitiello called The Old Republic “the most successful MMO through this period in the history of the industry. But we’re nowhere relative to what the opportunity in front of us is.” The chief executive mentioned new “content releases every quarter, systems, tutorials, feature upgrades and the future of expansion content” to keep players engaged. He explained that EA “tailored the game for the core user, people who were existing MMO players. What we do from here … [are] things designed to increase the funnel at the top. That means content changes, feature changes, new ways to bring the product to market … so new users can find entry into the game a lot easier.” One example is the recently introduced buddy key program, which allows subscribers to invite friends for a free trial period. Bioware has just released a trailer for the new content of version 1.2, which comes free with a paid subscription. Judging by Riccitiello’s comments, the announcement of a major game expansion pack can only be a matter of time. Star Wars: The Old Republic’s main competitor, World of Warcraft from Activision Blizzard, has released three $40 expansions over the years.Apple has removed the Java runtime from its upcoming Mac OS X Lion, according to a report based on firsthand experience with a preview release of the OS. Appleinsider reports that the latest developer release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion removes both Java and Rosetta, the package used to run PowerPC code on Intel-based Macs. But according to the fanboi news site, Lion includes a mechanism for automatically downloading the latest version of Java for the Mac. In late October, Apple caused a fair amount of unrest among Java developers when, in the release notes of a Java update, it said that Java on Mac had been "deprecated" and that it "may be removed from future versions of Mac OS." Now, it has been removed, but the future of Java development on Macs is secure. In November, Apple and Oracle announced that they would collaborate on a Mac-based incarnation of OpenJDK, an open source version of Java. Apple said it would contribute "most of the key components, tools and technology" needed for a Java SE 7 implementation on Mac OS X, including a 32-bit and 64-bit HotSpot-based Java virtual machine, class libraries, a networking stack, and base code for a new graphical client. The average Joe isn't likely to miss Java on Lion. Few consumer desktop applications use the technology. But many business apps still use it, and of course, Java developers need the runtime on their machines. According to Appleinsider, if you try to run a Java app on Lion, the OS will look for the latest version of the runtime and download it – with the user's approval. Rosetta was also previously deprecated by Apple, and the company barred applications using both Rosetta and Java from the new Mac App Store. With Snow Leopard, the current version of Mac OS X, Rosetta is not installed by default, but users could install it if they chose to. Now it has been completely removed. ®Hello everyone, more and more dirty laundry comes out on Wargaming lately and the more I learn, the more I feel disgusted and disappointed, even by Minsk. Let’s have a look at the latest scandal rocking the Russian server. It all started with the former Russian community manager Dietolog (specifically for World of Warplanes), who blew the case wide open on his blog. Dietolog is no longer an employee of Wargaming and seeing some events concerning War Thunder lately, he decided to come forward and talk. It could also be his thirst of vengeance against Wargaming, who knows? Motives do not make the truth any different (we’ll talk about that below). Now, what happened. Let me get back a bit. Remember when the conditions for being a community manager were leaked? A part of the test were subversive tactics against other games – back then, we had a good laugh, but I am no longer laughing, because it’s all true. Dietolog, as a community manager, was asked to participate in a subversive hate campaign as early as December 2013 against Wargaming’s competitor, Gaijin Entertainment, the developer of War Thunder. The campain was funnily enough called “G-spot” (WG has a sense of humor, I’ll give them that) and the entire leaked document is accessible here. It’s in Russian of course. The basic udea is that Wargaming-paid hate trolls were supposed to systematically attack Gaijin sites, forums, social network pages and fan pages and spread anti-War Thunder propaganda. Dietolog states that he did not participate in the subversive operation and only a month later, he left or was fired. The entire campaign represents a reaction of Wargaming to the total failure of World of Warplanes and an attempt to damage the competition by other means than by creating a quality game. Anyway, back to the campaign. I imagine most of you don’t speak Russian (that’s why you are here), so let’s have a look at what the campaign consisted of. Oh, one last thing, before we start. I reached out to several Wargaming ex-employees and employees. And you know what? It’s all true. Of course, I do not have a proof, so in the end, you’ll have to decide yourself, who to trust – a disgruntled whistleblower, or Wargaming corporate drones, who will deny the whole thing? One advice though: disgruntled employees are the major source of FTR news and Wargaming has MANY. These news are often proven to be correct. So, I wouldn’t discount them when it comes to credibility. So, about the smearing campaign: The first part of the document explains the basic pillars, on which WT PR is based on – a basic set of axioms, if you will: - “We are not Wargaming” (aimed at people who dislike WG for one reason or another) - “We are elite” (based on the fact WT playerbase is smaller) - “We are in hostile environment” (based on the eternal “conflict” with Wargaming) The result is, according to Wargaming, a specific community culture, built on “brotherhood in arms in opposition to Wargaming”. The report also notes further that this culture resulted in a loyal and active core of players and puts it in contrast to World of Warplanes (this refers to the state of the game from December 2013), where the issues with WoWp are identified as alleged WT subversive activities, bot-spam on lower tiers and issues with the game itself (optimization and such). It’s really an interesting analysis, I will translate it completely at one point in the future. Second part of the document deals with what should be done with it. Wargaming openly proposes to “spam” third party sites, that deal with Wargaming, with negative images and pieces of information (anti-WT hate). This spam would be performed by WG employees in various forms: - purely negative (spam of anti-WT statements, the list of which is available as a part of the report, no arguments required) - argued negative (actually arguing for anti-WT statements, involves discussion, requires, apart from the list from the first point also a methodology of using various arguments) - negative third party images or links (for example, spamming “funny” War Thunder images with mocking comments) Especially the use of the third point is very wicked – here, Wargaming proposes actively creating videos and screenshots that intentionally distort War Thunder physics and graphics to make them look wacky and unrealistic, but also proposes the creation of videos featuring various cheat modpacks to show how vulnerable War Thunder is to cheating. Back to points 1 and 2: Wargaming prepared, I shit you not, a HUGE list of various negative pieces of information to spam War Thunder with. Each of these points has its own methodology, eg. a proposed way, how to best use the argument and how exactly to counter any reply by War Thunder staff. Here’s how it works, a few examples: Example 1 – category: general Axiom: “War Thunder is shit” Explanation: an emotional method, used to evoke negative background and feeling, use may vary. Examples of use: “I saw your Thunder, it’s a bugged piece of shit”. Note: can be more effective when combined with other arguments, such as referring to Gaijin’s older game “Wings of Prey” and stating it’s the same game, claiming that Gaijin developers were doing nothing for last 6 years and made nothing new, just recycled the old game. Note 2: can be more effective when combined by a specially WG-made screenshot with wrong graphic settings, based on which it is claimed the
and shirtless in a Vancouver limo in 2010; and earlier this year, on Cinco De Mayo, was videotaped stumbling all over the University of Wisconsin campus. Kane has scored nine points in five games for Switzerland’s EHC Biel-Bienne while he waits for NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman to pull his head out of his ass.Topl’s goal is to connect investors and producers across the world to form project-based joint ventures. In this process, investors require privacy in their actions, yet producers need the ability to share past investment information. In addition, the network relies on consensus over not only digital information but also the storage of real goods. Both of these require implementation of a sophisticated scheme that prevents undue investor exposure, defines access roles over shared information, and avoids potential information leakage of transactions. These transactions rely on reputation of parties and ultimately require physical audits as anchors. For these reasons, the consensus has to be built around “real stake” (a combination of reputation and stake) and potentially fuzzy asset tracking — something which can’t be earnestly tackled given current development of general-purpose chains. Even Ethereum, which is working to include zk-SNARKs in its Metropolis release will be unprepared to seriously handle private transactions — such as those produced in ZCash — for some time. That’s not to say that there aren’t potentially significant benefits to being part of these chains. Look at Ethereum: Benefits: — Existing clients with JSON-RPC integration — High-quality development team and set standards (ERC20/223) — Relatively high number of users — Fairly simple development process for smart contracts Downsides: — Consensus is limited to Ethereum — Pay to deploy contracts and contract upgrades — Double-cost barrier for token monetization — Smart contract development is limited in terms of complexity (largely due to EVM) — Smart contract languages (Solidity, Serpent, LLL) still very immature — Gas price stickyness compared to exchange rate It’s obvious that one of the largest obstacles for any platform, user acquisition, has been addressed with great success in Ethereum. Ethereum has thrived at building to assist new applications in growth and attracting users. However, significant obstacles overshadow these benefits. Consider that Augur, Gnosis, and Aragon — along with many other projects of significant scope — use dozens of smart contracts and hundreds or thousands of lines of code. The costs and logistical challenges of these deployments are certainly not insignificant. A general-purpose compute blockchain like Ethereum can work very well for small applications now and in the longer term for consumer-focused, app-like contracts. Nevertheless, unless Ethereum becomes a “master chain”, it’s difficult to imagine the future of blockchains as anything other than an internet of blockchains instead of a single app store and platform. In the grand scheme of things, what Topl aims to provide is arguably far more specialized than what can currently or should ever be represented on an app-oriented chain. As a result, we’ve decided that the best course forward, both from a technical and logistical standpoint, is to build our own client on a tested foundation: the Scorex blockchain framework. However, in terms of liquidity, crypto-assets can still benefit from the nascent standards spearheaded by Ethereum. Given that many crypto-exchanges (e.g. Poloniex) have already begun accepting ERC20/223 tokens, this presents an opportunity for new crypto-assets to gain access to a more developed market. Other decentralized platforms with specific needs have already chosen this route (e.g. Golem, Mysterium). Liquidity benefits can also be realized to some extent in other chains as well, such as Stellar and Ripple. These can help extend these markets to those in the developing world — and specifically the unbanked. Consequently, we intend to develop functionality to port assets to other blockchains. Early on, users ought to be able to submit these asset transfer transactions to, for example, a contract on Ethereum (think Project Alchemy). The corresponding tokens should be subject to the ERC20/223 standard and be able to be re-imported from the contract back onto the Topl chain. In this way, we hope to improve access to Topl chain assets while avoiding any technical compromise. In the longer term, we hope to make use of tighter interoperability, such as the solutions proposed by Cosmos (formerly Gnuclear) and Polkadot. And perhaps most importantly, this hybrid approach will allow us to better offer our users the opportunity to participate in collaborative, pooled ventures in areas across the globe. The end result? Investments which benefit communities along with the enterprises that are built in them — all on blockchains.Wired's Joshua A Davis has a great profile of my pal Dan Kaminsky's work on discovering and then helping to fix a net-crashing DNS bug earlier this year. Davis really captures the excitement of discovering a major security flaw and the complex web of personal, professional and technical complications that come to bear when you're trying to disclose the research in a way that minimizes harm to the net. Dan does a lot of fun security-related stuff that doesn't get talked about in public. There's this one thing he does -- But that would be telling. The next morning, Kaminsky strode to the front of the conference room at Microsoft headquarters before Vixie could introduce him or even welcome the assembled heavy hitters. The 16 people in the room represented Cisco Systems, Microsoft, and the most important designers of modern DNS software. Vixie was prepared to say a few words, but Kaminsky assumed that everyone was there to hear what he had to say. After all, he'd earned the spotlight. He hadn't sold the discovery to the Russian mob. He hadn't used it to take over banks. He hadn't destroyed the Internet. He was actually losing money on the whole thing: As a freelance computer consultant, he had taken time off work to save the world. In return, he deserved to bask in the glory of discovery. Maybe his name would be heralded around the world. Kaminsky started by laying out the timeline. He had discovered a devastating flaw in DNS and would explain the details in a moment. But first he wanted the group to know that they didn't have much time. On August 6, he was going to a hacker convention in Las Vegas, where he would stand before the world and unveil his amazing discovery. If there was a solution, they'd better figure it out by then. But did Kaminsky have the goods? DNS attacks were nothing new and were considered difficult to execute. The most practical attack–widely known as cache poisoning–required a hacker to submit data to a DNS server at the exact moment that it updated its records. If he succeeded, he could change the records. But, like sperm swimming toward an egg, whichever packet got there first–legitimate or malicious–locked everything else out. If the attacker lost the race, he would have to wait until the server updated again, a moment that might not come for days. And even if he timed it just right, the server required a 16-bit ID number. The hacker had a 1-in-65,536 chance of guessing it correctly. It could take years to successfully compromise just one domain. The experts watched as Kaminsky opened his laptop and connected the overhead projector. He had created a "weaponized" version of his attack on this vulnerability to demonstrate its power. A mass of data flashed onscreen and told the story. In less than 10 seconds, Kaminsky had compromised a server running BIND 9, Vixie's DNS routing software, which controls 80 percent of Internet traffic. It was undeniable proof that Kaminsky had the power to take down large swaths of the Internet.GETTY British troops are resigning in droves at time of severe terror alert Droves of military personnel are handing-in their notices – largely due to low morale – meaning rules are being changed so hundreds of foreign fighters can sign-up to defend this country because there are not enough British nationals available. Staggering new figures from the Ministry of Defence show 7,260 troops from the Army, RAF and Navy have applied to resign since April 2015. It is believed service personnel are feeling the pinch after drastic cuts were introduced in 2010, prompting the UK National Defence Agency think-tank to warn: “We cannot afford to go on squeezing our armed forces till the pips squeak.” GETTY Low morale is said to be a key factor in the troops' resignations It comes as Britain faces a severe terror threat from Islamic terrorist groups and as the MoD prepares for engagement in Libya, which could see as many as 1,000 troops join coalition allies in supporting local forces to vanquish IS fundamentalists. Now, Defence Minister Penny Mordaunt has relaxed the rules imposed in 2013 banning Commonwealth soldiers signing-up unless they had lived in Britain for five years, and is allowing 200 Commonwealth citizens to fill roles in regular forces every year. According to the Ministry of Defence’s latest Service Personnel Statistics, the UK can field a total number of 140,570 fully-trained troops across all branches - well short of the MoD’s declared minimum number of troops needed for each service, which is 146,950. Our Brave Boys in Afghanistan Mon, July 27, 2009 Play slideshow 1 of 14 Welsh Guards, and 2 Mercian B Command, in Gereshk The so-called “liability gap”, which mainly affects the Army and the Royal Navy, stands at 6,380 – the size of an entire brigade. Describing the 4.3 per cent shortfall, the document suggests that the forces are experiencing the effects of cuts imposed by the Strategic Defence and Security Review 2010, which scythed 20,000 regular troops in the hope that they would be replaced by reservists. However other MoD figures show that hundreds of fully-trained troops are quitting every month, not because of redundancies, but because they have simply had enough. GETTY RAF resignations have exceeded 1,000 in the last year alone According to figures provided by Armed Forces minister Mark Lancaster, around 427 soldiers quit the Army every month between January 2015-16. In the Army, the so-called “Voluntary Outflow” figure between April 2015-January 2016 is 3,950 troops, it stands at 1,380 in the Navy and 1,930 in the RAF. In addition, MoD Minister Lord Howe confirmed that a massive 28 per cent of would-be soldiers – one in every four - quit before completing their training. GETTY Foreign troops are being drafted in because so many Brits are resigning According to the MoD’s most recent Continuous Attitude Survey, 32 per cent of all Armed Forces Personnel - one in three –are dissatisfied with life in the services. In the Army, 43 per cent of all soldiers admit morale is low. Andy Smith, chief executive of the UK National Defence Agency said: “These figures must surely be a reflection above all of declining morale in all three Services which is linked to continual rounds of defence cuts and redundancies and the fact that a military career no longer offers the prospects that it did or the job security. "As a nation we simply cannot afford to go on squeezing our armed forces till the pips squeak. "They [servicemen] want and need solid career prospects and stability. Our security relies upon these men and women. "They are vital national assets and it's a disgrace that the nation is treating them so poorly. No wonder they are leaving.” Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron MP, who put the question of quitting service personnel to Mark Lancaster, said: “It is a critical role of the government to protect the welfare of our brave service men and women, and to give them a proper wage for the role they play in defending our country. GETTY Miserable forces are resigning due to low morale meaning foreigners must fill void Our armed forces are lions led by minsters, who are, frankly, donkeys Tim FarronCITY HALL -- A new $250 million water tunnel from Brooklyn to Staten Island will be activated by Mayor Bill de Blasio on Saturday, four years after Hurricane Sandy caused extensive damage and delays to the project. The new siphon is considered a critical backup that can deliver as much as 150 million gallons of drinking water to the borough in the aftermath of a disaster. "Our city is better prepared to tackle 21st century threats like Sandy today than ever before," de Blasio said in a statement. "This water tunnel is one measure that will help Staten Island spring back to action in the event of a disaster that would disrupt the water supply." De Blasio will tour the tunnel's Tompkinsville side on Saturday morning. The new siphon competed pressurization and water quality testing this fall and will serve as an alternate feed for Staten Island's drinking water. Staten Islanders now use about 50 million gallons of water a day carried from upstate New York through New York City Water Tunnel No. 3 and the Richmond Tunnel. That will still be the main water supply for Staten Island. The new tunnel replaces two old siphons built just under a century ago that were the borough's primary water connection until the Richmond Tunnel was completed in 1970. Those siphons were the backup connections until being removed by the Port Authority's harbor deepening project. SANDY DAMAGE DELAYS Work on the project started in August 2011 and a tunnel boring machine had gone about 1,600 feet toward Brooklyn from the North Shore between July 2012 and Oct. 28 of that year, when operations were suspended before Sandy struck. The unfinished tunnel and the Staten Island shaft of the project were both flooded with sea water. The tunnel boring machine was also severely damaged. The city said this happened because the shaft was open. During the 18-month shutdown caused by the storm surge, the city put resiliency measures in place to prevent future damage. Plans were redrawn. Infrastructure, including the chlorination station, was moved out of the area where there is at least a 1 percent chance of flooding every year, known as the 100-year floodplain. The tunnel boring machine was able to resume work again on April 14, 2014, after repairs and once water was removed from the tunnels and shafts. Before Sandy, the machine had put in place 389 of 2,349 concrete rings to line the tunnel wall. Excavation finally completed in February 2015. NEW WATER MAINS The project also includes 6,545 feet of new water mains on Staten Island along Van Duzer Street, Victory Boulevard, Front Street and Murray Hulbert Avenue. Construction of the chlorination station is still incomplete. "New York City has one of the most sophisticated -- and cleanest -- water systems in the world, and it's a testament to the Department of Environmental Protection's great work," Rep. Dan Donovan (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn) said in a statement. "Thanks to this project, Staten Island will continue to have a safe and resilient water supply." De Blasio's decision to highlight the tunnel's completion on Saturday is in contrast with how he's marked Sandy's landfall in years past. On the third anniversary of the storm last year, de Blasio went to New Dorp Beach and promised that the Build it Back housing recovery program would complete work on single-family homes by the end of 2016. The city won't meet that deadline. Increasing construction costs have also left a $500 million hole in Build it Back's budget that taxpayers must shoulder, despite the program serving less than a third of roughly 20,000 homeowners who originally applied for help.WATCH: Obama Says Trump 'Exploiting' Anger, Fear Among 'Blue-Collar Men' toggle caption Nick Michael, Colin Marshall/NPR Donald Trump has gained traction in the Republican primary, according to President Obama, because the boisterous billionaire has found a way to play off American anxieties, especially among "blue-collar men." The president told NPR's Steve Inskeep in an interview late last week that economic and demographic changes in the country, including his own "unique demographic," have left a void that Trump is "exploiting." Watch here: "Particularly blue-collar men have had a lot of trouble in this new economy, where they are no longer getting the same bargain that they got when they were going to a factory and able to support their families on a single paycheck," President Obama said. NPR YouTube Here's part of what the president had to say: "I do think that when you combine that demographic change with all the economic stresses that people have been going through — because of the financial crisis, because of technology, because of globalization, the fact that wages and incomes have been flat-lining for some time, and that particularly blue-collar men have had a lot of trouble in this new economy, where they are no longer getting the same bargain that they got when they were going to a factory and able to support their families on a single paycheck — you combine those things, and it means that there is going to be potential anger, frustration, fear. "Some of it justified, but just misdirected. I think somebody like Mr. Trump is taking advantage of that. That's what he's exploiting during the course of his campaign." Much of that anger and frustration has been directed at this president. Pressed on whether he understands why some regular Americans blame him and believe he is changing the country for the worse, he answered this way: YouTube "Well, look, if what you are asking me, Steve, is are there certain circumstances around being the first African-American president that might not have confronted a previous president, absolutely.... "If what you are suggesting is that, you know, somebody questioning whether I was born in the United States or not, how do I think about that, I would say that that's something that is actively promoted and may gain traction because of my unique demographic. I don't think that that's a big stretch.... The fact of the matter is that in a big country like this, there is always going to be folks who are frustrated, don't like the direction of the country, are concerned about the president. "Some of them may not like my policies, some of them may just not like how I walk, or my big ears or, you know. So, I mean, no politician, I think, aspires to 100 percent approval ratings. If you are referring to specific strains in the Republican Party that suggest that somehow I'm different, I'm Muslim, I'm disloyal to the country, etc., which unfortunately is pretty far out there and gets some traction in certain pockets of the Republican Party, and that have been articulated by some of their elected officials, what I'd say there is that that's probably pretty specific to me and who I am and my background, and that in some ways I may represent change that worries them." The president noted, however, that there are those who object to his policies and may have "perfectly good reasons for it," like when it comes to coal, for example. He continued: "I think if you are talking about the specific virulence of some of the opposition directed towards me, then, you know, that may be explained by the particulars of who I am. On the other hand, I'm not unique to that. I always try to remind people, goodness, if you look at what they said about Jefferson or Lincoln or FDR — finding reasons not to like a president, that's, you know, a well-traveled path here in this country." Enlarge this image toggle caption Eric Schultz/AP Eric Schultz/AP Regular refrains at Trump's rallies — headlined with his campaign tagline, "Make America Great Again" — include railing against immigrants entering the U.S. illegally to take jobs, halting Syrian refugee relocation and, more recently, the candidate's call to stop any Muslims from coming into the U.S. (at least temporarily) amid terrorism fears. Born out of those fears, many of Trump's rallies have taken on a dark tone in recent weeks. There have also been regular dust-ups between attendees and protesters, with insults flying directed at detractors and the press. An NPR analysis earlier this year found that one reason Trump has been able to sustain his surprising momentum so long is that he has strong support among those blue-collar voters — mostly white men without a college degree. "The groups that he's doing well with are very often the core of the Republican Party's primary electorate, which is why he's not taking much incoming attacks from his fellow competitors," Lee Miringoff, director of Marist College's polling operation, told NPR back in August. But that success in a GOP primary may not necessarily translate to a general election, where the electorate is expected to be less white, more educated and more diverse, both demographically and socioeconomically.The French asset management company TOBAM, with $9 bln under management, has officially announced the creation of the first Bitcoin mutual fund. The goal is for institutional investors to gain access to the cryptocurrency. The company has created the fund as an unregulated alternative investment in order to provide a vehicle for allowing more regulated investors at the institutional level to gain Bitcoin exposure without the regulatory concerns. According to the business development lead, Christophe Roehri: "Direct investment in Bitcoin can be operationally challenging, from dealing with the choice of the platform, to maintaining the proper security measures in terms of custody and to managing the changes made to the protocol.” Massive institutional movement As the last two months has unfolded, the widespread adoption of Bitcoin at the institutional level has continued. The announcement by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) for the provision of Bitcoin futures, as well as other firms, has propelled the cryptocurrency to new all-time highs over $8,400. At press time, Bitcoin was trading at $8,301, just off those highs.The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has issued some sobering statistics on child pornography in the United States. PHOTO: MGN The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has issued some sobering statistics on child pornography in the United States. In a posting to the agency's website titled "The Scourge of Child Pornography," the FBI states "there is still much work to be done." As an example, the report cites a February case in Arizona where a woman was found mailing her jailed husband images of girls as young as 9-years-old. The report states many of the people who engage in the production and distribution of child pornography come from all walks of life and most don't even have a criminal history. Many of the crimes are carried out on the "dark web," also know as Tor -a browser which allows users to remain anonymous. Among the eye-opening statistics shared, a Department of Justice 2016 report shows one website on Tor hosted 1.3 million images depicting children subjected to violent sexual abuse. Analysis of these specific files identified at least 73 new victims previously unknown to law enforcement. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) estimates over 26 million sexual abuse images and videos were received by their analysts in 2015 alone. Since 2002, more than 10,500 victims depicted in child porn have been identified by police. One website on the dark web was shown to have 200,000 registered users and 100,000 individuals had accessed the site in just 12 days.We’re in full swing in Cancún. From Solidity and zkSNARKs to identity management and trusted data feeds, here are the key takeaways from the third day of presentations. This morning began with an introduction to Solidity by Hudson Jameson, co-founder of Oaken Innovations and an active member of the Ethereum community since its early days. Solidity is a human-readable, high-level language for Ethereum electronic distributed code contracts, also called EDCCs or smart contracts. The language looks like JavaScript with types, and contracts are comparable to classes, explained Jameson. Solidity compiles to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and the code is completely isolated, meaning that it does not communicate externally. If, for example, a person wanted to put sports scores into an EDCC, then that would require a trusted data feed, more commonly referred to as an oracle. “It’s easy to write contracts. It’s hard to make sure they’re secure.” A perfect sound bite from Jameson reflects the observation that securing EDCCs is significantly harder than writing them. This might be exemplified by the mess created by Bancor, which raised more than $100 million with roughly 40 lines of code. Jameson disclosed a fun piece of trivia, saying that there are six high-level languages for Ethereum to date. These are Mutan, Serpent, LLL, Solidity, Bamboo, and Viper. Jameson was pleased by the emergence of contract standards like ERC20. During the presentation, he quickly demonstrated the creation and deployment of a very simple smart contract, which stored an unsigned integer. Jameson also noted that the blockchain read or constant function is a very useful ability, akin to reading a database for free. Ultimately, Jameson said, the biggest problem for Solidity is that “it’s a young language,” but instead of complaining about the lack of familiar features, developers should help build solutions. Amid concerns of insecurity, Jameson is most excited about ZoKrates (pronounced: Zo-crates), a programming language that compiles to Ethereum zero-knowledge proofs. Following Hudson Jameson was Dr. Christian Reitwiessner, who coyly admitted that programming language theory might be a little bit “dry.” Nonetheless, Reitwiessner made a major announcement – Solidity’s documentation is now available in Spanish! Russian, Chinese, and German translations would also go a long way toward expanding Ethereum’s development community. Additionally, Reitwiessner explained that there is work being done to create dynamic return data. This is not fully functional yet, but he aims for this to be completed by the end of the year. Slides from Reitwiessner’s presentation are available here. Mist Everton Fraga and Victor Maia shared updates about Mist, which can be used to browse and use Dapps on the Ethereum network. They proudly announced that together, Mist and Ethereum Wallet have been downloaded 2.6 million times. Maia posed a fascinating question: “What would the web look like if it came after Ethereum?” Imagine, how ownership of user data or monetization schemes would be different. In a way, it almost seems backwards – but perhaps that’s the nature of this movement towards decentralization. It will take time and dedication for this computing revolution to reach fruition. Maia also issued a warning to developers, saying “Never import JS code you didn’t read. It’s not safe.” The Mist team explained that it had a security audit performed by a German software development company called Cure53. This audit uncovered 22 issues, some of which were critical, but were all resolved. Mist relies on a massive web stack, so complications at some level appear inevitable. Introduction to zkSNARKs I couldn’t help but laugh out loud when I walked into the breakout room to find nearly 200 people packed shoulder to shoulder. With flashing pink and green lights, the atmosphere seemed more like a rave than a development conference. Reitwiessner’s presentation on zkSNARKs garnered a tremendous amount of interest, though many developers have admitted that they’re still trying to wrap their heads around the topic. However, it’s clear that the most significant thing about zkSNARKs is that they can assist with scalability. Through cryptographic magic, it’s possible to verify that a piece of data exists – or is true – without actually revealing information about the material. Reitwiessner displayed a mini-Sudoku grid to illustrate how zkSNARKs function. Because of the properties of Sudoku, a person can shuffle the solution, so that verification is possible without giving away the actual solution. This method of taking an arbitrary problem and translating it allows for the “reduction” of interactions. By decreasing the number of rounds of interaction, verification is expedited. Polynomial graphs, for example, allow a person to detect even the smallest changes. Rather than checking the entire graph or matrix, the graph is different at virtually every point, so it’s easier to observe and verify. I hesitate to provide further insight because I want to make sure that I give readers accurate information. For interested parties, Reitwiessner shared his slides via GitHub. Lunch During lunch in the media room, a lady handed out temporary tattoos of Vitalik and Ethereum. Lots of writers happily pasted them to their bodies and I grabbed a few, too. No word on their immutability yet. uPort uPort is a “complete self-sovereign identity system built on Ethereum.” Product leads Michael Sena and Rouven Heck presented on “uPort – Usable Key Management for Multiple Identities Across Multiple Chains.” In a bold proclamation, Sena announced, “We’ve built Ethereum’s user platform.” The problem? With the abundance of chains, tokens, and applications, it’s impossible to work with just one ID on one chain. Today, users have multiple accounts on multiple chains (much the same way that folks have different login credentials for the multitude of social media, gaming, and entertainment platforms). Through the uPort application, Sena and Heck said, private keys can be securely managed for multiple identities. Thomson Reuters If Reitwiessner’s zkSNARKs presentation merited a rave theme, then so did Sam Chadwick’s presentation entitled “Data in the Missing Link.” As the director of new content initiatives for Thomson Reuters, Chadwick is based in Zug, Switzerland, which has been crowned as “Crypto Valley.” Chadwick explained that a few years ago, when he learned about Ethereum, he spoke with Vitalik Buterin – who coincidentally was living in Zug as well. Thomson Reuters describes itself as such: “We enable professionals in the financial and risk, legal, tax and accounting, and media markets to make the decisions that matter most, all powered by the world's most trusted news organization.” Buterin, realizing the inheren t trust that is afforded to Reuters, told Chadwick that the multinational media and information firm needed to become an oracle for Ethereum. Interestingly, Thomson Reuters is headquartered in Toronto – another crypto coincidence, as that is where Vitalik attended high school. The real question for Thomson Reuters, Chadwick explained was how to get involved. Markets are divided by value and volume. The “big tickets” include venture capital, private equity, OTC derivatives, and syndicated loans, so that’s where Thomson Reuters is getting started. Through B1IQ (read: Block One IQ) Thomson Reuters is offering data feeds for EDCCs in beta that are compatible with Ethereum and Corda. Chadwick also highlighted PermID, which aspires to provide permanent identifiers, a crucial issue in the financial services and FinTech world. Tickers can change ownership (e.g., “C” now denotes Citigroup, but it used to be Chrysler), and that would be a massive problem for blockchain-based technology. Hopefully, through PermID, Thomson Reuters has surmounted that challenge. It’s hard to believe that tomorrow’s the last day of the conference. There’s a wonderful happiness that I’ve felt walking around the convention center over the last few days. Hearing “blockchain this” and “crypto that,” I feel like I belong – and I think that’s something that a lot of developers and writers feel in this space. It’s rare to feel like you’re among people who are genuinely interested in making the world better. The projects that are being discussed are unequivocally revolutionary. Even if it’s unclear which exact projects will succeed and which will fail, what matters is that we’re all working together. Sharing, building, and decentralizing … and that’s special.Going forward it will be more and more difficult to get your money out of the financial system. The reason for this concerns the actual structure of the financial system. As I’ve outlined previously, that structure is as follows: 1) The total currency (actual cash in the form of bills and coins) in the US financial system is a little over $1.36 trillion. 2) When you include digital money sitting in short-term accounts and long-term accounts then you’re talking about roughly $10 trillion in “money” in the financial system. 3) In contrast, the money in the US stock market (equity shares in publicly traded companies) is over $20 trillion in size. 4) The US bond market (money that has been lent to corporations, municipal Governments, State Governments, and the Federal Government) is almost twice this at $38 trillion. 5) Total Credit Market Instruments (mortgages, collateralized debt obligations, junk bonds, commercial paper and other digitally-based “money” that is based on debt) is even larger $58.7 trillion. 6) Unregulated over the counter derivatives traded between the big banks and corporations is north of $220 trillion. When looking over these data points, the first thing that jumps out at the viewer is that the vast bulk of “money” in the system is in the form of digital loans or credit (non-physical debt). Put another way, actual physical money or cash (as in bills or coins you can hold in your hand) comprises less than 1% of the “money” in the financial system. Suffice to say, one of the biggest concerns for the Federal Reserve is what would happen if a significant percentage of investors decided to move into physical cash. Indeed, this is precisely what happened in 2008 when depositors attempted to pull $500 billion out of money market funds. A money market fund takes investors’ cash and plunks it into short-term highly liquid debt and credit securities. These funds are meant to offer investors a return on their cash, while being extremely liquid (meaning investors can pull their money at any time). This works great in theory… but when $500 billion in money was being pulled (roughly 24% of the entire market) in the span of four weeks, the truth of the financial system was quickly laid bare: that digital money is not in fact safe. To use a metaphor, when the money market fund and commercial paper markets collapsed, the oil that kept the financial system working dried up. Almost immediately, the gears of the system began to grind to a halt. When all of this happened, the global Central Banks realized that their worst nightmare could in fact become a reality: that if a significant percentage of investors/ depositors ever tried to convert their “wealth” into cash (particularly physical cash) the whole system would implode. As a result of this, the Fed and the regulators are looking to implement moves that would make it much harder to move money into physical cash. If you find difficulty in taking my word for this, consider the recent regulations implemented by SEC to stop withdrawals from happening should another crisis occur. The regulation is called Rules Provide Structural and Operational Reform to Address Run Risks in Money Market Funds. It sounds relatively innocuous until you get to the below quote: Redemption Gates – Under the rules, if a money market fund’s level of weekly liquid assets falls below 30 percent, a money market fund’s board could in its discretion temporarily suspend redemptions (gate). To impose a gate, the board of directors would find that imposing a gate is in the money market fund’s best interests. A money market fund that imposes a gate would be required to lift that gate within 10 business days, although the board of directors could determine to lift the gate earlier. Money market funds would not be able to impose a gate for more than 10 business days in any 90-day period… Also see… Government Money Market Funds – Government money market funds would not be subject to the new fees and gates provisions. However, under the proposed rules, these funds could voluntarily opt into them, if previously disclosed to investors. http://www.sec.gov/News/PressRelease/Detail/PressRelease/1370542347 In simple terms, if the system is ever under duress again, money market funds can lock in capital (meaning you can’t get your money out) for up to 10 days. If the financial system was healthy and stable, there is no reason the regulators would be implementing this kind of reform. This is just the start of a much larger strategy by the Fed to declare War on Cash. Indeed, we've uncovered a secret document outlining how the Fed plans to incinerate savings to force investors away from cash and into riskier assets. We detail this paper and outline t hree investment strategies you can implement right now to protect your capital from the Fed's sinister plan in our Special Report Survive the Fed's War on Cash. We are making 1,000 copies available for FREE the general public. To pick up yours, swing by…. http://www.phoenixcapitalmarketing.com/cash.html Best Regards Phoenix Capital ResearchEnlarge By Dale Zanine, US Presswire Virginia Tech quarterback Sean Glennon, sporting a replacement jersey after his Hokies uniform couldn't be found, threw for 296 yards and two touchdowns. FROM THE GRIDIRON FROM THE GRIDIRON Game report Virginia Tech team page Georgia Tech team page Top 25 recap Scores from around the nation USA TODAY Top 25 poll ATLANTA (AP) Sean Glennon wore a Georgia Tech jersey. There was no doubt he was playing for Virginia Tech. Wearing a replacement jersey provided by the home team when his own disappeared, Glennon threw two long touchdown passes and ran for another score to lead No. 13 Virginia Tech to a 27-3 win over Georgia Tech on Thursday night. "It was funny," Glennon said. "That was the jersey of a school I almost went to" coming out of high school. The Hokies (7-2, 4-1 Atlantic Coast Conference) bounced back just fine from their shocking collapse against Boston College, when they squandered a 10-point lead in the final minutes. Glennon made his second straight start in place of freshman Tyrod Taylor, who was sidelined again by a sprained ankle. The replacement starter, who lost the job to Taylor after the second game, made the most of it by throwing for 296 yards, including a 40-yard touchdown pass to Justin Harper and a 71-yarder to Josh Morgan. Virginia Tech moved into a first-place tie with rival Virginia in the Coastal Division. The teams will meet in the final game of the regular season. "I think I've been playing well," Glennon said. "But the coaches will go with the option they think they will win with." Georgia Tech (5-4, 2-4) saw its slim hopes of making a second straight trip to the ACC championship game go down the drain. The Yellow Jackets were simply horrible after jumping ahead 3-0 on their second possession. Rubbing more salt in Georgia Tech's wounds: Glennon was among four Virginia Tech players whose jersey mysteriously disappeared before the game, forcing them to suit up in the Yellow Jackets' white road jerseys. Glennon's name was written in magic marker on the back, and the home team's nickname was blacked out across the front of the shirt, which was trimmed in black and gold instead of maroon and orange. "Branden (Ore) wrote it on there first in caps and lower case," Glennon said. "I then did it in all caps." Maybe Taylor Bennett should have worn a Virginia Tech jersey
fredini and Michael Zager Halloween III: Season of the Witch – John Carpenter The Keep – Tangerine Dream Mountaintop Motel Massacre – Ron Di Iulio Sledgehammer – Ted Prior, Marc Adams, Philip G. Slate Spasms – Tangerine Dream Videodrome – Howard Shore Xtro – Harry Bromley Davenport 1984: Children of the Corn – Jonathan Elias The Dark Side of Midnight aka The Creeper – Doug Holroyd Don’t Open Till Christmas – Des Dolan The Jar – Obscure Size Monster Shark – Fabio Frizzi Murder-rock: Dancing Death – Keith Emerson A Nightmare on Elm Street – Charles Bernstein Rats: Nights of Terror – Luigi Caccarelli Razorback – Iva Davies Runaway – Jerry Goldsmith The Terminator – Brad Fiedel 1985: Blood Cult – Rod Slane Cut & Run – Claudio Simonetti Day of the Dead – John Harrison Deadly Intruder – John McCauley Evils of the Night – Robert O. Ragland Fright Night – Brad Fiedel Future-Kill – Robert Renfrow The Galaxy Invader – Norman Noplock Ghoulies – Richard Band Girls School Screamers – John Hodian Massacre in Dinosaur Valley – Claudio Simonetti Nail Gun Massacre – Whitey Thomas Nightmare Weekend – Martin Kershaw Phenomena – Goblin The Strangeness – David Michael Hillman, Chris Huntley 1986: The Abomination – Kim Davis, Richard Davis and John Hudek April Fool’s Day – Charles Bernstein Blood Hook – Thomas A. Naunas Body Count – Claudio Simonetti Breeders – Don Great, Tom Milano Chopping Mall – Chuck Cirino Class of Nuke ‘Em High – Ethan Hurt Combat Shock – Buddy Giovanazzo Deadly Friend – Charles Bernstein Evil in the Woods – Burt and Joe Wolff “Geek”! aka Backwoods – Skeet Bushor Goremet: Zombie Chef from Hell – Steve Cunningham, Dan Smith, Don Swan Gothic – Thomas Dolby The Hitcher – Mark Isham Night of the Creeps – Barry DeVorzon Revenge – Rod Slane Revenge of the Living Dead Girls – Christopher Reid The Ripper – Rod Slane Spookies – Kenneth Higgins, James Calabrese Tahkhana – Ajit Singh TerrorVision – Richard Band The Wind aka The Edge of Terror – Hans Zimmer, Stanley Myers The Wraith – Michael Hoenig, J. Peter Robinson 1987: Beaks: The Movie – Stelvio Cipriani Blood Diner – Don Preston Brain Damage – Clutch Reiser and Gus Russo Creepshow 2 – Les Reed, Rick Wakeman Demonwarp – Dan Slider Epitaph – John Gonzalez Killing Birds – Carlo Maria Cordio Open House – Jim Studer Psychos in Love – Carmine Capobianco The Shaman – Richard Yakub The Serpent and the Rainbow – Brad Fiedel Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama aka The Imp – Guy Moon The Soultangler (USA) – Hypnolovewheel Street Trash – Rick Ulfik Buy: Amazon.com \| Amazon.co.uk Surf Nazi Must Die – John McCallum Video Violence – Gordon Ovsiew 1988: The Blob – Michael Hoenig Curse of the Blue Lights – Randall Crissman Fatal Pulse – Martin Mayo Fright Night Part 2 – Brad Fiedel Graverobbers – Katherine Quittner The Hackers – David Christopher, Milly Duncan Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers – Alan Howarth Headhunter – Julian Laxton Hollowgate – John Gonzalez I Saw What You Did – Dana Kaproff Iced – Dan Milner Killer Klowns from Outer Space – John Massari The Last Slumber Party – John Brennan, Danilo Bridgens Lone Wolf – Jon Kull Night of the Demons – Dennis Michael Tenney A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 – Craig Safan, John Easdale Not of This Earth – Chuck Cirino Offerings – Russell D. Allen The Urge to Kill aka Attack of the Killer Computer – uncredited Vampire in Venice – Luigi Ceccarelli 1989: Beasties aka Bionaut – Darrell Devaurs Dark Heritage – uncredited Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers – Alan Howarth The House of Usher – Gary Chang, George S. Clinton MoonStalker – Douglas Pipes Nightmare Beach – Claudio Simonetti Skinned Alive – J.R. Bookwalter 1990: Demon Wind – Bruce Wallenstein Nightmare Concert (A Cat in the Brain) – Fabio Frizzi Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor – John Gray 1991: Intensive Care – Paul Natte 1992: The Washing Machine – Claudio Simonetti 1993: Demon Dolls – Killer Circus 1995: The Dummy – Killer Circus Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers – Alan Howarth 1996: The Dentist – Alan Howarth 1998: The Dentist 2 – Alan Howarth Psycho Santa – Steve Sessions 2004: Saw – Charlie Clouser 2008: Psycho Sleepover Slaughtered (Australia) – Hook 2009: All Hallows Eve – Jon McBride 2010: Resident Evil: Afterlife – Tomandandy 2011: Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead 2012: Beyond the Black Rainbow – Norm Li Room 237 – Jonathan Snipes 2013: LFO – Antonio Tublén 2014: Let Us Prey – Steve Lynch Starry Eyes – Jonathan Snipes Excess Flesh – Jonathan Snipes It Follows – Disasterpiece Late Phases – Wojciech Golczewski 2015: Bastard – Kyle Hnedak Live-Evil – Shawn Lee Secret Santa – Andre Becker Sinister 2 – tomandandy We Are Still Here – Wojciech Golczewski 2016: The Barn – Jason English; Rocky Gray Beyond the Gates – Wojciech Golczewski The Belko Experiment – Tyler Bates Fender Bender – Nightrunner Let’s Be Evil – Julian Scherle Sequence Break – Van Hughes Shadows of the Dead – Wojciech Golczewski She Wolf Rising – Tom Burns Tonight She Comes – Wojciech Golczewski 2017: Christmas Blood – Kim Berg Death on Scenic Drive – Starsky Partridge Game of Death – Julien Mineau Housewife – Antoni Maiovvi Ouija House – Jonathan Price Shhhh – Umberto Sick for Toys – David L. Small 2018: The Campus – Darryl Blood Exposure – Joshua Luttrell Killer Kate! – John E. Hopkins The Night Sitter – Rob Himebaugh Stephen Thrower, HORRORPEDIA Steve is the author of Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci; Nightmare USA and Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of Jesus Franco and one half of Cyclobe. Additions to filmography by Daz Lawrence and Adrian J Smith Buy Murderous Passions from Amazon.co.uk HORRORPEDIA is truly independent and we rely solely on the minor income generated by affiliate links and ads to stay online. Please support us by not blocking ads. Thank you. Quick links to HORRORPEDIA contents: A \| B \| C \| D \| E \| F \| G \| H \| I \| J \| K \| L \| M \| N \| O \| P \| Q \| R \| S \| T \| U \| V \| W \| X \| Y \| Z Must-See Horror Movies Worst Horror Films of All-Time Highest-Grossing Horror Films Like this: Like Loading...Share this article... Page 1, 2, 3, 4 Babesiosis is one of the most deadly tick infections on earth. It is not rare, a mere "coinfection," or "occasionally" present. It should always be checked in anyone with a history of a tick bite, possible Lyme disease, high suburban or rural exposure, or a transfusion, using specialty direct and indirect labs. Almost all direct testing is 95% inaccurate, with the exception of IGeneX, which detects Babesia approximately 25% of the time if you perform full testing of Babesia microti and Babesia duncani antibodies, PCRs, and a FISH test. This 25% is approximate and comes from 11 years of our own patients and our consult patients, who were tracked very closely on Babesia infections. Initial testing by over 100 physicians and our repeat testing yielded this percent in the absence of meaningful new exposures. Also, Babesia is routinely missed in slides by specialty laboratories.1 Babesia can cause crippling fatigue and migraines. Weight loss or gain is routine, but so is disability from an additional 50 possible symptoms which were carefully derived from a decade of our research and presented earlier in our Checklist book.2-4 (See Figures 1–3 and note the Babesia inside the red blood cells.) Despite these intimidating images, some patients have no symptoms. For others, their first or most serious symptom can be death by stroke, heart attack, blood clots in the legs or the lungs, or cancer. Figure 1: Babesia lives inside red blood cells. This routine Giemsa-stained blood smear is MO-1, which means that the first patient lived in Missouri. It was fatal. Figure 2: Babesia lives inside red blood cells. This routine Giemsa-stained blood smear is WA-1, renamed duncani. Figure 3: A wide range of Babesia single-celled infections inside the critical red blood cell – the cell carrying oxygen to all of the body's cells. The density of infected cells shown here is not routine. What is routine is to examine a blood sample slide for 3 minutes as the CDC suggests, and see no infected cells. Babesiosis, according to the CDC, can cause low and unstable blood pressure, severe hemolytic anemia (hemolysis), a very low platelet count (thrombocytopenia), disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC, or consumptive coagulopathy), which can lead to the above-mentioned blood clots and bleeding, malfunction of vital organs (such as the kidneys, lungs, and liver), and death.5 In 2001, Mylonakis was already warning of major risk of heart attacks, renal failure, and other catastrophic disease states from babesiosis.6 We first became concerned with Babesia, as an infection that affects clotting, when we noticed patients clotting very fast when cut by shaving accidents or blood draws. Very high D-Dimer and thrombin-antithrombin complex formation (TAT) blood levels were found in our Babesia patients, as well as research in humans and dogs.7-9 Our worry about death from clots in humans was further supported when some patients required prescription blood thinners to prevent a clotting death. Further, another issue emerged also related to clotting. We were consulted on patients who had strokes. The trouble was that they would take Coumadin or other medicines to keep their blood at a constant level of "thinness" to prevent another stroke, but their clot measurement labs were too variable for optimal clot prevention. All of these patients were eventually found to have Babesia and other tick infections, and their unstable blood thinning or clot risk labs, the PT, aPTT, and INR, changed due to a Babesia infection. Heart and brain infarcts are the leading causes of death in adults. Babesia increases the incidence of these infarcts by an unknown percentage. The chemical changes that Babesia causes in the body may add to this problem. This is partly discussed in our book, Babesia 2009 Update.10 Babesia occasionally increases red blood cell size (MCV) so that red blood cells that normally measure 8 microns often can barely pass through 10 to 20 miles of human capillaries. Babesia's "sibling," malaria, another single-celled red blood cell parasite, routinely causes brain infarcts, causes white blood cell adhesion, and impairs venous blood flow causing pressure, edema, and other coagulation disasters.11,12 No single test should ever be used to rule out a clotting risk from Babesia. Another top cause of death for adults is cancer. We believe that Babesia increases the rate of some cancers. The amount of natural killer cells with an outer CD57 marker can decrease with the presence of Lyme disease, but Babesia, when it is killed, can decrease the levels of this type of cancer killer cell even more.13 For example, in proprietary research and in our physician patients who were only given Babesia medications, the levels of cancer killer cells with CD57 decrease very rapidly with effective Babesia killing. Antimalaria medications used alone may also acutely decrease the levels of CD8 markers by Babesia death and presence of Lyme in the body. Another common cancer issue is the lack of testing for Babesia in most hemolytic anemia workups – the red blood cells are being destroyed, and hematologists seem to have no awareness that this may not be cancer but Babesia, even when told that it is Babesia related. Let me use a routine article to show this error. Nackos reports on a man who was admitted to a hospital weak and disoriented.14 His complete blood count (CBC) revealed mild anemia (hemoglobin 11 g/dL) and low platelets. His level of platelets had been normal 3 weeks earlier. My first appeal is that Babesia does not replicate very quickly. Nackos et al. seem to assume that Babesia replicates like weeds because he seems to think all of the patient's Babesia load came from a single walk in the "country grass." We have serial Babesia smears examined every 2 to 4 months which show otherwise, proving that Babesia is very slow growing. However, he is correct to consider a new additional bite is a trigger to acute illness and decreased function. The signs and symptoms were new in this poor man, but he already likely had Babesia present in his blood for years. Sometimes someone has a tick-infection trigger event such as a car accident, flu, another tick bite, a surgery, an airplane trip, a divorce, or the death of a close family member, which may lead to the sudden emergence of Babesia symptoms. However, the patient may have had Babesia for 20 years. Occasionally, there is no particular trigger. In this case, the patient was possibly bitten again "in country grass a few weeks before his symptoms started." The author, Nackos, might be confusing a trigger event with the onset of infection. I suspect that the patient had walked in exposed areas hundreds of days. My position is – and the evidence indicates – that this was not his first tick bite. One final point: it is theoretically possible that Babesia may create symptoms like a high mysterious fever on a first bite, but we believe that this is not the norm. We believe that the norm is that initial tick bites are experienced as trivial or merely a brief cold or flu, and after years of reproduction, serious symptoms start. Further, Nackos's patient showed evidence of shredding red blood cells. In response to the destruction of mature red blood cells, young red blood cells come out of the bone marrow quickly. These are called reticulocytes, and his count was 5.56% (0.5% to 2.17% normal range). Lactate dehydrogenase was also very high at 540 IU/L (98 to 192 IU/L normal range), consistent with the deadly excess destruction of red blood cells called hemolysis. His peripheral blood smear showed many parasites that looked like Babesia. It is highly unusual for hospital clinicians to consider Babesia. Most clinicians do not consider Babesiawhen a patient presents with these symptoms – they are often more cancer oriented in their thinking when hemoglobin or white blood cell levels decrease. They can actually initiate chemotherapy for a supposed cancer. Page 1, 2, 3, 4Anyone who follows my blog even a little closely can probably see that I <3 AngularJS: As I’ve learned more about the framework, I’ve come to appreciate many of the design decisions in spite of their initial (beastly) learning curve. For example, directives provide an absurd amount of flexibility and expressiveness in writing declarative HTML that is unmatched by jQuery-style imperative DOM twiddling. But the learning curve on them, and other bits of Angular, is weird: Some things that should be pretty straightforward, like navigating from tab to tab in single-page web applications, can be a little confusing to cough up in code 100% GUARANTEED TO BE CORRECT . So here’s a blog article with some cool tips to help you out. Highlighting the active tab for the view I touched on this a little bit in my unit testing article. In many applications (single-page ones especially) you’ll want to assign or get rid of classes on tabs or other navigation features to help the user understand where they’re navigating to or from (see Bootstrap’s.active class). How do we set these conditionally in Angular when we are using partials, and the default routing solution rednering in the ng-view directive? Simple. We can use the $location service and declare an ng-class attribute that depends on the result of a simple $scope method. In the controller: app.controller('NavCtrl', function($scope, $location) { $scope.isActive = function(route) { return route === $location.path(); }; }); In the view: <ul class="nav navbar-nav"> <li ng-class="{active: isActive('/profile')}"> <a href="#/profile"><i class="fa fa-dashboard"></i> You</a> </li> <li ng-class="{active: isActive('/find')}"> <a href="#/find"><i class="fa fa-bar-chart-o"></i> Find Friends</a> </li> <li ng-class="{active: isActive('/network')}"> <a href="#/network"><i class="fa fa-table"></i> Network </a> </li> <li ng-class="{active: isActive('/chat')}"> <a href="#/chat"><i class="fa fa-edit"></i> Chat Room </a> </li> </ul> Plunker demo of this concept: Very useful and IMO, very clean. Abstracting business / data providing logic into services This is more of an architecture tip than a general solution for common problems, but with my recent article on unit testing Angular applications a commenter on Hacker News pointed out that for a variety of reasons I should be putting more of my functions / code that retrieves data to be used in $scope by the controller into services, freeing the controller to just “glue it all together” (this also makes mocking things like AJAX calls a lot easier by avoiding $httpBackend ). I hadn’t really used services very much and all of the talk of factories etc., as well as a general dearth of actual examples in the official documentation on how or why to use them, left me a little bit hesitant to jump right in. He was kind enough to provide some example code and it made things a bit more lucid for me. Hopefully the following explanation will help to explain the use case for services as well as provide an illuminating example. Let’s say that you want to keep track of some data which multiple controllers can access. Perhaps it is weather data, preloaded into the page upon load (we’ll cover using AJAX in this case later in the article) and you need to access it in the user’s menu bar at the top of the page (to display the current temperature) as well as in a view frame for visualizing complex weather data over time. We could attempt to jerry-rig together a solution for communicating this from controller to controller using Angular’s event system or we could just chuck the aggregate data into $rootScope, but both of those situations are highly awkward from a standpoint of both future and present development. The solution that Angular provides us for usecases where we need to share (possibly mutable) data between controllers, or interact with things outside of Angular-land (other than the DOM, which is what directives are used for) is to use services. Services are singleton objects (only instantiated once) that serve as this kind of “bridge” or interface from Angular to the outside world or between different parts of your Angular application. In case you’re unfamiliar, services are usually created using the factory method on your application module and injected into controllers for use like so: app.factory('weatherService', function() { var weatherData = window.jsObjFromBackend.weather.data; return { // default to A2 Michigan state : 'MI', city: 'Ann Arbor', getTemperature : function() { return weatherData[this.state][this.city].temperature; }, setCity : function(city) { this.city = city; }, setState : function(state) { this.state = state; } }; }); app.controller('MainCtrl', function(weatherService) { $scope.temperature = weatherService.getTemperature(); }); You can use them in several controllers and they will save you the headache of trying to sync up data over multiple controllers. They are also a great place to store AWKWARD_CONSTANT_THAT_WOULD_OTHERWISE_BE_GLOBAL. Retaining state when switching from view to view Services also can save you a potential history headache when navigating from view to view. If you have some kind of state in one view that you want to be preserved so you can navigate to another view, then back to the original view intact (instead of re-loading the partial which is Angular’s default behavior), you will find this to be a very handy use case for a service. For instance, if you wanted to keep track of where a user had scrolled in a <div> element with its overflow propert(y\|ies) set to scroll, you could use a combination of a service and a directive to maintain this state. We will keep track of where the user has scrolled in a service, and coordinate adjusting the element back to that scrollTop state in the link function of the directive (you can inject services into directives much like you inject them into controllers). Our service is simple: app.factory('rememberService', function() { return { scrollTop: undefined }; }); Our directive does a little bit more: app.directive('scroller', function($timeout, rememberService) { return { restrict: 'A', // this gets tacked on to an existing <div> scope: {}, link: function(scope, elm, attrs) { var raw = elm[0]; // get raw element object to access its scrollTop property elm.bind('scroll', function() { // remember where we are rememberService.scrollTop = raw.scrollTop; }); // Need to wait until the digest cycle is complete to apply this property change to the element. $timeout(function() { raw.scrollTop = rememberService.scrollTop; }); } }; }); We attach it to the <div> we want to affect like so: <div class="scroll-thru-me" scroller> <div id="lots-of-stuff">... </div> </div> The element will render in the correct scrollTop location. Obviously this service can be made more complex if neccesary to coordinate maintaining state in a large application. The following plunker, a modified version of the first plunker on this page, demonstrates the idea. Try navigating to tab 2, scrolling around a bit, travelling back to view 1 and then back to view 2 yet again. As you can see, the state of where the user has scrolled to is retained. Making AJAX calls from services So what if you want to use Angular’s $http service to retrieve or set some data on the server, and interact with it from a controller? We know by now that we should be using services to perform this kind of data-getting, but how do we deal with this asynchrony? Doing so is not too painful, we simply return the promise Angular gives us when we make an AJAX call, and use the then method to define our callback in the controller. A simple example: app.factory('githubService', function($http) { var GITHUB_API_ENDPOINT = 'https://api.github.com'; return { getUserInfo: function(username) { return $http.get(GITHUB_API_ENDPOINT + '/users/' + username); } } }); app.controller('MainCtrl', function($scope, githubService) { // assuming $scope.username is set with ng-model githubService.getUserInfo($scope.username).then(function(data) { $scope.userInfo = data; }); }); But what if you want the service to take care of some more stuff (e.g. parsing the response for the desired data) for the controller so they don’t have to mess with all that business logic? As an example, note that the response from 'https://api.github.com/users/nathanleclaire' returns { "login": "nathanleclaire", "id": 1476820, "avatar_url": "https://gravatar.com/avatar/3dc6ac660128ff3640413d4036fed744?d=https%3A%2F%2Fidenticons.github.com%2F32974b06cb69bfa6e7331cd4a26dc033.png&r=x", "gravatar_id": "3dc6ac660128ff3640413d4036fed744", "url": "https://api.github.com/users/nathanleclaire", "html_url": "https://github.com/nathanleclaire", "followers_url": "https://api.github.com/users/nathanleclaire/followers", "following_url": "https://api.github.com/users/nathanleclaire/following{/other_user}", "gists_url": "https://api.github.com/users/nathanleclaire/gists{/gist_id}", "starred_url": "https://api.github.com/users/nathanleclaire/starred{/owner}{/repo}", "subscriptions_url": "https://api.github.com/users/nathanleclaire/subscriptions", "organizations_url": "https://api.github.com/users/nathanleclaire/orgs", "repos_url": "https://api.github.com/users/nathanleclaire/repos", "events_url": "https://api.github.com/users/nathanleclaire/events{/privacy}", "received_events_url": "https://api.github.com/users/nathanleclaire/received_events", "type": "User", "site_admin": false, "name": "Nathan LeClaire", "company": "Systems In Motion", "blog": null, "location": "Ann Arbor", "email": null, "hireable": false, "bio": null, "public_repos": 18, "public_gists": 7, "followers": 12, "following": 9, "created_at": "2012-02-26" "updated_at": "2014-01-04" } There’s quite a bit of information here, and with more complex API calls response will be full of nested objects and arrays. What if we just wanted to get the avatar_url with githubService.getUserAvatarUrl(username) and didn’t care about any of the other stuff? We can use promise chaining to take care of this logic in the service. Whatever is returned from the callback on the then method which has been invoked on the result of our $http.get() call (a promise object) will be passed to the callback function on the controller promise’s then method: app.factory('githubService', function($http, $q) { var GITHUB_API_ENDPOINT = 'https://api.github.com'; return { getUserAvatarUrl: function(username) { return $http.get(GITHUB_API_ENDPOINT + '/users/' + username).then(function(res) { // Though our return value is simple here, it could easily involve searching/parsing // through the response to extract some metadata, higher-order information, etc. that // we really shouldn't be parsing in the controller return res.data.avatar_url; }); } } }); app.controller('MainCtrl', function($scope, githubService) { // assuming $scope.username is set with ng-model githubService.getUserAvatarUrl($scope.username).then(function(avatarSrc) { $scope.avatarSrc = avatarSrc; }); }); Smooth. Plunkr demo: Conclusion That’s all for now, folks. Hope you’ve picked up some useful stuff along the way. And as always, stay sassy Internet.TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- It's been nearly four years since Bobby Bowden coached his final game at Florida State, but he'll be welcomed back to Doak Campbell Stadium on Saturday in grand fashion. Nearly 400 former players are expected to attend Saturday's game against NC State as Bowden attends his first football game at Florida State since he was ousted as head coach following the 2009 season. Just as he did in his final game at the Gator Bowl that season, he'll be tasked with planting the famous spear at midfield before kickoff, a longtime tradition at Florida State usually reserved for the team's mascot, Osceola. Bobby Bowden will attend his first Florida State game on Saturday since he last coached the Seminoles -- and planted the flaming spear at midfield -- in the 2010 Gator Bowl. Douglas Jones/USA TODAY Sports "It's going to be awesome," said linebacker Christian Jones, whose father and brother both played for Bowden. "He built this team up, so it'll be awesome seeing him on the field." After an acrimonious end to his 35-year tenure at Florida State, Bowden, the winningest coach in Football Bowl Subdivision history, worked to avoid lingering around the program. After his successor, Jimbo Fisher, led the Seminoles to its first ACC title since Bowden's retirement last year, Bowden finally accepted an invitation to return for a game. "There's no nerves," Bowden said. "I'm excited about it, getting to see a lot of people." Bowden will also attend Florida State's Nov. 16 game against Syracuse when the 1993 national championship team will be honored. Only five players remain on FSU's roster from Bowden's final season, but several seniors were recruited under his watch and said they're eager to witness the legendary coach's return. "I want to show him the pride we still have for this program, just to honor him," linebacker Telvin Smith said. "I'm going to dedicate this game to him and all those veteran players who are coming back just to show them we're trying to hold up what you all started."Oil Companies Form $1 Billion Venture to Fight Deepwater Gulf Spills Posted in Alabama Maritime News,Deepwater Horizon,Florida Maritime News,Gulf Coast,Louisiana Maritime News,Texas Maritime News on August 2, 2010 Four of the world’s biggest oil companies said Wednesday, July 28, that they have formed a new joint venture to fight deepwater gulf spills.The four oil companies are Exxon, Shell, Chevron and ConocoPhillips. Each will contribute 25 percent to a $1 billion company that would be able to mobilize a response within 24 hours to capture and contain deep-sea oil spills. The joint venture does not include BP. According to an article at MSNBC, the companies will create a nonprofit organization called the Marine Well Containment Company to operate and maintain the response system. ExxonMobil will lead the effort and other companies will be invited to participate. The response team should be able to start mobilizing within 24 hours of an oil spill, and be fully in place within weeks, Sara Ortwein, vice president of engineering for Exxon Mobil Development Company, told the Wall Street Journal. Frank Verrastro, an energy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the New York Times that such an initiative was badly needed. “The spill exposed the fact that the industry’s capability on capture and clean-up was 1980s vintage, in part because there was so much reliance on blowout preventers,” he said. “Companies have used their technology to get into the deepwater but they didn’t have an adequate plan to intervene at these depths or to contain a large-scale spill.” U.S. Representative Edward Markey, a Democratic member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the plan was a “positive step,” but urged more attention to the prevention of future blow-outs. “The oil companies must also invest more in technologies that will prevent fatal blowouts in the first place,” Markey said in a statement. “While this could be a rapidly deployed system, the oil companies must do better than BP’s current apparatus with a fresh coat of paint,” he said. Published by Houston maritime lawyer Gordon, Elias & Seely, LLPBack to the Mead Maker's Page. An Analysis of Mead, Mead Making and the Role of its Primary Constituents Daniel S. McConnell and Kenneth D. Schramm* Technical Director, G.W.Kent and President, The Yeast Culture Kit Company *Director, The Mazer Cup Mead Competition. From the bonny bells of heather, They brewed a drink long-syne, Was sweeter far than honey, Was stronger far than wine. They brewed it and they drank it, And lay in blessed swound For days and days together In their dwellings underground. R.L. Stevenson Heather Ale PART 1: AN ANALYSIS OF HONEY For the purposes of brevity, when we discuss the values of honey, those values are based on averages determined in an analysis of 490 samples of honey conducted by the Honey Investigations Unit of the Plant Products Laboratory of the U.S.D.A. This information was collected and published by Dr. Jonathan W. White[1,2], who was the chief of the Plant Products Lab, and to whom we owe credit for most of the information here. Certain floral varieties of honey may differ markedly from these averages, and we will make an effort to note when those differences should have noticeably good or bad effects on your mead making efforts. OVERVIEW Honey is obviously the product of the collection of nectar by honeybees. Not much is known about nectar. Perhaps the government does not think that it is worth the effort to collect it the way it pretty much has to be collected: one bee-full at time. Nectar is a complex sugar blend consisting primarily of sucrose, as well as levulose and dextrose. The bees add enzymes, and transfer the nectar to a honey stomach from which it is regurgitated into cells in the comb when they return to the colony. Additional enzymes are added, the cells are hermetically sealed, and the honey is then permitted to "ripen," meaning that the enzymatic activity occurs which gives the honey its final sugar blend. Bees do also collect pollen, which provides the protein portion of their diet, but pollen is not integral to the production of honey. The nectar source determines most of the variable characteristics about honey, including sugar balance, color, scent and flavor. The F.D.A. holds that a plant or blossom must serve as the chief floral source in order for the honey to be labeled as such. The vast majority of beekeepers fall into the hobbyist/part time beekeeper category, with fewer than 25 hives. These apiarists account for 50% of the colonies in the country, and about 40% of domestic production. The average colony produces just under 70 pounds of honey per year. An estimated 3.2 million colonies produced roughly 250 million pounds of honey with a value of about $124 million.[3] Others, and probably more important when one wishes to obtain a single source honey, are professional pollenators. These are individuals who provide a valuable service to fruit growers by bringing their bees which pollinate their trees and plants. A by-product of this pollenation is a single source honey. Honey is quality graded into four classes which are based on a combination of flavor, clarity, absence of defects and moisture content. For our purposes, we would recommend using only Grade A (Fancy) or Grade B (Choice). This will be expanded on this later. Honey is color graded into seven categories by the U.S.D.A., and these do not have any bearing on quality. Honey should not be judged on the basis of color, as some of the most distinctively and strongly flavored honeys, such as basswood, are very light, while very mild and pleasant honeys such as tulip poplar can be quite dark. Honey color is based on the Pfund Scale in millimeters; the common names for the range of standards from lightest to darkest are: Water White, Extra White, White, Amber, Amber, and Dark Amber. Honey has an average specific gravity of 1.41, which gives it a weight of about 11 pounds, l2 ounces to the gallon. Although the sugars in honey have more sweetening power, due to moisture content, honey matches the sweetening power of sucrose (table sugar) pound for pound. COMPOSITION AND ORGANOLEPTIC EFFECTS WATER The moisture content of honey plays a critical role in its quality. Honey is very hygroscopic, which means that it will absorb moisture from the air. Honey, on the average, contains 17.2% water by weight. Grades A and B must not have more than 18.6% moisture. Grade C honey can contain up to 20% water, and we do not recommend it for mead making. The reason that the moisture content of honey is important is that all unpasteurized honey contains wild yeasts. Due to the high sugar concentration, these yeasts will pose little risk in low moisture honey because osmosis will draw sufficient water from the yeast to force them into dormancy. In honey that has a higher proportion of water, the yeast may survive and cause fermentation to begin in storage. SUGAR Honey is comprised of many sugars, and their percentages and ratios are dynamic dependent on floral variety and storage. The primary sugars[4] contained in honey are shown below on Table 1. Table 1. Average Sugar Content of Honey Levulose (d-fructose)3 8.2% Dextrose (d-glucose)e 31.3% Sucrose (table sugar) 1.3
Brent Davis had finished his work, Jerry Sawchuk and his 29-year-old son, Jon, were wearing stunning likenesses of Terry Sawchuk's fiberglass mask. MONTREAL -- The pain of the March needle is a nasty memory. Legendary NHL goaltender Terry Sawchuk is remembered today only with great pleasure and affection by a son and a grandson who wear impressive matching tattoos of his iconic mask on their backs. "We started out small, but when I talked to Brent, he said he'd rather do it the size of a softball so he could get the detail of the mask in," Jerry Sawchuk says with a laugh. "We talked about incorporating my dad's jersey No. 1 in it and it just got bigger. And Jon and I chose our backs because I was going to be 63 and I didn't think I wanted anything on my biceps." Sawchuk, named one of the 100 Greatest NHL Players presented by Molson Canadian, was a four-time Stanley Cup champion, four-time Vezina Trophy winner and the 1951 Calder Trophy recipient as the NHL's top rookie. A seven-time First- or Second-Team All-Star, Sawchuk led the NHL in victories for five consecutive seasons (1950-55). When his career ended in 1970 after 21 seasons with five teams, he was the NHL's all-time leader in wins (447), a record that stood for three decades, and shutouts (103), which survived 39 years until New Jersey Devils goalie Martin Brodeur earned his 104th on Dec. 21, 2009. Video: Terry Sawchuk was four-time Vezina-winning goalie A member of the Detroit Red Wings, Boston Bruins, Red Wings again, Toronto Maple Leafs, Los Angeles Kings and New York Rangers, Sawchuk was a tortured soul much of his life. He battled demons seemingly forever, from the death of an older brother when he was 10 through later struggles with weight control, a shaky marriage and alcohol. Sawchuk's emotional turmoil sometimes overshadows his magnificence in the net, something that Jerry Sawchuk has lived with since his father died of a pulmonary embolism at age 40 on May 31, 1970. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame a year after his death, 17 years before Jon Sawchuk was born. Jon Sawchuk (left) plays pickup hockey with his father, Jerry "Jon knows just what he reads and what I tell him," Jerry says of his son, with whom he plays pickup hockey in the Detroit area (they're forwards). "There are always lots of questions and things on the internet. He was around Gordie Howe when he was growing up, and he's gone with me to several Red Wings events." Indeed, early in his own hockey life, Jerry Sawchuk had followed his father's path into a net. He recalls one memorable day in goal during a boyhood session at Howe's hockey school. "We were going through the scrimmages. My dad was teaching and I started getting into the butterfly, going down, letting my reflexes take over," he said. "My dad was an angle goalie, to perfection, and when he saw me going down a little before the shots, he let me have it in front of all the kids and coaches. 'Who do you think you are, Glenn Hall?' he yelled at me. 'Get back on your feet and cut down that angle.' So that's what I did." Jerry Sawchuk with his father Terry, a member of the Boston Bruins in 1955-56 Terry Sawchuk played bare-faced for the first decade of his NHL career, as well as every game before that in juniors and the minor leagues. But after he was injured by a flying puck in 1962, Red Wings general manager Jack Adams had Detroit trainer and practice goalie Lefty Wilson mold a mask to protect his cornerstone goaltender. What Wilson and assistant Donny Olesevich fashioned would become one of hockey's iconic, even haunting masks; five sheets of fiberglass with holes for the eyes and ventilation on the forehead, nose and mouth, and cheeks. Sawchuk wore this mask, which today is in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, from 1962 through his final game in 1970. Wilson made a couple of spares that just so happened to also perfectly fit Jerry Sawchuk, who wore one when he played goal. Detroit Red Wings trainer Ross "Lefty" Wilson molded Terry Sawchuk for this iconic fibreglass mask in 1962 "I have no idea where it went," he says with a sigh. "Maybe my aunt has it in an old hockey bag." It was around last New Year's that Jerry and Jon began tossing around the idea of celebrating Terry's career with tattoos, Jon suggesting that a bit of body ink would be a nice salute. "I said, 'That would be pretty awesome,' and some time went by," Jerry said. "Jon already had a small tattoo on his back, and he kept bugging me about my putting it off. In March, we finally got them done." Jerry visited Davis at Steel Tattoo in Hartland, Michigan, and remembers the artist being really excited about it. Davis, who says he was honored to have paid this ink tribute to a hockey legend, pored over photos of the Sawchuk mask before he found the one he most liked for its detail and color. Then he sketched it onto paper for transfer to the backs of first Jon, then Jerry, for 90 minutes of needlework. Or, two hours, if you listen to Jerry relate the misery. "Let me tell you something: It hurt," he says, laughing. "Two hours of pain. Jon went first. He didn't flinch at all. I'm thinking, 'This won't be too bad,' then when I got in there, when Brent started doing the straight line on the No. 1, it felt like a knife was in there, slicing me. I had no idea how long two hours can be." Word got around that father and son now had a goalie mask on their backs, Jon on the right side, Jerry on the left. "We were a hit in the locker room," Jerry says of their first hockey game after the tattoos had been applied. "Then people at work heard about it and I ended up taking off my shirt about 20 times." On New Year's Eve in Toronto, during a dinner hosted by NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman to honor the first 33 members of the 100 Greatest NHL Players, Jerry contemplated his father's place in hockey, a pioneer who is remembered as one of the greatest to ever play the game. Hockey Hall of Fame goaltending legend Glenn Hall on Dec. 31, 2016 with his son Pat (far left) and Jerry Sawchuk and Michel Plante, sons of the late goalie greats Terry Sawchuk and Jacques Plante. "I don't think my dad ever knew how good his accomplishments were," he said that night. "He never liked the spotlight, but it would be hard to say that he wouldn't be satisfied with what he did to revolutionize the game." A son and a grandson now proudly wear Terry's mask. And if Jerry Sawchuk never knew the torture his father endured playing goal on his way to hockey immortality, he felt more than a little pain of his own when a tattoo artist's buzzing needle put beneath his skin a colorful, striking reminder of his legendary dad.The art of the opening title sequence is flourishing like never before. The best ones contain clues, “Easter eggs,” as to the theme of path of the series. I’ve collected some examples below. I’m constantly on the lookout for new and interesting TV series. We live in a golden age, where I’d rather stay home and watch ten hours of deeply-plotted long form television than go to a movie theater and watch two hours of made-for-the-masses light entertainment. TV networks are trying to outdo each other in making niche content that new customers can discover over time, and a lot of that niche content appeals to me. It’s smart, it’s complex, and it’s very, very human. Recently I found myself watching the Starz series The Missing. There are two series of ten episodes each, and I plowed through both of them within a couple of weeks. Each series is told non-sequentially, jumping forward and backward in time, and a lot of the drama comes from seeing how “before” differs to “after” but not knowing how the differences came to be. Over time, though, each of the differences is explained as the mystery slowly unravels. Initially I thought the opening title sequence was a melange of arbitrary images, but as the series progressed I realized that each image was a clue as to where the story was going. Beyond that… well, before I go any further, you should watch some footage. Here’s the series two trailer: Both series are about child abductions, and combine family drama (how families function after such a loss) with a complex mystery that has many intertwining threads. Here’s the series two opening title sequence: Not only is each image a clue to what happens later in the series, but most are displayed as visual memories held by the abducted child. They capture hints of the emotional highs and lows of someone torn from their family environment and thrust into a new dynamic that, for them, becomes completely normal. The style in which this sequence is shot is not at all like that of the series itself, but it’s completely appropriate to set the stage for what’s to come. And, if you watch carefully, you’ll see some elements from the trailer that are presented in the title sequence, but from a child’s point of view. As the threads of the mystery come together the opening titles become more and more satisfying to watch. (The Missing is available on Amazon Prime Video.) Another series I’ve written about lately is Patriot. This Amazon Prime original series is one of my favorite shows of all time. It’s very dark, very funny, very emotional, and very complex, with some action tossed in for good measure. It took me a few episodes to figure it out, but the title sequence takes on new meaning once one gets the gist of the series: Patriot is ultimately a story about family. Dad works in a very shady position within the U.S. intelligence community, taking on jobs that need doing but require official deniability. One son, who isn’t quite as worldly as his brother and, while lovable, is a bit goofy and naive, is a U.S. congressman. The other son, the one with a wild side, has been groomed to be a deniable asset: he gets his hands dirty, often with blood. Both effectively work for their father, but out of family obligation rather than official obligation. Maybe I’m reading more into this than I should, but as the series went on I got the feeling that the title sequence was about the father grooming his sons to become what they became, especially the wilder of the two. This makes perfect sense, as—by the end of the series—it’s clear that dad is using this son without much concern for his health or safety, although he has complete confidence in his skills. Best of all, the actual “Patriot” title card changes to reflect some aspect of the upcoming episode. I love touches like that: they assume that the audience is bright enough to catch on, and will get some additional satisfaction out of connecting the dots that fall beyond the most obvious dots. Here’s another opening title sequence, from one of my favorite series, that sums up the subject matter very well: The show is officially about a traveling carnival during the Great Depression, where the supernatural is simply a part of everyday life and everyone seems to have a destiny to fulfill, for good or evil. There were certain elements that felt familiar, though, and it became clear when reading a retrospective of the series where the executive producer/creator said that it was the Book of Revelations played out in the 1930s Dust Bowl. What a crazy and original premise for a series, but it worked amazingly well. It’s one of the creepiest series around, with great performances by all concerned, and rich, deeply emotional story lines. Unfortunately it only lasted for two years out of a planned five, as the production costs were quite high and it never really found an audience. (It was truly ahead of its time, as it was riding the transition between factory television and the new wave of niche television.) HBO agreed to renew the series in return for budget cuts, but the show had an ensemble cast and there was no one to cut. This sequence clearly sets the stage for a series about destiny (the tarot cards) and the battle between good and evil, as shown through various stock footage clips that demonstrate that this battle isn’t as abstract as we might like. Best of all, the camera leads us to each clip by traveling through an appropriate tarot card. Continuing the theme of HBO creating great series with amazing title sequences, one of my favorites is from The Leftovers. This series, which examines the social, political and spiritual repercussions of an event in which 2% of the world’s population disappears without a trace or explanation, is really about loss, and the idea that anyone could lose anyone at any time. It’s also about the risks of falling in love, knowing that what happened before could always happen again. The series one opener had a somewhat religious and mythological slant, but the series two opener was simple, brilliant and summed up the theme of the series perfectly: I don’t know who thought about snipping people out of photos, but it’s both insidious and brilliant all at the same time. It’s a great metaphor for the series, which is not an upper by any stretch of the imagination but is one of the best dramas I’ve ever seen on television. Lastly, a bit of fun. The BBC series Neverwhere doesn’t hold up terribly well after 20 years, and even at the time it was clear it didn’t have a terribly big budget, but the opening titles hold the distinction of being scored by Brian Eno. The sequence doesn’t reveal much about the series other than to see the stage for high weirdness, as it is about a magical London that exists underneath and adjacent to modern London, that the modern residents can’t (or don’t want to) see. (It was inspired when the author, Neil Gaiman, noticed that people ignored the city’s homeless population as if they were invisible.) Every title sequence is effectively a commercial for the content that follows, and the best of them present us with riddles to solve, or reveal underlying themes that we only become aware of as the stories progress. I find that astoundingly satisfying, and I encourage the better series to keep up the great work and the others to step up their game. Art Adams Director of Photography Was This Post Helpful:[SPL'16] Jin Air vs KT - Grand Finals Preview 2016 Text by TeamLiquid ESPORTS Graphics by shiroiusagi Table of Contents Jin Air vs KT Rolster From Eighth to First Grand Finals Preview Jin Air vs KT Rolster Seven months after we kicked off the first Proleague campaign of Legacy of the Void, we're finally reaching the end of the line. Jin Air and KT have been the standout teams of 2016 by far, and both have been jostling for top dog status throughout the year. On that level, Jin Air taken the spoils so far—winning five out of six matches so far (3 all-kill, 2 proleague format)—but will the expanded Bo7 format play to KT's strength in depth? Join us for a piece on Jin Air's ascent to the top to cap off our series of articles on the four Proleague Playoff teams, as well as a preview of the Grand Finals. From Eighth to First This time last year, Jin Air stood on the precipice. This time last year, Jin Air left defeated. From their very beginnings as a ragtag bunch of merceneries, left homeless by the collapse of MBCGame_HERO, WeMade FOX and Hwaseung Oz and thrown in the deep end together to fill the 8th team slot in Brood War’s incarnation of Proleague, the Jin Air Green Wings have always been outsiders. It was an experiment to be repeated later on with ST-IM, or EG-TL; bundle a whole load of talent together and pray they figure out a way to develop the cohesion required. Led by Jaedong, that was indeed what they did in the final Proleague season of Brood War, reaching a creditable 3rd place finish by merit of their star. But as the transition to Starcraft 2 passed by, the team began to fracture. The team’s sole superstar in Jaedong ditched the team a mere three days before the start of the 2012-13 season for their rivals (TL-)EG, while Sea left for the other side of the partnership. Shorn of talent, they placed in the bottom half of the table in all six rounds, while only EG-TL’s map score (climbing slowly closer) kept them from finishing dead last when all the scores had been tallied up. Continuing to haemorrhage talented players after the end of the season, most notably TY to KT Rolster, things looked bleak for the rookie outfit. Built on a ragtag crew of old talent, the team seemed doomed to watch the world pass them by when the old blood scattered. Then, in the close season came stunning news. Jin Air had purchased the squad as part of their push into esports, and they picked up as good a one-two punch as there’s ever been in the Starcraft transfer world, plucking Maru from nearly defunct Prime and sOs from the wreckage of Woongjin Stars. With Maru’s OSL title and triple top 4 finishes at the back end of 2013, and sOs’ BlizzCon title to cap the year, it was a new dawn for Team 8. Suddenly, there was star power coursing through the team’s veins; suddenly, they had players to be feared - old and new. Pieces began to click into place one by one. Cure slowly began to develop into a reliable backup terran, peaking at the end of 2014. TRUE exploded into the public consciousness with his flashy zerg aggression, while Rogue’s quiet effectiveness underpinned the team’s Proleague hopes in a way most Proleague teams envied. Above all though, the twin lights of Maru and sOs shone the brightest—both placing in the top 3 of 2014’s winners’ rankings, effortlessly carrying the team to dizzying heights. Still, the playoffs proved to be one step too far. The war machine of KT Rolster rolled into battle, and while Maru would lead the way with one final act of defiance—beating TY, Sleep and Flash in the all-kill match to all but gift Jin Air the win—the old firm’s strength in depth proved too much to handle. In many ways, it was a trip all the way back to the start for Jin Air; dragged kicking and screaming to success by a pair of carries. The solution to that issue proved to be simple. TRUE’s departure at the end of 2014 was barely felt at all as Rogue effortlessly glided into place as Jin Air’s premier zerg. About to embark on his run of 5/6 starleague quarterfinals in the calendar year, Rogue ascended the ladder to join Maru and sOs at the top of the Jin Air tree; now one among three. Their records were devastatingly consistent (27-16, 27-17, 26-14 for Maru, sOs and Rogue respectively), while they were only kept off the top of the table by Zest’s 28 wins. With three players of that calibre, how could they possibly fail to win? The answer was SKT. After being denied by KT in the dying stages of 2014, it was their telecom rival’s turn to play the part of the bully in 2015. In Rounds 1 and 3, they beat Jin Air in the Round Finals, and even when SKT failed, it was CJ’s turn to block their way to victory in Round 2. At every turn, the Old Guard of KeSPA were fighting back. Jin Air had grown, but they were far from alone in fitting into bigger shoes. A stellar push at the finish line from sOs dragged them through the playoffs and into the Proleague Finals for the very first time, but once again, it proved to be another step too far. Dream defeated Maru in a marathon TvT, while INnoVation held on against sOs’ aggression. The dream was dead. Jin Air were mocked, and rightly so. The team that should have taken flight seemingly resigned themselves to endlessly tumbling to the ground. Four finals out of five in the Proleague season, and they’d somehow contrived to lose all four. In a time where soO, ByuL and Dream had contrived to establish a Kong line in HotS spanning a three year period, the Jin Air Kong Wings showed that losing on the big stage wasn’t an affliction bound to individual competition. Then again, they’ve been through worse. They’ve been through the disbandment of their original teams in Brood War; they’ve been through the paralyzing uncertainty of their sponsorless time on Team 8; they’ve been through times when they seemed to leak players on a monthly basis. When confronted with that history, how does a loss in a final even compare? Jin Air are the miracle team of Starcraft 2, and it’s a miracle that they’ve survived to the point where they dominate the teamleague arena like a colossus. It’s a miracle that Maru has managed to string together a ridiculous 21-4 record so far this year. It’s a miracle that sOs is peaking just when he’s most needed, as always. It’s a miracle that Rogue has improved like clockwork, progressing from Code A cannon fodder to being one of the two best zergs in Korea over the past four years. Jin Air have nothing left to prove. It’s been four years since their inception; three since they were picked up by Jin Air; two since they were transformed by Maru and sOs; one since they fell at the final hurdle. Now, it’s finally time for them to take the title that they deserve. Grand Finals Preview Cure < Frost> Trust Lifetime record: 5 - 5 Last match: 1 - 0 (30/09/2015) Cure and Trust have starred in the opening match for their teams before, and now they’ll be facing off on the grandest stage of them all. Of the two players, the Jin Air terran is probably the more recognized player, having reached the top ranks of GSL before. He’s a fast and dependable player, even though he ultimately seems to lack the killer instinct needed to become a champion. His Proleague record for this season confirms as much, with Cure contributing a positive net worth of map wins—especially in Jin Air’s last round playoffs match against KT. His recent individual performances don't invoke quite the same optimism though, as he was meekly eliminated from both Korean leagues early on. Trust recently made a name for himself by proving his worth against KT’s arch rivals SK Telecom T1: Trust eliminated Impact in the first series and more importantly took out INnoVation as the starting player on all-kill day, providing his team with a critical early lead. The protoss hasn’t done better than Cure in the individual leagues, but his recent success—specifically against terran—might even give him the position as a slight favourite here. Trust showed solid defence against INnoVation’s cyclone build, an ability that will serve him well against a seasoned multitasker such as Cure. Maru < King Sejong Station> TY Lifetime record: 8 - 7 Last match: 1 - 0 (02/07/2016) For many fans this will certainly be the duel of the day. We've been blessed this year with a handful of truly great TvTers—Maru, TY, ByuN, and INnoVation—and the last time these two met in Round 3, Maru took the victory, laying down his claim to the throne. Two months on though, TY has a chance to atone while stirring up the debate once more. Additionally, a defeat of Maru would deal Jin Air a huge mental blow, as he’s been their most valuable asset all season long, especially with sOs more or less in power saving mode for most of the season. As we've seen in the last three years, some matches in the grand finals mean more than a simple point on the board—INnoVation against SoulKey, Flash against PartinG, Maru against Dream—it's up to the team's star players to lay down a benchmark for how the night will play out. It’s really hard to make out a favourite between these two: Yes, Maru has won their last two Best of 1 duels. And while on paper these two wins may look very nice, the results of Bo1 games cannot be enough to conclude anything critical. Outside of Proleague TY has had the upper hand in most of his recent TvTs—including a back and forth series against GuMiho—, while Maru suffered some losses in online competitions. These, of course, aren’t any more conclusive than SPL Bo1s. But overall the forms of both players should present us with a very even TvT game, which may very well be decisive for the entire final. Trap < New Gettysburg> Zest Lifetime record: 7 - 20 Last match: 0 - 1 (22/03/2016) To answer your first question after reading the numbers of the lifetime record: Nope, this is not a typo. Since 2013 these two protoss players have met each other many a time in combat and Zest really has gotten the better of Trap. With no regular Proleague, it's difficult to tell just how far down the rabbit hole Zest has fallen though recently. Elimination by Ryung and TaeJa in the GSL proved to be the end of his vaunted PvT streak, while Patience put paid to his PvP reputation. Losses to Dark and Classic in the Proleague Playoffs capped off a truly awful couple weeks for the KT Titan. With that in mind, this match probably won’t be a one sided sweep in favour of KT Rolster though; that morale crushing 1-3 defeat at the hands of Patience in SSL will be fresh in both players' minds. Unfortunately, it’s hard to know how Trap is doing in the match-up nowadays, as his last mirror match dates back to June—a 0-3 loss against his team mate sOs in Code A. Since KT have played Stats two times on New Gettysburg against SKT, Jin Air may have expected to see him on this map again, which lead us to the possibility that Trap has practiced for a PvP showdown on this battleground for some time now. Looking at the historical score Zest has shown himself to be the superior StarCraft player and will be the slight favourite here—slump or not. Trap of course is apt to living up to his name, so being careful is certainly advised. sOs < Frozen Temple> jjakji Lifetime record: 8 - 0 Last match: 1 - 0 (10/08/2015) Talking about potentially one sided matches: jjakji has never even won a map against sOs and will now face the GSL finalist in such an important context. And boy, the timing couldn’t be worse. Who knows, maybe jjakji could’ve actually beaten sOs earlier in the year when the protoss wasn’t playing very well. But now that sOs has finally come into championship form—just right for prize money harvest season—this could become a cruel display of his power. jjakji’s last recorded game is in June, his last Proleague games date back even further to May and February, and he hasn’t won any of them. His best bet is probably going for some proxy shenanigans followed by some prayers to BoxeR and Flash. And even with divine interference it would be an uphill battle, as sOs has recently dominated every terran opponent he faced aside from ByuN. It’s pretty safe to say that jjakji upsetting sOs here would be a huge win for KT and one of this year's biggest upsets. Creator < Dusk Towers> Stats Lifetime record: 0 - 0 Last match: N/A Even though we do have quite a similar situation here, the chances of a Creator victory are much better than jjakji’s odds. The protoss player was nigh on invisible on Jin Air’s roster this season and is also lacking any individual results, but he always has been a dangerous foe in the PvP match-up. Unfortunately, he stopped playing any official matches in the mid of July after being fairly active in online tournaments—in fact one of his last series is a 2-0 win over sOs—making it hard for us and his opponent to find any relevant information about him. In contrast to that, Stats has been very much visible for the entirety of this year, even making a claim to the title of Korea's best player after the first Cross Final event. After a few minor PvP shakeups against SKT’s Classic and MyuNgSiK, the KT player redeemed himself against these very culprits on the second day of the Telecom War, taking the protoss duo out in commanding fashion. In the matches he showcased both his strategical and tactical superiority, by not only being able to get faster upgrades than his opponents, but also taking much better engagements with superior positioning. If he can show the same prowess against Creator, a solid victory should be assured even if his opponent is in good shape. Rogue < Overgrowth> Leenock Lifetime record: 5 - 2 Last match: 2 - 0 (16/10/2014) If we get this far, this series might be decided by a ZvZ of all match-ups. Fans of both sides will need to ready some popcorn or sugar coat their fingernails to make for some enjoyable side distraction, as we might see some very close and intense ling-baneling clashes in the early game on Overgrowth. Leenock is known for his excellent control in such scenarios and might actually be the deciding pick by the KT staff, should things really go this way. With players such as Rogue and the Leenocktopus involved, we can be certain of a lot action happening over the course of this potentially very short game. Should early game action really occur both players will have to show not only precise and fast control—as every unit counts in these situations—they’ll also have to prove their mental fortitude. The efforts of everyone on the team during the entire year might have been for nothing, if there is one critical baneling explosion or missed ling run by. Going into the later game, there are several possibilities how this duel could play out: Both have shown in the past that they like to mix things up from the normal roach-ravager chess battles, and might go for mutalisks, which could result in action-packed chases around the map or exciting basetrades. It’s hard to say which of these things are going to happen and who’s going to win, but this ZvZ has the capability of bringing fans to the edge of their seats. Ace: < JAGW in SPL 16: 8 - 2 KT in SPL 16: 5 - 5 Neither Cure nor Trust will probably return for the ace match on Frost. Jin Air have mostly set their hopes on Maru for the entirety of this season, but the resurgence of sOs gives them the opportunity to pick a different ace and maybe surprise KT Rolster one last time this year. KT could put their hopes into TY, but Stats has been their greatest asset this year and likely has the best chances to take home the ultimate win. Predictions Jin Air have had the upper hand in most of their playoff series against KT Rolster, but Grand Finals haven’t been generous to them so far. The Kong genes might still be in their minds somewhere, ready to take over and crash the green plane at the zenith of its flight. Some of the matches should be really close, some are likely to be quite one sided victories. Should things go sour for one team however, should upsets happen—as unlikely as they might be—, this Grand Final could spiral into craziness quite quickly. In the end Jin Air have played the better season however, and should be able to prove that with one last triumph. Cure < Trust Maru > TY Trap < Zest sOs > jjakji Creator < Stats Rogue > Leenock Maru > Stats JAGW 4 - 3 KT Time until Proleague Seven months after we kicked off the first Proleague campaign of Legacy of the Void, we're finally reaching the end of the line. Jin Air and KT have been the standout teams of 2016 by far, and both have been jostling for top dog status throughout the year. On that level, Jin Air taken the spoils so far—winning five out of six matches so far (3 all-kill, 2 proleague format)—but will the expanded Bo7 format play to KT's strength in depth? Join us for a piece on Jin Air's ascent to the top to cap off our series of articles on the four Proleague Playoff teams, as well as a preview of the Grand Finals.This time last year, Jin Air stood on the precipice. This time last year, Jin Air left defeated.From their very beginnings as a ragtag bunch of merceneries, left homeless by the collapse of MBCGame_HERO, WeMade FOX and Hwaseung Oz and thrown in the deep end together to fill the 8th team slot in Brood War’s incarnation of Proleague, the Jin Air Green Wings have always been outsiders. It was an experiment to be repeated later on with ST-IM, or EG-TL; bundle a whole load of talent together and pray they figure out a way to develop the cohesion required. Led by Jaedong, that was indeed what they did in the final Proleague season of Brood War, reaching a creditable 3rd place finish by merit of their star.But as the transition to Starcraft 2 passed by, the team began to fracture. The team’s sole superstar in Jaedong ditched the team a mere three days before the start of the 2012-13 season for their rivals (TL-)EG, while Sea left for the other side of the partnership. Shorn of talent, they placed in the bottom half of the table in all six rounds, while only EG-TL’s map score (climbing slowly closer) kept them from finishing dead last when all the scores had been tallied up. Continuing to haemorrhage talented players after the end of the season, most notably TY to KT Rolster, things looked bleak for the rookie outfit. Built on a ragtag crew of old talent, the team seemed doomed to watch the world pass them by when the old blood scattered.Then, in the close season came stunning news. Jin Air had purchased the squad as part of their push into esports, and they picked up as good a one-two punch as there’s ever been in the Starcraft transfer world, plucking Maru from nearly defunct Prime and sOs from the wreckage of Woongjin Stars. With Maru’s OSL title and triple top 4 finishes at the back end of 2013, and sOs’ BlizzCon title to cap the year, it was a new dawn for Team 8. Suddenly, there was star power coursing through the team’s veins; suddenly, they had players to be feared - oldnew.Pieces began to click into place one by one. Cure slowly began to develop into a reliable backup terran, peaking at the end of 2014. TRUE exploded into the public consciousness with his flashy zerg aggression, while Rogue’s quiet effectiveness underpinned the team’s Proleague hopes in a way most Proleague teams envied. Above all though, the twin lights of Maru and sOs shone the brightest—both placing in the top 3 of 2014’s winners’ rankings, effortlessly carrying the team to dizzying heights. Still, the playoffs proved to be one step too far. The war machine of KT Rolster rolled into battle, and while Maru would lead the way with one final act of defiance—beating TY, Sleep and Flash in the all-kill match to all but gift Jin Air the win—the old firm’s strength in depth proved too much to handle. In many ways, it was a trip all the way back to the start for Jin Air; dragged kicking and screaming to success by a pair of carries.The solution to that issue proved to be simple. TRUE’s departure at the end of 2014 was barely felt at all as Rogue effortlessly glided into place as Jin Air’s premier zerg. About to embark on his run of 5/6 starleague quarterfinals in the calendar year, Rogue ascended the ladder to join Maru and sOs at the top of the Jin Air tree; now one among three. Their records were devastatingly consistent (27-16, 27-17, 26-14 for Maru, sOs and Rogue respectively), while they were only kept off the top of the table by Zest’s 28 wins. With three players of that calibre, how could they possibly fail to win?The answer was SKT. After being denied by KT in the dying stages of 2014, it was their telecom rival’s turn to play the part of the bully in 2015. In Rounds 1 and 3, they beat Jin Air in the Round Finals, and even when SKT failed, it was CJ’s turn to block their way to victory in Round 2. At every turn, the Old Guard of KeSPA were fighting back. Jin Air had grown, but they were far from alone in fitting into bigger shoes. A stellar push at the finish line from sOs dragged them through the playoffs and into the Proleague Finals for the very first time, but once again, it proved to be another step too far. Dream defeated Maru in a marathon TvT, while INnoVation held on against sOs’ aggression. The dream was dead.Jin Air were mocked, and rightly so. The team that should have taken flight seemingly resigned themselves to endlessly tumbling to the ground. Four finals out of five in the Proleague season, and they’d somehow contrived to lose all four. In a time where soO, ByuL and Dream had contrived to establish a Kong line in HotS spanning a three year period, the Jin Air Kong Wings showed that losing on the big stage wasn’t an affliction bound to individual competition.Then again, they’ve
has power and two competing unassailable principles come into play, it gets complicated. And the 1960s helped bring about both those scenarios. By the end of the 1960s, the profound insight that effective dissent can turn the tables and put power in the hands of the powerless was elevated into an entire theory of society, called the critique of mass society. It came with a corresponding theory of dissent, which we can call the myth of counterculture, and it marked the mainstreaming of non-conformity as the default political pose. In reaction to the growing middle class, the rise of mass production of consumer goods and the development of a sophisticated marketing industry in the 1950s, social commentators developed the critique of mass society. The basic idea is that the capitalist economy is part of a more generalized and self-reinforcing culture of repression, which includes mass institutions such as schools, hospitals, the military and the government. Because the proper functioning of the system relies above all on conformity among the masses, individuals who resist the pressure to conform therefore subvert the system, and aid in its overthrow. In this scenario, the best way to resist the culture is to form a counterculture. If the Man wants you to live in a cookie-cutter suburban home, then you should shack up in a dingy urban loft with no running water. If Madison Avenue tries to sell you the latest Buick, you can resist by getting around in a Volkswagen Bug. If corporate radio tries to force Top 40 music down your throat, you need to get hip to the latest sounds from the underground. And so on. This theory asserted an enormously powerful grip on the imagination of the left during the 1960s, and it is now the default template for how we think about society. The consequence is that we find ourselves worshipping individualism in virtually any form and praising it as dissent. It isn’t just the usual mix of artists, musicians and writers; pretty much any rule breaker gets a pass. It is hard to overstate just how profoundly this is baked into the way we think about the world. The message of pretty much every movie for kids—Zootopia, Moana, Kung Fu Panda (to pick three recent ones)—is “be yourself,” and this lesson is repeated and reinforced at every opportunity. While the bleeding edge of countercultural rebellion used to be found in music, the beating heart of non-conformity today is located in Silicon Valley, where the cult of disruption is just a techno-lustful take on the basic template. So, for going on 50 years now, rebellious nonconformity masquerading as dissent has been installed as the operating system of the West. And it has without a doubt had a number of beneficial consequences, not least of which is that it has kept things from getting stagnant. Whatever its other effects, the counterculture has proven to be a fantastic mechanism for generating novel forms of culture and technology. In addition, it has made everyone extremely comfortable with most forms of symbolic dissent: we tend not to get too wound up when someone denounces the government or burns a flag or dunks a religious symbol in a jar of urine and calls it art. But one major consequence of fetishizing dissent is that we have come to hold abiding concerns over authenticity. One of the fatal indulgences of the counterculture was to deal with the worries over co-optation by becoming increasingly radical, in what amounted to an arms race of dissent, and to see anyone who breaks any rule, for any reason, as engaging in an act of resistance. The result is that we now have trouble distinguishing between the dissenters to whom we need to listen, on the one hand, and the criminals and cranks, the irrational or morally bankrupt on the other. It is symptomatic of the fundamental problem with any general celebration of dissent for its own sake: if you have no way to distinguish “good” dissent from its toxic forms, you are going to have trouble dealing with reactionary or deeply antisocial behaviour. This tendency was lampooned mercilessly by Tom Wolfe in his 1970 piece about hanging out at a party at Leonard Bernstein’s with members of the Black Panthers. Yet although the term he coined for it, “radical chic,” became part of our vernacular, the lessons buried in that great bit of social satire never really took hold. One lesson lies in the partisan assumption. A major outcome of the supreme dominance of countercultural thinking is the belief that dissent is, almost by definition, a dominion of the left. The tendency is understandable for a few reasons. First, to the extent that conservatism is understood as defending order, tradition and hierarchy, then anything that serves to undermine these is going to be seen as anti-conservative. Furthermore, one of the most justly celebrated successes of dissent of the second half of the 20th century was the civil rights movement, whose credentials are unimpeachably liberal. But there is nothing intrinsically left-wing or progressive about dissent. Political power can be wielded equally by the left or the right. The left is as guilty as the right, if not more so, of demanding ideological correctness. Science can serve peace or it can serve war, and war itself can be waged in the name of left-wing or right-wing goals. Things are complicated, and to give just one example, recall the confusion and anger on the American left when it turned out that Solzhenitsyn was a reactionary crank. This leads to a related point, which is that there is no necessary connection between dissent and truth. Activists, dissidents, protesters and other anti-authoritarians like to portray themselves as speaking truth to power, but that is just self-serving. A dissenting voice might be right, certainly, but simply diverging from a consensus or orthodoxy is no more likely to be true, on its own merits, than is the consensus itself. This is a problem that William Kaplan clearly recognizes in his chapter on dissenting judges and juries. He wants to laud the capacity of a jury to simply refuse to enforce an unjust law. And he is right: in the proper circumstances, jury nullification is the final safety valve of the legal system, upholding principles of natural justice against the inflexible demands of positive law. A jury that flat out refuses to convict someone who is clearly guilty under the law can be a powerful defender of what Kaplan calls “community values.” But what are we to make of the case of O.J. Simpson, one of the most egregious examples of misguided jury activism in living memory? There is no question he murdered his wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend Ron Goldman. But when the defence was able to turn the case into a referendum on racism in the Los Angeles Police Department and systemic racism in America at large, with the suggestion that Simpson was framed, the jurors (nine of whom were black) were given all the excuses they needed to let him off. It was payback of sorts for the acquittal, by a mostly white jury, of the LAPD cops who were filmed beating Rodney King a few years earlier. Kaplan has no way of handling this kind of dissent except to concede that community values and justice are not always the same thing. So what is dissent, in the end? Let’s start by saying that dissent is a position taken against an authoritative consensus, whether it takes the form of political power, religious orthodoxy, scientific or medical expertise, ideological correctness, bureaucratic rule following, judicial pronouncement, group conformity or what have you. The dissenting action can take various forms, including explicit disagreement with official or received views, an attempt at exercising countervailing power, a refusal to follow orders or conspicuous displays of non-conformity. Sometimes, as in the case of Frances Kelsey, the thalidomide whistleblower, dissent amounts to simply doing one’s job properly. Second, there must be a reason to believe that the authoritative consensus is in some sense illegitimate. This might be because the authority itself is illegitimate (e.g., a dictatorship), or it might involve an abuse of power. Finally, what makes dissent effective is its being directed against a power structure that is inherently brittle, unbalanced or rotten with internal contradictions. Dissent is threatening to illegitimate forms of authority because it exposes the established consensus as the sham that it is. This is where Kaplan has it exactly right: the reason to listen to dissenters is that humans are fallible, and we become especially fallible when we reason in groups or in other circumstances that exacerbate our native cognitive biases. Where you stand affects what you see, and we are better served by having input from as many different standpoints as possible. A culture that privileges dissent is like a body with a healthy immune system: it generates so many diverse antibodies that it is prepared to meet just about any threat head on. At this stage the celebration of dissent may start to look like little more than an endorsement of freedom of speech. Recall John Stuart Mill’s argument in On Liberty for why we should never suppress speech, however offensive it might seem to the authoritative consensus. First, the offending speech might be true, or contain part of the truth. But second, even if we know the received view to be absolutely true, it will always benefit from being challenged and contested; we will never go wrong reminding ourselves of why we believe what we do. But free speech is only half of it. What drives dissent as a political force is something Nelson Mandela knew in his bones: that dissent is a form of political power. For Mandela, it was the power of the moral high ground, of the rot at the core of the apartheid state and the knowledge that the world’s opinion was increasingly on his side. In the case of Frances Kelsey, it was the power of the process—her certainty that whatever the truth was about thalidomide, the company’s documentation was not in order. For leaders of mass protest such as Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr., it was the power of the mass of humanity itself to shame the authorities and force the state to reveal its true face. But the moral and political power of dissent is clearest when it is brought to bear against an authority that is unambiguously oppressive or illegitimate. This is a big part of the reason the whole world loves people such as Ai Weiwei and Aung San Suu Kyi—they are dissenters from the old school. It was surely easier to dissent in times where there was one voice of power and you were talking back to it; Kaplan’s idea that some people see things the rest of us miss is a harder one to see your way through when there is not a monolithic “rest of us.” And so our confusion about dissent is partly a result of the abundance and plurality of voices, but also the proliferation of authoritative nodes of consensus and power. That is why we experience the odd spectacle of both Steve Ladurantaye and the Indigenous writers he allegedly insulted being portrayed as powerless. This is why both Rebecca Tuvel and the feminist scholars and members of the trans community see themselves as victims of an intellectual hegemony. The social media mob of which we have heard so much about, in particular, is a curious form of dissent, because its explicit objective is often to suppress speech. This is when a group that sees itself as on the margins—that is, part of the self-described dissenting class—joins together to silence, suppress or censure a voice because it is seen as part of the authority or the orthodoxy. But, again, it must be stressed that there is nothing inherently partisan about this. The “ctrl-left” and the “alt-right” are both happy to silence their opponents using any means necessary, although they differ in their preferred tactics. The right uses things like rape threats, racist memes and releasing people’s home addresses, while the left mostly likes to get people fired. The era of networked protest has given the people unprecedented power of spontaneous organization, but it has the virtue of clarifying what is at stake. When an ad hoc and unaccountable mob can ruin someone’s career and reputation and bring threats upon their family in the space of hours or even minutes, where does the real power lie? Where lies the oppression? There is a kind of power emerging here, even when it is a sort of à la carte jihad of drive-by indignation. And if there is an authority, even if it is only a moral authority, it would benefit enormously from scrutiny, from a critical eye, from dissenting views. The powerless have become powerful in ways we are only beginning to comprehend. How we manage these shifting coalitions, spontaneous alliances and newly empowered communities while remaining true to our faith in the virtue of the dissenting voice, in all its power and glory, is going to be one of the great challenges of our time.In terms of psychosis, many noteworthy theorists have offered theories of this type of psychopathology. These theories include psychosis that may be seen in terms of the Jungian theory of the mind. This proposed of psychosis has been reflected in the Jungian theory of the collective and the archetypes that inhabit it. Essentially, the more or less psychologically aware person, in Jungian theory, would encounter archetypes in his mind, and his successful negotiation of this intrapsychic or, perhaps, interpsychic experience would correspond positively with his understanding of his own mind and the collective unconscious. This explanation of psychosis may or may not be valid. However, the validity of a particular theory may not rely on some construed or constructed “truth” of a given theory, but, rather, how the theory, when adhered to, allows the individual to function in the world. Essentially, a theory’s usefulness defines its validity, as opposed to the “truth” of a theory. Jung postulated deep-rooted mythical symbols as inhabiting the mind. The idea of the collective unconscious may be unpalatable to many scholars, due to the reality that there is little or no evidence that the mind represents, unconsciously or not so, a collectivity. It is known that, after the break with his mentor,, Jung experienced an extended period of psychosis, and this experience formed the basis of his theory. His postulation of the collective unconscious likely reflected a theory of based upon an explanation of his own mind’s experience of psychosis. Jung’s collective unconscious may reflect a dysfunctional way of understanding the mind. Jung’s theory of the mind may be termed a psychotic construction. Contrary to Jungian theory, Freud proposed the personal unconscious. In terms of an explanation of psychosis, asserted herein, the psychotic mind may be construed to implicate a personal unconscious. Moreover, psychosis may amount to objectification of the mental realm. This means that the psychotic individual would perceive his auditory hallucinations as separate from himself, even while they may reside within a single mind, that of the psychotic individual. Auditory hallucinations may seem to form distinct personalities in the mind by the psychotic individual. Jung would term these “the hero”, “the god-man” and “the shadow”, and other archetypes. Note that what is contended to be the “distinct” personalities in the mind of the psychotic individual may nevertheless mutate in the psychotic individual’s experience, even though they may nevertheless be thought to be distinct in the mind by that individual. Psychosis largely results from an imagined subject-object spilt in the mind of the psychotic individual. This means that the mind of the psychotic person contains both the “self” and the “other”, as construed by that individual. The self-object with one’s hallucinations, involving the imagined presence of others within one’s mind based upon auditory hallucinations, evolve by means of the psychotic individual’s non-normative thoughts or ideas that are not traditional. Note that divergent thought correlates with psychosis in the psychotic individual, and this divergent thought may be said to rely on non-normative experience. is a correlate of psychosis, and this stems from the actual divergent thought of a schizophrenic, in addition to the uncharted non-normative experience that the psychotic individual can feel compelled to negotiate. Hallucinations, appearing as supposedly distinct “personalities” within the psychotic individual’s mental realm, may represent recapitulations of relationships derived from early self-object relationships with others in the material realm. This implicates Object Relations theory in the understanding of psychosis. The psychotic person may project onto a fractured part of his mind the seeming “personalities” of people that are important in terms of his development. Primary relationships with one’s mother and father, as examples, can be considered to be symbolic in the sense that our represent to us our feelings regarding an accumulation of experience with them. These are constituted by our subjective feelings about them and constructed by our unconscious and subjective knowledge of them. These feelings can be thought to be very primitive and basic to the individual. It should be understood that the psychotic individual may project onto his auditory hallucinations these feelings that he has carried since early, without identifying in his mind the reality that the personalities constructed in his mind represent his mother or father or any other primary object. While it is possible that he thinks he is communicating with his mother or his father in his mind, he simply may be projecting onto these hallucinations feelings about his parents, perhaps without knowing he is doing so. As indicated, the mother figure is termed an “object” due to the fact that she is a symbol representing emotional reactions to accumulated interactions with her. The mother object does not represent an entity symbolizing an unchanging and distinct. The morphing of the mother object in terms of the psychotic person’s construction of her in his mind follows from the ambiguity with which the psychotic individual perceives the actual mother object. As a mental figure, she may be experienced, when perceived by the psychotic individual, in terms of that individual’s experience of her as a dynamic and changing symbol in the psychotic individual’s mind. The assertion that the “objects” in the psychotic individual’s mind are distinct and unchanging is of dubious validity. The fact that schizophrenics, and paranoid schizophrenics in particular, may construct intricate delusional systems provides evidence of this. To re-state the basic argument contained herein, primitive self-object relationships are reenacted by the psychotic individual in his mental realm, demonstrating a reemergence of relationships with specific primary objects such as one’s mother, one’s father and other objects or symbolic people emerging during the course of one’s life in the material realm. One’s relationships with these objects in the material realm may be construed as resulting in projected and objectified entities in the mental realm, that the psychotic individual invests in as important and powerful figures. In terms of emotional consequences of re-enactment of feelings regarding primary relationships, hallucinations that occupy the mind may be said to be abrasive to the psychotic person, given that perception of a mental realm that is not private to the individual is clearly invasive. As a matter of course, the “subject-object” or “subject-objects” relationships within the mind are experienced by the psychotic individual as punitive. The psychological intimacy with respect to these objects may be perceived by the psychotic individual as resulting in a seeming psychological nudity of the self. Psychological nudity is thus a delusion of the psychotic individual based upon his hallucinated experience. The type of experience that constitutes psychological nudity relies on the fact that all of the psychotic individual’s most personal and, to some extent, “secret” past experience in the mental and the material realms would be felt to be revealed to hallucinations, represented as “others’” within the mind. Note that all people have such “secrets” connoting that they reveal to few if any others in the material realm. The fact is that the mental realm, as construed by the psychotic individual, allows for no privacy in this regard, and this lack of privacy is experienced perhaps as humiliating and degrading. This psychological nudity within one’s mind, whether it is real or imagined, is very likely to elicit strong negative emotions in the individual who experiences it. One’s primitive emotions regarding early object relations as replicated through psychotic experience in the form of hallucinations would be elicited by the experience of psychological nudity. This kind of abrasive experienced emotion might lead to a catatonic emotional expression, such as that seen in flat affect of the schizophrenic, due to the fact of learned helplessness in dealing with punitive emotional experience that one cannot escape, simply because the psychotic individual is unable to escape her mind. The psychotic person’s perception of the symbolic entities within the mind is based upon whatever the psychotic individual believes them to be. This may be constituted by emotional “habits” reflected in emotional reactions to the mother object and the father object, as examples. To state this more clearly, the impetus for the evolution of these projected entities reflected in delusional systems may simply represent the psychotic individual’s emotions toward these objectified entities. Importantly, deep ambivalence may be expected in the psychotic individual if this individual is reacting to what can be construed as representations of primary objects, such as the mother, the father, etc. Ambivalence is hypothesized to drive the creation of delusional systems, and significantly, this ambivalence with which the psychotic individual invests in these seeming self-object relationships would provide an impetus for continued, perpetual and perhaps unending speculation regarding the intentions and the behavior of one’s hallucinations in the mental realm. Essentially, one’s ambivalence toward parental objects, for example, would allow one to project onto recapitulated objects in the mental realm dynamic rather than static interpretations of their composition. This would account for the apparent changes in delusional ideas that the psychotic individual holds to be valid. Simply, the ambiguity of one’s hallucinations, and the ambivalence that shapes these hallucinations’ subjective presentation in the mind of the psychotic individual, provide the momentum for ongoing psychotic speculation. Thinking about thinking, for all people, is like trying to follow the path of one’s cognitions while at the same time creating it. This is the conundrum of psychosis as experienced by the psychotic individual. One cannot objectively study one’s thoughts due to the fact that the mind cannot witness itself in action, even though the mind of the psychotic individual may be understood metaphorically to be fractured by the experience of psychosis. What, exactly, is the seeming mental object or personality that is the hallucination? This may be the very question that the psychotic individual seeks to answer. And it is impossible to answer, due to the fact that the mental representation of hallucinations mutates with each act of attempting to analyze it, with the goal of defining it, by the psychotic individual. Whether hallucinations are based on something real or imagined, they are illusory, and attempts to define them or pin them down are perhaps futile. In terms of the various types of schizophrenia, the paranoid psychotic individual may perceive the goal of defining their hallucinated “objects”, as crucial to her own well-being. The paranoid schizophrenic can be counted on to speculate endlessly the inaccessible realities of their experience of psychosis, simply because she is afraid. Fueled by ambivalence, the paranoid schizophrenic, as stated, simply may vigilantly analyze and reanalyze the presentation of her own imagined and objectified mental constructions, to which she reacts with strong emotion, as she goes on to construct, perhaps, an intricate and complex delusional system. Due to the nature of projection by the psychotic individual, the catatonic schizophrenic may be immobilized in this situation by means of punitive experience that results in learned helplessness. Catatonic presentations in schizophrenics may represent the most extreme suffering that a schizophrenic can endure. Their behavioral presentation may represent the epitome of learned helplessness. Whether this learned helplessness is inferred or not from their catatonia, it is nevertheless apparent. In terms of the disorganized schizophrenic, the psychotic individual may be devastated with confusion and pain due to the inability to comprehend her experience, and, similar to that seen in the catatonic schizophrenic, there may be a consequent presentation of learned helplessness in the realm. This may give credence to the meaning of flat affect. Like catatonia, but to a lesser degree, flat affect may signify the condition of learned helplessness. As stated, however, many schizophrenics may be likely to trace their mental experience while at the same time creating it, fracturing their minds and finding nothing unambiguous in the experience of psychosis, as ambiguity toward the paternal objects, for example, may fuel psychotic speculation indefinitely. One can see in both very simplistic and very complicated delusions as reflections of the ambiguity with which hallucinations are conceived by the psychotic individual. As a matter of course, projection represents an educated understanding of what is imagination in the psychotic individual. Clearly, the mental relationships with these primary, symbolic, hallucinated entities may represent whatever the psychotic individual believes them to be. It is interesting that the content of the mind may be fabricated by the mind of the psychotic individual. However, this is an idea that may be self-evident. The psychotic individual bases his delusions on hallucinations and his hallucinations on delusions in terms of a dynamic reenactment of indefinable and indistinct object relations. As such, the mind may be shaped by projection based on imagination. This equates, conversely, with the mind as a “black box”, as asserted by Skinner. It is the final contention within this discussion that our minds may be whatever we imagine them to be.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. Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! 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Ripping into the “vulture capitalists” and political elites who favor debt-restructuring schemes that penalize Puerto Rico’s poor and working-class families, Bernie Sanders brought his populist presidential bid to San Juan Monday. And as he has throughout his run for the 2016 Democratic nomination, Sanders argued that democratic options must be expanded in order to let voters prioritize human needs over Wall Street greed. Ad Policy “It is unacceptable to me for the United States government to treat Puerto Rico like a colony during a time when its people are facing the worst fiscal and economic crisis in its history. In my view, the people of Puerto Rico must be empowered to determine their own destiny,” declared the senator from Vermont, in remarks that focused on a debt crisis that has ravaged the commonwealth, and on the failure of officials in Washington to respond in a humane and economically responsible manner to that crisis. Sanders told cheering crowds in San Juan that the crisis—and the poverty and economic inequality that has extended from it—”has everything to do with the greed…of Wall Street vulture funds.” “In the midst of this massive human crisis, it is morally unacceptable that billionaire hedge-fund managers have been calling for even more austerity in Puerto Rico. Austerity will not solve this crisis,” declared the senator from Vermont, who began his campaign swing by addressing a boisterous town-hall meeting on the island that has been overwhelmed by demands from hedge funds for repayment of their piece of a $70 billion debt burden incurred during a period of severe economic decline. “As we all know from throughout the world, austerity will cause more suffering for working people and make the rich richer. We must vigorously oppose all efforts at austerity. It is unacceptable to me that vulture funds on Wall Street are demanding that Puerto Rico fire teachers, close schools, cut pensions and abolish the minimum wage so that they can reap huge profits off the suffering and the misery of the children and the people of Puerto Rico. We cannot allow that to happen. We will not allow that to happen.” Puerto Ricans cannot vote in November presidential elections, but they send delegates to the Democratic and Republican national conventions—and Sanders campaigned in San Juan in anticipation of the commonwealth’s June 5 primary. “Austerity will not solve this crisis.” — Bernie Sanders on Puerto Rico’s debt mess Both Sanders and his rival for the Democratic nomination, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, have called for Congress to take steps to ease Puerto Rico’s debt burden, with Clinton arguing that “Congress and the Obama Administration need to partner with Puerto Rico by providing real support and tools so that Puerto Rico can do the hard work it will take to get on a path toward stability and prosperity.” But Sanders—who campaigned in San Juan with a key supporter, former governor Aníbal Acevedo Vilá—turned up the volume Monday with an impassioned critique of austerity schemes and with a call for US officials to stop treating Puerto Rico like a colony. Blasting “the vulture capitalists on Wall Street are trying to get a hundred percent back on their bonds at a time when so many of the children and the people of this island are suffering,” Sanders delivered a blistering speech in which he demanded a humanitarian response to Puerto Rico’s economic woes. “The people of the US cannot continue a colonial-type relationship with the people of Puerto Rico.” — Bernie Sanders At the heart of the senator’s appeal was a message he has been emphasizing for a number of months: “When people are suffering and hurting, you don’t continue to squeeze them. We cannot allow Puerto Rico’s budget to be balanced on the backs of the most vulnerable people—working families, veterans, the elderly, children and the poor. It is not only morally wrong, it is also economically unsustainable.” Sanders called for an independent audit of Puerto Rico’s debt to insure that citizens are not saddled with debts incurred by irresponsible speculators and politicians who did not follow the rules. “If any debt was issued to creditors in violation of Puerto Rico’s Constitution,” Sanders has said, “it must be immediately set aside.” The senator decried congressional schemes to create an unelected “oversight board” that could impose austerity cuts on the already-battered public education and public service systems of Puerto Rico. Sanders called for the Federal Reserve to use its emergency authority under the Federal Reserve Act to “pave the way for an orderly restructuring” of the commonwealth’s debt burden. And he renewed his call on Congress to provide Puerto Rico with the tools it needs to address the debt crisis, declaring that “Congress should act immediately to give Puerto Rico the same authority granted to every municipality in this country to restructure its debt under the supervision of a bankruptcy court.” LIKE THIS? GET MORE OF OUR BEST REPORTING AND ANALYSIS “I believe that Congress should act immediately to give Puerto Rico the same authority granted to every municipality in this country to restructure its debt under the supervision of a bankruptcy court,” the senator told a cheering crowd at the gathering in San Juan. Clinton has also argued for providing Puerto Rico with “a fair shot at success” by extending bankruptcy protections. “The challenge is multi-faceted, and will ultimately require Puerto Rico to find a way to pay back its debtors in an orderly fashion,” the former secretary of state said last year. “As a first step, Congress should provide Puerto Rico the same authority that states already have to enable severely distressed government entities, including municipalities and public corporations, to restructure their debts under Chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code.” Some Republicans in Washington have shown interest in the bankruptcy reform, yet steps to aid Puerto Rico have been stalled in Congress. In San Juan on Monday, Sanders criticized Congress for failing to act. He also argued that Puerto Rico’s crisis has roots not just in economic instability but also in political injustice. “The people of the United States cannot continue a colonial-type relationship with the people of Puerto Rico,” said the senator, in a comment that earned extended applause from the crowd in San Juan. Sanders renewed his pledge to “fight for a US congressionally sanctioned and binding referendum where the Puerto Rican people would be able to decide on whether to become a state, an independent country, or to reform the current Commonwealth agreement.” “That is a decision that must be made by the people of Puerto Rico,” Sanders said Monday in San Juan, where he made the point that economic deficits must be understood—and addressed—with a recognition of democracy deficits.The Peoria Rivermen are scheduled to play a 7:05 p.m. game on Thursday at Oklahoma City. If only it was that easy. The Peoria Rivermen are scheduled to play a 7:05 p.m. game on Thursday at Oklahoma City. If only it was that easy. The AHL club was scheduled to fly out of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport at 9:45 a.m. Wednesday, but all flights out of O’Hare and Midway International airports were cancelled Tuesday through Wednesday afternoon, leaving the Rivermen scrambling. The team will now attempt to fly on the day of the game -- Thursday morning -- out of St. Louis, where the severe winter storm forced cancellation of the parent club St. Louis Blues home game on Tuesday night. The Rivermen are coming off the AHL All-Star break, which means several of their players are trying to fly back from other parts of the country to re-join the team. It also caused problems for the Rivermen All-Star contingent — coach Jared Bednar, defenseman Nathan Oystrick, center T.J. Hensick and goaltender Jake Allen — as they returned from the all-star game at Hershey, Pa., on Tuesday. Their flight landed at O’Hare at 11:18 a.m., but their connecting flight to Peoria -- along with all other remaining flights -- were shut down as the airlines ceased operating. “We got in, but we couldn’t get out of Chicago,” Bednar said. “So we rented a van and drove ourselves down to Peoria this afternoon. The roads were not the best.” One more problem: United Airlines refused to release any baggage to the Rivermen quartet, leaving everything at O’Hare. The Rivermen trio of all-star players, as of Tuesday night, had no equipment. It’s on the canceled United flight in Chicago. The team is also trying to find a venue to practice at Wednesday. If it can’t, it will have been off the ice for a week by the time it faces Oklahoma City on Thursday. “We’re regrouping and just waiting to see if and when we can get back out,” Bednar said. If Plan B goes as hoped, the Rivermen will land in Oklahoma City just 7 hours before game time. Dave Eminian can be reached at 686-3206 or [email protected] There were some top WWE officials very unhappy about Ring of Honor and Figure Toy Company releasing a Kevin Steen action figure because it's a non-WWE company being the first to enter the marketplace with an action figure of WWE's hottest new star. They were also upset because the look and character of ROH's Kevin Steen and WWE's Kevin Owens are essentially the same. Officials are now trying to prevent this from happening again so there is pressure on Triple H and that department to get non-WWE talents with potential signed to NXT with merchandising deals before they make it a company like ROH or TNA that has their own merchandise and cable TV deals. They are also looking to create a pipeline to find the talents with potential before ROH and TNA finds them. The idea is to not sign talent from ROH or TNA now for the main roster and get the word out to younger talents that if they have WWE aspirations, they shouldn't sign with TNA or ROH. There will always be exceptions to the rule. Many indie talents have signed 5 year deals with Figure Toy Company, meaning they have the right to market Kevin Steen merchandise for almost 5 more years while WWE pushes him as one of their top new stars. Source: Wrestling Observer Newsletter Subscribe to The Wrestling Observer by clicking here. Each issue has coverage and analysis of all the major news, plus history pieces. New subscribers can also receive free classic issues.Literary criticism once had an outsize reach, influencing the terms and concepts of disciplines like art and legal studies. With it came an outsize ego. During the 1970s and 80s, the heyday of literary theory, scholars aimed to explode the foundations of Western metaphysics, foment a revolution of the sign, overturn gender hierarchies, and fight the class struggle. The battles weren’t just in their imagination. In 1991 the columnist George Will declared Lynne Cheney, then chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, "secretary of domestic defense" for staving off literary theorists who were threatening the canon and traditional cultural values. But in the past decade, we’ve seen a new modesty. Literary critics have become more subdued, adopting methods with less grand speculation, more empirical study, and more use of statistics or other data. They aim to read, describe, and mine data rather than make "interventions" of world-historical importance. Their methods include "surface reading," "thin description," "the new formalism," "book history," "distant reading," "the new sociology." ... What We Read When we cease distinguishing between the great and the good, literature loses its spine. At times it seems as if each year brings the next new thing, but those methods add up to more than that. Together they augur a change in the basic assumptions of literary studies. Since the 1950s, the dominant practice in academe has been "criticism"; not the dusty excavation of facts about literature that had marked the field before that—the linguistic and historical background on Elizabethan England or Norse verb forms, or whether Chaucer traveled to France to hear his tales—but analysis and interpretation. Critics became seers who uncovered the special significance of texts, or warriors who critiqued society. Today they are still interested in "reading" texts, but their approach to what they read is different. In part, the shift represents a generational turnover, and dispensing with some of the overblown assertions of literary theory is refreshing. But it also seems to express the shrunken expectations of academe, particularly of the humanities, and a decline in the social prestige of literary criticism. The change has crystallized around "surface reading." The term comes from Sharon Marcus, a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University, and Stephen M. Best, an associate professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley. Marcus broached it in her 2007 book Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England (Princeton University Press), and elaborated on it in the introduction she wrote with Best to a 2009 special issue of the journal Representations on "The Way We Read Now." (They had been colleagues at Berkeley in the late 1990s and early 2000s.) Surface reading, they suggest, characterizes the work of a rising generation. A good deal of contemporary
ahan explains to some punk that there are different types of dog crap. He says to the punk, “To me, you’re nothing but a dog sht, understand? A lot of things can happen to dog sht. It can be scraped up with a shovel off the ground. It can dry up and blow away in the wind, or it can be stepped on and squashed. So take my advice and be careful where the dog shts you.” In this case, the dog sht Harry Reid into the United States Senate. Reid once stood on the floor of the Senate in 2012 and accused Mitt Romney of crimes related to taxes. He later, proudly admitted he was lying and didn’t care. From the same Senate floor, he called David and Charles Koch, two men who have done more for their country than Reid ever well, “un-American.” Now, on his way out the door as a human pile of dog poop that will dry up and blow away in the Nevada wind, he’s going after James Comey: “It’s obvious he was a partisan in all this,” Reid told CNN’s Manu Raju in an interview. “There’s information out there. He had it, I’m confident. And he ignored it.” He said Comey “significantly” helped make Trump the President-elect, faulting his failure to condemn Russian hacking of Democratic operatives and his handling of the investigation into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s email server. Reid said he urged Comey to address the hacking, which intelligence agencies have concluded was the result of Russian efforts to tilt the election toward Trump. “I am saying the FBI did nothing — did nothing. All the information that we’ve heard in the last couple weeks, it was available to the FBI. He just ignored it. He did not make it public. We asked him to more than once and he didn’t do it,” Reid said. He also pointed to Comey’s letter to lawmakers less than two weeks from the election announcing that — as part of the FBI’s investigation into sexting allegations against Anthony Weiner, the husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin — it had discovered emails potentially relevant to its investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified information on her private email server. “In fact, to show how awful this situation is, this man ignored precedent that had been going on for decade after decade after decade. The FBI does not get involved in politics — except Comey did,” Reid said. That’s odd coming from the same pile of dog poop who said of Comey when he didn’t recommend indicting Hillary Clinton, “No one can question the integrity, the competence.” Wouldn’t it stand to reason if Comey is the partisan Reid claims he is, that he would have shouted from the rooftops Hillary Clinton should be indicted in the email scandal? A possible indictment hanging over her candidacy for the final three months of the election cycle would do far more damage than some letter being released late on a Friday afternoon. As for the Russian hacking, the FBI has not reached the same “conclusion” as the CIA that Russia was actively attempting to “help” Donald Trump in his bid for the White House so what possible statement could he make to satisfy Reid? Thankfully, it doesn’t matter. James Comey will still be the F.B.I. Director when Reid departs the Senate the for good. So long and good riddance, Senator Dog Poop.Tweet Jumătate de an a trecut de la momentul în care tragedia de la “Colectiv”a părut să trezească acele energii ale revoltei pe care le credeam a fi epuizate, prin succesive renunţări şi deziluzii. Jumătate de an a trecut de la momentul în care demisia lui Victor Ponta marca, măcar aparent,retragerea în plan secund a celor care dezonoraseră naţiunea şi oficiul public, prin amestecul toxic de demagogie şi de iresponsabilitate cinică. Jumătate de an a trecut de la momentul în care guvernul Cioloş, mandatat moral de o revoltă civică, se auto-definea ca un guvern destinat să deschidă un timp al schimbării, sub semnul transparenţei şi al reformelor. La jumătate de an de la acel fine de octombrie 2015,anatomia României de acum este o anatomie a eşecului. Marasmul, cel care a fost, invariabil, triunfător, a învins şi de această dată. Agenda pe care societatea reuşise să o impună elitei politice este, în acest moment, abandonată definitiv. Statul responsabil de moartea atroce a compatrioţilor noştri este intact. Nici una dintre articulaţiile sale nu a fost afectată de evenimentele de după 30 octombrie 2015. Insolenţa cu care Cristian Popescu- Piedone a revenit în viaţa publică este semnul acestei reîntoarceri la ordinea complicităţilor şi a clientelismului. În fapt, dincolo de un recul temporar,,majoritatea USL ce domină Parlamentul României nu a fost ameninţată în controlul ei. Administraţia Cioloş nu a deţinut, în nici o zi din această jumătate de an care s-a scurs, capacitatea de a ameninţa acest bloc compact organizat în jurul PSD. Retragerii de moment i-a urmat ofensiva. Săptămâna aceasta, cu dezbaterile ei dedicate modificării legii avocaturii, este proba vitalităţii niciodată- dispărutei coaliţii de guvernare. Ca şi înainte de “ Colectiv”, obiectivul parlamentarilor rămâne acelaşi- obstrucţionarea acţiunii DNA şi subminarea ideii de egalitate în faţa legii. Privilegiile sunt coloana vertebrală a ordinii pe care această elită politică o apără, cu tenacitate. Statul nu are nici o altă menire în afară de aceea de a le asigura, lor şi celor din jurul lor, cadrul de exploatare al resurselor publice. Acest stat este statul împotriva căruia s-a ridicat revolta de după “ Colectiv”. Acesta este statul care a învins, încă o dată, compromiţând orice agendă a reformei. Eşecul este, aşadar,unul vizibil şi dramatic. Alegerile locale pot consacra, definitiv, această restauraţie a marasmului, clientelismului şi complicităţilor. Pentru un PSD al cărui preşedinte este condamnat definitiv pentru infracţiuni asociate cu subminarea democraţiei înseşi, principiile de integritate sunt un detaliu irelevant. Victoria acestui nou USL la locale poate fi punctul de plecare pentru asaltul de la scrutinul parlamentar: o majoritate consolidată poate transcrie, juridic, toate modificările menite să ofere imunitate privilegiaţilor politici. După jumătate de an de la tragedia din “Colectiv”, România politică are aceeaşi osatură instituţională. Peste iluzii şi aşteptări s-a aşezat piatra tombală a statului însuşi. Mecanismul său de parazitare al societăţii funcţionează, ireproşabil, ca şi cum nimic nu s-ar fi petrecut, ca şi cum morţii din octombrie 2015 nu ar fi existat, niciodată. Putem fi optimişti, în acest mai 2016. Căci totul merge spre bine în cea mai bună dintre Româniile posibile. Ai informatii despre tema de mai sus? Poti contribui la o mai buna intelegere a subiectului? Scrie articolul tau si trimite-l la editor[at]contributors.ro Citeste mai multe despre: Colectiv, coruptie, uslThere are few interviews with heads of state that have been as embarrassing for a country as the one President Jacob Zuma did this week. The Chinese television station CCTV interviewed a visibly nervous Zuma this week as part of the channel’s coverage of this week’s G20 summit held in the Chinese city of Hangzhou. It was not Zuma’s finest hour – or 18 minutes and 36 seconds – to say the least. In fact, it was as cringeworthy as it gets and underlines his lack of understanding of the challenges facing the South African economy. If it wasn’t such a massive embarrassment for South Africa, it would have been funny. ALSO READ: ‘Corrupt whites’, hands off our ‘economic liberator’ Zuma ALSO READ: Manyi thanks Zuma for the 3.3% economic growth The interview was conducted by veteran journalist Tian Wei of the World Insight programme. She has been referred to as the Chinese version of CNN’s Richard Quest and has interviewed many word leaders. World Insight is one of CCTV’s premier international news shows and provides global political and economic insights from a Chinese perspective. The interview may also explain why finance minister Pravin Gordhan was the point man at the WEF meeting in Davos this year and why Zuma also controversially missed a panel discussion about Africa’s economic challenges during this event. Zuma is also renowned for avoiding the South African media, but this time he could not hide. But don’t take my word for it, watch for yourself…. (The video and the full transcript of the interview appear below.) Tian Wei: During this year’s G20 summit [the] Chinese president has made very clear at the very beginning that Africa will be one of the focal points, but it also depends on the other 19 economies of the G20 whether that will be the case and whether there will be concrete results. Zuma: Of course President Xi Jinping made that point very clear, loud and clear, and nobody opposed that proposal. So everybody accepted that proposal, partly because they know the position of Africa, where Africa comes from. They also know the challenges of Africa and therefore it is accepted that there is a specific approach that is given to Africa. 0:43 Tian Wei: And during this process Mr President what should be Africa’s role – because you are the only African leader that is present there at the G20 economies – so what should be, could be, and will be Africa’s role? Zuma: Well, Africa … firstly Africa has a particular history. Africa, I think of all the regions of the world was the only one which was totally colonised and stayed therefore for long time without Africa doing its own things, when the countries from Europe were actually suppressing them for many years. I think it was only in the decade of the sixties [1960s] that they began to get their independence. So whilst other countries moving, they were in a sense ‘trapped’ in the colonial situation and they had(?) to get a phase where they were fighting for their liberation. But also the colonialists had come to occupy and dominate their resources so to speak, so whatever Africa is trying to do now is coming up from a very heavy kind of suppression and therefore Africa is lagging behind. But Africa is saying it’s a region that is emerging, that is now for the first time trying to come together so that they have a collective kind of an approach as a region and therefore it sees its future – and of course South Africa is one of the big economies in the in the continent, it is a member of a G20 and South Africa does not represent itself only, it represents the continent and therefore it speaks on behalf of the continent whilst is it is speaking also on his own behalf. 2:39 Tian Wei: Infrastructure projects usually take a lot of cash. I understand there has been an establishment of the BRICS New Development Bank; it has been running for one year. Even the South African has now become (?) head of that organisation and also the AIIB which has just started with their first …global board meeting. What do you think Mr President, will these two entities provide … your country with more alternatives, even the African continent? Zuma: The continent had taken a very deliberate decision to establish infrastructure that is going to connect the entire continent and heads of states are actually leading that kind of – there’s a committee that is leading that kind of -infrastructure to ensure that infrastructure is there. But also, the question of funding will always be a challenge, so the emergence of the BRICS bank has been one of the most important kind of happening in our society, because BRICS bank is different from other big banks that would have stringent conditions, what it [should] do … and therefore Africa and South Africa, all of us, are looking at the BRICS bank as the bank that is going to make things easier and the BRICS itself has that understanding that Africa … that’s why whilst the headquarters of the bank are here in China in Shanghai but a regional BRICS bank is going to be in Africa, in South Africa. 4:27 Tian Wei: It’s an African centre of the BRICS banks. But what is [likely?] to be the role of this African centre? Zuma: … one of main roles will be to find to fund the infrastructure in Africa, that is what it is going to do. Already they are projects that have been submitted to the bank here that now need to be looked at so that they can continue. So the emergence of the BRICS bank has been a step forward for us 5:00 Tian Wei: President Zuma industrialisation of the African countries have been quite a debate over the past few years. But how, how to do industrialisation? It has its positive connotations, sometimes negative connotations. So what do you think is the approach that African countries, including yours, should adopt in order to have industrialisation? Zuma: Well there are many things that we need to do. The question of industrialisation in our own continent has one side only, does not have a negative side. 5:40 Tian Wei: Really okay tell us about it. Zuma: Why, because we’ve never been industrialised in the past. Industrialisation waves that have come and gone, Africa was not touched. In other countries industrialised, for the first time we are industrialising. Because colonialists were not there to industrialise Africa. But in South Africa you have a different kind of situation wherein there was industrialisation, but not by the indigenous people, the majority, by those who came to settle. Now what we are saying is that the black people themselves must create the industry. So for the first time we are creating middle-class; we are creating people who are going to own businesses for the first time. So it can’t have a negative side; positive side all the time. We are going to create jobs; we are for example training our people, skilling them for the purposes of industrialisation with us. So that’s what we are looking at. Part of what President Xii Ping was saying, [is] to focus on the continent is actually to support among others, industrialisation itself. 6:53 Tian Wei: Talking about industrialisation, people look at China – whether it’s a China model or not, that’s for debate. But certainly the China experience, what does that mean to you Mr president and also other African nations? Zuma: What is critical with China is that the openness, much as they say so, but they are doing business as business, but guided by the Chinese characteristics. But what is important is that that in itself is a lesson to other people. How have the Chinese succeeded? It is because they have discipline in the job they do – that’s what people have got to adopt. I’ve said it to many people: you can wish to be Chinese, you’ll never be because you’ve got to have what guides them as an ideological approach, so to speak. But that’s [not to] say you cannot do it. 7:46 Tian Wei: What do you make of these dramatic changes when it comes to the demands of qualities of political leadership? Zuma: Well, South Africa is a democratic country – it is just 20 years. The experience is very clear: any former national liberation movement in 20 years, there are challenges politically that challenge the political party. What becomes important: how is that party responding to those challenges. That is important. I don’t think the ANC is different from other formal political parties. What is important [is] that the party must understand what is happening and it must say what do we do to deal with this. For example, 20 years in South Africa: it means democracy has matured and people generally, are beginning to make the choices having thought in the one form the other and it means … for an example for the first time in South Africa, we have just gone through the local government elections, wherein people have made their choices and we’ve had three metros at the big [??] that they were tying for the first time. And then there’s been an introduction of a new element of coalitions, because there is no one party that could rule without talking to smaller parties. so that’s a new element that is coming, that even small parties can now determine which direction a metro goes, or a municipality goes. That is a new kind of politics. 9:38 Tian Wei: What does that mean for the used-to-be major party? Zuma: ANC used to be a major party, it means we have reached a point where democracy is now taking another kind of turn. The ANC then has to say, how do we handle this situation as a big party in the question of coalitions. We must now begin to plan and factor in the issue of coalitions when we go for elections – that’s what it is all about. And this is a maturing of democracy and that’s what it is. If you look at old democracies they don’t have too many parties because they’ve been there for a while, and parties have been sort of shrinking into either two or three. So it is a process of the democratic process that we are now 20 years and therefore the politics, if you talk about winning elections, are beginning to introduce a coalition factor, which has not been a factor before. 10:41 Tian Wei: Mr Nelson Mandela had been so respected around the world. I remember a few years ago when Mr Mandela passed away, you were the one announcing the news to the rest of the world. What do you think is the most important part of his legacy and what would that mean for all politicians, including yourself Mr President, of your country? Zuma: President Mandela was made by the ANC to be great – that is very important to know. It is the ANC that is much much much important to many of us, including President Mandela. He was part of shaping the policies of the ANC and the ANC has not changed policy. So its leaders will always be there. But times are moving and Mandela’s legacy will always be remembered; not just Mandela alone … Oliver Tambo and others. And we are sticking to what Mandela practiced as the policy he believed in and he believed in until … he departed this world. So we are the organisation of Mandela. We are using the lessons from Mandela to run the organisation, to run the country. So we think of Mandela as our leader who gave to us the lessons within the ANC framework and we stick to them and we will follow what Mandela did and following that will never go wrong. 12:24 Tian Wei: Mr President, there are issues with your economy. For example, there are some estimates suggesting zero growth. So people are wondering what kind of tools do you have in hand in order to change that situation, to put your economy on a better track? Zuma: Well this is part of what we we’ve been discussing as the G20 – as to what do we do to boost up the economy, to if you want, ‘reignite’ the economy – what is that we can do. And I think the proposals coming from China through the president were very clear, that we need to break and look at innovation as a critical driver of the economic growth and you must have inclusive economic growth. There are many other kinds of things that people are looking at: how do we do the situation; how do we create jobs. We need to agree, because right now if we say the economy is sluggish, it means investors are hesitant to invest. They’re sort of holding their money and we are saying, let them be encouraged to do so. As a government in South Africa we have in fact done a lot of job creation, trying(?) to invest, trying to encourage the private sector. Now if for an example you are saying ‘let us grow the economy’ and then you invest or you protect your investment – we are using the term ‘protectionist’ – but the workers who are working they want higher wages, there is no sensitivity where we should all come together to say ‘since the economy is under challenge what is it that we can sacrifice, all of us, in order to ensure that we can grow the economy’. 14:27 Tian Wei: One of the things that your economy is facing is the energy prices – the fluctuation of the energy prices. Of course you try to seek ways out, but still at this moment difficult. What do you make of that dependence your economy has on energy? Zuma: That is one of the difficulties. Perhaps our economy… one of the areas would be energy. The energy has a history as well – because everything in our own country has its own history, because it was not worked on to take care of the entire population, because of our history. So we are almost like starting from new, but what we have been doing a lot of kind of progress from that point of view. And therefore to us it is important, because energy is important for the economy to grow. And we are working hard to ensure … we are for an example having a programme of mixed energy so that we do all types of energy, so that we can in a sense increase the volume of energy, so that that can help to generate the kind of economy that must go there. Of course, the price of energy – depending what we are talking about … for an example, other countries in Africa they were affected with regard to the going down of fuel, of oil rather, in other countries … that base themselves on the oil and that caused a problem. We get more affected because we are a mining country: the commodities coming from the mine also were no longer being attractive out there. So that in itself affected the kind of economy and these are the matters that we have got to say, how do we handle this situation as we go forward. 16: 24 Tian Wei: Mr. President when you look at the African continent, what do you make of the role of South Africa? What do you think should be the role that South Africa plays on your continent, or representing our continent worldwide? Zuma: Well South Africa is playing the role already. Firstly in the African continent, we take it as a priority that we work with them. We are participating in shaping the approach that Africa makes. We are participating in addressing the problems of the continent; for an example, we are there to keep peace; we are there to influence that there should be peace; we are there to defend those who’d be troubled by violence etc. We use the capacity we have. We … don’t do this as one country; we do this as part of a collective of the AU and there we play a part. we play a part outside of the continent by sensitising the world about the challenges of the continent. Right now South Africa is the member of the G20. It’s not raising its own matters only; it raises the matters of the continent – that’s part of the role it is playing. When BRICS came for the first time to meet in South Africa, South Africa asked the leaders of the continent – particularly those who have specific responsibilities – to meet with BRICS, to raise the issues with BRICS, and it was a very useful kind of meeting. That act has introduced in BRICS leaders what is now called ‘the outreach’, that when BRICS meets, leaders in the region would also come … that’s how South Africa sees its role, and it is acting on this role. Tian Wei: Thank you very much we really appreciate it thank you for your trust and your confidence Mr President Zuma: Thank you very much indeed. Brought to you by MoneywebWho could deny that the quality of the political protest march has improved since Jeremy Corbyn become leader? I went along to one called today in Birmingham to mark the start of the Conservative Party conference. “Tory scum out of Brum” read one banner. There were drums, whistles and even a woman dressed up as Theresa May. Unlike previous “Tories not welcome” marches, this one was very well-attended and pretty good-humoured. There were beautifully embroidered trades unions barriers on display. Even seeing the Communist component of the march made me a little nostalgic: it was like watching a 2016 remake of those BBC documentaries from the 1980s. This being a Corbynista march, we heard much about putting Labour moderates to the sword. The group I was walking with had, in their repertoire, a song suggesting which MPs to burn in a bonfire. “Put the Tories on the top, put the Blairites on the middle and then burn the f*king lot”. Perhaps the day’s highlight was a speech denouncing Clive Lewis, Labour’s defence spokesman. The organising group was the People’s Assembly Against Austerity, an umbrella movement for trades unions and the hard left. One its representatives told crowds that the Labour right-wing had wasted a summer” because “no one” wanted the leadership contest. Mr Lewis was then reprimanded for his support for Trident : didn’t he know he was only in his job because Jezza put him there? (A great many people there, young and old, were wearing Corbyn T-shirts. I’m not sure I can remember an MP who so inspired protesters). A popular T-Shirt is Corbyn’s name, written like superman (below). Another speaker later proposed that they stop fighting the Tories at all. He used a complicated analogy about wrestling a pig (“you get covered in crap and worst of all, the pig likes it!”). For years, I’ve been turning up to these party conferences and complaining about how boring they are, full of lobbyists, denuded of real politics. But there was plenty of real politics in Liverpool last week while Labour’s two tribes went to war and there’s plenty now with thousands marching on the Tory conference. But while Labour is still predominantly interested in fighting and talking about itself, Theresa May doesn’t have much to fear.President of the Supreme Court, David Neuberger (L), walks with fellow judges to Westminster Abbey for a service to mark the start of the legal year, London October 1, 2012. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor/File Photo LONDON (Reuters) - The head of Britain’s Supreme Court has accused politicians of not doing enough to protect the independence of the judicial system when judges came in for harsh criticism from pro-Brexit newspapers last year. England’s High Court triggered an angry response from some newspapers in November when it ruled that the decision to begin Britain’s formal divorce talks with the European Union had to be approved by parliament and not be taken by the government alone. The Daily Mail newspaper said the three judges who handed down the ruling were “enemies of the people”. In an interview with the BBC broadcast on Thursday, David Neuberger, the head of Britain’s Supreme Court, said: “I think some of what was said was undermining the rule of law.” Neuberger said politicians, who he did not name, did not speak out quickly or clearly enough after the criticism. “After the Court hearing. I think they could have been quicker and clearer,” he said. “But we all learn by experience, whether politicians or judges. It’s easy to be critical after the event. They were faced with an unexpected situation from which like all sensible people they learned.” Britain’s Justice minister Liz Truss initially made no comment about the media criticism of the High Court judges before issuing a brief statement two days after the ruling, saying the independence of the judiciary was the “foundation upon which our rule of law is built.” Britain’s government appealed the High Court’s ruling in the Supreme Court which upheld the original decision. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Theresa May won parliamentary approval to start the EU divorce talks which she aims to do before the end of March.Amidst the anguished cries of the western world following a bomb blast at Manchester’s 21,000 capacity Arena, I feel compelled to unleash some of my own internal noise unto my laptop and perhaps also the internet. I feel the need to disclaim that all sentences be silently prefixed with the phrase ‘In my opinion….’. In times like these we are discouraged by our peers from broadcasting our opinions, they roll their eyes and proclaim that ‘suddenly everyone is an expert’, so we all crawl like hermits back into our shells to protect ourselves from ridicule and humiliation. I didn’t go to University. I’m not mega clever. I have a part-time interest in politics everyone closes tab*. These are not fully formed ideas. Do we need watertight solutions to massive global issues in order to be granted permission to discuss them? Some people seem to think so, but I disagree. Let’s drop the elitism and allow discussion and the exchange of ideas, please. It’s difficult to find the end of the metaphorical thread within my minds wild and untethered internal dialogue. Lately, it’s been inhabited BY ‘deep’ thoughts about politics in the wake of the UK snap election. It’s been trying to decipher the nature of the so-called ‘left’ and ‘right’ wings that make up today’s politics spectrum. What are the fundamental traits that one has to have in order for them to passionately follow the left or, indeed, the right? And what of those that sit somewhere in the middle? And why is there seemingly so few of them? Why are we ‘radicalised’ (a risky word to use but I’m taking it back) into these two separate corners of the ring? I suppose I should offer an answer. But if I were to offer an answer it’d be coming from a human that is already emotionally tied to the ‘left’ and as such, I am unable to offer an objective view. It goes without saying that there are much smarter and more well read social and political historians and scientists that dedicate their lives to deciphering these questions that will offer far more legitimate answers. So maybe reading on is a waste of your time. Or maybe you think I’m clever and have something to say that you could relate to. Who knows. Most of those questions I will try to address, in my own way, another time. How do I evaluate the fundamentals at the core of the right and left, or, in this case, Labour and Conservatives? From my deluded, artist, utopianist mind, the Conservative party seems to try to sway voters into ticking their box by speaking mainly about the shortfalls and weaknesses of their opposition, to have you fear one another, especially those not from ‘your’ country and to brand its opposition’s ideas and ambitions as unrealistic. Of course, you would have to diminish your opponent’s plans if they benefitted the majority of the electorate otherwise it would be impossible to win. As a result, the only option is to attempt to convince the population that those plans are impossible. The fastest and most effective way to do this is to play on what the people fear. The fundamentals of Labour, or at least 2017’s Labour, seem to be, in my deluded and utopianist mind, togetherness, empathy and compassion. A philosophy that at its core says that we needn’t live life like it’s every man for itself. Yes, they talk of the oppositions shortfalls too, they’re no angels, the political system excludes angels when they go to sign up, however, the primary focus is on what they intend to achieve. Labour are appealing to young people starting out in life because they know that their policies lend themselves to giving those people a leg up in their fledgeling lives. The Conservatives have not made a single appeal (cue a link to a line somewhere in the small print) to young people to register to vote because they know that their appeal lies with older generations who seek to protect their wealth, because, ya know, it’s every man for himself and maybe we can like thy neighbour but fuck loving them, I hardly know them. And they might be lazy. And be on benefits. And they definitely didn’t go to Eton. OK, that’s too liberal now, Dan, reign it in. What I’m trying to say is, from where I’m sat, Labour participate far less in the politics of fear. I’ve spent the last couple of hours following the fallout from the bomb blast in Manchester. Todays ‘instant’ news phenomena that social media has lent us is a double edged sword. Because capitalism fills every vacuum it can find, news outlets have always, and still do, have to bend to some degree in order to shout the loudest and achieve the highest ratings that it can. Where there is no capital at stake we find that ego and its desire for validation come into play – how many likes can this post get, how many retweets or replies can this tweet yield (for instance the bizarre phenomenon of creating fake missing person posts on twitter to reap thousands of likes). After a ‘terror attack’, we become fiercely protective of our own and vehemently hateful toward the perpetrators. As such, news outlets tend to obtain maximum impact by tapping into our most primitive state of being – fear. Round up to the maximum deaths and injuries, speculate on the worst-case scenarios, compromise on the legitimacy of the source. Some will say that this is a cynical view whilst others will see its blatant logic. Terrible statistics have people instinctively hitting to retweet even if they’re unconfirmed figures. Speculation of a gunman from an, understandably, panicked eye witness spreads like wildfire throughout the world wide web and terror grips us all that little bit harder, only to find out later that there was no gunman (thank you Daily Express). Rhetoric is chosen to maximise the yield of fear. Not necessarily in the ‘fuck the Illuminati’ way that some may suspect, but because it returns the best ratings, the most likes, and the most retweets. it sounds so horrendously cynical but I think sometimes the human ego is that tasteless. No doubt as print media sales dwindle its methods for optimising sales would stoop lower and lower just to survive, so you have to ask, how authentic is the information that we assimilate? Even as I type I’ve fallen foul of this very game. Intermittently rubbernecking my way through Twitter for the latest update, the latest story, each one more horrific than the last. Each story swelling the feeling of vitriol one step further. That urge for revenge is undeniable. The simple distinction is not enough to exclude us from being sucked into the hurricane. Everyone knows rational decisions aren’t made in the heat of the moment, and yet that we seem to have a habit of fanning the flames in these instances and then executing the plan before giving it a clear-headed review. It could sound like I’m advocating for the very draconian internet monitoring and control that the Tories advocate for in their latest manifesto but this is absolutely not the case. The freedom for information to flow has pros that far outweigh the cons. Perhaps what we need is a better understanding of how humans interface with these new technologies and what behaviours of ours are modulated in the face of such emotionally provocative events. Even as someone currently sat on the other side of the planet to Manchester, the reliability of what has occurred hits straight into the pit of my stomach, just as 2015’s Paris attack at the Bataclan venue did. Clearly current trends in these attacks are designed to give us a feeling of permanent unease in our everyday lives. No longer safe at gigs, or football matches, or on the train, or on the bus, or on a plane, or at a mall, or on the beach….I’ve no doubt that this is by design. Maximum fear inflicted with the least effort expended. News outlets and social media light up like wildfire and we all spend x amount of time now looking over our shoulders, on red alert, waiting for the monsters to come and get us too. 20 young people losing their lives is a travesty. I don’t mean to come over cold or inhuman following such a terrible event. Even as someone who lost their twin brother only 9 months ago, I struggle to comprehend what the families of those individuals are experiencing. I think that our minds refuse to fully delve into what that experience is like, even if we possess an accurate reference, to protect us. Empathy seems to only stretch so far as to protect us from a life of constant grief and sadness. Nonetheless, you’d have to have lost your soul to not at least taste a morsel of the misery that those families are now living in. You often see people discouraged from engaging in these types of conversations shortly after people have lost their lives. Many people ask that we wait for the dust to settle in respect to those that have lost their lives before we begin to politicise event, and on one hand on do agree with this sentiment, however on the other I feel that those that are less emotionally battered have a duty to start asking questions and holding poise amongst all the chaos. In some ways, perhaps it is the best time to take a good look at the world that we live in. I’ve been repeatedly reminded lately that we (unbelievably) live in the most peaceful time in human history. Not that this pardons us from the horrors of today’s global events. One has to feel that we must do better in 2017. How do I (emphasis on the italic and the disclaimer mentioned at the beginning of this piece) think that we can do better? Well, it’s not going to be a popular view. In fact, I might even get so much abuse for saying this that I will collapse in on myself and delete this post altogether….. Surely what we must have learnt by now is that the current tactics employed to mitigate
in the DC Extended Universe. The film wrapped its first eight days with a total domestic gross of $147.3 million, trailing behind Wonder Woman's $163.5 million and Suicide Squad's $192.2 million over their respective eight-day openings. The Jacob Tremblay-led drama Wonder has an eight-day total of $59 million (against a modest $20 million production budget); Taika Waititi's Thor: Ragnarok has brought its 21-day domestic yield to $267 million, thanks to an additional $6.6 million on Black Friday; and Sony's Denzel Washington-starring legal thriller Roman J. Israel, Esq. nabbed $4.8 million, boosting its anticipated weekend gross to $6.5 million. Check back with Looper on Sunday for full weekend box office results.Hizb ut-Tahrir uses a public building to preach intolerance and draws nothing more stringent than hedged and guarded reactions from our political class. The Australian Liberty Alliance, meanwhile, is harassed and denounced. Something is wrong here, and the voting public knows it There is a clear double-standard operating in Australia concerning the two sides of the political debate over Islamist extremism. This is exemplified by the wildly contrasting political and media treatment of Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Australian Liberty Alliance. However, as the strong public reactions to last week’s National Anthem scandal and Sunday’s Hizb ut-Tahrir conference demonstrate, this duplicity is becoming increasingly obvious and is now galvanizing the growing resistance to Islamist extremism and the appeasement policies of federal and state governments and the mainstream media. To begin with, the coordinated and systematic Muslim assault on Australia’s national identity continues. On cue, speakers at the Islamist activist group Hizb ut-Tahrir conference in Bankstown on Sunday followed up on the attack launched last week at a Victorian primary school, where some 40 Muslim students were allowed to walk out on the national anthem because their religious allegiance was adjudged by school staff and the Victorian Education Department to have priority over their allegiance (if any) to Australia. Singing the Australian national anthem or pledging support for democratic values in the citizenship oath was part of a state campaign of oppression and “forced assimilation” directed at Australian Muslims, Hizb ut-Tahrir leaders declared. According to media spokesman, Uthman Badar, the federal government “claims to afford freedom, but seeks to impose values and beliefs” on Muslims, specifically in the citizenship oath when new citizens were required to pledge allegiance to the democratic values upon which Australian society is based. “It’s not enough that you obey the law, no, you have to adopt [Australian] values” as well, said Badar, who also condemned the expectation that Muslim schoolchildren should sing the National Anthem, which he claimed “reflects a disputed view of history”. He was referring to the Hizb ut-Tahrir version of history, which blames the West for all the problems in the world. “If you don’t share those values, why should they be forced to sing it?” he insisted. Badar appears to be well-connected on the cultural left in Australia, as his post-colonialist view of history indicates. Indeed, he rose to public prominence last year when it was revealed he had been booked to speak at the so-called ‘Festival of Dangerous Ideas’ in Sydney. His topic: “Honour Killings Are Morally Justified”. The resulting public outcry forced the lecture to be cancelled in a reaction that Badar saw not as understandable public horror, but only as a measure of the “extent and depth” of Islamophobia in Australia. The Bankstown conference theme was “A Community Criminalised: Innocent Until Proven Muslim?” perpetuating the self-identification of Islamists as an innocent and unjustly oppressed minority. It was Hizb ut-Tahrir’s largest and most elaborate propaganda event yet, re-asserting its claim that the federal government and security agencies are waging a brutal campaign to oppress Muslims and force them into compliance with Australian values. “It is nothing less than forced assimilation … justified by [an] exaggerated fear of a security threat”, declared Badar, while his comrade, Wassim Doureihi, insisted the government attitude was that “you cannot allow Muslims a moment to breathe”, and that raids by security agencies on the Muslim community were designed to “terrorise its inhabitants” and implement a policy to “tie their hands, beat them, [and] break their noses”. A notable speaker was the British Islamist, Ibtihal Bsis, who achieved notoriety in the UK by assuring a group of young Muslim women that Islamic State was not a problem. In a pre-recorded video he told Australian Muslims that, when they needed strength, they should “look at your brothers in Syria who stand and fight against an unjust ruler” — the implication being that Australian Muslims face the same threat and should behave in a similar manner. Testimonials were also provided by Muslims in attendance about their alleged mis-treatment by customs and border-protection officers. Others complained of how difficult it was made for them when they were visiting relatives imprisoned at the Supermax jail in Goulburn on terrorism-related offences. They were affronted because they were required to communicate with the prisoners in English via a phone and were not allowed physical contact with them. They complained also that children were forced to see their fathers in a steel room behind Perspex. Hizb ut-Tahrir is obviously extremely well resourced. No effort or expense was spared in mounting this latest move in its propaganda war. In addition to the convenient timing, the conference was very well organised and attended. The venue was comfortable and spacious, the live and video-recorded speeches were beamed onto a large screen, the speakers made full use of the autocue, and a large media contingent was in attendance to fully cover proceedings. Pre-packaged lunches were provided for the 800 participants. Dozens of ushers wore special orange T-shirts proclaiming the conference theme, and a glossy, 36-page booklet was distributed providing legal advice for Muslims anxious to avoid cooperation with police and security agencies. Such cooperation “is outright haram (forbidden)” for Muslims, the publication declared, making clear the incompatibility of Islam and Western societies. Throughout these harangues, “children in prams, toddlers, and teens accompanied their parents and many sat, mesmerised, to speeches suggesting Australia’s escalating counter-terrorism laws were an attack on Islam itself; that Muslims were being forced to surrender to Australian values”, The Canberra Times observed. Even as the NSW government commits $47 million of public money to a program allegedly designed to identify students at risk of radicalisation and to help counter violent extremism in schools, 800 Muslims sat entranced by the rhetoric of the Hizb ut-Tahrir extremists. Entranced and untroubled by any of the pro forma demonstrations and screaming mobs of leftists denouncing racism and ‘Islamophobia’ designed to shut down any criticism of Islamism. Indeed, the Islamist assault on the National Anthem and Australian values has been very successful in publicizing its extremist position and in aggravating and mobilizing a Muslim sense of grievance against their adopted country. In this assault it has been supported by the media and politicians too timid to do anything about its campaign of hate. However, they are only too happy to suppress the other side of the debate. Indeed, it is impossible to ignore the contrast between the elaborate and open nature of this Hizb ut-Tahrir conference and its favourable media coverage, and the situation of the Australian Liberty Alliance. This new political party was forced to keep secret its recent party launch meeting in Perth in an attempt to avoid the usual violent protests by Muslims and the left. Unlike Hizb ut-Tahrir it has received comparatively little media coverage. Moreover, while Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesmen can say the most outrageous and socially divisive things with impunity, the ALA’s featured speaker, Geert Wilders, the leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom, was nearly prevented by the federal government from entering Australia, while the WA state government tried to marginalize the party launch, with Premier Colin Barnett declaring that Wilders would not be allowed to speak in any government venues. Moreover, the usual protesters drowned out the ALA Senate candidates, who had to be protected by security guards. And this coordinated attempt at suppression was implemented despite the fact that, as Paul Sheehan points out: In the months since the immigrant influx, Holland’s most strident critic of Islam, Geert Wilders, has become the country’s most popular leader. His Party for Freedom (PVV), has polled an average 33.5 per cent in recent opinion polls, far more than any other party. The present political situation around the Muslim insurgency appears therefore to be a tale of two conferences. One was a conference held by an avowedly anti-Australian, anti-Western, anti-Christian, anti-democratic group that is seeking to mobilize Muslims against Australia, while the other sought to mobilize Australians in what its literature and platform depict as a democratic effort to defend the nation’s culture and heritage. society. One called for Sharia law and a Muslim Caliphate, and received government sanction and was free to meet; the other called for the protection of democratic liberties, and it was harassed by two governments and violent protesters. However, as the appearance of the ALA, and the growing support for Wilders and other similar European politicians demonstrate, there is a major shift going on in the politics of the many Western nations that are experiencing the effects of the escalating Muslim grievance. Unfortunately, government policy is not reflecting this shift. Instead, it seems to be a policy of appeasement, designed not only to facilitate the hate-mongering of Islamist groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir, but also to further alienate and anger mainstream Australians concerned with such obvious and outrageous double standards. Nothing better demonstrates this increasing alienation and anger than the massive volume of comments made online in response to the media coverage of the national anthem assault and Hizb ut-Tahrir conference proceedings, perhaps four or five times the number that might normally appear on controversial topics. For example, a story in The Australian on Hizb ut-Tahrir and the National Anthem went online at 1:04PM on Monday and had accumulated nearly a thousand responses by the end of the day, many extremely detailed, and most heartfelt and thoughtful. It appears that people are fed up with government policies they perceive as wishy-washy at best. The overwhelming view was, as one comment put it, I can’t stop laughing at how gullible Australian Politicians are, these radical Muslim preachers use democracies and freedom of speech to defeat us, and we do everything to accommodate them. Even the observation of Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison, that the Hizb ut-Tahrir speakers were “clowns”, was dismissed as an uninformed and superficial appreciation of the magnitude and existential nature of the Islamist threat. Typical comments were: For Scott Morrison to label these dangerous terrorists as clowns, just shows how that the gov’t is trying to pull the wool over our eyes. They’re dangerous and they should not be in our country. In describing Hizb ut-Tahrir as ‘clowns’ Scott Morrison is being disingenious; much as David Cameron and Tony Abbott were when describing ISIL as being not really Islam. It is. We don’t want to be placated. The ideals of Hizb ut-Tahrir to establish a global caliphate to rule according to Sharia law is consistent with the ideals of Islam generally. Morrison’s further claims that moderate Muslims are as appalled as he were similarly dismissed, as was the NSW $47 million ‘deradicalization’ program. One comment noted the performances of the new federal education minister, Simon Birmingham, and ALP frontbencher, Tony Burke, on Q&A on Monday night: Tony Burke and the other birks and mealy-mouthed politicians, like Simon Birmingham, just said on Q&A we should be honoured the Anthem is perceived as a joyful event and therefore not to be sung during a Muslim month of morning. The Muslim voting bloc now has to be appeased. Overall, the public commentary on these issues reveals an informed grip on Islam and the issues surrounding the Muslim insurgency far exceeding that demonstrated by professional politicians and the media, which are widely seen as out of touch and slipping behind in their grasp of the magnitude of the problem. The contrasting treatment of Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Australian Liberty Alliance is a measure not only of a major political shift but also of the disaffection among voters caused by ill-considered government policies — a disaffection that could well shape the politics of the next federal parliament.If you think you’re busy at work, be glad you’re not working for the FBI. Be very glad they’re working for you. The FBI is putting in 16-HOUR SHIFTS to sift through the hundreds of thousands of emails discovered in the investigation of Anthony Weiner’s sexting scandal on Oct. 27, 2016. As the result of yet another sexting scandal, Weiner became estranged in August of this year from his wife, the top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin. The wake of this discovery has left the FBI with a tremendous amount of labor-intensive hours ahead of them. “The same multi-agency intelligence task force that was first used on the Clinton email case has been directed to re-engage with a directive to identify new classified material,” Fox News chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge reported today. And those 16-hour shifts? They are daily overlapping shifts that will continue right through the weekends until the task is complete. Classifications on every email still have to be determined, and that’s not something the FBI can decide on its own. “You’re talking weeks or months to understand the classification,” said Herridge. That means those long hours will continue for quite some time. The FBI agency is using “de-dupe” software to eliminate duplicated emails and reduce the time it will take to review every email, making the process somewhat easier to tackle. Each remaining email will be read with “eyes on,” a process that requires considerable time and effort because of the man- and womanpower required to complete such a Herculean task. Huma Abedin’s lawyer reports that learning her emails were on her estranged husband’s laptop surprised her. SHARE on Facebook and Twitter if you support the FBI in their efforts to review these emails and get the job DONE! https://www.wedgies.com/question/57bf43c91896ee160027bcb4Alzheimer’s disease affects many more women age 65 and older than men of that age, a new report suggests. Wednesday’s report from the Alzheimer’s Association in the U.S. estimates a woman’s lifetime risk of developing Alzheimer's at age 65 is 1 in 6 or 17 per cent compared with nearly 1 in 11 or nine per cent for a man. The differences in lifetime risk between women and men are mainly due to women’s longer life expectancy. Age is considered the greatest risk factor for the mind-robbing disease. "Alzheimer’s disease takes a stronger toll on women than men," the report’s authors conclude. "More women than men develop the disease, and women are more likely than men to be informal caregivers for someone with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia." Alzheimer's disease is still largely misunderstood by the public, said Angela Geiger, the association’s chief strategy officer, based on the group’s poll findings. Everyone, male or female, family history or not, is at risk. The impact of Alzheimer's is expected to increase as baby boomers age. The National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired Persons, said more than half of unpaid caregivers — usually immediate family members — said they provide help with getting in and out of bed and one-third offer help with bathing, feeding, getting to and from the toilet and managing incontinence. In 2011, 747, 000 Canadians were living with Alzheimer’s or related dementias, according to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. In 2031, 1.4 million Canadians are expected to have the disease.On the Fourth of July in the year 2017, North Korea successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Alaska, posing a serious and unexpected threat to the United States — and apparently disrupting U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley's holiday plans. Spending my 4th in meetings all day. #ThanksNorthKorea — Nikki Haley (@nikkihaley) July 4, 2017 Haley would tweet again a couple of hours later, noting that North Korea's new capability to bomb other continents has implications besides more meetings. She would share Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's words calling the test “a global threat,” and call for the U.N. Security Council to convene on the issue Wednesday (yet another meeting). But the ambassador's initial “#ThanksNorthKorea” complaint about Independence Day meetings racked up more than 11,000 replies on Twitter, and there wasn't much sympathy for Haley. Most comments broke down along the lines of “do your job!” and “other people are doing harder jobs today.” Spending my 4th using diplomacy to prevent nuclear annihilation. #GodBlessAmerica Fixed it for you Nikki — Heather Whaley (@HeatherWhaley) July 5, 2017 “Did you think being the United States ambassador to the United Nations was a 9-5 job with holidays off?” wrote one self-described “political activist” (who boasts in his Twitter bio that he's been # BlockedByTrump). Meanwhile, BuzzFeed's Jason Leopold offered Haley a link to an ABC News explainer of her job description — “in the event you are unaware of what it entails.” We'll save you the trouble of reading it yourself. The former South Carolina governor, who had no foreign policy experience before President Trump appointed her, is paid to advocate for American goals at the United Nations, to its nearly 200 member nations, especially in times of crisis. And this is a crisis, according to the experts. They say North Korea had not been expected to deliver a weapon with intercontinental range so soon, and will likely manage to eventually attach a nuclear warhead to one of them. According to a former acting CIA director, any military response to Pyongyang would risk a catastrophic war. Haley's spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment about her tweet. The ambassador did have her defenders on Twitter, though. One appreciated her “lighthearted” take on the issue. But such sentiments were drowned out by unending comparisons to other people who had to work on the Fourth, too. “I just saw an ambulance go down my street,” wrote Jim Hollifield. “Doubt they'd be all, 'Thanks, stroke patient,' or whatever situation they're facing on the 4th.” The teenaged girl who served my cold brew this morning didn't complain about it at all, putting her a step above @nikkihaley. — The Last Lisa (@RogueParksFan) July 4, 2017 By far the most popular working folks cited by Haley's critics were “the nearly 200,000 US troops serving overseas on #FourthOfJuly,” as Andrew Weinstein — a top Obama fundraiser — put it. “I spent July 4th 2003 on walking patrol in Tikrit, Iraq you got it easy,” wrote one member of the #VetsAgainstTrump brigade. “Might want to think before you tweet.” . Kudos. Spending a holiday working for American security is unprecedented. pic.twitter.com/QpqERnnd0i — Jake Query (@jakequery) July 4, 2017 Again, the condemnation was not universal. Some noted that Haley's husband is in the National Guard, so the ambassador is likely familiar with the strictures of a military schedule. But it made little difference. The digs kept coming, with one woman telling the ambassador about her husband in the U.S. Army and his four tours in Afghanistan, holidays and anniversaries notwithstanding. “Stop whining,” she wrote. Inevitably, all this talk of soldiers circled back to the original theme of the holiday. I'm pretty sure my ancestors who fought in the American Revolution were also thinking, "Thanks, Redcoats. There goes my long weekend." pic.twitter.com/IaPCjDVpQW — Tomm (@SumTomGoingOn) July 5, 2017 Actually, the Fourth of July does not mark any particular battle. On that day in 1776, the members of the Continental Congress gathered in a room and discussed a long list of things: the procurement of flint, the appointment of bureaucrats, the deployment of militias. At some point in the agenda, they also adopted the Declaration of Independence. In other words, it was a day of meetings. More reading: North Korea missile launch marks a direct challenge to Trump administration U.S. and South Korea confirm ICBM test, launch joint military exercises Trump’s U.N. ambassador emerges as fierce but unnuanced voice on foreign policy Nikki Haley shows moxie — but will she keep her job?Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Professor Christopher Shaw says there should be "clear barriers" to stop some experiments that may be possible in the future Better regulation is needed to govern rapidly expanding research in animals containing human tissue or genes, the Academy of Medical Sciences says. It said such studies were necessary for medical research, but that new ethical issues could emerge and called for a national body of experts. It said "category three" experiments on monkey brains, resulting in "human-like" behaviour, should be banned. The government said it would consider the recommendations. Dr Robin Lovell-Badge, from the National Institute for Medical Research, said: "Everyone laughs at talking meerkats and cats with opposable thumbs, but if we were actually doing that in the labs I don't think people would be so happy." Cancer drugs Introducing human material into animals has furthered medical research. Putting human breast tumour cells into mice has allowed researchers to test cancer drugs on human tissue. Experiments on animals that lead to possible human characteristics are something the Academy of Medical Sciences has spent nearly two years considering Fergus Walsh's blog Stroke damaged mice showed some recovery when their brains were injected with human neural stem cells, which has led to human clinical trials. Mice with Down's syndrome have had a whole human chromosome added to their genome to help researchers learn more about the condition. Professor Christopher Shaw, from King's College London and one of the report's authors, said animals with human material were "hugely important. Is [the field] going to shrink and go away? No. I'm confident it will lead to new treatments." The academy report said it was anticipating "a major increase in the use of these techniques". However it raised concerns that some cases would fall through gaps in the regulation. The authors said that, for example, experiments on an embryo which contained predominantly human material would be controlled by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and the embryo would not progress beyond 14 days. For embryos which are mostly animal, but contained some human material, they said there was "no regulation at all". Animal research is regulated by the Home Office's animal procedures committee. Professor Martin Bobrow, chair of the Academy of Medical Sciences, said: "Our report recommends that the Home Office puts in place a national expert body, within the existing stringent system of animal research regulation, to provide specific advice on sensitive types of 'animals containing human material' research." The academy recommended three classifications for research on animals containing human material. Most would be "category one" and have no more restrictions than any other study on animals. 'Valuable study' Category two experiments could be allowed but "would require strong scientific justification". The report suggested this would include adding genes to non-human primates and significant changes to an animal to make it "more human-like". Category three experiments would not be allowed, such as letting any mixed embryo develop past 14 days or breeding animals with human influenced sperm or egg cells and modifying non-human primates to create human-like awareness or behaviour. Professor Bobrow was keen to stress that "nobody has done any of these things", but the Academy of Medical Sciences said it wanted guidelines in place rather than waiting until the horse had bolted. Home Office Minister Lynne Featherstone said: "We welcome the valuable contribution of this study to the understanding of the complex ethical, scientific and animal welfare issues involved in this area of research. "We will consider the recommendations carefully."The Chuwi Hi10 Pro is a cheap tablet that dual-boots Windows 10 and Android Lollipop and to which you can add a stylus and keyboard to turn it into a cheap portable laptop. But is it any good? Read our Chuwi Hi10 Pro review to find out. Also see: Best budget tablets Also see: Best Black Friday Laptop Deals Chuwi Hi10 Pro review: Price and UK availability You won’t find a Windows 10 tablet much cheaper than this, with the Chuwi Hi10 Pro currently costing £128.53 at GearBest. The optional keyboard dock (a recommended purchase) is an extra £29.31, also from GearBest, while the HiPen H2 stylus can be bought from Geekbuying for £11.16. That’s a total price of £169, but note that you could be asked to pay import duty upon its arrival to the UK that would take the total price closer to £200. Even so, that’s a tiny amount of money for a product that is Windows 10 tablet, Android tablet, Windows 10 laptop and Android laptop. Buying products from China typically returns huge savings, but you should always take into account the risks. Products can take several weeks to arrive, depending on which shipping option you select, and if they are faulty you’ll have the hassle of returning them at your cost and dealing with customer services in a non-EU country with different legislation. We’ve outlined some of the pros and cons in our separate article on buying grey-market tech, which is worth a read before you buy. Also see: Best budget laptops Chuwi Hi10 Pro review: Design and build You might be paying less than £200, but you wouldn’t think it to look at Chuwi’s range of Windows 10 hybrids. In common with its brothers, the Hi10 Pro has a full metal build with chamfered edges that is reasonably stylish and feels built to last. Also see: Best Windows tablets and Best Android tablets There are some giveaways of its budget roots, for example some rather thick screen bezels, a display that attracts fingerprints and some unsightly legends on the rear, but on the whole build quality is good. The display, bar the fingerprint issue, is among the highlights, an IPS panel with a full-HD resolution of 1920x1200 pixels. It’s clear and bright enough in all but the sunniest conditions, and its 16:10 aspect ratio is well suited to media. Colours are realistic and viewing angles are good; perhaps more importantly, at 10.1in on the diagonal it makes for a very portable laptop. See all budget laptop reviews The Hi10 Pro measures 261.8x167.3x8.5mm and weighs 562g, making it easy to slip into a bag and carry wherever you want. Adding the keyboard roughly doubles the weight, but it’s still an easily portable package. This tablet-laptop hybrid is the Pro version of the older Chuwi Hi10. We haven’t reviewed that device, but from what we can understand this is a thinner version that swaps full-size USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports for a faster-charging and reversible USB-C port. Both tablets also feature Micro-USB and Micro-HDMI ports, though only the USB-C port will charge the Hi10 Pro (you’d be better off using this port for charging since it supports 3A even if you had the choice). See all budget tablet reviews. As a result of the slimmer build (8.5mm vs 9.5mm) an insignificant 100mAh has been knocked off the battery, which is not enough to make a huge impact on runtime. Whereas you could get around eight hours from the Hi10, according to Chuwi, the Pro can still offer a good seven hours-plus, which should get you through the working day. The Pro version also adds the HiPen H2 stylus support. Despite the Pro moniker it’s running Windows 10 Home rather than Pro, though this version of the Hi10 does also boot into Android. It’s geriatric Android 5.1 Lollipop, customised with the colourful Remix 2.0 UI, but we like the fact it opens the door to a range of third-party software options that are otherwise not available in Windows 10. Chuwi supplied to us the compatible keyboard and stylus, which are otherwise paid-for optional extras. The HiPen H2 is an active electronic stylus, which means it won’t work with tablets that don’t support it and must be turned on for the Hi10 Pro to recognise it, though it is quick to charge via the Micro-USB port at one end and easy to click on and off. We like the thin nib, which makes handwriting more accurate and legible, while Chuwi says it’s also good for drawing artwork onscreen if you have the talent. If you use the Edge browser or OneNote app built into Windows 10, you’ll appreciate the stylus for taking advantage of Edge’s ability to annotate web pages and for making quick handwritten notes in OneNote if nothing else. The stylus supports 256 levels of pressure sensitivity, though we were possibly pushing a little too hard since its rubber tracks were visible on the panel when we switched off the display. The keyboard is of greater use to us, a magnetic docking version that is powered by a connection on the tablet, meaning you don’t need to remember to keep it topped up. The hinge is very sturdy, and does a good job keeping the Hi10 Pro propped up at a comfortable angle in laptop mode, without allowing it to tip back so far that the Chuwi becomes unstable. The keyboard also adds two full-size USB ports to the tablet, which will come in handy if you want to plug in a USB drive or mouse, though the one-piece trackpad built into this keyboard is an improvement over that of the Chuwi Hi12 and nowhere near as erratic. See all laptop reviews This is a US keyboard, which is annoying for UK users, but it’s quite comfortable to type on with reasonably large and well spaced keys. It really does make tapping out emails and documents much easier than using the onscreen keyboard, and as such we’d highly recommend it as an additional purchase for the Hi10 Pro. The only real problem we found with the build is the stereo speakers, which are low down on either side of the tablet and easily muffled by the hand when used as a tablet rather than a laptop. They’re also not as loud as we’d like, and rather tinny at full volume. But there’s nothing to stop you plugging in a pair of headphones via the 3.5mm jack. See all tablet reviews You also get 2Mp cameras at the front and rear of the tablet. You might use the front camera for Skype video chats, but you're unlikely to want to take any photos with the rear camera. Chuwi Hi10 Pro review: Hardware and performance In common with all the budget Chinese Windows 10 tablet/laptops we’ve reviewed, the Chuwi Hi10 Pro runs the 1.44GHz Intel Atom X5 (Cherry Trail) Z8300 chip with 4GB of LPDDR3 RAM and 64GB of flash storage. There’s also support for up to 128GB via microSD, which may come in handy given that some of that built-in storage is shared with the Android partition and very little is going spare. Of the 58.2GB available to Windows 10, 49.5GB had been consumed once we had installed our benchmarks. It’s not the most powerful hardware combination, and won’t make for a gaming laptop, but for web browsing, social media and emails it’s an ideal selection that won’t place a massive strain on the battery. As you would expect performance is in line with those other laptops, with 2144 points scored in Geekbench 4 and 1041 in PCMark 8. We were unable to install our GFXBench graphics benchmark on the Hi10 Pro, but would expect it to achieve similar performance to the Chuwi HiBook. You can compare those results below. Read next: Best laptop 2016 Follow Marie Brewis on Twitter.For someone who famously hypnotised Christopher Nolan with his performance, and his penetrating eyes, in not one but two Batman movies, Cillian Murphy seems keen to pass as anonymously as possible in interviews: a dad of two young sons, with his partner of almost 20 years (visual artist Yvonne McGuinness), he lives in the unglitzy London borough of Kilburn and says his only vices are “Tabasco on everything” and Dragons’ Den. “I can watch Dragons’ Den for hours,” he says. “Why are they in that warehouse? Why is the music so ominous? Why are they sitting there with piles of cash like mini-dictators. Such terrible people, all of them. It’s riveting.” You’d never guess that as a teenager this slight, unassuming man was the frontman in a Frank Zappa-inspired band with a five-album deal. The roles that he’s played since he dropped out of his law degree to become an actor have also hardly been quiet supporting turns. Danny Boyle, who gave Murphy his big break as the lead in 2002’s 28 Days Later and then put him in his sci-fi epic Sunshine, says the actor is still underrated. Ken Loach, who directed Murphy in Palme d’Or-winning The Wind That Shakes the Barley, described his instinct as “dead right” and “quite rare”. Murphy is about to return to the screen as Tommy Shelby, the Somme-scarred leader of the Peaky Blinders, a gang who roamed Birmingham in the early 1900s, slashing their victims with razor blades sewn into flat caps. The show was supposed to be a one-off: a moody period piece with a steampunk fetish, doing its best to look less Hovis ad, more HBO. In this second series Tom Hardy joins the cast but Murphy is still the main weapon. “I’m really a wimp,” he says, dressed in the uniform of the off-duty actor: T-shirt, leather jacket, dark jeans. “It’s nice to play a guy who’s tough. I’d only played two villains and they were more psychological.” (The Scarecrow in The Dark Knight Rises and Rachel McAdams’s stalker in Red Eye.) “Tommy Shelby,” says Murphy, “is properly tough.” Nolan, who also cast Murphy in Inception, said he tried to pack in as many close-ups of Murphy’s blue eyes as possible. Oh, those eyes – huge, blue marbles that seem to work almost as a separate entity to their owner: there are tumblrs solely devoted to Murphy’s career-defining peepers. And yet Murphy, the son of two teachers from the west of Ireland, finds himself in an apparently rare category for an actor with his talent and looks: celebrated without being a celebrity, in-demand with no reputation for being demanding. “It’s the easiest thing in the world to do!” he says. “Don’t go to openings, don’t go to those parties. It’s avoidable.” Although he thinks the pressures are more “upsetting and aggressive” for women, he believes “there are still lots of people at a high level” who manage to stay grounded. “I wish it was easier for me, but it’s excruciating. Who likes talking about themselves?” Actors! I say. He cringes. Murphy’s first (and last) TV interview took place just three years ago, on the Late Show in Ireland. “Logically, the less people know about you, the more convincing you are playing someone else. It’s glaringly obvious to me. I get the bus, I get the tube, I go to the shop and get the milk and do normal things. I would hate it if that became impossible. As an actor, you’re supposed to be playing real people so it seems essential to live like a normal person.” Cillian Murphy in series two of Peaky Blinders. Photograph: BBC If his refusal to play the celebrity game has harmed his status in Hollywood, he seems wholly unbothered. He has managed to hop, credibly, between blockbusters and budget films, TV and theatre – and is presently getting rave reviews in Ballyturk at the National Theatre, a play written and directed by his long-time friend and collaborator Enda Walsh. Still, his agents must get furious when he refuses to cash in on the “heat” generated by some of his movies. “The thing people fail to realise is that the agents work for us. The agents don’t tell us what to do. Or they don’t tell me what to do. I tell them what I’m doing.” He smiles. “The only thing I’ve tried to stick to, and I’ve repeated it ad nauseum, is to follow the good writing. I don’t want to go to America and up sticks to wherever a shoot may be for 12 months. I’ve got young kids, you don’t really want to uproot the family for a year.” Peaky Blinders, he says, “doesn’t preclude me from doing other work I want to do”. Ballyturk is a case in point. Deliberately contrived to go over your head but burrow under your skin, the play revels in having no plot and little logic, just plenty of manic, funny clowning instead. It’s probably the most demanding physical performance London’s National Theatre will stage all year: Murphy, appearing alongside Mikel Murfi and Stephen Rea, ends the show drenched in sweat, sometimes “needing to drink four pints really quickly”, and sometimes going straight home to bed. Murphy is so adept at giving so little away that you begin to understand why he clicks so well with Walsh and his work. “Art shouldn’t be prescriptive,” he says. “It should be what you want, it should be interpretive. Enda doesn’t ask any questions – or answer them. And I love that.” • Peaky Blinders returns to BBC2 on 2 October and BBC First in Australia on 16 OctoberThis is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN: Last year’s failed Copenhagen climate summit put the divide between rich and poor countries on full display. The US and China were criticized for refusing to accept major emissions cuts, while the US and other Western nations led opposition to the principle of climate reparations — compensating poorer countries for the devastation of global warming. But another divide appears to have worsened in Copenhagen, and that’s a divide within the environmental movement itself. Major environmental groups are coming under criticism from within their own ranks for taking positions that some say are antithetical to
landmark that was also used in Uncle Buck, another film with John Candy. At the request of producer John Hughes (a Chicagoan and big fan of the Chicago White Sox) and sports fan John Candy, the baseball stadium where Danny and Theresa's first date took place was arranged to be set at old Comiskey Park (home of the Chicago White Sox until 1990). Hughes hastily arranged the filming, as the stadium was slated to be torn down imminently. There is also a shot showing old Comiskey Park and the new Guaranteed Rate Field, the current home of the White Sox, under construction next door. Comiskey Park was located at the corner of 35th St. and Shields Ave., on the South Side of Chicago. The scene where Danny and Theresa kiss along Lake Michigan is located at Lincoln Park, Chicago, and the dinner scene was shot at One Ambassador East, also known as the Ambassador East Hotel, located at 1301 North State Parkway in Chicago's Gold Coast. The final scene with Danny and Theresa was shot at the Amtrak station in Niles, Michigan, which was renamed to Willoughby and decorated with Christmas lights for the filming.[1] Music [ edit ] Roy Orbison's hit song "Only the Lonely", on which the movie's title is based, is played in its entirety in the movie's opening scene. "Someone Like You" by Van Morrison is played during one of Danny and Theresa's dates. "Dreams to Remember" by Etta James is played, also in its entirety. Also, "Pachelbel's Canon" is played briefly during the wedding scene. The film's original music was composed and conducted by Maurice Jarre. The soundtrack album was released by Varèse Sarabande, featuring 28 minutes of Jarre's score and the songs "Only the Lonely" and "Someone Like You." Reception [ edit ] Only the Lonely received mixed to positive reviews from critics and currently holds a 64% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 22 reviews.When I was growing up, my mother hated the word “hate,” which she believed should be reserved for the only most genuinely heinous of people, things, or situations. So, I might hate Hitler, or poverty, or napalm—things which rarely found their way into my childhood discourse—but I could not hate, for example, the bizarre pairing of SpaghettiOs and creamed corn that my older sister routinely requested as her special birthday meal. I could find them “distasteful,” or “unappetizing,” or any of a number of options my mother would suggest. My brother could “disagree” with Nixon’s policies, but he could not profess hate for the man. “You don’t know him personally. You cannot possibly ‘hate’ him,” she would insist. “Hate” was a big-ticket word not to be squandered on annoying siblings or corrupt politicians. My mother’s semantic ethics on this point have stayed with me throughout my life, so I’ve never been one to throw around words like “hate,” “hater,” or “hate speech” casually. Words are of course powerful things, filled with the potential for hurt and shame that can linger for years, poisoning souls and relationships in ways that can be nigh on impossible to repair. But a quote from conservative pastor Rick Warren that has been popping up all over my Facebook page the last couple days—in the stinging aftermath of the “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day” spectacle engineered by Mike Huckabee—got me thinking that sometimes, despite and maybe because of its impact on relationships, “hate” is exactly the right word. Now, to be fair, Warren’s quote is taken well out of context by Chick-fil-A Christians from an interview on Christian-Muslim relations earlier this year. Still, they are deploying the quote in support of their words and actions last week, which, if the Hatfield-McCoy Facebook behaviors of some of my own friends and family members can be taken as somewhat representative, did no small amount of damage to relationships. I’d almost feel badly for Warren, given the way that Chick-fil-A Christians are misusing a quote from a much longer, much more thoughtful conversation, but he’s done little to distance himself from the controversy or to encourage the respectful speech and behavior which the quote suggests. To wit [the tweet below appears to have been deleted a day later, as noted by Leah McElrath in HuffPo. —Eds.]: In any case, Warren’s statement seems to nod in the direction of a more thoughtful use of hard words, chiding angry LGBTQ people and their advocates, and lauding the compassion and conviction-driven speech and actions of Chick-fil-A Christians: Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear them or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don’t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate. I say the Warren quote “seems to nod” because there’s much more going on in the quote as it’s deployed than an appeal for civility, tolerance, and thoughtful speech. Rather, the quote manipulates the sentiments with which my mother would have agreed in the service of a huge lie of which she certainly wouldn’t have approved: That the people who lined up in droves at Chick-fil-A restaurants last Wednesday and then crowed about their support for “family values,” “biblical convictions,” and the poor, beleaguered Cathys all over Facebook and Twitter, do not, in fact, hate LGBTQ people or fear the ways in which they see the increasing acceptance of LGBTQ people changing an American culture that bends less and less to their prooftexting, biblically illiterate, historically and politically ignorant wills. Because they do hate. They do fear. You don’t have to go much further than Twitter to put your finger on the pulse of that: Now, there are people who say that these sorts of haters are on the conservative lunatic fringe, that they’re not the same as the majority of conservative Christians who marched themselves and their impressionable children into Chick-fil-As all over the country. Well, yes and no. Yes, these wingnuts are more vocal and use more incendiary language than perhaps do many of the people who chowed down on fried processed chicken patties and waffle fries last week—at least in public. But, no, that doesn’t mean the rest of the lot, who incline more toward the specious “free speech” and “biblical marriage” arguments of which we’ve all grown tired, are not also haters. That would be nonsense. Seeing them otherwise relies on another huge lie that the Warren quote proffers. That lie is this: When people say that certain kinds of speech are “hateful,” and that the people who say such things are “haters,” they’re actually saying that a specific person is saying the equivalent of “I hate you personally, gay man or lesbian. You, over there…” When they say someone is “phobic,” they’re saying that person is literally afraid that the subject of their words will directly, personally harm the speaker. Again, this is nonsense. Rather, when people say certain kinds of speech are “hateful,” or that some sort of fear or “phobia” is evidenced by the hate speech, they’re pointing to the participation of that language in a rhetorical system that the people to whom the language is directed experience as having the emotional and often material effect of being hated. If you say hateful things to or about me, I’m going to experience you as a hater, whether or not you’ve ever personally said anything even vaguely unkind to me directly. Likewise, when they (and I’ll just claim myself as one of them, so, actually, “we”), when we say that certain conservative stock words and phrases are “homophobic,” we’re not suggesting that an individual person has an irrational fear of another individual person who is homosexual (though we do know that this does happen, too). Instead, we’re talking about the way in which the person’s language participates in a rhetorical system that demeans and demonizes lesbians and gays to the extent that it creates a general fear among some self-identified heterosexuals that a nefarious “gay agenda” is afoot that will somehow undermine heterosexual relationships, families, and society in general. So, of course it is not the case that you have to agree with everything an individual person does or says in order to genuinely love her or him as an individual person in the context of a specific interpersonal relationship. However, when you use conservative coded language like “lifestyle” to describe the lives of a particular category or class of people, you are engaging in hate speech, you are perpetuating a rhetoric of fear, even when you surround such rhetoric with words like “love” and “compassion.” You can think you “love” me personally all you want, and you may enjoy my winning personality endlessly. We can disagree all day long about whether taxing the wealthy is the best way to heal the economy or which direction the toilet paper roll should go and still be the best of friends. But when you speak and act in ways that seek to limit the civil liberties, increase the risk of discrimination and violence, and damage the psychological and spiritual well-being of me and people like me as a group, you are not being loving. You are not being compassionate. And, for what it’s worth, you don’t come off as particularly Christian, either—at least not the kind of Christian that anyone would recognize through a cursory scan of Jesus’ teachings. Furthermore, when you call me “unbiblical,” “unnatural,” and say I’m bent on destroying society with my “sinful lifestyle” and then complain that you’re being judged unfairly because I call that “hate” and I call that “phobic”; when you want to lean on the First Amendment for your own opinions then try to call up Miss Manners when I object—well, that’s just nonsense, too. In the face of that kind of nonsense, I feel pretty confident that my late mother would smile down from whatever sweet by-and-by in which she is now gently correcting other angels’ grammar and usage when I say, I hate haters and their hateful phobic hate speech. But surely my hate isn’t the final word. Nope, for that I turn to the prophet Amos, to whom the Lord spoke with words on which Chick-fil-A Christian haters might like to reflect before their next hater-phobic-festival:Gamba Osaka 0-1 Kashiwa Reysol: Watanabe's strike puts Reysol on top of Japan summit Relegated Osaka were arguably the better team throughout, but surrendered the match's lone goal on a first-half set piece to allow the Sun Kings to capture the lead In the traditional end to the Japanese football calendar and the first championship match of 2013, Kashiwa Reysol captured the Emperor's Cup on Tuesday with a 1-0 win over Gamba Osaka. In a dramatic conclusion to relegation-stricken Gamba's season, the Kansai club pressured early and often throughout the first half with national team star Yasuhito Endo's free kicks a constant threat. Brazilian Leandro, whose mid-season arrival heralded 14 goals in 15 appearances, forced Reysol goalkeeper Takanori Sugeno to make no small number of desperate saves. But it was a Reysol free kick in the 35th minute that resulted in the only goal of the match. Leandro Domingues' corner kick was met sharply by an unmarked Hirofumi Watanabe, whose header rocketed into the back of the net. Gamba defender Daiki Niwa was the villain on the play as he appeared to make no effort to cover Watanabe in the air. Reysol found their attacking momentum in the second half, with several break-aways nearly leading to a second goal. But although Gamba recovered defensively, they were unable to find an equalizer against a Reysol who were content to defend until the final whistle. The 2011 J-League champions booked a return to Asian Champions League play with the Cup win, their first since the Hitachi SC era. Reysol also became the fifth J-League club to have won all four domestic trophies: the J-League, the J-League Cup, the Emperor's Cup, and the Super Cup. Meanwhile, Gamba are facing their first-ever stay in the J-League's second division following their 17th-place finish in 2012. The club quickly announced the long-expected replacement of coach Masanobu Matsunami with former Shimizu S-Pulse manager Kenta Hasegawa following Tuesday's result, and the lack of Asian play could hasten the departure of top players such as Endo, national team defender Yasuyuki Konno, and former Mallorca bench-warmer Akihiro Ienaga. With club president Kikuo Kanamori also departing, the 2008 Asian champions will be faced with the task of rebuilding their front office in addition to their roster. Reysol, who join league winners Sanfrecce Hiroshima as well as Vegalta Sendai and Urawa Reds in representing Japan, will open their second ACL campaign at Guizhou Renhe on February 27. They are also grouped with the A-League's Central Coast Mariners and Korea's Suwon Bluewings.A man from Kosovo believes he is the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, the Nazi dictator to whom he bears a striking, eerie resemblance. Emin Djinovci, a 49-year-old Kosovan from Mitrovica, sports a jet black mustache and slicks his hair to one side, according the the Daily Mail. Traveling everywhere with a copy of Mein Kampf, Hitler’s manifesto, Djinovci earns his living as a Hitler look-alike, charging tourists roughly $90 for a photograph. Billing himself as Kosovo’s reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, Djinovci originates from Germany, which he left in 1998 in order to fight for secession from Serbia. He asserts that in this cause, he finds common ground with the real Adolf Hitler. “I am proud of my likeness to the Fuhrer because, like him, I fought against the Serbs – my enemies,” he said in an interview with InSerbia News. “It is easy. I find myself in Hitler’s character because he fought against my enemy. Enemy of my enemy is my friend. Yes, Serbs are my enemies.” Man claims to be Adolf Hitler’s reincarnation, earns £60 a time posing with tourists f… http://t.co/ZMjU763BC7 pic.twitter.com/kfW0gnHD2W — David Jones (@_dpaj) December 26, 2014 Djinovci has five daughters, whom he calls “Hitler’s children.” As Metro notes, he would face arrest in Germany for the same actions, as glorifying Hitler or the Nazi regime is considered a serious crime, and prohibited by law. Local business leaders in Kosovo, however, reportedly have little problem with Djinovci’s method of earning a living, pointing out that it shows “great enterprise.” Adolf Hitler, in Poland, talking to some of his generals, c. 1939 pic.twitter.com/wz9mGiuUfW — Old Pics Archive (@oldpicsarchive) December 24, 2014 Earlier this month, a reminder of Hitler’s brutal regime was discovered in Brazil, as police noted a swastika emblazoned upon the bottom of a swimming pool. Flying overhead as part of an unrelated investigation, the officers were stunned to notice the Nazi symbol, which as the Inquisitr reported, had been in place for 13 years. As the swastika and pool reside on private property, officials were unable to file charges against the owner. Adolf Hitler practices his speaking gestures in front of an imaginary audience, 1925 pic.twitter.com/t7Y5knLXNH — Historical Pics (@VeryOldPics) December 25, 2014 Hitler ordered German forces to invade Yugoslavia and Greece in April of 1941. During that time, the majority of the Yugoslavian population consisted of Serbs and Croats. During the course of the Second World War, Serbs were widely persecuted by the occupying Axis forces. Though he is remembered as the leader of Germany’s Nazi party, Adolf Hitler was actually born in Austria. [Image: YouTube/ new scene 2014 via the Daily Mail]After waiting a decade to play Final Fantasy XV, a lot of gamers have been pouring hours into the title. The highly anticipated JRPG is rich with story and complex character motivations, and some gamers curious about what all of it means and how it ties into the ending, well this article will help lay out the basics. Final Fantasy XV starts before the tragic events that take place in Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV. Just before the signing of the peace treaty between King Regis and Niflheim’s Emperor Iedolas Aldercapt, Regis sends his son Noctis off to marry Lady Lunafreya. The marriage has been planned years in advance and Noctis and Luna have known each other since childhood. Noctis is joined by his friend Prompto, his guardian Gladiolus and his mentor Ignis. The four make the journey to Altissia for the marriage but are stopped when when they receive news along the way that their capital city Insomnia was attacked by Niflheim forces and that King Regis was killed during the attack. The Niflheim forces used the peace treaty as a ruse in order to invade the Insomnia capital and steal the crystal that powered and protected the kingdom of Lucis. One of the Kingsglaive elite guards named Nyx was able to ward off the attack on Insomnia after the Empire stole the crystal that protected the city from daemons. However, Nyx and three of the six magical guardians die in the process of bringing down an arch daemon that was wrecking havoc on Insomnia. Nyx also manages to take down the leader of the Kingsglaive, Titus Drautos, who betrayed King Regis. Noctis meets up with another member of the Kingsglaive, Marshal Cor. He’s instructed by the Marshal to retrieve power from ancient tombs of Lucis in order to get strong enough to bring down the Empire and rid the land of daemons. Along the way they meet the mysterious Chancellor of the Empire named Ardyn, who helps them on multiple occasions. The Empire seeks to capture Noctis and his friends, forcing them to stay on the run whenever they encounter too many Imperial forces. Nevertheless, the boy band still attack their bases and wipe out small numbers of the Imperial troops whenever possible. While continuing the mission to get stronger and reclaim his throne from the Empire, Noctis learns that he not only has to retrieve the power from the tombs of Lucis’ past kings, but he must also prove himself worthy of the power of the ancient beasts, which sees him having to “tame” a Titan, a Leviathan, the goddess Shiva and Ramuh. Noctis manages to complete the tests for Ramuh and the Titan, but upon venturing to Altissia to deal with the Leviathan, things go sour. Noctis and Luna work together to tame Leviathan, but in doing so Noctis is knocked unconscious and and Ardyn flies his ship down and proceeds to stab Luna in the stomach. Luna ends up dying but she gives Noctis the ring of power before doing so. The ring originally belonged to King Regis, but it was cut from his finger during the fight that broke out in the citadel at the capital during the Niflheim invasion. Previously, Luna’s brother Ravus attempted to take the ring during the attack against King Regis but the spirit guardians rejected Ravus’ request for power and took his arm instead. Before dying, Regis retrieved the ring from Ravus and gave it to Luna for safekeeping so that she could return to it Noct. After Luna dies, Noct and the others continue their journey to retrieve the rest of the power from the tombs. But more tragedy strikes as Ignis reveals that he’s completely lost his eyesight after the battle with the Leviathan. As the four boys reconcile their mission the Imperial forces attack the train they’re riding on and Ardyn uses the opportunity to trick Noct with a spell to get him to attack Prompto during the fight with the Empire, causing Prompto to fall off the train. Ardyn captures Prompto while Noctis, a blind Ignis and Gladiolus reach Shiva and Noctis is given her blessings. However, Ardyn ends up taking away Noctis’ powers, forcing them to travel to Gralea, the capital of the Empire. Without any weapons, Noctis is forced to wear the ring given to him by Luna to destroy small nearby daemons. He eventually happens upon the body of Ravus, who had taken King Regis’ sword during the attack on Insomnia. Ravus, however, is killed by Ardyn and has his robotic arm severed. Noct recovers Regis’ sword from nearby Ravus’ body and proceeds to rescue Prompto and recover the crystal. Things don’t go as planned, however, and Noctis is sucked inside the crystal where Bahamut explains that his lineage is supposed to protect the world from daemons. It turns out that Ardyn Izunia’s real name is Ardyn Lucis Caelum and thousands of years before he was supposed to be the proper heir to the throne and protect the world from daemons. However, Ardyn was used by the king to heal the people by exorcising the daemons and storing them in his own soul. Ardyn grew extremely powerful but was ostracized by the Lucis king and cast out. Ardyn – due to the powers gifted to him – became immortal and was denied a right into the afterlife due to the amount of taint on his soul from the daemons he held within – the same daemons he saved the people from. Unable to rest in peace and unable to die, Ardyn bid his time well, soothe saying the Emperor of Niflheim and becoming the Chancellor for the Empire. He plotted, meanwhile, to overthrow the Lucis King and take back his kingdom. Ardyn wanted the world to be rid of the crystal and the Lucis lineage, and in order to do so he needed Noct to join and become one with the crystal, hence his plan to help Noctis along the way and to lure him to the crystal and get the ring to Noct (since the only way to absorb the crystal’s power would be through the ring). Only in joining with the crystal and emerging with its true power would Ardyn be able to destroy the champion of Lucis, the crystal’s power, and the ring for good. Bahamut explains to Noctis, however, that it’s possible to kill Ardyn, but he has so many daemons trapped within that it would take a great deal of power and a great sacrifice to purge Ardyn’s soul from thousands of years of having daemons tainting his being. Thus, only the chosen champion who merges all the crystal’s power into the ring can defeat Ardyn, but must do so at the expense and sacrifice of his own life and with the help of the past Lucean guardians in the realm beyond. King Regis knew that Noctis would have to give up his life to save the land, and Luna also knew since she was an oracle, and her job was actually to help aid the chosen one in securing enough power in order to complete the task of ridding the world of daemons. Both Regis and Luna never told Noctis about his true fate, leading him to believe that he was actually being groomed to be king over Lucis and that he was supposed to marry Luna and rule honorably. In reality, he was being groomed to die. The process of Noctis combining with the crystal takes place over the course of a decade, and Noctis ends up on Angelgard. He manages to return to Galdin Quay and meets up with the rest of the boy band who are now ten years removed from their youth. A decade on and Ardyn’s spread of darkness has taken over Lucis, with eternal night basking the land in a scourge of daemons. Noctis manages to reunite with the boy band and they make one final assault on the capital of Insomnia, where Ardyn has usurped the throne. Prompto, Gladiolus and Ignis presumably die while fending off the throne room from a horde of demons. In a one-on-one fight Noctis manages to defeat Ardyn with his newfound power from the crystal, but the only way to fully upend the daemon infestation is to purge the soul of Ardyn in the afterlife. Thus Noctis gives up his own life in order to use the power of the Lucean lineage from the realm beyond, and he’s aided by deceased loved ones such as Luna, Regis, Prompto, Gladiolus and Ignis, so that he can purge Ardyn’s soul of daemons and cleanse Lucis of the forever night with which the land was cursed. After cleansing Ardyn’s soul the credits roll. A mid-credit scene reveals that Noctis had difficulty expressing his feelings to the rest of the boy band during their final night before attacking the capital of Insomnia. The four of them reconciled that it would be their final night together before they would have to give up their lives for the world. A post-credit scene shows that in a dream-like sequence (possibly indicating a moment in the afterlife during the ascension) Luna and Noctis are happily married. The two lovingly rule over the land of Lucis. As the game finally ends, this post-credit scene shared between Luna and Noctis is their final fantasy. TL;DR: Everybody dies trying to save Noctis because he’s the chosen one to restore light to the land and remove a growing daemon invasion from an immortal savior named Ardyn, who became tainted over time. The only way to remove the daemon threat for good requires Noctis to give up his own life and purge all the daemons from Ardyn’s soul in the afterlife. Thus even Noctis dies at the end in order to restore the kingdom of Lucis and remove all the daemons from the land.SAN JOSE — San Jose leaders have taken their firmest stance yet on one of the thorniest issues at City Hall, moving to crack down big time on medical marijuana dispensaries following several failed attempts to get tough on pot over the last half-decade. The San Jose City Council’s 7-3 vote Tuesday evening limits existing and new pot shops to a handful of select industrial areas that make up less than 1 percent of the city, which will require the vast majority of the dispensaries to close within a year. Even the ones that survive will have to comply with costly new restrictions. Dispensary opponents led by some parents, prosecutors, conventional business owners and school officials pointed to research showing kids in San Jose were getting their weed from the pot shops, either through illegal drug deals or by obtaining medical cards. They said the city’s roughly 80 weed businesses were also destroying the character of suburban neighborhoods, attracting crime and blight. “I think we came up with something that protects our residents,” Councilman Pete Constant said, while still “providing enough space for dispensaries to operate.” While 60 percent of respondents in a city-commissioned poll earlier this year wanted pot shops regulated, only 16 percent favored an outright ban already adopted by about 200 California cities. But a ban is exactly what will happen, marijuana store owners say, as the new regulations will make it virtually impossible to do business in San Jose. The requirements force pot shops to grow all weed in or next to Santa Clara County, limit store hours and set up round-the-clock security. What’s more, no one under 18 can be allowed inside or to work for dispensaries, the shops can’t offer products that imitate candy and customers can’t get high in the store. “Nobody can operate under those environments,” said James Anthony, an attorney representing many of the pot shops. “It’s a de-facto ban and in kind of a sneaky way.” Pot business owners say they have collected more than enough signatures necessary to put their own dispensary rules — with looser regulations — on the ballot, Anthony says. They note the city makes $5.4 million in tax revenue from the pot shops and insist the issues are limited to a few problem shops. They were aiming to place the initiative on the November ballot, but the council could delay it to November 2016. A similar scenario played out in 2011, when the council followed years of discussion by voting for dispensary limits only to back off them when a referendum qualified for the ballot. Since then, however, a Supreme Court ruling and guidelines issued by the U.S. Attorney General’s Office have given cities new authority to regulate pot shops, and the council says it’s not backing off this time. Mayor Chuck Reed has even vowed to lead the fundraising campaign against the pot groups’ ballot measure. San Jose has the bulk of Silicon Valley’s pot shops thanks in part to its lack of action on regulations. Officials in Gilroy, Los Gatos, Milpitas, Morgan Hill and Sunnyvale have banned pot shops, according to Americans for Safe Access. The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors is set to consider a ban in unincorporated areas this summer. In San Francisco and Oakland, officials have enacted regulations but they are generally not as strict as what San Jose approved Tuesday. Under San Jose’s new rules, the stores must be more than 1,000 feet away from schools, parks and other areas children gather; 1,000 feet from certain major business parks; 150 feet from homes; and 500 feet from substance abuse centers. That leaves about 600 parcels, mostly in North San Jose and the central part of the city just east of Highway 87. As a result, the one-fourth of the city’s dispensaries that are next to homes could be forced to close in the coming months. Most of the others will also find themselves in no-pot zones but will have until summer 2015 before they have to shut down. About five to 10 could potentially stay in their current locations. During the last five weeks, the council has on four occasions had the final plan up for debate — totaling more than 10 hours of discussion — but delayed a decision. Each time, medical pot supporters wearing green cannabis leaf T-shirts flooded the council chambers alongside their opponents. On Tuesday, Councilmen Ash Kalra, Don Rocha and Xavier Campos were opposed, and Kansen Chu was absent. Contact Mike Rosenberg at 408-920-5705. Follow him at Twitter.com/rosenbergmerc.On Sunday Germany’s outgoing foreign minister Guido Westerwelle warned of a break in relations between the US and its key European ally. Articles in the German press, meanwhile, have questioned whether the two countries really are friends. Politicians and the press have echoed the German public's reaction of outrage and shock. On Thursday Westerwelle took the unusual step of summoning the US ambassador in Berlin. He later warned that spying on friends and partners “threatens to undermine the bonds which hold us together and which we need more than ever in the future in the globalized world of the 21st Century.” But despite Westerwelle’s warnings, it is the second half of his statement which reveals why there will be no long-term damage to US-German relations. Neither side can afford it. Yes, the spying scandal will erode trust of America and President Barack Obama in Germany, but from the Middle East to Europe, China and Russia the two countries' interests will continue to be broadly aligned. Merkel’s comments last week showed this. The strongest statement she could muster after hearing her phone was probably being eavesdropped on by the Americans was that spying among allies was “really not on”. Speaking about her telephone conversation with Obama where they discussed the phone tapping, she said: "The American president is always well prepared and we are united by a now long-standing relationship, which includes occasional differences of opinion." Domestically and within the European Union there will be inquiries into what happened and potentially new data protection laws and spying agreements. Dr. Christian Tuschhoff from the Free University in Berlin said relations might be affected in the medium term due to a loss of trust. But he told The Local: “Whether there will be long-term damage will depend significantly on if measures are introduced to restore that trust. Even if they aren’t, it doesn’t mean there will necessarily be long-term damage.” Obama’s natural popularity in Germany also means that he has a bigger well of goodwill to draw on than his predecessor would have had. Professor Michael Wohlgemuth from think-tank Open Europe Berlin said: “If Bush was still US President, we would see massive demonstrations all over Germany against the American "hegemon" that does not play fair. “Obama's popularity in Germany has suffered over the last years, but I expect that it will remain strong enough to keep the hidden anti-Americanism in Germany at bay.” The most harmful fall-out so far of the NSA tapping Merkel's phone is a call by some European politicians to halt trans-Atlantic free trade negotiations. The president of the European Parliament Martin Schulz has said they should be suspended. In May of this year he said they would bring “huge benefits to both sides.” It still will and Merkel knows this which is why she is pushing on with negotiations. "Maybe the talks are more important right now considering the current situation," she remarked on Friday during a meeting with EU leaders in Brussels. “Halting free trade negotiations would only help the protectionists on both sides of the Atlantic. And it would hurt the economic interests that European and American consumers and investors share,” Professor Wohlgemuth said. “I hope that this diplomatic super-accident does not impair the good and traditionally very friendly relations between Germany and the US.” Perhaps the most damaging aspect will not be to routine diplomacy but to how America is viewed internationally. Wohlgemuth added: “It is quite amazing to see how America, "the land of the free", has become ready to sacrifice liberty in the name of security.” But the tone from the White House on Monday suggests that they realize this and may address it. Spokesman Jay Carney said: “We recognize that there needs to be additional constraints on how we gather and use intelligence." The US and its European allies are made strong through rule of law, accountability in government and by protecting individual rights against state interference. Without these principles they lose standing internationally. It is in both Obama’s and Merkel’s interest to stick to these values together.The governor of West Virginia vetoed a budget bill next to a silver platter of bull feces on Thursday, signifying his distaste for the cuts it required. “We don’t have a nothing burger today,” Gov. Jim Justice (D) said, unveiling silver platters as he went. “And we don’t have a mayonnaise sandwich today. We all should take ownership for this, but what we have is nothing more than a bunch of political bull-you-know-what.” He lifted a third platter, revealing a pile of feces on top of the legislature’s budget bill. The crowd in attendance cheered. It seemed an odd choice to leave out an expletive while presenting the excrement itself. The governor continued. “And for that very reason, I’m signing my veto on the budget bill,” he said, to more applause. When our legislators play politics with the budget, the people of WV get a pile of bull-💩. We deserve a budget that takes us to prosperity. pic.twitter.com/b34o5Azyxb — Governor Jim Justice (@WVGovernor) April 13, 2017 The vetoed budget would have cut funding for universities in the state and Medicaid, and did not contain tax increases advocated by Justice, including a hike on the state’s consumer sales and B&O taxes, and additional taxes on the wealthy. The veto will require a legislative special session to come up with a new bill before the new fiscal year in July.This morning, I wasn’t able to go on my usual ride. Instead of getting up at 6am and shuffling myself and my bike out the door by 7:30, I slept till 7, got the kids up at 8, and got everyone shuffled off to an appointment with their pediatric neurologist for 10. Part of the rigmarole of being the parent of two Autistic children is that a lot of time is spent with doctors and therapists. I am sitting in the doctor’s waiting room as I write this post. My son is in the office with his father, and my daughter and I are waiting patiently. I find myself feeling out of sorts from not being able to complete a morning routine that has, for me, become as necessary as my usual breakfast of Weetabix and coffee. I’ve gotten to the point where I simply don’t feel right if I don’t start my day with an hour of riding. On the up side, this appointment means that my kids’ day will get started well. I don’t exactly know why, but they love going to the doctor— any doctor, really, but their pediatric neurologist is one of their favourite people. As far as our routines go, I’m not so different from my children. In order to be at their best, they need certain things to happen in a certain pattern. In that, we are very much the same. AdvertisementsBy Vernon Chan This evening, blogger Roy Ngerng raised the full sum of $70,000 for his legal defense against prime minister Lee Hsien Loong. On 28 May 2014, the premier of Singapore filed his civil suit in the Singapore High Court, where the value of claims is above S$250,000. PM Lee claims that Roy had defamed him in a post on his blog “The Heart Truths” alleging “criminal misappropriation” by the premier in the management of Singapore’s state pension fund, the Central Provident Fund [CPF]. The blogger acknowledged the defamatory nature of the article and issued a fomal apology. The two parties have nonetheless gone to court as a result of a breakdown in negotiations. It is interesting to ask why hundreds, if not thousands of ordinary Singaporeans have decided to donate to Roy in amounts varying from $1 to $200, despite the blogger’s initial apology and statement. It would be more interesting to study the implication of this event for Singapore politics. Setting new records? In September 2012, Chee Soon Juan, the leader of the Singapore Democratic Party, discharged himself from bankruptcy when his offer to pay $30,000 to Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong was accepted. This sum was raised in 10 days from the public via public donations through Paypal and bank transfer. Chee was originally declared a bankrupt for failing to pay the court
chance that we would be called to the scene of someone we knew. Many calls have stuck with me vividly, but a few in particular involved accidents with kids and teens, as well as my first cardiac arrest. I have one memory of a car fire that shut down all of I-95 and driving down the empty highway from the scene was very surreal.” Castro also told me about the one call she’ll never forget. While these high schoolers were responsible for saving people’s lives, they also had the extremely important job of comforting the family members and other people who were on the scene. “One of the particular calls that has stuck with me over the years has been a call where I was responsible for talking to the wife of a man who had gone into cardiac arrest. This call shifted the way I understood and respected every crew member’s responsibility on the call because as the driver, your focus needs to be on some of the scene’s periphery (but equally important) needs, such as communicating with [immediate] friends or family members — a shift away from the acute emergency that is CPR. I wrote about this experience in one of my college application essays because the couple was so elderly that the stark comparison in age between the surviving wife and myself stands out in my mind as a moment that represents the Post experience well. I, a 17-year-old, was confronted with the task of explaining to a 98-year-old woman that her life-long partner’s heart and respirations were being controlled by our emergency team. It’s not an easy task but in the moment, you don’t doubt yourself and you certainly don’t doubt anybody on the team. It is only in retrospect that I appreciate the awe of the experience.” After long nights spent sleeping at Post 53 with calls coming in at any time, these kids would then have to get up and go to school. “It was definitely a challenge to balance school and Post, mostly due to a lack of sleep sometimes,” Calahan said. “I think doing Post forced me to manage my time effectively, but after a sleepless night, paying attention in class was fairly difficult. I think that Post probably hurt my grades but I still ended up at a college that was perfect for me and I wouldn’t go back to change a thing.” The Posties couldn’t say enough about the positive impact that the experience had on them. Many students, though not all, go on to pursue medical fields. Whether Post 53 jumpstarted their medical career or not, they told me about how the experience changed them forever. Calahan shared the values that the organization taught him: “I think Post ingrained in me from a young age a love for teaching, and a belief that anyone can do something if you believe in them enough and support them in the right ways. I think Post taught us to work very calmly in high pressure situations, and helped us navigate the often difficult line of when to be serious and when to let go. Trust, integrity, love, pride, professionalism, responsibility, dependability, and confidence are the eight guiding principles of the organization. If I can continue to embody even half of these on a daily basis, Post will have helped me become an individual that I respect and aspire to become.” The High School 9-1-1 documentary was screened for the first time at the Heartland Film Festival in Indianapolis this past weekend, and I can’t wait for it to come home to Darien soon. In hearing about the amazing experiences these kids had being being a part of Post 53, it only gave me more respect for this fixture in the Darien community. I couldn’t imagine doing the same thing when I was in high school, and I really don’t know how they did it. But I do know that the entire town puts our lives in their hands, and trusts them completely. To learn more about ‘High School 9-1-1,’ visit Boomerang Productions. Article Posted 2 years AgoThe Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1070 gaming box is unlike other external graphics solutions as it comes with an embedded GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card for plug-and-play convenience. The Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1070 gaming box is unlike other external graphics solutions as it comes with an embedded GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card for plug-and-play convenience. Gigabyte Gigabyte’s much anticipated eGPU is finally here. The Aorus GTX 1070 gaming box is unlike other external graphics solutions currently out in the market as it comes with an embedded GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card inside. It provides real plug-and-play convenience and is moderately priced. Gigabyte unleashed the Aorus gaming box over a couple of weeks ago at Computex 2017. The eGPU was lauded at the show thanks to its overall design, power and affordability. Now it’s available to purchase for those who want to amp up their Thunderbolt 3-enabled notebook and turn them into a robust gaming system. The Aorus eGPU separates itself from most run-of-the-mill external graphics enclosures because it comes pre-installed with a factory-overclocked GTX 1070 graphics card. Users no longer need to look for and pay for extra hardware as it doesn’t come empty-handed. Its Thunderbolt 3 support improves laptop graphics and it boasts of 40 Gbps of data transfer speed and up to 100 W of power thanks to the built-in100W of power 450 W PSU. The diminutive gaming box’s plug-and-play feature disregards the need of rebooting the PC, allowing for swift and easy connections. Customisable RGB Fusion-powered colour lighting is also included on the side of the enclosure for aesthetics. The unit can also be used as a docking station, and it can handle multiple external displays thanks to a pair of dual-link DVI ports. Speaking of connectivity, Gigayte’s new eGPU comes with three USB 3.0 ports and an additional Quick Charge 3.0 port that is exclusively available for mobile charging purposes. The QC port should be able to provide up to four times the speed of basic chargers. For those who are interested, the Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1070 gaming box is now available to purchase for US$599 (AU$789). Check out its specs and features as well as the video below to know more about the product. Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1070 gaming box specs and features Graphics Processing: GeForce GTX 1070 GeForce GTX 1070 Box size: 212 x 96 x 162 mm 212 x 96 x 162 mm Box weight: 2,360 g ± 1 percent 2,360 g ± 1 percent PSU: 450 W, > 90 percent efficiency (equal to 80 plus Gold), PCI-E 8 pin power 450 W, > 90 percent efficiency (equal to 80 plus Gold), PCI-E 8 pin power AC Input: 100 - 240 V ~ \| 7 - 3.5 A \| 60 - 50 Hz 100 - 240 V ~ \| 7 - 3.5 A \| 60 - 50 Hz Graphics card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 Mini ITX OC 8G (GV-N1070IXOC-8GD) Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 Mini ITX OC 8G (GV-N1070IXOC-8GD) GPU clock in OC Mode : Boost: 1,746 MHz \| Base: 1,556 MHz Boost: 1,746 MHz \| Base: 1,556 MHz GPU clock in Gaming: Boost: 1,721 MHz \| Base: 1,531 MHz Boost: 1,721 MHz \| Base: 1,531 MHz Memory clock: 8,008 MHz 8,008 MHz Memory type: GDDR5 GDDR5 Memory size: 8 GB 8 GB Digital max resolution: 7,680 x 4,320 7,680 x 4,320 Multi-view: 4 4 I/O: 1 x Thunderbolt 3 USB port \| 1 x Quick Charge 3.0 USB port \| 1 x HDMI port \| 1 x DipslayPort \| 2 x DL DVI-D ports \| 3 x USB 3.0 ports 1 x Thunderbolt 3 USB port \| 1 x Quick Charge 3.0 USB port \| 1 x HDMI port \| 1 x DipslayPort \| 2 x DL DVI-D ports \| 3 x USB 3.0 ports Package content: 1 x Aorus GTX 1070 Gaming Box \| 1 x Thunderbolt 3 USB Type-C Cable 500 mm \| 1 x Power cord \| 1 x Installation guide \| 1 x Driver CD \| 1 x Carry bag MORE GAMING NEWS: Steam sale: The Mighty Sims Bundle 2 offers up to 97 percent savings Razer Blade Stealth specs, price and release details: New 13.3-inch gaming laptop is bigger yet still portableIt is no secret that I love language and all things related it to. Also, being a bit of a pedant, I love to share titbits of information about words, phrases, and language in general. Therefore, I have put together a list of misconceptions (one of my favorite types of list) about common sayings. Some involve spelling errors, while others involve conception or comprehension errors. Be sure to tell us your favorite (and by that I mean most hated) common errors in the comments. 10 Scot Free Common Saying: To get off scot free Many people think that this saying refers to Scottish people being tight with money – hence something being free, but in fact the word “scot” is an old Norse word which means “payment” – specifically a payment made to a landlord or sheriff. So this phrase – while meaning what most people think it means, has no connection to the Scottish people – it just means to get off without having to pay. 9 Fit as a Fiddle Common Saying: As fit as a fiddle This is another phrase where a single word has confused people – “fit” in the context of this saying does not mean “healthy” which is a 19th century definition. Its original meaning was “suitable” – and it is still used in that context in the sentence “fit for a king”. As fit as a fiddle means “as appropriate as can be” – not “in excellent health”. The first use of the phrase, incidentally, was in the 16th century and it was originally “as right as a fiddle”. 8 Another Thing Coming Common Saying: If you think that, you have another thing coming This is a complete aberration of the original phrase because of the sound of English. The correct phrase is “if you think that, you have another think coming” – in other words, “what you think is wrong so think again”. Because the “k” in “think” often ends up silent when saying “think coming” people have changed the phrase over time. Of course, “another thing coming” makes no sense at all. To illustrate how global this error is, when you google “another thing coming” it returns 139,000 results; when you google “another think coming” it returns a mere 39,000 results. 7 Eat Humble Pie Common Saying: Eat humble pie This phrase means “to be humble in apologizing for something.” I was slightly reluctant to put it on the list because it actually does mean what people think it means, but there is still a misconception here; people think that this phrase means to eat a pie made of humbleness but it actually means to eat a pie made with umble (pictured above). Umble is an old English word for offal – the bits of the animal seldom eaten today (sadly). It was a pie that was normally eaten by the poor as the finer cuts of meat were left for the rich only. “To eat a humble pie” is an example of metanalysis (words being broken down into parts or meanings that differ from the original) as it sounds just like “to eat an umble pie”. Other examples of this in English are “an apron” which used to be “a napron”. 6 Rule of Thumb Common Saying: Rule of thumb People commonly think that this saying is a reference to a law allowing a man to beat his wife as long as he uses a rod no thicker than his thumb. It is, of course, completely untrue. There is no record of any judge in Britain ever making a ruling like this – or any lawmaker passing a law. The phrase actually refers to doing something by estimates – rather than using an exact measure. 5 On Tender Hooks Common Saying: On tender hooks This phrase is very commonly misspelt. First off, what exactly is a tender hook? It doesn’t seem logical does it? Well – that is because it isn’t. The phrase is actually “on tenterhooks”. A tenter was a medieval tool used for making cloth – the tenterhooks (pictured above) were small hooks to which the fabric would be stretched in the manufacturing process. To be on tenterhooks means to be left hanging – or to be in a state of suspense. 4 Take a Raincheck Common Saying: I’ll take a raincheck This phrase is usually meant to mean “I won’t do it now but I will later”. This is the commonly accepted meaning (and has been for a long time) so it is now considered to be correct. It is included here merely out of interest because its original meaning was slightly different. Initially, a raincheck was offered to people who had tickets to a baseball game that was rained out – they would offered a “raincheck” which was a ticket for a game at a later date to make up for the missed game. This eventually found its way into shopping jargon in general where a raincheck was an offer to sell an out-of-stock good when it arrived back in stock. The meaning has eventually broadened to a point that it is not an offer any longer but a response. 3 Free Reign Common Saying: To give someone free reign This is a spelling error that leads to a misunderstanding – though the meanings remain the same fundamentally. Many people presume this phrase to mean that a person given free reign, has the “royal” power to do anything they want. In fact, the correct phrase is “free rein” and it comes from the days before cars when horses were used as our main mode of transport. When navigating a steep or winding path, one would relax the reins so that the horse could pick the safest path as he was more likely to do a better job than the rider. 2 Wreck Havoc Common Saying: To wreck havoc Havoc means chaos – and to wreck something is to put it into a state of chaos. So why would you make chaos out of chaos? You wouldn’t. What you might do is wreak havoc though – because “to wreak” means “to cause to happen”. The two words are pronounced differently – wreck sounds like “rek” while “wreak” sounds like “reek”. It is a small – but common, error. 1 Beg the Question Common Saying: To beg the question Let’s face it – 99% of people reading this list will not know the correct meaning of “beg the question”, but that implies that the mistaken meaning should really be considered correct through common usage – so let us not fight about right or wrong – I will just state the facts: “to beg the question” does not mean “to raise the question”. Originally the phrase was “to begge the question” and it appeared in English around the 1580s. It is a reference to a question (or phrase) which implies the truth of the thing it is trying to prove. Confusing? Okay – here is an example: “why does England have fewer trees per acre than any other country in Europe?” This is a “begged question” – the person asking is implying that England has fewer trees – when in fact, it may not. Another example is “he must be telling the truth because he never lies”. Decartes was begging the question when he said “I think, therefore I am”. Oh – and for those of you who are used to using the term in the wrong way, consider using “prompt the question” as a correct alternative. Contributor: JFrater Follow us on Facebook or subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter so you don't miss out on our latest lists.Have you woken up in 2011 vowing to cut down on your drinking, eat less and exercise more? All good basic principles, but research published in the past year has suggested that living a healthier lifestyle isn't quite so straightforward – and we needn't be quite so abstemious, either. There are plenty of less obvious, even counterintuitive, ways we can extend our lives and improve our health this year. Don't diet too much: being slightly overweight is good for you Until last year, the commonly accepted marker of a healthy weight-for-height was the body mass index, or BMI: your weight in kilograms divided by the square of your height in metres. BMI charts originally identified 20-25 as the target range for the lowest risk of future ill health: below 20 and you were too thin; above 25 and you were overweight; above 30 and you were obese. But that universally accepted standard changed in 2010. It seems a higher BMI score, of 25-27.5, is at least as healthy in terms of cardiovascular risk as one of 20-22.5. You really don't need to worry if you are a little overweight – provided you aren't more than around 5kg from the ideal weight for your height. The new emphasis is on waist measurements: men can be content if their waist is less than 38 inches and women should be happy with a waist of 34 inches or less. Keeping our waist measurements lower than those of our hips is a practical aim for everyone. Exercise only in moderation The two key terms for energy researchers in 2010 have been BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor) and VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor): BDNF stimulates the formation of new connections between brain cells; and VEGF produces new blood vessel-lining cells, potentially keeping the arteries free of flaws that are the potential sites of clots, and therefore preventing heart attacks and strokes. Regular exercise increases levels of both, so it should be good for you – but there's a snag: too much exercise lowers BDNF levels. Does that have a damaging effect on brain cells? We don't yet know, but anecdotal evidence of the breakdown in health of athletes and enthusiasts who train to near-exhaustion every day tends to suggest that it does. The main message, then, is to give your body time to recover after exercise. The current advice is to exercise to breathlessness (it doesn't matter what you do – anything you continue to enjoy) for around 30 minutes, and avoid exercising more than three or four times a week. It's not how much fruit and veg you eat, but which type According to American, Chinese and Finnish studies, eating lots of green, leafy vegetables helps to prevent type-2 diabetes, even if you don't lose weight in the process. Eating plenty of fruit and vegetables as part of a healthy diet also helps you avoid obesity, which has knock-on protection against heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and cancer. However, the big finding for 2010 was that particular foods can lower the rates of specific diseases. For example, alliums such as chives, leeks, shallots, onions and garlic are linked with much reduced rates of stomach and colon cancer, and it is claimed on good evidence (in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute) that tomatoes help to protect against prostate cancer. It seems cooking tomatoes, especially in olive oil, or eating them in ketchup, is even more effective than eating them fresh. Get more light One way to pump up your brainpower may be simply to sit in bright light for a few hours each day. Trends in cognitive sciences reported that people performed better in mental tests when under bright light, and other research journals have taken up the theme. The brighter the light, they have found, the more effective it is (pale blue light is even better). It seems that melanopsin, a newly discovered substance in the retina, absorbs the light and improves cognition. Throw away your peeler Skin, stalks and cores are all claimed to protect against cancer and boost nutrition. Now we come to something a little more contentious: today's buzzword is biosynergy, the theory that each part of a fruit or vegetable combines with the other parts to reinforce its nutritional benefit. Dr Marilyn Glenville, former president of the Food & Health Forum at the Royal Society of Medicine, says that discarding the skin of fruit isn't the only mistake we make. She recommends eating stalks and cores, too. The list of fruits she would persuade us to eat whole includes bananas – the peel is high in serotonin, needed in the brain to lighten mood and ease depression – and kiwi fruits, whose skin is high in antioxidants and is claimed to have anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory and anti-allergenic properties (golden kiwis have thinner, sweeter skins, so could be more acceptable eaten whole). She also advises eating the cores of pineapples, which contain twice the levels of bromelain, a digestive enzyme that protects the stomach lining, and orange and tangerine peel, which contain super-flavonoids that can significantly improve your lipid profile, theoretically improving your chances of avoiding a heart attack or stroke. Glenville recommends adding grated citrus peel to your food or putting the whole, unpeeled fruit into a juicer. As for vegetables, she claims that broccoli stalks contain more calcium, vitamin C and fibre than the florets, and that some vegetable skins may have anti-cancer properties, too. Garlic skin, for example, contains six separate antioxidant compounds, according to Japanese researchers. Glenville reccomends roasting garlic whole, along with other Mediterranean vegetables. Know your alcohol limits The news about health and alcohol isn't so surprising. Generally, we are drinking far more than any previous generation, and the troubles caused by our new habits are on the increase, from the social harm of drunken behaviour to the physical harm of failing livers and brains. Not only do we drink much more, but what we drink contains much higher levels of alcohol. Beers are stronger, while the alcohol content of wines has risen from around 8% abv to around 13% abv, and we drink them in 250ml rather than 125ml glasses. So the message remains: women should stick to no more than two units a day and men could manage three, but shouldn't try. And make sure you know what a unit is. You may be surprised. The idea that red wine has specific health advantages (because it contains the magic flavonoids) doesn't really hold up, either. Alcohol in small amounts does widen small arteries and helps smooth our blood vessel linings, in theory helping to prevent heart attacks and strokes. But to drink enough red wine to gain an advantage from its flavonoids would mean drinking more than is healthy. It is wiser to eat blueberries instead. According to recent research from Reading University, blueberries improve our attention levels and possibly our memories, too. But there is some good news for pregnant women: one recent study says they can drink, entirely without guilt, up to two units a week. Learn an instrument, at any age For a long time, medical thought was that our brains were fully developed by our late teens, and that we started to lose neurones after that point. If we did keep on learning from then on, we were using nerves and pathways that were already established: we couldn't "grow" more neurones or connections. That is now in doubt. According to the European Journal of Neuroscience, we may be able to train our brains to develop even once we are adults. It's more difficult than in childhood, but it does seem to work. Research done with London cabbies more than a decade ago provided evidence of new connections (for the purists, in the corpus callosum) between the two halves of the brain after they learned "the Knowledge". What we now know is that professional musicians have the same expansion of the corpus callosum as did the taxi drivers. And that children who learn a musical instrument have more highly active brains than other children. The old claim that we use only a small part of our brain when we think or perform actions has been shown not to be true. Brain scans show that many areas of the brain light up when we perform the simplest of tasks, and that musical training improves and widens these connections. So become proficient in any instrument and you should improve your dexterity, intellectual capacity and resistance to age-related dementia. All pretty good aims for the year ahead.Have you ever been in a situation where you’d give an advice to your friend on how to deal with his/her crush only to find out sooner or later on that you’d yourself messed up on yours? Or maybe when you gave that advice to a friend on how to become a success in your profession, in say badminton or public speaking, only to fail to heed on your own advice? These things happen, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who’s experienced them. In this article I’ll provide a theory as to why these things happen and an ‘advice’ on how to deal with them. Whenever a person is asked for an advice, he’d feel happy to help. Not only does this give the idea that the person matter but that his ideas matter too. It is at this point where the brain will release endorphins, the ‘happy’ chemical which gives the person an equivalent of a natural high. So after much discussions and talking, have you ever felt annoyed by some people who is trying to ‘tell you everything’? Well, the persons’ natural high is at its near peak. It is where the person would try to superimpose his personality and ego into the picture. So when the conversation stops, the person immediately got an ego boost. This is the point where a ‘short-circuit’ will happen in the brain. The absence of the chemical will then incur mild misery, unhappiness or even possibly, depression. Then the ‘illusion fallacy’ sets in. It’s when the person thought himself invincible (he just gave an advice so he must felt so). And it is at this stage where he wants to repeat the natural high. So with an injection of ‘invincibility’ or arrogance, without the necessary preparation or decorum, he’d sooner or later fail. Well then what happens to the advice he just gave? What happened to ‘lead by example’? Well, what would an invincible man need that for? Thus, it happens this thing happens more by observing how our brains work and how its chemicals are triggered. Mark Zuckerberg’ got a profound understanding over this concept that he successfully made a multi-billion dollar company called facebook just by exploiting this ‘need’. The term used for this is FOMO. And that is why the red notification is so addicting. It makes you feel good. And ever wondered why you feel depressed later on? It’s because of that ‘short-circuit’. That unnecessary posts you wish you hadn’t post up early this year? That’s to relive back that lost high. Anyhow, how do you deal with this? Well by not going over limits on what you do. Be it either giving excessive advice or checking your facebook/twitter/instagram 50x a day. Adapt a Stoic creed. Where to control impulse is the most important thing you can ever do in becoming a ‘universal being’. Then you may say how this writer will then discard his own advice and feel ‘invincible’; hence becoming what he writes about. But this writer humbly acknowledges his weakness. He is only human and this is just a matter of advice.A year in Effective Altruism: observations and criticisms (and tofu) Jacob Funnell Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 14, 2016 Peter Singer accepts the Tofu offering to Him, to satisfy His preferences In July 2015, I plugged ‘effective altruism Brighton’ into Google. To my surprise, there was a Meetup group locally. I wandered along and talked about Peter Singer and wrote about him on someone’s arm and went to the beach in the moonlight. It was a good evening. Since then, I’ve read lots of books, articles and posts about EA, written hundreds of comments, given communications advice to a number of EA orgs, attended an EA conference, ritually sacrificed tofu to Peter Singer, and made many friends. A year on, here are my general observations about EA–what’s surprised me, what I’m unsure of, and what I’ve found the broader EA community to be like. I’ve divided it into three parts: Philosophy covers EA philosophy(s), including whether or not EA is a complete theory of ethics, how EA presents its more controversial conclusions and the extent to which I think EA is wedded to utilitarianism. Community covers how I’ve found the EA community, and what it’s been like to be an EA. I try to cover how far the online world differs to EA in meatspace. My next year in EA gives a few thoughts on what I plan to do in the coming year. PHILOSOPHY ‘Utilitarianism’ is an extremely broad label Coming to EA, I always thought that utilitarianism would be a pretty united thing. Not in terms of utilitarians agreeing in every moral case, just that utilitarians would be generally more united among themselves about what we should do than they would be with deontologists. I’m not so confident about that any more. The varieties of utilitarianism are bewildering. Each assigns different weights to a number of values, including: The importance of present vs future beings. The importance of reducing suffering vs increasing well-being. The degree to which other broader principles can be brought into play (eg whether you can mix in some rights talk, as Singer does with self-conscious persons). The degree to which conscious experiences are commensurable and comparable. These utilitarianisms also draw on a variety of different meta-ethics; from Sam Harris-type moral realism (which seems to have a fair bit of traction in EA circles) to completely anti-realist theories, among many others. These differences in meta-ethics are most important when EAs talk about how obligatory or not EA-type acts are. The range of opinions here seems to vary a great deal — from ‘EA gives us good ideas for things you should do if you happen to care about others’, to ‘EA demonstrates that there’s a strong moral obligation to live your life as a utility producing/suffering reducing machine’. Beyond this, what EAs feed into their utilitarian calculuses radically differs, including: The number and type of sentient beings. The nature and measurability of conscious experience. The extent to which we can influence the future, and the methods by which we do this. It’s as if a team of physicists were all using the equation E=MC², except that some physicists gave a value of 1,000,000,000,000,000 mph to C, and others gave a value of 0.00001 mph, and still others thought that we shouldn’t really worry about putting mass into the equation at all. However, though the range of EA opinion really does seem to me to be about this wide, this doesn’t tell you about what the distribution of opinion is like. I don’t know how far there’s a broad consensus building between EAs. For example, how far do most EAs think the far future is a dominant priority? How many EAs are some form of hedonic utilitarian, or lexical threshold negative utilitarian, or whatever? What percentage of EAs think insects can suffer? How many don’t really know or think about any of these questions? I’d love to see some empirical work on this. We could see if the movement shows any overall trends over time, and if there are any patterns to be found among people in the different cause areas. It would let us be much more clear about what EAs actually believe. EA avoids putting its controversial conclusions up-front Some effective altruists hold views that would be strongly controversial to most people outside of EA. EA does a pretty good job of either not mentioning (or actively avoiding) these conclusions in its public-facing literature. Examples include the moral imperative to destroy habitat in order to reduce wild animal suffering[1], the need to divert funds away from causes like poverty relief and towards artificial intelligence safety research, or the extreme triviality of aesthetic value[2]. These are the kind of conclusions which are avoided in the public-facing media like books, websites, TED talks and articles in the mainstream press. I really get why this is – telling the wider public that ‘some EAs believe buying a chocolate bar is a case of partial homicide’ is hardly going to get many people on board, unless they already feel really, really bad each time they buy a Snickers. I also get that popularity says nothing about truth — if the general public find a proposition controversial, so what? However, I still find this double-sidedness of EA an uncomfortable situation. Will MacAskill’s book Doing Good Better is a bestseller, but it doesn’t really hint at these more controversial or wacky-sounding conclusions in EA. So I sometimes wonder how far I’m actively misleading people if I say ‘EA is about all these obvious things you agree with, like helping others more rather than less, so it’s a wonderful opportunity to help as many people as possible’. I almost prefer the framing ‘EA is a wonderful and highly challenging intellectual movement that aims to do the most good, a principle which often (but not always) translates to reducing as much misery and suffering as possible. Different EAs hold widely diverging views on how to do this, and have come up with conclusions that you may find enlightening, counter-intuitive, fascinating or deeply disturbing. Whatever you end up thinking about EA in the end, you have to grapple with its arguments about how and why we’re prioritizing our time and resources, both as societies and as individuals. I think it’s one of the best attempts at thinking through ethics with reason and evidence that’s ever existed, and it may be the single best thing you ever learn about — but don’t be surprised if it makes your head spin or makes you feel uncomfortable, sometimes deeply so.’ This would probably not work as a way of marketing EA (!) But it seems to me it would be a whole lot more honest about the huge universe of EA that lies beyond poverty relief and GiveWell – from MIRI and Animal Ethics to the Future of Humanity Insitute and Leverage Research. EA collides with other movements more easily than it endorses them Most other movements endorse intrinsic values, like equality, inclusion, lack of oppression &c. For example, feminists (usually) value equality between men and women for its own sake. EA’s utilitarianism works very differently, as nothing really matters intrinsically other than the reduction of suffering and (depending on your variant of utilitarianism) the increase of well-being. Let’s take a concrete case where these approaches are at loggerheads. A feminist would see equal representation between men and women in a broad social movement as intrinsically valuable, whereas an EA wouldn’t see that as a goal in itself. If a movement is 75% men and 25% women, that’s only a bad thing if the consequences of that imbalance are bad. This conflict came up in a real world discussion on the EA forum. To paraphrase a prominent EA: ‘we shouldn’t be worried about getting more women in EA for its own sake, as the point is to do the most good’. This may push a few moral buttons for some readers (it certainly did for me). If pressed on this point, I think most EAs would respond that an indifference to equality feels wrong only because a non-inclusive policy within EA has net negative outcomes. This is a small example of a wider problem (or difficulty, depending on your view): EA’s explicit rejection of the intrinsic value of equality, fairness, justice &c., and it’s willingness to run the calculations to see if these values make sense, make it harder for EA to co-exist with other social movements that are more likely to see these values as sacrosanct. EA is overwhelmingly utilitarian I don’t think I’ve met any EA who doesn’t identify with some kind of utilitarianism, at least in so far as believing it’s the best theory with which to work out the most ethical actions. This means that other moral views don’t get much attention within EA. There are a few people within EA (like Carl Shulman and Nick Bostrom) who do seem prepared to give other moral theories (like deontology) weight, even without assenting to them themselves. I think they’re on the right track. I don’t think that utilitarianism is the only theory worth our time, just that it’s the most plausible one. Of course, when we’re trying to model reality, the most plausible theory is the one we should give assent to. But ethics is about making decisions, rather than trying to model reality, so it may help to think about our ethical theories less as competing scientific paradigms, and more as guides to making decisions. But how can you act on multiple decision making processes when they recommend sharply contradictory things, as utilitarianism and deontology can do? It’d be like obeying the order to ‘stand still’ and ‘run’ at the same time. I find that Nick Bostrom’s idea of the moral parliament is really helpful here. The details of the theory are complex, but the overall idea is simple. Instead of just assenting to the most plausible ethical theory and giving it absolute majority every time we’re faced with a moral choice, we should instead model our moral thinking as a negotiation between different moral theories which we give a variety of credences. Theories we give a lot of credence get many seats in our personal moral parliaments, and theories that we give little (but non-zero) credence get few seats. So we may end up with a parliament consisting of 95% utilitarians, but with a few beardy Aristotelian virtue theorists making up the remaining 5%. Each time there’s a moral case put before us, the different parties of our moral parliament have to decide what their votes are going to be — and that involves a lot of negotiation between the various factions. This allows for the strongest arguments of a variety of moral theories to have some bearing on our decisions. (Bostrom’s original post outlines how to arrange the parliament’s voting to prevent the parliament constantly going with whatever the largest party thinks.) For example, Kantians would be particularly outraged if we secretly killed a prisoner so we could harvest their organs for transplant into ten other people, even if the prisoner listened to Limp Bizkit unironically. It’s this kind of situation where Kantian concepts like the ends vs means distinction have their greatest appeal, and where utilitarian justifications have the hardest time specifying why killing someone to harvest
start in Week 1, I finished.500 or better each of the next 10 weeks (an 81-59 stretch) as the "You suck, just stop making picks!" e-mails slowed to a trickle. Just know that it wasn't a fluke. There are four specific and undeniable reasons for my resurgence. I am sharing one of them with you right now. (Hold on, I'll let you enjoy the anticipation for a couple of seconds.) (Still milking it.) (Just a little longer.) (OK.) For the first 11 weeks of the regular season, home-field advantage has not mattered like it once did. I realized this during the Bears-Colts game in Week 1, when Kyle Orton waltzed into Indy and ruined the grand opening of Lucas Oil Stadium, the latest state-of-the-art football venue that seems much more interested in looking cool and making money over, you know, actually helping its home team win games. The place was so dead for four quarters that you could almost hear John Madden salivating over his postgame meal of fried turkey legs, blooming onions and Lipitor parmigiana. You could have laid a baby down at midfield, and it wouldn't have woken up. NFL FRANCHISES THAT BUILT NEW STADIUMS IN THE PAST 10 YEARS Team Year Seats Club Seats Suites Indianapolis 2008 63,000 7,100 142 Arizona 2006 65,000 7,501 88 Washington* 2004 91,704 15,736 243 Chicago 2003 61,500 8,600 133 Philadelphia 2003 67,594 10,828 172 Seattle 2002 67,000 7,000+ 100 Houston 2002 71,054 8,200 187 New England 2002 68,756 6,000+ 87 Detroit 2002 65,000 8,700 132 Denver 2001 76,125 8,800 132 Pittsburgh 2001 65,050 7,300 129 Cincinnati 2000 65,515 7,600 132 Tennessee 1999 69,143 12,000 175 Cleveland 1999 73,000 7,620 114 *Washington renovated Fed Ex Field for the '04 season; Chicago essentially rebuilt Soldier Field in 2003 Following Chicago's upset victory, after I had finished rejoicing that the Colts willingly gave away the trump card of a deafening Hoosier Dome, I remembered a conversation between me and my buddy Bug right before the season. Bug and his crew have owned season tickets for the Patriots since 1993. Once upon a time, nobody loved attending NFL games more than them. Bug woke up on Sundays at 7:45 a.m. no matter how hung over he was, paid the prostitute and asked her to leave (OK, that's not true), took a quick shower (not true either), squeezed himself into his Willie McGinest jersey, packed his car with beer and food, picked up his pals, packed more beer and more food, and then they zoomed down Route 1 to Foxboro and snatched a choice parking spot right next to the stadium. A massive, ambitious, artery-clogging tailgate commenced. Bug's friend Niko (the Wolfgang Puck of tailgaters) assumed command of the grill and sneered at everyone who got in his way. Everyone else ate and drank, smoked cigarettes or cigars and discouraged their buddy Grover from starting potential fights for reasons like "That loser in the Jets jersey keeps eyeballing me" and "I just don't like the way that guy with the earring looks -- he looks a little too pleased with himself, if you ask me." At 12:30 p.m., they packed everything up and headed toward the field, where they sat on freezing-cold aluminum bleachers in a lovable cesspool called Foxboro Stadium and cheered their crummy team. And you know what? They loved it. They were part of something. When Gillette Stadium opened eight months after New England's first Super Bowl title, the boys reacted like Tom Hanks in "Cast Away" right after his rescue, when he's wandering around an empty hotel room after the "Welcome Back!" party, looking at the high-rise tray of fresh seafood and wondering what the hell just happened. Suddenly, it was harder to get there and harder to park. Many die-hards were nudged to the third level of the stadium, with their noise drifting toward the sky instead of the field. The lower seats and suites were dominated by some die-hards and an inordinate amount of laid-back, well-connected fans who weren't exactly painting their faces before games. The chasm between the "haves" and the "have-nots" was jarring. I've attended three Pats games in the Gillette Mausoleum and always felt like I had been transported into a David Lynch movie in which everything looked slightly the same, only it isn't even remotely the same. Throw in the dirty secret that it isn't really fun to attend an NFL game in the 21st century -- the routine of "kickoff, TV timeout, three plays, punt, TV timeout, five plays, field goal, TV timeout, kickoff, TV timeout, someone gets hurt on first down, prolonged TV timeout, three more plays, touchdown, extra point, TV timeout, kickoff, TV timeout" gets old after about 25 minutes -- and by 2006 Bug's friends were making pro-and-con lists for keeping their tickets. So, why haven't they given them up yet? "The tailgates," Bug says grimly. "If we could take the tailgate and replicate the camaraderie in our backyard, we'd do it." Yikes. Even those tailgates became less enjoyable when the Patriots opened Patriot Place this season, a super-mall/mega-complex that bumped fans out of the main parking lot unless they paid an extortion fe— er, a premium fee. Team Buggy now tailgates on the other side of Route 1 for $50, crammed between a zillion other cars in a miasma of charcoal fumes. It takes them 35-40 minutes to walk from this space and find their seats inside. It takes them another 90 minutes to get home because common fans can't use the special access road for high rollers. Suddenly, it's an 11-hour commitment -- and a relatively expensive one -- to hang out and support their favorite team in an increasingly somber stadium. "We used to stand for every big down and every big drive," Bug says wistfully. "Now people yell at us to sit down. The old stadium was a dump, but we felt like we were at a football game, you know? Now we're at... I don't know. The fans don't affect the game anymore. It's really sad. Grover calls it the wine-and-cheese crowd. We've become the fans we always made fun of." So, how did we get here? Like so many other Patriots fans who fretted about them possibly moving in the early '90s, I will always appreciate Robert Kraft for saving the franchise, hiring Bill Belichick, winning three Super Bowls and keeping the team competitive. But he turned the experience of being a Patriots season-ticket holder into something of a Have/Have-Not dynamic, an ironic twist for a local businessman who originally curried favor because of his "I've been a lifetime Pats fan and season-ticket holder just like you!" mantra. Once upon a time, the fans felt like Kraft was one of them. He was a "have" who cared just as much about the "have-nots." Fairly or unfairly, some don't believe that anymore. I would put my buddy Bug and his friends in that group. They feel disenfranchised to a degree. Like Turtle and Drama if "Aquaman" hit big, then Vince told them they had to start sleeping in the guesthouse. That brewing disenfranchisement keeps popping up at these home games. You can not hear it, if that makes sense. And not just in New England. Thirteen teams have built SOTAS (state-of-the-art stadiums) since 1999; 14 if you include Daniel Snyder's overhauling of FedEx Field in 2004. Each stadium follows a similar let's-rake-in-the-cash blueprint. The first section of seats hug the field. At the top of those sections, the club seats start. That's followed by a phalanx of premium luxury suites. More luxury suites dominate the second section. And the majority of blue-collar fans are crammed into the upper decks. Fundamentally, it's a flawed way to cultivate a home-field advantage; beyond the emotional compromises and festering resentment of the blue-collar fans, the newer stadiums don't reverberate noise the same. Look at Lambeau or Ralph Wilson Stadium -- just rows and rows of fans, one after the other, rising for something like 75 rows before you hit your first luxury box. Watching the Browns-Bills game Monday night, I found myself enjoying the fans as much as the contest itself. Now this was football! Of course, Buffalo "needs" to build a new stadium to bank that suite money and "compete" with bigger teams. That's what owner Ralph Wilson says. He snookered outsiders like me with that argument until I made a few Toronto jokes and Buffalo fans graciously educated me on what was really happening. They want to purchase the team in a public trust and keep the stadium as is, like how the good people of Wisconsin own the Packers, but the NFL passed rules years ago preventing that from ever happening again. Why? So its owners could sell their franchises for the highest dollar, and so they could bilk their fans for new stadiums without them saying, "Wait, why can't we just keep the old one?" It's Economics 101 and one of the reasons that the fan/team dynamic can be so indefensibly one-sided and discouraging. We care about them; they don't care about us. In a perfect world, Wilson would sell the Bills to the locals and everyone would be happy. In the real world, the Bills will probably move to Toronto some day and play in -- you guessed it! -- a SOTAS that looks like every other SOTAS. What does this have to do with gambling? In the words of Russell Hammond, everything. After sitting through that Colts-Bears atrocity, I made the executive decision to discount home-field advantage until the weather turned. Turned out to be a wise move. Through 11-plus weeks (including Thursday night's Pittsburgh cover), the 14 teams that built SOTAS since 1999 (including Washington) are 29-44 against the spread. Yup, you read it correctly: 29-44. Week after week, those teams keep getting toppled at home or fail to cover big spreads, typified by three Week 10 games: New England losing in overtime to the Jets, the Colts winning but failing to cover an 8.5-point spread against lowly Houston, and Dallas handling the Redskins in Washington. Would you want Sage Rosenfels trying to cover eight points at the deafening Hoosier Dome? Could 30,000 Steelers fans have taken over a madhouse like RFK? Would Elway's Broncos have ever stumbled to an 0-4-1 record against the spread at Mile High? Could the Titans ever have prevailed in Soldier Field in cold weather without running the ball? Would I have picked last Thursday's game between evenly matched Jets and Pats teams by saying, "I'd like us if we were playing on the road, but since we're home, I'm taking the Jets?" The NFL has been flipped on its wealthy behind. GAMBLING TREND OF THE YEAR Sixteen 2008 home teams opened as double-digit favorites and only two have covered: The Giants (Week 7) and Steelers (Week 12). The Dallas-San Fran game takes place on Sunday. WK 1: Patriots (-16.5) Chiefs WK 3: Patriots (-12.5) Dolphins WK 3: Giants (-13.5) Bengals WK 4: Cowboys (-11.5) Redskins WK 5: Cowboys (-15.5) Bengals WK 6: Redskins (-13.5) Rams WK 6: Vikings (-13.5) Lions WK 7: Giants (-10.5) 49'ers WK 7: Buccaneers (-10.5) Seahawks WK 8: Jets (-12.5) Chiefs WK 9: Bears (-12.5) Lions WK 10: Chargers (-15.5) Chiefs WK 11: Dolphins (-10.5) Raiders WK 11: Panthers (-14.5) Lions WK 12: Steelers (-10) Bengals WK 12: Cowboys (-11) Niners A reader named Matvei alerted me to a fascinating trend before Thursday's game in Pittsburgh: Of 14 double-digit home favorites through 11 weeks, only ONE covered: The Giants in Week 7 (see sidebar). You could call it the ho-hum theory -- if you attend an NFL game that's not so much fun in the first place, and you're fully expecting your team to blow the other team out, how do you get excited for anything that happens in that game unless it's a night game and everyone's bombed? Win and you're supposed to win. Struggle and it's more annoying than anything. Ho-hum. And if you think the home team doesn't get affected by that lack of energy, you're crazy. There are other reasons for the erosion of home-field advantage, of course. The QB/coach headsets. Charter planes. Better grass and turf -- except for Pittsburgh's field (which is like playing on Chunky Soup). Giant heaters for cold games, giant spray machines for humid games. I'd even add the Internet and video games here -- in the old days, players laid in their hotel room after curfew, flipped between three channels and listened to their roommate snore. Now? They can keep themselves relatively entertained. It's not the worst thing in the world to play a road game anymore. But back when you were flying coach to Chicago to play in 14-degree weather at Soldier Field? Or on the rock-hard turf at Arrowhead Stadium? Bad times. So how far away is the average NFL home game from turning into a neutral-site Super Bowl? Closer than you think. The following home-field "advantages" work as long as the teams involved are legitimately solid (and not mediocre, like we saw with the Bills on Monday night): Minnesota, Buffalo, Oakland, Green Bay, Kansas City and the Jets/Giants. Of the SOTAS teams, Seattle and (to a lesser extent) Denver can make the field cameras shake for big moments. But because of the prices, TV timeouts and cold weather -- not to mention the BlackBerry generation of people who get bored in three minutes -- home cooking doesn't matter like it did. And the numbers back this up. Home teams versus spread (2008): 66-89 SOTAS home teams versus spread: 29-44. SOTAS home teams versus spread as favorites: 19-34. Hmmmmmmmmm. Could it just be a fluky season? Let's look at the past six years of SOTAS teams at home against the spread: 2008: WEEK 1 TO WEEK 11 Team Favorite Underdog Total Arizona 2-1 1-0 3-1 Chicago 1-2 1-1 2-3 Cleveland 0-2 2-1 2-3 Cincinnati 0-2 2-1 2-3 Denver 0-4 0-0 0-4 Detroit 0-0 0-4 0-4 Houston 1-3 0-0 1-3 Indianapolis 1-4 0-0 1-4 New England 2-4 0-0 2-4 Philadelphia 3-2 0-0 3-2 Pittsburgh 2-4 0-0 2-4 Seattle 1-2 0-2 1-4 Tennessee 3-1 1-0 4-1 Washington 1-3 0-1 1-4 TOTAL 19-34 10-10 29-44 2002: 30-41 (13-26 as faves) 2003: 51-33 (37-24 as faves) 2004: 42-49 (28-32 as faves) 2005: 47-48 (37-28 as faves) 2006: 49-52 (27-41 as faves) 2007: 55-42 (41-35 as faves) 2008: 29-44 (19-34 as faves) Quick follow-up to those numbers: Your typical NFL season goes one of two ways, either predictable or unpredictable. Predictable seasons play out like the '03 or '07 seasons did, with a clear separation between high-end teams, middle-class teams and the lower class. (For instance: In '03, the Pats, Titans and Eagles finished 38-10 overall versus the spread and 16-7 at home versus the spread.) Unpredictable seasons play out like '02 or '08, when the number of high-end teams dwindles and the middle class swells with up-and-down teams. We can usually determine by late September if we're headed for an unpredictable season -- remember, I predicted goofiness in 2008 after three weeks -- and those are the times you HAVE to think, "Road teams! Road teams!" for gambling purposes. At least for the first 11-12 weeks. Taking it a step further, home teams are 53 games under.500 against the spread since 1999 (1134-1187). Remember the days when you just filled out an office pool by saying, "I'm taking all the home teams?" No more. Look at what happened Thursday. Once Cincy's inept offense fell behind to a superb Pittsburgh defense in snowy conditions, normally the Bengals would have had as much of a chance as a second season of "Sports Soup"... and yet, they came within a Troy Polamalu goal-line interception of covering that 10.5-point spread. When the weather chills over these last few weeks of the season, could the staggering success of the road teams get tempered a little? Maybe. But it sure seems like we have entered a new era of NFL gambling, and with three more SOTAS teams arriving soon -- Dallas and the two New York teams -- half the league will be playing in stadiums that have absolutely nothing in common with Lambeau Field. It's a little depressing. Potentially lucrative... but depressing. Home Teams vs Spread (since 1999) 2008: 66-89 2007: 126-121 2006: 122-126 2005: 123-123 2004: 114-132 2003: 115-117 2002: 122-125 2001: 119-112 2000: 110-128 1999: 118-114 Total: 1134-1187 Source: Las Vegas Sports Consultants As for Bug and his friends, they planned to give up their seats after this season until Niko talked everyone out of it. After all, the man is in his grilling prime. It would be like Leo DiCaprio giving up acting or Todd Palin giving up his snow machine. You can't take the tongs out of Niko's hands. He has people to feed. "Doesn't matter, I'm sure we'll get our seats yanked within the next two seasons," Bug predicts. "Grover is going to flip out soon. He's like 25 more 'SIT DOWNS' away from causing an international incident. It's not gonna end well. He takes this stuff personally." And he should. The bad news is that, with just a few exceptions, it's now more entertaining to invite your friends over, tailgate in your backyard and watch your favorite team on TV. You get the replays. You get HD. You have your own bathroom. You're saving money. You can stand up if you want. You don't have a commute. If you have the NFL package, you can flip around to other games during commercials. What's the downside? You got me. I had 10 times more fun watching the Pats-Jets game at a New York City bar last week than I would have had at the actual game. And the sad thing was, I knew that would be the case. So that's the bad news. The good news is that we can keep profiting from home-field disadvantage during those first 11-12 weeks before Vegas finally catches on. And they haven't. At least not yet. (Wait a second, why did I write about this again?) ON TO THE WEEK 12 PICKS NOTE: ESPN researchers Mark Simon and Matthew Willis, as well as the Las Vegas Sports Consultants, contributed with research for this column. Bill Simmons is a columnist for Page 2 and ESPN The Magazine. For every Simmons column, as well as podcasts, videos, favorite links and more, check out the revamped Sports Guy's World.We have no idea if Verizon will be getting globally expected devices like the HTC One X or Samsung Galaxy S3, but many Big Red customers are also waiting for the rumored HTC DROID Incredible 4G. And it seems you won’t have to wait that much longer, as the latest rumors are indicating that the Incredible 4G will be released on May 31st. Enough proof that the device is close to its release has already come around. The extended battery is already available, The DROID Incredible 2 has reached its end-of-life, and the device even appeared briefly at Verizon’s Droid Does website. This rumor just might be the right one. We have seen multiple rumored release dates, but CTIA is just around the corner, and odds are in favor of a DROID Incredible 4G announcement. We will definitely be there to bring you all the juicy details, so stay tuned for next week’s CTIA coverage. But tell us guys, could this be your next device? [Via: Phonedog]image credit: @gingerlovesmakeup for Nouveau Cheap Ulta 21 Days of Beauty Fall 2015 Calendar of Events You have to act quickly during this event because the Beauty Steals do sell out in-store (often before noon the day of the event). But the Beauty Steals are also available online and you usually have a bit more time to get them online before they sell out. Be sure to check the Ulta website and weekly ad for additional gift-with-purchase promotions to go along with the daily Beauty Steals (there will be many of them during this event). For previous 21 Days of Beauty events, Ulta lowered their free shipping threshold to $25+ (instead of the usual $50+) for just one week of the event. So be on the lookout for that in case they do it again this time around. If you plan to make a purchase in-store, I highly recommend getting to your local Ulta the moment the store opens on the day of that particular event, if you are able to do so. I cannot tell you how many times I have pressed my luck and tried to pick up something during my lunch break, only to find that the item sold out earlier that morning. And be prepared for some craziness. If your Ulta is already a high-traffic store, and you go on the day of one of the more popular Beauty Steals, expect to stand in line for a while. That's why I suggest going as early in the morning as possible, since the crowds and lines will be nowhere near as crazy as lunchtime and after work. If a Beauty Steal on the calendar of events does not say "online only," then it is available both in-store and online. If you want any of the online-only deals, I would try to log on to the Ulta site as early as possible on the day of that particular Beauty Steal, to ensure that you get it before it sells out. I don't quite recall if these events go live right at midnight on the Ulta site, but if you do, please leave a comment and fill us in? Thanks! @gingerlovesmakeup, for the pic and heads-up! It's BACK! The Fall 2015 Ulta 21 Days of Beauty Event begins on September 6th and runs through September 26th, both in-store and online. Thanks to reader @gingerlovesmakeup on Instagram, I'm able to share with you a sneak peek of the deals that you'll be able score during this event!If you haven't received your Ulta ad in the mail yet this week, be on the lookout for it! @gingerlovesmakeup was kind enough to share some pics of the calendar with us, so I have all the highlights for you today.The full calendar events is now live HERE The Ulta 21 Days of Beauty Event offers shoppers(unless otherwise noted; some days there might be an extra Beauty Steal that is only available online, but for the most part these deals are available in-store and online). When these deals are gone, they're gone, so you have to act quickly (tips about that later in this post).9/6: Philosophy Purity Cleanser 8 oz. $15 (regularly $24) and bareMinerals Prime Time foundation primers 50% off9/7: Anastasia Clear Brow Gel $11 (regularly $23)9/8: All Juice Beauty 50% off9/9: Too Faced La Creme Lip Creams $11 (regularly $22)9/10: Stila Smudge Stick Waterproof Eye Liners BOGOFREE9/11: Smashbox 24HR Photo Finish Shadow Primer $10 (regularly $20)9/12: ButterLONDON lip products $10 each and Philosophy Time in a Bottle Serum 1.3 oz. $55 (regularly $75)9/13: Tarte Lights Camera Lashes Mascara $10 (regularly $21) and Pur Minerals Miracle Mist $10 (regularly $19)9/14: LORAC Porefection Concealers $12 (regularly $24)9/15: IT Cosmetics Eyelift in a Tube $14.50 (regularly $29)9/16: Strivectin SD Advanced Intensive Concentrate $49 (regularly $79)9/17: Too Faced Bulletproof 24-Hour Eye Liner $11 (regularly $22)9/18: Urban Decay Naked Skin Beauty Balms $17 (regularly $34) and Clarisonic Brush Heads BOGOFREE9/19: bareMinerals Lasting Line or Round the Clock eyeliner $8 (regularly $16)9/20: Laura Geller Balance-n-Brighten Foundation $20 (regularly $33) and Smashbox Full Exposure Mascara $10 (regularly $20)9/21: Mario Badescu Peptide Renewal creams and serums 25% off9/22: Amazing Cosmetics Anti-Aging Primer Travel Size $10 (regularly $18)9/23: CK One Brow Pencil + Gel Duo $11 (regularly $22)9/24: Stila Convertible Color $12 (regularly $25)9/25: IT Cosmetics Hello Lashes Mascara $12 (regularly $24)9/26 Tarte Lights Camera Lashes Precision Longwear Eyeliner $10 (regularly $20) and select Philosophy skincare sets 25% offAgain, these are just highlights. View the full calendar of events HERE Since I've covered many of the previous 21 Days of Beauty events, I have some helpful tips that I've picked up along the way (many of them from YOU) that will hopefully increase your chances of getting these deals before they're sold out.If you have any other tips to contribute that might help us all out, please leave them below (and thank you!).CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The jury that convicted East Cleveland serial killer Michael Madison began hearing evidence Thursday as it is now tasked with deciding whether to recommend his execution. The jury will hear from three psychologists who will describe how Madison's troubled childhood influenced his killing of three young women, part of a mitigation phase where Madison's defense attorneys try to convince a jury not to recommend a death sentence. "During the course of this hearing you will learn that Mike Madison, almost from birth, was on a predictable life trajectory that placed him where he sits today," defense attorney David Grant told the jury. Between October 2012 and July 2013, Madison strangled three women. He folded them in half and stuffed them into garbage bags, stashing the corpses near his apartment at the corner of Hayden and Shaw avenues. Previous coverage: Prosecutors open trial with details of mutilated bodies Madison's journey to the courtroom started long before 2012, Grant told the jury. Rather, the murders of Shirellda Terry, 18, Shetisha Sheeley, 28 and Angela Deskins, were part of a horror story that started when Madison was born. Madison was born October 15, 1977 to Diane Madison and John Baldwin, the result of an accidental pregnancy. Baldwin denied that he was Michael Madison's father, and never became a part of his life. Michael Madison's mother was ill-equipped to raise him from the beginning, Grant said, in part because of her own troubled childhood. Her mother left her father when she was young, eventually became a heroin addict and worked as a prostitute. As a single mother, Diane Madison rarely invited other children over to play with him and never took him to meet other children, Grant said. Holidays and birthdays often passed without fanfare or even notice. Michael Madison's early relationships were limited to his mother, her numerous transient boyfriends who disciplined him and a half-brother, Grant said. In 1980, when he was two years old, child and family services discovered that young Michael's mother had stuffed food down his throat causing him to vomit, Grant said. When he vomited, she put him in a tub of hot water. When he screamed, she took him out and beat him with an extension cord. Later that year, child and family services were again called to their home, his attorney said. Reports say that he had a large bruise and an injury on his forehead, requiring treatment at Mt. Sinai Hospital. Six months later, at age 3, one of Diane Madison's boyfriends beat Michael Madison so badly with a belt that he started vomiting and had to be hospitalized. "There was a time he was beaten so severely by a boyfriend of his mother that he lost hearing in one ear," forensic psychologist Dr. Daniel L. Davis said. Reports from social workers showed that he suffered contusions, abrasions and swelling on the shaft of his penis. Child services took him away from his mother. "Unfortunately they placed him with (his grandmother), who was a former prostitute and heroin addict," Grant said. After she received counseling, authorities returned Michael Madison to his mother's care. Still, the boy was a frequent patient at Mt. Sinai Hospital. In 1982 he was hospitalized with dehydration. A year later, social workers reported bruises and scratches on him and his half-brother. Michael Madison had little recollection of the early abuse, other than being trapped in a long room with one of his mother's boyfriends. That is not unusual for young victims, Davis told the jury. While he never recalled the extent of the abuse, psychological experts believe the helplessness and lack of nurturing relationships with adults led him to develop an alternate world in his mind where he could take control of his life. That disassociation with his childhood abuse fueled hatred toward women. Previous coverage: "I don't want this to be for nothing" He regularly lashed out at any form of female authority, according to the earlier testimony of two former girlfriends. He told one of them that he "hates the female species." As he grew, Michael Madison's inability to socialize with others got him in trouble. He was nomadic by the time he was 16 sleeping anywhere he could. At 17, he was charged with delinquency for inappropriately touching a classmate. At 20, he was sentenced jail for drug abuse. Several years later was convicted of rape. Madison was ruled competent to stand trial, meaning court psychologists believe he is able to distinguish the difference between right and wrong. A psychologist also cleared Madison of any mental illness or defects. Madison's violent upbringing left him without any moral compass, Grant said. Davis described generational patterns of abuse, so pervasive that they left Madison with no foundation other than violence. "This individual had no foundation on which to make the proper choices," Grant told the jury. "The evidence will show that Mike's life was further influenced by a disturbed family tree, comprised of generations of physical abusers, sex abusers. Literally, a family tree of abuse." If the jury recommends death, Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Nancy McDonnell will have the ultimate say on whether or not to execute him or send him to life in prison.Sri Lankan defence ministry begins evicting poor in Colombo By our correspondent 10 May 2010 Last Saturday, the Sri Lankan defence ministry deployed police and the army to evict 45 families from central Colombo and demolish their houses. Over recent days, police also have been mobilised to remove thousands of street hawkers in Colombo and its suburbs, in Kandy in the central hills and in the southern city of Galle. Hundreds of people at Mews Street in Colombo’s Slave Island area were confronted by police officers, including the riot squad, who had been mobilised to evict them. The families’ houses were located beside a school for the children of military personnel. When people refused to leave their homes, police dragged them away. Soldiers were deployed around the area. Bulldozers were brought in and started demolishing houses while local people looked on. When residents refused to leave the area, arguing that they had a legal right to housing, police riot squad members brutally beat them with batons and chased them away. Army personnel deleted photographs of the bashings from journalists’ cameras. Colombo hawkers after police destroyed their makeshift stalls These attacks are a part of the re-elected government’s broader plans to evict the poor from the country’s main cities and release the real estate for big business developers. Just a few days after the new government was established following last month’s general election, President Mahinda Rajapakse placed the Urban Development Authority (UDA) under the control of the defence ministry. Defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, the president’s brother, has been appointed UDA chairman. Placing the defence ministry in charge of urban development marks a further militarisation of Sri Lankan society. It is another demonstration that the repressive military methods used against the Tamil population in the north and east during the war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) will increasingly be unleashed against working people throughout the island. Successive governments tried on a number of occasions since 1977 to remove Colombo’s street vendors but backed away in the face of opposition. By placing the cities under the defence ministry, the government hopes to utilise the security machine built up during the war to forcibly clear the poor from areas it has earmarked for corporate ventures. The government has planned several projects in major cities, including Colombo, to attract foreign investment and tourists. According to the UDA, Colombo will become the “Core Area” and will dominate in “port-related activities, banking, financial and insurance sectors” on the basis of a “revised zoning plan”. The government is planning to relocate administrative offices in Sri Jayewardenepura-Kotte, nearly five kilometres from the Colombo city centre. Existing industries in Colombo will be located in free trade zones away from the city. Bulldozer destroying homes Gotabhaya Rajapakse declared the government’s wider intention to remove street hawkers and demolish the houses of the poor while touring the former northern war zone last week. He told the media in northern Kilinochchi that slums and other “illegal structures” were “eyesores” and would be removed from Colombo. The occupants would be provided with new houses to make the city attractive to the tourists, the defence secretary claimed. According to government statistics, nearly 54 percent of Colombo’s residents are slum dwellers. They occupy nearly 1,000 acres of prime land “illegally”. Authorities have accused the poor of draining the resources of the city and causing “serious nuisance to citizens and impeding development”. To justify the removal of Colombo’s pavement vendors, the government and the media claimed the action was pedestrian-friendly and necessary to eliminate crime. Friday’s editorial in the state-owned Daily News commended Gotabhaya Rajapakse for his “no nonsense” stand of rejecting “the pleas of politicians on behalf of these criminals and ordering all unauthorised structures be removed”. When WSWS reporters visited Slave Island yesterday, hundreds of people remained there on the roads or in near-by buildings. Police personnel had been deployed, and army troops stationed at the junction. Residents angrily recounted that the UDA had called them a week ago and announced that their houses would be demolished on May 8. One resident explained: “Many of us earn a living as street hawkers. We were asked to go to temporary huts about 4 kilometres away. There are no toilets there and the huts are not suitable for living. A UDA official said they had orders from ‘higher up’ to demolish our houses. “I think this area is being cleared for the defence school. We were given 5,000 rupees (about $US45). But we refused to take that money. They say these buildings have been constructed illegally. That is a lie. Our people have lived here for about 80 years. We have legal documents.” Another resident said: “The defence secretary has started this. This is only the first step.” He asked: “Is this the ‘wonder in the Asia’?”—referring to President Rajapakse’s claim to make Sri Lanka an economic wonder in Asia. He added: “Here Sinhala, Muslim and Tamil people were living peacefully. Is this the way the poor are treated by this government?” A schoolboy told us: “Yesterday I saw tractors come and break our houses. I can’t go to school for months. My school bag and uniforms are under the debris. My sister is facing the same situation. I am crying, and my mother is also crying. Don’t demolish my mother’s and grandmother’s house!” Many street hawkers expressed their outrage. One declared: “How can we live without our businesses? How will our
, insomnia, and excessive menstrual bleeding, though there is little clinical evidence of its efficacy. It is also a popular ingredient in beauty products, including face creams and moisturizers. Two hundred and fifty-gram slabs of the substance, which resemble resinous chocolate bars, sell for up to $350 each; in special circumstances, the price can be as much as 10 times higher. These extravagant costs reflect systemic shortages and insatiable appetite in China, where ejiao production now consumes some 4 million skins each year. In the last two decades, China’s donkey population — once the world’s largest — contracted from 11 million to less than 6 million, while per capita GDP increased almost tenfold, from just over $1,800 in 1995 to more than $14,000 in 2015. Rapid industrialization and urban migration greatly reduced the need for donkeys in rural areas, while rising affluence in cities boosted demand for consumer products like ejiao. The result has been a surge in skins imports from developing countries, often with scant regard for the suffering of donkeys or the lives of people who depend on them. “Traders and businessmen responded in a gold-rush style frenzy,” the Donkey Sanctuary, a welfare organization based in England, wrote in a report on the trade published earlier this year. Jeremy had never heard of ejiao but was excited by the prospect of easy money. The owner of a small renewable energy firm, he had no experience dealing with livestock or exports, but in other respects he was ideally situated to enter the sector. His parents had emigrated from Taiwan years before he was born, and he’d grown up speaking Mandarin, meaning that he could communicate easily with Chinese importers. But Jeremy needed donkeys, and to get them he turned to Claude, a stout Malawian man who claimed that he had access to an equine abattoir and a network of willing sellers. Claude, who asked not to be identified by his real name, asked Jeremy for a loan of $3,800 to procure the first batch of skins, which he suggested selling to a Chinese exporter named Liu Gin after the buyer who initially approached Jeremy pulled out. The loan was repayable in two weeks with 30 percent interest, meaning that Jeremy stood to pocket nearly $1,200. “It was purely a business opportunity. Who would say no to that return?” he said. So he photocopied Claude’s ID book and residential lease to avoid being conned and asked his lawyer to draw up a comprehensive loan agreement. On Aug. 4, Jeremy transferred the money to Claude from his company account. Claude had assured Jeremy that he was sourcing donkeys legally, but in reality he was operating an illicit skins-trading syndicate. While no laws explicitly forbid exporting donkey skins from South Africa, the industry is bound by strict animal welfare and food safety regulations, which require that the animals be slaughtered in registered abattoirs. Claude was buying donkeys directly from villagers and illegally butchering them on the spot — saving time and money by operating outside the law. The South African government has clamped down on illegal outfits like Claude’s, making dozens of arrests for theft and animal cruelty in the last 18 months. Increasingly, authorities are finding that donkey smugglers have ties to organized crime. Last September, while rescuing 70 donkeys from a farm run by a skins-smuggling group, police discovered a stash of dried abalone, a South African shellfish species exported illegally by the ton to China in exchange for methamphetamines and other drugs. Chinese and Taiwanese syndicates, collectively known as Triad gangs, have long profited from the illegal export of rhino horn, ivory, abalone, and precious minerals from South Africa, shipping drugs and migrants entering illegally in the opposite direction. When the donkey boom hit, it appears that these networks began dealing in hides as well. “Chinese importers began asking about donkeys in 2014,” said a former South African trade consultant who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “There were seven companies each looking to buy around 10,000 skins a year. It was a big opportunity for rural development, but there were no frameworks to support legal trade. And when you can’t go legally, you go through the mafia.” In addition to fueling criminal activity, the sudden spike in hide prices has made donkeys prohibitively expensive for rural farmers who rely on them. In Niger, for instance, average donkey prices jumped from $34 to $145 in just five years. Last September, after traders had shipped 80,000 skins in just nine months, Niger’s government joined Senegal, Mali, and Burkina Faso in banning further exports. Without intervention, “the animals will be decimated,” an unnamed Nigerien official told the BBC. “If the trade can be regulated and monitored, then there is a genuine opportunity to create a viable export market,” said Eric Olander, a journalist who founded the weekly China in Africa Podcast. “But at present laws are unclear and unevenly enforced, with vulnerable rural communities threatened by surging prices and poaching.” At the periphery of the syndicate that Jeremy unwittingly bankrolled was a slender Malawian immigrant in his late 20s named Sam. “A Chinese buyer was offering good money,” he said. “These guys needed help with their supply.” A cash-strapped church caretaker, Sam began working as a fixer for Claude’s outfit, linking his buyers with farmers from villages outside Johannesburg. One day last August, he hired a minibus taxi and drove west of Johannesburg to a tiny rural settlement near the town of Ventersdorp. There he purchased 25 donkeys, recruiting a group of locals to help process the skins. They killed the animals one by one, knifing them at the base of the skull or striking them between the eyes with a hammer. Sam earned $75 that day, a small fraction of what the haul was worth. When Jeremy learned that he’d financed a criminal enterprise, he quit the skins business completely. Claude’s syndicate collapsed less than six months later, in February, when police arrested Gin, the main buyer behind the operation, for falsely declaring a shipment of 300 skins at Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport. Customs officials intercepted the shipment, which was destined for Hong Kong, after noticing a foul smell rising from wooden boxes labeled “cladding.” Four days later, police confiscated more than 1,000 skins from a farm Gin had allegedly rented outside the city. Each of the confiscated skins would have fetched more than $500 in China, for a total of more than $650,000. It’s the kind of payday that keeps Chinese importers coming back despite the risks — and young men like Jeremy, Claude, and Sam clamoring for a share of the spoils. “If I could sell skins, I wouldn’t be in this situation,” said Sam, who has fallen on hard times since the syndicate ended and is on the lookout for a new buyer. “I need to start trading again. Even five skins would be enough.” TONY KARUMBA/AFP/Getty ImagesNext week New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady will tee it up with the world’s best golfer, Rory McIlroy, at Augusta National, the home of the Masters Tournament. Spraying golf balls around the tough Augusta layout should provide some headaches for the four-time Super Bowl Champ, yet probably not as many as the deflated footballs caused Brady back in January. Yahoo Sports reported that the Pats’s field general is no stranger to the links and plays to an impressive 8 handicap. Given the punishing greens and sloping fairways that means Brady might have a chance to break 100. No doubt wife and super model Gisele Bundchen will console him after the round as she often does after a bad day at the office. Perhaps she’ll blame a bad score on unfair pin placements since she won’t be able to fault hubby’s wide receivers. The outing kicks off McIlroy’s skill sharpening for the Masters coming up in April, which if he wins will give him the coveted career grand slam of four Major victories. The twenty-five-year-old Irish golfer has already won two PGA Championships, one British Open, and a U.S. Open. McIlroy disappointed himself and fans last week shooting 73 and 74 missing the cut at the Honda Classic in Palm Beach. Thursday he shot a one over 73 at the WGC-Cadillac Championship at Trump National Doral, finding himself 11 strokes back after J.B. Holmes fired a 10 under 62. A reinvigorated Dustin Johnson, coming off of a 2nd place finish at the Northern Trust open last week, where he lost in a playoff to James Hahn at Riviera, shot 68 capturing second place after Thursday’s rounds.The Penguins are among the Eastern Conference's worst teams when it comes to earning at least a point in divisional games: It’s the Penguins’ shortest week of the season. Just two games, back-to-back. Then an extended break for the All-Star Game. But don’t be fooled. It may well be their most crucial stretch of the season thus far. Games Tuesday and Wednesday at the Flyers and against the Blackhawks present the Penguins an opportunity to take a few days off feeling good about themselves, the best-case scenario a 5-3-1 record in January entering the break. Or the Penguins could stew for four days and reconvene for practice following two losses that dropped them into fourth place in the Metropolitan Division with a 3-5-1 record in January and losses in seven of eight against division opponents. “We have to get our game back and get back in sync,” coach Mike Johnston said. “That’s the real key thing for me right now.” That the Penguins need to bounce back from losses to the Islanders and Rangers, one more wretched than the next, is the easy part. How they do it gets a little more complex. The schedule The Penguins went winless in back-to-back games twice over the first 10 weeks of the season. It’s happened three times — including a seasonlong four games without a win Dec. 22-29 — since. “You can’t get into a spot where you lose a couple games in a row,” Johnston said. “We’ve lost two. Now, we have to respond.” The remaining 38 games somewhat favor the Penguins. Sure, 22 are on the road, but only 13 are against Metropolitan Division opponents, a group against which they have gone 6-8-3. More positive news: Nine of the 13 are against teams outside the current playoff picture, and eight are at home. “You want to play well against division teams,” forward Nick Spaling said. “That’s our focus next time we play one. We want to be ready for it.” The Penguins will want to watch goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury’s work rate. He has started 36 of 44 games or 81.8 percent. Fleury had 19 wins as of Dec. 20. He has three since. Fleury has had a comparable work rate before: 81.7 percent (67 of 82 starts) in 2006-07, 2009-10 and 2011-12. Those seasons, as you might remember, ended in disaster. The Penguins won one of four playoff series. Fleury, whether he was gassed or not, posted a combined 3.38 goals-against average over 24 playoff games. The injuries Extended absences of Patric Hornqvist and Blake Comeau — they’re expected to remain out at least until the end of January — have hurt. More than many expected, too. Despite missing the past 11 games, Comeau still ranks fourth on the Penguins with 97 hits. Hornqvist’s void on the power play has been addressed somewhat by David Perron, at least over the past six games. But the Penguins’ puck management, especially down low, has been negatively impacted, defenseman Rob Scuderi said. “Our ability to play down low with the puck for longer periods of time like we did earlier in the season has been a little bit affected,” Scuderi said. “Some of that is bad habits, and some of that is personnel.” Comeau was on pace for 28 goals when he was hurt, Hornqvist 32. Both would represent career-best numbers. But upper-body and lower-body injuries, respectively, have left the Penguins counting the days until their returns. “They’re both physical,” Johnston said. “They compete hard and go to the net. Both have fulfilled everything we expected and probably a little bit more. To lose them, yeah, it’s been difficult.” The offense No Comeau or Hornqvist has left Evgeni Malkin with a revolving door of wingers. On Sunday, Malkin started the game with Mark Arcobello, an experiment that didn’t make it past the first period. Arcobello was the 13th winger Malkin has had this season, though not the most unlikely. Jayson Megna and Bryan Rust are in the AHL; Andrew Ebbett was placed on waivers — and cleared; Rob Klinkhammer was shipped to hockey purgatory in Edmonton, where he has one assist in seven games. “Do I get concerned with the number of wingers he’d had? Yeah, for sure,” Johnston said. “Some of it has been dictated by circumstance, though.” Is it time to move Malkin back to wing and have center Brandon Sutter center the second line? Malkin averages 1.14 points on his own, 1.09 with Sutter. The Penguins are 6-4-1 in games they play together, but Johnston prefers Malkin at center. It would also push Spaling to a more familiar checking-line role. Spaling is a minus-3 over his past 12 games but a plus-4 on the season. “I like him at center,” Johnston said of Malkin. “He has the puck a lot more. He skates more.” Johnston wants to keep Chris Kunitz, Sidney Crosby and Perron together. “We have a line there,” Johnston said. “Now, we have to get a line with Geno, whether it’s Spaling or (Beau) Bennett for the next few games or it’s Hornqvist and Comeau when they come back.” Jason Mackey is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. Reach him at [email protected] or via Twitter @Mackey_Trib.This article is over 3 years old Chinese entrepreneurs bring their one-person craft, which is controlled by tablet and capable of flying 60mph, to the annual technology convention A Chinese company claimed a world first on Wednesday by unveiling a drone capable of carrying a human passenger. Guangzhou-based Ehang Inc pulled the cloth off the Ehang 184 at the Las Vegas convention center during the CES gadget show. In a company video showing the 184 flying, it looks like a small helicopter but with four propellers spinning parallel to the ground in a similar configuration to other drones. The electric-powered drone can be fully charged in two hours, carry up to 100kg (220lb) and fly for 23 minutes at sea level, according to Ehang. The cabin fits one person and a small backpack and is fitted with air conditioning and a reading light. It is designed to fit, with propellers folded, in a single parking spot. After setting a flight plan, passengers needed only to give two commands – “take off” and “land” – done with a single click on a tablet, the company said. The drone is designed to fly 300 metres to 500 metres (1,000 to 1,650 feet) off the ground with a maximum altitude of 3.5km (11,500 feet) and top speed of 63 mph (100km/h). US authorities are starting to lay out guidelines for drone use, and a human-passenger drone seems certain to face strict scrutiny. Michael Huerta, head of the Federal Aviation Administration, was at CES but could not immediately be reached for comment. Shang Hsiao, Ehang’s co-founder and chief financial officer, said his company hoped to sell the device for $200,000-$300,000 this year but acknowledged it occupied a legal grey area. “The whole world never had something like this before,” he said. A passenger would have no controls as a backup, he said. The company was planning a remote control centre that would take over the vehicle in the event of a problem and ensure it landed safely. Derrick Xiong, the chief marketing officer, said the vehicle had been flown more than 100 times at low altitudes in a forested area in Guangzhou, including several times with a person aboard. One feature that made the quadcopter safer than a helicopter was its numerous propellers, Xiong said. Even if three of the four arms had their six propellers disabled, the final arm’s working propellers could ensure a rough landing by spiralling toward the ground. The company, which also makes smaller drones, said in August that it had raised $42m in capital from various investors including GP Capital, GGV Capital, ZhenFund and others, after raising $10 m the previous year."The Purple People Eater" is a novelty song written and performed by Sheb Wooley, which reached No. 1 in the Billboard pop charts in 1958 from June 9 to July 14, reached No. 12 overall in the UK singles chart and topped the Australian charts. Composition [ edit ] "The Purple People Eater" tells how a strange creature (described as a "one-eyed, one-horned, flying, purple people eater") descends to Earth because it wants to be in a rock 'n' roll band. The premise of the song came from a joke told by the child of a friend of Wooley's; Wooley finished composing it within an hour.[2] The creature is not necessarily purple, but rather it eats purple people: I said Mr Purple People Eater, what's your line? He said eating purple people, and it sure is fine But that's not the reason that I came to land I wanna get a job in a rock 'n roll band[3][4][5] The creature also gives an additional reason for choosing not to eat the narrator, because the narrator is "so tough". The ambiguity of the song was present when it was originally played on the radio. In responses to requests from radio disc jockeys, listeners drew pictures that show a purple-colored "people eater".[2] The voice of the purple people eater is a sped-up recording, giving it a voice similar to, but not quite as high-pitched or as fast, as Mike Sammes's 1957 "Pinky and Perky", or Ross Bagdasarian's "Witch Doctor", another hit from earlier in 1958; and "The Chipmunk Song" which was released late in 1958. (Alvin and the Chipmunks themselves eventually covered "Purple People Eater" for their 1998 album The A-Files: Alien Songs.) The sound of a toy saxophone was produced in a similar fashion as the saxophone was originally recorded at a reduced speed.[2] The song invokes phrases from several other hit songs from that era: "Short Shorts", by The Royal Teens, and "Tequila", by the Champs, both from earlier in 1958; and "Tutti Frutti" from 1955. Notable recordings [ edit ] According to Wooley, MGM Records initially rejected the song, saying that it was not the type of music with which they wanted to be identified. An acetate of the song reached MGM Records' New York office. The acetate became popular with the office's young people. Up to 50 people would listen to the song at lunchtime. The front office noticed, reconsidered their decision, and decided to release the song.[6] The Sheb Wooley version crossed to the Billboard R&B listings, and while it did not make Billboard's country chart, it reached #4 on the Cashbox country listing.[citation needed] Jackie Dennis covered the song in 1958 and his version reached #29 in the UK.[7] Judy Garland recorded the song on her 1958 Capitol Records album Garland at the Grove, accompanied by Freddy Martin & his Orchestra, issued as Capitol T 1118 (mono) and ST 1118 (stereo).[8] Wooley recorded another version of the song in 1967, titled "The Purple People Eater #2" and credited to his alter ego Ben Colder, on the MGM label.[9] A cover version recorded by British comedian Barry Cryer reached no. 1 in the Finnish charts after contractual reasons prevented Wooley's version being released in Scandinavia.[10] Wooley re-recorded the song in 1979 under the title "Purple People Eater" and it was released on the King label.[11] Popularity [ edit ] The Hagen-Renaker ceramics company of California created a figurine of the Purple People Eater as part of its 1958–59 "Little Horribles" line. Due to the common misinterpretation of the lyrics as mentioned above, the creature was purple in color. The figure was a best seller.[citation needed] The enduring popularity of the song led to the nicknaming of the highly effective "Purple People Eaters", the Minnesota Vikings defensive line of the 1970s, whose team colors include purple.[12] From 1982, major British toy manufacturer Waddingtons marketed a children's game inspired by the song. Players competed to remove tiny "people" from the rubber Purple People Eater shell, using tweezers on a wire loop which activated an alarm if coming into contact with its metal jaws.[13]The technotariat is a collective noun describing automata, both hardware and software, which displace the traditional productive roles of the proletariat; i.e. robots which replace wage-earners. A member of such a class is a technotarian. The term stems from the Marxist word, "proletariat", which is used to name the social class that does not have ownership of the means of production and whose only means of subsistence is to sell their labour power for a wage or salary. Etymology Edit The technotariat derives from two words, technology and proletariat, technology being the use of tools created for the purpose of easing labour. and the proletariat being the social class whom sells their labour for wages or salaries in order to survive. Technostist theory Edit A technotarian can be defined as any technology that replaces the human worker in the workplace as long as that technology generates productive value, is owned by a human of the networking class, and possesses sentience but lacks sapience. Some technotarians can be placed in positions that were, in a pre-technostist economy, only held by owners of capital— the bourgeoisie. This is because technotarians are separate from artilects— artificially intelligent entities capable of sapience— and thus are not capable of exerting will or desire to own possessions and capital. The technotariat is incapable of revolution due to its inability to desire freedom or ownership of the means of production. The existence of the technotariat is the primary difference between mutualism and technostism. Due to these factors, the technotariat can be seen as the most revolutionary development in human history, part of a process that began with humanity's evolution as a tool-using hominid and ends with transhumanism and technostism. Because of this, humans will be freed from labour.by Gerrit De Vynck TORONTO BlackBerry Ltd. is offering to pay iPhone users as much as $550 to switch to a square-screened BlackBerry Passport. Starting in December, customers who trade in an iPhone for the keyboard-equipped Passport will get as much as $400 back depending on their Apple Inc. smartphone’s model and condition, plus a $150 prepaid gift card, BlackBerry said Monday in a statement. The promotion is only available in North America and lasts until Feb. 13. After losing most of its smartphone market share to iPhones and devices running Google Inc.’s Android software, BlackBerry is focusing on selling to business and government users. It brought back the physical keyboard and is touting the ease of working on the Passport’s wide screen. The deal is part of a blast of holiday promotions BlackBerry announced yesterday, including a Black Friday sale, a new financing program and red and white Passport phones. Chief Executive Officer John Chen has said he hopes to return the company to the consumer market one day.EFF’s case challenging the government’s mass telephone records collection program, First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA, has received some new firepower in the form of five amicus briefs, including one from U.S. senators charged with overseeing the NSA’s activities. The briefs are all in support of our claim that the NSA’s mass surveillance of ordinary Americans’ telephone records is illegal and unconstitutional. The friend-of-the-court brief filed by the ACLU on behalf of Senators Ron Wyden, Mark Udall, and Martin Heinrich takes issue with the government's argument that mass collection is necessary because it is the only effective technique for using phone records: The government has repeatedly suggested that it first must assemble the haystack, then find the needle. The senators, all members of the committee tasked with oversight of the NSA, write that they “have seen no evidence that the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records has provided any intelligence of value that could not have been gathered through less intrusive means.” As the senators’ brief points out, the government has other, more targeted means of surveillance at its disposal which can yield intelligence without invading the privacy of millions of innocent Americans. The problems with unchecked surveillance and the need for oversight are also discussed in a brief filed on behalf of three experts in the history of intelligence agency surveillance: NSA historian James Bamford and two Church Committee staff members, Loch Johnson and Peter Fenn. Relying on the findings of the 1975 Church Committee, the brief draws parallels between the NSA’s current dragnet collection of phone records and previous mass surveillance programs. When left unchecked, the experts assert, initially narrow surveillance programs “expand beyond their original purposes, often into illegal conduct.” Several other briefs shed light on the destructive effects that the phone records program has on fundamental constitutional rights, such as free speech, free association, and the right to counsel. The PEN American Center, whose members include some of the most celebrated writers in the world, undertook a survey that shows that the revelation of NSA surveillance has caused American writers to self-censor, avoiding writing and communicating about topics that might draw government scrutiny. As PEN explains in its brief, these chilling effects undermine the First Amendment’s fundamental protection of the right to advocate unpopular or controversial viewpoints. Meanwhile, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press focuses on the “corrosive effect that mass call tracking has on the ability of the media to report on matters of public interest.” For some of the most important reporting in American history, including the Watergate scandal and the first revelations of the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping in 2005, reporters have relied on confidential sources and government leaks. In the past, when the government has sought to identify these sources, it has had to obey First Amendment protections and negotiate with journalists. Yet, as the Reporters Committee argues, these protections are “rendered pointless when cast against the backdrop of total surveillance of domestic telephone calls.” As a result, reporters’ sources dry up, restricting the ability of the press to play its crucial role in providing information to the public. Finally, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers highlights how the phone records program infringes the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a right to counsel in criminal cases. Interlocking doctrines of confidentiality protect several aspects of the lawyer-client relationship, but just as the mass collection of phone records can reveal many intimate details of individuals’ daily lives, it can also strip away this confidentiality. Because “the very act of consulting with the counsel of one’s choice places the fact and details of that consultation, and all subsequent communications by both attorney and client, in the hands of the Government,” clients are chilled from seeking legal help and the Sixth Amendment guarantee is undermined. Combined with the plaintiffs’ first-hand accounts of how their associational rights are chilled by the phone records program, these amicus briefs show the wide-ranging effects of the government's unconstitutional phone records program. The amicus briefs: Senators Wyden, Udall and Heinrich Surveillance Experts PEN American Center Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press et al. NACDLWhen a politician says something that indicates a serious fundamental ignorance about economics or crime or really any subject, it can make you wonder whether they truly don't know what they're talking about or whether they're cynically assuming the average voter won't know enough to realize the flaw. With Sen. Bernie Sanders it can be a toss-up. He recently tweeted a particularly stupid complaint about college loans, whining that there's no reason why their interest rates should be higher than for cars or mortgages. It was pointed out that cars and homes can be repossessed or foreclosed upon, thus reducing the risk from the banks for providing the loan and reducing the potential losses. Does Sanders even understand this? Who knows? Today the Washington Post has published a commentary from Sanders calling for free college that again highlights his poor grasp of the economics of higher education and avoids any discussion of why college costs are skyrocketing. After crediting the progressive movement with creating the K-12 public education system, he declares: "By 1940, half of all young people were graduating from high school. As of 2013, that number is 81 percent. But that achievement is no longer enough. A college degree is the new high school diploma." He continues: In the 1950s and 1960s, it was possible to graduate from high school and move right into a decent-paying job with good benefits. Strong unions offered apprenticeships, and a large manufacturing sector provided opportunities for those without an advanced degree. A couple with a sole breadwinner could buy a home, raise a family and send their kids to college. That was the American dream. Unfortunately, today, for too many Americans, it's not a possibility. An important pathway to the middle class now runs through higher education, but rising costs are making it harder and harder for ordinary Americans to get the education they want and need. In 1978, it was possible to earn enough money to pay for a year of college tuition just by working a summer job that paid minimum wage. Today, it would take a minimum wage worker an entire year to earn enough to cover the annual in-state tuition at a public university. And that's why so many bright young people don't go to college, don't finish or graduate deeply in debt. With $1.3 trillion in student loans, Americans are carrying more student debt than credit card or auto loan debt. That's a tragedy for our young people and for our nation. By the way, on what basis is it a tragedy that Americans have more student debt than credit card and auto loan debt? If the argument being presented is that college educations are vital to economic mobility, doesn't that indicate intelligent decision-making? Anyway, you won't see any discussion in Sanders commentary about why college prices have exploded far above and beyond increases in the consumer price index or even the costs of healthcare. There will be no discussion of how subsidies and administrative bloat have massively driven up prices and eliminated any incentives for colleges to restrain costs. It's just a thing that happened. Instead, Sanders points to other, smaller countries that have "free" college tuition (scare quotes because obviously somebody's paying for it): Finland, Denmark, Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Mexico. He takes special note of Germany, because even Americans can access their college system: For a token fee of about $200 per year, an American can earn a degree in math or engineering from one of the premier universities in Europe. Governments in these countries understand what an important investment they are making, not just in the individuals who are able to acquire knowledge and skills but for the societies these students will serve as teachers, architects, scientists, entrepreneurs and more. Since Sanders left out any analysis of why college is so expensive, it's worth exploring what exactly Sanders has left out when he invokes Germany's college system. Note that Sanders has said "A college degree is the new high school diploma"? That attitude is exactly backwards from how Germany approaches higher education. Germany does not have a work environment that demands a college degree for every well-paying career. The apprenticeship program that Sanders bemoans having lost in America is well intact in Germany. Many careers that require college degrees in America do not require college degrees in Germany. Even with the free tuition, Germany actually has a lower college enrollment rate than many other Western countries, including the United States (check out World Bank data here). Actually, America has a higher rate of college enrollment than all of the countries Sanders lists except for Finland. Oh, also: America has a higher college graduation rate than Germany, too. And a greater percentage of young Americans have college degrees compared to every country on Sanders' list except for Norway and Ireland. Instead, Germany has a very robust vocational education track that partners businesses and the government to provide apprenticeships, so the government (and citizenry) is not paying the full burden for the students' training, though Germany is still covering classroom costs. It is also a highly regulated, centrally controlled, and very inflexible system that probably won't fly in the United States. Tamar Jacoby noted at The Atlantic when exploring Germany's apprenticeship program a year ago: What makes dual training work, every manager told us, are the standardized occupational profiles, or curricula, developed by the federal government in collaboration with employers, educators, and union representatives. Every young machinist training anywhere in Germany learns the same skills in the same order on the same timetable as every other machinist. This is good for apprentices: It guarantees high-quality programs where trainees learn more than one company's methods, making it possible for those who wish to switch jobs later on. But it's hard to imagine this level of state control or business-labor cooperation in the U.S. It's certainly easy to see how a guy who thinks we have too many types of deodorant would not grasp that flexibility and innovation could be lost as a result of standardizing college the way we have public education. It's also possible Sanders wouldn't even grasp that this is a problem.Kev Harrison, Lead Designer, Krome Studios “As Lead Designer I previously worked closely with Joel as our main Character Programmer, who was responsible for implementing the main vision of the game. Joel can without a doubt be relied upon to take responsibility for not only his own, but other peoples work by helping out wherever he can. He is always willing to help, listen and approach new ideas and always wants to know how, what and why when taking on tasks. This is because he strives to complete his tasks efficiently and makes sure he understands what is requested and why in the scheme of things, to get it done right. If there is a problem I could rely on Joel to step through it with me to work out what the source of the problem is and to solve it efficiently and effectively. Joel will get the job done and never settles for second best. It was great to work Joel, and a real shame for me to see him move to Melbourne, as together we were able to get some very creative and efficient work done, in budget and on time, and had great fun doing it.” September 10, 2010 Ray Leung, Art Director - Melbourne & Adelaide, Krome Studios “Joel is well-known across the entire studio as a talented programmer who not only understands what's required, but gets to the solution fast, and communicates with you during the process. He provides a lot of creative ideas for whatever project he's working on, and is also one of those guys who helps keep a whole team buzzing and interested in a project, through his own enthusiasm and motivation. One of the good guys.” September 2, 2010 Chris Lacy, Lead Programmer, Krome Studios “Joel is an intelligent, skilled, and highly dependable Senior Game Programmer. I've worked with Joel on 3 different projects in recent years, and in each case he has made himself a critical member of the programming team. He works well with fellow programmers and artists alike, and continually shows the dedication to do whatever is necessary to make sure milestones and ship dates are met. I would have no hesitation in assigning him any programming tasks required for a project. He is especially valuable at the end of a project, where he can be relied upon to both close out bugs and add the extra polish required to make a game stand out. Any programming team will undoubtedly be stronger with Joel on it.” September 2, 2010 Don Meadows, Producer, Krome Studios "I have worked with Joel across three titles. Early on, his ability to approach problems as both a resource conscious coder and a gamer impressed me – and I requested Joel for each successive project. Joel’s greatest strength is his ability to discuss the project with the different departments in their own language and infer the information into tangible results. He can speak to Design as a Designer, and to Artists as an Artist – and create code than understands the intent of the direction. Joel ensures that the end gameplay direction is qualified before coding and is able to autonomously make judgment calls within the code to fit the desired result. It’s his ability to take a problem and turn it into a hands-with-controller solution that saw him tasked with the more difficult mechanics and features that affected game-play on the Spyro and Clone Wars games. He also has a very clear understanding of the role of the Lead Coder and Production, and intrinsically understands the production of AVIs, screenshots and summary reports of progress and projected dates and possible issues. His ability to create code understanding the need for ease of movement in balancing, and the importance of thoroughly testing his own work helped to ensure Joel’s code was unusually low on bugs compared to our standard bug creation projection rates. This left Joel available to close other bugs within the database – of which he was both incredibly accommodating and understanding of from a production view and incredibly fast from a coding view." August 25, 2010 Kurt Busch, Studio Director - Melbourne, Adelaide, Krome Studios “Joel has been with Krome for five years, joining the studio in Melbourne just over two years ago. The Melbourne studio boasts a strong staff of extemely talented and experienced coders, yet Joel distinguished himself in this elite group quickly. On his first title in Melbourne - Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - he quickly became a critical part of the team, not only because of his in-depth understanding of the MKII engine, but also because of the extremely elegant and clean code he wrote, not only for early, important levels of the game, but also for the very critical Boss Levels. During this aggressive production schedule, he not only put in exceptional hours, but also sought out additional tasks and still managed to write superior code. Since then, he has consistantly been sought out by team leaders - in both Melbourne and Brisbane - because of his ability, reliability and sheer stamina. At our request, he has
show up and brag about not being arrested while our friends face life–changing charges. We now know that Inauguration Day was a coup. Since then, governmental power has rapidly begun consolidating into the executive branch, with the police as armed enforcers of its will. Is that who you want to decide for you who is a good protester and who is a bad protester? When power is arbitrary, we have no option other than to challenge power relations themselves. This requires vigilance and solidarity. As of now, charges have been dropped for the five journalists that were among the arrested. Those are the highest-profile arrestees, and the U.S. Attorney's Office thinks they can bury this story by dropping those charges. It thinks it can disappear the remaining 225 arrestees, just like the prison system disappears huge swaths of the population, hiding them from our eyes. This is how power operates – it separates us, isolates us, because together we are a threat. Since the inauguration, huge rallies at airports are starting to destabilize the dichotomy between symbolic protest and direct action. It’s a good start, but we need to disrupt that dichotomy further by demanding support from the people who participated in the Women’s March for the people who participated in J20. Good and bad protesters in solidarity. And once you accept that it’s the police’s prerogative whether a protest is violent or results in arrests, that realization should necessarily raise the question: why not embrace a politic of direct confrontation? Or at least, why not support those who do? This is a time to be bold. There are sweeping calls for “left unity,” seemingly deployed in an effort to silence anyone to the left of Democrats. What if left unity was organized around supporting those who engage in direct confrontation and those who are victimized or criminalized by police? What if it was organized around jail solidarity and prison abolition? Our only hope for surviving these brutal times is to join together... but we’re not together unless you’re with us. Don’t forget about the J20 arrestees. Don’t forget about DC. Your fate is bound up with ours. For more information about the J20 arrestees and how you can support them, visit disruptj20.org Beck Levy plays in the band Hand Grenade Job, which is celebrating the release of its debut album Devotionals this month. She produces work in multiples under the imprint Astropress. Her current research interests include autonomist movements, psychopharmacology, and makeup tutorials. By Beck Levy, distributed under a Creative Commons CC-BY license.Obituaries Desmond Doss, 87; WWII Hero Who Refused to Carry a Gun But although his religious beliefs forbade his taking of lives, Doss did what he could to save the lives of comrades. Instead he carried a pocket-size Bible on Guam, Leyte and Okinawa and when not treating the wounded, the Seventh-day Adventist from Virginia would read Scripture. A conscientious objector who served as an Army medic in the Pacific, he was ridiculed and cursed in boot camp by fellow soldiers for refusing to carry a weapon. For his heroic actions on Okinawa, including braving heavy enemy fire to single-handedly rescue 75 wounded infantrymen and lower them one by one down a cliff to safety, he received the nation's highest military award -- and he did it without ever firing a shot. "What I did," he later said, "was a service of love." Doss, the first conscientious objector -- and the only one during World War II -- to be awarded the Medal of Honor, died Thursday at his home in Piedmont, Ala. He was 87 and had been in failing health for some time, said Ken Wetmore, communication director for the Georgia-Cumberland Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. "Desmond was a very humble man," Pastor Les Speer, a longtime friend, told The Times. "He was not proud of himself for what he had done; he was proud that God was able to use him to save so many lives." A native of Lynchburg, Va., Doss was working in a Newport News, Va., shipyard when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Offered a deferment from military service to continue his work, he turned it down and registered for the draft as a conscientious objector. Doss, however, preferred to be considered a "conscientious cooperator," telling the draft board that, although he was not willing to kill, he was more than willing to serve. "I felt like it was an honor to serve God and country," he told the Richmond Times Dispatch in 1998. "I didn't want to be known as a draft dodger, but I sure didn't know what I was getting into." His religious convictions made him an immediate misfit in boot camp, where he was exempt from KP and other duties on Saturdays because his denomination's Sabbath runs from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. "The other men hated him for not pulling KP on Saturday," said Speer, adding that Doss was forced to make up for it during the week by doing extra KP and cleaning latrines. Fellow soldiers threw shoes at Doss when he knelt beside his bunk and prayed. An officer threatened to have him court-martialed and at one point even tried to have him discharged as "mentally unfit."Peter Julian is dropping his role as NDP House leader, suggesting the B.C. MP is gearing up for a leadership bid. NDP Justice Critic Murray Rankin will take the reins as the new NDP House Leader. Julian told reporters Wednesday that he’d announced at the party’s weekly caucus meeting that he’s stepping down and will spend some time talking with Canadians as he considers a possible leadership bid. But Julian also said he hasn’t decided for sure yet if a run is in the cards, and said there’s not a pressing deadline for him to decide. “That will mean lots of conversations — hundreds of conversations in the coming period,” he said. “I know how important our work in Parliament is, as well, of course I believe it’s important to have a full-time House leader that is focused on parliamentary work.” Julian made the announcement on the anniversary of the 2015 election. “This is the one-year anniversary of the government. I think a lot of Canadians are disappointed in how the first year has gone. There was a commitment to real change and we haven’t seen that.” “I think a lot of people are disappointed.” Julian was careful to describe bread and butter NDP issues and didn’t offer much on what a Julian campaign would look like. “We’re seeing appalling poverty in First Nations,” he said. “Climate change. The lack of affordability of housing. The cuts in the health care escalator will cost provinces and the healthcare system. There are a lot of challenges out there and I think Canadians want to see a better Canada.” Dropping the role as house leader, one of the few NDP jobs with perks, Julian is saying good by to an extra $16,800 a year. NDP MPs Nathan Cullen and Richard Cannings broke the news Julian was stepping down early Wednesday on twitter. Breaking news – @MPJulian stepping down as house leader for NDP. Thx for all your amazing work in the House Peter! #cdnpoli #NDP — Nathan Cullen (@nathancullen) October 19, 2016 .@MPJulian stepping down as NDP House Leader. Thank you for your work as the best parliamentary tactician in Canada! — Richard Cannings (@CanningsNDP) October 19, 2016 The longtime NDP MP routinely makes the usual strategists’ shortlists as a potential and likely contender. Julian is fluently bilingual and won his New Westminster-Burnaby seat five elections in a row. He was a founding member of the left-leaning citizens’ group the Council of Canadians, and a former NDP National Policy Coordinator. He has previously held the party’s energy, trade and finance critic portfolios. While the Conservative leadership race is burgeoning with candidates and activity, the NDP race, which will settled next October, still hasn’t really started. So far no MPs have officially declared intentions to run following the party’s stunning electoral crash one year ago today. Big names in the party, including Megan Leslie, Paul Dewar and Nathan Cullen, have backed out. The one dipper who has expressed serious interest and generated a good deal of attention so far has been Ontario NDP MPP Jagmeet Singh. But even he told iPolitics in September that it would still be a while before the race would really pick up and candidates would start to announce bids. Julian said there’s no rush because “there’s a year to go.” “We’ve got a year to have the conversations that need to happen…there are other people who are interested, no doubt.”Author's Note: Hello and welcome, one and all, to this, a very special entry in the Diary of Glynda Goodwitch! Special in that this marks the first of our four-part 100th Entry SPECTACULAR! Ehem… perhaps that was too much pomp and circumstance… the thought occurs that all these sparklers won't add much to the effect as you read this… Really probably shouldn't have bought them… Aaaanyway, this entry contains approximately the exact same amount of refusal to acknowledge responsibility as usual! Oh, and zombies… Enjoy~ Entry # 97: Age 17 Dear Diary, You find me, Mr. Diary, in something of a predicament today – although I suppose that in itself is a fairly frequent occurrence… Whatever… Today's unique crisis is on an altogether different order than previous ones though, as the student council presently finds itself beset with the task of suppressing the consequences of a series of misguided deeds performed by categorically desperate (in the extremely pathetic, rather than sympathetic sense of the word, let me be clear) individuals which have resulted in something of a quandary for us in the student administration… Heaven forbid any of the school's faculty should bester themselves to lift a finger to resolve this problem, but I suppose I digress… Wouldn't want Ozpin-sensei to think I can't handle things on my own now, would I? Ah, but I suppose that I'm getting ahead of myself aren't I? Perhaps it might be useful for the mercurial entity vaguely understood as 'posterity' – not that any of them have any business reading this anyway – to discuss the root of the problem. You see, It all goes back to the Occult Research Society's recent little 'civil war' – no, no, I guess it rather obliquely ties back to that gallon of love potion getting mixed into the hot chocolate after the Snowpocalypse (which incidentally was not my fault in the LEAST!) – although come to think of it, really this wouldn't have gotten all out of proportion if it weren't for that first-year Emerald from Signal who was only hanging around here because of the invasion of Signal so… I've got it! This is all ALEXANDER'S FAULT! HAHAHAHAHAHAH! Ehem… Sorry… Was the maniacal laughter a bit over the top? I just get excited sometimes when I contrive a means to blame – I mean learn that – someone else is to blame for my problems… It's such a liberating feeling… But anyway… the problem. Well, the 'Oh-Neo-Sama' faction of the Occult Research Society – for reasons that I should think I've covered a sufficient number of times – decided to give it one more go to impress their 'Sempai' by attempting to summon a legion of undead minions to serve her as 'tribute,' thinking that maybe then she would join their club and possibly date them (though I'm in doubt as to the veracity of that last part, in the first place because Neo's much too pretty for any of them, and in the second, carrying on a seven way relationship seems unduly complicated unless the members of the ORS just wanted to offer themselves as a harem…). You following so far? Good. That on its own wasn't enough to touch off the current crisis though – no, in addition to the Occult Research Society, that Emerald girl – for reasons presumably linked to the love potion-spiked hot chocolate she drank (which I reiterate was obviously ALEXANDER'S FAULT AND NOT MINE!) – had been in the vicinity praying at her 'Cinder-Sempai' stalker shrine (incidentally, I know I can't be the only one who finds that just a little bit creepy – and shut up! those cheesecake photo albums of almost everyone I know that I hide in the back of my closet are completely DIFFERENT!) to both Oh-Mikuru-Sama (so that she could be more adorable, I assume) AND Oh-Yuno-Sama (presumably just in case moe failed her…). Finally – fatally – CINDER – for reasons best known to herself – decided to incinerate every east/west facing wall on the third floor of the East wing… Frankly, I don't know if it was supposed to be symbolic of something (though I seriously doubt it it – this is Cinder we're talking about…) or if it was just for a lark, but it does strike me as an oddly specific rash of vandalism – Seriously! All the north/south facing walls were pristine! Ah, but I suppose I'm getting off-topic… The relevant consequence of Cinder's wanton destruction of property was that the divine energies from Emerald's little 'prayer session' (incidentally, I KNEW the Signal Push-Up program was a bad idea!) and the unholy energies from the Occult Research Society's unwholesome ritual got mixed, thanks to having the walls abruptly being removed (drywall is apparently a surprisingly good magical insulator…) consequently turning everyone on the third floor of the East wing – Cinder, Emerald, and the Neo-Worshiping members of the ORS included – into zombies… Eeeeyep… Zombies… Not just any zombies though – no… that would have been too EASY… They were all turned into magically chibified moeblob zombies… Presently puzzling over how one manages to mix amateur necromancy with moe… Glynda P.S. Fortunately we've managed to contain the threat on the upper floors of the East Wing for now – and even cutesy-moe-zombie Emerald seems content to give cutesy-moe-zombie Cinder a hug, rather than say… eat brains… I think we should be okay until we can figure this out…A sociology professor declared on Twitter that whiteness is “terror” and that white people are “conditioned” to commit mass murder – two recent examples of many extreme and radical comments the scholar had made on social media. In a series of tweets June 26, Zandria Robinson stated that “whiteness is most certainly and inevitably terror” and “waits for thinkpieces about how more mental health services could prevent white people from acting how they are conditioned to act.” And in a tweet from June 28, she stated “when whiteness is all white folk have left as property, ravaged as the working class has been since the 70s; racial terror + paranoia rises.” After news of Robinson’s tweets spread Tuesday, her faculty profile was abruptly taken down by the University of Memphis, which tweeted out that she no longer worked for the university. A campus spokesman did not respond to The College Fix’s request for comment Tuesday about when and why she left employment there, only saying “Dr. Robinson is no longer a faculty member at the University of Memphis.” Then on Wednesday, the Memphis-based Rhodes College put out a statement that it had hired her for its anthropology and sociology department, calling her an expert “in the areas of race, class, gender, culture, and the South.” The campus called her comments “provocative, controversial and debatable.” But Robinson’s tweets, first reported by the website SoCawlege, are not the first time she has made controversial statements on social media. Her previous posts on Facebook and Twitter included accusations that white students falsely believe students of color get into grad school based solely on their skin color, that she did not want her daughter attending school with “snotty privileged whites,” and that “white students threatened us and their racist evaluations of us factor into our job security,” Campus Reform’s Peter Hasson reported. A few days after that June 5 article was published, Robinson tweeted “yes some conservative fuckboys are very enamored with me and like little boys are pulling bra straps and showing their penises for attention” and “I am awaiting some death threats and rape threats, though. Because these are the ultimate expressions of love from conservative whites these days.” And in the aftermath of news reports on her latest tweets, someone claiming to be Robinson’s husband released a series of screenshots of what appears to be Robinson on Facebook. In a long dialogue, she compares her critics to screaming “toddlers” and instructs people to use trigger warnings. In a comment to The College Fix, Hasson said: “What’s most concerning to me is that we know how Professor Robinson acts publicly towards those who don’t hold her opinions but one can only imagine how she treats the students in her classroom who hold viewpoints she doesn’t agree with. I do, however, forgive Professor Robinson and will keep her in my prayers.” The University of Memphis website had linked to her controversial Twitter timeline on her university bio before it was taken down Tuesday, directing students to her controversial and extreme opinions. Her areas of research included “post-Civil Rights black South,” the “histories, cultures, and ideas generated by regional insiders and outsiders,” and “sexuality; urban sociology; popular culture; and feminism,” her bio had stated before it was taken down. Robinson describes herself on her Twitter profile as a “dirty south black feminist sociologist,” and “some babies’ mama.” Robinson also has a blog called “New South Negress” where she discusses pop-culture and race issues. In a post on the recent controversy regarding the Confederate flag, she said: “White folks who think they don’t participate in racism always get spotlight anxiety when some white folks who have no qualms about their racism whatsoever are center stage in media discourse. These white folks, who call the other white folks ‘backwards,’ ‘rednecks,’ ‘racist,’ and ‘trash,’ hate to have their whiteness sullied by these other white folks. They wouldn’t want colored folks to think they were like those white folks. So, they latched onto the thing that they hate about backwards white southerners more than Honey Boo Boo, trucker hats, Toddlers and Tiaras, burning crosses, and Swamp People combined–the confederate flag.” Through all of it, she still has a fairly strong Rate My Professor page. However, one review from ten years ago warns: “She is more concerned about race and inequality than sociology!” Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter IMAGE: YouTube screenshotDec. 19, 2016, 5:58 PM GMT / Updated Dec. 19, 2016, 11:21 PM GMT By The Associated Press Vincent Viola is a Brooklyn native, West Point graduate and billionaire businessman who paid $250 million for an NHL hockey team. And if the Senate agrees, he'll become the next Army secretary. Viola is founder of several businesses, including Virtu Financial, an electronic trading firm. He also owns the National Hockey League's Florida Panthers and is a past chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange. Chief Executive Officer and Owner of the Florida Panthers Vincent Viola on June 26, 2015 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Eliot J. Schechter / NHLI via Getty Images In a statement Monday, President-elect Donald Trump praised Viola, the son of Italian immigrants, as "living proof of the American dream" who has "long been engaged with national security issues." Related: Eric Fanning, First Openly Gay Army Secretary, Gets Sworn In Viola, whose father worked as a truck driver, was the first member of his family to attend college by graduating from West Point in 1977. He trained as an Airborne Ranger infantry officer and served in the 101st Airborne Division. He is a 1983 graduate of New York Law School. In 2003, he founded and helped fund the creation of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. Viola bought the Panthers in 2013. Forbes estimates his net worth to be $1.8 billion. Earlier this year, Eric Fanning was sworn in as secretary of the Army, the highest ranking openly gay leader of any U.S. military service. The Obama administration, which made a concerted pushed for gay and lesbian rights, and advocacy groups's applauded Fanning's confirmation.After the 2016 Under Armour All-America game on Saturday in Orlando, new Texas Longhorns commit Jean Delance explained by Rivals why he decided to pledge to the Horns at halftime. "Simply Coach Strong, he's a player's coach and he wants the best for his players, but also I know that his program is going to get turned around with a couple other players in this class going to commit soon. We're going to be pretty good," said the consensus four-star offensive tackle. Delance may have some inside information on those potential decisions, as he spent the week in Orlando with several other key Texas targets who are trending towards the Longhorns, including Waco cornerback Eric Cuffee, who wanted to commit during the game, Alief Elsik linebacker Dontavious Jackson, Aldine Davis linebacker Jeffrey McCulloch, and Nacogdoches safety Brandon Jones. At this point, there's an excellent chance that all four of those players join Delance in committing to the Longhorns. And the North Mesquite product wouldn't have made that decision if he wasn't convinced that Strong is the right person to lead Texas. "Well, I've looked at Coach Strong's background at Louisville and I strongly believe that he's going to do it at Texas," Delance said. "It just takes the right guys and commitment to get this thing turned around."By contrast, for all the excitement stirred by Mr. Obama, it is much less certain that an African-American could win a presidential election. Not as many blacks have been elected to prominent positions as women. Some high-profile black candidates — Harold Ford Jr., a Democrat running for the Senate in Tennessee, and Michael Steele, a Republican Senate candidate in Maryland — lost in November. And demographics might be an obstacle as well: black Americans are concentrated in about 25 states — typically blue ones, like New York and California. While black candidates cannot assume automatic support from black voters, they would at least provide a base. In states without big black populations, the candidate’s crossover appeal must be huge. “All evidence is that a white female has an advantage over a black male — for reasons of our cultural heritage,” said the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, the civil rights leader who ran for president in 1984 and 1988. Still, he said, for African-American and female candidates, “It’s easier — emphatically so.” Ms. Ferraro offered a similar sentiment. “I think it’s more realistic for a woman than it is for an African-American,” said Ms. Ferraro. “There is a certain amount of racism that exists in the United States — whether it’s conscious or not it’s true.” “Women are 51 percent of the population,” she added. Many analysts suggested that changing voter attitudes can best be measured in choices for governors, since they, like presidents, are judged as chief executives, rather than legislators. There will be one black governor next year — Deval L. Patrick in Massachusetts, the second in the nation since Reconstruction. By contrast, women will be governors of nine states, including Washington, Arizona and Michigan, all potential battleground states in 2008, a fact that is no doubt viewed favorably by advisers to Mrs. Clinton. “Voters are getting more comfortable with seeing governors as C.E.O.’s of states,” said Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a Kansas Democrat. Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, a Michigan Democrat who won a second term last month, said in an interview that when she first ran, she had to work harder. “Not this time,” she said in an interview. “They are used to a woman being governor.” Photo Of course, governors don’t have to handle national security. And Mrs. Clinton has used her six years in the Senate to try to counter the stereotype that women would not be as strong on the issue, especially with the nation at war. Mrs. Clinton won a seat on the Armed Services Committee, and was an early supporter of the war in Iraq. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Mr. Obama is in many ways an unusual African-American politician, and that is why many Democrats, and Republicans, view him as so viable. Mr. Obama is a member of a post-civil-rights generation of black politicians and is not identified with leaders like Mr. Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York, who are polarizing to many white voters. He has a warm and commanding campaign presence that, as he showed in Illinois, cut across color lines. Donna Brazile, a prominent Democratic strategist who is black, said that she had been deluged with e-mail messages from people looking to volunteer for Mr. Obama — and that most of the requests were from white voters. Moreover, there is abundant evidence that attitudes toward black candidates are changing among white voters. In Tennessee, Mr. Ford lost his bid to become the state’s first black senator since Reconstruction, but by only three percentage points. Surveys of voters leaving the polls showed that 40 percent of white voters supported Mr. Ford, compared with 95 percent of black voters. More intriguing, the final result was the same as what the exit polls had suggested. Before this, in many races involving black candidates, the polls predicted that they would do better than they actually did — presumably because voters were reluctant to tell questioners they did not support the African-American. That said, Mr. Ford lost his race after Republicans aired an advertisement that Democrats said was explicitly racist. Many Democrats said a lesson of the loss was that racial appeals still have force, particularly in the South. Race and gender are big issues in American politics, but they are not the only ones, particularly in the coming race. Mr. Obama, should he run, may find his lack of experience will be far more troublesome to voters than his color. He is 45 and serving his first term as senator. Mr. Obama said that many black voters he spoke with have serious questions about whether America is ready to elect an African-American president. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “I think there is a protectiveness and a skepticism within the African-American community that is grounded in their experiences,” Mr. Obama said in an interview. “But the skepticism doesn’t mean there’s a lack of support.” David A. Bositis, senior political analyst with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a nonpartisan Washington group that studies black issues, said that it would certainly be hard, but not impossible for an African-American candidate to win. “I certainly felt in the ’90s that if Colin Powell had been nominated on a major party ticket, he would have had a very good chance to win,” Mr. Bositis said. “If it’s the right black candidate, I do think there is propensity to elect a black. But it has to be the right black candidate.”Andy Mangan scored on his second debut for Shrewsbury Town after rejoining from Tranmere Rovers Cardiff City suffered an embarrassing third-round FA Cup exit as they were beaten by League One side Shrewsbury in front of a sparsely-populated crowd. The hosts shaded a turgid goalless first half at the Cardiff City Stadium, with Sammy Ameobi hitting the post. Although the Bluebirds continued to control possession, Andy Mangan headed the game's only goal after an hour. Federico Macheda and Stuart O'Keefe both wasted chances as Shrewsbury, 20th in League One, held on. Shrewsbury, 35 places below their opponents in the Football League, had only won one of their previous eight FA Cup ties against sides from a higher division since Kevin Ratcliffe's side beat Everton - and a young Wayne Rooney - in the third round in 2003. Wretched pitch, near-empty stadium A crowd of just 4,782 - marginally bigger than the stadium's record lowest football attendance of 4,194 - watched two much-changed sides toil on a muddy, deteriorating pitch, in a stadium that holds 33,280. Cardiff manager Russell Slade kept only two players from the 1-0 league win against Blackburn, while Shrewsbury boss Mick Mellon made five alterations to the team thrashed 7-1 by Chesterfield. It was one of Cardiff's nine changes, Alex Revell, who had the first shot of note but his scuffed rebound was easily palmed away by Mark Halstead. Bluebirds winger Ameobi then struck the post with a low, firm effort, though neither side was able to play with any fluency on the sticky surface. Cardiff kept the ball for long periods but to no avail, and they fell behind when Scott Vernon's deep, inswinging cross from the left flank was nodded in at the back post by Mangan, making his second debut for the club. Former Manchester United striker Federico Macheda failed to take several good chances for Cardiff Slade's side rallied with excellent chances for Macheda and O'Keefe, but both were denied by Halstead. The hosts recorded 26 shots including blocked efforts, more than any other team in the FA Cup third round, but failed to capitalise, with Macheda particularly culpable. Shrewsbury defended resolutely and still posed a counter-attacking threat, as Jordan Clark shot wide and Ian Black clipped the post, but Mellon's men were ultimately content to cling on to victory and reach the fourth round. Manager reaction Cardiff boss Russell Slade: "We made a lot of changes but there are no excuses - I sent out a team with enough ammunition to get a positive result. "We were a little bit wasteful in front of goal and then we've let ourselves down by not picking up their players in our box and they've scored. "Our focus shifts on to the league almost immediately but I love the FA Cup and we're disappointed, we wanted to progress. "Of course I'm prepared to take the criticism, all managers have to take that and the numbers don't lie." Shrewsbury boss Micky Mellon: "Football just drives me up the wall - one week we can have a performance like against Chesterfield and then they do this. "The players were fantastic and stuck to the game plan that we had worked so hard on during the week and got their rewards for that. "We always seem to get drawn away in this competition so I'd like the football gods to shine on us and draw us against one of the big boys at home." What next? Cardiff face high-flying Hull away in the Championship on Wednesday night, hoping to close on the play-off places. Shrewsbury will look to move away from the League One relegation zone as they host Barnsley on 16 January.In July, after decades of an underdog guerrilla struggle, South Sudan broke off from Sudan and formed its own nation. Most Southern Sudanese were ecstatic. The partying in Juba, South Sudan’s capital, did not stop for days. But for southerners living north of the border, like Mrs. Ley, whose stooped back and cracked, calloused hands tell their own story of suffering and toil, the south’s joyous independence compounded their misery. Because of the enmity between Sudan and South Sudan — the two have been massing troops on the border, bracing for another major conflict that could ripple across this entire region — there will not be any dual citizenship for southerners living in the north, and it is not clear what the status will be for northerners living in the south. The Sudanese government says it is going to strip all southerners of their citizenship starting in April. If they want to remain in Sudan, they must apply for a visa, work permit, residency papers and the like, all of which will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get for impoverished, illiterate people like Mrs. Ley who often have no documents showing when or where they were born. She thinks she is around 45 years old. Even if someone was born in the north, like Mrs. Ley’s 9-year-old son, Georgie, the restrictions are the same. If the person belongs to an ethnic group that is from the south — including Mrs. Ley’s, the Nuer — then that person is considered a southerner. Photo Facing all this, more than 350,000 southerners have recently relocated, by bus and by barge, from the north to the south, part of a huge migration facilitated by the United Nations and the South Sudanese government. Many others are in line to go. “I’m just waiting for my pension papers,” said Palegido Malong, an elderly southern man who worked as a guard at a government hospital in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital. “I’ll die where I’m supposed to die.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story And as Mrs. Ley soon discovered, a lot of people are dying in the south right now. It was around December 2010 — Mrs. Ley says with a laugh that she is not strong on dates — that she and her children boarded a bus back to her ancestral home, a place called Mankien, just south of the north-south border. She said she was excited to participate in the south’s referendum for independence, held in January 2011, and was all set to move back with her people. Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. But one morning, a rogue militia stormed into Mankien, part of a wave of communal violence and insurrections that recently have been sweeping the south. Southern Sudanese soldiers rushed to confront them. The fighting raged for two days, and when Mrs. Ley emerged from her hut, she said, she had to step over dozens of bodies in the grass — men, boys, girls. “We were all about to be killed,” she said. She was also disturbed by the lack of development in the south — and it is not as if she were ensconced in modernity here in Omdurman, which is just across the Nile from Khartoum. She lives in a mud-walled house with paper pictures of Jesus taped above the bed. But in Mankien, there are no paved roads or electricity, few wells and few schools. South Sudan is one of the poorest countries on earth, where 83 percent of the population lives in thatched-roofed huts and a 15-year-old girl has a better chance of dying in childbirth than of finishing school. A few months after arriving in Mankien, Mrs. Ley and her children decided to take a bus back to Omdurman, choosing the lesser of two evils. They did not receive a warm welcome. Her 14-year-old daughter, Nyapay, said her toes were crunched in the market one day by an Arab man who intentionally stepped on them. Mrs. Ley said people kept giving her nasty looks and saying things like, “Why are you still here if you have separated?” She had always felt like a second-class citizen in the north. Now, it was official. Mrs. Ley struggles to feed her children anything beyond wal wal, a tasteless dish of sorghum and water. She does not have any relatives nearby who can help. Her first husband, a tall, skinny man named Walkat, was a guerrilla fighter, and when he was killed, she was handed over to Walkat’s brother, who regularly beat her children and punched her in the face. She fled to Khartoum about 20 years ago and has been brewing and selling illegal alcohol ever since. “It’s all I know how to do,” Mrs. Ley said, as she stared listlessly at the tools of her trade — a big blue plastic jug and a set of dented plastic soda bottles. She once spent six months in prison and cannot count all the times the police have whipped her with leather straps, as dictated by Sudanese Islamic law. Mrs. Ley adores her children, and on a recent afternoon, she poured Georgie a cool glass of water and beamed at him as he tipped it back. But her eyes dropped straight to the dirt floor when the subject of school fees came up. “I’m out,” she said.Becoming Senator Wingnut. For all of Washington’s political polarization, the U.S. Senate remains a clubby place. Sure, lawmakers talk smack about the unparalleled malevolence of the opposition, but there is, in general, a high degree of respect for the institution, its members, and its time-honored Way of Doing Things. While the House is known for its ideological cowboys, demagogues, and revolutionaries, the Senate is where bright lines and rough edges tend to get smoothed out in the name of statesmanship and legislative compromise. Clearly, no one told this to Jim DeMint. During his first term, South Carolina’s junior senator has made quite the name for himself. Armed with a courtly demeanor, a blandly pleasant visage, and a butter-melting drawl, he has set about flaying Democrats with a fervor that causes even some of his Republican colleagues to cringe. (His July call for the GOP to make health care Obama’s “Waterloo” prompted multiple Republican lawmakers to distance themselves or flatly criticize him.) But more notable than DeMint’s savaging of the opposition has been his savaging of his own people. Perched on the far-right edge of his conference--he was the only senator to speak at the September 12 tea party on Capitol Hill--DeMint has spent recent years conducting something of a party purity crusade. He has repeatedly delayed or derailed legislation supported by the bulk of his conference. He has sought new rules on how leadership and committee seats are doled out. And he has joined forces with from-the-fringe activists to turn his leadership PAC, the Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF), into a renegade funding operation that often works at cross-purposes with the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). Among the “rock-solid conservatives” SCF is championing this cycle are Marco Rubio in Florida (over the NRSC-backed Charlie Crist), Michael Williams in Texas (over presumed party favorite David Dewhurst),
rights stand to grow if it’s in more and bigger TV markets. There’s also the possibility that both Fox and ESPN might be interested once again in a U.S. national hockey deal. $2.2: That’s the price, in billions, that Houston restaurant magnate Tilman Fertitta spent buying the Houston Rockets and the Toyota Center. In the past week, Fertitta was quoted saying that he will be aggressive in pursuing an NHL franchise to fill his building. “I would put an NHL team here tomorrow, but this one has got to work,” said Fertitta. “Would I love to have the other dates in the building, do I want to see Toyota Center filled up 300 nights a year, definitely. So we’ll do whatever we can do, but whatever we do is going to make sense. But yes, Will we be aggressive? Yes. That’s my nature.” You can bet NHL owners, including board of governors chairman Jeremy Jacobs, took notice. Fantasy Hockey Pool Play the Sportsnet Fantasy Hockey Pool for your chance to score big with over $22,000 worth of prizes to be awarded! $550: As in millions, the total dollars Tim Lieweke’s Oak View Group (OVG) has committed to renovating Key Arena in Seattle. OVG’s partners also include David Bonderman and Jerry Bruckheimer, both of whom have been mentioned as potential owners of a Seattle NHL team. 2019: In just two years the league and the players have the right to opt out of the current collective bargaining agreement. Yes, that means by the end of the 2019-2020 season we could have labour issues in hockey again. I hope not, but it’s possible. It’s worth remembering expansion fees were a highly contentious issue during previous CBA talks. Currently, all expansion money goes to the owners. You have to wonder if that too will only accelerate the search for the Team 32. 23: Roster spots on an NHL team. Expansion means more jobs and more money for the players. And it might just become the best way for the league to compensate for the union’s rumoured demand for more than 50 per cent of Hockey Related Revenue. 7: If the last expansion fee number had to “begin with a five,” the figure for the next round will have to begin with a seven, as in $700,000,000. Or more… 3: The number of viable NHL-style arenas without a team over the next few years. Houston, Seattle, and not to be forgotten, Quebec City. Demand could perhaps drive up the price. Although, it’s also not too far-fetched to think expansion and relocation might go hand-in-hand. $60,000,000: The price of re-location fee the True North paid for relocating the Atlanta Thrashers to Winnipeg. So, if any of those three cities don’t get an expansion team, there is precedent for the NHL and its clubs when it comes to sharing a relocation fee. And you can bet the next number will be far higher than the one paid by the Jets. And I didn’t even want to bring it up, but that 32 sure is a nice, even number. So while it may be true that the NHL is not currently in expansion mode, it is almost a given, that it will be again and sooner rather than later.“For God’s sake – get on with it!’ No, this is not the crowd’s refrain for the umpteenth reset scrum, though it could be; it is the response to the seemingly interminable wait for the television match official to come to a decision or make a recommendation to the referee and for that to be put into effect. This subject has been covered here before but it appears that rather than get to grips with it the powers that be – and that is presumably the law makers and referees’ supremos at World Rugby (formerly the International Rugby Board) – have left us with an unsatisfactory situation that not only annoys spectators and viewers but threatens to create a sense of injustice for players subject to its workings. I have tried to get to the bottom of what is and is not the current protocol under the global TMO trial, but I have been given so many different answers that it is impossible to know the definitive position. The trial extended what can be referred to the TMO from the act of scoring to incidents in the two phases of play before scoring and foul play at any time before the next restart in play. The trial expressly states the following four principles are paramount as the basis for the operation of the process: 1. The TMO is a tool to help referees and assistant referees. The referee should not be subservient to the system. The referee is responsible for managing the TMO process. 2. The referee is the decision-maker and must remain in charge of the game. 3. Any relevant information taken into consideration must be CLEAR and OBVIOUS [their capitals] and in the context of materiality. 4. The application of the TMO system must be credible and consistent, protecting the image of the game. The use of the TMO is now so confusing, with no standardisation of what is referred, when, for how long and whether the TMO is asked to make a decision or just give advice, that it is currently not a help to referees. There should be a clear ruling that if a referee asks the TMO to make a decision that decision is binding, or else why not just allow the referee to watch the replays on either the stadium screens or his own screen on the touchline? In the Leinster v Harlequins game on Saturday night the referee, Romain Poite, asked the TMO to look at a possible foul-play incident involving the Quins’ second row, Charlie Matthews. After some discussion the TMO was asked whether there had been gouging, and answered no. Poite then went back and gave Matthews a yellow card, stating that they were not sure whether gouging had taken place but that there had been a hand to the face somewhere near the eyes. Whilst the hand was unwise, it was not a punch and Poite’s summary was inaccurate; he was specifically advised there was no evidence of gouging. Let us also look the two specifics which are meant to be so important that they are placed in capital letters in the experimental protocol – CLEAR and OBVIOUS. It can be forcefully argued that an incident which satisfies these two imperatives is, by definition, not one over which multiple replays are needed. Different angles may show a clearer view, but when a TMO gets the best view and then has to watch that replay multiple times, how clear and obvious can it be? In the previous weekend’s match between Castres and Wasps, the French club’s winger, Sitiveni Sivivatu, was shown a yellow card for a high tackle on Tom Varndell, which also resulted in a penalty try. Multiple replays were used for an incident that happened right in front of the assistant referee and which should have been seen by the referee, George Clancy. As neither was sure, how clear and obvious was the high tackle that was eventually penalised? Players, spectators and viewers have the right to have these decisions made under one agreed system and within a reasonable time. The time taken seems little when you are commentating because you have things to say. If you are sat in a stadium without the benefit of any explanation the process is opaque, tedious and maddening. This is made worse by the fact that in the recent autumn internationals World Rugby allowed the unions to decide whether any replay was shown to the crowd at all. As a governing body World Rugby has to mandate how this process is run and all countries have to comply. The TMO should explain his decision-making process, as they do in Rugby League, or else get rid of the TMO and leave it to the referee. World Rugby has to sort this out for the World Cup – if loyal rugby fans are frustrated by this, casual watchers will simply switch off.The open-source Mozilla project said Thursday it won't comply with a U.S. Department of Homeland Security request to remove a Firefox add-on that helps redirect Web traffic for sites that have been seized by the government. At issue is the Mafiaa Fire add-on, designed to reduce the effectiveness of an antipiracy campaign by DHS's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division. When users try to visit a website whose Internet domain has been seized by ICE, Mafiaa Fire redirects them to a working site set up to replace the seized domain. That's a problem for the DHS, which is trying to knock these sites offline permanently. "The ICE Homeland Security Investigations unit alleged that the add-on circumvented a seizure order DHS had already obtained against a number of domains," wrote Harvey Anderson, vice president and general counsel for Mozilla, in a blog post Thursday. In recent months, ICE has shut down a large number of websites suspected of selling illegally copied music, movies or counterfeit products. Some free-speech experts have said the seizures may violate freedom-of-speech protections in the U.S. Constitution. The DHS did not come to Mozilla with a court order, and the group pushed back, asking for proof that Mafiaa Fire is illegal, or at least a legal reason justifying the removal of the add-on. "To date we've received no response from Homeland Security nor any court order," Anderson said. While content companies see obvious reasons to keep these sites offline, Mozilla sees it as a question of government censorship, and whether agreeing to these informal requests might somehow "threaten the open Internet," Anderson said. The DHS's ICE division could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday. Neither could Mafiaa Fire developers nor Mozilla's Anderson. Robert McMillan covers computer security and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Robert on Twitter at @bobmcmillan. Robert's e-mail address is [email protected] because Tuesday’s victories came in states or districts won by Mrs. Clinton doesn’t mean they can be dismissed, however. College-educated white voters, paired with nonwhite voters, could profoundly endanger the G.O.P. in traditionally Republican, upscale districts. Up until the polls closed in Virginia, it was reasonable to suppose that Mrs. Clinton’s performance represented something of a ceiling for Democrats in well-educated areas. It would be easy, the theory went, for Republican voters to distinguish their longtime Republican representatives from Mr. Trump. Jon Ossoff’s failure to outdo Mrs. Clinton in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District seemed fully consistent with that possibility. But well-educated voters in Virginia didn’t appear to make any distinction between Mr. Trump and their incumbent representatives. Ed Gillespie, who was thought to have run a pretty strong campaign for governor against Ralph S. Northam, wound up running well behind Mr. Trump in many well-educated suburbs, a possibility that few imagined heading into the contest. The catch, though, is that the overwhelming Democratic strength in well-educated areas did not cross the political divides of the 2016 election and reach into white working-class areas. In fact, Mr. Northam, a Virginia Military Institute graduate with a strong Southern pedigree, didn’t even come close to matching Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Mr. Obama or Senator Tim Kaine in rural western Virginia. Democratic State Assembly candidates didn’t run well ahead of Mrs. Clinton, either. Yes, the political divisions of the 2016 presidential election wound up working pretty well for Democrats in Virginia, a highly educated state. But that might not be the case for Democrats in a lot of the rest of the country. There are only 11 Republican-held congressional districts in the United States where Mrs. Clinton won by five points or more. Even if Democrats swept those 11 districts, it wouldn’t get them that far toward the 24 seats they need to flip the House. To my surprise, it’s not obvious that a rerun of the Virginia House of Delegates election on a national scale would yield Democratic control of the House. Without greater strength in areas that supported Mr. Trump, it would still be a tossup. The good news for Democrats is that they did run well ahead of Mrs. Clinton in white working-class areas during this spring’s special congressional elections. And on Tuesday, Mr. Northam ran ahead of her in some of those areas, too, even if he landed short of prior Democratic benchmarks. The big question in 2018 might prove to be whether Democrats can have it all: Will it be possible to combine a Virginia-like near sweep of Republicans in Clinton districts with a broad Democratic overperformance in white working-class districts? If they can do both, they will be favored to retake the House. One or the other would probably make the fight for House control a tossup. The fact that they’ve done both at various points this year might be an early clue.It was my senior year of high school and one of our teachers called us in a room full of new computers. We were instructed to sit down and “surf the web.” “Surf the web?” What did that even mean? At the time I did not live anywhere close to the beach and couldn’t really understand this concept of web surfing. It was clunky and pages were slow to load. There was no way that this was going to be useful. I went back to the library later that day during study hall and read the newspaper. You know, the ones you see in hotel lobbies and occasionally outside of restaurants. All kidding aside, when people are used to doing something a certain way for so long it truly becomes part of who they are. I have operations management experience and every time I attempted to change the process or way of doing something to make it more efficient I was typically met with resistance. Some people are far more married to certain ideologies than others. We see it everywhere. I see it with the older generation at church not liking the newer music. Or, for example, the National League baseball purists despising the idea of the designated hitter. How about even simple things like when Facebook or Twitter changes the user interface? Don’t mess with my timeline! LOL. Why then should it be any different for Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency? I talk to people every day who are educated and successful and yet still can’t wrap their heads around cryptocurrency. To me it is like explaining how to surf the web to people in 1994. For centuries people have had it ingrained in their brains that money issued by the government meant it had value. Fiat currency (money issued by a government – USD, Euro, Ruble, etc) has this connotation behind it that because the government printed this it MUST be of value. While it is true that our dollars have value, most people think it is because it is backed by something. As a society we have decided that shiny minerals we dig up from the ground are “valuable” and therefore so is our money. When economies are humming along and governments aren’t overbearing and people have a relative “trust” in them then yes, fiat currency works quite well. What happens when we tip that scale and things don’t go so well? Economists have varying opinions on that, but most of the time governing bodies will step in and try to stimulate the economy. This is done by manipulating the economy via tactics such as lowering interest rates or quantitative easing. Governments love to turn on the printing press when things go bad. These types of scenarios can lead to distrust, or far worse. Recessions can turn into even bigger problems such as price controls or food shortages. Just ask the people of Venezuela who are protesting in the streets on a daily basis. This is because their government backed Bolivar now has seen triple digit inflation and it’s not even worth the paper it’s printed on. Let that sink in. The distrust of centralized banks, governments and corporations has led to people seeking financial refuge elsewhere. It can be incredibly difficult and costly to move money around the world as well. I used to manage banks and the process was tedious and required many eyeballs on it for verification purposes. Blockchain technology is changing all that. It is completely decentralized meaning that no one President, Dictator, government or corporation can control it. The online digital accounting ledger known as the blockchain maintains trust and multiple persons nearly instantly verifying transactions for each other. People are financially incentivised to do so. It’s a genius peer to peer operation that relies on people’s greed to verify each transaction. Because of this, blockchain transactions are also the safest and most secure transactions ever invented. What the internet did for information, blockchain technology is doing for transactions. Bitcoin is not backed by any shiny material in the ground, but by something far greater. The lack of trust in traditional fiat currency is causing people from all over the world to move their money into cryptocurrencies. It is a secure and relatively easy method of payment. I can send Bitcoin to anyone in the world for almost no fee at all and they receive it instantaneously. They can keep it in Bitcoin or they can instantly trade it on an exchange back into the local currency of their choice. Not only that, but merchants around the world are starting to take notice and many are now accepting Bitcoin as a method of payment themselves. If I owned a store, I would be BEGGING people to pay me in Bitcoin. Those who accepted Bitcoin since the start of 2017 have now TRIPLED their profit. And it is only getting started. Right now only about 1% of the population is confident in conducting regular transactions with Bitcoin. Imagine when that number moves to 3%. Then to 10%. What many people don’t realize is that the more people that jump into cryptocurrency the more value it will have. This is because the amount of Bitcoin that will ever be created is FINITE. And you can’t have a Ponzi scheme with a finite resource. That number happens to be 21,000,000. That’s it. Once that happens there will never be another Bitcoin created again. I have written articles on learncryptoinvesting.com discussing the details behind this if you want to learn more. Because we have 7 billion people on the planet and probably only 15 million people invested in cryptocurrency, there will come a day that 1 Bitcoin alone will be more than enough to retire on. Now you can certainly continue singing those same songs. In fact, I like the occasional hymn now and again, but with more guitar. You can continue to fight something you don’t fully understand or dismiss it as a fad while Fortune 500 companies and governments are starting to realize it’s not. Let me close with this. Eventually we all put down that newspaper in study hall and began to catch up on the news and other interests we have by surfing this web. You can’t argue that or you wouldn’t be reading this article! Thank you for reading this and, as always, I would love to hear from you.Democrats: Lift ban on buying medicines from Canada U.S.-made prescription drugs sell for 'half the U.S. retail price' (CNN) -- Montana's Democratic governor thinks it "makes no sense" that the United States can import "cattle, hogs and logs" from Canada -- but not cheaper prescription drugs. Speaking in the weekly Democratic radio address Saturday from Helena, Montana, Gov. Brian Schweitzer said "local pharmacists should be allowed to reimport safe, affordable prescription drugs from Canada, where American-made, U.S. taxpayer-subsidized medicine is sold for as little as half the U.S. retail price." He said that for five years, the government "has had the ability to lower the prescription drug cost for every person in America by as much as 50 percent. In five years, they've not delivered. Since they continue to sit on the sidelines, states have no choice but to do it for themselves." Safety concerns about Canadian drugs "manufactured by American companies, are unfounded," Schweitzer said. According to the governor, a top Food and Drug Administration official said last year that "there has never been a single documented case of an unsafe prescription drug coming across the border from Canada." "In fact, Congress' own General Accounting Office issued a report last year reaffirming that prescription drugs purchased from Canada are just as safe as those purchased in the U.S.," Schweitzer said. Schweitzer notes that the U.S.-Canadian border had been shut after the first case of mad cow disease was discovered in recent years. "Now, on March 7th the President Bush is planning to open the border again to beef." Schweitzer said that when Bush was in Montana recently, "We had just one question for him: "Why allow bad beef to enter the U.S. from Canada and not allow safe medicine?" The administration has contended that buying drugs in other countries is unsafe. U.S. drug companies are thought to be upset at the practice because it would hurt their profits. Schweitzer, a longtime Montana political figure elected governor last year, has chartered buses since 1999 to bring senior citizens over the border to purchase drugs "at a savings of more than half or one third of what they were paying in the United States." "On the bus rides I would give the seniors citizens clipboards. "They would tally all the trucks they saw with Canadian plates heading into the United States carrying cattle, hogs and logs and yet prescription drugs, made in the U.S., shipped to Canada aren't allowed back across the border. This makes no sense."I've spent a long time in the closet, but it's time to come out. I've tried to deny it. I've tried to suppress it. Even now as I type this column my hands are trembling as I reveal a dirty secret. I've decided to identify myself as "rich." That's right. I'm rich. Well, not personally. Right now I'm a graduate student who makes well below the median household income of $44,000. I pay my own rent and such, but I still get occasional support from my parents—my mom, a New York City principal, and my dad, an administrator—who make about four times that. They would never call themselves rich, but maybe they should. I say this because presidential campaigns are full of bromides about the "middle class." John McCain has come under a lot of fire for his apparent reluctance to say the phrase in debates, probably because he thinks "rich" is someone who makes $5 million (How much is he worth again? Including his wife’s huge fortune, probably upwards of $50 million. Obama is probably worth about $2 million, mostly from book sales). The problem is everyone in America thinks they are middle class. According to Pew Research, 53 percent of Americans identify as middle class, and 41 percent of those who make under $20,000 do. Here's the rub: many respondents who make over $100,000 will say they are middle class, or "upper middle class," which is really "I'm pretty rich, but I can't just buy Mercedes on a whim, and paying taxes isn't the easiest thing in the world. Plus, 'rich' doesn't sound nice." They may euphemize and say "comfortable" or, at most, "well-to-do." Then, according to Pew, there are four "middle classes:" top, satisfied, anxious, and struggling. Well, maybe I'm weird, but I thought that if you're "struggling" you're probably not in the middle of anything but rather scraping on the bottom. Who are "the rich" in America? Well, actually, they probably look at lot like John McCain, although perhaps he's too likable. They are mainly nameless CEOs, executives, lawyers, lobbyists who make gazillions of dollars and scheme to screw over the rest of the country for their own gain. How do I know this is the caricature? You see, 64 percent of people who make over $150,000 think the "rich" have too much power in this country, and 77 percent of those who make under $30,000 do too, according a great study done by The New York Times three years ago. Translation: everyone hates the rich! Because nobody is rich. The problem is some people really are rich. It is much easier to live when you make over $100,000, or even less than that, depending on your location. Sure, my parents complain about money all time. They pay ridiculous New York/New Jersey taxes. They pay the alternative minimum tax. But at the same time, even as the Dow plummets, I don't have to worry about putting food on the table, or paying my bills, or even buying new clothes. Neither do they. They can pay for my brother's tuition in cash. They travel. They are renovating the kitchen. These are big luxuries, and as the economy gets worse, it's important for Americans understand that many of them have been cheated. Economists have for years complained about wage stagnation. Even as Americans have become productive, their wages have barely kept up with inflation over the last 30 years or so. The recent rise of the minimum wage was paltry, a mere correction (why doesn't it go up every year with inflation?). The real "rich," on the other hand, have seen tremendous gains. They've benefitted from globalization, deindustrialization, and the rising importance of higher education. They've done well. Meanwhile, our tax policy has not kept up. A guy like Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary because his income is investment income. (Buffett is awesome not only because he's giving away his fortune to charity and singlehandedly saving GE, but also because he refuses to give his kids a huge inheritance, calling it "welfare." I love him. He's right. They didn't work for it). In an amazing documentary, Born Rich, the heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune talks to his rich and secretive friends—a Trump, a Bloomberg, you get the idea. It's fascinating to see how ashamed they are about being extremely, obscenely wealthy. The few Europeans he interviewed, on the other hand, were blatant: "there are rich people and poor people. I'm rich. Deal with it." The Americans acted as if being rich was a big secret. No wonder. In America, everyone is supposed to be the same. There is no class in America. I could rattle off numbers about how many people believe they'll be rich some day, versus how many actually end up rising up the ranks, and how years of bad policy have made it difficult to achieve success. That's another column. But let's just say this: in this current economic meltdown maybe Americans will finally realize we're not all the same. Some people have it easier than others. We need to stop deluding ourselves. Maybe I'm late with this rant. In fact, many Americans have probably woken up and realized how royally screwed they've been. No wonder John McCain is behind.Roger Cheng/CNET Verizon Wireless subscribers who have held onto their $30-a-month unlimited data plans will soon be forced to upgrade to a new tiered offering the company plans to launch this summer, according to the Web site Fierce Wireless. Speaking at the J.P. Morgan Technology Media and Telecom conference today, Verizon Communications CFO Fran Shammo told investors that the company's 3G unlimited data plans that customers were allowed to hang onto last year when Verizon switched to a tiered offering will soon go away entirely. Instead, the company will migrate its existing and new 4G LTE customers to a new "data share plan." The company has yet to announce the details of this new plan, but it has said previously that the data share plan will be introduced in midsummer. The plan will allow people on the same family plan to share buckets of data each month, much like they share voice minutes and text messaging. It will also allow individuals to share data across different 4G LTE devices. Verizon eliminated its unlimited data plan for smartphone users last July, about a year after AT&T had done the same thing. Like AT&T had done previously, Verizon told its existing unlimited data plan customers that they could keep their unlimited data plans even after their contracts expired. And Verizon has allowed its 3G wireless subscribers to upgrade to 4G LTE devices, while keeping their unlimited data plans. But the company was always careful to say that it could change this policy in the future. And now it looks like that day has finally come. The way it will likely work is that as 3G unlimited contracts expire, Verizon will push subscribers to upgrade their devices to smartphones on company's 4G LTE network. These customers will then have to sign up for the data share plans. "Everyone will be on data share," Shammo said, according to Fierce Wireless. "When they migrate off 3G they will have to go to data share. That is beneficial to us." Verizon hasn't yet announced pricing details of the new share plans. Shammo said that he believes this new plan will make it easier for families and small businesses to connect multiple devices, Fierce reported. This new plan is meant to encourage people to buy multiple connected devices and to use them on the 4G LTE network, without signing up for an additional data plan. As this change happens and people connect additional devices to their accounts, Shammo said that the industry will have to change how they account for the revenue. Instead of looking at average revenue per user, he said that the industry should look at average revenue per account. News of the end of the unlimited data plan is sure to upset some consumers who have held onto their existing accounts specifically for the unlimited benefit. AT&T also offers this benefit to longtime smartphone customers. But the company has struggled to keep up with the demands of some of these users. In an effort to ensure that "grandfathered" unlimited users don't hog the network, the company began slowing down a proportion of these heavy users. The move outraged many customers. One man sued AT&T in small-claims court and won. AT&T has since changed its policy and now only slows down or throttles users if they exceed 3GB of data per month. Meanwhile, T-Mobile USA and Sprint Nextel still offer unlimited data plans. T-Mobile also slows down users if they consume too much data each month. But Sprint claims that it is the only major wireless carrier in the U.S. to still offer unfettered unlimited data. Some people question how long the carrier will be able to offer such a plan given the steep rise in data usage. Verizon issued this statement on Thursday morning: As we have stated publicly, Verizon Wireless has been re-evaluating its data pricing structure for some time. Customers have told us that they want to share data, similar to how they share minutes today. We are working on plans to provide customers with that option later this year. We will share specific details of the plans and any related policy changes well in advance of their introduction, so customers will have time to evaluate their choices and make the best decisions for their wireless service. It is our goal and commitment to continue to provide customers with the same high value service they have come to expect from Verizon Wireless.Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid is a 2007 book written by Lemony Snicket. It is a "wit and wisdom" quotation book partly drawn from Snicket's famous A Series of Unfortunate Events.[1] Contents [ edit ] Following the tradition of Snicket's work, Horseradish has thirteen chapters, each with a certain theme. The book is prefaced with an introduction that outlines these themes. Introduction [ edit ] The bulk of the introduction follows the story of a man and a woman who live in a small grass hut in a village surrounded by a horseradish field. They generally live a routine life, and, as they have no taste for the horseradish, spend most of their time hunting to prepare raisin-stuffed snails to provide for their meals. One night, the woman asks her husband if there is more to life than doing the same thing for years. Her husband replies that the woman's mother once told him about a wise man who would probably know. The woman visits her mother, who says that she heard about the wise man from the woman's third grade teacher, Miss Matmos. Miss Matmos tells the woman that the wise man lives on the top of a mountain far away and that the journey to the top of the mountain is difficult and dull. After months of walking and thinking about the subjects in the chapter headings, the woman arrives at the house of the wise old man; however, he is in fact not a wise man but a wide man. Tired and hungry, the woman returns home, but learns that in her absence her mother has taken her fishing pole, her husband has married Miss Matmos, and that she failed third grade. The moral of the story is that life has bitter truths that cannot be avoided. Chapters [ edit ] Home Family School Work Entertainment Literature Travel Emotional Health Affairs of the Heart A Life of Mystery The Mystery of Life An Overall Feeling of Doom that One Cannot Ever Escape no Matter What One Does Miscellaneous References [ edit ]So I’ve managed to get my hands on a beta copy of TradeSkillMaster 2.0. Over the past week or so I’ve been getting under the hood of the latest version of this popular gold making addon and finding out what features have been added and what has been ripped out. Given the size and complexity of TradeSkillMaster 2.0 I’ve written a short review to showcase the new feature of this latest version. My plan is update the review as features and functions mature with the beta to final release. There has been no release date for TradeSkillMaster 2.0, but Sapu, the lead developer, gives us a hint: ‘When its ready!’ If you’re new to TSM you may not appreciate all the new features and functions of TSM 2.0;however, this short review should give you an overview of the power under the hood. For those players familiar with TSM 1.x this review will give you the skinny on the new functions and the streamlined interface and prepare you for the final release. But most of all I’ve asked myself the question ‘Is TradeSkillMaster 2.0 good for your wealth’? Read the TradeSkillMaster 2.0 Review.Welcome To Yorkshire have confirmed that they are in talks with British Cycling about a potential bid to host the road World Championships, after British chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne announced at a press conference in Leeds on Thursday that they would back a future bid. Related Articles Yorkshire promises "greatest Grand Départ in the history of the Tour de France” Yorkshire puts on a show Tour de Yorkshire stage towns unveiled Tour de Yorkshire gets funding boost from UK government Wiggins and Kittel head Tour de Yorkshire line-up London bid for 2017 Tour de France Grand Départ “The Government have been very supportive of late of our efforts, they were very supportive around the Tour de France and we’ve been talking to them since about what we can do to build on that,” Welcome Yorkshire chairman Gary Verity told Cyclingnews. “We’re going to explore with our friends at British Cycling about the possibility of bringing the UK the Cycling world road championships and Osborne has announced today some report to that.” If the bid was successful, it would be the first time in the UK since Goodwood in 1982. Great Britain has only hosted the World Championships on one other occasion back on the second running of the event in 1922 when it was held in Liverpool. While a Yorkshire bid is not 100 per cent certain, as British Cycling have to invite expressions of interest, Verity is unaware any other contenders and is determined to have major racing return to the county. “We want Yorkshire, off the back of the Tour de France success, to be at the heart of any future British bid to host the worlds and we want to spend the next few months working that up with that.” Among those plans will be deciding on the year that they wish to target. The venues for the next three World Championships have been decided with Richmond, USA hosting it this season, Doha, Qatar in 2016 and Bergen, Norway in 2017, leaving the next open spot in 2018. The course will also be a crucial talking point and Verity believes that they can offer up any type of parcours that British Cycling asks for. “You’ve got all types of terrain in Yorkshire so you can do a hilly stage, you can do a flat stage or an intermediate stage,” explained Verity. “Whatever the feeling is in the discussions that we will have with the excellent team at British Cycling, the typography required is absolutely something that can be delivered because we have all possibilities.” Bigger and better Yorkshire played host to the Tour de France’s Grand Départ in 2014, to huge success with unprecedented fans lining the roads and, if they are to host the Worlds somewhere down the line, Verity wants it to be just as good. “We delivered the grandest Grand Départ of the Tour de France in the 111-year history of the race,” said Verity. “I’m sure if we were to be given the honour of hosting the road World Championships again that we would be able to give a really good account of ourselves and we would be able to do it in such a way that it would be as memorable as the Tour de France was in Yorkshire in last Yorkshire.” The funding from the exchequer will be used to get the bid off the ground and make them a viable option for the UCI, however Yorkshire will have to foot some of the bill if they want to take on the week-long event. The cost will be sized up over the coming months during the meetings between Welcome Yorkshire and British Cycling. Verity didn’t put a potential number on what it would cost them but he is confident that they will be able to bring that money back into the local economy. “The cost of the Tour de France was about 25 million quid, ball park, and the benefits of the UK economy just in that weekend in July was 130 million across the whole UK and 102 million to Yorkshire,” he said. “That was just that weekend in July and it has been growing since to a much bigger number. Basically a five to one return, and I think you’ll see at least that for any big cycling event that we host in the future.” Since hosting the Tour de France, the county has seen a huge boost in the numbers of people interested in the sport and taking up cycling. Verity says that the World Championships would only serve to make the sport even bigger. “I think that it would just build on the momentum and the excellent work of British Cycling over the past decade or more. You saw how last year’s Tour de France inspired a whole generation of people to really fall in love with cycling and older people like me to be energised by cycling. I’m sure more big cycling events coming here would be absolutely part of that.” Yorkshire is also set to host the Tour de Yorkshire this May, a three-day event backed by Tour de France organisers ASO.The citizens of Kalamazoo voted 3 to 1 for the legalization of medical marijuana last November. Most disabled veterans supported this vote because medical marijuana has a very personal effect on our lives, our well being and our health.Thousands of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are now diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and medical doctors report the medical use of marijuana is very therapeutic for veterans suffering the painful symptoms of PTSD. (Google Phillip Leve
. Flynn was paid $40,000 to attend an RT gala where he sat next to Vladamir Putin. Date unknown, 2016 : According to The Washington Post, “A series of contacts between Flynn and Kislyak began before the Nov. 8 election.” : According to The Washington Post, “A series of contacts between Flynn and Kislyak began before the Nov. 8 election.” April 2016: Manafort met with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian-Ukrainian political operative with past ties to Russian intelligence. Manafort met with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian-Ukrainian political operative with past ties to Russian intelligence. April 27, 2016: Trump met with Sergey Kislyak. April 27, 2016: Sessions is believed to also have met with Kislyak. Sessions is believed to also have met with Kislyak. May 2016: Donald Trump Jr. dined with Alexander Torshin, the deputy chairman of the Central Bank of Russia, at a National Rifle Association event. June 9, 2016: Trump Jr., Manafort, Kushner, and Rod Goldstone meet with Russian attorney and lobbyist Natalia Veselnitskaya; Russian-American lobbyist and former Soviet counterintelligence officer, Rinat Akhmetshin; Georgian real estate and finance executive and representative of the Algarov family, Ike Kaveladze; and former State Department employee, Anatoli Samochornov. Trump Jr., Manafort, Kushner, and Rod Goldstone meet with Russian attorney and lobbyist Natalia Veselnitskaya; Russian-American lobbyist and former Soviet counterintelligence officer, Rinat Akhmetshin; Georgian real estate and finance executive and representative of the Algarov family, Ike Kaveladze; and former State Department employee, Anatoli Samochornov. October 11, 2016: Donald Trump Jr. was paid “$50,001 and above” to speak at a dinner in Paris hosted by Fabien Baussart and Ronda Kassis, the founders of a Kremlin-backed think tank that Putin nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Donald Trump Jr. was paid “$50,001 and above” to speak at a dinner in Paris hosted by Fabien Baussart and Ronda Kassis, the founders of a Kremlin-backed think tank that Putin nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. July 7, 2016: Page met with Putin confidant Igor Sechin in Moscow. Page met with Putin confidant Igor Sechin in Moscow. July 7, 2016: Page met with Putin confidant Igor Diveykin in Moscow. Page met with Putin confidant Igor Diveykin in Moscow. July 20, 2016: Sessions met with Kislyak at the RNC. Sessions met with Kislyak at the RNC. July 20, 2016: Page and Trump adviser J.D. Gordon met with Kislyak at the RNC. Page and Trump adviser J.D. Gordon met with Kislyak at the RNC. August 14, 2016: Roger Stone and Russian-hacking alias Guccifer 2.0 exchanged direct messages on twitter. Roger Stone and Russian-hacking alias Guccifer 2.0 exchanged direct messages on twitter. September 8, 2016: Jeff Sessions met with Kislyak in his Washington, D.C., Senate office. Jeff Sessions met with Kislyak in his Washington, D.C., Senate office. April-November 2016: Reuters reports that there were 18 calls and electronic messages between Trump campaign advisers and Kremlin-linked individuals. Reuters reports that there were 18 calls and electronic messages between Trump campaign advisers and Kremlin-linked individuals. December 2016: Flynn and Kushner meet privately with Kislyak at Trump Tower in New York. Appendix 2: Trump team denials on Russian contacts July 24, 2016 : Paul Manafort appears on ABC’s “This Week” and George Stephanopoulos asks him, “Are there any ties between Mr. Trump, you or your campaign and Putin and his regime?” To which Manafort responds: “No, there are not. That’s absurd. And you know, there’s no basis to it.” Paul Manafort appears on ABC’s “This Week” and George Stephanopoulos asks him, “Are there any ties between Mr. Trump, you or your campaign and Putin and his regime?” To which Manafort responds: “No, there are not. That’s absurd. And you know, there’s no basis to it.” July 24, 2016 : Donald Trump Jr. appears on CNN and tells Jake Tapper that the Clinton campaign’s suggestion that Russia was helping Trump was “disgusting” and “phony,” noting: “Well, it just goes to show you their exact moral compass. I mean, they will say anything to be able to win this. I mean, this is time and time again, lie after lie.” Donald Trump Jr. appears on CNN and tells Jake Tapper that the Clinton campaign’s suggestion that Russia was helping Trump was “disgusting” and “phony,” noting: “Well, it just goes to show you their exact moral compass. I mean, they will say anything to be able to win this. I mean, this is time and time again, lie after lie.” July 27, 2016 : Trump appears on a CBS Miami news station and, in response to allegations that Russia was trying to help him win the election, he tells Jim DeFed: “I can tell you I think if I came up with that they’d say, ‘Oh, it’s a conspiracy theory, it’s ridiculous … I mean I have nothing to do with Russia. I don’t have any jobs in Russia. I’m all over the world but we’re not involved in Russia.” Trump appears on a CBS Miami news station and, in response to allegations that Russia was trying to help him win the election, he tells Jim DeFed: “I can tell you I think if I came up with that they’d say, ‘Oh, it’s a conspiracy theory, it’s ridiculous … I mean I have nothing to do with Russia. I don’t have any jobs in Russia. I’m all over the world but we’re not involved in Russia.” July 27, 2016 : Manafort appears on CBS and denies having any relationships with Russians and says suggestions that Russia was working on behalf of the Trump campaign are “absurd.” Manafort appears on CBS and denies having any relationships with Russians and says suggestions that Russia was working on behalf of the Trump campaign are “absurd.” October 24, 2016 : At a rally in Tampa, Florida, Trump states he has “nothing to do with Russia, folks. I’ll give you a written statement.” At a rally in Tampa, Florida, Trump states he has “nothing to do with Russia, folks. I’ll give you a written statement.” November 1, 2016 : As reports come out that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is being investigated by the FBI, Manafort tells NBC News that he never had ties or dealings with Putin or his government, calling any suggestions otherwise “Democratic propaganda … meant to deflect.” As reports come out that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is being investigated by the FBI, Manafort tells NBC News that he never had ties or dealings with Putin or his government, calling any suggestions otherwise “Democratic propaganda … meant to deflect.” November 11, 2016 : Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks gives the Associated Press (AP) a blanket denial of Trump campaign contacts with Russia, stating, “It never happened. There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.” Her denial came after the AP reported that “a top Russian diplomat and Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said … that Russian experts were in contact with some members of President-elect Donald Trump’s staff during the presidential campaign.” Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks gives the Associated Press (AP) a blanket denial of Trump campaign contacts with Russia, stating, “It never happened. There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.” December 18, 2016 : Kellyanne Conway goes on “Face the Nation,” and John Dickerson asks her, “Did anyone involved … in the Trump campaign have any contact with Russians trying to meddle with the election?” Conway responded: “Absolutely not. And I discussed that with the president-elect just last night. Those conversations never happened. I hear people saying it like it’s a fact on television. That is just not only inaccurate and false, but it’s dangerous.” Kellyanne Conway goes on “Face the Nation,” and John Dickerson asks her, “Did anyone involved … in the Trump campaign have any contact with Russians trying to meddle with the election?” Conway responded: “Absolutely not. And I discussed that with the president-elect just last night. Those conversations never happened. I hear people saying it like it’s a fact on television. That is just not only inaccurate and false, but it’s dangerous.” January 10, 2017 : During the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Jeff Sessions’s nomination as attorney general, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) says the following: “CNN just published a story alleging that the intelligence community provided documents to the president-elect last week, that included information that ‘Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump.’ These documents also allegedly say ‘there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government.’ Again, I’m telling you this as it’s coming out, so, you know. But if it’s true, it’s obviously extremely serious, and if there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?” Sessions replied: “Senator Franken, I’m not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it.” During the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Jeff Sessions’s nomination as attorney general, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) says the following: “CNN just published a story alleging that the intelligence community provided documents to the president-elect last week, that included information that ‘Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump.’ These documents also allegedly say ‘there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government.’ Again, I’m telling you this as it’s coming out, so, you know. But if it’s true, it’s obviously extremely serious, and if there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?” January 10, 2017 : In a text message responding to NPR about their report on alleged ties and collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, Manafort stated, “I have never had any ties to Russia or Putin.” In a text message responding to NPR about their report on alleged ties and collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, Manafort stated, “I have never had any ties to Russia or Putin.” January 11, 2017 : Trump is asked during a news conference about contacts between his associates or his campaign and Russia, which he refuses to answer until reporters chased him down afterwards. CNN’s Jim Acosta and ABC’s Cecilia Vega reported that Trump denied any contacts between his campaign and associates and Russia. Trump is asked during a news conference about contacts between his associates or his campaign and Russia, which he refuses to answer until reporters chased him down afterwards. CNN’s Jim Acosta and ABC’s Cecilia Vega reported that Trump denied any contacts between his campaign and associates and Russia. January 15, 2017 : Vice President-elect Mike Pence goes on “Fox News Sunday,” and Chris Wallace asks him, “So, I’m asking a direct question: was there any contact in any way between Trump or his associates and the Kremlin or cutouts they had?” Pence replied: “I joined this campaign in the summer, and I can tell you that all the contact by the Trump campaign and associates was with the American people … of course not. Why would there be any contacts between the campaign? Chris, the – this is all a distraction, and it’s all part of a narrative to delegitimize the election and to question the legitimacy of this presidency. The American people see right through it.” Vice President-elect Mike Pence goes on “Fox News Sunday,” and Chris Wallace asks him, “So, I’m asking a direct question: was there any contact in any way between Trump or his associates and the Kremlin or cutouts they had?” Pence replied: “I joined this campaign in the summer, and I can tell you that all the contact by the Trump campaign and associates was with the American people … of course not. Why would there be any contacts between the campaign? Chris, the – this is all a distraction, and it’s all part of a narrative to delegitimize the election and to question the legitimacy of this presidency. The American people see right through it.” January 15, 2017 : Vice President-elect Mike Pence goes on “Face the Nation,” and John Dickerson asks him: “Just to button up one question, did any advisor or anybody in the Trump campaign have any contact with the Russians who were trying to meddle in the election?” Pence replied: “Of course not. And I think to suggest that is to give credence to some of these bizarre rumors that have swirled around the candidacy.” Vice President-elect Mike Pence goes on “Face the Nation,” and John Dickerson asks him: “Just to button up one question, did any advisor or anybody in the Trump campaign have any contact with the Russians who were trying to meddle in the election?” Pence replied: “Of course not. And I think to suggest that is to give credence to some of these bizarre rumors that have swirled around the candidacy.” January 17, 2017 : In a follow-up letter after Sessions’ nomination hearing, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) asked Sessions if he had “been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after Election Day?” to which Sessions responded: “No.” In a follow-up letter after Sessions’ nomination hearing, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) asked Sessions if he had “been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after Election Day?” to which Sessions responded: “No.” January 19, 2017 : In an emailed statement responding to a New York Times report on possible links between Trump associates and Russian officials, Manafort stated: “I have never had any relationship with the Russian government or any Russian officials. I was never in contact with anyone, or directed anyone to be in contact with anyone.” In an emailed statement responding to a New York Times report on possible links between Trump associates and Russian officials, Manafort stated: “I have never had any relationship with the Russian government or any Russian officials. I was never in contact with anyone, or directed anyone to be in contact with anyone.” February 7, 2017 : Trump tweets: “I don’t know Putin, have no deals in Russia, and the haters are going crazy – yet Obama can make a deal with Iran, #1 in terror, no problem!” Trump tweets: “I don’t know Putin, have no deals in Russia, and the haters are going crazy – yet Obama can make a deal with Iran, #1 in terror, no problem!” February 14, 2017 : During a White House press briefing, ABC reporter Jonathan Karl asks Sean Spicer the following: “Back in January, the President said that nobody in his campaign had been in touch with the Russians. Now, today, can you still say definitively that nobody on the Trump campaign, not even General Flynn, had any contact with the Russians before the election?” to which Spicer eventually responded: “I don’t have any – there’s nothing that would conclude me – that anything different has changed with respect to that time period.” During a White House press briefing, ABC reporter Jonathan Karl asks Sean Spicer the following: “Back in January, the President said that nobody in his campaign had been in touch with the Russians. Now, today, can you still say definitively that nobody on the Trump campaign, not even General Flynn, had any contact with the Russians before the election?” to which Spicer eventually responded: “I don’t have any – there’s nothing that would conclude me – that anything different has changed with respect to that time period.” February 16, 2017 : Trump holds a press conference and tells reporters: “Russia is a ruse. I know you have to get up and ask a question. It’s so important. Russia is a ruse. I have nothing to do with Russia. Haven’t made a phone call to Russia in years. Don’t speak to people from Russia. Not that I wouldn’t. I just have nobody to speak to. I spoke to Putin twice. He called me on the election. I told you this. And he called me on the inauguration, a few days ago. We had a very good talk, especially the second one, lasted for a pretty long period of time. I’m sure you probably get it because it was classified. So I’m sure everybody in this room perhaps has it. But we had a very, very good talk. I have nothing to do with Russia. To the best of my knowledge no person that I deal with does.” Trump holds a press conference and tells reporters: “Russia is a ruse. I know you have to get up and ask a question. It’s so important. Russia is a ruse. I have nothing to do with Russia. Haven’t made a phone call to Russia in years. Don’t speak to people from Russia. Not that I wouldn’t. I just have nobody to speak to. I spoke to Putin twice. He called me on the election. I told you this. And he called me on the inauguration, a few days ago. We had a very good talk, especially the second one, lasted for a pretty long period of time. I’m sure you probably get it because it was classified. So I’m sure everybody in this room perhaps has it. But we had a very, very good talk. I have nothing to do with Russia. To the best of my knowledge no person that I deal with does.” February 19, 2017 : White House Chief of Staff Reince Preibus goes on “Fox News Sunday,” and when Chris Wallace asks whether the Trump team had any connections to Russia, Preibus says “no.” Preibus later went on to add: “Let me give you an example. First of all, The New York Times put out an article with no direct sources that said that the Trump campaign had constant contacts with Russian spies, basically, you know, some treasonous type of accusations. We have now all kinds of people looking into this. I can assure you and I have been approved to say this — that the top levels of the intelligence community have assured me that that story is not only inaccurate, but it’s grossly overstated and it was wrong. And there’s nothing to it.” White House Chief of Staff Reince Preibus goes on “Fox News Sunday,” and when Chris Wallace asks whether the Trump team had any connections to Russia, Preibus says “no.” Preibus later went on to add: “Let me give you an example. First of all, The New York Times put out an article with no direct sources that said that the Trump campaign had constant contacts with Russian spies, basically, you know, some treasonous type of accusations. We have now all kinds of people looking into this. I can assure you and I have been approved to say this — that the top levels of the intelligence community have assured me that that story is not only inaccurate, but it’s grossly overstated and it was wrong. And there’s nothing to it.” February 20, 2017 : White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders denies contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign, stating: “This is a nonstory because to the best of our knowledge, no contacts took place, so it’s hard to make a comment on something that never happened.” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders denies contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign, stating: “This is a nonstory because to the best of our knowledge, no contacts took place, so it’s hard to make a comment on something that never happened.” February 24, 2017 : At a White House press briefing, Sean Spicer is asked whether “the President has an improper relationship with Russia” and responds: “Well, again, there are no connections to find out about. That’s the problem. I think, A, he’s answered it forcefully. You can’t disprove something that doesn’t exist. He’s talked about the fact how many times he’s talked to Putin. He has no interests in Russia. He has no – there’s only so many times he can deny something that doesn’t exist.” At a White House press briefing, Sean Spicer is asked whether “the President has an improper relationship with Russia” and responds: “Well, again, there are no connections to find out about. That’s the problem. I think, A, he’s answered it forcefully. You can’t disprove something that doesn’t exist. He’s talked about the fact how many times he’s talked to Putin. He has no interests in Russia. He has no – there’s only so many times he can deny something that doesn’t exist.” February 26, 2017 : Trump tweets: “Russia talk is FAKE NEWS put out by the Dems, and played up by the media, in order to mask the big election defeat and the illegal leaks!” Trump tweets: “Russia talk is FAKE NEWS put out by the Dems, and played up by the media, in order to mask the big election defeat and the illegal leaks!” February 27, 2017 : At a White House press briefing, Sean Spicer is asked: “Can you not categorically deny there were no contacts between the Russians and anybody on the campaign?” to which Spicer responds, “I can’t deny – I can’t I guess my question is – ” and the reporter states, “That’s what the investigation would look at.” Spicer goes on to state: “Right. And I guess my point is, is that you’ve had the intelligence community look at Russia’s involvement in the election. You had the House and Senate both do the same. And so what I’m trying to ascertain is that at what point — how many people have to say that there’s nothing there before you realize there’s nothing there? I can’t say unequivocally — all I’m saying is, the people who have done the investigating about Russia overall and its activities in the United States, specifically now with respect to our election, haven’t provided anything that leads me to believe or should lead you to believe — and I continue to see reports coming from — there were media sources saying when they checked in with law enforcement, or intelligence community sources, there’s nothing more than has been previously reported over and over again. So, at some point, you do have to ask yourself, what are you actually looking for? How many times do you have to come to the same conclusion before you take the answer?” At a White House press briefing, Sean Spicer is asked: “Can you not categorically deny there were no contacts between the Russians and anybody on the campaign?” to which Spicer responds, “I can’t deny – I can’t I guess my question is – ” and the reporter states, “That’s what the investigation would look at.” March 2017 : In an interview with The New York Times, Donald Trump Jr. denied having participated in any campaign-related meetings with Russian nationals, stating, “Did I meet with people that were Russian. I’m sure, I’m sure I did. But none that were set up. None that I can think of at the moment. And certainly none that I was representing the campaign in any way, shape or form.” In the same interview, when asked whether he had discussed government policies related to Russia, Trump Jr. stated, “A hundred percent no.” In an interview with The New York Times, Donald Trump Jr. denied having participated in any campaign-related meetings with Russian nationals, stating, “Did I meet with people that were Russian. I’m sure, I’m sure I did. But none that were set up. None that I can think of at the moment. And certainly none that I was representing the campaign in any way, shape or form.” March 1, 2017 : Following reports from The Washington Post that Sessions had met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, Sessions’ staff released the following statement on his behalf: “I never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign. I have no idea what this allegation is about. It is false.” Following reports from The Washington Post that Sessions had met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, Sessions’ staff released the following statement on his behalf: “I never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign. I have no idea what this allegation is about. It is false.” March 2, 2017 : In an interview with NBC News, Sessions says, “I have not met with any Russians at any time to discuss any political campaign, and those remarks are unbelievable to me and are false.” In an interview with NBC News, Sessions says, “I have not met with any Russians at any time to discuss any political campaign, and those remarks are unbelievable to me and are false.” May 8, 2017 : Trump tweets: “The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax, when will this taxpayer funded charade end?” Trump tweets: “The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax, when will this taxpayer funded charade end?” May 11, 2017 : In an interview with NBC, Trump told Lester Holt, “I have had dealings over the years where I sold a house to a very wealthy Russian many years ago. I had the Miss Universe pageant – which I owned for quite a while – I had it in Moscow a long time ago. But other than that I have nothing to do with Russia.” Later in the interview, when discussing Comey’s firing, Trump stated: “And in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself – I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story. It’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election they should’ve won.” In an interview with NBC, Trump told Lester Holt, “I have had dealings over the years where I sold a house to a very wealthy Russian many years ago. I had the Miss Universe pageant – which I owned for quite a while – I had it in Moscow a long time ago. But other than that I have nothing to do with Russia.” May 18, 2017: At a press conference, Trump repeatedly denies any collusion occurred between his campaign and Russia, at one point stating: “… [T]he entire thing has been a witch hunt. And there is no collusion between, certainly, myself and my campaign, but I can only speak for myself and the Russians – zero.” Appendix 3: A campaign filled with Russian-linked operatives Donald Trump: Trump’s extensive ties to Russia go back decades. Following his bankruptcy in the mid-1990s, Trump’s organization sought investment from Russia. Donald Trump Jr.: Trump’s son has been intimately involved in running The Trump organization and was a key figure and surrogate during the campaign. Since 2008, Donald Trump Jr. visited Moscow at least six times in search of new business deals. Trump Jr. also attended the Miss Universe pageant and has a relationship with the Agalarovs. He traveled to Paris on October 11, 2016, just four days after the “Access Hollywood”/Wikileaks revelations, to speak to a Russian-linked think tank about U.S.-Russian cooperation in Syria. He was reportedly paid at least “$50,000.” Paul Manafort: In March 2016, Paul Manafort joined the campaign as campaign chairman, where he was an unpaid volunteer. Manafort was forced to resign five months later amid controversy about his connection to former pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Manafort is one of several Trump associates under investigation by U.S. intelligence for contacts with Russian officials during the campaign, according to U.S. intelligence sources. During the campaign, Manafort regularly consulted with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian-Ukrainian political operative with ties to Russian intelligence. Kilimnik sparked the interest of U.S. intelligence authorities after he made trips in April and August 2016 to meet with Manafort. For years, Manafort advised former Ukrainian President Yanukovych’s presidential campaign, which also received support from Russian intelligence services. Yanukovych, who was ousted from power and exiled to Russia in 2014, reportedly set aside $12.7 million in illegal and undisclosed payments for Manafort. Manafort lobbied on behalf of Oleg Deripaska, who has close ties to Russian crime networks and is known as “Putin’s favorite industrialist.” The AP reported he was paid $10 million annually, beginning in 2006. Michael Flynn, ex-national security adviser to Donald Trump: Retired Lt. General Michael Flynn resigned from his position after it was revealed that he lied to the public about direct contacts with Russian Ambassador Kislyak during the campaign. Flynn resigned over his calls to Kislyak: U.S. intelligence officials believe that Flynn illicitly led the Russian ambassador to “expect a reprieve from sanctions” from the incoming Trump administration. Flynn later lied to the public and the FBI about the nature of these calls, which led to his resignation. U.S. intelligence officials believe that Flynn illicitly led the Russian ambassador to “expect a reprieve from sanctions” from the incoming Trump administration. Flynn later lied to the public and the FBI about the nature of these calls, which led to his resignation. Flynn talked repeatedly with Kislyak during the campaign: On a number of occasions during the campaign and transition period, Flynn privately discussed U.S. policy toward Russia, including sanctions, with Kislyak. On a number of occasions during the campaign and transition period, Flynn privately discussed U.S. policy toward Russia, including sanctions, with Kislyak. Flynn acted as a foreign agent without registering: While Flynn was acting as Trump’s top foreign policy adviser, the government of Turkey paid him $50,000 to lobby on behalf of its interests. Flynn accepted money from Russian companies: Flynn accepted $11,250 from two Russian firms for speaking engagements in Washington. One of them was Kaspersky Lab, a cybersecurity company with ties to the Kremlin. Flynn was paid $45,000 to attend an RT gala: Flynn returned to Moscow in December 2015 to attend a gala dinner hosted by Russia’s state-sponsored media giant, RT. During the gala, Flynn sat at the same table as Vladimir Putin. Flynn first meets Trump in August, 2015: Flynn tells The Washington Post that, “I got a phone call from his team. They asked if he would be willing meet with Mr. Trump and I did.” Flynn tells The Washington Post that, “I got a phone call from his team. They asked if he would be willing meet with Mr. Trump and I did.” Flynn receives contract in August 2015 to lobby for Turkey, which is linked to a Kremlin-connected Russian energy executive: A Turkish businessman hired the Flynn groupto a $600,000 lobbying deal. The Turkish businessman “has in recent years helped to coordinate Turkish lobbying in Washington with Dmitri ‘David’ Zaikin, a Soviet-born former executive in Russian energy and mining companies who also has had dealings with Putin’s government, according to three people with direct knowledge of the activities.” A Turkish businessman hired the Flynn groupto a $600,000 lobbying deal. The Turkish businessman “has in recent years helped to coordinate Turkish lobbying in Washington with Dmitri ‘David’ Zaikin, a Soviet-born former executive in Russian energy and mining companies who also has had dealings with Putin’s government, according to three people with direct knowledge of the activities.” After leaving the military, Flynn becomes a contributor to RT: Flynn made “semi-regular appearanceson RT as an analyst, in which he often argues that the U.S. and Russia should be working more closely together on issues like fighting ISIL and ending Syria’s civil war.” Flynn led a controversial trip to Moscow, visiting GRU headquarters: Flynn met with Kislyak on an official visit to Moscow in 2013. During the trip, Flynn became the first U.S. officer to enter GRU—Russian intelligence—headquarters. “His decision to go was a controversial one. Flynn believed that there were opportunities to find common ground with Russia.” Flynn wanted to visit GRU again and invited GRU officers to come to the United States but “permission was denied.” Carter Page, ex-Trump campaign foreign policy adviser: Carter Page is a former Merrill Lynch banker and adviser to Russian state energy company Gazprom. He served as an early foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump. Page has been under investigation for his communications with Russian officials during the campaign. In 2015, Page was actively recruited by Russian intelligence, which was exposed when the FBI arrested the Russian agents. Page has admitted they sought to recruit him. In March 2016, in an interview, Trump announced Page as one of his five foreign policy advisers; the group was led by Jeff Sessions. In July 2016, Page travels to Moscow, which Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager at the time, personally approved. In Moscow, Page met with longtime Vladimir Putin ally Igor Sechin, according to U.S. intelligence officials. During the meeting, Sechin, who is currently executive chairman of Russian state energy conglomerate Rosneft, allegedly discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia with Page. Igor Diveykin, another top Putin aide, also allegedly met with Page during the trip. U.S. officials suspect Diveykin was the individual responsible “for intelligence collected by Russian agencies about the U.S. election.” Page also gave a speech that was extremely pro-Kremlin during his visit. Two weeks after his trip to Moscow, Page met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Page has “refused to reveal the substance of the conversation, citing a confidentiality agreement.” Page returned to Moscow in December 2016, where he claimed to have had “the opportunity to meet with an executive from Rosneft.” Page continues to refuse to say who connected him to the campaign. Roger Stone: Stone has been a longtime Donald Trump loyalist, a close business associate of Paul Manafort, and formally advised Donald Trump’s campaign until August 2016. Stone is one of several Trump associates under investigation by U.S. intelligence for contacts with Russian officials during the campaign. Stone was in frequent communication with Trump during the campaign and seemingly had advanced warning of the Wikileaks release of Podesta emails (see Appendix 4), which were hacked by the Russians. (Stone has denied he knew of the Podesta hack ahead of the release.) He has also admitted being in communication with Guccifer, the front for Russian military cyber hackers, and Julian Assange. Michael D. Cohen, personal attorney to Donald Trump; ex-executive vice president, The Trump Organization: Cohen, a longtime lawyer for The Trump Organization, now serves as Donald Trump’s personal attorney. Cohen has extensive business and family ties to Ukraine and is under investigation by the FBI for links to the Kremlin. In February 2017, Cohen delivered a plan to the White House for lifting sanctions against Russia. In crafting the plan, he partnered with Russian-American businessman Felix Sater and pro-Putin Ukrainian politician Andrii V. Artemenko. Cohen initially lied about his involvement in the episode. According to Sergei Millian, a former Soviet émigré and head of the Russian American Chamber of Commerce, Cohen granted him “rights to market Trump Organisation properties in Russia and the former Soviet Union.” According to the Financial Times, Millian was on the FBI’s radar for his ties to Russia. Appendix 4: Russia’s hacking efforts and Trump team knowledge In the summer of 2015, two Russian hacking groups—which have been linked by the FBI and DHS to Russian intelligence agencies and are known variously as APT28/Pawn Storm/Fancy Bear and APT29/Cozy Bear—accessed the DNC network and exposed private information sent over DNC servers. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has confirmed that these attacks were designed to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. In March 2016, Russian hackers gained access to roughly 60,000 of Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta’s emails through his Google account. In March or April 2016, Russian hackers also hacked the DCCC. As a result of their subsequent release, Democratic House candidates around the country fell prey to a Russian influence operation after hackers first released lawmakers’ personal information and later internal party documents, including candidate evaluations. On June 3, 2016, Rob Goldstone emails Donald Trump Jr. to try to set up a meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya who claims to have potentially damaging information on Hillary Clinton as part of “Russia and its government’s support” for his father. On June 9, 2016, Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Rod Goldstone meet with Veselnitskaya, who is accompanied by Russian-American lobbyist and former Soviet counterintelligence officer, Rinat Akhmetshin; Georgian real estate and finance executive and representative of the Algarov family, Ike Kaveladze; and former State Department employee, Anatoli Samochornov.by July may have been the Earth’s hottest month on record, but August felt even hotter in Santa Cruz. Students started shuffling back into classrooms as the school year kicked off and researchers at our local university answered internet questions about their video game research. The Museum of Art and History continued its upward trajectory behind the leadership of Nina Simon, who was named to the 40 under 40 list by the Silicon Valley Business Journal. A local surf icon was featured in a story by SF Gate, Aptos got a new community park, Big Basin hiking trails were added to Google maps, and a local UFC fighter goes for the gold. All that, plus new businesses in town and the best of the month from Santa Cruz social media in this month’s edition of Santa Cruz Connected. UCSC Video Game Researchers Answer Questions On Reddit A faculty member and two UC Santa Cruz PhD students answered questions about their video game research on the popular website reddit in August. The research of the UCSC group involves using a computer science approach to finding related video games outside of traditional genre limitations. The “AMA” series on reddit, which is an acronym for “Ask Me Anything,” is one of its most popular features and has included everyone from famous actors, musicians, and athletes to President Obama. City Removes Beloved Beach Flats Mural, Pays Artist $30K Santa Cruz owes $30K, apology in Beach Flats mural whitewashing suit http://t.co/MMGa1g5nw9 pic.twitter.com/AdhdXSnJOk — Santa Cruz Sentinel (@scsentinel) August 8, 2015 The City of Santa

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